“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.”
CHAPTER SIX
I DID SWEAR. TO MY MIND, THIS WAS LIKE PROMISING A MAN HIS lottery ticket would answer with a fortune. Worse than that, for a lottery, as a game of chance, can be manipulated-as I knew well-but there could be no counterfeiting a meeting with the king. Still, the promise did the business, and two nights later, I found myself in the green market to the west of the East India complex, where I contrived to busy myself in the examination of discounted cabbages-for these were the goods that had not sold that day, and the clever and unhygienic consumer could find a bargain if he didn’t mind a bit of maggot with his leaves. The air had grown quite cold over the course of the afternoon, and I ran my gloved hands over a variety of vegetables and squinted in a show of disappointment. My coat was of a better quality than any of the scavengers, and I attracted more notice than I should have liked, so I was most relieved when the operation commenced.
At only a few minutes before the striking of the eight o’clock hour, I heard a woman cry out in fear, and I knew Mr. Hale and his men had upheld their part of the bargain. Along with the other late patrons-many of whom used the distraction as an excuse to depart the premises without paying for their moldy greens-I ran out to Leadenhall Street and observed a group of some thirty or forty silk weavers standing by the premises, braving the cold in their inadequate coats. A half dozen or so held torches. Another half dozen tossed chunks of old brick or rotten apples or dead rats at the walls surrounding the structure. They shouted a wide array of criticism at this barrier, claiming the Company practiced unfairly against common laborers, contrived to lower their wages, diffused their markets, and corrupted the common taste with Eastern luxuries. There were some epithets against France thrown in as well, because the Englishman has not been born who knows how to riot without mentioning that nation.
Though many have had cause to complain about the sluggish motion of British justice and the enforcement of laws, here was a case in which a certain slowness served me in good stead. In order to make the silk weavers disperse, a constable would have to rouse a justice of the peace brave enough to stand before them and read aloud the substance of the Riot Act. At such a point, the mutineers had one hour in which to disperse before the army might be deployed to end the violence-ironically, through the use of violence. Here was an old system, but one borne out by time, and many experiments had proved that the firing of muskets into one or two of the troublemakers would send the remaining rebels a-scatter.
Devout Hale had assured me that he and his men would prosecute my cause for as long as possible before the risk of harm overtook them. They would not, in short, endure musket fire on my behalf, but they would continue to fling dead rodents for as long as they might do so in safety.
Such was the most I could request of them. If I were to attempt to be truly safe, I would need to enter the premises, get what Cobb desired, and exit before the soldiers scared away the mischief makers. I therefore made my way past the riot, feeling the heat of the burning torches and smelling the rank perspiration of the laborers, and hurried around the corner to Lyme Street. Darkness was now fully upon me, and as any perambulators would have been drawn to the spectacle of riot, and the guards within the complex would be preparing for a siege of silk workers, I felt I might scale the wall with some reasonable hope of success. Should I be discovered, I decided, I would merely explain that I was being chased by a crazed rioter who believed me affiliated with the Company, and as that organization was the source of my woes, I hoped they would be willing to be the source of my succor as well.
Because I needed to explain myself if apprehended, I could not bring with me grappling equipment, for it is the rare innocent spectator indeed who inexplicably has such engines about him. Instead, I climbed the wall in the more primitive method practiced by boys and housebreakers without expensive tools and found the climb rather easy-more particularly so as the street was deserted, any perambulators having gone to observe the mayhem on Leadenhall. During a daylight surveying of the area, I had observed numerous cracks and crevices, and these proved more than equal to the task of providing footing up the ten feet to the top. The greatest difficulty lay in climbing while holding on to the rather heavy sack I carried, containing as it did its measure of living creatures, who writhed unhappily within.