by David Liss
After perhaps three-quarters of an hour, I noticed my uncle’s clerk, Mr. Sarmento, among a group of men I did not recognize, vigorously engaging in their business. A series of documents lay upon a table, and several of the men were reading over these papers. This ritual continued for some time, and then the men all departed on seemingly amicable terms.
Sarmento had in no way indicated that he had seen me, yet when he was done with his business, he folded up his papers and walked purposefully over to my table.
“Shall I join you, Mr. Weaver?” he asked in a tone as blank and inscrutable as his face. I could find nowhere any trace of the puppy who had bounded after Mr. Adelman at my uncle’s house. Here I only saw the grim visage of a man who found life but a series of greater and lesser tensions.
“I should be delighted,” I said with a politeness that hung in the air like a foul odor.
“I cannot imagine what business brings you to this coffeehouse,” he said absently. “Are you thinking of involving yourself in the funds?”
“Yes,” I said dryly. “I believe I shall pursue a life as a licensed broker upon the ’Change.”
“You are mocking me, but you have still not answered my question.”
I took a sip of coffee. “What do you think I am doing here, Mr. Sarmento?”
He appeared astonished at this question. “I would not think you so bold as to speak of it openly. I never presume to judge Mr. Lienzo’s business, but I should hope for his sake that you would be subtle. You still recall, I hope, what your family is.”
Sarmento was hard to read, but he had the look of satisfaction that comes with having pieced together a complex puzzle. “What do you know of the matter?” I asked gently. I thought perhaps I could mislead him into telling me—I do not know what. I only knew that I did not trust him nor he me, and that struck me as reason enough to push onward.
“I assure you I know enough. Perhaps more than I ought.”
“I should very much like to know more than I ought,” I said with great calm.
Sarmento smiled in return. It was the crooked and misshapen smile of a man to whom mirth came unnaturally. “I do not believe you would. Do you know what I think, Mr. Weaver? I think you have ambitions that are well beyond your abilities.”
“I am grateful for your good opinion of me.” I bowed slightly.
“What? Must we conduct ourselves with the duplicitous politenesses of our English neighbors? That is not our way—all of this ‘you honor me’ and ‘I am your servant’ rubbish. We say what is on our minds.”
I rankled at the idea that I performed the Englishman, that I pretended to something I was not. That this man was a member of my race filled me with a kind of shame. It was a strange thing, for I had grown so used to thinking of myself as a Jew in a very particular way—listening to what the Britons around me had to say about Jews, wondering how I should feel about their words. But here was something else; over the last decade I had little experience of thinking of myself as a Jew in relation to other Jews. Now Sarmento made me feel something else—a kind of strange defensiveness, as though I were a member of a club, and I wished to see him cast out.
“Of what do you wish to speak, Mr. Sarmento?” I asked at last.
“Tell me about your conversation in Mr. Adelman’s carriage the other night.”
I pressed my hands together so as to appear a man deep in thought. In fact, I was deep in thought, but I wished to appear thinking thoughts of cleverness, not of confusion. “First, sir, you speak of my business with Mr. Lienzo, and now you inquire of my business with Mr. Adelman. Is there any business I have of which you do not wish to speak?”
“Business?” he asked in astonishment. “Is it business you conduct with Adelman?”
“I did not say that we had reached any agreement,” I explained. “Only that we spoke of business. But I would still very much like to know why you inquire so nearly into my affairs.”
“You misunderstand me,” Sarmento stammered, suddenly attempting to appear obsequious. “I am merely interested. Even concerned. Adelman may not be the man you think him to be, and I do not wish for you to suffer.”
“To suffer, you say? Why, did I not see you fawning all over Adelman the other night, and now you wish to warn me off him? I cannot claim to understand you.”
“I am a man who knows his way about ’Change Alley, sir, and you do not. You would be wise to remember this. But men such as Adelman and your uncle are men of business, trained in the arts of deception and flattery.”
I abruptly sat up straight, startling Mr. Sarmento. “What say you about my uncle?”
“Your uncle is not a man to be trifled with, sir. I hope you do not take him lightly. You perhaps see him as a kindly older gentleman, but I can assure you he is extremely ambitious, and it is an ambition I have come to admire and to emulate.”
“Explain yourself more clearly,” I demanded.
“Come, come. I know you are steeped now in your family business. Your uncle throws you a few coins, and you fetch them like a dog. But even you must surely see that it is strange that your uncle should have such a fond friendship with a man hated by your father.”
My uncle throw me coins? Adelman hated by my father? I wanted to know more, but I dared not expose myself by asking.
“Do not play with me,” I said at last. “And I should remind you to watch your tongue when you speak to a man who would not think twice about ripping it from your head.”
“I have no time for games, Weaver.” He mocked my name with his pronunciation. “I am also, I promise you, not a man to be trifled with. You are no longer in the ring, and you cannot beat men out of your way. If you wish to fight in ’Change Alley, sir, you will find you are outmatched by men such as myself, and here we use far more dangerous weapons than our fists.”
