The Devil's Company

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

HAT CAN I SAY OF MY CONSTERNATION AT THIS MOMENT THAT my reader cannot, for himself, imagine? Moses Franco, a man to whom I was kindly disposed, one who had never done me harm and had only meant me well, was now thrown into a dark dungeon because of my actions. I told myself that I must refuse to shoulder the blame. It was, after all, Cobb and Hammond, his vile lapdog nephew, who had taken these actions. I had never sought harm for Mr. Franco. Nevertheless, I could not entirely convince myself that I spoke the truth. After all, I had been heedless with my investigations, and I had not reported my discoveries to my unwanted overseers. I had tried to serve many masters, none more than myself, and now it was for Mr. Franco to pay the price.

I thought to take myself to the prison at once, but it was late, and I had no desire to disturb whatever rest and quiet he might find in that place. Instead, I spent a night of restless sleep and left early the next morning to confront my tormentors. It being Sunday, I was not expected at Craven House, and was at liberty to indulge myself in a day of not pretending to serve the East India Company.

I arrived before eight o’clock, an unreasonable hour, but I had little concern for the comfort of Mr. Cobb’s household. In fact, I wished to wake them early, and I had every intention of arriving before they left for Sunday worship, presuming, of course, that these were the sort of men who might spend six and a half days indulging in every villainy imaginable and believe it justified by a few hours of hypocritical repentance.

I was surprised to find I needed to pull the bell cord but once to be received by a dressed and ready Edgar, regaled in full livery and without a hint of sleep about him. “Weaver,” he said. “Why does your appearance not surprise me?”

I pushed past him, and he snorted at my rudeness. He little understood, however, that the very fact of his life, the terrible truth that he dwelled upon the same world as beautiful women and laughing children and prancing puppy dogs, filled me with such disgust that had I not brushed past him I should have been forced to strike him. I do not mean a manly challenge and round or two of fisticuffs, either. No, had I remained in that hallway another instant, I should have stomped hard upon his foot, driven my elbow into his nose until it blossomed with blood, battered my knee into his manhood—I hardly know what.

I followed the sounds of silver making music against porcelain and soon walked into a small dining room—not the capacious grandeur of Ellershaw’s but a much smaller and more intimate space. I presumed Cobb to be possessed of a second dining room where he could entertain in high style, should he ever wish to do so. Still, this room had the pleasures of comfort, though its Turkey rug was of all dark blues and browns, its furnishings a near black in color, and the walls a green so gloomy it might well have been the color of a cloudy moonless night. There were, however, high windows that sent in lances of light, giving the impression that the room was crisscrossed with the filament of a spider’s lair, and there, at breakfast, were the spiders.

Cobb and Hammond sat across from each other at a rectangular table, not so large as to impede conversation. The table itself was filled with enough food to satisfy a company five times their number: breads and mushrooms and cakes. And while I stood there, squinting in the streams of encroaching sunlight, the two men filled their plates with every imaginable manifestation of pig flesh: rashers of bacon, links of gray sausage, slivers of ham cut so thin as to be nearly translucent, their fat glistening in the candlelight. Though I now essayed to adhere to the dietary laws of my people, I had not always done so. Nevertheless, in recent years, since my return to Duke’s Place and the eateries of the Hebrews, the smell of pork had become unpleasant to my nostrils, but that was not what filled me with such disgust. Rather, it was the carnivorous pleasure with which these men ate. Indeed, watching them put the meat in their mouths, I sensed that, had they their way, they would have preferred to rip suckling piglets from their mother’s breast and devour them alive.

Cobb looked at me, nodded, and washed down whatever was in his mouth with a reddish-yellow liquid that sloshed in an oversized crystal goblet. I took it for some sort of thin arrack punch. “Weaver,” he said, once he had swallowed and set down the goblet. “This is not entirely a surprise. Shall I have Edward set a place for you?”

“Oh, let’s not be excessive,” Hammond said, snapping upright from his plate, which he had been studying with rapt attention. Less fastidious than his uncle, he did not wait to swallow his food entire, and shards of pink ham exploded across the table. “He has no desire to eat with us, and we none with him. Let him stand there if he has something to say. And better yet, let him stand there while he listens to what we have to tell him.”

