The Devil’s Company: A Novel

by David Liss

  “Mr. Blackburn, you may either take the time to integrate Mr. Weaver’s unique position, really as a servant to me, into your existing scheme, or you can accept that he is outside of your purview, not your responsibility at all. That being the case, you can safely ignore him altogether, as you would my footman or my pastry cook. Which would you like?”

  This pointed argument appeared to gain some sway with the clerk. “Your servant, you say? Like a pastry cook?”

  “Precisely. He helps me do my work more efficiently, and so it is my choice to take him on, and it is my wish to pay him out of my own monies. You need not account for him at all.”

  Blackburn gave Ellershaw a curt nod. “I accept your proposal,” he said, though, as far as I knew, nothing had been offered.

  “A fine plan, Blackburn. Very fine. But one more thing. I would rather you not discuss this matter with anyone. If anyone asks you, say only that everything is in order. I don’t believe most men would pry more, lest they hear about facts and figures and tables in which they have no interest. Can you keep this to yourself?”

  “Of course,” Blackburn said. “I have no desire to advertise this irregularity. You see, Mr. Weaver, you are something disorderly, and I hate disorder. I like things to be regular and predictable and easily accounted. I certainly hope you won’t bring disorder with you.”

  “I had thought to,” I said, “but upon your request, I shall refrain.”

  When we left Mr. Blackburn’s office, we nearly collided with a tall gentleman of fine form who appeared to hover in the hall awaiting our arrival.

  “Ah, Forester, well met,” Ellershaw said. He put a hand upon the man’s arm. “I want you to meet Weaver. He’ll be aiding my work on the warehouse subcommittee.”

  Forester’s dull blue eyes grazed Ellershaw’s hand on his arm before settling upon me. It could not have been plainer that he cared little for Ellershaw, but my new patron’s monkey grin told me he observed none of this animosity.

  Forester nodded. “Good. Things in the warehouses would benefit from more attention.”

  “Yes, yes. If you see Weaver around, think nothing of it. He is my fellow, you know. All is just as it should be.”

  For some reason, this prompted Forester to study me more closely. “Your fellow?”

  “Yes, yes. You needn’t worry.” Then to me, he said, “Mr. Forester is serving his first term upon the Court of Committees. Very new to everything, you see. But his father—ah, Hugh Forester. Now, there was a great servant to the Honorable Company. A great man both in the Indies and in London. The younger Forester has much to live up to, I think.” And here he offered me a wink.

  Forester walked off and Ellershaw remained still, his face frozen in a foolish smile, like a young man who has exchanged charming pleasantries with the lady of his fancy. “I like that young man,” Ellershaw told me. “I like him enormous. I believe he shall go far with my help.”

  I found this approbation astonishing. Forester’s disposition, which might flatteringly be called indifferent, had been unmistakable. How could Ellershaw not see the contempt with which this admirable young man regarded him?

  For want of anything more decisive to say, I merely remarked that he must know best the character of the men with whom he worked.

  “Indeed, I do. I love to spend my time with the Company men, inside Craven House and without. As it happens, I am to have some guests at my home four nights hence. I wonder if you would be so good as to join us.”

  I could not have been more astonished. I was Ellershaw’s underling, his plaything even, little more than a toy. The vast difference in our stations made this invitation both strange and unexpected, and I could not but doubt that I was invited to attend in the role of a curiosity, something at which his guests might marvel. Still, in light of my directions from Mr. Cobb, I could hardly justify excusing myself. There was more, however, to it. I was beginning to find Ellershaw more than an interesting specimen of unlikable man, I was beginning to find him fascinating in his obliviousness, and much as he surely planned to hold me up as an object of fascination, I wished to do the same with him.

  “You do me too much honor,” I told him.

  “Nonsense. You’ll come?”

  I bowed and said I should be delighted, and in doing so I set into motion one of the most important phases of this history.

