The Devil’s Company: A Novel

by David Liss

  He didn’t need to finish the thought. If Teaser were arrested and jailed, there was a strong possibility he would be dead before we could get to him, for the other prisoners would bludgeon a sodomite to death rather than share space with him.

  I pulled my hanger from its scabbard and lunged toward the window, where I made short work of the curtain lining. I handed one strip of the linen to Elias while I proceeded to tie another around my face, concealing everything below my eyes.

  “Are we planning on robbing the constables?” Elias asked me.

  “Do you wish to be recognized? You may have a hard time convincing the gentlemen of London to permit you to administer an emetic once you’ve been smoked as a molly.”

  He required no further argument. The crude mask—not unlike the sort I would, on occasion, resort to during my youthful days on the highway—was around his face in an instant, and together we rushed out into the fray.

  Two masked men brandishing weapons must always attract attention, and here it was no different. Indeed, the constables and the mollies regarded us with equal dread. We pushed through the crowds of men engaged in the unfathomable dance of arrest and resistance, looking for our man but seeing no sign of him.

  In the main hall, where once had been dancing, all was now in chaos. Some men cowered in corners while others fought mightily, brandishing candlesticks and pieces of broken furniture. Everywhere tables and chairs lay strewn in disorder; broken glass covered the floor, making islands in the pools of spilled wine and punch. There were some two dozen constables—or roughs who had been hired to act as such—and along with them, another dozen or so men of the Society for the Reformation of Manners. I could not help but reflect that men with such an interest in manners ought to act better than these. I saw a pair of constables holding a molly down on the ground while a Reformation man kicked at him. A group of three or four mollies tried to leave the room, but they were struck down by constables while the Reformation men cheered from a safe distance. The constables were bullies and ruffians, and the Reformation men were cowards. It is ever thus that the cause of righteousness is advanced.

  “Teaser!” I called out to the panicked mollies. “Who has seen Teaser?”

  No one heard or minded me. These unfortunates had their own difficulties, and the constables were attempting to ascertain if they should try to apprehend us or let us pass. No one moved to detain us, for there were certainly much less robust fish to be hooked. The Society for the Reformation of Manners men—they were the easiest to spy, for these were the ones who cowered and moaned if we even turned our eyes in their direction—demonstrated another attribute of those who would hide their cruelty behind the guise of religion. With such a fervent belief in their Lord, they were ever reluctant to risk being sent to meet him.

  “Teaser!” I shouted again. “I must find Teaser. I will get him away from here.”

  At last one man called to me. A pair of constables had him by either arm, and blood dripped in a pathetic trickle from his nose. His wig hung askew, but still on his head. One of the men who held him was in the process of showing his fellow how disgusting these mollies were—he demonstrated this by grabbing the prisoner’s arse and squeezing, as though it belonged to a succulent whore.

  This poor fellow’s face was twisted in pain and humiliation, but when he saw us, he somehow understood we were not with his enemies, and some expression of sympathy in my eyes may have prompted him to speak. “Teaser’s escaped,” he called to me. “He’s gone out the front with the big blackie.”

  I began to move toward the front of the house. A pair of constables moved forward to block my path, but I barreled against them with my shoulder, and they fell away easily enough, making room for me and Elias—cowering close behind me—to pass.

  Once we pushed through the main room, we were mostly out of the fray. A trio of constables chased after us, but not very hard, mostly for form’s sake, so they could explain later that their efforts to apprehend us failed. No one paid these men enough to risk their lives. Arresting a pack of mollies was easy enough work, but best to leave masked bandits for the soldiers.

  At the door, a pair of Reformation men stood keeping watch, but when they saw us come charging they quickly moved aside. One moved so fast he lost his balance and fell in my way, and I had to leap over him to keep from stumbling. Outside on the street a crowd had begun to gather, and they hardly knew what to make of us, but our appearance was met mostly with drunken cheers.

