The Sea Beggars (13 page)

“The fishmonger gave you this?”

Aart took it; there was writing on it, printed words. He pursed his lips, trying to look wise. He had spent his childhood years struggling with the mysteries of the alphabet without solving them in the least.

“Can you read?” he asked Jan, and thrust the paper at him. “I don't want to get my hands dirty.”

Jan hardly glanced at the paper. “It says the governor is going to tax you one hundredth the value of your tavern, and then one tenth of everything you earn from the trade.”

Aart snatched the paper back again and fixed his eyes on the black letters. “He can't do that. I'll be ruined.”

“To pay for his troops, it says,” Jan told him. He leaned his arms on the counter. His hands were bloody and smelled of fish, and scales, like tiny coins, clung to his sleeves. Mouse had come up behind him.

“He can't do that!” Red Aart said again. A helpless rage burned in his chest. He threw a wild look around his tavern. “It's not worth anything! I cannot pay it—if I have to pay a tenth of my trade, there won't be anything left for me.”

Jan leaned toward him. “Then go to sea with us, and keep everything you earn.”

The tavern keeper blinked at him, slow to follow this change of lead. “To sea.”

“On the
Wayward Girl
. You said—the other day—it's the tavern that keeps you here.”

The front door banged open. A score of soldiers tramped in, men of the Spanish army, but mostly German mercenaries. Aart watched them spill out across the room, find places, and bellow for drink.

He slid off the stool, to answer their demands. Facing Jan, he said, with a weak smile, “My custom's growing, you see.”

Jan said, “Yes, and you are paying them to come here.”

Aart pressed his lips shut. He saw the truth in that; there were three soldiers living in his house, now, and probably these would want credit, if they paid at all. But still—still—

“Herr Obst!” the mercenaries bawled, and beat on the tables.

He went to wait on them, bowing and smiling like a servant. With a grunt of contempt, Jan went out again to finish cleaning the fish.

Pieter had gone to bed very drunk; now he woke slowly, painfully, his mouth burning dry and his stomach sick. He fought against wakening. Pulling his head down he buried it under the blanket.

“What are you doing?” The sibilant rasp of Jan's voice came from the far side of the room. Heavy feet clumped. Pieter groaned; his head was so filled with pain it felt soft and swollen.

“Oh, ho, Dutch boy,” said the thick throaty voice of the German mercenary. “You think you stop me? I take whatever I want!”

“Over me,” Jan said.

“Shut up,” cried Pieter, and the effort pierced his head with pain; his stomach heaved.

Their feet tramped and thumped on the floor; a gasp followed a grunt, and something hard hit something softer. They were fighting. With a great effort of will the old man pulled his mind up from the dull comfort of sleep and rolled over.

The German was wrestling with Jan in the center of the floor. They were of a height; they strained together, their arms locked, in the dim room, until suddenly the German gave way and fell. Jan nearly fell on top of him. Instead he hovered over the German and shouted, “Now get out of here!”

Without a word the German launched himself upward from the floor, in his hand a long knife.

Pieter let out a yell. Tangled in his blanket, he fought to rise, while his nephew met the flashing blade with his bare hands. The German swore in his own language. Jan had him by the wrist and was holding his knife arm out straight; as the two men struggled for mastery their faces darkened and the cords on their necks stood up like rigging on a ship's mast.

The German lunged to the side, his leg snaking out, and kicked Jan behind the knee. The boy grunted; he went down heavily on his knees, his fist still clutching the German's knife hand, but the blade was now poised above him, gleaming in the dark.

Pieter kicked his blankets off. Snorting for breath, he flung himself up onto the German's back and wrapped his arms around the man's upper arms. The German howled. Jan sprang forward and drove his fist deep into the mercenary's belly, and as the German fell slackly to the floor kicked him between the legs.

The knife clattered on the floorboards. Pieter landed on top of the German, who writhed and moaned, helpless under him.

Jan reached down for the knife. When he straightened with it in his hand he started toward the German, and Pieter saw that he meant to kill him.

“No!” Pieter leapt between his nephew and the defenseless German mercenary. “No—don't cut him, for God's love.”

