The Quality of Mercy - By Barry Unsworth Page 0,11
table. They had used the oil against mosquitos in that land of swamp and lagoon. Kemp’s nostrils contracted involuntarily at the memory. Barton had been naked above the waist except for a scrap of red silk round his neck, and this degraded dandyism had stayed with Kemp as somehow marking the mate’s readiness to preserve himself, to serve new masters. How glad he had been to get this evidence against his cousin. Any instrument, however base, however loathsome. Matthew had still been alive then …
“That is all satisfactory,” the lawyer said. “But this case has aroused widespread attention, and I have learned something this morning that might complicate matters and make it more difficult to get a speedy judgment.”
“What is that?”
“Frederick Ashton and some others of similar persuasion have taken the case up.”
The name, coming thus unexpectedly, caught Kemp off guard, and he glanced aside, a thing unusual with him. He had recently met, and exchanged some words with, this man’s sister, Miss Jane Ashton, at the house of a business acquaintance, and her face came vividly to his mind now, the eyes particularly, between gray and green in color and very direct and unfaltering. She had looked at him without coquetry, without any care to challenge or provoke, though some hint of laughter there had been. No other young woman had regarded him so frankly, none that he could remember. He had felt a need to break that scrutiny, and he had found a way of doing this by paying her a compliment on her gown. At this she had smiled and glanced slightly away, and this had seemed to him like something won from her. A smile of good augury, as he thought of it now: not five minutes afterward his host had told him in private talk that a Lord Spenton, a mine owner, desired to obtain a loan from the bank, thus presenting the kind of investment opportunity that he had long hoped for.
The lawyer had noticed his hesitation and misunderstood it. “You know the man?”
“We have not met, but I know him by repute.”
“So far he has confined his activities to contesting the right of property in slaves brought to these shores from the West Indies, using the argument that England is the home of freedom and that her laws cannot tolerate one man claiming ownership in another.”
“That is all very well,” Kemp said. “But they don’t understand the workings of money, these people. There might be a hundred blacks brought here in the course of a year, all acquired by purchase. Then there are the numbers already here, probably at least a thousand in London alone. It amounts to a very considerable capital sum. Who is going to compensate the owners?”
“That is a question that causes alarm on all sides,” Pike said. “Of course, if they were declared to be free upon setting foot on English soil, their owners would be obliged to desist from bringing them here.”
“But that would be an unwarranted curtailing of our essential liberties as Englishmen.”
The lawyer’s own habit of mind caused him to suspect that there might be some intention of irony in these words, but his client’s face had remained completely serious. “Well,” he said, “it seems that Ashton is now looking further afield—he is intending to use the case for his own purposes. He has already engaged counsel to defend these men, an unusual step in itself, since they are quite penniless. His lawyers have petitioned for a postponement to allow them to seek material for the defense.”
“Defense? What defense can there possibly be? It is perfectly obvious that the men are guilty.”
“A defense of some kind can always be mounted. But certainly it is difficult to see what line Ashton intends to take. They have no independent witness to call into court. All those on board the ship at the time of the mutiny have either died since, or been resold into slavery in Carolina, or are lying in Newgate Prison facing capital charges. With the exception of our friend Barton, that is, and this Irish fiddler. I suspect Ashton will try to make a single action of it and force a decision on the issue of property.”
“But it is one single action, surely.”
“No, sir, you naturally see it in that light because you think of the felonies that were committed, the murder of the captain, the theft of ship and cargo, the clear intention not to return. But there is an action prior to this