The Devil's Company (9 page)

“It’s come harder than I can scarce remember,” Hale was saying, “to keep a man’s family in bread. What with the competition from the cheap cloths from foreign lands where they don’t pay their workers nothing and the local boys what set up outside the confines of the metropolis so they aren’t beholden to the rules of the London Company. Those fellows will take half the wages we need just to keep from starving, and if the workmanship ain’t so good, there’s plenty of folks that won’t care. They’ll buy the cheaper and sell it as though it were the dearer. There’s ten thousand of us in London, ten thousand of us in the silk-weaving trade, and if things don’t change soon, if we don’t make matters better, we’re as like to become ten thousand beggars as not. My father and his father and grandfather worked this trade, but no one cares now if there’s another generation to weave their cloths so long as they have the cheap of it.”

It was my task, I knew, to set him at ease. “I haven’t come to demand payment. In fact, I’ve come to offer you money.”

Hale looked up from his drink. “I hadn’t expected that.”

“I should very much like to give you five pounds in exchange for something.”

“I tremble to hear what you ask that is worthy of so great a fortune.” He stared at me skeptically.

“I want you to riot against the East India Company.”

Devout Hale let out a boisterous laugh. He slapped his hands together. “Weaver, the next time I feel the melancholy upon me, I shall summon you at once, for you have restored my good humor. It’s a marvelous game when a man offers you five pounds to do what you’d like as not do for free.”

Devout Hale had spent his entire life as a silk weaver—indeed, he was now a master silk weaver—and, through his industriousness and his inclination to hurl stones at his enemies, he had become something of a leader of these laborers, though his status was as unofficial as it was unshakable. He and his fellows had been involved in a war for the better part of a century now against the East India Company, for the goods the Company brought in to the island—their fine India cloths—cut deep into the fustians and silks these men labored so hard to produce. Their main means of protest—the riot—had served them well in the past, and Parliament had on more than one occasion capitulated to the silk weavers’ demands. Of course, it would be foolish to suggest that these men could get their way simply through a bit of rioting, but there were men of power in the kingdom, and in the city in particular, who feared that the East India Company’s imports would permanently harm the trade in native British cloths and enrich a single company at the expense of a national industry. Thus the violence of the silk workers and the machinations in Parliament of the wool interest had proved, when combined, a reasonable counter to the might of the greedy schemers of Craven House.

Hale’s smile began to fade and he shook his head slightly. “At least, we have been inclined to riot in the past, but we’ve got no cause now. Parliament’s thrown us some scraps, and we’re content for the time being. The Company ain’t given us a reason to knock ’pon their gates. And as we’ve won the last battle of our little war, it would be unseemly for us to launch a new campaign.”

“I believe I mentioned an incentive to wink at the unseemliness,” I said. “Five pounds. And, I hardly need mention, a cancellation of your debt to me.”

“Oh, you might mention it. It’s worth mentioning, all right. Make no mistake. But I don’t know that’s the offer I’ll take.”

“May I ask why?”

“Do you know where I was tonight, with my companions there, who have been so kind to me? I went to the Drury Lane Theater, where I learned from some contacts I’ve made over the years—I shan’t tell you who—that the king himself was to make a surprise attendance. And do you know why I should wish to be in the path of his Germanic majesty?”

I thought at first that there must be some political reason, but I quickly dismissed the idea. The answer was all too obvious. The lesions on Devout Hale’s skin and the swelling about his neck arose from scrofula, which poor men called
the king’s evil
. He must give credit to the stories told, that only a touch from the king could cure his affliction.

“Surely,” I said, “you don’t believe such nonsense.”

“Indeed I do. It has been known for many centuries that the king’s touch cures the king’s evil. I know many people who say their kinsmen know those who have been cured by the king’s touch. I mean to put myself in his way, that I might be cured.”

“Really, Devout, I am surprised to hear you say this. You have never been a superstitious man.”

“It’s not superstition but fact.”

“But come, only think of it. Before Queen Anne died, our King George was merely George, Elector of Hanover. Could he cure scrofula then?”

“I very much doubt it.”

