In the letter addressed to me, he writes:
Finally, the ship weighed anchor! To see all those people standing on the quayside … I was leaving my old life behind me, bound for a new life, an unknown life. I would rather have stayed, but I had to go. Someone new has taken my place in Josh Nunn’s safe hands. And someone new will eventually take my place in America too.
But even so, I was excited by the prospect of an adventure.
We set sail for Southampton with the wind in our hair, salt spray on our skin and joy in our hearts.
In my heart too!
The crossing went well. We went down to the sea in our ship and sailed the great water. We saw the deeds of the Lord, His wondrous works in the deep.
The Mayflower was waiting for us in the harbour with more passengers. Some of them shared our faith. Others did not, and these we named ‘the Strangers’. They were poor people seeking prosperity in America.
However, it soon became clear that the repaired Speedwell would be able to carry us across the North Sea and no further. No sooner had we left Southampton than she began to take on water. We turned back, and after she was repaired in Dartmouth, we made a second attempt, but again she took on water. The Speedwell was not going to make it. Some of the passengers were transferred to the Mayflower, and yet another group was left behind, this time in England.
On the 6th of September, a hundred and two passengers, Pilgrims and Strangers, and twenty-five crewmen set sail for America.
The crossing was arduous. I could write a book about that alone. Storms rose up, so intense that we thought our final hour had come. The sea was so rough that it threatened to wreck the ship. The crew was afraid, and all cried out to God for help. We were worried that our prayers would never reach heaven; they were surely scattered on the wind as soon as we sent them up. Some wanted to throw the cargo into the sea to reduce the risk of sinking, but then what would we have had to eat? I went down into the hold of the ship and had lain down and was fast asleep. The captain came to me and said, ‘What are you doing sound asleep? Get up, call on your god! Perhaps the god will spare us a thought so that we do not perish!’ I was scared that the sailors would say to one another, ‘Come, let us cast lots, so that we may know on whose account this calamity has come upon us.’ And that the lot would fall on me. I was like a stowaway, even though everyone knew that I belonged to the group. The sea was growing more and more tempestuous, and I was afraid that I should answer: ‘Pick me up and throw me into the sea; then the sea will quiet down for you; for I know it is because of me that this great storm has come upon you.’ And that they would cry out to the Lord, saying ‘Please, O Lord, we pray, do not let us perish on account of this man’s life. Do not make us guilty of innocent blood; for you, O Lord, have done as it pleased you.’ And that they would pick me up and throw me in the sea so that the sea would cease from its raging.
But time and time again, the sea was becalmed.
And on November 19th, we saw land at last … We fell to our knees and thanked God, crying, praying. William read Psalm 107, which seemed to have been written especially for us …
For He commanded and raised the stormy wind,
which lifted up the waves of the sea.
They mounted up to heaven, they went down to the depths;
their courage melted away in their calamity;
they reeled and staggered like drunkards,
and were at their wits’ end.
Then they cried to the Lord in their trouble,
and He brought them out from their distress;
He made the storm be still,
and the waves of the sea were hushed.
Then they were glad because they had quiet,
and He brought them to their desired haven.
The last storm had driven the Mayflower many miles north of our intended destination. We were near a cape which we later learned was called Cape Cod. However, the cape was not part of Virginia, the land we had been granted a royal patent for, but part of New England. Our permission to establish a colony was not valid there. We attempted to go further south but were held back by strong currents. And so we were forced to seek refuge here …
But the Strangers caused problems: they said that they were no longer bound by our contract because we were outside the bounds of our patent. The Strangers wanted to abandon our colony and set up their own. Chaos loomed: our colony was threatened with collapse before it had even begun.
After discussions between the Pilgrims and the Strangers, we came to a new agreement, a covenant that was signed by all of the male passengers on board the ship: the Mayflower Compact. Together, we would establish good governance and make our own laws, regulations and appointments. Every one of us now had a stake in the success of this undertaking.
John Carver was chosen as our first governor. We put into practice an idea that we had learned about in Leiden and brought with us from the Netherlands: Carver held no religious office, which meant that we could separate the two authorities. Church and government would be two distinct powers here, each independent of the other, and each respecting the sovereignty of the other in its own domain.
Once we were on dry land, we explored the terrain. We found a place to build houses. That first winter, the lack of food was a serious problem. We could not yet plant crops for the following year. After all, there is a season and a time for everything. We were dependent on the ship’s stores, on the fish that we managed to catch using what primitive means we had, and on the corn that the natives grow which we occasionally found in the area. Some of this we could not eat because we had to save it to use as seed in the spring. And the promised land was not empty. Just as the tribes of Israel encountered the Canaanites after wandering in the wilderness – he that hath ears to hear, let him hear! – we also came upon what appeared to be godless savages. Some were friendly and helped us, others were much more hostile. There have already been violent and bloody confrontations with them. During worship recently, William said that we will struggle to tame these savages and show them that the idols they worship are false. It will be many, many years before these Indians, as they are called, can truly be set free and approach the throne of Christ in humility – after all, it is only through His words that we can truly be set free.
