The Thousand Autumns of Jacob De Zoet: A Novel (88 page)

'Aye, sir.' Robert Hovell gives his captain his cape and goes below.

A midshipman helps him into the garment: it has Hovell's scent.

The Captain turns to the Watchtower, drunk with venom.

The Watchtower still stands, as do the men; and the Dutch flag flies.

'Demonstrate our carronades. Four crews, Mr Waldron.'

The midshipmen look at one another. Major Cutlip hisses with pleasure.

Malouf asks Talbot in a low voice: 'Won't carronades lack kick, sir?'

Penhaligon replies: 'They
are
built for closer-range smashing, yes, but . . .'

De Zoet, he sees, is watching him through his telescope.

The Captain announces, 'I want that damned Dutch flag torn to rags.'

A house on the hill spews oily smoke in the wet and falling air.

The Captain thinks,
I want those damned Dutchmen torn to rags
.

The gun-crews clamber up from below, grim-faced from Tozer's accident. They remove panels from the quarterdeck's bulwarks and manoeuvre the short-bore wheeled carronades into position.

Penhaligon orders, 'Load up with chain-shot, Mr Waldron.'

'If we're aiming at the flag, sir, then . . .' Gunner Waldron indicates the Watchtower, just five yards below the top of the flagpole.

'Four cones of whistling, spinning, jagged, broken chains,' Major Cutlip shines like an aroused lecher, 'and jagged links of metal will wipe the smiles off their Netherland faces . . .'

'. . . and their faces off their heads,' adds Wren, 'and their heads off their bodies.'

The powder-monkeys appear from the hatch with their bags of explosives.

The Captain recognises Moff the Penzance urchin. Moff is pale and pink.

Gunpowder is packed into the short, fat muzzle by a bung of rags.

Chain-shot rattles from rusted scuttles tipped inside the carronades' barrels.

'Aim at the flag, crews,' Waldron is saying. 'Not so high, Hal Yeovil.'

Penhaligon's right leg is become a pole of scalding pain.

My gout is winning
, Penhaligon knows.
I shall be bedbound within the hour
.

Dr Marinus appears to be remonstrating with his countryman.

But de Zoet
, the Captain consoles himself,
shall be dead within the minute
.

'Double-tie those breech ropes,' orders Waldron. 'You saw why below.'

Might Hovell be right?
the Captain wonders.
Has my pain been thinking for me these last three days?

'Carronades ready to fire, sir,' Waldron is saying, 'at your word.'

The Captain fills his lungs to pass the death sentence on the two Dutchmen.

They know
. Marinus grips the rail, looking away, flinching, but staying put.

De Zoet removes his hat; his hair is as copper, untameable, bedraggled . . .

. . . and Penhaligon sees Tristram, his beautiful, one-and-only red-haired son, waiting for death . . .

XXXVIII

The Watchtower on Dejima

Noon on the 20th October, 1800

William Pitt snorts at the sound of footsteps on the stairs. Jacob de Zoet keeps his telescope trained on the
Phoebus
: the frigate is a thousand yards out, tacking adroitly against the wet north-westerly on a course to bring her past the Chinese factory - some inhabitants are sitting on their roofs to watch the spectacle - and alongside Dejima.

'So Arie Grote finally gave you his alleged Boa Constrictor hat?'

'I ordered all hands to the Magistracy, Doctor. Even yours.'

'Stay here, Domburger, and you'll be needing a physician.'

The frigate opens her gun-ports,
clack, clack, clack
, like hammers on nails.

'Or else,' Marinus blows his nose, 'a gravedigger. The rain is in for the day. Look,' he rustles something, 'Kobayashi sends you a raincoat.'

Jacob lowers his telescope. 'Did its previous owner die of pox?'

'A little kindness for a dead enemy, so your ghost won't haunt him.'

Jacob puts the straw raincoat on his shoulders. 'Where's Eelattu?'

'Where all sane men are, at our Magistracy Quarters.'

'Was your harpsichord transported without mishap?'

'Harpsichord and pharmacopoeia alike; come and join them.'

Filaments of rain brush Jacob's face. 'Dejima is my station.'

'If you're supposing the English shan't fire because a jumped-up clerk--'

'I suppose nothing of the sort, Doctor, but--' He notices twenty or more scarlet-coated marines climbing up the shrouds. 'They're to repel boarders . . . probably. To take pot-shots, she'd have to come within . . . a hundred and twenty yards. There'd be too much risk of grounding the ship in waters hostile to British hulls.'

