The Day of Atonement

by David Liss

  I looked at Mr. Weaver’s big hand. Even at his advanced age, he was the sort of man no one would dare to trouble. I wished to be like that. I wished to be someone other men feared. “What is your trade?” I asked.

  “I am a thief taker,” he said. Seeing the look of confusion on my face, he added, “I am paid to find people and items.”

  “What manner of people and items?”

  “Lost or stolen items,” Mr. Weaver said. “People who are missing for reasons good or ill.”

  “But you’re called ‘thief taker,’ so you must find lawless men,” I said. “Do you find people who have done bad things?”

  “Yes,” Mr. Weaver said. “That is part of what I do.”

  “Do you hurt such men?” I asked.

  “If it cannot be helped,” Mr. Weaver admitted, somewhat abashedly, I thought. “I never seek to do violence, but I am prepared if violence is unavoidable.”

  I thought about that. The idea of finding someone who had done evil—and striking him, lashing him with a whip, running him through with a blade, or firing a pistol into his chest. All of these things had an undeniable appeal. I had seen how Mr. Weaver sniffed out Hastings’s crimes and then humbled him with but words and glances. It must be a wonderful thing to feel something other than powerless. London was a strange city, where Jews walked about openly and could demand justice of Christians. I did not know if I would ever grow accustomed to it, and I told myself I did not want to, that I did not want to let go of my anger. Yet part of me understood that I had come to a place where I might find it possible to live.

  Six months later I received a letter from Mr. Settwell. Illness had spread through the prisons. Many of the prisoners died, including my parents. They were gone.

  I retreated to my room, and Mr. Weaver did not trouble me. I remained alone for four days. Sometimes I ate and drank. Sometimes I did not.

  On the fifth day, I appeared in Mr. Weaver’s study. I was thin and ill rested, but I set my face in determination.

  “I want to be a thief taker, like you,” I said. “I want to learn to hurt people.”

  “Hurting people will not change what has happened,” Mr. Weaver said.

  “I know.”

  “Then I will begin your training tomorrow,” he said.

  Mr. Weaver proved to be correct. Hurting people never made me feel better, but sometimes, when I punched or tackled or kicked, it made me forget to feel at all, and that, at least, was some relief.

  Chapter 3

  My trunks would have to be cleared through the customs house, and it might be a day or more before they were delivered. So, with my business aboard the ship complete, I took my leave.

  The Tagus is massive at Lisbon. Called by locals the Mar da Palha, the Sea of Straw, it was perhaps a mile across to Almada. Vessels of all sizes, from titan East Indiamen to single-sail fishing boats, crowded the huge expanse of water. The quays were used primarily for unloading and loading barges, as the river was quite deep in its center, but too shallow near the shores for the great ships to dock. I took passage on a barge commissioned by the Factory and powered by a dozen hollow-eyed African galley slaves.

  I kept my eyes on the water, taking in the range of mighty vessels and opulent barges with their red velvet canopies and gold tassels. They belonged to wealthy fidalgos, minor nobility, or perhaps even to the royal family itself. The packet had anchored directly in front of the Terreiro do Paço, the Palace Square, and the barge veered westward, past the royal shipyards that rang with the pounding of hammers and the sawing of wood, to a small set of quays at the foot of Chaido Hill. It was all industry and growth and trade here, as goods from all over the world were unloaded and set on carts that rolled toward the warehouses. Silks and furs to dress the rich, and meats and cheeses and grains to feed them.

  When I first arrived in England ten years before, I had been shocked to discover that the greatest men in the kingdom took pride in their farmlands. Their properties fed and clothed the nation, and while they might not soil their own hands with labor, they nevertheless understood themselves to be physically bound to the land. An English gentleman always took pride in serving the foods cultivated upon his own estates. In Portugal, a fidalgo would imagine himself diminished if he were to bring the fruits of his holdings to market, and so the country could offer its citizens little in the way of meat or produce. The waters were teeming with fish, and peasants and small men and ships from other nations worked them, but no gentleman would tarnish his name by being called a fisherman. I watched, as I came to shore, barrels of salted fish from England being unloaded down the quays. It was but one way in which Portuguese pride made Englishmen rich.

