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.

Days went by. Mouse fell sick and Eleanor put him to bed in the master’s cabin and sat by him and prayed and talked to him, learning Dutch from him, and made him eat her bread and drink her sip of water. Jan went aloft himself every time the sails were set; he knew some of his crew were losing their strength. He hoped by his example to keep them working. Marten spent hours trying to snare the sea gulls that came less and less often now to wait for garbage in their wake. Some of the other men fished, catching nothing.

On the twentieth day after they left Plymouth, a sail appeared, bearing a red cross, to the north of the Wayward Girl. Jan sent up a flag, to signal the ships behind him, and raced toward the Spanish vessel. It was a merchantman, twice the size of the Girl, with three times the men on board, but Jan knew no caution: he wanted food and drink for Eleanor and for Mouse.

The merchantman tried to run. Clumsily she struggled around onto the other tack while the Wayward Girl, reaching along the wind, shot like an arrow toward her. The awkward Spaniard wallowed out of the wind’s eye, her sails slatting, and missed stays. Every sail flopped. Jan shouted in triumph.

“Starboard three points!” he called to Marten, who was steering. “We’ll give her a bit of iron, and she’ll cry like a baby. Forward gun, ready to fire!”

The three men crewing the bow gun were still struggling to load her. Panting, Jobst yelled, “Wait—one minute more—”

Eleanor came up onto the sterncastle. “What—oh! A ship!”

She went to the rail and leaned out to see. Jan swore and banged his hands together. “Jobst!”

“Almost—”

The Spaniard was crawling with men, up and down the rigging, hanging on the yards, as they worked to get the sails drawing again. They had rigged a spritsail, but the heavy-loaded ship resisted even that pressure to line up with the wind.

“Jobst!” Jan screamed, in a temper; he saw they might sail right past the Spaniard before they could fire, and then have the trouble of coming about and beating back against the wind. Given so much time, the Spaniard might get away, or Lumey, in the Christ the Redeemer, who was just behind the Girl, might get to her first.

“Hands to the braces!” He would slow his ship down.

“Look,” Eleanor cried, and pointed to a white scarf fluttering from the main yard.

“They’re giving up.” Jan wheeled around, filled with a spurious new strength. “Marten! A point more to starboard. Jobst, keep the gun on her. By the main braces, let her go!”

The hands on the mainsail let go the lines, spilling out the wind, and the ship slowed smoothly, gliding down on the Spaniard. Along the merchantman’s rail, a swarming crowd gathered, many waving white handkerchiefs. Jan ran to get his pistol.

With half a cable length separating the ships, he crossed in the dinghy, two of his men with him, their belts stuffed with pistols and knives. The Spanish captain met them at the top of the ladder, his face set like stone, snorting his words down at them as if he were giving the orders. Jan got him by the shoulder and swung him around to face the Wayward Girl.

“You see that gun, Señor?” Speaking French to this foreigner, Jan pointed to the brass culverin in the Dutch ship’s bow. “Resist me, and that gun will blow a hole through your ship a whale could sound through, and all these pretty ladies …”

He swept his arm toward the crowd along the rail; among the seamen were a number of gentlemen in black Spanish dress, and women too, with shawls draped to veil their faces. The Spanish captain sniffed at the culverin, but beyond the Wayward Girl, now, loomed the black masts and sails of the Christ the Redeemer.

The crowd along the rail saw her too, and cries of fear and despair went up from them. Jan made a face. He saw some priests in the crowd, and mindful of Lumey’s games with priests he got the Spanish captain by the arm again.

“Get those blackbirds below.” With a glance at the Christ the Redeemer he went down himself into the hold, to find the merchantman’s stores.

As well as the common stores of seamen’s fare, the Spanish ship was carrying live chickens, pigs, kegs of wine, real bread, crocks of butter, and honey, food for the elegant passengers. It seemed like a feast, all piled up on the deck of the Wayward Girl, but when it was divided up among the ships of the Beggar fleet it shrank away to a day’s eating.

“What else was there?” Lumey shouted, tramping up and down Jan’s main deck, a slab of bread and butter in one hand and his sword in the other. “What have you hidden from us, sailor boy?”

