Rotten at the Heart

by Bartholomew Daniels

  Death is the real stuff of this world and the next, and it is only our vanity that makes us suppose other.

  The morning next, I rose early to make my return to London, finding no more comfort in Stratford. I knew I would likely never again return here as to a home, but instead as an unwelcome landlord. My father, in the habit of the old – knowing, I suppose, he would soon have what fill of oblivion he may require – rose early to horde the portion of wakefulness his life still offered. And so, while I had meant to steal away unnoticed, having taken my leave of family the night past and my visit having left me foul in my temper, he met me in my leaving.

  “Will, I must say true that I do fear for thee.”

  “Life is a fearful business, Father, but I suspect myself no more prey to its insults than another. And so how do you fear?”

  “For your soul, Will. I do not inquire into your marriage bed, as it is not my affair. But I have seen the pamphlet that I know did greatly concern your Anne, and did overhear those artful remarks by which thee hast deflected its charges away from the honour of our name. Were I a better father and stern, I would have thee swear to me the honesty of your objections. But I will instead pretend to their truthfulness and thus make myself in conscience party to that lie that I will in consciousness pretend I do not know.”

  “As you ask no question, I will offer no answer.”

  He sighed, and sank into a chair. “I will admit I am made shallow happy by the favour thou hast secured us – the recent arms, the increasing comfort of this house. But, Will, it is our godliness only that will serve us beyond this life; and we have recent reminder that this life is uncertain and, even in its longest, measured short against eternity. In those ways I could serve example as a good Christian, I have. But I do wonder whether thou hast even any little care toward God’s opinion, or toward his church, and so I do fear that the grave, which I do true believe holds thy son in the warm embrace of God’s favour, will hold thee other. And as you are my son and as I do love thee, this grieves me.”

  Though I think myself a respectful son, and while my usual temperament toward any authority is cautious – as the prideful satisfaction of rebellion carries in its own commission the risk of its punishment – the experiences of the days just recent past and the sense of death now as my constant companion had rubbed my heart raw and easy promptedto anger.

  “Our godliness, sir? How godly? In your example? To cling some, but in private, to one religion, while trying also to pay sufficient service to another so as to preserve such station that you did all but squander in your vain attempt to serve two masters? As you are not martyr, you have failed in the former. As you are still hypocrite but poor at the art, you have failed in the latter. And as your failing did invite those attentions that have also eroded such human estates to which you did aspire, then you also have failed us all. No, then I am not godly, as I will ready admit that I will kneel to whatever object of worship the Crown may choose to present, it being in my philosophy as valid as any former or as any later and as likely that whatever god may bear witness to our affairs is either the same amused or the same offended by either effort.

  “Or perhaps you mean more full godly, as was Mary, our late Queen, who in her thirst to satisfy your god’s honour did send so many to burn or hang or otherwise suffer dear solely for the service of their conscience. Or godly perhaps as our new Puritan brothers? So certain in their imagining of God’s will that they piss on those few pleasures he doth grant us and think that in abusing his gifts they serve his glory? No, sir. I claim myself in no way godly. I know my own sins, and I do suffer them complete, but I have met no man yet not fully poxed with sin. Even could I make my own sins pure, I would not be godly – for it would seem to require I choose one god or another by which to define it, and then grow some appetite for cruelty, as any god of my choosing would need that I abuse any man who follows some other.

  “My sins are of my appetites, and my selfishness and my faithless holding of others hearts, and as such are vile enough. But to be godly would require that I do purposeful evil and then pretend it good. That I constantly seek chance to stand judge of my fellows and then do them grievous ill in service of an imagined master. In the shadow of such sins that I already have so careless committed I am sufficient darkened. I have no stomach for more, and so will not be godly.”

  And I left, closing the door hard behind me, sorry already for my harsh words to a man whose path in life was marked by more charity and care to his fellows than I could claim, and whose hypocrisies were those only of one trying to serve both flesh and conscience in a world that made one pay dear for either attempt. And so I could now add to my swelling ledger the sin of dishonouring a father who had faithfully executed that office toward me as well as his conscience and human limitations allowed. Who had served me far better than I could claim to have served my own son. Who had, in fact, served father to my own son more than had I, a son who had died alone denied the only blessing he had ever sought from me, my company.

  CHAPTER 17

  “It is a scheme of some considerable imaging,” said Webb, having various maps and documents already displayed on my arrival. I was grateful to have word he had news, as my absence seemed to be trying Carey’s patience, and it would ease my circumstances to have some sop for his growling appetite.

  “The members of the Somerset Company include Carey’s younger brother,” Webb continued, “and while he holds the second largest stake, he is by some distance the least notable shareholder. Cecil, the Baron Burleigh, who is the Queen’s good friend and counsellor, holds the largest stake, with some shares held by other members of the Privy Council and leading members in the Worshipful Company of Mercers. And since the Mercers control the Bourse, at which shares of the Company would be traded, their involvement is most convenient.

