Sea Change (4 page)

'Good. You must eat your fill. There is no need for a man to go hungry in this house. My husband's prudence in matters of business has served us well of late.'

'I'm glad to hear it.'

'There is a saying in Dutch he often quotes. “Des waereld's doen en doolen is maar een mallemoolen.” “The ways of the world are but a fool's merry-go-round.” But, if that is the case, I often think, it begs the question: are we all fools, then? For we must all live in the world.'

'I'm not sure there can be an answer to such a question.'

'Not one we would wish to hear, at any rate. Quite so. Let us try another, then. How long have you been in Sir Theodore's service, Mr Spandrel?'

'Not long at all.'

'And before?'

'I am a mapmaker by profession.'

'Indeed? I wonder you do not pursue your profession.'

'Times are hard. And in hard times people decide they can live without maps.'

'But without a map, there is always the danger of going astray.'

'As many do.'

'How did you take up your profession?'

'From my father.'

'An eminent mapmaker?'

'A prosperous one — for a while.'

'My husband has a Mercator Atlas. Is that the sort of mapmaking of which we speak?'

'Not exactly. I map... closer to home.'

'Ah. Then you may be interested in this.' Mrs de Vries rose and moved to the map drawers Spandrel had eyed earlier. She pulled one open, slid out a sheet and laid it on the table. 'A recent acquisition. Come and look at it.'

Spandrel set down his tea and joined her by the table. A map of London lay before him; one he well recognized as the work of a competitor.

'Is it good?' Mrs de Vries asked.

'It's... accurate. If a little... out of date.'

'Out of date?' Mrs de Vries laughed lightly. 'I shall look forward to teasing my husband with that remark.'

'All maps are out of date to some degree.'

'Then should we discard them, like an old newspaper?'

'They should be drawn so that you don't want to discard them.'

'Ah. Because of their beauty?'

'Yes.' He looked round at her to find that she was already looking at him. He was suddenly aware of her perfume enveloping him and of how close they were, the lace ruff at her elbow just touching his sleeve. 'Exactly.'

'So, your maps are works of art?'

'I only wish—'

The door opened abruptly, too abruptly for the arrival of a servant. And clearly the person who entered was nothing of the kind. He was a short, barrel-chested old man in russet greatcoat and black suit, the coat worn draped over his shoulders like a cape, the sleeves empty. His face was lined but mobile, broken veins reddening his sharp cheekbones beneath grey, wary eyes framed by a mane of his own snowy white hair. The absence of a wig and the way he had shrugged on the coat, presumably the more readily to shrug it off, conveyed at once a certain bluntness, if not brusqueness. Ysbrand de Vries, as Spandrel felt sure the newcomer was, lacked his old friend Sir Theodore Janssen's polish and perhaps also his subtlety. But he was the one of them who, according to his wife, had scorned the lure of South Sea and Mississippi alike. He, Spandrel reminded himself, was the better judge of the two.

'Mr Spandrel,' the man growled unsmilingly. 'I am de Vries.'

'Your servant, sir. I've come—'

'Enough of that.' He glanced at his wife. 'You may leave us, madam. Ga weg.' It sounded like what it undoubtedly was: a dismissal verging on the curt.

'Goodbye, Mr Spandrel,' said Estelle de Vries, so unembarrassed by her husband's manner that Spandrel could only suppose it was what she was well used to. 'I hope you enjoyed your tea.'

'I did. Thank you.' Already, as he spoke, she was on her way out of the room. As the door closed behind her, he looked at de Vries and summoned a respectful smile. 'Mijnheer—'

'Janssen sent you?'

'Sir Theodore Janssen, yes.'

'With an article for safe-keeping.'

'Yes. But...' Spandrel retreated to the armchair and retrieved the satchel. 'I must take precautions, mijnheer. You understand?'

'What precautions?'

'I'm instructed to ask you to name the third member of the party on the occasion of your and Sir Theodore's first meeting.'

'Ha. Spelletjes, spelletjes, spelletjes. Janssen plays too much. You cannot always win.' De Vries pulled off his coat and tossed it over the back of the armchair. 'You liked the tea, Mr Spandrel? You enjoyed the... tart?'

'The cake was good.'

