A Spectacle of Corruption (11 page)

Once the drink had moistened his lips, he found himself ready to begin addressing the matter at hand. “Explain to me again why you will not flee.”

“Had I truly murdered Yate,” I said, “I would flee gladly, with all my heart. I would adopt the role of a fugitive. But I have not murdered anyone, and I won’t live the rest of my life as a renegado, afraid to enter the country that has always been my home, because someone has wished to see such a thing happen.”

“What someone has wished is to see you dead. While you live, you surely have defeated your enemies.”

“I cannot accept that. I must have justice. At the very least, I must understand why all of this has happened, and I will risk my life by remaining in London to find out. And I owe it to Yate.”

“To Yate? I thought you’d never met the man until an hour before his death.”

“It’s true, but in that hour we formed a friendship of sorts. At one instant in the fighting, he saved my life, and I won’t let his death go unpunished if I can help it.”

He sighed and rubbed his hands down along his face. “Tell me what you know thus far.”

I had already recounted to him of my early meetings with Mr. Ufford and Mr. Littleton, though I recalled those events to him and spoke also of my meeting that night with Rowley.

Elias was no less astonished than I had been. “Why would Griffin Melbury want to see you hang?” he asked. “Good Lord, Weaver. You are not cuckolding the man, are you? For if this is merely a matter of bedding another man’s wife, I will be very disappointed.”

“No, I am not bedding another man’s wife. I have not seen Miriam for nearly half a year.”

“You have not
seen
her, you say. Have you carried on some sort of intrigue by letter?”

I shook my head. “Nothing of the sort. I’ve had no contact with her. I would be surprised that Melbury even knew I had ever asked his wife for her hand. I cannot believe she would speak to him of his former rivals, and certainly not in a way that would be intended to spark his jealousy.”

“You can never be certain with women, you know. They will do the most astonishing things. After all, did Mrs. Melbury not surprise you entire by becoming a Christian?”

I looked away. Miriam
had
surprised me—to a degree that I could not entirely understand. Since I had resumed contact with my relations, most notably my uncle and his family, and returned to our neighborhood, Dukes Place, I had found myself drawn—as much by habit as by inclination—deeper into the community of my coreligionists. I attended Sabbath worship on a regular basis, said my prayers at the synagogue for nearly all major holy days, and increasingly found it difficult to violate the ancient dietary laws. I had not yet determined to observe these laws to the letter, but I had come to get a queasy feeling when I contemplated eating pig flesh or oysters or meat stewed in milk—or even the bird given to me at this tavern. I had begun to dislike keeping my head uncovered; I begged off business on Friday night or Saturday if it could be postponed; from time to time I would sit in my uncle’s study looking through his Hebrew Bible, struggling to recall the slippery language I had studied for so many years as a child.

I do not claim to have been inching toward anything a true devotee would consider full observance of the Jewish laws, but I found myself more at ease if I inclined myself toward several of them. And perhaps because, like all men, I tend to look inward and easily presume the rest of the world thinks the way I do, I believed Miriam would be so inclined as well. After all, she attended the synagogue, she assisted my aunt with holiday preparations, she never, that I could see, blatantly violated Sabbath or dietary law—not even after she moved from my uncle’s house. So why had she joined the Church?

At first I presumed it had merely been to appease this Melbury, whom I imagined as oily and unctuous, a handsome spark of better breeding than means. But later, as I contemplated Miriam’s choice, another thought occurred to me. More than once she had told me that she envied me for my ability to be like the English. I knew it was something she desired, but it was made impossible by her being a Jewess. There was an irony here, for as a Hebrew man, I could never be English, I could only be
like
the English. As a Hebrew woman, the opposite was true of Miriam.

Only look at the works of the poets, and you will see it. There is always the
Jew,
and there is the
Jew’s daughter
or the
Jew’s wife.
This truism is perhaps most blatant in Mr. Granville’s famous
Jew of Venice,
in which the pretty daughter, Jessica, need only leave her villainous Jew father and embrace her Christian lover in order to shed all vestiges of her Hebrew past. Miriam, to deploy the terminology of the natural scientists, as a woman was but a body in the orbit of the most powerful man to whom she attached herself. Marrying a Christian allowed her to become English; more than that, it necessitated it. It has happened that Jewish men marry English women, and each partner maintains the erstwhile religion. It cannot happen with a Jewish woman, and so it did not.

