A Conspiracy of Paper (26 page)

A little farther down the page he had written “Rochester,” and then, under that, “S. S. Co. Contact—Virgil Cowper.”

I called Elias over and showed it to him.

“Could these be notes that he took after your meeting?” he asked.

“I never mentioned Rochester to him,” I said. “And I have no idea who Virgil Cowper is, so even if these are notes he took later, it shows that he knows something he’s not telling me.”

“But these could just be his speculations. They don’t prove anything.”

“True enough, but at least we have a name we didn’t have before. Virgil Cowper. I suspect he’s someone at the South Sea Company, and he may be able to tell us something.”

I took out a piece of paper and wrote down the name, and then continued looking through the piles. Elias by now had grown bored, and began looking through Bloathwait’s bound notes upon the bookshelves, but all he found there were incomprehensible pages of names and numbers and dates.

We worked together in silence once more, both of us exhilarated by the find. We were not wasting our time. I do not believe, however, that Elias was capable of periods of prolonged silence.

“You never answered my question,” he said at last. “Would you marry this widow if she would have you?”

Although Elias sought mostly to rail at me, there was something else in his voice—a kind of sadness, and a kind of excitement, too, as though he were on the brink of something wonderful and altering.

“She would never have me,” I said at last. “So there is no answering the question.”

“I think you have answered it,” he said gently.

I escaped further probing by discovering a draft of a letter, made out to a name I could not decipher. I should have overlooked it completely, but a name in the middle of the page caught my eye. “Sarmento proves himself to be an idiot, but more on that later.” It was the only mention of my uncle’s man that I could find. The reference made me smile, and for some reason it gave me a curious pleasure to know that he and I agreed on Sarmento’s character.

My reflection was halted by the sound of footsteps coming down the hall. We both quickly rushed to replace all the papers and blow out candles. But our frenzy halted when we saw Bessie come dashing through the door, her skirt lifted to aid her running.

“Mr. Bloathwait’s awake,” she breathed. “His gout roused him. I’m to be fixing him a dish of chocolate, and then he aims to come down. So give me my half crown, and then off with you.”

I slipped her the coin as Elias finished dousing the lights. I could only hope that enough time elapsed before Bloathwait made his way in here that whoever lit them again would not notice the wax to be soft and warm.

Bessie quietly led us through the maze of hallways to the servants’ entrance. “Don’t be coming back here,” she said to me, “unless you have something else on your mind. I’ve no time for the intrigues of you men of business. I don’t much care for such things.”

She curtsied and closed the door, and Elias and I scrambled into the street. It was late, and I took out my pistol so that anyone passing by would think twice before setting upon us.

“Was it a successful venture?” Elias asked.

“I think so,” I said. “We know that Bloathwait has some knowledge of the South Sea forgeries, and that he had some kind of idea about my father in relation to it. And we have this name, this Virgil Cowper. I tell you, Elias, I have a good feeling about tonight. I think the information we’ve taken of Bloathwait will prove most useful to us.”

I could not tell if Elias disagreed or merely wished to return to his room and sleep.

NINETEEN

I
AIMED TO MAKE
my way to South Sea House the next afternoon, but I first wished to visit my uncle and report to him of my adventures with Bloathwait. I was not yet certain that I wanted to tell him what I had seen of Sarmento, but I grew tired of playing these cat-and-mouse games. For the nonce I would inform him that the Bank of England director had made it clear that he had some interest in the inquiry.

I confess that my desire to meet with my uncle was in some way augmented by a desire to see Miriam once again. I wondered how the matter of the twenty-five pounds she borrowed of me would sit between us. A loan of necessity such as this could produce a discomfort, and I was determined to do all in power to keep such a thing from happening.

The irony of my interest in Miriam amused me; had I known more of Aaron’s pretty widow, perhaps I would have contemplated a reconciliation long before. And yet, even as I sang a little drinking ditty to myself as I walked, I wondered about my intentions. Despite the world’s opinion of widows, I could not think myself such a cad as to attempt to encroach upon the virtue of a woman who was very nearly a relation, and living under the protection of my uncle, too. Yet what could a man such as myself offer? I who scraped together, at the very most, a few hundred pounds each year, had nothing for Miriam.

As I approached my uncle’s house, coming on to Berry Street from Grey Hound Alley, I was shocked out of my reverie by an ungainly beggar man, who materialized with jarring suddenness. He was a Tudesco Jew—as we Iberian Jews called our coreligionists from Eastern Europe—perhaps of middle years, though he looked ageless in that way of men who are undernourished and oppressed with labors and hardships. My readers may not even realize that there are different categories of Jews, but we separate ourselves based on our culture of origin. Here in England, those of us of Iberian descent were the first to return in the last century and until recently outnumbered our Tudesco cousins. Because of the opportunities our exiled forebears found among the Dutch, most Jewish businessmen and brokers in England are Iberian. The Tudescos are frequently persecuted and harassed in their native lands, and when they come here they find themselves without skills or trades, and thus the largest number of beggars and old-clothes men about the streets are of Eastern European origin. These distinctions are not etched in stone, though, for there are rich Tudescos, such as Adelman, and there is no shortage of poor among the Iberian Jews.

