Unico Vorstenbosch squints at the thermometer hung by the painting of William the Silent. He is pink with heat and shiny with sweat. ‘I shall have Twomey fashion me one of those ingenious cloth fans the English brought from India… oh, the word evades me…’

‘Might you be thinking of a punkah, sir?’

‘Just so. A punkah, with a punkah-wallah to tug its cord…’

Cupido enters, carrying a familiar jade-and-silver teapot on a tray.

‘Interpreter Kobayashi is due at ten,’ says Vorstenbosch, ‘with a gaggle of officials to brief me on court etiquette during our long-delayed audience with the Magistrate. Antique China-ware shall signal that this chief resident is a man of refinement: the Orient is all about signals, de Zoet. Remind me what blue-blood the tea-service was crafted for, according to that Jew in Macao?’

‘He claimed it was from the trousseau of the last Ming Emperor’s wife, sir.’

‘The last Ming Emperor: just so. Oh, and I am desirous that you join us later.’

‘For the meeting with Interpreter Kobayashi and the officials, sir?’

‘For our interview with the Magistrate Shirai… Shilo… Aid me.’

‘Magistrate Shiroyama, sir – sir, I am to visit Nagasaki?’

‘Unless you’d prefer to stay here and record catties of pig-iron?’

‘To set foot on Japan proper would…’ cause Peter Fischer, thinks Jacob, to expire with envy ‘… would be a great adventure. Thank you.’

‘A chief needs a private secretary. Now, let us continue the morning’s business in the privacy of my bureau…’

Sunlight falls across the escritoire in the small adjacent room. ‘So,’ Vorstenbosch settles himself, ‘after three days ashore, how are you finding life on the Company’s furthest-flung outpost?’

‘More salubrious’ – Jacob’s chair creaks – ‘than a posting on Halmahera, sir.’

‘Damnation by dim praise indeed! What irks you most of all: the spies, confinement, lack of liberties… or the ignorance of our countrymen?’

Jacob considers telling Vorstenbosch about the scene at breakfast, but sees nothing to be gained. Respect, he thinks, cannot be commanded from on high.

‘The hands view me with some… suspicion, sir.’

‘Naturally. To decree, “Private Trade is Henceforth Banned” would merely make their schemes more ingenious; a deliberate vagueness is, for the time being, the best prophylactic. The hands resent this, of course, but daren’t vent their anger on me. You bear the brunt.’

‘I’d not wish to appear ungrateful for your patronage, sir.’

‘There’s no gainsaying that Dejima is a dull posting. The days when a man could retire on the profit from two trading seasons here are long, long gone. Swamp-fever and crocodiles shan’t kill you in Japan, but monotony might. But take heart, de Zoet: after one year we return to Batavia where you shall learn how I reward loyalty and diligence. And speaking of diligence, how proceeds your restoration of the ledgers?’

‘The books are an unholy mess, but Mr Ogawa is proving most helpful, and ’ninety-four and ’ninety-five are in large part reconstructed.’

‘A shoddy pass that we have to rely on Japanese archives. But come, we must address yet more pressing matters.’ Vorstenbosch unlocks his desk and takes out a bar of Japanese copper. ‘The world’s reddest, its richest in gold and, for a hundred years, the bride for whom we Dutch have danced in Nagasaki.’ He tosses the flat ingot at Jacob, who catches it neatly. ‘This bride, however, grows skinnier and sulkier by the year. According to your own figures…’ Vorstenbosch consults a slip of paper on his desk-top ‘… in 1790 we exported eight thousand piculs. In ’ninety-four, six thousand. Gijsbert Hemmij, who displayed good judgement only in dying before being charged for incompetence, suffered the quota to drop under four thousand, and during Snitker’s year of misgovernance, a paltry three thousand two hundred, every last bar of which was lost with the Octavia, wherever her wreck may lie.’

The Almelo Clock divides time with bejewelled tweezers.

‘You recall, de Zoet, my visit to the Old Fort prior to our sailing?’

‘I do, sir, yes. The Governor-General spoke with you for two hours.’

‘It was a weighty discussion about nothing less than the future of Dutch Java. Which you hold in your hands.’ Vorstenbosch nods at the copper bar. ‘That’s it.’

Jacob’s melted reflection is captured in the metal. ‘I don’t understand, sir.’

‘The bleak picture of the Company’s dilemma painted by Daniel Snitker was not, alas, hyperbole. What he did not add, because none outside the Council of the Indies knows, is that Batavia’s Treasury is starved away to nothing.’

Carpenters hammer across the street. Jacob’s bent nose aches.

‘Without Japanese copper, Batavia cannot mint coins.’ Vorstenbosch’s fingers twirl an ivory paper-knife. ‘Without coins, the native battalions shall melt back into the jungle. There is no sugar-coating this truth, de Zoet: the High Government can maintain our garrisons on half-pay until next July. Come August, the first deserters leave; come October, the native chiefs smoke our weakness out; and by Christmas, Batavia succumbs to anarchy, rapine, slaughter and John Bull.’

Unbidden, Jacob’s mind pictures these same catastrophes unfolding.

‘Every chief resident in Dejima’s history,’ Vorstenbosch continues, ‘tried to squeeze more precious metals out of Japan. All they ever received were hand-wringing and unkept promises. The wheels of commerce trundled on regardless, but should we fail, de Zoet, the Netherlands loses the Orient.’

Jacob places the copper on the desk. ‘How can we succeed where…’

‘Where so many others failed? Audacity, pugnacity, and by an historic letter.’ Vorstenbosch slides a writing set across the desk. ‘Pray take down a rough copy.’

Jacob readies his board, uncorks the inkwell and dips a quill.

‘ “I, Governor-General of the Dutch East Indies, P.G. van Overstraten,” ’ Jacob looks at his patron, but there is no mistake, ‘ “on this, the -” Was it the sixteenth of May we left Batavia’s roadstead?’

The pastor’s son swallows. ‘The fourteenth, sir.’

‘ “- on this, the… Ninth day of May, seventeen hundred and ninety-nine, send cordial salutations to their August Excellencies the Council of Elders, as one true friend may communicate his innermost thoughts to another with neither flattery nor fear of disfavour, concerning the venerable amity between the Empire of Japan and the Batavian Republic”, stop.’

‘The Japanese have not been informed of the revolution, sir.’

‘Then let us be “the United Provinces of the Netherlands” for now. “Many times have the Shogun’s servants in Nagasaki amended the terms of trade to the Company’s impoverishment…” No, use “disadvantage”. Then, “The so-called ‘Flower-Money’ tax is at a usurious level; the rix-dollar’s value has been devalued three times in ten years, whilst the copper quota has decreased to a trickle”… stop.’

Jacob’s hard-pressed nib crumples: he takes up another.

‘ “Yet the Company’s petitions are met with endless excuses. The dangers of the voyage from Batavia to your distant Empire were demonstrated by the Octavia’s foundering, in which two hundred Dutchmen lost their lives. Without fair compensation, the Nagasaki trade is tenable no longer.” New paragraph. “The Company’s directors in Amsterdam have issued a final memorandum concerning Dejima. Its substance may be summarised thus…’ Jacob’s quill skips over an ink-blot. ‘ “Without the copper quota is increased to twenty thousand piculs” – italicise the words, de Zoet, and add it in numerals – “the seventeen directors of the Dutch East Indies Company must conclude that its Japanese partners no longer wish to maintain foreign trade. We shall evacuate Dejima, removing our goods, our livestock and such materials from our warehouses as may be salvaged with immediate effect.” There. That should set loose the fox in the chicken coop, should it not?’