Sea Change

by Robert Goddard

  ‘In my situation, Sir Theodore, would you find that … sufficient?’

  ‘Your situation, Mr Spandrel, is that of someone who has nothing to lose and nothing to bargain with. In your situation, I would find any guaranty sufficient.’ Sir Theodore raised his hand to forestall objections, though in plain truth Spandrel could conceive of none. ‘I have to trust you with an article of some value and the money you will need to travel to Amsterdam. You have to trust me that your reward for undertaking the journey will be a release from indebtedness. You could abscond. But the consideration you showed your father suggests that you would not lightly abandon your mother. I could break my word to you. But to what purpose? I cannot profit from your imprisonment. I may profit from your feeling obliged to me. I still regard your father’s map as a worthwhile commercial project. Only you can complete it. I have no wish to prevent you. Who knows but that if you do, we may not be in a position to contract more … orthodox business together.’ Sir Theodore smiled. ‘We all take a risk, Mr Spandrel, every day that we live. The one I am inviting you to take is not so very great, now is it?’

  ‘I suppose not.’

  ‘You agree, then?’

  ‘Yes. I agree.’ Spandrel refrained from adding that he really had no choice but to agree.

  ‘Good.’ Sir Theodore walked past him to a table in the centre of the room. Turning, Spandrel saw that an old leather satchel lay on the table. Sir Theodore pulled it upright and opened the flap. ‘This is the article I require you to carry.’

  Spandrel moved closer. Inside the satchel was a maroon leather despatch-box, with brass reinforcements, catches and lock.

  ‘You are to deliver the box personally to Mijnheer Ysbrand de Vries at his home in Amsterdam. He lives on the Herengracht, near the centre of the city. You will have no difficulty finding the house. Mijnheer de Vries is well known. He will be expecting you. You will obtain a receipt and return here with it.’

  ‘Is that all?’

  ‘It is. The box is locked, Mr Spandrel, and I will retain the key. You understand?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Mijnheer de Vries is a man of about my own age. We are old friends. There must be no mistake as to the identity of the person to whom you deliver the box. You will say that you are instructed to ask him to recall to mind the third member of the party on the occasion when he and I first met. The person he will name is Jacob van Dillen. You have it?’

  ‘Jacob van Dillen,’ Spandrel repeated.

  ‘Van Dillen is long dead. I should doubt if there is anyone now living who remembers him, other than Ysbrand de Vries and myself. And now you, of course.’

  ‘I won’t give him the box unless he can name van Dillen.’

  ‘Good.’

  ‘When do you want me to leave?’

  ‘Immediately.’

  ‘I must see my mother first.’

  ‘There is no need for that. Write her a note. Say you will be away for a week or so, but do not say why. Jupe will deliver it to her and assure her that there is no need for her to worry.’

  ‘Surely—’

  ‘That is how it will be, Mr Spandrel. Sit down and write the note. I have pen and paper to hand.’

  Almost, it seemed to Spandrel, before he knew what he was doing, he was seated at the table, scrawling a few words that read as vaguely to him as he knew they would be baffling to his mother. Sir Theodore stood over him as he wrote, waiting for him to finish.

  ‘Good enough.’ Sir Theodore plucked the barely signed letter from Spandrel’s fingers. ‘You may leave that with me. Now, to your travel arrangements. You will be driven in my coach to Hungerford Stairs, where my skiff is waiting to take you to Deptford. The sloop Vixen is due to sail from Deptford for Helvoetsluys on the afternoon tide. Your passage is paid for. For your expenses beyond that …’ Sir Theodore crossed to a bureau in a corner of the room and returned with a well-filled purse. ‘This will be ample.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Spandrel, pocketing the purse without examining the contents but judging by the weight of coin that it was, as Sir Theodore had said, ample. ‘I’d, er, always understood the quickest passage to Holland was from Harwich.’

  ‘I did not know you were an experienced traveller, Mr Spandrel.’

  ‘I’m … not.’

  ‘Have you ever been to Holland?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Have you, in truth, ever left this country?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Then accept the arrangements made for you by one who was born far from these shores. You will land at Helvoetsluys some time tomorrow. From there it should take you no more than two days to reach Amsterdam. Mijnheer de Vries will be expecting you on Wednesday. In the event of unforeseen difficulties, apply to my banker in the city – the firm of Pels. But do not do so unless absolutely necessary. It would be better for you, much better, to avoid all difficulties. And to return here for your reward.’

  ‘That’s what I intend to do, Sir Theodore.’ Spandrel closed the flap of the satchel and laid his hand on it. ‘You can rely on me.’

  ‘Let us hope so,’ said Sir Theodore unsmilingly.

  Spandrel left Hanover Square in a daze. After months of hand-to-mouth misery at Cat and Dog Yard, he was suddenly riding through London in a well-sprung carriage, with money in his pocket and a liveried driver at the reins. He knew it was too good to be true. But he consoled himself that some things were good and true. Maybe this was one of them.

  Maria Chesney was certainly another. His most recent encounter with the Chesneys’ talkative footman, Sam Burrows, in Sam’s favourite Sunday watering-hole, had yielded the information that Maria was still not engaged to be married. Spandrel had taken this to mean that her heart still belonged to him, which had only deepened his gloom at the time, since there was no way in the world that Maria’s father would let her marry a debtor. But he might not be a debtor for much longer. Maybe, with Sir Theodore’s grateful help, he could finish the map and make a commercial success of it. And maybe old Chesney could then be induced to approve of him as a son-in-law.

  Unwise though he knew it to be, Spandrel let such thoughts fill his head. He had drunk his fill of despondency. For the moment, he could not resist the flavour of a sweeter brew.

  Jupe delivered Spandrel’s letter to his mother promptly, if peremptorily. Beyond assuring Mrs Spandrel that her son would be out of the Middlesex magistrates’ jurisdiction throughout his absence and therefore not liable to arrest, he told her nothing and was gone almost before she had read the few lines William had written. They likewise told her nothing, other than not to worry, which naturally she did, especially when Annie Welsh expressed her certainty that Jupe was the man who had called there on Friday morning. William had been planning this since then at least, possibly longer. That much seemed clear. But nothing else was. And, until it became so, she would do little but worry. ‘For that boy’s sake,’ she gamely informed Annie Welsh, ‘I hope he’s got a good excuse for leaving his old mother in the lurch.’

  Whether his mother would regard his excuse as good or bad did not figure in Spandrel’s thoughts as Sir Theodore’s skiff nosed in to the dock at Deptford and drew alongside the Vixen beneath a gun-metal noonday sky. His confidence had already faded in the sobering face of a journey down the Thames during which the boatmen had said not a word to him, though they had exchanged many meaningful looks and mutters. He was cold and hungry and would soon be far from home. What was in the box? He did not know. He did not want to know. If all went well, he never would. And if all did not go well …

  Why had Sir Theodore chosen him? And why had he not sent him by the Harwich route? There were questions, but no answers. Except one: he had to go through with it; he had no choice.

  That would probably still have been Spandrel’s conclusion had he been aware of the other sea crossing being made that day by a recent visitor to the house of Sir Theodore Janssen. Robert Knight was also on his way out of the country, boarding a private yacht at Dover by prior arrange
ment for the short voyage to Calais. When the Committee of Inquiry reconvened at South Sea House on Monday morning to continue his examination, it was going to find itself without an examinee.

  Chapter Four

  The Mapmaker’s Journey

  IN OTHER CIRCUMSTANCES, Spandrel would probably have enjoyed his journey to Amsterdam, a choppy crossing on the Vixen proving, somewhat surprisingly, that he did not suffer from sea-sickness. Anxiety was a different matter, however. Once he had delivered the box to de Vries, he would be able to relish the sights and sensations of foreign travel. Until then, he could only wish the days and miles away.

  He tried to keep himself to himself, but a loquacious tile merchant from Sussex called Maybrick wore down his defences in the passenger cabin of the Vixen and insisted on accompanying him from Helvoetsluys, where they landed on Monday afternoon, as far as Rotterdam. For Maybrick’s benefit, Spandrel claimed to be what he would so like to have been: a mapmaker thinking of applying his talents to the cities of the United Provinces.

