by Debbie Rix
‘That he’s a liar,’ said Georgie.
‘Or maybe he just didn’t have time before Christmas?’ suggested Miranda. ‘I mean, we can’t assume that he’s up to no good.’
‘Miranda,’ said Jeremy exasperatedly, ‘stop deluding yourself. They told me that he had not mentioned the vase to them, hadn’t seen them in weeks. He was never intending to put that vase in the sale in Hampshire. He lied to you.’
‘Maybe he’s going to put it in a sale somewhere else then?’ said Miranda.
‘Now that is the first sensible thing you’ve said all Christmas,’ said Jeremy. ‘G, start trawling the Internet for sales of Chinese porcelain. Let’s see what we can find out.’
* * *
The pieces are turned on a potter’s wheel. The workers are divided into two groups – those who turn pieces of one foot in diameter, and those who turn the larger pieces. The wheel is a wooden disc mounted on a vertical axis, so it turns for as long as possible at a regular speed while the clay is shaped. As the potter shapes the clay, a boy drives the wheel with a rope on a pulley. The pot is then given to a third workman, who fits it into a mould to give it the required shape. There are two earthenware moulds – one inner and an outer one. The production of these moulds is a highly skilled task. There are only two or three workmen who are able to do it. The finished cups are placed in neat rows on shelves in the sun and around the walls of the potter’s workshop. A fourth workman polishes each cup with a chisel, particularly around the edges, and thins it so that it becomes almost transparent. He moistens the pot as he works it, for if he lets it dry out it will crack. The pieces are now ready to be decorated.
Part III
Chapter Twenty-Two
Amsterdam, 1631
At thirty-three years of age, Hans Kaerel considered himself a success. He was married to a charming and pretty wife with whom he had three children and was the owner of a fine home on the Herengracht, the most fashionable street in Amsterdam. Earlier that day, he had been appointed to the Board of Directors of the company his father had helped to establish – Vereenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie – the VOC. He had just one problem: a secret that had begun to tear him apart.
Hans sat in his private study at the rear of the house, checking his accounts. Meticulously tidy, the room was panelled in dark oak, with glazed bookcases built on either side of the fireplace. Hans’ desk stood facing towards the door and his back was to the garden. The garden was his wife’s domain and held no interest for him. Hans preferred to work in his study at night, after dinner, with the dark red damask curtains closed against the night sky. By the light of the oil lamps, the room was suffused with a warm, peaceful glow; the only sounds were the spitting of the fire in the grate and the quiet snoring and snuffling of his favourite dog Kuntze. The dog was a Kooiker, a breed much prized at the time. Intelligent and friendly, he was a good hunting dog. He was the perfect companion for a man such as Hans, who required total devotion from everyone around him. To say Hans was difficult would be incorrect. Exacting would describe his nature better. He was also a man of determination and quick intelligence. He knew what he wanted, and he was not to be crossed.
He could hear his wife Antoinette singing in the room next door. Unlike the rest of the house, which was dark and masculine, this little parlour of hers had been decorated in shades of pale blue, which reflected the sky on a winter’s day; the floors were a chequerboard of russet and white tiles, covered with Turkish carpets. She had a couple of chairs, a small table also covered in a colourful carpet, and beneath the window, her beloved spinet – a gift from her husband on their wedding day. She played well and liked nothing better than to practice first thing in the morning. She refrained from playing in the evenings for fear of disturbing Hans’ work. The fireplace was tiled with Delft blue and white tiles and above it hung a painting of a rural scene, exquisite in every detail.
