Remember remember, p.6
Remember, Remember, page 6
Lord Harvey sits at the far end, sealing letters behind a hulking mahogany desk. He seems to have recovered quickly from yesterday’s events, but Delphine spies the outline of a bandage at the base of his neck. The dark circles beneath his eyes are evident even from across the room. The lord’s mouth twitches as they enter, but he doesn’t look up.
Be strong, she thinks. He cannot keep you this time. Nicholas clears his throat. ‘Uncle?’
Lord Harvey doesn’t react; calmly, he reaches for another letter to seal. ‘My lord,’ Nicholas tries again.
The lord clicks his tongue, blows on the hot wax, and sets the envelope aside. His eyes are still fixed on the desk.
‘Mister Lyons,’ he says without moving. Nicholas flinches at his condescending tone.
Delphine’s chest tightens. She should open her mouth to speak, assert her place, try to break the tension building in the room, but she also knows that if she does, it might be the last thing she ever says. So, instead, she balls her fists and waits.
Having recomposed himself, Nicholas attempts conversation once more. ‘Uncle, what is this I have heard about Vincent? Is he well? May I see him?’
The lord finally looks up. He notices Nicholas first. Then, his gaze settles on Delphine and flares with rage. He presses his lips into a thin line, considering his following words.
‘You know,’ Lord Harvey begins, his eyes boring into Delphine’s as if Nicholas hadn’t spoken, ‘I received correspondence from an acquaintance in Jamaica not long ago. He told me of the most comedic method for punishing runaway slaves. I would try it now, girl, but alas, I have no limes to hand.’
Delphine opens her mouth to reply, but she can’t. The menace in his words has turned every object in the room into a threat. She can feel it all: the sharp, red pain in her gut from the stab of a letter opener; the crunch of her windpipe beneath the clawed foot of the Chippendale sopha; her world turned black by the blunt weight of the bronze door stopper. The phantom blows build in her ribcage until she releases one frightened breath.
‘Come now,’ Nicholas cautions his uncle, moving into the space between him and Delphine. ‘It is Vincent we are here to discuss. You and I both know he has earned his freedom and—’
‘Let’s not talk of Vincent, Nicholas.’ Lord Harvey is playing with the candle he was using to heat his sealing wax, passing one finger back and forth through the orange flame. ‘Not when more of my property has returned.’
‘She is not your property,’ Nicholas says crossly, ‘not anymore. I am here with Miss...’ he seems to search his mind for a surname he has never cared to learn, then powers on, ‘Miss Delphine to act as Vincent’s advocates. Now, if you’ll just be reasonable—’
‘Reasonable?’ Lord Harvey slams his hand on the desk so violently the candle splutters out. The shock sends both Delphine and Nicholas staggering back.
‘What would be reasonable, I wonder?’ The lord turns to Delphine and smirks. ‘To sell you at the merchant hall or trade you for some good quality Madeira? Then again,’ he smiles wryly as he elevates himself from the seat, ‘I doubt you’d be worth the seller’s fees. I wasted enough coin in the week we spent searching for you.’
Delphine’s mouth goes dry. Four years she’d been hiding, and he’d stopped looking after seven days. She knew the lord didn’t think much of her, but never has he made her feel quite so pathetic.
‘Vincent, on the other hand,’ Lord Harvey says, casting his eyes towards one of the cabinets in the corner of the room, ‘will fetch a fine price.’
Delphine grips her fists tighter, pulse throbbing in each knuckle. Of all the punishments she’d feared for Vincent, transportation was the worst.
‘You can’t be serious,’ says Nicholas.
‘Oh yes,’ Lord Harvey says restlessly, ‘I’ve grown tired of the boxing game. And you’d be surprised what plantation owners will pay for an athletic, young buck. Care to guess how much, Delphine?’
All she can manage is a shake of the head.
The lord strides towards her with a snarl, but Nicholas leaps between them again.