'The secret is in the spices.' De Vries scowled at him.

'No doubt.'

'Jacob van Dillen.'

'I beg your pardon?'

'The name you require... for Sir Theodore's game. Van Dillen.'

'Yes. Of course. I'm sorry.'

'So. The article. It is in the bag?'

'Yes.'

'Give it to me, then.'

Spandrel took the satchel to the table, laid it next to the map of London, opened the flap and slid out the despatch-box. De Vries's shadow fell across it as he did so, the old man's hand stretching out to brush the map aside.

'There were no... difficulties on your journey?'

'None, mijnheer.'

'That is good.' De Vries reached for the despatch-box and Spandrel noticed how swollen his knuckles were, how claw-like his fingers. He imagined them touching Estelle's soft, pale flesh and could not suppress a quiver of disgust at the thought. 'You are cold?'

'No. It's nothing.'

'Relief, perhaps.' De Vries slid the despatch-box towards himself. 'At a mission accomplished.'

'Perhaps.'

'You require a receipt?'

'Yes. Please. I do.'

De Vries smiled with half his mouth, then marched to the desk by the window and seized pen and paper. He did not sit down, but stooped to write, quickly, in a practised hand. Spandrel watched him, marvelling at how lightly his distorted fingers held the pen. Then he was done, and marching back to the table, holding out the receipt for Spandrel to take.

'Thank you, mijnheer.' Spandrel glanced down at the document and flushed at once with a sense of his own stupidity. 'But... it's in Dutch.'

'I am Dutch, Mr Spandrel.'

'I don't know what it says.'

'It is what you asked for. A receipt.' De Vries raised a wintry eyebrow. 'You doubt me?'

'I... must be sure.'

'Must you?'

'Yes. I think I must.'

'I think you must too.' De Vries gave another lopsided smile. 'I can also play games, you see? You write what you require.' He waved him towards the desk. 'I will sign it.'

Spandrel walked over to the desk, de Vries keeping pace behind him. He sat down, the old man looming at his shoulder, and wrote.

'Very good,' said de Vries when he had finished. 'But you have the date wrong. We are eleven days ahead of England here. And you are here, not there.' He took the pen, crossed out 25th January and wrote 5th February in its place. 'It is always better to be ahead than behind.' Then he added his signature. 'You are not an experienced traveller, I think.'

'No,' admitted Spandrel, shamed by his mistake.

'Dates can be confusing. It will still be January when you return to England. Those of us who make our profits and losses by the day' — he tapped his temple — 'keep such things in mind.'

'Yes. Of course.' Spandrel folded the receipt and slipped it into his pocket.

'Be sure not to lose that.'

'I will be.'

'When will you leave Amsterdam?'

'As soon as possible.'

'A pity, if this is your first visit. The city would repay a longer stay.'

'Sir Theodore will be anxious for confirmation of the box's safe delivery.' Spandrel stood up. 'I must go.'

'How will you travel?'

'The way I came. By barge.'

'You know the times?'

'I confess not.' Spandrel was once again brought up sharp by his own stupidity. He should have enquired about the return journey to Haarlem on arrival at the city gate. But, in his haste to reach de Vries's house, he had forgotten to do so. 'Do you, mijnheer, by any chance...'

'Keep them also in mind? No, I do not. But I employ someone who does.' De Vries strode to the door, opened it and bellowed into the hallway, 'Zuyler! Hier! Onmiddellijk! Then, leaving the door open, he marched across to the table on which the despatch-box lay. But it was not the box he was looking at. 'Why did Estelle show you my map of London, Mr Spandrel?'

'She thought I would be interested.'

'Why?'

'Because I am a mapmaker by profession.'

'How did she know that?'

'I told her.'

'You tell too much.' De Vries turned and regarded him thoughtfully. 'It is a bad habit. You should—' He broke off at Zuyler's appearance in the doorway.

'Mijnheer?' There was a brief exchange in Dutch, then Zuyler nodded and looked at Spandrel. 'You are bound for Helvoetsluys, Mr Spandrel?'

'I am.'