  “I will have you know the Company’s members have gone to some pains to protect their secrecy. Their shares are held by other companies, the shares of which are held by yet other companies, so that to tease out the actual ownership of Somerset did much try my art and did, in some instances, require passing coin to those with access to records that are beyond my view. And even so, I can call this account only my best reckoning and not for certain true.”

  “When men wish their congress secret it is oft in shame of their motives,” I said.

  Webb nodded. “Just so. Now, of note, if you consider this ledger, you will see that all members of the Company gained their shares by purchase, save Carey the younger. His stake was secured in exchange for title to his considerable holdings in Shoreditch, which he gained at his father’s death.”

  “And had he not inherited such properties, then he could not have joined the Company?”

  “Had he not inherited such properties, there likely would be no Company,” Webb said. “Let me explain further. The younger Carey’s properties went into the company as payment for his shares, but are not held by the company. Rather, the company exchanged those properties for cash, and then broke those properties into various parcels that were distributed out to the shareholders as a kind of dividend – to all shareholders save Carey, as, he, having contributed the properties, could not expect also to benefit from their conversion.”

  “This seems odd,” I said. “Is not the purpose of this company to consolidate mercantile properties in Shoreditch, the company being in essence a land venture? Why buy and hold titles to some properties within the Company, but then take such trouble to not hold others?”

  Webb nodded. “That struck me odd, too. Put aside the matter of Carey’s lands for a moment, and let us consider again the Company’s holdings. Your butcher’s account is largely accurate. Since early June, various agents have been buying leases or properties as he described so as to control almost all trade in Shoreditch and in that area of London nearest. And, while those leases and properties did all eventual end up in the Company, they were not bought by the Company, but instead by numerous other agents who would buy them first and the
n sell them immediate into Somerset’s holdings – but at some profit. Somerset’s attorneys then would approach the affected tenants to secure them for this new venture.”

  “But why use other agents to purchase these properties when this only served to increase their eventual cost for the Company?” I asked.

  “For one, so that each transaction would seem individual and not reveal the interest of the Company in the entire district. Were I advising a client and I were to learn that a single company had designs on all properties in some area, then I would tell my client to hold hard for a dear price. By using multiple agents, they avoid landholders gaining this knowledge. But I think this only a minor concern. By this model, these properties purchased, all in one area, are now seen in public records to have sold once to one party, and then again to a seeming second party, and each time at a higher price. This already is creating a stir among those with the wealth to speculate in lands.”

  “The appetites of greed being thus whetted, such buyers will pay yet a higher price, believing they are privy to some new trend, and that they will sell these holdings at some price yet higher still.”

  Webb again nodded. “Speculations are the current fever of the newly moneyed, as they see lands and goods and companies not as objects of some intrinsic value but simply as conduits through which to attract wealth. You have bought some lands around Stratford. How did you think on these lands before you made purchase?”

  I shrugged. “Their usual yield in crops and income in leases, so as to know what gain they may produce in compare to what price I will pay.”

  “And you think how such lands, once in your ownership, will profit your estate. But,” Webb held up a finger, “for these speculators, such issues mean naught, for the value of the land itself is the only crop. Which crop they fertilise with the avarice of others so that it grows tall in men’s minds. They then sell this imagined bounty to some other, who then must make this crop seem somehow taller still.”

  “But such trend can only hold so long as profitable sales continue.”

  Heaton held up a sheet that detailed the inventory of properties that the players to this scheme had amassed. “Somerset already has sold back lands it has purchased from its agents to other agents, again at a higher price – the scent of such actions already having pricked the noses of our new class of moneyed speculators, who now are so hungry for this perceived feast that they little question its cost. But, most peculiar, while Somerset offers this ravening crowd the varied morsels of those small properties within its company, its shareholders – who, through their truck with the younger Carey, now hold many larger lands surrounding the Company’s holdings – do not offer such larger parcels for sale. More peculiar still is the current traffic in Somerset’s shares. Aside from the younger Carey – whose ownership in Somerset is held plain in his own name – the Company’s more shadowy shareholders hold their claim behind the veil of other interests in other companies, which interests are now also being sold through the Bourse, and for staggering amounts. “

  From the gleam in Webb’s eye, I could see he had some larger and final mischief to reveal, but one he thought he might already have made clear. And so I pondered his map and ledgers a moment and then offered my guess.

  “The younger Carey has been played the fool,” I said. “Through the inducement to be member of their august company, he was tricked into handing over to his fellows those properties that he would have held as his own, those properties being much larger in area than those contained now within the Company itself. He was sold this same vision of some new district of stores and the Company’s monopoly on that district’s commerce, which vision now is also being whispered about as reason for profits in land in Shoreditch. But his fellow shareholders are selling the lands within its corporation to drive speculation in properties in the district, while holding the larger lands gained from Carey to sell at the last, highest price. Meanwhile, they also are selling their shares, so in the end, they will have profited twice from the same fictions, while Carey will be left landless and with shares in a company that is then worth nothing.”

