David Liss - A Spectacle Of Corruption

My encounter with Mr. Rowley was spoken of as well, but these broadsheets, which were composed for the poor and lowly, celebrated my acts as the revenge of the repressed against his ill users. I took no small satisfaction in this, and in the way in which my escape was described, with much admiration and wonder. Benjamin Weaver, these articles said, smashed through two dozen doors, singlehandedly defeated a score of guards- using only his fists against their firearms and blades. He leaped from (and to!) great heights. No lock could hold him. No constable could defeat him. He was a strong man, a master of escapes, and an acrobat all combined. These accounts sometimes veered toward the fantastical and depicted me fighting armies of villainous Whigs and corrupt Parliamentarians- not to mention violent Rome-inspired Papists.

Though these versions of my adventures were fantastically exaggerated, I now flatter myself that had not a celebrated prison-breaker by the name of Jack Sheppard emerged a bit later, escaping from prison half a dozen times in a variety of extravagant fashions, my own acomplishment would be far better recalled than it is today.

Yet, while I delighted in my name being spoken of with such admiration, I saw that there can be no good without a touch of bad. My championship came with a steep price, for the ballad seller informed me- without ever once suspecting to whom he spoke- that a hundred and fifty pounds had been placed on my head. I was somewhat gratified that I should fetch so mighty a sum, but I would have traded that gratification for a greater hope of being left to my own devices.

Mr. North lived in one of the better houses on Queen Street, though even the best house on Queen Street was a mighty poor house. The edifice was cracked and crumbling, the stairs so damaged as to be almost impassable, and most of the front windows had been bricked to avoid the window tax. The landlady showed me to his chambers- two rooms on the third floor of this feeble building- and I found him at home with his wife and four small children, who made the most appalling noises. Mr. North greeted me at the door. I now had the opportunity to study him more closely than I had before, and I saw that his black coat was worn and patched, his white cravat stained, his wig unpowdered and disordered. He appeared, in short, a meager representative of his church.

“You were just with Ufford. What do you want?” he asked me, treating me in a surly fashion no doubt because of my livery. I thought it mighty unkind of him to look down upon a man of my supposed station, but I was not there to become his friend.

“I beg a moment of your time,” I said to him. “In private, if you please.”

“On what business?” His impatience made him appear older than his relatively meager years. He knit his brow and bared his teeth like a cur.

“On business of the utmost importance, which can only be discussed in privacy, and not with your landlady lurking just out of sight, listening to us.” I repressed a smile at the sound of her shuffling a few steps down.

“You must tell me more than that,” he insisted, “if I am to grant you audience.”

“It concerns Mr. Ufford and his connection to a great crime.”

I don’t believe I could have said anything else half so effective. He ushered me into the back room, a small sleeping chamber that he evidently shared with the entirety of his family. There was but a large mattress on the floor, piles of clothes, a few chairs cobbled together of broken things. He stepped out, said a few words to his wife I could not hear, and then rejoined me and shut the door. With the door shut I felt ill at ease in that poorly lit room, smelling of sweat and fatigue.

“Speak your business, then.”

“What do you know of Mr. Ufford’s relations with Walter Yate and a tobacco man called Dennis Dogmill?”

He narrowed his gaze. “What is this?”

“Can you not answer the question?”

He blinked at me a few times, and then his eyes widened to the size of apples. “You’re Weaver, aren’t you?”

“My name is immaterial. Please answer the questions.”

He took a step back, as though I might attack him. I could hardly blame him, what with the press full of accounts of my prison breaking and ear severing. “Ufford told me he had hired you to find out who was sending him those notes. You must be very dedicated to continue your inquiry even though you are fleeing from the law.”

“I am fleeing from the law because of that inquiry,” I said. “I have killed no one, and I believe that if I can find out who sent those notes, I may discover the true killer and so unsully my name.”

“I am afraid I don’t see how I might be of use to you. I have never been invited to concern myself in Mr. Ufford’s projects, and I have never wished to be invited either, for his ideas are fantastical and his thinking inept. He would have you believe, I am sure, that he is out to help the laboring man because he is a Christian, but Mr. Ufford cares to help the poor because he believes that the poor, if content, are more easily herded.”

“You do not agree.”

“I am not in a position to agree or disagree,” he said, “being of the poor myself. An education at one of our nation’s universities may confer knowledge, but it does not confer wealth- and certainly not wisdom.” He paused for a moment. “Can I offer you something to drink? I haven’t much of quality, but a man on the run for his life must build a powerful thirst.”

I declined the offer, preferring to continue with my inquiry.

He cleared his throat. “Then allow me to take a drink for myself, for I find this conversation not a little disordering, and it leaves my throat uncommon dry.” He stepped out of the room, took a pewter mug of ale from his wife, whom he kissed on the cheek and murmured to affectionately. He then smiled thinly, returned to the sleeping chamber, and closed the door.

“Do you know,” I asked, “if Mr. Ufford had any dealings with Griffin Melbury?”

“Melbury,” he repeated. He took a sip from his mug. “The Tory standing for Parliament? I suppose he may have. They are both Tories, so it is possible they may have had some business together, but I could say nothing of its exact nature. Though I must inform you that my understanding of Mr. Melbury is that he has honorable intentions, if you understand my meaning, and that might not appeal to Mr. Ufford.”

“I’m afraid I don’t understand you at all.”

“Oh, just that Ufford is rather, shall we say, dissatisfied with our current monarch.”

I admit freely that I did not understand politics so well that I could be absolutely certain of North’s implication. “Please don’t be coy, sir. Say precisely what you mean, so there will be no misunderstanding.”

He smirked. “I don’t know how much clearer I might be. Mr. Ufford is, in all likelihood, a Jacobite. He supports the old king. Do you understand?”

“As he is a Tory, that should be no surprise. I was under the impression that Tories and Jacobites were mere variants of the same thing.”

“Ha,” he said. “That is what the Whigs want you to believe. In reality, they are quite different. Tories are High Church men who want to see the Church restored to its great days of power. They tend to represent old money, old power, privilege, that sort of thing. In general, they are counter to the Whigs, with their Low Church ways, all latitudes and laxness. Jacobites, on the other hand, want to restore the son of James the Second to the throne. You do know that James the Second was forced to flee for his life some thirty-five years ago?”

“I’d heard something about that,” I said sheepishly.

“Yes. James was a Catholic, and the Parliament would not stand for a Catholic to take over the throne. So James fled, and now there are those who wish to see his line returned to power. Mr. Ufford is very likely among them.”