‘That’s far enough!’ he cries, throwing out both arms as a human barricade. ‘Bloody hellhounds, Uncle. I was hoping it wouldn’t come to this. Just release Vincent to me immediately, or—’
‘Or what?’ Lord Harvey spits, slapping Nicholas’ hand away. ‘You’ll take this to the courts? Ask them to release my property to you? A man with no title, barely a penny, and no claim. Never forget that I can make your life much harder, Lyons.’
Nicholas’ arms drop to his sides. With his back turned to her, Delphine cannot see his expression.
‘Vincent will be on the Atlantic before the week is out,’ Lord Harvey hisses, close to Nicholas’ face. ‘Sooner, if you don’t leave now.’
It’s over, Delphine thinks, eyeing the door. What had she expected, coming here? That when Nicholas threatened his uncle, he wouldn’t retaliate? A low-born lawyer cannot afford to make an enemy of a wealthy lord. Nicholas will back down now. She will run for her life again, and Vincent will be lost.
‘No, Uncle.’
Delphine blinks. Cautiously, she drags her eyes away from her escape route to Nicholas.
‘You cannot bully your way out of this. You may have ostracised my mother and hated my father. But you are not above the law. It is illegal to sell a slave on English shores.’ Amazingly, Nicholas sounds like he believes it.
‘Tell that to the African Company of Merchants!’ Lord Harvey snorts. ‘You are as delusional as your parents were. The realities of the world do not change simply because you stamp your foot, nephew.’
But there’s a crack in Lord Harvey’s porcelain veneer. It’s clear that what Nicholas has just said – it is illegal to sell a slave on English shores – has caused the lord to doubt himself. She had never seen her master rattled before. Does that mean it’s true?
Observing for the first time the twitch in Lord Harvey’s creased temple, the preoccupation in his tired eyes, Delphine realises something. This man has become almost mythic in her mind. The inescapable antagonist of her nightmares.
And yet.
He is only a man.
And it is from this fragility that she draws strength. Nicholas stamping his foot may not change the world, but perhaps her words might. Delphine draws in a breath, preparing herself to do something she has never dared before: talk back.
‘If you will not release Vincent.’ She swallows. ‘Then we will release the truth.’
Both men turn to her, open-mouthed.
‘You filed an insurance claim knowing I was alive. That was fraud. And selling Vincent would be a crime, too.’ Delphine rolls her shoulders back, a self-assured gesture she’s borrowed from Marion. ‘If this went to trial… You know what they’d say at Westminster.’
‘You,’ Lord Harvey growls, curling a finger at her, then at Nicholas. ‘You think anyone will believe you? A runaway Negress and a galumphing blunderbuss from the midlands?’ That sneer widens. ‘Everyone will see you for what you are – a harlot – slippery as Eden’s serpent.’
A harlot she might have been, once. But the lord can’t know that, and she won’t let him see his banal insult aimed true.
‘And yet,’ Delphine half-smiles, ‘you are the one filled with venom.’
The lord looks like he might explode, and Delphine relishes in her candour.
Then Harvey opens his mouth, a torrent of abuse gushing forth. Words and phrases so vile that Nicholas backs away from his uncle towards her as if he can shield her from it. But Delphine has heard worse.
For a heartbeat, Delphine wishes she could kill Lord Harvey. Simply end her and Vincent’s pain by ending his life.
But that impulse didn’t serve her brother well.
And if what Nicholas says is true, there might be another way. ‘We are going, Nicholas,’ she says, cutting off the lord mid-sentence. There’s no telling what Lord Harvey might do if they push him too far. ‘I am walking out of this room, and so are you.’ Her knees threaten to buckle beneath her skirts, but her voice is steady and clear. ‘You have no power to stop us seeking justice. And believe us now, my lord. Heed us when we speak. You will not get away with this.’
Chapter Six
A Negro serving girl who had been many years in her master’s service has been resold into perpetual bondage and shipped to Jamaica for £80 colonial currency. It has been reported that ‘when she put her feet into the fatal boat at Lamplighter’s Hall, her tears ran down her face like rain’.
—BRISTOL JOURNAL
‘What do you mean we can’t board?’ Delphine taps her foot against the warehouse floor, disturbing the dust below. Her ears are flooded with the noise of the docks: the rhythmic sawing of wood, clatters of metal against stone, and haunting sea shanties from a nearby tavern.
