The Sea Beggars (7 page)

The people in the streets knew him at once; everyone in Antwerp knew him, from his work during the iconoclasm and his rule since then, and they loved him. A small crowd followed him as he rode through the city toward the gate. A boy ran up beside his horse, calling, “Where are you going? Oh, where are you going?”

“To Dillenburg,” said the Prince, in breezy fashion. “For the hunting. I am only going to Dillenburg, friends—no cause for alarm.”

The boy would not be put off; he ran alongside him, still crying out, “Where are you going? Oh, where are you going?” And the crowd grew larger that followed along after him.

He smiled at them; he tried to reassure them, but his smile was tight and forced, and as if he gave off an aura of uneasiness and tension the crowd, swelling in numbers with every step, grew more distressed. They pressed after him to the gate.

“Oh, where are you going?”

“Goodbye,” the Prince said, and turned and waved to them. “I shall come back soon—have no fear.” He smiled at them; he rode out the gate, still smiling, but many saw the sweat that stood on his brow, and many saw the smile stiff as a grimace, like the rictus of death.

Don Fernando Alvarez De Toledo, Duke of Alva, gathered under his banner the three tercios of the Spanish soldiery stationed in Italy and marched them north through the Alpine passes. In slow orderly progress, he led these thousands of men, beneath their banners of the Virgin and the saints, from the Catholic south to the reformed north of Europe, and from the rocky heaths of Scotland to the swampy Polish plain, the Protestant Christians tensed like bowstrings. Alva knew the effect of his march, and being a patient man he was content with that for now and kept his troops in good order and made no trouble on the way.

Tall, with hair and beard gone white in the service of his King and his God, he rode usually near the head of his columns. He knew everything that happened in the army and he gave every general order himself. His son was one of his officers, but Alva treated Don Federico de Alvarez no differently from any other Spanish soldier; he expected absolute discipline and unfaltering courage from everyone he commanded, the same discipline and courage he demanded of himself.

In the spring of the year he led his army into the Low Countries.

As he marched toward Brussels, he studied the terrain. His confidence fed on what he saw. He had been here before, and it was easily understood, this countryside—flat and low, the plain swept toward the North Sea without a barrier more formidable than an occasional wood. The roads were excellent, but the canals were a real marvel, connecting every part of the Provinces. On this flat and open game board stood the major pieces of the opposition, the great cities, divided within into hostile classes, jealous one city of another, intensely competitive.

The game was almost too easy. Alva entered Brussels without opposition, without even a stir of alarm among the people who lined the streets to watch. He found that nearly all his immediate enemies were waiting, within easy grasp, for him to make the first move. And Alva moved.

At breakfast, Mies said the prayer as usual, and they all sat down at the table, and the maidservant brought in the hot dishes. Hanneke spread her napkin on her knees, her hands quick with impatience. She had talked her mother into making a rare excursion out to the market today and she wanted to leave before the older woman changed her mind. She watched her father serve himself the broiled fish, wondering if he deliberately loitered over the choice and the removal of the crusty brown filets to his plate.

He laid the fish knife down along the platter's edge. Sitting back so that the maidservant could take the plate away to Hanneke's mother, he raised his eyes to her brother, across the table.

“You are coming with me today on my shop rounds.”

Hanneke lifted her head, startled. Mies' rule of silence at mealtimes was almost never broken. Usually he had settled with Jan what he was to do the night before.

Jan was bent over his plate. When he raised his head his eyes were dark with temper.

He said, “I have other plans.”

“Jan, dear,” his mother said, in soft reproof. She turned to the fish.

“You are coming with me,” said Mies, in a tone that meant to shut down all objection.

Jan said, “I see no reason to obey someone who betrayed his God and his God's faithful—”

There was a thunderous pounding on the front door of the house.

“—and who puts profit and goods ahead of truth and justice!”

