For his part, while Jeronimus has still, in fact, been unable to persuade Lucretia as to his own charms, he is yet confident that she will see sweet reason. Outside his own tent, he also recognises that with so few women to be shared among so many men there is enormous potential for trouble unless it is all strictly regulated. In recent days, some fighting has broken out among the Mutineers over access to the women for common service: who goes first, should fringe Mutineers have access to the more desirable of the women, such as Anneken Bosschieters, and so forth. The only way is to share and share alike. (With the exception of himself and Coenraat, of course, who don’t intend to share their beauties with anyone.)
With all this in mind, Jeronimus decides that the oath sworn just four days earlier is now out of date, and so forms up a new one. Gathering his Mutineers to him in front of his tent – for by now there are way too many to get into his tent all at once – Jeronimus reads them the new, improved oath:
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And so they all sign, as before, including Hans Hardens, who is consecrating a document that formally consigns his own wife to whoredom at the hands of the murderers of their little child.
Still not content that everything is locked down, however, Jeronimus also meets with all of the women for common service, one by one, and obliges them to sign their own oaths, whereby they swear not only eternal fealty to him but also to make their bodies available to whosoever of the Mutineers demands what used to be their sexual favours but are now their sexual duties, whensoever they demand it. They must also promise to be obedient to the men in all they should desire of them, not just in sexual matters. In return, he, Jeronimus, pledges himself on his soul and salvation that all those who sign need no further have any fear or mistrust that they will be killed, as they will be under his personal protection against those forces on the island that might be prone to doing them harm.
What alternative do they have but to obey this man born of the spawn of the Devil? This division of women is duly chronicled in a resolution by which they ‘bind themselves on their soul’s salvation and by the help of God to be true to each other’. Each woman signs, and the sexual activity on the island proceeds on a more ordered basis.
For the women for common service, there is now constant sex, around the clock. For the Mutineers, there is also regular sex, although they go about it in different ways. Jan Pelgrom delights in going from woman to woman as his whim takes him. He arrived on these islands a virgin and now has sex on tap like beer from a gushing barrel – life has never been better. The one woman he covets but decides to stay away from, because both Wouter Loos and Lenart van Os growl at him when he looks at her, is Anneken Bosschieters.
Others, like Mattys Beer, have clear favourites. In Beer’s case, he only has eyes for Zussie, despite the fact that this woman is also the regular concubine of Jan Hendricxsz, and Mattys must always ensure that the massive Jan is well sated and well away before he takes his own turn – for Jan is not prone to waiting around for anyone.
Zussie’s sister Tryntgien – whose husband, Claas Jansz, was last seen on the longboat heading north with the skipper and the Commandeur – is not the particular favourite of any of the more powerful men on the island, and for that reason she receives the most attention. Of them all, she is the safest one to be with without arousing the ire of the most powerful Mutineers – and so is the busiest of them all.
As for the non-Mutineer men, of course, there is no sex at all. Ironically, this is one of the very few things they have in common with the Kapitein-Generaal at this point, as, to his stunned amazement – and he is in fact more than a little hurt – Lucretia still refuses him.
16 July 1629, Hayes’s Island
Who on earth can this be, this half-drowned man lying before them on the beach?
Why, it is Cornelis Janszoon of Amsterdam, who aboard the Batavia fulfilled a minor clerical position. Now, Wiebbe Hayes and his men can only just recognise him. When they last saw him, he was a jolly, plumpish type of man, with a friendly word for all and an aspect about him of one who, while perhaps knowing hardship, had not known horror. But that has all clearly changed.
As they haul his exhausted body out of the water and get him onto dry land, not only is Janszoon emaciated and seemingly aged ten years but also his hunted, haunted eyes bespeak a man who has witnessed and experienced things in the last four weeks that he never imagined could exist on this earth, or even in hell.
‘Treachery!’ he croaks at them. ‘Verraad, treason . . . moord, murder . . . bloedbad, bloodbath . . . massacre . . . mutiny . . . dead . . . all dead.’
