Daughters of the Silk Road: A beautiful and epic novel of family, love and the secrets of a Ming Vase

by Debbie Rix

  ‘It certainly is,’ said Miranda’s mother, almost as if she disapproved of such reckless inflation.

  ‘Say something,’ said Jeremy desperately to his best friend.

  ‘I don’t know what to say,’ said Miranda. ‘It’s just incredible. I can’t take it in. It just seems impossible… Like a dream and I’ll wake up tomorrow and I’ll have an electricity bill that I can’t afford to pay and nothing will have changed.’

  ‘Darling,’ said Miranda’s mother. ‘Do you have an electricity bill you can’t afford to pay? Why haven’t you mentioned it before? We can help you; you can always come to us.’

  Miranda looked kindly at her mother. ‘I know, Ma, I’ve always known, but I wanted to do it myself. To show you that I might have married a useless husband, but I was all right. G and me, we’re all right.’

  Georgina stood up and hugged her mother from behind. She whispered into her ear, ‘we’re all right, Ma – you and me. We’re more than all right – we’re brilliant!’

  ‘And to think that vase stood on our hall table all those months,’ said Miranda. ‘Me using it for flowers, and G knocking it with her coat each day. It could so easily have been broken, destroyed. But it survived. It’s survived all those years; over six hundred years of people using it, painting it, plonking things in it. It really is a kind of miracle, isn’t it? The dragon vase that was meant for a king landed up in Sheen with me and G…’

  ‘Champagne!’ said Jeremy. ‘We must have champagne.’

  The young man from Anstruthers leapt to his feet.

  ‘Yes, of course. Please, how rude of me. I’ll go and see what I can find.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Miranda, ‘and we must raise a toast to dear Great Aunt Celia without whom none of this could ever have happened.’

  ‘And to Charlie,’ said Georgie.

  ‘Oh G, don’t mention him at a time like this,’ said Jeremy.

  ‘No, because if he hadn’t nicked it, we’d never have known it was valuable, so we have him to thank really, don’t we?’

  ‘Stolen, Georgina,’ said Miranda’s mother. ‘Not nicked!’

  The young man from Anstruthers reappeared with a tray of champagne for the sellers. He handed the glasses around.

  ‘To Great Aunt Celia,’ said Jeremy, raising his glass to the group in a grand gesture.

  ‘And to Charles Davenport,’ said Miranda. ‘Alias Simon Manning, alias… Who knows?’

  ‘Did Michael Hennessy ever say what had happened to him?’ asked Jeremy as he sipped his Bollinger.

  ‘No – but if I know Charlie, he got away somehow.’

  * * *

  The painter dipped his fine sable brush into the deep cobalt-blue underglaze. The vase, a storage jar intended for the palace, stood nineteen inches tall. Decorating it would take a great deal of skill, and the artist was not experienced in the painting of porcelain. He had done some good work on silk and paper; he had recently completed a charming illustration on silk of gibbons playing in a garden. The painting hung now in the bedchamber of his favourite wife. The gibbons were her particular playthings, purchased for her only recently, and he had completed the painting as a gift so that she could relish their playfulness even as the gibbons themselves slept.

  * * *

  The painting of porcelain was a departure. He knew that no errors were possible. The jar, which he was to paint, had been simply air-dried. Any paint that was now applied would seep indelibly into the surface. Once the design had been applied, the piece would be fired in the kiln. The painter knew that only after firing would the final colours be revealed. There was an almost magical alchemy that took place between the cobalt and the heat of the fire. Sometimes, after firing, the blue became dark and intense, almost black. At other times, the colour was paler, the colour of the sea or the sky. It was crucial that the painter applied the colours in such a way as to enhance the final design.

  * * *

  Around the top of the jar were four Kirtimukha, hideous monstrous faces that had their origins in Indian and Chinese mythology. The myth told of a monster who willingly ate his own body to please Lord Shiva. The god, pleased with the monster’s sacrifice, gave it the name ‘Face of Glory’; they were only used to symbolise the presence of a deity – perhaps at the pinnacle of a temple or, as in this case, on a piece of porcelain intended for a royal recipient. The artist was pleased with the Kirtimukha; in particular, he like the way their eyes bulged expressively from their hideous faces.

