I moved forward and caught a better look at my adversary. He stood in the darkness, his night clothes draped around him loosely like the ethereal nimbus of a spirit, and his eyes were wide with terror. He raised his arm and for a moment I thought he brought forward a pistol. Indeed, I nearly fired before I saw it was no weapon but only a small glass vial.
“You may shoot me if you like,” he said, “but it will answer little. I have already died, you see.” The vial fell to the ground. I suspect he should have liked a dramatic shattering of glass, but instead there was only a weak bounce.
I have been called a cynical man in my life, and perhaps it was unkind of me to wonder if he merely pretended to have swallowed poison. I would certainly take no chances on that score.
“Is there anything you wish to tell me before you meet your maker?” I asked.
“You blockhead,” he spat. “Can you not discern that I have taken this poison so that I can’t be made to tell you anything?”
“Of course,” I said. “I ought to have considered that myself. Perhaps, in your remaining time, you would like to offer an apology? An encomium upon my virtues?”
“Weaver, you are the devil himself. What sort of monster mocks a dying man?”
“I have little else to do,” I said, keeping the pistol trained on him. “I cannot take the chance that you are tricking me and have taken no poison at all, and I can hardly engage in cold-blooded murder and shoot you. I am forced to wait and watch, and I thought perhaps you might wish to use your final moment to converse.”
He shook his head and sank to the floor. “I am told it works quickly,” he said. “I don’t know how much time there is for conversation. I will tell you nothing of our plans, what we have hoped to accomplish or what we have already done. I may be a coward, but I will not betray my country.”
“Your country or the new French East India Company?”
“Hah,” he said. “You have the right of it. The days of serving one’s king with honor are done. Now we must serve his chartered companies. But if I cannot tell you of my nation, I can tell you of yours, and how you have been played for a fool.”
“And how is that?” I asked.
Mr. Hammond, however, was unable to respond, for he was already dead.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
HERE WAS NOW, I BELIEVED, LITTLE REASON TO FEAR FOR MR. FRANCO. Much trickery and scheming still abounded—I had no doubt of that—but the French were finished for the moment, so Mr. Franco need no longer fear for himself or his daughter. Still, Elias, my aunt, or myself might yet be tossed into debtor’s prison.
Mr. Franco was free to travel home by coach, though I declined to join him. It was late, I was exhausted in both body and spirit, and the next day would tax me even further, but I had one stop to make before I could retire. Everything would be resolved within a day’s time, but to ensure that it was resolved to my liking I would have to order things with particular care.
I therefore took a coach to Ratcliff Highway and, in the darkness of the quiet morning, when even the cries of London were reduced to whines and whimpers, I entered the very tavern where the clerk Mr. Blackburn had told me so much of value. Indeed, it was only in recent hours that I had come to understand the full extent of his information.
I found the tavern keeper, whom I recollected to be Blackburn’s brother-in-law, and, he recollecting me, I was able to overwhelm his natural caution and persuade him to inform me where I might find his relation. It was never his custom, he explained, to reveal a man’s home without his permission, but he saw no harm in revealing his place of business, and so he explained that the good clerk had taken a temporary position with a brewer of some note who wanted his books to be set right. Mr. Blackburn, I was told, was most eager to perform his task speedily and well, and could be found in the offices as early as seven o’clock.
I took my breakfast with the good man, partaking of some still-hot bread procured from a nearby baker and a bowlful of raisins and nuts, washed down with a crisp small beer. Then I made my way to New Queen Street, where I found the good Mr. Blackburn in a small windowless closet, surrounded by a pile of innumerable accounting and ledger books and appearing as happy a man as ever I’ve seen.
“Why, it’s Mr. Weaver,” he said. He rose and bowed at me from as comfortable a distance as he could manage. “As you can see I have landed upon my feet, sir, in the manner of a cat. The Company may attempt to smear my name, but the truth will out, and I believe the good people I now serve will tell the truth.”
“He’s a marvelous good clerk,” one of his fellows shouted, with evident humor.
“Our books have never been so well ordered,” called another.
I knew at once that Blackburn had found employment where both his services and his peculiarities could be enjoyed, and so I felt less uneasy on the score of his losing his former place. “I am relieved to hear you are so happy.”
“Prodigious happy,” he assured me. “These books, sir, are a disaster. It is as though a hurricane of numbers and errors has struck them, but they shall be made right. It is something of a pleasure, I must say, to find that the difficulties here are no more than mistake and ignorance—”
“Woeful ignorance,” called one of his fellows.
“—and not malice,” Blackburn finished, in a far quieter voice. “There are no cozening deceptions here, no secret expenditures and tricks meant to disguise any manner of mischief.”
“It is on that score I’ve come to see you,” I told him. “I have a question about a matter to which you once referred. Do you recollect that you spoke of a time when my patron asked you to disguise the loss of a certain sum from the books, and when you refused, you found the sum taken all the same?”
“I recall it well,” he said. “Though for some reason I do not recollect telling you.”
I chose not to dwell on that point. “Can you tell me the sum?”
