The Sea Beggars (39 page)

While he stood listening, he saw the watch moving up and down the far bank, looking for him, their lanterns swaying out over the canal, throwing gleaming patches of yellow light onto the flat water. They called back and forth, and sometimes men answered on the bank over his head, so that he knew where they were and could hide from them. His feet were numb from cold. He hated the men up there so much he caught himself snarling silently in the darkness whenever their voices rang out. The rope over his shoulder was wearing a rut into his flesh.

Once, someone saw him, or perhaps it was a lucky guess; a musket went off on the far side of the canal, and the bullet plowed into the bank a foot from Michael's face. His stomach heaved. He could be that dead man in there; he could be yielding up that ripe aroma of blood and cooling flesh.

He was that man, he told himself. That man, and every other victim of the Duke of Alva. For a long while he did not move, although the chill crept into his bones and turned his feet and legs to unfeeling lumps; he knew now what a burden he bore.

At last they were gone. He heard them moving away down the canal, calling to one another, and he dragged the boat on to the next turning, out of sight of the enemy. There under the dangling branches of a tree, he pulled himself up into the boat and took the oars once more. Only when he was half a mile on, rowing toward his bakery, did he remember that he had been supposed to wait at that turn for the others. He shrugged. That did not matter. If there were any others left, they were busy enough with their own safety, and he had the bakery, the ovens, the skill to make use of the flour. He could not worry about those other people now, anyway; worrying about them divided his mind and soul; and now he had to be strong. He rowed on, into the fine dawn light, into the warmth of the morning.

Nearly a week later, Michael stood in the square before the cathedral with a mass of other people to witness the execution of the King's justice. He looked among the rows of men and women brought forth to die, and when he saw Clement there he was not surprised at all.

Clement could barely walk. His arms hung limp at his sides and his face was gray as old paper. He held his head high as a crowned king. When on his way to the stake he passed by Michael, their eyes met for a moment. Michael struggled to keep his face impassive; not a trace of recognition showed in Clement's expression. The tips of his fingers were mashed and raw, and deep blackened burns showed on his palms and lips; he had been tortured.

Michael knew that Clement had kept his secrets, in spite of the torture, because he, Michael, was still free. That was why Clement held his head so high as he walked to his death: he had defeated the Spaniards once again. Michael felt no pity for him. Even when Clement and the others were tied to the stake and burned, he felt only a grim satisfaction in their defiance. His defiance. Scourged of the softness and kindness of his youth, he knew himself strong as any Spaniard. As the smoke rolled up from the fires and the people writhed and burned, he even smiled.

The Governor Del Rio watched the executions from the porch of the cathedral, with his aides around him. The crowd that had come to watch seemed much smaller than that which had witnessed the previous executions, but that did not surprise him, since so many had left Antwerp and so many had died. What did surprise him was the silence of this crowd. Earlier crowds had cried out, moaned, prayed, cursed, surged back and forth the better to see it all, and wept for pity and horror. Today these people stood like soldiers in neat rows and watched and were still as rocks. Their faces were hard. He wondered uneasily what he could do now to make an impression on them. He realized with a rising panic that somehow he had lost his power over them.

16

“Magnificent! Wonderful!” The Duke of Alva paced across the room, his long strides sweeping the carpet. At the far wall he wheeled and glared at the little semicircle of his officers, waiting by his desk. “The Spanish navy has struck a great blow for Christ. At last they have driven the Beggars from the sea.”

He swung out one arm like a scythe and knocked down a lamp standard.

“While the Spanish army dawdles and haggles and lets itself be put off by a crew of merchants and storemen!”

A page ran to pick up the iron standard. The clay lamp had broken; a puddle of oil soaked into the carpet. Alva strode back through the office, scowling at the floor, his hands on his hips, his cocked elbows spread.

Luis del Rio, the King's governor in Antwerp, was among the six men looking on. The news of the great victory over the Sea Beggars off the coast of Friesland filled him with relief, and he was unwilling to ask the hard questions that Alva's flamboyant announcement left so ominously unanswered.

