The Sea Beggars (42 page)

“Where are we going?”

“To see the duke.”

She sucked in her breath, startled. He towed her along beside him, her feet flying to keep up with his long swift strides. Yes. Confront the duke. She skipped a little, to catch up with him.

They went through the dark city, over muddy streets and streets slippery with cobblestones, past the hooked and barbel spires of the church that once had been Catholic and now was Lutheran, to the palace of the duke, where Louis' name and obvious nobility got them entrance in spite of the late hour. When they came to the chamber where the duke was taking his late evening cup, the overdecorated footman at the door told them that the Prince of Orange was there also.

Hanneke said, “Good, then.”

Louis paused, one hand to his chin. Younger than his brother, he was much handsomer, as if practice had improved the design. He said, “I am not sure we should not wait.”

“Wait,” Hanneke said. “Did those soldiers wait? People might have died in that fire.”

“We don't want to confound my brother's mission.”

“If you are cowardly—” She started for the door. The footman, before it, was looking, startled, from one to the other of them.

“What do you intend of my master?”

Louis, scowling, turned his uncertainty and temper on the servant. “Let us through.”

“My master does not enjoy being disturbed at—”

“Let us through!” Louis shoved the man violently to one side and rushed at the door. Hanneke followed in his wake.

They plunged through the doorway into a room elegantly carpeted, the walls hung with portraits. A little fire burned on the hearth, where two or three spaniels were sleeping; before the hearth sat the duke and the Prince of Orange, each in a little bowlegged chair, while a servant bowed between them, offering a tray of delicacies to eat.

The duke was turning to look at Louis and Hanneke. He wore a blue satin coat, the sleeves embroidered in gold and silver thread and slashed with pearl-gray velvet, and his beard and mustache were trimmed to perfect curves.

“My lord Louis of Nassau,” he said, looking surprised and disapproving. “I did not remember extending my leave to you.” His gaze rested on Hanneke; he sniffed.

“My lord,” Louis said, and looked at his brother, who was stooped down over his knee to stroke one of the spaniels. “I went to meeting tonight,” he said.

“I warned you against that,” said the Prince calmly. In his worn brown coat he looked like a commoner. “What happened to your head?”

“I beg your pardon?” the duke said. “My lord, I desire some explanation of this unseemly intrusion—some reason why I should welcome you and not order you out.”

“Tonight I was at meeting,” Louis stated firmly, loudly. He advanced two steps to plant himself before the duke, but his hands slipped behind his back, and Hanneke, seeing his fingers twine and intertwine, knew how this authority cowed him.

“What sort of meeting was this?” the duke asked, blandly.

“A Calvinist meeting. An assembly of the children of God, for the purposes of worshiping God—”

“Nonsense,” said the duke. He waved at the servant with the tray of sweets, and he withdrew rapidly into the corner of the room. “Such goings-on are outlawed in my duchy.”

“Nonetheless,” Louis said, still louder—shouting now, his voice ringing from the walls. “I was there, with dozens of other men and women, and we were attacked—set on by soldiers who threw us into the street and burned our meeting place.”

The duke leaned back in his ornate little chair. “Excellent. So ought all outlaws to be treated.”

“Outlaws.” Hanneke strode forward, going up between the two chairs, almost into the hearth. “You deem us outlaws, who want only to obey God? Your men, sir”—she stooped to say this into the very face of the duke—“your men tried to burn a Bible.”

“Who is this woman?” The duke's lips twisted in distaste. “Some common peasant out of the fields? Who is she?”

The Prince was standing. “With your leave, my lord—”

The duke's voice overrode him. Higher than before it cried, “Who brought this dirty person in here? Who is she? Get her out! Get the dirty wench out!”

The Prince bowed. “By your leave.” He started toward the door, taking his brother in tow, one arm out to herd Hanneke before him. “Come on, now, friends—”

She did not move. She stood staring down at the duke, who was waving a scented napkin at her as if she had brought some miasma with her into his expensive little room. She said, “God have mercy on you, and on all your kind. When we are safe in our own kingdom, you shall fall on such times you will pray to God to relieve you of them in death.”

