The Covenant (21 page)

The celebrations lasted three days, and were especially vivacious in that many of the leaders of Batavian society had departed on the Christmas fleet, so that those who remained felt obligated to show extra enthusiasm to replace that which had been lost. People ate and drank till they were near senseless, then slept sprawled on beds and floors until the soft music awakened them so that they could sing and dance and eat themselves into another stupor. At times some amorous woman, having dreamed of this party for weeks, or one whose husband had left on the fleet, would catch a stout burgher as he was about to go to bed, and she would join him in one of the smaller rooms, often retaining the fan-boy to keep the humidity lowered.

Mevrouw van Doorn’s two sons watched the New Year’s celebrations with detached interest; stern Karel had observed the carryingson in previous years and judged them to be the inevitable release of spirits by people who were far from home and sentenced to live among natives they did not respect. He had no wife as yet, nor any intention of finding one for the present, and whenever some lady far in drink wanted to drag him into a corner, he smiled wanly and moved away. In previous years young Willem had usually been kept away from the rowdier celebrations, but now that he was both a practiced ambassador and a frontline soldier, to do so any longer would be incongruous, so he wandered among the guests, listened to the music and watched with unusual attention the prettier slave girls.

“It’s time he should go,” his mother conceded as she saw him follow one serving girl into the kitchens, and when the party was over, and the borrowed musicians had returned to their accustomed places, she ordered her carriage with its six attendants and rode down the streets of Batavia to the Compagnie headquarters.

“I should like the two passages on the
Haerlem
,” she said crisply, and the documents were handed over.

Since the three swift vessels would not depart until the seventeenth of January, overtaking the main fleet somewhere in the vicinity of St. Helena, where fresh stores would be taken aboard, the brothers had two full weeks of farewells. Young Willem spent his in visiting numerous friends, but Karel reported each day to the Compagnie offices, mastering details of that year’s intended sales and purchases. He took note of the various fleets that would sail east and north, and of the captains who would command them; at times, as he studied the complex operations, he felt that he was sitting like a spider at the heart of a web, controlling the destinies of half a world. There were now no Portuguese in Malacca; those Straits were Dutch. There were no other Europeans at Nagasaki, either; Japan was now exclusively a Dutch concession. English vessels still stopped at their little entrepôt but were no longer allowed in the Spice Islands; and even the occasional French merchantman, its sails ragged from the long voyage out, had to obey regulations set down by the Dutch.

“We rule the seas,” he exclaimed one morning when the full power of Jan Compagnie was revealed.

“No,” an older man cautioned. “The English are beginning to rule India. And the Portuguese still control Macao and the China trade.”

“Let them have the tea and ginger,” Karel conceded, “so long as we keep the spices.”

When the brothers approached the three ships, they could smell the spices from a considerable distance, for the holds were crammed with last-minute sacks and bundles from the eastern islands; the ships moved in a splendid ambience, reeking of fortunes and the promise of gold. They were taking the heart of Asia to the center of Europe, and each ship represented a greater wealth than many small nations would handle in an entire year. Jan Compagnie controlled Java, and Java controlled the seas.

On the fourth day, after the little ships had passed through Sunda Strait, a vigorous storm arose, with visibility almost nonexistent. Great winds raged for three days, and when the low clouds lifted, the
Haerlem
was alone. The captain fired cannons, listened for replies, and when none came, followed the basic rule of navigation: “If separated, proceed to the point of rendezvous.” Without further apprehension
as to the fate of the
Schiedam
and
Olifant
, he headed for St. Helena and the body of the fleet.

It would take more than two months to negotiate this distance, and as the
Haerlem
sailed westward, sunrise at her back, sunset glowing ahead, spars creaking and sails filled by reassuring winds, the brothers speculated as to what might have happened to their sister ships. “They’re good captains,” Karel said. “I know them, and they know the oceans. They’re out there somewhere, because if we survived, so did they.”

“Will we see them?” Willem asked, peering always toward the horizon, as if on this vast sea three tiny ships might accidentally converge.

