The Devil's Company

CHAPTER FIVE

HE BRITISH EAST INDIA COMPANY CONDUCTED ITS LONDON BUSINESS at Craven House, located at the intersection of Leadenhall and Lyme streets. Here was not only the mansion with the Company’s directors but the whole of the India House yard—an increasingly large portion of the space bordered by the two streets mentioned—as well as Grace Church Street to the west and Fenchurch Street to the south. As the East India Company grew in wealth, so too grew the space required to house spices, teas, precious metals, and, of course, the linens and muslins and calicoes the Company imported and for which the British public demonstrated an insatiable appetite. At the time I write these memoirs, so many years after the events, the Company has become synonymous with teas, and in the time of my infancy it was one and the same with spices. In the days I write of, however, the world knew the Company for its Indian textiles.

During all daylight hours of the warmer months, each day but the Christian Sabbath, a steady stream of porters and wagoners, burdened with their precious cargoes, could be seen making the trek between the India House yard and the Billingsgate dock, where the ships were loaded and unloaded. Even in cold months, when ship traffic was all but eliminated, a steady procession moved in and out, for the adoration of that most esteemed idol, profit, knows no season.

I understood relatively little of the particulars of the East India Company, but I did know as much as this: Craven House was guarded by a near army of men whose task it was not only to protect the contents of the warehouses but the interior of Craven House itself. Unlike the other trading companies—the Africa, the Levant, and, of course, the South Sea Company, now notorious throughout the nation and the world—the East India Company no longer held a monopoly on its trade. It was fully established, and had been so for these hundred years or more, and serious rivals were few and weak, but the Company directors had good reason to guard their secrets. It is a foolish man, a very foolish man, who dares to challenge one of the trading companies. I might be swift and clever in the ways of housebreaking, but when a man crosses a power that can spend millions of pounds with the ease I spend pennies, he is sure to come out the loser.

It was for that reason I had declined Mr. Westerly’s offer when he’d come to me weeks ago, offering me forty pounds (clearly the remuneration had decreased as expenses had increased) to perform an act I considered unthinkably foolish: break into Craven House, make my way to the office of one of the directors, and steal documents vital to a forthcoming meeting of the Court of Proprietors, the large ruling council of the organization. The risk of capture, I explained to Mr. Westerly, was far too great, and the consequences too dire.

I recalled a celebrated incident of some years back: A rogue by the name of Thomas Abraham had managed to steal some sixteen thousand pounds from Craven House. He had done it by secreting himself inside, acquiring his goods, and waiting for the grounds to be vacated for the night. Unfortunately, he had too well fortified his courage with drink beforehand and was consequently forced to abandon the security of his hiding place in order to empty his water, and during this unfortunate if necessary excursion he was apprehended. Mr. Abraham was sentenced to death for his infraction, but in a rare moment of generosity, the Company commuted his sentence to perpetual servitude in one of its East Indian outposts. I did not consider the life of a slave in a tropical habitation of heat, disease, famine, and war much of a mercy and wished very keenly to avoid a similar fate.

On the other hand, I discovered that Mr. Cobb was sympathetic to the difficulties I faced, and desirous as he was that I should succeed in my mission, he agreed that he would be willing to expend such funds as were necessary in order to ease my way inside, provided I could demonstrate the value of each expenditure. Therefore it was with the promise of such funds that I left Cobb’s house and proceeded on a journey that I feared could only end in disaster.

Upon leaving my meeting with Cobb, I stepped outside, extending my legs over the body of Edgar the servant, who, though alive—for I could see the rise and fall of his chest—had been used roughly by the urchins. He was, for one thing, entirely naked, having been stripped of his clothes, no kind treatment during a time when the air was so cold, the ground so icy. For another, he had cuts and bruises about his eyes that I had not delivered, and I felt certain the boys had been quite harsh with him. I would have to be very certain not to expose any weakness to Edgar, who would be sure to make me suffer for it.

