by Judy Nunn
‘Malcolm, Kit, time to go home.’ Henrietta yelled. Suddenly aware of her motherly duties, she thought it was time to call a halt to the fun.
‘Oh Mum …’ they both whinged, they could have stood there forever.
‘Time to go home,’ she repeated. She looked at Paul, the two of them could have stood there forever too. ‘You’re at the Hotel Darwin.’ It wasn’t a question.
‘Of course,’ he shouted back.
‘I’ll ring you! Come on boys!’ And they belted for the car.
Paul watched them go. He stood there in the storm, drenched and bedraggled, for a good five minutes or so before he walked up the rise and back to his car. He hadn’t felt this happy in a very long time.
Lucretia watched, hollow-eyed, from the far end of the table as he strutted about in his scarlet tunic, his silk stockings and garters of lace. She recognised, vaguely, that the tunic was Pelsaert’s.
In his grand tent, Jeronimus Cornelisz was holding court. A number of his men were present, including the handsome young cadet, Coenraat van Huyssen.
Cornelisz unlocked the heavy wooden casket which sat in the middle of the table, threw back the lid with a grand flourish and stood aside in order that the riches within might be admired. He himself never tired of caressing the treasures, buffing the jewels with a fine silk cloth, holding them up to the light. His favourite was the great cameo of onyx, one of the largest in the world, Pelsaert had once told him. Carved for the Roman Emperor Constantine in the fourth century AD, and intended for the Indian Emperor Jahangir.
‘Now it is ours!’ Cornelisz would proclaim to his friends, but he really meant ‘it is mine’.
Lucretia continued to watch dully from the sidelines. The jewels were of no interest to her, nothing was of any interest to her, except the mere matter of survival. These were times when the only task at hand was how to exist from one day to the next.
She had momentarily wondered at the presence of the predikant. Gijsbert Bastiaensz was a weak man who could serve no purpose to Cornelisz, and yet the predikant appeared to be the guest of honour. Then she realised of course that it was all part of the game. The predikant had been invited along with his eldest daughter, not his wife, nor his other five children, just pretty young Judick. And Judick had recently become ‘betrothed’ to van Huyssen. Was poor old Gijsbert being feted as the father of the ‘bride’, Lucretia wondered. It was a mockery in the eyes of God, but it was a mockery which God Himself would surely forgive, for the playing of such a blasphemous game would no doubt save Judick’s life.
The murders were becoming more blatant now. At first people had simply disappeared. They’d gone to the High Islands, the community had been told, in search of water, or to Seals’ Island to join the settlement there. And they’d chosen to believe Cornelisz and his men; after all, it meant more space and more provisions for those who remained. But they could no longer close their eyes to the truth. Remains of bodies fed to the sharks had been washed up on the shore. The more handsome of the women, several married, whose husbands had disappeared, were servicing Cornelisz’s men in order to stay alive.
The mock betrothal of Judick to the vile van Huyssen mirrored Lucretia’s own predicament. Jeronimus Cornelisz was wooing her. Like a suitor paying court, he called upon her daily, and several times he had invited her to his tent. Fearful for her life, she had attended and sat silently witnessing such scenes as this. And after the jewels had been admired, and they’d all eaten and drunk and the others had departed, he would read poetry to her in Latin and French and ply her with fine Spanish wine. He would even offer her a jewel from the Company casket in his efforts to seduce her. But, silent, repulsed, Lucretia had withstood his advances. Perhaps if he had held a knife to her throat she might have succumbed, she did not wish to die. But he didn’t threaten her. He behaved like a frustrated admirer and allowed her to return to her tent unscathed. Lucretia wondered how much longer it would be before he tired of the game.
A man appeared at the tent opening, Cornelisz gave him a brief nod, and he disappeared. Lucretia observed the interchange, in her detached state little escaped her notice. The man was Davdt Zeevanck, Cornelisz’s closest confidant and a ruthless killer. She wondered who it was they were going to murder tonight.
‘Predikant Bastiaensz,’ Cornelisz said with gusto, raising his glass, ‘I drink a toast to your beautiful daughter and my young friend Coenraat.’
