The Coffee Trader

32

The new girl spoke no Portuguese but made herself content with a rough exchange of signs. Catryn had a dour face, closer to plain than homely, but unpleasant enough to suit her mistress. It hardly mattered. Miguel was out of the house now, and the prettiness or plainness of the maid meant nothing to anyone.

In the mornings, Daniel left the house almost before she was awake, and Hannah was left to her breakfast with the girl hovering over her. Catryn gestured toward the decanter of wine on the table. She seemed to believe that a woman with child could never take too much wine, and Hannah had been disordered with drink every morning for a week before she had found the will to say no. Now she just shook her head. When she drank so much the baby quieted down inside her, and she liked to feel it kicking and squirming. When it lay still, even if just for a few minutes, Hannah feared the worst. If the baby died, what would Daniel do? What would he do to her?

She sent Catryn to the market outside the Dam to buy coffee and had the girl prepare it for her each afternoon. One day Daniel came home early and grew so enraged when he saw her drinking it that he struck her until she cried out for the well-being of their child. Now she only drank it during Exchange hours when she knew Daniel would not be there.

Sometimes she saw Miguel on the street, dressed as he was now in his fine new suits, walking in his familiar way with the great merchants of the Vlooyenburg. He looked content, youthful in his triumph. Hannah didn’t dare look too long. If she went to his house, if she told him she wanted to leave her husband and be with him, what would he say? He would tell her to be gone. Maybe if he had failed in his mighty scheme and had nothing more to lose, maybe then he might have taken her, but not now.

After Catryn cleared away the breakfast things, she and Hannah went out to the markets. The girl could not cook half so well as Annetje, and she knew less about picking meats and produce. Hannah had a better eye than the girl, but she didn’t speak her mind. Let her pick bad vegetables and turning beef. What did it matter to her if their meals were bland or sour?

This was her life now, pale carrots and rotten fish. These things were her only pleasures. She had her husband and she would have her daughter, whom she prayed would be born healthy and fit. Those things would have to be enough. They would have to be enough, because there could be nothing else.

Moving from his brother’s house was sweet. Miguel had rented a fine home across the canal, and though it was smaller than his brother’s, he thought it far more elegant and perfectly suited for his needs. He hardly even knew what he would do with the space he had, though he hoped soon enough to fill it with a wife and children. The marriage brokers had already begun to pound on his door.

The day after his victory on the Exchange, his last in his brother’s house, he had climbed up from the cellar and walked through the kitchen and then up again to the main level, where he saw Daniel sitting in the front room, pretending to look at letters. Daniel said nothing to him. Not a word of kindness. Miguel had told him that morning that he would be moving out and had thanked Daniel for his hospitality. Daniel had merely nodded and advised Miguel to be certain not to take anything that was not his.

There was still one order of business, and Miguel wanted it put to rest before he left. He cleared his throat and waited while Daniel slowly raised his head.

“Is there something?” he asked.

“I wanted to talk to you about a matter of money,” he said. “It is an awkward thing, and I would not have you think me overeager. Right now my affairs are quite healthy, thank the Holy One, blessed be He, but I am told that you owe me some money.”

Daniel rose to his feet. “I owe you? What nonsense is that? After I sheltered you for the past six months, you would say that I owe you?”

“Your shelter has been very generous, Daniel, but such generosity is not worth two thousand guilders. Ricardo has explained everything to me.”

“I cannot believe you would fly in my face with this!” he shouted. “I lent you money when no one else would, when your name was a byword for failure. I took you in and gave you shelter when you had nowhere to turn. And now you dare tell me I owe you.”

“I have not said when you must pay me. I know your finances to be in disorder.”

“Who told you such a lie? Now that you have a few coins jingling in your pocket you think yourself the finest man in Amsterdam. I must tell you, brother, it does not work thus. Because you are now solvent does not mean I must be ruined.”

“I had not thought it worked that way,” Miguel said quietly.

“And I will tell you something else. That little scheme of yours on the Exchange would never have worked had you not taken my name and done with it as you ought not to, promising my money to back your ventures. I suppose you thought yourself too clever to be discovered.”

“I thought it only fair,” Miguel said, “considering you had the effrontery to demand that I pay you what you lent me when you knew yourself to be my debtor.”

“Well, I won’t forgive you,” Daniel said. “The money you claim I owe you was made by stomping upon Senhor Parido’s plans, plans in which I was also invested. While you profited from whale oil, I lost-but I never chastised you for your trickery. And while you profited from your little scheme with coffee, you have cost Senhor Parido a great deal of money. Can you only profit, Miguel, by tricks and schemes that injure others?”

