Barkskins. Annie Proulx

Compagnie—the Dutch East India Company, largest business in the world, controls everything. Perhaps you can find a sympathetic captain who will take you aboard. And I have heard there are a few independent captain traders who are not tied to the VOC. Those are the men you should seek out. But I know none of them.”

      He swallowed his tumbler of rum and delicately touched the sore on his lip with the long nail of his little finger. “And,” he said, “I doubt you speak Chinese.”

      “Very little,” said Duquet. He would learn the most important words as soon as he heard them.

      In La Rochelle, unpleasant feelings came over Duquet. The old smells of poverty nearly sent him bending and creeping along close to the walls as he had done in childhood. Relentless hunger and chilblains had been his childhood lot. Of his father he remembered beatings and curses, and at the last, a pair of receding legs.

      His eyes burned from the smoke of greasy street fires and he thought of the clear rivers of Kébec, of the forest air, and with these cleansing memories he regained himself. Yet he was mortified that his clothes and person announced him as a country bumpkin in French streets.

      In New France he and the Trépagny brothers had been skillful with war hatchets but he saw no hatchets on the streets of La Rochelle. He went to the armorers and purchased a Walloon sword, ambidextrous, flexible. He saw many of these on the street. It was a gentleman’s sword. One day, he swore silently, he would order fine garments and a full, rich wig.

      In the area between rue des Petits-Bacs and rue Admyrauld, where the merchants congregated daily, he talked with a sallow wool merchant whose greasy hands trembled; when Duquet casually mentioned China, the merchant said his cousin had been a sailor pressed into three years’ service on a Dutch voyage from Hoorn to Guangzhou, that the English called Canton.

      “He said it was a very long journey to a horrible place,” and the merchant passed back Duquet’s brandy bottle. “Very strong stink. Food? Affreux! Foreigners not allowed in the city, but penned up in a horrible foreigners’ quarter. He prayed to return home. And they despised the ship’s cargo, which was horses, the captain having heard the Chinese longed for them horribly. But in Canton the go-between merchant said China now had secured its own horses from the north. So the trip was for nothing. And on the return journey the captain was so angry he pushed all those horrible worthless horses into the sea. They could see them swimming after the ship for a long time.”

      “Oh, horrible,” said Duquet, at once planning to make his way to Amsterdam or Hoorn. How many times had Forgeron told him the men of the Low Countries had a talent for business?

      “Stay away from the East India Company ships. They are bound by hard rules and the captains take blood oaths to uphold them. It is a horrible, grasping company that allowed no competition for many years. Only East India ships were allowed to traverse the horrible Strait of Magellan. Now the Cape Horn route has been discovered their grasp is broken, but the old animosities linger. You must choose a captain with care.”

       11

       Dutch sea captain

      Without exception every ship captain he approached was exceedingly suspicious, for trade routes and overseas contacts were under constant threat by spies, and Duquet was immediately and repeatedly identified as a French spy. Only after detailed descriptions of the forests of Kébec and the rigors of the fur trade—as well as a flash of the marten skin he had begun to carry as proof of his identity—could he prove his disinterested innocence in matters of trade route secrets.

      In the Rock and Shoal, a sailors’ tavern on the waterfront, he noticed a group of convivial men who seemed all to be captain mariners. They spoke in a mixture of languages, mostly German, French, Portuguese, Flemish and Dutch, and seemed to be placing bets. One, whom he heard called Captain Verdwijnen, a fair-faced man with a large nose and scarred cheek, wheaten wisps of unshorn hair sticking out from the edges of his ill-seated wig, particularly caught his eye because of his ceaseless motions and apparent sanguine temperament. Duquet edged closer to the group until he was nearly among them, grasping at half-understood words in the Babel of discourse. After a long time Verdwijnen made his excuses to the company and said he had to get back to his ship. Duquet followed him out into the dark street. The captain suddenly spun around and flashed a dagger at Duquet.

      “Footpad!” he shouted into the night. “Help! Robbery! Assault! Murther!”

      “Captain Verdwijnen,” said Duquet. “I am no footpad. I am a friend, I am a fur merchant from New France, begging your favor.” And he bowed low, making a clumsy leg. He presented himself as an enterprising businessman. He became the sweet-voiced persuasive Duquet, talked on, explaining and mollifying, opening his pack of furs, which he carried on his back like a peddler. He said that he could pay for his passage—he had enjoyed a good sale of his furs in Montreal, keeping out the best to trade in the east. Moreover, he would supply the captain with cases of the best Schiedam jenever for the voyage, the special distillation of gin with a green label showing a large yellow eye, the eye of a furious lion, far superior to the slop the captain had swallowed in the Rock and Shoal. Look, he had a bottle in his coat pocket this very minute, and he swung the garment open to show the luteous eye. The Dutchman thawed a little and told Duquet to follow him aboard his ship, Steenarend, the Golden Eagle, where they could speak more comfortably. Duquet was surprised to see it was an armed, full-rigged, three-masted frigate, which could accommodate more than a hundred men, the gun room painted red to hide bloodstains.

      “There are many pirates in the South China Sea,” explained Captain Verdwijnen. Duquet had seen him drink countless glasses of jenever in the sailors’ tavern, but the man spoke with clarity and decisiveness.

      The captain said he was indeed suspicious of foreigners, especially the French and English, most of whom were spies, and it could cost him his livelihood to take Duquet aboard if the ship’s German owner heard of it, and of course he would hear of it. He glared at Duquet and clenched his fists.

      “What you are asking me to do is a grave thing. I cannot do it. Why, sir, it is a thing that was never done before. And never should be done. Nooit—never.” He wrenched his face through an extraordinary series of grimaces and frowns. Duquet spoke humbly.

      “I am only interested in securing a market for my furs. And I am most sensible, dear captain, of the honor you do me by even discussing such a matter.” His mouth curved, his eyes winked. He smiled, opened his coat and took out the bottle, uncorked it and handed it to the captain. “Perhaps we can discuss it further,” he said softly, “if you do not hold me to be completely odious?” He had marked the captain as one who would do much for a little cup of spirits, not unlike the Indians of the north.

      The captain’s cabin was a great room, the rear windows giving a vertiginous view of the port. There was a single chair before a mahogany table covered with charts. The captain waved Duquet to a small side bench bolted to the floor; under it lay a huge mastiff that growled at Duquet. The captain sat in his chair, now holding a glass brimming with that best jenever. He nodded at the glass.

      “Good. We Dutch must drink or die, you know.” He swallowed. “Or so they say.”

      Duquet opened his pack and laid several of the furs atop the charts. The dog looked at the furs with interest.

      “Of course I am always happy to buy furs myself to take to Amsterdam,” the captain said.

      “I shall keep that in mind, but my information is that I can get a great deal of money for them in China. And I wish to establish a trading connection in that place.”

      Captain Outger Verdwijnen squinted his eyes. Duquet might understand more about business than he showed. Or, indeed Duquet might be a spy, evil thought. But after an hour of serious drinking, when the captain knew Duquet a little better, he abandoned the spy characterization, and when he learned his guest would send ten cases