Daughters of the Silk Road: A beautiful and epic novel of family, love and the secrets of a Ming Vase (15 page)

Richmond Theatre was a hive of activity as the three battled through the crowds of excited children in the lobby. Charlie bought a programme for Georgie and a box of chocolates for them all to share. He’d booked a box to one side of the stage and once Georgie and Miranda were in their seats, he brought out a bottle of champagne from beneath his cashmere coat. He had a small hip flask in his pocket with a silver cup and as the pantomime began, he quietly uncorked the champagne and handed the first sip to Miranda.

‘You are naughty,’ she whispered.

‘Well, not sure I could get through the whole thing without a drink. Besides, I wanted to treat you,’ he whispered back, kissing her briefly on the cheek.

The pantomime was Cinderella. It was full of the usual clichés: a beautiful Cinders played by a famous soap star; comedians dressed as dames over-acting as the ugly sisters; a sweet but hopeless Buttons and a fine performance by a well-known game show host who played Prince Charming and turned out to have a magnificent singing voice.

On the way home, Georgie played one of her favourite games of assigning real people to the characters in the production.

‘Mum obviously is Cinderella – the beautiful girl trapped in a house doing all the work.’

Her mother laughed. ‘So who are you then?’ asked Miranda.

‘Not sure yet,’ said Georgie. ‘Jeremy is definitely Buttons – good-natured, loyal, but ultimately useless.’

‘Oh G, that’s too unkind,’ said Miranda, stifling a laugh.

‘And Charlie, of course, is Prince Charming. Tall, handsome and here to save Cinders.’

Charlie fell silent. Miranda blushed. ‘Oh G, you do talk a lot of nonsense.’

They arrived back at Miranda’s house just after half past nine. She threw her coat over the banisters and rushed into the kitchen to check on a casserole she had left in the oven.

Georgie went upstairs, turning round at the top of the landing and calling out, ‘Thanks Charlie, for the panto; it was great. And don’t take my silly game too seriously, will you? I didn’t mean anything by it.’

‘You’re welcome G, no problem,’ he said.

In the hall, Charlie removed his coat and hung it up carefully on a peg by the door; he wandered into the kitchen holding the blue and white vase in his hands.

‘Miranda, darling,’ he said as he walked into the kitchen. ‘Do you want me to flog this for you? You remember that sale I was telling you about? It’s on in the New Year. I could take it down to the sale room tomorrow and log it into the catalogue.’

‘Oh,’ said Miranda, setting the casserole onto the table, ‘I’d forgotten about that. I’m not sure. I feel a bit guilty about selling it really.’

‘Well, if you don’t want to, that’s fine. I just thought I’d mention it,’ he said, smiling and wandering back into the hall.

‘How much do you think it would fetch?’ Miranda called after him.

‘Not sure – could be fifty pounds, could be a hundred and fifty. It’s a nice thing, probably forty or fifty years old. Hard to say.’

‘Not sure it’s worth selling for fifty quid, is it really?’ said Miranda, laying baked potatoes on the table as he came back into the kitchen.

‘Tell you what,’ he said, ‘how about I buy it from you now, then you’ll know exactly how much you’re going to get and can spend the money accordingly.’

‘Oh, that’s nice of you.’

‘Well, call it a bit of an early Christmas present. I’ll give you two hundred for it.’

‘Oh, Charlie, that’s too much. You said yourself it might only get fifty.’

‘Well I wasn’t sure what to get for Georgie, so why don’t you give her the extra money and say it’s from me.’

‘You don’t have to give her anything,’ said Miranda.

‘Yes I do. Oh, and… Well, I was going to give this to you tomorrow, but you might as well have it now.’

He handed her a beautifully wrapped box, turquoise blue, with Tiffany written on the lid.

‘Oh my God,’ said Miranda, untying the ribbon. Inside, nestling in the white satin lining was a silver bracelet. ‘Oh Charlie, it’s so beautiful,’ she said slipping it onto her wrist.

‘No more than you deserve,’ he said, lifting her wrist to his lips and kissing it.

‘And I’ve got something for you,’ she said, a little shyly. She went through to the sitting room and brought out a present that had been lying under the tree. ‘I hope you like it… I made it myself.’

He unwrapped the present carefully. Inside was a Fair Isle scarf in shades of dark green, navy, coral and grey.

‘That’s fantastic, Miranda. It’s really beautiful. I know you mentioned you made these, but I had no idea they were so good. I mean you could sell this in a shop.’

‘I do sell them… I told you.’ She smiled. ‘So you like it?’

‘I do! Thank you.’

He wrapped the scarf elegantly round his neck and the three of them ate supper in a cheerful mood. But at half-past ten, when Georgie had gone up to bed, he stood up and said, ‘Look love, I ought to be off really. I’ve got a long day of cataloguing tomorrow for the New Year sale. Would you mind if I didn’t stay tonight?’

