The Signature of All Things

she could always get more money, if true emergency were to arise. She supposed she could walk into any countinghouse at the Rotterdam docks and—using Dick Yancey’s name and her father’s legacy—easily draw a loan against the Whittaker fortune. But she did not wish to do this. She did not feel that the fortune was rightfully hers. It struck her as a matter of utmost personal consequence that she—from this point forth—make her own way in the world.
    Letters posted and a fresh wardrobe procured, Alma and Roger left Rotterdam on a steamboat—by far the easiest part of their journey—and headed to the Port of Amsterdam. Upon their arrival, Alma left her luggage at a modest hotel near the docks and hired a coachman (who, for an additional fee of twenty stivers, was finally persuaded to accept Roger as a passenger). The coach took them all the way to the quiet neighborhood of Plantage, straight to the gates of the Hortus Botanicus.
    Alma stepped out into the slanting early-evening sun outside the botanical garden’s tall brick walls. Roger was by her side; under her arm was a parcel wrapped in plain brown paper. A young man in a tidy guard’suniform stood at the gate, and Alma approached, asking in her easy Dutch whether the director was on the premises today. The young man confirmed that the director was indeed on the premises, because the director came to work every day of the year.
    Alma smiled. Naturally he does, she thought.
    “Would it be possible to have a word with him?” she asked.
    “Might I ask who you are, and what your business is?” asked the young man, aiming condemnatory looks at both her and Roger. She did not object to his questions, but she certainly objected to his tone.
    “My name is Alma Whittaker, and my business is the study of mosses and the transmutation of species,” she said.
    “And why should the director want to see you?” the guard asked.
    She drew herself up to her most formidable height and, like a rauti , launched into an imposing recitation of her bloodline. “My father was Henry Whittaker, whom some in your country once called ‘The Prince of Peru.’ My paternal grandfather was the Apple Magus to His Majesty King George III of England. My maternal grandfather was Jacob van Devender, a master of ornamental aloes, and the director of these gardens for thirty-some years—a position that he inherited from his father, who, in turn, had inherited it from his father, and so forth, all the way back to the original founding of this institution in 1638. Your current director is, I believe, a man named Dr. Dees van Devender. He is my uncle. His older sister was named Beatrix van Devender. She was my mother, and a virtuoso of Euclidean botany. My mother was born, if I am not mistaken, just around the corner from where we are now standing, in a private home outside the walls of the Hortus—where all van Devenders since the middle of the seventeenth century have been born.”
    The guard gaped at her.
    She concluded, “If this is too much information for you to retain, young man, you may simply tell my uncle Dees that his niece from America would very much like to meet him.”

Chapter Twenty-eight
    D ees van Devender stared at Alma from across a cluttered table in his office.
    Alma allowed him to stare. Her uncle had not spoken to her since she had been ushered into his chambers a few minutes earlier, nor had he invited her to have a chair. He was not being impolite; he was simply Dutch, and therefore cautious. He was taking her in. Roger sat at Alma’s side, looking like a crooked little hyena. Uncle Dees took in the dog, as well. Generally speaking, Roger did not like to be looked at. Normally, when strangers stared at Roger, he would turn his back on them, hang his head, and sigh in misery. But suddenly Roger did the strangest thing. He left Alma’s side, walked under the table, and lay down with his chin upon Dr. van Devender’s feet. Alma had never seen the likes of it. She was about to comment upon it, but her uncle—completely unconcerned about the cur on his shoes—spoke first.
    “ Je lijkt niet op je moeder, ” he said.
    You do not look like your mother.
    “I know,” Alma replied in Dutch.
    He went on: “You look precisely like that father of yours.”
    Alma nodded. She could tell by his tone that this was not a point in her favor, her resemblance to Henry Whittaker. Then again, it never had been.
    He stared some more. She stared back. She was as riveted