The Sea Beggars (22 page)

Lumey was tramping off down the ship, poking at the heaps of wool and cloth, and nosing into the pepper. Van Treslong moved up closer to the fire and put out his long elegant hands over it to warm them.

“And the Spanish gave her back to you? Kindly folk that they are?”

“We stole her,” Pieter said.

From the darkness beyond the fire, where Lumey was, came a whoop of derisive amusement. “What van Cleef does best, by God's hat!”

Sonoy crouched down, the firelight shining on his round red face. “Then you are playing pirate? Join us. The more sticks, the hotter the fire, as the saying goes.”

Pieter took his pipe from between his teeth. “Two fools under the same cloak, as the saying goes.”

Lumey's heavy footsteps made the deck tremble. “This is all you found on this ship?” He waved his arm broadly at the cargo.

Jan said, “There's still some below, but the ship was pretty well worked over when we finally got her, and the sea's washed into most of it.”

Lumey grunted. Beneath his bristling eyebrows his eyes were small and close set like snake's eyes. He said, “You're just a stripling; these other fools are harbor rats. You can't sail alone against Spain. You'd better fall in with us.”

“We do well enough,” Jan said.

Van Treslong tipped his head back; the firelight shone up under his hat's floppy broad brim. “We need a good fast ship like yours. We've got a scheme to—” Lumey kicked him in the ribs.

“By God,” van Treslong said, and snatching a brand from the fire he leapt up and swiped at Lumey with the blazing stick. Lumey howled. Springing backward, his arms flying up over his head, he missed his footing on the blood-slippery deck and crashed down on his backside. The other captains roared with laughter.

“Keep your boots in the barn, Lumey!” Van Treslong threw the brand in a fiery arc out over the rail into the dark sea.

“Hush, hush,” Sonoy said, pulling on his sleeve. “He's got his own ways—and you shouldn't hand out your sheets until the wedding's consummated.”

“As the saying goes,” Pieter said, and sent up puffs of smoke from the chimney of his pipe.

Jan said, “What's your plan?”

“Join us,” Sonoy said. “Then we'll talk about it. We share everything equally. Lumey is our commander, because there has to be someone to give orders and the Prince of Orange named him our admiral, but as you can tell, we all say what we think. We're all good honest Christians—”

“Damn the Pope,” Lumey said, coming back to the fire. He rubbed his backside with one hand, ignoring van Treslong. His cheeks were red as raw bacon.

“Bah,” Pieter said. “I don't care what you dress it in, you're still pirates, and nothing better than pirates. I'll take my chances by myself.”

“Oh, no,” said Lumey tenderly. “We're not pirates. We have letters of marque from the Prince of Orange himself, God bless him.”

“Letters of marque,” Jan said. “What's that?”

Lumey's hand plunged inside his coat and came out again with a packet of paper wrapped in cord. “Letters from the sovereign Prince of Orange that we are sailors in his navy, and therefore whatever we do is lawfully done and we can't hang as pirates.”

He laughed, exultant, and waved the papers in the air.

“Do your necks still stretch?” Pieter stamped his foot. “Do the Dons still make rope? Then you'll hang if they catch you, you fools!”

Lumey stuffed his letters away under his gaudy clothes. He said, “I don't mean to be caught.”

“What's this plan you have?” Jan asked van Treslong.

The tall man straightened up, taking off his hat. “I see no reason to keep it hidden. We have in mind to throw a net of ships across the mouth of the Channel, and when the Spanish fleet comes between The Lizard and the Brittany coast, we'll take them. The King of Spain sends a fleet to Antwerp every half year, with supplies and the pay for his troops.”

“How many ships do you have?” Jan folded his arms over his chest. “Those six little ships out there won't do much against a fleet of galleons.”

“We'll have forty sail,” Lumey said. “And every God-fearing, priest-hating man between The Lizard and the Maas to sail them. Join us, or by Heaven we'll sink you right here.”

Jan started toward him, angry, but van Treslong got him by the arm. “Pay no heed to him; he's impatient with reason. But you must see the advantage to joining us, even if all you mean is simple piracy.”

