Free The Devil's Company by David Liss

“if you think I care for him above my uncle. Indeed, my uncle is unwell, and these debts of yours can only strain his already taxed constitution. If you will but release him from your bonds, I will serve you as you ask. You will have the additional surety of Franco and Gordon.”

    “I must admit I know he suffers from a pleurisy, and I have no love of making him suffer—” Cobb began.

    “Oh, bother!” Hammond announced. “You do not dictate conditions, Weaver, we do. If you treat fairly with us, your uncle has no need to concern himself, no need to tax his health. You are in no position to negotiate, since you have nothing to offer us but what we have already asked. The sooner you comply, the sooner your friends will be relieved.”

    There was no other way, I saw. The peace of three men—and in the case of Franco and my uncle, their families—would rest upon my willingness to obey Cobb’s orders. That the nature of those orders would put my life and safety at risk appeared of no account to such men as these. They acted as though they wanted nothing more of me than to run a simple errand, when what they wished was that I break open a house very like a fortress, filled with men of such power and greed that the very thought of this task filled me with cold terror.

    CHAPTER FIVE

    HE BRITISH EAST INDIA COMPANY CONDUCTED ITS LONDON BUSINESS at Craven House, located at the intersection of Leadenhall and Lyme streets. Here was not only the mansion with the Company’s directors but the whole of the India House yard—an increasingly large portion of the space bordered by the two streets mentioned—as well as Grace Church Street to the west and Fenchurch Street to the south. As the East India Company grew in wealth, so too grew the space required to house spices, teas, precious metals, and, of course, the linens and muslins and calicoes the Company imported and for which the British public demonstrated an insatiable appetite. At the time I write these memoirs, so many years after the events, the Company has become synonymous with teas, and in the time of my infancy it was one and the same with spices. In the days I write of, however, the world knew the Company for its Indian textiles.

    During all daylight hours of the warmer months, each day but the Christian Sabbath, a steady stream of porters and wagoners, burdened with their precious cargoes, could be seen making the trek between the India House yard and the Billingsgate dock, where the ships were loaded and unloaded. Even in cold months, when ship traffic was all but eliminated, a steady procession moved in and out, for the adoration of that most esteemed idol, profit, knows no season.

    I understood relatively little of the particulars of the East India Company, but I did know as much as this: Craven House was guarded by a near army of men whose task it was not only to protect the contents of the warehouses but the interior of Craven House itself. Unlike the other trading companies—the Africa, the Levant, and, of course, the South Sea Company, now notorious throughout the nation and the world—the East India Company no longer held a monopoly on its trade. It was fully established, and had been so for these hundred years or more, and serious rivals were few and weak, but the Company directors had good reason to guard their secrets. It is a foolish man, a very foolish man, who dares to challenge one of the trading companies. I might be swift and clever in the ways of housebreaking, but when a man crosses a power that can spend millions of pounds with the ease I spend pennies, he is sure to come out the loser.

    It was for that reason I had declined Mr. Westerly’s offer when he’d come to me weeks ago, offering me forty pounds (clearly the remuneration had decreased as expenses had increased) to perform an act I considered unthinkably foolish: break into Craven House, make my way to the office of one of the directors, and steal documents vital to a forthcoming