by David Liss
“Are you willing to fully commit yourself?” asked Mrs. Carver, meeting my eyes, and I thought there was hidden meaning in the question.
I blushed and turned away from the lady. “I have very little in ready money,” I answered. I was a man made uneasy by the attentions of a beautiful woman, I reminded myself, and would reveal what I did not mean to. “You see, I was forced to settle a great deal of debt when I came into my estate. However, the lands provide me with near a thousand pounds per annum, and though the income of the next few years may already be spoken for, I have been told the surety of my property will be enough to begin my career in this country.”
“If you want ready money, you’ll need the Jews,” Mr. Carver said. “They have the deepest pockets in the city.”
“I was told there were no Jews in Portugal,” I answered.
Mr. Carver waved his hand about in amusement. “The New Christians. Convertos, I believe they are called. It matters not. They love a landed man, and your thousand pounds a year will serve you well. They have a nose for money, those people.”
“So I but present myself to one of these New Christian merchants?”
“It is not quite so easy as that,” said Mr. Carver with much gravity. “To make these Jews comfortable, I suggest you attach yourself to an English merchant who already has a thriving trade. You will find no shortage of clever men who have a steady business exporting cork and fish and wine and importing woolens. Even the best of us may find an occasional shortfall in funds, and willingness to lend is a fine way to ingratiate yourself.”
“I think I understand you,” I said, as though I were just able to put the pieces together. “I use my land as surety with the New Christians to borrow money, which I then lend to a dependable merchant for a return for a portion of his profits. But can this be worth the trouble? Such money as I make from the trade cannot be much more than what I owe for the borrowed funds.”
“It is not very profitable,” agreed Mr. Carver.
“Then how does pursuing such a course help me?” I asked.
Mrs. Carver leaned forward slightly. “It helps you because in following this course, you make friends. It is an elaborate dance, and we have all learned the steps.”
Mr. Carver pulled out his pocket watch. “Gad, look at the deuced time!” he cried out. “I have kept one of my best olive oil factors waiting a quarter hour. What a jackanapes I am! I presume to tell you how to conduct your business, Mr. Foxx, but I make a poor show of it. Will you excuse me, sir? My wife will continue this conversation, and any questions you have, you may address to me at your convenience.”
Without waiting for a reply, he shook my hand and left me alone with his wife. She met my eyes with her own, which were wide and slightly moist and almost shockingly blue. She did not turn away, and so, after a brief pause, I did.
“It is a hard thing to come to Lisbon alone, I imagine,” said Mrs. Carver. She tossed her head, allowing her ringlets to flow with enchanting effect. “I arrived with my husband, and that was some comfort, but it was nevertheless difficult to adjust to life here.”
“It is an odd city,” I said, “but not without its own peculiar charm and strange beauty.”
“Peculiar charm and strange beauty,” she repeated. She pressed her lips together in something between a smile and a scowl. “Yes. I like that. It is a place where many men fail, but it is also a place for new beginnings.”
“I hope it may be so for me,” I assured her.
“And if you don’t mind my inquiring, I noticed you come in with Mr. Charles Settwell. Are you long acquainted with him?”
I blushed and looked away. “Mr. Settwell struck up a conversation with me at my inn, but I don’t know him beyond his company and that he appeared very willing to introduce me to the Portuguese trade. Yet after coming here with him, I must wonder if he is the best guide.”
“I shall be honest with you, Mr. Foxx,” Mrs. Carver said. “Settwell was once a great man, but he has made many mistakes of late. There are some who will say he ought not to have married a Catholic woman and then converted, though his Catholicism is of a very lax variety. His own daughter was baptized into that faith, but he does not take her to church now, and so has irritated both the local authorities and his countrymen. I trust you will be more careful than he.”
“I shall make it my business to be so,” I said.
Mrs. Carver raised her glass in the air and grinned like a coquette and a predator. “Let us hope you succeed,” she said. She tapped her glass against my own, and there was something in that touch that seemed very much like a promise.
Chapter 11
Most Englishmen who came to Lisbon stayed for years. They had time to establish connections, develop a feel for how things worked, and spot their own prey in the herd. I had not the luxury of so leisurely an approach. To advance my connection with the Carvers, I needed a New Christian who would be willing to lend me money sooner rather than later, and that meant someone who would take risks. I needed to find a man with his back against the wall. My connections in Lisbon might be limited, but I believed I knew one man who could help.
Once more, I found myself knocking on the door to Inácio’s boathouse in the Alfama. The same young man answered the door this time, but now he grinned. “Englishman!” he cried. “Inácio said if you came I must show you in right away.” He opened the door wider.
Almost nothing of the original interior remained. A walkway circled around a great basin of water, which contained two square-sailed fishing boats. In one corner, a pair of men sat on barrels, playing cards and smoking pipes, but otherwise the place was empty.
The young man led me along a walkway toward a door that opened up into an actual house, and I followed the man up a set of stairs to a door on which he knocked. “Inácio,” he cried. “Inglês.”
