East India

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by Colin Falconer


  “A good servant,” Christiaan whispered, stroking his arm, ‘is someone who does your bidding without question.”

  “But it's only a baby!’

  “Exactly.”

  And Christiaan stood up, waited to see what he would do. What a divine experiment it was, an exquisite exploration of that diffuse substance that is the human soul. What might we do to make base metal into gold? Impossible to know until you applied a little heat.

  Some called ti alchemy. It was fascinating.

  Chapter 77

  IT WAS like watching a play, or some fine entertainment in the street, stand with a hand upon the hip and a glass of wine in the left.

  He was more than just their Captain-General. He was a gentleman, a philosopher.

  Salomon du Chesne had been charged and convicted in absentia with disobeying an order, and there was a surfeit of willing executioners to be had. Lennart ten Broek led them along the beach, big Willem Groot the soldier and even Rutger the locksmith following, like children playing in the sun, splashing happily through the shallows, intent on their prize.

  The accused had seen them coming, and was trying to escape, though really, there was nowhere to run on such a small island. He slipped on the coral flags and tried to crawl. They caught him in the shallows, all three of them, nothing dainty about it. They stood over him, waiting for the Captain-General’s orders.

  He had Strootman pour him another goblet of wine and then walked down the sand to administer justice. Justice and order; they were of supreme importance to any society of men. Without it, there was chaos.

  Salomon lay in the shallows, crying. He must have known this was coming.

  “Please don't hurt me,” he said.

  “We're not going to hurt you,” Christiaan said. “We're just having a bit of fun.”

  “I'll do anything you say.”

  “Ah, we have caught you in another lie.” Christiaan crouched down beside him. “You disobeyed an order.”

  “I couldn’t. Not a baby.”

  Christiaan nodded at Krueger. “Let's have a blindfold on him,” he said.

  “Please,” Salomon said.

  “Stop whimpering, boy. We're not going to do hurt you. It's just a game.”

  “What game?”

  “I'll explain everything in a moment,” Christiaan said.

  He tossed the boy Strootman his sword. “I have a job for you.”

  It was like he had been thrown a bag of silver rix-dollars. He couldn’t wait to get to it. Steenhower shook his head. “That boy couldn't cut butter with an axe in both hands. Let Gerrit do it.”

  Gerrit van Hoeck, bigger and heavier than young Strootman, grabbed the sword hilt and tried to wrestle it away. But young Strootman hung on, imploring Christiaan to make good with his promise. Van Hoeck clubbed Strootman behind the ear and sent him sprawling.

  A fine thing, Christiaan decided, two young men fighting over which of them will chop off a head. He would never tire of his new friends. This was wonderful.

  Christiaan gave Krueger a good silk kerchief from his pocket and he tied it around Salomon’s eyes. “What are you doing?” he said.

  “There's no need for this, Captain-General,” Gilles Clement said.

  “He catches fish for us,” ten Broek said. “He’s a good servant.”

  “If we tolerate disobedience, what will become of us?” He nodded to Gerrit van Hoeck.

  “I want to take this off,” Salomon wailed and reached up for the blindfold.

  Van Hoeck brought down the sword and Christiaan felt a draught of air as he swung it. It was done with just one stroke, skill worthy of a professional executioner. The body keeled over onto the stones, blood gouting from the neck, spurting once, twice, three times before the heart stopped. The legs kicked a final time.

  Steenhower applauded and van Hoeck grinned and bowed.

  “I could have done that!’ Strootman shouted and ran off.

  “I told him it was just a bit of fun but some people just can't take a joke,” Christiaan said.

  He looked up the beach. Cornelia had been watching. Oh look at that sour face. If only that girl had a sense of fun, she would be perfect.

  Chapter 78

  BIG Willem Groot came out of the tent where they kept the women, hitching up his breeches, looking pleased with himself and the world. Another new convert to Christiaan's philosophy.

  Neeltje was waiting for him, her baby in her arms. She dogged his heels along the beach, Cornelia could hear her weeping and shouting fifty paces distant. Neeltje, love, it will do you no good, she thought. He doesn't care about you now, if he ever did.

  Neeltje tried to grab his arm and he pushed her away.

  “Don't tell me what to do, woman!’

  “You're my husband!’

  “All women for every man!’ he shouted at her. She shouted something else but then he was on her, beating her with his fists. Cornelia ran down the beach and threw herself between them.

  “No, Willem! Mind the baby! If you won’t have a care for your wife, mind the baby!’

  Groot stepped back, not because she had appealed to his conscience, but because he did not want to hurt the vrouwe and make trouble for himself. Some of the other men were watching and they cheered, and that seemed to make him feel better. He put his thumbs in his belt. “I do what I want,” he said, loud enough for them all to hear, and stamped off into the dark.

  Neeltje was still sobbing. Cornelia put an arm around her. “Here, Neeltje love,” she whispered and gave her a handkerchief. “Dry your eyes.”

  “Those whores,” she sobbed.

  “They have no choice,” Cornelia said. “They don't like it any better than you.”

  She looked up the beach, saw Christiaan watching them, saw him smile, the secret smile of the alchemist.

  Chapter 79

  CHRISTIAAN van Sant, perfume in his beard, a new dagger at his belt and a medal on his black felt hat, admired himself in the gilt mirror he had had brought to her shelter. He examined his reflection this way and that.

  He turned around and gave her a broad smile, as if noticing for the first time that she was there. He sat down on her bed. “Come,” he said, patting the coverlet, ‘sit here beside me.”

  He poured wine from the ewer into a pewter cup.

  She did not move.

  “My dear Cornelia. What is wrong? Such a long face. Are you not comfortable here?”

  “Do you think I did not see what happened to Salomon du Chesne?”

  He threw the cup across the tent, a sudden tantrum she had not anticipated. The red wine sprayed across the canvas.

  He stared at the mess he had made, and then frowned and turned away from it, as if it were someone else's mistake. Immediately the smile returned, dazzling. “The boy was murderous,” he said, ‘do you not know how many he put to death?”

  “At your orders.”

  “You do not understand. I am the one trying to keep order here as best I can! Do you know how hard this is for me?”

  “You enjoy it.”

  “If that is what you think, then you do not know me at all. I walk a tightrope. Do you not see how David Krueger has changed since the wreck?”

  “Krueger does your bidding, like the rest of them.”

  “You’re wrong, Cornelia. It is only I who keeps you from the Devil. They would have done to you what they did to the rest of the women if it was not for me. They are evil men. Only I can keep you from this madness.”

  He offered her the cup again.”Come,” he said. “Life is too short to be miserable.”

  She turned away.

  “Have you ever seen me lay a hand on anyone? Well?”

  “You're too clever for that.”

  “Surely you do not think I could stop what is happening here on my own?” When she did not answer him, he picked up his fine hat from the bed. “Well, I am insulted, vrouwe. I see that you must think me the very devil.”

  Whatever offence she had given him quickly passe
d and he lay down again on her narrow bed, the gold medallion gleaming in the folds of the commandeur's ruffed shirt.”Come here, lay by me, Cornelia.”

  “I am a married woman, Christiaan.”

  “Marriage. It is a form of enslavement! Do you want to be a slave? It is ungodly for a woman to belong just to one man. All men still desire her, and the desire was put there by God. We meddle with God's natural laws.”

  “Ungodly for a woman to belong to one man, you say? Yet you do not allow others to come near me.”

  He gave her a simpering look, as if her reluctance was merely a game to entice him more. “I am the most powerful man on this entire island,” he said, speaking of their barren plot of rock and bushes as if it were, well, Spain. “Does that power not excite you?”

