The Sea Beggars (46 page)

Days went by. Mouse fell sick and Eleanor put him to bed in the master's cabin and sat by him and prayed and talked to him, learning Dutch from him, and made him eat her bread and drink her sip of water. Jan went aloft himself every time the sails were set; he knew some of his crew were losing their strength. He hoped by his example to keep them working. Marten spent hours trying to snare the sea gulls that came less and less often now to wait for garbage in their wake. Some of the other men fished, catching nothing.

On the twentieth day after they left Plymouth, a sail appeared, bearing a red cross, to the north of the
Wayward Girl
. Jan sent up a flag, to signal the ships behind him, and raced toward the Spanish vessel. It was a merchantman, twice the size of the
Girl
, with three times the men on board, but Jan knew no caution: he wanted food and drink for Eleanor and for Mouse.

The merchantman tried to run. Clumsily she struggled around onto the other tack while the
Wayward Girl
, reaching along the wind, shot like an arrow toward her. The awkward Spaniard wallowed out of the wind's eye, her sails slatting, and missed stays. Every sail flopped. Jan shouted in triumph.

“Starboard three points!” he called to Marten, who was steering. “We'll give her a bit of iron, and she'll cry like a baby. Forward gun, ready to fire!”

The three men crewing the bow gun were still struggling to load her. Panting, Jobst yelled, “Wait—one minute more—”

Eleanor came up onto the sterncastle. “What—oh! A ship!”

She went to the rail and leaned out to see. Jan swore and banged his hands together. “Jobst!”

“Almost—”

The Spaniard was crawling with men, up and down the rigging, hanging on the yards, as they worked to get the sails drawing again. They had rigged a spritsail, but the heavy-loaded ship resisted even that pressure to line up with the wind.

“Jobst!” Jan screamed, in a temper; he saw they might sail right past the Spaniard before they could fire, and then have the trouble of coming about and beating back against the wind. Given so much time, the Spaniard might get away, or Lumey, in the
Christ the Redeemer
, who was just behind the
Girl
, might get to her first.

“Hands to the braces!” He would slow his ship down.

“Look,” Eleanor cried, and pointed to a white scarf fluttering from the main yard.

“They're giving up.” Jan wheeled around, filled with a spurious new strength. “Marten! A point more to starboard. Jobst, keep the gun on her. By the main braces, let her go!”

The hands on the mainsail let go the lines, spilling out the wind, and the ship slowed smoothly, gliding down on the Spaniard. Along the merchantman's rail, a swarming crowd gathered, many waving white handkerchiefs. Jan ran to get his pistol.

With half a cable length separating the ships, he crossed in the dinghy, two of his men with him, their belts stuffed with pistols and knives. The Spanish captain met them at the top of the ladder, his face set like stone, snorting his words down at them as if he were giving the orders. Jan got him by the shoulder and swung him around to face the
Wayward Girl
.

“You see that gun, Señor?” Speaking French to this foreigner, Jan pointed to the brass culverin in the Dutch ship's bow. “Resist me, and that gun will blow a hole through your ship a whale could sound through, and all these pretty ladies …”

He swept his arm toward the crowd along the rail; among the seamen were a number of gentlemen in black Spanish dress, and women too, with shawls draped to veil their faces. The Spanish captain sniffed at the culverin, but beyond the
Wayward Girl
, now, loomed the black masts and sails of the
Christ the Redeemer
.

The crowd along the rail saw her too, and cries of fear and despair went up from them. Jan made a face. He saw some priests in the crowd, and mindful of Lumey's games with priests he got the Spanish captain by the arm again.

“Get those blackbirds below.” With a glance at the
Christ the Redeemer
he went down himself into the hold, to find the merchantman's stores.

As well as the common stores of seamen's fare, the Spanish ship was carrying live chickens, pigs, kegs of wine, real bread, crocks of butter, and honey, food for the elegant passengers. It seemed like a feast, all piled up on the deck of the
Wayward Girl
, but when it was divided up among the ships of the Beggar fleet it shrank away to a day's eating.

