East India

by Colin Falconer

  “The seal island?” Steenhower said.

  Christiaan nodded. “Let’s do it,” he said.

  ***

  Gerrit van Hoeck, Steenhower and the jonkers set off later that afternoon, telling everyone they were going hunting. Cornelia watched them go. It was no surprise to her when they returned later that night without any meat at all. Yet they all had the look of men coming out of a whorehouse, sated and furtive. It was clear to her what had happened. You didn't need a pike, a sword and a morning star club just to kill a few seals.

  Chapter 65

  CORNELIA heard them gathered around the fire; she couldn't make out their faces in the darkness, but she knew them by their voices; the jonker Joost van der Linde; the soldier with the lantern jaw, Willem Groot; the van der Beeck boys; even the cabin boy, Strootman, his voice as shrill and excited as a girl's.

  ‘...you should have heard him,” Willem Groot was saying, ‘he was crying like a child, like a woman. Every time I went to strike him, he crawled on his knees begging me not to do it.”

  “What did you expect?” Joost said. “He was only a shopkeeper.”

  “He should have more self respect,” one of the van der Beeck boys said. “Learn to die like a man.”

  “The knife went through him just like butter. I never dreamed it would be so easy.”

  “My one,” Strootman said, “I dashed his brains out, I saw them on my morning star, his brains on the point right there and he was still screaming.” His voice was hushed in wonderment. “I never would have believed it. I had to hit him three more times before he was still.”

  Just then they saw her, her silhouette against the moon. They all fell silent. Then Joost got up and strode towards her.

  She gave no thought to running. She wondered if he would kill her too, but instead he just dragged her back to her tent and had a guard placed outside it.

  Later Christiaan came and told her she was from that moment forbidden to speak to anyone on the island without his express permission.

  She lay in her bunk, rigid with horror. She had never heard, and could not imagine, anything as vile as those things she had just heard. She slept only fitfully, every time she closed her eyes there were nightmares, men without faces dragging her into a darkened cabin. In the middle of the night she heard screams from the women’s tent. Are they going to murder all of us too?

  She thought about Michiel Van Texel. He was out there somewhere, on the long island, and she knew he would come back for her. She knew it in her bones. What was it he had said to her?

  “Even if God forsakes, I will find you.”

  While there was Michiel Van Texel, there was hope.

  The long island

  Michiel woke suddenly, thought he heard a scream. He sat up, sweating. It was nothing, he thought, just a gull. He got up and went down to the beach. The guards rounded on him, hearing his footfall. Good, they were awake and alert.

  They relaxed again when they heard his voice.

  A full moon was riding high in the sky against few clouds, the swell running hard against the reef. He looked across the silver lagoon at the silhouette of the Houtman Rocks..

  Christiaan has miscalculated, he thought. He supposed he was beaching us on a desert, but this is a paradise compared to what they have over there. Here they had everything a man might need to survive: birds, eggs, even strange little hopping cats with big hindlegs who carried their babies in pouches under their bellies. A man could easily run them down and catch them, and cooked over roasted coals they tasted like chicken. The low tide exposed countless shellfish on the rocks and there were colonies of grey-whiskered seals, trusting as lambs, that lay dozing in the sunshine every day and were easily killed with pikes and clubs. Just two of them made dinner for the whole camp.

  The water they had found was enough for now; they brought it up by crawling into the wells and scooping it up in the shells of the giant balers they found on the beach. It was good water, too, fresh and clean, but it would not support two hundred people. The irony of it was that he and his mercenaries would probably survive longer than Christiaan and his scrappy band of tailors and shopkeepers now, even if their damned commandeur rowed all the way back to Amsterdam for help.

  But he was troubled. The rest of the men had accepted his explanation of what had happened: that Christiaan had decided to sacrifice them to save the rest. They didn't like it, but they understood it. Yet Michiel kept thinking about Ryckert and the things he was supposed to have said and he knew there was more to it than expediency.

