The Sea Beggars (4 page)

Once he opened his heart to fear a thousand fears came at him. Jan was dead, surely, or he would have gone home to eat. Jan had been carried off, or he would not have left the wharf in the first place. Jan was lying somewhere dying, and Mies could not find him to help him—

Someone jumped him, striking him down. Mies rebounded with the energy of dread and despair and laid about him with the lantern. The dark figure of his attacker staggered backward, and Mies leapt at him, roaring. With the lantern Mies clubbed him fiercely down. The lantern's bowl broke and sprayed oil over the stumbling man, which sprang alight, burning, burning, on his coat, his hair, his arms. Screaming, the man ran off down the street, while Mies panted for breath behind him. Mies flung down the lantern's handle and went on.

Whatever happened to him, he welcomed; that was God's will. But not for his son. “Jan,” he bellowed, his voice harsh with fatigue and use. “Jan van Cleef!” And got no answer.

In her bedroom Hanneke's mother was praying loudly, as if to shout in God's ears would force Him to hear her. Hanneke clenched her fists in her lap and stared out the window into Antwerp.

The street below was dark and empty. The night lay heavy over the city. Whatever was happening out there she saw no sign of. Her father had not come home; her brother had not come home. There was nothing to do but wait.

Now here came the watch, a little glowing ball of light like a shell around the three men with their halberds. Hanneke sprang up from her chair and ran down the stairs to the front door.

“Hanneke!” her mother shrieked. “Be careful!”

Hanneke opened the door and went out onto the walk to the gate, in her mind cursing her mother: how could she be uncareful in her own garden? She leaned against the iron bars of the gate and pressed her face between them, as she had when she was a little girl, and waited.

The watch went by her, the lantern creaking on the end of its pole, and at the next street corner stopped.

“Ten of the clock,” the watchman called, “and the city's full of terrors. Stay in your houses, good people of Antwerp, and pray for God's deliverance.”

Hanneke gasped; she bit her lip. They were walking on, walking away, taking with them their bit of light and their suggestion of news. She put her hand to her face.

“God, deliver us.” From what?

“Hanneke,” her mother called.

She put her hand on the latch. To go out there, to go look, to help, perhaps—

“Hanneke!”

All her life they had kept her here, telling her girls did not go out, girls did not seek the world, girls did nothing. Sit at home and learn to sew, read the right books, wait. She sobbed, her eyes hot with sudden tears, furious at them and at herself for accepting it. The rough iron bit into her hand. She would go out there.

“Hanneke, please—I'm frightened.”

Over her shoulder she looked back at the house and saw her mother in the doorway, the light behind her, her arms stretched out.

“Hanneke! What are you doing?”

“I'm locking the gate, Mother.” Firmly she drew the bolt across the latch and went back up the walk to the house, where she belonged.

The banging on the gate aroused her. She sat up in her chair; she had slumped against the window when she fell asleep. Down at the gate someone stood, rattling the latch and knocking at the bars. She sprang up and ran downstairs to the door.

It was Mies. A glad cry escaped her. She rushed to the gate and threw back the bolt, and her father stumbled in through the open gate.

“Papa!” She flung her arms around him and kissed him.

“Not now,” Mies said. His voice was thick with exhaustion; he pulled her arms down and held her away from him. “Help me.” Turning, he went back out the gate.

“Oh, God have mercy.” It was Jan, lying on the ground beside the wall. Hanneke and her father lifted him up, and the movement brought a yell from the young man like an arrow in the darkness.

“His leg's broken,” Mies said; he had Jan by the armpits, while Hanneke tried to cradle his legs. “Be careful.”

Jan was crying with pain. Hanneke said, “Oh, I'm sorry, I'm sorry—” He was too heavy to handle with any delicacy and with every step she hurt him more. She and Mies dragged him into the house and took him down to the kitchen, in the rear of the first floor, where it was warm.

“Oh, Jan.” She bent over him, his face gray and sunken and marked with horrible bruises.

Mies went around to his feet and pulled his legs out straight, and Jan screamed again. Hanneke took his hand. “I'm sorry.”

