The Queen's Exiles (31 page)

Adam was rowing as hard as his men, pulling toward shore. With the ox-strong Berck Verhulst at the oars they were three boat lengths ahead of the others, twenty-seven boats in all. Each had four to six pairs of oars splashing in unison and held fifteen to twenty men crammed together, their pikes upright, looking like a flotilla of porcupines. Adam hauled at his oars, his back to the beach, his eyes on Claes Doorn in the following boat. Only the strongest men rowed, so Doorn sat motionless in the bow, gripping his pike. On board the
Gotland
he had been hurrying past Adam to get into the boat when Adam angrily grabbed his arm to stop him.

“How could you let her leave the ship?”

“What?”

“Your wife, man! When you
know
it’s not safe.”

“What are you talking about?”

“You don’t know? She’s gone ashore. Verhulst just told me.”

Doorn looked shocked. “Why?”

Adam didn’t know. “She told Verhulst it was my order, which is nonsense.” His eyes locked with Doorn’s, both of them struggling to understand. What could Fenella be thinking? What could she be
doing?
But there was no time to talk. The boats were loading.

Now, Doorn sat gripping his pike, his face skull-thin but shining with zeal for the mission. Adam grudgingly admired the zeal. Doorn had experience with this kind of fight. Adam didn’t. He had hacked and slashed his way across Spanish decks slippery with blood but had never taken part in a land battle. He feared it more than he’d expected now that they were nearing the beach. He had always vaguely assumed that when death came it would be at sea, since he’d spent most of his life there, and he had found the thought of oblivion on the water oddly comforting. Now, as the Beggars’ ships receded and the walls of Brielle loomed, he felt a gut-sharp pang.
This isn’t where I want to die. Never to see Fenella again
.

No time to dwell on it. To the right La Marck and Bloys and two other captains were leading half the flotilla around the pier. They would attack the northern gate. Taking the southern gate was up to Adam and two other captains with a hundred and seventy men. It suddenly seemed far too few.
If Doorn’s information is wrong, a thousand Spanish soldiers could be waiting for us behind that wall
.

His boat crunched up onto the beach. He and his men jumped out. Then the other eleven craft hit the beach, Doorn’s first, and men poured out of them onto the sand. La Marck and his boats disappeared around the pier. Adam looked at the city wall that rose dead ahead, its gate closed. The tower overlooking it rose into the pale blue sky. No movement on the tower. The beach, too, was deserted. Nothing stood in their way.

He turned to his mate, Curry, and pointed to a bilander on the beach. From the
Gotland
Adam had spied it, a small two-masted ship that lay careened on the sand, its hull stove in. He drew his sword. “Foraging parties, go!” Thirty men set off along the beach to carry out the plan, Curry’s group with axes, a group of young Captain Lueb’s men spreading out. “The rest of you, to the gate!”

A hundred and forty men swarmed across the beach toward the wall. Adam’s crew was the vanguard and he led them at the run. The two other captains followed at their heels, leading their men. The sun was hot on Adam’s face, bright in his eyes. Then it darkened, eclipsed by the wall.

The gate was a massive arched portal of wood studded with iron, and when the throng reached it they halted with a clatter of pikes. They stood catching their breath, looking up, looking around. Still no soldiers atop the wall. The tower was silent as an obelisk. Adam raised his sword and thumped its handle against the studded wood.
Thud! Thud!
A hundred and forty men waited as the hollow thumps reverberated. Adam was about to call out to demand entry when suddenly Doorn was beside him, brandishing his pike, shouting, “In the name of Prince William of Orange, open the gate!”

His voice was so vigorous, the men caught his fervor and several yelled, brandishing their weapons, “In the name of the Prince, open the gate!” Some banged their fists on the wood. “Open! Open! Open!”

Muffled shouting behind the gate. “Quiet!” Adam called to his men. Their voices died, everyone straining to listen. The shouting inside the city died, too. Nothing stirred.

Captain Lueb came to Adam. “Burn the gate, my lord?”

Adam nodded. This was the plan, and the foragers among Lueb’s men were coming forward on the run with combustibles they’d collected from the beach: crates, ropes, barrows, spars. All joined in now, heaving this material at the base of the gate, piling it high. Adam saw Doorn dragging a barrow, so he picked up the other end and together they hurled it up onto the pyre. Lueb set the pyre alight. Orange flames licked the gate and black smoke boiled, giving off a reek of fish oil.

Adam wiped sweat from his brow as he watched the bonfire burn. It would take a long time to eat through the solid gate, time for Spanish archers to man the walls and rain arrows down on them. He glanced up, expecting to see steel helmets appear atop the wall. So far, no one. He turned to see how Curry and his men were progressing at the bilander, chopping its mainmast down for a battering ram. Adam beckoned Verhulst. “Come. We’ll help haul it!”

They took off at the run and reached the bilander, where Curry and his men were hacking with axes at the two-foot-thick mast, wood chips flying. Doorn had followed Adam and Verhulst, and Doorn now scrambled up onto the vessel to help two more of Curry’s party who were knifing through rigging that hung in fouled loops. They tugged it down, stripping the mast clean.

The mast creaked, about to fall. “Stand back,” Adam ordered. It toppled, crashing like a felled oak. Curry and the others grappled it and lifted it. Adam took the position by the masthead and slung his arm around it.

“We should get the other mast, too,” Doorn said. “Use it to scale the wall.”

Adam nodded and told Verhulst, “Cut down the mizzen.”

“Aye, my lord.” Verhulst wiped his brow as he moved to the mizzenmast with his axe.

Adam raised his voice to the five men behind him holding the battering ram. “Up with her now!” They hoisted it up onto their shoulders and started across the sand toward the gate, laboring under the burden. Doorn kept beside Adam and yelled ahead to the massed men, “Make way for the ram!”

A cheer went up from the throng at the gate when they saw the battering ram coming. They backed away, leaving a corridor between them to the gate.

“You three men, fall in!” Lueb said, and they trotted to the mast and ranged themselves along its length with the other five. They brought the mast to within a few feet of the gate.

“Ready!” Adam yelled. “On three! One . . . two . . .
heave!
”

The masthead thundered against the wood. Adam felt the shock shoot through his shoulder bone. Muffled shouts rose from inside the city. The men with the ram danced back, reversing the momentum, then forward again as Adam yelled, “One . . . two . . .
heave!
”

The ram thudded. Again they danced back.

A
crack!
The man behind Adam fell with a grunt. Adam froze. He knew that
crack!
—a pistol shot. “Halt!”

The man writhed on the ground, moaning. Adam looked up at the tower. Nothing stirred.

“Move that man!” Lueb yelled. “You, take his place!”

Behind Adam, the fallen man was pulled out of the way of the other ram bearers. Adam forced his eyes ahead on to the gate. He yelled, “One . . . two . . .
heave!
”

Crack!
Lueb cried out and fell, blood spurting from his neck.

Shouting erupted in the street.
What’s happening?
Locked alone inside the mayor’s study, Fenella stood on her toes under the window, trying to see out, but the window was so high, the sill level with her forehead, it was impossible. Through the stained glass covered with heraldry she could see nothing but an opaque shimmer of sky.

Again, she heard that muffled
thud!
like a rumble of thunder. She’d heard it several times. It had to be a ram. The Beggars were battering at the gate! With every
thud!
her heart thumped and the shouting in the street got louder. Many townspeople had left their houses and the commotion sounded like they were coming closer. The mayor’s house was around the corner from the southern gate.
Is Adam behind that gate? Is Claes?

A faint sound, a
crack!
A woman screeched.
A pistol shot? What’s happening?
Fenella could have screamed in frustration.

Behind her the mayor’s house lay silent. A half hour ago when they’d locked her in, the house had been in an uproar, frightened maidservants running this way and that, Koekebakker sending his family out with a few retainers. Fenella had heard enough to know that Koekebakker had personally gone to stand with the city guard, but that was
all
she knew. How many fighters were in the city guard? How many archers? How many guns? Even if the Spanish soldiers had left to quell unrest in Utrecht as Claes had said, the bullets and arrows and pikes of several hundred guards and citizens fighting for their lives could just as surely kill the Sea Beggars.

Thud!
went the battering ram. She could hear townspeople outside, on the move. Were they heading for the southern gate? A mob massing to fight the attackers? She had to know!

She looked around for something heavy. On the desk were papers, scrolls, a globe, two pewter goblets. She snatched a goblet and hurled it at a window. The glass cracked, but the goblet bounced off and tumbled to the floor. She grabbed the globe, big as a pumpkin, its lead stand heavy as a rock. Lifting it above her head in both hands, she hurled it. It smashed the glass and sailed through. She jumped back from the rain of glass shards. Now she could hear the voices outside, men and women, loud, strident, and the tramping of feet. The
thud!
of the battering ram thundered. She smelled a faint whiff of smoke, something burning. The gate? Had the Beggars set fire to it? She had to get out!

She went to the desk and started to pull it toward the window. It was too massive, like trying to pull a stalled mule. She came around the desk and pushed it, grunting at the effort, and slowly maneuvered it across the room and beneath the window. She clambered up onto it. The windowsill was now at her waist and she looked out through the hole in the jagged glass. The crowd was tramping toward the southern gate. To fight the Beggars? But none of them had weapons. And there were as many women as men. Could she climb out? The room was at street level, so if she could get through the window it wasn’t far to jump down. Using her elbow, eyes closed, she smashed the glass to make the hole big enough to climb through. She swept the residue of glass shards off the sill with her sleeve, then planted a knee on the sill and was struggling to pull herself up into the opening when the door behind her clicked. She dropped back onto the desk and whipped around. The door opened. A young woman came in. She stared at Fenella up on the desk.

“Are you Mevrouw Doorn?”

How did she know? Fenella was wary. Was this woman from the mob?
Do they want me as a hostage, maybe?
But the open door offered her the fastest way out. She jumped down off the desk. “Yes,” she said.

The woman beckoned someone and a burly man appeared and the woman said, “See?” She turned to Fenella. “Is it true your husband is out there, at the gate? Claes Doorn?”

Fenella hesitated, eyeing the man in the doorway.

“Don’t worry about him. He’s my uncle. The devil duke hanged my father.”

“Been wanting to join the Brethren,” the man said shyly.

Hope surged in Fenella.
Friends!
“The other people out there, do they feel as you do?”

“Yes, they’re for the Beggars,” the woman assured her.

“And for the Brethren,” the man said.

Fenella could have kissed them both. “Then you
shall
join them! Come!”

When they stepped out into the street Fenella found that the crowd was even bigger than she’d thought. They were moving toward the southern gate, and with every
thud!
of the battering ram their pace picked up more boldly. Fenella and her companions fell in with the people. “To the gate!” someone shouted. Other voices rose, picking up the cry, “To the gate!” It became a chant as they marched: “The gate! The gate!” Fenella glimpsed a half-dozen helmeted guards holding pikes at the edge of the street under the eaves of houses, but they looked on in silent dismay as the crowd marched past them. The city walls rose above the heads of the people. Fenella could see the arched top of the gate. Smoke billowed above it and the smell bit her nostrils.
Thud!
went the battering ram.

A shout. Someone pointed. Fenella looked to the top of the wall beside the gate. Three Sea Beggars were crawling up onto the wall from the other side. One got to his feet, crouching, pulling a dagger from his belt. Grim-faced, he eyed the people as if they were lions about to spring at him.

“The Beggars!” someone shouted. A cheer went up.

“Down with Alba!” a woman yelled. The crowd took up the chant. “Down with Alba! Down with Alba!”

The three men on the wall stood frozen, amazed. Fenella wanted to shout to them in glee,
Brielle is yours!
Two more men crawled over the edge. One was Berck Verhulst.

“Berck!” Fenella shouted. She pushed her way through the people, eager to welcome him. “Berck! Over here!” He heard her and scanned the faces, looking for her.

There was a crash of splintering wood as the ram smashed through the gate. People cheered, even as they lurched out of the way. Axes outside the hole hacked it to enlarge it, and in a moment men were scrambling through, pouring into the street.

Crack!
One of the men on the wall beside Berck tumbled forward and pitched down to the street. A woman screamed.

Fenella looked to the tower. Saw a man behind an arrow slit. He had a pistol! The four men on the wall had crouched, looking swiftly around for the gunman. Berck alone stood upright. He hadn’t seen his comrade get shot and he was grinning, waving with his own pistol to the Sea Beggars below, exuberantly beckoning them in.