  “Heer Undermerchant, I do not understand why you think I should wish you to court me, even if I did not have a husband waiting for me in Batavia. Others seem to find you charming. For myself I would rather contemplate being wedded to a cockroach.”

  “I do not know what I have done to deserve your distaste.”

  “You are a thief and a murderer.”

  “I hope in time you will see that I am neither and that God opens your eyes to the truth of all this.” He stood up, paused for a moment at the opening to her shelter to give her a wounded look, as if he were a wronged and dutiful husband, and then went out.

  Chapter 80

  CHRISTIAAN watched the soldier's eyes--they were intent on the blue ribbon as he twisted it between his jewelled fingers. Willem Groot recognised it, of course, though so far he had said nothing about it.

  “They say when a man takes a wife he enslaves her, and offends God, for it is not a natural state, in His eyes. For men will always lust after women, and it is only the commonality of women that makes for an orderly and peaceful society. The want of women makes men go to battle.”

  Whether Groot had heard him or not, it was hard to say. He still had not taken his eyes from the ribbon. There were always objects that could mesmerise a man; with some it was a coin, for it represented their greed; for Groot, it was the ribbon, for it represented his guilt, and with it gone he would be free.

  Christiaan held it closer for him to examine. “She will not be needing this anymore,” he said.

  Groot took the ribbon and crushed it in his fist. Would he keep it or throw it to the winds? For him to decide. They say she had made a fight of it. Or so Strootman and Krueger said, and if they said it, they had no cause to lie.

  The long island

  Michiel Van Texel sat with his verredigers by a crackling fire of brushwood, though there was no warmth in it and precious little light. All of them shivered in the cold. They had dried some of the cat skins and tied them round their calves as leggings, the little creatures not big enough to make a proper cloak. What they wouldn't give for some of the blankets over there on the Houtman Rocks with Christiaan and his muyters.

  “Now we have the raft,” Michiel said, “I say we go over there and rescue the women.”

  “We don't even know if there's any of them left alive,” du Trieux said.

  “Oh, they're alive,” Welten said. “The soldiers made it plain what they wanted them alive for.”

  Michiel shook his head. “We've one raft, and we can get perhaps a dozen people on it. It would have to be done in darkness, and we would have to pole hard against the current.”

  “How many will go then?”

  “I want two volunteers to come with me.”

  “Just three men against so many?”

  “We are not going there to do battle. If we get to the island and if we can find the women in the darkness, we must leave enough room on the raft to bring them all back..”

  There was silence.

  “I won’t order any of you to go.”

  Slowly, one by one, each of the soldiers put up their hands.

  “It will be a dangerous business,” he warned them.

  He chose two of the Frenchies, Gabriel and du Trieux. He would leave Westerveld in charge of the verredigers, in case he did not come back.

  “Then we’re decided. We will go tomorrow night, after the moon has set. We will take them by surprise and get away again before they know what has happened.”

  There was a long silence.

  “God's death, it's cold,” Westerveld murmured.

  The Houtman Rocks

  Christiaan heard the angry shriek of gulls from overhead. He looked up, saw a flock of them as they drifted on the wind, scrapping and freewheeling. Those accursed birds were getting on his nerves. He wished he could take a musket to the lot of them.

  Strootman went down to the beach with Rutger the locksmith, to bait the pastor as he sat there in his misery, eating grass stalks to still his hunger. Rutger was crowing: “Is anyone around needs their ears boxing? I'll do it, for a tot of gin.” And looking at the pastor, who would not meet his eye.

  Beside him, Strootman, with a big grin on his face: “Come now, you devils with all your sacraments. Here I am, ready for you. I wish now I saw a devil, don't you, Rutger?”

  “Indeed, I do.”

  They grabbed the pastor by the hair and Rutger pulled out his knife, “And who would like to be stabbed to death? I can do that, you know, and very beautifully.”

  Hendrika ran down the beach and shouted at them to leave him alone. They saw Joost, and their smiles vanished.

