Chapter Seven

Rotterdam 1558 A.D.

A Family in Conflict

Henri returned to Rotterdam in professional triumph; the outstanding performance of his fleet had excited the maritime community. It had given other shipbuilders a new product to be copied and sold in the marketplace. Henri was honored by a banquet at the Guild Hall. Little did anyone imagine that such gunboats would play a decisive role in the coming war with Spain. They would help the Dutch control the rivers and dominate the countryside. Similar gunboats would protect the inland waterways, sometimes limiting Spanish advances into Dutch held territory when all else failed. Henri received a hero’s welcome for the personal courage he displayed while accompanying his ships on their maiden voyage into combat. The Rotterdam Estate presented him with a finely crafted silver plated wheel-lock musket with the raised image of the fleet engraved on its oak stock. It was one of many gifts of weapons presented to him by militia, guild, and trade groups. His sons saw to it that all these gifts were exhibited in the parlor with the family’s ancestral sword, given to him by the Baron, as the centerpiece of the display.

Reylana seemed oblivious to her son’s efforts to memorialized Henri’s accomplishments and met his triumphant return with cold indifference. As a wife and mother, Reylana was having a difficult time coping with life and circumstances since Johanna’s death. Fate seemed to have accumulated an endless cycle of obstructions to her treasured independence, despite her best efforts to find an acceptable compromise. To her credit, she voluntarily began to manage the day-to-day financial operations of the shipyard, which Johanna had previously handled so well. Henri’s status as a premier shipbuilder eliminated the need for promotion, but her husband had never mastered the dollars and cents of the business. Reylana was forced to use her commercial expertise to fill that void. She hired a nanny to help care for the sometimes rambunctious boys. Luckily, the young woman developed a good rapport with Teewes and Petrus and assisted them with their school work, giving Reylana a few more hours of precious personal time. Yet, travel was becoming hazardous for those living barely even within the Ban-Palen posts. Beyond the city’s walls, personal safety became an issue as hordes of people, displaced by famine, disease, and warfare, wandered aimlessly outside of Rotterdam. The city, once a bastion of safety, found its security forces stressed in maintaining public order. Henri was forced to hire two former soldiers to protect his family and the shipyard. The boys had to be accompanied on their trips to school and Reylana needed an escort on her now infrequent visits to the city. Worse still, in her mind, Reylana found she was expecting another child as Henri had committed to build Lord Willem’s fleet. Though still a young woman, eleven years had passed since she carried a child and she felt overwhelmed at the prospect of raising another infant. As her belly swelled, she received little consolation from her Calvinist faith, for she thought it preordained that her family would be limited to two children. The unexpected pregnancy filled her day with nagging physical pains she had not encountered during earlier pregnancies. As the baby grew within her, so did her resentment toward the baby and her husband. She found it annoying that Henri seemed so delighted with the prospect of another child.

When the baby boy was born, it was well after sunset. The delivery exhausted both mother and midwife. Even by candlelight, Reylana saw this child bore little family resemblance to his brothers at birth. He had a stocky body and a head was covered with dark black hair. It was in pointed contrast to the lean build and light complexion of her first two children. The baby showed little trace of her own Visigoth ancestry or Henri’s Germanic tree. The dark colicky infant soon overwhelmed the weary mother, already weakened from the long ordeal. Reylana instinctively knew this would be a demanding baby, contented only when feeding or sleeping. Her maternal instincts made her love the child but she knew this new baby would be difficult to like.

Reylana named the infant Gustoff after a “character of the night’ she had once seen in a stage play. The baby’s irregular sleep patterns made an adequate night’s rest impossible. Reylana’s constant weariness inhibited her recovery and any hope Henri had for resumption of intimacy. The fatigue affected Reylana’s physical appearance and she noticed her well proportioned body was not returning to its previous dimensions. While still a remarkably beautiful woman, Reylana knew this child’s birth had stolen a bit of her beauty along with her treasured independence. She vowed this type of situation would never, ever, happen again. Despite God’s laws and the physical needs she shared with Henri, Reylana vowed this would be her last child.

