The Sea Beggars

by Holland, Cecelia;

  He galloped into the village, a loose straggle of huts laid out along a twisting little street. As he rode in at one end, a hut at the far end exploded into flame. Red gold light flooded the whole village, and he saw at once what was happening.

  His men were breaking into the houses and throwing the poor peasants’ belongings into the street. The peasants themselves were scattered all through the place, some crouched down beside their dwellings, trying pitifully to hide, and some engaged in trying to protect their homes; these were being struck down as soon as they took a stand in their own doorways. A soldier ran by Orange down the middle of the street, chasing a girl who ran screaming ahead of him, and little children wandered through the flickering hellish light, their howls lost in the deafening roar of the flames and the rampaging soldiers. Orange drew his other pistol.

  He rode up to the nearest house, where a brawny peasant with a hoe was fighting off several German mercenaries, and lifting the heavy pistol Orange shot the frontmost of the Germans in the head.

  That swung the others toward him. He held out his second pistol at arm’s length and fired it into the face of another of his men, and dropping the weapon he drew out his sword. The mercenaries charged toward him. When he lifted the sword they wheeled around and raced off down the street.

  A trumpet blasted. A column of mounted men was pushing into the village. Orange wheeled his horse, ready to block the cavalry’s way, and saw his brother leading them. With a broad gesture of his arm he urged the horsemen after him and galloped on through the village, attacking the looters.

  The mercenaries were no more willing to fight now than they had ever been. At the first sign of Louis’ cavalry they scattered and fled into the safety of the darkness outside the village. Orange rode up and down the street, grimly watching the peasants collect their families and gather together what of their belongings they could find intact. The women wept, standing together in groups to console one another; a young man walked along the center of the street, his face lifted toward Heaven, and his arms full of a trampled child. Louis and his men put out the fire, but the hut was entirely consumed, and several of the other buildings had lost their roofs. Orange stopped at the hut where he had shot the mercenaries and dismounted to retrieve his pistol.

  When he straightened, the heavy gun in his hand, a tall old man with a beard rushed up to him.

  “Get out!” he cried. “Get out! Go!” He waved his arms at Orange as if he were shooing off chickens. “Go away!”

  Orange turned to his horse and mounted; he touched his hat to the old man. “As you wish.” Swiftly he scanned the darkness outside the village, wondering where the Spanish were, and went to find his brother and his brother’s trumpeter.

  Alva stood in his stirrups. “They are marching toward France.”

  Don Federico trotted his horse up beside him; they had come out ahead of their army to this tall hill to see what Orange was doing, when the scouts said he had abandoned his road along the river and was heading south. Alva settled down into his saddle again, smiling. Orange’s army was veering off into the tree-masked hills, taking the road south.

  “Well, very good,” he said. “I think they are giving up.”

  His son said nothing. He knew his son had wanted a battle, but Don Federico had no understanding of the wider nature of the struggle and could be expected to do only the obvious. Alva reached out and clapped the younger man on the shoulder.

  “Follow him. Make sure they don’t turn back and try to sneak into my Provinces again. I’m going back to Brussels; I have work to do there.”

  “Why is he leaving?” Don Federico burst out. “He hasn’t been beaten yet.”

  “Because he has a heart of feathers,” said Alva. “He will give up when the way gets hard. That’s the sort of man he is. I know him. Now follow him and be sure he goes on into France. I don’t care what he does there: I hope he makes a lot of trouble for the Dowager, that’s all.”

  “And you are going back to Brussels,” said Don Federico. “When will you send me the money to pay my troops?”

  “When it comes,” Alva said. He smoothed his beard, smiling. “Be patient. The King will send it soon enough, and I will raise my taxes, and we shall have everything firmly in hand.”

  7

  “Fire!” Pieter roared.

  Jan said nothing; with the burning match in his hand he hovered over the waist gun, his gaze pinned to the Spanish merchantman wallowing in the sluggish surf a cable length away.

  “Fire, damn you!” Pieter brought the flat of his stick down on Jan’s back.

