1636- the China Venture

by Eric Flint

  “What was your masterwork?”

  “A self-portrait.”

  “I am sure it was very fetching.” Judith blinked at the veiled compliment. “The timing of your entry to the guild was unfortunate, however.”

  “Yes, that’s true,” said Judith. “Thanks to the Spanish advances, the commissions dried up. And the apprentices, and even some journeymen, were recruited into the militia. Fortunately, I was visiting Grantville, staying with Prudentia Gentileschi, when Haarlem fell and Amsterdam was placed under siege.”

  “I have heard of Artemisia Gentileschi.…”

  “Prudentia is her daughter, and follows in her mother’s footsteps.”

  “And were you following in your mother’s or your father’s footsteps?”

  “Neither! I am the daughter of a brewer and clothmaker. I studied with Frans Pietersz de Grebber; I was a friend of his daughter Maria.” Judith did not mention that her father had gone bankrupt and that she had supported her family, first as an embroiderer and later as an artist.

  “And have you any of your paintings on board?”

  “Yes. I hope that in China they will have an air of the exotic, and command higher prices than back home. And if not, then perhaps I can sell them to a homesick Dutchman in Batavia on our return passage.”

  “As you know, Miss Leyster, I am a man of some wealth and influence. If you show me your work, and I think it worthy, I can put some commissions your way when we return to Europe.”

  “That is most kind of you,” said Judith.

  “In fact, why not join me for dinner in my cabin, and bring some of your paintings for me to look at.”

  Judith gave him a sharp look. “I am honored, but I am already having dinner with Jim and Martina.”

  “No problem, come by after dinner.”

  “I…I will think about it.”

  * * *

  “Don’t do it,” said Martina. “He’s a married man and he shouldn’t be inviting a woman your age to his cabin.”

  “Even if he were an unmarried man, it would not be good for your reputation,” said Eva Huber. “Besides, I think he’s creepy. I’ve caught him watching you, or me, or even Martina before. And he comes real close when he talks to us.”

  “What?” cried Eva’s brother Jacob. “I’ll kill the bastard!”

  “Well, he hasn’t asked me to his cabin to show him my rock collection yet,” said Eva. “Anyway, you’re with me most of the time that I’m not with Martina, Judith, Eric or Mike. Which is just as well, since if you killed someone of his stature, even in defense of my honor, you’d probably be executed.”

  “Just have a sailor bring him a note to the effect that you were sleepy after dinner and give your regrets,” said Martina.

  “Won’t he just ask again tomorrow or the next day? He needs to be ever so politely warned off,” said Jim.

  Zacharias Wagenaer raised his hand. He was the third member of the geological survey team, with Eva and Jacob.

  “It’s not a class,” said Jim. “Just speak up.”

  “Why don’t we all go? We say that Judith mentioned that she was invited to show her pictures, and we haven’t seen them, so we tagged along. What can he say? Especially when two of the party are up-timers critical to the mission?”

  “Well, Jim’s critical to the mission, I’m just along because I haven’t eaten in a Chinese restaurant in centuries,” quipped Martina. “But I like the idea. He can hardly refuse without being obvious about his intentions in front of us, and once he has seen them, he can’t use them as the excuse for a second invitation.”

  * * *

  Events proceeded pretty much as Zacharias and Martina had predicted. Ambassador Salvius’ eyes had widened when he opened his cabin door in response to Judith’s knock and saw her entourage, but Martina made an artfully ingenuous speech and he had waved them in, each carrying a couple of paintings.

  He waited without obvious impatience as the others oohed and aahed over the artwork, and made polite sounds of his own, but he didn’t offer his guests any wine. He was also quite noncommittal when Zacharias daringly mentioned that he, too, was an artist, and would be delighted to display his own illustrations for the ambassador’s edification at the ambassador’s convenience.

  * * *

  A few days later, while Judith was topside once again, and hard at work, she was startled to hear the high boatswain bellow, “All hands on deck!” This was quickly followed by, “All passengers, go below now!”

