David Liss - The Coffee Trader

“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.

Maybe she had wanted it to happen. When she thought back on it, that was how it seemed. She hadn’t hidden the book particularly well, setting it in the pocket of an apron, with one corner sticking out, or under a pile of scarves, its sharp corner jabbing through the fabric.

She took it out often, leafing through its uncut pages, peeking at the images hidden in pages that were still attached. She knew she ought to separate them-it was her book and she might do as she pleased-but she did not know how and she was afraid of damaging it.

The words meant nothing to her. She could not tell one letter from another, but the woodcuts were pretty and they suggested to her a world beyond what she knew. Delicately drawn fruit, a fish, a boat, a little boy at play. Some of them were silly, like the cow with the almost human face, smiling out at her with maddening cheer.

She and the new girl, Catryn, had been washing the floors before Shabbat when Daniel entered the hallway and trod along the clean floors with his muddy shoes. His face was blank, hardly even changing as he slipped and had to grab onto the doorjamb to keep from tumbling. Catryn muttered under her breath but didn’t look up.

“Come with me,” Daniel said to Hannah.

She raised herself and followed him to the bedroom. The book had been set out on the bed. She had known it would happen. She had been waiting for it. Even so, her stomach wrenched so hard she feared for her child. She took deep breaths and willed herself calm.