  “Find some other sport,” he snapped at them and they shuffled away, their heads down.

  He would have to do something. There was no one left to kill who might take their mind off their murders, so now his fine lads played at dice and cheated each other for a handful of silver cash they would never spend. He watched

  Steenhower toss the dobbelsteen on a piece of silk they had laid out on the coral, did not even look to see how they fell, instead cast a nervous look over his shoulder at the grey silhouette of the long island. Until now the weather and seas had been against them.Now it was clearing again and they all knew a confrontation was coming.

  They would have to get that raft back.

  Chapter 81

  HE GATHERED them all in his tent and took out the commandeur's casket, unlocked it to show them the trove of chains, medallions, bracelets and rings, all snug in their trays of red velvet. Hardly a man dared breathe, in awe of such a treasure.

  With a theatrical gesture, he lifted the tray and produced a second key to unlock another box beneath. There was a gasp as he produced the great cameo of Constantine, in its frame of silver gilt. Large enough to fit into both his outstretched hands, he held it up for them to see. But he would let none touch it and soil it with common fingers.

  “The largest piece of agate in the known world,” he whispered to them, ‘see here, the Emperor Constantine, one of the great Roman kings of ancient times, depicted on his chariot, the two centaurs in the traces trampling his fallen enemies. This very piece was presented to the Roman king himself thirteen hundred years ago. It found its way into the hands of the painter, Rubens, who handed this to Secor to be traded privately in the East. It was intended for the Indian emperor, Jahangir, himself! It is worth at least five thousand guilders.”

  The men whistled and shook their heads.

  Now he reached for the small wooden box beside the casket. “And this, even the Company itself does not know of this piece, for Secor was to trade it under the lap.”

  He held it up for them. It was a vase, scarcely seven inches high, cut from a single piece of agate, the colour passing from honey to milk white, embossed with a design of grapes and vine leaves, worked so finely that in places it was almost translucent. On the handles were carved two faces of the lecherous woodland god, Pan.

  “A priceless jewel,” he breathed, ‘over a thousand years old, perhaps much more. How many more treasures can we plunder when we leave these islands with our own great ship?”

  They were set on their course now. Which of them wished to return to the strictures of Dutch life after they had
tasted true freedom here? “How may do we do this?” Krueger asked.

  Christiaan sipped brandy from a silver cup, and his lips shone in the glow of the oil lamp. “When the rescue yacht arrives, the officers will come ashore first. We shall laugh, drink and celebrate our rescue together. And when it is night, and they are all drunk, and we have shown them the treasure we have safely kept for the Company, we will cut their throats for them.”

  Steenhower chuckled, deep in his chest. Never a man liked cutting throats more, it seemed to him.

  “Then under darkness we will row back to the yacht and overpower what is left of her crew. If the skipper is with her, so much easier will it be, for he will surely assist us. Then we can use the ship to plunder the Honourable Company and the Specks, whoever we find, before we retire as rich gentlemen to Barbary.”

  “My Lord Krueger,” Joost chuckled and nudged the big clerk's shoulder, eliciting a boyish grin. He liked the sound of that.

  They drank a toast to their future success. Never was the world warmer, or more promising than on that bleak night in those lonely islands for they had all they could wish for; wijnte en trijntje--women and drink--and the promise of more riches and ease to come. Pan himself grinned at them, and showed them the way. A beautiful night to be alive, with a sword in your belt and warm brandy in your belly.

  Chapter 82

  “I HAVE here something you might like to see,” Christiaan said.

  He held in his lap a casket, and in the other a key. He turned the key in the lock with almost mocking deliberation. A showman, our Christiaan. “Would you care for a glimpse?”

  Cornelia feigned disinterest.

  “Come now, a lady like yourself could never resist a fine jewel.”

  “What do you want from me, Christiaan?”

  “It doesn't hurt to look,” he said. He opened the lip of the casket, suppressed a theatrical gasp.

 

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