Jan was eating chicken, barely cooked over the hastiest of fires. “You’re on my ship, Lumey.”

“I say he’s holding something back.” Lumey’s arm wheeled out, inviting the other men around them into the argument. “I say he found more than this; why else would he refuse to let anyone else on board the prize? Hah! Answer that.”

Jan had stripped the Spaniard and let her go, since he could not feed or even guard the swarms of people on board her. The merchantman would make for a port in the Low Countries, only a few days away.

Sonoy sat on his heels by the mast, his head against the rope wrapping, watching some of Jan’s crew roast a whole pig on a spit. “Whatever he took, he earned; he seized the ship. The sweet goes to the man with the cake in his mouth.”

“Hah!” Jan shouted at Lumey. He stalked away up the deck to the sterncastle ladder, where Eleanor was sitting, eating bread and honey. Mouse crouched at her feet, his cheeks sticky.

“Recovered?” Jan nudged the boy with his foot.

“He was giving all his food away.” Eleanor bent and hugged the boy. “He is a saint.”

“He’s a fool,” Jan said, “but God loves him.”

She raised her head to give him a glance barbed with bad feeling. Jan sat down beside her. “What’s the matter now?”

Before she spoke, she ate the rest of the bread and licked her fingers of the last of the honey. Finally, her hands in her lap, and her eyes turned away from him, she said, “You are nothing but pirates, really, aren’t you?”

“What?”

“All that fine talk about helping your people, and fighting the Spanish for the sake of your faith—all you are is a pack of pirates.”

Her voice trembled, either from fatigue or the weight of what she was saying; it was in his mind to laugh at her, to tell her she had known always what he was, but that quaver in her voice held him back. He thought of old Pieter, who had said much the same thing as this but with an opposite emphasis. His heart sank. Was that all there was to it—an empty shell of words and wind to pretty up plain robbery? He supposed she was right, as old Pieter had been right.

She got to her feet and went away down the stern deck to the hatch, and disappeared below. Jan slapped his hands on his thighs.

“Women,” he said to Mouse.

The other captains were gathering around Sonoy at the mast of the Wayward Girl. The delicious aroma of the roasting pig surrounded them; gently the skin crackled, crisping in the fire, and the fat exploded in pops like small arms. Jan licked his lips. He hoisted Mouse onto his feet and pushed him ahead of him down to the others, where Lumey was strutting and throwing his chest out and snorting his suspicions.

“Keep civil,” Jan said, between his teeth. “This is my ship.”

“Mind your betters, sailor boy.”

Sonoy lifted his head. “Hold, you two—van Treslong’s got a plan.”

Jan turned, uninterested at first, still clutched in the gray mood Eleanor’s words had brought upon him, but now he remembered thinking before that van Treslong had something deep in his mind, and he went over to the group of captains. “What’s going on?”

Van Treslong fiddled with his red-yellow mustache. “We’re standing just over the horizon now from the coast of Holland. There’s little harbors all over those islands, and none of them have garrisons of any size. I’ll warrant there isn’t a Spaniard in the whole of the waterlands right now, just the local Catholics in arms. I say we sail in and take one of the sea towns and reprovision there.”

Jan let out his breath, a little disappointed; that was daring, but still piracy. The others leaned forward, intent. A quick look into their faces told Jan they were very warm to this.

“Where?” Sonoy said.

Van Treslong shrugged, twisting his mustache around his finger. “Flushing. The Brill. There’s a dozen different places.”

Sonoy’s face was shining. “To go back home again,” he said, under his breath.

At that Jan’s spirits brightened. He had not set foot on a Dutch shore in over a year, and even if Holland were not Brabant, yet it was nearly the same. His mind raced forward, toward the practical application of this scheme.

“We’ll need pilots. Those waters are treacherous.”

Van Treslong smiled at him. “Half my crew grew up in Zeeland. I myself spent much of my boyhood in The Brill; my father was governor there.”

“That was a while ago,” said someone else. “The Maas changes with every tide. If we go to The Brill, we’ll be sailing up the river.”