“And what of the Pretender. Can he cure scrofula?”

“Don’t stand to reason. He wants to be king, but he ain’t.”

“But the Parliament could make him king. If it did, could he cure you then?”

“If he were king, he could cure me.”

“Then why not petition the Parliament to cure you?”

“I’ve no mind to play at sophistry with you, Weaver. You can believe what you like, and my believing what I like don’t give you no hurt, so there’s no need to be unkind. You do not suffer from this disease. I do. And I tell you a man with the king’s evil will do anything—anything, I say—to be rid of it.”

I bowed my head. “You are quite right,” I said, feeling foolish for having tried to dash an afflicted man’s hopes.

“The king’s touch can cure me, that’s the long and short of it. A man’s got to put himself in the king’s way to get his touch, and that ain’t always as easy as one would like, now, is it? Tis said,” he announced, in a tone that suggested a shift in conversation, “that when you was a fighting man, amassing your victories in the ring, the king himself was something of an admirer.”

“I’ve heard that bit of flattery myself but never seen any evidence to prove it.”

“Have you sought evidence?”

“I can’t say I have.”

“I suggest you do.”

“Why should I care one way or the other?” I asked.

“Because of the king’s touch, Weaver. That’s my price. If you want my men to riot at Craven House, you must swear to do all in your power to get me the king’s touch.” He took another deep drink of his ale. “That and the five pounds four shillings you mentioned.”

IN THIS CONVERSATION, we circled each other many times. “You are sadly mistaken,” I explained, “if you believe I have any connection of the sort you require. You seem to forget the troubles I earned for myself in the late election. I made no shortage of political enemies.”

“We have but two political parties in our land, so any man who makes enemies must, in the same stroke, make friends. I would present that to you as a law of nature, or something very like.”

I cannot say how our conversation would have resolved had it not been interrupted by a sharp explosion of noises—a burst of angry voices, the overturning of chairs, the hollow
clang
of pewter knocking pewter. Hale and I both turned and saw two fellows standing in close proximity, faces red with anger. I recognized one of them, a short stocky man with comically bushy eyebrows, as a member of Devout’s company of silk weavers. The other fellow, taller and equally well built, was a stranger to me. It took but one glance at Devout to see he was a stranger to him as well.

Though large and ungainly, Devout Hale was upon his feet and lumbering toward them as best as his frail and ungainly body would allow. “Hold there, what is this?” he demanded. “What’s the ill, Feathers?”

Feathers, the shorter man, addressed Hale without once taking his eye off his adversary. “Why, this rascal has insulted those of us whose parents come over from France,” he said. “Said we’re naught but Papists.”

“I never said anything of the sort,” the taller man said. “I believe this fellow is drunk.”

“I’m sure it ain’t but a misunderstanding,” Devout Hale said. “And we can’t have any unpleasantness here, so what say I buy you both a drink and we make ourselves friends?”

The one Hale called Feathers sucked in a breath, as though steeling himself for peace. He would have been wiser to steel himself for something else, however, for his adversary most unexpectedly threw a punch directly into Feathers’s mouth. There was a spray of blood before the man sank, and I thought for certain the author of this violence should find himself destroyed by the injured man’s companions, but all at once there was the sound of a constable’s whistle, and we turned to find two men, dressed in the livery of their office, standing alongside the mayhem. I scarcely had time to wonder how they could have arrived so quickly before they began to collect the fallen Feathers.

“This one was looking for trouble,” one of the constables observed.

“No doubt, no doubt,” the other agreed.

“Hold on, there!” Hale cried. “What of the other?”

The other was not in sight.

IT WAS ONLY WITH GREAT EFFORT that Mr. Hale was able to convince his brother silk weavers to stay in the tavern while he accompanied the victim of injustice to the magistrate’s office. His proposal produced much discussion, and I was led to understand that my friend was not upon good terms with the unfortunate Mr. Feathers, but he nevertheless convinced the others that he should make the best possible representative for their injured brother, and that arriving in the chamber in great numbers might only give the magistrate cause to claim intimidation. He asked, however, that I accompany him on his mission, as I knew something, as he put it, of the workings of the law.

