The Sea Beggars (8 page)

It was the soldiers, come to take the house. Jan longed to fight them; he wanted to snarl brave words into their faces, but there were ten of them, all with pikes and guns. He hoisted the chest his sister showed him up onto his shoulder, and under the cold foreign eyes of the Spaniards he and Hanneke and their mother with their belongings on their backs trudged out of their house into the street. One of the soldiers said something to his sister as she passed and reached out his hand to pat her breast. She wheeled away, dropping the wooden chest of books into the street. The soldiers all laughed. Jan helped her put the books away again and led her off down the street.

“Just a few troublemakers,” said Alva, smiling. He fixed Count Horn with an unblinking stare and spread his hands. “I must protect my troops from the fanatics who have already proven themselves enemies of the state, capable of any crime.”

Count Horn clenched his fist. A glance around the council chamber showed him the other men divided into two unequal groups; those who supported Alva watched with sleek satisfied faces, while the few who opposed him—very few—wore looks etched deep with strain and uncertainty.

Horn coughed into his cupped palm. He had the sensation of losing the ground under his feet, as if the floor had suddenly dropped away.

Stubbornly, he said, “We in these Provinces are governed by laws, my lord duke. Such measures as you have taken violate our privileges.”

Alva said, “People who destroy churches and sacred relics do not deserve privileges.”

“The Duke of Burgundy is not the Duke of Burgundy without the law!” Horn leaned forward, urgent with his idea; Alva's bland smiling mask infuriated him. “The law makes the ruler. Without the law there is no rule. Don't you see—”

“The King,” said Alva slowly, with emphasis, “is master of far more than these few little territories. He cannot be bound by the moss-grown superstitions of one little corner of his realm, or he loses his grandeur as King.”

Beside Horn, Count Egmont lifted his head and his deep clear voice. “He rules here because he is Duke of Burgundy—all else is irrelevant here.”

“He rules here because he is the son and successor of Charles the Fifth,” said Alva. “Because he is King. Because he has the power—the only power—which you will obey, because you have no choice.”

Egmont muttered, “Would that Orange were here.”

Alva seemed not to hear that. He went on, smiling, smiling, to reassure them. “I am concerned with the safety of my troops—therefore, I have caused the arrest of some few troublemakers throughout the land. Let me promise you no honest man shall be disturbed. And now I ask your leave to dismiss this council until the afternoon, as I am hungry.”

Horn leaned over to whisper into Egmont's ear. “Have you heard from Orange?”

“Nothing.” Egmont gestured, and the servant behind him moved his chair back away from the table. All around the long polished slab, the others of the council were getting up. If Orange were here, he would have new arguments, subtle disputations of reason and tradition to hurl against Alva, but Egmont was tired and baffled. He could not reach this man, who rejected the very basis of the Burgundian state while pretending to serve its master. “The King has blundered, sending Alva here. He must be made to see that.”

Horn did not reply to him. With their aides and their pages around them, the two noblemen went out of the chamber into the large room beyond, where the secretaries sat at their desks and the sentries stood along the walls. As the councillors came out, the secretaries shot up onto their feet and the sentries stiffened to attention, tapping the butts of their pikes on the slick tiled floor. Egmont pulled his gaze away from the soldiers. Their round Spanish helmets oppressed his spirit. He turned to his page for his gloves, his cloak.

A soldier marched up to him. “Count Egmont.”

Egmont nodded, holding out one hand, to allow his glove to be drawn on.

“You are under arrest, sir.”

From Horn, behind him, a choked gasp; Egmont's head snapped up. “I beg your pardon?”

“Come with me, sir. You are under arrest, by order of the Governor-general.”

Egmont gaped at him, his mind frozen by surprise; this could not be happening and in a moment would resolve itself into order and right again, the soldier bowing, leaving him alone. Instead the man reached out a hand to take him by the arm, and Egmont recoiled.

