The covenant - James A. Michener [123]
'I did.'
'What do you think of this?' From a drawer in his desk Karel produced a bottle of white wine and encouraged the Frenchman to taste it. 'How is it?' Van Doorn asked.
Pursing his lip and spitting onto the floor, De Pre said, 'The man who made that ought to be executed.'
Van Doorn smiled thinly, then broke into a laugh. 'My brother made it.'
'I'm sorry. But it's a very bad wine. It shouldn't be called wine.'
'My own opinion.'
'They told me your brother's in Africa?'
'This comes from his vineyard. He's been working it for thirty years.'
'He must have a very poor vineyard.'
'I wonder if he mixes in something beside grapes?'
'He wouldn't dare.'
'Then how can it be so bad?'
'In making wine, there are many tricks.'
'Could this wine be saved?'
Gingerly De Pre took another sip, not enough to strangle him with its badness but sufficient for him to judge the miserable stuff. 'It has a solid base, Mijnheer. Grapes are grapes, and I suppose that if a vintner started fresh . . .'
'I have a report here. It says the vines are still healthy.'
'But are they the right kind of vine?'
'What do you think should be done?'
De Pre sat with his hands in his lap, staring at the floor. Desperately he wanted to get back to the soil, in Java preferably, where gold proliferated, but his heart beat fast at the possibility of once more raising grapes and making good wine. Since he did not know what to say that might further his plans, he sat dumb.
'If the Compagnie were to send out some men who knew wine,' Van Doorn was saying as if from another room. 'And if those men took with them new strains of grape. Couldn't something be done?'
Ideas of wonderful challenge were coming at him so fast that De Pre could not absorb them, and after a while Van Doorn said, 'Let's look at the map,' and he led the way to a council chamber decorated with a Rembrandt group portrait and a large map done by Willem Blaeu of Leiden. On it four spots showed conspicuously: Amsterdam, Batavia, the Cape of Good Hope, Surinam in South America.
'We're concerned with these three,' Karel said, jabbing at the Cape, which stood midway between Amsterdam and Java. 'If our ships sailing south could stop at the Cape and load casks of good red wine and strong vinegar, they could maintain the health of their men all the way to Java. And we'd save the freightage we now spend on bottles from France and Italy.' Suddenly the spot representing the Cape assumed considerable importance.
'But the soilwill good vines grow there?' De Pre asked.
'That's what we intend to find out,' Van Doorn said. 'That's why I've been watching you so closely.'
De Pre stepped back. So the watching had been spyingand since his experiences with the Catholics of France, this fact troubled him deeply.
'You didn't think that I hired you to clean up my garden?' Van Doorn laughed. 'I could have hired a hundred Germans to do that, good gardeners some of them.' He actually placed his arm about De Pre's shoulders, leading him back to the first office. 'What I sought, De Pre, was an estimate of you Huguenots. What kind of people you were. How you worked. How dependable you were religiously.'
'Did you find out?' De Pre was angered with this man, but his own canny approach to life made him respect the Dutchman's caution.
'I did. And your honest reaction to my brother's wine has made up my mind.' He rose and strode nervously about the room, galvanized by the prospects of new engagements, new opportunities to snaffle a florin here or there.
Resuming his seat, he said softly, 'De Pre, I must swear you to secrecy.'
'Sworn.'
'The Lords XVII are going to send three shiploads of Huguenots to the Cape. We like you peopleyour stubborn honesty, your devotion to Calvinism. Your family is going to be aboard one of those ships, and you'he reached over and slapped De Pre on the knee'you will take with you a bundle of first-class grape