  Judith grabbed her sketchbook, and walked gingerly toward the nearest hatch, being careful to have one hand on a railing or other support at all times. As she walked, she looked about, seeking a better understanding of what was happening.

  On every mast, hands were grabbing the ratlines and climbing into the shrouds. On deck, gear was being secured, but there was no rush of crewmen down to the broadside cannon on the gun deck. Plainly, then, the threat was from Nature, not Man.

  Soon after Judith descended below, the hatch was closed. Her nostrils were immediately assailed. She was not as fastidious as the up-timers, but the smell of sweat and garlic was so fierce that she found herself trying to hold her breath from time to time. The ventilation on the ship was never good, but with a storm on hand, the gunports and hatches were all shut.

  And soon afterward, the ship began rolling from side to side, and pitching forward and back, more than it had at any time since Judith had first boarded it. For hours, it heaved, surged and swayed unpredictably. Just as unpredictably, there was thunder, sometimes a brief sharp clap, like a gunshot, and other times a long roll, like fireworks being set off one by one. It made it difficult to sleep.

  Nor could Judith read or sketch. Candles were forbidden, lest one fall against something flammable and start a fire, and so it was too dark for such activities. Judith could only talk to her cabin mates, Martina and Eva, but after a while they stopped speaking and tried to doze whenever there was a lull.

  It was from one such period of half-slumber that Judith suddenly awoke, and realized that the ship’s motion had gentled.

  Judith felt a sudden urge to be above deck and breathe clean air. She grabbed her sketchbook and headed up. The hatch was open.

  It was night, by now. She couldn’t tell how late, but the sky was studded with a thousand stars. She wandered back to the poop deck at the very stern of the ship. There was a small cabin aft, which was normally the quarters for the trumpeter and drummer, but with the mission on board, displacing the officers from their normal quarters, a couple of petty officers slept here instead. They were, however, on night watch, so the cabin was empty.

  On the roof of that cabin, there was a short bench and, in the middle of it, a lamppost. From this post, an ornate ship’s lantern hung aftward, a beacon for any trailing ships to follow. The lantern mimicked the cupola of a church: It had a verdigris dome and eight glass windows, each window formed of little diamond shaped panes.

  She looked past the lantern in the direction from which they had come; there, in the west, lightning still lit the sky.

  “It’s nice and quiet here,” said a voice behind her. The words were slurred; the speaker was drunk.

  She turned. It was Ambassador Salvius, walking across the poop deck.

  “The way the ship was being tossed about, I thought we were going to drown,” he continued, joining her on the roof of the cabin. “It made me think about how precious life was…and love.…”

  She was cornered; she backed away toward the lantern. “Please, sir, you are married, and I am a virtuous maiden.”

  “We may never make it back to Europe, so who cares about civilized convention?” He reached out for her.

  Judith jumped aside and screamed, but no one responded. Judith knew that the sailors would have their senses attuned to what lay ahead of them, not behind. They would fear reaching the shoal waters off the coast of Australia ahead of expectation, and running aground, or even tearing open the hull.

  “You paint just because y
ou haven’t found a real man yet.” He made another grab, and caught hold of the fabric of her bodice, tearing it. He pulled her close enough so she could smell his breath.

  She kneed him in the balls.

  He howled, falling back, and as he did so she bolted past him. He recovered quickly and pursued her.

  There was no time for a ladylike descent; she jumped down to the poop deck. As she did so, he lunged for her—and missed.

  The top of the port bulwark slammed into his stomach; he oofed. Slowly, like a tree falling in the wilderness, he tumbled over the side, and disappeared into the dark waters of the Indian Ocean.

  At the sound of the “oof,” Judith looked back just in time to see the ambassador fall. After a moment’s hesitation, she yelled, “Man overboard!”

  Again, there was no answer. Judith suddenly realized that it was as though she was trying to have a conversation with someone walking ahead of her. Her words were being carried away so the crew, up forward, couldn’t hear her.

  She ran forward, clutching her torn bodice with one hand, and called again from the quarter deck.