While the soldiers gasp and grimace as Janszoon’s account tumbles out – each story worse than the one preceding until he gets to the last dreadful afternoon and evening, where it seems nearly all but him on the island have been wiped out – Wiebbe Hayes simply listens patiently, digesting every detail. He is stunned that such events have been occurring on Batavia’s Graveyard since their departure, yet it certainly provides an explanation as to why no one has come for them since the lighting of their bonfires. This changes everything.
What Janszoon is revealing to them now, while monstrous in its own right, puts an equally monstrous complexion on their own situation. Can it be that Jeronimus has actually sent them all here to die? Has the Onderkoopman sent them to an island on which he was convinced that no water existed, in the hope they would all perish? That would certainly fit in with what Janszoon is telling them about the ruthless program of elimination that Jeronimus appears to have embarked on.
Within the next few hours, the words of Cornelis are supported by other refugees from Seals’ Island, another six in total, who stagger ashore and tell equally horrifying stories of the reign of Jeronimus and what it has wrought. Each man is welcomed, fed, watered and accommodated the best he can be. Part of it is through simple decency, but part, too, because Wiebbe Hayes is beginning to realise that, for what is coming their way, they will be needing every healthy man they can get.
18 July 1629, Batavia’s Graveyard
While pleased with the death count after the first attack on Seals’ Island, Jeronimus wants the job finished off. There are still four women and 15 boys on the island, each lad a potential danger to them should the rescue yacht perchance arrive and get to them first. And eight men are unaccounted for, too, but though the Mutineers have carefully been watching the shores of Seals’ Island since the first attack, they have not seen a single one, and they have come to the reluctant conclusion that perhaps the men have escaped to the High Islands to join Wiebbe Hayes. They will find out, soon enough.
For this attack, they decide the job is best done at night, and it is to be led by the ever-faithful David Zevanck, together with his accomplices Coenraat van Huyssen, Mattys Beer, Gijsbert van Welderen, Jan Pelgrom de Bye and Jan Willems Selijns. Oh, and one more. Jeronimus has decided it is time for 40-year-old soldier Andries Jonas to get another murder under his belt.
‘Do you have a knife?’ Zevanck asks the old fellow, pleasantly enough.
‘Yes, but it is not very sharp,’ old Jonas replies.
‘Why,’ Zevanck replies, laughing agreeably, ‘you may have mine.’
Jonas gratefully accepts the offer, but on the instant he grasps the hilt of the knife, Zevanck bursts forth in an entirely different tone.
‘Now,’ says he, leaning in closely, ‘take it and cut the throats of the women. Leave the chasing after the young fellows to the others.’
18 July 1629, Seals’ Island
Late that evening, well after the sun has gone down and the stars have begun to twinkle in the moonless sky, they set off. This time, they are to give no warning to those on the island. After landing some 100 yards away from where they did the last time, they creep ashore. The only noise is the crunching sound of their clogs on the shards of broken coral and shells that make up the beach as they head slowly towards the glow of the fire they can see about 300 yards to their south.
There! As they craw
l over a small dune, they can see the desultory fire and the four women, including the heavily pregnant Mayken Soers, sitting grimly around it, not talking. The familiar, queasy smell of boiling sea-lion meat fills the air, as they are downwind of the cooking pot atop the fire. Of the cabin boys, there is no sign, though the likelihood is that they will be found sleeping in their two little humpy tents, visible about ten yards distant from the fire. The fact that none of the men are apparent is a probable sign that they really have escaped to the High Islands, but still the Mutineers must proceed with caution. Through the use of hand signals alone, Zevanck directs Gijsbert van Welderen and Mattys Beer to approach the tents. He now lifts a hand, having the men halt, ready to charge into a tent apiece as soon as they launch the main attack. Meanwhile, he takes Andries Jonas and the others and comes at the women from opposite directions to ensure that no one escapes.
