The Sea Beggars

by Holland, Cecelia;

  “Bah,” Pieter said. “I don’t care what you dress it in, you’re still pirates, and nothing better than pirates. I’ll take my chances by myself.”

  “Oh, no,” said Lumey tenderly. “We’re not pirates. We have letters of marque from the Prince of Orange himself, God bless him.”

  “Letters of marque,” Jan said. “What’s that?”

  Lumey’s hand plunged inside his coat and came out again with a packet of paper wrapped in cord. “Letters from the sovereign Prince of Orange that we are sailors in his navy, and therefore whatever we do is lawfully done and we can’t hang as pirates.”

  He laughed, exultant, and waved the papers in the air.

  “Do your necks still stretch?” Pieter stamped his foot. “Do the Dons still make rope? Then you’ll hang if they catch you, you fools!”

  Lumey stuffed his letters away under his gaudy clothes. He said, “I don’t mean to be caught.”

  “What’s this plan you have?” Jan asked van Treslong.

  The tall man straightened up, taking off his hat. “I see no reason to keep it hidden. We have in mind to throw a net of ships across the mouth of the Channel, and when the Spanish fleet comes between The Lizard and the Brittany coast, we’ll take them. The King of Spain sends a fleet to Antwerp every half year, with supplies and the pay for his troops.”

  “How many ships do you have?” Jan folded his arms over his chest. “Those six little ships out there won’t do much against a fleet of galleons.”

  “We’ll have forty sail,” Lumey said. “And every God-fearing, priest-hating man between The Lizard and the Maas to sail them. Join us, or by Heaven we’ll sink you right here.”

  Jan started toward him, angry, but van Treslong got him by the arm. “Pay no heed to him; he’s impatient with reason. But you must see the advantage to joining us, even if all you mean is simple piracy.”

  “That’s all there is to do,” Pieter shot at him. “And you who parade about, pretending you are fighting a war against Spain—”

  Sonoy distracted him, his mouth full of proverbs, into another line of argument. Van Treslong plucked Jan’s sleeve.

  “Mark you, there is this: every blow we strike here against Spain hurts both Spain and Alva. Do you hate the Bloody Duke? Do you want to free our cities and our Provinces from his rule? Then you would do well to join us.”

  Jan said, “Alva hanged my father. I want my revenge.”

  Lumey pushed in between him and van Treslong. “Either join us, sailor boy, or go to the bottom of the sea! Take your choice.”

  “God’s blood!” Pieter bounced up onto his feet. “For that, I’ll never join you, Lumey—for your bullying ways and your big mouth.” He tramped up before the bigger man, shouting into his face. “Baron, are you? On the sea you’re only as fine as you sail, pirate, and you sail as the wind blows! Don’t make more of yourself than there is, pirate—”

  Jan tensed, ready to get between his uncle and Lumey, but suddenly van Treslong was looking down past Pieter at the deck, suspicion drawing his face long. Jan lowered his gaze. With a half-smothered yelp he grabbed Pieter by the arm.

  “I told you not to stand up!”

  Pieter thrust him off, another volley of insults leaving his lips for Lumey. Jan pulled him backward, back over the length of unfinished wool cloth he had dragged after him from the chest, back toward the chest left exposed and obvious before the other pirates.

  “You old fool!”

  “Why, now,” van Treslong said mildly, “I think our hosts here have been withholding something of their bounty from us.” He went to the chest and bent over it.

  “That’s ours,” Pieter cried.

  “Oh, yes,” said van Treslong. “And you brought it out on the Wayward Girl to bring on board all your prizes, to give them that certain aura of expense.” He tipped up the lid. Lumey bellowed.

  “Cheats!”

  “Well,” said Sonoy, puffing out his round cheeks, “the pisspot’s hanging on the door now.”

  Jan looked around at the intent faces of the pirate captains; he saw there was no argument now that would keep the silver from them, and he shrugged. He smacked old Pieter on the shoulder.

  “God, you make me angry sometimes.”

  Pieter growled. “It’s ours!”

  Van Treslong was already counting the silver coins out onto the deck. “There’s six of us here,” he said loudly. “Six ships of the Sea Beggars. I’ll divide it up into sixes.” Lifting his head, he smiled at Jan and Pieter. “Or is that seven ships of the Sea Beggars?”

  A low rumble of angry noise was the only answer Pieter gave. Jan folded his arms over his chest. They had already half convinced him to join them; but he was sorry to be losing so much of the silver. He shrugged again.

  “I’m with you.” Jan twisted, his face turned over his shoulder, and called, “And my crew, too.”

  From the dimness outside the firelight the other men of the Wayward Girl muttered their agreement. Van Treslong nodded, the silver clinking in his hand.

  “Divided by sevens, then.”

  Sonoy gave Jan a comradely slap on the arm. “Two people can shit through the same hole, you know.”

  Jan laughed. Pieter stuck his pipe between his teeth again. “As the saying goes.”

  8

  At noon, Pieter went down the deck to the wheel, where in a little covered stand the ship’s compass was housed, and turned the hourglass over and rang the bell. He marked the watch book and put it away under the compass. Going aft, he leaned on the stern rail and looked out to sea. His hands moved, collecting his pipe and his tobacco pouch and firebox, but he stopped himself, remembering he had no more tobacco. Laying his arms down on the rail, he looked steadily out toward the gray rolling sea.

  The Wayward Girl lay off the English coast, waiting for the pilot to arrive who would guide her into Plymouth harbor. This was Lumey’s idea, coming here, although Pieter had grudgingly to agree to its good sense, since they had to sell the plunder from the Spanish ship. The rest of the Beggar fleet was scattered over the water around Pieter’s ship, which was why he kept his gaze pinned straight out toward the sea, where he had to look at none of them.

  He hated them. He hated Lumey most, the brawler, the braggart, but he hated the others as well, although he knew them little. And now they had their grips on his nephew. His hands curled over the ship’s railing and he clenched his teeth in frustrated rage.

  Pirates: what were they but pirates? Nothing wrong with that. Pieter knew himself for a pirate, having been one for as long as he could remember, long before he ever put to sea. It was there in his heart’s working, in the structure of his bones, to steal. To live free. So he stole and lived according to his own liking, prepared to take the consequences. But he never dressed it all up in fancy, lofty talk of saving the world.

  They would seduce Jan into it, Jan whom he loved with his whole heart. He was tough, that boy, and a natural seaman, a born pirate, like Pieter. He was young, too, and the likes of Lumey and van Treslong and Sonoy would pour the honeyed poison of their excuses into his ears, and it would happen to him what happened to them all.

  Pieter had seen it happen to his brother, Mies. A good practical boy Mies had been once, not a pirate, but still a free, wild heart. Then slowly he had gotten notions of religion. Bit by bit he lost sight of the real things of life, the daily hungers, the instants of satisfaction and distress; gradually his mind filled up with a grand, false vision of angels and battles in the sky. In the end it got him hanged. Long before that, he had stopped talking to Pieter, and Pieter had stopped liking Mies.

  Behind Pieter now someone shouted across the water. The pilots were coming.

  Resolutely he kept his back to them. He hated turning his ship over to a stranger—hated it the more now, when he had lost her once, and thought her lost forever, and only recovered her by force. He had her now, though, and he had won the Spanish hulk with her. Damn Lumey! If he and his Beggars had not interfered, Pieter would hav
e had most of the plunder overboard and kept the silver—enough to make them all rich.

  Lumey had the silver now, but Pieter would not give up so easily. In Plymouth there would be opportunities to have it back again. The old man smiled, wanting his tobacco, which he would also find in Plymouth, and wanting his silver. He would have it back, and a satisfaction in regaining it, too. Let them think they were warriors of God. Waving their letters of marque. He’d show them how a true pirate did.

  “Look, Jan! Look!” Mouse leapt up and down, delighted.

  “Shut up,” Jan said.

  Mouse could not keep still. He had been at sea for two weeks and before then never out of Nieuport. The sail up Plymouth Sound was like a passage into another world. At first the low dark hills on either side had seemed to close in around the ships, and he had kept near Jan, who was not afraid; Jan was never afraid. Then abruptly the hills opened up like hands when they gave you something, and there ahead of them, on the smooth water, a great forest of masts appeared.

