, wreathed in emblems. It was a priest’s vestment, used at the solemn high Mass.7
“Fire!” Pieter roared.
Jan said nothing; with the burning match in his hand he hovered over the waist gun, his gaze pinned to the Spanish merchantman wallowing in the sluggish surf a cable length away.
“Fire, damn you!” Pieter brought the flat of his stick down on Jan’s back.
“Shut up, Uncle,” Jan cried, and as he spoke the next onshore wave rolled under the Wayward Girl and lifted her until the dark hulk of the Spanish ship fit square in the notch of the culverin’s sights. He put the match to the touchhole. With a hiss and a hellish whiff of sulfur the flame shot away into the brass backside of the cannon and an instant later the great gun bellowed its deafening smoky thunder.
The smoke swirled in around the gun. Jan and the two men working with him jumped forward to drag the monster back inboard to be loaded. From the masthead of the Wayward Girl came a cheer.
“Got the other mast! Round as a barrel, she is!”
All around the ship the other men roared and cursed and cheered. Pieter whacked Jan on the rump, this time congratulatory.
“Doomshot! That’s my nephew.”
Jan with his own hands swabbed the culverin’s barrel with a sponge on a staff. He let other people fire the fore and aft guns but he had fallen in love with this waist gun and could hardly bear to let anyone else handle her. Mouse was waiting with the charge. Half-witted though he was, the puny boy was useful for some things. Jan nodded to him and watched while the boy stroked the heavy flannel packet with the gunpowder deep down the gun’s long throat.
That done, Jan lifted his eyes to the target.
The Wayward Girl rolled and thrashed in the trough of the waves, just outside the surf. Halfway between her and the rocky English beach where the water ended, the Spanish merchantman struggled with the pounding waves.
She had lost one mast in a storm the night before, or the Wayward Girl would never have dared take on so huge a ship, three times her weight, carrying over a hundred men. Some of those men were creeping around on the deck, which pitched and bucked with every surging crosswave of the surf; while Jan watched, a few more of the Spanish seamen leapt overboard into the water, to try to swim to shore. Most of the crew clung to the rails and screamed with every wild corkscrew motion of their vessel. Without a mast or a shred of sail to hold her upright, the Spanish ship could roll completely over at any moment.
“She’ll run aground any time now,” Pieter said. He stuck his thumb into his belt and squinted toward their target. “Once she does, the sea will break her up. We have to get her out where we can loot her. Let’s pound her again. Maybe the rest of the crew will jump for it.”
Jan muttered, “Would you?” He jabbed his hand toward the shingle beach beyond the surf.
All along the English shore, dark figures stood on the sand, watching, and waiting, and as Jan pointed to them, more slipped over the horizon of cliff behind the beach and came down toward the sea. A few of the Spanish sailors were just wading up through the surf and the people on the beach nearest them rushed up and seized them and fell to beating them.
“There must be fifty of them!” Red Aart shouted. “Who are they?” He leaned across the railing of the Wayward Girl to look.
Jan bent over his gun again. If the Spanish ship went aground, those lurking beach bandits could well end up with most of the booty. Pieter tapped him on the shoulder.
“Load up the guns with man killer. Rock shot. Chains.” The mean glint in old Pieter’s eyes surprised his nephew, in spite of all he knew about him. “Let them say their Hail Marys.”
Jan straightened. “Moek! Willy! Aart!”
The men stepped forward, eager, and he sent some to the shot locker and others around the ship, to each of the other guns. “All the guns?” he said to Pieter mildly, and drew a filthy oath from his father’s brother.
Mouse tugged on his sleeve. “Me, Jan. Tell me too.”
“Get out of my way,” Jan said, and pushed him over to the rail. He went up to the bow, to load the old cannon there.
“Sail!” Marten shrieked, from the masthead. “Sail ho—”
Jan sprang toward the rail, every hackle standing. “Where away?” In the waist Pieter howled with rage and kicked violently at the hatchcover.
“Larboard beam,” Marten was screaming. “Sail hull down to larboard—”
Jan shaded his eyes, staring across the rushing seas into the distance, but the ship hull down to the masthead was still well out of sight from the deck. It hardly mattered. Whoever she was, she would make no friend of the Wayward Girl.
Pieter said, “Well, well. That cuts down a little on our time.”