I took a hackney to Spitalfields and to an alehouse called the Crown and Shuttle, for it was the haunting ground of a man with whom I dearly needed to speak. It was early yet, I knew, but I had no other business that could possibly intrude upon my affairs, so I ordered an ale and sat thinking of the troubles ahead. I was nearly apoplectic with resentment, and the thought of being used as I was filled me with a simmering anger that, even when I turned my thoughts to other subjects, never quite left me. However, I admit I was intrigued. Mr. Cobb had presented me with a problem—a very troubling problem—and it was now my task to uncover the solution. Though I had told Mr. Westerly that the task was impossible, I now came to understand that I had overstated the difficulty. No, not impossible—only improbable. But with the appropriate amount of planning, I could do what was required of me, and do it perhaps even easily.

It was these things I contemplated over the course of two or three hours and five or six pots of ale. I confess I was not at my most finely sharp when the door to the tavern burst open and a set of six burly young men came in, all clustered around a central figure. This figure was none other than Devout Hale himself, the man of whom I had come in pursuit. He made no attempt to hide his misery; his head slumped and his shoulders slouched, while his comrades, dressed in undyed rough cloth one and all, gathered about him to offer their support.

“You’ll get him next time,” announced one.

“He almost saw you. He was turning your way when that sodden whore with her baby cut you out,” said another.

“It was the rottenest luck, but you’ll get him yet,” asserted a third.

From the midst of the throng of well-wishers emerged the gloomy principal, a rough man in his middle forties with an unruly flourish of luminous red hair and a fair skin full of untended beard and unfortunate blemishes—both the kind associated with his coloring and those of a more dire nature. He had, however, sparkling eyes of green, and though his face bore freckles and lesions and a hundred scars from the battles he’d fought, he still appeared a robust man, no less defeated in his sadness than Achilles in his brooding.

“You’re good friends, lads,” he announced to his companions. “Good friends and companions all, and with your help I shall be victorious in the end.”

He moved forward now, pressing upon the tabletop for support. I could not mistake that his condition had grown worse since I’d last laid eyes upon him, and inevitably in his infirmity he brought my uncle to mind, and a new wave of sadness crashed over me, for I felt as though everyone I knew had fallen into a state of decay.

Though thick in the shoulders and chest, this man had grown more slight with his disease. The swelling on his neck, though he made an effort to hide it with a gravy-colored cravat that had once been white, was more pronounced, and the lesions on his face and hands hinted to the ravage that lay under his clothes.

With great effort, he brought himself to a table where he would no doubt drown his sorrows in drink, but as he moved he scanned the room with the cautious eye of a predator who fears something worse than itself. Thus it was he saw me.

His face, I was heartened to observe, brightened some little bit. “Weaver, Weaver, welcome, friend, but you’ve come at a terrible time, I’m afraid. A terrible time. Come join me here, all the same. Danny, fetch us our pots, would you, lad? That’s a good fellow. Sit here with me, Weaver, and make me no sadder, I pray.”

I did as he bid and, though in no need of more ale, I did not instruct his fellow to forbear. Indeed, I had hardly lowered myself before the pots appeared before us. I sipped at my drink, but Devout Hale drank half of his down in a greedy gulp.

“I don’t mean to evade you. Hardly that at all, but these times are hard, my friend, right hard, and once the family’s been fed and the landlord’s greed answered, once the candles are bought and the room heated, there’s scarce a farthing to spare. But when there is, by the devil’s tits, I swear I’ll give you what you’re owed.”

I would not go so far to say that I had forgotten that I was Devout Hale’s creditor, but that little obligation he bore me inhabited no significant status in my mind. I have worked for many poor men, and I ever permitted them to pay me when they could. Most paid in the end, whether out of gratitude for my service or fear of the consequences I cannot say—though with Mr. Hale I was dependent upon the former rather than the latter. He and his followers could hardly fear a single man—not when they had taken on and vanquished such enemies as they made.

However, I had done him a good turn, and it was this fact upon which I depended. That he still owed me four shillings in payment only meant he might be more inclined to listen to my proposal. Some three months ago one of his men had gone missing, and Hale had asked me to find his whereabouts. This man was a special favorite of his, a cousin’s son, and the family had been exceptionally uneasy. As it turned out, there was no cause for alarm—he had run away with a serving girl of poor reputation, and the two of them had been living in Covent Garden, joyously consummating their union while earning their keep through the ancient art of picking pockets. Though Mr. Hale had been disappointed and angered at his kinsman’s behavior, he had been relieved to find the boy alive.

