The Sea Beggars

by Holland, Cecelia;

  “There, now,” Pieter said.

  The sail filled and drew, as the men tugged the braces in to keep the canvas face to the wind, and sweetly the Wayward Girl answered the urging. Pieter cast a quick look around them. The galleon still lay between them and the channel; it looked dark and inert, but deeper in the anchorage a small boat was rowing through the lesser ships, and lights moved and people shouted on the deck of a galley only a cable length from Pieter.

  He shouted, “Shake out the mainsail!”

  Jan was bent over the musket, trying to fit a patch into the muzzle, but he wasn’t needed now; the men leapt to the halyards, and the huge new mainsail cracked open, falling wide from the jack yard on the mast. Pieter let out his breath, exhilarated.

  On the galley there was a shout, and a drumbeat.

  “Man the sheets!” Pieter went to the edge of the stern deck, above the wheel. “Jan, take the helm.” He looked up the harbor, toward the distant sea. The wind blew full in his face. More than the wind against him, he feared the three big cannon mounted on the shore. He gripped the rail, looking down at his nephew’s head as the young man took the wheel.

  The ship was moving handily through the water now, headed dead away from the mouth of the harbor; she would pass astern of the dark galleon. The mainsail was luffing a little, which surprised old Pieter, until he remembered that the weight of the new cannon had the ship out of trim. He licked his lips. Ahead the river poured into the harbor.

  “Luff off all sail!”

  They jumped to the braces and let the sheets fly, spilling the wind out of the canvas. With the wind off her the ship lost her liveliness. She seemed to die slowly, or fall asleep. On the last of her forward momentum, she glided into the onrushing river current, and the forceful water bore her away down toward the sea.

  Now they understood, Pieter’s crew, and a rough cheer went up.

  “Hands to the braces,” Pieter roared.

  Jan looked up at him, his face solemn. “Here comes that other ship.”

  The old man was watching the far shore slip by, judging the ship’s speed downriver. The tide was ebbing strongly. The ship was swinging slowly around in the broad tug of the current, and he called an order to trim the jib. When the wind turned the ship broadside to the current again, he spared a look over his shoulder at the galley.

  The harbor master’s ship was putting out her oars. In a ragged line the blades rose dripping into the air, flashing and sparkling in the light of the lanterns at her poop and forecastle. Slowly she moved out of her anchorage. Free of the wind, she could pass the galleon on the bow side, cutting in half the margin between her and the Wayward Girl. Pieter bit his lips. He drummed his fists on his thighs. Abruptly, one hand on the rail of the poop deck, he vaulted down to the waist beside Jan.

  “Get that musket ready. I’ll take the wheel.”

  Jan reached down at his feet for the gun. “What do you suppose the range is with this thing?”

  “You see that culverin in the galley’s bow?” Pieter hung his arms over the wheel spokes, keeping the ship steady as he could. He squinted to see forward through the bustle on the deck. “Just don’t let them fire on us with that culverin.”

  “Yes, sir,” Jan said.

  The Wayward Girl was slowly losing speed. The current nudged her off to the side. Pieter’s legs tingled, as they often did when he was frightened. What an ass he was, to give up his house and his jug of liquor for this wretched life again. He yelled to his crew to trim the jib.

  While he was bringing the ship up into the current again, someone on the foredeck saw the galley.

  “They’re chasing us!”

  All the men but two dropped their work and ran to the rail to see. Pieter roared, “Luff off. Luff off, damn you! Jan—”

  The men rushed back to their work. Pieter cast a quick look over his shoulder. Jan had gone up onto the stern deck; he was laying out the powder flask, the sack of musket balls, the patches, and kneeling began to load the musket. Pieter’s gaze changed its angle. The galley was coming on, her oars rising and falling like wings. Within minutes she would have the Wayward Girl within range of her bow gun.

  Pieter gave a yell of rage. His men had finally taken the wind out of the ship’s jib, but too late; her way would carry her upriver a little now, closer to the galley, while the rowed ship like an arrow coursed down the tideway at their flank.

  “Jan,” he shouted. “Keep watch!” Despairing, he flung a look ahead of them, at the narrow mouth of the harbor, where the shore guns hid in the dark.