“She’s still probably a half a glass away,” Jan said, hoping. He went on to the bow gun. Mouse followed him, walking with a peculiar slouching stride that was meant to imitate Jan’s.
“Hands to the braces,” Pieter shouted.
The men ran around the ship. There were too few seamen to work the ship and fire the guns too, and Jan swore, wondering what his uncle was doing. But when he started back toward the stern, where Pieter was climbing the steps to the poop deck to con the steering of the ship, his uncle shouted curses at him.
“Mind the guns! Just mind the guns and shoot when I tell you, you dumb suck!”
Jan turned back to the bow gun. Mouse was on his heels; Jan pushed him.
“Fetch me the match.”
The slow match sulked in its iron box by the brass waist gun. Mouse ran down the ship and brought it up to the bow.
Pieter got the Wayward Girl under sail, slipping like a knife through the water, headed away from the Spanish hulk. Standing out to sea until he got room to maneuver, he brought the ship about. Jan leaned against the railing at the bow. His uncle handled the ship as neatly as a wooden shoe in a bathtub. Pieter had made him practice changing course and he had never managed to turn the sails, to lay the ship over and take the new heading without losing the wind and going dead in the water. The great gaff-rigged mainsail luffed a little, drawn too tight to the wind, and Pieter shouted to the man on the brace to let it out a little.
Now the Wayward Girl was racing down through the heavy seas toward the Spanish hulk again. On the thrashing merchantman a howl of terror went up, as the crew saw her tormentor approaching, and the men rushed back from the rail. Jan bent over the bow gun. He saw what his uncle meant to do, and that he would have very little time to fire the guns as the Wayward Girl passed her target; swiftly he made ready.
In the notch of the cannon’s sight the Spanish ship loomed larger and darker. The waves lifted her and dropped the Wayward Girl, until the Spanish vessel seemed to hang above them like a great cloud. Then the wave passed on and the two ships slid together, one rising, one falling, and Jan put the match to the cannon and the gun roared.
The shot, dozens of pieces of metal and rock, whistled as it flew. It raked across the deck of the merchantman, killing in a broad swath. The Spanish sailors shrieked and darted in all directions, and more of them dove overboard into the surf.
Jan was already running down the ship to the waist gun. The Wayward Girl was flying through the water; Pieter shouted to the men to back the mainsail to slow her down a little, and Jan fired the next gun.
The two ships were so close now that he saw the faces of the Spanish sailors, saw them disintegrate into red mash when the shot struck. The ship rolled toward him just after the shot whipped across the deck, and on the tilted deck he saw the bodies scattered and broken and the blood running in streams. Without hesitating he raced down the Wayward Girl to the stern, jumped up the three steps to the stern deck, and bent over the two stern guns.
Standing at the railing of the poop, Pieter shouted, “Aart, go below and bring up two coils of the new cable. Helm, steady as she goes.”
The Wayward Girl swept past the Spanish ship. Looking down the barrel of the first stern gun, Jan saw the length of her deck; on the boards were a tangle of corpses and screaming wounded and the wreckage of the masts. He put the match to the two bores and the guns thundered almost simultaneously. A veil of smoke hung over the stern for a moment. Coughing, he squinted with watery eyes through the clearing black fog.
The big merchantman rolled helpless. On her deck nothing stirred except a rag of sail that fluttered in the wind.
“Lower the dinghy,” Pieter called. He wheeled, grabbing Jan by the sleeve. “You take the boarding party. Rig the tow cable to her bow, if you can—we can haul her off down the coast a little way. I know where there’s a cove—”
“Sail,” Marten was screaming, from the masthead. “The sail’s coming straight down on us! She’s Spanish—a Spanish greatship!”
“Oh, God,” Jan said.
“Never mind her!” Pieter shook him. “There’s no time to spend worrying about her. Get that hulk in tow.”
Jan spared one instant’s glance out to sea, where the unseen Spaniard was cleaving the water toward them, and ran, down to the waist. Aart and Willy were carrying the ship’s little dinghy to the rail. On the deck lay two huge rolls of three-inch cable, so new the long blond threads that escaped the twist had not been worn off. Jan helped the other men heave the dinghy overboard.
“Come with me,” he said to the two men, and swung his leg over the rail.
