what capacity, sir? All of London knows that Balfour died of his own hand.”
“True,” Sir Robert agreed, “but can we doubt that there was a rabbinical influence behind it all? Balfour had a connection with a Jew—that stock-jobber who was killed the next day.”
“I believe you misrepresent matters,” Home said. “I heard that Balfour’s son had the Jew run down to avenge his father’s death.”
“Nonsense.” Sir Robert shook his head. “Balfour’s son would have helped the Jews to kick the stool from under his dangling father, but there can be no question that this Jew was involved.”
I looked about me carefully to see if anyone stared at me. I felt reasonably sure that no one knew the identity of my father, but I also felt that I was perhaps being tested in some way. I speculated that it would be best if I said nothing, but it then occurred to me that I had nothing to fear of failing the test. “Why,” I asked, “is there no question that there were Jews involved?”
Other than Sir Robert, who stared at me with mute amazement, the others simply looked embarrassed and inspected their shoes. I felt embarrassed and awkward, and their embarrassment did nothing to put me at my ease, but I had no choice but to press the inquiry. Sir Robert did not shrink from my gaze. “Really, Weaver, if you wish not to be insulted, then you should not ask such questions. The matter does not concern you.”
“But I am curious,” I said. “How is Mr. Balfour’s death related to Jews?”
“Well,” Sir Robert said slowly, “he was friends with that Jew broker, as I told you. And it is said that they were plotting something.”
“I have heard this as well,” Home chimed in. “Secret meetings and such. This Jew and Balfour surely involved themselves in something to which they proved unequal.”
“Are you saying,” I said, almost whispering, “that you believe these men were murdered because of some financial scheme?”
“Balfour involved himself with these”—Sir Robert waved his hand in the air—“these fiends, sir, these stock- jobbers, and he paid the price. I can only hope others will learn from him. Now, if you will excuse me.”
Sir Robert rose abruptly and Thornbridge, Home, Sir Owen, and I instinctively followed. He walked halfway across the room with his friends, leaving me to stand, by myself, with all eyes upon me, for an excruciating minute or two. Then, with a broad smile upon his face, Sir Owen strolled over to me. “I must apologize for Bobby. I thought he would be more welcoming. He really meant nothing, you know. Perhaps he was a bit warm from too much drink.”
I admit I was not as profuse in my expressions of unconcern as I might have been had I been truer to the dictates of fashion rather than those of feeling. I only thanked Sir Owen for inviting me, and took my leave.
I found myself overcome with relief when I finally stepped out of the building. Wishing to avoid even the potential unpleasantness of attacks upon my person, I asked the footman to procure me a hackney, and I rode home in a foul disposition.
THIRTEEN
THE NEXT DAY, after a hasty breakfast of coarse bread and Cheshire cheese, washed down with a mug of small beer, I rushed over to Elias’s lodgings. Though it was rather late in the morning, I found my friend still asleep. Such was often his way. Like many men who thought themselves more blessed by the gods of wit than those of money, Elias would often sleep away whole days at a time that he might avoid the consciousness of his own hunger and poverty.
I waited as his landlady, Mrs. Henry, roused him, and I considered myself honored that he rushed to dress himself in all due haste.
“Weaver,” he said, hurrying downstairs, still thrusting one arm through his deep-blue laced coat that matched perfectly a blue-and-yellow waistcoat beneath. Short of money though he was, Elias owned some handsome suits. He struggled to finish dressing himself, as he shifted from hand to hand a thick pile of papers tied together with a green ribbon. “Monstrous good to see you. You’ve been busy, yes?”
“This business with Balfour consumes my full attention. Have you time to discuss it?”
He studied me with concern. “You look tired,” he said. “You have not been getting enough sleep, I fear. Shall I take some blood to refresh you a bit, sir?”
“Someday I shall let you bleed me just for the pleasure of astonishing you.” I laughed. “That is, I shall let you bleed me should I believe you will not kill me in the process.”
