The Quality of Mercy (8 page)

One of the men in the group ahead of him was Daniel Walker, who he intended to have a word with as soon as he saw a chance of getting him alone. He thought again of his brother’s hangdog look the previous evening when his bruises were revealed. He had been ashamed … David was walking beside him now, silent, still not fully awake. He might have hastened his steps so as to come up with Walker, and perhaps find an occasion as they walked side by side. But he did not want to be among the first to go down; in the few minutes of waiting for the rope he could look at Elsie; he looked for her every morning and she looked for him.

He could hear the sounds of the workings as they drew near the pithead, the grinding of the cogs on the drum, the jingling of the horses’ harness as they plodded round, the creaking of the stern pole fixed to the axle of the drum. The first men were going down already. There was a fire burning in the iron basket suspended over the shaft, and by its light he saw Elsie with the other women, crouching over the heaped coal. As he waited, with seven or eight others, for his turn to be lowered down the shaft, she looked up and saw him watching and smiled. The banksman
shouted up from below that the shaft was clear, and the men prepared to descend.

There was no platform, only the winding rope that dangled before them. They bound themselves into the rope, each man making a loop and thrusting one leg into it, each using one hand to grip the rope above him, each keeping the other free to guard himself against being dashed against the sides of the shaft in the descent—collisions that had sometimes maimed men in the past. The younger boys sat astride the knees of the men; the older ones clung with their hands to the rope and twined their legs about it. Clustered thus, colliers and boys riding down on a single rope, it was as if they had been spliced together and hung on a string by some giant hand.

The fire bucket was kept burning above them, suspended over the mouth of the shaft, placed there to move currents of air through the mine workings and disperse accumulations of marsh gas. By its light, as they descended, they could see for a while the vitreous glints in the walls of the shaft. These were lost as they went deeper, and for a while they were in a darkness almost total, with only the candlelight far below them on the shaft floor and no sound but that of the rope uncoiling on the drum.

Michael found the occasion he was looking for soon after touching down at the shaft bottom. David had stopped at the entrance to the main gallery, to load empty corves onto a sledge. At a point where the gallery divided into two narrower ways toward the coal face, he came up with Walker and spoke a greeting to him. Walker turned quickly, as if startled. The light of the candle he was holding lit up the lower part of his face, glinted on the fair stubble around the heavy jaw. “What does tha want?” he said.

Neither of them could stand upright here, the ceiling was too low. Crouching forward, with heads lowered, they faced each other. There had never been much love lost between the two families; small disagreements had been magnified over time, as happens in close-knit communities.

“Tha’s been bearin’ too heavy on our David,” Michael said. “Tha’s been too free with yor fists.” He saw Walker’s mouth loosen with a sneer. “A’m tellin’ you to lay off it,” he said. “The lad’s only twelve.”

“He’s been blabbin’ then, blabbin’ to big brother,” Walker said. “Blabbin’ and blubberin’.”

Michael had resolved at the outset to keep calm, but the unfairness of this brought the beginning of anger to him. “He dinna blab,” he said.

“He’s nay bleddy use,” Walker said. “He dinna put his back into it. He’s losin’ me a shillin’ a day.”

“He does his best,” Michael said. “A know him better than tha does.”

“Is tha callin’ me a liar?”

“Keep yor hands off him,” Michael said. The anger rose in him, impeding his breathing in that constricted space. “Tha thinks tha owns him. He is smaller than you, he pushes the baskets at yor biddin’, so tha thinks he’s yor property, to kick an’ punch as tha choose. A’ll teach you different.”

“Teachin’, is it?” Walker said. “Sunday mornin’, ten o’clock, at the big field.”

“A’ll be there,” Michael said, and on this they parted.

“I had hoped the business might be settled privately between us,” Van Dillen said. “The outcome must be doubtful in law, and if we go to the extent of a hearing there are costs to be thought of. Why should we fatten the lawyers, Mr. Kemp?”

He was not finding the interview easy. He was physically uncomfortable, for one thing; the seat of his chair was too small for a man of his bulk, and the weather was unseasonably hot. The room had only one window, and the morning sun, strong despite the clogging air of London, slanted through it and lay directly on him. He felt overheated in his bob wig and broadcloth suit.

