The Quality of Mercy - By Barry Unsworth Page 0,19

and like to die before reaching Jamaica, and that this was done in the full knowledge that death aboard ship, when due to natural causes, is not covered by our policies.”

Ashton passed a hand over his brow. “Natural causes, is it? Heaven help us. I have not yet understood how I can be of service to you.”

“You can speak for us. You are a man known for your opposition to slavery, known as a generous patron and protector of black people. Who more fitted than you to make an appeal to the court and express on the behalf of the underwriters the sincere indignation and moral outrage we feel at the barbarism of this claim? Thirty guineas a head for the men, twenty-three for the women—that is what the owner is claiming. We will dispute the estimates of value, but if they are taken as correct, it will amount to upward of twenty-five hundred pounds, taking the men and women together.”

“I see, yes,” Ashton said. “You want me to sound the note of humanity so as to help you avoid meeting the claim.”

“I would not put it like that, sir.”

“No, I dare say not. Well, we shall not quarrel over words. Perhaps we can come to an accord. We for our part will seek to have the cases heard together in the same court. The charges Kemp is bringing against the crew, or what remains of them, are murder and piracy—murder of the captain, not the negroes. Since the ship was at sea, the case comes under the jurisdiction of the Admiralty, but this will make no difference in practice, as it will be heard at the Old Bailey just the same, with two, or possibly three, Admiralty commissioners sitting in judgment. If you will raise your voice with ours in a common plea and argue with us that one set of human beings cannot, in law, have such power over another, that this was mass murder whatever the quantity of water, we may both be victorious. You will avoid payment, and we may obtain a ruling that denies the right of property of one man in another.”

He had leaned forward in the enthusiasm of these words, but Van Dillen remained silent and motionless for several moments, avoiding his eye. “No, sir,” he said at last. “No, it will not do. We will press for the hearing to be held at the Guildhall, as is usual in such claims. We cannot confuse the two cases, we cannot hazard the firm’s money on an issue of property. It would only lead to muddle, sir. No, we must confine our arguments to the question of jettison, whether these negroes were cast over the side for some just cause or not.”

“Some just cause?” Ashton rose to his feet, obliging his visitor to do the same. “I should have known better,” he said. “I will not take up any more of your time. Be assured that whatever words are uttered on our side in court, they will not be designed to save your guineas.”

5

It was the purse that brought an end to Sullivan’s brief period of affluence, while at the same time signaling its peak—the purse, and with it, in disastrous combination, a misplaced sentiment of fellow feeling. In all the years of his life—years of poverty and vagrancy from early adolescence onward—he had never possessed such a purse; in fact, he had never possessed a purse at all, keeping what coins he had in a cloth bag inside his shirt. And he was, in any case, particularly vulnerable to tricksters during this period of his life, being unused to money and in a way innocent about it after the years in the Florida settlement. They had traded, but there had been no use for coins.

For all it was so fleeting, he was always to remember the sense of wealth and well-being that the beautiful purse and its contents had brought him. They became linked in his mind with his miraculous escape, the supremely fortunate encounter by the wayside, a time when he had been a man at large, a man under a vow, with a destination, in stout boots and a good coat with brass buttons. Though in the end not much was to remain to him but the destination and the vow, he was always to think of these few days as constituting one of the highlights of his life.

The wagon put him down in Bedford on the evening of the following