“Not likely. They may have rushed ahead. They may have lagged. We’ll see them at St. Helena.”

“You think they’re afloat?”

“I’m sure of it.”

On the long reach, it became apparent that the Van Doorn brothers were heading for Holland with conflicting motivations. For Karel, who had been born there and who vaguely remembered both his mother’s home in Haarlem and his father’s in Amsterdam, it was merely a return to the seats of power where he must establish himself with the Lords XVII against the day when he would become governor-general of Java. For Willem it was quite another matter. He was afraid of Holland, not because he knew anything adverse about it but because he loved the East so much. Those days with the little brown man, wandering through the various quarters and meeting traders from all nations, had enchanted him, while the languorous trip to Formosa had awakened him to the magnitude of his birthland. He was not old enough to comprehend the limitations he suffered as a Java-born Dutchman, and he simply refused to believe that a man born in Amsterdam was inherently superior to one born in Batavia.

When he questioned Karel about this, his austere brother frowned. “The Java Dutch are mainly scum. Would you even dream of marrying a girl from one of those families?” This perplexed young Willem, for not only had he dreamed of marrying the Van der Kamp girl; he had also dreamed quite actively of marrying the little Balinese who served as his mother’s maid.

Next morning, for reasons he could not have explained, he rummaged in his gear, found Jack’s ivory bracelet still attached to its
silver chain, and defiantly placed it about his neck. When Karel saw this he said sharply, “Take that silly thing off. You look like a Javanese.”

“That’s how I want to look,” and from then on, the bracelet was rarely absent.

In the middle of March unfavorable winds were encountered, and although the crew remained remarkably healthy, the captain grew apprehensive about his water supply and announced that he was planning to stop at the Cape of Good Hope, where fresh water would surely be available and bartering cattle with the little brown people a possibility.

During the reddish sunset Willem remained aloft, savoring his first glimpse of the famous rock, and even after the sun had sunk beneath the cold Atlantic, the curve of earth allowed its rays to illuminate the great flat area, and he noticed that the sailors relaxed, for they considered the Cape the halfway point, not in days, for the run to Amsterdam would be long and tedious, but in spirit, for the alien quality of the spice lands was behind them. The Indian Ocean had been traversed; the homeward passage through the Atlantic lay ahead.

At dawn on March 25 Willem did not see Table Mountain, for as so often happened in these cold waters a wind had risen, bringing clouds but no rain; the flat summit was obliterated. But then the wind abated, and toward noon the lookout shouted, “Ship ahoy!” and there, nestled at the far end of the bay, rode a little merchant vessel. The chief mate and a few oarsmen were dispatched in the skiff to ascertain who she was, but as they drew away, the weather closed in, a stout wind from the southeast forcing the
Haerlem
’s captain to make sail close-hauled. The other ship became lost to sight as the wind freshened to storm level, pushing the
Haerlem
toward shore.

At this point it was still in no real danger, but now the wind veered crazily, so that sails which had been trimmed to hold the ship offshore became instruments for driving it on. “Cut the spritsail!” shouted the captain, but it was too late; fresh blasts caught the sails and drove the little ship hard aground. When the captain tried to swing it around, hoping that other gusts would blow it loose, rolling seas came thundering in. Timbers shivered. Masts creaked. Sails that had been cut loose whipped through the air. And when night fell, the
Haerlem
was hopelessly wrecked and would probably break apart before morning.

“Anchor chain has parted!” a watchman’s alarm pierced the night, and the Van Doorn brothers expected the ship to go down. The captain ordered four cannon shots to be fired, trusting that this would alert the other ship to the peril, but the message was not understood. “By the grace of God, our only Helper,” as the captain wrote in his log, “the power of the waves abated. We were not ripped apart. And when dawn broke we saw that while our position was hopeless, we were close enough to shore to save those aboard.” In the misty morning the skiff returned to report that the ship in the roads was the
Olifant
, so a longboat was lowered and made for the beach, but the
Haerlem
’s men watched with dismay as the boat foundered in the pounding surf, drowning one sailor who could not swim.

