The Quality of Mercy

14



The day had begun badly for Ashton, and things did not improve in the course of it. Stanton came to see him in the morning with the news that Evans, the negro they had rescued at Gravesend hours before he was due to be forcibly transported to the West Indies, had disappeared from the house where they had been keeping him out of harm’s way until his case could be heard.

“He is gone without trace,” Stanton said. “He must have been inveigled out somehow, perhaps on some false summons from us, then seized and carried off. He was aware of the danger to him, he knew by experience what these men are capable of for the sake of the fifty guineas they claim he is worth. It is a tidy sum, after all. No, it is unlikely that he left the house of his own free will. And if he did, why has he not returned?”

“But how could they have known where he was?”

“It is possible that the man who had Evans in his care, whom we have been paying to keep him safe, saw a chance of some more immediate profit. No doubt they would be ready to offer a reward, perhaps two guineas or so.”

“Townsend? No, I am unwilling to believe that. He has been providing this service for years—there have been others before Evans. Why should he betray us now?”

Stanton smiled at these words and shook his head. “You are always ready to take things on trust, Frederick, and it does you credit. But it is not a habit of mind we can afford to cultivate when we have to question witnesses in a court of law. Under certain circumstances loyalty can wear thin. Townsend may have had losses we know nothing of, he may have had expenses we know nothing of.”

“I cannot believe it. I think it more likely that Evans was followed to the house. Those two, the slave-takers, as they call themselves—and why not, since it is their trade?—the two that seized Evans and bound him and carried him to the ship, whom I was intending to sue for assault and abduction along with the ship’s captain, they have not been found, they have not been named. They were nowhere to be seen when the writ was presented to the captain. I think they may have waited, unobserved, and followed us when we accompanied Evans to Townsend’s house.”

“It is possible, yes,” Stanton said. “Then they would offer the information, at a price, to those two gentlemen who are claiming damages from us, who would allow some time for things to settle down and vigilance to be relaxed, meanwhile spying on the house, waiting for a moment when there was no one else about.”

Ashton nodded. “However it happened, we have lost him,” he said. It was bad news indeed. Evans would be held in captivity somewhere. London contained numerous prisons of one sort or another, many of them disguised as private houses; people could be kept in confinement indefinitely at small cost. “There is nothing we can do for the moment,” he said. “Merely his disappearance gives us no grounds for action. Without a definite knowledge of his whereabouts, we cannot lodge a complaint on his behalf. It would be answered that he might have simply run away. I am sorry for the poor fellow—he has done no wrong and he is being made to suffer.”

“We must hope for the best,” Stanton said, and on this he took his leave, somewhat disappointed to have had no sight of Jane Ashton. She was out on a visit of charity, Frederick had said.

Ashton remained in his study, sunk in gloomy thoughts. This new violence done to Evans had brought about one of the lapses into depression to which he was prone. There had been so many disappointments, so many setbacks. The odds were too great; the forces of avarice and cruelty would carry the day, as they had done for all the centuries of man’s habitation on earth.

His mood was not lightened when in early afternoon he received a note from the judge appointed to hear the insurance claim on the jettisoned slaves. After due consideration, Mr. Justice Blundell had found it more in keeping with the dictates of due process to have this civil case heard separately at the Guildhall at a date yet to be determined; the criminal charges would more appropriately be heard later, before the King’s Bench. He had therefore decided not to refer the matter to the Lord Chief Justice, a decision which lay within his powers.

Nowhere contained in this carefully worded document was there any hint of Blundell’s private awareness that to trouble the Lord Chief Justice with such a request could seriously impede his own further career and might well put an end to his hopes of a title. In fact, it had not taken him long to make up his mind; the delay in communicating his decision had been merely to lend an impression of weight and deliberation. He knew the public interest this case had aroused and he knew Ashton by repute, knew him for a troublesome fellow who was set on disturbing the social order. But he had not had any direct dealings with him before, and the petition he had been sent, eloquently urging that the two cases should be tried together, had given him a glimpse of nightmare, a vision of the bottomless pit—this also, of course, not hinted at in his reply. In particular, the improper use of Holy Writ had troubled him. The words taken by Ashton from the Book of Job had gone on echoing in his mind. What then shall I do when God riseth up? And when He visiteth, what shall I answer Him? Did not He that made me in the womb make him?

His appetite had been affected for two days running. Instead of presiding over a case of insurance liability, he was being asked to request the senior judge of the land to transform this simple matter into a formal and explicit deliberation as to whether the negroes thrown overboard were to be regarded as something more than goods, an issue to be left to the judgment of a dunderheaded jury, unpredictable and given to crude sentiment. Who could tell what the outcome might be?

