The Tulip Virus

by Danielle Hermans

  “I’ll see you tomorrow morning at the New Archery Hall,” the man said. He pulled his hood farther over his head and strode out.

  No sooner was he gone than light and warmth returned to the room. With a sigh, Adriaen sank down onto the chair by the fire and stared at the book on his lap. The gold leaf on the cover caught the glow of the flames, dazzling him with its luster. Smiling, he caressed the soft red leather.

  TWENTY

  Dick gnawed his thumb. “The trouble really started when they extended the season. At first, bulbs were sold only in summer, because that was when they were harvested. But that wasn’t enough for the tulip dealers. They wanted to make money all year-round. So what did they do? They started selling offsets— the shoots that sprouted from the bulb. Once the plant has flowered, you lift the mother bulb from the soil and remove the offsets. In time, they can mature into bulbs and produce offsets of their own. The problem is, it takes a couple of years for the offsets to become full-grown bulbs. But they were often sold well before that stage.” Dick shook his head. “They should never have done it. When business transactions start to depend on trust, catastrophe is just around the corner.”

  “Are you saying people didn’t really know what they were buying?” Alec asked.

  “Correct. The seller would give the buyer a promissory note, a slip of paper describing what he had bought and when he could collect it.”

  “So they were speculating,” Damian said.

  “That’s right. Trading was no longer seasonal. Instead, they could buy and sell all year. The dealers imagined that now they could really make their fortunes. And indeed, some of them did, but there was one problem, and it was a doozy.”

  Dick stood up, looking worried, and started pacing from one end of the musty office to the other.

  “You see, there was no guarantee whatsoever that the offsets would be as hardy as the mother bulb, or that an offset from a prize bulb would produce exactly the same tulip. Yet in spite of these huge risks, the trade in offsets boomed. In fact, they were often traded before they were even removed from the mother bulb. Something else you must keep in mind,” Dick went on, wagging his finger, “is that the weight of the bulbs was crucial. A heavy, mature bulb produces a lot more offsets than a lighter one. So bulbs were sold by weight, which was measured in aces. One ace was less than two-thousandths of an ounce. As you can imagine, the trade in promissory notes soon got entirely out of hand. Buyers couldn’t be sure of anything. They had no way of checking the quality of a bulb or knowing what kind of flower it would eventually produce. They didn’t even know if it existed, or was really in the dealer’s possession.”

  “So in fact, they were paying a lot of money for scraps of paper that might turn out to be worthless, nothing but hot air,” Alec said.

  “It was a bubble,” Damian added.

  “A speculative bubble, precisely. The buyers were speculating on two things. First, the future price of the bulbs. They were hoping that the price would rise after they paid for the bulbs but before they collected them, so that they could sell at a profit. Second, they were betting that the weight of the bulb would increase while it was in the soil. A bulb weighing forty-eight aces could expand to two hundred aces in just a year’s time. That would, of course, boost their profit. A three-hundred-percent return on investment in only twelve months. But the sellers were gambling too. In theory, buyers would make a down payment when they bought the promissory note, and agree in writing to pay a certain amount when they collected the bulb. But sellers could never be sure they would get the rest of their money.”

  Alec nodded, committing everything Dick said to memory. At the same time, he tried to find the connection to Frank. It could be lurking anywhere. But where? Up to now, Dick hadn’t mentioned anything that seemed connected to Frank. The possibilities were starting to overwhelm him. Had Frank entrusted a large sum of money to the wrong person? Had he demanded repayment and instead paid with his life? How much did Alec really know about Frank’s financial affairs? He’d never looked into how Frank had made his fortune. So far, Dick’s story hadn’t helped at all. They were wasting their time there. Alec sighed. Dick looked at him. “Does any of this seem relevant?”

  “Not yet, but please go on. I’ll have to let it all sink in.”