E
lias, however, was far more interested in why Melbury would wish me harm. “If you have done him no wrong, and presuming that you are right and that his wife has not incited a hatred, why would he wish to destroy you? And perhaps more important, how could he possibly tell Piers Rowley how to conduct himself?”

“As for the latter, I presume that Rowley owes some sort of allegiance to the Tories, and that Melbury is a patron of one kind or another. The judge made it clear that in anticipation of the upcoming election, men must gravitate as their loyalties demand and act accordingly.”

“Indeed they must.” Elias cocked his head. “I had forgotten that you were no politician, Weaver, which is why the story is utter nonsense. Rowley owes nothing to the Tories. He is a Whig, sir. A Whig, and one known to be aligned with Albert Hertcomb, Melbury’s opponent in the upcoming race.”

“I know who Hertcomb is,” I said sullenly, as I took a sip of my drink, though I had only learned of the fellow because I had heard a newspaper story about him read aloud at a tavern a few days before my arrest. “Rowley insisted that my arrest and hanging were somehow vital to the Tory cause, so why—?” I stifled my own question as I recalled the nature of the story to which I had listened. “Wait a moment. Is there not some connection between the Whig candidate, Hertcomb, and Dennis Dogmill, the tobacco merchant these porters hate so much?”

Elias nodded. “I am surprised you know that. Yes, Dogmill is Hertcomb’s patron and, as such, Hertcomb has been instrumental in the passage of several bills that favor the tobacco trade in general and Dogmill in particular. He is also Hertcomb’s election agent.”

I slammed my hand upon the table. “Let us use your wondrous ideas of probability and see what we know. A priest spoke up for the rights of the porters who unload Dogmill’s tobacco and then received a threat, warning him to cease his actions. Next, a leader of the labor agitators is killed, and I am arrested for the crime. The judge at my trial, a Whig, does all in his power to convict me, but when his feet are to the fire, he blames a great Tory. When I approach a location where any searcher might hope to find me, it is guarded by men of the Riding Office, who ought to concern themselves with smuggled cargo rather than escaped murderers. Given the generally acknowledged corruption of customs officers, who are said to be in the pockets of the most powerful merchants, I believe I can deploy the mechanisms of probability and determine the identity of the villain.”

“Dennis Dogmill,” Elias breathed.

“Precisely. I should love to see him swing after the rude treatment he meted out when I tried to speak with him. He must be the man. There is no other person who would want to see Walter Yate dead, have the power to make another man hang for the crime,
and
want to set me against Griffin Melbury.”

Elias studied my face. “You must be disappointed,” he said, “to discover that Melbury is very likely not your foe.”

I admitted to myself that he was right, but I would not give him the satisfaction of saying so. “Why should I be?”

“Come now, Weaver, you have been out of sorts this last half year, ever since you learned that that pretty cousin of yours had joined the Church and married Melbury. I cannot but think you would take some delight in the thought of exposing him for a villain. After all, if Melbury were hanged, Mrs. Melbury might marry once more.”

“I have more things to concern myself than affairs of the heart,” I said weakly. “For now I shall content myself in almost certain knowledge that Dennis Dogmill is my enemy.” I was not so content at all, and I had not yet entirely abandoned the notion that Melbury might not be somehow involved—or perhaps that I could involve him.

“Dogmill is well known to be cruel and sour,” Elias agreed, “but if he did have Yate killed, why should he seek to harm you of all men? The docks are swarming with the lowest fellows on earth, men who would hardly know how to speak a word on their own behalf, who would offer no worthwhile defense of themselves, and who would certainly not have the mettle to break from Newgate. Why assign blame to a man whom he must know would fiercely resist this usage?”

I shook my head. “I agree that it does not seem wise. I had little chance to learn anything of the matter of the threatening notes. I was arrested at the very beginning of my inquiry, so it cannot be that Dogmill wished to silence me, for I have nothing yet to say. I believe this question must be the key. If I can learn why Dogmill wished to punish me, I can discover some way to prove myself innocent.”

He frowned skeptically. “And how will you do this?”

“Tomorrow I shall go to Ufford and see if he can offer me any more information. And there are a few others I must seek out. For now, I must get my sleep.”

