The Wages Of Virtue (A Poor Man at the Gate Series, Book 8)

by Andrew Wareham

  "So, Lord Andrews, our policy is opposed to any change in the status quo. Far from being able to bring Egyptian cotton under our control the effect will be to create an independent and powerful state, one that will be able to defy our commercial interests."

  "As the Ottoman declines so Egypt will grow, you are suggesting?"

  "I think so, my lord."

  Robert sat mute for a minute or so, recollected himself, apologised, called for refreshments to be brought in.

  "The Family has too little influence to be able to pressure Lord Liverpool to alter policy, Sir Erasmus. Canning I hardly know, and do not like, and we have no obvious means of changing his mind. Wellington will not support rebellion, especially while Byron - who he detests on both literary and moral grounds - is involved, so he will have no objection to the Turks wiping out the Greeks. Goderich will never upset any other faction for fear that he might not ever become Prime Minister himself. Peel? We as a family do not wish to be seen to ask him for any favours, and I have no idea how he would stand on the issues."

  "We have no route to follow in Westminster then, my lord."

  Robert picked up the implication, had not realised there was an alternative to the directly political.

  "What can we do outside of Parliament, Sir Erasmus? I trust you do not propose to take the risk of bribing the King - he really is too unreliable, you know, will often take the favour but 'forget' to fulfil his side of the transaction."

  Clapperley had more sense than to put any faith in Georgy-Porgy.

  "We could create a public outcry against the Ottomans, my lord, starting with Greece and then expanding to Egypt. Our own pamphleteers could be commissioned to produce a flow of reports of outrage; articles could be placed in the daily newspapers, written by 'An Aristocratic Traveller' and consisting of first-hand records of the bestiality of the Turk and accompanied by line-drawings of burnt-out churches and hanging priests. With a little more of care and ingenuity we could produce refugee priests to give sermons in our most fashionable churches, recounting their woes and calling for a Crusade. We would have to take care to maintain a basis of truth, of course, but the Turk is behaving with a degree of savagery that makes it possible to overstate the case quite plausibly."

  "The cost, Sir Erasmus?"

  "A pamphlet of thirty or forty pages to appear every fortnight or so, say twelve thousand words at a pound a thousand, quite a high rate; every scribbler in Grub Street would be queuing up at our printer's door. Three or four hundred pounds and twice as much again to print them - within a few weeks it would be possible to sell them for two or three pence to pay much of their cost, provided the material is sufficiently gory and with many hints at the fate of the female population at the hands of the ravening bashi-bazouks. The newspapers will take any article sent free to them, especially if it refers to a popular cause. As well, my lord, we need only direct our efforts towards the press in London - the provincial newspapers lift their columns wholesale from the metropolitan sheets."

  "A first task for young Mr Goldsmith, do you think, Sir Erasmus?"

  "An able gentleman, my lord. He might well be well-suited to the commission. Mr James' name does not occur to one in such a function."

  "I agree. Far too duplicitous for his talents."

  "It is, my lord, and it would be unwise to tar his hands with such a back-door procedure. He has already gained the mild respect of many in the House for being a man of unimpeachable integrity and honour - 'not brilliant', they will say, 'but sound, very sound indeed'."

  Robert was surprised and very pleased - he had had few hopes for James and he had already surpassed them.

  "I doubt Mr James will ever achieve any of the very highest offices, my lord, but I would expect him to become a senior member of a Whig Cabinet twenty years from now. That, of course, assumes that we shall any of us at Westminster survive so long. Have you been close to the River lately, my lord? Even in winter it reeks. What it will be like next summer, I dread to think!"

  "Let us pray for a wet winter, Sir Erasmus, and a sufficient volume of floodwater to wash all out to sea."

  "Amen to that, my lord. London has, of course, a very limited supply of sweet water - I would expect that one half of the population, if not more, depends on the Thames and on shallow wells not far from its banks."

  "Unpleasant! Unfortunate for those who must drink of it. I must remind the butler to tell the housekeeper to be doubly sure to boil all water used in the household. I do not fancy that tang added to the taste of our tea and coffee."