“What else was there?” Lumey shouted, tramping up and down Jan's main deck, a slab of bread and butter in one hand and his sword in the other. “What have you hidden from us, sailor boy?”

Jan was eating chicken, barely cooked over the hastiest of fires. “You're on my ship, Lumey.”

“I say he's holding something back.” Lumey's arm wheeled out, inviting the other men around them into the argument. “I say he found more than this; why else would he refuse to let anyone else on board the prize? Hah! Answer that.”

Jan had stripped the Spaniard and let her go, since he could not feed or even guard the swarms of people on board her. The merchantman would make for a port in the Low Countries, only a few days away.

Sonoy sat on his heels by the mast, his head against the rope wrapping, watching some of Jan's crew roast a whole pig on a spit. “Whatever he took, he earned; he seized the ship. The sweet goes to the man with the cake in his mouth.”

“Hah!” Jan shouted at Lumey. He stalked away up the deck to the sterncastle ladder, where Eleanor was sitting, eating bread and honey. Mouse crouched at her feet, his cheeks sticky.

“Recovered?” Jan nudged the boy with his foot.

“He was giving all his food away.” Eleanor bent and hugged the boy. “He is a saint.”

“He's a fool,” Jan said, “but God loves him.”

She raised her head to give him a glance barbed with bad feeling. Jan sat down beside her. “What's the matter now?”

Before she spoke, she ate the rest of the bread and licked her fingers of the last of the honey. Finally, her hands in her lap, and her eyes turned away from him, she said, “You are nothing but pirates, really, aren't you?”

“What?”

“All that fine talk about helping your people, and fighting the Spanish for the sake of your faith—all you are is a pack of pirates.”

Her voice trembled, either from fatigue or the weight of what she was saying; it was in his mind to laugh at her, to tell her she had known always what he was, but that quaver in her voice held him back. He thought of old Pieter, who had said much the same thing as this but with an opposite emphasis. His heart sank. Was that all there was to it—an empty shell of words and wind to pretty up plain robbery? He supposed she was right, as old Pieter had been right.

She got to her feet and went away down the stern deck to the hatch, and disappeared below. Jan slapped his hands on his thighs.

“Women,” he said to Mouse.

The other captains were gathering around Sonoy at the mast of the
Wayward Girl
. The delicious aroma of the roasting pig surrounded them; gently the skin crackled, crisping in the fire, and the fat exploded in pops like small arms. Jan licked his lips. He hoisted Mouse onto his feet and pushed him ahead of him down to the others, where Lumey was strutting and throwing his chest out and snorting his suspicions.

“Keep civil,” Jan said, between his teeth. “This is my ship.”

“Mind your betters, sailor boy.”

Sonoy lifted his head. “Hold, you two—van Treslong's got a plan.”

Jan turned, uninterested at first, still clutched in the gray mood Eleanor's words had brought upon him, but now he remembered thinking before that van Treslong had something deep in his mind, and he went over to the group of captains. “What's going on?”

Van Treslong fiddled with his red-yellow mustache. “We're standing just over the horizon now from the coast of Holland. There's little harbors all over those islands, and none of them have garrisons of any size. I'll warrant there isn't a Spaniard in the whole of the waterlands right now, just the local Catholics in arms. I say we sail in and take one of the sea towns and reprovision there.”

Jan let out his breath, a little disappointed; that was daring, but still piracy. The others leaned forward, intent. A quick look into their faces told Jan they were very warm to this.

“Where?” Sonoy said.

Van Treslong shrugged, twisting his mustache around his finger. “Flushing. The Brill. There's a dozen different places.”

Sonoy's face was shining. “To go back home again,” he said, under his breath.

At that Jan's spirits brightened. He had not set foot on a Dutch shore in over a year, and even if Holland were not Brabant, yet it was nearly the same. His mind raced forward, toward the practical application of this scheme.

“We'll need pilots. Those waters are treacherous.”

Van Treslong smiled at him. “Half my crew grew up in Zeeland. I myself spent much of my boyhood in The Brill; my father was governor there.”

“That was a while ago,” said someone else. “The Maas changes with every tide. If we go to The Brill, we'll be sailing up the river.”