He was at the further disadvantage of being a petitioner, of having solicited this meeting. Some men are dressed in authority wherever they go, but the broker was not of these; he was accustomed to wielding what he had of it in the domestic surroundings of his home in Richmond, his modest premises off the Strand, or free and unbuttoned in his booth at Lloyd’s Coffee House, where most of his day-to-day business was done. This present ground belonged to a man not only younger but very much richer. A wealth not much expressed in display, however, he had noted: plain oak paneling, shelves for ledgers and almanacs, ladder-back chairs.

“We are in high summer before we have had spring,” he said,
in the face of the other’s continuing silence. He felt an itch at the side of his neck, some insect crawling there. Conditions, however uncomfortable, will generally be favorable to life of some sort, and the windless days and early heat had produced a plague of small black beetles that flew about blindly, getting tangled in wigs and snared in the corners of eyes, copulating and dying, leaving a scurf of corpses.

The broker took out a handkerchief and dabbed at his neck, turning his head in a way too affectedly elegant, or so Kemp thought, for an honest man. Too many Dutchmen in shipping and insurance these days, too many brokers altogether. He had never had the smallest fellow feeling for opponents; the knowledge of conflicting interests fed an appetite for enmity always keen. “To my mind,” he said, “there is no doubt of the outcome in law, none at all.”

“How? After close on fourteen years and most of the actors in it dead?” Van Dillen looked with affected surprise and genuine curiosity at the man before him. It was not so much the certainty of tone; the broker had much experience of disputed claims, and litigants always professed—at least publicly—an unshakable faith in the justice of their cause. But this man had an air of conviction that came close to ferocity—his eyes blazed with it. A vivid face, not very English, some suggestion of the south in it. From Liverpool, the family, a melting pot of peoples and races …

There was again a silence between them that lasted for some moments. In one corner of the window a fly tumbled and buzzed, caught in some hopeless mania of escape. The din of metal wheels on the cobbles of Cheapside came to them here, but distantly; Kemp’s place of business looked out over the quiet courts south of St. Paul’s. There was the occasional scrape of a stool from the adjacent room, where three clerks worked side by side at a long counter. “What are fourteen years, or forty, if it comes to that?” Kemp said. “What point are you seeking to make? Time can make no smallest difference to the justice of my claims, mine or any other man’s.”

“That is all very fine, sir,” the broker said. “Impeccable sentiments, egad, they do you credit. If you but had the trying of the case yourself, there could be very little doubt of the verdict. But it is far from certain whether the judge will take the same view.”

He had spoken tartly, provoked at last by the arrogant certainty of the other’s tone. Now he saw Kemp relax a little from the braced position he had assumed in the high-backed chair, and he wondered for a moment if the way to get the fellow on terms less stiff was to quarrel with him. The broker was an observant man, and shrewd in his way. There was some absence in the other’s face, a kind of blankness, in spite of the fierce regard. This was a man who believed so strongly in his own purposes as to appear stricken by them, afflicted—and he answered this affliction with rage. “In a case of this kind,” the broker said, “at such an interval of time and with such flawed and partial testimony, no one can predict the outcome.”

He saw the other pick up a ruler and strike down at the desk with it. “Filthy little creatures,” Kemp said. “How do they get in? The window can’t be opened.”

“What can be predicted are the legal costs,” Van Dillen said.

“My good sir, the facts are not in dispute, at least as regards the central fact of the negroes being cast overboard and the necessity thereof.”

“It is precisely the necessity of it that the insurers will dispute if it comes before a court.”

“There was a shortage of water. Lawful jettison is one of the hazards covered by the underwriters. You guaranteed the policy with my father in 1752, through his agent in Liverpool, where the ship was built and fitted out.”

“Not I,” Van Dillen said. “I inherited the policy on the death of my uncle, when I became one of the partners. I would never have signed an agreement on a per capita basis at a fixed rate. No firm that I know of would insure against loss of cargo at more than twenty percent of the current market value.”

“Well, sir, like it or not, the insurers accepted the risk at that
time to the extent of thirty guineas per head for the men and twenty-three for the women. Come, it is not so unreasonable. In the summer of 1753, when these negroes were cast overboard with just cause, a male slave would have fetched forty-five guineas in Jamaica, whither the ship was bound, and a female thirty-three or -four. The numbers are not in dispute. There were eyewitnesses, some of them still alive.”

