The Quality of Mercy - By Barry Unsworth Page 0,30

of this, Spenton had sent him a note by a servant, inviting him to be a guest at a party for dinner that he was giving at the Spring Gardens in Vauxhall in some days’ time. Kemp had learned later that Sykes too had been invited. It wasn’t exactly what he had wanted; there would be too many people. But he would be able to broach the matter, at least.

Jane Ashton’s face came to his mind again. It had all be gun there, this prospect for the future, this renewal of purpose and hope, it had all begun with her smile and her glance. Since that moment all had gone well, all was set fair. She had brought him luck. The present lease expired at just the right time for him, and there were no special bidding rights involved in its renewal.

She must have already known about the court cases that were pending. She must have understood that her brother’s interests were directly opposed to his, that the man she was looking at stood for everything her brother—and she too, no doubt—considered detestable. Yet there had been no hint of enmity in her regard, and he had been aware of none on his own part as he looked at her. And this was something so far outside his usual habit of mind as to seem almost miraculous.

8

“It is a most amazing piece of good fortune,” Ashton said. “No, that is not the way to describe it, it is the work of Divine Providence.”

Horace Stanton, who was a friend and fellow abolitionist of long standing and would be a leading member of the defense when the charges of murder and piracy came before a jury, nodded at these words, but without much appearance of fervor. He was, like Ashton, a devout Methodist, but the name of God did not come often to his lips. Cautious by nature, he was sparing in expressions of faith, not wishing to squander resources. Only in the courtroom, making his final plea to the jury, was this habitual caution relaxed.

“Certainly it will help our case very considerably,” he said. “It is likely to help the underwriters too, if they make the right use of it. It is not yet known who will be representing them when the case comes up.”

The two men were sitting over coffee in the morning room of Ashton’s house. It was still early; Stanton had come with the news as soon as possible, knowing how much it would gladden his friend.

“I cannot ascribe such a thing to the working of chance alone,” Ashton said. “There is a blessing in it.”

Jane Ashton entered the room as he was speaking, and bade the two good morning. “What blessing is that?” she said.

“We have a new witness,” Ashton said.

Stanton’s manner had brightened perceptibly at the sight of Jane in her cream-colored day gown, which followed the lines of her figure very much more closely than the hoop skirts fashionably worn for going out. He was unmarried and well settled; he had known Jane Ashton since she was sixteen and had always thought her highly attractive, and not only because of her looks: something careless-seeming in her, irreverent almost, made a challenge to his prudent and sober nature. She was too headstrong, of course, too forward with her opinions—the result of growing up without parental control. But marriage would cure her of these faults.

“He is one who was there at the time the negroes were thrown overboard,” he said. “One who was neither slave nor crew member.”

“That sounds very mysterious.” Jane smiled at the lawyer, aware of his interest and pleased by it, though privately thinking him somewhat too dry and tending too much to the pompous.

“The interpreter on the ship,” Ashton said and paused, smiling. His face had lost its lines of strain; he looked years younger. “What they call the linguister, whose work it is to make clear to his fellow Africans the wishes and commands of officers and crew. You understand, there were different languages spoken among them, depending on the region where they were captured.”

“He saw the jettisoning,” Stanton said. “He saw the crew rise against the captain. He saw everything that took place.”

“He is an African, then? I thought they were all sold back into slavery in Carolina.”

“That might have been his fate, certainly,” Ashton said. “He was not a slave, he was on the ship of his own free will. He was intending to come to England to better his