The Sea Beggars (45 page)

“What is it?” he said to her, coming in among them, and his eyes went to the two strangers. Before she could say anything, he was speaking to them in Dutch; he had passed into their world and left her behind.

She stood there a little separate from them, knowing she had lost him; her hands closed to fists at her sides. What a fool she was: last night, at least, she could have loved him, shown she loved him. He wheeled toward her.

“The Queen of England's ordered us gone. She's closed England to the Sea Beggars, and we have to sail, and we can't come back.”

She put out her hands to him. “Where will you go?”

“I don't know.” His big hard hands reached for hers. “I have to go at once; you know that.”

“Yes. Yes.”

“Then come with me. Come with me now, on the
Wayward Girl
, and we'll get married as soon as we can find a preacher.”

In her heart, something wild swelled and rose like a bird taking flight. She turned her head, to sweep her gaze over the placid fields, the mounds of hay, the cottage in the distance. The kindly English sky, the English earth. She lifted her face toward her lover's.

“I'll need some clothes, and my books.”

They threw their arms around one another and kissed. Eleanor laughed, more to let out the exultant energy that danced hectic in her blood than from any real amusement.

“We have to hurry,” Jan said, and they went swiftly off to Stonegate House.

20

Jan got to Plymouth three hours before the tide began to ebb, giving them only time enough to fill their water barrels and take on some stores of bread and salted meat, sailcloth and tar and line. The other ships of the Beggar fleet waited for the
Wayward Girl
at the mouth of the sound. The wind was rising out of the east. Jan smelled a storm breeding in the gray clouds that bullied their way into the eastern sky.

Twenty minutes before the tide would turn, he was running along the waterfront from shop to shop, looking for something to make the little master's cabin prettier and more comfortable for Eleanor. At last he bought a bolt of red cloth and a pitcher with flowers painted on it.

They put to sea as the first rain began to fall. The wind drove them west out of the Channel, into the wild Atlantic. The red cloth lay untouched on the cot in the master's cabin; he never saw the painted pitcher again. Against the storm he needed every hand, even Eleanor's, to keep the ship afloat and in the fleet. The pumps worked constantly, and still the water climbed in the bilge. The buffeting winds blew the ship off steadily west; huge seas rose like mountain ranges between her and the other Dutch ships. Now and again the storm faltered, the wind calmed, the seas flattened, and Jan sent his men up the masts to set the sails, and they beat back to the east, tacking for miles to recover a few hundred yards of weathering, until again the savage gale set on them.

Finally the winds blew themselves out. The sun shone through the clouds and patches of blue sky appeared. Save for the men working the pumps, the crew gathered on the deck to thank God for their deliverance. Jan stood with Eleanor beside him, reading out of Marten's Bible. When he was done, he turned to her, ready with reassurances, but her blazing smile met him.

She said, “God is proving Himself to us, Jan, and we to Him.”

He grasped her hand and kissed it, pleased with her. The crew cheered them in weary voices, and they sat down to eat, their first food since leaving Plymouth. That was when they found one of the casks of meat bought in Plymouth was rotten, and that bilge water had leaked into most of their bread.

The only Beggar ship in sight of them was the
Christ the Redeemer
, Lumey de la Marck's ship. Together the two vessels sailed eastward, to raise the coast of Europe and judge from their landfall where they were. Just before night three more ships appeared, two of Sonoy's, and one little hoy of Baron van Treslong's, which was badly beaten up and looked about to sink.

The first call from these ships was for water; they had lost all their water stores in the storm.

The ships gathered together for the night. Jan worked nearly all the night long, with three other men, stuffing tarred rope into the strained seams of the
Wayward Girl
. By morning, the bilge pumps were sucking air, and he could order them shut down for a while.

He went down to the master's cabin. Eleanor slept there on the cot, wrapped in his big boat cloak, her head pillowed on the bolt of red cloth. When he came in, meaning only to look at her and make sure that she was warm, she stirred, looked up at him, and sat, putting out her arms to him.

He sank down into her embrace, and they kissed. She pressed her cheek against his face.

“My love,” she said. “When will you come to sleep?”