Elias rolled his eyes at me. “It is a wonder you Jews ever survived at all. You are like savage Indians in your medical beliefs. When one of your tribe grows ill, do you send for the physician, or for the shaman dressed in a bearskin?”
I laughed at Elias’s retort. “I should love to hear how you Scots, who run around the Highlands naked and painted blue, are more civilized than the authors of the Scriptures, but I had hoped you would have time to discuss the Balfour matter. And I should very much like to talk with you about all this stock-jobbery and such, of which I believe you know something.”
“By all means. And I have much to tell you. But if it’s stock-jobbery you wish to discuss, I can think of no place better than Jonathan’s Coffee-house, the very heart and soul of ’Change Alley. If you should only agree to pay for a hackney to drive us there, then I shall allow you to buy me something to eat. Or better yet, why not bill our expedition to Mr. Balfour?”
There would be no expenses billed to Mr. Balfour. From what Adelman had told me, I should be lucky to receive anything of him, but I had no desire to dampen Elias’s enthusiasm. I felt the jingle of silver in my purse, owing to Sir Owen’s kindness, and I was happy to pay for my friend’s morning meal as well as his good advice.
In the hackney on the way to ’Change Alley, Elias chatted constantly but said relatively little of import. He told me of old friends he had seen, of a riot in which he had nearly been caught, and of a ribald adventure he’d had involving two whores in the back room of an apothecary’s shop. But my mind wandered as Elias prattled happily away. The day was cool and overcast, but the air was clear, and I watched out the window as we headed east on Cheapside until it turned into Poultry. I saw in the distance Grocers Hall, home of the Bank of England, and before us the enormity that was the Royal Exchange. I must say this mammoth structure always filled me with awe, for though my father had not done business within since I had been a very small child, I still associated it with sullen and mysterious paternal power. The Exchange, as it was rebuilt after the Great Fire destroyed the old building, is essentially a large rectangle, the exterior surrounding a great open-air courtyard. Though only two stories, the walls reach upward three or four times as high as any other two-story structure one might think of, and the entrance is hovered over by an enormous tower that spires into the heavens.
Many years ago, stock-jobbers like my father did their business in the Royal Exchange, and Jews even had their own “walk” or place of business in the courtyard, along with clothiers and grocers and all manner of men engaged in foreign trade. But then Parliament passed a law forbidding stock-jobbing within the Royal Exchange, so jobbers had moved to nearby Exchange Alley, taking up residence in coffehouses such as Jonathan’s and Garraway’s. Much to the anger of those who had fought against stock-jobbing, the greater share of London’s commerce moved along with them, and while the Royal Exchange stood as a monument to Britain’s financial soundness, it was but a hollow monument.
In comparison, the real business of ’Change Alley took place in a few tiny and seemingly insignificant streets that one might circumnavigate in but a few minutes. On the south side of Cornhill, just across the street from the Royal Exchange, one entered Exchange Alley, and proceeded south past Jonathan’s and then Garraway’s, while the alley wound east to Birchin Lane, and a traveler passed the old Sword Blade Bank and a few other coffeehouses in which one might do business with lotteries or insurance or projects or trade abroad. Birchin Lane took one north, back to Cornhill, thus completing the simple tour of the most confusing, powerful, and mysterious streets in the world.
Our hackney encountered traffic near the Royal Exchange, so I bade the coachman stop by Pope’s Head Alley, and from there we walked the short distance, pushing our way through the crowds of men who swarmed about us. If Jonathan’s Coffeehouse was the center of commerce, it was also the purest standard of commerce, and the farther one pushed outward, the more one found strange hybrid shops, rooted in both the monetary frenzy of ’Change Alley and the more mundane business of everyday life. One could see lottery butchers, where the purchase of any chicken or coney registered a customer for a prize. A tea merchant promised that a treasure of East India Company stock was hidden in one out of every hundred boxes of his goods. An apothecary stood outside his
