East India

by Colin Falconer

  “Get after him!’ Quick shouted from the beach.

  “I can’t swim!’

  Welten hauled Groot onto the raft. He was covered in blood but he was alive. Welten steered them out towards the channel. The tide and the current were with them and in no time they were a dot on the horizon. They had escaped with only one of the three serviceable rafts they had, and were headed straight for the long island and Michiel Van Texel.

  The long island

  Michiel stared across the lagoon. His soldiers gathered on the beach around him, their faces ashen as Welten told his story. It defied all belief. Michiel could not credit that among Christian men and women such things could take place. Christiaan ruled the island as if it was his own personal kingdom, Welten said. Some madness had overtaken all of those with him. They had sent the provost and most of the passengers to the seal island, then they went over over early one morning on their rafts and murdered them all, chasing and butchering them like mutton birds.

  Next they had put all the women in one tent and used them for their personal pleasure. They had forced the pastor’s daughter to become Joost van der Linde's wife.

  “What about Cornelia Noorstrandt?”

  “Christiaan is saving her for himself,” Welten said.

  Both men were shivering with fright and with cold. The sailor Pieter Robben had a sword slash to his back, the muscle sliced clean through to the bone. He should be dead. Blood had soaked his shirt and still ran in rivulets down his spine.

  Michiel told his corporal to find them blankets and bandage their wounds best they could. They helped them off the beach and back to the makeshift lean-tos they had built.

  “Drag the raft up the beach,” Michiel told his men. “Hurry now. It will be dark soon.”

  “What do you make of it?” Westerveld said.

  “There is only one thing to make of it.”

  “But Christiaan van Sant is a Company man!’

  “Not any more.”

  He stared across the channel. Only a matter of time now before that murderous bunch of clerks and fancy boys came after them. Well, they would have a surprise for them.

  “What are we going to do?” Westerveld said.

  “We have a duty to the women,” he said. “Now we have a raft we can pay our friends a little visit.”

  The Houtman Rocks

  Christiaan ranted, pacing back and forth, a froth of spittle in his beard. Even big Steenhower kept his head lowered.

  “How could you allow them to steal one of our rafts?” Christiaan shouted.

  “It was Krueger's fault,” Steenhower said. “I left him in charge.”

  Krueger looked sulky, scuffed the sand with his buckled shoes.

  “Well?” Christiaan said.

  Krueger refused to answer.

  “They were in the women's tent,” Gilles Clement said.

  “What?”

  “Krueger and ten Broek. They were supposed to be guarding the rafts and they went to the women’s tent instead.”

  He turned away from them, disgusted. “Do we know who it was?”

  “Welten, the butler.”

  “The other one was Pieter Robben, the sailor,” Groot said. “I cut him with my sword. I thought he was dead. WeltenStrootman tripped me up or I would ahve finished him.” He held up his arm to show the deep gouges in his arm from the coral cuts.

  “I didn’t trip him! Robben pushed him over!’

  Christiaan turned on Krueger and ten Broek. So, for the sake of a little fornication they had lost one of their three rafts. Everything had been so easy until now; this complicated their plans. If Robben and Welten reached the long island, they would have to get the raft back. But facing Michiel Van Texel's soldiers would not be as easy as running down a few frightened boys on the seal island.

  Chapter 74

  THE gulls dived, screeching for tidbits in the channel as the mackerel chopped through a school of smaller fish. There was the promise of a storm on the rain-scented wind. Crabs scuttled on the clinker beach.

  Cornelia washed the bandages as best she could in the shallows then headed back up the clinker shore to the sick tent. Willem Groot and Steenhower were outside; the little monster Strootman and one of the jonkers, Lennart ten Broek, were with them, Krueger too. Groot was saying something to Maistre Arentson, and by the look on his face she knew something terrible was going to happen. The barber seemed resigned to it. He shrugged and walked away.

  “Maistre Arentson!’

  He saw her and shook his head.

  “You should go with him,” Steenhower said to her.

  “Why? What are you going to do?”

  She saw Christiaan heading along the beach, Salomon was with him, and Christiaan had his arm around his shoulders, like they were old friends, out for a walk.

  They stopped outside the ragged shelter where Maistre Arentson had been nursing the sick; Richard Merrell, the cabin boy Simon Oddyck, who had flux, Hollert the understeersman and a couple of others who had fallen ill with infections or sickness.

  "Now Salomon, have you killed anyone yet?" Christiaan said, brightly.

  Salomon jerked, as if someone had jabbed him with a knife. "My lord?"

  "You're no good here among the Devil's Own if you've no sin on your soul. Ask anyone. Ask the preacher."

  Salomon stared at Cornelia in dumb appeal.

  "Please, let him go, Christiaan. Dear God, no more blood."

  He shrugged, as if the matter was out of his hands.

  "Do it for me."

  He smiled, delighted. "For you, my love?" He had Strootman fetch him a cup of wine. He handed it to Salomon. "Drink it. Come on, boy. You heard what I said! It will give you courage."

  Salomon drank it down, wine leaking down the corners of his mouth. Christiaan took the jewelled dagger from his belt and handed it to him. "Now then, do what must be done. See if you truly are one of us. We have to be eternally vigilant for muyters, you know."