  * * *

  But the centrepiece of this jar was to be the dragon. And it was this that gave the painter the most cause for concern. He wanted it to appear animated and ‘on the move’ as it snaked through the sky, surrounded by little undulating clouds, its tail almost catching up with its face. Every part of the dragon must have an inherent energy. Its scales would be shaded with underglaze, dark through light, so they appeared almost to stand proud of the dragon’s lashing back and tail. His three-pronged paws were tipped with just enough glaze to create a dark ‘nail’ bed from which the white sharp claw emerged. Its beady eyes were alert and all-seeing. Above all, the painter wanted the dragon to be free, flying through the sky for evermore, bringing luck and good fortune to all who saw him.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Delft, 1650

  Pieter Kaerel sat in his workshop in Delft painting tiles. He had an order for over one thousand tiles to be sent to a house on the Herengracht in Amsterdam. The house was being refurbished and tiles were required for all of the fireplaces, around the range in the kitchen, and in the laundry room. Each one would be individually painted with a design slightly different from the other.

  The finished tiles stood on shelves around Pieter’s workshop. There were pictures of fishermen holding rods, hunters with their dogs and labourers resting beneath the shade of a tree – all pastoral scenes that reflected country life in Holland. There were fishing boats, and fishermen holding their catch aloft. There was even a galleon in full sail. Pieter had painted something similar for his own mother many years before. Their father had been a merchant who had died at sea, in his ship, The Flying Dragon, and he made the tile as small memento for her. It was the first tile he had created completely by himself without the help of his uncle Frans. His mother had wept when he brought it home.

  But Peter’s favourite subjects were animals: dogs running, dogs lying in the shade of a tree, cats snoozing, ducks splashing in the water, and geese diving, their feathered backsides uppermost, the water spraying out around them. He loved to paint horses, especially big field horses pulling a cart; he had even painted an elephant once – the image copied from a book that his mother had given him. All the tiles were meticulously decorated, their corners embellished with a simple flower motif that joined almost seamlessly with the tiles on either side, creating a flowing kaleidoscope of images.

  The house on the Herengracht would also have a set of twelve tiles which, when joined together, created one complete scene. They depicted a large whale thrashing about in a choppy sea. This was a tricky job, for each tile had to line up exactly with its neighbour to complete the illusion. Pieter had already thrown away thirty-six tiles in his attempt to create this centrepiece.

  Pieter’s sister Isabel wandered through from the office next door. She had recently married a potter named Floris, and was pregnant with their first child.

  ‘Hans, I am going now. I need to get back to Mama. Shall we see you a bit later?’

  ‘Yes, yes. I’ll be back in time for supper. I just want to finish this. I’ve still got over five hundred to go. I’m going to have to get Cornelius, and perhaps Floris, to help, I think. Do you think he’ll have time? His painting is very good these days. They want these tiles by the end of the month.’

  ‘I’m sure he can help. The job he’s working on is almost finished.’ She threw her cloak around her shoulders.

  ‘It must be a huge house to need so many tiles,’ said Isabel.

  ‘Yes, they are a wealthy merchant fami
ly – part of the VOC. Oddly, we share the same name. Johan Kaerel – it’s his house. Maybe we’re related?’

  ‘I somehow doubt that, don’t you?’ said Isabel.

  ‘Yes, I suppose there are lots of people called Kaerel. See you later.’

  Isabel arrived home just after dark. Her mother had already lit the gas lamps, and the house emanated a warm glow as she walked down the cobbled street.

  ‘Hello, Mama,’ she called out as she hung her cloak on the pegs by the door.

  Her mother, Maria, emerged from the basement kitchen.

  ‘Hello, Isabel. Supper won’t be long. Are Floris and Pieter coming soon?’

  ‘I expect so,’ said Isabel. ‘Pieter’s just finishing a sequence of tiles for that big house in Amsterdam.’

  ‘Oh? What house?’

  They went into the sitting room. The fire was lit, and mother and daughter sat companionably together, their chairs facing one another.