  Without ceremony, I stepped upon the quay and began to shoulder my way through the crowd of sweat-stinking slaves and laborers. It was but a short distance to my new lodgings, the Duke’s Arms, one of a mass of inexpensive inns and taverns serving the English. I had not chosen the most reputable of such establishments, and my inquiries suggested that a man wishing to make the best possible impression would have stayed elsewhere. I, however, was not looking to make the best possible impression. Far better to appear to be a man who little knows his best interests. Far better to appear to be lost and uncertain in this dangerous city. That was what would get me closest to the Inquisitor I sought.

  Naturally, I could not have predicted the day of my arrival—travel from England ranged from as little as eight days to three weeks or longer, should bad weather or pirates intervene—but I had written ahead to tell the innkeeper of my ship’s name and its departure date. The inn would know of the packet’s arrival and ready my room accordingly.

  I considered these details as I walked, keeping my head down, feeling the sun beat upon my neck, smelling rosemary and fish and the sour stink of laborers who passed close. I turned away from all I did not need to see, but there was no blocking out the sounds of the city—the cries of street vendors, hawking their goods in Portuguese and English; the snatches of Arabic and African and Brazilian languages; the strumming of guitars and mandolins, and the pounding of drums. I did not raise my head, and I looked no farther before me than navigating the street demanded. I did not want to see Lisbon. Not yet. It was one thing to gaze at the city from a distant vantage point upon the Tagus, quite another to see it from the streets—to be upon those streets.

  For a moment, I was near dizzy with regret. I wanted to be back in London. Not that London was home—not anymore. I had burned my bridges there. I had not so much as told Mr. Weaver I was leaving, let alone explained where I was going—though I left him a letter, revealing all. In the weeks before my departure, I quietly sold all I had of worth. I gathered all the money I had saved over the years and traveled by coach to Falmouth to board the next Factory packet. All my life, events had pushed me from one place to another. In this, I had chosen my way, made my own terrible choice. It was what I said to myself, and yet, as I had boarded the packet, I had felt as though the course I was on had always been inevitable.

  The inn was at the intersection of two unmarked streets, sitting astride the hill so the ramshackle wooden building looked as though it might, at any moment, give way and topple face forward into the street like a drunkard. And inside, the common room was full of sots who appeared as though they might, at any moment, topple face forward onto the floor. They were, to a man, British—almost all English, with a few Scotch voices thrown in and one accent decidedly Cornish. None were Portuguese, and that, no doubt, was how the patrons liked it. The British in Lisbon wanted a place to be away from their hosts and their papist ways and the unceasing scrutiny of the Inquisition. Even so, there would be familiars of the Inquisition within the tavern, and every man there knew it. The Inquisition had many powers, but first among these was ubiquity. Inquisitors had the coin to buy agents in any walk of life. Some men went more willingly than others, but in the end no one refused to serve. Anyone who drew the attention of the Inquisition did its will, either outside the Palace dungeon or within it
. Most chose to earn gold rather than lashes.

  I crossed the warped wooden floors, strewn with sawdust, past English laborers—not a Factory man among them—and approached the counter. I pretended not to notice I was the only gentleman present, the only man in wig and waistcoat, the only man with silver buttons and buckles. The only man who troubled to wave his hands at the buzzing clouds of mosquitoes. The other patrons, however, appeared entirely indifferent to my presence. Indeed, they demonstrated the same indifference to their own lives.

  Behind the bar stood a huge man, unusually tall, whose massive frame was composed of broad shoulders and muscular arms, but also an enormous belly that protruded out over his breeches. Like his patrons, he went wigless, and the stubble on his scalp suggested he shaved his head as protection against lice. He dressed in the common Portuguese manner—simple and rough and inexpensive. And like a Portuguese, he was bearded, though his ginger facial hair came in rough patches. The round, too-wide face surrounding his unkempt whiskers was red and blotchy and deeply creased. Humming rather loudly to himself, he kept his gaze deliberately down as he washed out tankards with an oily cloth.