  Krueger laughed.

  "Don't do it," Cornelia said to him.

  “What do you want me to do?”

  Christiaan looked at the shelter where Maistre Arentson’s patients lay covered with filthy blankets. “It is unfortunate but necessary. Most of them will die. Why waste our food and water? And they are suffering and we have no medicine. I tell you, it is a kindness.”

  "You mustn't do it," Cornelia repeated.

  Christiaan smiled, apparently pleased with how things were turning out. She knew what he was thinking: if the boy resolves against me, I'll kill him instead. Perfect.

  Salomon made up his mind and brushed past her. She grabbed his arm and tried to wrestle the knife away from him. Krueger threw himself between them and easily pushed her aside. She fought him as best she could, and he hit her once around the head with his closed fist. The blow stunned her and knocked all the fight out of her. Her legs gave way and she stumbled to her knees.

  The muyters laughed about it among themselves. “You're nothing better than animals,” she screamed at them.

  Salomon steeled himself and went in.

  The long island

  Their numbers had swollen from two dozen to more than two score, augmented by the few who had managed to swim or float across from the seal island before the massacre that Welten had described.

  Among the survivors were two coopers, and Michiel had put them to work, had them break up some of the water barrels and use them to fashion an arsenal for his soldiers; some hardened hoop iron made enough for several pikes, and these were sharpened and bound to pieces of driftwood. They made some morning star clubs from hunks of flotsam timber from the wreck, spiked with nails. They built up cairns of coral slabs to use as missiles.

  In a hand to hand fight they would chase off this bunch of fancy boys and clerks in a few minutes, skewer the rest. They were professional soldiers, most of them hardened against the Spanish and the Matarams. But this would not be an even fight; Christiaan and his men had swords and even a few muskets.


  Still, they were not defenceless anymore.

  They had called themselves the verediggers - the diggers - a bitter joke for the use that Christiaan van Sant had put them to. But now they said it with pride. Every day Michiel drilled them, made them soldiers again after the long months of inactivity. He scouted the island thoroughly, decided which way the attack would come. It would certainly be here in the arm of the island, he told them, the muyters would run their rafts with the current, straight across the shallow mud flats from the lagoon.

  He posted sentries all along the island anyway, on twenty-four hour guard. He knew they must not be caught by surprise; once the muyters were on the island, they would have the advantage. It was while they were in the shallows, trying to get ashore, that his verediggers had their best chance of beating them off.

  Every day Christiaan stalled allowed them to prepare themselves a little more. They would not die like sheep, like the unarmed women and children and shopkeepers on the seal island.

  But first they would deliver a little surprise of their own.

  ***

  “Salomon must really want to live,” Krueger said.

  “Look at that,” she heard Groot say to Steenhower. “He's cured two of the patients already. I'd say he is a better physician than Maistre Arentson.”

  “Richard!’ Cornelia shouted and tried to run inside. She had promised Michiel she would take care of him. Steenhower caught her easily and threw her down again. She caught her hip on a piece of coral and cried out in pain.

  Moments later Salomon ran out of the tent. He dropped the knife on the ground and stumbled down to the beach and retched into the shallows.

  Krueger and Steenhower cheered.

  “Let's call him “Cannonball,”’ Groot laughed. “He can kill five men at once.”

  Christiaan nodded to Krueger who picked up the knife and cleaned it with a clerk's precision in the seawater before returning and handing it to Christiaan. Salomon meanwhile was scrubbing at the bloodstains--the seawater around him was already stained pink. Meanwhile Strootman and Groot were already busy digging graves among the mutton bird nests.

  Salomon hid in the bushes at the other end of the island. He did not return until long after dark.

  Chapter 75

  “NOW Willem,” Christiaan said, ‘how long have you been a soldier?”

  Big Willem Groot stammered something, could not meet his eyes. “Are you truly one of the Devil's Own?” “You can rely on me, Captain-General.”

  “It is not enough just to say the words, Willem. A man must be tested.”

  He looked around the room. Krueger and Steenhower fingered their heavy cutlasses, reading the direction of his thoughts and smiling.

  “I will not let you down, Captain-General,” Willem said.

  “These two men have silver for you,” Christiaan said, picking up a heavy rix-dollar and letting the candlelight reflect on the engraved head on the reverse. “They also have women at their disposal, but you already have a woman. It divides a man's loyalties, does it not?”

  “She means nothing to me.”

  “There is no place where we are going for women.”

  Suddenly our new recruit to the Devil's Own looks like a sickly child. Or perhaps it is just the light. “Do you wish to visit the women's tent tonight, Willem? Who would be your fancy, should you choose to go? Plump Marretje Overmaars with her heavy breasts or that little Elisabeth Post, skinny but sweet, they say. Or beautiful Alida with her blonde curls? Who would you choose?”

  Willem looked around the group, Steenhower and Krueger grinning at him, inviting him into their conspiracy.

  “Or will you go and lie with Neeltje? She is your wife after all. A little fat, I have to say it. Her behind too plump for my tastes. And the child cries incessantly; I dare say your wife has no time for you anymore.” Before Willem had time to answer, Christiaan tossed him the silver coin. “Here, take it, there are chests of it where that came from.”