  “Jan, see? There’s a town.”

  “Shut up, will you?” Jan cuffed him along the side of the head.

  Jan was writing in a book; he had been scribbling away ever since the pilot brought them into the mouth of Plymouth Sound. Mouse wanted to ask him what he was doing but he knew Jan would shout at him again, and anyway he probably would not understand.

  He stood on his toes to see the harbor. It was bigger than Nieuport, with many more ships. Small boats scurried over the water among the moored vessels. The beach ahead curved around to the left, where the sound went on through the hills. Above the beach the roofs of buildings climbed the slopes like a jumble of steps. He saw a church spire in the middle of the town. Up there on the top of the slope was a big tower, like a castle.

  “Jan,” he cried, forgetting, and clapped his hand over his own mouth. Jan ignored him, writing.

  What was he writing about? Mouse craned his neck to see the page, bowed up from the binding. Marks half covered it. The marks wavered and jumped over the page and doubled and tripled themselves, and he covered his right eye with his hand, which made the marks much tamer. Still they looked only like bird tracks in the damp sand. He would have understood better if they were pictures.

  Jan’s face, bent over them, was intent and beautiful with concentration. Mouse smiled to himself. If Jan did them, the marks had to be important.

  The pilot called orders to old Pieter, who sent them on to Red Aart at the wheel. They were coming about, in the middle of the forest of ships; soon the mast of the Wayward Girl would rock and sway with the others. Mouse looked up at the little topsail. They had taken down the mainsail and brought her in under her jib and topsail, which opened at the top of the bare mast like a net for the clouds.

  “Ready with the anchors!”

  The men dashed around the ship. Mouse kept his eyes on the topsail. The edge shivered, losing the wind; abruptly now it collapsed.

  “Down anchors!”

  The anchors plunked down into the water. A moment later the little topsail fluttered away down the mast to the deck, leaving the bare finger of the mast behind to point into the sky.

  Mouse crowed and clapped his hands together. He felt now they had truly come to rest.

  “Jan! Shall we go ashore?”

  Still bent over his book, Jan swiped backward at him with his left arm. Mouse dodged the blow. He wished Jan liked him better. He loved Jan; he wished he were Jan, so much that at night when he lay beside his brother on the deck, watching the wheeling stars and waiting for sleep to come, he made up little stories in which a Mouse as big and strong and clever as Jan did wonderful deeds and was everyone’s hero.

  It wasn’t true. Standing on the deck behind his idol, he knew how untrue the stories were and a great misery filled up his head and blurred his eyes. But before he could begin to cry a hand ruffled up his hair.

  “Little Mouse, shall we go put our feet on solid ground again?”

  It was old Pieter. Amazed, he blinked up at the ship’s master, who had never spoken to him before. “Oh, yes.” He caught Pieter’s hand. “Oh, yes.” A warm gratitude replaced his grief, and clinging to Pieter’s hand he went across the ship to the rail, where his brother was helping to lower the dinghy.

  The wharves of Plymouth smelled, like Nieuport, of rotting seaweed and tar and fish. They were busier than Nieuport’s, barges tied up to every pier and from every barge a line of men stretching back to the street, passing bales and bundles and barrels of goods from hand to hand to the waiting wagons. Through this orderly crowd Jan wandered like an invisible man, having no place.

  The language tantalized his ears. He stopped to listen to a master in a blue hat curse a half-naked laborer, and the words leapt at him, all but understandable. The rhythm was the same as Dutch, the sounds inside the words the same but the words themselves fell like riddles on his ears.

  While he stood there, struggling with the familiar, unknown speech, someone bumped into him from behind. In his own country he would have roared at this insult and fought an hour to avenge it, but here he only lowered his head and walked on.

  Across the broad street that curved around behind the harbor, the buildings of Plymouth town began. These were not like Dutch houses. He found their strange looks oddly comforting. He followed a narrow twisting street back into a warren of houses made of wooden beams and thatched in straw. The ditch was full of garbage, rank to the nose. A flock of white chickens clucked and pecked along ahead of him, as if he drove them. He smelled burned garlic. Two men passed him, arguing; they ignored him.