“Hanneke—” The Prince had her by the arm. She leaned against his pull.

“Then think of those you might have helped but instead hindered,” she said to the duke.

“Get her out!”

“Think of Christ, Whom you might have emulated but instead have crucified a second time!”

“Get her out of here before I call my men to take her out by violence!”

“Hanneke.” The Prince dragged her away to the door.

Now she went with him, seeing this was hopeless. Going out, past the white-faced footman into the antechamber, she realized how hopeless it really was, and her mood sank; her body felt made of lead, impossible to move. She trudged along with the Prince and his brother, fighting against tears. The palace was darkened for the night. They walked alone through corridors and rooms lit by single candles set into the walls. In the main hall a woman was down on hands and knees washing the marble floor.

Had she done wrong? For the first time she wondered if she had made a mistake—if some subtler way might not have won what they needed, the support of this rich, light-minded man. Yet it seemed to her that any cause which depended on such people was doomed.

Perhaps they were doomed, all doomed. Perhaps the Catholics were right.

She stumbled. The Prince caught her arm and helped her keep her feet.

Were they right—the Catholics, who claimed to have known the truth all along, who said the Calvinists were sinners who deserted God? Oh … oh …

She heard herself moaning and clamped her lips shut. Her legs wobbled. Hurrying after her companions down a darkened corridor, she fought the cold invading trickle of doubt. God's will be done. Was it arrogance, to think to know God better than other people did? Satan's sin, to put her own vision first. God's will be done.

At last they reached the sanctuary of the Prince's rooms. She crept into a chair and put her face in her arms, terrified.

“Well,” the Prince said, “fortunately he had already declined any interest in our cause, and therefore your display will have few serious consequences.”

With a taper he went around the little room lighting the candles on the tables and the walls. It was a very small room, only large enough for a bed and a chair; perhaps it had been servants' quarters, before the arrival of the penniless Prince of Orange made it necessary for the duke to find some extra space. The Prince wondered where the servants were being kept—in a stable somewhere, perhaps.

He smiled at that; he smiled at his brother, sitting hunchbacked on the bed, his hands clasped between his knees.

“I'm pleased you're not badly hurt. Surely it wasn't as savage an onslaught as you made out.”

“It was,” said Louis. “I might have died, William. Some of the others pulled me free, or I would have died.”

In the chair by the window, Hanneke lifted her head a moment, her face a full moon against a background of shadows.

“You were foolish to go,” the Prince said. “Knowing what you put at risk.”

“Foolish?” the girl said, in her rough low voice. “To do God's service?”

“You are wise indeed, girl, if you know God's service so well.”

She flinched at that, her eyes shining in the candlelight, her face luminous; he thought again, as he had before,
She's mad
. For a long moment their eyes met, the whole space of the room between them. There was no challenge in her look, only a sort of desperation, searching, and longing. Finally she lowered her eyes.

“If you had seen what I have seen you would not suffer fools like this duke to stand in your way.”

The Prince grunted. His temper slipped; before he could catch hold of his tongue, hot words were leaping forth.

“Again, it's I who've failed, is it? You come at me with more reproaches—if only I would do this, if only I would do that. What of you, Hanneke? When will you submit to God, and devote yourself to God, rather than challenging me to do it? I cannot save the Dutch; you must save yourselves.”

She flung her head back, her cheeks flaming red with the heat of anger. She sprang up from the chair. They faced each other like adversaries. The Prince regretted his outburst; always he preferred to keep his true thoughts secret. She faced him like a lioness, muscular and poised, her hands fisted at her sides.

Then her face changed. Under his gaze the warm red subsided from her cheeks, and her glowing eyes dimmed. Her mouth softened. She turned a little, curving her body away from him, as if to shelter him from the full fire of her temper. Over her shoulder she lifted her head and nodded to him.

“You are right. God has shown me what to do. God has been speaking to me all these months and I have not understood.” She smiled at him. “Thank you for making me understand.”

