Free The Devil's Company by David Liss Page B

flourish of luminous red hair and a fair skin full of untended beard and unfortunate blemishes—both the kind associated with his coloring and those of a more dire nature. He had, however, sparkling eyes of green, and though his face bore freckles and lesions and a hundred scars from the battles he’d fought, he still appeared a robust man, no less defeated in his sadness than Achilles in his brooding.

    “You’re good friends, lads,” he announced to his companions. “Good friends and companions all, and with your help I shall be victorious in the end.”

    He moved forward now, pressing upon the tabletop for support. I could not mistake that his condition had grown worse since I’d last laid eyes upon him, and inevitably in his infirmity he brought my uncle to mind, and a new wave of sadness crashed over me, for I felt as though everyone I knew had fallen into a state of decay.

    Though thick in the shoulders and chest, this man had grown more slight with his disease. The swelling on his neck, though he made an effort to hide it with a gravy-colored cravat that had once been white, was more pronounced, and the lesions on his face and hands hinted to the ravage that lay under his clothes.

    With great effort, he brought himself to a table where he would no doubt drown his sorrows in drink, but as he moved he scanned the room with the cautious eye of a predator who fears something worse than itself. Thus it was he saw me.

    His face, I was heartened to observe, brightened some little bit. “Weaver, Weaver, welcome, friend, but you’ve come at a terrible time, I’m afraid. A terrible time. Come join me here, all the same. Danny, fetch us our pots, would you, lad? That’s a good fellow. Sit here with me, Weaver, and make me no sadder, I pray.”

    I did as he bid and, though in no need of more ale, I did not instruct his fellow to forbear. Indeed, I had hardly lowered myself before the pots appeared before us. I sipped at my drink, but Devout Hale drank half of his down in a greedy gulp.

    “I don’t mean to evade you. Hardly that at all, but these times are hard, my friend, right hard, and once the family’s been fed and the landlord’s greed answered, once the candles are bought and the room heated, there’s scarce a farthing to spare. But when there is, by the devil’s tits, I swear I’ll give you what you’re owed.”

    I would not go so far to say that I had forgotten that I was Devout Hale’s creditor, but that little obligation he bore me inhabited no significant status in my mind. I have worked for many poor men, and I ever permitted them to pay me when they could. Most paid in the end, whether out of gratitude for my service or fear of the consequences I cannot say—though with Mr. Hale I was dependent upon the former rather than the latter. He and his followers could hardly fear a single man—not when they had taken on and vanquished such enemies as they made.

    However, I had done him a good turn, and it was this fact upon which I depended. That he still owed me four shillings in payment only meant he might be more inclined to listen to my proposal. Some three months ago one of his men had gone missing, and Hale had asked me to find his whereabouts. This man was a special favorite of his, a cousin’s son, and the family had been exceptionally uneasy. As it turned out, there was no cause for alarm—he had run away with a serving girl of poor reputation, and the two of them had been living in Covent Garden, joyously consummating their union while earning their keep through the ancient art of picking pockets. Though Mr. Hale had been disappointed and angered at his kinsman’s behavior, he had been relieved to find the boy alive.

    “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