“We must get ashore!” Karel shouted to the captain.

“There is no way,” the captain replied, but Karel judged that if he could lash two barrels together, they would float him ashore, and it was on this rig that Karel and Willem van Doorn landed at the Cape of Good Hope.

The following days were a nightmare. Led by the Van Doorns, the crew of the
Olifant
tried three different times to reach the sinking
Haerlem
, but always the surf pounded their longboat so that they had to retreat. Fortunately, two English merchantmen sailed into the bay, homeward bound from Java, and with daring seamanship a boat from the
Haerlem
succeeded in reaching them with a request for help. To the surprise of the Dutch, the English crew agreed to aid in transferring the smaller items of cargo to the
Olifant
, and for some days they labored at this as if they were in the pay of Amsterdam: “… a hundred sockels of mace, eighty-two barrels of raw camphor, eighty bales of choice cinnamon, not wet, and five large boxes of Japanese coats decorated in gold and silver.” And when this arduous work was completed the English captains offered to carry forty of the
Haerlem
’s crew to St. Helena, where they could join the main Dutch fleet on its way to Amsterdam.

But before these good Samaritans sailed, Willem was given a task which he would often recall. “Fetch all letters from the post-office stones,” he was told, and when he started to ask what a post-office stone was, an officer shouted, “Get on with it.”

Ashore, he asked some older hands what he must do, and they explained the system and designated two young sailors to protect him as he roamed the beach, even to the foot of Table Mountain, looking for any large stones which might have been engraved by passing
crews. Some covered nothing, but most had under them small packets of letters, wrapped in various ways for protection, and when he held these frail documents in his hands he tried to visualize the cities to which the letters were directed: Delft, Lisbon, Bristol, Nagasaki. The names were like echoes of all he had heard on the voyage so far, the sacred names of sailors’ memories. One letter, addressed to a woman in Madrid, had lain beneath its rock for seven years, and as he stared at it he wondered if she would still be living when it now arrived, or if she would remember the man who had posted it.

He brought nineteen letters back to the English ships, but six were addressed to Java and other islands to the east. Gravely, as part of the ritual of the sea, the English mate accepted responsibility for seeing that the thirteen European letters were forwarded, after which Willem took the others ashore for reposting under a conspicuous rock.

When the English ships departed, the Dutch had time to survey their situation, and it was forbidding. It was impossible in this remote spot to make the gear that would have been required to refloat the
Haerlem
. It had to be abandoned. But its lower holds still contained such enormous wealth that neither the
Olifant
, nor the
Schiedam
if put into Table Bay, could possibly convey it all back to Holland. A temporary fortress of some kind must be built ashore; the remaining cargo must then be taken to it; and a cadre of men must remain behind to protect the treasure while the bulk of the crew sailed home in the
Olifant
.

Almost immediately the work began, and the foundations for the fort had scarcely been outlined when the work party heard cannon fire, and into the roadstead came the
Schiedam
. Though marred by the disastrous grounding of the
Haerlem
, it was a joyous reunion of the three crews, and soon so many sailors were working to construct the fort that the captain had to say, “Clear most of them out. They’re getting in each other’s way.”

Now came the exhausting task of rafting the bulk of the
Haerlem
’s cargo ashore, and with speed lest the battered ship break apart. The Van Doorns worked on deck, supervising the winches that hauled precious bales aloft, and when three sailors were sent to the lower hold to shovel loose peppercorns into bags, Karel directed: “You’re not to leave a single bag down there. It’s precious.”

But soon the men hurried aloft, gasping, and when Karel demanded why they had left their posts, they pointed below and said, “Impossible.”

But since rich stores lay beneath the deck, Karel leaped down into the hold; the sailors had been right. Salt water, leaking into the pepper, had begun a fermentation so powerful that a deadly gas was being released. Choking and clutching at his throat, Karel tried to get back on deck, but his feet slipped on the oily peppercorns, and he fell, knocking his head against a bulkhead.