A Conspiracy of Paper

experience of thinking of myself as a Jew in relation to other Jews. Now Sarmento made me feel something else—a kind of strange defensiveness, as though I were a member of a club, and I wished to see him cast out.

“Of what do you wish to speak, Mr. Sarmento?” I asked at last.

“Tell me about your conversation in Mr. Adelman’s carriage the other night.”

I pressed my hands together so as to appear a man deep in thought. In fact, I was deep in thought, but I wished to appear thinking thoughts of cleverness, not of confusion. “First, sir, you speak of my business with Mr. Lienzo, and now you inquire of my business with Mr. Adelman. Is there any business I have of which you do not wish to speak?”

“Business?” he asked in astonishment. “Is it business you conduct with Adelman?”

“I did not say that we had reached any agreement,” I explained. “Only that we spoke of business. But I would still very much like to know why you inquire so nearly into my affairs.”

“You misunderstand me,” Sarmento stammered, suddenly attempting to appear obsequious. “I am merely interested. Even concerned. Adelman may not be the man you think him to be, and I do not wish for you to suffer.”

“To suffer, you say? Why, did I not see you fawning all over Adelman the other night, and now you wish to warn me off him? I cannot claim to understand you.”

“I am a man who knows his way about ’Change Alley, sir, and you do not. You would be wise to remember this. But men such as Adelman and your uncle are men of business, trained in the arts of deception and flattery.”

I abruptly sat up straight, startling Mr. Sarmento. “What say you about my uncle?”

“Your uncle is not a man to be trifled with, sir. I hope you do not take him lightly. You perhaps see him as a kindly older gentleman, but I can assure you he is extremely ambitious, and it is an ambition I have come to admire and to emulate.”

“Explain yourself more clearly,” I demanded.

“Come, come. I know you are steeped now in your family business. Your uncle throws you a few coins, and you fetch them like a dog. But even you must surely see that it is strange that your uncle should have such a fond friendship with a man hated by your father.”

My uncle throw me coins? Adelman hated by my father? I wanted to know more, but I dared not expose myself by asking.

“Do not play with me,” I said at last. “And I should remind you to watch your tongue when you speak to a man who would not think twice about ripping it from your head.”

“I have no time for games, Weaver.” He mocked my name with his pronunciation. “I am also, I promise you, not a man to be trifled with. You are no longer in the ring, and you cannot beat men out of your way. If you wish to fight in ’Change Alley, sir, you will find you are outmatched by men such as myself, and here we use far more dangerous weapons than our fists.”

He looked at me in the most unanimated fashion, as though he shared a table with a piece of vegetation. There was nothing threatening about the gestures of his body, nor the look in his face. “I confess I don’t know how to understand you, sir,” I said finally. “You seem for all the world to wish to threaten me, and yet I know of no reason why you should be my enemy.”

Sarmento again offered me something not entirely unlike a smile. “If you have no wish to be my enemy, then I have no wish to threaten you.”

“What is it you fear of me?” I asked him. “That I shall assume your place in my uncle’s business? That I shall marry Miriam? That I shall challenge you to fight me? Let us be honest with each other.”

“I scorn your mockery,” he said—I cannot say angrily, for his tone changed not a whit. “You would be well advised to be cautious of me. And of your uncle—and his friends.”

Before I could respond, Sarmento had risen to his feet, shoved a short trader out of his way, and forced his way into the crowd. I was unsure of what he meant to imply about my uncle, but his warning me of Adelman troubled me more than anything else he had said, for Sarmento now wished to make insinuations of a man whom, at my uncle’s house, he had wished nothing more than to please.

Driven by curiosity, I arose from my table and made my way toward the exit, where I saw Sarmento just leaving. Waiting a moment, I followed suit, and watched him head north toward Cornhill. Once upon this busy street, it was easy for me to follow closely. He walked briskly, weaving in and out of the greedy mobs come to do business upon the ’Change.

He made his way west, to where Cornhill intersects with Threadneedle and Lombard streets, and here the thickness of the crowd began to thin out a little, so I hung back, took an instant to throw a penny at a beggar, and continued to follow at a safe distance.

By now Cornhill had turned into Poultry, and Sarmento made a right upon the much more sparsely populated Grocers Alley. I waited a moment and followed him into the alley leading to Grocers Hall, which I reminded myself was the home of the Bank of England. Sarmento veered off toward the massive building, which, like the Royal Exchange, stood as an architectural testament to the excesses of the last century.

Sarmento hurried toward a coach standing before the Hall. That I might move closer, I approached a group of gentlemen nearby and, keeping one eye upon this coach, I affected a country accent and explained that I had lost my way and required the quickest route to London Bridge. Londoners may not be the most gregarious lot in the world, but there is little they love so much as to give directions, and now, while these five gentlemen vied with each other to provide me the shortest walk, the coach began to move slowly, making its way past me. Sarmento, I could see, engaged himself in deep conversation with a man with a wide face full of undersized features. The smallness of his nose and mouth and eyes was made even more absurd by an enormous black wig that piled almost to the ceiling of the coach and undulated down in thick ringlets. It was a face that I had seen but recently and one that I recognized with little difficulty. I cannot say I felt anything so much as utter confusion as I watched Sarmento drive off with Perceval Bloathwait.

EIGHTEEN

I COULD NO LONGER pretend to myself that my suspicions of Bloathwait were born of the vague ghost of a childhood terror. He had covered something on his desk, something he had not wanted me to see. That in itself might mean little—it might have been a reminder to himself about private finances or whores or a taste for young boys for all I knew. It would be very strange if a man like Bloathwait had nothing on his desk worthy of hiding from a potential enemy. But a connection with Sarmento, a man employed by my uncle, was an entirely different matter. Bloathwait maintained a secret connection to my family, and I felt I had to know what it was.

My youthful adventures as an outlaw had left me well prepared for this business of inquiring into murder, and I knew that it was time to call upon my skills as a housebreaker. I had long ago learned that there was no more useful tool for the illegal entering of a house than the interests of a silly maid, so I composed an enchanting little lettre d’amour, which I sent wrapped around a shilling. I had little doubt that Bessie the laundry lass would respond kindly to my missive, and when I received the answer I desired within the hour, I rubbed my hands together with excitement.

My next stop was Gilbert Street, where I was delighted to find that Elias had returned from his celebratory debauch, but he slept so soundly under the influence of a wine which still stained his teeth and tongue a bright purple that it took Mrs. Henry and me nearly half an hour to bring my friend to consciousness. He lay on his back, his bob-wig remaining affixed to his head, but pushed forward down his brow. His clothes were mainly still upon his body, but he had fallen asleep after removing one arm from his coat. His shoes and stockings were speckled with mud that he had smeared all over Mrs. Henry’s sheets, and his cravat, loosened but not untied, was strewn with brown meat drippings.

When he at last came to something like consciousness, Mrs. Henry left the room with performative disgust, and in the flickering of two inadequate candles I watched my friend open and close his mouth like a Bartholomew Fair puppet. “Gad, Weaver. What time is it?”

“Nearly nine o’clock, I believe.”

“If the house is not on fire, I shall have to be very angry with you,” he muttered, and pushed himself to sit upright. “What do you want? Can you not see that I am celebrating?”

“We have work to do,” I told him bluntly, hoping the force of my intent would help to awaken him. “I need to