Beside Jan, Lumey erupted in a great yell of laughter. “By God, you'll all sail straight into the Spanish throat! You're mad. We cannot go blind into a Spanish port—”

“Not Spanish,” Jan said. “Dutch.”

“There will be people who support us, too,” Sonoy said. “Many in the waterlands support us.”

“You're mad,” Lumey said. “But if you insist on doing this, then let it be The Brill; she has the best harbor on the coast—save Flushing, and Flushing's almost in the Duke of Alva's lap—but The Brill is far away.”

“The Brill it is,” van Treslong said, and put out his hand, and one by one the others laid on their hands, looking deeply into one another's eyes, and nodded.

The Schelde, the Maas, the Rhine—the great rivers flowed up from the south through the center of the Low Countries, and where they poured their several streams into the North Sea, they broke the land into a fleet of little islands. Flat and low, they kept their faces ever to the sea, where a great tide or a wild storm or even a single monstrous moondriven wave could rise up to drown them utterly. With the solid ground for anchors, the people had over the centuries built dikes around the tidal marshes, pumped the sea out, and made new land, but it was a precarious footing, the sea ever seeking to reclaim its own when the people tired of watching.

To Eleanor Simmons, used to the constant, solid English countryside, these half-drowned lands were strange as China.

She stood on the sterncastle of the
Wayward Girl
, listening to the pilot direct the course of the ship and writing down what he said. It was still early morning. The sky was pearly with fresh light. A steady breeze was blowing and the tide was making, so Jan had set only the jib and the mizzensail, to creep in over the water.

There on the larboard beam a low dark mass rode on the river: an island of barren silt. Beyond it on the far bank Eleanor could see the wide arms of a mill against the sky. Quickly she made note of that; Jan had told her to write down every landmark.

The pilot said, “Three points starboard, there, wheel.”

Behind Eleanor the rudder lines creaked. It was so quiet she could hear the warble of the sea passing under the ship's stern. Jan came pacing up the deck toward her, his hands on his hips. Three big pistols jutted from his belt. He wore a fancy white shirt of linen, booty from the Spanish ship, and sailor's breeches of dirty canvas and no shoes. He shouted, “What's the bottom?”

Someone amidships relayed the questions, and from the bow, where the man was casting the lead, the answer came back: “Five fathom and rising! Black silty bottom—”

The pilot said, “It'll be three fathom before we wear the tip of The Brill.”

Jan muttered something. His forehead was damp with sweat. Eleanor knew better than to speak with him; he had been half wild all morning, and being so enclosed in land, with the tide and the wind pushing him steadily up the narrowing river, he had all the aspect of a beast being dragged into a cage.

On the land to the left—to larboard, she reminded herself—was a low round tower; she made a note of that in her book.

“There's The Brill,” said the pilot sharply.

Off the starboard bow the land was jutting out to meet them. A high seawall thrust across the river current to break the tidal flood; beyond it rose thatched roofs and mottled walls and the tops of little trees. Eleanor wrote as fast as her fingers would move. She had never seen a Dutch town before. The shape of the buildings was different—taller, narrower than English buildings. The pilot was taking them out a little from the seawall, where the white surf banged and crashed and threw foam up into the air; as the
Wayward Girl
turned, Eleanor caught a glimpse of the rest of the Beggar fleet, sailing behind her. Crowded together, they seemed more even than they were.

Now the
Wayward Girl
was gliding past the seawall, and the wharves and riverfront of the town of The Brill opened up to view. Jan rushed to the railing.

“No Spanish ships,” he said, relief heavy in his voice.

The whole broad riverfront was covered with people. When the
Wayward Girl
sailed into their ken, a great yell went up. They could not know yet who this was; Eleanor wondered at their wonderings. She wrote what she saw, although she wanted only to look, to see everything.

“Sail,” someone yelled, from the waist, and there was a general laugh from the crew.

A ferryboat was swinging across their path, a flat barge propelled by sweeps. The half dozen people on board gaped at the ship looming over them. Jan ran to the side and looked out.

“Bring him alongside! Marten, point a gun at him and get him under our lee.”