'Your quickest passage would be by the overnight trekschuit direct to Rotterdam. It leaves at eleven o'clock, from the Oudezijds Herenlogement on Grimburgwal.' De Vries intervened in Dutch at this and Zuyler smiled faintly before continuing. 'Mijnheer de Vries suggests I take you there. He doubts you will find the way. The Herenlogement is an inn. You may wish to take a meal before your journey.'

'Thank you. I'm sure I can find it myself.'

'It would be my pleasure to escort you, Mr Spandrel.'

'In that case...' Spandrel glanced from one to the other of them, 'I accept.'

'Goodbye then, Mr Spandrel,' said de Vries. 'Tell Sir Theodore...'

'Yes?'

'Nothing.' De Vries looked at him unsmilingly. 'That is always best.'

It turned out to be but a short walk from the de Vries house to Grimburgwal. Spandrel was nonetheless grateful to have a guide. The network of canals and bridges and alleys that comprised Amsterdam seemed designed to confuse the stranger, so similar was one part of the whole to another. He jokingly asked Zuyler if this were deliberate, but the Dutchman responded with dry seriousness that he thought not and had himself found London equally bewildering without being driven to suspect a plot against foreigners.

Zuyler, of course, had only a swift return to his secretarial duties to look forward to, whereas Spandrel, his task accomplished, was already anticipating the transformation in his circumstances that awaited him in England. The disparity in their levels of humour did not really surprise Spandrel. Indeed, having met Ysbrand de Vries, he could not help feeling sorry for anyone who had to work for him. An attempt to put this into words, however, fell as flat as his joke.

'I imagine Mijnheer de Vries is a demanding employer.'

'That is the nature of employment,' Zuyler replied. 'It makes demands of one.'

'Indeed. But—'

'And it seldom rewards imagination.' Zuyler pulled up and pointed to a handsomely pedimented building on the other side of the canal. 'That is the Oudezijds Herenlogement. The Rotterdam trekschuit will pick up from the landing-stage in front.'

'Well, thank you for showing me the way.'

'I hope you have a safe journey.'

'I'm sure I will.'

Zuyler gave him a faint little nod that hovered on the brink of becoming a bow but never did, then turned and walked away. Spandrel watched him for a few paces, then had to step beneath the awning over a hatter's shop while a coach drove by. It was mounted on sledge-runners, as if designed for harsher weather than the prevailing mild grey dismalness, but rattled across the cobbles briskly enough. When Spandrel looked in Zuyler's direction once more, he was nowhere to be seen.

The Oudezijds Herenlogement was as comfortable and congenial an inn as Spandrel could have wished for. The tap-room was full of smoke and warmth and chatter, even at this unpromising hour of the late afternoon. He ate a hearty stew, washed down with a mug of ale, and gleaned confirmation of the trekschuit departure time from the tapster. Then he smoked a pipe over a second mug of ale and considered how best to fill the evening he had at his disposal. Darkness had fallen over the city and he knew better than to stray far from the inn, for he would be certain to lose himself. This was not London. He carried no map, on paper or in his head. Much the safer course of action was to stay where he was.

But even the Oudezijds Herenlogement held its hazards. As more and more customers arrived, Spandrel was joined at his table by three drinkers of genial demeanour, one lean, animated and talkative, the other two paunchy, dough-faced and content to puff at their pipes and quaff from their mugs while their companion chattered on. The chatterer soon tried to involve Spandrel in the conversation and, upon realizing that an Englishman was among them, gleefully revealed his knowledge of the language.

Spandrel was half-drunk by then, nestled in a smoky swathe of self-satisfaction. Jan, the chatterer, evinced nothing but a grinning eagerness to hear his description of London life, while the puffing and quaffing pair —Henrik and Roelant — set a stiff pace of consumption which he felt obliged to match. A few desultory hands of cards were played, although Spandrel found it difficult to distinguish the clubs from the spades. Toasts were drunk to good health and fellowship. A venture to the jakes demonstrated to Spandrel that he was becoming unsteady on his feet, though he persuaded himself that a few lungfuls of night air aboard the trekschuit would cure the problem, ignoring the fact that the trekschuit was not due to leave for another few hours. Then he and Jan became embroiled in a comparison of Englishwomen and Dutchwomen that led to a fateful challenge. Jan knew a nearby musico, as he called it, where particularly delectable young women could be had at reasonable rates. Let Spandrel sample one and he would be bound to admit their superiority to anything London had to offer. Tea with Estelle de Vries had undeniably whetted Spandrel's sexual appetite, just as ale with Jan, Henrik and Roelant had fuddled his judgement. Assured by Jan that he would be back long before eleven o'clock, he accepted the challenge.

