‘So Sir Peregrine is proposing that they sell up. Fifty per cent to the Prime Warden sounds a pretty good deal to me, William. And what’s to stop any of them taking all their share for themselves and never giving any back to the company when the peril or pestilence has ended?’
‘What suspicious minds you people have,’ said Burke, shaking his head sadly, ‘but as it happens, you’re more or less right. Three months ago, I think, Sir Peregrine proposed this vast sell-off of all their assets. He’s been canvassing for votes ever since. They’ve got a rather unusual membership, the Silkworkers. Most of the livery companies don’t want to have too many members on board — you don’t want to be paying for elaborate feasts for five hundred or more. But the Silkworkers have an ordinance that says only Silkworkers can be admitted to their almshouses. Rather than go to the bother of changing their statutes, they simply enlist everybody who isn’t a Silkworker already into the company when they are taken in at places like your Jesus Hospital.’
‘Do you mean to say,’ Powerscourt was leaning forward, ‘that all the old boys in the Jesus Hospital in Marlow are members of the Ancient Mistery of Silkworkers? That they all have a vote, for God’s sake?’
‘They do.’
‘You’re not telling me that all the pupils at Allison’s up in Norfolk are members with votes too?’
‘They’re too young,’ said Burke, ‘but I bet many of the masters are members. I’m virtually certain that the late bursar must have belonged.’
Powerscourt rose to his feet and began pacing up and down the room, as he did so often in his own drawing room in Markham Square. Walking the quarterdeck was how Lady Lucy referred to it.
‘I think you said earlier, William, that one of your experts had doubts about the authenticity of the codicil?’
Burke laughed. ‘Yes, and a most entertaining fellow he is too. Professor of History at Cambridge, Fellow of Trinity, said by his contemporaries to be the brightest interpreter of the past since Thomas Babington Macaulay. Name of Tait, Selwyn Augustus Tait. He’s thought to be unable to write a word of his books until he’s taken a pint of claret on board. He read the codicil, the original version, in this room, in that very chair, Francis, where you’re sitting now.’
Powerscourt stared at his chair as if a scrap of historical wisdom might have been deposited on it by his distinguished predecessor. ‘What did he say?’
‘In actual fact, he read it twice. Then he said, “Mr Burke, I would not hold you to any figure, but tell me, what are the Silkworkers worth? Approximately. To the nearest million.”’
‘What answer did you give, William?’
‘I said five or six million, maybe more.’
‘What did he do then?’
‘He laughed. Then he asked if we had any decent claret about the place. “When my wits have been sharpened by a glass or two,” he said, “I shall give you my verdict.” Then he went out to stare at the view from that window behind you, the one where you can see St Paul’s.’
‘I presume the claret arrived in due course?’
‘It did, an excellent vintage it was too. When Tait had consumed two glasses, at a pretty rapid pace, it must be said, he laughed again and poured himself a refill. “It’s a fake,” he said, “that codicil. I’m almost certain it’s a fake.” And he laughed a third time.’
‘Like Saint Peter with the cock crowing perhaps. Did he explain why he thought that?’ asked Powerscourt, fascinated by the account of the claret-drinking historian, a cross between Johnny Fitzgerald and Edward Gibbon.
‘He did. Of course he did. For a start he said that people like the Silkworkers always looked after their archives very carefully. He had examined a couple of the livery companies ’ records in the course of his researches and found them extremely well annotated. He doubted if anything could have been found recently which would have been in existence for six hundred years without discovery. By this time, Francis, most of the original bottle had gone and I felt obliged to order another. The professor’s main objection was cynical. You always have to ask this question in these circumstances, he claimed. Cui bono? Who benefits? Who stands to gain from it? It was a good question for Cassius and Cicero, he said, and an even better one now, for the Silkworkers. Sir Peregrine and his colleagues could make fortunes, possibly millions for Sir Peregrine alone. He was sure the thing was a clever forgery, designed to provide an avenue through which the funds of the Silkworkers could be diverted into the pockets of their officers. Then he took another long pull of his claret and said good afternoon and left to catch his train.’
‘Was he weaving on his way out? Steering an uncertain course for the door perhaps?’
‘He was not, Francis. Selwyn Augustus Tait seemed as sober as you and I. Maybe there’s something in the air up there in the Fens with all that mist and those winds from the Urals.’
‘Do we know if there is a timetable for this vote? By God, it’ll be more exciting than a by-election. The fate of these vast sums of money in the hands of a group of people many of whom have never seen a bolt of silk in their lives. A date, William, a date?’
‘I’m not absolutely sure,’ Burke replied. ‘Something tells me it is the middle of February, end of February perhaps? I’ll check for you.’
Burke fell silent for a moment. The great seventeenth-century French clock that had once graced the hunting lodge of Rambouillet ticked away the seconds of the late afternoon on the Burke mantelpiece. ‘I wouldn’t say this to anyone but you, Francis, but I blame democracy and the popular papers for so many of our troubles, I really do.’
‘Whatever do you mean, William?’ Powerscourt had never heard his brother-in-law as political or as philosophical as this before.
‘With democracy as we know it now, with all these extra voters on the rolls, politics is governed by the whims of the uneducated and the ignorant. The popular papers, especially the Daily Mail — God, how I hate the Daily Mail — have been exaggerating or inventing the threat from the Germans for years now. You can scarcely open a newspaper but there are these ludicrous scare stories in there. If the country were run by intelligent people like men of business, we could sort out the German problem in a weekend. “You would like a bit more of Africa,” we could say. “Well, have another bit. Have this bit here and that bit over there, while you’re about it, we’ve got far too much of it already.” So the German men of business would say, “That is very kind, now what would you like in return? Would you like us to stop building our dreadnoughts up there in Kiel and Wilhelmshaven? Would you like us to halt the arms race at a point where you always have four or five big ships more than we do so you and your people don’t feel threatened? Very good. We shall do it.” I’m sure it wouldn’t even take a weekend. But can you imagine what the newspapers would say back here? “Asquith gives Empire to Germans!” “British Empire handed over to the Hun!” The mass of the population who read the Mail and not The Times or the Morning Post would be up in arms. The government would fall within weeks. They would be pariahs, excluded from polite society, maybe even banned from their clubs, who knows.’ Burke sighed. ‘It’s all too late now, Francis, far too late. People talk about currencies being devalued so they lose their purchasing power and their value. Good government has been devalued by extending the franchise in this country but nobody could stop it.’