  Lost now in the winding streets, he stopped at a place where three streets came together and looked around. A vendor was calling, somewhere, in the singsong of all vendors, but he could not see him. From the second story window of the house on his left a woman leaned to string wet baby napkins on a rope stretched between hers and the next house. A shutter banged.

  He went on a few steps and paused; now he could see through the open gate into a yard before a tall old house. In the yard a woman was singing in a fine, pure voice, singing in English that tore his heart. He leaned closer to see. She was washing clothes in a pot, stirring them with a wooden paddle. Behind her a baby sat on the flagstones playing with a little spaniel dog. On the windowsill of the house behind them, a pie had been set to cool.

  He took another step toward this place, drawn by old memories. In that house, might he not find a fire, someone to talk to, sweets to eat? Then she turned, the woman, and stopped singing, and gave him so fierce and hostile a look he turned and went off with his ears burning.

  The wandering lanes took him around back to the harbor and dumped him in the street like so much garbage. He walked along the wharves again, his head turned out toward the many ships that rested on the quiet water of Plymouth Sound. A woman spoke to him.

  He wheeled, hungry for this contact, and opened his mouth to answer, but no words come out: all his words were Dutch, and she was English.

  She smiled at him. Over her real face she wore a false one of paint. She asked him a question, and while he fumbled for some way to answer what he did not understand, she reached out and grabbed his crotch.

  That he understood. His cheeks and ears went hot as a forge. He tore his gaze from her face and stammered something in his own tongue. She laughed at him. With a flirting twist of her wrist and a toss of her head she walked away down the wharf street.

  Jan broke into a run in the other direction. His mind churned with bits of thoughts. He could go back—go with her. But he had no money with him. The urge grew in him to run and run until he ran into Antwerp and up the Canal Street and into the front door of his own mother’s house.

  Ahead, the street ended; the wharf ended, and he was still in England. He slowed to a trot and after a few steps to a walk. On his left was a tavern. Through the open doors spilled the sounds of men drinking and gambling, laughter and curses, and voices speaking Dutch. In the window was a face he knew, and someone called
his name; he belonged here. He swerved to go in.

  Lumey growled over his cards. With one hand he wiped his mouth and reached for his tankard. Before him stood a heap of silver, much diminished from a few hours ago, but still considerable.

  Most of what he had lost now lay before Pieter van Cleef, across the table from him. Pieter kept his eyes half-closed and his face noncommittal. He wanted no sign of his delight to show, lest the malice underlying it show too and the others begin to suspect him.

  On this round anyway the other players had already dropped out. They lounged on their stools, drinking, paying little heed to the game. Around them the tavern boomed with the noise of the other Beggars, some dicing and playing at cards, and some talking and pawing the barmaids. Fine Calvinists, Pieter thought, and his righteous indignation added a polish of divine authority to his pleasures.

  He fingered his cards. “Will you bet?” he said sharply to Lumey.

  The Beggar grunted. He was very drunk. The sweat streamed down his veined forehead. His fingers tapped nervously on the paste and paper tickets in his hand. Finally he reached for more silver.

  “Five, and I’ll take another card.”

  Pieter nodded, satisfied. While Lumey drew another card from the deck between them, the old man leaned back against the wall behind him and stared at his own cards. He had kings and queens in three suits and four of the Grand Trumps; all he needed was another trump to have a sweep hand, unbeatable unless Lumey held all four Aces; and Pieter knew he could not have the Ace of Wands. He pursed his lips. He could match Lumey’s five and draw, and hope to improve his hand that way; but Pieter’s design was too elegant to rely on such common chancy ways of winning. He lifted his gaze and scanned the room for Mouse.

  The half-wit was sitting by the nearest window, his mouth ajar, his hands idle in his lap. His eyes were always aimed in two different directions so it was hard to tell what he was looking at. Pieter gave a tug to his beard. For a moment Mouse did not move and he thought the boy had fallen into a daze, but then Mouse slid off the window ledge and came over to him.