He considered the request briefly. “I suppose they can do me no more harm than they have already.”
So he told me what I wished to know, and it was at that moment that my suspicions were confirmed and I believed I understood everything. Yet there was one more theory to test. The day would prove if I had the better of my enemies, or whether they were far more clever than I could even now perceive.
NEXT, I MADE MY way to Spitalfields, where I knocked repeatedly upon a door until it was, at last, answered by a meek creature whose nature I could not identify as servant, daughter, or wife. I explained that my business was of the most urgent sort and could not wait. She explained that men such as he needed their rest, and I retorted that what I brought was better than any night’s sleep. At last my will proved stronger than her defenses, and she invited me in. I sat in a dimly lit and dingy parlor, without refreshment, and attempted to resist the urge to sleep.
At last Devout Hale appeared in the door. He wore a dressing gown and cap, and though the poor light did much to blunt the effect of his scrofula, the cruelty of being awakened at this hour was plainly visible.
“By Jesus, Weaver, what can possibly bring you here at this hour? If you don’t have the king himself in tow, I don’t want to hear it.”
“Not a king,” I said, “but a king’s ransom. Sit down and I will tell you as little as you need to know to understand.”
He sat across from me, hunched over, apparently having some difficulty breathing. Nevertheless, he was soon enough wide awake and listening to my tale as I informed him of things I had previously held secret. I told him how Pepper had been far cleverer than any of them had suspected and invented a cotton weaving engine that would have rendered the East India Company’s trade routes worthless, and how French, British, and even Indian agents had been doing all in their power to recover it—each to protect the interests of his own nation.
“I have been told,” I explained, “that I must return these plans to the British Crown, for it is in this country’s best interest that the East India Company remain strong. I believe myself to b
e a patriot, Hale, but the heart of what I love in this kingdom is found in its people, its constitution, its liberties and opportunities, not in its companies. I take great pleasure in having helped to thwart the schemes of the French, but that does not mean I cannot see with my own eyes the dangers in handing the reins to the kingdom over to men who value nothing but money and profit.”
“Then what shall you do with the plans?” Hale asked.
“I will give them to the men and women who serve this kingdom not with their schemes but with their labor.” I reached into my pocket, pulled out Pepper’s octavo, and handed it to Hale. “I give it to the silk weavers.”
Hale said nothing. He pulled the oil lamp closer and began to examine the pages in the book. “You know I can’t read.”
“You will have to depend on those who can, and I suspect it will take some time to understand the contents. Yet you and your men will puzzle it out, and when you do, you will be in a position to dictate terms to those you wish. I ask only that you share the wealth with your fellow workers and not become the thing you despise. That book contains the promise of great riches to be endured over generations, and I hope you will give me your word that you will administer its possibilities with generosity rather than greed.”
He nodded. “Aye,” he said, somewhat breathlessly. “Aye, that can be done, Weaver. It may not yield wealth at all in my lifetime, but I shall manage it as best I can. But tell me, don’t you want any of that wealth for your own keeping?”
I laughed. “Should you become rich and wish to make me a gift, we can discuss it at that time, but no. I shall not form a joint stock company with you. I asked you to do me a favor, you may recall, to help me in an endeavor that, though I despised it, I needed to complete. You did, and you asked me for something in return, something I have been unable to grant. I give you this in lieu of what I could not deliver, and I hope you will consider my debt to you paid.”
“I accept it on those terms,” he said, “and God bless you.”
I WOULD NOT HAVE many hours to sleep before my next appointment, but I was determined to take what I could. I sent a note to Elias, asking him to come meet me at my rooms at eleven that morning, which should provide us with ample time to arrive at the meeting of the Court of Proprietors at noon. What I would say to Miss Glade when she demanded the book, I did not know. Perhaps I would tell her the truth. I should, even then, have liked more than anything to give her what she desired, to see if in that moment I might find some place in her that was not designing or scheming.
Indeed, she arrived at my rooms at half past ten. I was fortunately awake—after but an hour’s sleep—and dressed, and, though not at my most alert, still able to face whatever she might wish to say to me.
“You broke open the house?” she asked.
I smiled at her. It was my finest approximation of her own smile. “I was able to liberate Mr. Franco, but I could not find the book of plans. Edgar knew nothing, and Hammond took his own life. I searched the rooms, even the house as best as I could, but I could find no sign of it.”
She rose quickly, and her skirts fluttered about like leaves on a windy autumn day.
“You could not find it,” she repeated, not without skepticism.
“I could not.”
She stood and stared at me, hands on her hips. She may have been making an effort to appear angry—she may, for all I know, have been making no effort at all—but she seemed to me so astonishingly beautiful that I felt myself tempted to confess all. I resisted the temptation.
“You,” she pronounced, “are not being honest with me.”
I stood up to meet her eyes. “Madam, I resent you for forcing me to reply with so trite an expression, but in this case I must observe that what is sauce for the goose must be sauce for the gander. You accuse me of concealing the truth from you? On what occasion have you not concealed the truth from me? When have you not told me falsehoods?”
