pots, would you, lad? That’s a good fellow. Sit here with me, Weaver, and make me no sadder, I pray.”
I did as he bid and, though in no need of more ale, I did not instruct his fellow to forbear. Indeed, I had hardly lowered myself before the pots appeared before us. I sipped at my drink, but Devout Hale drank half of his down in a greedy gulp.
“I don’t mean to evade you. Hardly that at all, but these times are hard, my friend, right hard, and once the family’s been fed and the landlord’s greed answered, once the candles are bought and the room heated, there’s scarce a farthing to spare. But when there is, by the devil’s tits, I swear I’ll give you what you’re owed.”
I would not go so far to say that I had forgotten that I was Devout Hale’s creditor, but that little obligation he bore me inhabited no significant status in my mind. I have worked for many poor men, and I ever permitted them to pay me when they could. Most paid in the end, whether out of gratitude for my service or fear of the consequences I cannot say—though with Mr. Hale I was dependent upon the former rather than the latter. He and his followers could hardly fear a single man—not when they had taken on and vanquished such enemies as they made.
However, I had done him a good turn, and it was this fact upon which I depended. That he still owed me four shillings in payment only meant he might be more inclined to listen to my proposal. Some three months ago one of his men had gone missing, and Hale had asked me to find his whereabouts. This man was a special favorite of his, a cousin’s son, and the family had been exceptionally uneasy. As it turned out, there was no cause for alarm—he had run away with a serving girl of poor reputation, and the two of them had been living in Covent Garden, joyously consummating their union while earning their keep through the ancient art of picking pockets. Though Mr. Hale had been disappointed and angered at his kinsman’s behavior, he had been relieved to find the boy alive.
“It’s come harder than I can scarce remember,” Hale was saying, “to keep a man’s family in bread. What with the competition from the cheap cloths from foreign lands where they don’t pay their workers nothing and the local boys what set up outside the confines of the metropolis so they aren’t beholden to the rules of the London Company. Those fellows will take half the wages we need just to keep from starving, and if the workmanship ain’t so good, there’s plenty of folks that won’t care. They’ll buy the cheaper and sell it as though it were the dearer. There’s ten thousand of us in London, ten thousand of us in the silk-weaving trade, and if things don’t change soon, if we don’t make matters better, we’re as like to become ten thousand beggars as not. My father and his father and grandfather worked this trade, but no one cares now if there’s another generation to weave their cloths so long as they have the cheap of it.”
It was my task, I knew, to set him at ease. “I haven’t come to demand payment. In fact, I’ve come to offer you money.”
Hale looked up from his drink. “I hadn’t expected that.”
“I should very much like to give you five pounds in exchange for something.”
“I tremble to hear what you ask that is worthy of so great a fortune.” He stared at me skeptically.
“I want you to riot against the East India Company.”
Devout Hale let out a boisterous laugh. He slapped his hands together. “Weaver, the next time I feel the melancholy upon me, I shall summon you at once, for you have restored my good humor. It’s a marvelous game when a man offers you five pounds to do what you’d like as not do for free.”
Devout Hale had spent his entire life as a silk weaver—indeed, he was now a master silk weaver—and, through his industriousness and his inclination to hurl stones at his enemies, he had become something of a leader of these laborers, though his status was as unofficial as it was unshakable. He and his fellows had been involved in a war for the better part of a century now against the East India Company, for the goods the Company brought in to the island—their fine India cloths—cut deep into the fustians and silks these men labored so hard to produce. Their main means of protest—the riot—had served them well in the past, and Parliament had on more than one occasion capitulated to the silk weavers’ demands. Of course, it would be foolish to suggest that these men could get their way simply through a bit of rioting, but there were men of power in the kingdom, and in the city in particular, who feared that the East India Company’s imports would permanently harm the trade in native British cloths and enrich a single company at the expense of a national industry. Thus the violence of the silk workers and the machinations in Parliament of the wool interest had proved, when combined, a reasonable counter to the might of the greedy schemers of Craven House.
Hale’s smile began to fade and he shook his head slightly. “At least, we have been inclined to riot in the past, but we’ve got no cause now. Parliament’s thrown us some scraps, and we’re content for the time being. The Company ain’t given us a reason to knock ’pon their gates. And as we’ve won the last battle of our little war, it would be unseemly for us to launch a new campaign.”
“I believe I mentioned an incentive to wink at the unseemliness,” I said. “Five pounds. And, I hardly need mention, a cancellation of your debt to me.”
“Oh, you might mention it. It’s worth mentioning, all right. Make no mistake. But I don’t know that’s the offer I’ll take.”
“May I ask why?”
“Do you know where I was tonight, with my companions there, who have been so kind to me? I went to the Drury Lane Theater, where I learned from some contacts I’ve made over the years—I shan’t tell you who—that the king himself was to make a surprise attendance. And do you know why I should wish to be in the path of his Germanic majesty?”
I thought at first that there must be some political reason, but I quickly dismissed the idea. The answer was all too obvious. The lesions on Devout Hale’s skin and the swelling about his neck arose from scrofula, which poor men called
“Surely,” I said, “you don’t believe such nonsense.”
“Indeed I do. It has been known for many centuries that the king’s touch cures the king’s evil. I know many people who say their kinsmen know those who have been cured by the king’s touch. I mean to put myself in his way, that I might be cured.”
“Really, Devout, I am surprised to hear you say this. You have never been a superstitious man.”
“It’s not superstition but fact.”
“But come, only think of it. Before Queen Anne died, our King George was merely George, Elector of Hanover. Could he cure scrofula then?”
“I very much doubt it.”
“And what of the Pretender. Can he cure scrofula?”
“Don’t stand to reason. He wants to be king, but he ain’t.”
“But the Parliament could make him king. If it did, could he cure you then?”
“If he were king, he could cure me.”
“Then why not petition the Parliament to cure you?”
“I’ve no mind to play at sophistry with you, Weaver. You can believe what you like, and my believing what I like don’t give you no hurt, so there’s no need to be unkind. You do not suffer from this disease. I do. And I tell you a man with the king’s evil will do anything—anything, I say—to be rid of it.”
I bowed my head. “You are quite right,” I said, feeling foolish for having tried to dash an afflicted man’s hopes.
“The king’s touch can cure me, that’s the long and short of it. A man’s got to put himself in the king’s way to get his touch, and that ain’t always as easy as one would like, now, is it? Tis said,” he announced, in a tone that suggested a shift in conversation, “that when you was a fighting man, amassing your victories in the ring, the king himself was something of an admirer.”
“I’ve heard that bit of flattery myself but never seen any evidence to prove it.”
“Have you sought evidence?”
“I can’t say I have.”
“I suggest you do.”
“Why should I care one way or the other?” I asked.
“Because of the king’s touch, Weaver. That’s my price. If you want my men to riot at Craven House, you must swear to do all in your power to get me the king’s touch.” He took another deep drink of his ale. “That and the five pounds four shillings you mentioned.”
IN THIS CONVERSATION, we circled each other many times. “You are sadly mistaken,” I explained, “if you