“That's all there is to do,” Pieter shot at him. “And you who parade about, pretending you are fighting a war against Spain—”

Sonoy distracted him, his mouth full of proverbs, into another line of argument. Van Treslong plucked Jan's sleeve.

“Mark you, there is this: every blow we strike here against Spain hurts both Spain and Alva. Do you hate the Bloody Duke? Do you want to free our cities and our Provinces from his rule? Then you would do well to join us.”

Jan said, “Alva hanged my father. I want my revenge.”

Lumey pushed in between him and van Treslong. “Either join us, sailor boy, or go to the bottom of the sea! Take your choice.”

“God's blood!” Pieter bounced up onto his feet. “For that, I'll never join you, Lumey—for your bullying ways and your big mouth.” He tramped up before the bigger man, shouting into his face. “Baron, are you? On the sea you're only as fine as you sail, pirate, and you sail as the wind blows! Don't make more of yourself than there is, pirate—”

Jan tensed, ready to get between his uncle and Lumey, but suddenly van Treslong was looking down past Pieter at the deck, suspicion drawing his face long. Jan lowered his gaze. With a half-smothered yelp he grabbed Pieter by the arm.

“I told you not to stand up!”

Pieter thrust him off, another volley of insults leaving his lips for Lumey. Jan pulled him backward, back over the length of unfinished wool cloth he had dragged after him from the chest, back toward the chest left exposed and obvious before the other pirates.

“You old fool!”

“Why, now,” van Treslong said mildly, “I think our hosts here have been withholding something of their bounty from us.” He went to the chest and bent over it.

“That's ours,” Pieter cried.

“Oh, yes,” said van Treslong. “And you brought it out on the
Wayward Girl
to bring on board all your prizes, to give them that certain aura of expense.” He tipped up the lid. Lumey bellowed.

“Cheats!”

“Well,” said Sonoy, puffing out his round cheeks, “the pisspot's hanging on the door now.”

Jan looked around at the intent faces of the pirate captains; he saw there was no argument now that would keep the silver from them, and he shrugged. He smacked old Pieter on the shoulder.

“God, you make me angry sometimes.”

Pieter growled. “It's ours!”

Van Treslong was already counting the silver coins out onto the deck. “There's six of us here,” he said loudly. “Six ships of the Sea Beggars. I'll divide it up into sixes.” Lifting his head, he smiled at Jan and Pieter. “Or is that seven ships of the Sea Beggars?”

A low rumble of angry noise was the only answer Pieter gave. Jan folded his arms over his chest. They had already half convinced him to join them; but he was sorry to be losing so much of the silver. He shrugged again.

“I'm with you.” Jan twisted, his face turned over his shoulder, and called, “And my crew, too.”

From the dimness outside the firelight the other men of the
Wayward Girl
muttered their agreement. Van Treslong nodded, the silver clinking in his hand.

“Divided by sevens, then.”

Sonoy gave Jan a comradely slap on the arm. “Two people can shit through the same hole, you know.”

Jan laughed. Pieter stuck his pipe between his teeth again. “As the saying goes.”

8

At noon, Pieter went down the deck to the wheel, where in a little covered stand the ship's compass was housed, and turned the hourglass over and rang the bell. He marked the watch book and put it away under the compass. Going aft, he leaned on the stern rail and looked out to sea. His hands moved, collecting his pipe and his tobacco pouch and firebox, but he stopped himself, remembering he had no more tobacco. Laying his arms down on the rail, he looked steadily out toward the gray rolling sea.

The
Wayward Girl
lay off the English coast, waiting for the pilot to arrive who would guide her into Plymouth harbor. This was Lumey's idea, coming here, although Pieter had grudgingly to agree to its good sense, since they had to sell the plunder from the Spanish ship. The rest of the Beggar fleet was scattered over the water around Pieter's ship, which was why he kept his gaze pinned straight out toward the sea, where he had to look at none of them.

He hated them. He hated Lumey most, the brawler, the braggart, but he hated the others as well, although he knew them little. And now they had their grips on his nephew. His hands curled over the ship's railing and he clenched his teeth in frustrated rage.

