The Devil's Company (15 page)

“Weaver
, you ninny,” Ellershaw said to her. “Now go bring him his green tea.”

She curtsied and left the room.

My heart beat heavily as I felt the thrill and panic of having escaped—but escaped what, I hardly knew. I could not concern myself with the matter for now, however. I had first to discover what it was that Ellershaw would do with me, though I operated under the severe disability of not knowing what Cobb would have Ellershaw do with me. What if I should do the wrong thing? I could not worry myself with that, for if Cobb had not told me he could not hold me responsible.

Ellershaw took a sip from the steaming bowl the girl had brought him. “This is monstrous stuff, sir. Absolutely monstrous. But I must take it for my condition, so you shan’t hear me complain, I promise you, though it tastes as though brewed by the very devil.” He held out the bowl. “Try it, if you dare.”

I shook my head. “I dare not.”

“Try it, damn you.” The tone of his voice did not quite match the harshness of the words, but I misliked it all the same, and I should never have endured this treatment were I in possession of the freedom Ellershaw so extolled.

“Sir, I have no wish to try it.”

“Oh, ho. The great Weaver afraid of a bowl of medicinal herbs. How the great have fallen. This bowl is the David to your Goliath, I see. It has quite unmanned you. Where is the girl with that tea?”

“It has only been a moment,” I observed.

“Already taking the sides of the ladies, are you? You’re a wicked man, Mr. Weaver. A very wicked man, in the way I have heard that Jews are wicked. Removing the foreskin, they say, is like removing the cage from the tiger. But I like a man who likes the ladies, and that Celia is a rather tasty morsel, I think. Do you not agree? But let us stop this foolishness, for you won’t advance in Craven House if you can think of nothing but getting under the skirts of serving girls. Do we understand each other?”

“Absolutely,” I assured him.

“Let us turn our attention to the matter at hand. I have not had much time to consider it, but tell me, Mr. Weaver, have you ever thought of working for a trading company rather than being an independent such as you are, struggling from day to day, wondering where the next bite of bread might be found?”

“I had not thought of it.”

“It has just come to my mind, but I wonder how it is that these papers could have gone missing. You know, there was a riot of rotten silk fellows the other night, and my guards were all occupied in jeering at the ruffians. It might be that, in the excitement, one of those rogues could have slipped in and taken this.”

Ellershaw cut too close to the truth for my comfort. “But why should they take these papers? Was anything else taken?” I asked.

He shook his head. “I know, it hardly sounds plausible, but I can think of no other explanation. Even if I am wrong, it little alters the fact that we have dozens of low types guarding the premises, but no one who truly supervises them. The ruffian who inspects a departing laborer to make certain he has stolen nothing is himself the next day inspected by the very fellow he previously examined. The Company, in a word, is vulnerable to the treacheries and inadequacies of the very men charged with protecting it. Thus, I have the idea, at this very moment, that you might be the fellow to be head of the guard, if you will, to keep your eye upon them and make sure they are up to no mischief.”

I could hardly think of anything I should like to do less, but I understood my place was to seem agreeable to Mr. Ellershaw. “Surely,” I proposed, “a former officer in the army might be a better man. It is true I have some experience with thieves, but I have no experience in commanding underlings.”

“It hardly signifies,” he said. “What do you say to forty pounds a year in exchange for your services? What say you to that, sir? It is nearly as much as we pay our clerks, I promise you. It is a fair rate for such an office. Maybe too fair a rate, but I know better than to haggle over price with a Jew. I shall pay your people that compliment with all my heart.”

“It is a very tempting offer, for the stability of the work and the steadiness of the income should be quite a boon to me,” I told him, having no wish to make any decision without first consulting Cobb. “But I must think on it.”

“You must please yourself in that regard, I suppose. I hope you will inform me of your conclusions. It’s what I hope. But you’ve kept me long enough, I believe. I have much to do.”

“The girl is coming with the tea,” I reminded him.

“What? Is this a public house that you can order this and that at your leisure? Sir, if you are to work here, you must first understand that it is a place of business.”

