The Chosen Man
and why he was chosen.
The plot behind the plot or conspiracy in The Chosen Man came into being after a series of vaguely connected events a few years ago while I was planning the sequel to The Empress Emerald. One evening, as I was watching victims of the U.S. mortgage crisis being interviewed on a television, I saw the link between the loan scandals happening in the USA and Britain and the get-rich-quick ethos behind the 17th century Dutch scandal known as ‘tulip mania’. Then we heard about how just one person was responsible for a major French banking scandal and there was the collapse of Lehman Brothers, and the wicked but charismatic rogue Ludo da Portovenere came into being.
The story in The Chosen Man centres on the Dutch tulip bubble. At its height, in the early spring of 1637, a Dutch merchant paid 6,650 guilders for a dozen tulip bulbs. At that time 300 guilders would have kept an entire family for a whole year. The merchant wasn’t simply a rich man buying outrageously expensive the bulbs to plant and enjoy for their colour, he intended to sell on and make a profit – as his fellow Dutchmen had been doing for the past two years. Records document instances of farmers giving up their farms to acquire bulbs and men exchanging their homes for a just one single rare bulb. Artisans pawned or sold their tools to ‘invest’ in tulips. Between 1635 and 1637 everyone, it seemed, was trading in tulips. There were also connoisseurs, mostly belonging to the professional class, who spent huge sums on what they considered an object of art. All these people, merchants, artisans and lawyers, fell prey to this collective madness – why? .
There is no single answer, but the socio-economic and climate
conditions of the epoch were perfect for ‘tulip mania’. During the
1630s there was a mini ice-age in northern Europe. Having lived
in the province of Holland, I can fully appreciate why, once tulips
had been introduced into northern Europe at the turn of the 17th
century, they became so popular. Tulips bring colour and a promise
of spring at the end of long, dark, tedious winters. If the weather
was even worse then, no wonder people wanted something to brighten
their homes and gardens. The 1630s was also the period known as
the Dutch ‘golden age’. The Protestant work ethic and the egalitarian
nature of the Independent Provinces meant many more people now had
a disposable income. It was a period of house-building and home-improvements;
people were buying musical instruments and investing in works of
art. But the plague was everywhere: death was quite literally on
the doorstep. Dutch frugality and diligence had led to wealth, but
many obviously feared they might not have the time to enjoy it and
took to the excitement and risks in gambling. Plus of course, money
could not be allowed to lie idle.
At an international level, the first half of the 17th century was
a period of intense political intrigue in Europe. Spain had lost
its Dutch provinces and was engaged in a protracted war to regain
them. Cardinal Richelieu in France had signed a treaty with the
Dutch, and was involved in ‘arrangements’ with the Vatican to hinder
Spain in Flanders; French ships raided the Spanish fleet bringing
supplies to its men. The Habsburg Emperor, Ferdinand, had vowed
to impose Catholicism throughout his empire before his death and
was harrying the Spanish monarch, Don Felipe, to win the fight in
Flanders.
Statesmen throughout Europe were angling for power and control
and then suddenly – apparently spontaneously - there is a financial
bubble in Holland. It brought ruin to a number of wealthy people,
the very people who used the Dutch banking system – which financed
the United Provinces’ resistance to the Habsburgs.
After watching the television coverage of the mortgage and bank
scandals and the fall of the Lehman Brothers, I filed the connections
away in my mind until some weeks later, while visiting the British
National Trust property Cotehele in Cornwall in preparation for
my second novel it all came together in an unexpected manner. I
was being taken round Cotehele by Rachel Hunt, who told me the history
of a Flemish tapestry merchant and his daughter; I saw her portrait
and that of a 17th century Lady Edgcombe, a woman with a face that
shows no trace of humour or forgiveness. This is the background
to the heroine of the novel, Maria de los Angeles Catalina Fernanda
Santoña Gomez (Alina), daughter of an impoverished Spanish grandee,
and the one woman who does not entirely fall prey to Ludo’s charm.
But while this part of my novel is pure fiction, the events and
conditions of Alina’s life are based on the typical circumstances
and social conditions of her rank and gender at the time, as seen
at Cotehele.
After that visit, I set aside my original plan and started on
The Chosen Man. I began my research on the assumption that
there had been a conspiracy to undermine the Dutch banking system
in an attempt to bring the United Provinces back under the Habsburg
rule. However, I soon learnt Dutch banks had prohibited loans for
tulip-buying so if there had been a conspiracy, which was very likely,
the person or persons intending to bring about a financial collapse
must have also been providing loans as well. I read more widely
and found the Vatican had been playing a double game with Spain
and Emperor Ferdinand: Pope Urban VIII wanted to limit Habsburg
power, not bolster it. Cardinal Richelieu was also involved in this.
The conspiracy would have needed someone to set things in motion,
a troublemaker they could subsequently eliminate. The person chosen
for such a task would, though, surely have been sharp enough to
play his own game.
In my version of what happened, the bubble is inflated by the
fictional Ludo, an unscrupulous Genoese ‘rich trade’ merchant who
speaks the necessary languages and has no visible loyalties. He
is selected by a Vatican cardinal and somewhat reluctantly agrees
to the task knowing he can make himself rich in the process. During
a long interview in a Spanish cortijo belonging to the Conde-Duque
de Olivares, the Spanish monarch’s first minister, Ludo sets his
own conditions, however, and his price – a ship. But Ludo is wise
enough to know from the start that he’ll have to get away – right
away and out of sight - before these powerful men need to erase
all trace of what he has done, and for whom he has been acting.
As his name suggests, Ludo sees it all as a game, and he has no obligations to anyone – except perhaps Alina, but she has to decide whether Ludo is her chosen man.