  Not a light anywhere on the Houtman Rocks. Birds wheeled like ghosts in the moonlight and their harsh cries made the sentries jump. The moon dipped behind the clouds and shadows moved on the beach.

  Chapter 66

  The Houtman Rocks

  CORNELIA crept down to the water’s edge to wash, the other women gathered in a miserable huddle a little further along the beach. Big homely Marretje Overmaars was sitting on a flat rock with her head bowed, pale like all the juice had been squeezed out of her; Alida Post was crouched in the shallows trying to wash the blood out of her skirts; little Elisabeth, her pretty sister, was slumped on the beach, eyes red-rimmed from crying, staring into the water. She had a plum-coloured bruise on her cheek where one of the men had hit her.

  “Here's the Captain-General’s fine lady,” Marretje said to the others.

  Alida gave her a look. “She won't want to talk to commoners like us.”

  “Alms for the poor, miss,” Marretje said, holding out her hand, palm up.

  “Leave her be,” Elisabeth said. “She's in the same fix as the rest of us.”

  “Not quite the same,” Marretje said. “She only has one prick to coddle.”

  Cornelia felt tears burning in her eyes, shame, and outrage together. “What did they do?” she said.

  “What do you think?” Alida said. “And my brave husband not here to protect me.” She fell to her knees on the sand. Elisabeth put her arms around her and stroked her hair as she sobbed.

  Marretje looked up at Cornelia. “Just go,” she said.

  ***

  The pastor paced the shore, pale and trembling. “It is an abomination before God. Christiaan and his so-called council behave like savages. Their treatment of the people is a reproach to all civilised and God-fearing men!’

  His family were gathered outside his tent, watching him; the maid, Wybrecht, had her arms around the younger children; the older girls, Hendrika and Wilhelmyntgie, clutched each other. His wife stood apart from all of them, terrified.

  Cornelia was astonished that the pastor had so far ignored the murders and disappearances that had been so obvious to the rest of them. But the rape of Elisabeth and Alida Post and Marretje Overmaars could not be explained away by any Christian man.

  “I am frightened, Johannes,” the pastor's wife said.

  He stared at her, his eyes bright with messianic rage. “Satan is walking among us! I must face him!’

  “Perhaps we should pray instead.”

  “Have we not prayed constantly since the wrecking of the ship? God is testing our resolve. We must stand fast against Satan as certainly as we would in Holland!’

  In Holland we had the stadtholder's soldiers to back the Lord's wisdom, Cornelia thought. You have left your stand against Satan a little late, I think.

  He started down the beach towards Christiaan's grand tent, his shoes crunching on the coral, his long black coat flapping in the wind. A group of jonkers were gathered outside it; Joost, the van der Beeck boys, David Krueger as well, they started laughing when they saw him approach. Just boys, she thought. How could they do such terrible things?

  They called to Christiaan and he stepped outside his tent, his hands on hips. “Well, well,” he called out. “The Lord has sent a messenger to us. What is the word of God this morning, preacher man?”

  The pastor stopped to catch his breath, held out the Bible in his right fist. “Know you not this Book?”

  Christ
iaan snatched it from him. He flicked through its pages, as if he had not seen such a book before, then with one sudden movement he tore out a handful of pages and let the wind scatter them.

  The pastor gasped and tried snatch it back, but Christiaan would not release it. The others laughed at this little game.

  “God will strike you down for that!’

  The undermerchant looked up at the sky, in a dumb show of bewilderment. “When?” he said, and appeared puzzled.

  “The Lord himself has said...”

  Krueger grabbed him and threw him on the ground. Hendrika ran forward to protect him. “Don't hurt him!’ she shouted.

  Christiaan tossed the Bible aside and it landed with a splash in the shallows. “There will be no more talk of your Lord! God has wrecked our ship here so that the true word can pass among men, and I am the instrument of it. There will be no more Sunday preaching, pastor. From this time, you shall come to me to know God's law!’