Alva said in a low voice, “The navy will have the King's ear for this, and we shall have nothing. Nothing.”

Del Rio was watching Alva's face. The old soldier looked tired, and less than triumphant. Perhaps it was only that the victory had fallen to the navy and not the army. Maybe it was jealousy that kept him from rejoicing fully at this great news.

He had fought wars since his childhood, had Alva, and never lost. Not until now. He put all his faith in the simple Aristotelian logic of force: attack weakness, avoid strength, keep your men fit and well armed. By all the laws of his experience, the Low Countries should have submitted to him as tamely as the Indians to Cortez, by the fact of their several natures. But here the roles were different. He despised the Dutch for merchants and traders, but here their mercantile laws prevailed; and it all came down, in the end, not to strength, fear or faith, or even truth, but to money.

“Your Excellency,” said Viglius, the councillor, “when can we expect some money from Spain?”

Alva grunted explosively. He turned his back on the half ring of his advisers.

“Your Excellency, the army has not been paid in months. They will not fight. Fortunate we are that Orange and the others have not chosen this moment to attack. We need money to meet the payroll, or the troops will mutiny.”

“Surely,” del Rio said, “now that the navy has destroyed the Beggar fleet, a shipment of money will come through.”

Alva wheeled around to face them, his jaw clenched tight as a shark's. His eyes gleamed. For a moment he faced them in silence. Del Rio thought.
He is wondering how much to tell us
, and a cold tingle of alarm ran down his spine.

“No,” Alva said, abruptly. “They have not destroyed the Beggar fleet. They hurt them—that was all. They caught them, finally, and did them some damage. That was all.”

He shook his head; his long face worked through a frown. “What about the tenth penny? How much have we collected?”

Del Rio cleared his throat. This was his business. He said, “In Antwerp, almost nothing. In the northern Provinces, some few revenues, but they are poor up there. The great cities are refusing the tax.”

“The Estates voted it! They must pay it.”

“Excellency, they are refusing to trade. It is a tax on trade. If they will sell nothing, buy nothing, there is nothing to tax.”

“How can they refuse to trade? It is their lives.”

Alva swung to face him; del Rio lifted his chin, to look his chief in the eyes. “Because they hate us, Excellency. They would rather die than help us.”

“God's blood,” said Alva. “Would we could slaughter them all.”

“Your Excellency.” Del Rio leaned forward, intent on what he said, as if he could force his thoughts into the duke's skull. “Even if you slew every Calvinist, these people would stand against you. It is not merely the Calvinists here, it is everyone—Catholics too. What you have done, Excellency, by your oppressions, is drive them together, to confront us as one people.”

Alva stiffened. His mouth thinned to an angry slit. “What are you trying to say, Luis?”

“Excellency, I am saying you have failed here. Your policy has failed. In fact your policy has strengthened the opposition to the Crown, and made the King's name despised here.”

The long hard Spanish face of the Duke of Alva tightened into a mask. He jerked his head at Del Rio. “Get out.”

“Your Excellency.” Del Rio bowed deep and started past the other councillors to the door.

“All of you,” Alva snapped. “Get out!”

They shuffled away after del Rio into the antechamber, where at once they let out a round of sighs, a gusty wind of relief. Viglius laughed, shaky.

“We'll turn this placid Brussels into the breezy Bermoothes.” He put out his hand to del Rio. “Your courage is your escutcheon, my lord.”

“Your loyalty wears a bend sinister,” said Don Federico de Alvarez, Alva's son. Gloomy, he walked away across the room to the window, his back to the others.

“What do you think he will do now?” said the governor of Mechlin, with a twitch of his head in the direction of Alva's room.

Del Rio drifted off, letting Viglius manage these idle speculations. At the window he joined Don Federico. They stood side by side, looking out over the park to the busy streets of the capital.

“I can't understand it,” said Alva's son. “We win every battle, but they will not see reason and surrender.”

“We have lost control of the sea,” Del Rio said. “The navy must do more than win honorary battles and inflated triumphs if we are to regain it. And there is another thing. You know the legend of Antaeus?”