The Mayflower stayed with us and did not return to England until March 1621. So we always had the ship to fall back on. But half of the new settlers died in that first year, and we could do nothing to prevent it. People in the village began to complain. ‘If only we had died by the hand of the Lord in Leiden,’ they said to John and William. ‘There where we sat by the fleshpots and ate our fill of bread. For you have brought us out into this wilderness to kill this whole assembly with hunger.’
John, our first governor, did not survive the first year. William succeeded him.
Luckily for us, more ships arrived carrying new colonists … Had they not, our colony would soon have died out.
And if I had died, then I would have made the wrong choice in going to America: all my knowledge would have died with me. I have my own pupil now, just as I was a pupil once myself. This gives me faith that the line will not be broken, even here.
The ships brought more Pilgrims from Leiden, but they also brought people we did not know and who had no connection to us. How providential the Mayflower Compact has proved to be! Because of the good agreements that we had set out in it, we were able to get along despite our different backgrounds and interests.
Because, despite all the difficulties and despite all the setbacks, our settlement, Plimoth Plantation, has survived. So well, in fact, that we can even celebrate by holding a harvest feast every October. We have called it Thanksgiving. The feast reminds us of Leiden, where it all began … We have fond memories of the annual thanksgiving service in the Pieterskerk every October 3rd where we gave thanks to God for the Relief of Leiden, for driving away the tyrannical Spaniards who wanted to impose their beliefs and their way of worship on the people of that ci
ty, who forgot that every man is ultimately free, neither master nor slave. In the Netherlands, that bastion of freedom, Leiden, these things were engraved on our hearts. And we hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
With these ardent words – words that I had already heard from John’s lips and committed to paper – the letter I received from our man in America ended. This was the part intended for the public that I read to the congregation.
But, as I have said, there was another letter. Inside the envelope that was addressed to me was another message that was not meant for me. Of course, I immediately gave it to Josh Nunn. He knows that I have become the Leiden congregation’s chronicler in recent years. Tonight, he will give the letter back to me. He has given me permission to reproduce its contents in this account so that what is written in it will not be lost. Josh has told me that I will soon understand the true nature of all that has happened. Who ‘the teacher’ is, and who ‘the pupil’. The true role of our man in America. The real source and nature of the conflict within our group. Why some of us went to America and why such a large group of us stayed here.
Tonight, everything will be revealed.
I already know that …
Email from: Piet van Vliet
And there the fragment ends, Peter! Maddening! Either our anonymous writer never found out what was in that letter, or he did find out, but decided against including those revelations in the chronicle. Or someone else made that decision for him …
It seems so ironic that the very people who sought freedom in America had such a limited perception of freedom themselves. Just read what he says about William Brewster – and one gets the impression that he is trying to tell us between the lines that this is not a view that he shares – who told the congregation that they ‘will struggle to tame these savages and show them that the idols they worship are false’ and that ‘it will be many, many years before these Indians can truly be set free and approach the throne of Christ in humility’. The Pilgrims’ version of Christ, that is!
They took all the principles that they had learned about in the Netherlands with them on the Great Crossing: freedom of religion, freedom of speech, and freedom of the press. Those principles formed the basis of what eventually became the modern United States: civil marriage, separation of church and state … But first and foremost, they were concerned with their own personal freedom. It’s similar to the way the politicians in the Partij voor de Vrijheid set themselves up as the party of freedom but then wanted to restrict other people’s religious freedoms by calling for a ban on the Quran and the closure of mosques. The Pilgrims’ freedom, their path to that freedom and the realisation of their desire to be allowed to freely practise their religion without having any restrictions imposed on them from outside, caused the indigenous population to lose their lives and their freedoms. Freedom that costs another person their freedom can never be true freedom!
The people who stayed in Leiden integrated into the wider population of the city. The thing that the Pilgrims were perhaps most afraid of happened, in the end.
But we are left with so many questions. Why did Josh Nunn’s pupil, who wrote this letter to our chronicler, go to America after all? What changed his mind? To take his knowledge with him … But what knowledge? And he passed that knowledge on to a pupil? What was the ‘real source and nature of the conflict within our group’?
The answers to all of these questions are so close, and yet so far. Like a dying father trying to whisper something in your ear, something that will finally answer a question you’ve had for so many years …
But before he can tell you, he breathes his last breath.
Chapter 28
Peter stood next to the Greyhound Bus ticket window at South Station waiting for Tony. He was early, but he had made a habit of always arriving early for appointments.
‘I would suggest that you ask him that yourself,’ Walter L. Lunt had said the day before in the lobby of the grand lodge.
Walter’s two-hour-long torrent of words had seemed to suddenly dry up, and he had bid Peter a terse goodbye before turning around and walking away from him.