Beside Jan, Lumey erupted in a great yell of laughter. “By God, you’ll all sail straight into the Spanish throat! You’re mad. We cannot go blind into a Spanish port—”

“Not Spanish,” Jan said. “Dutch.”

“There will be people who support us, too,” Sonoy said. “Many in the waterlands support us.”

“You’re mad,” Lumey said. “But if you insist on doing this, then let it be The Brill; she has the best harbor on the coast—save Flushing, and Flushing’s almost in the Duke of Alva’s lap—but The Brill is far away.”

“The Brill it is,” van Treslong said, and put out his hand, and one by one the others laid on their hands, looking deeply into one another’s eyes, and nodded.

The Schelde, the Maas, the Rhine—the great rivers flowed up from the south through the center of the Low Countries, and where they poured their several streams into the North Sea, they broke the land into a fleet of little islands. Flat and low, they kept their faces ever to the sea, where a great tide or a wild storm or even a single monstrous moondriven wave could rise up to drown them utterly. With the solid ground for anchors, the people had over the centuries built dikes around the tidal marshes, pumped the sea out, and made new land, but it was a precarious footing, the sea ever seeking to reclaim its own when the people tired of watching.

To Eleanor Simmons, used to the constant, solid English countryside, these half-drowned lands were strange as China.

She stood on the sterncastle of the Wayward Girl, listening to the pilot direct the course of the ship and writing down what he said. It was still early morning. The sky was pearly with fresh light. A steady breeze was blowing and the tide was making, so Jan had set only the jib and the mizzensail, to creep in over the water.

There on the larboard beam a low dark mass rode on the river: an island of barren silt. Beyond it on the far bank Eleanor could see the wide arms of a mill against the sky. Quickly she made note of that; Jan had told her to write down every landmark.

The pilot said, “Three points starboard, there, wheel.”

Behind Eleanor the rudder lines creaked. It was so quiet she could hear the warble of the sea passing under the ship’s stern. Jan came pacing up the deck toward her, his hands on his hips. Three big pistols jutted from his belt. He wore a fancy white shirt of linen, booty from the Spanish ship, and sailor’s breeches of dirty canvas and no shoes. He shouted, “What’s the bottom?”

Someone amidships relayed the questions, and from the bow, where the man was casting the lead, the answer came back: “Five fathom and rising! Black silty bottom—”

The pilot said, “It’ll be three fathom before we wear the tip of The Brill.”

Jan muttered something. His forehead was damp with sweat. Eleanor knew better than to speak with him; he had been half wild all morning, and being so enclosed in land, with the tide and the wind pushing him steadily up the narrowing river, he had all the aspect of a beast being dragged into a cage.

On the land to the left—to larboard, she reminded herself—was a low round tower; she made a note of that in her book.

“There’s The Brill,” said the pilot sharply.

Off the starboard bow the land was jutting out to meet them. A high seawall thrust across the river current to break the tidal flood; beyond it rose thatched roofs and mottled walls and the tops of little trees. Eleanor wrote as fast as her fingers would move. She had never seen a Dutch town before. The shape of the buildings was different—taller, narrower than English buildings. The pilot was taking them out a little from the seawall, where the white surf banged and crashed and threw foam up into the air; as the Wayward Girl turned, Eleanor caught a glimpse of the rest of the Beggar fleet, sailing behind her. Crowded together, they seemed more even than they were.

Now the Wayward Girl was gliding past the seawall, and the wharves and riverfront of the town of The Brill opened up to view. Jan rushed to the railing.

“No Spanish ships,” he said, relief heavy in his voice.

The whole broad riverfront was covered with people. When the Wayward Girl sailed into their ken, a great yell went up. They could not know yet who this was; Eleanor wondered at their wonderings. She wrote what she saw, although she wanted only to look, to see everything.

“Sail,” someone yelled, from the waist, and there was a general laugh from the crew.

A ferryboat was swinging across their path, a flat barge propelled by sweeps. The half dozen people on board gaped at the ship looming over them. Jan ran to the side and looked out.

“Bring him alongside! Marten, point a gun at him and get him under our lee.”