It is to be a very easy murder indeed for old Andries Jonas. Staying closely behind Zevanck, he carefully walks towards the fire, and they only go to ground when there is a chance that the fire’s glow will illuminate them. Then, when Zevanck is satisfied that everyone is in position, he points out to Andries who his mark is: the heavily pregnant Mayken Soers – so pregnant, she will be incapable of running far if she tries it. Andries grips his knife tightly and steels himself. This is what has to be done if he is to survive. He is neither a bad man nor a good man, particularly. He is just a man preparing himself to do what has to be done. He has to do this.
Then, Zevanck suddenly steps forward into the light, as Mattys Beer appears from the other side. Two of the women start to scream, but Mayken Soers is not one of them. To Andries, she seems to simply look up resignedly, as if this is no more than what she has been expecting all along.
Gently, thus, even as the other women wail all around, Andries takes her by the hand and says to her, ‘Mayken, love, you must die.’ And then he throws her down, puts his knees upon her chest – as opposed to her bulging stomach, because that somehow doesn’t seem right – and then cuts her throat. She appears to be dead within seconds, so heavily does his knife penetrate her neck, to the point that it nearly severs her head.
Jan Pelgrom, meantime, is struggling with another of the wives, who is putting up such a furious fight that he can’t easily get his knife to her throat. But, in the end, it is exactly as Jeronimus says: once you are a murderer, the next one is easy. For Andries Jonas now takes his knife, wipes Mayken’s blood on his trousers, walks over and helps Jan Pelgrom. Two stabs of his knife into this woman and she ceases her struggle entirely. She, too, is soon dead. Not that there is quiet, for all that.
Instead, there is screaming and swearing coming in equal measure from the cabin boys, whom van Welderen, Mattys Beer and the others are laying into with daggers, morning stars and clubs, exacting a fearful toll. In such close quarters, the Mutineers must be careful not to hurt each other, but, by standing far enough apart, that is easily accomplishable, just as by swinging their weapons violently they can’t fail to hit one of the screaming cabin boys.
When it is all over, four women and eight boys have been killed, while, unbeknown to them, three of the cabin boys have managed to escape into the night and have now secreted themselves elsewhere on the island. It has been a good night’s work, and the Kapitein-Generaal will be pleased.
The only downside is speculation that the eight men really have got away and are now in all likelihood with Wiebbe Hayes and his band. That problem will have to be resolved.
20 July 1629, Batavia’s Graveyard
Strange, how rain on one day can make a baby lustily cry for the following three. In the first few days on Batavia’s Graveyard after the wreck, the once bouncing baby of Mayken Cardoes was so weak, so very near death, that it simply had no energy to make a lot of noise. In recent weeks, though, a pattern has developed whereby the rain falls and the baby’s strength briefly improves, as increased sustenance comes from Mayken’s replenished breasts. The usual ration of two pannikins of water per day is not enough for Mayken to make both herself and her baby flourish, though, meaning that in dry times the baby tends to be quiet once more. When a good rain falls again, as it did two days earlier, her milk flows freely again, so the baby is strong enough to wail to her heart’s content.
And it drives Jeronimus mad. For an entire day and night, the baby has been wailing, surely catching up on the shrieks it has missed out on, and now the Kapitein-Generaal decides he can stand it no more. He has just the solution. Mercurium sublimatum, this solution is called, and he knows all about it from his days as an apothecary in the Dutch Republic. Fortunately, he has just enough ingredients with him in his bag to enable him to mix it up in a jar, and then he calls for Mayken and her baby to be brought to him.
Mayken feels such a relief when the Kapitein-Generaal kindly asks her why her baby is wailing so! For a mad moment, she had feared he would be angry at her and her baby for the noise the little one was making, but in fact Jeronimus simply could not be nicer.
As the wind softly moans outside the tent, she tells him that her baby daughter simply has a little bit of intestinal trouble and she thinks she should be fine by the morrow. Beaming, Jeronimus replies he thought that might be the problem and quietly directs Mayken to hand the baby to him, as he has mixed up some medicine for her that should soon see her right.
