Daughters of the Silk Road: A beautiful and epic novel of family, love and the secrets of a Ming Vase (30 page)

The policeman looked at his colleague, who gave a subtle nod of his head. ‘OK, but only for a few minutes. We are busy, you understand?’

‘Yes, yes I do. Thank you so much.’

He held his pass up to an electronic reader at the side of a second pair of glass doors, which slid open, revealing the pale apricot and cream interior of the cloisters. The family wandered through, accompanied by two police officers.

‘May I take a few pictures?’ asked Miranda, indicating her phone. ‘For research?’

‘
Si, si
, but no police.’

‘No, of course.’

The cloisters stood around a central grass courtyard. Wooden doors intersected the white inner walls at regular intervals, presumably leading to the nuns’ cells. A pair of elaborate carved doors led to an old chapel, now a small sitting room and café for the police – an incongruous mix of high church and fast food. At one point, Miranda wandered towards a heavy iron grille that led onto the canal – the Rio dei Greci. A policeman stepped in front of her.

‘No,
signora
.’

As Miranda stood in the cool cloisters gazing about her, she thought back to the family who had returned to Venice from the East all those years before – Maria and Daniele with their father. In preparation for their visit to Venice, she had visited the British Library a week earlier and had been allowed to view dei Conti’s diary. She had taken photographs of it on her phone and had since done some further research on the merchant explorer. She was fascinated by his extraordinary life. He had left Venice as a young man, barely out of his teens, and studied Arabic in Damascus. He had joined an Arabian caravan en route to Baghdad, sailed the Persian Gulf as far as Oman, where he learned Persian. He had crossed India, and on to present-day Sri Lanka. From there to Sumatra and thence to China. Leaving China he visited the Spice Islands – Sunda and Banda – before travelling to Vietnam and Cambodia. On his return journey he travelled via the Malabar Coast, across the Red Sea and to Cairo, where his disguise as a Persian merchant was uncovered. His life and that of his family were threatened, forcing him to convert to Islam. He then tragically lost his wife and two of his children and servants in an epidemic in Cairo. He arrived finally in Venice accompanied by just two of his children – Maria and Daniele. On his return he had begged absolution and had dictated his diary to the scholar Poggio Bracciolini. In all, he had lived a long and remarkable life.

But after reading the detail of Niccolò’s journey, it was frustrating to know so little about his life once he returned to Venice. What had their lives been like? Where had they lived in Venice? What had happened to Maria and how did she come to meet her husband Peter and move to Bruges?

A breeze blew in through the iron grille off the canal. She shivered involuntarily. Had Maria walked near this church, or taken a gondola down the Rio dei Greci? Had she seen what Miranda was seeing now? Venice in 1450 was no different really from the Venice of today. It was an extraordinary thought, that this distant ancestor of hers, this daughter of the Silk Road, may have stood where she stood, walked where she walked.

Their visit complete, their pictures taken, the three were ushered back out into the street.

‘Well,’ said Miranda, ‘that was interesting. What a curious life the women there must have led. I can’t imagine being locked up in that place, can you?’

‘No!’ said Georgie firmly. ‘I can’t imagine anything worse. Like being in prison.’

‘I gather it was quite common,’ said Miranda, ‘for girls to end up in convents in the old days – if they were unmarried. Thank goodness Maria married. I’m glad her life didn’t come to an end in a place like that.’

Back at the Danieli, they arranged to meet for dinner in the top-floor restaurant. The sun was setting over the lagoon as the three sat down, drinks in hand, to study the menu.

‘Here’s to you, Miranda,’ said Jeremy, clinking his Bellini against hers.

‘What for?’ asked Miranda.

‘For being the best friend a guy could have, and the best mother.’

‘I’ll drink to that,’ said Georgie.

‘And for not letting life get you down,’ continued Jeremy. ‘I was doing a bit of reading the other day about the significance of the dragon to the Chinese. You know, they consider it to be good luck. It got me thinking about that vase and the luck it’s brought you – and me, come to that.’

‘Yes, I know. I still can’t quite believe it, if I’m honest,’ said Miranda. ‘And when I look at that family tree that Celia left me and see all those people, all those lives that were touched by the vase, it makes me think. I don’t really believe in luck, but I do appear to have been the recipient of something quite remarkable – to be the last in a long line that stretches back in time to Niccolò dei Conti and his daughter and his daughter’s daughter and so on.’

