The Sea Beggars (30 page)

The
Wayward Girl
drifted toward a clear mooring not far from the
John Calvin
. At a bellow from the old man, Marten let the anchor run.

Jan thought an angry oath at his uncle. Plymouth no longer looked so strange to him. If not home, it was a familiar place to him now, with soft beds and good, hot food—hot food, anyway; he longed to go there as if it were a real home. Already the other sailors were gathering by the mast, where old Pieter stood filling his pipe. Most of the men would go ashore at once. Only his own nephew would Pieter hold on board to work. Jan went below, in a rising rage.

Mouse was there by the water barrel, leaning in over the edge to dip up a cupful of the slimy green water. He slid down onto his feet again.

“Where are we? Can I go up and see?”

His face was gray, and even while he talked, a cough struggled up his throat. Jan got him by the arm and pulled him back down the center aisle of the hold, the only space in the dark crowded cave belowdecks where Jan could walk without banging his head. At the end, in the stern, was the tiny room he shared with his uncle, and now with Mouse. He pushed the boy through the little doorway and made him lie down on the straw tick where usually Jan himself slept.

“We're in Plymouth. You sleep, damn you. I didn't risk all our lives to pull you out of the sea just to have you die on me afterward. Now we can start a fire, and I'll get old Pieter to cook you something hot.”

“Plymouth.” The boy lunged toward the little window in the stern. Jan caught him by the hair and forced him down on the straw tick. The boy coughed again. He had no fever but his face was the color of clamshells. Jan laid the blanket over him.

“If I catch you up out of this bed again I'll beat you top to bottom. Understand?”

Roughly he bundled the blanket over Mouse's body, tucking it in. The contact, the protective tenderness it roused in him, unsettled him. To hide it he cuffed the boy lightly on the side of the head and, going out, he slammed the door.

When he reached the deck again, most of the crew were already gone, riding the overburdened dinghy halfway to the wharf. The shipyard's tender, nearly as big as the
Girl
herself, was lying along the starboard beam, and old Pieter leaned over the rail bargaining for spars and tar and line. Jan loitered by the larboard rail. The crippled
John Calvin
lay between two big flyboats, roped to their railings; only their support kept the drowning ship above the water. The men who had been working on her had gone ashore. She looked deserted now.

A little rowboat from the wharf circled the
Wayward Girl
. The boy at her oars shouted in English. Jan waved to him to come closer.

“I want some bread, good fresh bread, and some cheese, and meat, beef or mutton, or fish.” He felt for his wallet for a coin and thumbed up a silver real, which he tossed into the bottom of the rowboat. “Understand?”

“Bread, cheese, beef, and fish,” the boy yelled, in bastard Dutch.

“Fetch it back in half an hour, and there'll be two more like that for you!”

“Eh?”

Jan switched to French, holding up his fingers to sign the time and the money. The boy nodded and bent to his oars. Jan went to join his uncle, splicing the broken halyards.

Mouse said, “I didn't mean to fall.”

“Shut up,” Jan said. “Don't be a crybaby.”

Old Pieter grunted an oath at them; he was rolled up in his blanket on the bed built into the stern bulkhead. The light from the lantern hanging just outside the little round window shone on his face.

Mouse coughed. He seemed stronger, now that he had good food in him.

Jan sat with his back against the doorpost. The three of them filled the tiny cabin so well he had no room to stretch his legs out, which he longed to do, but he was reluctant also to leave Mouse. Caring for the boy gave him something to do, and it was gratifying that Mouse was obviously getting better, although he had never been especially sick.

Somewhere across the harbor a ship's bell clanged. A few moments later the church bells of Plymouth counted out their solemn measures of the hour. From Pieter's bunk came the gentle rumble of a snore. Mouse was asleep also, his mouth open, his hand curled under his cheek. Jan tucked the blanket under him and went through the hold to the main hatch.

There was no wind. When he came up onto the deck the warmth of the air surprised him. Heavy skeins of fog lay on the flat, calm waters of the harbor and veiled the town and sank over the masts of the ships. Jan walked the length of the deck, glad of the room to move. When he turned, by the forecastle, a light caught his eye.

