The Covenant (18 page)

Captain Saltwood found no time to enjoy these sights, for he was preoccupied with two serious problems: he had traded so masterfully that his ship now contained a fortune of real magnitude and must be protected from pirates; but the fortune could not be realized unless he got his ship safely past the fort at Malacca, across the seas, around the Cape of Good Hope, through the storms of the equator, and home to Plymouth. It was with these apprehensions that he anchored in the roadstead off Java and was rowed ashore to bargain with the Chinese merchants who might want his rhinoceros horns.

While the
Acorn
lay at anchor, waiting until the next fleet formed for the journey to Europe, Jack had an opportunity to explore the trading center that the Dutch had established on Java. He lounged by the waterside, learning to identify the varied craft that worked these Asian waters: carracks with their bristling guns, swift flutes from Holland, the amazing proas from the islands—by shifting the location of their mast, they could sail in either direction with equal speed—and best of all, the towering East Indiamen.

It was while watching one of these monsters unload that he became aware of a tall, thin Dutchman who seemed always to preempt the best cargo for his warehouse, which stood close to the harbor. Traders called him Mijnheer van Doorn, and he seemed a most austere person, overly conscious of his position, even though he could not have been more than twenty-three. Jack was awed by his stiff dignity and spoke to him in broken English, which Van Doorn as a trader had to know.

“Where you from?” the Dutchman asked, looking down as if from a great and sovereign height.

“Many days.”

“You’re not black. You’re not yellow. Where?”

“Setting sun.”

The interrogation was so unsatisfactory that Van Doorn summoned a sailor from the
Acorn
and asked, “Where’s this fellow from?” and the man replied, “Picked him up at the Cape of Good Hope.”

“Hmmmm!” Van Doorn stepped back, looked down his long nose at the little fellow, and said, “The Cape, is it a fine place?” Jack, understanding nothing of this, laughed and was about to retreat when he spotted a white person about his own size, a boy of thirteen whom Van Doorn treated affectionately.

“Your boy?” Jack asked.

“My brother,” Van Doorn replied, and for the last two months that Captain Saltwood idled off Java, Jack and this white lad played together. They were of equal size and equal mental development, each striving to understand the complex world of Batavia. They formed an attractive pair, a thin little brown man with bandy legs, a stout Dutch lad with blond hair and wide shoulders, and they could be seen together in each of the quarters allocated to the different nationalities: Malay, Indian, Arab, Balinese, and the small area in which the industrious Chinese purchased almost anything offered for sale, but only at the prices they set.

One day young Van Doorn explained that Dutch children had two names; his other one was Willem. “What’s yours?” he asked.

“Horda,” his playmate said with a blizzard of click sounds. “And his name?” he asked, pointing to the older Van Doorn.

“Karel.” And while Jack was repeating the two names, Willem produced his surprise. Having noticed that Jack owned only the clothes he wore, he had procured from the Compagnie warehouse an additional pair of trousers and a shirt, but when Jack put them on he looked ridiculous, for they had been cut to fit stout Dutchmen, not dwarfish brown persons.

“I can sew,” Jack said reassuringly, but after the clothes were altered he reflected that aboard the
Acorn
whenever one man gave another something, the recipient was supposed to give something in return, and he very much wanted to give Willem van Doorn a gift, but he could not imagine what. Then he remembered the ivory bracelet hidden in his pouch, but when he handed it to Willem it was too small to fit his stout wrist. It was dour Karel who solved the problem. Taking a silver chain from the Compagnie stock, he fastened the ivory circle to it, then hung the chain about Willem’s neck, where the combination of silver, ivory and the lad’s fair complexion made a fine show.

That night Captain Saltwood, richer than he had ever dreamed because of the trade he made on the rhino horns, informed his crew that since no other ships were preparing to depart for home, the
Acorn
had no alternative but to make a run up the Straits of Malacca to join with some English fleet forming in India. “It will be a grave adventure,” he warned his men, and they spent that night preparing their muskets and pikes.