“It’s come harder than I can scarce remember,” Hale was saying, “to keep a man’s family in bread. What with the competition from the cheap cloths from foreign lands where they don’t pay their workers nothing and the local boys what set up outside the confines of the metropolis so they aren’t beholden to the rules of the London Company. Those fellows will take half the wages we need just to keep from starving, and if the workmanship ain’t so good, there’s plenty of folks that won’t care. They’ll buy the cheaper and sell it as though it were the dearer. There’s ten thousand of us in London, ten thousand of us in the silk-weaving trade, and if things don’t change soon, if we don’t make matters better, we’re as like to become ten thousand beggars as not. My father and his father and grandfather worked this trade, but no one cares now if there’s another generation to weave their cloths so long as they have the cheap of it.”

It was my task, I knew, to set him at ease. “I haven’t come to demand payment. In fact, I’ve come to offer you money.”

Hale looked up from his drink. “I hadn’t expected that.”

“I should very much like to give you five pounds in exchange for something.”

“I tremble to hear what you ask that is worthy of so great a fortune.” He stared at me skeptically.

“I want you to riot against the East India Company.”

Devout Hale let out a boisterous laugh. He slapped his hands together. “Weaver, the next time I feel the melancholy upon me, I shall summon you at once, for you have restored my good humor. It’s a marvelous game when a man offers you five pounds to do what you’d like as not do for free.”

Devout Hale had spent his entire life as a silk weaver—indeed, he was now a master silk weaver—and, through his industriousness and his inclination to hurl stones at his enemies, he had become something of a leader of these laborers, though his status was as unofficial as it was unshakable. He and his fellows had been involved in a war for the better part of a century now against the East India Company, for the goods the Company brought in to the island—their fine India cloths—cut deep into the fustians and silks these men labored so hard to produce. Their main means of protest—the riot—had served them well in the past, and Parliament had on more than one occasion capitulated to the silk weavers’ demands. Of course, it would be foolish to suggest that these men could get their way simply through a bit of rioting, but there were men of power in the kingdom, and in the city in particular, who feared that the East India Company’s imports would permanently harm the trade in native British cloths and enrich a single company at the expense of a national industry. Thus the violence of the silk workers and the machinations in Parliament of the wool interest had proved, when combined, a reasonable counter to the might of the greedy schemers of Craven House.

Hale’s smile began to fade and he shook his head slightly. “At least, we have been inclined to riot in the past, but we’ve got no cause now. Parliament’s thrown us some scraps, and we’re content for the time being. The Company ain’t given us a reason to knock ’pon their gates. And as we’ve won the last battle of our little war, it would be unseemly for us to launch a new campaign.”

“I believe I mentioned an incentive to wink at the unseemliness,” I said. “Five pounds. And, I hardly need mention, a cancellation of your debt to me.”

“Oh, you might mention it. It’s worth mentioning, all right. Make no mistake. But I don’t know that’s the offer I’ll take.”

“May I ask why?”

“Do you know where I was tonight, with my companions there, who have been so kind to me? I went to the Drury Lane Theater, where I learned from some contacts I’ve made over the years—I shan’t tell you who—that the king himself was to make a surprise attendance. And do you know why I should wish to be in the path of his Germanic majesty?”

I thought at first that there must be some political reason, but I quickly dismissed the idea. The answer was all too obvious. The lesions on Devout Hale’s skin and the swelling about his neck arose from scrofula, which poor men called the king’s evil. He must give credit to the stories told, that only a touch from the king could cure his affliction.

“Surely,” I said, “you don’t believe such nonsense.”

“Indeed I do. It has been known for many centuries that the king’s touch cures the king’s evil. I know many people who say their kinsmen know those who have been cured by the king’s touch. I mean to put myself in his way, that I might be cured.”

“Really, Devout, I am surprised to hear you say this. You have never been a superstitious man.”

“It’s not superstition but fact.”

