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Around him Miguel noticed the glances of passing strangers: a neatly dressed Jew locked in uncomfortable conversation with a beggar. Among the openly curious Catholic Portuguese, this strange pair would have been surrounded by a crowd of curious maids and peasant housewives, staring with open amusement as they wiped their floured hands on their aprons, laughing and heckling as though this conflict were a puppet show staged for their pleasure. Here, among the Dutch, who had taken to heart the introspective doctrine of their Reformed Church, the curious looked away politely, as if to cast their eyes upon someone else’s business was shameful. Surely they had troubles of their own that needed tending.
“We understand each other,” Joachim said. “I’ll take those two guilders.”
Miguel took a step back, but he considered it a defiant retreat. “You’ll get nothing from me now. I offered you kindness, and you repay me with impudence. Keep your distance from me, or shit-smeared straw and piss gruel will seem to you the greatest luxuries in the world.”
Miguel turned in the other direction and headed toward the Exchange, pushing his legs, now heavy and stiff, as quickly as he could, trying to erase the discomfort of the encounter by doing something decisive. He replayed the incident again and again in his mind. He should have given the fellow his two guilders. He should have given him ten. Anything to make him go away.
“Damn my pride,” he murmured. A madman might say anything to anyone, including the Ma’amad. If Parido should learn that Miguel had been brokering for a gentile, all his protests of goodwill would be like smoke in the air.
A few weeks before, Miguel might have even struck Joachim and allowed the consequences to come as they may. Now he had too much to lose. He would not put his new expectations at risk for a disgruntled vagabond. He would see Joachim at the bottom of a canal first.
12
Ha
Daniel had grown particularly fond of herring, since their arrival in Amsterdam, and wanted to eat it three times a week, prepared in stews, or in sauces with raisins and nutmeg, and sometimes smothered in butter and parsley. The stall keepers down at the fish market had a hundred ways to sell bad herring, but A
A
Ha
No one need know, she repeated to herself during those long nights. No one would find out, and there would be no consequences if she just kept silent.
Only the coffee berries comforted her now. She had slipped down to Miguel’s cellar once more and slid a handful into her apron. One handful. How long would that last? So she took another, and then a half handful to be sure she need not come again so soon. Inside the sack, the beans appeared diminished, but Miguel would hardly notice. If he traded in the fruit, he might get more as easily as he pleased. For all she knew, this was a new sack entirely.
Now, as she and A
She hardly noticed where they walked, so A
Pretty as a portrait, the widow approached her, smiling her wide irresistible smile. She hardly looked where she walked, but her natural grace steered her past the puddles of blood and offal. A few paces behind lagged her man, young, fair-haired, and handsome in the most menacing way imaginable. He held back, to keep a watchful eye on her.
“My dear,” the widow said to Ha
Ha
“She understands well enough,” A
Wicked though she might be, A
“Very well, sweetheart, you just nod if you understand me and shake your head if you do not. Can you do that, my dear?”