With his household in turmoil, Henri tried to schedule work at a slower pace, hoping to comfort his wife. He planned to delay construction of a newer version of his Jachtschips and spend more time with Reylana. Yet his new status as a local hero prompted a much faster allocation of wood from the guild than he expected. The new timber’s arrival only added to the huge supply of wood left over from the gunboat project which he had stored within one of the boathouses. He knew that stock-pile would be crucial, when the time was right, for him to progress to the next logical step in his jacht designs. Henri wanted to design a much more sophisticated Jachtschip. One capable of carrying men and cargo on the longest of ocean voyages. But for the moment, because his peers were looking on, he was forced by custom to use the guild’s allocation. He chose to build a less complicated Jacht, but that still consumed time that should have been spent calming the turbulent seas within his marriage. Since Gustoff’s birth, Henri’s sex life deteriorated into brief moments of onanism. Henri again became the hesitant man of his youth. He even avoided discussing the issue of intimacy with his wife.

Reylana felt she couldn’t discuss her real feeling with Henri for she knew he would consider not wanting children an abomination of nature, if not secretly within himself, an affront to some high law of some unknown deity. She knew that her feelings were at best sinful, and at worst could lead to damnation by her all-powerful God. Reylana sometimes wondered if she hadn’t already been so damned. In desperation, she turned for advice to a woman in the healing arts. She assumed the knowledge-able midwife, who had used simple pepper to provoke the massive sneezing that brought Gustoff to term, would know about such things. Reylana was relatively naive about her body and hoped the midwife could tell her how to avoid future pregnancies without breaking God’s laws. When she attempted to discuss the matter with the trusted midwife, the woman was too fearful to even discuss the topic with her.

The reason for the woman’s fear went back a hundred years. It began when the Black Death dramatically decreased the European population, and every king sought to repopulate their kingdoms. Preventing the birth of a child became a criminal act. Women, the majority of healers, were forbidden to provide what little information was available about controlling birth. The male rulers, knowing only women had such knowledge, had females relegated to only the most elementary positions in the healing arts. In less than a decade, the kings with the support of the Catholic Church saw to it that men won control of the healing profession. The female healers, courageous enough to still provide such information to other women, were charged with witchcraft and sorcery, and burned alive. Reylana’s trusted midwife, through ignorance or fear, could not answer her questions, but she was a good enough friend to give her the name of a woman who might know about such things and this woman was no witch.

A few days later Reylana visited one of the poorest neighborhoods in Rotterdam. She was accompanied by her armed escort and both were hooded to avoid being recognized. She was visiting a French woman named Jeannette, once a proud courtesan in Brussels, who decades ago had come as a refugee to Holland. Her mother had once been a prominent healer in Paris, first jailed, and ultimately garroted, for continuing to provide banned information to her female patients. Reylana was graciously received at a dilapidated house. The courtesan had fallen on hard times since advancing age had forced her retirement. She retained few of the rewards she once acquired, sharing her bed with some of the most prominent lords in the Low Countries. Reylana felt some sympathy for her. Reylana was told the woman had no children to care for her which made her think the plight of this lonely woman might well indicate she possessed a solution to Reylana’s predicament.

Jeanette was all business and assumed she knew the reason for Reylana’s visit and she did. She offered Reylana, for a small fee, her mother’s thoughts on the avoidance of conception. For a larger fee she would share the method she used throughout her lifetime to avoid childbearing. Courtesans such as Jeanette, who entered into courtly relationships, knew the birth of a child often caused complications for their benefactors. Those who refrained from having children during these relationships could always demand greater rewards. Reylana handed the courtesan the smaller fee telling her she might still consider a second purchase. Jeanette explained that her mother believed a man’s milky cream, like honey, needed to sweeten the soul of a woman’s womb to cause conception. The simplest means to avoid pregnancy was for the man to withdraw before ejaculating within a maiden. The courtesan said the problem was that men are basically selfish and even the most considerate man will succumb to pleasure and fail to withdraw. To safeguard against such irresponsible behavior, her mother had counseled women to place a small amount of beeswax, carefully soaked in vinegar within them. Her mother felt the combination usually, but sadly, not always, made conception nearly impossible. Reylana thought about what she had just been told and reached for more coins.

