The Devil's Company by David Liss

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