I apologized for my error, while Ellershaw glared at me with the utmost hostility, and I made my way out of Craven House. I maneuvered around rushing clerks, servants with trays of food and drink, self-important and generally—though not always—plump men in close conversation, and even a few porters, all of whom moved about with such determination as to give the building the feel of a center of government rather than a company office. I both lamented and celebrated that I managed to see nothing more of Miss Glade, for I knew not what to make of that lady. I knew, however, that were I to return on a regular basis, that matter must come to some sort of head.

Once I was clear of Craven House, I had no choice, then, but to visit Mr. Cobb and report at once on everything I had seen. This necessity pained me, for I hated more than anything the feeling of fleeing to my master to tell him how I had served him and to inquire how I might best serve him next. However, I once more reminded myself that the sooner I discovered what it was that Cobb wanted, the sooner I would be free of him.

I had no desire, however, to deal with his injured and malevolent serving man, so I took myself to an alehouse and sent a boy to Cobb, asking that he should meet me there. I thought it a small imposition for him to come to me when he was so eager to treat me as his puppet. And, in truth, ordering him this way or that felt to me a pitiful sort of lubricant but a lubricant nevertheless, to help me swallow the bitter medicine of my servitude.

As I drank my third pot of ale, the door to the tavern opened, and in came, of all people, Edgar the servant, his bruised face hard with rage. He strolled toward me like an angry bull whose baiting had not yet started and stood over me with an air of menace. He said nothing for a moment and then raised his hand and opened it over my table. I was rained on at once by two dozen tiny pieces of shredded paper. It took no close examination to determine that this was the note I had sent.

“Are you such an idiot as to send notes to us?” he asked.

I took one of the pieces of paper and acted as though examining it. “Apparently.”

“Never do so again. If you have something to say, you come to us. Do not send a boy from an inn. Do I make myself understood?”

“I’m afraid I don’t understand you,” I answered.

“Play games to amuse yourself in private,” he sneered. “Not upon Mr. Cobb’s time nor within his sphere.”

“What does it matter if I send a boy?”

“It matters because you are not permitted. Now get up and follow me.”

“I am finishing my pot,” I told him.

“You are done with your pot.” He struck out at once, knocking my pot from the table so it hit the wall, spraying a few patrons who had been hunched over their own drinks. They stared at me and the good manservant. Indeed, everyone stared at us: the patrons, the barman, the whore.

I fairly leaped from my chair and grabbed Edgar by his shirt and thrust his back down on my table. I raised one fist over him that he might know my intent.

“Ha,” he said. “You’ll strike me no more, for I believe Cobb shan’t permit it. Your days of terrorizing me have passed, and you’ll come meekly or your friends will suffer. Now let me up, you filthy heathen, or you’ll know more of my wrath.”

I thought to tell him that Cobb had assured me I might beat Edgar as I like, a term of employment that the good patron had clearly been remiss in articulating. Nevertheless, I held my tongue, for I did not wish to sound like a child quoting paternal sanction. What shred of power I could reserve for myself, I would have. I therefore justified myself upon my own terms.

“We face a difficulty,” I told him. I spoke quietly and with a calm I did not possess. “These people here know me, and they know I would never allow a bootlick such as you to treat me thus. Therefore, that I might better protect Mr. Cobb’s secret designs, I have no choice but to thrash you. Do you not agree?”

“One moment,” he began.

“Do you not agree that it must appear to the world that I am the same man I have been?”

“Yes,” he said.

“Then what must I do?”

Edgar swallowed hard. “Strike me,” he said.

I held myself still, for it occurred to me that to strike him when he showed himself in a position of surrender might not prove satisfying. Then I struck him—to find out for certain. I hit the good footman two or three times about the head until he was too disordered to stand. Tossing a bit of silver to the barman for his trouble, I took my leave.

If Cobb thought it strange that I had arrived without the footman in tow, he did not say so. Indeed, he said nothing of the note and the boy, and I wondered if that had been Edgar’s fabrication, an effort to try to lord some power over me. More likely, Cobb wished to avoid a confrontation. That appeared to be, at all times, his inclination.