“How dare you touch me! I am a Knight of the Golden Fleece—I am a councillor of the Duke of Burgundy—”

The soldier seized his arm and Egmont threw him off with a violent thrust. “You have no right!” Behind him, they were taking Horn, too. The ground was gone from beneath his feet. He was walking into a void that would devour him. They had him by the arms now. Someone, some Spanish soldier, was actually removing his sword from its scabbard. A hard knot formed in his chest.

“You have no right.”

“Only the King has rights.” Alva came up beside him, smiling. “The only law is the King's will. Good day, Count Egmont.” With a little bow, he favored Horn with a look. “You cannot know, sir, how I agree with you: Would that the Prince of Orange were here.” He laughed; he strode away down the antechamber, his back stiff as a pikestaff, arrogant and assured. The soldiers took Horn and Egmont down the stairs.

“I want you to come with me,” Hanneke said.

“With you? Where? To the prison?” Jan gave an angry mirthless grunt of laughter. “I have been there.”

Hanneke was on her knees, packing clothes for her father into a chest; she did not look up at her brother. The room she and he and their mother were sharing, above the Kelmans' kitchen, was so small there was scarcely room for the three of them together. Her mother was still asleep in the cupboard bed; the chest and Hanneke herself took up the center of the floor, and Jan stood in the doorway, watching her.

“It will only be a few hours of your time,” she said. “You can spare him that, at least.”

“I can. How well you know what time I have.”

“You aren't working.”

The factory and the shops of Mies van Cleef had been confiscated along with his house.

“It takes time to steal,” Jan said.

She said nothing to that. She knew that was how he was getting their food. They had a little money left—not much—but she was clinging to it, reluctant to spend even a penny, with the future so uncertain. She got up from the chest and went to the back of the room, where the books were lined up against the wall, and pored over the titles until she decided on Thomas à Kempis and the
Gospels
.

When she went back to the chest, Jan was gone. The door hung open, the sunlight glittering with suspended dust.

She made a sound in her chest. He could have stayed to help her. Furious, she shut the lid of the chest and heaved it up onto her shoulder. Her mother still slept, to Hanneke's relief; the older woman made such a fuss when Hanneke went out alone. She slipped out the door into the late autumn sunlight.

In spite of the bright weather, it was cold. Her shoulder already aching from the weight of the chest, she started away across the city to the prison.

At the gate a long line of people waited to see the jailers; they carried petitions in their hands, and bundles of clothes and food for their relatives inside the old tower. Down at the other side of the broad damp meadow that lay between the river and the canal was a crew of workmen, clearing the ground for the new fortress to be built there. Hanneke waited in line with the others, gnawing her lip, impatient. Surely by now her mother would have wakened. There would be trouble when she got back.

There was nothing to do, anyway, but argue with her mother. Better that she was here, doing some good. She fixed her eyes on the broad back of the man in front of her in the line and waited.

At noon, at last, she was let in to see the jailer, in the tiny courtyard of the tower: a tall man in a leather apron. He took her chest of clothes and books and tossed it over onto a heap of other baskets and bundles against the wall.

“But—” she said, startled. “Aren't you going to put his name on it? How will you know whom to give it to?”

The man laughed at her, his eyes glinting. “Oh, I have a splendid memory.”

“Can I see him?”

“No, no one can see any of the prisoners, little lady.”

She stood before him, irresolute; lifting her head, she scanned the blackened stone wall of the tower, the tiny windows crisscrossed with iron bars. Suddenly she realized that Mies would never come out again, that none of the things she had brought for his comfort would ever reach him, that to her he was already dead. She trembled; her soul seemed to shrink inside her.

A touch on her arm made her jump. The jailer was fingering her sleeve. He smirked at her, his eyes unblinking.

“Of course,” he said, purring like a big cat, “if I wanted to, I could make some arrangements. If you made me want to.” His fingertips stroked her wrist, sliding under the cuff of her sleeve to her bare arm.

She jerked her arm back out of his reach. Her stomach rolled over. With one more glance up at the tower, she turned and rushed away out of the courtyard.