I did know a thing or two about the law, and I knew I did not like what I had seen of the business thus far. Those constables had been too quick to appear, the assailant too quick to disappear. There was some mischief afoot.

The office of Richard Umbread, magistrate in Spitalfields, was spare and quiet at night, with only a few constables and a clerk milling about in the poorly lighted space. A fire burned in the fireplace, but it was small, and there were far too few candles lit, giving the room the air of a dungeon. Mr. Feathers, who dabbed at his bleeding nose with an already crimson-soaked handkerchief, looked up in a daze.

“Now then,” the judge said to Feathers. “My constables tell me you instigated a drunken attack upon your fellow. Is this true?”

“No, sir, it ain’t. He insulted my parents, sir, and when I objected, he hit me without cause.”

“Hmm. But as he is not here and you are, it is a rather easy thing to set all the blame upon him.”

“There are witnesses to that effect, sir,” Devout Hale called out, but the judge offered him no mind.

“And I am made to understand,” the judge continued, “that you have no gainful employment, is that correct?”

“That ain’t right either,” Feathers corrected. “I am a silk weaver, sir, and I work along with a company of silk weavers hard by Spinner’s Yard. That man standing over there, Mr. Devout Hale, works alongside me, sir. He knew me as an apprentice, though I was not ’prenticed to him.”

“It is a very easy thing,” said the judge, “for a man to get his companions to say this or that on his behalf, but it does not alter the fact that you are a man without employment and so inclined to violence.”

“That’s not the case at all,” Feathers shot back. His eyes were now wide with disbelief.

“You can offer me no evidence to the contrary.”

“Excuse me, your honor,” I ventured, “but I believe he has offered you ample evidence to the contrary. Mr. Hale and I witnessed the conflict, and we will swear that Mr. Feathers was the victim rather than the cause. As to his employment, Mr. Hale will swear to it, and I’m sure it would be no hardship to find a dozen or so men who will swear similarly.”

“Swearing don’t signify when it is all falsehood,” the judge said. “I have not sat these many years on the bench without learning to see what stands before me. Mr. Giles Feathers, it is my experience that men of violence and no account want a useful skill to teach them to better their ways. I therefore sentence you to the workhouse at Chriswell Street, where you may learn the trade of silk weaving over the three months of your detainment. It is my hope that such a skill will help you to find employment upon your release, and so I will not need to see you here again on similar charges.”

“Learn the skill of weaving?” Feathers cried. “But I
know
the skill of weaving and am a journeyman in that trade. It’s how I earn my bread.”

“Get him out of here,” the judge told his constables, “and clear the room of these loiterers.”

Had Mr. Hale been a stronger man, I would have expected him to show his outrage in ways that would have landed him in prison as well, but he could not resist the pull of the constable, and it was not my battle to fight, so I followed him out.

“I’d heard of these tricks,” Hale breathed, “but I never thought to see it practiced against my own men.”

I nodded, for I now understood all too well. “A kind of silk-weaving impressment.”

“Aye. Chriswell Street workhouse is a privately run affair, and the men what owns it pays the judge, who pays the constables, who get men with skills arrested on no account of their own. Then they’re sent to the workhouse to
learn
a trade—the very irony of it. It ain’t nothing but slavery. They get three months’ worth of unpaid labor out of Feathers, and if he makes a fuss, they’ll jut punish him with more time.”

“There’s nothing to do?” I asked.

“No, there’s what to do. I must go now, Weaver. There’s legal men to be hired and testimony to be sworn. They’re depending on us being foolish and ignorant of our rights, and in most cases the men they snatch will be. But we’ll sting ’em, don’t you doubt it. They’ll think twice before they go after one of my fellows again.”

“I’m glad to hear it. Now, I hate, when you have such other concerns, to raise the issue once more—”

“Your riot, is it? Well, you need not fear about that. I’ve got the anger in me now, and a good riot shall make me feel right and proper. You just get me the king, sir. Swear you’ll do all in your power. That will have to be enough.”