The tall man shrugged. “I don't recognize the name.” He was not young anymore, although del Rio thought of him as young; he had grown middle-aged in his father's shadow.

“It's a story from Greek times,” del Rio said. “Heracles fought Antaeus, whose mother was the earth; as long as Antaeus touched the earth, her strength sustained him, and he could not be beaten.” He waved his hand at the tree-filled park, the crowded city, the distant hazy farmlands beyond. “This is the Dutch earth.”

“You think we cannot win.”

“We cannot win your father's way.”

Don Federico spun toward him, taller than he was, tanned from the sun. “God is only testing us. Let our hearts be strong, and we shall triumph. We must triumph. For God's love.” His hand chopped the air. “We are the Spanish army! We have fought the Italians, the Germans, the French, the Moors, the feathered warriors of Montezuma, and destroyed them all. We are the greatest force on earth! How can a leaderless crowd of bakers and brewers, moneymen and pirates stand against us?”

Del Rio said, “I admire your zeal. At my age, passion's only a forewarning of indigestion. Let me ask you this—what think you honestly of your father's policy?”

The dark fierce face turned away, out to the window again, toward the open, the sky, the broad plain. “It's not soldier's work—to hang men up to die. If we cannot beat them in a fair fight, we might as well go home.”

Grasping the younger man's arm, del Rio embraced him. “God have mercy on you. While such as you live, I have no fear for Spain.”

“I am—” Don Federico grimaced. “Out of my time.”

“Perhaps.”

“What will you do now?”

“What do you mean?”

“I know you, Luis. When you speak as you did to my father just now, it is no idle volley, but the opening salvo to a long engagement. You mean to change his policies. How?”

“I have no faith in my ability to change the mind of Don Fernando de Alvarez.”

“What, then?”

“We will write to the King. Ask for his removal.”

Don Federico's lips twitched. His eyes burned dark as coals. “Well,” he said. “Good. I am tired of being here.” He turned and walked away, out of the room.

17

Leaving Antwerp, Hanneke followed the highway south, sleeping under trees and digging turnips and onions from the fields on either side when hunger drove her to it. There were other people traveling away out of the Low Countries; she found company often with others going into exile.

They talked of the future, where they were going, what they would do. No one really knew, Hanneke least of all.

At the border, she helped a widowed farmwife spin her season's flax, staying there for fourteen days to do it. For her labor she got some clothes and a sack of cheeses, which she took over the border into Germany and sold in a city market for a little money.

The German Empire, a patchwork of hundreds of great and little states, ordered its churches by the principle of
cujus regio, hujus religio
, meaning that the persuasion of each ruler became the faith of his people. The place where she found herself being Catholic, she made for the Palatinate, whose prince was Calvinist. On the way she fell into company with a German family taking the same road north. The wife was very genial and kept Hanneke by her to talk through a whole day's travel. Hanneke, glad of the companionship, questioned none of it. They stopped at an inn that night, and foolishly Hanneke let herself be convinced to put her little hoard of money into the hands of the wife for safekeeping over the night. When she woke in the morning, the whole family, kind and kith and kindred, was gone.

When she asked for them the innkeeper laughed at her. A heavyset man in middle age, he watched her through small pale eyes that never seemed to blink. “Gone,” he said. “Sneaked away in the deepest morning, before the sun woke—took your pennies with them, did they?” He laughed again.

She stood still, her hands hanging limp at her sides, and the tears welling like fire in her eyes. Suddenly she wanted her mother with a longing more intense than any hunger, any thirst: wanted her mother and the safety and familiarity of her own home.

“They went on toward Württemberg,” the innkeeper said, and waved his arm vaguely down the road. “If you hurry maybe you can catch up with them.”

She gulped. Even if she caught them, what would she do? She could not force them to give back her money. She shut her eyes. If she thought hard enough, perhaps this greasy kitchen with its stench of pickled cabbage and old beer would vanish, and when she looked up again she would be back in her home in the Canal Street in Antwerp, before the thunderous knocking on the door broke down the circle of her world, that day so long ago when her father disappeared.