  Clapperley agreed, adding that he had heard that a few medical men - including some of the most renowned - were inclined to wonder whether contaminated water was not the cause of some of the many fevers that seemed to be increasing in the country. Every seaport, including London, had recorded outbreaks of the cholera in recent years, though none of them yet truly epidemic in scale, and the spotted fevers were a commonplace in the industrial towns where poor water and bad sanitation were a commonplace.

  "Then Lady Andrews and the children will stay out of London except on rare occasions, Sir Erasmus, and never in the summer."

  Mr John Starling sat at his mahogany desk in the office in Rotherhithe, within sight of the East India Company wharves. He ran his fingers over the leather surface - rich and of the highest quality, dyed a beautiful green - glanced at the ivory figurines and jade pieces on the shelves, second-rate examples most of them, but good enough in England where very few knew better. It all contributed to the front of wealth and influence he had carefully created.

  An Indian servant came to the door, cringingly ushered his visitors in, making a great play of subservience to the Sahib. John was certain Krishnan Rao - which was the unlikely name he claimed - was there to spy on him, to report back to the syndicate in Bombay; he might well have instructions to kill him under certain circumstances. He nodded curtly to the servant, as his guests expected.

  "Mr Dean and Mr Jensen! Thank you for coming, gentlemen. Tea? Coffee? Something stronger?"

  Both took tea, English style.

  "I have it in mind to send a number of music-hall acts out to Bombay, gentlemen. English singers and dancers, able to entertain both East India Company employees and the richest of the Indians, maharajahs and their courts. Needless to say, they must be very presentable, blondes or red-heads, out of the ordinary way of local girls."

  Both men were theatrical agents, or so they claimed, tending to place acts in the smaller halls about the country. In the nature of things the girls they represented would be new to the profession, yet to make any reputation in England and hence unlikely to be missed. Neither man was naive, but, equally, they were not rich either.

  "Six months on an Indiaman, Mr Starling - a long journey during which they would have to be paid, so expensive, sir."

  "Three months if one uses a fast ship to Alexandria and then overland to the Red Sea and take passage on one of the returning pilgrim ships. Easily arranged, gentlemen, and has the advantage of being less visible."

  "How many, Mr Starling?"

  "A dozen this season; the same or more annually if the first batch is seen as a success."

  "And our fee, sir?"

  "Fifty pounds per head."

  Far too much to refuse, and in itself confirmation that the transaction was unlawful.

  "Would you expect a prolonged stay in foreign parts, Mr Starling?"

  "Highly! I would be surprised if the girls did not find themselves so enamoured of their new existence that they wished never to return."

  There was an existing and none-too-secret trade of young girls into Belgium, had been for years, and this was little more than an extension of that business; both men shrugged and agreed to find six apiece within a week.

  "How well must they be able to sing, Mr Starling?"

  "Unimportant, sir - they can practise aboard ship. It might be thought well to persuade the girls - whose geography will probably be limited - that they are to entertain the sailors of
the Royal Navy at their ports throughout the Mediterranean - they might feel that Bombay was outlandishly far."

  The impresarios left the building and their host followed soon after, invisibly on foot rather than taking a cab, his next transaction having to take place at his contact's place of business, a large scrap-metal yard no more than two miles away.

  "Mr Upnor, my pleasure, sir."

  Upnor, a fat, jolly-seeming middle-aged gentleman, dressed in boots and breeches, once-white shirt and a flaming scarlet waistcoat, had little time for courtesies and came abruptly to business.

  "Nah, then, Starling, ain't it? I deals in metal and metal's what I wants ter see!"

  Five hundred gold sovereigns came out of the bag John was carrying.

  "Right, then - I reckoned yer might be more mouth than action, like they says, but yer ain't, I'll give yer that. In the back shed, 'ere."

  The iron barrels of twenty cannon lay on wooden racks.

  "Check 'em out, but they all bin stored dry, well-oiled and kept polished - no bloody rust on any of 'em."