He knew it was a mistake as soon as he left the inn. Far from clearing his head, the night air administered a chill shock which set it reeling. That and the enveloping darkness disoriented him at once. Jan led the way, Spandrel several times needing Henrik's or Roelant's assistance to keep track of him through the cobbled gulfs of blackness between the few street-lamps, confusingly reflected as they were in the adjacent canal.

Then they left the canal behind, turning first right, then left, then right into a narrow alley lit only to the degree that it was less dark at its far end. Spandrel decided he had had enough. Lust had entirely deserted him. He hurried to catch Jan up, asking him to stop at the same time.

'I'm not sure about this, Jan. I don't feel—'

Suddenly, he tripped, on what he had no idea. He fell heavily to the ground and rolled into the central gutter, then struggled to his knees, looking around for assistance. But he did not receive assistance. Instead, he received a boot in the midriff that drove the breath from his body and was followed by a wave of nausea. A second boot added a sharp, disabling pain to the nausea. Then something blunt and heavy struck him round the side of the head. He fell helplessly into the gutter, his senses grasping little beyond fear and the impossibility of escape. He had been taken for a fool and he had acted like one. They were thieves and probably murderers too. He was done for.

He must have vomited at some point. He dimly saw a pale smear of it on one of their sleeves and heard the owner curse him. It was Henrik. Or Roelant. He could no longer tell. It earned him another cuff to the head and a deepening of the blear through which his brain struggled to understand what was happening. The ale he had drunk dulled his pain but sapped his ability to think or to act. He was dragged into a doorway and hauled into a sitting position. Then they began rifling through his pockets. One by one they were emptied, till finally his money-bag was pulled out, tearing off the button fastening the pocket it was in with such force that it bounced back onto his face from the wall next to him. 'Snel, snel,' he heard Jan say. 'Het zand.' Something else was being put in to replace the money-bag — something heavy and bulky. Whatever it was, the same was being thrust into his outer pockets. Then he was dragged upright and carried along the alley, held by his arms across Henrik's and Roelant's shoulders, his feet scuffing the cobbles.

He glimpsed lamplight to left and right and the vague outline of a bridge. They must be near a canal. That fact was as much as he had grasped before he was abruptly released and found himself falling. He managed to brace his arms in front of him to take the impact. But it was not the cobbles he hit.

The water was cold and darkly turbid, a soundless world that wrapped its muddy coils around him and held him fast. He could not swim, but even had he been able to he would probably have been helpless, so heavy did he feel, so resistant did the water seem. He recognized the end that he now confronted: a drowned drunkard, far from home. He struck out against it. He saw a shimmer of lamplight, refracted through the water. He was close to the surface, but not close enough. He sank back, abandoning the effort and with it himself to the oblivion that folded itself around him.

Then something caught at his shoulder and lifted him bodily through the water. He broke surface and gulped in the air, coughing convulsively. There were stone stairs at his back, leading down from the street into the canal. A boat-hook was being disentangled from his coat as he was dragged up the lower steps. Somebody was behind him, hands beneath his shoulders, knees braced at his side. 'Push yourself up,' said a voice he vaguely recognized. 'Push, damn your eyes.'

Spandrel did push, but it was the other man who did most of the work. When they were both clear of the water, he lay back, panting from the effort.

'We can't stay here.' Now Spandrel knew who he was. 'They may come back.'

'Zuyler? Is that... you?'

'Listen to what I'm saying,' Zuyler hissed. 'We have to go. Quickly.'

'I can't... move.'

'You'll have to.' Zuyler struggled to his feet, pulling Spandrel half-upright as he did so. 'Get up, man.'

'I can't, I tell you.' Spandrel gave way to a bout of coughing. His clothes were saturated, the stench of canal mud rising in a plume around him. 'I feel so weak.'