The assembled company followed suit, Gijsbert Bastiaensz accepting the toast as if it were a personal salutation and reciprocating with a vote of thanks to Cornelisz. How flattering to be so feted, he thought with an eye to the food which lay in wait, they didn’t eat like this in his tent. The fear having momentarily left him, the predikant was pompous, jovial, and pathetic in his vanity.
Cornelisz gestured to his lackeys for the feast to be brought to the table.
Wybrecht Claes, young serving maid to the predikant and his family, answered the soft call from outside the tent. Her throat was slit in an instant and the five men stood and watched silently as she lay twitching on the ground. When death had clouded the terror in her eyes, they raised their adzes above their heads and stormed into the tent.
Cornelisz, in ordering the dispatch of the predikant’s family, had himself suggested that adzes would be the most effective weapons in close and crowded quarters. ‘Several can be felled with one blow,’ he’d said, wishing he could be present to witness the slaughter.
Maria Bastiaensz, her three sons and two daughters, sat eating their meagre meal in the light of a single lamp. A man swung his adze, the lamp shattered and, in the near darkness, the men set about their grisly task. The eldest son, eighteen years of age, was the first to die, his skull smashed in one blow. Then the men went into a frenzy, swinging their deadly adzes in every direction.
The infant, Roelant, nearly made good his bid to escape. Running between the knees of the murderers, he was at the door of the tent when his silhouette was spied in the dim light of the moon which issued from outside, and he was felled by one of the men with a back-handed blow. The child’s skull shattered like a young melon, and all was silent.
The bodies were dragged from the tent to a shallow grave which had been dug in preparation, and there they were unceremoniously dumped and covered in a thin layer of dirt. The disposal of bodies was becoming more and more slovenly, the murderers by now fearing no reprisals.
In Cornelisz’s tent, the party continued. The men, having gorged themselves, continued to guzzle from their tumblers, wine running down sodden beards and dripping to the ground. Led by Cornelisz, they were now singing. The predikant was drunk, and his daughter Judick was sitting in a corner with her young cadet, smiling as van Huyssen whispered in her ear.
Lucretia watched them. They looked for all the world like a young couple in love, she thought, sickened. Was the girl deliberately blinding herself to the fact that her handsome young man was the most bestial of murderers, guilty of the foulest deeds beyond all imagining?
Cornelisz, who was in turn watching Lucretia, stopped singing. The others continuing without him, he sidled up to her unnoticed, bent and whispered in her ear. ‘Young love is a beautiful thing, is it not?’
She jumped, startled, then quickly regained her composure. She made no reply, nor did she look at him.
‘You haven’t touched your wine, is it not to your palate?’ Still she made no reply. ‘Look at me, Lucretia,’ he commanded, and she knew that she must.
He smiled as her eyes met his. ‘I said, do you not like the wine?’ he repeated gently.
She picked up the glass and took a sip. ‘The wine is excellent,’ she said obediently. Did he think he could beguile her with the smile of Satan? She did not flinch, sitting proudly at the table, her back ramrod straight, but inwardly she recoiled at the evil before her.
‘You must stay and have a drink with me after they’ve gone,’ he whispered.
‘As you wish.’ Yet again he would press his suit, she knew it, and y
et again she would refuse him, wondering if this would be the night he would force her to his bed at knifepoint.
Cornelisz soon tired of the revelry, he wanted Lucretia to himself. Perhaps tonight would be the night he would win her. Abruptly, he ordered everyone to leave.
‘My dear,’ he said when they’d departed, ‘have more wine.’ He sat beside her and filled her empty glass, she had surreptitiously tipped its contents onto the ground as she always did. Then he sang to her softly, one of his favourite French ballads set to music, she had heard it a number of times before. ‘Did you like that?’ he whispered, his mouth so close to her ear she could feel his breath.
‘It is a beautiful verse,’ she replied. How dare a voice so vile profane words of such beauty.
‘Lucretia,’ he murmured. Her loveliness, the very sound of her voice, filled him with desire. ‘Lucretia, my dear,’ he raised her hand to his lips and kissed it. She suffered the caress in silence. Emboldened, Cornelisz leaned towards her, his breath fanning her face, his mouth bent upon seeking hers.