  Dick gave a slight nod. “Okay, so in sixteen thirty-five and thirty-six, this speculative trading sent bulb prices soaring. That attracted a new group of buyers, who were more interested in guilders than in gardening. They came from all walks of life and sold everything they had— their cattle, their looms, their kilns, their anvils— just to get into the game.”

  Damian said, “I once read that those stories about humble craftsmen investing all their money in tulips were just tall tales.”

  “It probably varied from place to place. Still, in the centers of the tulip trade, like Alkmaar, Haarlem, and Amsterdam, there’s good reason to think that all sorts of people were looking for a piece of the action.”

  “But if they sold the tools they needed to practice their trades, then they had nothing left to fall back on.”

  “That’s right, Damian. That was the problem. The boom reached its height in the final months of sixteen thirty-six. By then, people were paying insane amounts. As the market attracted new buyers, demand kept growing, so prices kept rising. It simply couldn’t go on.”

  Dick went back to his chair and sat down, looking glum. “The year sixteen thirty-seven was a financial disaster for the tulip trade. A huge auction took place in Alkmaar. That was the beginning of the end. It changed everything. The bubble burst, leaving thousands of people penniless.”

  Alkmaar

  FEBRUARY 5, 1637

  The gales of the day before had cleared the air, and the wet streets of Alkmaar glistened in the morning sun. Most of the ice had melted, leaving only a thin crust on the shady patches along the road to the New Archery Hall, the guild hall of the city’s longbowmen. Its gable was finely etched against the bright blue sky. The gold weather vane on the spire, an archer poised to shoot, pivoted slowly on its axis, uncertain which way the wind was blowing.

  Far below, a group of men were waiting at the door. When it opened, they pushed their way inside and hurried to the small room at the far end of the corridor, where they were admitted two at a time.

  Adriaen Koorn was pleased. The auction hall was full, and there was still a line of people waiting. The first bidders had shown up at seven o’clock that morning and been taken to view the tulip book commissioned months ago from a local artist.

  Yes, Adriaen thought, since last July we’ve accomplished many things. The artist had produced 168 watercolors of the flowers in Winckel’s collection. As instructed, he had devoted special attention to the 124 tulips, since they were bound to fetch the highest prices. To publicize the auction, they had written to Holland’s best-known flower merchants and distributed pamphlets through their network of contacts throughout the republic.

  All these preparations had taken time, but as it turned out, time had worked in their favor. Winckel had died the previous July, and now it was February. In the intervening months, the prices of most varieties of tulips had doubled. The orphanage’s share of the expected proceeds came to far more than he had originally anticipated. Adriaen rubbed his hands together. Yes, he had plenty to be pleased about.

  Willem Winckel felt sick to his stomach. The sun was beating down through the windows, and vapor was rising from the dense, damp crowd. It was warm and stuffy, and the stench of onions and alcohol hung heavy in the room.

  He ran his hand over his face. The foul air forcing its way into his nostrils and throat was not the only thing making him nauseous. Another sickly odor filled the room. Every corner, every chink in the woodwork, every mote of dust was permeated with greed, like a haze only he could see, growing thicker with each new bidder who came through the door.

  There was another reason for his queasy feeling. As he had lain in bed the night before, unable to fall asleep, the th
ought had struck him that his family was entirely dependent on other people’s avarice. They had no choice but to encourage their greed and to hope it kept growing in the hours that followed. Only after the sale could he promise his brothers and sisters a secure future. The future his father had worked for all his life.

  He knew it wasn’t just their freedom that his father had wanted to secure. Wouter Winckel’s dream had been another kind of freedom, a kind they’d often discussed in the months before his death: human freedom, freedom of speech and action. Wouter’s words still rang in Willem’s ears: “However much you may possess, freedom is beyond price. It is better to live in poverty and be free than to live in prosperity and be shackled by other people’s prohibitions.”

