The covenant - James A. Michener [124]
'Where will I get them?'
'In France. From some area whose vines you can trust.'
'They won't send vines to Amsterdam. Forbidden.'
'No one sends the vines, De Pre. You go get them.'
'I'd be shot.'
'Not if you're careful.'
'The risk . . .'
'Will be well paid for.' Again he rose, storming about the room, tossing his white head this way and that. 'Well paid, De Pre. I hand you this first bag of coins now. I hand you this second bag when you return to Amsterdam with the grapevines. And if you get them to the Cape, you and I will sell them to the Compagnie and share the profits.'
De Pre studied the offer, and he was glad that the Bosbeecq women had alerted him to this canny gentleman: he was buying the vines with Compagnie money, then selling them back to the Compagnie for more of its money. He remembered something one of the women had told him: 'Van Doorn has a mind that never stops working. As a Compagnie official, he imports cloves from Java. And whom does he sell them to? To himself as a private trader. So he earns double, except that he trebles the price of cloves, since he's the only one who has any, and makes a princely profit.' Here was a man to be wary of, but he also remembered something else the women had said: 'But he dare not steal a stuiver from a servant.'
'Will you pay me the two other times?' he asked directly.
'Would I dare do otherwise? A member of the council?'
And then De Pre's stolid French honesty manifested itself: 'You didn't share with your brother.'
Van Doorn ignored the insult. 'In life,' he said, 'accidents occur. My brother was a dolt. He gave me no help in spiriting the family fortune out of Java. He was a man to be forgotten. You're a man to be remembered.'
When Paul informed his wife that he intended smuggling their eight-year-old son Henri into France with him, she was appalled, but after he explained that this might prove to be the one disguise that would disarm the border guards'A father traveling back to the farm with his son'she consented, for she had long suspected that French families ought not to stay too long in congenial Holland. The boys were beginning to speak only Dutch, and the strict Calvinism of the French was being softened by the easier attitudes of the Dutch. She knew also that her husband longed to get back to the making of wine, and this seemed an opportunity engineered by God Himself. So she packed her son's clothing, kissed him fondly, and sent him off on the great adventure.
There was no problem as long as the pair remained in Holland: Amsterdam to Leiden to Schiedam and by boat to Zeeland, where another boat skirted Antwerp and set them down in Ghent. But on the approaches to Amiens, spies could be expected, so the pair shifted eastward and slipped by back roads into the country north of Caix, and when Paul saw the fine fields his eyes filled with tears. This was the good land of France, and it was only an error of magnitude that had driven him from it.
When he passed several small villages where Protestants had once worshipped freely and saw the ruined churches, he was desolated, and late one night he tapped lightly at the window of a farm he knew to be occupied by his wife's family, the Plons.
'Are you still of the true religion?' he whispered when an old woman came to the door.
'It's Marie's man!' the woman cried.
'Ssssssssh! Are you still of the true religion?'
When no one dared answer, he knew that they had reverted to Catholicism, but it was too late to retreat. He must rely upon these farmers, for they controlled his destiny. 'This is Marie's boy,' he said, thrusting Henri forward to be admired by his kinfolk.
'If you're caught,' an old man said, 'they'll burn you.'
'I must not be caught,' Paul said. 'Can we sleep here tonight?'
In the morning he told the cautious Plons that he must have four hundred rootings from grapes which made the finest white wine. 'You'd not be allowed to take them across the border, even if you were Catholic,' they warned.
'I'm taking them to a far country,' he assured them. 'Not Holland or Germany, where they