“I hope I have not violated any rules today,” Miguel said. “Appearing on the Exchange without properly greeting you, perhaps. I expect I’ll receive another summons before long.”
“I expect the same.” Parido laughed softly, as though making light with a friend. “You must not think there was anything of a personal nature in what transpired in that room with the Ma’amad. I merely acted in accordance with what I believed to be right and proper.”
“Of course,” Miguel agreed flatly.
“However, your likening the Ma’amad to the Inquisition-that will make you no friends. There are too many in this city who have lost loved ones to the Inquisition.”
“You forget that the Inquisition took my father; I know what it is, and so does my brother. If he ever sees things as I do, he may not be so quick to follow you blindly.”
“You judge him too harshly. He only wishes to do what is best for his family, and that family includes you. I suspect he will be very proud of you when he learns of your brilliant scheme in the East Indies trade.”
“My scheme?” Miguel studied his face for some sign of what might be coming.
“Yes. I had no idea how clever you were, but now I see in its fullness your plan. Wait until the price of coffee rises because of the growth of demand, and then gamble a large sum of money you do not have on the price falling. Yes, very clever indeed.”
Miguel smiled back. Parido knew nothing but what Miguel had intended the world to learn, though he had learned it with disturbing speed. “I’m glad you approve.”
“I hope nothing happens to make the price rise again in ten weeks’ time.”
“I hope so too,” Miguel told him. He would not appear too clever or too confident. Let Parido believe he knew Miguel’s plan, rather than look for more. “You think the price will rise, but I’ve heard that since I wagered, others have followed suit and more will follow. We’ll see what sort of momentum has begun.”
“I suppose we will,” Parido agreed, clearly thinking about something else already.
There was another note from Joachim when he returned home. Another note in that uneven, drunken hand.
If you speak to my wife again, I will kill you, it said. I will creep up behind you so you won’t know I’m there and slit your throat. I’ll do it if you again approach Clara. There were two lines that had been crossed out, and then underneath he wrote, In fact, I may just kill you anyway for the pleasure of revenge.
The note had a kind of manic sincerity. Had Miguel’s silly banter with Clara (how could she have been so stupid as to tell him about it?) pushed her husband over the edge? He cursed Joachim and he cursed himself. It would be a long time before he would again feel at ease.
24
In the deceptive shadows of twilight, a figure crept up behind him but slipped back into the dusk before Miguel could spin around to face it. An indeterminate shape lurked behind a tree just out of his vision. Something splashed into the canal a few paces behind his hurried steps. Each street brought Miguel closer to some deadly confrontation with Joachim. Out of the corner of his eye he saw a madman’s foul grin, the glimmer of a knife blade, a pair of lunging hands.
Miguel was no stranger to death. In Lisbon he had lived in terror of the arbitrary power of the Inquisition and of the bands of bloodthirsty villains that had roamed the streets almost with impunity. In recent years, Amsterdam had been subject to horrible visitations of plague: men and women turned purplish-black in the face, developed rashes, and died within days. Thanks to the Holy One, blessed be He, people now smoked so much tobacco, for it alone prevented the spread of that disease. Still, death lurked everywhere. Miguel knew as well as anyone how to live with its random assaults on the living; he did not know how to live while being hunted.
And so Joachim began to win his war upon his enemy’s quiet. Miguel found his concentration wandering, even upon the Exchange. He watched helplessly as Parido made his way through the crowds of merchants, buying coffee futures, betting that the price would continue to rise.
If something should happen to make Miguel unable to control the price of the coffee, he would lose money on his puts, and then Daniel would learn that Miguel had abused his name and his funds. What if Nunes refused to deliver the goods until Miguel paid his debts? It all struck him as futile, when he might be dead at any moment of an assassin’s blade.
Miguel knew he could not live with that possibility. Even if Joachim never intended to draw blood, he had already done great harm. No one could doubt Miguel’s need to put an end to it. He needed to live his life without fear of some madman stalking him.
It took him a few more days to determine how to proceed, but once he had his idea firmly in mind it seemed to him both sordid and clever. It would involve some unpleasantness, but he could not expect to deal with a person like Joachim without confronting the unsavory. Certainly that had been his problem all along. He had tried to engage with Joachim as though he were a sound man, as though he might be convinced by reason, but time and time again Joachim had shown himself unable or unwilling to act as a man of sense. He recalled a tale of Charming Pieter in which a ruffian sought revenge against the trickster. Outmatched by an enemy’s physical prowess, Pieter had hired an even more dangerous ruffian to protect himself.
At the Singing Carp they told him Geertruid had not been seen in half a week, and that meant she might be gone for a few days more. Often Hendrick would go with her, but not always, and Miguel had no need to wait for her return. In fact, he thought, this might be the better way. Why should Geertruid know all his business?
He spent the better part of the day scouring the taverns where he might expect to see Hendrick, but it was not until late afternoon that he found his man, sitting at a table with a few of his rough friends, smoking a long pipe that smelled like a mixture of old tobacco and dung. Hendrick had mentioned the tavern in passing before, but Miguel had never imagined that anything would lead him to enter such a place. He could taste in his mouth the scent of rotten wood from the tables; the flood had been covered with filthy straw. In the back, a crowd of men made a game of watching two rats fight each other.
Seeing Miguel, Hendrick let out a barking laugh and then whispered something to his friends, who joined in the cackling. “Why, speak of the devil, it is the very Jew Man. ” Hendrick puffed furiously at his pipe, as though the clouds of smoke might engulf Miguel.
“I’ve been looking for you,” Miguel said. “I need to talk with you for a moment.”
“Drink up, boys,” Hendrick shouted to his companions. “I must take my leave for a time. I have a meeting of importance, as you can see.”
Outside the tavern, the dead-fish smell of the canal coated Miguel’s throat. The summer heat had begun to settle upon the city, and the stink with it. He breathed in deep through his mouth and led Hendrick toward the alley, which had a slightly more pleasant odor of soil and old beer. A distressed cat with filthy white fur and a mangled ear opened its pink mouth and hissed at them, but Hendrick hissed back, and the cat fled into the shadows.
“My lady has gone away for the nonce, and I am used to it being that where there is no Madam Damhuis, there is no senhor either.”
“Has she gone to her lawyer in Antwerp again?”
“So you’ve come in search of her after all?” He punched Miguel congenially in the arm.
“I’ve not come for her.” Miguel offered a knowing look of his own. “But I’m curious.”
“Ha!” Hendrick barked. “You’ve kept that curiosity in check, haven’t you, good Jew Man? She’s a lady with many secrets: from you, from me, from the world. Some say she’s as ordinary as buttered bread, but she keeps secrets to seem otherwise.”