  “Shut up, Uncle,” Jan cried, and as he spoke the next onshore wave rolled under the Wayward Girl and lifted her until the dark hulk of the Spanish ship fit square in the notch of the culverin’s sights. He put the match to the touchhole. With a hiss and a hellish whiff of sulfur the flame shot away into the brass backside of the cannon and an instant later the great gun bellowed its deafening smoky thunder.

  The smoke swirled in around the gun. Jan and the two men working with him jumped forward to drag the monster back inboard to be loaded. From the masthead of the Wayward Girl came a cheer.

  “Got the other mast! Round as a barrel, she is!”

  All around the ship the other men roared and cursed and cheered. Pieter whacked Jan on the rump, this time congratulatory.

  “Doomshot! That’s my nephew.”

  Jan with his own hands swabbed the culverin’s barrel with a sponge on a staff. He let other people fire the fore and aft guns but he had fallen in love with this waist gun and could hardly bear to let anyone else handle her. Mouse was waiting with the charge. Half-witted though he was, the puny boy was useful for some things. Jan nodded to him and watched while the boy stroked the heavy flannel packet with the gunpowder deep down the gun’s long throat.

  That done, Jan lifted his eyes to the target.

  The Wayward Girl rolled and thrashed in the trough of the waves, just outside the surf. Halfway between her and the rocky English beach where the water ended, the Spanish merchantman struggled with the pounding waves.

  She had lost one mast in a storm the night before, or the Wayward Girl would never have dared take on so huge a ship, three times her weight, carrying over a hundred men. Some of those men were creeping around on the deck, which pitched and bucked with every surging crosswave of the surf; while Jan watched, a few more of the Spanish seamen leapt overboard into the water, to try to swim to shore. Most of the crew clung to the rails and screamed with every wild corkscrew motion of their vessel. Without a mast or a shred of sail to hold her upright, the Spanish ship could roll completely over at any moment.

  “She’ll run aground any time now,” Pieter said. He stuck his thumb into his belt and squinted toward their target. “Once she does, the sea will break her up. We have to get her out where we can loot her. Let’s pound her again. Maybe the rest of the crew will jump for it.”

  Jan muttered, “Would you?” He jabbed his hand toward the shingle beach beyond the surf.

  All along the English shore, dark figures stood on the sand, watching, and waiting, and as Jan pointed to them, more slipped over the horizon of cliff behind the beach and came down toward the sea. A few of the Spanish sailors were just wading up through the surf and the people on the beach nearest them rushed up and seized them and fell to beating them.

  “There must be fifty of them!” Red Aart shouted. “Who are they?” He leaned across the railing of the Wayward Girl to look.

  Jan bent over his gun again. If the Spanish ship went aground, those lurking beach bandits could well end up with most of the booty. Pieter tapped him on the shoulder.

  “Load up the guns with man killer. Rock shot. Chains.” The mean glint in old Pieter’s eyes surprised his nephew, in spite of all he knew about him. “Let them say their Hail Marys.”

  Jan straightened. “Moek! Willy! Aart!”

  The men stepped forward, eager, and he sent some to the shot locker and others around the ship, to each
of the other guns. “All the guns?” he said to Pieter mildly, and drew a filthy oath from his father’s brother.

  Mouse tugged on his sleeve. “Me, Jan. Tell me too.”

  “Get out of my way,” Jan said, and pushed him over to the rail. He went up to the bow, to load the old cannon there.

  “Sail!” Marten shrieked, from the masthead. “Sail ho—”

  Jan sprang toward the rail, every hackle standing. “Where away?” In the waist Pieter howled with rage and kicked violently at the hatchcover.

  “Larboard beam,” Marten was screaming. “Sail hull down to larboard—”

  Jan shaded his eyes, staring across the rushing seas into the distance, but the ship hull down to the masthead was still well out of sight from the deck. It hardly mattered. Whoever she was, she would make no friend of the Wayward Girl.

  Pieter said, “Well, well. That cuts down a little on our time.”

  “She’s still probably a half a glass away,” Jan said, hoping. He went on to the bow gun. Mouse followed him, walking with a peculiar slouching stride that was meant to imitate Jan’s.

  “Hands to the braces,” Pieter shouted.

