by David Liss
There was, however, no way to gain purchase to an appropriate height and very little chance I might sneak inside the vehicle. The footman and the coachman were engaged in conversation, and while it was theoretically possible I might be able to creep past them and somehow avoid the inevitable creak of the door opening, I did not like to depend on such luck. And once inside, then what? How could I hope to go unnoticed by Mr. and Mrs. Thurmond?
As I considered my options—such as stealing a horse or following on foot in hopes they did not travel fast—a servant emerged from the house and darted over to the coach, instructing the driver and footman to spring into action. They did at once. The driver climbed up and took the reins, the footman hopped onto the back.
I followed through the shadows as they pulled directly to the door, and here I enjoyed a wondrous bit of luck, for the aged gentleman helped his wife inside but then declined to enter himself. Instead, he spoke a few words to her and gave some instructions to the coachman and then walked away from the house toward Theobald’s Row. I followed at a safe distance, but I was close enough to hear when, at the corner of Red Lyon Street, he dropped a coin in the hand of another gentleman’s waiting footman with the request to find him a hackney.
This was a far superior situation, for once the transportation was secured it was no difficult thing to hop on the back and remain crouched, that I might go unobserved. And so I did, clinging to the back as the carriage traveled at its snail pace through the filthy streets of the metropolis. My presence was remarked upon by a few of the whores and low men we passed, but the coachman failed to understand—or failed to care—and ignored the jeers until the conveyance arrived at Fetter Lane. Thurmond then departed and entered the Brush and Palette, a tavern favored by men of an artistical inclination.
I crawled down from the back, determined to wait a moment before entering.
The coachman then turned around. “Enjoy the ride, did you, my master?”
I knew too well the code of the streets either to ignore his meaning or to begrudge it. The metropolis inhaled knowledge and exhaled revelation, and if I did not wish this coachman to respirate to Thurmond, I would have to buy his silence. A sixpence, I was delighted to see, did the business, and the coachman and I parted friends.
I now turned to the matter at hand—principally the question of why Thurmond might choose to attend a coffeehouse of portrait painters—but suspected the answer quickly enough, for I had done such tricks in my time. Why does a man ever go to a public house associated with men with whose business he has no contact? Because he wishes not to be seen.
Maintaining both distance and luck, I followed the worthy inside and was unobserved as he took a room in the back and left instructions with the publican. After a moment, I approached this fellow, a stooped fellow of about Thurmond’s age. Rather than wasting time, I handed him a coin.
“What did the gentleman instruct you?” I asked.
“That when another gentleman should inquire for a Mr. Thompson, he be shown to that room.”
I proceeded with another coin. “Is there a room adjacent to his?”
“There is indeed, and it is available for three shillings.”
It was, of course, an absurd price, but we both knew I would pay without haggling, and so I was led to my own private space, where I waited, close by the wall, for something to happen. And something did. Within half an hour I heard another person enter the adjoining room. I pressed my ear to the wall, but I could still not make out the particulars of their conversation. Nevertheless, I recognized the voice of Thurmond’s visitor. It was the second clandestine meeting I had seen the same gentleman engage in that very night.
Yes, Mr. Forester of the East India Company had come to meet with Mr. Thurmond of the wool interest, and I did not believe they met because of their many conflicts. With the meeting of the Court of Proprietors hard upon Ellershaw, it would seem his rivals had found much to discuss.
THERE WERE MANY QUESTIONS now before me. Ought I to tell Ellershaw of Forester’s betrayal with Ellershaw’s wife, his betrayal with his enemy Thurmond, with both, or with neither one? As near as I could tell, I gained no advantage in doing so. Sending Ellershaw, and perhaps the whole of Craven House, into chaos would not serve my ends, and I had nothing to gain by gathering for myself more of the gentleman’s trust than I had already obtained. As for Cobb, I was determined to mention only Mrs. Ellershaw’s indiscretion. Such intelligence would demonstrate to my overseer that I performed as he wished and would offer greater protection for my friends. At the same time I felt confident that Cobb would have no use for this information, and consequently there could be no risk in revealing it. As I knew not which was the greater villain in this conflict, I could not easily tell how best to disseminate my discoveries to full advantage.
The next morning, Ellershaw called me into his office, though he appeared to have nothing of import to say to me. I had the distinct impression that he wished only to test my mood following his cruel treatment of Thurmond the night before. I, for my part, kept quiet about what I had seen. Thus we spoke some time of my days as a pugilist. Ellershaw laughed at some of my stories, but after a quarter of an hour he informed me that I had wasted quite enough of his time and should go about my business, lest I waste his money as well.
“Of course, sir,” I said. “But may I ask a question of a delicate nature?”
He waved his hand with grudging permission.
“It regards Mrs. Ellershaw’s daughter from a previous marriage. Am I to understand there is something unfortunate that has transpired with her?”
Ellershaw studied me for a moment, his face remaining immobile and expressionless all the while. “The girl fled,” he said at last. “She took a liking to a rogue, and, despite our promise that she would receive not a penny if she married him, there is every reason to believe she obtained a Fleet marriage. We have not received a word from her since, though you may depend upon it, we shall. They will certainly wait until they believe our anger has passed and then come calling, hat in hand.”