“I wish Mr. Franco released from the Fleet,” I said.

“I can understand how you must feel, Mr. Weaver,” Cobb said, “but surely you must understand our position. You have not been entirely forthcoming with us.”

“And we have been paying him. That’s the very devil of the thing, you know,” Hammond announced. “It isn’t as though we’ve simply been forcing him to do our bidding, now is it, Uncle? No, he’s received coin, and good coin too. And from the East India Company as well. And now he has the audacity to accuse us of wrongdoing because we penalize his failure to perform his duties. I daresay he’s lucky he’s not the one languishing in there, waiting to die of jail fever before Parliament can enact some foolish relief law.”

Cobb coughed gently into his fist. “You must understand my position, Mr. Weaver. Mr. Hammond is inclined to excess. I, however, am not. Nevertheless, even a patient man has his breaking point. Surely you can see that. You have been running inquiries all over London, learning we hardly know what, and you have not reported a single fact to us. You have attempted to interfere with my own communications network, and that is a very bad business.”

“The man who tried to take my letters?” I asked.

“Indeed. You treated him rather roughly, and I resent it.”

“How could I know he was in your employ and not someone with a loyalty to Craven House?” I ventured, but rather feebly, I thought.

“Oh, that is very poor,” Hammond said. “Very poor. He is like a child caught with one hand in the larder, saying he was merely attempting to slay a mouse.”

Cobb bit into some sort of apple pastry and chewed methodically. After he swallowed he looked at me very gravely, as though he were a schoolmaster scolding a favorite student for form’s sake. “I think, Mr. Weaver, that you had better tell us everything that you’ve discovered thus far. And from this moment, I’d like you to send us regular reports. I wish to hear about all elements of your dealings at the East India Company, and I wish to hear all the details of your inquiry, even those aspects which yield no results. If you spend the day inquiring of a tailor you think can tell you something and then discover he knows nothing, I wish to hear his name, his address, what you thought he knew, and what he actually knew. I trust you understand me.”

I clenched my fist and could feel my color rising, but I nodded all the same. There was still Elias, still my aunt. And there was, of course, still Mr. Franco, whom I hoped to see set at liberty. Thus it was that I followed my aunt’s advice: I took my anger and set it aside; I placed it in a closet whose door I would open someday but not now.

“I fear I have been too busy to report with any regularity,” I said, by way of an apology, “but if you wish to work out a system by which I might, to your own satisfaction, send you communications, I shall certainly endeavor to comply. As for what I can now report, I trust once I do so, Mr. Franco will be released.”

“I should think not,” Hammond burst in, having no desire to let his uncle answer this question. “We cannot let such a thing be. Weaver has defied us, so we punish his friend. If we now release the friend once he agrees to make everything right, he has no incentive to remain honest with us. He may do as he likes and think he will tell us if he must but deceive us so long as he can. No, I must insist that Franco remain imprisoned for the duration, as a reminder of what awaits the others should Weaver think himself too clever once more.”

“I fear I must agree with my nephew,” Cobb said. “I am not angry that you have attempted to deceive us. It is only natural for you to do so. You do not like this situation, and that you would press to see what you might hope to get away with is entirely understandable. But now you must learn that, though I wish you no harm, I must be resolved to do harm if that is the only way. No, Mr. Weaver, your friend must remain in the Fleet, though perhaps not forever. If, after some time has passed, I believe you have been dealing fairly with us, I will consider seeing to his release. He must remain there long enough, you understand, for his imprisonment to be undesirable. Otherwise the effect will be as my nephew has stated, and you will have no reluctance to, shall we say, do things in the manner of your choosing rather than ours. And now, sir, I must beg you to tell us precisely how you have been using your time and what it is you did not wish us to know. In other words, I would very much like to hear what you thought so interesting that you would rather withhold it than protect your friends.”

“Stop coddling him, by gad,” Hammond said. “The devilish Court of Proprietors meeting is hard upon us, and we have no notion of what Ellershaw has planned. No notion of Pepper or his—”

“Weaver,” Cobb broke in, “it is time to tell us what you know.”