  “Go forward!” yelled the steersman. He was at the helm, in the high-ceilinged steering place that was nominally on the main deck, inside the ship. It had a high window looking onto the quarter deck, where it gave him a protected view of the foot of the main course. “I cannot leave my post!”

  Hearing this, she continued toward the bow, and found several sailors in the waist that lay forward of the main mast, between the sterncastle and the forecastle. “Man overboard!”

  They gaped at her for a moment, and then one rushed over to a bell, and rang it. The watch officer appeared a moment later. “What is going on?”

  “The ambassador attacked me.” She pointed to her ripped attire. “We struggled, he overbalanced and fell overboard.”

  The officer blew a whistle. “All hands!” the officer shouted. “Prepare to heave to!” Heaving to would cause the ship to tremble forward and backward like a falling leaf, effectively hovering in place.

  By now, Captain Lyell was on deck. As the watch officer supervised the heave-to, the captain took charge of the rescue.

  He tapped a passing sailor’s shoulder. “Signal the Groen Feniks, ‘Man Overboard, Please Assist.’”

  “What side did he fall off, and how long ago?” he asked Judith.

  “Left, I mean, port. A few minutes ago, I was shouting but no one heard me.”

  A boat was lowered, and lanterns hung at its bow and stern. It started retracing their path, on the port side.

  The Groen Feniks came into hailing distance, and was ordered onto a parallel search track.

  “You look a bit the worse for wear,” said Captain Lyell. “Clothes torn, and you’re bleeding to boot.”

  Judith realized that in her last jump, she had gotten scraped. “I was attacked, sir.”

  “By a sailor? A soldier?”

  Judith shook her head. “By Ambassador Salvius.”

  “What a mess this is.”

  “It has not been a pleasant experience for me, either,” Judith shot back.

  Lyell held up his hand. “I didn’t mean to be callous. The sea is pretty quiet, right now, but it’s dark. Not one sailor in seven can swim, and the chance that a landlubber nobleman can do so and keep himself afloat until we can find him is minimal. Assuming he was even still conscious after he hit the water. The ship traveled many boat lengths in the time that passed between when he fell and when we lowered the boat, so it will be a hard and long pull back to where he entered the sea. And currents may have carried him off our track.

  “But I must go through the motions, even though it puts my crew and that of the Groen Feniks at risk. And since he’s a baron, and an appointee of Gustav Adolf, there are going to be political and perhaps legal repercussions. For both of us.”

  The heave-to maneuver had startled the passengers, and several, including the up-timers, had come up on deck to find out what was going on. They had heard part of Captain Lyell’s conversation with Judith Leyster.

  “Captain, surely you can let Judith get some rest from this ordeal,” said Martina.

  “Agreed,” he said. “But I need a written statement from her at her earliest convenience.”

  “Tomorrow morning should be soon enough,” said Martina.

  “No, I’ll write it now,” said Judith. “I can hardly sleep just yet, anyway.”

  “Captain, if the ambassador is recovered, he should be confined to his quarters, with a guard on the door,” said Jim Saluzzo. “Attempted rape is a serious crime.”

  “I agree,” said Eric Garlow.

  “Surely it would be premature to assume a nobleman’s guilt on the basis of the unwitnessed word of this woman,” protested Salvius’ servant, Anders Hansson.

  “She has reported unwelcome advances from him before,” said Martina. “And Eva and I can testify to what we’ve witnessed him say and do.”

  “For that matter, I think she should be confined under guard. How do we know that she didn’t push him overboard?” Anders added.

  “She says he fell. And if she had pushed him, it would have been self-defense,” Martina protested hotly.

  “Enough!” said Captain Lyell. “We are on the deck of a ship, my ship, not in a court of law. I’ll find out what happened tomorrow. Right now, I have to search for Ambassador Salvius, without losing anyone else. If you want to be helpful, go to the sides and look for Salvius in the water. Point and yell if you see him.”

  The search continued that night, and the following day, but neither Salvius nor his body was found.

