The Quality of Mercy - By Barry Unsworth Page 0,58

money in this, much more. Their sense of property has been outraged. Both are convinced they have an absolute right of ownership in him, and will wave a bill of sale to prove it.”

Ashton was silent for some moments, then said, more quietly, “This business is taking on the look of a feud, an issue of principle on both sides. If we can only rescue the man and get him safe to court, preferably with the bruises of his ill-treatment still upon him … If we can get a favorable ruling, we might, with God’s help, add some real momentum to the movement for ending this foul trade. It is strange, perhaps it is regrettable, the heart can take no account of numbers.”

“How do you mean?”

“Evans’s life and circumstances are no less in importance, in their value to us, than the lives of all the negroes that were thrown from the deck of the Liverpool Merchant. Both have to be measured against the many thousands of lives we hope to redeem.”

“But Evans is only one, and his life is not at immediate risk, only his liberty. You cannot really mean what you are saying, Frederick.”

But she knew, with sinking heart, and without needing to look at his face, that he had meant every word of it.

It was at this moment, when this stricken silence had fallen between them, that the housemaid tapped on the door, bearing a note that had just been delivered. It was an invitation, addressed to both brother and sister, to an evening reception to be held the following week at the house of Mr. Jonathan Bateson.

“I don’t think I know him,” Ashton said. “Perhaps you have some closer acquaintance with the family?”

“No, I have never been to the house and have no acquaintance in the family at all.”

“Strange.” Ashton was silent for some moments, then said, “Bateson, Bateson—yes, now I think of it, I recall the name. He sits in the House of Commons. He represents the West India Interest. The sugar trade, in other words.” He looked at his sister more closely. “Perhaps he is an associate of Mr. Erasmus Kemp,” he said.

Jane turned away, as if there were something that needed her attention. But he was in time to see that she had changed color. “The man will be waiting for an answer,” he said. “I think we should accept, don’t you?”

15

“Snippin’ off me buttons without wakin’ me would have needed a light touch,” Sullivan said. “He cannot have been so drunk as he made himself out to be. It is troublin’ to the spirit to think that he must have had a knife about him.”

Just beyond Chesterfield, heading north on foot, he had fallen in with another wayfarer, a thickset, shaven-headed man, and had confided to him the story of the stolen buttons.

“Lookin’ at it another way,” he said, “the weather is improvin’ day by day, an’ where is the need for a coat like that?”

“That’s right, that’s what I allus say, look on the bright side,” his new companion said. “You can’t win every bout, you will get beat sometimes an’ lose the purse money, but you ain’t lost it cos you didn’t have it without you won the match.”

“My feelin’s exactly,” Sullivan said. “Then there is the further argument that a coat like that, whether equipped with buttons or not, will tend to cramp the style of a fiddlin’ man, an’ reduce the power of his music.”

He had pawned the coat in Peterborough before leaving, together with the bag in which he had been carrying his fiddle and bow; these were slung over his shoulder now, as they had been when he walked out of Newgate Prison. His old shirt and trousers had also been in this bag, but the pawnbroker had not been interested in these.

“He tried to make out that a coat that has lost its buttons has thereby undergone a grievous loss in its value. I wasn’t born yesterday, I said to him, I am a traveled man, I said, I know somethin’ of commerce, an’ it is obvious to me that you are exaggeratin’ the importance of them buttons for your own purposes. Buttons is a variable thing, I said, buttons can be gold, they can be silk, they can be cloth, but a good stout coat is not subject to changes of quality.”

In the end he had obtained five shillings on coat and bag together, more money than he had possessed since the day of his