I had no choice. I had to stand there, again feeling like a schoolboy, this time one brought to the front of the class to conjugate Latin verbs or read a composition. And I had a difficult decision to make while I did so, for I had to determine what, if anything, of Absalom Pepper I would reveal. This dead scoundrel, I knew, was the key to what Cobb wanted, and if I could but find the truth at the end of this dark and meandering path, I might be able destroy my taskmasters. If I was not careful, I could not believe with any confidence that they would decline to destroy me.

I therefore recited my lessons. I told them of Ellershaw and his phantom illness that bordered on madness. I spoke of Forester and his secret relationship with Ellershaw’s wife, and of my strange evening at Ellershaw’s house. All the sordid details came tumbling out of me as I attempted to use smoke and confusion to hide what I did not want to reveal. So I described how I was made to threaten Mr. Thurmond of the wool interest, of the general awkwardness of Mr. Ellershaw’s domestic situation, and even of the sadness of a lost daughter that Mrs. Ellershaw was forced to conceal. I told them about Aadil, only to say that he was hostile with an air of danger and that he very clearly wished me harm. At that point I appeared to falter, for I meant to appear to falter. I had one more piece to deliver, and I wished to appear reluctant if not entirely unwilling give up my final treasure.

“Explain, if you will be so kind,” Hammond said, “what was in the letter you sent to your surgeon friend, and what it has to do with your frequent visits to the silk-working taverns.”

“Yes,” I said. “I was coming to that. Indeed, I saved it for last, because I believe it is the final piece of the puzzle—at least, as much of the puzzle as I’ve yet divined. You see, I learned that Forester maintained a portion of one of the warehouses for a secret holding, though of what no one knew. With the help of one of my fellow watchmen, I made my way into this secret room to learn what Forester stored for himself. While we were inside, we were discovered. I escaped undetected, but my companion was caught and killed, though his death was made to look like an accident. I very much believe that it was this East Indian, Aadil, who killed him.”

“Cease your pausing for effect,” Hammond boomed. “This isn’t a dramatic reading of Gondibert. What was in the secret store? Had it anything to do with Pepper?”

“That I cannot say. But the secret store was the purpose for my meeting with the silk workers. You see, I didn’t entirely know myself, nor did I understand why it should be worth hiding, would be worth protecting with murder.”

“Out with it!” Hammond boomed.

“Raw silk,” I lied, hoping that this would be enough to set them on a wrong path. “Raw silk produced in the southern American colonies. Forester and a secret group within the Company have found a way to produce silk cheaply on British colonial soil.”

Hammond and Cobb looked at one another in amazement, and I knew my lie had struck home. I had replaced Forester’s inexplicable stash of ordinary calico with something that I knew from Devout Hale to be the holy grail of British linen production—silk that required no trade with the Orient. I could only presume that my deception had been sufficiently fabulous to blind them.

ONCE I HAD PRESENTED my story to Cobb and Hammond, I ceased to exist. I faded into nothingness as they argued bitterly in whispers—one of the first signs that my company was no longer desired—about what this intelligence might mean and how they must deal with it. I therefore muttered a few polite words of farewell and departed unnoticed, leaving them to solve their puzzles and go chasing after fictitious quarry. As for the potential consequences of my actions, I told myself it little mattered. Should they discover I had not told them the truth, I would merely blame the false intelligence upon the silk workers. Let Hammond go after the men who rallied to Devout Hale’s flag if he dared. He would not dare, I was certain.

My next unfortunate stop was to be none other than to see Mr. Franco, so I took myself to Clerkenwell and that notorious debtors’ hell known as the Fleet Prison. This great redbrick structure might have looked stately from the exterior, but it was a most wretched place for the poor Even those with some cash about them would find only tolerable comforts inside, and any man who was not indebted going in must become so once inside, for the smallest morsel of bread was sold for a fortune. In that way, debtors, once captured, could hope for no release without the intervention of friends.

As I had, on occasion, business at that institution—though fortunately none of it involving my own insolvency—I was able to find one of the wardens familiar to me and locate Mr. Franco with little difficulty.