'I'd rather a swarm of musket-balls than a volley of broadsides.'

Grant me courage
, Jacob prays. 'My life is in the hands of God.'

'Oh, the
grief
,' Marinus heaves, 'those few, pious words can bring about.'

'Repair to the Magistracy, then, so you won't have to suffer them.'

Marinus leans on the railing. 'Young Oost was thinking you must have some secret defence up your sleeve, something to reverse our reverses.'

'My defence,' Jacob removes his Psalter from his breast pocket, 'is my faith.'

In the shelter of his greatcoat, Marinus examines the old, thick volume and fingers the musket ball, fast in its crater. 'Whose heart was
this
boring into?'

'My great-grandfather's, but it's been in my family since Calvin's day.'

Marinus reads the title page. 'Psalms? Domburger, you
are
a two-legged cabinet of wonders! How did you smuggle ashore
this
rattle-bag of uneven translations from the Aramaic?'

'Ogawa Uzaemon turned a blind eye at a crucial moment.'

' "It is
he
that giveth salvation unto kings:" ' reads Marinus, ' "who delivereth David his servant from the hurtful sword." '

The wind carries the sound of orders being relayed about the
Phoebus
.

In Edo Square, an officer shouts at his men; a chorus replies.

A few yards through the air behind them, the Dutch flag flaps and rustles.

'That tricoloured tablecloth wouldn't die for
you
, Domburger.'

The
Phoebus
bears down: she is sleek, beautiful and malign.

'Nobody ever died for a flag, only what the flag symbolises.'

'I'm agog to learn what you
are
risking your life for.' Marinus thrusts his hands into his eccentric greatcoat. 'It can't just be because the English Captain dubbed you a "shopkeeper".'

'For all we know, that flag is the last Dutch flag in the world.'

'For all we know, it is. But it still wouldn't die for you.'

'
He
. . .' Jacob notices the English Captain watching them through his telescope '. . . believes we Dutch are cowards. But starting with Spain, every power in our rowdy neighbourhood has tried to extinguish our nation. Every power failed. Not even the North Sea has dislodged us from our muddy fringe of the continent, and why?'

'Here's why, Domburger: because you have nowhere else to go!'

'It's because we are stubborn sons-of-guns, Doctor.'

'Would your uncle want you to demonstrate Dutch manliness by dying in a crush of roof-tiles and masonry?'

'My uncle would quote Luther: "Whilst friends show us what we
can
do, it is our enemies who show us what we must." Jacob distracts himself by studying the ship's figurehead of the frigate - a mere six hundred yards away now - through his telescope. Its carver endowed Phoebus with a diabolic determination. 'Doctor, you must go now.'

'But consider Dejima post-de Zoet! We'd be reduced to Chief Ouwehand and Deputy Grote. Lend me your telescope.'

'Grote is our best merchant: he could sell sheep-shit to shepherds.'

William Pitt snorts at the
Phoebus
with a very human defiance.

Jacob takes off Kobayashi's straw coat and puts it on the ape.

'Please, Doctor.' Rain wets wooden boards. 'Don't add to my debt of guilt.'

Gulls vacate the roof-ridge of the boarded-up Interpreters' Guild.

'You're absolved! I'm indestructible, like a serial Wandering Jew. I'll wake up tomorrow - after a few months - and start all over again. Behold: Daniel Snitker is on the quarterdeck. It's his hominid walk that betrays him . . .'

Jacob's fingers touch his kinked nose.
Was it only last year?

The
Phoebus
's Master shouts orders. Sailors on the yards furl the topsails . . .

. . . and the warship drifts to a dead halt, three hundred yards out.

Jacob's fear is the size of a new internal organ, between his heart and his liver.

A gang of the top-men cup their mouths and shout at the Acting-Chief, 'Scrub, little Dutch boy, scrub scrub scrub!' and wave the reverse of their index and middle fingers.

'Why . . .' Jacob's voice is taut and high '. . . why
do
the English do that?'

'I believe it goes back to archers at the Battle of Agincourt.'

A cannon is run through the aft-most port; then another; then all twelve.

Lapwings fly low over the stony water; their wingtips drip with seawater.

'They're going to do it.' Jacob's voice is not his own. 'Marinus!
Go!
'

'As a matter of fact, Piet Baert told me that one winter - near Palermo, I believe - Grote actually
did
sell sheep-shit to shepherds.'