Pirates: what were they but pirates? Nothing wrong with that. Pieter knew himself for a pirate, having been one for as long as he could remember, long before he ever put to sea. It was there in his heart's working, in the structure of his bones, to steal. To live free. So he stole and lived according to his own liking, prepared to take the consequences. But he never dressed it all up in fancy, lofty talk of saving the world.

They would seduce Jan into it, Jan whom he loved with his whole heart. He was tough, that boy, and a natural seaman, a born pirate, like Pieter. He was young, too, and the likes of Lumey and van Treslong and Sonoy would pour the honeyed poison of their excuses into his ears, and it would happen to him what happened to them all.

Pieter had seen it happen to his brother, Mies. A good practical boy Mies had been once, not a pirate, but still a free, wild heart. Then slowly he had gotten notions of religion. Bit by bit he lost sight of the real things of life, the daily hungers, the instants of satisfaction and distress; gradually his mind filled up with a grand, false vision of angels and battles in the sky. In the end it got him hanged. Long before that, he had stopped talking to Pieter, and Pieter had stopped liking Mies.

Behind Pieter now someone shouted across the water. The pilots were coming.

Resolutely he kept his back to them. He hated turning his ship over to a stranger—hated it the more now, when he had lost her once, and thought her lost forever, and only recovered her by force. He had her now, though, and he had won the Spanish hulk with her. Damn Lumey! If he and his Beggars had not interfered, Pieter would have had most of the plunder overboard and kept the silver—enough to make them all rich.

Lumey had the silver now, but Pieter would not give up so easily. In Plymouth there would be opportunities to have it back again. The old man smiled, wanting his tobacco, which he would also find in Plymouth, and wanting his silver. He would have it back, and a satisfaction in regaining it, too. Let them think they were warriors of God. Waving their letters of marque. He'd show them how a true pirate did.

“Look, Jan! Look!” Mouse leapt up and down, delighted.

“Shut up,” Jan said.

Mouse could not keep still. He had been at sea for two weeks and before then never out of Nieuport. The sail up Plymouth Sound was like a passage into another world. At first the low dark hills on either side had seemed to close in around the ships, and he had kept near Jan, who was not afraid; Jan was never afraid. Then abruptly the hills opened up like hands when they gave you something, and there ahead of them, on the smooth water, a great forest of masts appeared.

“Jan, see? There's a town.”

“Shut up, will you?” Jan cuffed him along the side of the head.

Jan was writing in a book; he had been scribbling away ever since the pilot brought them into the mouth of Plymouth Sound. Mouse wanted to ask him what he was doing but he knew Jan would shout at him again, and anyway he probably would not understand.

He stood on his toes to see the harbor. It was bigger than Nieuport, with many more ships. Small boats scurried over the water among the moored vessels. The beach ahead curved around to the left, where the sound went on through the hills. Above the beach the roofs of buildings climbed the slopes like a jumble of steps. He saw a church spire in the middle of the town. Up there on the top of the slope was a big tower, like a castle.

“Jan,” he cried, forgetting, and clapped his hand over his own mouth. Jan ignored him, writing.

What was he writing about? Mouse craned his neck to see the page, bowed up from the binding. Marks half covered it. The marks wavered and jumped over the page and doubled and tripled themselves, and he covered his right eye with his hand, which made the marks much tamer. Still they looked only like bird tracks in the damp sand. He would have understood better if they were pictures.

Jan's face, bent over them, was intent and beautiful with concentration. Mouse smiled to himself. If Jan did them, the marks had to be important.

The pilot called orders to old Pieter, who sent them on to Red Aart at the wheel. They were coming about, in the middle of the forest of ships; soon the mast of the
Wayward Girl
would rock and sway with the others. Mouse looked up at the little topsail. They had taken down the mainsail and brought her in under her jib and topsail, which opened at the top of the bare mast like a net for the clouds.

“Ready with the anchors!”

The men dashed around the ship. Mouse kept his eyes on the topsail. The edge shivered, losing the wind; abruptly now it collapsed.

“Down anchors!”

The anchors plunked down into the water. A moment later the little topsail fluttered away down the mast to the deck, leaving the bare finger of the mast behind to point into the sky.

Mouse crowed and clapped his hands together. He felt now they had truly come to rest.