Father and son glared at each other across the table. Hanneke gripped her napkin in her lap, her heart pounding. This could not be happening; as well shout God down from the sky as challenge a father over his own table. But it was. The pounding on the door went on, but it seemed to be taking place in another world, unimportant.

Mies said, “I shall accept no more of this insolence. You are coming with me, or I shall resort to such punishments as are suitable for the misdemeanors of a child.”

“When you betrayed our faith and our people, you lost your power over me, Mijnheer van Cleef.”

The front door burst open. Now Mies turned his head, blinking; all the family sat up stiff in their chairs to goggle at the strange men who tramped into their dining room.

They wore iron shirts and carried muskets. Soldiers. Hanneke's mouth fell open, and her mother screamed. Mies thrust back his chair. Standing, he strode around the table to the obvious leader of these men, a neatly bearded officer in a black coat.

“What do you mean by this trespass? Who are you?”

“You are Mies van Cleef,” the officer said, unruffled. His accent was strange; he spoke in French. He smiled a meaningless pleasant smile at Jan, staring at him from across the table. “You are under arrest.”

Mies stood still where he was, but he swayed, as if a strong wind shook him, and his face went white. Hanneke's teeth caught her lower lip. When the soldiers closed around her father, she said, “No.”

“You can't take him now,” her mother said. “He hasn't finished his breakfast.”

Jan passed behind her chair so violently he knocked her forward into the table; he set himself at the men around his father. Mies shouted. In a wild confusion, the soldiers, their prisoner, and Jan all whirled together in a milling of arms and the soldiers' long guns. There was a sharp thud and Jan fell to the floor.

The officer looked amused. His men folded around Mies and walked him out the door, and the officer turned to Hanneke and her mother.

“This house is forfeit to the Crown. You have until noon to get out.” He jabbed his thumb at Jan. “We will come for him next.” He went out after his men.

Hanneke shot up out of her place and ran around the table to her brother, groaning on the floor. A glance showed her he was well enough. Her mother sat motionless at the table, staring at Mies' empty chair. “Where have they taken him? When will he be home again?” Hanneke went out the door to the front sitting room.

The furniture here was all draped against the dust; the room was used only on feast days. At the window the maidservant and the cook were pressed to the glass looking into the street. Hanneke forced a way in between them.

Out there the soldiers were pushing Mies into a line of other men, each with his hands manacled behind his back and a halter around his neck linking him to the man in front of him. Other soldiers with pikes and helmets stood around them. The men who had taken Mies pulled his hands behind him and fastened him up to the last man in the line. Hanneke bit her lip. He looked dazed, her father, unready and helpless. His breakfast not even eaten. Among the other men in line, she saw faces she recognized. Near the front of the line was Albert van Luys, the preacher.

At a gesture from the officer, a man with a hammer strode up to the door of the van Cleef house, took a roll of paper from beneath his arm, and tacked a notice to the door. The officer barked an order. The column of prisoners marched away, soldiers on either side and coming after. The man with the hammer hurried after them, breaking into a run to catch up. She thought Mies turned his head to look back, but the dust of so many feet made it hard to see; within minutes he was gone from sight.

The day was overcast and cold. Jan shivered without his jacket. At the tower by the river where his father had been taken, he found a crowd of people fidgeting and pacing around, trying to find out what had happened to their own relatives, who had been marched off as peremptorily as Mies. There seemed to be no one who could give them any answers.

The tower gates were locked and barred and the windows were shuttered. People stood before the doors hammering on them with their fists and shouting. Other people talked in little groups. Jan walked through the crowd, his shoulders hunched, the cold driving him on. He wondered if this had befallen him for his impiety—if God had heard his defiance of his father and with the suddenness of a thunderclap had taken Mies away to punish him. The tower was made of grim gray stone, several stories high. He imagined scaling a rope to one of the narrow windows at the top and bearing Mies away on his back.

“They've taken every important man in Antwerp,” an old woman was saying, near the gate. “Even some of the Catholics.”

