John McPake and the Sea Beggars

by Stuart Campbell

  The other Voices were strangely quiet, as if taken aback by the Academic’s breadth of knowledge and the visions he was conjuring. John too found himself making theoretical choices for his own funeral.

  Taking advantage of the unexpected silence, the Academic continued. ‘Mind you, horse-drawn affairs are less popular after that accident in Ipswich a few years back. The horses struck a bollard and careered into parked cars, the carriage flipped over in the street, spilling the old dear into the gutter. All hell broke loose … ’

  FIFTY

  The horse slipped on the lamp oil that had been oozing undetected from a large flask on the quayside. The revellers scrambled to escape the cart as it toppled towards them. ‘Mind yourself,’ said Balthasar, pushing his fellow weavers out of harm’s way. The distressed horse fought against the yoke that was now twisting into its neck. The momentum of falling from the cart and the subsequent impact with the ground served to burst open the bales and free them from the hempen ties on which their previous shape had depended. Filigrees of straw cascaded over all and sundry. When the dust settled the weapons were clearly visible. Muskets, flintlocks, arquebuses, and daggers. A small boy who emerged from a heap of straw clutching a cross bow as big as himself was soon squealing under the impact of his mother’s hand against his cheek. His friends, not constrained by a parental presence, chased the myriad shot balls running across the cobbles.

  Several geuzen emerged from the tavern opposite the tumbled cart. One of their number was holding up his breeches with one hand while trying to extricate himself with the other from the young woman whose body he had been exploring moment’s earlier. The weavers too helped to gather up the weapons; many lives had already been lost in their procurement. When they had been safely stowed they trooped back into the tavern with their new comrades.

  Two drunks, presumably woodsmen in their previous lives, faced each other with locked arms and mimed sawing the table in half. A tiny man struggled to hold the enormous breasts of his new life companion, one in each hand as if he might drop them at any moment. A geuzen stripped to the waist gargled his ale in tune to a song half remembered from his childhood. His companion slapped him on the back and the contents of his mouth arched onto the floor. A party of four men took turns to rise from an adjacent table with the regularity of a pumping engine to propose toasts.

  ‘To William!’

  ‘William!’

  ‘To my neighbour’s wife!’

  ‘I’m your neighbour, you horny bastard!’

  ‘To horny bastards everywhere!’

  ‘Horny bastards!’

  An older man slumped in a corner picked at a scab on his arm and muttered. The weavers gave up trying to speak as all words were drowned out by the cacophony of competing songs, bawdy, maudlin, patriotic, and interweaved snatches of sea shanty.

  ‘UP HER ARSE, UP HER ARSE … FAREWELL MY LOVELY … GOD’S CHOSEN WILL NEVER KNOW DEATH … UP HER ARSE … NEVER KNOW DEATH … FAREWELL … ARSE … ‘KNOW DEATH … ARSE …

  Three stout Wallenders stood looking down at the top of a barrel, then simultaneously opening their fists, dropped their chosen cockroaches onto the wood. The race started badly, two of the stunned insects landed on their backs and had to be turned.

  ‘Come on, you beauty!’ urged the nearest roach trainer. His breath propelled the black thoroughbred towards the middle of the barrel.

  ‘Cheating turd!’

  Offended, the accused slammed his fist onto the wood obliterating the rival insects, and then defiantly rubbed the black smudges into his stubble.

  ‘UP HER ARSE … FAREWELL… GOD’S CHOSEN … MY LOVELY … NEVER KNOW DEATH …

  Other beggars arm wrestled, fought, swore, spat, sang, becoming sentimental and belligerent by turns. One was standing on a table, progressively removing items of clothing to a tune only he could hear. Another, having lapsed into a coma, snored loudly into the face of his new female acquaintance. A fat man had fallen asleep while playing a penny whistle. The instrument responded faithfully to each long breath.

  A stray chicken ran the gauntlet of legs and boots.

  A small man whose head was dissected by a stained bandage spoke to the shade of a Spaniard he had disembowelled days before. ‘It wasn’t personal, you know that. It could have been you ripping my guts out. You shouldn’t have come to our country. How old are you? Sixteen, same age as my boy … ’ He wiped his eyes and went back to his drink.

