The Sea Beggars (23 page)

“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.

“Here, what do you want?” Pieter said crossly. He waved at Mouse, as if to send him away. To the other players, he said, “He's an idiot. We should have left him on the shore.”

Mouse leaned over him. “What are you doing? Can I play?”

With his elbow he knocked over Pieter's jug. Pieter yelled; he grabbed the jug and righted it again before all the liquor could spill out. Mouse babbled at him—for a fool, he was good at this, although Pieter had spent a patient hour drilling him at it—and stooped to catch the liquor dripping off the tabletop in his cupped hands.

When he tried to pour it back into Pieter's jug the men around the table rocked with laughter. Pieter huffed and fumed, yelled for the barmaid to bring a rag, rescued the deck of cards from the spreading pool of gin. Beneath the table, while he pretended to clean up, Mouse laid three cards on the old man's knee.

“Get away,” Pieter shouted, and pretended to kick him. Palming up the cards, he waited until the barmaid was bent over the table and the other men were looking down her bodice before he slipped the new cards into his hand. Mouse had brought him the World and the High Priestess and the Ace of Wands.

“Well, well,” Pieter said, when the barmaid had gone. “I don't think there's much I can do with this hand. I'll bank on it, Lumey—ten pieces.” He counted silver into the pile in the middle of the table.

Lumey made a variety of low animal sounds. He fingered his cards and rubbed his nose and shifted on his stool, as if he were making up his mind. He would not throw it in, not now. Pieter knew Lumey well enough to be sure of that. Finally he counted out the ten pieces, and old Pieter laid down his cards.

All the other men groaned. Sonoy shook his head. “As the saying goes, Pieter, cakes grow on your roof.” They drank to Pieter's luck and, smiling, Pieter hauled in his winnings.

Mouse was proud of himself; he had done exactly what Pieter had told him, and done it well, because now Pieter was rich. The old man had promised to buy him a knife of his own if he did it properly. Tonight he would have his own knife—no more waiting like a baby while his brother cut his meat for him. He went to the window, where the sun made it warm, and sat up on the ledge.

He still had three of the cards, and he took them from his shirt and held them in front of him. The pictures were very strange, the colors as bright and pretty as the glass windows in the Oude Kirk in Nieuport. Funny things happened in the pictures, hands without arms reaching down from clouds, and people flying. He turned the picture over to look at it better and covered his right eye with his hand.

“What's that he has?” someone said behind him.

He looked around. At the table, the cardplayers were all staring at him.

“By God's blood,” Pieter said loudly. “He must have taken them off the table, after the hand was played. Here, boy, give me those. We'll have to deal again.”

Mouse shrank back, clutching the oblong pictures in his hand. Pieter had not told him about this part of it. The five men at the table sprang up and marched toward him. Frightened, he cowered back into the angle of the ledge, and the big man in the gold coat tore the cards out of his fingers.

“Trumps, by Heaven!”

A hand seized Mouse by the nape of the neck. “Where did you get those?”

Pieter was talking so fast the words tripped on one another. “Off the table. Must have taken them off the table when the deck was down—”

“In a priest's punchbowl,” the big man shouted. “It was a jig! You cheated me!”

Mouse whined, pushing at the hands that held him, at the big bodies that fenced him into the window space. He threw a beseeching look at Pieter, who understood all this, and could rescue him.

Pieter was backing away. “He's an idiot,” he said, and shrugged. “He doesn't know what he's doing.”

“We'll find out what he's doing!” The man who held him raised a fist, stuffed with rings like barnacles. “Talk!” he bellowed at Mouse.

Mouse sucked in his breath. He knew he was going to be hurt, and he began to cry. Twisting away from the threatening fist, he pressed his face to the glass.

Beyond the window, out in the street, Jan was walking toward him.

“Jan!”

The hand on his neck yanked him around again. “Talk! Where did you get those cards?”

“He's a fool,” Pieter shouted. He was sidling away across the room. “He's too stupid to tell the truth!”

Mouse was sobbing. He cried again, “Jan!” and struggled to bury his face in his hands. The men around him pressed closer. He saw the ring-studded fist coming.

An instant later the wall of bodies broke. Whirling aside, the men staggered back, away from Mouse. Jan stood there, breathing hard.

“What's going on?”

The big man, who still had Mouse by the neck, thrust the crumpled cards under Jan's nose. “Your uncle was cheating us, and this idiot helped him.”

Jan put his hands on his hips. “He's too dumb to cheat anybody.”

“He cheated me!” The big man shook Mouse back and forth.

Jan's face changed, sliding into an uneven grin with no merriment and much anger in it. “Well, if you admit it—it makes a fine story—the great Lumey de la Marck cheated by a half-witted boy?”

Behind them, someone laughed. The grip on Mouse's neck relaxed, and Lumey backed off a step.

“Your uncle cheated me!”

Jan looked broadly around the room. “I don't even see my uncle here.”

They whirled. A howl of rage went up from Lumey, who pumped his arms and bit his beard in fury. “The little bastard!”

“He's gone,” Sonoy cried. “He took all the silver, too.”

Jan got Mouse by the arm. “Come on,” he said. Swiftly they went out of the tavern.

“I thought you said not to steal from your own people,” Jan said.

Pieter muttered something under his breath. He puffed on his pipe. The pungent smoke of the tobacco made the air around them hard to breathe. He thrust out his legs before him on the deck. “They aren't my people.”

“They're Dutch.” Jan held out his hand, palm up. “Like us. And we'll sail with them. That scheme for taking the supply fleet, that's a good notion.”

He was eating smoked fish, and he stopped to pick a bone from between his teeth. They and Mouse were the only people on board the
Wayward Girl
, and Mouse was sleeping. He and Pieter sat in the forecastle, looking down the length of the ship. There behind the mast, by the helm, the lantern gleamed over the compass; otherwise no light showed, and yet Jan could have found his way effortlessly throughout the whole ship, could have done the most intricate task necessary to sail her, with his eyes closed. So small a world, he thought, and felt her around him like a case.

“We have no country anymore,” old Pieter was saying, beside him. “Get used to that. No country, no family or friends—only the ship and the sea and the winds. That's the truth. If you don't like it, you can make up stories, the way the Beggars do, and try to say it's otherwise, but you're only fooling yourself.”