“But come, only think of it. Before Queen Anne died, our King George was merely George, Elector of Hanover. Could he cure scrofula then?”

“I very much doubt it.”

“And what of the Pretender. Can he cure scrofula?”

“Don’t stand to reason. He wants to be king, but he ain’t.”

“But the Parliament could make him king. If it did, could he cure you then?”

“If he were king, he could cure me.”

“Then why not petition the Parliament to cure you?”

“I’ve no mind to play at sophistry with you, Weaver. You can believe what you like, and my believing what I like don’t give you no hurt, so there’s no need to be unkind. You do not suffer from this disease. I do. And I tell you a man with the king’s evil will do anything—anything, I say—to be rid of it.”

I bowed my head. “You are quite right,” I said, feeling foolish for having tried to dash an afflicted man’s hopes.

“The king’s touch can cure me, that’s the long and short of it. A man’s got to put himself in the king’s way to get his touch, and that ain’t always as easy as one would like, now, is it? Tis said,” he announced, in a tone that suggested a shift in conversation, “that when you was a fighting man, amassing your victories in the ring, the king himself was something of an admirer.”

“I’ve heard that bit of flattery myself but never seen any evidence to prove it.”

“Have you sought evidence?”

“I can’t say I have.”

“I suggest you do.”

“Why should I care one way or the other?” I asked.

“Because of the king’s touch, Weaver. That’s my price. If you want my men to riot at Craven House, you must swear to do all in your power to get me the king’s touch.” He took another deep drink of his ale. “That and the five pounds four shillings you mentioned.”

IN THIS CONVERSATION, we circled each other many times. “You are sadly mistaken,” I explained, “if you believe I have any connection of the sort you require. You seem to forget the troubles I earned for myself in the late election. I made no shortage of political enemies.”

“We have but two political parties in our land, so any man who makes enemies must, in the same stroke, make friends. I would present that to you as a law of nature, or something very like.”

I cannot say how our conversation would have resolved had it not been interrupted by a sharp explosion of noises—a burst of angry voices, the overturning of chairs, the hollow clang of pewter knocking pewter. Hale and I both turned and saw two fellows standing in close proximity, faces red with anger. I recognized one of them, a short stocky man with comically bushy eyebrows, as a member of Devout’s company of silk weavers. The other fellow, taller and equally well built, was a stranger to me. It took but one glance at Devout to see he was a stranger to him as well.

Though large and ungainly, Devout Hale was upon his feet and lumbering toward them as best as his frail and ungainly body would allow. “Hold there, what is this?” he demanded. “What’s the ill, Feathers?”

Feathers, the shorter man, addressed Hale without once taking his eye off his adversary. “Why, this rascal has insulted those of us whose parents come over from France,” he said. “Said we’re naught but Papists.”

“I never said anything of the sort,” the taller man said. “I believe this fellow is drunk.”

“I’m sure it ain’t but a misunderstanding,” Devout Hale said. “And we can’t have any unpleasantness here, so what say I buy you both a drink and we make ourselves friends?”

The one Hale called Feathers sucked in a breath, as though steeling himself for peace. He would have been wiser to steel himself for something else, however, for his adversary most unexpectedly threw a punch directly into Feathers’s mouth. There was a spray of blood before the man sank, and I thought for certain the author of this violence should find himself destroyed by the injured man’s companions, but all at once there was the sound of a constable’s whistle, and we turned to find two men, dressed in the livery of their office, standing alongside the mayhem. I scarcely had time to wonder how they could have arrived so quickly before they began to collect the fallen Feathers.

“This one was looking for trouble,” one of the constables observed.

“No doubt, no doubt,” the other agreed.

“Hold on, there!” Hale cried. “What of the other?”

The other was not in sight.

IT WAS ONLY WITH GREAT EFFORT that Mr. Hale was able to convince his brother silk weavers to stay in the tavern while he accompanied the victim of injustice to the magistrate’s office. His proposal produced much discussion, and I was led to understand that my friend was not upon good terms with the unfortunate Mr. Feathers, but he nevertheless convinced the others that he should make the best possible representative for their injured brother, and that arriving in the chamber in great numbers might only give the magistrate cause to claim intimidation. He asked, however, that I accompany him on his mission, as I knew something, as he put it, of the workings of the law.