She later returned home to find the child had again put her household into total disorder. Gustoff had awakened and discovered his mother missing. He began loudly crying; only occasionally pausing to replenish the air in his lungs, refusing the milk maid’s breasts. The nanny was forced to summon Henri from the shipyard. Only five months old, Gustoff would not be appeased or distracted from his fit. When Reylana arrived she had a good-natured look on her face and playfully scolded Henri for “upsetting their sweet child,” gently picking up Gustoff, allowing him to feed until he fell asleep. After putting the boy in his cradle, she signaled for her husband to follow her to their bedroom. The room was cold, so Henri nervously threw too much dry wood on the fire causing it to over-blaze; much like the fireplace once did when they lived in the little cabin. Reylana truthfully told her husband she had visited a courtesan-healer and wanted him to listen carefully to what she was about to say. She began by assuring Henri her love for him was as bright as the scorching fire. She told him she was proud of his success as a shipbuilder and a warrior, but most important to her, he had always been an understanding husband. For thirteen years she found him a loving partner with whom she willingly shared the trials and triumphs of their marriage. Reylana said she remembered each wonderful warm moment they spent together but she explained, he as a man could never share the pain and anguish, she as a woman felt, during the birth of their last child. Reylana told Henri she would not repeat such a suffering. Adamantly, she demanded his support.

Reylana then shared the information she had purchased for her second fee. The courtesan had told her that children could only be conceived in the fourteen days that immediately followed a menstrual cycle each month. Reylana told her husband she was willing to re-establish normal intimacy outside of that time frame. Henri now understood his wife’s fears and desperately wanted to restore normalcy to their marriage. He consented, knowing he had little choice. Reylana felt a bit of guilt for Henri would never learn about beeswax and vinegar. She found the very idea repulsive and would never trust, even Henri, to a timely withdrawal. However, she had enough faith in the courtesan’s information to whisper to Henri, “I believe today is the sixteenth day.”

Within a few short months the reunited couple learned to better control the attention-seeking behavior of their contrite child and rekindled their physical relationship. They added simple things such as moonlit walks along the banks of the estuary to enrich their romance. The reality of those times meant that Henri was armed with a pistol when the strolls took them outside the Ben-Palen posts. On one of those long walks, they came upon an inlet where a waist-deep stream sent fresh water rolling into the estuary. The stream barred their way to the other bank where a tall, man-made mound of stone and earth had been built by ancient people. Local people thought it was once a great watchtower protecting the people from sea raiders. The couple daringly shed their clothes, leaving them and even Henri’s pistol behind when they waded across the stream. When they reached the other side, unclothe they climbed the mound. Like newlyweds, they spent a few hours making love atop the man-made hill taking in the picturesque view. Because of the full moon, they saw Delft and the North Sea in the distance. They would often return to that high ground, if only to look out over Holland and for a few hours find refuge from the new and difficult problem they were forced to deal with within their household.

That problem, Gustoff, had reached his first birthday when he began to suffer a mysterious coughing illness which often put him on death’s doorstep. Whenever the seasons changed or there were some other fluctuations in weather, the illness began with the same progressive symptoms. Gustoff began spitting up a clear fluid, which quickly turned green, and ultimately a brown liquid would coat his throat, inhibiting breathing. The only relief was to keep steaming pots of water on the fireplace. The vapors helped Gustoff‘s lungs fill with precious air. For the next three years, the frequency and severity of these attacks increased, and the parents expected Gustoff to die. Somehow the pugnacious child managed to survive. Reylana felt the illness was the punishment of God for not wanting more children. She began to pray to Jesus Christ, asking for God’s understanding. She begged the Lord not to punish her child for her sin. For whatever reason, after four years of prayer, the child’s symptoms miraculously ceased.

Yet the illness had taken its toll on the boy’s physical and emotional development. Gustoff was a very small five years old, with a horrendous disposition. He was spoiled by parents who expected his demise. Once he became healthier, his less compassionate brothers found his antics aimed at remaining the center of attention less amusing, particularly as normal growth patterns returned. It was the older boys who first noticed that Gustoff had little interest in the written word and could not distinguishing one letter of the alphabet from another. Reylana and Henri chose to ignore their astute observations, feeling Gustoff’s ability to recognize letters would blossom like his physique with time, but that flower never bloomed.