  Willem’s eyes flickered around the tent, to Krueger and Stonecutter, weighing the risk. A difficult choice, Christiaan thought, between scruples and your life. He seemed to be having some difficulty with it, but perhaps not as much as he thought he might.

  “I've told you, Captain-General, I am yours to command.”

  Christiaan laughed easily. “I have no commands for you. All the choices are yours.”

  “Tell me what I have to do.”

  “That is the best of it, Willem--for the most part you need to do nothing. In fact, you will not even know if you have the passed the test until it is done.” He leaned closer, lowered his voice. “I can be the harbinger of your dreams, Willem, every secret dream I can bring to you.” And then he added, in the sibilant whisper of a lover: “If you would only let me.”

  ***

  The booming of the reef. It mocked them, day in, day out. This relentless hammering of the wind was driving her mad.

  Cornelia heard scratching outside her tent, drew back the canvas. It was Salomon, lying on his belly, half concealed in the brush. He had crawled up to her tent through the saltbushes hoping none of the muyters would see him. His face was grey as a corpse.

  “What are you doing here?” Cornelia hissed. “They'll kill you if they see you.”

  “I have to talk to you,” he said.

  She let him inside. She remembered him from the dinner table on the Utrecht, such a pale boy with his fair hair and studious ways. Now look at him. What had these monsters done to him?

  “You shouldn't be here,” she repeated.

  He started to cry. Just like that. Broke down and wept, his head on his knees, like some madman in the street. His nose was running, there was snot on his sleeve.

  She put out a hand to touch his shoulder but he shrank away from her. “You don't want to touch me,” he said. He shook his head, violently. “I'm sorry, vrouwe. They made me do it!’

  She spared an anxious glance for the doorway.

  “It's all right if someone makes you do something, isn't it? They made you be Christiaan's whore, right?”

  “I'll never give in to him,” she hissed. “Is that what you think? That I've given in to him? I'll never do that! Never!’

  Suddenly there was hate in his eyes; it was not what he wanted to hear. “You're no better than the rest of us,” he said. “You think you are, but you're not.”

  She drew away from him.

  “They were sick,” he said. “They were going to die anyway. Christiaan said.” He looked up at her, his eyes pleading his case. “You would have done the same.”

  She did not answer him.

  “Say something,” he said.

  She supposed she should feel sorry for him. But she could not find not a single word of comfort for him.

  “I had to do it,” he insisted.

  “Better to let them kill you,” she whispered.

  “Then why are you still alive?” “I don’t know.”

  “Look at me!’ he hissed at her.

  She shook her head.

  “I thought you were my friend.”

  He scrambled out of the tent.

  Chapter 76

  FACE to face with the Devil, the expediter of carnal dreams, alchemist of souls. He came in to her tent unannounced, with merry eyes, a winning smile, and sporting a new mutton bird feather in his hat.

  “All alone?” he asked her.

  “As you wished it to be.”

  “Not even Salomon du Chesne to keep you company?”

  So, he knew.

  “Are you going to murder him, too?” she said, heard the weariness in her own voice.

  “It is for your own protection.”

  “From Salomon?”

  “Of course. He's a killer, didn't you know? He murders sick people.”

  “I am not sick.”

  “A man like that, he wouldn't discriminate.” He reached out and touched her face, tender as a lover. “I would not have anyone hurt you.” “Let him be. Please.”

 
; “I shall certainly not touch a hair on his head,” he said, ‘if that be your wish.”

  And he left, shouting to David Krueger to have his court attend him.

  ***

  That night they found Salomon du Chesne in his shelter, curled miserably in the corner on the hard ground. Perhaps they thought they might forget about him if he hid in here. He started shaking as soon as he saw them.

  “What's the matter, Salomon,” Christiaan said. “You look like you've seen the devil himself.”

  Christiaan held up the torch. The little clerk's face shone with sweat. He stared up at them, at the van der Beeck boys, big Willem Groot, Steenhower. Such exquisite fear on his face. A moment worth savouring.

  He looked around for escape. There was nowhere to run, of course, but that didn't stop them trying.

  “Can we trust you, Salomon?” Christiaan whispered. “You know, some of the jonkers, they say you can never trust a Jew boy. I told them they're wrong about you.”

  “I’ve done what you said. I murdered all those people.”

  “It wasn’t murder, it was mercy killing. I told you that. They were suffering.” He flinched as Christiaan crouched down and put an arm about him. “You see, that’s what I told them. I said you were loyal. To the death.”

  “Please don't hurt me,” Salomon whispered. He was going to cry. How exquisite.

  Krueger started laughing, the van der Beecks too, enjoying the sport.

  “Do you hear that noise?” Christiaan whispered.

  It was Neeltje Groot’s brat, howling in the darkness. Not enough water, she had said. My milk's drying up. Christiaan wept a gallon of tears for her. Drink those.

  “Can you stop the baby crying for us, Salomon?”

  “Please,” he said. “I did everything you said. Let me be. I’ve been a good servant, haven’t I?”