“Hanneke,” Louis said.

Amazed, the Prince saw she was leaving. She was going to the door; she was pulling her coat closer around her, as if she meant to face some winter blast of wind. He put out his hand to her.

“Where are you going?”

Her face swung toward him again. “Where God means me to go.”

“Where is that?”

“To the Low Countries. To my home. To make the New Kingdom.” She opened the door and went out.

“Hanneke.” Louis got up and started after her. The Prince caught his arm.

“No. Let her go.”

“But—”

“Let her go, Louis. She was never ours anyway.” The Prince put out his hand to draw the door shut. What she had said rang in his mind. Mad, mad, surely mad. As Christ Himself had probably been a little mad. Belatedly, he wondered if he should not go after her—give her money, words of hope, directions home. Smiled at himself: the mother in him.
Godspeed, Hanneke
, he thought. And pulled the door closed.

18

The rain pelted the oiled paper over the windows. Jan sat staring at the wall, his elbows braced on the table, his chin in his cupped hands. Grains of black powder had embedded themselves in the heavy calluses on his hands, which smelled faintly of sulfur now no matter how he scrubbed them.

Behind him, old Pieter was playing cards with a few of his crew and with Lumey de la Marck. The slap of the cards on the table and the clink of money changing hands played like music against the hiss and rattle of the rain. There was a burst of laughter, and a tremendous growl from Lumey, who had obviously lost again.

“You are too lucky, you old bastard.”

Jan shifted his chair. His backside was numb from sitting. The
Wayward Girl
had been refitted and patched. In a few days the storm would pass, and they would go to sea again, which, though often just as boring as sitting in taverns, at least gave him work to do. And sometimes fighting.

He could go buy a whore—there were three or four in this tavern now, upstairs servicing the other sailors. They said they liked the Dutch sailors because, being so much at sea, they had no chance to pick up diseases.

He thought of Eleanor Simmons, away in Salisbury, and his heart quickened.

If he went there, he was getting himself into something more than a warm bed. He had told her he would come back. If he did not, she could think he had died at sea. But if he did, he would be making some promise with his feet that bound his heart as well.

He could scarcely remember what she looked like. Her hair was red-brown, her eyes were blue, but the shape of her face, the curve of lip and eyebrow, was gone from his memory. He could not love her, if he could not keep her face in his mind.

Yet he had thought of her every day since he had left her, on the
Wayward Girl
at night, standing watch, and since they had limped crippled into Plymouth the thought of her had been growing stronger and more irresistible, like an enchantment.

He remembered of her the soft melody of her voice, the sharing of words with her, the sharing of dreams and longings.

“You old pig!”

Chairs crashed over. He jerked his head around to see Lumey de la Marck dive across the gaming table, his arms outstretched, lunging at Pieter's throat.

The old man went down under Lumey's weight with a crackle of breaking furniture. Jan sprang across the room. Lumey and his uncle sprawled on the floor; Pieter shrieked, a sound like a knife tearing through canvas. Jan bellowed a wordless answer. His foot swung in a short hard arc that caught Lumey in the side and lifted him up off old Pieter to fall heavily to the floor.

His fists clenched, Jan started after him. A gurgling whine from his uncle stopped him short.

The old man lay on his back in a litter of broken furniture. Blood was pouring out of his mouth. Jan yelled. Dropping to his knees by his uncle, he caught the old man's hand and their eyes met, the blood fountaining up between Pieter's lips. The old man's eyes glazed. He gasped and choked and rolled a little to one side and was dead.

“Rib through the lungs,” said Red Aart, behind Jan.

Old Pieter's hand still clutched in his own, Jan knelt there in a trance, waiting for this to end—for the old man to come alive again. The suddenness had jammed up the workings of his mind. He was not ready for it: it could not be.

“Hey!” Lumey bawled. “De la Marck! To me!”

Red Aart and Marten charged him. Lumey fled into the back of the tavern, where others of his men were drinking; they rushed to protect him.