The Quality of Mercy - By Barry Unsworth Page 0,38

own people. On the other hand, the deeper understanding that had come about through this experience of life together in community, if it could be voiced in court, might have an effect on the jury, as showing the absurdity of asserting a right of property in one’s fellows on the grounds of race or color.

He took care to let nothing of these thoughts show in his face or manner. It was time now to make his promise to them—first the promise, then the appeal. “You are kept in chains, I believe,” he said. “Everything has a price here, so it seems, and I will make sure that you are not fettered again, at least until they bring you for the hearing. And I will contrive matters so that you will get regular and wholesome meals.”

He saw Barber glance sharply round at the others. Libby smiled in ugly fashion, and a look of wondering delight appeared on the half-witted man’s face.

“We are beholden to you,” Barber said, and there were nods among the men, and one or two exclamations of agreement. There was no softening in Hughes’s regard, however.

“I want to make an appeal to your reason and your self-interest,” Ashton said. “There is only one way for you to escape hanging. If you will plead that you mutinied on grounds of conscience, that you rose against the captain because you realized that you were engaged in murdering innocent men and women, then you will have a chance of life. There would be no real falsehood in such a statement, only a shifting of the time. After all, you came to this realization later, during your years in the settlement. It will be argued against you that this change of heart was belated, too much so to carry conviction, as it did not occur until many had already been cast overboard to drown. But you can make reply that you were under the orders of the captain, whom you were accustomed to obey. When Divine Mercy intervened, in the person of the ship’s doctor, you saw the hideous error of what you were about and immediately ceased from it. If we can succeed in swaying the jury to that effect, it is more than likely that they will dismiss the capital charges on the grounds that there was no intention of harm, and you will go down in history as heroes of the antislavery movement.”

And if we fail, he thought, and you end on the gallows, there is a chance that you will be seen as martyrs, and that is almost as good … But no, they were not the stuff of martyrs, or heroes either; they had no voice, no attitude, they represented nothing. If by some miracle of advocacy true justice could be done and these men declared guilty of murdering the slaves and hanged for it in full view, that would be the best solution of all. Beyond hoping for—Stanton would not risk such a plea. But what a wonderful thing it would be, what a triumph! A clarion call through all the years to come, sounding the note of justice and humanity to future generations.

With this thought, his sense of differences among the men, a perception that had earlier taken him by surprise, altogether disappeared. They became once again in his eyes the featureless, amorphous body they had been before, a body that circumstance had deprived of all rights, made entirely subject to considerations of utility, of the higher and nobler purposes they could be made to serve.

“If you do not make this plea,” he said, “you will have no defense against the charges of murdering the captain and making off with ship and cargo, since the slaves will be regarded in that light. You will be condemned and you will end on the cart to Execution Dock.”

No reply of any kind came from the men assembled there. Ashton regarded them in silence for some moments, then said, “I leave the matter to your consideration. I will pray to Almighty God that you be guided to the right decision.”

On this, he raised an arm and signaled to the guards waiting outside the gate.

10

“I should have suspected somethin’ there and then, when he said that about seein’ the power of music in me. How can anyone see the power of music in a man only by exchangin’ a few words? He must have been followin’ me, he must have seen me fiddle. But the notion did not enter