At nine, already two years older than when his brothers had entered the same private school, Gustoff began his education. After only a year the school suggested Gustoff’s best interest might be served elsewhere. He showed little interest in his lessons and enjoyed provoking confrontations with boys of higher birth. Reylana, in despair, rose above her anti-Papist feelings and enrolled him in a Catholic school known for stern discipline. The school had a harsher approach to education but a reputation for good student outcomes.

It was only a few months later that the Brother Superior visited the parents at their home. He told them Gustoff’s behavior had improved somewhat, probably because of the severe consequences. Yet, he still occasionally lapsed into outlandish and defiant conduct. During those episodes the monks were finding it difficult to restrain him without injuring the boy. His teacher was convinced that Gustoff would never learn to read. The Brother Superior believed it was God’s will that some children saw the letters of the alphabet differently than other children. He believed Gustoff learned entirely by listening to the spoken word. “If a teacher tells your son something multiple times, he seems to remember everything said. When a short passage is read to him more than once, he retains at least part of the information. And whenever Gustoff finds a subject interesting, he remembers all of what he heard.” The good Brother went on to assure the parents that God had given Gustoff an auditory path to learning.

Like most families in the Netherlands in 1568 A.D., the Roulfs had far greater concerns than a wayward child. Duke Alba had arrived in the south with a massive Spanish army. Many Protestants and even some Catholics were being condemned to death for heresy and treason. Resistance to Spain’s occupation had grown and much of the country was in open rebellion. Rotterdam’s government was attempting to balance loyalty to the Catholic King with the desires of the ever-growing militant Protestant population for war. Henri’s oldest son, Teewes, a follower of John Calvin, had fled his school in Brussels as the Spanish occupied the city. He was now apprenticing with Henri to become a shipwright. Petrus, fascinated by his mother’s interest in finance had found an entry level position within the budding banking industry. Even the Catholic Church was beginning to accept the idea that money could be loaned with some expected annual return, and bankers in general were escaping the internal trouble by financing both sides of the warring parties.

By now, Henri had completed the long voyage Jachtschips he envisioned and his design was quickly copied. Ships like these would take Dutch and English explorers to the New World. As the war intensified, obtaining timber became an even greater problem and sometimes the shipyard lay idle. Reylana was also finding that the religious polarization was curtailing her limited social calendar and making business decisions riskier. It became her responsibility to handle all of the family’s financial interests and Reylana had risen to the challenge. She converted most of their investments into gold and silver coins and purposely turned away from those exceptional but risky business opportunities that war always brought. She was now a much happier woman for the compromise on intimacy had stood the test of time.

Soon after Gustoff was expelled from the Catholic school, he ran away and spent a few weeks in hiding with some of the less desirable juvenile elements in Rotterdam. He found refuge with a gang of orphaned boys, aged 8 to 13 years old who begged and stole to support themselves. It was not the sheriff’s men, but Hector, one of the soldiers hired to protect their home and shipyard and who sometimes served as Reylana’s personal bodyguard, who actually found him. Gustoff was ready to come home and Hector’s dubious reward for finding the boy was to see that he did not run away again. Hector was a gigantic Frisian with a short beard and a pock-marked face. He wore chain mail armor on his bare skin during the warmest summer days and the coldest winter nights. He carried a brace of pistols in his belt, but relied on a Frankish throwing ax and a long Saxon knife to intimidate potential adversaries. The nearby neighbors loved him because his mere presence made the area safer. He was one of the few people Gustoff feared.

Since his return, Gustoff had been making life more difficult for everyone. An attempt at putting him to work on small chores at the shipyard became a colossal failure. The now fearless ten-year old purposely did mischievous things to anger his father, brother, and the shipyard workers. He regularly amused himself by hiding someone’s favorite tool or piling moist peak or wet wood on the fire pits, filling the boathouses with heavy smoke. The boy developed a habit of picking up tools that had moving parts which interested him. He would study the item for hours, usually forgetting to return it to its rightful place on the tool rack.