  The pastor made a high keening like a wounded animal. He scrambled to his feet and fled, stumbling on the stones, the gulls rising from the beach in front of him, screeching like the devil's battalions.

  Chapter 67

  Batavia Fort

  AMBROISE endured the long and terrible silence as the Governor-General reviewed the transcripts of his reports. Finally he laid them aside and regarded Ambroise down the end of his formidable nose. “I have read your account of the unfortunate events on the Utrecht that you have made and I have to tell you, I am not as impressed with your abilities as they are in Amsterdam. Your actions will be examined more fully at a later date.”

  Damning judgment; but not official, Ambroise reminded himself, not yet. There was still time to redeem himself.

  “The most important thing at this time, is that you return to the wreck to salvage the Company's goods and treasure and rescue any of the people as still survive. You will take the Zandaam, and return there with the upper steersman from the Utrecht. Together you are charged with the task of locating the reef where she foundered.”

  He drummed his fingers on Amrboise’s report.

  “You shall therefore set sail tomorrow in the name of God and shall hasten your journey with all possible diligence in order to arrive most speedily at the place where this disaster has been visited upon the Company and the people.”

  Ambroise nodded and took his orders, leaving without another word.

  ***

  The Zandaam cleared port and sailed west once again, bound for the Sunda Straits and the mysterious Southland. Ambroise stood on the poop, eyes sunken and yellow with fever, a skeleton in ruff and cloak.

  His mind was a chaos of self recrimination and outrage, one moment castigating himself for those things he had done, the next consumed with outrage at the injustices done to him. If anything at all gave him cause for satisfaction that morning, it was the corpse blackening in its chains outside the castle. Jan Decker, high boatswain of the Utrecht, had finally paid for what had been done to a good Dutch wife.

  He had heard from Raemburch that the skipper had been put to the question also. Even a man like that, he’d break eventually. Well, he’d brought it all on himself. As for that nasty little trollop of a maid, Coen had left her rotting in a dungeon. He supposed Cornelia would be pleased to hear of it, if she was still alive.

  Or perhaps not. Knowing Cornelia, she would probably feel sorry for her.

  Chapter 68

  The Houtman Rocks

  CHRISTIAAN strutting around the island like a prince. He had his entourage with him: Joost van der Linde, David Krueger, and the bully boys, Willem Groot and Gerrit van Hoeck. The pastor stood outside his tent, a lonely figure now, his wife beside him, their children clinging to her skirts.

  “We have to get away from here,” Cornelia said. “Your daughter is in danger. We will all die if we stay here.”

  “There is no way we can escape.”

  “We have to steal a raft.”

  But he was not listening. He watched Christiaan make his way up the beach, in fine spirits this morning. “Pastor! The very man I wanted to see. It seems there has been a misunderstanding between us. ’

  And that was all it took. She watched the pastor’s demeanour change. “A misunderstanding, Heer Undermerchant?”

  “I have treated you harshly. Perhaps the strain of looking after so many people.”

  “I am much relieved to hear you speak this way. I should like the opportunity to speak again to the people and reassure them that we are not lost to God's laws. I fear that due to our privations we are not all behaving as God-fearing men.”

  Christiaan smiled. “God-fearing? I do not fear Him, preacher man, for He has saved me from all manner of disasters. He plucked me from the wreck and put me here on the island to shepherd you all. Indeed, He has protected me while others around me have met with diverse disasters.”

  “We should thank God for it.”

  Christiaan put a hand on his shoulder. “Indeed, you should.”

  “Don't toady to him,” Hendrika snapped. “Father, can’t you see what he’s doing?”

  Christiaan glared at her, and for a moment Cornelia thought he would strike her. Then he threw back his head and guffawed. “You have chosen a spirited little filly,” he said to Joost. “You should sleep with a dagger under your pillow!’

  “Chosen?” the pastor said.