  Fortunately the stoop was fairly well raised and gave me a sufficient view of the surrounding areas. I looked back and forth, and then I saw them. It was Teaser—I recognized him in an instant, despite the gloom of the street—and he was being pulled along by a very large and surprisingly graceful man. It was dark and I could not see his face, but I had no doubt that Teaser’s abductor was none other than Aadil.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  OLBORN IS FULL OF COUNTLESS LITTLE STREETS AND DARK ALLEYS, so it might, at first glance, seem the ideal place to make one’s escape, but many of these alleys are dead ends, and even a tough like Aadil, I reasoned, would not want to face two pursuers and manage a prisoner while pinned in a corner. I was therefore not very surprised when I saw that he ran down Cow Lane and toward the sheep pens. Perhaps he meant to lose us among the animals.

  Elias and I both stripped our masks from our faces and dashed after Teaser and his abductor. Rain had begun to fall—not hard, but enough to turn the snow to slush and make the encrusted ice dangerously slick. We barreled forward as best we could upon so dangerous a surface, but it soon became apparent that we no longer had Aadil and Teaser in our sights. Elias began to slow down in defeat, but I would not have it. “To the docks,” I said. “He’ll try and take his prisoner across the water.”

  Elias nodded, no doubt disappointed that our running was not yet at an end. But, tired though he may have been, he followed me as we wound our way through the dark streets only to emerge under the open sky of night near the docks. I heard now the chorus of human life: the oyster girls and meat-pie men calling their wares, the cackling of whores, the laughing of drunkards, and, of course, the endless cries of the watermen. “Scholars, will you have whores?” they called, an ancient pun on scullers and oars. The quip was as old as the city itself, perhaps, but never lost its spice for this easily entertained lot.

  We stopped now on the docks, thick with rich and poor alike, all making their way off or onto boats. Then we heard the shouts upon the water. In accordance with another hoary custom, no respect for rank and class was afforded to those who dared to step foot in a boat, and so low men might call what lascivious words they had to high-born ladies or wealthy gentlemen. The king himself, if he deigned to cross the river by boat, would be afforded no deference, though I doubted he knew enough English to understand what insults might be lobbed at him.

  Elias was breathing heavily, looking with unfocused eyes at the countless bodies that surrounded us. I gazed out upon the river, illuminated by a hundred lanterns of a hundred boatmen, a mirror of the starry dome of sky above us. There, not fifteen feet from shore, sat an enormous man, his back to us, and Teaser, facing forward. Between them the boatman rowed. Teaser could not have made his escape, for it would be certain death to plunge into those cold waters, even if he could swim. He was held now on a floating prison.

  I grabbed Elias by the arm, dragged him down the dock stairs, and pushed him onto the first empty boat we found. I climbed in after him.

  “Ho-ho,” the boatman said. He was a young fellow, his shoulders thick with muscles. “A couple of young sparks out for a quiet ride, is it?”

  “Shut up,” I snapped, and jutted out a finger toward Aadil. “See you that boat? There’s extra coin in it if you can overtake them.”

  He gave me a sideways glance but hopped in all the same and shoved off. He might have been a saucy fellow, but for all that, he knew how to put some grit into his labors, and we were soon pushing through the waves. The water here smelled hal
f of the sea, half of sewage, and it lapped furiously against the sides of the boat.

  “What is it now?” the boatman asked. “That spark made off with your catamite?”

  “Do shut your mouth, fellow,” Elias snapped.

  “Fellow, is it? I shall fellow you with this here oar, and say it was the first time a whore ever touched your fundament.”

  “Saying it shan’t make it so,” Elias groused.

  “Don’t bother,” I told him. “These boatmen will tell you up is down, only to see if doing so will agitate you.”

  “Up is down, my spark,” the rower said. “All but fools know that, for it is only the great who tell us which is which, and if we care to look for ourselves we shall find out different.”

  We were making some significant progress, I must say, and we closed the gap between ourselves and Aadil’s boat. At least I thought it was Aadil, for in the dark of the water, with only our lanterns to light our way, it was not always easy to tell which boat was which. Nevertheless, I felt reasonably certain. When I saw a figure in the boat we pursued turn around, and then urge his boatman to row faster, I knew we still hunted our true quarry.