  Captain of his own pirate ship for years, he was familiar with the guns, spent an hour going over them.

  "I'll take eighteen of them. All twelve of the nine-pound field guns, four of the eighteen-pounders and the pair of twenty-fours. One of the eighteens has honey-combing around the touch-hole and another has a cracked trunnion - the two I have chalk-marked."

  Upnor had no military experience, asked for further explanation.

  "You see the tiny cracks and discolorations around the touch-hole, sir? The metal has been weakened by the acids present in exploded gunpowder, and sooner or later will blow out when the gun is fired. The trunnion, here look, bears the whole weight of the gun; if it breaks on firing then the barrel will spin off of its carriage."

  "Right yer are, Mr Starling, sir - I'll know next time, if yer wants there to be a next time, that is."

  "I do not want the little four-pounders, Mr Upnor, but I will take any other iron barrel you can find - long gun, howitzer, carronade or mortar quite equally. Paying in gold, no questions asked, or answered."

  "So be it, sir. They'll be put in yer barge come the morning, sir."

  Gun carriages could be made in India, probably out of better timber than could be found in England; bearing in mind that artillery was as likely to be drawn by oxen or elephant as horses then it would probably be the most practical solution as well as the least visible. As for the use the guns might be put to - well, a few dozen of cannon were insignificant in the context of the sub-continent as a whole, they would certainly not throw the British out of India, or prevent their further expansion. The cannon would serve to aid local rulers in their minor squabbles with each other, and they might make a little man feel much bigger, could possibly kill a few of sepoys or redcoats, but they would not actually be important.

  There was no cause for concern, John concluded - just another harmless source of profit.

  He returned to his office, found an invoice newly arrived and processed by his clerk, a note appended.

  Another consignment of apothecary's supplies off of a Levant trading ship; checked and accepted and already placed on a wagon to go north to Liverpool. More expensive than using a barge but less visible - there was no chance of the nature of the goods being discovered on their way to his warehouse. There was no law regarding the possession or consumption of his goods - of opium and hemp - but there was also no means of preventing interfering do-gooders from shouting his name from their pulpits and trumpeting their disgust in their newssheets. It was already the case that certain of the larger brewers were opposing all other intoxicants, and the growing tobacco industry was much against hemp, and both were known to the political parties they increasingly supported; it was wise for the innocent merchant, concerned only to provide his customers with the goods they demanded, to remain unknown.

  Mr Starling shook his head at English hypocrisy - a million gin-sodden wretches collapsed into the nation's gutters every Friday and Saturday night, and a bare quorum of churchmen said that it was very sad. A few gentlemen sat down quietly with an opium pipe and there were howls of 'Yellow Peril' and fears of national degradation. Not a rational race, the English, he feared.

  He did his best to quietly counter the howling of the mob of newspapermen and would-be politicos - mentioning to his customers and the apothecaries he supplied that 'many of the aristocracy, of England's noblest and best, patronised him' - but he feared that his was a losing cause.

  "If only I could put fifty thousand a year into the funds of the political parties," he told his clerk, "then Starlings would be as respected as the brewers and distillers, and opium would be valued alongside tea."

  David Mostyn smiled at his host of the evening, bowing with London elegance to merchant, wife, adult son and eldest daughter, hair only recently up and appearing socially for the first time. The festivity could in fact be seen as the girl's coming-out, the young banker a very eligible target for her ambitions.

  'Fifteen thousand sovereigns, and the financing of every deal the merchant house makes - worth a cool two thousand a year to the bank. Not good enough, Mr Alfreton, not by a long way - especially with that surname.'

  David kept his thoughts to himself, begged the honour of a waltz, saw his name entered in her dance-card for later in the evening, made way for the next-comer, glanced about the dance-floor - not quite big enough to be called a ballroom, he felt. There was a young miss without a partner for the set just forming and, as courtesy demanded, he made his way to her side and offered his arm.