  ‘You know, the one on the Herengracht,’ said Isabel, sitting down heavily. ‘Gosh, I’m tired. The baby is getting heavy.’

  ‘I didn’t know he was doing a job there,’ said her mother, picking up her sewing.

  ‘I’m sure we told you. He’s got the same name as us. Isn’t that odd?’

  ‘What do you mean?’ said Maria.

  ‘Kaerel.’

  Maria smiled a little to herself. ‘Oh, that’s a coincidence, isn’t it?’

  ‘Do you think we’re related?’ asked Isabel.

  ‘I doubt it,’ said her mother. Maria looked up at the Ming vase that stood on the mantelpiece. It glowed in the flickering firelight. She thought then, as she often did, of Hans. His death, so many years before, had been such a terrible tragedy. The news of the ship going down in the Indian Ocean with the loss of all on board had been almost impossible to take in. For many weeks, even months, she had been sure that a mistake had been made; that he would turn up one day, walking down the streets of Delft. That he would return for her and the children.

  After they had been sent away from Amsterdam, Maria’s mind had been filled with so many different dreams of what their future might hold. She lay in bed night after night wondering what would happen when he returned from his travels. Her dearest hope was that he might marry her. But this would necessitate the disappearance of Antoinette. She would fantasise on these long, lonely nights that perhaps Antoinette might die. He would find a way of explaining the children to everybody. He could adopt them perhaps, passing them off as someone else’s. But Antoinette did not die. Sometimes she dreamed of Hans writing to her from some faraway land, begging her to bring the children and join him. Together they would make a new start on some tiny island in the South China Sea. Or perhaps back in her homeland of India. But no letter came. What she never imagined was Hans dying; Hans drowning; Hans never coming back.

  He was true to his word though and had made sure she was well provided for. She was able to buy a modest but comfortable house in Delft with the money Hans had given her. She changed her name to Maria; so many people didn’t understand the pronunciation of Mori. It just seemed easier. Pieter and Isabel both learned to read and write. Isabel studied French and was delighted when Frans bought her a spinet for her tenth birthday; she practiced assiduously, and often played at their small family gatherings. Pieter worked hard at his apprenticeship and had real talent as a potter. By the age of twenty-one he had his own workshop and his own commissions. He had even been invited to England to lay a tiled floor at a priory in Hampshire.

  Mori often thought of her own mother. She still kept the little rag doll and the chemise. The chemise had been carefully laundered and mended and lay in a drawer in her bedroom. The doll sat on the lace pillow of her bed each night. She had made a similar one for Isabel when she was a little girl, and was making one now for Isabel’s child. Two sets of clothes for the doll lay on the little side table next to her chair; a blue dress edged in lace if the baby was a girl, or red trousers and a shirt if Isabel’s first born was a boy.

  She wondered sometimes about the myths surrounding the vase. Hans had said he did not believe that it brought luck to the person who cared for it. He told her it was simply a beautiful thing; a valuable thing; and something that should be used to inspire potters and painters. ‘We make our own luck,’ he had told her often. ‘Remember that, Mori. You have made your own luck. When you decided to leave Carlos all those years ago, you made your own luck.’

  It seemed to her that she had been fortunate in so many ways. Hans was right. She could have died with her mother so many years before. She could have been killed at any time by her captors, or by Carlos. Hans had rescued her and that surely was good luck. He had loved her and that had been her good fortune. And she had two beautiful healthy children who reminded her every day of their father. Surely, no one could have had more luck than her – little orphan Mori from Goa, now Maria Kaerel from Delft – householder, mother, soon to be grandmother, living a productive and happy life in a beautiful town in Holland.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine January 2016

  Coober Pedy, South Australia

  Charlie opened his eyes. At least he was aware that his eyelids’ muscles had changed position. The blackness that enveloped him was so total that it was impossible to know if his eyes were in fact open or closed. He put his hand out blindly and thrashed about. He located his phone, finally, and pulled it towards him. As he turned it on, a comforting glow emanated from the screen. He found the torch app and pointed it into the darkness. The bedroom walls had been whitewashed, and pictures – reproductions of Monets and Picassos – hung incongruously verdant on the walls, in a effort to disguise what was, in reality, an underground room carved out of the red, hot earth. For this was Coober Pedy, South Australia – a mining town in the heart of the Australian desert; centre of the opal mining industry and one of the hottest places on earth.