Outside, she stopped; she wondered if she ought to go back—what he would ask of her. She knew what he would ask of her. She could not do that. Not even for Mies—and Mies would not want it of her. Blindly she walked forward through the skeins of people waiting to get inside. They moved out of her way; she bumped into someone and apologized. Her eyes hurt. She was going to cry. The cold sunlight burned her cheeks. Mies would not want that of her. Mies was dead. She wheeled and looked up again at the gaunt stone tower. Tufts of grass sprouted on the black roof.

She should go back. Do whatever she had to do for her father's sake. But her feet were moving, taking her away into Antwerp, back into Antwerp, home to her mother.

When she came into the street that ran by Kelman's house she saw her mother in the middle of it, walking toward her. Hanneke stopped, amazed. In all her life she could never remember her mother leaving the house by herself.

The older woman saw her and turned toward her, walking slowly, her head down. She looked strange. Her hair was slipping free of the tight linen cap that covered her head and her long dark housecoat was dingy. She was barefoot. Suddenly ashamed of her, Hanneke hurried toward her, to get her away out of sight.

Her mother gave her such a strange look, when she came up to her, that Hanneke paused without touching her and said, “What are you doing here?”

“I am looking for—” Griet said, and stopped.

Hanneke waited a moment for the rest of the answer; her heart was pounding. She cast a quick look in either direction along the street, to see if anyone was watching them.

“For what, Mother?”

The older woman raised her face, gaunt and seamed with age lines. “The way to Hell.”

Abruptly tears spilled down from her eyes. Hanneke took her by the arm and led her back to Kelman's house.

In the little room above the kitchen, she helped her mother take off her clothes and get into the cupboard bed. All the while her mother cried like a child. Hanneke sat beside her in the semidarkness, one hand on her shoulder, and thought of her father in prison and her brother fled away into the streets.

“Mama,” she said, “this is already Hell.”

In the darkness deeper inside the dungeon someone was screaming, had been screaming now for hours; Mies had gotten used to that. He kept his back to that. His eyes fixed on the dim slot of light at the top of the door. The only light there was.

His arms hurt from the manacles on his wrists, but his arms had been hurting for so long he had learned to ignore that too. In prison a man learned to ignore so many things, the hunger, the stench, the thirst, the curses and screams. He kept his mind going; he kept his attention on what happened inside his head, what he could manage. He kept thinking about his trial.

When they took him out to be tried, he meant to offer such a defense that they would set him free and everyone else they had arrested. He knew the law. They had made a mistake, taking Mies van Cleef in their net. He would talk his way free and destroy them in the process. They couldn't do this to him.

He lined up his arguments again, for the tenth time, or maybe the hundredth, the arguments so well worn in his mind now, like paths through the tangle of his mind, which led him surely and certainly through the dangers toward the light and safety on the other side.
The other side of what
, he did not question. This could not go on, this screaming and darkness and waiting and hunger and thirst, not forever, and at the end of it surely would be …

Something.

His home again, his family, his work. His children. His wife. Out there somewhere, without him to care for them; what was to become of them? Hanneke and her mother: where were they? He imagined them hungry, like him, without his strength of will to resist fear and hunger. Jan would take care of them. In a burst of fury he cursed his son, knowing Jan would not be able to keep the two women safe and fed and housed, the dolt, the stupid fool; why did he have such a fool for a son? And now in the opening made by one passion another swept in, a cold fear, a shaking in all his limbs and a blank terror in his mind. He had to get out of here. Oh, please, let me out of here—

The screaming from behind him struck him like a knife in the heart, and he groaned and wept and banged his head against the wall.

They can't do this to me.

No. They could not. The law said they could not. And now once again he piled up the arguments, brick by brick, into a wall around him, a containment of his fear, a bulwark of his only hope.

Jan leaned against the wall of the warehouse, his hands behind him, watching the street, waiting. There were a lot of people loitering around the street, poor laborers who gathered here every day in hopes that one of the warehouses all around this quarter would put out a call for daywork. There was very little work to be had in Antwerp since so many factories had been shut down.