“Me too?” Mouse danced on the deck beside him. “Can I come too, Jan?”
Jan’s temper surged; he brought his arm back to swat the boy away, but Aart glared at him, and he thought better of it. Maybe if they took him, Mouse would catch a stray shot, eliminating a small but persistent annoyance from Jan’s life. “Yes, come,” he said, and grabbing Mouse by the arm hoisted him up over the rail and dropped him into the dinghy.
Mouse yelled, from delight or fear; an instant later the other men fell into the dinghy beside him, with the cable. They rowed off toward the Spanish hulk.
Heads and bodies dappled the white-striped surf around the Spanish ship. Most of her crew had gone overboard. Jan hoped none was waiting to meet him when he went up the side. They rowed under her lee by the stern. The ship was catching the bottom now with each push of the waves. Jan could hear her keel scraping on the hard shingle. She rolled down over his dinghy, shutting out the sky, and he gaped up a moment at the huge hulk above him, unnerved, waiting for her to crash down on him. Then she rolled back the other way, and from beneath the waves her dripping weedy bottom rose streaming into his face.
“Wait ’til she comes back over again!”
Some of the Spanish crew swam in the sea near them. Aart leaned out from the dinghy, an oar in both hands, and whacked a floating head until it went under. The others had struck out for the beach, where the English were gathering them in. A row of naked bodies already lay on the cold sand above the tide line.
Jan stood up in the dinghy, with the little boat’s anchor in his hand. As the side of the Spanish ship swung down above him, he threw the anchor up over her rail. Midway up her side, a hole three feet wide showed through her timbers, where the Wayward Girl had hit her at close range with a heavy shot. The ship righted itself in its wild roll, and the anchor caught on the rail. Jan clung to the rope; he was lifted up, up out of the dinghy.
Like a pendulum he swung hard against the Spanish ship’s side. Kicking out his feet, he got a toehold on her slick streaming timbers and walked up over the rail.
The deck was tipping and pitching like a feather in the wind. Everything on it rolled from side to side with every toss of the waves. A body was lodged against the rail where he climbed over; he had to step on its dead hand to get across. The blood gurgled in the scuppers.
“Dios,” someone called, feebly, from the direction of the stern. “Dios y Madre de Dios—” Someone else screamed.
Jan leaned over the railing, to look down into the dinghy. “Row along to her bow. I’ll meet you there.”
Aart waved. Jan went forward; he had to plow through the wreckage of the forward mast and sails and rigging. The rolling of the ship made it hard to keep his footing. There were dead everywhere—underfoot, caught in the snarl of wood and rope, huddled against the bulkhead of the high forecastle. The smell of blood was sickening. A tangle of canvas around a broken spar lay over the steps up to the forecastle deck, and he heaved and lugged at it uselessly until he saw a coil of line hooked around the top step. With his knife he cut it free. The next heave of the ship took the spar off down the deck. He climbed up to the forecastle.
Something boomed in the distance. He wheeled. Off to sea, a little blossom of smoke was shredding away in the wind. Behind it stood a Spanish warship.
Jan Caught his breath. He had never seen a greatship under full sail before and even though she was Spanish she was beautiful, her sails piled up like clouds above her, her pennants streaming in the wind. A moment later the shot she had fired struck the sea midway between him and the Wayward Girl with a splash that sent droplets flying into his face.
“Come on!” He dashed across the forecastle to the bow of the hulk. The dinghy was just below him, the men looking up with anxious faces. He waved to them to send the cable up, and Aart bent over the rolls and found an end and began uncoiling length on length of the heavy line.
Another rattle of thunder from the Spanish ship. All the men jerked as if struck.
“I’ll take it,” Mouse cried, and grasping the end of the cable he climbed up onto his brother’s shoulders and reached over his head for the chains that hung from the Spanish ship’s bowsprit.
“Aart,” Jan roared. “Do it yourself.”
Too late: Mouse was already scurrying, nimble as his name, into the chains, dragging the cable after him. Jan swore under his breath. He leaned down over the rail to haul the boy on board.
“She’s going,” Willy cried, dismayed. “Pieter’s leaving us!”