‘All the way to me!’ said Georgie. ‘Surely I’m the last in the line, for now. And who knows, maybe I’ll have a daughter too. And whilst I don’t have a vase any more to hand on, we have the luck it brought us, don’t we?’

‘And with that luck, darling, comes our responsibility,’ said Miranda. ‘Remember that. We must do something worthwhile with our luck and not fritter it away. Remember all those who have gone before and what they achieved – all those businesses and children; all that pride they had in themselves. We must make that our legacy. The vase has gone back to its geographical home – back to China where it came from, where it belongs. But we carry its luck with us always.’

T
hank
you for reading this novel. I do so hope you enjoyed it.

T
he ‘stars
’ of this novel are, of course, the family at its heart. As I have said in my notes, Niccolò dei Conti and his two children, Maria and Daniele did exist. But I have fictionalised their lives on their return to Venice and created a large family of descendants. I am fascinated by family history, and have explored my own through various ancestry websites. I know it is of great interest to many of us – to understand where we come from; what our ancestors did for a living; what influenced their lives.

T
he other ‘star
’ of this novel is, of course, the Ming storage jar. I have been fascinated by blue and white china ever since I was a young child and my mother gave me a miniature blue and white china tea-set for my dolls. I played with it for many years and as a teenager began to collect other – larger – pieces of blue and white china. I now have quite a considerable collection. As a young reporter working for the BBC, I was lucky enough to travel to Hong Kong and bought two large storage jars and a smaller blue and white vase from an antique dealer in the Hollywood Road – the centre of Hong Kong’s antique district. They were not Ming of course, but had some age. I had quite a battle to persuade the airline to let me carry them with me inside the plane and not put them in the hold. They sit on the shelves in my sitting room to this day and have been an inspiration to me when writing this story.

I
first came
up with the idea for the novel eight or nine years ago. I was already writing my first novel, and had no time to develop this new story. But it continued to bubble away in my imagination. I collected bits and pieces of information, did some research about Niccolò dei Conti and was surprised when a press story emerged of a family in west London who had inherited a Chinese vase that turned out to be worth £39 million! It appeared that the story I had been harbouring all these years was true.

I
began
to write
Daughters of the Silk Road
as soon as my first novel was published and have spent a wonderful year exploring the various cities that feature in the story. I had been to Venice and Bruges in the past, but it was a new experience to see them through the eyes of my characters. It was wonderful to visit the convent of San Zaccaria (which is now a police station), and to ‘find’ the house on the canal where I like to think Niccolò and his family lived when they returned to Venice from the East. It was exciting to walk the pretty streets of Bruges and Amsterdam locating the houses where dei Conti’s fictional descendants might have lived. And fascinating too, to visit Antwerp and be shown round a stunning house and workshop of a well-known book-binder. This house was the inspiration for the home of Cornelius and Margarethe.

I
hope
you have enjoyed reading my tale of the dei Conti family and their descendants. If you have, I
would be so delighted if you could leave a review for others.
Also, if you’d like to keep up-to-date with all my latest releases, just sign up here:

U
ntil the next time
…

Connect with me:

• @debbierix
  
• DebbieRixAuthor
  

T
his novel is based
on the life of a real person – Niccolò dei Conti and his two children Maria and Daniele. Many of the ‘characters’ in the novel are based on real people, but the majority are not.

Niccolò dei Conti was an Italian explorer. Born in Choggia near Venice in 1395, he left Italy as a young man intent on travelling the world. He studied Arabic in Damascus before joining an Arabian caravan en route to Baghdad. From there he went by sea through the Persian Gulf to Oman, where he learned Persian. He crossed India and on to what we now call Sri Lanka. From there he travelled to Sumatra and on to the lands of ‘further India’, as China was then known. There is some disagreement as to whether he did get as far as China, but he certainly travelled to the Spice Islands and thence to Vietnam and Cambodia. Whether he actually met Admiral Zheng He is not known, but it is possible, as they were both in Sumatra at around the same time and dei Conti did write later of the immense power and capability of the Admiral’s vast ships, which conquered the oceans on behalf of his Emperor.

Zheng He wrote of his own travels:

‘
W
e have traversed more
than 100,000 li of immense water spaces and have beheld in the ocean huge waves like mountains rising in the sky, and we have set eyes on barbarian regions far away hidden in a blue transparency of light vapours, while our sails, loftily unfurled like clouds day and night, continued their course as rapidly as a star, traversing those savage waves as if we were treading a public thoroughfare.’