“Soon, I hope,” he said. He kissed her again. “When I do, Eleanor, I think we ought to sleep apart, until we find a man of God to marry us.”

She hugged him, her arms around his neck. “When will that happen?”

He shook his head. “I don't know. We cannot go to England, nor to France, and my own country belongs to the Devil.” He forced himself to laugh. “When you came with me, you gave up everything else, dear Eleanor.”

“Nothing of any worth,” she said, in a husky voice.

His heart jumped at that; he had thought she would regret it, coming with him, but he saw now that something in the storm had kindled her spirit. They sat awhile, in silence, kissing each other now and then; finally she lay down again to sleep, and he wrapped the boat cloak around her and with a kiss on her forehead left her there.

When she came on deck, Eleanor drank in the keen salty air like a draught of wine. For a moment she stood looking across the deck at the sea and the sky, so utterly changed from the days of storm. The deck still rocked under her feet and she walked carefully toward the rail.

Now the sea lay around her in wide calm swells, blue-green under the sun, that lifted the
Wayward Girl
in swoops up to the sky and let her down again into the trough of the wave. The sky was bland as milk. Against her cheek the wind blew a light warm breath. She thought of the storm; the waves had climbed up into walls that towered over the ship, the wind driving hard lances of rain against her face, the sky black with clouds, demonic.

At the rail, she stood watching the other ships. There were fifteen of them altogether now, each rocking and dipping in its own dance with the sea, each one different. None was near enough that she could see people on board. They were like separate worlds.

The ship was, she thought, the world pared to its elements. No overgrowth of extraneous custom blurred the stark outline of the eternal struggle. No embellishment or habit of society could moderate the constant intervention of the hand of God. The sailors gave themselves up to the unequal battle with the sea; whom God chose survived.

The infinite horizon filled her with a sense of gigantic purpose. The very emptiness of the broad sea, which dwarfed the little wooden ships, satisfied her with its obvious order and proportion.

A mumbled voice beside her diverted her gaze.

The slow-witted boy, Mouse, stood there, holding out a chunk of bread and a wooden bowl of some indeterminate stew. She smiled at him, suddenly hungry, ready to share this new companionship.

The bread was so hard she could not bite into it. The boy talked to her in his own language, which was so close to hers and still unintelligible to her. Taking the biscuit from her, he dipped it into the broth in the bowl, lifted it, and pretended to eat, and gave it all back to her.

She soaked the bread until it was soft enough to eat. It all seemed very tasteless, and the meat looked and smelled foul. She smiled again at Mouse, who beamed at her. While he stood watching her, she forced herself to eat of the meat.

Her throat refused it. By a fierce effort she swallowed it anyway, and instantly her stomach sent it back up. Turning to the rail, she hung her head over the side and vomited convulsively.

She heard a soft gasp from the ship's boy, and felt a light sympathetic pat on her back. When she straightened up, breathing hard, she saw only a glimpse of him at the far end of the main deck, darting into the space behind the poop deck stair. Somehow she had frightened him. Her stomach hurt. She leaned against the rail, trembling, her throat raw. Remembered her lofty thoughts of only a few moments before, and in the tortured coils of her guts she found the strength to laugh.

Lumey said, “For the arrows of the Lord are in me, the rage whereof drinketh up my spirit, and the terrors of the Lord war against me.”

On his ship there was nothing left to drink but wine, which he had a jug of and now lifted up for several swallows.

Jan grunted at him. “Better to drink nothing than that, you fool. God knows we'd be better off without you.”

“Leave off,” said Dirk Sonoy. “Now is the moment to love one another. Better a raven than a swan among crows. Without one another we are surely doomed.”

The other captains muttered in agreement. They were sitting in their ships' boats, pulled together rowlock to rowlock and bow to bow in the midst of the fleet. Today the sea was quiet as a baby's cradle, the wind too weak to fill a sail. Sonoy leaned forward over his chart again, spread on the thwart before him. He had broken his arm somehow in the storm and it was wrapped up and bound across his chest under his shirt. Treslong, sitting opposite him in the bow, held the edges of the chart down with his widespread feet.