  “She’s firing,” Jan called.

  There was a boom from the galley. A moment later the ball whisked through the air and a fountaining splash shot up from the black water to starboard.

  “Don’t let them fire on us!” Pieter danced on the deck, spitting with rage as he shouted. “One good shot and we’re hulled!”

  “She’s too far away still.” Jan stood calmly looking over the rail at the oncoming galley.

  The galley was sweeping down on them. With the Wayward Girl nearly broadside to her, she had an enormous target to fire on. Pieter gritted his teeth. He longed for his little fire and his gin. In the light of the galley’s forecastle lantern he could see the men working around the big culverin, loading, running her forward, standing up with the slow match—

  “Jan,” he shrieked.

  The culverin thundered smoke and flame. Pieter’s whole body tensed, waiting, waiting for the blow. The hiss in the air sounded almost overhead. He whirled; the white eruption of the water where the shot hit burst up on the far side of the ship, a scant two fathoms off. They had fired completely over the ship. They were aiming high, trying to disable the Wayward Girl so that they could recapture her.

  “Jan!”

  The boy raised the musket to his shoulder. The Wayward Girl was nearly to the mouth of the harbor, now, still turned broadside to the current and to the pursuing galley. The stink of sulfur crossed the water to Pieter’s nose. In the forecastle of the galley the men bent over the cannon, so close he could see the gleam of sweat on their naked shoulders. The bore of the culverin like a preacher’s mouth was round with fulminations.

  “Jan—”

  The boy lifted one hand to him to wait.

  Farther away, in another direction, there was another low boom, like summer thunder. Pieter wheeled, his hair standing on end. They had come under the shore battery’s fire. He peered toward the dark hilly headland between the harbor and the sea. Where that shot went, he could not tell, and he saw nothing; his back tingled in expectation of the next.

  On the galley they ran the gun forward into firing position, and the man with the slow match stepped forward. Jan raised the musket neatly to his shoulder and shot the gunner through the chest.

  Pieter emptied his lungs in a yell. His nephew grabbed the ramrod. On the galley’s forecastle the gun crew was milling around; someone shouted angry orders in Spanish, and then in Dutch. “Shoot! Shoot!” Jan flung down the ramrod and poured gunpowder into the musket.

  From the shore battery came another dull thump. Pieter held his breath. He flung a wild look around him, looking for the ball that could come from anywhere, and saw to his surprise that they were in the mouth of the harbor now, the open sea only yards away.

  “Hands to the braces!”

  The galley’s gun banged, so close that the smoke from the culverin rolled across the water and enveloped the stern of the Wayward Girl. Pieter coughed, blinking his fogged eyes; Jan loomed through the smoke, the musket to his shoulder, unmoving, and fired.

  There was a shriek from the galley. The Spanish officer fell in a long dive over the rail into the sea.

  There was another low boom from the shore battery. Pieter ducked; he heard the whistle of the shot passing close beside his ship. Between him and the galley, the water suddenly burst upward into a volcano of white spray. Jan yelled in triumph and delight, dancing on the poop deck. The white water subsided. Behind it the galley rolled helpl
ess in the thrashing wave, half its bow gone.

  “Mainsail,” Pieter cried, his voice hoarse with relief. “Trim her down!”

  The crew hauled in the mainsail sheets; into the taut belly of the sail the wind poured its strength, and the ship grew light and quick in the water. The shore battery boomed again, but, perhaps distracted by the calamity it had brought upon its own galley, it sent its shot way wide. On the foredeck of the Wayward Girl the men were dancing and hugging one another and cheering. Pieter cranked the wheel over.

  “Prepare to wear ship!”

  Jan sprang down to his side. “Are we out? Are we free?”

  Pieter was looking forward, past the wild celebrations on the deck, toward the broad flat horizon of water unbroken by any land. “Yes,” he said.

  Jan clapped him on the back, and Pieter put out his hand and gripped the boy’s arm in rough proud affection. They brought the ship around on a broad reach and sailed away into the masterless sea.

  5

  Every morning before dawn, Michael opened the ovens and raked over the coals and laid on more charcoal. While the ovens were heating, he went around to the front of the bakery and unrolled the awning and opened the shutters and the door. Now the sun was rising.

