“Anyway, soon I was doing very nicely indeed, despite the wars and the Spanish taxes—the Spanish were pretty well in charge of the Netherlands then, you remember, what with the Earl of Leicester and the Duke of Parma and all that—and I was all set to retire at thirty-five when I had a stroke of bad luck. Two strokes of bad luck. The first was the bottom falling out of jute, just when I’d got a ship crammed with the stuff. I’d put every last liard I had into jute, and suddenly you couldn’t give it away. I hawked it all round Spain and Portugal and people just stared at me as if I was trying to sell them tainted beer. It was amazing; one minute you had perfect strangers accosting you in the street begging you to sell them some jute, the next thing you know jute is out. I’m not even sure that I know what jute is. I’m absolutely positive I don’t care.”
“And then I had my second stroke of bad luck, which happened just off Cadiz. I happened to run into the celebrated Francis Drake, who was on his way to singe the King of Spain’s beard. You’ve heard of Francis Drake? Oh good.”
“When I said you couldn’t give the stuff away I was exaggerating, because actually that’s exactly what I did. I needed some persuasion, mind, but I think it was the way Sir Francis drew up alongside and said that if I didn’t surrender my cargo he’d blow me out of the water that tipped the scale.”
“Well, after that there was nothing much I could do except wait until Sir Francis had finished messing about in Cadiz harbour and go for a drink. Even that wasn’t easy, what with the bombardment and so forth—one of the depressing things about licensed victuallers as a class is the way they dive for cover at the first little whiff of gunpowder—but eventually I found a tavern that wasn’t actively burning down and where they were prepared to sell me fermented liquor.”
The stranger paused and looked at the bottom of his glass, but the young German didn’t take the hint. He appeared to be spellbound, and the stranger carried on with his story.
“I’d been sitting there for a while, I don’t know how long, when this man came in and sat down beside me. It’s odd the way people sit down beside me in liquor-shops—no disrespect intended, of course, perish the thought. Anyway, he had this huge box with him, a sort of junior crate, and he was obviously worn out with lugging it about. Tall chap, thin, nose on him like an umbrella-handle, about your age or maybe a year or two older. I thought he was Spanish, or Italian, or he could have been French at a pinch. Anyway, a Southerner. Well, he looked even more miserable than I felt, which would have made him very miserable indeed, and I remember wondering if his trunk was full of jute. Incidentally, I’ve often wondered what Sir Francis did with all that good stuff he took off me. I bet he had no trouble shifting it at all.”
“Do excuse me, I tend to get sidetracked. This Southerner came and sat down in this tavern, and I offered to buy him a drink. He seemed offended.”
“‘I can afford my own drink, thank you very much,” he said. “That’s the least of my worries.” Brittle sort of bloke, I thought, highly-strung.
“‘All right then,” I said. “You can buy me one.”
“He looked at me, and I think he must have noticed that I was still in my sea-boots and general working clothes, because he suddenly became very much less hostile.”
“‘If you could tell me where I could find a ship to get me across to England,” he said, “I’d buy you as many drinks as you like.”
“‘England!” I said. “You don’t want to go there. The English are a load of thieving bastards, they’ll kill you for the buttons on your doublet.”
“He shook his head. “Better than being burnt alive,” he said. “And that’s what’s going to happen to me if I stay around here much longer. I’ve got to get to a Protestant country double quick.” ”
“I didn’t like the sound of this, but he wasn’t going to give up. “If you find me a ship that’ll take me to England,” he said, “I’ll pay you a hundred pistoles, cash.” ”
“To a refugee from the jute trade, this sounded too good to pass up, even if the man was clearly three sols short of a livre tournois, as we used to say when I was a boy. “What would you pay me if I could provide a ship myself, then?” I asked.”
“‘Think of a number,” he replied, “then double it. I can afford it, rest assured.”
“‘Who are you, then?” I asked.
“‘Does it matter?” he said.
“‘No,” I replied, “I’m just incurably nosy.” Which is true, as it happens.
“‘My name’s Juan de Montalban, but I trade as Fortunatus Magnus,” he said, with just a hint of pride. “You’ve probably heard of me.”
“I mumbled something about how out of touch you get in my business, but I could see he was disappointed. It’s true, though; you do lost track of things when you spend most of your life surrounded by hundreds of miles of open sea. Oh yes.”
“‘Well,” he said, “if you must know I’m an alchemist.”
“You mean cures for headaches and things?” I said.