  I watched as the heavy man left streaks of grease inside the tankards. My expression must have betrayed revulsion, because the man stopped and met my gaze with a steely look of contempt.

  I knew him.

  The coincidence ought not to have surprised me. Probably fewer than a thousand Englishmen lived in Lisbon, and I fully expected to see men I recalled from my childhood, but not so quickly, and not where I intended to lodge. When I last saw the man behind the bar, Kingsley Franklin had been ten years younger, quite a bit less corpulent, and far better dressed. He’d been a factor then, and a successful one, a man with whom my father had done frequent business.

  For a moment, I feared recognition, but of course that was foolish. He last knew me as a thirteen-year-old boy, hardly worth the notice of a merchant. Even if, for some inexplicable reason, the man recalled the son of a New Christian business associate, if he had clear memories of him and discussed him often with his friends, he would not now perceive the child in the face of a bewigged English gentleman fresh off the packet ship.

  His dark expression certainly betrayed no recognition. “Something not to your liking? Not the finery you’d hoped for?” Franklin asked. He narrowed his eyes at me for a moment, daring me to look away, and then returned to the important work of wiping out mugs.

  Were this London, I would have taken very unkindly to his rudeness. To best communicate my displeasure, I might well have grabbed his hand, twisted back his wrist until he fell to his knees. I did not enjoy being treated poorly. I chose to let the matter pass, however, for I had not come all this way to teach innkeepers how to conduct themselves, and though he was ill-mannered now, long ago Franklin had dealt fairly with my father.

  I said, “I beg your pardon. I meant no offense. I wrote ahead about a room. I am Mr. Sebastian Foxx.”

  Evidently, he did not care for my efforts to ingratiate myself. “Young fellow like you? I was expecting Mr. Sebastian Foxx”—he recited the name with not a little mockery—“to be a man of business. I wasn’t expecting a lad making a stop on his grand tour.”

  If that was the game, I would play it. “I assure you, I am here upon business, and I am three and twenty. Not so very young for a man who wishes to live by his own labor.”

  Franklin grinned, warming to the banter. “Aye, that’s true enough, if you are not still upon your mama’s teat.”

  “I am not.” I leaned forward slightly to meet the man’s gaze. “Were you a younger man, I might quip that I’ve actually been upon your mama’s teat, but given your own advanced age, that would be not a little unsavory.”

  Franklin stared at me. His mouth quivered, but he said nothing, and I wondered if I had gone too far. Mr. Weaver had taught me that it was easier to get what you wanted from a man if you could convince him he had not been bested.

  “Now, shall we discuss my room,” I inquired, “or shall we further explore the subject of teats?”

  Franklin remained motionless for another moment, then he erupted in a guffaw, showing off a mouth of large and generally intact teeth. “You’ve got spirit for a popinjay, I’ll warrant.” He thrust out his hand. “Kingsley Franklin.”

  I took his hand and shook as though he were a long lost friend, and, in truth, he was close enough. “I believe we shall do together quite amiably.”

  “As to your lodgings, I think we have what will answer.” All hostility had now been erased from our history. “I reckon you’ll be glad to sleep upon dry land after all that churning about on the packet. And once you’ve seen your rooms, perhaps some food and drink will answer.”

  “Nothing presently, but I assure you, I will want refreshment later, and I shall let you know if it is convenient.” I had already informed Franklin I was not easily frightened. Now it was time to assure him I would be a source of coin.

  “We aim to please,” Franklin replied brightly, having received the message, “provided it ain’t much trouble.”

  With a lazy wave of his hand, Franklin led me through the common room and toward a dark staircase so steep it seemed designed specifically to encourage drunk men to fall to their deaths. Indeed, Franklin’s height and girth made the stairs a particular challenge, and as we ascended his breathing grew pronounced and ragged. I watched the man hurling himself upward, and I shook my head at the wonder of it all. I was staying in an inn belonging to Kingsley Franklin—a man who had dined at my father’s house, whose errands I had run as a child.

