I handed Ellershaw the stick. “I think a beating unnecessary,” I said. “I won’t do it.”
“You risk your situation with us,” he informed me.
I shook my head. “It is a risk I am prepared to take.”
Ellershaw glowered at me. I thought for a moment that he would beat the fellow himself, but instead he tossed the wooden plank to the ground and made a wild gesture with his hand. “Let the wretch go,” he told the watchmen holding Carmichael.
A cheer of joy rose from the men, and I heard my name called out approvingly as well. Ellershaw frowned at me and at them. “I beg you await me outside, by the front of this house,” he said, “where I trust you will offer an explanation for this mutiny.”
I bowed and took my leave among the men’s huzzahs, for they appeared to have come to love me for my act of defiance. Only the East Indian, Aadil, hung back, glowering at me with foreign menace. I dreaded finding Ellershaw once more, for I felt certain he would dismiss me, and I would be forced to explain these events to Cobb. I was quite mistaken, however, for the Company man met me with a large grin and clapped me on the shoulder.
“Finely done,” he said. “The men now love you, and they shall follow you as you wish.”
I remained speechless for a moment. “I don’t understand. Do you mean to say you desired that I refuse to flog the fellow? I wish you had made your pleasure better known, for I believed I had openly defied you.”
“Oh, as to that, you did defy me. I had no desire that you refuse, but the end result is excellent, and I shan’t make a fuss of it. Come then, back to my office. There is something of great importance to discuss.”
“And what might that be?”
He observed from my voice how ill at ease I felt and let out a little laugh. “Why, you mustn’t take this warehouse business too seriously, Weaver. What I wish to discuss with you is the true reason I’ve taken you into my employ.”
CHAPTER TEN
WE CLIMBED THE STAIRS ONCE MORE. ELLERSHAW, AS THOUGH made giddy by our episode in the warehouse, had to cling to the polished banister, and once he almost fell backward upon me. When we reached the top he looked back and grinned at me, exposing a mouth full of mashed brown pulp.
Once he opened the door to his office, however, he was surprised by a fellow of some forty years, plump in body, with a round face offering a nervous grin meant to appear like a smile of familiar pleasure.
“Ah, Mr. Ellershaw. I hope you don’t mind my taking the liberty of awaiting you.”
“You!” Ellershaw cried. “You! How dare you show your face here? Did I not banish you on pain of death?”
The strange man half crouched and half bowed. “Mr. Ellershaw, I told you from the beginning that yours was a delicate concern, sir, and that you would need to follow my orders to the letter, and you would need to be of a patient disposition. I have observed that you have not followed my advice on either account, but if we begin again, I believe we may-”
“Get out!” Ellershaw cried.
“But, sir. You must believe me when I say-”
“Get out, get out, get out!” Ellershaw screamed, and then surprised us both by embracing me as though he were a child and I his mother. He smelled of chop grease and a strange, bitter perfume and felt unnaturally heavy against me. Most shocking of all, I could feel the warm trickle of tears against my neck. “Make him get out,” he sobbed.
Against my own desires, I found myself patting his back in a cold approximation of comfort. With the other hand, I flicked away the intruder, who crept backward out of the room, closing the door behind him.
Through his tears, Ellershaw began to say something I could not quite make out. At first I thought to ignore it, but when he repeated the same murmurings I told him gently that I could not understand him. He murmured in the same high-pitched, baby-bird tones once more.
“I’m afraid I still don’t understand you, sir.”
Ellershaw startled me by pushing me away violently. He glared at me from three or four paces away. “Damn you, man, do you not under-stand English? I asked you if you knew of a reputable surgeon to recommend?”
I own it took all the self-control I could muster to suppress a grin. “As a matter of fact, Mr. Ellershaw, I know just the man.”
ONCE THE INTRUDER, whom I deduced to be Mr. Ellershaw’s now-erstwhile surgeon, had taken his leave and I had provided my employer with Elias Gordon’s name, matters calmed considerably. There were no signs of the previous intimacy other than Ellershaw’s overly mannered correcting of his clothes-pulling at his sleeves, dusting off his coat, and the like. After a moment of harrumphing and ahemming, Ellershaw rang his bell and summoned a girl, fortunately not Celia Glade, to bring us some tea.
While we waited, Ellershaw refused to say much of substance, and spoke instead only of a play he had seen and the scandalous French dancers who had performed afterward. Finally, the tea arrived-the green mixture of which he had previously spoken-and I drank it with some pleasure, for it had a delicate grassy quality I had not previously known.
“Now, sir,” he began, “you have no doubt begun to wonder as to why I should hire you to oversee the watchmen when we already have such a man.”
He spoke, of course, of the East Indian, Aadil, but I had been under the impression he’d been ignorant of the man’s existence. Now I knew not how to judge if his previous actions had all been a masquerade or if he played at some much deeper game.
“I presumed,” I began cautiously, “that there had been a misunderstanding, which you chose generously to settle to my benefit.”
He slammed the desk with his open palm, rattling the china. “You think me such a fool, then, do you? You shall soon see, sir, that I am no fool. I see it all; I see everything. And I see something else as well. When the Court of Proprietors meets in just over two weeks, there is a faction that will exert its utmost power to have me thrust from my position-thrown onto the streets, sir, after all I’ve done for this Company.”
“I am distressed to hear it.”
“Distressed? Is that all? Where is your rage, sir? Where is your sense of justice? Have I not toiled for this Company from the time I was old enough to walk? Did I not squander my youth in the inhospitable climes of India overseeing the factory in that fetid hell called Bombay? Have I not, with these very hands, been made to strike dead wild natives-and not just men, mind, you, but women and children-for failure to heed my directives? I’ve done all that, sir, and more, in the name of the Company’s profits. And then I return to this island and take my rightful place in Craven House, where I lead the Company to greater success than it has ever known. After a life of service, now there are those who want me gone, who say my time is finished. I won’t have it, and with your help I shall destroy them.”
“But who are these men?” I asked, sensing I was upon something of import.
His color subsided somewhat. “That I cannot determine. They use strange and clever engines of deception to hide themselves and their motives. I know not who they are or even why they wish me gone, other than that they wish their man in my place. You see, I don’t believe I am their enemy, sir. Rather, I believe they see my place as vulnerable, and so they have set their sights on it. The destruction they have planned for me is but a circumstance of their ambition, not the cause of it.”