‘Oh, yes, sure. If you need to,’ said Miranda, trying hard to hide her disappointment. ‘We’ve not really sorted out what we are doing over the next few days, have we?’ she asked, a little anxiously.

‘No. I think I mentioned I’ve got to see my folks in Devon for Christmas Day, and I ought to head off there tomorrow night. But I’ll be back on Boxing Day evening. How about I come up to see you both then and we can have a re-run of Christmas together – just the three of us?’

Her disappointment lifted as she realised that they would be spending at least part of the holiday together. ‘Oh, that would be lovely, Charlie. What shall I cook? Anything but turkey, I presume.’

‘Whatever you like, darling.’ He kissed her: a long, lingering kiss. As he left, he picked up the vase.

‘I’ll take this, shall I? I’ve written a cheque for it. I’ll just put it on the hall table.’

Before Miranda could say anything, he had gone. She wandered over to the table and picked up the cheque. It had been written, or at least dated, a week earlier. All that was left of the vase was a watermark where it had once stood. The hall felt curiously empty, as if some important force of nature had simply evaporated.

T
he clay bricks
are thrown into a large pool of water, where they are stirred with iron shovels. The workmen are assisted by a pair of sturdy buffaloes. One man beats the animals with a rod, to encourage them as they walk round and round the pool, kneading and trampling the clay bricks. While the buffaloes rest, a thick cream floats to the surface of the pool. This is scraped off and stored in a vase of water. The process is repeated, until there is nothing left but coarse pieces at the bottom of the pool.

W
hen the clay
is finally free from all impurities, workmen carry large wooden tubs of the creamy substance to a low building by the side of the river. Here ladies sit on green and blue porcelain stools beneath an arbour of vines. They pass the cream through a fine horsehair sieve, then into a large bag made of two layers of silk. They sit and drink tea, and sieve. This is women’s work. Once the paste is clean, it is solidified, wrapped in fine cotton cloth, and laid, one brick on top of another. In this way, all remaining water is absorbed into the cloth. Before it is completely dry, the kaolin is pressed into wooden moulds, and sliced neatly with a wire cutter, before being stamped with the mark of the manufacturer. These white clay tiles, known as ‘pai tun’, are then dried in the sun on large low tables, before they are stored in warehouses.

M
argarethe ran
down the impressive oak staircase of her family’s house on Groenerei, her little dog Spitzke at her heels. She leapt the last two stairs, holding her skirts up to avoid tripping. At nineteen years of age, she was on the cusp of womanhood, but craved the freedom of her childhood. Her leather mules clattered onto the black and white tiled floor as she landed. Spitzke barked excitedly and danced around her feet, her intelligent currant-black eyes sparkling in the candlelight. It was a dull day, and Margarethe’s mother had ordered wax candles to be lit in all the downstairs rooms. The flickering light bounced around the hall, refracted by the tall, latticed windows that looked out over the canal.

That evening, the family was to host a grand party to celebrate Margarethe’s betrothal to Cornelius van Vaerwye, a merchant from one of the most significant families in Antwerp. Her parents, Maria and Peter Haas, had invited over one hundred people to their home overlooking the ‘Green’ canal. Her Uncle Daniele, who had recently returned from a lengthy period of travelling in Sweden, was also to attend, along with her three sisters, Beatrice, Caterina and Katje. The household staff had been busy since dawn cooking and baking, arranging chairs and covering tables with crisp white linen cloths. Crystal sparkled, silverware had been polished, and a collection of exquisite and rare Chinese porcelain was laid out on the tables and filled with spectacular arrangements of crystallised fruit.

The gown Margarethe was to wear that evening had been laid out on the bed in her room by her maid. Delivered a few days earlier by the dressmakers, it was made of silk brocade in a shade of blue-green that perfectly matched her eyes. The sleeves were lined with sable, a fur normally reserved for the nobility or royalty which had been specially sourced by her uncle Daniele; her headdress would be made of the finest Italian linen edged in Bruges lace.

A painting had been commissioned by her parents to commemorate their eldest daughter’s forthcoming wedding. Margarethe and Cornelius had spent many hours ‘sitting’ for the artist. The composition had been the subject of much discussion. Every last detail had been artfully constructed: the vividly coloured silk of Margarethe’s dress; the colour and style of her husband-to-be’s coat and hat. Even their positions had been carefully considered. The artist had decided they should both be standing, Cornelius gently holding Margarethe’s right hand. Between the pair lay Spitzke, Margarethe’s little Brussels griffon; a bowl of oranges sat on the dark oak chest next to the bride, symbolic of the family’s great wealth and a nod to her mother’s Italian heritage; and on the mantelshelf above the great fireplace in the drawing room, positioned exactly between the couple, stood a Ming vase.