At dawn Jack wanted to slip ashore to say farewell to his Dutch friend, but Captain Saltwood would not permit this, for he wished no
interference from Dutch authorities and intended sailing without their knowledge or approval. So Jack stood at the railing of the
Acorn
, looking vainly for his companion. Willem knew nothing of the departure, but toward eleven a Dutch sailor ran into the Compagnie warehouse, shouting, “The English ship is sailing!” and Willem, fingering his ivory gift, stood by the water’s edge watching the ship and its little brown fellow disappear.

It required two weeks for the
Acorn
to transit Java waters, sail along the coast of Sumatra and past the myriad islands that made this sea a wonderland of beauty as well as fortune, but in time the sailors could see that land was beginning to encroach on each side of the ship, and they knew they were headed directly into the critical part of their voyage. To port lay Sumatra, a nest of pirates. To starboard stood the massive fortress of Malacca, impervious to sieges, with nearly seventy major guns on its battlements. And fore and aft would be the pestilential little boats filled with daring men trying to board and steal the prize.

The fight, if it came, would be even, for the
Acorn
was manned by men of Plymouth, grandsons of those doughty fellows who with Drake had routed the ships of King Philip’s Armada. They did not intend to be boarded or sunk.

It was Captain Saltwood’s strategy to remain hidden behind one of the many islands to satisfy himself that there was adequate wind, and then to run the gauntlet at night when the Portuguese might be inattentive, and this plan would have succeeded except that some Malay sailor, lounging on the northern shore, saw the attempted passage and sounded an alarm.

It was midnight when the battle began, great guns flashing from the fort, small boats darting out in an attempt to set fire to the English ship, larger boats trying to ram and board. Jack understood what was happening and knew from conversation with the sailors what tortures he and the others might expect if their ship was taken, but he was not prepared for the violent heroism of his English mates. They fought like demons, firing their pistols, thrusting and stabbing with their pikes.

Dawn found them safely past the looming fortress, with only a few small craft still trying to impede them; like a bristling beetle ignoring ants, the
Acorn
swayed ahead, its sailors shooting and jabbing their attackers, and before long, pulled away. The dangerous passage was completed.

In India, Captain Saltwood faced a major disappointment: no English fleet would sail this year. So once more he went on alone, a daring man carrying with him enough wealth to found a family and perhaps even acquire a residence in some cathedral town. Getting home became an obsession, and he sailed the
Acorn
accordingly.

At Ceylon, pirates tried to board; off Goa, Portuguese adventurers had to be repulsed. South of Hormuz the Plymouth men ran into real danger, and at Moçambique two crazed carracks lumbered out to give chase on the remote chance that they might take a prize, but when the
Acorn
sailed serenely on, they abandoned the pursuit. Finally Sofala was passed to starboard, with Captain Saltwood saluting the unseen merchant who had sold him the rhinoceros horn. The southern coast of Africa guided them westward, and the morning came when a sailor shouted, “I see Table Mountain!” and Captain Saltwood himself handed him the silver coin, saying, “We’re one step nearer home.”

When the bay was reached and the longboat prepared, Jack said farewell to his accidental friends, standing on tiptoe to embrace them. Once ashore, he walked slowly inland, pausing now and again to look back at the ship whose victories and tribulations he had shared for nearly four years. But the moment came when the next hill must close him off forever from the
Acorn
, and when he passed this and began to see familiar rocks and the spoor of animals he had always known, a strange thing occurred. He began divesting himself of the sailor’s uniform he had worn these many months. Off came the shirt, the carefully sewn trousers, the leather shoes. He did not throw them away, nor the extra raiment given him by the young Dutch boy at Java, but tied them carefully into a little bundle, which knocked reassuringly against his leg as he walked homeward.

When he reached his village he was sucking a clove stolen at Java, and when his old friends poured out to greet him, he breathed a strange odor upon them, and undid his bundle to display what he carried, and to each he gave a clove in remembrance of the many times during the past four years that he had thought of them.