Three days ago, Delphine’s hunch that Vincent was being held on the Ann and Mary proved correct. Nicholas immediately filed two injunctions: the first to visit Vincent and the second to prohibit the ship from setting sail. Two days ago, both requests were granted. So, Delphine has been mentally preparing for a trip to the docks for the last day and a half. No small task, given that the Ann and Mary is the same vessel that brought her to this country. This place will only ever remind her of seasickness and longing for home.
‘See here, August,’ Nicholas says, digging around his jacket pocket for the court documents. ‘I have permission from the High Court.’
August Grey, a broad man with a barnacle-grey beard, lifts a hand to draw an invisible circle around his rough-skinned face. ‘Only authority here is the captain,’ he says to Nicholas. ‘And you’ll win no friends here with that sort of informality, Mister Lyons.’
Outside, barrels thud as they roll over stone – heavy with cocoa, cane, or another ill-gotten good on its way to increase Lord Harvey’s fortune. They’ll be sold for six times the price Marion pays the smugglers.
‘Apologies, Captain Grey,’ Nicholas says, ‘but as you know, my family owns this ship.’ He stands a little straighter as though looking down on the man may encourage him to change his mind.
‘Your uncle owns this ship,’ Captain Grey corrects, without malice. ‘And if you needed a bit of parchment from the court to let you on, I doubt he wants you here.’
‘Please, Captain?’ Delphine says, stepping into his eyeline with purpose. ‘We’ll be no trouble. We only wish to enquire after my brother’s health.’
‘Oh aye?’ The captain smiles as though Delphine has said something amusing and pushes off the pile of cotton bales he was leaning against to face her. Grey takes a second to steady himself, as if unmoored on land after a lifetime at sea. ‘No trouble, she says. Only, the way I remember it, Trouble is your middle name.’
Trouble? Delphine peers closer at the man and his sun-weathered eyes. The beard, she now realises, is new. As is the title of Captain. But the way he calls her Trouble, with that teasing northern lilt, is the same as the day they met.
She was at Castries Harbour in St Lucia, eleven years old and distraught. Earlier that day, she’d been ripped from her father’s arms as her mother fell to her knees, begging Lord Harvey not to take away her only daughter. The lord had looked on, indifferent, as her mother keened and keened.
It was Grey who tried to calm Delphine when they first threw her and Vincent on the ship. He introduced himself as Grool – an affectionate nickname the crew had constructed from Grey and Liverpool – and wrapped her in a rough blanket on a day far too hot to need one. Then he patted her on the shoulder, called her Trouble, and joked that she’d best quieten down lest one of the grumpier sailors throw her overboard.
‘I remember,’ Delphine says, willing herself back into the present.
Grey raises a bushy eyebrow. ‘So don’t think me unkind when I say I can’t help you.’
It didn’t feel like kindness at the time – not in the way Captain Grey seems to be remembering it.
But if he believes he helped her once…
‘Can you not do me one more kindness, Captain Grool?’
He answers by shoving them out the door.
‘Well, that’s that then,’ Nicholas huffs, kicking a stone towards the water. Delphine follows its path until it’s lost beneath the two-dozen mud-flecked boots, trudging amid hooves and cartwheels along the narrow riverbank.
A fleet of dark clouds is sailing their way, threatening to dampen Delphine’s mood further. With a well-practised effort, she locks away each intruding emotion. ‘What can we do?’
‘I’m thinking,’ Nicholas says.
Delphine is, too. Thinking of how badly Harvey’s men may have hurt Vincent. What will happen if his wounds are left to fester? What if he… What if they… What if, what if, what if? The only certainty is her fears won’t abate by remaining still.
‘We can’t leave him on there,’ she says. Without waiting for Nicholas, Delphine turns on her heels and heads for the ship.
She makes it three steps, before—
‘Wait!’ Nicholas yells, yanking her back the second before a canopied wagon hurtles past. Spinning her towards him, he places his hands on her shoulders. ‘Just. Wait,’ he insists. ‘This is a legal matter. And though I’m hardly a model of impulse control, is there a need for such hysterics?’