  The ovens were hot, and his mother would be up, shuffling around in the small dark room at the rear of the bakery, exhaling deep sighs in place of words or prayers. The first loaves were ready for the ovens, little round buns that Antwerpers loved in the midmorning, some plain, some stuffed with fruit or jam. There were forty-two of these; Michael knew already the names and faces of those who would buy thirty-six of them and could have guessed to the moment when these regular customers would appear, who would pay with a penny and who with a real, and what each one would say to him in the course of the transaction.

  The other six buns were part of the day’s surprises. Michael loved surprises. He slid the tray of buns into the top oven.

  He swept the shop and went out to sweep the street in front. Up the way, past the broom hedge, the wine and oil shop was open, and old Philips was out in front sweeping his part of the street. He and Michael waved to each other. Michael did not bother to smile. Philips was nearly blind. He needed only the gesture. Stooping over the broom again, Michael scrubbed away at the cobblestones. Sometimes it seemed that the older he got the less interesting his life became.

  But now here came Melisse, a seamstress who lived down the street above the flower shop, a covered dish in her hand. Michael straightened, his curiosity jumping alive.

  Melisse wore a dirty apron over her long sober dress. Her hair was pushed carelessly up under a worn coif, and her long thin face was hollow and baggy with fatigue. Coming up to Michael, she tugged on his sleeve and turned back the cloth over the dish.

  “My baby’s sick, Michael, dear,” she said. In the dish was a mess of egg and herbs and milk. “Let me set this in your oven, just for a moment, just to cook the goodness in.”

  He took the dish; giving a look over his shoulder into the shop, he covered the slop over again. His mother disapproved of charity—and Melisse was gossiped to be a secret Calvinist. Michael smiled at her. “Come back in half an hour.”

  “Not too long, now,” she said. “I don’t want the egg to be hard; he won’t eat it if it’s hard.”

  “Don’t worry.”

  “But it must be warmed all the way through. Maybe I should stay and do it myself.”

  “No, no, go on, and come back in half an hour.”

  Melisse lingered, frowning. Michael took the dish into the shop and set it on the table inside the door. His mother called him. He went back into the kitchen, to help her knead the dough.

  Jeanne-Marie hated the sunlight. Her kitchen was like an anteroom of Hell, gloomy and low, the pent air thick with odors of yeast and decaying fruit and old flour and souring milk. The old woman padded on her broad bare feet from the cupboard to the table where she worked, every few minutes fetching up a sigh so tremulous she might have been about to weep. Her clothes were impregnated with flour, and her body shapeless with fat, so that she reminded Michael always of one of her own great floury rolls. When he came into the kitchen she gave him a buffet on the ear.

  “What are you doing out there? Who are you talking to? Come work this dough and earn your keep like a decent Christian man.”

  Side by side they stood at the table punching and pounding the dough, warm and moist at first, sticking to Michael’s hands as he pulled and folded it and pumped it with his arms.

  Out in front of the place the door opened.

  Michael kept his eyes on the dough. He knew what would happen, every step, like an old dance.

  His mother shuffled to the kitchen door and peered out. “Michael!” She waved him frantically over to her side.

  “Yes, Mama.”

  “Who is that? Is that Moeller?”

  He looked. Of course it was Moeller, who came in every day at this time, with his penny, to buy a fruit bun for his wife and a plain bun for himself.

  “Yes, Mama.”

  “He’s a Calvinist. You go and give him what he wants. See he doesn’t cheat you.” She pushed him forward out the door. “Hurry up before he leaves and we lose the money!”

  While he was giving Moeller a cherry bun and the plain bun, two more regular buyers appeared.

  “Good morning, Michael.”

  “Hello, Vrouw Arliss. What may I sell you today?”

  “Oh, the usual, Michael.”

  “Hello, Vrouw Schenck. What may I sell you today?”

  “What we always have, Michael.”

  He wrapped the buns in soft paper, careful not to smear the sweet filling that oozed from the side. A strange girl came into the shop.

  “Thank you, Vrouw Schenck. God be with you.”