The painting had been hung above that same fireplace the previous day, and Maria had wept when she had seen it. She had told Margarethe that she was determined that her betrothal would be the most splendid celebration in Bruges since the wedding the previous year of Charles the Bold, the Duke of Burgundy, to Margaret of York.

‘My own betrothal to your father was not quite so elaborate. Things were done differently in those days,’ she had said mysteriously to her daughter, alluding to her rushed nuptials in a Venetian convent.

Maria had never revealed to her children the nature of her and Peter’s sudden departure from Venice. The fear of plague was so powerful, the pair had agreed to conceal their brush with the terrible disease all those years before. All the girls knew was that their parents had met in Venice and had moved to Bruges on their marriage.

Maria and Margarethe sat now on either side of the fireplace in the tall leather-backed chairs gazing up at the painting.

‘He has caught you very well,’ Maria said to her daughter. ‘The light catches your hair so beautifully.’

‘I love that look on Spitzke’s face. He looks so naughty,’ said Margarethe.

‘Yes, he is adorable. And the vase looks good, don’t you think?’

‘It does, Mama,’ said her daughter.

‘I had not mentioned this to you before, my darling, but your father and I want you to have the vase as part of your dowry.’

‘Oh Mama, no! I couldn’t take the vase from you. I know how you love it so.’

‘Yes, I love it. It’s a part of our family history; we brought it back from the East with Papa all those years ago. It came with us on board ship, as part of caravan as we crossed the desert. And it was my dowry when I married your father. But I have always told you that it would be handed on, and your marriage seems the most opportune moment.’

‘But Mama, are you sure? I know what it means to you.’

‘I know you do. But it’s not just that it’s been in our family for many years. I truly believe it has a mysterious power. You know – I have told you before – that the one time we let it out of our sight we lost our darling
Mamma
.’

‘Mama, you don’t really believe that, do you?’ asked Margarethe, slightly incredulously.

‘I know it sounds ridiculous, but trust me, Margarethe; it has brought us luck all our lives. Look at how successful we have been here in Bruges. Your father is one of the most important merchants in this city. We have been very fortunate. I want that fortune to be handed on. I have four daughters and sadly I cannot split the vase into four pieces. So we have decided that you shall have it, as our eldest child. I’m sure Cornelius will make his own luck. He seems a bright and industrious young man. But I want you to have it nevertheless. You are sensible, Margarethe, and careful. I know you will value and protect it. It came all the way from the court of the Emperor of China. Remember that. Promise me that you will look after it.’

‘I will take it with me to Antwerp and keep it safe, I promise.’

‘And one other thing,’ said Maria. ‘I have written a brief history of the vase, here on this paper. I shall put this note into the vase and I would take it as a kindness if you could carry that history on for me, and if God wills it and you have a child, ask them to do the same.’

‘If that’s what you wish, Mama, yes of course,’ said her daughter, kissing her mother’s soft cheek. ‘Now, I must go upstairs and get ready; our guests will be here soon and I want to look my best for Cornelius.’

Maria watched her daughter leave the dark, panelled drawing room; she was proud of her eldest child – of her thoughtfulness, intelligence and beauty. Margarethe’s betrothal had proved a great comfort in recent weeks. Two months earlier she had received the sad news that her beloved father Niccolò had died, quite peacefully, in his sleep. It had come as a terrible shock to Maria. Despite his seventy-four years of age, he had appeared to be in good health, writing regularly to his daughter and keeping her abreast of his work and life in Venice. It had been many years since she had seen her father, and she felt his loss keenly. She had hoped he would travel from Venice for Margarethe’s wedding, and had been looking forward to it enormously. As soon she heard this news of her father, she wrote to her brother Daniele and begged him to return to Bruges.

M
y darling Daniele
,

I trust all is well with you in Gothenburg. I am writing with some very sad news. Our beloved father has passed away. I hear from Mattheo – who was with him at the end – that it was very peaceful. It seems that he went to bed after a fine dinner and the following morning, when Mattheo went to wake him, he appeared fast asleep in his bed. He was, however, quite departed from this world.

His will is to be read next week. I shall be unable to attend; Margarethe’s wedding is taking all my attention. But his notary has promised to send details to me here in Bruges.

Write to me soon, and let me know if you are able to return to us here.

Your loving sister,

Maria de’ Niccolò Haas

M
aria’s mood
had lifted when she had received a letter from Daniele, dictated to his servant, informing her that he would be returning to Bruges in time to celebrate his niece’s betrothal.

I
am so saddened
to hear of Papa’s death. He lived a good and long life, and we should be grateful for it. But it has been too many years since we were all together. I see now that I have been living the bachelor life too long. It is time for me to put down roots, sister. And so, I too have some news, my dear Maria. It seems remarkable, I know, but at the age of forty I am finally to be married myself. I hope to bring my betrothed with me when I visit you next. She is the daughter of a Swedish merchant, Lars Petersson and is called Annelise. I know you will love her.