  The men ran around the ship. There were too few seamen to work the ship and fire the guns too, and Jan swore, wondering what his uncle was doing. But when he started back toward the stern, where Pieter was climbing the steps to the poop deck to con the steering of the ship, his uncle shouted curses at him.

  “Mind the guns! Just mind the guns and shoot when I tell you, you dumb suck!”

  Jan turned back to the bow gun. Mouse was on his heels; Jan pushed him.

  “Fetch me the match.”

  The slow match sulked in its iron box by the brass waist gun. Mouse ran down the ship and brought it up to the bow.

  Pieter got the Wayward Girl under sail, slipping like a knife through the water, headed away from the Spanish hulk. Standing out to sea until he got room to maneuver, he brought the ship about. Jan leaned against the railing at the bow. His uncle handled the ship as neatly as a wooden shoe in a bathtub. Pieter had made him practice changing course and he had never managed to turn the sails, to lay the ship over and take the new heading without losing the wind and going dead in the water. The great gaff-rigged mainsail luffed a little, drawn too tight to the wind, and Pieter shouted to the man on the brace to let it out a little.

  Now the Wayward Girl was racing down through the heavy seas toward the Spanish hulk again. On the thrashing merchantman a howl of terror went up, as the crew saw her tormentor approaching, and the men rushed back from the rail. Jan bent over the bow gun. He saw what his uncle meant to do, and that he would have very little time to fire the guns as the Wayward Girl passed her target; swiftly he made ready.

  In the notch of the cannon’s sight the Spanish ship loomed larger and darker. The waves lifted her and dropped the Wayward Girl, until the Spanish vessel seemed to hang above them like a great cloud. Then the wave passed on and the two ships slid together, one rising, one falling, and Jan put the match to the cannon and the gun roared.

  The shot, dozens of pieces of metal and rock, whistled as it flew. It raked across the deck of the merchantman, killing in a broad swath. The Spanish sailors shrieked and darted in all directions, and more of them dove overboard into the surf.

  Jan was already running down the ship to the waist gun. The Wayward Girl was flying through the water; Pieter shouted to the men to back the mainsail to slow her down a little, and Jan fired the next gun.

  The two ships were so close now that he saw the faces of the Spanish sailors, saw them disintegrate into red mash when the shot struck. The ship rolled toward him just after the shot whipped across the deck, and on the tilted deck he saw the bodies scattered and broken and the blood running in streams. Without hesitating he raced down the Wayward Girl to the stern, jumped up the three steps to the stern deck, and bent over the two stern guns.

  Standing at the railing of the poop, Pieter shouted, “Aart, go below and bring up two coils of the new cable. Helm, steady as she goes.”

  The Wayward Girl swept past the Spanish ship. Looking down the barrel of the first stern gun, Jan saw the length of her deck; on the boards were a tangle of corpses and screaming wounded and the wreckage of the masts. He put the match to the two bores and the guns thundered almost simultaneously. A veil of smoke hung over the stern for a moment. Coughing, he squinted with watery eyes through the clearing black fog.

  The big merchantman rolled helpless. On her deck nothing stirred except a rag of sail that fluttered in the wind.

  “Lower the dinghy,” Pieter called. He wheeled, grabbing Jan by the sleeve. “You take the boarding party. Rig the tow cable to her bow, if you can—we can haul her off down the coast a little way. I know where there’s a cove—”

  “Sail,” Marten was screaming, from the masthead. “The sail’s coming straight down on us! She’s Spanish—a Spanish greatship!”

  “Oh, God,” Jan said.

  “Never mind her!” Pieter shook him. “There’s no time to spend worrying about her. Get that hulk in tow.”

  Jan spared one instant’s glance out to sea, where the unseen Spaniard was cleaving the water toward them, and ran, down to the waist. Aart and Willy were carrying the ship’s little dinghy to the rail. On the deck lay two huge rolls of three-inch cable, so new the long blond threads that escaped the twist had not been worn off. Jan helped the other men heave the dinghy overboard.

  “Come with me,” he said to the two men, and swung his leg over the rail.

  “Me too?” Mouse danced on the deck beside him. “Can I come too, Jan?”