“How can you speak of tricks and schemes when all this time Parido’s interest in coffee was based on nothing but revenge? That is no kind of way to do business, I assure you. It would have been far better had he looked to making money rather than to making me lose it.”

Daniel shook his head. “I had always thought you lax and undisciplined, too free with drink and women, but I had never before thought you a villain.”

“Tell yourself what lies you like,” Miguel said bitterly. “I won’t take you before the Ma’amad. I leave it to your own sense of right and wrong to act as you see fit.”

The letters had gone out to all the agents Miguel had hired: agents in London, Paris, Marseilles, Antwerp, Hamburg, and half a dozen other exchanges. He had not contacted those agents to which Geertruid was responsible, those secured in Iberia with the aid of her lawyer. Geertruid handled those herself, and she had no idea her own letters contained something very different from Miguel’s.

On the day that Miguel had indicated, Geertruid’s agents in Lisbon, Madrid, and Oporto were to buy as much coffee as they could. Word of the Amsterdam sell-off would have trickled to the foreign exchanges already. Prices would have dipped after Miguel’s maneuver, and Geertruid’s agents would be prepared to pounce on the low price.

Geertruid arrived at the Amsterdam Exchange at midday. She was not the only woman to set foot there, but her sex was rare and she attracted some small attention as she strolled across the courtyard in her flowing red skirts, imperious as a queen. During the early stages of their planning, Miguel had suggested that she come to the Exchange to watch the buying take place and witness the birth of their wealth. Miguel had never repeated the suggestion, but Geertruid had not forgotten it.

She beamed, tilting her head just slightly in the way that drove Miguel mad. There was Miguel, her partner, her friend, her puppet. She had sent him out to do her bidding, and he had done it.

Except she now saw he did something else entirely. Her partner was selling. He stood amid a crowd of traders who called out their price. Miguel sold off his ninety barrels piecemeal-ten to this merchant, five to that. Since the recent upheaval, coffee had come to be regarded as a risky venture and no one bought in any great quantity.

“What are you doing?” She rushed over as soon as Miguel had finished the transaction. “Have you gone mad? Why aren’t you buying?”

Miguel smiled. “With a little manipulation and a carefully placed rumor here and there, I’ve managed to raise the price of coffee to thirty-seven guilders to the barrel, so I’m unloading the barrels I bought from Nunes. I’ll make a tidy profit, which will enhance the wealth I acquired from my puts. After the events of last closing day, I bought some short-term futures, and I believe I should profit quite nicely from those as well.”

“A profit? Your puts and short-term futures? You’ve been gazing at the moon. When the other markets learn that Amsterdam has not gone down, we’ll lose money across Europe.”

“Oh, I’m not worried. The agents will buy nothing. I’ve dismissed them.”

Geertruid stared at him. She began to speak but choked on her words. She tried again. “Miguel, what game are you playing? Please tell me what is happening.”

“What is happening,” Miguel said calmly, “is that I have changed the scheme to my advantage, and I have left you to muddle through as best you can.”

Geertruid opened her mouth but nothing came out, so she turned away for a moment to master herself. “Why would you do such a thing to me?” Her eyes blinked and she stared into nothingness. “Why would you do this?”

Miguel smiled. “Because you deceived me and betrayed me. You thought, even now, that I would never have learned that our chance meeting was no accident. You have manipulated me since the day we met, but now I have manipulated you. You sought to use this coffee scheme to ruin me, but I have found you out and made a handsome profit. It is not the profit I dreamed of, I grant you, but it is certainly enough to restore my reputation, resolve my debts, and give me the freedom to trade as I like. You, on the other hand, have committed yourself to your agents in Iberia, and I believe they will turn to you to repay them.”

This time Geertruid could not find her voice at all.

“Of course, I shall return your capital. Though you sought my ruin, I’ll not steal from you. The money should go a little way toward repaying your agents for their purchases.”

“I am undone,” Geertruid whispered. She took hold of his arm, as though he were a witness to her ruin and not its architect.

“Perhaps your master will rescue you. Surely it is his responsibility to do so. I suspect the three thousand guilders you laid out were his to begin with. Of course, this incident has not left Parido untouched, and he may not find himself as generous as he once was. But that is no concern of mine.”

Geertruid still said nothing but only stared ahead in disbelief. Miguel, who had more coffee to unload, turned away.