Batavia (44 page)

Those forts have been specifically built on the island’s best vantage points, so it will be all but impossible for the Mutineers to launch any surprise attacks, unthinkable as it is for them to try to navigate the shoals at night. But, as Hayes tells them, this measure is just the beginning of their defence plan.

They need to be able to neutralise the effect of the invaders’ guns well before they get so close as to be able to do them damage. The stone forts are all very well, and will at least provide some scant protection, but ideally the Defenders need to prevent the Mutineers coming within firing range of their positions. But how can they do it?

Hayes explains. Back when he was a kid in the town of Winschoten in the province of Groningen, he and his brothers delighted in playing a certain kind of war game with slings fashioned from flax or hemp. By whirring the sling around and around their heads and letting go of one end of the rope, they were able to fire their stones a remarkable distance, often with great accuracy. Back then, they used to wish for a
real
battle in which they could prove themselves, ideally in exactly the way that David had been able to bring down Goliath in that wonderful story from the Bible. And maybe, just maybe, this is Hayes’s and his men’s chance!

And so, on this first day of serious preparation, in the late morning light, Hayes, with Otto Smit by his side, is ready to conduct a series of trials on the edge of the southern cliff overlooking the only suitable landing site on the east coast. Before them are five classic slings made of braided cord, as well as the hides of some of the cats and even cloth – some of the Defenders’ long pants have been sacrificed for the purpose – to test for accuracy and distance. Of course, the shorter the sling, the more accurate the shots. However, it is crucial to propel the chunks of coral at least as far as the beginning of the mudflats below, if not further.

Hayes loads up the diamond-shaped pouch of a short sling with a projectile about as big as an apple. He swings it progressively faster around his head until, with a gentle
whoosh
, the sling finds sweet release, sending its projectile far over the cliffs and down into the water below. It makes a good 40 yards but just fails to make the tidal flats. Choosing a longer sling, Hayes lets off another volley. Now, the stone lands comfortably at the beginning of the shallows with a satisfying splash some 50 yards beyond their position.

‘
Het is goed
, it is good,’ Otto allows, ‘but do you really think it’s a fair counter against men with muskets?’

‘Ja,’
Wiebbe replies with a twinkle, ‘provided those
musquetten
have been wet through with big splashes from the lumps of coral landing all around them.’

Then Smit understands. If these stones make a direct hit on the invaders, that would be to the good, but that is not the main point. The point is to bombard them with so many stones from so many angles that water is thrown up all around and over them and the powder of their muskets is rendered sodden and useless.

Then,
then
they would see about a fair fight!

Subsequent trials determine just which kind of sling will be best for the purpose, and then others of the Defenders set about making them, as more and more of them – including Cornelis the once fat trumpeter – are obliged to sacrifice their pants.

Some of the Survivors who have recently joined the Defenders are carpenters, and they are kept particularly busy. Using the longest bits of driftwood that they can find, along with precious 16-inch nails recovered from the wreck, they are able to make pikes – long poles with a spear-like head – ready for action. Still not content,
they take some of the barrel hoops
from their empty barrels, break them, flatten them, sharpen one side and, by attaching them to small pieces of driftwood, soon have swords!

It looks like there is going to be a battle royal: evil and guns hard up against goodness and rocks. God will see them right, Hayes feels sure.

23 July 1629, on the approaches to Hayes’s Island

Divide et impera
.

It worked very well initially, so why not again? The more Jeronimus thinks about it, and he does so constantly, it seems to him that his best chance to destroy Wiebbe Hayes and his men is to turn them against each other.

It is with this in mind that on this day the young cadet and Mutineer Daniel Cornelisz – he who boasted that his sword was so sharp it went through Warner Dircxsz ‘as if he was butter’ – is being rowed across to Hayes’s Island. The firm, if not so precise, instructions of Jeronimus ring in young Daniel’s ears.
Divide et impera, divide et impera.
Once landed, he is to find a way to make contact with the French soldiers, who Jeronimus reasons will be less faithful to Hayes than his Dutch compatriots. Daniel is to pass them in secret a letter that Jeronimus has penned . . .

The closer that Cornelisz gets to the island, the more nervous he becomes. Just
how
, exactly, is he going to make contact with the six Frenchmen without alerting Wiebbe Hayes and the rest of his men? As a matter of fact, he realises as he is dropped in the shallows of the east coast’s only suitable landing spot and has to wade the rest of the way to the shore, he doesn’t know where to begin his search to find even one of Hayes’s men,
let alone the Frenchmen
.

He needn’t have worried.

For on Hayes’s Island a cry has just gone up from one of the lookouts whom Hayes has placed on his south-eastern shores. An approaching boatload of men has been spotted, the distant splash from their oars sparkling in the bright sunshine, the straining figures above those oars all curiously dressed in red.

No sooner does Cornelisz arrive on the island and climb the small cliff face to breast the plateau than he finds himself surrounded by six men with rough swords and sharp pikes, all pointed at him! What was Jeronimus, the brilliant strategist, thinking to have him landed on the island like this?

Just minutes later, the captive is frogmarched up to Wiebbe Hayes, who looks him over and commands that he be searched. It is Otto Smit who finds the letter secreted in the folds of Cornelisz’s cloak. Far from being seduced by it, the French soldiers are highly amused by it, as they translate it for Hayes, even mimicking Jeronimus’s sometimes lisping Friesan ‘accthent’.

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Oh, how they laugh! A secret compass? Really? So they ‘can go secretly with the little boat to the high land’ –
het Zuidland
– that lies to their east? Now, why would anyone want to do that, when they have more than they can possibly eat and drink right here? Jeronimus, clearly, has no idea, and they are all amazed at this ludicrous ploy to turn them from brothers to enemies.

