The Sea Beggars (49 page)

They went out through the side door, past the brick ovens in the yard, out to the street. There, three Spanish horsemen were riding down the center of the street toward them, one with a trumpet and two with the long red pennants of the army, curling and uncurling like serpents in the air above them.

Hanneke and Michael stopped at the low wall along the side of the street; now before the half-ruined houses on either hand, other people appeared, sheltering behind gates, beside fences, and under trees, half hiding from the soldiers.

They stopped directly before her; the trumpeter put his shining horn to his lips, and the metal shriek rang out.

“Soldiers of the King! Soldiers of the King!”

The cry was in Spanish, but every Dutchman understood it, having heard it a thousand times before. Hanneke closed her fingers on the fence. The generals were summoning an army, making ready to march. She wheeled toward Michael.

“Where are they going?”

He lifted one indifferent shoulder, his eyes sharp. “Who cares where they go? As long as they go. Tomorrow, we will bring feasts in.”

Hanneke watched the soldiers ride away, the pennants rippling from their pikes; the sun caught the brass trumpet in an instant's blinding flash. “They must be going to fight somewhere. Maybe Orange is come again.”

Michael made a sneering sound in his throat. With the side of his shoe he kicked at the leaves piled against the base of the fence. For the first time she saw how thin he was; his shirt hung over his chest like a sail over the hollow air, his spine like a mast, his ribs like curved yards.

He said, with contempt, “Orange. He will not come again—not that fool. It's the Beggars, up in The Brill—that's where these will go to fight.”

With a gesture he indicated the street. Two Spanish soldiers had wandered out of the houses across the way, yawning and pulling on their red doublets.

“The Brill,” Hanneke said. She had some vague notion that was a seaport in the north somewhere. “The Beggars are in The Brill?”

He nodded, still watching the soldiers, who were making their way off down the street.

Hanneke sucked in her breath. She had been traveling for what seemed weeks and had heard nothing of this. The news struck her slowly, with a gathering force. The Beggars were in The Brill: The Brill was Calvinist. Was Dutch again. She took a step toward the street, after the soldiers.

Michael gripped her arm. “Where are you going?”

Over her shoulder, she said, “To The Brill.”

“What? To The Brill? You're mad.” Roughly he yanked her around to face him. “You just came home, Hanneke. This is where you belong. Here you must stay.”

She looked into his face and saw a stranger. The merry good-hearted boy she had known had disappeared behind the dour face of this man shouting orders at her. She wrenched her arm out of his grasp and ran through the gate.

“Hanneke!”

She gathered up her skirts out of her way and ran down the street after the soldiers.

The moment he stepped out the door, del Rio knew something was wrong; he had been dealing with soldiers too long not to hear the ugly temper in the mutter of noise that arose from these men. He went out to the middle of the courtyard, where the groom held his horse. The soldiers were gathering in the parade ground just beyond the south gate, and as he mounted he put himself in view of them over the low unfinished wall.

They were not standing in ranks. Already some thousands of the men quartered in Antwerp had appeared, and the parade ground, sloping off a little toward the muddy Schelde, was red with their jackets. But rather than forming the orderly rows their training required of them, they were massed in clumps, talking. Del Rio's back tingled with premonition. Most of these men were not Spaniards. Most were German mercenaries, and they had not been paid in months.

He gathered his reins and signaled to his officers, mounted in the courtyard beside him, and slowly they rode out of the half-finished citadel onto the parade ground.

The trumpeters went ahead of the staff, flourishing their long belled horns, so that the red ribbons danced in the sunlight. A blast of brass-throated sound rang out. The troops stilled. Here and there, lines formed among them, as the horns awoke their obedience. Del Rio rode forward toward the high ground, where he could survey them all.

Now he saw that the edges of the gently sloping field swarmed with people—the townsfolk, come to witness. Even the bridge over the river was black with them. Nor were the soldiers gathered here any near the number of men quartered in Antwerp; easily one third of King Philip's army had not answered the call.

