The Hopeful Loaf
Outside her husband’s warehouse, Nella waits for Hanna and Arnoud Maakvrede, Johannes’ key around her neck. Her mind rings with this new truth of Marin and Johannes; their understanding made of light as much as shadow. Love a beam of sun which sometimes clouds the heart. It seems that Marin viewed marriage as a ceding of something, whereas so many women – including my own mother, Nella realizes – see it as the only possible form of influence a woman may have. Marriage is supposed to harness love, to increase a woman’s power, Nella supposes. But does it? Marin believed herself to be more powerful without it. Love has been left unharnessed, and indeed extraordinary things have happened. A child, a prison cell, yes – but also choice and the moulding of one’s own fate.
After the revelation about her past, Marin had wanted some distraction, some occupation – she had practically demanded it – and Nella had taken her chance. You weren’t callous, she tells herself, leaning up against the warehouse wall; it was absolute necessity. So, as Nella sat at the small table in the back room, away from the prying eyes of the canal, Marin had written a letter to Arnoud Maakvrede in Johannes’ hand. She had agreed with Nella’s new idea, inviting Maakvrede to taste the sugar with a proposition to sell it solely in the republic; a quicker sale to a ready audience. My marriage has afforded me a little influence at least, Nella thought wryly.
Marin’s voice plays through Nella’s head. ‘The profit-bar is ours to set. There are fifteen hundred cones, which I estimate, if we do well, could make thirty thousand guilders. Start higher than it will sell. Remember that if they want to purchase, we’ll be cutting the profit three ways now, and the bulk of the money still needs to go to Frans.’
‘But what if Arnoud has heard about Johannes – what if he won’t buy?’
‘It’s the guilder over godliness. All we can do is pray that Arnoud Maakvrede’s an Amsterdammer before he’s an angel.’
‘He might know we want to sell the stock quickly. He might see the rot.’
‘Hold your ground, Nella. Price it up, and make it seem that you’re discounting it because of the spores.’
Nella could not help admiring how Marin drew up the bridge of her sadness when it really was important, how she could put herself away somewhere others couldn’t reach. She wondered if she herself was too small for this big idea, that she would be swamped by it, drowned by her own ambition. And yet Marin gave her all the words she wanted to hear. ‘Petronella,’ she said quietly. ‘You are not doing this alone. I am here.’
Across the abandoned verkeerspel board, Marin’s hand reached out for hers and squeezed it, and in her astonishment, Nella thought her heart might burst.
Nella sees the confectioner couple approach in the cold light. She wonders if someone has told them what’s happened at the Stadhuis, but the scandal of a wealthy merchant’s arrest does not yet seem to have penetrated the city streets. Cornelia has reported nothing along the canal path – perhaps Aalbers, in his decency, has managed to keep the Stadhuis prison guards silent? But it will only be a matter of time before everyone knows what’s happened to Johannes Brandt. A strutting nine-year-old brat like Christoffel cannot be bridled as easily as a prison guard with mouths to feed. The surface of Amsterdam thrives on these mutual acts of surveillance, the neighbourly smothering of a person’s spirit.
Outside, in the shadow of the warehouse, Arnoud looks less inflamed, his apron replaced by a neat black suit and hat. He seems a different presence to the one battering his honeycomb trays. It’s as if the air has shrunk him.
‘Seigneur, Madame,’ Nella says, as she turns the key in the lock. ‘New Year greetings. Thank you both for coming.’
‘In your husband’s letter, he made no mention we would be meeting you,’ Arnoud says, unable to conceal his surprise at seeing Nella here alone.
‘Indeed, Seigneur,’ Nella replies, feeling Hanna’s shrewd eye upon her. ‘My husband is away.’
‘And Marin Brandt?’
‘Visiting family, Seigneur.’
‘I see.’ Arnoud is visibly perturbed by Nella’s youth and sex, as if she is a trick, a play-act – but just you wait, she thinks, clenching her fists in the cuffs of her coat.
‘Come this way, Seigneur, Madame. And mind your feet on the rungs.’
Leading Arnoud and Hanna up the ladder, Nella thinks of Agnes’ miniature hand back home. The loaf may not have turned any blacker in the cabinet, but outside that shrunken world a day has passed, another night of weather, another night of damp. Nella can hardly guess what she will find. What was once, is now no longer. Her heart starts thumping harder as she hears Arnoud wheezing up the rungs, Hanna’s neat step tapping the ladder behind him.
‘Here they are,’ she says, indicating the loaves when they reach the eaves.
‘I hadn’t expected there would be so much,’ says Arnoud.
‘Imagine it transformed to guilders.’ He raises his eyebrows and Nella winces inwardly at her own crass patter. Think of Marin, she tells herself. Be as affable as Johannes.
Hanna approaches the Surinam side and inhales sharply. ‘Rot?’ she asks.
