David Liss - The Devil's Company

Inside, I found the house to be full of activity. Clerks rushed from here to there with bundles of papers pressed to their chests. Runners moved from the house to the warehouses, checking on quantities or delivering information. Servants scurried this way and that, delivering food to the hungry directors who labored tirelessly in the offices above.

Though I knew well where to find Ellershaw’s office, I inquired for the sake of appearances and then climbed the stairs. I found the door closed, so I knocked, and my actions were met with a gruff call to enter.

Here was the same room I had explored under cover of darkness. Now, in bright daylight, I saw that Ellershaw’s desk and bookshelves were of the most ornately carved oak. His window offered him an expansive view not only of the warehouses below but of the river in the distance and the ships upon it that brought him riches from so far away. And while in the darkness I had seen only that his walls were covered with framed pictures, now, in the afternoon glare, I could see the images.

At last I began to gather some understanding of why Cobb had so desired that I, and I alone, should deliver to Ellershaw his missing documents. I still had no idea what Cobb wanted of me and where his manipulations might lead me, but at least I understood why he required that it should be I, and no other, who engaged with Ellershaw.

Not all his pictures, mind you-for many depicted scenes of the East Indies -but many of them had a single focus. There were some dozen woodcuts and prints upon one wall that celebrated the life and exploits of Benjamin Weaver.

They spanned the course of my career. Ellershaw had a print of my early days as a pugilist, when I first made a name for myself. He had a print of my final match against the Italian, Gabrianelli. He even had a rather absurd rendering of me escaping without benefit of clothing from Newgate Prison, a consequence of my unfortunate involvement with parliamentary elections from earlier that year.

Mr. Ellershaw was, in short, an aficionado of the life of Benjamin Weaver. I had met men in the course of my work who recalled me from my days in the ring, and I flatter myself by observing that more than one of these recalled my fights with reverence and regarded me with special notice. I had never before met a man who seemed to collect images of me the way some odd fellows will collect bones or mummies or other curiosities from afar.

Ellershaw looked up from his work and an expression of pleased surprise came over his face. “Ah, you’re Benjamin Weaver. Ambrose Ellershaw at your service. Do sit down.” He spoke with a curious amalgam of gruffness and amicable cheer. Observing that my eyes went to his prints, he colored not a little. “You can see I’m no stranger to your doings, your comings and goings. I know full well about Benjamin Weaver.”

I sat across from him and offered a weak smile. I felt both awkward to be engaged in this charade of returning what I had stolen and embarrassed by his enthusiasm as well. “I am gratified and surprised by your attentions.”

“Oh, I have seen you fight many times,” he told me. “I even witnessed your final match against Gabrianelli-that was the night you broke your leg, you may recollect.”

“Yes,” I said stupidly, for I wondered how he thought I might somehow forget breaking my leg in the boxing ring.

“Yes, quite a sight, the breaking of your leg. I am glad you are here. May I see it?”

I own I showed the greatest surprise. “My leg?”

“No, you blockhead,” he barked, “the report. Give it me!”

I hid my surprise at the insult and handed the documents to him.

He opened the packet and examined the contents with evident approbation, leafing through the pages as though to make sure all was in order and nothing missing. He then took from a ceramic bowl, painted in red and black in the oriental design, a hard brownish thing that he placed in his mouth and began to chew methodically, working at it as though it tasted both horrible and unspeakably delicious. “Very good,” he mumbled, through his chewing. “Not a thing out of order, which is rather fortunate. Should have been a bit of work to replace. When I discovered it missing, I thought, Here is an opportunity to see Weaver at work in his newer capacity, but I was not entirely certain I had not left these at my country house. I had a servant searching, and I was awaiting his report every moment when I received your note instead. How very fortunate. Where did you find this?”

I had a lie prepared, so I answered with easy confidence. “I was in the process of apprehending a notorious dealer in stolen goods when I came across a number of personal items. When I saw these documents, I perceived them to be of significance, and I felt their owner would be happy to see them again.”

“Indeed I am,” he said, continuing to work his brown nugget with his back teeth. “Very good of you to make so free as to bring them to me. That is the great gift of this island to the rest of the world, you know: our freedom. No arsenal and no weapon in the arsenals of the world is so formidable as the will and moral courage of free men.”

“I had not thought of that,” I told him.

“Now, what can I offer you in compensation for your efforts?”

I mimicked giving this matter great thought. “The papers have no intrinsic value of their own, and I am used to receiving a guinea for the return of such an item, but as you did not employ me to search for your papers, and as finding them took no more effort than the actions for which I was already employed, I cannot in good conscience demand payment. I ask only that if the East India Company, in future times, requires the services of a man of my skills, you will not hesitate to call upon me.”

Ellershaw appeared to chew over the matter along with the strange wad of brownness, which by now had coated his teeth with a sepia film. He twisted his face into an unhappy frown. “Oh, no, that won’t do at all. Not at all. We cannot leave things hanging this way.”

I thought he should say more, but the conversation came to an abrupt end as he suddenly stopped speaking and winced, as though in the most sudden and excruciating pain. He gripped the side of his desk, clenched his eyes, and bit his lower lip. In a few seconds, the worst of it appeared to have passed.

“The damnable trouble. I must take my emulsion.” He pulled at a tasseled rope that dangled beside him, and in the distance I heard a bell ring. “What sort of employment do you seek?” he asked me.

I laughed dismissively. “I am fortunate enough to have no shortage of men in need of my talents, sir. I did not come here to beg employment of you at this moment, only to request that if, in the future, a need should arise, you might consider me your man.”

“That won’t do at all. I am too delighted to have met you at last to let you walk away on such uncertain terms. I know you are a man of some pride, a fighting man and all that. You won’t admit your needs, but it must be of some trouble to have to live from one found employment to the next.”

“It has never been a trouble before.”

“Of course it has,” Ellershaw explained, with an indulgent smile. “And look at you, sir. You put a good face on it with your clean suit and such, but any man can see you a Jew without too much squinting. It must be a terrible burden for you.”

“It has been a tolerable burden thus far.”

“And though it be a terrible burden, you still enjoy the freedom of an Englishman, almost as though you were one yourself. Is it not a glorious thing? Freedom is, as you must know, the right to question and change the established way of doing things. It is the continuous revolution of the marketplace, whether it be the market for Indian textiles or stolen watches, I suppose.”