Lucretia rose from the table. ‘I have told you before, I am married.’ She could never bring herself to call him by name, much as he insisted she do so. ‘I cannot commit adultery.’
Thwarted once again, frustrated beyond endurance, Cornelisz leaped to his feet. ‘A kiss, woman!’ he snarled. ‘Jesu, just a kiss!’
She stood her ground. Was tonight the night he would kill her, or at least threaten to do so? And if he did, would she have the strength to die? ‘A kiss is an act of adultery,’ she said, and she added, ‘I beseech you to accept my refusal.’ No, she did not want to die.
A harrowing cry rang out through the night. ‘Oh horror of horrors!’ It was the predikant’s voice. ‘What cruelty!’ he wailed. ‘Oh horror of horrors!’ And he fell into a fit of sobbing which echoed about the island.
Lucretia felt the blood drain from her face. So that was why the predikant and his daughter had been invited to the grand tent. She stared dumbly at Cornelisz who smiled as he stared back at her. Perhaps now, he thought, the knowledge of his power might force her to succumb.
Lucretia turned and stumbled from the tent.
Early the following evening, she received a visit from Davdt Zeevanck, the man with whom Cornelisz shared his innermost confidences.
‘I hear complaints about you, Vrouwe van den Mylen,’ Zeevanck said with a voice like ice. ‘You do not comply with our Captain’s wishes.’ Cornelisz had long assumed the rank of captain with his men, and of late the entire community had considered it safer to address him as such. ‘In his generosity,’ Zeevanck continued, ‘the Captain begs for your kindness, and yet you disobey him.’
Zeevanck himself was bewildered as to why Cornelisz had not taken the haughty bitch by force. ‘Stick a dagger at her throat and she’s yours, Jeronimus,’ he’d said. But for twelve days Cornelisz had wooed the woman like a lovesick schoolboy. For twelve whole days she’d withstood his advances. Why, yet again, just this morning, he had said, most unhappily, ‘Still she resists me, Davdt, what am I to do?’
Zeevanck refused to allow such behaviour to continue, it undermined his Captain’s authority. ‘Leave it to me, Jeronimus,’ he’d said. ‘Tonight you shall have her.’
‘You must make up your mind, Vrouwe van den Mylen,’ he said, ‘either you must do that for which we have kept the women, or you will go the way of the others.’
Lucretia had seen the shallow grave of the Bastiaensz family, the bloodied remnants visible beneath the scattering of earth. And she had seen the blood-drenched tent where the slaughter had taken place, the horror of it all was etched in her brain.
‘The decision is yours,’ Zeevanck said. The woman did not reply and he took her silence as acquiescence. He walked to the door of the tent and turned. ‘I shall be back in one hour to escort you to your Captain.’
When he’d gone, Lucretia knelt and prayed. She did not question her strength to resist, she knew she had none. She prayed that God might take her quietly during the night, that when she had been defiled by the Devil, she might die. But she did not have the strength to offer herself up for a bloody death at the hands of the murderers, may God forgive her. She would do what she must to avoid becoming one of the corpses of Batavia’s Graveyard.
She unfastened the locket from around her neck. When Cornelisz saw her in her nakedness he would surely take it from her. She made a pocket amongst the lining of her skirts and, as she kissed the symbol of her love, the mountain peak and the diamond sun, she wondered, if she were ever to survive, how she could allow her husband to touch her body which had been so defiled. Carefully she concealed the locket amongst her skirts, and awaited the return of Zeevanck.
Henrietta saw Paul several times a week. After she’d dropped the boys at school, she’d spend the day with him and they’d walk along the clifftops, or take a picnic lunch to Mindil Beach. Sometimes they talked avidly, Paul regaling her with wicked and colourful stories of his past until Henrietta was hysterical with laughter. Or she would recount to him the latest mischief the boys had got up to. Paul took a keen interest in both children. He was always eager for news not only of his son Kit, which was to be expected, but also of Malcolm, about whom he appeared equally concerned.