“He'll rob us naked,” Jan said.

“No. God, if he's killed in this house they'll hang both of us.”

The German was lying limp on the floor, unconscious, or feigning. Pieter cast a swift look down at him and getting Jan by the arm pulled him toward the door. “Come along.”

“I can't stay there with him,” Jan said, on the steps outside.

The dawn was breaking over the rooftops of Nieuport. In the street the housewives were sweeping their steps, calling gossip to one another; the air was cold and fresh. Pieter locked his nephew's arm firmly in his own and led him away toward the canal.

“Come on.”

“I've got to get out of here,” Jan said. “I can't stay here. I'll kill him or he'll kill me.”

“Quiet.”

“You should have let me kill him. I owe them some killings—after what they did to my father—”

“Quiet!” Pieter gave him a shake.

“Where are we going?”

“You'll see,” Pieter said. “Just be quiet and let me do the talking.”

Red Aart said, “Well, what about the harbor patrols? If they catch us out there—”

“They won't catch us,” Pieter said. “Not if we work fast.”

Marten leaned across the table, his eyes bright. “Besides, if they do, we can just jump overboard and swim for it. I say let's do it! Pay the Goddamned royalists back a little for what they've caused us.”

There was a general growl of assent from around the table. Beside Red Aart his half-wit brother stood, jaw dropped open and crossed eyes dancing.

“All right,” Aart said. “When?”

“Tonight,” Pieter said. “After the tenth bell.”

“And we'll just be going to sink the
Wayward Girl
, right? Nothing fancy. I know you, Pieter van Cleef.”

Pieter stuck his pipe between his teeth. “Do you?”

“Not much else we can do, tonight,” said Marten. “The wind will be dead foul for the mouth of the harbor, even when the tide's at full ebb.”

“It might shift,” said Jobst, the baker's son.

“Aye,” said Red Aart, “and it might die entirely. The harbor patrols are galleys; they don't need the wind. I don't like the sound of this.”

“We'll stove a hole in her and go,” Pieter said. He glanced at Jan, sitting silent beside him; the young man said nothing.

“Don't worry about the galleys,” said Jobst. “What can slaves do against free Dutchmen?”

“I'll drink to that,” Pieter said.

“At ten bells, then,” said Red Aart.

“Can I come?” his brother asked.

Pieter grinned at him. “Can you swim?” He reached for the gin bottle in the middle of the table.

4

The water of the harbor was warm as milk, but where the river ran in, it turned cold. At the chill, Jan lost his breath; he let go of Pieter's belt, in front of him. The old man stopped at once to let him catch up.

“Keep close!” The words came in a breathy hiss over the water. “The channel begins here; we have to swim.”

Jan nodded. His chest felt tight and he was shivering. The bottom dropped off under his feet. A tug on the back of his belt yanked him sideways. In front of him Pieter was swimming. They were all swimming. Only Jan's height kept his feet on the ground and his head above the water; now he missed his footing altogether and the water lapped his chin and he struck out with his arms after his uncle.

They could not hold belts now, but they kept together, so close Jan's kicking legs brushed the men behind him. He kept his eyes on Pieter's head, cleaving the dark water ten feet ahead of him.

There were eight men altogether, friends of his uncle; he scarcely knew some of them by name. They didn't matter to him anyway. All that mattered was the water, the ship lying in the dark ahead of them, and his uncle leading him to it. That and the desire churning in his belly like another soul, which quickened at the thought of blood.

They were coming to the anchorage. The wind ruffled the surface of the water and ran cold as a dead hand over Jan's hair. A white light bobbed on the shore, a cable length away, but nothing else showed of the town except a clutter of roofs and the church steeple pointing up into the sky. Ahead of the men in the water, the first ships loomed, their masts towering up toward the stars.

The wind was rising. Pieter waved them all into the shelter of the nearest hull.

“Well, boys,” he said, when he had them all together and had counted them, “this is the sticking point. Once we go up on deck, we're in it to the teeth. If the Spaniards catch us they'll hang the lot—if they let us live that long. If anybody wants to back out now I don't blame him, or any with him.”