  Jan’s temper surged; he brought his arm back to swat the boy away, but Aart glared at him, and he thought better of it. Maybe if they took him, Mouse would catch a stray shot, eliminating a small but persistent annoyance from Jan’s life. “Yes, come,” he said, and grabbing Mouse by the arm hoisted him up over the rail and dropped him into the dinghy.

  Mouse yelled, from delight or fear; an instant later the other men fell into the dinghy beside him, with the cable. They rowed off toward the Spanish hulk.

  Heads and bodies dappled the white-striped surf around the Spanish ship. Most of her crew had gone overboard. Jan hoped none was waiting to meet him when he went up the side. They rowed under her lee by the stern. The ship was catching the bottom now with each push of the waves. Jan could hear her keel scraping on the hard shingle. She rolled down over his dinghy, shutting out the sky, and he gaped up a moment at the huge hulk above him, unnerved, waiting for her to crash down on him. Then she rolled back the other way, and from beneath the waves her dripping weedy bottom rose streaming into his face.

  “Wait ’til she comes back over again!”

  Some of the Spanish crew swam in the sea near them. Aart leaned out from the dinghy, an oar in both hands, and whacked a floating head until it went under. The others had struck out for the beach, where the English were gathering them in. A row of naked bodies already lay on the cold sand above the tide line.

  Jan stood up in the dinghy, with the little boat’s anchor in his hand. As the side of the Spanish ship swung down above him, he threw the anchor up over her rail. Midway up her side, a hole three feet wide showed through her timbers, where the Wayward Girl had hit her at close range with a heavy shot. The ship righted itself in its wild roll, and the anchor caught on the rail. Jan clung to the rope; he was lifted up, up out of the dinghy.

  Like a pendulum he swung hard against the Spanish ship’s side. Kicking out his feet, he got a toehold on her slick streaming timbers and walked up over the rail.

  The deck was tipping and pitching like a feather in the wind. Everything on it rolled from side to side with every toss of the waves. A body was lodged against the rail where he climbed over; he had to step on its dead hand to get across. The blood gurgled in the scuppers.

  “Dios,” someone called, feebly, from the direction of the stern. “Dios y Madre de Dios—” Someone else screamed.

  Jan leaned o
ver the railing, to look down into the dinghy. “Row along to her bow. I’ll meet you there.”

  Aart waved. Jan went forward; he had to plow through the wreckage of the forward mast and sails and rigging. The rolling of the ship made it hard to keep his footing. There were dead everywhere—underfoot, caught in the snarl of wood and rope, huddled against the bulkhead of the high forecastle. The smell of blood was sickening. A tangle of canvas around a broken spar lay over the steps up to the forecastle deck, and he heaved and lugged at it uselessly until he saw a coil of line hooked around the top step. With his knife he cut it free. The next heave of the ship took the spar off down the deck. He climbed up to the forecastle.

  Something boomed in the distance. He wheeled. Off to sea, a little blossom of smoke was shredding away in the wind. Behind it stood a Spanish warship.

  Jan Caught his breath. He had never seen a greatship under full sail before and even though she was Spanish she was beautiful, her sails piled up like clouds above her, her pennants streaming in the wind. A moment later the shot she had fired struck the sea midway between him and the Wayward Girl with a splash that sent droplets flying into his face.

  “Come on!” He dashed across the forecastle to the bow of the hulk. The dinghy was just below him, the men looking up with anxious faces. He waved to them to send the cable up, and Aart bent over the rolls and found an end and began uncoiling length on length of the heavy line.

  Another rattle of thunder from the Spanish ship. All the men jerked as if struck.

  “I’ll take it,” Mouse cried, and grasping the end of the cable he climbed up onto his brother’s shoulders and reached over his head for the chains that hung from the Spanish ship’s bowsprit.

  “Aart,” Jan roared. “Do it yourself.”

  Too late: Mouse was already scurrying, nimble as his name, into the chains, dragging the cable after him. Jan swore under his breath. He leaned down over the rail to haul the boy on board.

  “She’s going,” Willy cried, dismayed. “Pieter’s leaving us!”