Sometimes they felt no need to talk at all, and they would hold hands and look out at the sea, both overwhelmed with a sense of peace and contentment, and they would whisper their love for each other before they parted and she collected the boys from school.
From the outset she’d told Terence as much as she felt he needed to know. ‘Paul Trewinnard is back in Darwin,’ she’d announced. ‘I’m going to spend the day in town with him every now and then.’
Terence’s eyes narrowed. She was not asking his permission, she was telling him. ‘Why in God’s name?’
‘Because he’s my friend and he’s dying.’
There wasn’t much Terence could say to that. But when the visits became too regular for his liking, he decided it was time to check out his wife’s story.
‘I might come into town with you this morning,’ he said casually one day, studying her reaction. ‘Perhaps I could have lunch with you and your friend Paul?’
She ignored the sarcasm in his tone. ‘Of course,’ she said, ‘I’m sure he’d be delighted to see you.’
Paul was indeed very interested in seeing Terence, and he insisted upon taking them to lunch at the Hotel Darwin. ‘You’re on my home turf,’ he said with a smile, and throughout the meal he asked Terence questions about the homestead and the boys, encouraging the man to talk, and apparently enjoying the conversation.
Terence was relaxed and expansive over lunch, any misgivings he’d had having dissipated the moment he’d laid eyes on Paul Trewinnard. The man was a skeleton with one foot in the grave, he looked about seventy.
Paul could clearly see the bully beneath Terence’s charm. And the man was as arrogant and self-opinionated as he’d always been, it was evident in his every gesture, even in the way he ordered a beer. Normally scathing of such men, Paul took great care to disguise his dislike; Terence Galloway was a violent and unpredictable man who could make Henrietta’s life hell if he chose. He already had. Once anyway.
Paul would never forget Henrietta’s distress all those years ago when she’d come to the hotel to seek his help. They often talked of their night together, the wonderful night when they’d discovered each other, but she had never told him what had happened that afternoon. It was the one thing she never spoke of and, until she felt the desire to do so, he had resolved never to ask her.
Now, as Paul looked at Terence, all he could see was the bruise upon Henrietta’s cheek and her hands shaking uncontrollably as they clutched his own. He despised Terence Galloway.
‘Really?’ He laughed dutifully at the anecdote about Malcolm demanding his meat rare. ‘Just cut off its horns and wipe its arse,’ the boy had apparently said.
‘Yes, he’s a chip off the old block, that boy. It’s become a bit of a family
joke, you see, father to son,’ Terence said with happy pride. ‘For generations now. Can’t wait to hear Malcolm’s boy follow suit.’
Poor Malcolm, Paul thought, and poor Malcolm’s boy. He didn’t dare look at Henrietta for fear his smile might be readably intimate. He’d heard the joke before, she’d actually told it in defence of Terence. ‘He’s been indoctrinated,’ she’d said. ‘Old Jock did it to him, now he’s doing it to his sons, what hope does any poor Galloway kid have?’ and she’d said it with such ironic humour that he’d laughed out loud.
Lunch was a great success. ‘We must do it again, Paul,’ Terence said as the two of them shook hands. ‘You must come out to Bullalalla.’ If you live long enough, you poor bastard, he thought.
‘Thank you, I’d love to.’
‘Christ, he looks as if he’s going to drop dead any minute,’ Terence said as they drove to the school to pick up Malcolm and Kit.
‘Please don’t say that in front of the boys.’
‘Why the hell not?’
‘Because they like Paul, and they don’t know he’s dying.’ God he could be so insensitive. ‘And they don’t need to know either.’
‘All right, all right.’
Sometimes Henrietta and Paul would take Aggie for a drive during her lunchbreak. But, much as they both loved Aggie, it was out of a sense of duty, loath as they were to relinquish one moment of their time together.
Sometimes Aggie would hiss to Henrietta when Paul was out of earshot, ‘He looks terrible, what can we do?’
‘Nothing,’ Henrietta would reply. ‘Let him handle things his way, that’s what he wants.’ She hated being reminded that Paul’s days were numbered. She thought he was looking much better herself, he was rallying, she was sure.