Antoinette often stood at the large latticed windows overlooking the garden, which had been recently redesigned in the latest Baroque style, with box-edged beds set out in a geometric pattern filled with seasonal plants. Star amongst these annual delights were the tulips, purchased at huge cost. The tulip had become the latest craze in Amsterdam and was considered a symbol of wealth. Antoinette professed that her passion for the flowers was simply that she ‘loved their beautiful colours and form.’ But secretly, she was thrilled that her husband was able, and willing, to spend thousands of guilders to beautify her garden with this most fashionable of flowers. The tulips would only be in bloom for three or four weeks in April and early May. As soon as the first flower opened its petals, Antoinette threw herself into a whirl of social activity. Guests were served coffee, tea or lunch in the small pavilion that had been built at the bottom of the garden. From here, they had a perfect view of the spectacular display whilst the magnificent fountain that had been erected in the centre of the flowerbeds spattered water into a marble bowl at its base.
The drawing room at the front of the house was reserved for larger parties. It had views out over the canal and was lined with engraved and gilded leather panels specially imported from Venice. Turkish carpets in rich tones of blue and red covered the black and white tiled floors and the large oak table that stood against the wall. Chairs upholstered in blue leather were arranged around the room. When the candles were lit in the twin brass chandeliers that hung from the high ceiling, Antoinette thought it the most elegant room on the Herengracht.
The cabinets on either side of the large fireplace in Hans’ study were filled with examples of fine porcelain, imported by generations of his family. One piece was particularly prized amongst the rest: a Ming vase, at least two hundred years old, that had been in his family since its creation. At least, that was the story he had been told by his mother Clara and grandmother Beatrice, who had inherited the piece from her mother Maria Margret Corso. Beatrice had married one of her cousins – Thomas van Vaerwye, the son of Peter van Vaerwye. Together they had moved to Amsterdam from Antwerp during the war with Spain in the early 1580s. Beatrice had then handed the vase on to her own daughter Clara when she married Hans’s father Johan Kaerel.
* * *
And now it had come to him. He gazed up at the Ming Vase. It stood in pride of place on the top shelf. Other pieces were arranged on the lower shelves: a flask – bulbous at the base, with a narrow neck, that also featured a dragon chasing round the centre. There was a small Ming tankard; a wine jar that was decorated with charming scenes of Chinese courtly life, depicting slightly windswept ladies sitting with their children in a garden as a companion played the flute. A pair of blue and white bowls stood on the shelf below. He had given a similar bowl to the young painter Rembrandt just the week before. The artist had recently moved back to Amsterdam, and when Hans visited his house he had been much impressed with the range of ‘props’ that Rembrandt kept in his studio storeroom. An extensive collection of porcelain, crystal claret jugs with silver necks and lids – some of considerable merit – were meticulously stored on shelves around the room alongside more bizarre items: weapons of all kinds, skulls of dogs, stuffed birds and game. The artist clearly had a passion for purchasing items that would one day be the centrepiece of one of his paintings. In the studio next door, where Rembrandt worked alongside one or two young apprentices, Hans observed the artist was painting a large Ming bowl he had sold to him the previous year. He thought the young men were capturing the bowl’s detail beautifully, although there was no doubting who was the master and who the apprentice. Hans suggested to Rembrandt that it might ease the artist’s persistent money problems if they effected a swap whereby Hans could provide one or two new pieces of porcelain in return for the painting. The artist had readily agreed and that painting hung now above the fireplace in Hans’ study.
He looked back at his books, moving the oil lamp closer to the work. His eyesight was getting weaker, which concerned him. He would request a visit from the spectacle maker. He had commissioned a new ship, which he hoped to take to China that year. L
aid out on his desk in tidy piles were the invoices from the shipwright. He had visited the shipyard earlier that day and had been impressed with progress. But it was an expensive venture and he needed to study and check the invoices carefully.
He had chosen a name for the ship. It was to be christened the Vliegende Draek – ‘The Flying Dragon’ – after the vase. He knew the mythology that surrounded the vase: whoever had care of it would have good fortune. His mother, however, disapproved of the name.
‘It will bring you nothing but despair. You mark my words, Hans. Look what has happened to me. I had care of the vase and look at all the tragedy that has befallen me.’