He went to the rail, squinting into the dark and fog. The light bobbed up and down across the water, making for the
John Calvin
, haloed in the mist.

Jan had spent the evening tying knots and sewing canvas. He took this light as an invitation; without a moment's thought, he peeled off his clothes and vaulted naked over the rail of the
Wayward Girl
.

He entered the water as straight as he could, to keep from making much of a splash. When he surfaced, twenty feet from his ship, the light was still there, bobbing and bouncing toward the crippled Dutch ship. He swam after it, his arms working soundlessly below the water's surface.

The light was a little lantern, half-shuttered, on the bow of a rowboat full of men. Reaching the
John Calvin
, the oarsmen shipped their oars. The other men crouched together in the center of the rowboat, working at something.

Jan reached the side of the rowboat and put his head cautiously up over the gunwale. The smell of burning pitch reached his nose. They were lighting a torch, the men in the rowboat; they were going to burn the
John Calvin
.

Jan got his hands on the rowboat's gunwale, ready to heave his weight up onto it and rock the boat over, but before he could move, one of the men looked around and saw him.

It was Lumey de la Marck. Surprised, Jan gaped at him, and Lumey lurched forward and got him by the arm.

“Get in here, sailor boy!”

That ruffled him, that nickname. Jan swung himself over the gunwale, into the midst of the four men, all bent over a torch and a pot of coals.

“What are you doing?” he asked.

“We're going to burn this hulk,” said Lumey.

Jan looked from face to face. Out of the water, now, he was cold. “It's Sonoy's ship. Where is he?”

“Why do you care?” Lumey said, in a voice that grated. His huge paw of a hand lay on Jan's shoulder still, and he shook the younger man, like a schoolmaster giving a lesson. “She's finished, this ship. But there's still something she can do against the King of Spain.”

“I don't follow you,” Jan said.

One of the other men coughed. “We set her ablaze, right? Everybody will think the Spanish did it, and the Englanders will order the Dons out of Plymouth. Then we take them.”

Jan said, “Unh.” It seemed too obvious to work. He scanned the faces around him, their features faintly picked out of the gloom by the light from the pot of coals; this was Sonoy's ship, and Sonoy was not here, and as slightly as Jan knew the upright little captain he was still sure he had no part in this. Lumey was staring at him, smiling.

“Are you with us?”

They all looked drunk. It was a drunkard's scheme. Jan wiped his hand over his mouth. He glanced across the harbor toward the Spanish ships. He had been idle for hours, and bored, and this work at least promised some excitement. Besides, what could he do to stop it? He nodded.

“Yes. Do it.”

Lumey pounded him on the back. The man with the unlit torch dipped the pitchy end into the coals. Jan crouched down in the bow of the rowboat, shivering with cold. He raised his eyes to the
John Calvin
, whose side rose up over him. The ship gurgled, taking on more water.

“We'd better get away fast,” he said. “She'll burn like kitchen coal.”

Lumey nodded. “We'll make for your ship, say. When the fire gets going, we can stroke back here and pretend to put it out. Cut the tenders here free.” He nodded toward the boat that supported the
John Calvin
. The fire was spreading over the head of the torch and the red light licked his face, the round cheeks bristling with beard, the shrewd little eyes almost hidden under his shaggy brows. He smiled again, showing his gappy teeth. “We'll all be heroes.”

Jan said nothing; he had his doubts about that. The man with the torch stood up in the rowboat, swung the flaming club once around his head, and threw it up over the rail of the
John Calvin
. They all heard it thump on the deck.

“Now we're off,” said Lumey. Sitting down in the rowboat, he reached under the thwart for a little flagon of wine.

Jan slipped over the side into the water and swam toward the
Wayward Girl
. Behind him the rowboat plied its way on creaking oars away from the crippled ship. In the night stillness the sound of the oars groaning in the locks seemed loud as a voice calling. Jan swam to the stern of his ship, where the ladder was let down, and grabbed one of the wooden rungs. The rowboat came after him.

“Wait here,” he said to Lumey. “My uncle's asleep.”

He glanced up at the little round window in the stern, hoping that was true.

Lumey smiled at him; the leather wine flagon hung limp and empty in his hand. “Have you got anything aboard to drink?”