  “What say you, Hendrika? This fine young fellow here wants you for his woman.”

  “This fine young fellow,” Cornelia thought; a beardless youth with little talent for anything except bullying and drinking, such a stranger to suffering that he thinks it sport. Until we hit this reef he would have spent his life as some junior official in the Great Company, but now he thinks himself great because Christiaan calls him friend.

  This fine young fellow.

  “It must be done in accordance with the law,” the pastor said.

  Cornelia gaped at the pastor in astonishment. She heard Hendrika catch her breath.

  “Hendrika?” Cornelia said. “Is this what you wish?”

  “I am her father! It is for me to decide what she wishes.”

  Christiaan’s mood became expansive once more. “I am glad you see the sense in it. I had hoped we may be friends, Johannes. There has been dissension between us for too long. Do you not think so?”

  “Indeed, a reconciliation between us is the warmest wish of my heart.”

  “Perhaps we should consider restoring you to our council.”

  “I should be most honoured!’

  “Well, I shall have to think on it.”

  “Much depends on your daughter,” Joost said.

  “I am sure you will find her most dutiful.”

  “Good,” Christiaan said and smiled at Joost. Then to the pastor: “You should come to dinner tonight in my tent. Bring Hendrika. Cornelia, you will come too. We will have a feast to celebrate. Good day to you.” He laughed and moved on, his thumbs in his belt. The others followed.

  “Well, I think everything is going to be all right now,” the pastor said to his wife.

  “You just sold him your daughter,” Cornelia said.

  “No, it will be all right. We must trust in the Lord.”

  “Are you mad?”

  “They are not such bad fellows,” the pastor said. “They had to be firm with the thieves. If we are going to survive, we need such discipline.”

  “What about the Post girls and Marretje Overmaars?” Cornelia said.

  He looked away. “It is going to turn out all right. You'll see.”

  “They raped them last night in their tents!’

  “Everything is going to be all right,” he repeated and he hurried Hendrika and the rest of the family away from her, back into their scrap of a tent.

  She looked across to the long island. Smoke from cookfires had smudged against a cold, blue sky. Help me, Michiel. Come back for me.

  ***

  A cold southerly hurled itself at the beach. It was pitch dark, spa
rks from the camp fires carried on the wind with snatches of laughter from Steenhower's soldiers and their jonker friends, the chink of pewter jugs as they drank. The pastor made his way through the bush, the much worn Bible he had salvaged from the sea tucked under one arm. His wife followed.

  “We shall bring them to repentance,” he said to Cornelia as he set off. “Trust that I know what I'm doing.”

  “You know what Christiaan wants, and it isn't to repent.”

  “We will observe the proper forms. Maistre van der Linde comes from a fine and God-fearing family,” he said.

  “You cannot let him do this!’

  “No, it will be all right. You will see.”

  Joost stood outside his tent, golden hair streaming in the wind. His cloak, she noticed, embroidered with passementerie; Christiaan's pet tailor had been at work again. When they got there Joost ushered them inside, as if welcoming them to a palace. She supposed that compared to the other shelters on the island, it might as well have been. Silk hangings, plundered from a Company chest, shimmered in the light of the gymbel lamps that hung from the cross spars.

  There was food set out on the table; lobster tails and roasted mutton birds and oysters artfully arranged on the driftwood table. "Eat as much as you like," Joost whispered. "What isn't eaten tonight, we throw away." He picked up a pewter cup. “Wine?” he said and poured out a glass of the best French burgundy, decanted into a silver jug.

  Christiaan entered then, glorious in red surcoat of laken, a golden medallion about his neck, his coat similarly decorated with abundant passementerie. Joost bowed to him, and addressed him as Captain-General, a title she had never heard before.

  They sat down and the boy, Strootman, waited table, bringing them wine, fish freshly roasted on a hot fire, gobbets of toasted Gouda cheese. Tonight, it seemed, they could forget they were starving.