Page 66 of Dawnlands

“Who knows how smallpox spreads? And, of course, there’s jail fever now. Some are wounded…”

“Do you ship them anyway? Sick or well?”

The man spread his hands. “I’m not the law,” he said pompously. “It’s the law that says they’re guilty and whether they shall be hanged here or serve their sentence in Barbados.”

“Does the law ever say they’re innocent?” Johnnie asked limpidly.

“Hardly ever,” the broker said cheerfully. “Each prisoner is yoursfor ten pounds, and you carry the cost of shipping them. They’re sold by my agent on arrival at Bridgetown in Barbados, for fifteen pounds, maybe twenty pounds each. That’s a return that you can’t despise, eh? The Royal Africa Company doesn’t make more on their slaves than you will on yours.”

“If I took, say, ten, I should want to pick them.”

The man frowned. “Can’t be done. There are hundreds to be disposed of, maybe even thousands by the time the judge has finished. People can’t pick and choose their cargo. If I were to sell them to their own families, and they helped them escape, then it would be me dancing at the end of a rope, as well as them. This is business, sir, not rescue. A young lady from London offered the judge a thousand pounds for her brother’s life and was refused. That’s a judge you can trust!”

“A thousand pounds?”

“She clung to the wheel of his coach, and his servants whipped her off,” the man said with quiet satisfaction. “But she got mercy.”

“Her brother was released, for a thousand pounds?”

“No! No! Hanged but excused drawing and quartering. That was the mercy. I suppose she thought it worth it to spare him pain. Young lad: William Hewling.”

“Can I see a list of names of those to be charged here?” Johnnie asked.

The broker grimaced. “You can see those from Dorchester.” The man reached into his jacket and pulled out a crumpled packet of papers. The names were misspelled and crossed out, corrected and sometimes scratched out with a remark—“dead of wounds” or “died.”

“And I’m still looking for the Indian servant,” Johnnie said, scanning the list for the name Ferryman.

“Would you pay a reward for him?”

“Not a bounty, he’s not a runaway slave. He’s a free—er—man.”

“A finder’s fee then, like he was a horse?”

“Five pounds?” Johnnie suggested.

“You could hire a servant for a year for that!”

“I want this one,” Johnnie said, feeling his heart twist at the thought of her, in this dangerous town, where mercy cost a thousandpounds and bought a hanging rather than a disemboweling for a lad not yet twenty.

Johnnie, high up in the public gallery, pressed against the wall by the crowd, held one of his grandmother’s pomanders of herbs to his nose, and prayed that he did not catch a sickness from the people around him, or jail fever from the pitiful prisoners crushed together on the floor of the court.

The Lord Chief Justice took his seat gingerly on a fat cushion; the gossip was that he was so tortured by a stone in his spleen that he could not sit or stand without pain, and the long days in the coach to get from town to town were agony to him. The country people said that he had sent so many good men to hell that they wished him the stone and the pox as well.

The clerk of the court announced the prisoners who were pleading not guilty; and to Johnnie’s surprise, only four men came into court.

“Names?” the judge snapped to the clerk.

“Captain Abraham Annesley; William Cooper, joiner of Bridgwater; William Gatchill, yeoman of Angersleigh; and Simon Hamlyn, a tailor of Pitminster in this Hundred.” He paused, measuring the sour mood of the judge, high above him, behind an imposing raised desk. “The Mayor of Taunton wishes to speak for Simon Hamlyn.”

Jeffreys heaved a sigh. “Why?”

The mayor, wearing his chain of office over his gown, stepped up to the bench to address the judge and muttered earnestly.

“No, no,” the judge said loudly. “Sit down, sir. We have evidence against him.”

A lawyer stepped forward, hired by one of the families.

“Sit down, sir, you have nothing to say.” Jeffreys raised his voice. “Is there evidence for their guilt?” he asked the prosecutor.