Christie Dickason - The Lady Tree

Coymans raised his wide-brimmed hat to the Englishman and switched to English also. ‘Mynheer Timmons. You’re a man of genius to come to Holland at this time to do business!’

‘To see if there is any business here worth doing,’ said Timmons, more stiffly than he intended. He stayed well out of Coymans’s reach.

‘No fear,’ said Coymans. ‘There’s no business like it in the world. Forget the Caribes and the Indies! I shall make you as rich as your English king would like to be.’

Timmons’s long face sketched a polite smile below its waterline of moustache. ‘As I’m not privy to his Majesty’s ambitions,’ he said, ‘that tells me nothing.’

‘Rich enough to build a fleet of new ships to wipe the Spanish off the seas,’ said Coymans cheerfully. ‘And the Dutch.’ His teeth showed in the candlelight; his eyes were hidden by the shadow of his hat.

‘Amen to the Spanish.’ Timmons hesitated. But there was now altogether too much self-satisfaction in the room. He could not resist the lightest of slaps. ‘But I believe that our two countries are supposed to be at peace.’

‘Ignore politics! They exist only to serve trade.’ Coymans snatched off his short cloak and tossed it to the servant. ‘Let me show you something more powerful than cannons, more intoxicating than a religious war.’

He seated himself uninvited in Vrel’s chair at the head of the long table. From his pouch he took a linen-wrapped parcel which he placed with a flourish on the rug-covered table in front of him. He raised both hands like a wizard poised to enchant and looked up at Vrel.

‘Cornelius. Voilá! Ecco ! Mira ! The new Indies here on your own table!’

Timmons winced at the theatrical excess and peered sceptically through the dim yellow light at the dirty little parcel. He felt the budding of ass’s ears begin to prickle at his scalp.

‘The Admiral den Boom,’ said Coymans, and waited for cheers and applause.

Vrel didn’t move closer to the table. ‘How much?’

Coymans flashed his teeth at Timmons. ‘I hope your English clients are more fun to deal with. Cornelius here has no taste for the flourishes that make work into fun. “How much?” he asks. Just like that! Clunk! When I hadn’t even finished telling him the whole wonderful story.’

‘So tell it,’ said Vrel. Coymans was right – he had little patience with whimsy. He went straight for the adding, the subtracting and, most vital of all, the multiplying.

‘My Admiral here is a miracle,’ said Coymans, still including Timmons in the blast of his focus. He dropped his voice to a dramatic stage-whisper. ‘He fathers his own offspring without a mother! Would that we all could…think of the strife it would save mankind!’

He’s going to wink now, thought Timmons with alarmed distaste.

Coymans winked. ‘And I have brought Mynheer Vrel the pater and two sons.’ He leaned forward and hooked his audience more firmly with sharp chilly eyes. ‘One son more than God the Father Himself!’

Then Timmons saw the irony behind the chill and felt an uneasy respect. Here was a performer of far greater range and subtlety than himself.

‘Like a good pimp, I have brought more than asked for but not more than is desired.’

‘You have brought me three Admirals?’ The pitch of Vrel’s low steady voice climbed at least two tones.

Coymans let a beat of silence cut through the candlelight. ‘The only three in the world.’

‘Impossible.’

‘I made sure of it.’ Then Coymans added a few swift sentences in Dutch.

Whatever he said shifted the set of the muscles in Vrel’s face. The merchant walked to the open window and pretended to look out. He was close enough for Timmons to hear how fast and shallow his breathing had become.

‘One thousand florins,’ said Vrel.

Timmons understood that much.

‘Ptsh,’ said Coymans sadly. He drew his knife and cut the leather thongs around the parcel. He laid the knife on the table, then delicately, precisely, unfolded the linen cloth. In its centre lay an irregular egg of dried grass tied with reeds. Coymans cut these bindings. With large-knuckled, reddened fingers he probed the grass, parted it tenderly and pressed it aside. Then he leaned back in his chair.

In spite of himself, Timmons moved closer.

Three onion-like bulbs lay in the grass nest. Each was cased in a papery skin the colour of chestnuts and bearded at its base with a fringe of dried white roots.

Timmons was shocked by how ordinary they looked. Coymans had somehow persuaded him that there really was something wondrous in that packet. Timmons had begun to persuade himself that he wouldn’t have to tell the obvious truth when he returned to London – that the Dutch had gone mad and there was no salvation there for the desperate Englishmen. Now the prickling on his scalp grew more insistent.

One thousand florins for those…onions!

Coymans lifted one bulb out of the nest into the candlelight, his red fingers as gentle as if it were a phoenix’s egg. ‘Ecco ! Look there!’ He placed a blunt red finger lightly on two tiny, tooth-shaped bulblets just above the union with the roots. ‘Two more infant Admirals , which will grow to blooming size in three short years. Then there will be five true Admirals , all of the same unadulterated substance. Not a rich man’s original and four cheap copies for hoi polloi. What other commodity can perform this magic?’

When Vrel did not answer, Coymans interrogated Timmons. ‘Can gold multiply its true self? Or a porcelain jar? Or a painting?’

Timmons shook his head in helpless assent.

Vrel collected an arrangement of dolphins and mermaids from a sideboard and carried the extra light to the table. ‘Blankaart!’

Blankaart leaned forward over the table and extended his wrinkled neck out its lace collar. ‘May I?’ He picked the largest bulb from the nest and sniffed it. Then he held it close to the candles, turning it in his fingers. ‘ Tulipa,’ he announced at last.

Coymans blew like a surfacing whale. His moustaches heaved upward on the force of his irritated breath. ‘Of course it’s a tulip! I don’t trade in turnips! Vrel, can’t your tame botanist do better than that?’

‘Probably not the common Turkish type,’ continued Blankaart resolutely, with one eye now on Vrel. ‘It’s darker and a little longer from base to nose. But an Admiral den Boom? Hard to say without seeing it in bloom.’

‘It’s more expensive to buy in bloom,’ said Coymans to Vrel. ‘Buy now, in the dry. The advantage will be yours when you sell again.’

‘Blankaart?’ demanded Vrel. ‘What’s your advice?’

‘If you buy now, you must trust your dealer.’ Though Blankaart’s voice was flat, his botanist’s hands cradled and caressed the smooth chestnut-coloured shape.

A bad actor, thought Timmons. No help to Vrel. In all my ignorance, I could serve better than that.

Coymans’s teeth showed briefly in the shadows of his moustaches. ‘A cheat can sell only once. I intend to last in business till I’m old as Methuselah.’

‘I’ll agree a price now but wait till the thing blooms before I pay you,’ said Vrel.

‘Then I’ll sell tomorrow in auction in the collegium , as I am bound to do by law,’ replied Coymans. ‘I’m only risking a private sale because you asked it.’

Vrel made a small nervous swing back toward the window. ‘Add four barrels of nutmegs, and seven bales of wrought silk.’

Coymans laughed. ‘For three? And two offsets? Think what you would have to pay for three bulbs of Semper Augustus ! Ten times that. And the flames of the Roman emperor are a tiny candle next to the meteor of our own Dutch sailor!’ He turned to Blankaart. ‘Is that true or not, high priest of things botanical?’