By 1640 the grim-faced Dutchmen who proposed to rule the East from Java had endured enough: “Those damned Portuguese at Malacca must be destroyed.” In stinging reports to the Lords XVII, the businessmen who controlled the East Indies Company from their
dark offices in Amsterdam, they had complained: “The Catholic fiends in Malacca have sunk our ships for the last time. We are prepared to besiege their fortress for seven years if necessary.”

The Lords XVII might have rejected this daring proposal had not a gentleman whose grandfather was burned at the stake while trying to protect Dutch Protestantism from the fury of Spain’s Duke of Alva argued passionately: “Our fortunes teeter in the balance. Malacca must be destroyed.” His oratory carried, and plans to crush the Portuguese had been approved, not by the Dutch government but by Jan Compagnie. The hardheaded citizens of Holland knew in what kind of hands responsibility should be placed. Merchants with something to protect would know how to protect it.

When authorization reached Java the local Dutchmen responded enthusiastically. Funds were made available. New ships were built. Javanese natives in sarongs were taught to handle tasks afloat. And of equal importance, ambassadors were dispatched to large and petty kingdoms to assure them that when the Dutch moved against Malacca their interest was not territorial: “We intend to take no land belonging to others. But we must stop the Portuguese piracy.”

Among the ambassadors chosen for this ticklish task was Karel van Doorn, now twenty-five and with a solid reputation as a loyal Compagnie servant. He was severe, honest, humorless, and gifted with an understanding of finance and the profitable management of Compagnie slaves.

Such promotions as Karel had achieved were due principally to his mother, the stalwart widow of an official who had been killed while endeavoring to extend Compagnie holdings in the Spice Islands. He had been a man of enormous energy; by arrogance, bluff, courage and expropriation he had protected the Compagnie; by chicanery, theft, falsification and diversion he had at the same time built up his own clandestine trading interests—a thing severely forbidden—and in so doing, had accumulated a considerable wealth which he had been trying to smuggle back to Holland when he died. His widow, Hendrickje, now found herself with a growing fortune which she could spend only in Java.

Fortunately, she flourished in the tropics, and as soon as the Dutch destroyed the Javanese city of Jacatra and began building opposite its ruins their own capital, Batavia, she appropriated one of the choicest locations on the Tijgergracht (Tiger Canal) and there built herself a mansion. Curiously, it could have stood unnoticed on
any street in Amsterdam, for it was done in massive Dutch style, with heavy stone walls and red-tiled roof protecting it from snows which never came. Thick partitions separated the rooms, which were illuminated by very small windows, and wherever a breeze might have entered, some heavy piece of furniture shut it out.

The only concession indicating that this massive house stood in the tropics was a garden of surpassing beauty, filled with the glorious flowers of Java and punctuated with handsome statuary imported from China. In this garden, to the sound of the tinkling gamelan comprised of eleven musicians, many decisions regarding Dutch fortunes in the East were reached.

Mevrouw van Doorn, a voluptuous blonde who might have been painted by Frans Hals, who did paint her mother, had arrived in 1618 when that notable administrator Jan Pieterszoon Coen was running affairs in his harsh, capable style, and she had quickly endeared herself to him, supporting him eagerly no matter what he did. She heard him warn the populace that acts of immorality among servants must cease, and when one of her maids became pregnant she herself dragged the frightened girl to Coen’s headquarters and was present in the square when the girl was beheaded. The young man involved was also sharply reprimanded.

Two obsessions controlled her life: business and religion. It had been she who goaded her husband into setting up his illegal private businesses, one after another. It had been she who supervised those operations, earning a profit of sixty percent a year when the Lords XVII could make only forty. And it had been she who sequestered the stolen funds when they reached Batavia. Indeed, her husband’s estate was now so complicated that she dared not risk returning to Holland lest it fall in chaos. As she reported to her younger sister in Haarlem: