Nella falters. The thought of Agnes going to the Kalverstraat, of her having a connection with that woman, of her knowing she even exists, feels insupportable. It would feel as if her secret knowledge had been plucked, its best bits pecked away.
As if she senses weakness, Agnes leans forward. ‘Well?’
‘I—’
‘My mother left me some childhood pieces. Petronella has been using those,’ Marin says.
‘What, Marin?’ says Agnes. ‘You had a childhood?’
‘I must fetch the Rhenish wine,’ Marin adds, ignoring both this and the gratitude which beams from Nella’s face. ‘Otto has failed to put it out.’
Marin disappears from the room, calling Otto’s name. Agnes watches her exit, leaning back against her chair. ‘Poor thing,’ she breathes. ‘Poor thing.’ She turns to Nella, concern etched on her face. ‘I don’t know why she’s so unhappy.’ She leans ever closer, scooping Nella’s hand in both of hers. Her fingers are damp, like a pond-pulled frog. ‘Our husbands, Nella, used to be such good friends.’ She squeezes tight, the stones of her twisted rings indenting Nella’s palm. ‘They made it through some of the worst storms the North Sea has ever seen.’
‘You are too interested in the past, my darling,’ her husband calls from the window. ‘Is not today more interesting?’
Agnes laughs. ‘Oh, Frans. Nella, your husband must have told you, they met when they were twenty-two, working in the VOC ships? Over the Equator they went – missing the Carib storms because the north-east trade wind was pushing them on.’ Agnes recites it like a fairy tale, learned by years of repetition.
‘My dear—’
‘They were so talented, working for the glory of the republic! Of course, Frans found his calling at the Stadhuis in the end, but the brick walls of Amsterdam could never hold Brandt.’
When her husband stops at the door, Agnes’ gaze follows him like a hawk. ‘Has Brandt told you his tales of Batavia?’ she asks Nella.
‘No.’
‘He sold his stock and quadrupled the money he went with. He practically talked the guilders into his pocket and came back with a crew of his own.’
Agnes’ admiration, laced with an indefinable scorn, is hypnotic. Although this information seems to cause Meermans some discomfort, Nella is eager for more.
‘That was seventeen years ago, Agnes,’ says Meermans, his voice forcefully hearty. ‘These days he’s happier down on the Eastern Islands stuffing himself with potatoes.’
He walks out of the room as if he lives here and knows where he’s going. She hears the pause of his heavy clump across the hallway and imagines him sitting in one of the hall chairs, seeking a moment of relief – but from what exactly, she cannot tell.
He’s right about one thing, though – Agnes is the only person Nella has met who likes to bring up the past. It pained her mother, it made her father weep. The rest of Amsterdam seems to want to move forward, building ever upwards despite the boggy land that might well sink them all.
Agnes looks breathless, slightly wild. Opening her hands with a shrug, she picks absently at an invisible mote of dust on her skirt. ‘Men are men,’ she says, oblique and adult once again.
‘Of course,’ Nella replies, thinking that two men couldn’t be more different than Frans Meermans and Johannes Brandt.
‘I’ve given a loaf of our sugar to your maid,’ says Agnes. ‘Frans said we’ll try it after dinner. Do you think Marin will have a spoonful?’ She closes her eyes. ‘All those perfect loaves! Frans has been – wonderful. The refining process has gone very smoothly.’
‘It was your sole inheritance, am I correct?’
Agnes blinks. ‘In the act of submission, Madame Brandt,’ she murmurs, ‘one always gains much more.’
Nella instinctively rejects this offered confidence. Disappointed by the curdling silence between them, Agnes straightens up. ‘Although there may be more sugar to come, it is important your husband does well by us,’ she says. ‘The weather is not always kind to Surinam, and foreigners are constantly attacking my father’s – that is to say, our land. This crop could be our only fortune for many a year.’
‘Yes, Madame. We are highly honoured you have selected us.’
Agnes visibly softens a little. ‘Have you ever been to your husband’s office?’ she asks.
‘Never, Madame.’
‘I go quite frequently to the Stadhuis. It is pleasant for Frans when I pay him visits. Such a thrill to see his achievements in regulating this republic. He is an exceptional man. But tell me,’ Agnes continues. ‘Has Marin made you eat her herring dinners, those culinary massacres of self-improvement?’
‘We—’
‘One-herring dinners and plain black gowns!’ Agnes places a hand on her heart, closing her eyes again. ‘But in here, Madame, God sees our truest deeds.’
‘I—’
‘Do you think Marin looks unwell?’ Agnes snaps her eyes open, adopting her previous pose of concern.
Nella doesn’t know what to say, exhausted by the woman’s mercurial conversation. Unhappiness seems to roll off Agnes in uneven waves, and yet, she can be so convincingly confident that it makes for such confusion. She hungers for something, and Nella cannot sate her.
‘Marin always used to be the strongest,’ Agnes observes, a faint wisp of spite.
Nella is saved from replying by the sound of Rezeki’s bark.
‘Ah!’ says the guest, rearranging her dress. ‘Your husband is finally home.’
