The Quality of Mercy - By Barry Unsworth Page 0,39

me mind at the time, I was puffed up with pride an’ vainglory, I am not the man to deny that.”

Several people were listening to this, or appearing to, all in a medium state of drunkenness, as was Sullivan himself. They were sitting round a fire of scraps and rags on a piece of waste ground in the town of Peterborough. “They is terrible cunnin’, some of these beastly fellers,” somebody said.

“Lookin’ at it another way, I had spent a good part of the money, so the loss was not so grievous. Then there was this shillin’ that was left to me. Small things can lead to great, as various sages has observed at different times. A shillin’ is not a large sum, but when I discovered that shillin’ in me pocket, I knew the Blessed Virgin was still keepin’ me in the lamp of her eyes. It was at the first partin’ of the ways, one road was leadin’ to Watford, the other to St. Albans. I took a shillin’ out of me purse an’ tossed it an’ it come down for St. Albans.”

“Aye, St. Albans, is it?” another man said. “I bin there.”

“What it was, you see, I was only lately a purse-bearin’ man, an’ I was not intoirely in tune with the condition of it, so I did not think to put the shillin’ back in me purse, I stowed it in me pocket. Then it come back to me, a picture of meself, standin’ at the crossroads, spinnin’ up the coin.”

He had seen the group round the fire, seen the Hollands passing among them and brought a pint from the nearby taphouse, so as to be friendly. “Then there was the pleasure of it,” he said, “feelin’ the edges of the shillin’ in me pocket. Pass the jar down, will you, it is stayin’ too long at that end.”

Not much was left of his shilling now. Sixpence had gone in the course of the four days it had taken him to get here from Bedford, and twopence had gone on the gin. He felt entitled to a fair share of this, as also, it seemed, did the man sitting next to him, who had contributed nothing but readily seconded his request for the jar to be passed along. This was a lank, lantern-jawed, unshaven person, from the folds of whose being there emanated an odor of neglect strong enough to prevail against the fumes from the burning rags.

“My friend, I understand you, I understand you well,” this man said. “It was the force of habit that saved you.” The gin was beginning to slur his speech slightly, but he had the accents of an educated man. “One of the strongest forces known to humankind,” he said. “I would put it on a level with instinct, in the sense that it is antecedent to reflection. If you had paused for thought, you would have replaced the shilling in the purse and so lost it along with the rest. You may find it hard to believe, but I have known force of habit to be urged in a court of law as a defense against the charge of murder.”

“You know somethin’ of the courts, then?”

This had come from the man on the other side of Sullivan. There was a woman sitting close by him; it seemed that these two were together.

“Know something of the courts?” The man paused to take a drink from the jar. “I should think I do.”

“Steady with the fluid,” Sullivan said, reaching out for it. He had to keep his hand extended for a considerable time before the jar was yielded up to him. Half of the gin was gone already. “My name is Michael,” he said. “Names are in order, seein’ as we are takin’ swallers from the same font.”

“Know something of the courts?” the man said again. “Simon Reedy is the name, a name that should have been known throughout the land, but for adverse circumstances and conspiracies against me. I was intended for the law, sir, I might say I was born for it. I practiced at the bar and was widely recognized as an up-and-coming man, a man marked out for greatness. Lord Chief Justice Reedy was the title prophesied by many, until through the plots of envious colleagues I was wrongly accused of falsifying documents and other malpractices of a similar kind, and struck off the list. As a consequence, I was forced to descend to the lower level