Inácio appeared in a moment, and waved me inside. He had been sitting at a table, drinking wine and eating salt cod stew and bread. “You want?” he asked.
I held up a hand. “I need your help.”
Inácio scowled. “I told you that it would not be easy to aid you. Besides, how hard can it be to find an Inquisitor? In my experience, they find you soon enough.”
“That they do,” I agreed. “I don’t need help on that score. It is another matter.”
Inácio leaned forward. “I shall aid you if I can. You know that. But sit. You make me nervous, standing there.”
I sat at the table. The onion smell made my eyes water.
“So,” he said, swirling a piece of bread through his stew. “This is now what stands in for friendship among adults. You need things, and so you come to me.”
I was no fool. Whatever affection Inácio might yet feel for me was tinged with resentment, and it seemed as likely as not he would be looking out for his own interests as well as mine. If he were going to be of use to me, and not a danger, I would need him to understand that my good fortune would be his own.
“It is a matter of business,” I said. “Any profit it incurs will, of course, be worth a finder’s fee.”
He waved the wet bread in a gesture of dismissal, as though this were the last thing upon his mind.
“I need to find a New Christian willing to lend money. Someone who is desperate enough to take a risk on an unknown man.”
Inácio barked out a laugh. “You come to me to learn about New Christians. The tables have turned, eh!”
“It is your city now,” I said. “I am but an Englishman.”
“Englishmen have no difficulty making friends with New Christians. Why do you need my help with this? First you tell me you care only for revenge and justice, and now you are looking to make money?”
“I’ve agreed to help out an old friend. You recall Charles Settwell, I think.”
Inácio nodded. “The English merchant, yes. My father did some business with him as well.”
“I owe the man much, and I wish to help him, and time is of the essence. I’d like to know precisely which New C
hristian is most likely to give me what I want in the shortest period of time.”
Inácio pulled on his mustaches and studied me. “Let me think about that. How much money did you say you would give me for this information?”
“I have nothing to give you now,” I said. “If it should prove profitable, then, shall we say, fifty pounds English?”
He widened his eyes. “That is a great deal of money for a name. A mere name. And yet you will give me this gift?”
“Should things go as I wish, then it will be no gift, but a payment for services rendered.”
He let go of his mustaches, and leaned forward. “Someone, it seems, stands to make a great fortune, and you offer me a good sum, but no more, so another can become rich.”
I rose from my chair. “I wished for your help, and I am pleased to compensate you for that help, but I do not care to be put to the question. If you cannot help me, I will find another who can.”
“Sit, sit, sit.” He patted his hand down. “You have become agitated. I meant no offense.”
I sat once more.
“I will show you my friendship by giving you what you ask,” he said, “for I have just the name for you. Do you remember Eusebio Nobreza?”
I felt myself scowling. “He was something of a fool, wasn’t he? I recall his father was a good man, but the son was a puffed-up popinjay.”
“The father is retired,” said Inácio. “The son has taken control of the business, and yes, he is a fool. He has made some mistakes, and the debts are mounting. He may take a little coaxing, but I have heard he is eager to make new connections. I think he may be your man. If he resists, you must stick with him, for you will find yourself rewarded.”
“Thank you,” I said. “And I promise you shall be paid if this goes as I hope.”
Inácio grinned. “If my advice is of use, that is all the payment I need. And, of course, the fifty pounds.”
A light rain fell, and the air was warm and humid. Buzzing insects swarmed around my face, and though I told myself the effort was futile, I continued to wave them away. I tried to stay dry by hugging the buildings on the uphill side of the Street of the Trinity, not at all far from a house where I lived as a small child, before we moved when I was five or six years old. I recalled these buildings, and recognized the most unexpected details—a missing brick or the floral pattern in a set of tiles. Everything seemed so familiar, but also remote and impossibly distant. Even the people I passed on the street seemed only vague and ghostlike. These were nothing but shadows, illusions, half formed in dreams.
I had things to do, so I shut my eyes to anything familiar and entered the taberna to which Inácio had directed me. As I walked into the room, I felt a curious contempt for these New Christians. With each trade and business deal, these men stretched out their necks for the butcher’s blade. Each one of them would sigh with relief when his neighbor was dragged off to the Palace dungeons. It is not me. Not today. Portugal lived and died by New Christian trade with other nations, and yet the New Christians themselves were grist for the Inquisition’s mill.
I approached the barman, hardly more than a boy, with a prominent Adam’s apple and a long head with narrow, slitted eyes. He studied me with curiosity, but no alarm. Englishmen were likely not common here, but neither were they unknown.
“Do you speak English?” I asked him.
“All New Christians speak English a little,” he answered.
I looked around with the grin of a child looking upon rope dancers. “Portugal’s Jews! How marvelous. Tell me, my good New Christian. Have you porter?”
“No porter. Port.” The barman smiled at his own humor. “We speak English, but this is not England.”
I slapped my hand upon the countertop. “There’s port aplenty in England, I assure you. Give me a glass, if you please. I am new to Lisbon.”
The man poured the wine into a pewter cup. “I never make this guess.”
“You mock me,” I said.