With some relief I discovered that his state of penury was not so dire that he was unable to afford decent lodgings for himself, and so I found my way to one of the better quarters of the prison. Here I found a dank hallway, flooded with dim light from the overcast skies trickling in from high barred windows. The halls smelled of beer and perfume and roast meats, and there was a busy trade taking place as peddlers and whores and hawkers pushed their way through, selling their wares to whoever would have them. “Best wine in the Fleet,” one man called. “Fresh mutton pies,” cried another. Off in one darkened corner, I saw a grotesquely fat man whose lips had long since been cut off sliding his hand into the bodice of an equally unsavory woman.

Soon enough I found Mr. Franco’s room, and my knock was answered at once. Mr. Franco stood with a book of Portuguese poetry tucked under his arm. He appeared to me a worried man, with eyes both reddened and propped up by black rings, but otherwise himself. He had taken great pains to keep himself neat and dignified: a heroic effort, surely, under such difficult circumstances.

To my great surprise and mortification, he embraced me. I should have preferred, I then realized, his anger. After all, did I not deserve as much? His friendship pained me more than any outrage he could deliver.

“My dear Benjamin, how very good of you to come. Please, please, do make your way inside. I am sorry I have such awkward accommodations, but I promise to do my best.”

The room was small, some fifteen by fifteen feet, with a narrow bed and an old writing table with one leg so much shorter than the others that it appeared it would totter should the slightest breeze come through the chamber—though none ever did, for it was cold and stagnant and smelled of sweat, old wine, and the sour tinge of a dead mouse rotting off in some undiscoverable crevice.

Mr. Franco gestured for me to sit in the only chair while he walked over to his writing desk—surely the most important furnishing in such a place, for it provided a venue for the composition of degrading letters to one’s friends, begging for what they might spare. His desk contained no papers but books, and there were three bottles of wine, a few pewter tumblers, a half-eaten loaf of bread, and a large chunk of very pale yellow cheese.

Without asking if I desired refreshment, he splashed some wine into one of the cups and handed it to me. He took one as well, and after he said the blessing upon the wine, we both drank deep.

“You must know,” I began, “that no amount of money I could raise would free you from these walls. My enemies have contrived you must stay here, and I believe they will make certain it remains so. Nevertheless, they have indicated that if I behave as they wish, they may release you in a few weeks.”

“Then I must prepare myself for a long stay, for if I can have any influence upon you at all, I will keep you from behaving as they wish. They punish me to make you pliable, Benjamin. You cannot give in to them, not now. Do as you must. I shall remain here. Perhaps you will send me some books and make certain I have acceptable food, and I shall be well. May I impose upon you by making a list of what I should need?”

“It is no imposition. I would take the greatest pleasure in providing for you.”

“Then do not trouble yourself about my confinement. This room, while not the finest I’ve inhabited, is no torment, and with your help I will have nourishment for body and mind. As it is no difficult thing to take exercise, I shall find it no task to maintain body and spirit. All will be well.”

I admired beyond words how philosophically he accepted his fate, and I was grateful that he had asked me to bring him some little things, for in so doing I would assuage my guilt.

“Is there anything else I might do, that I have in my power, to make your imprisonment less odious?” I asked.

“No, no. Except, that you must tell me all, for there is no risk now in doing so. No more harm can befall me. Perhaps, locked away as I am now, I may be able to do you and myself some good.”

I could not deny the truth of his words, and I feared always that if he were to learn something on his own, he would feel himself compelled to act upon it, heedless of his own good. Instead, I chose to filter the information—for my sake and his.

Thus I told Mr. Franco not precisely everything, but near enough-all that I had told Cobb and Hammond, and much of the rest as well. I told him I suspected Celia Glade to be a French agent. I told him about Absalom Pepper and his two wives. The only thing I held back was the truth about what Forester kept in his secret warehouse. In part, I worried that, even here, the walls might hide the watchful presence of the enemy, and I also feared that we had not seen the worst of what Cobb and Hammond had to offer. How could I be certain they were not above cruel forms of questioning? It would be best, I decided, to keep some things close, even from my friends.

Mr. Franco listened with particular interest to my description of the mystery surrounding Ellershaw’s stepdaughter. “This is the perfect place to find out,” he said. “If she engaged in a clandestine marriage, she would do so within the Rules of the Fleet.”

“Very true,” I said, though without enthusiasm.