“They can't do this; it's against the law.” A man in black came up to Jan and spoke earnestly to him, as if they knew one another well. “They can't do this; they must all be released at once.”

A clump of men stood opposite the main gate of the tower; their heads together, they were planning something, with many calculating glances at the prison, and Jan went over to join them. They let him without hesitation into their midst.

“We'll need weapons.” The big bearded man at the center spoke to all of them, his eyes shifting from face to face. Jan knew him, a brewer from the German quarter. “Rakes, clubs, knives, anything. And something heavy to break down the door with.”

The man beside Jan turned to him and said, “They can't do this. We are right to free our people, who are false prisoners.”

From behind the tower a trumpet blew. All the men wheeled.

A column of pikemen was trotting up the gentle slope from the river. The sun, just breaking through the dense dark clouds, caught on a helmet here and there and on the long leaf-shaped blades of their pikes. Uncertain, the people around the tower waited and watched them approach. Jan flexed his hands. His mouth was dry. He wished he had a sword, a stick, any sort of weapon. The Spanish pikemen reached the tower, swung their long lances down, and charged into the crowd.

Women screamed; all around the tower, people turned and struggled to get out of the way of the blades. Jan let out a bellow of rage. Whatever these soldiers were, they were cowards, attacking unarmed men and women. Spreading apart his bare hands, he rushed forward at the pikemen, determined to grab one of their weapons and use it on them.

Shrieking, a woman blundered into him, her hands raised to shield herself; he slipped by her and planted his feet. The line of soldiers swept toward him like an ocean wave, close packed, their pikes laid down horizontal in a moving fence of blades. There was no way past them, no way to take one at a time. They spitted a young man to Jan's left and threw him down to the ground and while he screamed trampled over him. Jan thrust his hands out, his breath coming fast, in whines. The wall of blades swung toward him. Blood dripped from the points. He backed up, stumbled, fell, and rolled frantically away.

The memory swept over him of the time he had nearly been trampled; suddenly his body broke free of his mind's discipline. Without thought he sprang to his feet and ran away. There was someone in his path and he knocked her down and ran by her without a glance. The shrieks and curses of other Dutchmen sounded in his ears but he heard nothing except the thunder of his heart. Ahead of him other people were fleeing. They ran too slowly for him; he threw them aside and raced on, on, up the slope toward the city, away from the pikes, away to safety.

When he reached the house in the Canal Street there were boxes piled on the front step, and his sister was in their parents' bedroom packing jewelry and money and books into the wooden chest from his father's cupboard. Their mother stood over her, wringing her hands and weeping.

“Why are you doing this? There's no need for this. Your father will be home soon—what will he say? Wait for him to tell us what to do.” The older woman's face was swollen and twisted with crying. She put her hands out to Jan. “Tell her to stop.”

One hand pressed to his aching side, Jan lowered himself to the floor beside Hanneke. She ignored him; she laid books in the chest in a neat brickwork.

“Where are you going?” he asked.

“The Kelmans will rent us a room,” Hanneke said. “In the Swan Street, the Joseph and Mary House.”

“Tell her to stop,” their mother pleaded, crying tears.

“What happened to you?” Hanneke asked him.

“At the tower,” he said. “The soldiers came and drove us off. There were lots of people there but they drove us off. Some were killed.”

“Are you all right?” Hanneke laid her hand on his arm.

He nodded, his gaze sliding away from hers; he could not face her when he thought how he had fled away from his enemies like a coward.

“Is Father in the tower?” she asked.

He nodded.

“He will be home soon,” their mother said. “I'll go watch for him.” She fled out of the room.

Hanneke stroked her brother's sleeve; now suddenly there were tears on her cheeks. “What will happen to us? Why is this happening to us?”

He put his arms around her and pulled her against his shoulder, and she wept. “There, now, Hanneke,” he said, and rubbed her back.

There was a sudden banging on the door downstairs, and she jumped so violently she spilled books from her lap onto the floor. Jan got up to his feet.

“I'll see who it is.”