The Wayward Girl was making sail again, headed for the open sea. Jan shouted, “No, no, he’s just putting her on her best tack. Come on—row back—”
A flight of cannonballs stopped his words in his mouth; they hit the sea around the Wayward Girl and threw up a curtain of water as high as her jack yard. The ship was moving, slipping away from the Spanish hulk; Jan blinked after her, wondering what Pieter was doing. Maybe he was leaving them. Certainly he was heading dead away from them.
No. Trust the old man. Jan bawled, “He’ll come about and sail in past us to pick up the cable. You go out to meet her—”
The two men in the dinghy bellowed, against that entirely. Jan gritted his teeth. Beside him Mouse stood solemnly watching them. Jan twisted to look out to sea, where the greatship was sailing toward them again.
As long as she was sailing up toward them she could not shoot. Jan struck the rail with his hand. He watched the Wayward Girl, now rapidly shrinking as she fled away from them.
Her mainsail shivered. Pieter was wearing ship, to bring her back to Jan.
“Go on! Row out to meet him—slip the cable as you go—”
“I’m not going out there,” Willy howled.
“Ah, you hen, Willy! Then go there!” Jan pointed to the stretch of rough water in between the rolling hulk and the beach. The Wayward Girl drew far less than any Spanish ship; maybe she could squeeze in between this hulk, now scraping bottom, and the sloping beach where the English happily mauled the shipwrecked sailors. “Go!”
That they were willing to do. Clinging to the rail through another gut-twisting roll of the Spanish hulk, he watched them row the dinghy off to the quieter water, where, protected by the hulk from the greatship, they paid out the cable over the dinghy’s stern.
The Wayward Girl was coming about. Her jack yard swung from one side to the other; her hull wallowed a moment, sluggish, and then lay over on the other flank. The wind caught her great mainsail and swelled it full as a matron’s apron.
Mouse cheered. Jan grunted, relieved, and turned back to watch the greatship.
She did not sail fast, but she was so big, her sail so towering above her stepped decks, that she seemed to split the sea and throw the sky behind her. Jan leaned against the rail beside him through another pitch of the hulk.
This time she went hard aground. A shudder passed through her as if she were a living thing that died.
“Come on,” Jan said, alarmed. If she went aground they would not easily tow her off. He ran down to the main deck again, where the broken masts and yards lay over everything, and searched for an ax to chop it all free and lighten the ship.
The Spanish greatship was coming about, to follow the Wayward Girl. Clearly she meant to close with the smaller ship and grapple with her. Her great bulk lay between the Wayward Girl and the open sea, pinning the little ship against the coast, and on her decks men crowded thick along the rails, ready to board her and overwhelm her.
Mouse yelled, “There’s another ship!”
He was pointing away down the sea. Jan glanced there and saw nothing and fixed his attention on the Wayward Girl again.
Pieter was trying to get his ship back up north of the hulk again, so that he could run down before the wind and take her in tow; but the Spanish greatship, lumbering powerfully along on a near parallel course, farther out to sea, was rapidly running her out of sea room. Jan bit his lips. He drummed with his hands on the rail of the hulk. Pieter was losing the wind. He had to come about soon, or run aground, and when he came about he would fly into the teeth of the greatship and her heavy guns and her boarding party.
“Come on!” He could stand still no longer. Kicking through the rubble on the deck, he found a well-dressed corpse with a saber in its hand, took the sword, and began hacking away the swaddling debris that clogged the hulk’s deck.
“Here comes the other ship!” Mouse cried.
He put his shoulder to a broken spar and heaved it overboard, and with it went a mass of rigging and sail. The hulk seemed to rock up, lighter in the water. Mouse shouted again. Jan raised his eyes.
An oath escaped him. There was another ship, running down in the wind’s eye from the north. A two-masted cog, whose round bow and stern proclaimed her Dutch built. On her high-stepped fore- and afterdecks were ranks of men with muskets. A gaudy banner of gold and green fluttered from the peak of her mainmast, and other, uglier trophies dangled from her yard ends—bodies, swathed in rusty black cloth. With the wind behind her this strange vessel swept down on the Spaniard, and the Spanish ship swung clumsily around to meet her.
Jan yelled. With the greatship thus distracted, the Wayward Girl had a clear path out to the open water, and Pieter seized the moment and brought his handy little ship about and made for the safety and sea room that stretched out beyond the greatship’s stern.
The greatship lost the wind. In coming about to meet the strange craft she had missed her course. Her sails slatted and drooped flat against her masts, and she wallowed in the sea like a washtub. The strange ship bore down straight at her. Jan wondered if she meant to ram her. The newcomer was half the size of the greatship. Yet she charged down on the Spaniard with every sail spread.
“Jan!” On the dinghy, bobbing in the lee of the mastless hulk, Aart was standing up to yell at him. “What is going on?”
“There’s another ship out here fighting the Spaniard!” Jan swept the sea with his gaze, looking for the Wayward Girl, and saw her far out on the water. Her square mainsail shortened to a vertical line. She was turning. “Here comes Pieter. Get ready.”
From the greatship came a roar of voices. The newcomer was sweeping down on her. At the last moment the strange ship swerved off a little, to pass astern of her, and the Spanish ship fired her guns.
The crack of splintering wood resounded across the water. A cannon-ball skipped over the waves and buried itself in the sea with a splash that went up like a tree of spray. The strange ship glided past the Spaniard’s stern and muskets cracked and snapped on her decks. Along her stern overhang ran the words Christ the Redeemer. Still the greatship lay stubbornly dead in the water while her crew scrambled through her rigging and over her yards, trying to fill her sails with wind to give her life again. Between her and the strange ship the stretch of water widened as her course carried the newcomer away down the wind.
From the Spaniard’s far side suddenly the Wayward Girl appeared, racing down so close to the greatship that Jan howled with fear and anger at his uncle. Distracted, the Spanish had not seen her; one or two of the huge Spanish guns went off, but the Wayward Girl, sailing almost under the greatship’s rails, fired the bow gun, the waist culverin, and the two stern guns pointblank into the Spaniard’s hull, and leaning with the wind she was racing off light as a deer before the greatship could recover.
Jan whooped. “God, the old man can sail!”
“There’s more ships,” Mouse cried, and pointed.
A whole fleet of strange vessels was strung out along the horizon. The greatship had seen them too. With both her immediate enemies sailing off away from her, she finally gained the wind again. Her pouched canvas billowed and filled taut, and she gathered herself up out of the lap of the sea. The Christ the Redeemer was coming about, but she was hardly more nimble than the greatship herself with the wind over her stern, and the Spaniard put her bows straight for the sea and took the wind and ran.
Mouse was dancing on the rail of the hulk, his arms in the air. Jan grinned at him, gay with relief and victory. “Let’s go below,” he said, “and see what it is we’ve been fighting for.” He ruffled the boy’s hair. Mouse smiled up at him worshipfully, and Jan led him over to the nearest hatch and hauled the cover back.
“Wool.” Pieter kicked the nearest of the mountain of bales on the deck. The tide was ebbing, leaving the mastless ship solidly aground; Jan and his men had cleared the deck of bodies and rubble and brought up what of the cargo they could salvage. Bursting in through holes in her hull, the sea had gotten into most of the wool and a lot of the cloth. Pieter went on to the row of casks. “What’s this?”
Jan pulled up a slat in the top of the cask he had opened and took out one of the sacks that filled it. Pieter kneaded it expertly with his fingers, feeling the contents through the cloth.
“Pepper. Good enough. Are they all the same?”
“I don’t know.”
Pieter was looking off across the deck, over the rail, toward the sea. Night was falling. In the darkening air the half dozen ships lying to in the deep water seaward of the Wayward Girl were only vague shapes. Jan rubbed his hand on his thigh.
“What are they going to do?”
“I don’t know,” Pieter said.
The strange fleet had come up on the heels of the Spanish greatship’s retreat. They were all Dutch built, cogs and flyboats, showing the gold and green pennant, and when the Spanish ship fled they had calmly assumed a station just outside of the hulk.
“Who are they?” Jan said.
Pieter grunted. He stuck his pipe between his teeth and tramped on down the deck, past the heaps of cargo. “Anything else?”
Jan led him over to a wooden chest by the stump of the mainmast. Aart was standing there, his arms crossed, his back against the butt of the mast. Jan tipped up the lid of the chest with his foot.
“Hunh.” Pieter started to squat down, to get closer to the heaps of silver coins in the chest, and thought better of it. “Who else knows about it?”