  The niece of one of the Company Writers, newly come out, he vaguely recognised her - they had spoken before he suspected. He performed his part for half an hour, returned her to the aunt's chaperonage and retired to the refreshments, all perfectly correctly. She was even less financially attractive than Alfreton's girl. He smiled again as he remembered his first reaction to the name on the card of invitation - it had triggered a memory of a journey north and he had taken a look at his Atlas of England, found the town in Derbyshire. The surname might be the one the gentleman had been born with, but it smacked of convenience, of a need to avoid Jack Ketch's attentions.

  A number of very successful merchants had left England rather hurriedly in the first instance, and none were thought the worse of in Bombay, but one hardly wished to marry into their families!

  David kept a pair of Indian girls out of obvious sight in his very large bungalow, as did the bulk of unmarried men; those who did not were popularly supposed to keep boys instead, but there was no great concern about any man's activities behind closed doors. He had no overwhelming need to marry for his own convenience, therefore, but kept an eye out for a practical alliance that would benefit the bank and his own personal fortunes. He knew of one otherwise successful merchant who had taken the daughter of a very wealthy Indian entrepreneur as a lawful wife - he was now extremely rich, and ostracised by the English community. A banker could not follow that example.

  "Mr Mostyn! I had hoped to bump into you tonight, sir!"

  Rear-Admiral Parker, a lesser member of the naval clan that seemed to number admirals and post-captains by the score in its ranks. He could not be seen speaking to David at the bank - all of his acquaintance would immediately assume he was strapped for cash, was begging a loan - the scandal would follow him throughout his career.

  "I was told that a Captain John had been one of your clients before he returned to England a year or two ago, sir. His little merchant fleet is still sailing and I wondered if you might have any idea who owned them now? One of my frigates recently came across a smallish brig that was used to be his, in distress, her water fouled and far from a safe port, up towards the Gulf. Boarding her she was discovered to be a slaver, many of her cargo in extremis. No papers, of course, nor would the ship's officers say a word."

  David thought quickly - he could not be seen to breach clients' confidentiality but must not break ranks with the English authorities.

&
nbsp; "Captain John sold out all of his interests in the ships, Admiral. The sums he deposited with me must have accounted for the whole of his business assets. From all that he said, he did not himself know for certain exactly who he was dealing with. Everything went through the hands of a lawyer - a Mr Rennie, I believe - certainly a Scottish gentleman - who was acting for a consortium of, he suspected, Indian merchants."

  The attorney, Rennie, had died of cholera six months before; he was not the man who had represented John Starling, but he would do, being equally a Scot and hence possibly legitimately to be confused, one for the other.

  Parker was quite satisfied, believing that Mr Mostyn had risked some slight indiscretion in the amount of information he had offered; he made his best thanks.

  Not easy, but it added to the enjoyment of his life, confirmed him in his belief that he was a clever man in the company, mostly, of fools. It also suggested that he must be a little more cautious in his pursuit of profit - it might be wise to avoid the company of adventurers such as Captain John had been - they made money, but they were a risk, just perhaps too great a chance of being blown upon - he must preserve the bank's good name.

  David caught the eye in passing of Mr Mathieson, bowed across the room to him - a very important member of the merchant community and a senior man in the Governor's council. The council had no formal powers, but it spoke for the most important of the British community and a Governor was wise to listen very carefully to all they had to say, and have very good reasons for denying them. Mathieson beckoned and he crossed the room instantly - he was not a man to keep waiting.

  "Mr Mostyn, I would wish to introduce you to the daughter of my late partner. Miss Tucker spent some years in England and has returned to Bombay on the decease of her mother, having no relatives in England, and knowing that she is welcome indeed in my household."

  Not yet twenty, no beauty but in no way unpleasant, bright enough - no heavy dullness to her eye - an ordinary sort of young lady, it seemed. No relatives and the daughter of Mathieson's partner said money, and in no small amount. David smiled and begged a dance later of her; having no acquaintance in Bombay she was pleased to oblige him. Her partner for the next pair of country dances appeared at her side and she took the floor, leaving the two men alone.