“As you are here, perhaps it would be wise to pursue that line of inquiry.”

“I should prefer not to. I am sufficiently aggrieved that I must inquire into the Company. I have no desire to upturn personal lives and heap miseries upon Mrs. Ellershaw or her daughter.”

“Often, in business, it is the circuitous path that is the most expedient. That matter has been raised, and you tell me that this Forester appears to be concealing something from you.”

“Yes, but as he has tender feelings for Mrs. Ellershaw, it seems likely that he conceals to aid her.”

“I see no harm in pursuing the matter, in the event you are mistaken. I do not wish to use my position to influence you, but I would hope you would use every advantage possible to influence those who hold all our fates in their hands.”

It was true enough. The investment of a few hours might yield nothing, and if that were the case I could easily forget I had pursued this course. “Perhaps you are right.”

“Indeed, I may save you some time. I met this morning a priest by the name of Mortimer Pike who told me he lives within the Rules, on the Old Bailey, and he, at least according to his own declaration, is fairly the king of Fleet marriages. He appears rather proud of the claim that he has performed more of these ceremonies than any other man alive. I cannot speak of his veracity, but he does appear to do a brisk trade and, what’s more, knows the other priests.”

I thanked him for the intelligence. And, after visiting for some half an hour more, I set off in search of this servant to Hymen.

IT HAS EVER BEEN one of the most curious aspects of the city that there are small sections in which the normal laws that govern our lives do not apply, almost as though one might stumble into a neighborhood where a dropped object would fly upward rather than downward or in which the old turn young rather than the young old. The Rules of the Fleet, the dense and tangled quarter surrounding the prison, was such a place, for therein a man could never be arrested for debt, and so the most desperate debtors in the city would make it their home, never venturing away except on Sundays, when no man can be arrested for debt anywhere. By similarly curious tradition, marriages can be performed within the Fleet, even marriages of the underaged, without permission of parents or the traditional reading of banns.

Thus I walked the streets of the Rules, in the shadow of St. Paul’s Cathedral, and listened to the cries of the boys in employ of priests—every one of them impecunious, defrocked, or false. “Marriage, marriage, marriage, marriage!” called out a young fellow from under a shop sign. Another tugged at my pant leg with dirty hands. “Get married, sir?”

I laughed. “To whom? I have no lady with me.”

“We can answer that, for we’ve no shortage, sir.”

Was marriage now like a good meal, something a man must pursue when he felt the need, and if only indifferent offerings were available, he must make do? I told the boy I searched for Mr. Pike’s marriage house and he brightened prodigiously.

“I work for him, I do. Come on, then.”

I could not help but feel equal amounts of amusement and sadness at this mode of commerce, but such is the nature of marriage in our kingdom. Indeed, it is said that fully one third of all marriages that take place are of a clandestine nature; that being the case, it is surely cause to wonder if the rules governing the institution require some revision when so many people are unwilling to comply. Granted, many such marriages were of a kind that no just law could endorse—those between siblings or other near relatives, those between parties already married, those between children or, worse yet, adult and child. And yet the greater part of these secret marriages stood between young people who simply cared not for the lengthy process required of them by canon law.

In light of this demand, it is hardly surprising that officiating over marriages should become a popular means of generating income among indebted priests and, indeed, indebted men who are capable of performing a tolerable impersonation of a priest.

I could not say into which category Mortimer Pike might have fallen, but he clearly operated a profitable business at the Queen’s Fan, a tavern close enough to the Fleet Ditch to be permeated with the stench of that river of offal.

When I walked inside, I observed that the building was no place in which to make one of the most solemn decisions in the life of a man. Here was a poor sort of tavern, an old wooden structure with a low roof, smoky, crowded, and all surfaces sticky. The clock on the wall read shortly before nine, for by law a marriage must take place between 8 A.M. and noon, so here the world was always frozen between those hours.

A goodly number of prospective spouses drank while preparing themselves to enter Hymen’s temple; toward the back, the good priest performed his services in a little alcove decorated with tarnished church vestments. I heard his words before clearly observing the wedding party, noticing he hurried through the service in a haphazard manner, and though I am no expert in Church doctrine, I could not but suspect he read the text unexactly. This little confusion was made clear when I noted a distinctive drunken slur to his voice and saw that the book he held was not precisely ecclesiastical but rather a collection of the plays of John Dryden, and held upside down too.

