well, he does poorly.”
I turned at once to enter the house, paying no mind to a fellow attempting to balance a chair truly too large for a single man. I knocked him quite soundly but took no pleasure in his broad efforts to keep from tumbling.
Inside, the front rooms were well lit, no doubt to aid the creditor’s men. I rushed to the main stairs and up to the second floor, where my uncle kept his room. The door was only slightly opened, so I knocked and heard my aunt Sophia call for me to enter.
My uncle did indeed lie abed, but had this not been his house I should hardly have known him. He appeared to have aged a decade or more since I saw him last. His beard had taken on a new and deeper gray, and the hair on his uncovered head had grown far thinner and more dry. His eyes, open, were deep and reddened and heavily bagged, and I observed that each breath was a struggle for him.
“Have you sent for the physician?” I asked.
My aunt, who sat on the bed holding his hand, nodded. “He has come,” she said, in her heavily accented English.
She said no more, so I knew there was nothing more to say. Perhaps he despaired for my uncle; perhaps he did not know. When she showed no optimism for recovery, I could only presume there was none.
I came to the bed and sat upon the other side. “How fare you, sir?”
My uncle attempted a weak smile. “I do not do well,” he said. A rattling sound emerged from his chest, and his voice was heavy and labored. “However, I have walked this path before and, though dark and circuitous, I have ever found my way back.”
I looked to my aunt, who offered me a half nod, as if to say that he had suffered these attacks previously, but perhaps not so bad as this.
“I am full of remorse that this has happened,” I said, keeping my words vague. I hardly knew if he was aware of the outrage that transpired below.
“As to that,” my uncle managed, “it is of no moment. Minor setbacks. Soon all will be well once more.”
“I know it will,” I told my uncle.
I looked to the door and saw Mr. Franco hovering, as though he had something of urgency to discuss. I excused myself and stepped outside.
“The men are done,” he told me. “They’ve taken several pieces, but I fear that is the least of it. If word spreads, the creditors will show no mercy. Your uncle, sir, will lose his house. He will be forced to sell his importing concern, and in its current diminished state, he must sell it very cheap indeed.”
I felt my face grow hot. “Damn them.”
“I am certain you do what you can,” he said. “Your uncle and aunt know it too.”
“I am meant to attend this cursed dinner tonight, but how can I go with my uncle so unwell?”
“If you must go, then you must,” Franco said. “With whom do you dine?”
“Ellershaw and some other men of the Company. I hardly know any more than that. I must send a note excusing myself. Cobb cannot expect me to be his plaything while my uncle lies so gravely ill.”
“Do not excuse yourself,” Franco said. “If by attending this dinner you bring yourself any closer to your goal, I am certain your uncle would far prefer you do that than spend the evening looking sad by his side. No, you must find the strength to attend to your duties. Your aunt and I will make certain your uncle has all he needs.”
“What did his physician say?”
“Only that he may recover, as he has in the past, or he may decline. This attack, he fears, may be worse than what we have seen before, but he cannot say what that means.”
We whispered together for a few more minutes, while I attempted to inform him of some of what had transpired in recent days at Craven House. I kept the discussion brief, in part because I wanted to return to my uncle, but also because I had not entirely recovered from the revelation that my most private conversations appeared to be available to Cobb. I only said that I had, at Cobb’s request, become employed by the East India Company, where I looked into any of a variety of internal turmoils. But, I said, as Mr. Cobb’s agenda remained opaque, I could hardly say if I grew closer to my end or not.
During this conversation, my aunt emerged from the bedroom with a look of some relief upon her face. “He is better,” she told me.
I entered and saw that, in the space of half an hour, he did appear remarkably changed. Though he still breathed with some difficulty, his face now had more color. He sat up, and his countenance was one of a normal man, not one about to leave this mortal realm.
“I am gladdened to see you so much improved,” I told him.
“As am I to be so,” he answered. “I am told you witnessed the unpleasantness below.”
“Yes,” I said. “Uncle, I cannot endure that this continues, yet I hardly know how to offer you relief other than by giving my full efforts to Cobb.”
“You must for all the world make him believe you do, but you must never cease looking for advantage.”
“I fear what happened today is but the beginning,” I said. “Can we afford to play games with this man?”
“Can we afford to let him turn you into his puppet?” he asked.
“Both of us,” my aunt said. “Both of us want you to fight him.”
“But so that he suspects nothing,” my uncle added.
I nodded. Heartened by his spirit, I told him I would do no less, and so I was determined, but I could not help but wonder how we would feel when my uncle was turned to a destitute man, homeless, broken, and without health. He was no fool and knew what bargain he made. I, however, was not certain I could endure it.
I SPENT WHAT TIME I could with my family, but at last I made to excuse myself, to return to my rooms, and change for the evening. Once I looked presentable, I hired a chair to take me across town and arrived with a satisfying promptness.
I could pretend to no surprise that Mr. Ellershaw’s house on New North Street, not far from the Conduit Fields, was a fine one—a director of the East India Company ought to have a fine house, after all—but I could not recall that I had ever been invited in the capacity of a guest to a finer, and I admit I felt an unexpected apprehension. I had no Indian calicoes to wear, so I put on my finest suit of black and gold silk, woven, I could not but reflect, in the cramped garrets of Spitalfields or the dark hall of a workhouse. And though I knew I wore upon my back the labor of the cheated and the oppressed, I could not but reflect that I cut a fine figure in these fine clothes. We are all of us Adam’s children, the saying goes, but silk makes the difference.
A polite if somewhat grave servant met me at the door and guided me inside and to a receiving room, where I was met shortly by Mr. Ellershaw, resplendent in his full-bottom wig and dressed in the height of imported finery. His waistcoat had quite obviously, even to my ignorant eyes, been woven in India, and was magnificent in its red and blue and black floral designs of indescribable intricacy.
“Ah, this is a very important evening, Mr. Weaver. Of the utmost importance, you know. Mr. Samuel Thurmond is here tonight, a Member of Parliament for Cotswold. He has been one of the great champions of the wool interest, and it is our role to convince him to back our proposal in the House.”
“The repealing of the 1721 legislation?” I asked.
“Exactly.”
“And how shall we do that?”
“You need not worry on that score for the moment. You need only follow my lead, and all shall be well. Now, as you are the last guest to arrive, you must follow me to the sitting room. I trust you will do nothing to embarrass me before my guests?”
“I will attempt to acquit myself to your liking,” I assured him.
“Ah, good. Good.”
Mr. Ellershaw led me through a maze of closely wrought corridors and into an expansive parlor where a number of guests were sitting upon sofas and chairs, sipping at glasses of wine. The only person in the room I knew was Mr. Forester, who did remarkably well at paying me no mind.
I was quickly introduced to Mrs. Ellershaw, a beautiful woman at least twenty years younger than her husband, though no doubt at least in her middle thirties. “This is my new man, Weaver,” Ellershaw said. “He’s a Hebrew, you know.”
Mrs. Ellershaw had hair so pale it was nearly white, her skin was the color of porcelain, and her pale gray eyes were remarkably bright and lively. She took my hand and curtsied and told me she was delighted to meet me,