“You and me. And Aart,” Jan said. He shut the lid again.
“Get it onto the Wayward Girl. Swim it over if you have to.” Pieter threw another narrow look toward the strange fleet.
“Who are they?” Jan asked him.
The old man puffed on his pipe. “Beggars,” he said. “Sea Beggars. Willem Lumey de la Marck and his pack. Pirates disguised as men of religion. You saw the meat hanging from his yardarms?”
Jan remembered the corpses dangling in their black shrouds and nodded.
“Priests. Lumey hates priests.”
Jan turned to Aart. “We have to get that chest over to the Wayward Girl if we mean to keep it.”
Pieter went over to a heap of little kegs and bent over them. “They’re just waiting until we do the work here,” he said, forcing up the bung of the top keg with the tip of his knife. “Then they’ll take it all. God-damned pirates.” The bung popped out with a squeak. Lifting the keg, he poured red wine into his mouth.
“I’ll take the dinghy,” Aart said, and stooped to pick up the chest.
“You will not,” Jan said. “They’ll know we’re doing something.” He picked up the chest in both hands; it weighed as much as a good-sized child. “You can’t swim with it; you’ll go straight to the bottom.”
“Here they come,” Pieter said, and clicked his teeth together. He thumped the bung back into the hole in the little wine keg.
From the dark fleet that hemmed them in against the shore came a little boat, bobbing across the water toward the hulk. A torch blazed in her bow. Jan frowned, trying to make out how many men sat behind the hot glow of light, but could see only shadows. He wheeled around.
“Here.” He grabbed the chest from Aart and put it down again at the foot of the mast. Three long strides took him to a bundle of unfinished cloth that lay against the smashed railing. He yanked it open and tore off an arm’s length of it and draped it over the chest. “Now.” Picking up his uncle, he set him down on top of the cloth like a little king. “Sit there and don’t move.”
“Get your hands off me!” Pieter thrashed at him. Jan backed away, looking around, saw nothing else to do, and nodded to Aart.
“Call the rest of the men over here. We’ll have a fire and drink the rest of this wine and see what can be done with these people who rescued us.”
“They never rescued us!” Pieter shouted.
“They did,” Jan said. “And we may as well admit it. Now, sit up, look smart, and don’t move off that chest.”
The other men gathered around them, and hacking up other parts of the hulk, they made a fire in the middle of the deck, and warmed the wine in a pan over the flames. By that time the fleet’s boat had come alongside, and the Sea Beggars were climbing up on the deck.
They strode across the blood-stained deck of the hulk into the firelight, eight men, all carrying as many weapons as they could hold, knives and swords in their belts, and pistols in their boot tops, and two with muskets on their shoulders. Their leader strutted forward on widespread feet. His clothes glittered in the firelight, heavy with gold embroidery and chips of jewels; down the center of his heavy surcoat ran the sacred letter , wreathed in emblems. It was a priest’s vestment, used at the solemn high Mass.
“Well, well,” Pieter said, around his pipe. “Lumey de la Marck, I see.”
The man in the priest’s coat stopped on the far side of the fire, his fists planted on his hips. “I am Lumey de la Marck,” he said. “But I didn’t expect to see you here, Pieter van Cleef.”
“Did you think I was ashore forever? Here’s my nephew, Jan van Cleef, as good a hand with a big gun as any you’ll find on the narrow seas.”
Jan gave his uncle a surprised glance, startled by the heady praise, and Lumey thrust his hand out to him.
“Well met, Jan van Cleef.”
From behind Lumey came a tall man in sober dark clothes of fine cloth and high boots; the hilts of the daggers and the sword in his belt were of chased silver.
“Van Treslong,” he said, “of the Peter and Paul.” And they all shook hands.
After him came a small round man with a wen on his cheek. “Dirk Sonoy, the Katerina.”
They greeted him, and one by one the other captains after him. Jan kept his gaze on Willem Lumey de la Marck. He had heard before of the leader of the Sea Beggars, tales of wild courage and butchery which the bold charge of Lumey’s ship against the Spanish greatship gave him some measure of. A nobleman, like many of the Sea Beggars. Jan shuffled his feet together, his hands sliding behind him, uneasy.