  He could not complain too much about Maybrick, though, since the fellow took him to an inn in Rotterdam that was comfortable as well as cheap and told him how sensible he had been to avoid the Harwich run on account of the grasping ways of Essex innkeepers.

  Spandrel was nevertheless relieved to continue on his own the following morning, by horse-drawn trekschuit along winding canals through flat, winter-stripped fields. Rain of varying intensity, ranging from drizzle to downpour, fell out of the vast grey dome of sky and the trekschuit kept up a slow if steady pace. It finally delivered its passengers to Haarlem nine hours later, in the chill of early evening, bone-weary and, in Spandrel’s case, fuddled by spending all bar a few minutes of those nine hours inhaling other people’s pipe smoke in the cramped cabin.

  But Haarlem was only three hours from Amsterdam. Next morning, washed and refreshed, Spandrel felt his fragile confidence return. Before the day was out, he would have done what Sir Theodore had asked of him. Nothing was going to stop him. And nothing was going to go wrong.

  The rain persisted. The Haarlem to Amsterdam trekschuit seemed draughtier and damper than the one Spandrel had travelled on the day before. Or perhaps it was simply that his tolerance was diminishing. The vast stretches of water between which the canal ran through a scrawny neck of land created the illusion that they were voyaging out to an island somewhere in the Zuyder Zee, well enough though he knew Amsterdam’s location from his father’s collection of maps.

  At length they arrived, the canal running out into the moat that surrounded the city wall. Above them, on the wall, windmills sat like sentinels, their sails turning slowly in the dank breeze. It was early afternoon and Spandrel was eager to press on to his destination. Spending money with a liberality he reckoned he could easily accustom himself to, he hired a coach from the city gate to take him to the de Vries house. ‘Ik heb haast,’ he told the driver, using a phrase he had picked up from merchant Maybrick. ‘I’m in a hurry.’ It was nothing less than the truth.

  The houses of Herengracht were elegant and uniform, their high, narrow frontages lining the canal in a display of prosperity that convinced Spandrel he was entering the very heart of the city’s mercantile community. The de Vries residence, which the coachman had seemed to know well, looked very much like its neighbours, a broad staircase leading up to a loftily architraved entrance at mezzanine level. Gazing up from the street, Spandrel noticed the hoist-beams jutting out above its topmost windows. Every house had such devices. His eye followed them round the curve of the canal. Suddenly, and unwelcomely, he thought how like a row of Smithfield meat-hooks they looked, waiting for a carcass. Then he thrust the thought aside and climbed the steps.

  An elderly manservant answered the door. He had an unsmiling air of truculence about him, as if he sensed that Spandrel was not so important as to merit any show of respect. The fellow communicated by grimaces and hand signals, presumably because he spoke no English. He admitted Spandrel no farther than the marbled hall and left him to wait on a low chair literally overshadowed by a vast oriental urn on a plinth.

  Five minutes passed, precisely timed for Spandrel by the long-case clock he was sitting opposite. Then a tall, dark-eyed man of about Spandrel’s own age appeared. He had an intent, solicitous expression and was immaculately if plainly dressed. But there was also a languor about him, an impression of unstated superiority. And in those sea-cave eyes there was something else which disturbed Spandrel. He could not have said what it was. That was what disturbed him.

  ‘Mr Spandrel,’ the man said in perfectly enunciated but accented English. ‘My name is Zuyler. I am Mijnheer de Vries’s secretary.’

  ‘Is Mijnheer de Vries at home?’

  ‘I regret not.’

  ‘I must see him. It is a matter of some urgency.’

  ‘So I understand.’ Zuyler cast a fleeting glance at the satchel. ‘You are expected. But the time of your arrival was unknown. And Mijnheer de Vries is a busy man.’

  ‘I’m sure he is.’

  ‘My instructions are to ask you to wait here while I fetch him. He is at the Oost Indisch Huys. It is not far. But I cannot say how … involved in business … I may find him. Nevertheless …’

  ‘I’ll wait.’

  ‘Good. This way please.’