  ELLERSHAW NEXT LED ME down the stairs and out the back door, which I had previously entered on my covert first foray into Craven House. The grounds, in the light of day, seemed almost a small city, or perhaps even like one of the Company’s encampments in the Indies. Three or four large houses—converted homes, as I understood it—hulked about the grounds, but while the outer structures had surely not changed since the Company acquired them, they had lost all air of anything domestic. On the lower floors, windows had been boarded up, no doubt as much to save on the window tax as to provide security, and the bricks all had a dull gray cast to them.

  Except they teemed with life. Scores of men and wagons, like monstrous insects of the Indies themselves, filed in and out of the compound, bringing goods to and from the East India docks at the river. The air was full of grunts and cries and orders shouted, the squeak of wheels, the creaking of wagon wood. Smoke puffed out of the warehouses’ chimneys, and from not too far away I heard the clang of a blacksmith, at work, no doubt, on some poorly abused wagon component.

  And then, of course, there were the guards. I distinguished them from the laborers because they carried nothing, they hurried nowhere. They merely strolled around the grounds, looking at once suspicious and bored. Occasionally one would stop a wagon and examine the contents. I observed one fellow demand to see a manifest of some sort, but from the way he held it, I divined at once that he could not read.

  Ellershaw led me to one of the largest of the structures, situated in the middle of the yard and facing the open gate. The wagons of goods went around toward the back of the house, where I presumed I would find some sort of dry dock for the loading and off-loading of cargo. The front maintained the illusion of a house. When I walked in, however, the illusion shattered at once. The interior of the house had been gutted but for the supporting walls required to keep the second story from crashing down on the first. Here I found a vast expanse of crates and barrels and boxes, not unlike my uncle’s warehouse of woolens and wines. And here, as in the days before Mr. Cobb wielded his malicious influence, the space was bustling with activity and energy.

  “Move your arses, then,” a man shouted behind us, and divided Mr. Ellershaw and myself as he walked between us carrying a pile of boxes that rose three or four head lengths above the top of his hat. If he noticed to whom he spoke and felt regret, he offered no indication.

  “You there,” Ellershaw shouted at a portly fellow with heavily hooded eyes leaning against the wall, watching the proceedings lazily. “What’s your name, you slothful miscreant?”

  The man looked up as though the effort of doing so pained him. He was not yet old, but he was close, and he had the look of a fellow who’d spent his life in the service of something about which he cared nothing. “Carmichael, sir.”

  “Very well, Carmichael. Are you ’pon the watch?”

  “That I am, sir, and at your service.” He offered a hesitant bow, clearly understanding that he spoke to someone important. “I am at your service, sir, and one of the watchmen too, as your worship observed himself.”

  “Yes, yes, that’s fine. Now gather your fellows here, I wish to address them.”

  “My fellows?” he asked. “Begging your worship’s pardon, your worship, but I’m not aware in any wise of your meaning.”

  “My meaning,” Ellershaw said, “is that you will gather your fellows—the other watchmen. Go and gather them. I wish them gathered.”

  “As regards your worship’s meaning,” the guard answered, “I understood as much as that. But as regards to the how of your worship’s meaning, I am less certain. How is it that I am to gather my fellows?”
/>   “How the devil am I to know? How do you usually do it?”

  “Begging your worship’s pardon, but I don’t, nor does no one. There ain’t no method to do so of which I’m aware.”

  “Mr. Carmichael, do you mean to say,” I inquired, “that you have no means of gathering about you the various guardians of the grounds?”

  “It is as your other worship says,” he informed me.

  “How are new orders conveyed and how is new information disseminated?” I said, pursuing the matter.

  “One fellow tells another, is how it’s always been done.”

  “This is done very poorly,” I said to Mr. Ellershaw, with an air of gravity, taking upon me the full role demanded by Cobb. “Very poorly indeed, for this lack of organization is most disastrous. You must go about the grounds and shout,” I told Carmichael, “ordering such guards as you can find to gather here. Tell them, if they ask, that Mr. Ellershaw of the Court of Committees demands it.”

  Carmichael bowed his ungainly form nearly to the ground and scurried out. While we waited, Mr. Ellershaw praised me for my masterful handling of the low fellow and then begged me to amuse him with some stories from my time in the ring. I did so, and after perhaps a quarter hour, there were a sufficient number of men gathered about us for Mr. Ellershaw to proceed.