  The stairs twisted up to a windowless corridor, and Franklin led me through the darkness until we reached a door with the number eight written on it in chalk. He paused and put one hand to the wall while he caught his breath. “Here we are, Mr. Foxx. Not so very bad, I’ll wager.”

  It was not so very bad at all. I opened the door and saw a bright room with a view of the river and the Palace in the far distance. It caught a pleasant breeze, and the furnishings were spare but sufficient. In the front room, a writing table and several chairs and a servant’s bed near a fireplace. In the back a clean-looking bed with fresh linens. The room smelled not of sweat or piss, a prospect that seemed all too likely, but of fresh-cut flowers and citrus, sea air and a distant hint of cinnamon and baking bread.

  Franklin stood by the threshold, watching me inspect my new lodgings. “My daughter used to help about here until she ran off with a sailor, so I’m a bit shorthanded at the moment. Anything you want, I’ll have it for you—me or one of these Portuguese I pay. They’re cheap as dirt, and almost as useful.”

  “I shall keep that in mind.”

  “And if it’s some company you desire, you need only give me the nod,” he said with a wink. “I know the best ladies in town, English and natives. Some men, newly arrived, have an inkling to try the blacks, and I know a few places where they are clean and lovely both.”

  “Should the need arise,” I said, “I shall inform you anon.”

  Franklin held up his hands in protest. “If you’re the puritanical sort, sir, I meant no offense. You need not swive a whore to be estimable in my eyes.”

  “Your disposition is most liberal,” I said, making no effort to disguise the weariness in my voice.

  Franklin clapped his hands together. “I’ll be off and leave you to your settling in.” He turned to the door, and had gone so far as to set one foot into the hallway before he turned back around. “If I may be bold, Mr. Foxx, I’ll give you a bit of advice—some that I wish was given me. You’ve come to make your fortune, and I’ve no doubt you will. Earn your riches, then, and welcome to them, but return home, quick as you can. Men who stay too long do so at their peril.”

  “And what is it they risk?” I asked. English merchants had always appeared privileged when I was a boy. They could come and go as they pleased, and they had no fear of the Inquisition so long as they did nothing foolish, but Kingsley Franklin, once a successful Factory man, no
w stood behind the counter of a second-rate inn.

  “A man who stays too long risks everything he has,” Franklin said, his melancholy undisguised. “A good man was ruined, and I was ruined along with him. I lost all I valued, sir: my fortune; my wife, who left me; and finally my daughter, who’d had her fill of being a poor English girl in a city full of rich Englishmen. Don’t wait until you have more than enough. When it’s merely enough, it is time to leave.”

  A great man? Did Franklin’s fortunes decline with my father’s arrest?

  “You must tell me your history, Mr. Franklin, but another time, if you please. I fear I am not a fit audience.”

  The tremendous sphere of a man had now taken out a handkerchief and was wiping his eyes. “The very devil,” Franklin swore softly. “I don’t often lose myself like that, but I find myself suddenly in a reflective turn of mind.” He started toward the door and then—I could scarcely believe it!—he turned back yet again. Would he never leave the deuced room? “Be mindful to always dress as you are now, in the English manner. Don’t think to don the native clothing, as some visitors like to do.”

  “Why ever not?” I asked.

  Franklin squinted. “With your coloring, sir, you could well be taken for a New Christian, and the last thing you want is the Inquisition looking at you twice.” So saying, he stepped out of the room and closed the door.

  Franklin was going to be a problem.

  It might well be that he would never see my resemblance to my father, though I saw it with unavoidable clarity whenever I gazed into a glass. Even so, I must be prepared to deal with the innkeeper.

  That was a matter to be resolved later. Now was the time for considering how best to proceed. I breathed in the floral air, laced with the sea scent of the Tagus. Then I decided I would no longer try to spare myself. I approached the window and looked outside, taking it all in: the river and its many ships, the glittering jewel of the Palace, the commotion of the quays.