Pieter leaned forward on his makeshift throne. “Let’s have wine all around,” he said. “The night’s chill. Aart—Willy—”
There were no cups; they passed the wine in the pan it had heated in, with the dipper from the hulk’s water barrel to drink it by. Lumey drank a sip and stood back, running his gaze over the heaps of cargo on the deck around him.
“A fine, big ship,” he said, in his booming voice. “A true mare of Andalusia, and what does she carry, Pieter van Cleef?”
“Wool, as you see, mostly ruined. Cloth to be finished, and some spices.”
“All we’ve taken,” Jan said, “we’ll gladly share with you, for saving us.”
“Oh, ho!” Lumey shouted with laughter. He tramped around in the little circle of firelight, his hands on his hips and his gold-embroidered coat sparkling and flashing. “What gratitude this is, from a good crew of Dutchmen!”
“Well said, I think,” said van Treslong, quietly, and smiled.
Dirk Sonoy was staring away into the dark. He wheeled around abruptly toward Jan.
“Your ship is the Wayward Girl?”
“Yes,” Jan said.
“She seems different. I didn’t recognize her—I thought she was caravel-rigged.”
“No,” Pieter growled. He stuffed his pipe full of tobacco and reached into the fire for a splinter. “Fore-and-aft rigged, she always was, but the Spanish took her and rerigged her with the gaffsail. And she sails very prettily for it, too.”
Lumey was tramping off down the ship, poking at the heaps of wool and cloth, and nosing into the pepper. Van Treslong moved up closer to the fire and put out his long elegant hands over it to warm them.
“And the Spanish gave her back to you? Kindly folk that they are?”
“We stole her,” Pieter said.
From the darkness beyond the fire, where Lumey was, came a whoop of derisive amusement. “What van Cleef does best, by God’s hat!”
Sonoy crouched down, the firelight shining on his round red face. “Then you are playing pirate? Join us. The more sticks, the hotter the fire, as the saying goes.”
Pieter took his pipe from between his teeth. “Two fools under the same cloak, as the saying goes.”
Lumey’s heavy footsteps made the deck tremble. “This is all you found on this ship?” He waved his arm broadly at the cargo.
Jan said, “There’s still some below, but the ship was pretty well worked over when we finally got her, and the sea’s washed into most of it.”
Lumey grunted. Beneath his bristling eyebrows his eyes were small and close set like snake’s eyes. He said, “You’re just a stripling; these other fools are harbor rats. You can’t sail alone against Spain. You’d better fall in with us.”
“We do well enough,” Jan said.
Van Treslong tipped his head back; the firelight shone up under his hat’s floppy broad brim. “We need a good fast ship like yours. We’ve got a scheme to—” Lumey kicked him in the ribs.
“By God,” van Treslong said, and snatching a brand from the fire he leapt up and swiped at Lumey with the blazing stick. Lumey howled. Springing backward, his arms flying up over his head, he missed his footing on the blood-slippery deck and crashed down on his backside. The other captains roared with laughter.
“Keep your boots in the barn, Lumey!” Van Treslong threw the brand in a fiery arc out over the rail into the dark sea.
“Hush, hush,” Sonoy said, pulling on his sleeve. “He’s got his own ways—and you shouldn’t hand out your sheets until the wedding’s consummated.”
“As the saying goes,” Pieter said, and sent up puffs of smoke from the chimney of his pipe.
Jan said, “What’s your plan?”
“Join us,” Sonoy said. “Then we’ll talk about it. We share everything equally. Lumey is our commander, because there has to be someone to give orders and the Prince of Orange named him our admiral, but as you can tell, we all say what we think. We’re all good honest Christians—”
“Damn the Pope,” Lumey said, coming back to the fire. He rubbed his backside with one hand, ignoring van Treslong. His cheeks were red as raw bacon.
“Bah,” Pieter said. “I don’t care what you dress it in, you’re still pirates, and nothing better than pirates. I’ll take my chances by myself.”
“Oh, no,” said Lumey tenderly. “We’re not pirates. We have letters of marque from the Prince of Orange himself, God bless him.”
“Letters of marque,” Jan said. “What’s that?”
Lumey’s hand plunged inside his coat and came out again with a packet of paper wrapped in cord. “Letters from the sovereign Prince of Orange that we are sailors in his navy, and therefore whatever we do is lawfully done and we can’t hang as pirates.”