This little impropriety did not long hold my attention, however, for I noted something far more amiss. The bride was dressed in a most exquisite blue silk gown with a gold bodice and ivory stomacher. She wore about her graceful neck a chain of gold and had all the appearances of a lady of some worth. The groom, however, was dressed in plain undyed wools, was possessed of many scars upon his face, and had the general appearance of a rude fellow. Indeed, the clandestine marriage had been invented in large part to facilitate the unions of those unequal in rank, but something of far greater import transpired here. The bride, elegant in dress though somewhat unlovely in her face, could not stand of her own accord and was held in place by two fellows as rude as the groom. These men laughed to each other and made a great joke of attempting to hold the bride’s head upward, because it was clear to me that she was entirely disordered with drink or some other potion.

Drunkenness at these affairs is to be expected, though not always for the clergyman, and I might not have been alarmed had not, when the good priest asked the lady if she willing accepted her vows, one of the rude witnesses took her head and puppeted a nod, which produced general laughter among the men.

“I shall accept that,” the priest announced, and then turned to the groom.

Perhaps the priest could accept it, but I could not. Hardly taking the time to consider the prudence or consequences of my actions, I lunged forward, drawing my hanger as I did so. In an instant I stood among the wedding party, but I differed from the others in the gathering in that I had a blade pressed to the groom’s throat.

“Speak a word,” I told him, “and it will be your last.”

“By Mary’s cunny, who are you?” he demanded, in violation of my orders, though not significant enough a violation for me to follow through with my threat. I had, after all, only intended that the ceremony not be completed.

“I am a stranger who has happened upon what appears to me an abduction and forced marriage,” I said. Such crimes, sadly, were another consequence of the ease with which clandestine marriages were carried out. Young women of considerable portions might be abducted and made insensible one way or another, so that they would awaken to discover themselves wedded, their bodies violated, and their new husbands demanding dowry.

“A forced marriage!” the priest cried, in a poor imitation of alarm. “Sirs, you scandalize me!”

“Give us a moment to make this spark mind his own affairs,” one of the witnesses said, and the two men put the bride down upon the floor as though she were a sack of flour. They turned toward me, indicating with raffish grins that they were more than ready to answer what I should demand. I turned from the groom and quickly struck with my blade. It had ever been a maxim of mine that the removal of an eye is the fastest way to discourage a villain from further mischief, and here I found it a means by which two men could be dispatched. No sooner had I slit one of the fellow’s eyes, and he cried out and dropped, than his companion fled the premises without further complaint.

Allow me to say, lest I be accused of excessive cruelty, that I reserve such tactics for when I believe my life to be at risk—which was not precisely the case here—or when I deal with men I think deserving of more than a sound beating. Anyone who would say I am cruel must consider that here was a man who would take a young lady from her family, ply her with drink, force her to marry a monster she knows not, subject her to rape, and then demand that she ask her family for her marriage portion. If he does not deserve the loss of an eye, I am hard-pressed to consider who might.

The rascal was now on the floor, rolling and shouting most pitiably, so I turned to the groom. “He was only the assistant, so I believe one eye sufficient. You are the perpetrator, and so you shall lose both. Alas, my code of honor demands that you threaten me before I can, in good conscience, deprive you of your vision.”

His unwashed face had gone white, and I understood he meant to make no fight of it. He backed up and away and then around me, collected his friend from the floor, and dragged him from the marriage house with all the dispatch at his disposal.

I, the priest, and those awaiting marriages watched the slow exodus in silence. When it was over, the priest turned to the boy. “It is well we ask for payment in advance,” he said. Then, to the crowd. “Who is next?”

By now I had picked up the unconscious bride and held her by keeping one of my hands under her armpit—not the most gentlemanly means in the world, but the best at my disposal. I was grateful she was slight of build.

“I am next,” I growled to the priest. “You will deal with me.”

“Ah, you wish to marry the lady yourself?”

“No, I wish to make you account for your actions. How could you allow such a crime to take place?”