“I will leave you then.” He rose and replaced his hat, and then turned to me. “One more question. Who is this Johnson fellow the witnesses against you were speaking of?”

I shook my head. “I’d forgotten about that. The name means nothing to me.”

“Very strange. That young fellow, Spicer, appeared particularly eager that the world should associate you with this Johnson.”

“I thought so too, yet I know no one by that name.”

“I suspect you may yet,” he prophesied—and, as it turned out, quite correctly too.

We then determined another tavern where we might meet the next night. As he prepared to leave, however, Elias hesitated for a moment and then extracted a small purse from his coat.

“I’ve brought you an enema and an emetic. I hope you will be wise enough to use them.”

“I really must get some sleep.”

“You’ll sleep better if you cleanse yourself. You must trust me, Weaver. I am, after all, a medical man.” With that, he departed, leaving me to stare at his generous gift.

CHAPTER 7

T
HERE WERE
some curious glances at the Turk and Sun when I took a room there that night. From my livery they must have concluded that I had run away from an unkind master, but as I paid my reckoning in advance with ready cash, there were no questions put to me, and I was shown to my room with reasonable cheer.

I intended to do nothing with Elias’s medicine, but in a fit of restlessness I chose to administer the dosages, and though I spent an hour or more in the greatest discomfort, I confess I felt mightily cleansed thereafter and slept longer and deeper than I likely should have otherwise, though my dreams were a wild and incoherent jumble of prisons and hangings and escapes. After I had voided my body I called for a hot bath, that I might wash away the vermin of the prison, but they were soon enough replaced by the vermin of the tavern.

The purges had the effect of leaving me enormous hungry, however, and in the morning I ate my breakfast of bread and warm milk with great relish. Then, still in my footman’s disguise, I began my journey to the home of Mr. Ufford, who I hoped would be able to shed some light on my troubles. As I walked the street, now in the light of day, I felt the most unusual sensation. I was at liberty but not free at all. I had to remain in disguise until . . . until I hardly knew what. I would have thought that I must prove my innocence, but I had already done that.

I could not dwell upon these difficulties fully, for they made me far too uneasy. I wanted only to keep occupied, and I believed that Ufford might well have information to aid me. I found, however, that when I presented myself at his door, the priest’s serving man showed no sign of granting me admittance. To a third party, our encounter would have appeared very much like two dogs evaluating each other, each wishing nothing but the worst for the other lest his rival receive too many caresses from their master.

“I must speak with Mr. Ufford,” I told this fellow.

“And who are you, that you must speak with him?”

I certainly could not tell him that. “Never mind who I am,” I said. “Let me speak to him, and I promise you your master will tell you that you’ve done right.”

“As to that, I shan’t allow you to enter based on that promise of someone when I don’t know who it is,” he said. “You will give me your name or you will go. Indeed, I think it very likely you will do both.”

I could not allow a meeting of such vital importance to be prevented by this fine fellow’s sense of duty. “You will find that I’ll do neither,” I said, and shoved him aside and forced my way past him. Having not previously been in any room but the kitchens, I had no idea where I might find Mr. Ufford, but I fortunately heard voices coming from down a hallway, so I made my way there, with the servant all the while close behind me and pulling at my shoulder the way an untrained lapdog nips at its keeper.

I burst into the room where Ufford was sitting and sipping wine with a young man of not more than five and twenty. This fellow was also dressed in the humorless blacks of a churchman, but his clothes were of an inferior cut. Both men looked up in surprise as I forced the door open. Perhaps Ufford’s expression might be more fairly characterized as fear. He leaped from his chair, splashing wine upon his breeches, and took three steps backward.

“What is this?” he demanded of me.

“I beg your pardon, sir,” the servant said. “This rogue pushed his way past me before I could stop him.”

“I am sorry that doing so was necessary,” I said to Ufford, “but I am afraid I need to speak with you urgently, and the normal channels are not open to me just now.”

Ufford stared at me with disbelief until something seemed to slide into place inside his brain, and he recognized me despite my costume. “Oh, yes. Of course.” He coughed like a stage actor and brushed at the stain. “You will excuse me, Mr. North,” he said to his guest. “We will have to continue speaking of our business another time. I will call on you tomorrow, perhaps.”