  Zuyler led him towards the rear of the house and into what was clearly de Vries’s library. Well-stocked bookcases lined the walls and the windows were shaded against the depredations of sunlight, an unnecessary precaution, it seemed to Spandrel, in view of the grey weather he had travelled through. Sure enough, more light was coming from the fire burning in the grate than from the world beyond the windows.

  ‘I will return as soon as I can,’ said Zuyler. And with that he was gone, slipping silently from the room with disconcerting suddenness.

  Spandrel looked around him. Busts of assorted ancients were spaced along the tops of the bookcases. Lavishly framed oil paintings of less ancient subjects – Dutch burgher stock, for the most part – occupied the space between them and the stuccoed ceiling. Above the mirror over the fireplace was a painting of a different order, depicting a castle of some sort in a tropical setting, palm trees bending in an imagined breeze. An armchair and a sofa stood either side of the fireplace. There was a desk in front of one of the windows and a wide table adjacent to a section of bookcasing given over to map drawers. Spandrel was tempted to slide the drawers open and see what they contained, but he resisted. He did not want to complicate his presence in the house in any way. He wished, in fact, to know as little as possible about its owner; and that owner, in turn, to know as little as possible about him.

  But that was easier thought than adhered to. There was a clock in this room too, ticking through the leaden minutes. Spandrel sat down in front of the fire, stood up and inspected the paintings, sat down again, stood up again. And all the while he kept the satchel in his hand.

  Twenty minutes slowly elapsed. Spandrel had little hope that de Vries could be swiftly extricated from his place of business. He stood glumly in the centre of the room, examining his reflection in the mirror. It was a clearer and fuller version of himself than he had seen for many months and the hard times he had lived through during those months had left their mark – there was no denying it. He looked older than his years. He had acquired a faint sagging of the shoulders that would become a permanent stoop if he did not mend his posture, which he thereupon did, to encouraging effect. But it was only that: an effect. It could not last. As if admitting as much, he let his shoulders relax.

  At which moment the door opened behind him and a dark-haired young woman in a blue dress entered the room. ‘Excuse me,’ she said, her accent sounding genuinely English. ‘I did not realize …’

  ‘Your pardon, madam.’ Spandrel turned and mustered a bow. ‘I was bidden to wait here for Mijnheer de Vries.’

  ‘You may have a long wait, sir. My husband is at East India House. I am not expecting him back before six o’clock.’

/>   Spandrel registered the disconcerting fact that this woman was de Vries’s wife. She could not be much above twenty-five, but Sir Theodore had described de Vries as a man of about his own age, so Mrs de Vries had to be more than thirty years his junior. To make matters worse, she was quite startlingly attractive. Not classically beautiful, it was true. Her nose was too long, her brow too broad, for that. But she had a poise and an openness of expression that overrode such considerations. Her blue dress set off her hair and eyes perfectly. There was a curl of some nascent smile playing about her lips. Her eyebrows were faintly arched. Around her neck she wore a single string of pearls, at her breast a white satin bow. Confined for so long to the female company of Cat and Dog Yard, Spandrel had forgotten how intoxicating close proximity to a well-dressed and finely bred woman could be. And even Maria Chesney had lacked something that Mrs de Vries quite obviously possessed: a confidence in her own womanhood that made her marriage to the crabbed old miser Spandrel had suddenly decided de Vries must be less a mockery … than a tragedy.

  ‘Have you come far to see my husband, Mr …’

  ‘Spandrel, madam. William Spandrel.’

  ‘From England, perhaps?’

  ‘Indeed.’

  ‘It is always a pleasure to hear an English voice. You will have guessed, of course, that I am only Dutch by marriage. My husband speaks excellent English. So do most of the household. But …’ She trailed into a thoughtful silence.

  ‘I met Mr Zuyler.’

  ‘Well, well, there you are. A fluent example, indeed. But fluency is not quite authenticity, is it?’ She smiled.

  ‘No,’ Spandrel said hesitantly. ‘I suppose not.’

  ‘Where is Mr Zuyler now?’

  ‘He has gone to fetch your husband.’

  ‘To fetch him? With the expectation that he will wish to be fetched, I assume. You must be an important man, Mr Spandrel.’

  ‘Hardly.’

  ‘Has no-one offered you tea?’

  ‘Er … no.’