In their skiff anchored in deep water just off the shallows that surround Hayes’s Island, the two Mutineers who have brought Daniel Cornelisz sit and wait, hoping for the smallest sign that the young man might be returning to them, might have accomplished his mission. As the hours pass and the sun begins to wane and then even to set, they are forced to the reluctant conclusion that something has gone wrong. Perhaps Daniel has been captured; fallen over in the mudflats and drowned; been bitten by a poisonous lizard; collapsed from exhaustion? Whatever the explanation, there is no doubt as to their course of action – they must set off back to Batavia’s Graveyard to report to the
Kapitein-Generaal
, leaving Daniel Cornelisz to his fate.

24 July 1629, Seals’ Island

And now it is time to do the final tidy-up of Seals’ Island. Jeronimus instructs Stonecutter – who, with the
Kapitein-Generaal’s
blessing, has now promoted himself all the way up to being a Lieutenant-General and insists on being so addressed – and three minor Mutineers who need ‘blooding’ to row the yawl across to the island and finish them off.

This time, the hunt is a little different. The island is narrow, it is broad daylight and, by starting at the southern end and systematically combing in a line towards the other, the four murderers efficiently flush out the three boys, who are found cowering together in spindly bushes on the northern tip. Instead of killing them outright, however, Lieutenant-General Stonecutter and the others laughingly capture them, truss them up and put them on the yawl, seemingly to come back to Batavia’s Graveyard. Then, mid-channel, he gives one of the three weeping lads, Claas Harmansz – the very boy who was spotted by Jeronimus searching for molluscs – an opportunity to save himself in the now time-honoured fashion. If he is untied, will he agree to throw his two companions overboard and then join them as a Mutineer? The wild-eyed Claas agrees to do exactly that and is as good as his word. Within two minutes, he has been untied and has pushed his two former friends to their watery graves. They disappear over the sides of the boat, their faces upturned to the light and the air that Claas still enjoys above, even as they sink to the depths. Though troubled, the youngster, Claas, arrives on the shores of Batavia’s Graveyard alive, as a fully fledged Mutineer, for
he has killed in cold blood
.

As it happens, Harmansz has joined the Mutineers at the very time that it is obvious to Jeronimus they are going to need more killers. Certainly, the best part of the killing on Batavia’s Graveyard, Seals’ Island and Traitors’ Island has been accomplished, but the fact that Daniel Cornelisz has not returned from Hayes’s Island – and has presumably been captured or killed – has highlighted just how critical that situation has become.

It is now urgent, thus, that the Hayes problem be eliminated, and as the last days of July begin to dribble away the way sand used to in the hourglass on the
Batavia
, Jeronimus and his most trusted lieutenants turn their attention to this very project.

25 July 1629, Batavia’s Graveyard

First things first, however. Eliminating those on Hayes’s Island might well be difficult. Getting rid of the weak on this island is much easier. And, on this morning, Jeronimus is bored. Having the power of life and death over people offers no satisfaction unless it is constantly exercised, and it has now been
days
since anyone has been killed on Batavia’s Graveyard itself. Thus, arriving unannounced at the tent of his long-time servant Rogier Decker – who is frying some fish – he commands him to come hither, upon which he offers the 17-year-old a glass of his finest wine and then hands him a gleaming silver dagger. ‘Go outside,’ he commands imperiously, ‘
en steek Hendrick Jansz door het hart,
and
stab Hendrick Jansz in the heart
.’

No more than two minutes later, the innocent carpenter Hendrick Jansz lies dead at Rogier’s feet, the pool of blood beneath him already beginning to congeal. Jansz was walking with Salomon Deschamps at the time. Though profoundly shocked, Deschamps did nothing to save his friend and does not protest afterwards. Jeronimus is enormously satisfied. This is not such a boring day after all.

Meanwhile, who is the lonely figure down by the beach, sitting there day after day and barely moving? It is either the
Predikant
or the man who once was the
Predikant
, depending on the way you look at it. A shattered, cripplingly lonely man with now only his daughter Judick surviving from his former family of nine, on bad days he can even curse the fact that he has survived at all. The Mutineers have kept him alive to tend to their rafts and boats whenever they launch from the beach or return to the shore. Occasionally, he can hear mutterings that they will ‘
let him live a little longer
, as we might make use of him to persuade the folk on the other island to come over to us’. The main thing for the moment, they tell him, is that he must not weep, that he must ‘be
stil
, silent, or you go the same way’.

There are only two occasions when the
Predikant
does not feel completely desolate. The first is when he reads his Bible – searching for solace among the tear-stained passages – and the second is when he manages to talk to Judick.

Father and daughter contrive to meet once a day for a short time, usually when Coenraat van Huyssen is off somewhere intimidating people. When they do dare to meet, though they try to present to each other as brave a front as possible, usually the fair facade crumbles quickly to reveal the devastation within.

‘
Judick, my only child
,’ often laments the
Predikant
, ‘you must look tomorrow to see whether I have been murdered.’

And though Judick shakes her head and sobs, not wanting it to ever be true, she knows in her heart it is every bit possible. The fact that he is Coenraat van Huyssen’s de facto father-in-law will not save him, any more than it saved the rest of her family.

That afternoon on Batavia’s Graveyard, all is not right in the world of Jeronimus, despite the morning’s satisfying killing. Yes, he is now the master of the island, unchallenged in his total authority over all those living upon it. And he is enjoying all the privileges of power, from the fawning he receives from his subjects to the wealth that lies in his tent, to his access to the finest wines and foods that the stricken
Batavia
had to offer – and he particularly enjoys wearing only the finest silks, with a new outfit every day. But something is missing, something that continues to gnaw at him.