“You’ve told me so yourself. You told me that out of necessity you were schooled in the arts of deception. I want no deception now, however. I want the truth.”
“Just because a man knows how to deceive doesn’t mean that he has forgotten how to be truthful. I would not lie to you, just as I know you would not lie to me.” He probably should not have said it, but he felt sure that his face betrayed nothing of the irony. “Your money is safe, and though more money would have made my task far easier, I believe I can still order everything.”
“Better to do it, then,” she said. “You cannot eat the same rabbit twice, Miguel. You’ve got all there is to get from me.”
“Then I will have to make do,” he said, with an easy grin.
Geertruid said nothing for a moment. She took a deep drink of her beer and stared past Miguel. “I believe you,” she said. “I know you are my friend, and I know you would not hurt me. But if there is something I must know, you had better tell me, because if you do hurt me-if it even appears to unschooled eyes that you have hurt me-you must understand that Hendrick will kill you, and I won’t be able to stop him.”
Miguel affected a laugh. “He’ll have no cause to resent me when all is done, and neither will you. Now, if things are to be this way, I had better go and make certain all is in order.”
“When will the shipment be in port?” she asked.
His speculations on coffee came due in three weeks’ time. He had planned originally that the coffee be in port some two weeks later. It would not happen, but no one need know that. Not for what he had in mind.
“A month,” he said. “Maybe less.”
The meeting left a sour taste in his mouth, but that could not be helped. As he crossed the Warmoesstraat, Miguel saw a pair of men who pretended that they did not keep their eyes upon him-surely Ma’amad spies. It was no matter. There was no crime in being on the street. Still, he felt compelled to lose them, and ducked into a side alley that led to a back street. He took another alley and then another side street, which took him back again to the main road.
He turned around, and the spies were still behind him. Perhaps they had never turned in the alleys, knowing Miguel would come back to where he started. He picked up a flat stone and tossed it into the canal to make it skip, but it sank the instant it hit the murky water.
Miguel lifted up the sack of coffee berries. It was light, light enough to toss from hand to hand. He would have to start being careful how he used it or he would soon have none left. Perhaps the people at the Turkish coffee tavern would allow him to buy for his own use.
Having taken an inventory of the problems before him, Miguel now saw what he faced: his coffee scheme was on the brink of foundering, owing to late shipments and insufficient funds; his partner, Geertruid, was not what she seemed, perhaps in league with Parido, perhaps not; Joachim was certainly in league with Parido, but that made Miguel’s life easier, not harder, since Parido’s money seemed to have returned the fellow’s sanity; Miguel could not pay his debt to Isaiah Nunes because he had used the funds to pay off his brother and to pay his Muscovy agent; the money he’d earned from his brilliant whale-oil trade was unavailable because the broker Ricardo would not pay Miguel or reveal the name of his client; Miguel could do nothing about Ricardo’s treachery since using the Dutch courts would bring upon him the anger of the Ma’amad, and going before Ma’amad was too risky because of Parido.
Rather, it had been too risky.
Miguel swallowed the last of the coffee in his bowl. There was at least one thing he could resolve, he realized, and he could do so at once.
After searching a half dozen taverns, Miguel called on Ricardo at his home. The broker was notorious for hiring the cheapest servants he could find, and the creature who opened the door must have been a rare bargain: well into her last years in life, she was hunched and trembling. Her eyes were mere slits, and she had trouble propelling herself forward.
“What is it?” she asked Miguel in Dutch. “You here for the Jew’s supper?”
Miguel smiled brightly. “Certainly.”
“Come in then. The rest are already eating. The Jew doesn’t like for the people he invites to be late.”
“Has it occurred to you,” Miguel asked, as he followed her along at her shuffling pace, “that as you speak of ‘the Jew,’ you are speaking to yet another Jew?”
“Take that up with him,” she said. “It’s none of my business.”
The woman led him down a long, brightly tiled hallway and into a spacious room, furnished with hardly more than a large table. The walls, however, were thick with paintings: portraits, landscapes, biblical scenes. Miguel recognized one portrait, a painting of Samson, as being in the style of that curious fellow who had lived in the Vlooyenburg and was in the habit of paying poor Jews to model for him.
The models, however, were the only poor Jews who graced the inside of this house; surrounding the table, which seemed to Miguel to have relatively little food on it, were some of the wealthiest men of the Portuguese Nation, including Solomon Parido. From the volume of the conversation, Miguel guessed that Ricardo had been more liberal with his wine than with his food.
The broker, who had been laughing at something, now looked up and saw Miguel standing with the old servant.
“It’s another Jew for you,” she announced.
“Lienzo.” Ricardo spat. “Surely I didn’t invite you here.”
“You told me to come join you and your friends for a merry feast, so here I am.”
Parido raised his glass. “Let us toast Lienzo, then. Amsterdam ’s most uncanny trader.”
Ricardo pushed himself to his feet. “Walk into my private chambers for a moment.” He lurched forward, stumbling briefly, and then, after taking a breath, seemed to have regained his balance. Miguel bowed at the guests and followed.
Ricardo let him up a narrow half flight of stairs to a smallish room, furnished with a writing table, a few chairs, and piles of papers that rested on the floor. The windows had been pulled shut, and the room was nearly entirely dark. The broker opened one of the shutters so there was just enough light for them to see each other, but hardly more than that.
“I’m beginning to suspect,” Miguel said, “that you drink more wine than is healthy for one of our nation. The Dutch are bottomless vessels, but you seem to have reached your limit.”
“And I think,” Ricardo said, “that you may be more of a rascal than I had first suspected. What do you mean coming here while I am entertaining my friends, a category, I might point out, that certainly does not include you?”
“I had no idea you had friends here. I was merely looking for you in some obvious places. Had you not hired your serving girl out of the graveyard she might screen your visitors a little more thoroughly.”
Ricardo lowered himself into a chair. “Well, what is it you want? Speak quickly, but if it is about that cursed money again, I will have to tell you what I’ve told you before: you’ll get what you have coming in due time and not before.”
Miguel chose not to sit but, instead, paced back and forth in the room like an advocate making a speech before the burgomasters. “I have thought about what you’ve said and found it wanting. You see, I am owed money, and if I cannot have it I am entitled at the very least to know who is my debtor.”
Ricardo’s mustaches twitched with superior amusement. “You may think so, but we both know there is nothing you can do about it.”
“So you say. You believe I won’t risk the anger of the Ma’amad by going to the Dutch courts, and I won’t go to the Ma’amad because one of its members might lead the council against me. That, at any rate, is what you think. I suppose you also know about my recent encounter with the council and my daylong banishment, but because those proceedings are held secret, you don’t know what was revealed. So let me tell you this: my enemy on that council betrayed himself and revealed his antipathy for me to the other parnassim. That man would be unable to lead the council against me.”