When Reylana noticed different weapons in the parlor were disappearing for periods of time, Gustoff became the prime suspect. The parents became alarmed that Gustoff was playing with these dangerous weapons. It was Hector who actually discovered that it was Gustoff who was taking them. He also learned the boy was able to disassemble and reassemble each. The veteran soldier was astounded the ten-year old boy could take matchlock weapons apart and put the pieces back together correctly. Hector volunteered to take the boy hunting so Gustoff truly understood the destructive power of firearms. Those trips progressed from Gustoff watching the discharge of a musket or fowling piece to becoming a partner in the hunt. Soon the boy was behaving more responsibly at the shipyard and his father rewarded him with a small caliber carbine of his own on his eleventh birthday. Under Hector’s tutorage, the boy became an adept hunter and an excellent shot. By the time he was twelve he could handle the recoil of every weapon in the household. Gustoff expanded his interest to other metal objects. He learned to work the furnace at the boathouse and became a proficient blacksmith. Gustoff soon found himself winning praise for sharpening and repairing the same tools he once found delight in concealing.

Hector had a good friend who was a gunsmith. The man was in charge of the small detachment of professional artillerymen that manned Rotterdam’s gun batteries. Many of the cannons sat on top of the city’s walls, making them vulnerable to the corrosive mixture of salty air and wet weather. The cannons had to be frequently cleaned, oiled, and repaired. It was a difficult task for the lone gunsmith, who also had the responsibility of training the gun crews to fire them. When Gustoff was fourteen, Hector arranged for him to assist the gunsmith. Despite the grime and physical labor, Gustoff found the work satisfying. He was content to spend hours cleaning and polishing cannons for the rare opportunity to participate in drills. The gunsmith appreciated the boy’s enthusiasm, treating him as an apprentice and over time teaching Gustoff all he knew about each gun.

To shore up Rotterdam’s defenses, the government purchased a battery of twelve guns from an English foundry; they were capable of firing a fifty pound ball. Once the new battery was in place, a public event was scheduled to fire the new guns. When ignited, the barrel of the first cannon exploded, killing most of the gun crew and many bystanders. The horrific carnage sent shock waves throughout the small city. The families of the dead demanded an investigation. Everyone wanted to know what had caused the powerful and expensive gun to fail. An official hearing was scheduled before the last of the causalities were put to the earth. Almost as an afterthought, sixteen year-old Gustoff Roulfs, who escaped serious injury, was ordered to appear before the inquiry.

The panel had little idea that the young man could give vital information as to the cause of the gun’s failure. On the day of the explosion, Henri and his other sons had rushed to the scene of the calamity, searching for Gustoff. They found him in the armory. It had been an hour since the explosion, but Gustoff seemed oblivious to the powder burns on his face and a gash on his shoulder covered in dry blood. He told his family the calamity had been no accident for he discovered the reason for the explosion. Henri took Gustoff home before he disclosed what he discovered. After his wounds were dressed, the boy told his family he found defective cannon balls. Once home, Gustoff began to speculate that the garrison commander must have purchased cheap defective ammunition. Henri and Reylana silenced him for they knew the danger of casting aspersions at such a powerful person. When the family learned Gustoff was ordered to appear before the investigating panel, they collectively began to prepare Gustoff for his appearance. For two days the family prompted Gustoff into giving calm, rational and truthful testimony. They rehearsed his presentation until he had memorized every word, and prepared him, as best they could, for the other questions he would surely be asked by the members. Since his testimony would be controversial, his mother warned him that one brash comment would negate the truth of his entire testimony.

Gustoff was scheduled to be the last witness at the hearing held in the Central Meeting Hall. The hearing was crowded with people overflowing into the city square. All wanted to know why so many friends and neighbors had perished so needlessly. The first part of the hearing was devoted to the grieving families who spoke about their loss. Next came many citizens, present during the catastrophic event, speaking about what they had witnessed. Finally, the committee called Rotterdam’s military commander and a number of prominent sea captains familiar with cannons. One after another, these influential men had adhered to the testimony of the Garrison Commander: that loading cannons was dangerous work and the crew had probably overcharged the cannon with black powder. Since the English foundry had an unblemished reputation, all testified the most logical explanation for the explosion lay with the gun crew. Each said that too much powder had probably been rammed down the barrel of the new cannon. The inquiry was startled when the last witness, Gustoff Roulfs, a mere boy, challenged the testimony of these influential military witnesses.