I did know a thing or two about the law, and I knew I did not like what I had seen of the business thus far. Those constables had been too quick to appear, the assailant too quick to disappear. There was some mischief afoot.

The office of Richard Umbread, magistrate in Spitalfields, was spare and quiet at night, with only a few constables and a clerk milling about in the poorly lighted space. A fire burned in the fireplace, but it was small, and there were far too few candles lit, giving the room the air of a dungeon. Mr. Feathers, who dabbed at his bleeding nose with an already crimson-soaked handkerchief, looked up in a daze.

“Now then,” the judge said to Feathers. “My constables tell me you instigated a drunken attack upon your fellow. Is this true?”

“No, sir, it ain’t. He insulted my parents, sir, and when I objected, he hit me without cause.”

“Hmm. But as he is not here and you are, it is a rather easy thing to set all the blame upon him.”

“There are witnesses to that effect, sir,” Devout Hale called out, but the judge offered him no mind.

“And I am made to understand,” the judge continued, “that you have no gainful employment, is that correct?”

“That ain’t right either,” Feathers corrected. “I am a silk weaver, sir, and I work along with a company of silk weavers hard by Spinner’s Yard. That man standing over there, Mr. Devout Hale, works alongside me, sir. He knew me as an apprentice, though I was not ’prenticed to him.”

“It is a very easy thing,” said the judge, “for a man to get his companions to say this or that on his behalf, but it does not alter the fact that you are a man without employment and so inclined to violence.”

“That’s not the case at all,” Feathers shot back. His eyes were now wide with disbelief.

“You can offer me no evidence to the contrary.”

“Excuse me, your honor,” I ventured, “but I believe he has offered you ample evidence to the contrary. Mr. Hale and I witnessed the conflict, and we will swear that Mr. Feathers was the victim rather than the cause. As to his employment, Mr. Hale will swear to it, and I’m sure it would be no hardship to find a dozen or so men who will swear similarly.”

“Swearing don’t signify when it is all falsehood,” the judge said. “I have not sat these many years on the bench without learning to see what stands before me. Mr. Giles Feathers, it is my experience that men of violence and no account want a useful skill to teach them to better their ways. I therefore sentence you to the workhouse at Chriswell Street, where you may learn the trade of silk weaving over the three months of your detainment. It is my hope that such a skill will help you to find employment upon your release, and so I will not need to see you here again on similar charges.”

“Learn the skill of weaving?” Feathers cried. “But I know the skill of weaving and am a journeyman in that trade. It’s how I earn my bread.”

“Get him out of here,” the judge told his constables, “and clear the room of these loiterers.”

Had Mr. Hale been a stronger man, I would have expected him to show his outrage in ways that would have landed him in prison as well, but he could not resist the pull of the constable, and it was not my battle to fight, so I followed him out.

“I’d heard of these tricks,” Hale breathed, “but I never thought to see it practiced against my own men.”

I nodded, for I now understood all too well. “A kind of silk-weaving impressment.”

“Aye. Chriswell Street workhouse is a privately run affair, and the men what owns it pays the judge, who pays the constables, who get men with skills arrested on no account of their own. Then they’re sent to the workhouse to learn a trade—the very irony of it. It ain’t nothing but slavery. They get three months’ worth of unpaid labor out of Feathers, and if he makes a fuss, they’ll jut punish him with more time.”

“There’s nothing to do?” I asked.

“No, there’s what to do. I must go now, Weaver. There’s legal men to be hired and testimony to be sworn. They’re depending on us being foolish and ignorant of our rights, and in most cases the men they snatch will be. But we’ll sting ’em, don’t you doubt it. They’ll think twice before they go after one of my fellows again.”

“I’m glad to hear it. Now, I hate, when you have such other concerns, to raise the issue once more—”

“Your riot, is it? Well, you need not fear about that. I’ve got the anger in me now, and a good riot shall make me feel right and proper. You just get me the king, sir. Swear you’ll do all in your power. That will have to be enough.”