David Liss - The Devil's Company

While we waited, Ellershaw refused to say much of substance, and spoke instead only of a play he had seen and the scandalous French dancers who had performed afterward. Finally, the tea arrived-the green mixture of which he had previously spoken-and I drank it with some pleasure, for it had a delicate grassy quality I had not previously known.

“Now, sir,” he began, “you have no doubt begun to wonder as to why I should hire you to oversee the watchmen when we already have such a man.”

He spoke, of course, of the East Indian, Aadil, but I had been under the impression he’d been ignorant of the man’s existence. Now I knew not how to judge if his previous actions had all been a masquerade or if he played at some much deeper game.

“I presumed,” I began cautiously, “that there had been a misunderstanding, which you chose generously to settle to my benefit.”

He slammed the desk with his open palm, rattling the china. “You think me such a fool, then, do you? You shall soon see, sir, that I am no fool. I see it all; I see everything. And I see something else as well. When the Court of Proprietors meets in just over two weeks, there is a faction that will exert its utmost power to have me thrust from my position-thrown onto the streets, sir, after all I’ve done for this Company.”

“I am distressed to hear it.”

“Distressed? Is that all? Where is your rage, sir? Where is your sense of justice? Have I not toiled for this Company from the time I was old enough to walk? Did I not squander my youth in the inhospitable climes of India overseeing the factory in that fetid hell called Bombay? Have I not, with these very hands, been made to strike dead wild natives-and not just men, mind, you, but women and children-for failure to heed my directives? I’ve done all that, sir, and more, in the name of the Company’s profits. And then I return to this island and take my rightful place in Craven House, where I lead the Company to greater success than it has ever known. After a life of service, now there are those who want me gone, who say my time is finished. I won’t have it, and with your help I shall destroy them.”

“But who are these men?” I asked, sensing I was upon something of import.

His color subsided somewhat. “That I cannot determine. They use strange and clever engines of deception to hide themselves and their motives. I know not who they are or even why they wish me gone, other than that they wish their man in my place. You see, I don’t believe I am their enemy, sir. Rather, I believe they see my place as vulnerable, and so they have set their sights on it. The destruction they have planned for me is but a circumstance of their ambition, not the cause of it.”

“How do you know all this?”

“Rumblings, sir, rumblings. You do not get to my lofty place without learning to hear them, to feel them. I know the weather before it breaks, I promise you. I’ve built my life on it. A look here, a glance there. Craven House is a place of secrets, Mr. Weaver. It always has been. We on the Court of Committees each have our separate responsibilities, but it has often been our way to establish secret committees-committees whose tasks are known only to the members. We love our secrets, and for some time I have felt that there is a committee that works against me. Those papers you found, you know. I believe they were stolen by an agent of that secret committee.”

“But surely a man who has served the Company his whole life cannot be tossed aside for losing some accounting records. It seems petty.”

“You have the right of it. But they mean only to show a pattern, for there is a great edifice upon which they mean to build their attack: the legislation of 1721.”

I gave him a quizzical look. I have never been a political creature, and though I’d received a rude education in the late election, I knew not of what he spoke.

“You are utterly ignorant,” he said, with evident disgust. “I see that now. Very well. Listen carefully, Weaver, but do not expect this to be a happy story, for it is a story of government men, and that can never be good. These government men, Weaver, they scheme of how to hurt the man of business, how to take away his money. And they have little minds, for were it otherwise, the world of business would hire them away. Shall I tell you of their calumny?”

“Please do.”

“Cures have been developed when there is no disease, I tell you. And so, as of this Christmas the wearing of imported calicoes will be made illegal. With the exception of a few items, like neckcloths or blue fabrics that are so deeply entrenched in our society Parliament would not dare act against them, those scoundrels in the Commons have stood up for the wool interest and those villainous silk weavers and acted against the Company.”

I knew from my associations with Mr. Hale that the wealth and influence of Britain ’s indigenous wool interest had wedded very nicely with the blistering violence of the silk weavers. Hale and his men had rioted, demonstrated, and lashed out. They had struck down men and women in the streets for wearing India prints. They broke the windows of shops that sold imported calicoes. The nation had been moving steadily away from fabrics made or woven at home, but the silk weavers did a fine job of making any man who stepped in the street with foreign-woven threads on his back feel as if he had an archer’s target upon him. Now I understood that Parliament had bowed to the pressure of the wool interest, who, Ellershaw explained, had succeeded by threatening to withhold support for candidates in the late election. Thus, as of December 25, I, and every other citizen in the nation, would be empowered to bring before a magistrate any person wearing imported fabrics, and if the victim should be found guilty I should receive five pounds.

Ellershaw recounted all this for me, though his descriptions were peppered with condemnations of the silk workers and the wool interest and praise of the effects of imports upon the British economy.

“The men who were in my office earlier,” he said, “the Holy Trinity, as I style them-they understood the absurdity of contriving to convince the populace to purchase goods they will soon be fined for wearing, but we shall do our best. We must surely sell what we can when we can by what means we can contrive.”

I nodded, wishing to give no more sign of my feelings.

“So, there you have the long and short of it, Mr. Weaver. I chaired the Company’s Parliamentary Committee meant to prevent such legislation, and now that the fruits of that year are coming to ripen, this legislation will be wielded against me as a weapon by my enemies, men who tell themselves they work for the best interest of the Company. Perhaps they even believe it.”

“Surely,” I proposed, “such men always work in their own best interest, and the interest of the Company be damned.”

He nodded most approvingly. “I believe you have the right of it, sir. They will sacrifice me on the altar of their ambition, for this disaster is no fault of mine. You must understand that I had my men in Parliament, I had my men in the Lords, I worked quite hard to counter this business. But with the general election looming, the Parliament took the coward’s way out.”

“What will the Company do?”

He waved his hand. “Without the home market, you mean? Well, I shall tell you what the other members of the Court believe we will do. We will keep selling to the European and colonial markets. They look upon past colonial and continental purchases and believe these shall predict future purchases, but they know nothing. Those fabrics we have sold abroad before sold only because they were fashionable in the home market. Without British fashion to lead the charge, I cannot say how the other markets will respond.”