He looked at me in the most unanimated fashion, as though he shared a table with a piece of vegetation. There was nothing threatening about the gestures of his body, nor the look in his face. “I confess I don’t know how to understand you, sir,” I said finally. “You seem for all the world to wish to threaten me, and yet I know of no reason why you should be my enemy.”
Sarmento again offered me something not entirely unlike a smile. “If you have no wish to be my enemy, then I have no wish to threaten you.”
“What is it you fear of me?” I asked him. “That I shall assume your place in my uncle’s business? That I shall marry Miriam? That I shall challenge you to fight me? Let us be honest with each other.”
“I scorn your mockery,” he said—I cannot say angrily, for his tone changed not a whit. “You would be well advised to be cautious of me. And of your uncle—and his friends.”
Before I could respond, Sarmento had risen to his feet, shoved a short trader out of his way, and forced his way into the crowd. I was unsure of what he meant to imply about my uncle, but his warning me of Adelman troubled me more than anything else he had said, for Sarmento now wished to make insinuations of a man whom, at my uncle’s house, he had wished nothing more than to please.
Driven by curiosity, I arose from my table and made my way toward the exit, where I saw Sarmento just leaving. Waiting a moment, I followed suit, and watched him head north toward Cornhill. Once upon this busy street, it was easy for me to follow closely. He walked briskly, weaving in and out of the greedy mobs come to do business upon the ’Change.
He made his way west, to where Cornhill intersects with Threadneedle and Lombard streets, and here the thickness of the crowd began to thin out a little, so I hung back, took an instant to throw a penny at a beggar, and continued to follow at a safe distance.
By now Cornhill had turned into Poultry, and Sarmento made a right upon the much more sparsely populated Grocers Alley. I waited a moment and followed him into the alley leading to Grocers Hall, which I reminded myself was the home of the Bank of England. Sarmento veered off toward the massive building, which, like the Royal Exchange, stood as an architectural testament to the excesses
of the last century.
Sarmento hurried toward a coach standing before the Hall. That I might move closer, I approached a group of gentlemen nearby and, keeping one eye upon this coach, I affected a country accent and explained that I had lost my way and required the quickest route to London Bridge. Londoners may not be the most gregarious lot in the world, but there is little they love so much as to give directions, and now, while these five gentlemen vied with each other to provide me the shortest walk, the coach began to move slowly, making its way past me. Sarmento, I could see, engaged himself in deep conversation with a man with a wide face full of undersized features. The smallness of his nose and mouth and eyes was made even more absurd by an enormous black wig that piled almost to the ceiling of the coach and undulated down in thick ringlets. It was a face that I had seen but recently and one that I recognized with little difficulty. I cannot say I felt anything so much as utter confusion as I watched Sarmento drive off with Perceval Bloathwait.
EIGHTEEN
I COULD NO LONGER pretend to myself that my suspicions of Bloathwait were born of the vague ghost of a childhood terror. He had covered something on his desk, something he had not wanted me to see. That in itself might mean little—it might have been a reminder to himself about private finances or whores or a taste for young boys for all I knew. It would be very strange if a man like Bloathwait had nothing on his desk worthy of hiding from a potential enemy. But a connection with Sarmento, a man employed by my uncle, was an entirely different matter. Bloathwait maintained a secret connection to my family, and I felt I had to know what it was.
My youthful adventures as an outlaw had left me well prepared for this business of inquiring into murder, and I knew that it was time to call upon my skills as a housebreaker. I had long ago learned that there was no more useful tool for the illegal entering of a house than the interests of a silly maid, so I composed an enchanting little lettre d’amour, which I sent wrapped around a shilling. I had little doubt that Bessie the laundry lass would respond kindly to my missive, and when I received the answer I desired within the hour, I rubbed my hands together with excitement.
My next stop was Gilbert Street, where I was delighted to find that Elias had returned from his celebratory debauch, but he slept so soundly under the influence of a wine which still stained his teeth and tongue a bright purple that it took Mrs. Henry and me nearly half an hour to bring my friend to consciousness. He lay on his back, his bob-wig remaining affixed to his head, but pushed forward down his brow. His clothes were mainly still upon his body, but he had fallen asleep after removing one arm from his coat. His shoes and stockings were speckled with mud that he had smeared all over Mrs. Henry’s sheets, and his cravat, loosened but not untied, was strewn with brown meat drippings.
When he at last came to something like consciousness, Mrs. Henry left the room with performative disgust, and in the flickering of two inadequate candles I watched my friend open and close his mouth like a Bartholomew Fair puppet. “Gad, Weaver. What time is it?”
“Nearly nine o’clock, I believe.”
“If the house is not on fire, I shall have to be very angry with you,” he muttered, and pushed himself to sit upright. “What do you want? Can you not see that I am celebrating?”
“We have work to do,” I told him bluntly, hoping the force of my intent would help to awaken him. “I need to break into the house of Perceval Bloathwait, the Bank of England director.”
Elias rolled his head from side to side. “You’re mad.” He pushed himself to his feet and stumbled across the room to a basin filled with water and discreetly covered with a pretty piece of linen. He stripped himself of his coat and waistcoat and then removed the cloth from the basin and began splashing his face. Even in the dark I could not but notice what appeared to be grass stains across the rump of his breeches.
