The Quality of Mercy - By Barry Unsworth Page 0,70

saving; they had proved it in court with Barber again as their spokesman. They had not given heed to his advice, they had pleaded ignorance and blind obedience. Nevertheless, the judgment in favor of the underwriters had done some service to the cause. It was true that it had not been stated, or even implied, that the Africans were to be regarded as other than merchandise. But there had been journalists in the court; he had seen a correspondent of the Morning Chronicle, a man he knew fairly well, who had a certain discreet sympathy for the abolitionist cause. He could not express this directly without incurring the risk of dismissal, but he could be trusted to stress the fact that casting the Africans overboard had been unlawful and fraudulent, that it had been a deed entirely gratuitous, without ground or reason other than the desire to claim on the value. A monstrous crime, it had to be so regarded, in any court, in any system of law …

Once again the appalling obviousness of it came to Ashton, accompanied as always by the bafflement he felt at the failure of so many to see it. How could such an offense against God and man be adjusted, compensated for, shuffled away out of sight by a judgment that related only to the regulations governing insurance claims? He was intending to write to the Lord Commissioners of the Admiralty to petition that the surviving crew members should be prosecuted for mass homicide. He rehearsed some phrases in his mind as he waited. I believe it my duty to lay before your lordships the circumstances of multiple and felonious murders carried out by captain and crew of the Liverpool Merchant in 1753 … I have done my utmost to discover and publish the full facts in regard to this most inhuman crime, so that justice may be done, and the blood of the murdered may not rest on us all …

No, it was clear that the crew had forfeited their rights. They would not now be able to escape from the contradiction of having risen up and killed that very embodiment of authority to whom they claimed to have owed absolute obedience. Unlikely that they would change the nature of their evidence now, advance at this late hour the only defense that might have saved them, a crisis of conscience, the sudden realization that what they were doing was hideously wicked.

There was no way out for them now. They were bound for the gallows, either as mutineers and pirates, which he was compelled to admit was the more likely outcome, or, Divine Providence assisting, as the murderers of eighty-five innocent men and women made in God’s image like themselves. Again he reflected on what a wonderful stroke of fortune it would be if the judgment went that way, how it would resound in the annals of humane endeavor. Finally, a key ruling …

He sipped his claret, and the warmth of it on his tongue and in his throat was also the warmth of this imagined success. With one of the upsurges of spirit characteristic of him, he felt that everything was possible, a new age of freedom was about to be ushered in.

From this he fell to considering another matter, also promising in its way. It presented itself as a series of images or memories. Jane had kept very quiet about having met Kemp before. She had said nothing about it for a week or more. She was not usually so reticent, and there were particular reasons why she should have spoken of this meeting. Kemp’s return from Florida with the surviving members of the crew was being spoken of on every hand; she had known that he, her brother, was involved in the case; she had known that Kemp was an adversary, and this should have argued a readiness to say what she knew of him in the hope that it might be useful. But she had done the exact opposite. And when she had finally spoken of the meeting, it had been with what seemed to him now in retrospect a sort of studied casualness. She had turned away and busied herself with the tea things, though there had been no immediate need for this, they were scarce finished drinking their tea.

These were things not much remarked at the time, given significance now by certain impressions of later. When they had received the invitation, when he had recalled—and mentioned—that Bateson was