  Two elderly brothers stared at each other, their faces inches apart. Maudlin reminiscence had suddenly flared into acrimonious recriminations over a long-buried childhood slight. ‘You did, you did, you did!’

  ‘It wasn’t me, you fool, it was our sister.’

  A candle jammed into the wall guttered and dribbled hot tallow onto the face of the sleeping man still playing the whistle. He jerked awake. ‘Do that again and I’ll rip your bollocks off and make you eat them!’ Nobody paid any attention. He morosely picked the wax from his beard.

  The weavers sat together. ‘My belly’s not right; I think I’m still on the ship.’ Balthasar lurched and steadied himself against a table.

  ‘Look at these hands.’ Cornelius rubbed the calluses that had recently appeared on his lower finger joints.

  ‘Geertje won’t thank you for rubbing her buttocks with those,’ said Balthasar.

  Johannes’ pleasure in the moment lasted until he felt hot breath on his neck. He turned to face Blindman who, as if deprived of both sight and speech, mouthed a word of two syllables and then laughed soundlessly.

  FIFTY-ONE

  ‘Let’s try one more,’ said Mick, leading the way up Easter Road. ‘Let’s face it, your brother’s not a jaikie skulking in a shite cemetery like that scabby Council tip. If he’s anything like you, he’s got more class.’

  John followed in his wake without the faintest idea

  where he was being led. He had surrendered all volition.

  There was no room left in his head for himself and his own thoughts. The Voices had commandeered every corner of his brain. The best he could do was listen impotently as his personal parasites gossiped, bitched and argued among

  themselves.

  ‘Another goose chase.’

  ‘I don’t know, flying geese could be a sign.’

  ‘A sign, my arse!’

  ‘I’ve always been fascinated by the myth that humming birds migrate on the back of geese. Difficult to accept really as humming birds would not survive flying at 20,000 feet which is the altitude preferred by Canada Geese.’

  ‘Can’t you take a sabbatical for a while or do something useful like educating the ignorant forces of darkness who live in Mick’s head?’

  The Academic ignored the insult but thought it wise to change tack. ‘It’s true, you know.’

  ‘What is?’ asked the Bastard.

  ‘The sea beggars became expert at smuggling arms into the coastal villages, right under Alva’s nose. And by all accounts, and judging by contemporary portraits, his nose was very large indeed. Perhaps it grew as a result of all the lies and false promises he made to the Dutch nobility.’ Hugely amused by his own joke the Academic started to honk and guffaw. The Jester shook his head.

  Refusing to acknowledge the existence of pedestrian crossings Mick launched himself, and John, into the full stream of traffic turning from Princes Street into the top of Leith Walk. ‘Effing green men telling me what to do, when to cross the road, I think not!’

  The Carlton Cemetery was altogether a more sombre, impressive affair. A slice of 18th century Edinburgh left untouched, a vast memento mori barely noticed by the scuttle of lawyers and uncivil servants preoccupied with their meeting scheduled to start in five minutes in St Andrews House.

  Mick paused beneath the smoke-black obelisk that had pride of place in the cemetery. ‘Rich bastard.’ Tumbling down the slope at odd angles were the open family vaults, sepulchres to forgotten merchants and erstwhile worthies. John looked at the tomb nearest the outside wall. The cracked lint
el squatted on two wind-and vandal-eroded columns. There was nothing inside except Special Brew cans and an improvised cardboard bed.

  ‘He might have stayed there last night,’ suggested the Tempter, unhelpfully. ‘Safe spot away from the gay bashers on the hill over there.’ John looked up at the pagoda folly on Carlton Hill. ‘Perhaps we should come back when it’s dark. Wait for him.’

  ‘Aye, he’s probably gay like you, a pair of sibling shirt lifters.’

  ‘Look at this one,’ called Mick. ‘WILLIAM RAEBURN PERFUMER died 24th March 1812. I bet he’s humming now.’

  John moved to the adjacent vault. Again it was completely empty apart from a matrix of used orange syringes scattered on the ground.

  ‘Perhaps he’s got a habit,’ said the Tempter. ‘Broken home, raised in care. It happens, you know.’