Nobody said anything. Jan was treading water close by the hull where they had taken shelter; the smell of the ship's wood, the creak of her anchor cable as she backed off before the wind, laid their impress unforgettably on his fine-tuned nerves. He raised his eyes. High overhead, the vessel's mainmast yardarms cut the sky into open squares. The main braces bellied out on the wind.

“All right,” Pieter said. “Let's go. God's with us: we're fighting Spaniards.”

He put out his hand to Red Aart. “You keep an eye on that boy, hear?”

“I have him,” the tavern keeper said. Behind him Mouse was paddling like a dog in the water.

They all shook hands. In the dark Jan saw only pale shapes where their faces were. They swam away down the side of the hull and below her overhanging stern.

Ahead of them the
Wayward Girl
lay at her mooring, quartered away from them, a lantern on her stern showing the merest bead of light. Pieter swam with his head poked up out of the water, his vigorous arms and legs never breaking the surface, and for an old man he swam fast. Jan strained to keep up. Reaching out with his arms at the top of the stroke, he splashed one hand into the air and his uncle hissed at him in reproof, without slackening his pace. The heads of the other men bobbed like corks after him. They were coming into the lee of the ship. Pieter reached her side. Then on the deck above them something moved.

All around Jan there was a sharp gasp; with that deep breath the others sank down under the water, out of sight. Jan lunged for the shelter of the ship's side, next to his uncle. His hands flat to the fresh smooth paint, he looked straight up and saw a guard, leaning over the rail ten feet above his head, a musket in his hands.

Jan held his breath, thinking of the men out there, under the water. The guard was looking straight at them. If one of them surfaced … An instant later, softly, a dripping head rose from the sea beside him, against the ship's side.

The musketeer saw nothing. He walked off. They could hear his footstep through the wooden hull inches from their ears.

Pieter yanked on Jan's sleeve, and the boy slipped away down the side of the ship, toward the bow. The anchor there held the
Wayward Girl
's bow into the wind; the ruffled water broke in a steady slap-slap of little waves against her hull. Sliding under the anchor cable, Jan reached up over his head as high as he could, gripped the thick new rope, and climbed hand over hand up toward the bow rail.

With one hand he held the rail; inch by inch he raised his head above the level of the deck and looked around.

There in front of him on the foredeck was one of the new guns, drawn back on its carriage and lashed down to cleats on the deck. Her brass shone through the dark like an angel's wing; he could smell the new rope of her tackles. He swept a look across the foredeck and the waist of the ship. The sterncastle was three steps up from the main deck. Directly in front of the steps, by the wheel, was the sentry, leaning on his musket.

Jan's guts tightened. He slipped back down from the rail to the anchor rope and down the anchor rope to the water, where his uncle and the others were waiting.

“I see him,” he said. “Give me the knife.”

Pieter scrubbed his hand over his face. “Where is he?”

“Give me the knife!”

The old man looked up, startled at his tone. After a moment, his face drawn long, he put the knife into Jan's hand.

Jan hung it carefully on his belt by the thong around its haft and climbed back up the anchor cable; just below the deck the angle of the cable took him within reach of the bottom of the bowsprit, and he scrambled up across it into the space beside the brass gun.

He had never seen a weapon this size. One hand stroked the long barrel. The metal was much smoother than skin.

The sentry was coming forward, his musket in the crook of his arm. Jan crouched beside the long gun and watched him. He was a short, stout man, the sentry, maybe not even Spanish. He stopped in the waist near the mast and turned to look over the side. Jan ran one finger along the blade of the knife at his belt; he unhitched the thong and with the knife low in one hand he moved bent-legged down the deck to the mast.

Only a few feet away the sentry was relieving himself over the side of the ship. Jan tapped on the mast with the haft of his knife.

The soldier wheeled around, the musket flat in his hands. “Who's—” Jan grabbed the barrel of the gun and yanked it out of his grasp. For an instant, still with fear, the sentry looked stupidly into his face. Jan smiled at him. When the sentry's mouth fell open in a shout, Jan plunged the knife up to the hilt in his chest.