“I make joke with you,” the barman said, raising an eyebrow. “May I not?”
“I’ll be damned for a Frenchman before I resent a man for a good-natured quip,” I said. “But let it not cut to the bone, or then we shall have a disagreement.” I raised the cup and for a moment had the perverse desire to say the blessing for wine. What would happen? How would these men react? Would they know Hebrew when they heard it? I thought it unlikely. The Inquisitors believed, or pretended to believe, that every New Christian kept secret volumes of the Talmud stashed under floorboards, but I had never seen so much as a Hebrew letter before my arrival in England.
I raised the cup in salute to the barman and took a sip. “By the devil, you keep the best drink for yourselves! This is superior to the finest port I’ve had in London.”
The barman smiled and shrugged his thanks.
I drank again and smacked my lips. “I’m looking for a man called Nobreza. I understand he wishes to do business with an English factor.”
“I do indeed,” said a voice behind me. “But you are not a factor, are you, sir?” The English was accented, but otherwise flawless. I turned. Eusebio Nobreza was a man with dark hair and eyes, tall, regal in appearance and confident in expression. He wore long mustaches in the style of a fidalgo, and a woolen suit of dark brown, drab in color but expensively made.
Because he was a decade or so older than I, Eusebio and I had had little congress in my youth, but I recollected him well enough. He had always been impatient around children and had made a point to shoo me away like a stray dog. As a man in his early twenties, he had been self-impressed and vain of his appearance. Time, however, had etched some lines upon his face that gave him an air of dignity he’d lacked ten years earlier.
“I am new to the city, yet it is but a matter of time before I am admitted to the Factory,” I explained. “I am now in the process of establishing contacts among men of significance, and your name has been mentioned more than once, senhor.”
“You flatter me,” Eusebio said with an affected bow. “Sit at my table and we shall see what we can learn about each other.”
I followed him to where an older man sat. He shared Eusebio’s narrow eyes and sharp nose, though his hair and mustaches were white, and his hands trembled as he set down his glass of wine.
“My father, Luis Nobreza,” the younger man said.
I bowed to him, recollecting that this older Nobreza had done business with my father. He had seemed ever kind and generous in those days, always offering raisins and dates to the children of his business associates.
“I was told to speak to Senhor Nobreza,” I said. “How can I be certain you are not the man recommended to me?”
The older man shrugged as if indifferent to the matter. “I am done with trade, I fear. My health is poor and I tire easily. My son now manages our affairs.”
“I am certain his considerable skill was learned from you,” I said.
“Hmm,” the old man said. “An Englishman who flatters like a Spaniard. What wonders shall we witness next?”
“I am indeed lucky to have learned from so great a man as my father,” Eusebio said. “And now he sits by my side to make certain I don’t forget his lessons.”
Was there some bitterness in this? I wondered. Was it something I could use to my advantage? I decided to press the matter. “I too have learned from the experience of my elders. A wise man knows who most deserves his praise.”
“Indeed. Sir, can I call for something for you to eat? The ham is excellent.” The younger Nobreza gestured toward the smoked hams and dried pork legs hanging from the ceiling like talismans against evil.
I studied him. “Ham, you say.”
Eusebio scowled, but his irritation was almost comic. “It is always thus with you Englishmen. I know not what you’ve heard, but we are Christians. We eat like Christians.”
I laughed. “I confess, I have never quite understood your circumstances though I have heard of them. Are you Christian by choice, or are you coerc
ed?”
Eusebio cocked his head. “I will reply, but what of your religion? Did you join it by force or by choice?”
“In England, no man is coerced into his faith,” I assured him.
“But when did you choose?” Eusebio asked. “We worship as our fathers did, and they as their fathers. Is that choice?”
I nodded slowly, as if considering these matters for the first time. “You raise a fine point. I shall have to think on it. And I thank you for your offer of food, but I shall decline. At this moment, I am only hungry for gold!”
“The single-mindedness of the English,” said the younger man.
“It is what makes them so useful,” said the older. “What sort of business do you wish to do, Mr. Foxx?”
I leaned back and did my best to appear thoughtful. “I have property, sir. Very sound property.”
“But no ready cash,” Eusebio speculated. “You wish for me to advance you money that you might trade with it.”
“Yes. You have come right to the heart of the matter.”
Eusebio smiled. “I have dealt with newly arrived Englishmen before, and your circumstances are not unusual. I am always eager to lend money to a solid man who will return the investment, but I am less eager to engage in business with a man for whom no one will vouch. The lands that will act as surety are very far away.”
“I can offer documents—” I began.
“Documents are made out of paper, and they are of little value when the lands in question are so distant,” Eusebio interrupted.
I was not willing to argue the point too vigorously, since it was, in fact, my intention to forge any documents I might require. “The difficulty,” I said, “is that everyone feels much the same. How am I to establish myself if I cannot find someone who will take a risk?”
“I am afraid that is your concern, not mine,” the younger man said without a hint of satisfaction. “If you seek men who love risk, you must visit Amsterdam. Here in Lisbon, caution is the guiding principle.”