He turned to me, his face now glistening with water. “You wish to break into Bloathwait’s house? Good Lord, why?”
“Because I believe he’s hiding something.”
He shook his head. “Break into his house if you wish. I shan’t stop you. But I don’t know why you should wish me to go with you.”
“Because I’m gaining access by the good graces of a pretty little servant girl, and I shall need someone to keep her occupied while I search Bloathwait’s papers.”
I now had Elias’s attention. “How pretty?”
An hour later Elias had cleaned himself up, changed his clothes, fixed his wig, and demanded that I buy him a few dishes of coffee. We thus made our way to Kent’s, a favorite coffeehouse of Elias’s; it was filled with wits and poets and playwrights—none of whom had a farthing about them. I should think the serving girls must have had the very devil of a time getting this band of self-inflated rogues to pay their reckonings, but the coffeehouse, for all the poverty of its patrons, appeared to thrive. On this particular night, nearly every table was full, and conversations buzzed all about us. The new theatrical season was upon every man’s lips, and I heard critiques of this play and that author and praises of the beauty of half-a-dozen actresses.
“Tell me again what you hope to gain from breaking into this man’s house.” Elias hesitantly raised his dish of coffee to his lips like a servant presenting a platter.
“He’s hiding something. He has more information than he’s willing to share, and I’ll wager that we can find what we need in his office, and probably upon his desk.”
“Even if there was something there when you went to see him, would he not have locked it away by now?”
I shook my head. “Bloathwait doesn’t strike me as the sort of man who would believe anyone might dare to violate his home.”
“I wish he were right,” Elias sighed. “You do realize that housebreaking is a hanging offense?”
“Only if we are there as thieves. If we are there to prey upon the virtue of a young girl, there’s not a man in England who would stand to see us charged, let alone convicted.”
Elias grinned at my ingenuity. “True enough.”
My friend began to look more alert, and though it was perhaps not the best time to seek his advice, I could not subdue the urge to ask of him what I hoped he would know. “What,” I began, “can you tell me of insurance?”
He raised but one eyebrow.
I pressed on. “Would a merchant ever send a ship upon a trading mission uninsured?”
“Not unless the merchant was a dunce,” he said. He left the why unasked.
“My cousin’s widow,” I explained hesitantly. “She had a fortune—not an insignificant one—when she was married, and my cousin invested in my uncle’s business. His ship, which represented much of the investment, was lost, and so, she presumes, was her portion. But if the ship was insured, then surely someone has that money.”
“An intrigue with a pretty widow!” Elias nearly shouted. He was now fully awake indeed. “Gad, Weaver, I should kill you for holding back this information. I must know all about her.”
“She lives in my uncle’s house,” I said, careful of how much ammunition I wished to provide for his raillery. “I believe she wishes to set forth on her own, but she has not much money.”
“A widow,” he mused. “I love a widow, Weaver. None of that niggardliness with their favors. No, widows are a generous race, and I applaud them.” He saw my displeasure and reined himself in. “It is a sad matter,” he observed.
“I would like to help her somehow.”
“If she’s pretty, I’ll help her soundly!” he exclaimed, but then soon recovered himself. “Yes, well, do you suspect your uncle of withholding what is rightly hers?”
“I do not think he has taken anything not his by contract,” I said. “But it pains me to think that he keeps her a near-prisoner in his house by taking advantage of the laws of property.”
“Do you believe your uncle to be entirely trustworthy?” he asked.
I had no answer, not even for myself. Instead I checked my watch and announced that it was time for us to go. I
paid our reckoning and procured a hackney, which took us a few blocks from Bloathwait’s house. From there we walked to Cavendish Square, which in the thick of night was dark and quiet and tomblike. Elias and I quietly slipped around to the servants’ entrance and, according to plan, met Bessie at eleven o’clock. She stared at Elias with some confusion (while he stared at her with some delight), but let us in just the same.
“All’s asleep,” she said quietly. “What’s this gentleman for?”
“Bessie,” I whispered, “you’re a charming lass, and your beauty is not lost on me, but I am here to look at Mr. Bloathwait’s study. I don’t want to take anything, just to look about. If you’d like, you can follow us and raise the alarm if we do anything you don’t like.”
“Mr. Bloathwait’s study?” Her voice became unnervingly shrill.
“Here’s a half crown for you,” I said, slipping a coin into her hand. “There will be another when we’re done if you agree to look the other way.”
She eyed the coin in her hand, her hurt feelings squeezed out by the money’s heft. “All right,” she said slowly. “But I don’t want nothing to do with you. You go on your way, and if they catch you, I won’t say I ever saw you here.”
It wasn’t quite what I had wanted, but it would have to do. So I told her that if we had to depart in a hurry, I’d send her the other half crown in the morning. The bargain thus struck, we made our way to the study.
This room, which had been dark even during the daytime, took upon itself a new feeling of evil now, as we cast shadows within the narrow space of the chamber, which seemed to wrap about us like an enormous coffin. I moved toward the desk, lighting a few candles along the way, but the dim light of too-few flames created a feeling of more rather than less menace.
