David Liss - A Spectacle Of Corruption

I did not need to look at them to know what they were. I had felt such things and, indeed, used them most villainously in my greener years when I had plied my trade outside the law: a lockpick and a file.

Events of the past few days had happened so quickly and so strangely, I felt I understood almost nothing, but I now knew two things with absolute certainty. I knew that someone desperately wanted to see me convicted and sentenced to hang, to which end the law had been cruelly abused.

And, just as surely, someone wanted me free.

HOW HAD I FOUND myself in so dire a condition? I could not even begin to fathom this upheaval, but I knew that my difficulties were in some way linked to the services I had engaged to render to Mr. Christopher Ufford, a priest of the Church of England, serving at St. John the Baptist Church in Wapping.

In the melancholy that had settled upon me since Miriam wedded herself to a Christian gentleman, I had left my business in a state of neglect. I hardly worked at all for some months, preferring to pass my time in drink and debauchery- or else sullen contemplation- and sometimes a combination of all. So when I received notice from this cleric the same day I received three urgent notes from my creditors, I thought it best to do as I had been promising myself I would do for some months- that is to say, shake off my stupor and resume my business. I therefore dressed myself neatly in a dark suit with a clean shirt. I splashed the sleep off my face, bound up my hair, which I wore in the style of a tie periwig, and traveled by hackney coach to York Street, at which address Mr. Ufford desired me to call upon him.

I set off that morning little thinking that I would, more than thirty-five years later, commit my actions to paper, but had I been so aware, I might have taken some additional notice of the disorderly men who surrounded me as soon as I exited my hackney in Westminster. Here were four fellows, made, unknown to them, to perform the literary act of foreshadowing. They took their positions at my four corners and sneered. I thought them nothing more than the countless thieves who haunted the streets since the South Sea Company had collapsed, taking the nation’s wealth with it. But these were a different sort of criminal.

“Which be ye, Whig or Tory?” one of them, the largest- and very likely the drunkest- of them snarled at me.

I knew that the six-week-long election season was nearly upon us, and candidates would often canvass in advance by hosting riotous parties at taverns in which lowly men such as these, men who surely did not possess the vote, might drink their fill. The reason for the politicians’ generosity was quite plain: They hoped their uncouth guests might go forth and behave just as these fellows now behaved, coarse advocates of their cause.

As it was quite early in the morning, I could only presume that these men had not yet taken their sleep. I stared at them, with their unshaved faces and ragged clothes, and attempted to measure their capacity to do me harm.

“Which be ye?” I asked in return.

The leader barked a laugh. “Why should I tell you?”

I took from my pocket one of the brace of pistols I always carried about me and pointed the firearm in this man’s face. “Because you began the conversation, and I wish only to understand the level of your interest.”

“Begging your pardon, sire,” he said, grossly overestimating my position. He removed his hat and, placing it against his chest, began to bow like a Turk.

I’d have none of this groveling. “Which party are you?” I asked again.

“Whigs, if it please you, sir,” another of the men said. “What should we be but Whigs, for we’re only laboring men, you see, and not great lords, like your honor, to be Tories. We was at a tavern with drink paid for by Mr. Hertcomb, the Whig for Westminster. So we’re Whigs now, and in his service. We meant you no harm.”

I cared nothing, and knew less, for Whigs and Tories, though I understood enough to know that it was the Whigs, the party of new wealth and little church, that might be more willing to attract men such as these.

“Get gone,” I said, waving my pistol. They ran off in one direction, I walked in the other. In an instant I had forgotten about the encounter, and my mind turned to my meeting with Mr. Ufford.

I have known very few priests in my day, but from my reading I harbored the idea of dignified little men living in neat but unremarkable cottages. I was surprised to see the lavish town house in which Mr. Ufford resided. Men who seek careers in the Church tend ever to be without prospects, either because their families have not much money or because they are younger brothers and excluded from inheritance by the strict laws and customs of the land. But here was a priest who had taken for himself the whole of a fine house on a fashionable street. I could not say how many rooms he possessed, or of what nature, but I soon found that the kitchen was of the finest quality. When I knocked upon the front door, a ruddy-faced manservant told me I could not enter thus.

“You must approach from the rear,” he told me.

I rankled not a little at this treatment and thought to comment most unkindly on his orders, but his usage was, if not common, hardly unprecedented. Perhaps the excess of wine I’d consumed the night before inclined me to irritation. Nevertheless, I cast aside my annoyance and walked to the side entrance, where a stout woman with arms as thick as my calves directed me to a large table fixed in one corner. Sitting here already was a fellow of the meaner sort, not old but aging ungracefully, grizzled about the face, lacking a wig, with nothing on his balding and close-cut pate but a wide-brimmed straw hat. His clothes were of the plainer sort of undyed linens, though clearly new, and adorned only with his pewter porter’s badge, which he wore pinned to his right breast. I could not say why, not knowing the man, but I had immediately the distinct impression that Mr. Ufford had bought the clothes for him, and recently too- perhaps for this very meeting.

Soon another man, wearing a black coat and a white cravat- a style I recognized as priestly- entered the kitchen tentatively, as though sneaking a look at a room in a house where he was a dinner guest. On meeting my eyes, he simpered briefly. “Benjamin,” he cried with great warmth, though we had never before met. “Come in, come in. I am glad you could meet me as I requested, and at such short notice too.” He was tall, inclined to be plump if not fat, and with a sunken face that resembled a crescent moon. He wore a tie wig, new and carefully powdered.

I bristled a little, I admit, at the unexpected use of my name. I had never met the man before and had no reason to expect such familiarity. I suspected that if I were to address him as Christopher, or perhaps even Kit, he would not take it kindly.

“I am honored to be able to attend you, sir,” I said, with a shallow bow.

He gestured toward the table. “Come, sit down. Sit down. Oh, yes. Where have my manners gone? Benjamin, this fellow is John Littleton. He lives in my parish and has benefited from the kindness of the Church. More than that, however, he knows the parish and the sort of men who inhabit it. I have made much use of him in recent days, and I thought you might as well.”

I turned to offer the fellow, as the priest would have it, my hand in friendship.

He took it with eagerness, perhaps relieved to see I was of a somewhat more open nature than our host. “How do ye,” he said cheerfully. “Benjamin Weaver, I seen you fight, me spark. More than once, too. I seen you beat the tar out of that Irishman Fergus Doyle, and I seen you take out that French fellow too, but I don’t recollect his name. But the best match I ever saw, let me tell you, sir, was the time you fought Elizabeth Stokes. Now, she was a great fighter of the female sort. They don’t make the likes of her no more.”