“Certainly,” the other murmured, rising to his feet. He looked harshly at me, as though I had arranged this little scene for no purpose but to embarrass him, and then he glared at Ufford. I make no special claims to know the secrets of the human heart, but I could not doubt that this Mr. North hated Ufford, and violently so.

Once he and the servant had left, Ufford came over to me, tiptoeing as though to perform the degree of stealth this meeting required. He took my hand most gingerly and hunched over. “Benjamin,” he said in a hushed voice, “I’m glad you’ve come.”

“I don’t know that such precautions as whispering are strictly required,” I said in something short of my normal volume—for quiet is contagious—“unless your servant is listening at the door.”

“I hardly think so,” Ufford said in a now very loud voice, all the while skulking toward the door with his arms stretched out like a bird’s wings. “I know I can count on Barber to conduct himself as befits his station. I need not even check on him.” With that he threw the door wide open to reveal an empty hallway. “Ah,” he said, when he’d once more pressed the door shut. “You see? Safe after all. No need to worry. Though I suppose there is every reason for you to worry, isn’t there. But let us not worry for now. Come, a glass of wine, to restore your spirits. You do drink wine, I hope? I know many men of the lower sort never take it.”

“I drink wine,” I assured him, believing I should have to take a great deal of it to endure this interview. Once he had handed me the glass and I took my seat (he never invited me, and appeared a bit out of sorts when I lowered myself unbidden, but I could not trouble myself for such niceties now), I gestured toward the door with my head. “Who was that man?”

“Oh, that was just Mr. North. He is the curate who serves in my parish in Wapping. He’s resumed his preaching duties since I’ve started receiving those notes. Have you made any progress in discovering the author?”

I stared at him. “You do understand, sir, that I have been otherwise absorbed.”

“Oh, yes. I understand that. But I also understand that you made a promise to me, and a promise remains a promise though the fulfilling is more difficult than we anticipated. How shall you ever raise yourself if you are deterred from performing the services you have contracted to perform?”

“At this particular moment, I am much more concerned with avoiding swinging from a halter than I am in raising myself. But as it happens, I am now prepared to return to your affairs, as I believe that the discovery of the author of those notes will shed some light on my own predicament.”

“I hardly think that a fit reason to pursue the work I paid you to perform. Is not the satisfaction of a job performed incentive enough? In any case, I should like to know what predicament you refer to.”

“The predicament of my having been convicted of a murder I did not commit,” I said very slowly, as though the sluggishness of my speech might help him to understand me better. “I cannot but suspect I was tried for that man’s death because I intended to discover the author of those notes.”

“Oh, ho!” he cried. “Very good, sir. Very good. A murder you did not commit. We shall play that little game if you like. You will find me agreeable in that.”

“There is no game, sir. I did not harm Walter Yate, and I have no idea who did.”

“Was he perhaps the author of those terrible notes? Could that be why some unknown person—and who could say who this person might be?—meted out justice upon his lowly skull?”

“To my knowledge, Mr. Ufford, Walter Yate had nothing to do with those notes.”

“Then why on earth would you have abused him so cruelly?”

“I’ve told you, it was not me. But if I find out who did kill him, then I believe I shall find out who sent you those notes.”

Ufford scratched at his chin, contemplating my strange words. “Hmm. Well, if you believe that this inquiry of yours will discover my harasser, then I suppose it is an acceptable use of your time. I think it is quite all right if you proceed thus, so long as you don’t lose sight of your true aims.”

I had, by this time, reached the conclusion that responding directly to Ufford’s words was a waste of time, so I thought it best to attempt to set the agenda myself. “Have you received any more such notes?”

“No, but as I have not been preaching, I have tricked the writer into believing he has got what he wanted.”

I don’t know that I could have distinguished between the trick and the genuine article, but perhaps that was my own weakness. “Mr. Ufford, did you have any particular encounters with Walter Yate, or have any reason to believe that there might be some link between this man and the notes you had received?”

“Yate was by far the most agreeable of those fellows. I met with him once or twice, you know, and though he rejoiced in my benevolent interest in the porters, he never seemed to believe that my words would do him any good. You see, such men have no idea of the power of speech, and for them to believe in rhetoric is like believing in magic, for it is something they cannot hold in their hands. But he and I shared no particular intimacy, if that is what you mean.”