“Thank you, sir,” I said.
“If you think to earn for yourself a few extra shillings by finding the girl,” Ellershaw said to me, “you must be disappointed. Neither I nor Mrs. Ellershaw cares if we never hear from her again.”
“I had no such intentions. I was merely curious.”
“You would be better served directing your curiosity toward the rogues of Craven House and less toward my family.”
“Of course,” I agreed.
“Now, as to Thurmond. He must know that he cannot be permitted to shrug us off so casually. It is time to make him fear us truly.”
I considered Ellershaw’s threat with the burning poker and trembled to ponder what mischief he had in his mind. “With less than two weeks left before the meeting of the Court of Proprietors,” I said, “I hardly think it wise for you to have your strategy hinge upon frightening Mr. Thurmond.”
“Ha!” he shouted. “You know nothing, and I have no intention that you should learn more. Do you think this my only avenue? It is but one, the only one that concerns you. Now, my informants within Parliament have told me that he plans to dine tonight with an associate of his near Great Warner Street. You must break into his home while he is out and await his return. Then, when he has gone abed, I wish you to pummel the scoundrel, Mr. Weaver. Pummel him within an inch of his life, that he might know that Craven House is not to be trifled with. Then, sir, I wish you to violate his wife.”
I remained motionless. I said nothing.
“Do you not hear me?”
I swallowed hard. “I hear you, Mr. Ellershaw, but I am afraid I do not comprehend. You cannot mean what I think you to mean.”
“Indeed I do. I have faced the resistance of such men before, I can promise you. In Bombay there were always chieftains and leaders among the blacks who believed they might stand up to the Company. They had to be made to see the consequences, and I believe Thurmond must be made to see too. Do you
think this is a trivial matter? On what we do hinges the future of the Company, and upon that the world itself. The Company is the standard-bearer of free trade. You and I have a rendezvous with destiny, Weaver. We will preserve for our children this, the last best hope of man on earth, or we will sentence them to take the first step into a thousand years of darkness. If we fail, at least let our children and our children’s children say of us that we justified our brief moment here. We did all that could be done.”
I stifled my first impulse, which was to say I harbored grave doubts that our children’s children should praise us for beating old men and violating old women. Instead, I took a deep breath and lowered my eyes deferentially. “Sir, you do not speak of a tribal leader among the Indians. You speak of a well-respected member of the House of Commons. You cannot expect the crime to go unreported. And even if you could be guaranteed of your success, I cannot condone such barbaric usage of anyone, particularly the aged—and I could most assuredly never participate in such a thing.”
“What? You haven’t the stomach for it? I thought you more of a man than that. This is the world we live in, Mr. Weaver, full of deceits and treachery. You must be the one to wield the club, or you will be thrashed by it. I have told you what I wish, and you are my servant; therefore, you will do as I say.”
Once more I found myself faced with a conundrum: Actions that would preserve my place conflicted with actions that would preserve my soul. I might have had a difficult time convincing Cobb that I could not bring myself to beat a warehouse worker, but I would have to believe that even he could not expect me to engage in shameless violence and rape—if for no other reason than that such crimes must be pursued and, if traced to me, must surely be traced to him.
It occurred to me that this might be precisely a bit of curious luck. I had no choice but to walk away from Ellershaw, and Cobb could not blame me for doing so. Perhaps I indulged in unreasonable optimism, but such was all I had at my disposal.
Forcing my face into a cast of steely determination, I rose from my chair. “I cannot do what you ask, nor can I quietly countenance such a thing if you assign the task to another.”
“If you defy me in this, you must lose your position here.”
“Then I will lose my position.”
“You do not wish to make the East India Company your enemy.”
“Better the Company than my conscience,” I answered, and turned toward the door.
“Hold!” he said, now rising from his chair. “Hold, do not go. You are right. Perhaps my methods are too extreme.”
I cursed silently, for my hopes were cruelly, if not unexpectedly, dashed. Nevertheless, I turned. “I am glad to hear you rethink the matter.”
“Yes,” he said. “I believe you are in the right here. Nothing quite so brutal, then. But we shall think of something, Mr. Weaver. You may depend upon it.”
ON MY WAY to the warehouses, I began to consider the larger situation. One moment I served Cobb, another moment Ellershaw, and a third myself. That is to say, I walked a precarious line, and though I would wish to have no master but myself, I understood that I must be a toad-eater, at least in some small degree, if I were ever to do any good. I loathed feeling powerless above all things and yet, with my friends’ lives hanging by precarious threads, I must at least assume the appearance of subservience.
How to endure such a thing and not fall into despair? The answer, I believed, lay not in resisting my would-be masters but rather in setting out upon my own projects. I must learn what Forester hid in his secret warehouse. I must discover Ellershaw’s plans for surviving the impending Court meeting—and very possibly discover more about Ellershaw’s daughter. Such a path could be a blind alley, but many of the major actors in my little drama—both Ellershaws, Forester, and Thurmond—had spoken of her in ways that intrigued me, and though she appeared but an irrelevancy, I had long ago learned that pulling at loose threads could cause the curtain to unravel.