Her expression softened somewhat. “I have endeavored to be honest with you.”
“Are you even a Jewess?” I demanded.
“Of course I am.” She let out a sigh. “Do you believe I would make up such a thing merely to disarm you?”
“The thought has crossed my mind. If you are who you say,” I asked, “why do you speak, when unguarded, with the accent of a Frenchwoman?”
Here her lips curled into a half smile. Perhaps she did not like to be so exposed, but I knew she could not but approve of my skill in having detected her ruse.
“All I told you of my family is true,” she said, “but I never claimed to have told you every detail of my life. As it happens, I spent my first twelve years in Marseilles—a place, I might add, where Jews of my sort were no better loved by Jews of your sort than they are here. In any event, what signifies such a small detail?”
“It might have signified nothing, had you not hidden it from me.”
She shook her head. “I hid it from you,” she said, “because I knew there was French mischief about, and I did not wish you to suspect I might be part of it. Because I could not tell you all, I wished to hide from you that which I believed must give you a false idea.”
“And in the hiding, you merely impressed upon me the need to be suspicious.”
“It is an irony, is it not?”
Through an unspoken mutual understanding, we took our seats.
“And your early history?” I asked. “Your father’s death and debts, and your—protector?”
“Also true. I neglected to mention, however, that this protector was a man of some influence in the ministry and has risen to even greater influence. It was he who recognized my talents and asked me to serve my country.”
“By doing such things as seducing my friends?”
She looked down. “Do you honestly think I would have had to surrender to Mr. Gordon in order to obtain the information I wished? He may be a good friend and a stalwart companion, but he is not well equipped to resist the requests of women. I may have taken advantage of his interest, but my regard for you is such that I would not have created difficulties in the friendship by surrendering myself to him.”
“Which friendship?” I asked. “That with Elias or that with you?”
She grinned quite broadly. “Why, either, of course. And now that we have clarified matters, I hope we can discuss the book you perhaps found after all.”
I felt myself waver, but even if I believed her story, as I was inclined to, it did not mean I wished for the East India Company to have the book. She might believe herself to be in the right, and her sense of politics gave her every reason to wish to obtain Pepper’s plans, but my sense of justice could not deliver it.
“I must repeat that I could not find the plans.”
She closed her eyes. “You seem unconcerned that the French may have the engine.”
“I am concerned, and I should prefer that they fail miserably in their schemes, but I am a patriot, madam, not a servant of the East India Company. I do not believe it is the government’s concern to protect a company from the creative genius of invention.”
“I would not have thought you capable of this treachery,” she said. Her beauty, while not precisely gone, was hidden now under a mask of crimson anger. We discussed not some project in which she happened to be involved. Miss Glade, I saw, was a true devotee of her cause. That the British government and the British government alone should have sway over the plans mattered to her profoundly, and I had no doubt she understood my role in preventing that outcome.
“It is no treachery,” I said softly. “It is justice, madam, and if you were not so partisan in your views, you would see it.”
“It is you who are partisan, Mr. Weaver,” she said, somewhat more softly. I flattered myself that while she despised my actions, she understood I took them out of a belief in their rectitude. “I would have thought you might have come to trust me, to trust that I do what is best. I see that you will take guidance from no one. More the pity, for I see you understand nothing
of this modern world.”
“And you understand nothing of me,” I said, “if you think that because I wish to please you I must also wish to please the East India Company. I have suffered before, madam, and I have learned it is better to suffer for what is right than to be given a sweetmeat as reward for what is wrong. You may continue to hunt down and kill inventors if you like—I cannot prevent it—but you must never make the mistake of thinking I will join the cause willingly.”
A smirk crossed her lips. “You served Cobb and there was no will there, sir. That is what your king’s servants understand of you—that you will fight and fight mightily too for a cause you don’t believe in to protect the people for whom you care. Don’t think we’ll forget it.”
“And while you are recalling what I will do while under duress, I beg you to recall that Cobb is now imprisoned and Mr. Hammond is dead. Those who would twist my will to their own ends have not fared so well as they would like.”
She smiled again, this time more broadly, then shook her head. “The sad truth of it is, Mr. Weaver, that I have always liked you very much. I believe things might have been very different if you had liked me. Not desired me, sir, the way a man may desire a whore whose name he never cares to learn, but harbored for me those feelings I was inclined to harbor for you.”
And so it was that she left me. With a glorious swish of her skirts she departed on that note of finality, so well suited to close a tragic stage play. She delivered her line with such strength that I believed indeed it was the last time I should have dealings with her, and I was inclined to think on my words, if not my conduct, with much regret. As it happened, however, this interview was not the last time I was to see Miss Celia Glade. Indeed, it was not even the last time I would see her that day.
ELIAS ARRIVED WITHIN half an hour of the time he had promised, which I considered very amiable for him. Indeed, I did not mind his lateness, for it gave me some time to regain my composure and to attempt to set aside the sadness I felt after Miss Glade’s visit.