It was true that his parents had had their fair share of tragedy. Clara had given birth to seven children and lost all but one. Three children died in their first year of life. When Hans was born she lived in terror that he too would be taken from her. But he survived, and when he reached the age of two years, she began to hope that her bad luck was behind her. She had three more children in quick succession, hoping for a large, happy family. But tragedy struck again four years later when her fourth child Karl died of scarlet fever. His sister Magda contracted the same illness and died weeks later. Her seventh and final child, Katje, mercifully escaped the illness. A beautiful child with long dark hair and bright blue eyes, her parents adored her. She was gentle and kind and had an extraordinary ability for one so young to intuitively understand what the people around her required. Her mother could hardly bear to be parted from her, even sharing the nursery with her at night. During the day, she dressed her, brushed her hair and spent hours playing with a collection of miniature household items she had collected for the child. In fact, she scarcely left the large nursery at the front of the house on the Herengracht.
As Hans grew from a boy to a young man, he observed this close relationship between his mother and little sister. He was not jealous in any way, for he too cared for Katje. She was a delight and adored her older, handsome brother. Besides, he was relieved that at last his mother had another child to whom she could devote herself. For the loss of so many of her children had made her neurotic and anxious. Until Katje’s birth, she had tried to control Hans’s life from the moment he woke until the time he went to bed. She was fearful if he ventured out of the house alone. In the winter months, when the canals froze, Hans and his young friends loved nothing better than to get out onto the ice and skate. Hans would wake in the morning and if the canal was frozen he would put on his warmest winter clothes and run down the oak staircase and into the basement where the kitchens and laundry were the domain of their kitchen staff Mitze and Saskia.
Saskia had been with Johan and Clara since they were first married and had cooked for them ever since. She was a sturdy woman with a kind round face and strong forearms. It appeared to Hans that she was in every way perfect – kind, calm and loving – and always with something delicious cooking in the huge range. Hans would go first to the kitchen to see if there were any sweet treats – a Speculoos biscuit perhaps, made with cinnamon and nutmeg for the feast of St Nicholas on December 5th. Then, stuffing the biscuits into his pockets, he would run to the boot room and find his skates, put on his thick woollen cloak and head off to the canal where he would meet his friends. But often as he emerged from the basement kitchens he would find his mother standing dourly in the hallway, her thin face contorted in anxiety.
‘Where are you going, Hans? It is cold outside. You will surely catch a chill. Stay indoors with me and little Katje. We will do a puzzle together perhaps?’
Hans was unable to argue with his mother, but could also not bear the prospect of a day trapped indoors when the sun shone outside and the water lay frozen and inviting. At these times, he would seek his father’s intervention. Fortunately, Johan was inclined to take the boy’s side.
‘Let the boy go, Clara – he wants to meet with his friends. You can’t keep him cooped up in here all day.’
Clara would eventually relent and Hans would rush from the house before she could change her mind. As he raced down the large stone steps of the house on Herengracht, his skates dangling over his shoulder, he was aware of his little sister watching wistfully from the drawing room window.
His young teenage years were spent in study and as much outdoor activity as possible. He was a good student, and his father was proud of him, but he was no academic. Johan was one of the original partners in the VOC when it was founded in 1602, and they needed young men who were prepared to travel abroad and protect and manage the Dutch trade in spices on which the company had been granted a monopoly. When Hans was eighteen, Johan formally introduced him to his partners in the VOC and they agreed that young Hans was to be sent out on the next ship sailing for the East to learn the business.
Clara argued desperately that Hans should remain in Amsterdam. ‘Let him stay here, Johan, I beg of you. Do not send him away. He is only eighteen. He should go to university. He must be educated. Besides, so many terrible things could befall him. He could drown at sea, or die of one of the terrible diseases over there. You know how the young Baeker boy died of malaria on that trip. Please, Johan.’
But Johan was not to be persuaded and Hans was delighted to be sent away to sea under the command of Chief Merchant Jacob van Neck. He travelled to the spice islands of Malaku where they were to collect a shipment of pepper and establish a direct trading route between Holland and the islands. Hans was given the position of Chief Merchant’s Assistant – answerable only to Jacob, himself. As such, he was one of the major officers on board and held a position of some responsibility. He was in effect the ship’s secretary and accountant.
