unwell, and these debts of yours can only strain his already taxed constitution. If you will but release him from your bonds, I will serve you as you ask. You will have the additional surety of Franco and Gordon.”
“I must admit I know he suffers from a pleurisy, and I have no love of making him suffer—” Cobb began.
“Oh, bother!” Hammond announced. “You do not dictate conditions, Weaver, we do. If you treat fairly with us, your uncle has no need to concern himself, no need to tax his health. You are in no position to negotiate, since you have nothing to offer us but what we have already asked. The sooner you comply, the sooner your friends will be relieved.”
There was no other way, I saw. The peace of three men—and in the case of Franco and my uncle, their families—would rest upon my willingness to obey Cobb’s orders. That the nature of those orders would put my life and safety at risk appeared of no account to such men as these. They acted as though they wanted nothing more of me than to run a simple errand, when what they wished was that I break open a house very like a fortress, filled with men of such power and greed that the very thought of this task filled me with cold terror.
CHAPTER FIVE
HE BRITISH EAST INDIA COMPANY CONDUCTED ITS LONDON BUSINESS at Craven House, located at the intersection of Leadenhall and Lyme streets. Here was not only the mansion with the Company’s directors but the whole of the India House yard—an increasingly large portion of the space bordered by the two streets mentioned—as well as Grace Church Street to the west and Fenchurch Street to the south. As the East India Company grew in wealth, so too grew the space required to house spices, teas, precious metals, and, of course, the linens and muslins and calicoes the Company imported and for which the British public demonstrated an insatiable appetite. At the time I write these memoirs, so many years after the events, the Company has become synonymous with teas, and in the time of my infancy it was one and the same with spices. In the days I write of, however, the world knew the Company for its Indian textiles.
During all daylight hours of the warmer months, each day but the Christian Sabbath, a steady stream of porters and wagoners, burdened with their precious cargoes, could be seen making the trek between the India House yard and the Billingsgate dock, where the ships were loaded and unloaded. Even in cold months, when ship traffic was all but eliminated, a steady procession moved in and out, for the adoration of that most esteemed idol, profit, knows no season.
I understood relatively little of the particulars of the East India Company, but I did know as much as this: Craven House was guarded by a near army of men whose task it was not only to protect the contents of the warehouses but the interior of Craven House itself. Unlike the other trading companies—the Africa, the Levant, and, of course, the South Sea Company, now notorious throughout the nation and the world—the East India Company no longer held a monopoly on its trade. It was fully established, and had been so for these hundred years or more, and serious rivals were few and weak, but the Company directors had good reason to guard their secrets. It is a foolish man, a very foolish man, who dares to challenge one of the trading companies. I might be swift and clever in the ways of housebreaking, but when a man crosses a power that can spend millions of pounds with the ease I spend pennies, he is sure to come out the loser.
It was for that reason I had declined Mr. Westerly’s offer when he’d come to me weeks ago, offering me forty pounds (clearly the remuneration had decreased as expenses had increased) to perform an act I considered unthinkably foolish: break into Craven House, make my way to the office of one of the directors, and steal documents vital to a forthcoming meeting of the Court of Proprietors, the large ruling council of the organization. The risk of capture, I explained to Mr. Westerly, was far too great, and the consequences too dire.
I recalled a celebrated incident of some years back: A rogue by the name of Thomas Abraham had managed to steal some sixteen thousand pounds from Craven House. He had done it by secreting himself inside, acquiring his goods, and waiting for the grounds to be vacated for the night. Unfortunately, he had too well fortified his courage with drink beforehand and was consequently forced to abandon the security of his hiding place in order to empty his water, and during this unfortunate if necessary excursion he was apprehended. Mr. Abraham was sentenced to death for his infraction, but in a rare moment of generosity, the Company commuted his sentence to perpetual servitude in one of its East Indian outposts. I did not consider the life of a slave in a tropical habitation of heat, disease, famine, and war much of a mercy and wished very keenly to avoid a similar fate.
On the other hand, I discovered that Mr. Cobb was sympathetic to the difficulties I faced, and desirous as he was that I should succeed in my mission, he agreed that he would be willing to expend such funds as were necessary in order to ease my way inside, provided I could demonstrate the value of each expenditure. Therefore it was with the promise of such funds that I left Cobb’s house and proceeded on a journey that I feared could only end in disaster.
Upon leaving my meeting with Cobb, I stepped outside, extending my legs over the body of Edgar the servant, who, though alive—for I could see the rise and fall of his chest—had been used roughly by the urchins. He was, for one thing, entirely naked, having been stripped of his clothes, no kind treatment during a time when the air was so cold, the ground so icy. For another, he had cuts and bruises about his eyes that I had not delivered, and I felt certain the boys had been quite harsh with him. I would have to be very certain not to expose any weakness to Edgar, who would be sure to make me suffer for it.
I took a hackney to Spitalfields and to an alehouse called the Crown and Shuttle, for it was the haunting ground of a man with whom I dearly needed to speak. It was early yet, I knew, but I had no other business that could possibly intrude upon my affairs, so I ordered an ale and sat thinking of the troubles ahead. I was nearly apoplectic with resentment, and the thought of being used as I was filled me with a simmering anger that, even when I turned my thoughts to other subjects, never quite left me. However, I admit I was intrigued. Mr. Cobb had presented me with a problem—a very troubling problem—and it was now my task to uncover the solution. Though I had told Mr. Westerly that the task was impossible, I now came to understand that I had overstated the difficulty. No, not impossible—only improbable. But with the appropriate amount of planning, I could do what was required of me, and do it perhaps even easily.
It was these things I contemplated over the course of two or three hours and five or six pots of ale. I confess I was not at my most finely sharp when the door to the tavern burst open and a set of six burly young men came in, all clustered around a central figure. This figure was none other than Devout Hale himself, the man of whom I had come in pursuit. He made no attempt to hide his misery; his head slumped and his shoulders slouched, while his comrades, dressed in undyed rough cloth one and all, gathered about him to offer their support.
“You’ll get him next time,” announced one.
“He almost saw you. He was turning your way when that sodden whore with her baby cut you out,” said another.
“It was the rottenest luck, but you’ll get him yet,” asserted a third.
From the midst of the throng of well-wishers emerged the gloomy principal, a rough man in his middle forties with an unruly flourish of luminous red hair and a fair skin full of untended beard and unfortunate blemishes—both the kind associated with his coloring and those of a more dire nature. He had, however, sparkling eyes of green, and though his face bore freckles and lesions and a hundred scars from the battles he’d fought, he still appeared a robust man, no less defeated in his sadness than Achilles in his brooding.
“You’re good friends, lads,” he announced to his companions. “Good friends and companions all, and with your help I shall be victorious in the end.”
He moved forward now, pressing upon the tabletop for support. I could not mistake that his condition had grown worse since I’d last laid eyes upon him, and inevitably in his infirmity he brought my uncle to mind, and a new wave of sadness crashed over me, for I felt as though everyone I knew had fallen into a state of decay.
Though thick in the shoulders and chest, this man had grown more slight with his disease. The swelling on his neck, though he made an effort to hide it with a gravy-colored cravat that had once been white, was more pronounced, and the lesions on his face and hands hinted to the ravage that lay under his clothes.
With great effort, he brought himself to a table where he would no doubt drown his sorrows in drink, but as he moved he scanned the room with the cautious eye of a predator who fears something worse than itself. Thus it was he saw me.
His face, I was heartened to observe, brightened some little bit. “Weaver, Weaver, welcome, friend, but you’ve come at a terrible time, I’m afraid. A terrible time. Come join me here, all the same. Danny, fetch us our