  The back wall featured a single graffitied heart pierced by an arrow with initials.

  ‘Romeo and Juliet on heroin,’ suggested the Tempter. ‘Perhaps he died in his lover’s arms. Worse ways to go you know. It would make a good Fringe play. Perhaps you could write the script John. You could dedicate it to your brother.’

  The Bastard snorted, amused that the Tempter seemed to have usurped his role. He was, though, only an amateur with no concept of how to cause real pain.

  ‘I think you’ve been here before, John. Yes, it’s coming back to me now. Didn’t you bring Sarah here in the early days when you were students? You had a few in the Abbotsford. Remember now? You came up here and suggested a knee trembler in one of these vaults. She looked at you as if you were mad. She wasn’t far wrong was she? She ran away saying she never wanted to see you again. You ran after her, the length of Princes Street, shouting at her, urging her to stop and talk to you. You couldn’t catch her. Odd that. She was always the better athlete. Eventually you knocked over an old lady, sent her tumbling. Her skirts in the air, her messages all over the pavement. Not best pleased, if I remember. You went for another drink on your own. That barman refused to serve you a third pint and you went home, sobbing. You’ve always had an impressive capacity for self-pity.

  ‘Sarah stayed out that night, didn’t she? Do you remember, she was oddly contrite when she turned up at your flat the following day? You knew she had been with someone else, but neither of you mentioned it. The writing was on the wall though, wasn’t it?’

  Leave him alone, Bastard; it’s unnecessary.

  ‘Look, you’re just the Narrator, an objective chronicler of all that is said, allegedly. You have no right to censure other Voices. I think you’re getting too fond of John, altogether too protective.’

  Mick was standing in front of the statue of David Hume, saluting.

  ‘Yes, yes,’ said the Bastard sarcastically, ‘move the story on, change the focus just when we’re getting somewhere.’

  It’s my story!

  ‘We’ve had this discussion before’ said the Academic. ‘It’s John’s story.’

  ‘Some man that Davy,’ Mick said. John joined him. ‘A major figure in the Scottish enlightenment … No time for they Rationalists. He preferred passion, desire was the thing with him.’

  The Academic also sensed that John needed to be distracted from the corrosive memory skilfully conjured by the Bastard. ‘A key figure in epistemology, metaphysics, ethics, political philosophy and classical economics.’

  John mimed the words as if there was solace and respite to be gleaned from concentrating on the terms, each one a mindless prayer on a rosary. He was also feeling exhausted.

  As they left the cemetery he felt the desperate need to be somewhere else. He was being tugged away and, after the smallest moment of hesitation, surrendered to the familiar lure.

  When they returned to the hostel Jack was in crisis. He was being held in Beverley’s arms.

  ‘There’s no love in the world,’ he moaned. ‘No love.’

  ‘Of course there is,’ said Beverley, less than convinced as she cradled her man-baby. ‘We all love you.’

  ‘No, we don’t,’ said Paul, who was passing. ‘We are fellow residents, I am your friend but I don’t love you.’

  Jack moaned louder.

  FIFTY-TWO

  ‘What are you saying? What are you saying?’ shouted Johannes, drawing back his clenched fist.

  Blindman moved his head slowly in the direction of a knot of soldiers who were sufficiently sober to string words together. Johannes lowered his fist and strained to hear their conversation. The men were talking of the Prince. Some said he had died of the plague in Rotterdam. Some said his heart had broken on hearing of his brother, Louis’ death. Others in the tavern claimed that the Prince had rallied and was about to send his army to Leyden. Johannes joined in the discussion.

  ‘Leyden you say.’

  ‘Two months they’ve held out,’ explained one of the younger sailors, whose voice had barely broken. ‘Those who still live are eating the hooves and skin of horses. The pigeons carrying messages of hope are eaten before they can fly home with news but someone still has the strength to send rockets from the tower. Every night the stars erupt. We must go there. I will strangle Valdez with my bare hands, and then make every Spanish mercenary choke on the chicken they stuff into their faces.’ He put his hands round the neck of an imaginary enemy as he spoke and made a clicking sound, an approximation of a skull separating from a vertebra.