He had refreshed his memory by referring to the definition of piracy delivered in the case of Rex v. Dawson of 1696: “Piracy is only the sea term for robbery within the jurisdiction of the Admiralty … If the mariner of any ship shall violently dispossess the master and afterwards carry away the ship itself or any of the goods with a felonious intention in any place where the Lord Admiral hath jurisdiction, this is robbery and piracy …”

This was all very well, as far as it went. But the felonious intention in this present case was not altogether evident. He could not recall any case of piracy in which no attempt had been made to profit from the stolen goods. Why had these men run off to Florida without attempting to sell the slaves or the ship? There were cases on record of persons taken prisoner by pirates, but these were persons of rank, for whom a ransom might be asked. What ransom could be asked for a parcel of blacks, and who could conceivably ask it? It was this appalling tangle, and the thought of discharging it onto the Lord Chief Justice, on whom his advancement largely depended, that had so much affected his appetite. And he had felt released from an incubus after dispatching the note announcing his decision.

In spite of the blow to his hopes and his continuing depression at Evans’s disappearance, Ashton did what he could in the course of the next few hours to institute a search for the negro’s whereabouts. He sent for two men who had helped him on occasion in similar searches, and gave them Evans’s name and description. If they found him and brought word of where he was, they would have a guinea each. He did not tell them the address at which Evans had been staying, though one of them asked for this. They could not be trusted with such information. No reliance could be placed on the men themselves, only on their hope of a reward. Slave-takers and slave-finders belonged all within a single confraternity; had the paymaster been other, these two would have sought out any fugitive negro in London and returned him by force to those who claimed to be his owners. They knew the communities among which the fugitives took refuge, as they knew many of the houses where those recaptured were kept confined until a ship for the plantations was fitted out and made ready to sail.

Ashton had no clear idea of how many black people there were in the city; the numbers were nowhere recorded. Some had been manumitted and lived as free men and women; others fled and lived as they could, as laborers, market porters, street musicians, beggars; yet others remained in the service of those who had brought them here, slaves still, liable to be sold to another master or carried back to the West Indies. This growing population had created a new trade: the manhunters, who combed the streets for runaways and lived on the rewards.

It was late in the afternoon when Jane returned. She had spent most of the day, in company with two ladies of her acquaintance, in the Pass Room at Bridewell, where the female vagrants and prostitutes and unmarried mothers were kept confined for short periods before being moved on. She was engaged, together with the others, in trying to teach the women useful skills, such as weaving, frame knitting and basketwork. She often encountered resistance, but today there had been progress, or so she felt, and she was happy at this—so much so that she launched into speech immediately at sight of her brother, giving him no opportunity for the time being to relate the doleful news he had received that day.

“They have been harshly used since earliest childhood, most of them,” she said. “No one has ever thought of them or taken any care for them in all their lives. They have been whipped out of one parish after another. Why should we be so shocked that they have bastard children or take to thieving and whoring? Is it any wonder?”

“No, certainly not.” Ashton had never grown altogether used to his sister’s impetuous habit of speech when she was excited in her feelings, nor to her forthright use of terms not usually regarded as polite in young unmarried ladies.

“They feel of no use to themselves or anybody, that’s what it is. Today we had two silk weavers with us, we paid them for the day’s work, they set up their looms and the women took turns to try their hand, they saw things made and finished—small things: handkerchiefs, braid, ribbons.”

Jane’s face was alight, her eyes were shining. “They took part in it themselves, you see, Frederick, that is the great thing about it, they could see what they had produced. Only give these women power over themselves and they will be saved from so much misery. A few shillings a week, I know it is not much, but it would give them some self-respect, some control over their own lives.”

All the force of her conviction vibrated in the words. People must be given means to act, to change things. It was no use wringing one’s hands and doing nothing. Pitying people was only useful as a spur to action, it had no value as a state of mind. Sometimes Jane wondered if she were really such a good Christian after all. Compassion made her feel uncomfortable and impatient, and it could turn quickly to anger unless there was some immediate scope for rendering it superfluous. She could not feel that it was good for the soul to contemplate the sufferings of others—or one’s own, for that matter.

“Houses of Correction, they call them,” she said. “That is correction, is it, covering women with shame?”

Only now did she notice that her brother’s face was not showing the degree of gladness at her success that she might have expected. “How has your day been?” she asked.

Prompted thus, he related the double blow he had received, told her how he had set the men on to discover Evans’s whereabouts. “Without some luck they have small chance of finding him in time,” he said. “Evans’s new owner, as he considers himself, this sugar planter, Lyons, may be the one behind it, or perhaps he is in league with the previous owner, Bolton. Both were intending to bring an action against me for trespass and theft in the sum of two hundred guineas.”

“Yes, I remember you speaking of this.”

“Well, they keep finding reasons for postponing the action, and this is because they cannot be sure of winning. Two witnesses to the first assault, when they carried him out to the ship, have now come forward. I believe that is why they have anticipated the judgment by securing Evans’s person. Better to have fifty guineas in hand than wait for a doubtful ruling.”

“They have gone to a great deal of trouble for the sake of their fifty guineas.”

“That is true. There is more than 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?”