“It is never my business to inquire into why couples wish to marry, sir. I merely provide a service. It is business, you know, and business has nothing to do with right or wrong. People must take responsibility for their own lives. If the lady did not wish to marry, she must say so.”

“She does not appear to me in a condition to say anything.”

“Then she had a responsibility not to find herself in so poor a condition.”

I sighed. “She is heavy. Have you a back office where I can set her down and deal with you as I see fit?”

“I have marriages to perform,” he said.

“You’ll deal with me first, or I promise you will never perform another marriage again.”

He knew not what I meant, for neither did I, but as he had seen me run my blade into a man’s eye not minutes before, he understood I meant something unpleasant and complied accordingly.

“Come with me then.” Mortimer Pike was some five feet in height and fifty years of age, with a face lined and weathered, but handsome and charming for all that, and he had a pair of sprightly grass-green eyes as dull with drunkenness as his movements.

We moved slowly because of my burden, but once in his office, I set the lady down in a chair, where she slumped like an enormous doll. Making certain she would not topple, I turned to the drunken villain of a priest.

“I want to review your marriage records.”

He studied me for a moment. “My primary purpose, good sir, is to marry those in search of happiness, not the distribution of records. I cannot even consider aiding you while couples await my services.”

“Please don’t make me threaten you more. Or, worse, act upon threats. If you do as I ask, you may then leave me be to examine the books, and I will need disturb your work no further.”

“It is hardly work to provide happiness,” he said. “No, it is a blessing. The greatest blessing a man can know.”

“Knowledge is a blessing too, and I wish to be blessed with the record of a marriage of a Miss Bridget Alton. I had hoped I might be able to review your book for such a record.”

“The book,” the priest repeated. The moment I mentioned his volume he picked it up and, though it was a large and heavy folio, clutched it to his bosom as though it were a beloved infant. “You must understand that the registration of a marriage is a sacred and private business. I am afraid it is quite against the laws of God and man to show this book to anyone. And now, if you will excuse me.”

“Begging your pardon.” I took a gentle hold of his arm to make certain he did not truly abandon me. “Is not the very purpose of that book to provide a record so that men upon the very sort of errand I am performing may have an opportunity to do their researches?”

“It is commonly believed to be so,” he said. “But that belief, as you have just now discovered, is a false one.”

“You will let me look at the book, or I shall take this lady to the magistrate and make certain you hang for what happened today.”

“Perhaps if I let you look at the book you will spare my life and give me two shillings.”

In a way, I could not but admire his audacity, and accordingly I accepted his offer.

THE YOUNG LADY’S still slumber improved into a dull snore, which I took to be a good sign that she might recover soon. I certainly could not take her home until I knew who she was and where she made her home, after all, so I kept her as my companion while I did my work.

After agreeing to let me see his books, Pike led me to a shelf where were stacked numerous folios. “I have been providing happiness to men and women for some six years now, Mr. Weaver. It has been my privilege to serve the poor and the needy and the desperate ever since I made some rather foolish investments in an affair of sheep raising. My very own brother-in-law, if you can credit such a thing, neglected to mention that he had no particular plans to buy sheep. The money was all lost, and I could not pay quite what I owed. And, if I am to be honest in the eyes of God, I must also mention that I did not precisely end my spendings once this disaster had taken place. And so, for the matter of a mere few hundred pounds, left to rot for all eternity. Most men would turn to despair, don’t you think?”

“Perhaps so,” I agreed.

“You are right. They would. But not I. No, I have turned to serve the Lord here in this hell of desolation. And in what better way can the Lord be served than by performing that most holy of sacraments, marriage? Did not the Lord advise us to be fruitful and multiply? My own wife, sir, has been a blessing to me these many years. Are you married, Mr. Weaver?”

Because I could not be entirely certain I would be permitted to leave there in a state unblessed by matrimony, I thought it prudent to lie and say I was.

“Ah, very good, sir, very good. I can see it upon your face. There is no state happier than the married state. It is the very ship of good fortune, which every man must pilot for himself. Don’t you agree?”

I said nothing, lest he once more try to convince me to marry the sleeping lady.

