The Sea Beggars (6 page)

At that a wail went up from the Calvinists packed into the street inside the gate, and they lunged forward, broke the gate, and spilled out onto the road and the green slopes along the road, rushing to join the Beggars. The Prince seized the nearest horse and galloped through their midst to their head.

“Stop—go back—you'll be slaughtered!”

Alone, he put himself between them and the Beggar army, now creeping into view along the rounded horizon, and seeing him the mob slowed and stopped.

“Go back.” He spread his arms, as if he could herd them all back into the city. “Go back—don't give the Governess's army the excuse to attack Antwerp.”

Someone bolted forward from the mob, trying to rush past him, and he swung his horse to block the man's way. “Go back—please—I beg of you.”

The man struck clumsily up at the elegant figure on the horse that stopped his progress. The Prince warded off the blows with his arms. “Go back—go back—please—I implore you.”

At that a sigh went up from the mob, when they saw him shielding himself from the blows of the Calvinist, not fighting back, not striking down his attacker, and pleading for his attacker's own safety; they even found the power to raise a cheer for him, and turning they made their way back into the city.

A few stole away, hanging back from the fringes of the mob. Most of them returned to Antwerp; the great gates closed, and the bar went across them, and the city shut itself to the Beggars. And after that there was no more trouble.

Jan gripped a pole in both hands, his breath coming harsh and short between his teeth; his eyes were itching with dust. Far down the plain the Beggar army was streaming into view over the horizon. He straightened, prepared to be overcome by the majesty of their appearance—ready to see God's angels in the sky above them. His skin tingled, and his blood thrashed in his veins; at any moment, he knew, something great would happen.

Nothing happened. Far off over the plain the Beggars were running along the road and over the meadows beside it. They kept no order; they wore no armor or insignia. No banners flew over them. No angelic light shone around them. Hesitantly he started forward through the knee-high grass, clutching his weapon, his injured leg throbbing painfully with each step.

A trumpet sounded, far away. He wheeled. This was the beginning, at last, the horns of God blasting on the plain of Armageddon. Now he could see horses galloping up over the rolling land. He called out, raising one arm straight over his head, and ran forward to meet them.

A few strides later he stopped in his tracks.

The horsemen were riding down the Beggar rabble. Not joining them. Not supporting them. Tiny in the distance, they hacked with their swords at the fleeing backs of the army of God. They were the royalists, then, the Catholics, and they were killing with impunity.

Jan let out a low cry. He broke into a run again, headed toward the nearest group of the Beggar army. His leg gave way and toppled him into the grass, and he rose and went on, sobbing for breath, his vision yellowed by the dust that rolled in clouds under the feet of the Beggars and their killers.

Ahead of them a hundred Calvinists were rushing along the road, but the royalist horsemen were rapidly overtaking them. He was too far away to help. Too far away even to die with them. He stumbled over something in the grass and went to his hands and knees, and turning to see what he had fallen over found a body on the ground.

He lunged up onto his feet and raced on, but they were drawing away from him. The enemy horsemen, striking and wheeling, rode on faster than he could run. He passed a man in tatters who writhed and gasped on his back in the slimy grass. Out of breath, his lungs choked with dust, Jan slowed to a walk and then stopped, his gaze on the horsemen, still small in the distance.

They were riding off; their trumpets blared again, a tinny little spangle of noise in the silent afternoon. Gradually he heard the other sounds around him, the whisper of the wind in the grass, the twittering of insects, the croaking of the day birds. A butterfly flapped by him. Slowly he turned and spread his attention around him. He was surrounded by a lot of men, dead or dying, scattered in the grass. No army. No angels, no glory of God, only a litter of bloody meat in the August sunshine. He moaned; a noise he had never heard before and did not mean to make rolled up from his belly and leaked out between his lips. He thought what he saw should burn his eyes out. That would be better. That would mean something. Slowly he dragged his feet back to Antwerp.