Marten, in the bow, had a musket, which he brandished at the ferry. The master of the little barge was hanging on his sweep, staring up at the ship that towered above him; his jaw hung open like a flytrap. At the sight of the gun he flung his arms up over his head.

Two or three splashes rose from the far side of the barge. The gun’s appearance had sent some of his passengers overboard.

Under Marten’s gun, the ferryman brought his flatboat around beneath the Wayward Girl’s rail. Jan leaned out and yelled, “Have you anything to eat?”

Eleanor laughed. She folded her arms comfortably on the rail and watched the ferryman search a locker and bring forth a round yellow cheese.

“Who are you?” he called, and tossed the cheese up over his head, where Jan could catch it.

“The Wayward Girl, Jan van Cleef, master, sailing under letters of marque from the Prince of Orange.”

“Orange!” The ferryman wheeled toward the few passengers left to him, who stood close together on the barge behind him. “It’s the Sea Beggars!”

The people gave up a wail. The ferryman looked back to Jan again.

“What do you here?”

Jan flung a look across the water at The Brill; he shortened his gaze to meet Eleanor’s eyes. His face tensed with decision. Leaning over the rail, he shouted to the ferryman, “Go in there and tell those people we are giving them two hours to surrender the town to us.”

“Two hours!” The ferryman backed across his barge to look downriver at the rest of the fleet. “How many men have you?”

“Oh …” Jan scratched his chin, his eyes narrow. “About five thousand or so.”

“Five thousand men!” The ferryman flung his hat into the air. “God be blessed—God be thanked.” He seized his long-bladed stern oar and swung the barge slowly around, away from the Wayward Girl, and steered for The Brill.

Jan laughed, and raising one arm called for his boat. He still held the cheese, which he brought to Eleanor.

“Here. Divide this up properly with everyone, and see Mouse eats his. I have to go talk to Lumey and the rest.” He smiled at her, his tension and temper dissipated in the exchange with the ferryman. “What do you think—have we five thousand here?”

“Counting God and His angels.” She took the cheese and with her left hand pulled his knife out of his belt. “Go tell your fellows what you’ve gotten us into now.”

He laughed again, high tempered, and bent down and kissed her, a loud smack on the lips. “There will be a minister here, somewhere.”

“Good,” she said. “It’s wasteful to sleep in two beds, when we could be using one.”

He went down to his dinghy, and she sat on the deck to cut the cheese into pieces.

The Ferryman, whose name was Koppelstok, went up from the quay through the townspeople that crowded the waterfront; having seen him speak to the strange ship, everyone assailed him with questions, which he ignored. The excitement beating in his breast was too great to lose in words. He went straight up the street to the town hall, where the magistrates had gathered in a nervous cluster on the front steps, some of them still fastening their coat fronts.

“Koppelstok!” cried the chief magistrate. “Those ships! Whose are they? They don’t look like merchantmen to me.”

“Heavens above,” the assistant magistrate said. “They’re only fishermen, come in to escape a storm or something.” He looked very pale; his fingers pulled constantly at the flat brim of his hat. “Tell him, Koppelstok. My wife’s invited her mother’s uncle to dinner today, and I should have been home to sit down with him half an hour ago.”

Koppelstok planted himself on the steps, enjoying his moment of preeminence, and looked from one to the other of the officers, with whom he had been engaged all year in a nasty argument over his licenses. In rolling tones, he said, “Well, they aren’t merchantmen.”

The chief magistrate wrung his hands together. “I knew it.”

“And they aren’t fishermen.”

The assistant magistrate dropped his hat on the ground.

“They say they are the Sea Beggars, and we have two hours to deliver up The Brill to them.”

Behind him a many-throated yell went up, because a huge crowd had followed him here from the riverfront to hear what he would say; and having heard it, they turned and scattered in all directions through the town, shouting the awful news.

“The Beggars are coming! The Beggars are coming!”

The magistrates flung up their hands. The chief magistrate, a pious Catholic, crossed himself and muttered an oath like a little prayer.

“What shall we do? What shall we do?”

“They say,” Koppelstok said, with malice, “that they have five thousand men on board, armed head to foot.”

The assistant magistrate was sidling away down the steps; others of them took his example, and fled off the other way, into the town hall. From the church tower two blocks down came the rolling clamor of bells.

