The next morning, Ellershaw called me into his office, though he appeared to have nothing of import to say to me. I had the distinct impression that he wished only to test my mood following his cruel treatment of Thurmond the night before. I, for my part, kept quiet about what I had seen. Thus we spoke some time of my days as a pugilist. Ellershaw laughed at some of my stories, but after a quarter of an hour he informed me that I had wasted quite enough of his time and should go about my business, lest I waste his money as well.
“Of course, sir,” I said. “But may I ask a question of a delicate nature?”
He waved his hand with grudging permission.
“It regards Mrs. Ellershaw’s daughter from a previous marriage. Am I to understand there is something unfortunate that has transpired with her?”
Ellershaw studied me for a moment, his face remaining immobile and expressionless all the while. “The girl fled,” he said at last. “She took a liking to a rogue, and, despite our promise that she would receive not a penny if she married him, there is every reason to believe she obtained a Fleet marriage. We have not received a word from her since, though you may depend upon it, we shall. They will certainly wait until they believe our anger has passed and then come calling, hat in hand.”
“Thank you, sir,” I said.
“If you think to earn for yourself a few extra shillings by finding the girl,” Ellershaw said to me, “you must be disappointed. Neither I nor Mrs. Ellershaw cares if we never hear from her again.”
“I had no such intentions. I was merely curious.”
“You would be better served directing your curiosity toward the rogues of Craven House and less toward my family.”
“Of course,” I agreed.
“Now, as to Thurmond. He must know that he cannot be permitted to shrug us off so casually. It is time to make him fear us truly.”
I considered Ellershaw’s threat with the burning poker and trembled to ponder what mischief he had in his mind. “With less than two weeks left before the meeting of the Court of Proprietors,” I said, “I hardly think it wise for you to have your strategy hinge upon frightening Mr. Thurmond.”
“Ha!” he shouted. “You know nothing, and I have no intention that you should learn more. Do you think this my only avenue? It is but one, the only one that concerns you. Now, my informants within Parliament have told me that he plans to dine tonight with an associate of his near Great Warner Street. You must break into his home while he is out and await his return. Then, when he has gone abed, I wish you to pummel the scoundrel, Mr. Weaver. Pummel him within an inch of his life, that he might know that Craven House is not to be trifled with. Then, sir, I wish you to violate his wife.”
I remained motionless. I said nothing.
“Do you not hear me?”
I swallowed hard. “I hear you, Mr. Ellershaw, but I am afraid I do not comprehend. You cannot mean what I think you to mean.”
“Indeed I do. I have faced the resistance of such men before, I can promise you. In Bombay there were always chieftains and leaders among the blacks who believed they might stand up to the Company. They had to be made to see the consequences, and I believe Thurmond must be made to see too. Do you think this is a trivial matter? On what we do hinges the future of the Company, and upon that the world itself. The Company is the standard-bearer of free trade. You and I have a rendezvous with destiny, Weaver. We will preserve for our children this, the last best hope of man on earth, or we will sentence them to take the first step into a thousand years of darkness. If we fail, at least let our children and our children’s children say of us that we justified our brief moment here. We did all that could be done.”
I stifled my first impulse, which was to say I harbored grave doubts that our children’s children should praise us for beating old men and violating old women. Instead, I took a deep breath and lowered my eyes deferentially. “Sir, you do not speak of a tribal leader among the Indians. You speak of a well-respected member of the House of Commons. You cannot expect the crime to go unreported. And even if you could be guaranteed of your success, I cannot condone such barbaric usage of anyone, particularly the aged-and I could most assuredly never participate in such a thing.”
“What? You haven’t the stomach for it? I thought you more of a man than that. This is the world we live in, Mr. Weaver, full of deceits and treachery. You must be the one to wield the club, or you will be thrashed by it. I have told you what I wish, and you are my servant; therefore, you will do as I say.”
Once more I found myself faced with a conundrum: Actions that would preserve my place conflicted with actions that would preserve my soul. I might have had a difficult time convincing Cobb that I could not bring myself to beat a warehouse worker, but I would have to believe that even he could not expect me to engage in shameless violence and rape-if for no other reason than that such crimes must be pursued and, if traced to me, must surely be traced to him.
It occurred to me that this might be precisely a bit of curious luck. I had no choice but to walk away from Ellershaw, and Cobb could not blame me for doing so. Perhaps I indulged in unreasonable optimism, but such was all I had at my disposal.
Forcing my face into a cast of steely determination, I rose from my chair. “I cannot do what you ask, nor can I quietly countenance such a thing if you assign the task to another.”
“If you defy me in this, you must lose your position here.”
“Then I will lose my position.”
“You do not wish to make the East India Company your enemy.”
“Better the Company than my conscience,” I answered, and turned toward the door.
“Hold!” he said, now rising from his chair. “Hold, do not go. You are right. Perhaps my methods are too extreme.”
I cursed silently, for my hopes were cruelly, if not unexpectedly, dashed. Nevertheless, I turned. “I am glad to hear you rethink the matter.”
“Yes,” he said. “I believe you are in the right here. Nothing quite so brutal, then. But we shall think of something, Mr. Weaver. You may depend upon it.”
ON MY WAY to the warehouses, I began to consider the larger situation. One moment I served Cobb, another moment Ellershaw, and a third myself. That is to say, I walked a precarious line, and though I would wish to have no master but myself, I understood that I must be a toad-eater, at least in some small degree, if I were ever to do any good. I loathed feeling powerless above all things and yet, with my friends’ lives hanging by precarious threads, I must at least assume the appearance of subservience.
How to endure such a thing and not fall into despair? The answer, I believed, lay not in resisting my would-be masters but rather in setting out upon my own projects. I must learn what Forester hid in his secret warehouse. I must discover Ellershaw’s plans for surviving the impending Court meeting-and very possibly discover more about Ellershaw’s daughter. Such a path could be a blind alley, but many of the major actors in my little drama-both Ellershaws, Forester, and Thurmond-had spoken of her in ways that intrigued me, and though she appeared but an irrelevancy, I had long ago learned that pulling at loose threads could cause the curtain to unravel.