Delphine says through her teeth, ‘Does the captain truly have more authority than the court?’
‘Laws between land and sea are complicated,’ he says. ‘But ultimately, yes. We’re committing piracy if we board the Ann and Mary without the captain’s permission. I’d quite like to keep my neck, wouldn’t you?’
‘Piracy?’ Delphine regards the myriad ships bobbing along the dock with renewed interest – maybe a pirate could give her better advice than Nicholas. ‘What is the value of a court order if the captain can overrule it?’
‘As I say, the law is complicated.’
Delphine’s temper rises like a flag on a mast. ‘You keep saying that, yet you don’t explain how.’
‘Delphine, men who’ve studied law for years struggle with its complexity. Forgive me if I don’t produce a chalkboard and write out the Responsible Shipowner’s Act for you now.’
Usually, she tries harder to mask her discontent, but if Nicholas is truly her ally, maybe she shouldn’t need to. ‘Did you mean it when you said we are to address each other as friends?’
‘You may speak plainly, yes,’ Nicholas glances sideways at her, suspicious.
Delphine meets his glance with a glower. ‘Then, Mister Lyons… If we don’t stop thinking and do something in the next thirty seconds… I’m afraid I’ll have no choice but to unleash the full extent of my hysteria.’
His eyebrows arch in surprise – she, too, is aware her current expression is rarely worn by a friend – but he seems to shrug it off. ‘Please, do not scream,’ he says. ‘I only meant that recklessness gets people killed. Or transported across oceans with no way of getting them back.’ He buries his hands in his pockets. ‘As I said before, there is a difference between what is permissible and what is done. If the ship were to set sail, yes, they’d be breaking the law, but ultimately, the Crown isn’t going to pursue a ship for the return of one slave.’
It was a depressing statement but one she could have predicted. ‘So, what do we do?’
‘We go through the justice system,’ Nicholas says, his tone determined. ‘Secure a writ of habeas corpus that forces Captain Grey and my uncle to surrender Vincent into court custody.’
‘And then what?’
‘And then, there will likely be a trial. Not only will I need to persuade the court Vincent cannot be transported from England, but I’ll also do my best to convince them he should be freed. No doubt my uncle will play the wounded party, and it’ll be for me to prove otherwise. This could be a landmark case.’ His eyes widen, charged with intellectual zeal. ‘How far can a master’s authority go on English soil?’ he murmurs, almost to himself. Then, his gaze shifts from Delphine into what seems like an explosion of thought.
To bring him back, Delphine asks, ‘You’d do that for Vincent?’
Nicholas blinks, then nods. ‘I’ll do what is right.’
Delphine forces a smile. She wants to believe him. But faith in Nicholas alone won’t save Vincent.
Can she believe in everything Nicholas is proposing, too? That the law can save her brother. That the ship won’t set sail, that the courts will hear the case, that Nicholas can win, that Lord Harvey won’t do something terrible to stop him. So many elements of his plan rely on things outside of her control.
But what is the alternative? To break Vincent out? Condemn him to a life on the run, like hers? Vincent doesn’t want that. So she can’t want it either.
Despite her every impulse not to, she chooses to believe. ‘When do we start?’
Nicholas’ eyes crease with gratitude, further fuelling Delphine’s suspicion that people do not often agree with his plans. He pulls a palm-sized notebook, a tiny ink pot, and a quill from his coat pocket.
For the first time today, Delphine could laugh. Only he would carry around such things on his person.
‘Come to my residence north of Clerkenwell in a fortnight, and I’ll have made progress.’ Holding the parchment to the nearest wall, he deftly balances the open pot of ink between two fingers, scrawls down his address, and hands it over. ‘Until then – don’t cause any trouble, Trouble.’
No trouble in a whole fortnight? For a clever man, Nicholas can be most naïve.
Chapter Seven
Did I consider myself an European, I might say my suffering were great: but when I compare my lot with that of most of my countrymen, I regard myself as a particular favourite of heaven.
—OLAUDAH EQUIANO
1745-1797, enslaved 1756-1766