M
aria was delighted
when she read Daniele’s letter. She had worried about him in the last few years. He had travelled widely since she had brought him to Bruges with Peter; he was always itching to be on the move. He had proved an able enough merchant, although too trusting, her husband said. ‘Always ready to take the first price he is offered – not wishing to bargain hard. But he has a good eye and has improved our supply of furs from the north.’

Daniele had based himself in Gothenburg, and when not purchasing and exporting furs such as sable, mink, or arctic fox, to be sewn into sleeves of a man’s
coppia
, or a woman’s gown, he spent his time hawking and hunting. He was at his happiest galloping through the woods chasing deer, his bow or sword at the ready, his beloved greyhound Freya at his heels.

Just two weeks before Margarethe’s wedding, Daniele arrived. Annelise was not with him; she had resolved to remain at home in Sweden with her father until after she was married. Maria was delighted to have her brother back with her and was secretly relieved that he had not yet brought his fiancé to meet the family. She was keen for him to make a marriage and settle down, but she was keener still to spend time with him alone. It reminded her of the early days of her marriage to Peter, when she was newly arrived in Bruges. While Peter was out having meetings with the League or making deals at the Bourse, she and Daniele would curl up in front of the fire in the house on Groenerei and tells stories, or read one of the new books that Maria had purchased. She had made a home in Bruges and Daniele had been a part of that. When he was eighteen and Peter had suggested that he be the family’s representative in the north, she had been heartbroken at the thought of him leaving. But she knew that Daniele needed to make his own way. She had suggested to Peter that he might return to Venice to act as their agent there and live with his father, but Daniele had insisted that he would not go back to Venice. The memories of their escape had never left him. Instead he was delighted at the prospect of striking out into new, unknown territory in the north.

The day of his arrival in Bruges lifted her from her sadness at their father’s death. She sat in the small sitting room overlooking the cobbled road that ran alongside Groenerei, scarcely able to concentrate on her needlework. Several times the needle caught her finger and a tiny drop of blood had marked the piece she was working on. She would have to work some red silk into the design to cover the stain. It was over ten years since she had last seen her brother, and she tried to imagine how he would have changed. He was forty years old now, and when they had last met he had still been a young man – tall and dark, with their father’s dark brown eyes. Might his hair now have a little silver running through it? Might he have eaten too many excellent dinners, causing his stomach to swell? Suddenly, there was a clatter of hooves on the cobbles outside and the barking of a dog. She leapt to her feet, her needlepoint falling to the ground, and rushed to the large latticed window. Leaping from his horse was her brother. He was still tall and handsome, and his hair, escaping from the fur hat, was long and dark. He looked well and ruddy-cheeked as he bent down to pat his dog. The servants opened the sturdy studded oak door and Maria rushed down the steps to greet him.

‘Daniele, darling Daniele,’ she sobbed into his heavy woollen cloak. ‘You are here, safe and well.’

‘I am,
cara
…’ He held her by the shoulders and looked deeply into her tearful blue-green eyes. ‘You look well, sister, if a little tired. Don’t cry. I am here now.’

‘I am well,’ she said, laughing, ‘and I am not sad now – just happy and all the better for seeing you.’

She dragged him up the steps to the house and his trunks were unloaded into the hall. At the top of the steps, he turned round and snapped his fingers, calling ‘Freya’. The greyhound leapt up the steps and into the house. She lay obediently in the hall, her dark eyes watching her master intently. Finally he said, ‘Good girl. Come and meet my sister.’ The dog leapt to her feet, her tail wagging, and her paws clattering on the tiled floor as she rushed at Maria, who knelt down and took the dog’s fine long-boned head in her hands, scratching her ears.

‘She’s a beauty, Daniele – a real beauty. Have you had her long?’

‘Five years,’ said Daniele, glowing with pride. ‘She’s the best dog I’ve ever had – the most responsive, the most intelligent, and the most obedient.’

‘Well, we must make her a comfortable bed for her stay,’ said Maria kindly.

‘She’ll be fine with me,’ said Daniele. ‘She warms my feet at night.’

They spent the following days rediscovering each other and talking incessantly. Maria took huge delight in her brother and they laughed and joked from morning till night. On their first evening together, as the family assembled in the large dining room, Daniele went from one niece to another, expressing his admiration for their beauty and elegance.

‘They are more than just pretty girls,’ said Maria with pride. ‘They all speak several languages – French of course, Italian, Flemish and German. They paint and they play the spinet. They are the most talented young ladies in Bruges.’

‘Oh Mama,’ said Margarethe, ‘you embarrass us.’

‘Well, I look forward to witnessing all your talents whilst I am here,’ said Daniele. ‘The last time I was here, you were just little girls. Adorable, but noisy, I seem to remember!’