Chapter 289: The Boudoir

Hale threw back his hood and shed his priestly attire. He picked up the derringer and examined it closely. After quickly opening the hinged barrel and studying the chamber, he closed it, cocked the hammer, and pulled the trigger several times, listening carefully to the soft click of the firing pin as it was controlled by the ratchet.

The Baroness noticed a note in the wooden box, with Weiss’s hasty, scrawled handwriting on it. She picked it up and read it aloud: “To the Rose of Manila, Baroness Ciaro. From a devout soldier, Vincenzo Lando Fananova.”

“A man facing a duel in a few hours still has the mind to compensate for the damage to your husband’s armor,” Hale said, having finished examining the pistol. He began to play with the accompanying ammunition, pea-sized spherical bullets connected to a percussion cap with a paper cartridge. “A smoothbore,” he muttered, “a flashy but impractical thing, though still much more useful than your husband’s armor.”

“At least it’s good for hunting parrots and sparrows in the fields, stopping them from stealing the corn.”

“Don’t mention your corn again,” Lucrezia stretched languidly, completely unconcerned about the enticing jiggle of her breasts in the rippling water. “I have already written to the steward of the estate, telling him to plant half the land with corn and the other half with sweet potatoes, except for the fields for cloves and nutmeg. As for developing new sugarcane plantations, I have also instructed them to begin preparations. I don’t care about Ciaro’s armor either; it’s nothing more than a decoration now. Don’t think about those things now.”

“Did you manage to buy the goods I asked you to purchase for me in Macau in your letter?”

“Don’t mention the Australian goods you wanted—most of them are out of stock. Besides the rice vermicelli and strong liquor, which were bought in full, I only managed to get a third of the soap. The other things are far from complete.”

“What about the instruments?”

“Only a part of them. Some they wouldn’t sell. But my servants are very persuasive—they still managed to get them.”

“You are truly my lucky star.”

“Spare me your sweet flattery—I really don’t understand, what do you need all these strange things for? And to buy so much rice and noodles, can’t the rice in the Philippines fill the stomachs of your men?”

“Of course, it is to serve His Majesty the King and His Excellency the Governor.”

A look of disapproval crossed the Baroness’s face. As a Portuguese noblewoman, she had little reverence for the King of Spain-Portugal, not to mention the hostile competition between the merchants of the two countries in Southeast Asia.

“This way, I can better serve the Baroness,” Hale said, kissing her bare shoulder.

The widow smiled sweetly and whispered, “You truly are a devil,” she said. “Tell me, who will win the duel? Fananova or Sanavria, who do you favor?”

“Is this a wager?” Hale put down the pistol and ammunition and closed the wooden box. A rare smile appeared on his face. “What are the stakes?”

“A gold coin,” Lucrezia replied casually. Her voice suddenly turned cold. “I bet the Count kills that liar, because he deserves to die. From Goa to Macau, people everywhere have told me that Sanavria has cheated them of their wealth with forged bills of exchange from the Seville Chamber of Commerce and already invalid Genoese bonds. My father’s friends in Lisbon have already filed a complaint in Madrid. But the result will certainly not be as they wish.”

Lucrezia did not further explain the reason for her anxiety. Just as few people knew the true source of her great wealth, which was not because her husband had received a fief in the Philippines and bought large tracts of land to grow spices, nor because she owned several licenses for the Manila galleons, allowing her to legally transport a shipment of oriental goods to Acapulco for sale each year. In fact, by virtue of her Portuguese origin and her connections with the Jesuits, the Misericordia she presided over in Manila received widespread support from the Portuguese merchants in the Far East. Furthermore, her lending rates were lower, and in just a few years, she had attracted many local Spanish merchants and Catholic-converted East Indian sea merchants. This naturally aroused the jealousy and dissatisfaction of other charitable foundations in Manila, especially the oldest local one, the “Brotherhood of Mercy.” And Sanavria was the only non-clerical director of this group. In snatching the Baroness’s business, Don Esteban Sanavria had done a lot from behind the scenes.

“A pistole?” Hale took a gold coin from his pocket and placed it in Lucrezia’s hand. With just a glance, she noticed the difference in this coin: its size, weight, and texture were no different from other pistoles, and the material was indeed gold. But its shape was unusually regular, its edges smooth, without the common burrs of cast coins. The obverse and reverse of the gold coin were smoother than ordinary cast coins, and even the pattern was exceptionally clear.