  Willem surveyed the room. The bidders seemed to him like grave robbers, frantic to lay their hands on his father’s tulips. They were huddled together in their black cloaks, their eyes glued to the sale list in their hands. The list was more than a simple enumeration of the tulips in the estate of the innkeeper Wouter Bartelmieszoon Winckel. It was a harbinger of hope, prosperity, and immeasurable riches, because the tulips in question were the most valuable in all the Dutch republic. They included the rare and precious Admirael van Enckhuysen, two Viceroys, an Admirael van der Eijck, an Admirael Liefkens, a Bruyn Purper, a Paragon Schilder, and dozens of other coveted varieties.

  Willem stole a glance at his younger brothers and sisters, sitting beside him in the front row. He felt certain the auction would raise at least enough for a house and someone to manage the house hold. One thing was certain: they had to get out of the orphanage as soon as possible. He needed to be able to move freely. Standing beside the grave, he had solemnly sworn that his father’s death would not be in vain. He, Willem Winckel, would take up his father’s work.

  Startled by the sound of the doors slamming shut, he peered over his shoulder. All the men in the room still had their eyes on the list, except one. The stranger sat bolt upright on his chair, staring fixedly ahead of him. His neck was so long and thin that it was hard to believe it could support his head. He held a Bible close to his heart, and his lips were moving. Suddenly, without a blink, his eyes stared straight into Willem’s.

  At the first tap of the hammer, all the men in the room turned as one to the auctioneer. Their eyes swept past Willem, all but those of the man with the Bible, which held him in an unrelenting gaze. Willem felt his blood run cold in his veins. He tore himself away and turned his attention to the front of the room.

  TWENTY-ONE

  Alec looked up.

  “Did you say sixteen thirty-seven?”

  “That’s right. Why do you ask?”

  “No reason,” Alec said, shooting a look at Damian. “I didn’t know if I had heard you right.”

  His mind raced with possibilities. When Frank had pointed to the date, had he meant that he’d fallen prey to some similar scheme? Or was something else going on, something Alec hardly dared contemplate? Had Frank been the evil genius behind some plot to bilk people out of their money? And had it cost him his life? It just couldn’t be true.

  Alec rose and wandered over to the window, staring pensively outside. He’d had enough. He was exhausted, and nothing they’d learned seemed relevant at all. How long would this guessing game go on? He turned around.

  “I hate to say it, Dick, but this isn’t getting us anywhere. China, Turkey, sultans, flowers, bulbs, aces, auctions. I’m totally lost. All this information and nothing we can really use.”

  Alec felt his anger getting the better of him, but he couldn’t hold back. “What does any of this have to do with Frank? Can either of you tell me that? Not a damn thing. What the hell does the tulip trade, or the whole fucking seventeenth century, have to do with a man who had both feet firmly on the ground, a man who lived in this world, in the present, in the now? Not a goddamn thing. You know what? Let’s just drop it, we’ll never work it out. We should leave the whole thing to the police.”

  “It’ll be all right, Alec. I’m sure we’ll figure out what Frank was trying to tell you,” Damian said.

  “Nothing is going to be all right, Damian. I’ve lost Frank, the only family I had. Look at me now, what a loser. After all he did for me, I can’t do a thing in return.”

  Dick patted Alec on the shoulder. “What makes you think Frank had anything to do with all this? Or that he was trying to tell you something? If you told me that, maybe I could do more to help you.”

  Dick followed Alec’s gaze as he threw Damian a questioning look. Seeing Damian shake his head, Dick returned to his chair with a sigh. “I must say I’m disappointed you won’t confide in me.”

  “It’s not that, Dick. It’s just that I . . . well, to tell you the truth, I talked to Frank right before he died.”

  Dick’s mouth dropped open. “You talked to him?”

  “Yes, just for a moment. He was in a lot of pain and . . . well, I made him a promise I intend to keep.”

  Dick nodded. “In that case, I understand. Look, why don’t I just finish my story. You never know, right?”

  Alec nodded and sat down on the windowsill.

