by Wilbur Smith
For Louisa this dreadful voyage seemed to have lasted all her life. Even during this respite from the open sea, while the Meeuw lay at anchor in Table Bay, the magnitude of the ordeal she had undergone still haunted her. She cowered further into her refuge under the cannon and shuddered as each of the separate memories pricked her like thorns. The throng of humanity was pressed close about her. They were packed so tightly into every inch of the deck that it was almost impossible to escape the touch of other filthy bodies crawling with lice. In rough weather the latrine buckets slopped over, and the sewage ran down the crowded deck. It soaked the women’s clothing and their thin cotton blankets where they lay. During the occasional spells of calm weather the crew pumped seawater down the hatches and the women went down on their knees to scrub the planks with the coarse holystones. It was in vain, for during the next storm the filth splashed over them again. In the dawn when the hatches were taken off the companionways, they took turns to carry the reeking wooden buckets up the ladders to the deck and empty them over the side while the crew and the guards jeered at them.
Every Sunday, in any kind of weather, the prisoners were mustered on deck while the guards stood over them with loaded muskets. The women, in their leg irons and ragged canvas shifts, shivered and hugged themselves with their thin arms, their skin blue and pimpled with the cold, while the Dutch Reform dominie harangued them for their sins. When this ordeal was over the crew set up canvas screens on the foredeck, and in groups the prisoners were forced behind them while streams of seawater were sprayed over them from the ship’s pumps. Louisa and some of the more fastidious women stripped off their shifts and tried as best they could to wash off the filth. The screens fluttered in the wind and afforded them almost no privacy, and the seamen on the pumps or in the rigging overhead whistled and called ribald comments.
“Look at the dugs on that cow!”
“You could sail a ship-of-the-line up that great hairy harbour.”
Louisa learned to use her wet shift to cover herself, as she crouched low, screening herself behind the other women. The few hours of cleanliness were worth the humiliation, but as soon as her shift dried and the warmth of her body hatched the next batch of nits she began to scratch again. With her bronze blade she whittled a splinter of wood into a fine-tooth comb and spent hours each day under the gun carriage combing the nits out of her long, golden hair, and from the tufts of her body hair. Her pathetic attempts at bodily hygiene seemed to highlight the slovenliness of the other women, which infuriated them.
“Look at her royal bloody highness, at it again. Combing her poesje hairs.”
“She’s better than the rest of us. Going to marry the Governor of Batavia when we get there, didn’t you know?”
“You going to invite us to the wedding, Princess?”
“Nedda here will be your bridesmaid, won’t you, Nedda lieveling?” The livid scar down Nedda’s fat cheek twisted into a grotesque grin, but her eyes were filled with hatred in the dim lantern-light.
Louisa had learned to ignore them. She heated the point of her blade in the smoky flame of the lantern in the gimbal above her head, ran the blade down the seams of the shift in her lap, and the nits popped and frizzled. She held the blade back in the flame and, while she waited for it to heat again, she ducked her head to peer through the narrow slit in the joint of the port-lid.
She had used the point of her blade to enlarge this aperture until she had an unobstructed view. There was a padlock on the port-lid, but she had worked for weeks to loosen the shackles. Then she had used soot from the lantern to darken the raw wood, rubbing it in with her finger to conceal it from the weekly inspection of the ship’s officers, carried out on Sunday while the convicts were on the open deck for the prayer meeting and ablutions. Louisa always returned to her berth terrified that her work had been discovered. When she found that it had not, her relief was so intense that often she broke down and wept.
Despair was always so near at hand, lurking like a wild beast, ready to pounce at any moment and devour her. More than once over the past months she had sharpened her little blade until the edge could shave the fine blonde hairs of her forearm. Then she had hidden away under the gun carriage and felt for the pulse in her wrist where the blue artery beat so close to the surface. Once she had laid the sharp edge against the skin and steeled herself to make the deep incision, then she had looked up at the thin chink of light coming through the joint of the port-lid. It seemed to be a promise.
“No,” she whispered to herself. “I am going to escape. I am going to endure.”
To bolster her determination she spent hours during those terrible endless days when the ship crashed through the high, turbulent storms of the southern Atlantic daydreaming of the bright, happy days of her childhood, which now seemed to have been in another hazy existence. She trained herself to retreat into her imagination, and to shut out the reality in which she was trapped.
She dwelt on the memory of her father, Hendrick Leuven, a tall, thin man with his black suit buttoned high. She saw again his crisp white lace stock, the stockings that covered his scrawny shanks lovingly darned by her mother, and the pinchbeck buckles on his square-toed shoes, polished until they shone like pure silver. Under the wide brim of his tall black hat the lugubriousness of his features was given the lie by mischievous blue eyes. She had inherited hers from him. She remembered all of his funny, fascinating and poignant stories. Every night when she was young he had carried her up the stairs to her cot. He had tucked her in, and sat beside her reciting them to her while she tried desperately to fight off sleep. When she was older she had walked with him in the garden, her hand in his, through the tulip fields of the estate, going over the day’s lessons with him. She smiled secretly now as she recalled his endless patience with her questions, and his sad, proud smile when she arrived at the right answer to a mathematical problem with only a little prompting.
Hendrick Leuven had been tutor to the van Ritters family, one of the pre-eminent merchant families of Amsterdam. Mijnheer Koen van Ritters was one of Het Zeventien, the board of directors of the VOC. His warehouses ran for a quarter of a mile along both banks of the inner canal and he traded around the world with his fleet of fifty-three fine ships. His country mansion was one of the most magnificent in Holland.
During the winter his numerous household lived in Huis Brabant, the huge mansion overlooking the canal. Louisa’s family had three rooms at the top of the house to themselves and from the window of her tiny bedroom she could look down on the heavily laden barges, and the fishing-boats coming in from the sea.
However, the spring was the time she loved the most. That was when the family moved out into the country, to Mooi Uitsig, their country estate. In those magical days Hendrick and his family lived in a cottage across the lake from the big house. Louisa remembered the long skeins of geese coming up from the south as the weather warmed. They landed with a great splash on the lake and their honking woke her in the dawn. She cuddled under her eiderdown and listened to her father’s snores from the next room. She had never again felt so warm and safe as she did then.
Louisa’s mother, Anne, was English. Her father had brought her to Holland when she was a child. He had been a corporal in the bodyguard of William of Orange, after he had become King of England. When Anne was sixteen she had been engaged as a junior cook in the van Ritters household, and had married Hendrick within a year of taking up her post.
Louisa’s mother had been plump and jolly, always surrounded by an aura of the delicious aromas of the kitchen: spices and vanilla, saffron and baking bread. She had insisted that Louisa learn English, and they always spoke it when they were alone. Louisa had an ear for language. In addition Anne taught her cooking and baking, embroidery, sewing and all the feminine skills.
Louisa had been allowed, as a special concession by Mijnheer van Ritters, to take her lessons with his own children, although she was expected to sit at the back of the classroom and keep quiet. Only when she was alon
e with her father could she ask the questions that had burned all day on the tip of her tongue. Very early she had learned deferential manners.
Only twice in all the years had Louisa laid eyes on Mevrou van Ritters. On both occasions she had spied on her from the classroom window as she stepped into the huge black-curtained carriage, assisted by half a dozen servants. She was a mysterious figure, clad in layers of black brocaded silks and a dark veil that hid her face. Louisa had overheard her mother discussing the chatelaine with the other servants. She suffered from some skin disease which made her features as monstrous as a vision of hell. Even her own husband and children were never allowed to see her unveiled.
On the other hand Mijnheer van Ritters sometimes visited the classroom to check on his offspring’s progress. He often smiled at the pretty, demure little girl who sat at the back of the room. Once he even paused beside Louisa’s desk to watch her writing on her slate in a neat and well-formed script. He smiled and touched her head. “What lovely hair you have, little one,” he murmured. His own daughters tended towards plump and plain.
