The Confusion

The lawyers were five strong. To judge from their ages, the quality of their periwigs, and their posture, she guessed two full-fledged barristers and three clerks. The barristers were shoulder-to-shoulder with their clients, the clerks packed like oakum into spaces beneath the stair and among bancas that were not, for the most part, shaped at all like human beings. It was well that Eliza’s morning sickness had abated, for the smell of coffee, snuff, decaying teeth, unwashed men, and colognes used to overpower same would else have sent her right back out into ’Change Alley, where she’d have gone into a fit as bad as Isaac Newton’s. As it was, she had no lack of incentive to make the conversation brief and momentous.

“With so many gentlemen here, there is no room for silver,” she remarked. “May I assume that it has all been delivered to the Mint to be coined?”

“My lady,” began the London factor. He was literally reading from a prepared script. “The two weeks since you presented the Bills of Exchange at these premises have been eventful ones. Allow me to give you a brief account. You arrived on a day when news of a French invasion was looked for at any moment. The price of silver was high; its availability, nonexistent. You presented five Bills. One was payable immediately, and we paid it. The other four were payable on the tenth of June, by English calendar; that is, today. As no silver was to be had in London we despatched a message, post-haste, to our factory in Amsterdam. Less than twelve hours after its arrival in that city, a ship was underway on the Ijsselmeer laden with silver sufficient to pay the four outstanding Bills. Under normal circumstances she would have reached London and called at Tower Dock in more than enough time for the said bullion to have been minted into English coins before the date of expiry of the said Bills. During her passage across the Narrow Seas, however, she was waylaid, and overhauled by Ships of Force flying the flag of the French Navy. The silver and the ship were taken to Dunkerque, where they remain. Because this piracy was carried out by ships flying the fleur-de-lis, it is nominated, by our Dutch insurers, as an Act of War, expressly not covered by our policy; in consequence, the cargo is a total loss.”

“Have you tried to buy silver on the local market?” Eliza asked. “There must be a glut of it now that everyone knows that the French invasion has failed. Why, I have heard that the Marquis of Ravenscar sold his holdings two weeks ago.”

“News of the piracy did not reach my clients until yesterday,” returned a barrister-a feline man not much bigger than Eliza. “Needless to say, my client has bent all efforts, in the short time since, to acquire local silver; but my client’s ability to make such purchases is founded upon the credit of his House, not, mind you, as it really is, or ought to be, but as that is perceived by other bankers of the City-” and here he could not prevent his eyes from straying toward the window; for a few of those bankers, or their messengers, had begun to gather without.

“And that has suffered a blow, hasn’t it,” Eliza returned, in a voice suffused with childlike wonder, as if this had only just occurred to her, “because of the pirates and the insurers and whatnot.”

“As to your speculations, my client has no comment,” announced the barrister, “however I must correct you on a matter of lexicography. You said pirates. A pirate owes allegiance to no sovereign. The correct word, in his instance, would be privateer. Do you ken the distinction, my lady?”

“Why, yes-a privateer flies the flag of some country or other, and is in effect a part of its Navy.”

“Your clarity, where this distinction is concerned, may perhaps reflect your status as the wife of the Grand Admiral of France-the superior of Captain Jean Bart, who confiscated my client’s silver.”

“That man is incorrigible! Why, only three years ago the rascal confiscated every last penny that I owned! I am relieved to be informed that the House of Hacklheber escaped with comparatively small losses.”

“That remains to be seen,” said the barrister. “A lady’s wealth consists of the contents of her jewellery-box, but that of a banking-house consists largely in its credit. Direct losses such as the shipment of silver may be written off, and perhaps recovered. By contrast, when a Person of Quality erects an elaborate complot to destroy the good name of a banking-house-”