“Water,” Mies said, as if to speak more syllables than necessary was beyond his strength. He bent over his son's body; cloth ripped in his hands. Hanneke went to find water.

When she came back, the cook had come out of her room behind the oven and was kneeling beside Mies to inspect Jan's leg. There was no room for Hanneke. With the cup of water in her hands she stood uncertainly watching them. Behind her a small noise turned her attention that way.

Her mother stood in the hall doorway, in her dressing gown, her nightcap over her hair. Her gaze fell on her husband and her son, and she cried out.

“Mies! Is he—” She rushed forward, flung herself against her husband's back, trying to reach her son. “Is he dead? Is he—”

Mies thrust out his arm to push her away. “Stand back! Give me room, woman—Hanneke, take your mother up to her bed. Where's that—” Twisting around, he saw the cup of water in her hands and grunted. “That's not enough. Take your mother. Cook, fetch some water.”

“Mies!” his wife screamed. “Is he hurt? Is he dead?”

“Take her, Hanneke.”

Hanneke clasped her mother's arms. “He's alive. He has a broken leg. Come along.”

“Oh, God in Heaven.” Her mother broke into floods of tears. “Oh, my God—why did I ever have children? Why did I ever have babies?” Sobbing and heaving for breath, she let Hanneke draw her away toward the stairs. On the stairs, going up to her bedroom, she seized Hanneke's arms with her cold hands.

“Don't ever leave me, Hanneke. Don't ever go. Please don't ever leave me.”

“I'm not leaving, Mother. Come along.”

“Don't ever leave me alone.”

Hanneke looked down over the stair rail, into the hall, where now the servant girl had come up from her bed to stand and look curiously into the kitchen; Hanneke wanted to go down there as much as she wanted life—to see, to help, to do. Her mother clutched her tight.

“Don't ever leave me.”

“I won't, Mother.” One arm around her mother's shoulders, she led her up the stairs to her bedroom.

The rioting in Antwerp did not go on beyond that same dawn, but the city was hot for more trouble, ready for any excuse. To keep peace in Antwerp, the center of the Low Countries, the heart of northern Europe, the Governess sent the one man she knew could do the job, the man she hated and feared most of all: William of Nassau, Prince of Orange.

Magnificent in his brocaded coat, riding a splendid horse, followed by a great retinue of servants and aides, the Prince rode into Antwerp late on an August Sunday. Many said that was a mark of his lack of piety, that he traveled on the Sabbath, but others said it was a mark of his wisdom, because he came into the city on the one day when everyone in Antwerp would be free to come watch his entrance. Certainly the streets were packed with people. But it was not a welcome they gave him. No one cheered; no one waved banners or gave speeches in his honor and presented pageants likening him to ancient heroes. They stood along the streets and watched him ride by, accepted his easy smiles and raised right hand without any answers of their own. Everybody knew there would be trouble, and everybody, Catholic and Protestant alike, expected to see William of Orange on the other side.

“Did you go?” Jan asked. He sat in his bed, propped up on pillows, his bad leg stretched out on more pillows before him. Hanneke sat next to the bed on a stool. Between them lay the draughts board. She reached for one of her checkers.

“Father said not to,” she said.

“But you did go.”

“Mother was sleeping. He came in by the west gate, it was only a little way off.”

“Oh, Hanneke,” Jan said.

“I had to go! I'm so tired of being kept here like a caged animal—” She set down the checker almost at random. “I was only gone for a little while.”

“What if I'd needed you?” he said, and taking one of his men jumped three of hers in a giddy charge across the board.

“Jan!”

“What if I'd needed you and you weren't here?”

She leapt up, her temper swollen, and, having no other outlet, driven to tears. “Why is it always I who must be here?”

“You needn't,” Jan said. “Just tell me when you go out, so that I don't call for you and alert the whole house that you're gone. Understand?”

She came back to the stool and sat. “Yes, you're right.”

“I'm all behind you,” he said, smiling at her. “Go out all you can. Otherwise how am I to know what's going on?”

“Oh, you'll be walking soon.”