“Men of Spain!” He raised one hand over his head, to command their silence. The lieutenant on his left rode forward to translate his words into German, most of these men of Spain speaking no Spanish.

“Men of Spain! The King has called us forth to serve God and the Crown against those who threaten our faith. I know you will reply as you always have …”

He had given so many of these speeches that the words fell without thought from his lips. His eyes took in the restless mob that faced him, grumbling, angry, and growing angrier; until abruptly a tall fat man with a yellow beard leapt up out of the mass of men in front of del Rio and shouted, “Where's our money?”

The shout that these words brought from the other soldiers resounded like a thunderclap. Del Rio's Barb stallion reared up, snorting. While del Rio fought him quiet again, the soldiers yelled and clapped and whistled like night creatures; the trumpeters played shrieks on their trumpets, the commanding sound lost in the tumult.

Then suddenly the soldiery broke forward, like the sea rushing in over the beach. They flooded around del Rio and his horse and his officers and seized them and shook them to and fro. Del Rio drew his sword. It was whipped out of his hand before it had cleared the scabbard. His horse reared again, and as del Rio looked out over a mob of red doublets and shouting faces he began to pray.

“Our money!” The yellow-bearded man roared at him like a great German bear. “Our money! Our money!”

An arm's length from him the young lieutenant who had been translating wheeled around, his face shining with terror, and flung out his hand to his chief. “Help me!” An instant later a pike took him through the chest. His body flopped like a speared fish. The howling mob hoisted him up overhead and trooped off with him.

“Our money! Our money!”

“There is no money,” del Rio shouted. His hands were slimy with sweat; his back itched, expecting the dagger point between his shoulder blades. “Go to The Brill—destroy the Beggars—they have your money!”

“We won't move a step until we're paid!”

Beyond the soldiers, now, del Rio saw, with a certain small surprise, the townspeople were crowding closer. One, a woman, had even pushed in among the soldiers, to hear what they were saying. He dragged his attention from this. He forced his voice steady, his face calm; he looked down on this mad mutinous army like a father on disobedient sons.

“The Beggars stole your money. Destroy them, and the King will give you all you desire, for love of your valor. If you do not, if you continue to defy his wishes, then—”

The yellow-bearded man caught the bridle of del Rio's horse and dragged the slim head down and sideways in the milling of his arms. “Then we will sack Antwerp!”

Another raw-throated yell went up from the soldiers. The woman elbowed her way even closer. Her face was bright with fury, her eyes direct and clear; she looked up into del Rio's face and shouted, “You cannot let them. The city is in your charge—on your head, if harm comes to these people who are your responsibility.”

Del Rio blinked at her; he had seen her before somewhere, but his unsettled mind would not connect her with any other memory. A woman of the people. His horse staggered. The yellow-bearded man was wrenching the poor beast's head around again.

“Our money! Our money, or Antwerp burns!”

Now another outcry rose, this from the townspeople, not the brutal yell of the soldiers, but a wail of terror and rage kept silent too long, bursting forth now irresistibly. They pressed closer around the soldiers, and del Rio saw, in the calm of despair, that they outnumbered the soldiers, and they carried weapons—not pikes, but clubs of wood, and rakes from their gardens, and knives from their kitchens. There were as many women among them as men, which gave their collective voice its higher pitch, its birdlike clarity. He tore his gaze away, back to the yellow beard.

“You are treading the edge of disaster. Now, while you can, form ranks, obey your officers, and make yourselves an army again—”

“The Beggars!”

The clear feminine voice rose above all the racket like a flag above the surge and chaos of the crowd. It was the woman of the people. She had climbed up on something, not far from del Rio; she was pointing out over the crowd toward the river, and her voice pierced the clamor.

“The Beggars! The Beggars are coming!”

A gasp went up from the soldiers and the townspeople alike, as if they drew one breath into one set of lungs. Every head turned. There, on the muddy Schelde, beyond the supply barges tied up at the citadel wharves, a white sail glided, and beyond it another, and beyond that, another still.