I should like to say that I formed no prejudice against the Tudescos simply because I thought their appearance and language strange, but the truth is that I found such men as this peddler an embarrassment—I believed them to cast our people in a shockingly bad light, and I felt ashamed of their poverty and ignorance and helplessness. This man’s bones jutted out of his parchmentlike skin, and his black, foreign garments hung upon him as though he had simply draped bedclothes across his body. He wore his beard long, in the fashion of his countrymen, and a conspicuous skullcap spread over his head, with stringy locks creeping from beneath. As he stood there, a foolish smile upon his face, asking me in poor English if I wished to purchase a penknife or a pencil or a shoelace, I was overcome with a desire, intense and surprising, to strike him down, to destroy him, to make him disappear. I believed at that moment that it was these men, whose looks and manners were repulsive to Englishmen, who were responsible for the difficulties other Jews suffered in England. Were it not for this buffoon, who gave the English something to gawk at, I would not have been so humiliated in Sir Owen’s club. Indeed, I should not find so many obstacles in my path that block me from learning what had happened to my father. But even this was a lie, I told myself, for I knew that the truth was that this peddler did not make the English hate us—he merely gave their hatred a focus. He was an outcast, he was strange to look at, his speech abused the language, and he could never blend into London society—not even as a foreigner blends in. This man made me hate myself for what I was, and made me wish to strike out at him. I understood this passion for what it was; I knew that I hated him for reasons that related not at all to him, so I hurried off, hoping to make him and the feelings he engendered in me fade away.

Yet as I rushed, I heard him call to me. “Mister!” he shouted. “I know who you are.”

This claim only fueled my anger, for what could I, the son of one of London’s prominent Jewish families—and this was a title that I rarely claimed—have to do with a beggar such as he? I clenched my fists and turned to face him.

“I know you,” he said again, pointing at me. “You.” He shook his head, unable to summon the words. “You this, yes?” He balled his hands into fists and brought them up level to his nose before he pantomimed some quick jabs. “You the great man, the Lion of Judah, yes?” He took a few steps forward and nodded vigorously, his beard swinging back and forth like a crazed and hairy pendulum. He barked a little laugh, as though his ignorance of the English tongue suddenly amused him. Then, placing one of his hands upon his heart, he reached down to his tray of trinkets and held something forth. “Please,” he said. “From me.”

As he held out an hourglass in the palm of his bony hand, I understood that, while I saw him as what I hated about myself, he saw me as something in which he could take pride. It is a terrible thing to come to so humbling a realization, for in an instant a man sees himself as petty and illiberal and weak. And so I took the hourglass from him and dropped a shilling upon his tray, rushing away as I did so. I knew a shilling to be an enormous amount of money to the Tudesco, but he chased after me, holding the coin. “No, no, no,” he repeated nearly endlessly. “You take from me. Please.”

I turned to face him. I saw that one hand was once again pressed to his heart, the other held out the coin. “Please,” he said again.

I took the coin from his hand and then dropped it in his tray. Before he could react I put a hand to my own heart. “Please.”

We exchanged brief nods, expressing a communion I did not entirely understand, and then I hurried off in the direction of King Street.

I walked quickly, hoping to remove the encounter with the peddler from my mind, and when my uncle’s house came in sight, I nearly trotted. The servant Isaac opened the door only after I had knocked several times, and even then he attempted to block my entrance by maneuvering his withered frame before me. “Mr. Lienzo is not in,” he said sharply. “He is at the warehouse. You can see him there.”

He sounded clipped, perhaps a bit frightened. “Is something wrong, Isaac?”

“No,” he said rapidly. “But your uncle is not here.”

He attempted to close the door, but I pushed against it. “Is Mrs. Miriam about?”

Isaac’s face changed dramatically upon the mention of her name, and on an impulse I forced my way past him and into the foyer, from where I could hear voices, raised as if shouting. One of them was clearly Miriam’s.

“What happens in there?”

“Mrs. Miriam, she is having an argument,” he said, as though offering precisely the information I needed to ease my confusion.

“With whom?” I demanded. But at that very moment the withdrawing-room door opened and Noah Sarmento emerged, his face bearing a scowl something grimmer than his usual. He paused for a moment, visibly astonished to see the two of us standing in close proximity to their quarrel.

“What do you want, Weaver?” he asked me, as if I had just barged into his own home.

“This is where my family lives,” I said with what I admit was a bellicose inflection.

“And for a sufficient quantity of silver, you now care about your family,” he snapped. He grabbed his hat from Isaac, who had produced it without my notice, and stepped out of the already open door. Isaac closed it as Miriam emerged from the withdrawing room. She opened her mouth to speak to Isaac, but stopped upon seeing me.

I can only presume that she found some irony in my presence there, for she smiled slightly to herself. “Good afternoon, Cousin,” she said. “Would you care for some tea?”

I told her I would enjoy it very much, and we retreated into the withdrawing room, where we waited for the maid to bring us the tea things.

Miriam was still heated from her argument with Sarmento, and her olive skin had enough of the red mixed in to make her eyes glow like emeralds. On this day she wore a particularly striking shade of royal blue, which I speculated was a favorite color with her.