Peter had stared after him, but Walter had sat down behind the reception desk and given the impression of being so absorbed in some urgent business that he didn’t look up again.
Peter had made the journey back to Harvard with a bad taste in his mouth, wondering if it wouldn’t be better to cancel his appointment with Tony.
But then again, Peter had thought, the man is probably going to be coming over to Leiden regularly. I can hardly avoid him.
By the time he had arrived at Harvard station, his head had mostly cleared.
His phone battery had been almost dead, but as he’d walked through the campus, he’d typed a quick email to Rijsbergen back in Leiden.
Hello,
Visited the Freemasons in Boston today. Was given a tour by someone called Walter Lunt. He told me about the murder of two Masons four years ago in Jerusalem. Again, an older man and a younger one. You probably know about it already, but I thought I should pass it on, just to be sure. Possible connection to Leiden case? And it gets even more bizarre: the chairman of a Freemason’s lodge and his pupil went missing on a fishing trip off the Boston coast. Searches for them have been unsuccessful so far. Flying back to the Netherlands tomorrow. Speak soon.
Regards,
Peter de Haan
It would have been after midnight in the Netherlands when he sent the email, so it was unlikely that Rijsbergen would have seen it straight away.
After eating dinner at the apartment, he and Judith had gone to one of the student bars near the campus and ended up spending the rest of the evening there. Fridays and Saturdays were the busiest nights of the week, but there were always lots of people out and about on ordinary Thursday evenings like this one too.
It had been their last chance to say goodbye over a few drinks before Peter went home. Judith had to give a presentation tonight, and she wasn’t able to get out of it. As part of the conditions of her grant, she had to deliver a report about her research at a private event.
Peter had woken early and left the apartment almost as soon as he was dressed, without stopping to eat breakfast or even drink a cup of coffee. He had taken a minute to quickly scan his emails on his laptop. There was a message from Rijsbergen thanking him for the suggestion about the Jerusalem link and letting him know that they were already aware of it. The information about the disappearance of the two men in Boston had been new, however, and they would be closely monitoring the situation from Leiden.
Judith had still been asleep when he’d gently closed the front door behind him. Her bedroom door had been ajar, and he’d caught a glimpse of her through the gap. He’d resisted the urge to go in and pull the covers back over her shoulders.
It was only once he was sitting in a subway carriage that he realised that he had left his phone on the charger back at the apartment. There was no time to go all the way back to Judith’s now.
A phone-free day will probably be quite relaxing, Peter had thought. I usually have it turned off or on flight mode anyway, so I probably won’t even notice it’s missing.
Back in Leiden, he often deliberately left his phone at home for the day. Those days were usually so much more relaxed that he often advised other people to try it now and then.
Last night, before he had fallen asleep, Peter had read the seventh – and what so far appeared to be the last – fragment that Piet van Vliet had sent him. He shared Piet’s frustration over the abrupt way the manuscript ended just as the real secrets were about to be revealed.
It really is maddening, Peter thought.
But he was thrilled to be visiting the places where the Pilgrims had first set foot in America and to be going to see the reconstruction of Plimoth Plantation – a day after reading the letter tha
t had been written there.
‘Peter!’ he heard Tony’s voice behind him.
‘Tony!’ he replied, trying to replicate the warmth of Tony’s tone.
The bus had already pulled up. The passengers were boarding one by one, showing their E-tickets to the driver on their mobile phones, or like Tony, presenting printed tickets to be scanned.
‘Here’s your ticket,’ Tony said, and he handed Peter a printout. ‘I’ve sent it to you in an email too.’
Peter folded up the ticket and put it in the front pocket of his backpack into which he’d also stuffed an anorak, a notebook and pen, a bottle of water, and his book, which he’d put inside a plastic bag in case the water bottle leaked.
Tony had brought absolutely nothing with him.
As soon as they had found their seats, Peter took out the copy of Mayflower that he still hadn’t finished reading and put it on his lap. He was genuinely keen to read it, but he also wanted to give Tony a signal that he had no intention of spending the next two hours talking.
Peter wondered if Tony’s Red Sox baseball cap was permanently attached to his head. He had been wearing it every time Peter had seen him in the Netherlands.
‘Do you ever take your cap off?’ Peter asked.
‘No, sirree,’ he said, like a new recruit responding to a senior officer. ‘Never go anywhere without it.’
There were many questions that Peter wanted to ask Tony, but he decided to keep the conversation neutral for now. ‘Don’t you have a car?’ he asked.
‘Yes, of course I do,’ Tony laughed. ‘An American without a car! But we’re going for the authentic American experience today: taking a trip on the Greyhound. We’ll take a taxi after this, and there are shuttle buses that run between Plimoth Plantation and the town of Plymouth. After that, I have a surprise for you.’
A surprise, Peter thought. What childish nonsense … But we’ll see. I can easily find a bus back to Boston.
The Pilgrim Conspiracy Page 29