  ‘There is a plan,’ said his older companion. ‘The Prince has given orders that the sluices be opened and the dykes breached. He himself supervised the destruction of the barriers on either side of Capelle. Believe me, the waters will carry us to the very gates of Leyden.’

  ‘There are seven thousand foreign troops in Rynland, all approaches are completely sealed,’ said the Academic, excitedly. ‘Some of the burghers want to sign the truce.’

  Shhh. Listen to the men.

  ‘I’ve seen the devil’s own boat,’ explained the young lad. ‘It’s in the dock, we passed it as we sailed in. Two galleys made into one with wheels so that it can be hauled over the dykes.’

  ‘It’ll never work.’

  ‘Have faith. They say Valdes’ mistress is Dutch. She stopped him from invading the town. We can get there.’

  Johannes got the attention of the others and signed for them to listen. ‘Michel,’ he said by way of explanation.

  ‘The challenges are twofold,’ said the Academic,

  increasingly frustrated that only his fellow Voices and John could hear him. ‘The plague is striking down those still

  capable of standing, and the brewers have selfishly insisted on using all available corn which means the citizens are left

  with inedible malt. Furthermore the citizens are hiding their dead so they can still claim their allowance of old

  flesh.’

  Shhh.

  ‘The waters are flowing. Haven’t you seen the farmers outside dragging all they own on carts? Their women stoop under their burdens. They have sacrificed their livelihood, their cattle, their orchards, so we can rise as a nation.’

  The idea resonated with Cornelius.

  ‘The displaced peasants are being hired to breach the dykes after they have been secured. The barges have been requisitioned and are ready to sail.’

  ‘Yes, yes,’ said the Academic. ‘Several hundred praams have been collected. Seventy galleys have been equipped with small cannon and seven or eight arquebusiers … ’

  What?

  ‘Early muzzle loaded firearms which carried a ball of about 3.5 ounces. Sometimes I’m astounded at how little you know!’

  Behave yourself!

  ‘They need men to row the galleys.’

  ‘Count us in,’ said Johannes. Balthasar and Cornelius nodded.

  ‘Tomorrow we sail again!’ shouted the lad before he became overwhelmed by his own excitement and the belated impact of the drink he had earlier consumed. He slumped down on the table, rested his head in his arms and yawned.

  The weavers made a corner of the tavern floor their ow
n and prepared to sleep. Two of the beggars started to argue drunkenly about the relative stamina of their new mistresses until the others told them to be still.

  ‘What do you think, men?’ asked Johannes.

  ‘Our lives are not our own,’ said Cornelius. ‘We join tomorrow.’

  ‘Do you think they’ll take an old man?’ whispered Balthasar. ‘My arms are not what they were.’

  ‘Old man?’ chided Johannes, ‘You are strong as an ox. Several ox,’ he corrected himself.

  ‘Oxen,’ said the Academic.

  Johannes couldn’t sleep. Michel was within reach, he knew it. ‘My son, my son,’ he said.

  ‘Sorry old man, we don’t need you,’ said the beggar captain, still wearing his newly captured Spanish Admiral’s uniform. ‘You two, yes.’ Balthasar looked towards the others.

  ‘You take all three or none of us,’ said Cornelius. The Admiral grunted and acquiesced.

  Sixteen galleys choked the Rotte, forming a bridge across the river. Men clambered from one boat to another looking for unclaimed oars. One of the lead galleys had sprung a leak and was slowly filling with water. Cursing, the new crew abandoned their attempt at bailing and pulled themselves onto a neighbouring boat which, in turn, threatened to capsize under the weight of the extra bodies.

  Legions of gulls banked and dipped down again towards the human frenzy. A sack of corn split when it was passed down from the dock. Its contents fell into the choppy water forming a sloppy gruel. A woman with a large pannier basket threw loaves at the men in the boats who competed with each other to catch the freshly baked trophies.

  Cornelius argued briefly with a small man who had seated himself in the middle of a three-man bench. Grudgingly he moved aside leaving room for the weavers.

  ‘The two of us will take the strain,’ said Johannes. ‘Rest when you need, Balthasar.’ The older man nodded.