“And what of Billy Greenbill?”

“That fellow was far less likable. He would not meet with me, and he called my man names when I sent him.”

“Tell me,” I said at last, “about your interest in the current election.”

He looked at me curiously. “I could hardly have thought it any concern of yours. Jews don’t have the vote, you know.”

“I am aware that Jews don’t vote, and never do we vote less than when we are escaped felons. I ask about your interest, not mine.”

“I am a great admirer of the Tories. That is all. I believe that the porters will be far better off under the Tories than the Whigs, for these Whigs care only to use men like rags and wring them out when they are done.”

“And you want the porters to understand that and support Mr. Melbury?” I asked.

“That’s right. Melbury is a good man. He believes in a strong Church and in the power of the landed families.”

“But what good will the support of Wapping laborers do him? They cannot vote. And even if they could, Wapping is nowhere near Westminster. It is the other side of the metropolis.”

He smiled. “They hardly need to vote to make their presence felt, sir. If I can deliver these boys for Melbury, I will not only have done some good for the Tories, I will have robbed the Whigs of a weapon.”

I understood now. The porters were to be roughs for Melbury. That, at any rate, was what Ufford desired. They could intimidate voters at the polling station. If need be, they could riot. Ufford’s desire to help them was only to make sure that when they were used, they were used for the Tories.

I thought little of this plan, but I had small incentive to lecture him on his ethics—nor to inform him that upon the docks I had heard these same porters chanting against
Jacobites, Papists, and Tories
—all of which suggested that his efforts, thus far, had failed. Instead, I returned to matters more pressing.

“Sir, has it occurred to you that the letters you received might have come from Dennis Dogmill himself? This tobacco man, after all, has the most to gain from seeing any labor combination fail. I met with him but once, and briefly at that, but he seemed to me not above any sort of threat of violence.”

Ufford chuckled softly. “I do not love Mr. Dogmill, who is a notorious Whig, but I must bring to your attention that he is a John’s man.”

I had no idea of his meaning. “A John’s man?”

“That is to say, he attended Saint John’s College at Cambridge, which I attended myself, though at an earlier date. You may not have observed the many ways in which that letter I showed you bespoke a lack of education, but the flaws were painfully obvious to me, and I can promise you no man from Saint John’s would write thus.”

I let out a sigh. “It might well be that he wrote thus in order to deceive you, or that he had the letters written for him by a man who had not the honor of attending your college.”

He shook his head. “I am certain I heard that Dogmill was a John’s man, and so what you say is unthinkable.” He held up a hand. “Wait a moment. Now that I think on it, I recall that he was cast out of Saint John’s. Yes, indeed he was. He was cast out for some act of violence or another. You may be right about him after all.”

“What was the act of violence?”

“I don’t know, precisely. I understand he was hard with one of his tutors.”

“Any man who is hard with a tutor could certainly pen a threatening note with poor spelling,” I said, by way of encouragement.

“It is certainly possible,” he agreed.

“And as I presume he does not dirty his own hands with things like killing porters, have you any knowledge of who his brutal instrument might be? Does he have any particular relationship with one rough or another? A man who might always be by his side?”

“I hardly know the man enough to answer your question. Or any of your questions. Do you think the law might persecute me for allowing you into my home?”

I could see he had begun to grow uneasy and thought it time to change subjects. “What of your Mr. North?” I asked, by way of concluding.

“Oh, he is also a John’s man. That was the reason I took him on as my curate. I can always rely on a John’s man.”

“I meant something else entirely. Do you think he might have some notion of who I am and, if so, can be depended upon to say nothing of having seen me?”

“As for knowing you, I cannot say. Did he know you before your current troubles? I did not first recognize you in your new clothes, but I cannot speak for another man. As to his remaining quiet, I can make my demands of him and he will certainly obey my orders. I do not give him thirty-five pounds a year to no effect, and a man with four children shan’t discommode his source of income.”

“I must ask you one more thing. During my trial, one of the false witnesses who spoke against me mentioned a Mr. Johnson. Do you know anyone of that name?”

He shook his head with an urgent violence. “I’ve never heard of anyone with that name. Indeed, I have not. It is a very common name, and there is no telling how many thousands of men may answer to it.”