Exchanges
The meal, for all of Nella’s hunger and Cornelia’s cooking talent, is excruciating. Over the downy white expanse of cloth, Agnes drinks three glasses of Rhenish and talks of Pastor Pellicorne’s excellent sermons and his piety, of the importance of always being grateful – and what about those petty thievers with their severed hands she’s seen being let out of the Rasphuis?
‘What is the Rasphuis?’ Nella asks.
‘The male prison,’ Agnes replies. ‘The Spinhuis is where wicked women are sent, the Rasphuis where they tame the wild men. It’s where the lunatics live,’ she continues, craning forward and boggling her eyes in some approximation of madness. It is a shocking sight and when Agnes persists in it, Frans stares into the tablecloth. ‘Abandoned by their families, paid for with a stipend to the prison to keep them safe.’ She points a ringed finger at Nella. ‘But the really wild men get sent to the torture chamber in the bottom of the Stadhuis, next to the storerooms for the city’s gold.’
Marin says little, throwing glances at her brother, who matches Agnes glass for glass and then one extra by the time Cornelia removes the first course.
Johannes holds himself together, but he is glassy-eyed, his stubble unshaved silvering his tanned face. He considers his plate with extra concentration, plunging his fork into the chunks of pigeon slicked in ginger sauce. As Agnes becomes more foolish, Meermans takes over, trying to impress with his mercantile talk. He wants to discuss cane juice and copper equipment, sugar loaves, the degree to which one must punish a slave. Johannes chomps on his carrots with a barely muted ferocity.
Eventually, the plum pie and thick cream has been fought with and swallowed down, the meal is done, and the real reason for their being there can be avoided no longer. At a nod from Marin, Cornelia comes in with the sugar loaf on a China-ware plate, as tentative as if she were carrying a newborn child. Behind her, Otto enters with a tray of spoons.
Nella examines the sugar loaf, a conical, glittering structure the length of her forearm, the crystals tightly compacted.
‘Half of the crop was loaved before it shipped,’ Meermans says. ‘The other half has been refined in Amsterdam.’
‘Spoons?’ says Johannes, handing them out. Everyone takes an implement. ‘Cornelia, Otto, you should try,’ he says. ‘You’re the likely experts.’
Agnes’ nostrils flare and she purses her lips. Gingerly, Cornelia accepts a spoon and passes one to Otto. As Johannes pulls out a small flick-knife and stands to make the first incision, Meermans rises from his chair and draws a dagger from his belt. ‘Allow me,’ he says, brandishing the blade. Johannes smiles and sits back down. Marin remains rigid, both hands resting on the damask cloth.
The first white shaving lands in a curl at the base of the cone. ‘For you,’ says Meermans, handing it with a flourish to his wife. Agnes beams. He hands out more shavings, leaving Johannes and Otto till last. ‘Incroyable,’ he says, popping his own curl in his mouth. ‘Your father may not have been blessed with sons, my dear, but in his sugar he got the prize.’
Nella feels the shaving melt in her mouth, sweet and granular, vanished in a moment. It leaves a sheen of vanilla behind, and tacks her tongue onto her palate. Marin holds her spoon, her eyes averted from the waiting sweetness. Agnes’ eyes never leave her as Marin’s knuckles tighten on the handle, her mouth barely opening as she swallows it quickly.
‘Exceptionally good,’ Marin says; a thin smile.
‘Another taste, Madame?’ says Agnes.
‘Cornelia, what do you think of it?’ Johannes asks. Marin throws the maid a warning glance.
‘Very good, Seigneur. Delicious.’ Cornelia’s voice is the most timid Nella has ever heard.
‘Otto, what do you think?’ Johannes asks.
‘Now God be thanked, but you are going to make our fortunes, Brandt!’ Agnes interrupts. Johannes smiles, accepting another white curl from the glistening loaf. Nella watches Otto wipe his mouth delicately, every move one of controlled economy.
‘When are you going to Venice?’ asks Meermans. ‘All those palazzos and gondolas – it’ll be home away from home.’
Marin, who had been trying another shaving, puts down her spoon. ‘Venice?’ she says.
‘What is a gondola, dearest?’ Agnes asks her husband, her voice stupid, her eyes shining with Rhenish wine and a desire to be loved.
‘C’est un bateau,’ he replies.
‘Oh,’ says Agnes.
‘I’ll be gone within the month,’ says Johannes. ‘Perhaps you would like to join me, Frans? Ah,’ he adds, putting up a finger. ‘I forget how hard you find the water.’
Meermans sniffs. ‘Very few men bear choppy waves.’
‘True.’ Johannes drains his glass. ‘But there are always those who can.’
Marin rises from the table. ‘Petronella, will you play the lute?’
‘The lute?’ With Marin’s warning not to pluck her brother’s strings rising in her mind, Nella cannot conceal her surprise.
‘That is what I said.’
Their eyes meet for the third time that evening. Nella, seeing the fatigue in Marin’s face, refrains from any protest. ‘Of course I will, Marin,’ she says. ‘Of course.’