  “They’ve seen us,” I told the boatman. “Faster.”

  “It don’t get any faster than this,” he answered, no longer having the wind for banter.

  In the boat, the silhouette of Aadil turned again, snapped something at the boatman, and when he didn’t get what he wished, I observed him shoving the boatman aside. He began to row himself.

  Somehow my own boatman caught sight of this, and once more found the strength within to run his mouth. “What’s this?” he shouted over to the other boatman. “You let that spark steal your whore?”

  “I’ll get it back,” he called over, “and you’ll find it soon enough lodged in your sweet-smelling shitter.”

  “No doubt,” our boatman called, “for it is but a shitten stick you wield, and it seeks the fundament the way a baby or a whoremonger seeks your mother’s bubbies.”

  “Your mother has no bubbies,” the other called back, “for she was naught but a hairy he-bear who conceived you after being swived in the arse by a libertine hunter who knew neither arse from cunny—such a man being your father, or perhaps an ape of Africk; who can tell the one from the other?”

  “And your father,” our boatman returned, “was the whoreson bum-firking daughter—”

  “Quiet!” I cried, loud enough to be heard not just by our boatman but by the other as well.

  In that instant, I heard the other’s oars quiet and when I looked over, even in the dark I could see them lifting out of the water. From the boat I heard a strange and yet familiar voice shout, “Weaver, is that you?” The voice contained hope and humor—and nothing at all unpleasant.

  “Who is that?” I answered back.

  “’Tis Aadil,” he said. And then he let out an enormous laugh. “Here I have been exhausting myself, fleeing as though there were someone dangerous after us, and all along it was only you?”

  I could not but note his speech. Every time I had heard him open his mouth, he had grunted his words like a beastly savage. Now, though he spoke in the same musical accent he had always used, his speech was refined, grammatically proper, and on an equal footing to anyone born here.

  I hardly knew what to say. “What is this?” was the best I could manage.

  He let out another rich laugh. “I think,” he called over to us, “it is time we talked to each other in somewhat more frank terms. Let’s meet at the docks, and we’ll find someplace to tell each other our stories.”

  MERCIFULLY, OUR BOATMEN seemed to understand that something most unexpected had passed between us, and they remained quiet for the remainder of our journey. Elias gave me searching looks, but I hardly knew how to answer his unspoken questions. I merely pulled my coat around me, for it suddenly seemed to grow much colder as the light, steady rain fell upon us.

  Their boat landed first, and I did not entirely believe that Aadil’s offer to treat with us was not a clever trick—not until he stepped out and waited patiently as we docked and climbed out as well. This side of the river was as crowded and noisy and lively as the other, and it was a very strange place for us to talk, but Aadil merely smiled at us and then offered us a deep bow.

  “I have not been entirely honest with you about myself. Of course, you have not been entirely honest with me either, or anyone else at Craven House, but that is no matter. I’ve since concluded you mean me no harm and, indeed, your presence has been a most interesting catalyst.” He looked at the sky. “Sir, this rain continues apace, and if I have learned anything of your English weather, it shall get more unpleasant before it clears. Shall we find some warm and dry shelter?”

  I ignored the pleasantries, though I too was anxious to get out of the rain. “Who the devil are you?”

  He let out another of his thick laughs. It sounded as though it echoed about his chest before being set free. “My name is, indeed, Aadil. I am Aadil Wajid Ali Baghat, and, though unworthy, I must endure the unbearable honor of being a contemptible servant of his most glorious majesty, the Emperor Muhammad Shah Nasir ad Dîn, shah an shah, king of kings, Mogul of India.”

  “Rabbit it!” Elias whispered. “The filthy bugger’s an India spy.”

  “Hardly filthy, but a spy all the same. Yes, I am an agent of the Mogul. I have been sent here to deal a blow that will, I hope, curb the power of the East India Company. Would you like to hear more?”

