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“Some port?” he asked.
“Thank you.” I only briefly considered the possibility that he might poison the drink. But poison did not seem Mendes’s way. Seeing me ripped to pieces by his dogs was more in his line, and as he had not done this I could assume the drink to be safe.
He moved to hand me my pewter cup, but it slipped from his hand. As it landed on the wooden floor with a light tap, I understood that it was empty- and I understood that it had been a distraction.
Mendes now stood over me with a blade to my throat- a long knife of remarkable sharpness. He pushed with the sharp blade, and I backed up, feeling it cut into my skin. He pressed forward, however, and soon I was against the wall.
“Guard,” he said quietly. I did not understand his meaning until I realized it was a command to his dogs. They approached and stood at my feet, legs wide apart. They looked at me and growled but did nothing more, awaiting Mendes’s command.
The blade moved just a quarter inch, and I felt the skin on my neck slide. Not deeply, but enough that there should be blood. “I thought to let the insult go,” Mendes said. I felt his breath on my face, hot and pungent. “I understood that you believed you needed to put a gun to me, that you could take no chances until you were certain. I am not unaware of all of that, and so I thought to forget the matter. But I ca
“What sort of retribution do you envision?” I asked. I spoke slowly to keep the skin from moving too much against the blade.
“An apology,” he said.
“I apologized before,” I observed.
“Before you apologized to be courteous. Now you must apologize out of fear.” He stared hard into my eyes, refusing to turn away. “Are you afraid?”
Of course I was afraid. I knew Mendes to be unpredictable and violent, two qualities I did not desire from a man holding a knife to my throat. On the other hand, there was such challenge in his voice that I could not capitulate- not like he wished me to.
“I’m uneasy,” I said.
“Uneasy is not enough. I want to hear that you are afraid.”
“I’m concerned.”
He blinked. “How concerned?”
“Quite.”
He let out a breath. “And sorry?”
“Certainly,” I said. “Very sorry to have had to hold a pistol to you.”
He took away the blade and backed off. “I suppose that will have to do. You with your irrational pride- we’d have been here all day.” He turned away- to show his confidence, I suppose- and found a rag, which he tossed to me, presumably for the purpose of dabbing up the blood on my neck.
“Now,” he said, as he picked up the fallen pewter cup, “shall we take that port?”
Soon we sat in chairs across from each other, faces red from the fire, chatting as though we were old friends.
“I told Wild you would never come to meet him,” Mendes said, his scarred face erupting into a satisfied grin, “but he insisted the advertisement, assuming you saw it, would have the desired effect. And now it seems he was correct, for in truth he only wanted to pass some information along to you, and in your current state you are a difficult man to seek out.”
I could not regret that it was so. In the past, Wild’s efforts to seek me out had involved sending his men to attack me and drag me to his house against my will. “And what information would that be?”
Mendes leaned back in his chair, as satisfied as a country squire who had just finished his evening fowl. “The name of the man who has brought all this trouble down on your head.”
“De
He leaned forward, unable to hide his disappointment. “You are cleverer than Wild would have believed.”
“Wild thinks no one clever but himself, so I ca
He shrugged. “Not very much, I’m afraid. We learned that you had been meddling around with the porters at Wapping. Dogmill has been wrestling with the labor combinations for months, even while he sets them against one another. This fellow Yate was causing him no small amount of grief, and it’s easier to kill a porter than it is a rat.”
“That much I know. Why would he choose to blame me for the crime?”
“Wild had hoped,” Mendes said, “that you would tell us that.”
I felt the sad tug of disappointment. Nevertheless, that Wild had known to blame De
Mendes gazed at me skeptically. “Come, Weaver. The truth.”
“Why should I not speak the truth?”
“There have been some suggestions in the paper that your loyalties are not to His present Majesty.”
I laughed aloud. “The Whigs are merely trying to turn an embarrassment into political capital. It was one of their judges who so blatantly condemned me against the evidence. You are not so foolish as to believe what you read in the political papers, I hope.”
“I don’t believe it, but I wonder about it. You have not involved yourself in some Jacobite plot, have you, Weaver?”
“Of course not. Do you really think me mad enough to indulge in treason? Why should I want to see any James the Third on the throne?”
“I admit it seemed to me unlikely, but these are strange times and there are plots everywhere.”
“I ca
“I should think you would look favorably on the Whigs when the man who married your cousin’s pretty widow runs as a Tory. You once took it into your head to marry her, did you not?”
I glared at him. “Don’t think to take liberties with me, Mendes.”
He held up a massive hand. “Stay your temper, friend. I meant nothing by it.”
“No, you did mean something. You meant to prod me to see how I should react. Prod me again on this matter, and you’ll know- dogs or not- I am not to be made sport of.”
He nodded solemnly, a look- almost of remorse, I must say, settling onto his misshapen face. “Then let us go back to the matter at hand. Why have you been singled out to hang for Yate’s death?”
“I ca
“Ufford has been making trouble with the porters,” Mendes said, “and he is a known Jacobite, but that hardly seems reason enough for Dogmill to wish you to hang. You say you learned nothing about these notes, but it would be reasonable to suspect that Dogmill thinks you’ve learned something- and he would rather see you dead than reveal it.”
I shook my head. “Then why not slip a blade into my back when I am not looking? Why not have my food in prison poisoned as I awaited trial or have a guard smother me in my sleep? There are a hundred ways to kill a man, Mendes. You know that. A thousand, if he is in Newgate. Arranging for a trial and bribing a judge to misdirect a jury hardly seem the most effective. I am not convinced that what has happened to me is a mere effort to keep me silent.”
He gazed into his glass thoughtfully. “You may be right, but it is nevertheless true that Dogmill wished that these things should befall you. Wild believes you must be dangerous to Dogmill in some way, and he is willing to offer you protection in exchange for learning the truth. But now you tell me you don’t know. That’s bad news, Weaver, because if you ca