Seas of Fortune(60)
“Yours must have been quite a dangerous journey, Senhor da Costa,” Maria murmured. In the meantime, she was trying to visualize the up-time maps, and guess at its length. Twelve hundred miles? Sixteen hundred?
“Indeed it was, my lady. Giant crocodiles. Poisonous snakes. Deadly rapids. A thousand times, I thought myself at death’s door, and took solace in the thought that I would be taken into Heaven. And then I made it here. And now I must wonder whether I died after all, and have come to Heaven, for surely you are an angel.”
Heyndrick rolled his eyes.
Maria smiled at Henrique. “Surely it is too warm here to be Heaven.”
Heyndrick saw the smile. “I am surprised that you speak so blithely of Heaven, Herr da Costa. The guards told me that you are a Marrano, a secret Jew, wanted by the Inquisition for heresy.” Having been baptized, however insincerely, Henrique could not avow Judaism without being considered a heretic.
“I am a heretic only in the eyes of the Catholic Church, not in the eyes of the Lord,” Henrique retorted. “And I daresay that the Catholics would consider you, too, to be a heretic, Captain.” Heyndrick was indeed Protestant.
Commander van der Goes winced slightly. “Tell me more about your colony, Mevrouw Vorst.”
“We have both a sawmill and a glassworks, the first on the Wild Coast, I believe. So we have manufactures that we can sell here and to other colonies. We have shipped home a kind of clay called bauxite. We have planted, as cash crops, cotton, tobacco, and the dye tree orlean. And we are collecting the sap of a strange tree which I doubt you would have heard of, since, until the coming of the up-timers, the only Europeans who knew of it were a few Spanish, and they had no use for it.”
“Oh, what tree is that?”
“It is called the rubber tree, the up-timers know much about it. Its sap hardens into a material which is waterproof, and is elastic, an—”
“I know what rubber is!” Henrique interjected. “That is what I was collecting, in Brazil!”
Maria spilled her drink. “In Brazil? How did you learn of it? Have you shipped any to Europe? Who is buying it? I would have heard if, before I left, someone was selling Brazilian rubber in Grantville. And that’s the only market for it.”
“Dear lady, I suspect that my family knows about it the same way you do, we have some connection who has studied the books of Grantville. In 1632 I was given a map, and a description of the tree. We started tapping the trees in the summer of 1633, and the first shipment went out thereafter, on one of the sugar ships out of Bahia. When rubber first reached Lisbon, I know not.” He was too polite to mention that, beside storms, the likeliest reason for the rubber not reaching Lisbon was interception by privateers. Dutch, French or English.
“And I don’t know what my family would have done with the rubber. It might have been some time before they sent samples to business associates outside of Portugal or Spain, and in these troubled times it could have taken many weeks to reach Grantville. It is somewhere near Magdeburg, is that right?”
“Hmm . . . we left Hamburg in December of 1633. That would explain why we heard nothing about it. Is Belém still shipping rubber to Portugal, you think?”
“It is hard to say. Maurício and I were the only Europeans involved in the tapping operation. We are both here now. The same . . . incident . . . that led me to leave Belém, would also have had unpleasant repercussions for my family. I hope they were warned, and fled in time. The Inquisition seizes the properties of heretics. It is possible that they will read the private papers, decide that rubber trees are worth exploiting, and recommend that the Crown send an agent to Belém to take over the business. More likely, they will decide it is too much trouble, or tainted by its association with Grantville, and the Indian seringueiros I recruited will just return to hunting and fishing.”
* * *
“We should ask Henrique and his friends to join us at Gustavus,” said Maria.
Heyndrick snorted. “I think that would be a mistake, Maria. Henrique’s allegiance is to Portugal, and, so long as Philip rules Portugal, the Portuguese are our enemies.”
“But now that they know he is Jewish, he cannot return to Portugal. He must find a new home. He was born and bred in the New World. What would he do in Europe?”
“I still think he would be a bad influence. His whole life has been a lie. We can expect him to have imbibed deceit with his mother’s milk.”
“Heyndrick . . . I do believe you’re jealous.”
Heyndrick took a deep breath. “I have no claim on you . . . other than one of friendship . . . and affection.” He didn’t dare say more, not yet. She was of substantially higher rank than him, although not hopelessly so.