Their first voyage took them down the west coast of Europe and West Africa. They paused at the Cape to bring on fresh provisions before setting sail for Malaku, one of the islands off the coast of China that would eventually become known as the Dutch East Indies. Hans had been abroad for nearly eighteen months when he received word from his father telling him that Katje had died from tuberculosis. She was barely ten years old. Nine months passed before Hans could return to Amsterdam, on board a ship with a cargo of cinnamon and nutmeg. Johan confided in his son as soon as he arrived:
‘I fear your mother has lost her mind. She never leaves Katje’s room. She spends most of her time in the nursery, lying on Katje’s bed, surrounded by the child’s clothes and toys. If she bothers to get dressed at all, she chooses a simple black day dress and a black cap. She becomes hysterical if we even suggest she leaves the room. Mitze tried to persuade her to put some of Katje’s clothes away the other day and I thought she would kill the poor girl. Go to her, but I warn you, she is much changed.’
Hans gently knocked on the oak door to Katje’s room, but there was no answer. He slowly pushed it open. His mother sat in the small nursing chair, her hands in her lap, gazing at a portrait of Katje she and Johan had commissioned for her tenth birthday.
His mother had become almost unrecognisable – gaunt, pale, her blue eyes permanently red-rimmed from crying.
‘Mama, I am here.’ He knelt down at his mother’s side and took her painfully thin body into his arms. She stiffened at his touch.
‘So you are,’ she said finally.
He followed her gaze towards the oil painting of his sister, set in an elaborate gilded frame. The girl was dressed in blue organza, her dark hair falling around her shoulders, her rosebud mouth smiling obediently. Her bright blue eyes looked wistfully at the viewer. It seemed to Hans that she was pleading with the observer in some way – to rescue her perhaps from the oppressive relationship in which she was bound with her mother.
‘I am so sorry,’ he said. ‘I should have been here.’ It was unclear if he was addressing his dead sister in the painting or his mother.
‘Yes,’ was all his mother would say.
Eventually, Hans went downstairs. He found his father in the study poring over columns of figures. ‘Papa, I am so sorry. I should have been here.’
‘Not at all, dear boy. You have y
our work, and thank God for it. Katje was the apple of our eye. She brought so much light and happiness to our lives. I miss her very much. But what could you have done? She was ill. She was never strong. It was always just a matter of time. At least, I thought so.’
Hans slumped in the chair opposite his father and wept.
‘Dear boy, don’t cry. There has been too much weeping in this house. You must go back to your work when you have had a chance to rest. This is no place for you now.’
‘Really?’ asked Hans. ‘Won’t Mama want to me stay here?’
‘She will, but I won’t let her. You cannot stay just to comfort your mother, Hans. You must continue with your work. I hear great things of you from Jacob. He has been most impressed. He says you have a great future. Your book-keeping is exemplary. You are good with the natives and the crew alike.’
‘Well, I am delighted, obviously, but how will we tell Mama?’
‘I’ve already told her. When you wrote to tell us you were coming home, I made it clear that she must not put pressure on you to stay. Losing Katje was God’s will and we must accept it. “We must not punish Hans for our loss,” I told her. “He must be allowed to travel and live his life.” Besides, we need you to take on the business one day; you need to learn all you can now.’
‘And what did Mama say?’ asked Hans.
‘The love of money is the root of all evil.’
Johan looked up at his son and winked. ‘The first book of Timothy; chapter six, verse ten.’
Hans remained at home for three months. He helped his father with the book-keeping. He discussed business with other merchants at the VOC and spent any spare time with one or two of his friends who were still in Amsterdam. At home, in the evenings, the family would eat together in the large dining room at the front of the house. Now that Hans was home, his mother had agreed at least to come downstairs for the evening meal.