His nephew, however, seemed to me a man who delighted in nothing so much as discord. He too sat in the parlor, and he stared at me with malice, as though I had dragged mud through his house. He remained quiet, however, and made no comment or gesture as I entered the room. Instead, he watched my interaction with Cobb, watched with reptilian dispassion.

I returned Hammond’s cool gaze, then faced Cobb and spoke of everything that had happened with Ellershaw. He could not have been more pleased. “This goes precisely as I’d hoped. Precisely. Weaver, you are doing a remarkable service, and I promise you that you will be rewarded.”

I did not respond. “Shall I presume, then, that you wish me to take this position at Craven House?”

“Oh, yes. We cannot miss the opportunity. You must do everything he requests of you. Take his position, of course, but you were wise, oh, so wise, to claim to need to think on it. Gives it a bit of verisimilitude, you know. But you must go to him in a day or two and take what he has to offer.”

“To what end?”

“That doesn’t matter just now,” Hammond said. “You will learn when we wish you to learn. For the moment, your only task is to get Ellershaw to like you and trust you.”

“Perhaps we should be more particular now,” Cobb said. “I should hate for Mr. Weaver to lose an opportunity because we have not told him the reason for his presence.”

“And I should hate for our plans to crumble to dust because we have spoken too soon,” Hammond replied.

Cobb shook his head. “It is more dangerous to leave so important an agent directionless.”

Hammond shrugged at this point, more a condescension than a concession “Tell him, then.”

Cobb turned to me. “You will have many tasks to accomplish while at Craven House, but perhaps the most significant is to discover the truth behind the death of a man named Absalom Pepper.”

It would seem that they had hired me to conduct an inquiry. For some reason, this revelation cheered me. At least now I was upon familiar ground.

“Very well,” I said. “What can you tell me about him?”

“Nothing,” Hammond snapped. “That is the difficulty of it. We know virtually nothing of him, only that the East India Company arranged for his death. Your task is to find out what you can of him, why the Company viewed him as a threat, and, if possible, the names of the particular people who committed the crime.”

“If you know not who he is, why should you care—”

“That,” Hammond said, “is not your concern. It is ours. Your concern is to do what you are told and keep your friends from languishing in prison. Now that you know what you must do, listen well to how you must do it. You may not ask questions of this matter, not in Craven House or anywhere. You may not speak the name of Absalom Pepper unless someone raises the name unbidden. If you violate these rules, I will hear of it, and you may depend that I will not let the crime go unpunished. Do you understand me?”

“How am I to discover anything of this man if I may not conduct an inquiry?”

“That is for you to sort out, and if you wish to redeem your friends I suggest you work hard at making that discovery.”

“Can you tell me nothing more of him?”

Hammond let out a sigh, as though I tried his patience. “We are led to believe that the East India Company arranged to have him attacked late at night, and accordingly he was beaten most likely to death. If not so, then it was the drowning that killed him, for he was tossed into the Thames and there abandoned to his fate. As is often the case with such unfortunates, he was undiscovered for many days, and by the time he was retrieved, the water creatures had nearly devoured his extremities, though his face remained sufficiently intact and he was accordingly identified.”

“By whom?”

“Damn you, Weaver, how am I to know? What little information I have is based upon intercepted correspondence. It is all I know.”

“Where was he found?” I asked. “I should like to speak to the coroner.”

“Are you deaf? I told you we know nothing more. I cannot say where he was found, where he was buried, or any other such detail. Just that the Company had him killed and we must know why.”

“I shall do what I can.”

“See that you do,” Hammond said. “And do not fail to recall your restrictions. If we learn you have spoken this man’s name aloud, we shall declare our business with you finished, and you and your friends may all live happily together in your imprisoned state. Do not forget this warning. Now, go off and do as you are told.”

I hardly knew how I could do as I was told, but I had no choice, so I took my leave and returned to my rooms for the afternoon. The confinement did little to soothe my anxiety, but I had nowhere to go and nothing to do, and the entire metropolis had begun to feel alien and dangerous to me.