Sonoy tapped the chart, which showed the Narrow Seas and the bordering coasts of England and France. “We can put in here, perhaps, in Cornwall, and fill our water casks; if we hurry, do it at night, we can be in and out before anyone's the wiser.”

Jan leaned over to look, his weight tipping his dinghy up onto its round side. “God's love, Captain, I am taking no ship of mine in on that coast. There are such rocks and reefs—”

“I know the coast.”

“At night?”

Sonoy jabbed the chart with his thumb. “The villagers here are sympathetic to us. Once I had to go ashore here, and I had a very fine greeting from them.”

“That was before their Queen threw us to the Devil.”

“They repaid me evil for good,” Lumey droned, “and hatred for my love. Set thou the sinner over him, and the Devil—”

“Shut up,” Jan said, curt, and turned back to Sonoy and van Treslong, who as usual were masters of the fleet during Lumey's incompetence. “Why can we not sail up to the German coasts, where people would be friendly to us?”

“That's a long way, van Cleef, and no guarantee of a kindly welcome.”

Van Treslong said, grim faced behind his huge ginger mustache, “The Germans are under the Hapsburgs.”

“What do you say?” Jan asked him.

“I say look for a fat ship to take. Spanish, if possible—anything that comes, if necessary. Fill our stores as best we can by piracy.”

This was so inadequate that Jan guessed at once van Treslong had some deeper scheme that he meant to bring forth more in its maturity. He looked hard into the other seaman's face. Van Treslong blinked at him and slowly under his mustache smiled.

“When we reprovision,” Jan said, “what then?”

Sonoy was bent over his chart, ignoring him. One of the others said, “Then death to Alva and the King of Spain!” and others vented a round angry cheer.

“What have you in your heart?” van Treslong asked.

“Sail west,” Jan said. “To the New World. Make our place there, in a virgin and innocent place.”

Several of them laughed at him; the others, even Sonoy, stared at him with wide eyes, caught on the dream.

“The Spanish rule there too,” someone said.

“There are few Spanish, and lots of land.”

Van Treslong put out his hand. “A bold idea, van Cleef. Maybe someday we will.” At that the others looked away; they fell to arguing over the idea. The clatter of voices swelled. Jan took van Treslong's hand.

“We could do it.”

“Maybe. In the meantime some of us are near to starvation, and we must feed ourselves.”

Lumey flung the empty wine jug high over his head; it spun end over end down into the sea. “The wind,” he said, croaking. “The wind is coming up.”

Jan raised his head. Down so near the level of the waves, he felt no more than the ruffle of the wind like a hand touching his hair; higher, in the riggings of the nearest ships, the freshening breeze plucked at the lines like harpstrings, and the sails that had hung drooping from the yards gathered their bellies full and grew plump and white as a housewife's apron.

The captains cheered. They scrambled around in their boats, rocking and slapping oars and gunwales together. Lumey bawled, “We'll take a line to weather The Lizard. The
Wayward Girl
to lead.”

Jan thrust his oars out through the rowlocks and stuck his feet against the stern thwart. “Lumey! I've an extra cask of water; steer by me and we'll drop her to you.”

“A gracious gesture, by God!” Lumey saluted him with a raised fist.

“You're no use to us drunk,” Jan shouted. He put his back into the oars.

They sailed into the Channel, looking for a prize. The wind stayed fair for the northern run. They found no ships to seize. One evening they raised the coast of France; bonfires burned on every hill, warning them off.

Eleanor said, “I am a weakling. I'm unfit; I cannot eat this meat.” Her hands covered her face.

“Eat my bread.” Jan gave her his piece of biscuit and took the chunk of salted pork from her bowl. He drew her into the circle of his arm; they sat in silence on the stern deck, looking out across the sea.

That was the last of the meat anyway. Thereafter they had only bread and water, and very little of that.

Eleanor said no word of complaint. When they sat together every evening, she smiled and told him stories of her past life; her face was pinched thin as an old woman's, and her eyes grew huge above the hollows of her cheeks. When he kissed her, her lips were so dry he wondered if she could feel the touch.