  I counted some two dozen guards. “How many are there employed at this time? How many are missing?” I asked him.

  “I have no idea.”

  I then put the question to the gathered group, but they were as confused as Mr. Ellershaw.

  Ellershaw turned to the men. “Fellows,” he shouted, “you have acquitted yourselves poorly, for something of mine has gone missing, and I shan’t tolerate it. I have therefore decided to put in charge of you one man, who shall organize your comings and goings and duties. You shan’t laze about further on Company time, I promise you, for I have employed as your overseer the famous pugilist Benjamin Weaver, who shall tolerate none of your knavery I give him to you now.”

  A murmur arose among the men, and I observed that they spoke confusedly to one another. My initial impression was that they had no notion of the idea of an overseer. I soon saw, however, that I was mistaken.

  “Begging your worships’ pardons,” Carmichael said, stepping forward hesitantly, “but perhaps you don’t know that we already have one of them.”

  Ellershaw stared blankly at the gathered company, and then, as if in answer to a question he dare not ask, a figure pushed its way forward. And what a figure he was. Here was a man of well over six feet in height, of enormous stature and commanding presence. He was dark, almost as dark as an African, but dressed as a working Englishman would dress in such weather, in rough woolens, a heavy coat, and a cravat about his neck. His face was of the cruelest sort, with a large flat nose and small eyes and a long, sneering mouth, but what made it most distressing were the scars that crossed his flesh as though he had been whipped in the face. His cheeks, across his eyes, even his upper lip, bore the deep craters and crevices of some unknown conflict. Upon the street, I might have wondered at the land of his origin, but here, in this place, there could be no mistaking it. He was an East Indian.

  “What this?” he demanded, as he pushed himself forward. “Warehouse overseer? I warehouse overseer.”

  “And who the devil are you?” Ellershaw asked. “Why, you look like the devil for all that.”

  “I Aadil. I warehouse overseer.” He grunted.

  “That’s Aadil,” Carmichael chimed in. “He’s the warehouse overseer that we already got. What do we need another one for?”

  “A warehouse overseer?” Ellershaw bellowed. “No such thing.”

  “I warehouse overseer,” Aadil responded, now smacking a massive hand against a massive chest. “It me. All men here agree me overseer.”

  “How come I never heard of this?” Ellershaw demanded. A good question, particularly since he governed the subcommittee on the warehouses.

  No one had an answer for his unanswerable inquiry, which Ellershaw took as some sort of victory. “There it is, then,” he said. “You.” He jabbed a finger at the East Indian. “You’ve done a poor job, so I’m demoting you. You are now one of the guards. Weaver here is the new overseer.”

  Aadil glared at the two of us but said nothing, accepting loss of status with what I regarded as Oriental stoicism. At least I hoped it was that, for the fellow looked angry—enraged, even—and I should hate to have to manage affairs with a wrathful barbarian under my command.

  “Now that we’ve resolved this business,” Ellershaw said to me, “perhaps it would be best for you to speak a few words to your men.”

  I turned to the gathered crowd, possessing no notion of what to say. I had not known to prepare any oratory, but the situation provided me with little choice but to make the best of it. “Men,” I said, “there have been mistakes in the past, that much is true. But you have been given a difficult duty and you have been hampered by a lack of organization, and that shall plague you no longer. I am here not to torment you but to make your duties easier and more clearly understood. I hope to have more information for you shortly, and until that time I trust you will acquit yourselves as best you can.” Having nothing more to say, I took a step backward.

  Mr. Ellershaw, it would seem, had no better idea than I of what to do, and we stood in awkward silence for a long moment. Then one of the men leaned to his left and whispered something in Carmichael’s ear, and that worthy let out a too loud and too shrill titter.

  Ellershaw turned red at once and pointed his walking stick at the laughing man. “You there,” he boomed. “Step forward.”