‘Only on a few,’ says Nella. ‘The season has not been kind.’
Arnoud kneels down reverently, like a priest before an altar. ‘May I?’ he asks.
‘Please.’
Arnoud removes a loaf from the Surinam side, and also a loaf marked with the three crosses of Amsterdam. From his pocket he produces a sharp little knife, and with an expert flick he takes a solid shaving off each cone. Breaking them in two, he hands half to Hanna. As they put the Surinam sample on their tongues, their eyes meet.
What are they saying to each other, with no words? A conversation is certainly taking place. They do the same with the Amsterdam sample, dissolving in their mouths and communing in silence. Whatever its true purpose, marriage is certainly a funny thing, Nella thinks. Who would have paired elegant Hanna with a round puffert of a man like Arnoud Maakvrede? She wishes Johannes were here. A man of many languages, he would understand the traders’ silence. The image of him in that cell is too much, and Nella buries it, trying to focus on the sugar.
‘There are one thousand five hundred loaves here,’ she says. ‘Seven hundred and fifty were refined in Surinam. The rest have been refined here in the city. We are looking to sell them all.’
‘I thought Brandt traded from the east?’
‘He does. But a Surinam plantation had excess stock and wanted to keep it in the republic. We have other people coming to see it later today,’ she lies. ‘They are very keen.’
Hanna delicately wipes the corner of her mouth. ‘How much for the Amsterdam lot?’
Nella pretends to consider. ‘Thirty thousand,’ she says.
Hanna’s eyes widen in surprise. ‘Impossible,’ says Arnoud.
‘It is, I’m afraid,’ Hanna says. ‘We simply do not have that kind of money.’
‘Prosperous enough,’ murmurs Arnoud. ‘But not stupid.’
‘We are makers of cakes, not sellers of sugar,’ Hanna says, frowning at him. ‘There may be no guild in our way, but as pastry bakers we’re still subject to the whims of the burgomasters and their hatred of papist gingerbread idols.’
‘It is excellent sugar, as I’m sure you can tell. Its quality alone will guarantee it sells. The craving craze shows no sign of abating – marzipan, cakes, waffles,’ Nella says. She watches Arnoud as he thinks, staring at the cones rising to the roof. ‘Your reputation would certainly increase,’ she adds. ‘I can only imagine what other doors such sugar might open.’
Nella isn’t certain, but she thinks Hanna is hiding a smile. It is very unlikely they have thirty thousand guilders to spare, although you never know in this city. It is a preposterous sum – but what can she do? Marin said to name a high price, for Arnoud to feel he’s comfortably clambering down. They need their cut, Agnes needs hers. Nella begins to feel desperate.
‘We’ll give you nine thousand,’ Arnoud says.
‘I cannot let you take all this sugar for nine thousand.’
‘Very well. We will take a hundred Amsterdam loaves for nine hundred guilders and let you know how it sells. If we make a profit, we will come back for more.’
Nella tries to think quickly, as fast as Arnoud. He wants one cone for nine guilders, but she needs to be selling each one nearer to twenty. He came prepared, she thinks. ‘Too low, Seigneur. Three thousand five hundred,’ she says.
Arnoud laughs. ‘One thousand one hundred,’ he replies.
‘Two thousand.’
He twists his lip. ‘One thousand five.’
‘Very well, Seigneur Maakvrede. But I have two other interested parties coming to see it this afternoon. I can give you three days to make your decision on the rest, but if they offer higher then your chance is gone.’
‘Done,’ he replies, folding his arms, looking impressed. He seems happy; it is the first time she has seen him smile. ‘For a hundred loaves.’
Nella’s head spins. She’s not done as well as she hoped, but at least some of their stock is to be circulated – and in Amsterdam, where words are water, all it takes is one platter of delicious buns. She puts a Surinam loaf in a basket for Cornelia to experiment with drying them out.
Arnoud gives Nella one thousand five hundred guilders in crisp notes. It feels exhilarating to touch them – a sense of potential, a life raft made of paper. One thousand must go straight to Agnes and Meermans on the Prinsengracht, a sweetener to try and stop them testifying against Johannes. The other five hundred must bribe Jack Philips. They will have to think about saving anything for themselves later.
Hanna begins loading a basket with the loaves. ‘How is Cornelia?’ she asks.
She’s frightened, Nella wants to say. She’s tethering herself to her kitchen. She had left the maid in a frenzy, yanking open the tight globe of a savoy cabbage, shredding scallions and leeks. ‘She’s well, thank you, Madame Maakvrede.’
‘Some shrink, whilst others grow,’ Arnoud remarks, shaking his head at the mountain of cones.
Hanna squeezes Nella’s hand. ‘We will sell this sugar, and return,’ she says. ‘Of that I will make sure.’