  “The bulbs at the auction in Alkmaar were put up for sale by the orphanage. They were part of an inheritance left to seven children who had ended up there. The bulbs were sold on behalf of the orphanage, so the orphanage received a share of the proceeds. That’s how it worked in those days. After two hours of frantic bidding, the sale came to an end. The auctioneer was drenched with sweat, and the entire collection had been sold. The proceeds were huge. Do you have any idea how much money they made? No, of course not, how could you. Hold on, where did I put that thing?”

  Dick leaned over, rummaged in a desk drawer, and produced a course reader. He thumbed through it rapidly and, stopping at a page in the middle, said, “Wait till you hear these figures.”

  The auctioneer began by formally announcing what was for sale. When Willem heard the name of Wouter Winckel, his heart filled with pride. This was all his father’s doing. Without knowing the first thing about the tulip trade, Wouter had thrown himself into it, studying the market and keeping track of its movements. He knew exactly when a tulip was undervalued or overvalued and it was time to make his move.

  Willem had heard the rumors. People in Alkmaar were saying that Wouter had been murdered for his bulbs but the thieves had been unable to find them. Willem knew better. He knew the true motive for his father’s killing, and with the proceeds of this auction, he could take revenge on the murderers. The money was vital, not just for him and his siblings, but for the entire world. He had to keep that in mind. He couldn’t let himself be distracted by the greed that pervaded the hall. In the end, it would all be to his benefit.

  The bidding began. The first bulb to go under the hammer was a red-and-white Boterman. Weighing in at 563 aces, it sold for 263 guilders. The second was a Scipio, which weighed only 82 aces but fetched the handsome sum of 400 guilders. Willem was stunned. How could this be? The next was a Paragon van Delft, one of his father’s favorites. The winning bid was 605 guilders.

  When the auctioneer announced the Bruyn Purper, a hush fell over the room. This was a lot that many people had been waiting for, because the flower, with its shades of purple and brown, was quite exceptional. The bidding went on so long that Willem almost believed it would never end. When the hammer finally fell, the selling price was 2,025 guilders. Willem glanced at the orphanage director, who was sitting beside the auctioneer’s podium with a rapturous smile on his face.

  After an hour, the auctioneer announced a short recess. The tension in the room was suddenly broken as everyone started talking at once. Some were in good spirits and congratulated each other on their purchases, while others looked morose. Willem rose from his chair when he noticed the orphanage director approaching him.

  “It’s all going very well, just as we expected. Isn’t it marvelous? We’ll remember this day for a long time to come.” You bet we will, Willem thought, and he nodded politely.
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br />   After the recess, it was time for the two Viceroys, one weighing 658 aces and the other 410. Willem had seen the stunning illustration in the tulip book: two flowers side by side with flamed midnight-blue petals. To his astonishment, the first sold for 4,200 guilders and the second for 3,000. But the biggest surprise was the Admirael Liefkens, a variety known for its sinuous lines of color. The tiny, lightweight bulb went to a dealer so desperate to get his hands on the rare specimen that he bid 1,015 guilders.

  Two hours after the bidders had poured into the room, the auction was over. Something inconceivable had taken place. Never before in the history of the tulip trade had an auction brought in so much money.

  Dick shoved his reading glasses up onto his forehead. “Can you imagine the suspense in that auction hall? One bulb after another, selling at record prices.”

  He lifted his eyebrows, and his glasses fell back onto the bridge of his nose. Then he returned his attention to the course reader.

  “It’s all right here in the historical record. See for yourself.”

  He handed Damian the reader, open to a reproduction of the list of prices. The page was divided into two columns, giving the weight and selling price of each bulb in minute handwriting.

  “Unbelievable,” Alec said.

  “Unbelievable is the word. This is where it all went wrong,” Dick continued. “Because the bids were so high, the auctioneer kept raising the starting prices. The bidders went into a frenzy. The higher the prices, the more they wanted those bulbs.”

  “What were the total proceeds?” Damian asked.

  “The auction raised ninety thousand guilders all together. It says so right here.” Dick pointed to the page. “On the right-hand side, all the way at the bottom.”