  “Less than nothing,” Webb said, “for while Carey has contributed his own wealth to the enterprise, the other shareholders have paid for their interest with debts secured by and held in the name of this network of companies through which they make ownership. This debt is transferred, along with their shares, to the new owners while Carey’s fellows slink off, like rats from the sinking ship of commerce.”

  We paused for a moment, and a matter that had some puzzled me was now clear.

  “And thus the name,” I said.

  “Pardon?” asked Heaton.

  “To call the company Somerset – I did wonder after this, for it seemed likely to draw attention to this enterprise that those of its creation might wish to avoid. But this will end in scandal, with many investors feeling ill used. The only person they will find at which to aim their wrath will be the younger Carey, the name of his house serving to confirm his place as head of this scheme. But as he, too, will be much harmed, it will not seem he conducted purposeful mischief, but instead did wager too much in a game he too little understood. For him to claim other would mean to indict persons with the power and station to do him considerable ill, and on whose continued favour he will now be even more dependent, what few assets he was left for his own maintenance having been squandered. And, from your telling, I would suppose any proof to any claims against any other members of the Somerset Company would be much fogged in this maze of companies and loans and interests you have described, so that only the guilty, who built such maze, can find their way clear, any else having been sucked into its labyrinth to wander to no end.”

  Webb sat back in his chair and smiled. “You should have been a lawyer Will, as you have the talents in conspiracy that it oft requires.”

  “Invention of conspiracies is vital, too, to my own art,” I replied. “But mine are played out on stages, not in lives. I fear I do not have the appetite for the real dish.”

  Webb packed away the varied maps and documents that illustrated the scheme, leaving on the table only my company’s lease for the theatre. On seeing it, I made a wry smile.

  “I suppose it is a weakness of my craft,” I said, “that I did become so engrossed in your tale as to forget that business which first brought me here.”

  “On that, I do not yet have news, but I am to meet with Miller today. Methinks the mischief to which he has, unknowing, attached himself being so grave and the parties to it of such weight, it shall make it easy to settle matters to your liking.”

  I left Webb’s office and headed for Somerset, where I had further business.

  Shouldering my way through the thronged lanes, I thought on the difference in experience for Carey, and his station, and most others, for Somerset sat direct on the Thames, its walled lawns and gardens covering the long distance between the wings of the house and the river, and its stables and carriage houses behind. Stepping from its doors Carey would join either the artful peace of its gardens or the privacy of his coach, while I, stepping from even Webb’s rooms in this fine district of the city, found every sense assaulted immediate – the stench of the chamber pots emptied to the cobbles and the waste of the horses; the constant clatter of their hooves and the rumble of cart wheels along the stones; the babble of voices all in near shout to be heard at even close distance; a twilight of shade even at midday as the timbered stories added atop every building oft o’erleaned the streets to gain some few more feet of space. While men had through all history sought one another’s company so that even rustic tribes would make villages, in our pastoral heritage we allowed some space that a man could take a moment in contemplation, could enjoy some ease away from the press of his fellows. But London allowed no solitude, only a forced intimacy that seemed at times a kind of violence. It was the friction of that constant commerce that sparked the birth of many wonders, true, but one that also seemed to give rise to our plagues, to flame into
violence, and even to drive some to madness.

  I had much madness to consider. The late Lord Chamberlain had first fallen ill in May, and his condition had such declined by June that his death did seemed certain – and it was in June, it seemed, this Somerset Company scheme was hatched, accelerating upward as the late Carey’s health tended down. His seeming recovery, while news dear to those who loved him, would much injure the purse of this Somerset Company’s players, the younger Carey’s inheritance being key to their plot. This seemed motive enough for murder, plain. But by whose hand? That of the Baron’s son, or some other? And how to know the truth of that?

  CHAPTER 18

  “He was a fair master,” a chambermaid answered. It was as long an answer as I had managed from any of the late Lord Chamberlain’s attendants in near an hour. I suppose the habit of discussing any noble person of their care with any stranger, even at the direct behest of their current master, seemed fraught with much danger and little chance for reward.

  “I tell you all in sooth that you can speak plain and without fear. The late Baron’s son has commissioned that I write a clear remembrance of his father. And as every character has many sides, I would have known your honest thoughts and will thank you for them true, but share them exact to none. What source might serve for any line of my work will be for my mind alone.”

  “As she said, fair,” said the cook, “though stern as well if you failed in your offices. But he made your office known and made even occasional thanks when you performed it, which is more than I expect from some others in this house.”