“The Beggars. The Beggars are coming!”

The townsfolk roared. They rushed forward in a single mass against the soldiers, and like reeds before the scythe the men of Spain went down.

“Wait,” del Rio shouted, but his voice was lost in the screaming and shouting of the men around him. They were running. The yellow-bearded man still had del Rio's horse, and he dragged it around by the bridle and led it in a wild plunge down the parade ground. The other soldiers followed in a ride toward the shelter of the citadel.

“Wait,” del Rio shrieked. No one heeded him. He waved his arms and wrenched at his reins; he twisted to look across the surging crowd at the river, where the three sails, drifting closer, revealed themselves to be no more than garbage scows. No one stopped. With the townspeople hewing and clawing at their backs, King Philip's army fled in a wild rout into the new fortress, del Rio hustled along in their midst, and slammed the gates, and hid.

Hanneke did not think it would last very long. She sat with her knees tucked up to her chest on the pounded earth of the parade ground and watched the people of Antwerp dancing in rings on the lower meadow. They had done a wonderful thing; they had driven off the evil that had hung so long over their heads, but she did not think it would stay away long.

Nearby her was the dead horse she had stood on when she called the name of the Beggars and brought a phantom navy to these people's aid. A dozen women in bloody aprons were butchering it; they would eat meat tonight. The men were breaking into the supply barges along the river, and would find more food there. But it would not last.

What would last was in the north, where the Beggars had taken a city and could stand, their backs to the ever-nourishing sea. Even now, she knew, from the shortened speech of the Spanish governor, the Duke of Alva was planning a counterattack on The Brill; and that would be the measure of the future, not this business here in Antwerp.

It was there that she was called to go. What called her she had no name for: only, as she sat looking over the slope, the rings of dancers, the women cutting up the dead horse, the children, who finding bits of wood, pretended to fight, the young mothers nursing their babies, the old men standing deep in talk, the citadel behind them, the broad brown reach of the river like a hem along the foot of the slope—she saw in this variety an order, like the order of the starry sky at night, too large for a human mind to comprehend, but clear enough to God. In that order she moved like a wisp of dandelion seed that sailed the wind.

Her brother. She had not heard from him in years, but he had gone to sea. She gave no hope, no longing expectation to finding him ever again, but the wind that brushed her cheek and urged her north was the air that filled his sails. She stood up, shaking the dirt from her dress, and started away down the road.

23

“Heave!”

The men threw themselves against the rope; with a whir and a groan the block rolled the slack line through and took the weight of the big brass cannon. Jan leaned over the edge of the rampart to watch the gun climb slowly up through the air toward him. With one outstretched hand he motioned the men to pull.

They leaned into the rope, hoisting the cannon, nose first, up into the air, while the three sailors around it supported it in their arms like a great brass baby. Behind Jan there was an ominous popping of wood. He screwed his head around toward the mast they had rigged against the city wall to carry the block and tackle. The mast popped again.

“Avast! Let her down.” Frantically he milled his arms at the four men on the rope.

They let the rope slide. Singing through the rollers, it flew slack, and the cannon sank down toward the ground; but the mast was splitting, end to end, with a scream like a murdered man. Jan leapt down off the wall. The cannon fell in its net of ropes. The men around it took the weight on their arms and it bore them down to their knees, their mouths flying open at the shock. Someone watching wailed. Jan flung himself at the big gun, wrapped his arms around the barrel, braced his legs, and planted himself. The cold weight dropped into his embrace, crushing his shirt, driving him down. He gasped. Other men rushed in around him. With their help he lowered the great gun down to the street.

“Aaah.”

His breath exploded from him in relief. The other men clapped him on the shoulders.

“I thought I was dead,” said Marten. Naked to the waist, he held out his arms, where bands of bruises already purpled the flesh where the gun had fallen. “Until I saw you there.”

He flung one arm around Jan's neck and hugged him. Jan nudged him away with his elbow.