The Lady Tree. Christie Dickason

Timmons made a career trotting to and fro like a market pony, laden with information, propositions, money, documents, promises or silver spoons.

      The third man in the room asked a question in Dutch.

      Timmons turned to study him with carefully neutral eyes. Named Blanket or Banquet or some such Dutch torturing of vowels, in his late fifties, a little older than Vrel, a head taller but half the weight. As they waited, he had been strolling aimlessly around the room.

      Busy coveting the Chinese porcelain and gilt plates, thought Timmons. He heard the anxiety now in the man’s voice and wished he could understand the question.

      Vrel replied in a voice as chilly as the night air. Blanket (or Banquet) sank his skinny neck and long head back into his shell of black merino and Brussels lace. He turned away to study a set of golden spice scales.

      Whatever it is, thought Timmons, Vrel is firmly in control. He shivered. His fine, light-brown hair lay damply clumped against his narrow head. His long thin face slid unchecked down sagging light-brown moustaches and a small pointed beard. A newly-fashionable flat collar drooped limply over narrow shoulders which were betrayed by the new, unpadded style of English doublet. His lace tie, lace cuffs and lace boot tops had all lost their starch in the damp sea air. A more confident man would not have left his wool cloak at his lodgings in the name of fashion.

      An ecstasy of barking erupted on the dock.

      Vrel was already on his feet. ‘He’s here. Follow my lead, Blankaart!’ he ordered. ‘Listen to me very carefully. Don’t let your enthusiasms run away with my money …!’

      A commotion mounted the stairs outside the room. On the dock, the dog still barked.

      The newcomer blew into the room like a storm at sea, brushing aside the servant who had brought him up, bellowing words of greeting, his wide hat and cloak flapping, the soft barbs of a scarlet feather in his hat quivering like a virgin’s knees. Timmons took a step back towards the safety of the wall.

      ‘Mynheer Vrel…Cornelius!’ The man clasped Vrel’s large hand with one even larger. He slapped at Vrel’s upper arm, rustled his lace cuffs, shook his beard and flashed white, white teeth. ‘If you ever want to deal in secret again, roast that dog!’

      Vrel pulled himself out of the maelstrom. ‘Have you left a man on watch?’

      ‘Who do you think is being eaten down there now?’ The newcomer focused on Timmons the suddenly still eye of the genial storm. ‘… And is this your speculatory Englishman?’

      Timmons stiffened at the tone and cursed the ugly, unintelligible foreign words.

      ‘A mere envoy from the English merchants, chasing after the Dutch lead as always,’ said Vrel. ‘He won’t say how much they can afford to invest.’ He switched to English. ‘Mr Simeon Timmons, this is Mynheer Justus Coymans.’

      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