  “And how is your dear mother, Michael?” Vrouw Schenck loved to talk.

  “Very well, thank you.”

  The strange girl had gone to one side of the shop and was staring at the loaves of bread left over from the day before. Her long gray skirt was patched, the hem worn, but the stuff was very fine. He craned his neck to see if she wore jewelry.

  “Have you heard the latest about Melisse, Michael? I understand her husband has left her again.”

  He mumbled something to Vrouw Schenck, his curiosity absorbed by the stranger.

  “That’s what happens to people who don’t mind their ways,” said Vrouw Schenck, comfortably. “If she’d only—”

  The strange girl was leaving. Michael brushed rudely past Vrouw Schenck, saying, “Yes, yes, you’re perfectly right,” ready to stop the girl at the door. But she had only gone to look at the sweet buns. Embarrassed, he faced his old customer again.

  “My, my, Michael,” she said, and sniffed. “I can see my friendship’s wasted here.”

  “Vrouw Schenck, I’m sorry—”

  The housewife drew herself up like a strutting pigeon and marched out the door. Michael grimaced. It would not do to lose a good customer. He stood looking at the back of the stranger, wondering why he would risk certain profit for the sake of a new face.

  “May I help you?” he said.

  The girl turned. She was a little younger than he was, and not pretty. Her pale hair hung down in disorderly braids over her shoulders. She said, “Do you sell your stale bread?”

  “We give it to the Church,” he said.

  Her face fretted with disappointment, she glanced behind her once at the sweet buns and started toward the door. Michael got in her way. “Wait.” Her dress was rich; he wondered what fate had brought her to search for day-old bread. “Is it for you? Are you hungry?”

  From the back of the shop came his mother’s sibilant hiss. “Michael!”

  He waved at her to be quiet. At his question the girl’s face had gone suddenly blank. “I feed it to the birds,” she said, with an edge in her voice that suggested he should keep his interest to himself.

  “Michael!” his mother called, in a hoarse loud whisper. “W
ho is she? Is she Catholic?”

  “The Church gives bread to the poor,” Michael said.

  The girl raised her pale eyebrows into polite arches. “How very kind of the Church.”

  Not a Catholic. He looked her over again, intent, and saw her hands, soft and fine as a noblewoman’s. She was making for the door again and he blocked her way.

  “Wait. Who are you? I’ve never seen you before, and I know everybody in this quarter of Antwerp.”

  “I’ve got to go,” she said. “My mother’s waiting for me.”

  “Michael,” his mother shouted. “Get rid of her!”

  “Wait.” He lunged past the stranger, grabbed the nearest sweet bun off the rack, and brought it to her. “Here.”

  Her eyes widened, softening her face; slowly she took the bun from him, her gaze unwavering from his, and lifting the bun took a bite. Her hunger overwhelmed her discipline. She stuffed the delicious sweet into her mouth, chewing hard on the sticky mass. Michael smiled at her, triumphant.

  “Who are you? Where do you live?”

  “Michael!”

  She managed to swallow the lump of bread in her mouth. Now that she had eaten of his charity, she could not deny him a little courtesy, and she said, “My name is Johanna van Cleef—I live over in the Swan Street, above the Kelmans’ kitchen. Do you know them?”

  “Kelman,” he said. “Two buns in the morning, a long loaf at night.”

  She was going. He did not stop her, having now some connection with her after she left the bakery. He smiled at her, and, her mouth stuffed with another greedy bite of the bun, she gave him back a broad cheerful grin. She went out the door.

  “Michael!”

  “Coming, Mother.”

  When Hanneke came around the corner into the Swan Street, the Spanish soldier was sitting in front of Kelman’s house. Her back stiffened. On straw legs she made herself walk down the gentle slope toward the house; her mother was in that house, her mother.

  The Spanish soldier watched her come with his smoldering black eyes. He was very young, her age perhaps, although he had managed to grow a little feathery mustache. He was always dressed in fine clothes, trunk hose and doublet and leather shoes, exotic as a papingo among the plain Dutch people on whom he was quartered. As she came closer, Hanneke’s stomach rolled in panic. He had only been here a few days but her fear grew more intense every time she saw him.