Seeing that I would not answer, he gestured toward the books. “These go back six years, sir. As many as a hundred marriages a week, and the names do begin to compile. Now, when was this marriage you mention?”

“Not six months ago,” I said.

“Very easy, very easy indeed. It is the very book I hold in my hands.”

When he made no gesture to hand it over, I reached into my purse and pulled out the coins he had mentioned. The book, now liberated, was set before me.

“Perhaps you might recollect the woman I seek,” I attempted. “I am told she is very remarkable in her unusual beauty. A tall creature, very pale, with white skin and hair. What is most astonishing, they say, is that in spite of her pallor, her eyes are most dark. Have you seen such a woman?”

“I may have,” he said thoughtfully, “but in my penury, my memory is not what it once was. It is a sad thing for a man’s thoughts to be so distracted by wondering whence his next meal might appear.”

I handed him another coin. “Does that aid your memory?”

“Indeed it does, and I can now definitively report I have not seen the girl you seek.”

GIVEN THAT THE GIRL had come from a respectable family, I could be fairly confident, if not absolutely certain, that she would write with a good hand. That fair confidence, however, did not allow me to feel free to pass over the unintelligible scrawls in the book without a second glance. It therefore took me better than two hours to make my way through the last six months’ worth of names, and I had nothing to show for my labors. No sign of the lady in question. Certainly it was possible that she might falsify her name, but that was the sort of trick used by a man who wished to be married in the most physical sense but perhaps not the most legal. A woman, I believed, even a young and love-struck woman, would be less eager to cheat herself out of the slim legitimacy converged by a Fleet marriage.

When I closed the book, the Reverend Mr. Pike emerged from whatever shadow in which he had been lurking. He shook his head sadly. “You’ve met with no luck, I see. It is a very sad thing. I do hope you will come back should you ever again be in need of matrimonial records.”

“Certainly,” I said, though I thought it an odd suggestion that I should pursue such things on a regular basis the way a man might be asked to come again to a shop selling snuff or stockings. I looked over at the sleeping woman, thinking I might now try to rouse her and discover where she belonged. Before I could do so, Pike ahemmed behind me.

“If you will allow me.” He opened the door to his office and I observed that the tavern contained a queue of priests awaiting me, an army of shabby men dressed in soiled black suits and yellowed cravats, once, no doubt, in some earlier and unimagined time, a pristine white. Each of these men held, in a variety of styles—clutched to their breasts, crooked under their arms, held in both hands like offerings—volumes of a variety of sizes and girths.

“What is this?” I inquired.

“Ho-ho,” Pike said, with a hearty laugh. “You thought the word would not get out, did you? It spreads like fire, you know. All these men have heard I’ve been entertaining a gentleman willing to pay two shillings for the right to peruse a registry book.”

I SHOULD HAVE BEEN perhaps a bit more cautious with the money, had I not intended reimbursement from Cobb, so I agreed to the avaricious terms set out by the good Reverend Pike. Another shilling for the use of his room, another again for more candles to illuminate the pages as my eyes grew fatigued. Never, I must admit, have I had such good service. At the first sign that my lips had grown dry, he offered to send out for beer, and when my stomach made a large rumbling noise he sent for bread and cheese—all provided, of course, at outlandish prices.

In the end, I toiled for more than two hours, feeling the dust accumulate under my nails, in my nostrils, along my tongue. I was fairly sick of the books but I vowed to review them all. And so it was not until the seventh or eight priest, a slight man with a hunched back and a crooked smile, presented me with his little quarto registry that I struck gold. While this strange fellow hovered over me, I could not believe my astonishing luck. There it was, the girl’s name, Bridget Alton, in undeniable clarity.

The happy groom’s name was there as well, though this was harder to make out. It took some scrutiny before I could read it, but once I did there could be no doubt that it was a false one: Achitophel Nutmeg. And it hardly took a man of rare perceptive powers to divine this worthy’s true identity, for the first names were both from the biblical tale, not to mention the Dryden poem, “Absalom and Achitophel,” and the last names both staples of the spice trade.

Once more, I had stumbled upon the considerable persuasive prowess of Absalom Pepper, the very man Cobb claimed had been killed by the East India Company. Now it appeared he had married Ellershaw’s stepdaughter.