She was disordered, I could see that quite clearly, but she tried hard to mask her mood with smiles and pleasantries. After a few moments of asking me about the weather and how I had entertained myself since last we met, she produced a dazzling Chinese fan and began to wave it at herself somewhat violently.

“Well,” I breathed. At least, I thought, the difficulties with Sarmento made the matter of the money I’d lent seem less pressing. I had thought to engage her in idle chatter for a while, but I soon decided I should get nowhere with a woman like Miriam if I pretended to a frivolousness I surely did not possess. “Is Mr. Sarmento causing you any difficulties with which I can assist you?”

She set aside her fan. “Yes,” Miriam said. “I should like you to beat him soundly.”

“Do you mean at cards? Billiards, perhaps?”

We might have been discussing the opera for all her face revealed. “I would prefer cudgels.”

“I think Mr. Sarmento would hold his own nicely in a battle,” I said absently.

“Not against you, surely.”

I stiffened a bit at this. Miriam flirted with me, quite obviously so. She had not failed to observe that I found her attractive, and I thought to myself that I would be wise to keep my wits about me. I could not allow myself to forget that she had been in an argument that her servant had been at pains to conceal from me. Whatever I was to this family, I was not yet trusted. “No,” I said, looking about the room. “Not against me. And against you, Miriam, he fared poorly as well. You have quite knocked him out of the ring.”

“I hope I have done so permanently,” she said acidly.

The maid wheeled in the tea things, and Miriam sent her off with a wave of her hand. In that time I chose to speak bluntly to Miriam, for I had nothing to lose by doing so. “Will you tell me about your quarrel with Mr. Sarmento?” I asked, as she poured me a dish of tea.

She smiled. “Among the English, it is considered impolite to be so blunt.”

“I have lived among them, but I do not observe all of their customs.”

“So I see,” she said, handing me my drink. I had not been quick enough to ask Miriam not to put sugar in my dish, so I accepted the sweetened mixture.

“Mr. Sarmento came to request my permission to speak to Mr. Lienzo for my hand,” she continued. “It was a shockingly awkward thing, I can assure you, and I am unaccustomed to being confronted so boldly. Like you, Mr. Sarmento might better learn the English customs.”

“What happened?” I kept my voice quiet, casual, disinterested.

“Mr. Sarmento said that he had a mind to speak to Mr. Lienzo and that he wished to inform me in advance. I told him that I had no knowledge of any business he might have with Mr. Lienzo. He accused me of being overly mannered, and said that I knew well what business he had. Seeing that I grew unacceptably warm, I corrected myself by saying he had no business that could possibly interest me. He became quite angry and said that it was foolish of me not to seek to marry him. Some other words were exchanged along the same topic—some rather loud words, I believe. Then he left, which you saw.”

“Surely my uncle will not condone his behavior. Will you tell him?”

She was silent for a moment. “I do not think so. Sarmento has a promising future in the trade, you know, and my father-in-law quite depends upon him. I think my feelings toward him were made entirely clear, and so long as he bothers me no further, I see no reason to be petty.”

“You are perhaps more generous than I would advise, but I admire your spirit,” I told her. I sipped my sweet tea and wished it were something stronger. “Do you trust Mr. Sarmento? What I mean to say is, he works for my uncle, but he seems to have his own dealings upon the Exchange.”

She set down her cup of tea and stared at me. “What do you know of his dealings?” Her face had grown stiff and inanimate.

“I have been spending a great deal of time in ’Change Alley, and I have seen him there, conducting affairs of which I know nothing.”

Miriam smiled in a way that unnerved me. “Your uncle employs Mr. Sarmento, he does not own him. It is no uncommon thing for a man in Mr. Sarmento’s position to pursue his own affairs as he has the opportunity.”

“Why did Isaac wish to keep this quarrel from my ears?” I asked. I think I had been wondering this in my mind, and I had not meant to speak it.

If the question surprised Miriam, she answered with composure. “Isaac is a good servant. He does not wish to allow family business to become public. A quarrel in a private room between two unmarried people can be interpreted in many ways, especially by malicious tongues.”

“True enough,” I agreed with some embarrassment, stinging a bit from Miriam’s exclusion of her wayward cousin from the family business.

She said nothing, and I shifted uncomfortably in the silence. I believe Miriam took some small pleasure at having me upon the rack, and smiled sweetly at me for some minutes before speaking. “Have you come on a social call, or do you have business with Mr. Lienzo?”

For reasons I cannot explain, this question put me at my ease. I settled comfortably into my chair. “Rather a bit of both, I think.”

“I hope more the former than the latter,” she said, smiling. “And if you have come to be sociable, then perhaps you would like to take a walk with me,” she suggested. “I long to examine some of the goods at the market, and I would welcome your company.”

I could hardly refuse the offer, so I silently determined to postpone my visit to South Sea House until the next morning. Miriam disappeared to ready herself, and after perhaps a quarter of an hour she reentered the room with an unexpected slowness, as though she were a child called forth for punishment. She held in her hand an envelope.