The covenant - James A. Michener [58]
Mevrouw van Doorn, a voluptuous blonde who might have been painted by Frans Hals, who did paint her mother, had arrived in 1618 when that notable administrator Jan Pieterszoon Coen was running affairs in his harsh, capable style, and she had quickly endeared herself to him, supporting him eagerly no matter what he did. She heard him warn the populace that acts of immorality among servants must cease, and when one of her maids became pregnant she herself dragged the frightened girl to Coen's headquarters and was present in the square when the girl was beheaded. The young man involved was also sharply reprimanded.
Two obsessions controlled her life: business and religion. It had been she who goaded her husband into setting up his illegal private businesses, one after another. It had been she who supervised those operations, earning a profit of sixty percent a year when the Lords XVII could make only forty. And it had been she who sequestered the stolen funds when they reached Batavia. Indeed, her husband's estate was now so complicated that she dared not risk returning to Holland lest it fall in chaos. As she reported to her younger sister in Haarlem:
I often think of coming home to live with you in our house on the canal, but I dread those cold winters. Besides, I am kept prisoner here supervising the sixty-nine slaves who work for me. By Haarlem standards I know this sounds a lot, but it really isn't. When I go about Batavia, attending my affairs, eight slaves accompany me to assure that coaches, umbrellas and footwear are available. Seven girls tend my clothes, six watch over my retiring room. I need six cooks, nine serving men, eleven members for my orchestra, twelve to tend the grounds and ten for general services. So you see, I am kept quite busy.
Her devotion to religion contained no shred of insincerity, nor should it, considering her family history. Her grandfather, Joost van Valkenborch, had been executed by the Spaniards in 1568 when the great Count Egmont went to his death; both patriots had given their lives in defense of Holland and Calvinism. Her father, too, had died fighting the Spanish Catholics; Willem van Valkenborch had established the first Calvinist assembly in Haarlem, a clandestine affair whose members knew they would perish if caught. One of her first memories was of secret night worship when her father spoke eloquently of God and the nature of man. Religion was more real to her than the stars over Java, more encompassing than the canals that served Batavia.
Before her husband died they had shared the pleasure of receiving from the Lords XVII a Protestant Bible printed in Dutch, a massive affair published in 1630 by Henrick Laurentsz of Amsterdam, and together they had read in their own language the glowing stories that had sustained her father and grandfather in their martyrdoms. Despite all the wealth her husband had left her, she held her chief treasure to be this Bible; it was the light that ruled her life.
Her next treasures were her two sons, who lived with her and whose fortunes she supervised so carefully, nudging the local directors whenever she thought Karel merited an advancement. It was she who had proposed him for the embassy to governments neighboring on Malacca, and when the trip was in preparation it was she who suggested that young Willem go along so as to witness the vast extent of the Compagnie's trading interests.
'He's only fifteen,' Karel protested.
'Proper time to learn what ships and battles are,' his mother snapped, and on a very hot afternoon when flies buzzed in stifled air, members of the diplomatic mission were briefed by high officials of the Compagnie, who sat like gargoyles in the white-walled council chamber, nodding gravely as an old man who had been fighting the