David Liss: The Devil's Company

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.

I did not allow Elias to linger long, and we soon took a hackney to Craven House.

“How is it,” he asked me, “that we will be able to enter at will a meeting of the Court of Proprietors? Will they not turn us away at the door?”

I laughed. “Who would attempt to attend such a meeting without business? The very idea is absurd. There could be nothing more tedious and of less interest to the general public than a meeting of the East India Company.”

My understanding of those meetings was quite right, though in recent years we have seen that these meetings have become the subject of much public interest, theatrical rancor, and coverage by the papers. In 1722, however, even the most desperate paragraph writer would choose to fish optimistically in the most unfashionable Covent Garden coffeehouse rather than seek out news in so dull a place as a Craven House Court of Proprietors meeting. Had one such paragraph writer been there that day, however, he would have found his optimism well rewarded.

As I predicted, no one thought to question that we belonged there. We were both dressed in gentlemanly attire, so we fit in with the other hundred and fifty or so dark-suited types who filled the meeting hall. We were conspicuous only in being younger and less portly than the majority.

The meeting was held in a room that had been constructed for the specific purpose of these quarterly events. I had been in the room before, and it had struck me as having the sad emptiness of a deserted theater, but now it was full of life-sluggish, torpid life though it might be. Few of the members of the Court appeared particularly interested in the proceedings. They milled about, gossiping with one another. More than a few had fallen asleep in their seats. One man, among the few younger than myself, appeared to occupy himself by memorizing Latin verse. Some ate food they had brought with them, and one intrepid sextet had actually carried in a few bottles of wine and pewter tankards.