He laughed, exultant, and waved the papers in the air.
“Do your necks still stretch?” Pieter stamped his foot. “Do the Dons still make rope? Then you’ll hang if they catch you, you fools!”
Lumey stuffed his letters away under his gaudy clothes. He said, “I don’t mean to be caught.”
“What’s this plan you have?” Jan asked van Treslong.
The tall man straightened up, taking off his hat. “I see no reason to keep it hidden. We have in mind to throw a net of ships across the mouth of the Channel, and when the Spanish fleet comes between The Lizard and the Brittany coast, we’ll take them. The King of Spain sends a fleet to Antwerp every half year, with supplies and the pay for his troops.”
“How many ships do you have?” Jan folded his arms over his chest. “Those six little ships out there won’t do much against a fleet of galleons.”
“We’ll have forty sail,” Lumey said. “And every God-fearing, priest-hating man between The Lizard and the Maas to sail them. Join us, or by Heaven we’ll sink you right here.”
Jan started toward him, angry, but van Treslong got him by the arm. “Pay no heed to him; he’s impatient with reason. But you must see the advantage to joining us, even if all you mean is simple piracy.”
“That’s all there is to do,” Pieter shot at him. “And you who parade about, pretending you are fighting a war against Spain—”
Sonoy distracted him, his mouth full of proverbs, into another line of argument. Van Treslong plucked Jan’s sleeve.
“Mark you, there is this: every blow we strike here against Spain hurts both Spain and Alva. Do you hate the Bloody Duke? Do you want to free our cities and our Provinces from his rule? Then you would do well to join us.”
Jan said, “Alva hanged my father. I want my revenge.”
Lumey pushed in between him and van Treslong. “Either join us, sailor boy, or go to the bottom of the sea! Take your choice.”
“God’s blood!” Pieter bounced up onto his feet. “For that, I’ll never join you, Lumey—for your bullying ways and your big mouth.” He tramped up before the bigger man, shouting into his face. “Baron, are you? On the sea you’re only as fine as you sail, pirate, and you sail as the wind blows! Don’t make more of yourself than there is, pirate—”
Jan tensed, ready to get between his uncle and Lumey, but suddenly van Treslong was looking down past Pieter at the deck, suspicion drawing his face long. Jan lowered his gaze. With a half-smothered yelp he grabbed Pieter by the arm.
“I told you not to stand up!”
Pieter thrust him off, another volley of insults leaving his lips for Lumey. Jan pulled him backward, back over the length of unfinished wool cloth he had dragged after him from the chest, back toward the chest left exposed and obvious before the other pirates.
“You old fool!”
“Why, now,” van Treslong said mildly, “I think our hosts here have been withholding something of their bounty from us.” He went to the chest and bent over it.
“That’s ours,” Pieter cried.
“Oh, yes,” said van Treslong. “And you brought it out on the Wayward Girl to bring on board all your prizes, to give them that certain aura of expense.” He tipped up the lid. Lumey bellowed.
“Cheats!”
“Well,” said Sonoy, puffing out his round cheeks, “the pisspot’s hanging on the door now.”
Jan looked around at the intent faces of the pirate captains; he saw there was no argument now that would keep the silver from them, and he shrugged. He smacked old Pieter on the shoulder.
“God, you make me angry sometimes.”
Pieter growled. “It’s ours!”
Van Treslong was already counting the silver coins out onto the deck. “There’s six of us here,” he said loudly. “Six ships of the Sea Beggars. I’ll divide it up into sixes.” Lifting his head, he smiled at Jan and Pieter. “Or is that seven ships of the Sea Beggars?”
A low rumble of angry noise was the only answer Pieter gave. Jan folded his arms over his chest. They had already half convinced him to join them; but he was sorry to be losing so much of the silver. He shrugged again.
“I’m with you.” Jan twisted, his face turned over his shoulder, and called, “And my crew, too.”
From the dimness outside the firelight the other men of the Wayward Girl muttered their agreement. Van Treslong nodded, the silver clinking in his hand.
“Divided by sevens, then.”
Sonoy gave Jan a comradely slap on the arm. “Two people can shit through the same hole, you know.”
Jan laughed. Pieter stuck his pipe between his teeth again. “As the saying goes.”