“So exquisite! You made it?”

“The first batch of alluvial gold from Baguio was used to cast some blanks. As per the Governor’s instructions, I made a few for him in the workshop using the rolling mill and screw press for making brass parts. It took the German watchmaker who works for me a week to carve the die. Coincidentally, just yesterday, His Excellency the Governor personally came to the workshop to supervise this work. He was greatly surprised to see that our machine had already pressed 20 coins in the time it took the Mexican mint workers to cast one.”

“The Governor plans to open a mint, in Manila? Will the King and the Council of the Indies agree?” The Baroness tossed aside the pistole and picked a bottle of rose oil from a pile of large and small bottles on the low table, gesturing for Hale to apply it to her neck and shoulders.

“My dear protector,” he obeyed, and at the same time whispered in her ear, “This plan depends on you and your friends to push it forward. You will silence those meddlesome colonial judges and officials. I assure you, not only the Governor but also Archbishop Lorenzo agrees with this plan. Whether it’s His Majesty the King, the Council of the Indies, or the Viceroy of New Spain, they will all be happy to see that they no longer need to send financial subsidies to the Philippines.”

Due to the lack of currency materials and Spanish-style indolence, the Philippine colony had no mint. The currency needed by the colony, precious metal coins, was shipped from New Spain, while base metal coins were supplied by Chinese merchants. The lack of products and its own currency made the Manila colonial authorities economically “severely exploited”—the silver coins shipped from New Spain would pass through their hands and flow into the pockets of the Chinese merchants, while the Philippines remained in a state of deflation.

“The mood of the King of Spain and his finance minister has nothing to do with me…”

“It will if you are the contractor for the mint.”

“You’re mad. Such a benefit won’t fall into my hands—”

“I guarantee you will get the Governor’s authorization—think of the profits. If you can undertake it, we haven’t even calculated the benefits from all other aspects.” His fingers slid over her delicate skin.

The wealthy widow let out a low gasp. The difference between the face value and the intrinsic value of the coins was a huge profit, a temptation the Baroness could not resist under any circumstances.

“How much money do I have to invest in this venture?”

According to the traditional practice of many countries in ancient societies, the state did not pay any fees for minting. It adopted an “all-inclusive” model. The contractor only needed to deliver a sufficient amount of currency of the required fineness and quantity according to the contract, and the rest was their own profit or loss. To become a contractor for a mint, one needed to invest a large amount of startup capital out of one’s own pocket, including the cost of building houses, purchasing equipment, hiring workers, and buying currency materials and fuel.

“Excluding the currency materials, twelve thousand pesos.”

“Not cheap,” the Baroness fell into thought. Although this amount was within her means, raising such a large sum of cash in the short term would still require some maneuvering. In the previous stage, she was one of the main shareholders in organizing the Baguio company to find and mine gold. The exploration and mining had cost a lot of money, leaving the Baroness’s finances somewhat strained.

The Baroness had always been Hale’s biggest financial backer. It was thanks to the generous support of this amorous and wealthy widow that his career had progressed so smoothly. Even after he became a legendary figure in the colony, his proposal for an expedition to Baguio was still met with skepticism. Apart from the Governor, who provided a small team of soldiers and two ships on the condition of receiving one-fifth of the profits, the whole of Manila laughed at his plan as “fantastical.” It was only with the Baroness’s funding that this adventure could succeed.

“If all goes well, you will recover your entire investment in the first year.”

“And for the Governor and his friends?”

“All included.”

“You truly are a devil,” the lady’s voice was full of affection. “Do you know how much money I have spent on you since you came to Manila? You want me to invest in building a water mill, then a sugar mill, then to mine for gold, and now you want me to plant corn and sweet potatoes and act as a mint contractor…”

“It’s always been worth it, hasn’t it?”

Hale’s fingers were rough and nimble. His powerful massage and kneading left flushed marks on the Baroness’s fair skin. As his hands moved down past her shoulders, Lucrezia’s gasps grew heavier. “What else?” she struggled to keep her mind clear.

“And a second thing, please introduce me to Count Fananova. I wish to meet with him, if he survives the duel—which I am very confident he will. As for the third thing, that is—” Hale bent down abruptly and lifted the hostess out of the bathtub. Lucrezia let out a soft, moaning cry, clinging tightly to the man’s neck, letting him carry her towards the large bed at the other end of the bedroom.