I
n India
, dei Conti met his future wife. Sadly, we do not know her name. But we do know they had four children who travelled everywhere with their parents. What an extraordinary life they must have lived. When Niccolò decided to return finally to Italy, the family travelled via the Malabar Coast, through the Red Sea to Cairo, where his disguise as a Persian merchant was uncovered. He was forced to convert to Islam in order to protect his family. This was a relatively common practice amongst European merchants in Asia at that time, and whilst it was an expedient thing to do, it was also an example of dei Conti’s desire to learn ‘at first hand’ about the diversity of people and their religions. Tragically he lost his wife and his two youngest children, along with all his servants, during an epidemic in Cairo. What sort of epidemic is not known, but the plague, in all its forms – bubonic, septicemic and pneumonic – were endemic at that time. He finally returned to Venice with his two remaining children, Maria and Daniele, in 1441.

The plague island that I describe near Venice does exist. Poveglia was used as a quarantine island for victims of the plague and leprosy; between 1922 and 1968 it was an asylum. It is now deserted, and contains nothing more than the old hospital building and a chapel. The landing station is still there, but the gardens are now overgrown. It is currently the object of a battle between a property developer who wishes to turn it into a private hotel and the Mayor of Venice who wishes to preserve it for the people of his city. It is said that ghosts inhabit the island, and it can be hard to persuade taxis to take you there. I visited the island and it is indeed a sad and melancholy place. But I never encountered a ghost!

After his return to Venice, Niccolò lived another twenty-eight years to the ripe old age of seventy-four. In that time he was appointed a member of the
Maggior consiglio
in 1451; was elected procurator of the churches of San Francesco in 1453 and Santa Croce in 1460. But what he is truly remembered for is his diary,
India Recognita
, a record of his travels dictated to the humanist scholar Poggio Bracciolini, private secretary to the then Pope Eugene IV as an apostasy for his conversion to Islam. This diary was translated into a variety of languages, including Portuguese, Spanish, Dutch and English, and formed the fourth book of Poggio Bracciolini’s’s work,
De Varietate Fortunae
–
On the
Vicissitudes of Fortune
– completed in 1448.

Sadly nothing more is known of his children and what happened to them. I have imagined their future in this novel; as the children of a well-known and successful merchant, it seemed to me that they would have continued with that way of life. Through their imagined lives, I have endeavoured to explore the extraordinary and rich tapestry of the merchant class in fifteenth, sixteenth and seventeenth-century Europe, as the cities of Venice, Bruges, Antwerp and finally Amsterdam became, one by one, the principal merchant centres of their day.

The following people referenced in the book did exist:

• Niccolò dei Conti
  
• Maria dei Conti
  
• Daniele dei Conti
  
• Emperor Xuande and his many wives and concubines
  
• Admiral Zheng He
  
• Polisena Cavorta – young nun who fell in love and ran away with
  
• Giovanni Valler
  
• Elena Marcello –nun of uncertain virtue in Sant. Angelo convent
  
• Willhelm Rumlim – German merchant in Venice
  
• Friedrich Diterichs – German merchant in Venice
  
• Tomasso Portarino – Medici Banker based in Bruges
  
• Carlo Cavalcanti – silk merchant to the Medici bank based in Bruges
  
• Folco d’Adoardo di Giovanni Portinari – Medici banker based in Bruges
  
• Guido di Savino – maiolica potter who became famous in Antwerp
  
• Margriet Bolleman – Guido’s wife
  
• Francesco di Marco Datini – Merchant of Prato
  
• Desiderius Erasmus – humanist scholar
  
• Jan Huygen van Linschoten – Dutch explorer
  
• Plancius – explorer
  
• Jacob van Neck – VOC Chief Merchant
  

All the rest are fictional.

I have been aided in this novel by the work of many scholars and authors:

Lars Tharp, ceramics expert

The Book of Porcelain
by Walter A Staehelin – a fascinating and beautiful book explaining the remarkable process of porcelain production in China in the 18th century.

Venice: A Documentary History 1450 –1630
, edited by David Chambers and Brian Pullman

Court and Civic Society in the Burgundian Low Countries c.1420 –1530
by Andrew Brown and Graeme Small

The Web of Empire
by Alison Games

Venice and Amsterdam
by Peter Burke

A Companion to Venetian History, 1400 –1797
, edited by Eric R Dursteler

Maiolica,
an essay
by Timothy Wilson

My thanks to them and to the authors of all the other fascinating pieces of information I have discovered on this journey.