“Five thousand men!” The chief magistrate wiped his forehead. “God have mercy on us. God have pity on us.” Turning on his heel, he ran up the steps to the town hall and disappeared inside. Behind Koppelstok, a wagon rumbled down the street, piled up with furniture, headed for the land gate. Another appeared in the crossroad. Koppelstok went back down the street to the waterfront, to hide away all his valuables.

By the late afternoon, when Jan and his crew led half the Beggars in a rush onto the waterfront, The Brill was deserted, except for a few dozen Calvinists who cheered them from the river’s edge to the land gate. At the land gate, Lumey was just breaking his way in, knocking open the gate with the butt end of a mast. The two groups of Beggars met in the street and milled around a while, uncertain now what to do.

“Where are they all hiding?” Lumey asked. He waved his sword around him, practicing on the enemy air.

“They ran away,” said a gray-bearded man whom Jan recognized as the ferryman who had taken his message to the town. Standing on the steps of the church, he peered around at the sailors gathered in the square before the gate. “Where is the rest of your army?”

Jan thrust his pistol under his belt. He had eaten nothing in two days but a sliver of cheese; he began looking around him for something to steal. “This is all.”

The ferryman blinked at him. “You said—”

“I lied.” Jan started back down the street toward the waterfront, where Eleanor would be waiting for him.

The ferryman trotted after him. “You said you had five thousand men!”

Jan flung him a sharp look. “What difference does it make? The lie worked as well as an army would have. Is there a minister of God in the city?”

“But—aren’t you here to fight Alva?”

Jan stopped, exasperated by this persistence. Ahead, the street opened onto the broad stone quays of the harbor; by the water stood a woman, her hair covered by a shawl, a boy beside her, waiting. He raised one hand to her. Facing the old ferryman, he said, “Go find me a minister.”

The old man’s jaw thrust out, warlike. “I thought you were—”

Jan grabbed the front of the old ferryman’s coat and hoisted him up onto his toes. “Go find me a minister! A sexton—a deacon—anyone who can marry me.” Opening his hand, he let the old man fall with a thud to his heels and strode away, down the street toward Eleanor.

He broke into one house after another, until he found one with the dinner laid out and ready to be eaten. The soup was cool and the beer warm, but that mattered nothing to him. The ferryman returned with a minister, who stood in front of Jan and Eleanor and said the appropriate words, and then they all sat down to the feast—Jan, his new wife, his crew, and the minister and the ferryman as well.

The ferryman said, chewing, “Well, you made fools of everyone. There isn’t a soul left in The Brill but God’s people.”

Jan said, “They can have it back when we’ve stocked our ships.”

The old man watched him steadily through narrowed eyes. “You’re going away again, then? Just leaving, without even a shot at Alva?”

“Alva’s a hundred leagues off in Brussels,” Jan said. He wished Koppelstok would shut up; his talk made Jan very restless. Once they left The Brill, the Beggars were back where they had begun, homeless, captives of the sea. He put boiled turnips on Mouse’s plate, to his left. “Eat,” he said, and struck the boy lightly on the shoulder. “Put some muscle on you.” Mouse lifted his face in a wide shy smile, his eyes crisscrossed.

“I thought the Beggars were fierce,” said the ferryman. “Now I see you’re only—”

Jan poked at him with his fork. “I’ll sew up your lips if you keep nagging me.”

His crew laughed, and Koppelstok fell still, glowering at them. Jan stood up to cut the mutton. He would worry about The Brill later. Maybe some arrangement could be made—they could pay the local Calvinists to keep the port safe for them, once they went to sea again. He chased that thought from his mind. The huge bulk of the people here were Catholic.

While Jan was putting a slice of mutton on his plate, van Treslong came in, alone.

“Congratulate me,” Jan said. “I am a married man.”

The baron shook his hand, and taking off his hat bowed very courteously to the bride. Mouse moved off to give him the seat on Jan’s left hand at the table. Van Treslong took a bit of meat and a cup of drink.

“What do you here?” Jan asked. His stomach was painfully full and he thought he might be about to be sick. Leaning back on the stolen chair, he groped in the space to his right for Eleanor’s hand.