'This will help.' Zuyler bent over him, pulled something bulky from his right-hand coat pocket, then from his left, and tossed the objects into the canal. 'Sandbags,' he announced. 'To weigh down your corpse.'

'Oh God.'

'God will not help you, Spandrel. But I will. Now stand up.'

Afterwards the instinct for survival that lies dormant until it is most needed could alone satisfactorily explain to Spandrel how he was able to bludgeon his body into the action required of it that night. Quaking from the cold, and from the shock of what had happened, his clothes a chill, dripping weight around him, he somehow managed to follow Zuyler through a labyrinthine mile of alleys and canalsides to a chemist's shop, the meanly furnished basement of which constituted Zuyler's less than stylish residence.

Zuyler lit a fire for Spandrel to warm himself by, huddled in a blanket, his wet, mud-caked clothes discarded. A glass of schnapps and a bowl of soup slowly revived him, until he was able to offer the man who had saved his life some stumbling words of gratitude.

'You thank me,' Zuyler responded, puffing thoughtfully at his pipe before adding, with a rueful smile, 'and I curse you.'

'What?'

'I curse you, Spandrel. For presenting me with such a choice.'

'I don't... understand.'

'What do you think happened to you tonight?'

'I... fell into bad company.'

'Indeed you did. But why?'

'Because I was...' He broke off to cough. The pain in his side every time he did so had convinced him that at least one of his ribs was broken. But the throbbing ache in his head had the meagre merit of distracting him from the injury. 'I was foolish.'

'And that is all?'

'What else?'

'What else is what brought me to your aid. Cornells Hondslager is not a—'

'Who?'

'Hondslager. The thin one.'

'He said his name was Jan.'

'No doubt he did. Aliases are a natural condition of his occupation.'

'And what is his occupation?'

'He is an assassin, Spandrel. A hired killer.'

'Hired?'

'To kill you. The other two I don't know. His regular assistants, I think we can assume.'

'To kill me?' Spandrel was having difficulty keeping pace with the implications of what Zuyler was saying. 'But that means...'

'It was arranged beforehand. Exactly.'

'How do you know?'

'I observed a meeting yesterday between de Vries and Hondslager. It was the purest chance. The coffee-house they chose for the purpose is not the kind of establishment where my employer is likely to be seen, in normal circumstances. That is actually why I sometimes use it. Well, clearly the circumstances were not normal. Another customer had alerted me to Hondslager's occupation some time ago. I could have little doubt as to the reason for their meeting and fell to asking myself who de Vries wanted to have killed. Your arrival this afternoon provided a possible answer. It could have been a coincidence, of course. De Vries has many enemies. He might have felt obliged to eliminate one of them, though frankly I doubted it. It is not the kind of sanction de Vries would wish to invoke against a business rival, for fear another rival might be inspired to use it against him. No, no. A stranger to the city and its ways seemed much the likelier target. Your arrival therefore seemed anything but coincidental.'

'Why didn't you warn me?'

'Because you don't pay my wages, Spandrel. De Vries does, albeit reluctantly. My interests are not served by obstructing his affairs.'

'But you obstructed them this time.'

'Yes.' Zuyler took an irritated swig of schnapps. 'You can thank my conscience for that.'

'I do. Believe me.'

'Which will profit me precisely nothing. But there it is. What's done is done. After de Vries had finished with me this evening, I decided to call at the Oudezijds Herenlogement on my way home to see that you had come to no harm. But you were already in Hondslager's company, too drunk to notice me or indeed the trap that was closing around you. Where did you think you were going, by the way?'

'A musico.'

'Much as I thought. Well, you could say Hondslager's done you a favour, Spandrel. At least you won't have a dose of pox to remember Amsterdam by.'

'It's a great consolation.'

'There was nothing I could do while you were in their hands. They'd have made short work of me. Fortunately for you, however, they didn't linger after pushing you into the canal. They must have thought the sand-bags would keep you under. And they would have done if I hadn't been standing by with the boat-hook. I'd guessed what they were planning for you. Drowning's so much easier to explain than a knifing, especially for a newcomer to the city. If your body had ever been found, that is, which I doubt. There must be more than a few murdered men rotting in the mud at the bottom of our canals. So, I borrowed the hook from a barge moored round the corner and tried my hand at fishing you out.'