  Elias appeared as dumbstruck as I felt, yet I managed a few words. “I am not certain I wish to deal any blows against the Company. I have no love of the men of Craven House, I promise you, but I’m not sure its destruction is my affair.”

  “Perhaps,” Aadil said, “you hardly know your affair, or the faces of your enemies, or the nature of their malice.”

  “No,” I agreed. “I don’t.”

  “Then come with me to a nearby tavern if you wish to find out. I shall increase the offer of warmth and dryness with food and drink.”

  “Now that,” Elias said, “is the offer you should have made in the first place.”

  AS A JEW AMONG ENGLISHMEN, I have ever felt out of place in my own native city, but I soon learned that to be a Jew is a very easy thing compared to being an East Indian. We could hardly walk three feet without someone calling to Aadil or stopping him. Children called him blackbird with the meanest contempt or else ran up to him to rub his dark skin and see if it would come off. Men moved out of his way, holding their noses, though he smelled far cleaner, and indeed more floral, than any of their lot could hope. Whores called out to him, telling him they gave special prices to Africans or else that they had never a black privy member and wished to gaze upon one.

  I believed I should go mad with rage or simply distracted with chatter were I asked to live his life, but it was clear that Aadil had long since grown familiar to such usage, and he took no note. Nevertheless, I soon discovered that there was one way in which Jew and East Indian were very much alike: the merchant, no matter what prejudices he might hold in his heart, regards the silver of all nations equally. We found our way to a crowded tavern, and though the publican gave Aadil an unwelcoming look, he changed his mind soon enough when the East Indian offered an unwarranted measure of silver for a private room, food, and drink.

  Aadil must have known his taverns well, for it was a comfortably appointed room, with two unboarded windows, ample sconces for light, and a handsomely laid table. The food was set before us, though Aadil would have none of it. The meats, he said, were not prepared in accordance with his religion. The same faith, he explained, forbade the consumption of spirituous liquors.

  “No liquors, quotha!” Elias cried out. “By the devil, Weaver, I’ve finally discovered a more unappealing religion than yours.” He would not allow our host’s abstinence to slow his progress, however, and quickly poured himself a glass of wine and began to inflict serious harm on a plate of cold chicken.

  Through all of this
, our friend Mr. Teaser sat quietly, hands in his lap. He shook his head when offered food and drink. I though it not entirely surprising. After all, he had heard terrible news and witnessed some remarkable events that day. Nevertheless, I could not understand his passivity in the hands of this black-skinned giant. There was naught to conclude but that Teaser had enjoyed dealings with Aadil Wajid Ali Baghat before and had been given cause to trust the Indian spy.

  This supposition was borne out in the sequel, for though Mr. Teaser sat in utter dejected silence, Aadil nevertheless poured a healthy portion of wine into a pewter cup and handed it over to the unfortunate. “Drink it, sir. I know you English find it restoring.”

  Teaser took the cup in his hands, but he made no motion to drink. “I can’t believe she’s dead,” Teaser intoned. “And poor Mother Clap and my friends—what will become of them? We must go back to help them.”

  I own I had not expected such brave sentiments from a man who would marry another man, but the night was already full-freighted with surprises and would, I was now certain, yet contain many more.

  “We cannot go back, and there’s nothing to be done for them,” I said. “I am sorry to put it to you so, but it is the truth. With the constables and Reformation men there, it is out of our hands, and from their behavior I gathered they were in the service of some other power, one with money to make certain the business was done. We can only hope that when their dark purpose is fulfilled, they will lose interest in the prosecution of your friends.”

  “And who do you believe to be that hidden power?” Aadil asked.

  I could tell from his tone of voice that he knew himself and only wanted to hear me say it. I could think of no reason to refuse. “Unless I am very much mistaken, the East India Company. I suppose I should say, a faction within the Company, but if it is Ellershaw’s or Forester’s or some other hand that moves these pieces, I cannot say.”