  * * *

  Captain Lyell cleared his throat. “I have read the statements of Judith Leyster, Martina Goss, Eva Huber, Zacharias Wagenaer, Anders Hansson, the upper steersman, and the crew members whom Judith notified of the accident, and questioned them directly on certain points. I am going to record the death of Ambassador Salvius as being the result of misadventure at sea. That is, to say, falling overboard at night. And that’s all I intend to say officially about the matter.”

  “What about the attempted rape?”

  “The emperor would not welcome us placing a stain on the record of his appointed ambassador. The less said about that, the better.”

  “What of the stain on Judith’s honor?” asked Martina.

  “It could just as easily have been Martina or me that the beast attacked,” Eva added.

  The captain made a placating gesture. “She was shaken by the incident, but the only physical harm was to her dress, and the sailmaker can help her mend it, should she need help. I am not going to offend an emperor over a failed attempt.

  “As for her reputation, all that the crew knows for sure is that she was on the deck at night, and that her blouse was torn. But until today, she has been, as far as I know, the epitome of virtue, not visibly flirting with anyone. That said, it perhaps would have been wise for her not to go up on deck alone at night,” said the captain.

  Martina’s face turned red. “So it’s her fault?”

  “No, I’ll not go that far. I can understand her need for fresh air after being cooped up thanks to the last storm. But there are only three women on board, and hundreds of men, men desperate or hard enough to chance a life at sea, and there is such a thing as tempting fate. The crew will be talking about this incident until something new captures their attention, and I can’t stop them from wondering whether it was an assignation that got out of hand.”

  * * *

  As it turned out, the captain was unduly pessimistic about the crew’s reaction. Anders Hansson, playing cards on the forecastle with some sailors, made some nasty comments about Judith, and “accidentally” fell and broke his nose.

  Apparently, over the long voyage, many of the sailors had sneaked a peek at Judith’s sketches, and liked what they saw.

  Hansson, on the other hand, had acquired a reputation of being servile toward his superiors and abrasive toward his inferiors. The latter category had inclu
ded the sailors.

  * * *

  “Doctor Garlow, Doctor Saluzzo, a moment of your time.” The speaker was Peter Minuit, the former governor of the New Netherlands and the chief representative of the mission’s financial supporter, the SEAC.

  “I appreciate that in the diplomatic credentials provided by Emperor Gustav, Doctor Garlow is named as the successor to Johann Salvius as ambassador in the event of Salvius’ death, resignation, or inability to serve. The latter clause triggering since he is lost at sea, even though it is too soon for him to legally be presumed dead. However, I ask you to consider why Johann Salvius was named as ambassador even though Doctor Garlow has been with the ‘China Project’ since its inception.”

  “You know, I am actually not a doctor; in fact, I was one semester short of receiving a bachelor’s degree,” Eric Garlow protested.

  Minuit waved this off. “Given what you must learn to receive an up-time bachelor’s degree, you would be considered the equal if not the superior of a doctor of philosophy at any university in Europe. Jena, Padua, or Leiden would all be glad to have you. And I am sure that as a professor of Chinese Language and Literature, the first in Europe, you would thrive in such an academic environment.”

  Eric suddenly realized that this was not a compliment. “But not, say, as an ambassador at an imperial court?”

  “Salvius, for all his faults, was the son of a civil servant, trained in law, and experienced in politics and diplomacy. He traveled all over the Germanies on King Gustav’s behalf.”

  Jim Saluzzo snorted. “I don’t doubt his qualifications for negotiating with fellow Europeans, but he hardly has the understanding of the Chinese that Eric has.”

  “If the understanding of Chinese were critical, then the emperor would have appointed Mike Song as ambassador. And do you know why the emperor did not name Eric, or you, or Mike as the ambassador?”

  “Because Salvius paid him a bribe to get the position?” Eric’s time with Don Francisco had increased his skepticism concerning political affairs.

  Minuit laughed. “Well, maybe. Even probably. But that was surely only a minor consideration, a reason for preferring Salvius to someone else, Henrik Klasson Fleming perhaps.