Van Treslong wiped his fingers on the tablecloth. “You’ll learn, in time.”

Eleanor squeezed his hand. Jan reached for his cup and drank the last of his beer. “In a very short time I will not be here.”

“Where, then?”

“Upstairs. Enjoying my host’s clean Sunday sheets. What brings you to me?”

Heavy footsteps sounded in the front rooms of the house. Van Treslong said, “I think you are about to learn it.”

Lumey came in, half a dozen of his men behind him. His face was bright red from drink. His sword was thrust through his belt. Trampling into the room, he looked around the table and let out a yell of understanding.

“By God’s eyes! A wedding feast. I’ll kiss the bride.” He started forward.

Jan drew out one of his pistols and laid it on the table. “You’ll kiss my backside first, Lumey.”

His crew roared with laughter. Van Treslong pulled his long mouth longer in a smile and Lumey snorted, standing on widespread feet, his great belly out in front of him, his head thrown back like a counterweight.

“Mark you, how he’s grown beyond his station!” He waggled one finger at Jan. “But I forgive it, for the weight of his cannon. The which is why I’m here, sailor boy. The night’s coming, the tide will turn in three hours. Now we must fill our holds with plunder and take to the sea.”

Jan pressed his lips together. His gaze slid sideways to van Treslong, whose face behind the ginger flow of his mustache was sleek with interest. To Lumey, Jan said, “I’d in mind to stay awhile longer.”

“Don’t be a fool, sailor boy. When they find out we’re so few in number, they’ll be back. They’ll have the Spanish in their front rows, too. We’re only safe at sea. Let’s go.”

Van Treslong said nothing, only his face speaking for him, the cheeks taut, the eyes bright as lamps. Jan held Eleanor’s hand in his, wondering how much of this she understood, and thinking how she had called them nothing but pirates.

He scratched his chin. The Spanish would come, that much was true. He did not see how they could hold The Brill against them. But …

“We were starving on the sea,” he said.

“You fool,” Lumey cried, wheeling on van Treslong. “What have you said to him?”

“Nothing,” said the baron. “All these are my witnesses.”

Lumey struck the tabletop with his fist. “How long do you mean to stay, sailor boy? Three days? A week?”

Jan was struggling with his thoughts; there seemed nothing solid to decide on, only death or wandering over the sea. Eleanor held tight to his hand. He looked from face to face of his crew around the table. They would do as he said. He thought of the sea, and its peace, and the storms of the sea, when every ship needed a harbor.

He thought of the taverns of Plymouth, full of foreigners, whores, and lonely sailors. His gaze ranged over this room, the dark polished wood, the solid table and chairs, the little round portraits of the previous occupants, like his own mother’s dining room. This was Zeeland, not Brabant, but the people here spoke his native tongue, and they ordered their lives by customs he was used to.

As he thought, something happened in his mind. His whirling ideas took shape, and he found a place to stand on and see forward and backward at once.

“We came here as pirates,” he said to Lumey, and to them all. “We took The Brill like pirates, ready to rob and go. Well, maybe the time’s come to be greater than pirates. We could go back to the sea, and taking The Brill would be nothing but a snap of the fingers in Alva’s face, and another song for Beggars to sing. But we can stay here, and make a stand, for us, and for all our people; and even if we die, then people will see what is important enough to fight and die for.”

Van Treslong clapped his hands together. At the far end of the table Koppelstok leapt to his feet. “Well said!”

“Stay,” Marten cried, hoarse voiced, and the other men lifted their voices and their clasped hands. “Stay. Stay.”

Lumey straightened, his face working. “By God, you have a heart like a church bell, boy.” He shook his head. “We’ll see how strong it sounds when Alva’s at the gates.” He turned and marched out of the room.

Jan’s right hand was still in Eleanor’s, and her grip was tight and hot. He turned to her and she smiled, her face brilliant with pride and courage. He saw she had understood it, all along, everything. He wondered if she understood the odds against them. Putting his arms around her, he drew her tight to him, urgent now to use the time, and to cheers that boomed like thunderclaps they kissed.