“Oh, Who cares?” Jan said. He flung his hand out, loose muscled, flopping his arm down on his knee. “It's all a damned lie anyway, Hanneke.” He folded his other arm over his face.

His sister backed away from him, to the door of his room; she wondered what had happened to him outside the walls of the city. Since he had come back he had said nothing. She went out the door to the corridor.

The housemaid was singing in the room opposite. The warm odors of dinner drifted through the house. Slowly Hanneke went down the stairs to the second floor.

Through the open door to her parents' room, she could see her mother, sitting on the tall canopied bed, combing her hair. Her mother smiled at her brightly, like a child, the long brown rope of her hair hanging over her shoulder. Hanneke went on to the sitting room, looking for her father.

Mies was there, in the old chair by the fire. Slumped down into his seat, he did not move when she came in, or look up, or speak to her. She stood a moment waiting for him to notice her. His face was slack and dull as a drunkard's. Aghast, she wondered if he were drunk. He never said a word to her; if he saw her there, he ignored her utterly. She could not think what to say to him. And what if he were drunk? She went down the room to the window.

Night was falling. The sinking sun cast its light against the tall front of van der Heghe's house across the street, gilding the windows. Hanneke looked by habit for the storks in their nest on the chimney.

She gasped. The birds were gone. The nest was knocked halfway off the chimney top. Bits of stick and straw littered the roof line. She turned toward her father, to share this evil, but he was staring into the fire, inaccessible. She looked out again at the house opposite, wondering what had happened—where the birds had gone. It was too early for them to have flown away south. Africa, she had heard, that was where they went for the winter. The name sounded in her mind like a meaningless incantation, a curse in another language. Suddenly she was fighting back tears. She turned blindly to the bookshelf, to find something to read, to forget herself in.

2

When Count Horn rode in through the gate of the Palais de Nassau in Brussels, he could scarcely penetrate the courtyard, which was filled with heavy ox-drawn wagons and servants rushing between them and the palace doors. The servants, he noticed, were loading goods from the palace into the wagons, rather than the other way around, the usual order of things. The place looked as if it were being looted.

He found a groom to take his horse, and leaving his retainers to keep out of the way of all this hubbub he went into the palace in search of his friend the Prince of Orange.

Orange was in his living quarters, on the second story of the south wing, overseeing the removal from the walls of the mirrors and paintings and their packing into crates. When he saw Count Horn, he smiled and held out his hand in greeting, but his face remained grave as ever behind the courtly mask.

“My dear friend.” Horn came to his side, his gaze surveying the clutter of packing and goods that took up all the space in the room. The carpets were rolled up and tied fast, and even the ornate fastenings on the windows were coming down. “Are you moving to another palace?”

That seemed impossible. The Palais de Nassau had been the seat of the Princes of Orange for their last several manifestations; no finer house stood in the Low Countries.

Orange still wore his smile, but his dark eyes were hooded and morose. “I am moving my household to Germany, my friend,” he said.

“To Germany! Whatever for?”

“This past week I have had news that the Duke of Alva is leading the Spanish armies in Italy north, to take them through the Alps and bring them here. I do not mean to be within his reach when he arrives.”

Horn stared at him, his lips parted. With a shake he brought himself out of his astonishment, laughed, and plucking at the snowy masses of lace at his throat adjusted his enormously expensive coat. “You must be joking, my lord. You'd abandon the field to the enemy before he even appears? After your brilliant success at Antwerp?”

Orange had lost his smile. He watched Horn with an impassive face, cocked his hand to a servant standing nearby, and said, “I beg your pardon, my dear Count. I have been unforgivably rude—will you join me for a glass of wine?” A nod to the servant sent him hurrying off.

When they had gone out onto a little balcony, where the sun shone warmly and the evidence of the Prince's activity was gone from view, Horn relaxed. He felt now that this would make a splendid joke—the Prince's loss of nerve at the mere mention of the name of the Duke of Alva. In spite of the disruption of his household, Orange's staff was still perfect in his service; within moments the servant brought a flagon of a very fine pale Moselle wine, and another servant presented Horn with a tray of sweets and fruits for his selection.