Gustoff began his appearance calmly, reminding the members of the inquiry that he, unlike all the expert witnesses, were present when the cannon was loaded. He respectfully disagreed that the experienced gun crew had overcharged the weapon. He stated that the deceased gunsmith who supervised the gun crew as they loaded the cannon knew well the danger of overcharging. Gustoff told the members he had scrutinized each of the remaining cannons and found the barrels well forged and without noticeable flaws in the metal. He felt the responsibility for the explosion rested not with the gun or its crew but with the cannon ball. Gustoff felt the ball the crew had embedded into the barrel on that fatal day had a serious flaw. The ball was cheaply made and its imperfections, and not any action by the gun crew, caused the tragedy. Gustoff speculated that the imperfect ball became wedged in the barrel. He went on to explain that he examined other fifty pound balls in the armory and found many with an almost oval rather than round shape. He asked the committee if he could submit evidence. Before anyone could object, he reached into a leather bag near the base of his chair. With both hands he lifted a heavy cannon ball high over his head for all to see. He walked to the heavy oak table in front of the committee and Gustoff placed the ball on the table and attempted to spin it. It spun for but a moment before the irregular circumference sent the ball erratically spinning off the table, crashing onto the stone floor with a loud smacking sound. The ball rolled only a few feet before stopping. Gustoff pointed at the ball and told the committee that the experienced crew, wanting to demonstrate the full power of the new gun, would have rigorously rammed a similar ball down the barrel. They would have unknowingly jammed it in the barrel. Once ignited, the wedged ball would have had difficulty exiting, and Gustoff solemnly said that the result was predictable.

The room erupted after Gustoff’s testimony had contradicted the theory of the expert witnesses and provided evidence to the contrary. A detachment of sheriffs were sent to the armory to gather a more complete sampling of cannon balls. When members spun those balls even more gently, the results were the same. Many of the prior expert witnesses were recalled after being given sufficient time to examine the large sampling of cannon balls. They were asked if such balls could be considered defective, and if so, would that have played a role in the accident. After scrutinizing the balls, all admitted that imperfect shot could have played a pivotal role in the disaster. A few, including the Garrison Commander, embarrassed by their previous testimony, reluctantly admitted that an imperfect ball might have caused the barrel to explode, particularly if the cannons were “overcharged!” Since Rotterdam needed a new gunsmith, sixteen year old Gustoff Roulfs was appointed acting gunsmith of Rotterdam. His appointment had little to do with his honest and courageous testimony. The politicians decided that the boy’s appointment would help appease the population. They also thought Gustoff was probably the least likely candidate to cause another disaster. The committee, at the same time, announced that any hope of discovering who purchased the defective balls had died with the gunsmith.

The Roulfs were proud of Gustoff. Henri and Reylana were relieved that their once troubled child had embraced a bright future, for a gunsmith was considered a respected profession, as lucrative as it was dangerous. Only Reylana foresaw her son’s history of brash behavior might erupt at any time. She warned Gustoff to make sensible and well thought out decisions as he assumed such a prominent position. She specifically warned Gustoff about misusing power.

A week later, while the Garrison Commander was away, the city awoke to a cascade of cannon fire. The sound of the loud discharges reminded everyone in the city of the recent calamity. It forced a grieving population, still in mourning, to relive the tragic events of the explosion. It seemed Gustoff was using his authority as gunsmith to test fire all the remaining English cannons. As Gustoff predicted, the cannons worked flawlessly and the test firing was completed without incident. The only damage was to Gustoff’s reputation for the people were beginning to perceive the new gunsmith as an arrogant young man.

Gustoff seemed oblivious to the public outrage, despite a series of warnings from his mother to delay further firing exercises. Gustoff continued to fire the cannons, now intent on teaching his gun crews to load and fire the powerful weapons accurately. When he was satisfied with the performance of his professional artillerymen, he ordered training exercises for the militia who now manned the older batteries. The roar of cannon fire continued for many days. The public’s discontent gave the garrison commander the excuse needed to remove Gustoff as acting gunsmith upon his return. The commander had never forgotten his public embarrassment. When Reylana reproached Gustoff for not following her advice, he became angry and left for Amsterdam without as much as a farewell to his family. Upon his arrival he found work repairing small arms and as required by law joined the common militia. When Amsterdam’s chief magistrate learned of his knowledge of weaponry, he had Gustoff appointed commanded of the militia’s small battery of six field guns. He received no pay for the position, but it carried the militia rank of Ensign of Artillery and an officer’s uniform which delighted Gustoff.