  He did. “I am sorry, your worship,” Carmichael said, with a nervous stammer that seemed to suggest he knew he had crossed a line. “I meant no harm or nothing like it.”

  “Your meaning is your own, I can’t speak to it,” Ellershaw said. “Your behavior, however, is another matter. To demonstrate that our affairs shall be far more orderly under Mr. Weaver’s guidance than under that black fellow’s, I believe it is best that this fellow receive a stout beating. It is just, and it shall provide Mr. Weaver with a fine opportunity to use his pugilistic skills once more.”

  I examined his face, hoping to find the unmistakable mask of humor. Instead, I saw only a hard determination. My agitation now ran high. How could I acquit myself to the satisfaction of Ellershaw—and so consequently my true master, Cobb—if I were to shirk from this cruel task? “That is, perhaps, excessive,” I ventured.

  “Nonsense,” Ellershaw told me. “I have had men under my command, and in India too. I know something of maintaining order.” He called forth two men from the crowd to hold tight Mr. Carmichael, whose eyes were now big and moist with fear. Ellershaw ordered one of the men to hand me a thick pole of wood, some three feet long and four inches wide. “Strike this fellow about his buttocks,” he commanded me. “And feel no need to restrain. It is a sturdy piece of wood, and no mere human flesh will harm it.”

  I took the plank but made no motion with it. I merely stared dumbly.

  If Ellershaw saw my hesitation, he made no sign of it. Instead, he turned to the immobilized man. “You are a lucky fellow. You are about to be flogged by one of the great fighters of this kingdom. You may tell your grandchildren of this.” And then to me, “Go on, then.”

  “I think it overly cruel,” I said. “I have no wish to flog the fellow.”

  “But I wish you to,” Ellershaw returned. “If you wish to keep your post, I suggest you listen.”

  When a man is in disguise and acting as something he is not, he must inevitably face such moments as this, though not only with such dire consequences to another human being. If I were to act as myself and do what I thought right, I must refuse my charge and so jeopardize my standing with Mr. Cobb. To refrain from flogging the innocent would be to risk my uncle and my friend. On the other hand, I could not in good conscience beat a fellow with a heavy stick just to placate Ellershaw’s thirst for thrashed but
tocks.

  I struggled in my mind to come to a solution, but came up instead only with a justification. I was disguised, it is true, but as myself, and I like to believe that those who knew me would think me unwilling to beat someone who had done me no harm. Mr. Ellershaw had hired Benjamin Weaver, and he could not fault me for acting as myself. If I were to lose my place, I could explain to Cobb that I wished only to act as myself, thinking the order something of a test. I hoped that would be enough to preserve my friends from harm.

  I handed Ellershaw the stick. “I think a beating unnecessary,” I said. “I won’t do it.”

  “You risk your situation with us,” he informed me.

  I shook my head. “It is a risk I am prepared to take.”

  Ellershaw glowered at me. I thought for a moment that he would beat the fellow himself, but instead he tossed the wooden plank to the ground and made a wild gesture with his hand. “Let the wretch go,” he told the watchmen holding Carmichael.

  A cheer of joy rose from the men, and I heard my name called out approvingly as well. Ellershaw frowned at me and at them. “I beg you await me outside, by the front of this house,” he said, “where I trust you will offer an explanation for this mutiny.”

  I bowed and took my leave among the men’s huzzahs, for they appeared to have come to love me for my act of defiance. Only the East Indian, Aadil, hung back, glowering at me with foreign menace. I dreaded finding Ellershaw once more, for I felt certain he would dismiss me, and I would be forced to explain these events to Cobb. I was quite mistaken, however, for the Company man met me with a large grin and clapped me on the shoulder.

  “Finely done,” he said. “The men now love you, and they shall follow you as you wish.”

  I remained speechless for a moment. “I don’t understand. Do you mean to say you desired that I refuse to flog the fellow? I wish you had made your pleasure better known, for I believed I had openly defied you.”

  “Oh, as to that, you did defy me. I had no desire that you refuse, but the end result is excellent, and I shan’t make a fuss of it. Come then, back to my office. There is something of great importance to discuss.”