“You will be the laughingstock of Brussels, you know,” said Horn, lifting a candied lime to his mouth. “And after all the expense and bother of moving everything out, you'll only have to move it all back in again, when the season starts. I hope you don't break that mirror from your salon; you'll never find another as handsome.”

“If you want my advice, you'll leave as well,” said Orange.

He sat, not on the embroidered cushion of the chair to Horn's left, but on its carved wooden arm; he looked very restless.

Horn laughed. “I am not afraid of Alva.”

Orange said nothing.

“We are in control here,” said the count. He leaned forward over the silver tray of sweets, his fingers poised, searching out another candied lime. “The Governess had to rely on you to help quell the iconoclasts, did she not? The country is restored to order—”

“There are many who call me traitor now on both sides,” said Orange. “The Governess hates and fears me the more because of my work in Antwerp, and the Calvinists hate me for refusing to shelter their army there.”

“That will pass.” Horn licked sugar from his fingertips. “Alva is a barbarian. The Netherlands is a civilized place.”

“Alva is not a barbarian,” Orange said sharply. “I know him far better than you do, and he is as subtle and keen witted a man as there is in Europe. Let me tell you something. Years ago, when the Emperor was still alive, he sent me and two others to France, after the conclusion of the treaty between him and Henri the Second, to secure the provisions of the treaty.” Orange picked up the wine flask and filled his friend's cup. “One day I found myself in the company of Monsieur le Roi de France in a wood at Chantilly, where he was enjoying a picnic supper, and Monsieur le Roi turned to me and began talking about ‘our common plan.' I knew nothing of this plan, but I held my tongue and listened, to know more. Soon it became clear that those who knew me better than Monsieur le Roi had kept the Common Plan from me, because they knew I had no heart for slaughter and persecution, and this plan was for the slaughter and persecution of every heretic in Europe. Beginning with the Low Countries.”

Horn licked his lips. The taste of the lime still clung to his mouth. But Henri II was dead, he reminded himself, and so was the Emperor.

“I sat there in the wood in Chantilly,” said the Prince, “and listened to him speak of killing his own subjects—some by the sword, some by the rope, and by fire—as if he talked of treading on locusts who devoured his fields, or pulling up weeds in his garden. He thought I knew of every detail. He thought so because one of the other hostages was a chief framer of the Common Plan, and had been sent to France especially to acquire Monsieur le Roi's support for it.”

He leaned forward, his dark, hooded eyes sharp. “That hostage was the Duke of Alva.”

Horn pressed his lips together. For a moment he entertained a high hot anger at the Prince of Orange for this overdramatic speech, for trying to frighten him.

“He is coming here to destroy heresy in the Low Countries,” said the Prince. “The Beggars have given him the excuse, and into the bargain they have quenched all sympathy they could have enjoyed with the Catholics.”

“All the more reason to stay,” Horn said, in a full courageous voice. “To stay and fight.”

“To stay and be wiped out.”

“What can he do to us? He can hang a few peasants, but we are the greatest men of the Provinces, my dear Prince—we are Knights of the Golden Fleece, stadtholders, counts, and princes—he cannot touch us.”

As he spoke Horn relaxed, reassured. He drew a deep breath, happy with himself.

“I hope you are right, sir,” said Orange.

“Of course I am right.” Horn finished his wine and set down his cup. “However, if you're leaving—I don't suppose you would sell me that mirror? You'll break it certainly, hauling it off to Germany.”

The Prince of Orange laughed. “It's yours,” he said. “I'll send it to your palace this afternoon.”

“A noble gesture. When you return, you shall have it back.”

“Only see that it is not broken in my absence, Count.”

“Be sure of it,” said Count Horn, pleased.

The Prince of Orange intended to make his departure from the Low Countries covertly, and so he returned to Antwerp for a while, after he had sent all his possessions to Germany from Brussels. But a few days after he reached Antwerp he gathered up his servants and his retainers and rode off to the gate of the city.