Louisa blushed. She thought how kind he was, and yet as remote and powerful as God. He even looked rather like the image of God in the huge oil painting in the banquet hall. It had been painted by the famous artist, Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn, a protégé of the van Ritters family. It was said that Mijnheer’s grandfather had posed for the artist. The painting depicted the Day of Resurrection, with the merciful Lord lifting the saved souls into Paradise, while in the background the condemned were herded into the burning pit by demons. The painting had fascinated Louisa and she spent hours in front of it.
Now, in the reeking gundeck of the Meeuw, combing the nits from her hair, Louisa felt like one of the unfortunates destined for Hades. She felt tears near the surface, and tried to put the sad thoughts from her mind, but they kept crowding back. She had been just ten when the black plague had struck Amsterdam again, beginning as before in the rat-infested docks, then sweeping through the city.
Mijnheer van Ritters had fled with all his household from Huis Brabant, and they had taken refuge at Mooi Uitsig. He ordered that all the gates to the estate were to be locked and armed sentries placed at each to deny access to strangers. However, when the servants unpacked one of the leather trunks they had brought from Amsterdam a huge rat leaped out and scuttled down the staircase. Even so, for weeks they believed themselves safe, until one of the housemaids collapsed in a dead faint while she was waiting on the family at dinner.
Two footmen carried the girl into the kitchen and laid her on the long table. When Louisa’s mother opened the top of her blouse, she gasped as she recognized the necklace of red blotches around the girl’s throat, the stigmata of the plague, the ring of roses. She was so distressed that she took little notice of the black flea that sprang from the girl’s clothing on to her own skirts. Before sunset the following day the girl was dead.
The next morning two of the van Ritters children were missing when Louisa’s father called the classroom to order. One of the nurserymaids came into the room and whispered in his ear. He nodded, then said, “Kobus and Tinus will not be joining us today. Now, little ones, please open your spelling books at page five. No, Petronella, that is page ten.”
Petronella was the same age as Louisa and she was the only one of the van Ritters children who had been friendly to her. They shared a double desk at the back of the room. She often brought small gifts for Louisa, and sometimes invited her to play with her dolls in the nursery. On Louisa’s last birthday she had given her one of her favourites. Of course, her nurse had made Louisa give it back. When they walked along the edge of the lake Petronella held Louisa’s hand. “Tinus was so sick last night,” she whispered. “He vomited! It smelt awful.”
Half-way through the morning Petronella stood up suddenly and, without asking permission, started towards the door.
“Where are you going, Petronella?” Hendrick Leuven demanded sharply. She turned and stared at him with a bloodless face. Then, without a word, she collapsed on to the floor. That evening Louisa’s father told her, “Mijnheer van Ritters has ordered me to close the classroom. None of us is allowed up to the Big House again until the sickness has passed. We are to stay here in the cottage.”
“What will we eat, Papa?” Louisa, like her mother, was always practical.
“Your mother is bringing down food for us from the pantries: cheese, ham, sausage, apples and potatoes. I have my little vegetable garden, and the rabbit hutch and the chickens. You will help me work in the garden. We will continue your lessons. You will make swifter progress without the duller children to hold you back. It will be like a holiday. We will enjoy ourselves. But you are not allowed to leave the garden, do you understand?” he asked her seriously, as he scratched the red fleabite on his bony wrist.
For three days they had enjoyed themselves. Then, the next morning, as Louisa was helping her mother prepare breakfast, Anne fainted over the kitchen stove and spilled boiling water down her leg. Louisa helped her father carry her up the stairs and lay her on the big bed. They wrapped her scalded leg in bandages soaked in honey. Then Hendrick unbuttoned the front of her dress and stared in terror at the red ring of roses around her throat.
The fever descended upon her with the speed of a summer storm. Within an hour her skin was blotched with red and seemed almost too hot to touch. Louisa and Hendrick sponged her down with cold water from the lake. “Be strong, my lieveling,” Hendrick whispered to her, as she tossed and groaned, and soaked the mattress with her sweat. “God will protect you.”