“No,” Jan said, lying, and went up the ladder to the deck of his ship.

His clothes lay in a heap by the rail. He pulled them hastily on, defending himself, he knew, less against the cold than against suspicion. The
John Calvin
looked dark and inert across the narrow gap of water that separated them. Maybe the torch had gone out. But while he was pressing the water out of his hair with his hands, a flame shot up from the waist of the cripple and climbed furiously into the tarry rigging with a crackle he could hear all this way away.

He ran back to the stern, watching the fire seize the ship; within minutes she was blazing from her bowsprit to her rudders. The greedy power of the fire impressed him. Now he wished he had not agreed to this, but there was no way to stop it: the
John Calvin
was doomed. Below him, in the rowboat, Lumey said, “Well, let's go be heroes,” and laughed, a wine-soaked giggle.

None of the others laughed. They stroked back toward the
John Calvin
more slowly than they had left her.

Jan leaned against the
Wayward Girl
's railing, struggling with his regrets, his gaze trapped by the fire, which now was lapping the tenders on either side. On the shore there was an outcry of voices, and little dark figures ran about. He could see them on the wharf because the hellish red-gold flickering light of the fire stretched across the water and danced over the wharves and poked deep into the town behind.

Clouds of dark smoke rolled upward from the blazing ship, hiding the flames a moment. The breeze scattered the smoke, and the rushing fire shone so bright he had to blink, one hand raised to shield his eyes.

All three ships were burning now, the
John Calvin
and the two tenders. Lumey and the others sat in the rowboat midway between the
Wayward Girl
and the blaze, held away by the heat. Other boats were hurrying out from the shore.

“What's all this?”

Jan jumped. He had not heard his uncle come up on deck behind him. Guilty, he turned, pulling his face into a mask.

“What you see. The
Calvin
's burning.”

“Oh? And how did that happen?”

Jan took a deep breath. It was easier to tell the truth. “Lumey set fire to her. He'll blame it on the Spaniards.”

The old man glowered at him. Furiously he dug his thumb into the bowl of his pipe. “And you helped?”

“I came on them doing it. There wasn't much I could do.”

His uncle stuck the stem of his pipe between his teeth. “What a fool's caper.” He nudged Jan with his elbow. “We'd better get ashore. There'll be a night's yelling over this piece of work, and they'll need help to see it go our way.”

Jan raised his hand to Lumey, flagging him over. Suddenly he thought of Mouse. If Mouse knew of his part in this, Mouse would think less of him. Ridiculous, even to consider it, the opinion of a half-wit boy. Jan thrust the thought off.

He followed his uncle down into the dinghy. Mouse had never mattered to him before. He resolved to have him matter nothing once again.

The wharves were crowded with folk watching the fire, townspeople in their nightcaps, their cloaks thrown over sleeping gowns, sailors from the inns and taverns who still carried their tankards of ale in their hands, and even small children, peering through their elders' legs. When Lumey and the other Dutchmen tramped up the stone steps to the quayside, the harbor master met them, wearing a frown as fierce as his ceremonial sword. Behind him was a gathering of Englishmen.

He shouted something at Lumey, gesturing toward the fire. Jan could not understand the English, although a word here and there was close enough to Dutch for him to make it out. Lumey spread his feet wide apart and slid his hands under his belt, already burdened with a weight of pistols. He bawled something loud, to reach the ears of the crowd.

Jan understood the word “Spanish.” So did the onlookers, who let out a roar.

The air was raw with smoke and cinders, and bits of burning rope and sail were drifting down around Jan. He moved a little away from Lumey, down the stone quay. Dirk Sonoy came out of the crowd near him, his face turned toward his ship; deep lines furrowed his high forehead.

Lumey was shouting, his right arm jerking and milling in the air. The crowd seemed to agree with him. The harbor master folded his arms over his chest.

Down the quay came a band of men with muskets, pushing people out of their way. Two linkboys lit their path. As they passed, the crowd muttered and swore and shook their fists at them. In the midst of the musketeers walked a man in a broad-brimmed hat and a fancy doublet with a high old-fashioned collar. It was the Spanish commodore, who ignoring the angry crowd strode up to Lumey and the English harbor master and shouted into their faces.