They had decided that the leg was not broken, only disjointed at the knee. Bandages swathed it like a babe in the cradle.

Hanneke bent over the draughts board. “Anyway,” she said, “the day after tomorrow is Assumption Day, you know.”

“Oh, really. I had forgotten.”

She advanced one of her men. He was ahead of her now by three pieces and she had to be cautious. “The word is that the priests went to Orange and asked him if they should still have the procession, and he said they ought, to make things seem as usual.”

Jan chewed his lip. He moved a man, and Hanneke moved again. “Are you going out to see it?” he asked.

“I will if I can. Mother naps every day in the afternoon.”

“If anyone looks for you I will say you went out to pick me a pear,” said Jan.

He put out his hand, and she took it in a conspirator's grasp. After he made his next move she jumped four of his pieces.

Albert van Luys raised his fist into the air. “The King has declared war on us! We must defend ourselves and our faith—all over the Netherlands. God's people are rising in arms against this devilish King and his ministers—”

Among the several dozen men ranged behind him in the council chamber, fifteen or twenty loosed cheers of support for him; but most of them sat silent and unmoved. The Prince of Orange kept his face expressionless. He saw the task before him as one of building a wall—he had to find the right matter among these people and put those pieces together into something whole and solid to stand against the fate sweeping toward them like a North Sea storm.

He leaned over the table, his forearms pressed against the marble top, and looked into Albert's blazing eyes.

“Yes, you are right,” he said. “There have been riots in a hundred places, people have broken into the churches and destroyed the paraphernalia of the Catholic faith, and everyone in the Low Countries is up on his toes, ready to fight.”

He widened his gaze to sweep the mass of men behind Albert, seeking out those who had not cheered his call to war.

“But my information is that even here in Antwerp as many of these eager warriors are Catholic as Protestant.”

“Traitors!” Albert cried.

“Oh, sit down, you loudmouth,” called one of the men behind him.

A grumble of agreement sounded in the wake of that, and here and there men turned to their neighbors and began to argue. The chamber filled up with discordant noise. Albert folded his arms across his chest and set his jaw. He stayed on his feet, but he said no more, staring at Orange. The Prince wondered how much he knew—if he had heard of the Beggar army that was marching on Antwerp even now and whose leaders had sent a message on ahead asking him to open the city gates to them and give them refuge from the Governess's army coming hard on their heels.

He had spoken to an assembly of the great Catholic men of Antwerp that morning. Now he faced a room full of Calvinists and Lutherans and probably Anabaptists too, and he wondered briefly if there were any use in it, or if he ought to have them all arrested and held until the danger was past.

They were still locked in their small private arguments. Albert swung toward them, raising his arms high.

“Prepare yourselves. The conflict is coming. Soon God Himself shall appear in the sky and ride at the head of our army to destroy the Anti-Christ Philip and usher in the Golden Age!”

The Prince watched the faces of the men before him and saw how they closed against that rhetoric, and his heart quickened with new confidence. They did not want to fight, these burghers and merchants and tradesmen; they had too much to lose. His mind leapt to find a way to use that to his ends.

One of them was standing up.

“Your Highness.” This man bowed stiffly from the waist. A slender man of middle height, dressed in black, a touch of silver at his throat. A face as hard as a soldier's. “Give me leave to speak.”

“Speak,” said the Prince, with a smile at the imperious command in that voice.

Like Albert, like all of them, this man spoke in French, the official language of the Low Countries. He said, “In the fighting for the cathedral, a few days ago, my only son was nearly killed. There are boys like him, who want to fight—young and ignorant men, not the paladins of God—only boys who fight anyway, whenever the chance arises. It is not God's way to use such instruments.”

The Prince cleared his throat; this was a very fine point, subtle as a shadow, to be made in the face of such broad and sweeping passions. He said, “May I ask your name, sir?”

“I am Mies Willem van Cleef, your Highness; I make and sell cloth. I am a good churchgoing God-fearing man, as everyone here can testify, but I doubt when the final battle for the world comes that it will be fought by green boys, with stones and clubs.”