They took turns to sit with her during the night, but in the dawn Louisa screamed for her father. When he came scrambling up the stairs Louisa pointed at her mother’s naked lower body. On both sides of her groin, at the juncture of her thighs with her belly, monstrous carbuncles had swelled to the size of Louisa’s clenched fist. They were hard as stones and a furious purple, like ripe plums.
“The buboes!” Hendrick touched one. Anne screamed wildly in agony at his light touch, and her bowels let loose an explosion of gas and yellow diarrhoea that soaked the sheets.
Hendrick and Louisa lifted her out of the stinking bed and laid her on a clean mattress on the floor. By evening her pain was so intense and unrelenting that Hendrick could bear his wife’s shrieks no longer. His blue eyes were bloodshot and haunted. “Fetch my shaving razor!” he ordered Louisa. She scurried across to the wash-basin in the corner of the bedroom, and brought it to him. It had a beautiful mother-of-pearl handle. Louisa had always enjoyed watching her father in the early mornings lathering his cheeks, then stripping off the white soapsuds with the straight, gleaming blade.
“What are you going to do, Papa?” she asked, as she watched him sharpening the edge on the leather strop.
“We must let out the poison. It is killing your mother. Hold her still!”
Gently Louisa took hold of her mother’s wrists. “It’s going to be all right, Mama. Papa is going to make it better.”
Hendrick took off his black coat and, in his white shirt, came back to the bed. He straddled his wife’s legs to hold her down. Sweat was pouring down his cheeks, and his hand shook wildly as he laid the razor edge across the huge purple swelling in her groin.
“Forgive me, O merciful God,” he whispered, then pressed down and drew the blade across the carbuncle, cutting deeply and cleanly. For a moment nothing happened, then a tide of black blood and custard-yellow pus erupted out of the deep wound. It splattered across the front of Hendrick’s white shirt and up to the low ceiling of the bedroom above his head.
Anne’s back arched like a longbow and Louisa was hurled against the wall. Hendrick cringed into a corner, stunned by the violence of his wife’s contortions. Anne writhed and rolled and screamed, her face in a rictus so horrible that Louisa was terrified. She clasped both hands over her own mouth to prevent herself screaming as she watched the blood spurt in powerful, regular jets from the wound. Gradually the pulsing scarlet fountain
shrivelled, and Anne’s agony eased. Her screams died away, until at last she lay still and deadly pale in a spreading pool of blood.
Louisa crept back to her side and touched her arm. “Mama, it’s all right now. Papa has let all the poison out. You are going to be well again soon.” Then she looked across at her father. She had never seen him like this: he was weeping, and his lips were slack and blubbery. Saliva dripped from his chin.
“Don’t cry, Papa,” she whispered. “She will wake up soon.”
But Anne never woke again.
Her father took a spade from the tool shed and went down to the bottom of the orchard. He began to dig in the soft soil under a big apple tree. It was mid-afternoon before the grave was deep enough. He came back to the house, his eyes a vacant blue like the sky above. He was racked with shivering fits. Louisa helped him wrap Anne in the blood-soaked sheet, and walked beside him as he carried his wife to the bottom of the orchard. He laid the bundle beside the open grave and climbed down into it. Then he reached up and lifted Anne down. He laid her on the damp, fungus-smelling earth, then climbed out and reached for the spade.
Louisa sobbed as she watched him fill in the grave and tamp down the earth. Then she went out into the field beyond the hedge and picked an armful of flowers. When she came back her father was no longer in the orchard. Louisa arranged the tulips over where her mother’s head must be. It seemed that the well of her tears had dried up. Her sobs were painful and dry.
When she went back to the cottage she found her father sitting at the table, his shirt filthy with his wife’s blood and the grave soil. His head was cupped in his hands, his shoulders racked by shivering. When he lifted his head and looked at her, his face was pale and blotched, and his teeth chattered.