  Charlie had arrived the day before, via Sydney and Adelaide. He had left Hong Kong the day he received a voice mail message from Mr Hennessy:

  ‘Mr Manning, this is Michael Hennessy. I wonder if you could call me at your earliest convenience.’

  This was followed by a second message, less unctuous, altogether more menacing in tone, one hour later.

  ‘Mr Manning. This is Michael Hennessy. I’m afraid there appears to be some rather major discrepancy with the Ming vase. I really must insist that you call me as soon as you get this.’

  By the time he got the second message, Charlie was at the airport. He booked a seat on a flight headed for Sydney that afternoon. He would have gone anywhere, but Australia seemed a good bet. It was civilized, they spoke English. He’d do well there. He removed the sim and threw his phone into the waste bin before he went through security. He paid for the flight on a credit card he kept back for emergencies. There was enough credit on it to last a few days.

  In Sydney he checked into a small hotel in Kings Cross. Clean, comfortable, nothing special. He took stock. Miranda, it seemed had found him out and doubtless had by now claimed the vase. Her trip to the solicitor would probably have delivered some kind of proof of ownership. He wondered if Anstruthers, or indeed Miranda, would take it any further. Would they bother to report him; would Interpol be involved?

  He resolved that he needed to lie low for a while. Going back to the UK wasn’t an option – at least not yet. As he sat in a restaurant that evening, toying with a poorly cooked steak, he glanced at a magazine. An article caught his eye. An interview with a Russian opal miner named Vlad. Just Vlad. He had no surname apparently, surnames being superfluous in the opal-mining town of three and a half thousand disparate souls. Vlad had lived in Coober Pedy for over ten years. The reporter implied that the Russian had a past and it was not a past he chose to share with the readers of Australian Life. Back in the hotel lobby, Charlie looked Coober Pedy up on the shared computer.

  The following morning he checked out, flew to Adelaide and then on by small plane to Coober Pedy.

  As he walked down the a
irline steps behind the Chinese opal merchants flying in for their monthly buying trip, the heat hit him like a wall. He could scarcely breathe and felt sweat pouring down inside his elegant blue shirt; he was drenched by the time he reached the airport building. Grateful for the air conditioning, he grabbed his bag off the carousel and went in search of a cab.

  ‘You here long, mate?’ the taxi driver asked on the ride from the airport.

  ‘Not sure.’ Charlie gazed out at the shimmering red earth.

  ‘You’d better get a hat,’ said the driver, looking at Charlie in his rear-view mirror. ‘Colouring like yours… You’ll fry.’

  The hotel was owned by a large woman known as Ma Baker. She’d lived in Coober Pedy all her life; she looked Charlie up and down as he signed the visitors’ book.

  ‘Here long? You a buyer or a miner?’ she asked.

  ‘Neither; not sure; playing it by ear.’

  ‘You and everyone else here,’ she said as she led him down a dark, almost circular corridor. As they descended, and went underground he realised that the air temperature had dropped dramatically.

  ‘This is you,’ she said, indicating an unremarkable white door. She unlocked it and held it open for him.

  A room carved out of the earth, painted white. No windows. A large bed, comfortable looking. A melamine chest of drawers and a wardrobe stood incongruously in this airless curved cave. She pushed open a louvred door, revealing a simple bathroom.

  ‘Nothing glamorous, but it’s all there.’

  ‘Thanks,’ said Charlie. ‘It’s fine.’

  Later that day, after he had slept a little in the room with the lights on, he had emerged into the hot, airless reception area.

  ‘What can I do for you, Charlie?’

  ‘Something to eat. Is there a restaurant?’

  ‘Sure. Go down the high street – just there. Mac’s bar on the left. They do a good steak, or a piece of lamb and some of the best wine you’ve ever drunk in your life.’