“They will be the surviving members of the crew, no doubt, presently lying in Newgate Prison, men who will be facing charges of murder and piracy once this insurance claim has been settled. Fine witnesses, sir.”

“There is also the chief officer, Barton. He will testify to the numbers and to the shortage of water.”

“The mate on a slave ship, we know what that is. And freed on your surety. Neither judge nor jury will take him to their bosoms. And then, memory plays us false, all men of ordinary judgment recognize that. It was a desperate action—ship and crew were in a grievous state at the time. It is no use whatever to talk about the value of the cargo, as we both know full well. A Corymantee black, for instance, will fetch more than an Ibo, as being more robust and less likely to cut his throat or decline into melancholy and so die.”

Van Dillen smiled and nodded and sat back as far as he was able, smoothing down the white cotton waistcoat over his ample paunch. “Sir, latitude of thought, the ability to make distinctions, is a main mark of civilized man. I know the Guinea trade, sir, we do a great deal of business in that line.”

“I do not doubt it.” These last remarks had confirmed Kemp in his dislike of the broker, whose quality of civilization had an odor he recognized. That he was obliged to recognize it, that it was an odor Van Dillen obviously took for granted they had in common—something Kemp could not deny, even if he had so far demeaned himself as to attempt it, since denial would have been tantamount to admission—his visitor could hardly have given
him offense more mortal. “I have business to attend to,” he said. “What is the nature of this proposal of yours?”

“Well, that is soon said. The underwriters, who have authorized me to speak for them, are willing to make a private settlement. This is not because we feel our case to be weak, far from it, but to save the trouble and costs of an action. We will not dispute the number cast overboard. In view of the time gone by and the difficulty of establishing anything after such an interval, we think it reasonable to set a value of ten guineas a head on the blacks, whether male or female, it makes no difference. At the number we have been given, that would amount to eight hundred and fifty guineas. I am authorized to offer that sum in complete settlement. It is a generous offer, under all the circumstances, and I trust that you will find it satisfactory.”

“No, I do not find it satisfactory,” Kemp said, with a perceptible increase in volume and eagerness of tone. “Generous offer? Do you take me for a supplicant? Be damned to your generosity, sir.” He paused a moment, then continued more quietly, with a rigid set of the jaw. “I will have my father’s rights in full. I will have a proper settlement by process of law. That ship was my father’s. He had her built and fitted out. The blacks were purchased with trade goods he had provided at his own expense. His last days were shadowed by that loss. I will have satisfaction for his name.”

Satisfaction for his investment, the broker was inclined to think, thereby doing Kemp less than justice and demonstrating the limits of his own understanding. His eye had been on the younger man’s right fist, which had clenched during this speech and whitened to a bloodless line along the knuckles. Van Dillen was a sedentary man, thick-necked and sometimes troubled these days by shortness of breath. This passion of retribution was disquieting to him. Kemp would seek to use the surviving seamen as witnesses in support of his claim on the insurers, and afterward do his best to see them hanged …

“Well,” he said, “I see you are set on the courts.”

“It is you who talk of the courts,” Kemp said, slowly opening the fingers of his hand. “I am set on obtaining my rights.”

The broker nodded. Rights were measured with money, in his view of things. The terms were more or less interchangeable. Kemp had money in plenty, but those with money always wanted more. It was a fact of life; he had never encountered a single exception to it. All the same, he was obliged to recognize now that there was more to this than money. He knew a good deal about the man sitting opposite him; he had made it his business to know. A career meteoric, even in these days of quick fortunes. Seventy thousand pounds, Jarrold’s daughter was said to have brought him, along with a share in the bank. The old man had lost his wits, as it was said, and was kept in confinement. The bank he had founded was in Kemp’s hands now. No, there was no shortage of money in that quarter. Of course, such a man would want to win all battles. How he had discovered their whereabouts, these remnants of slaves and crew, how he had been able to track them down in the wilds of southern Florida where they had taken refuge—these were matters not yet definitely known; there were conflicting accounts. No doubt much would be made clear in the course of the capital charges at the Old Bailey …