“I want my money,” Joachim affirmed. “I want you to help me get back my money. It’s no less than what you owe me.”

With no more room in his life for debt, Miguel disliked this talk of what he owed. He’d made an error in judgment, nothing more. They had both suffered; it should end there.

“What manner of business is this when you send such notes? What am I to make of your strange communications?”

Joachim said nothing. He looked at Miguel the way a dog looks at a man who lectures it.

Miguel tried once more. “We will talk about this when I am at leisure,” he told Joachim, looking about nervously for signs of Ma’amad spies.

“I understand that you are a busy man.” Joachim spread his hands wide. “I, as you can see, haven’t many demands on my time.”

Miguel cast a glance at the Exchange. Every minute here could mean lost money. What if, even now, the man on whom he could unload his brandy futures, at perhaps not too significant a loss, was buying those shares from someone else?

“But I have,” he said to Joachim. “We’ll talk later.”; He took another exploratory step backwards.

“When!” It came out hard, a command more than a question. The word had a power to it, as though he had shouted stop! Joachim’s face had changed, too. He now gazed at Miguel sternly, like a magistrate issuing a decree. In the butcher stalls, several people halted in their steps and looked over. Miguel’s heart began to thump a panicky beat.

Joachim moved along with him in the direction of the Dam. “How will you contact me when you don’t know how to find me?”

“Very true,” Miguel agreed, with a foolish laugh. “How thoughtless of me. We’ll speak on Monday, after the close of the Exchange, at the Singing Carp.” It was a little out-of-the-way tavern that Miguel visited when in need of a quiet spot for drink and contemplation.

“Good, good.” Joachim nodded eagerly. “I see it will all be made right. What’s done can surely be undone, so now we’ll shake on it like men of business.”

But Miguel was not about to touch Joachim’s flesh if he could help it, so he hurried away pretending he had not heard. After pressing into the crowd outside the Exchange, he risked a look behind him and saw no sign of Joachim, so he took a moment of rest before entering. Merchants filed past him, many shouting a greeting as they headed through the gates. Miguel straightened his hat, caught his breath, and muttered in Hebrew the prayer said upon receiving ill news.

7

He should have known better than to stand still in the Exchange, for the moment Miguel stopped moving he found himself descended upon by a dozen traders of the lowest sort, each out to test the limits of his indebtedness. “Senhor Lienzo!” A man he hardly knew stood inches away, nearly shouting. “Let’s take a moment to talk of a shipment of copper from Denmark.” Another edged the first aside. “Good senhor, you are the only one I would tell this to, but I have reason to believe that the price of cinnamon will shift dramatically in the next few days. But will it go up or down? Come with me to learn more.” A young trader in Portuguese attire, probably not even twenty years of age, tried to pull him from the crowd. “I want to tell you how the syrup market has expanded these past three months.”

After the unnerving encounter with Joachim, Miguel was in no mood for these scavengers. They were of all nations, the fellowship of desperation requiring no single language or place of origin, only a willingness to survive by leaping from one precipice to the next. Miguel was attempting to force his way past when he saw his brother approach, the parnass Solomon Parido by his side. He hated for Daniel and Parido to see him in such low company, but he could hardly run off now that he had been spotted. It is all posture, he told himself. “Gentlemen, gentlemen,” he told his gathering of unfortunates, “I think you mistake me for a man who might have interest in doing business with you. Good day.”

He pushed off and nearly collided with his brother, who now stood inches away.

“I’ve been looking for you,” said Daniel, who, since the sugar collapse, had rarely so much as glanced at Miguel during Exchange hours. Now he stood close, leaning in to avoid having to shout above the clamor of trade. “I did not, however, expect to see you dealing with miserable men such as these.”

“What is it you gentlemen wish?” he asked, directing his attention in particular to Parido, who had thus far remained silent. The parnass had developed a habit of turning up far too frequently for Miguel’s taste.

Parido bowed to Miguel. “Your brother and I have been discussing your affairs.”

“The Holy One has truly blessed me, that two such great men take the time to discuss my dealings,” Miguel said.

Parido blinked. “Your brother mentioned that you were having difficulties.” He ventured a half smile, but he looked no less sour for it.

Miguel looked at him icily, not quite sure how to respond. If that fool brother of his had been talking about coffee again, he would strangle him in the middle of the Exchange. “I think,” he said, “that my brother is not so well informed of my business as he would like to believe.”

“I know you’re still receiving letters from that heretic, Alferonda,” Daniel said blithely, as though unaware that he revealed information that could put Miguel under the cherem.

Parido shook his head. “Your correspondence is of no interest to me, and I think your brother, in his eagerness to help you, speaks of family matters best kept private.”

“We are in agreement there,” Miguel said cautiously. What did this new generosity mean? It was true that Parido’s anger seemed to have abated somewhat since Miguel lost money in the sugar collapse. He no longer approached merchants-even while Miguel stood there speaking to them-to advise them to pursue their affairs with a more honest broker. He no longer left a room simply because Miguel entered it. He no longer refused to speak to Miguel when Daniel invited the parnass to dinner.

Even after Miguel’s losses, however, Parido would find ways to inflict injury. He would stand with his friends and openly mock Miguel from across the Dam, pointing and smirking as though they were schoolboys. Now he wished to be friends?

Miguel did not bother to conceal his doubt, but Parido only shrugged. “I think you’ll find my actions more convincing than any suspicions. Take a walk with me, Miguel.”

There was nothing to do but agree.

Miguel’s difficulties with the parnass had begun because he had followed Daniel’s advice to take Parido’s only daughter, Antonia, as his wife. At that time, nearly two years before, Miguel had been a successful trader, and it had seemed both a good match and a way of solidifying his family’s standing in Amsterdam. Already married himself, Daniel could not make himself part of Parido’s family, but Miguel could. He had gone too long without remarrying, the wives of the Vlooyenburg said, and he grew weary of matchmakers hounding him. Besides, Antonia came with a handsome portion and with Parido’s business connections.

He had no reason to dislike Antonia, but neither did she appeal to him. She was a handsome woman, but he did not find being with her a handsome experience. Miguel had seen a picture of her before they met, and he had been most pleased by the miniature portrait, but though it was a good likeness, the painter had rendered her features far more animated than nature had done herself. Miguel would sit in Parido’s front room, taking stabs at conversation with a girl who would not meet his eye, asked no questions not directly related to the food or drink set out by the servants, and could answer no questions with words other than “Yes, senhor” or “No, senhor.” Miguel soon became intrigued by the idea of teasing her and began asking her questions touching on theology, philosophy, and the political skullduggery of the Vlooyenburg. Such inquiries produced the far more entertaining “I could not say, senhor.”