Mrs. Ellershaw appeared to believe that her husband wished to know her daughter’s location, though he made precisely the opposite clear. It seemed to me likely that Mr. Ellershaw’s interest in the girl must have been other than fatherly, and her marriage might have been an effort to escape as much as a pursuit of the heart. That being the case, her mother would clearly wish to protect her whereabouts.
One thing struck me, however. Mrs. Ellershaw feared that her husband had learned the truth. Not that he had discovered the daughter’s address or wished to discover it. No, she believed there was a hidden truth of which Ellershaw was ignorant, which meant that the intelligence he had now provided me might well be false or incomplete.
As for Forester, it would seem he not only disliked Ellershaw but had reason to hate him—namely, his dalliance with Mrs. Ellershaw. Did he hate his lover’s husband to the extent that he would betray him with Thurmond for the pleasure of it? I doubted it. Rather, it seemed to me that Forester had some business that depended on the failure of Ellershaw and perhaps even the Company itself—though I was at a loss as to what that might be. I did, however, suspect that it had something to do with the secret warehouse level Carmichael had spoken of, and I knew I would have to discover the contents of that room.
As always, Aadil kept a close watch on me throughout the day, his ugly scarred face studying my every move with Oriental single-mindedness. But toward evening I managed to remove Carmichael to a private corner on the pretense of scolding him for some imagined failure.
He was so earnest a fellow that when he obeyed my summons to meet in the back of the warehouse, he appeared downcast and apologetic before I even spoke a word.
“Have no concern,” I said at once. “You’ve done nothing wrong. I merely set out the rumor in order to engineer our time together.”
“That’s a relief, Mr. Weaver, as I think well of you and would have you think well of me.”
“Indeed I do. You’ve proved to be a diligent worker and a useful guide to the warehouses.”
“I hope to remain so,” he said.
“I hope you will remain so as well,” I said, “for what I am now about to ask of you is not strictly within the bounds of your duties. I wish for you to show me the location of Mr. Forester’s hidden cargo and to help me gain access.”
His mouth parted slightly, but he said nothing for a moment. Finally, he shook his head. “It is a very dangerous thing you ask. Not only might I lose my place, but I should earn for myself the enmity of that beast Aadil. I don’t want that, and if you are wise you won’t want it either.”
“I understand it is a risk, and yet I must see the contents of that room, and I cannot do it without your assistance. You will be rewarded for your efforts.”
“It ain’t about the reward, don’t you mind that. It’s about not losing my place. You might be the watchmen overseer, but if Aadil or Mr. Forester wants me thrown out without what they owe me, there’s nothing that will stop them.”
“I won’t let that happen,” I told him, wondering, as I spoke, precisely how I would prevent it. I told myself that if Carmichael’s position should come under attack because of his assistance to me, I would make certain he would not suffer for it. I had enough friends and influence that, at the very least, I could secure him a position of equal income elsewhere.
He studied me, perhaps appraising whether or not my optimism was well founded. “To be honest, Mr. Weaver, I’m scared to go against them.”
“I must learn what’s in there. If you won’t help me, I shall find someone who will, But I would prefer it to be you, as I believe I can trust you.”
He took a deep sigh. “And so you can, sir, so you can. When shall it be?”
I had an appointment I would by no means wish to miss for that night, so we made plans to meet behind the main warehouse at the strike of eleven on the following night. Against his protests, I placed a coin in his hand, but in doing so, I feared I had only weakened his resolve. Carmichael, I recognized, wanted to help me because he liked me. If I beca
me yet another employer, his trust diminished, and I needed such trust as I could muster wherever it would be found.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
DEPARTED FROM CRAVEN HOUSE THAT AFTERNOON, HOPING NO ONE would notice my absence and Mr. Ellershaw would not call for me again. As per my arrangements, I met Elias at the Two Schooners Tavern on Cheapside, where he had ordered a pot and a meal, which I presumed I would be called upon to pay for. When I sat down, he was wiping the last of the grease from his plate with the last of his bread.
“Are you certain this matter will not turn difficult for me?” he asked.
“Reasonably certain,” I assured him.
I reviewed the plan, which I believed to be rather straightforward and easily accomplished—at least his end of it. Elias then wiped his face and departed to travel the short distance to Throgmorton Street, where the Seahawk kept its offices. I ordered a pot, which I allowed myself to drink over a third of an hour, and then paid the reckoning and made my way to the offices myself.
I entered the building and found myself in a large open room with several heavy writing desks where several clerks were currently at their labors. I noticed a door over to my left, which I believed led to Mr. In-gram’s office. I had contacted him earlier that day—using Elias’s name—to request an appointment. At that moment, Elias would be inside, attempting to secure insurance policies on several very elderly sea captains. Mr. Ingram, for his part, would be engaged in a rather lengthy effort to deny Elias, all of which gave me the time I required to attempt our scheme.
I approached the nearest clerk, a stooped-over gentleman of later year, his eyes obscured by bulky spectacles. He wrote in a hasty yet vastly neat hand in an opened ledger book, and he did so with such intensity that he failed to notice me as I approached.