Taking the baby gently in his arms, he personally administers the medicine, the poison slipping down the throat of the junger Cardoes, before handing the baby back. And, sure enough, the crying does almost immediately stop! Her baby is . . . is . . . is now finding it difficult to breathe, and even changing colour before her eyes to a very sickly grey, as Jeronimus continues to watch intently, his eyes strangely glazed.
Before long, the baby is comatose, limp as a rag doll. And yet, as her mother futilely flutters around her – now realising that what the Kapitein-Generaal gave her baby was not medicine at all – her baby daughter still clings grimly to life, little more than a useless shell of a being at her withered right teat, with no longer the strength to suck upon it. After ten minutes, when it seems likely that the baby will not die immediately, as he has hoped, Jeronimus peremptorily dismisses Mayken and sends for his most faithful killers three, to wit David Zevanck, Jan Hendricxsz and Stonecutter, so he can have a few words with them.
Ten minutes later, these three send a messenger to get Salomon Deschamps. This worthy – nominally the second-highest-ranking VOC official on the island after Jeronimus – is awoken and taken to Mayken Cardoes’s tent. There, he finds that devastated woman holding her stricken baby and furiously rocking her as if her love alone could heal her, while Stonecutter, Zevanck and Jan Hendricxsz stare balefully on. When Deschamps arrives, it is time for Zevanck to take the matter in hand. Roughly grabbing the baby from her mother’s arms, he hands her to Deschamps, together with a piece of rope. His words are brutal and hit the VOC official like so many slaps.
‘Deschamps,’ he says, ‘here is a half-dead child. You are not a fighting man. Here is a little noose. Go over there and fix it, so that we on the island do not hear so much wailing.’
What does it do to a man to hear such an instruction? Deschamps is a good and fundamentally decent, if also weak, man. And here he is being told to go and kill an almost lifeless child that will soon die anyway. And, though it is unsaid, it is understood – he must do as he is bid or be quickly murdered himself.
For ten seconds, there is no movement among the men, no sound apart from the anguished sobbing of Mayken and the near-death rattles of the baby, as all await his decision. Now, Mayken gathers herself and, having given up on the Mutineers showing any mercy, falls to the ground and puts one arm around Deschamps’s knees, begging piteously for the life of her child.
He must make a decision.
Finally, Deschamps gently extricates himself from Mayken, takes the child, and the rope, and walks outside as Zevanck holds the now prostrate Mayken under his right foot. She, too, now subsides a little, almost as if
the last solace left to her is to hear the last sounds of her baby’s life. Twenty seconds later again, there is a quick gurgling, coughing sound and then . . . nothing.
20 July 1629, Batavia
And so, the end.
In Batavia, public hangings are held on public land to the left of the citadel that allows the always large crowd to get a good view of proceedings. The abject Evertsz, followed by an eager procession of townsfolk, is marched to the permanent gallows, situated by the main road in full view of the harbour. For the authorities, it is useful in giving the people an example of what happens to those who flout either Dutch law or VOC regulations, or both. And, for the people, there is something strangely alluring about seeing a man die, particularly when he has done something notorious, and this one is particularly interesting. They say his name is Jan Evertsz and he was the bosun on the ship Batavia, which foundered on the Abrolhos Islands. It has been the talk of the town ever since Commandeur Pelsaert and the others completed their extraordinary journey and arrived in this port over a week ago.
Anyway, before the ship hit the reef, it turns out, Evertsz led an assault on a passenger, a woman by the name of Lucretia, and she was able to identify him by his voice. The reason he wasn’t punished at the time was that Pelsaert was not in complete control of the ship and feared it would rouse the crew against him – imagine! – but there is no such problem now. And here he is!
Dressed in stinking rags, Evertsz is dragged into the public square, blinking at the shimmering bright light, trying to steel himself for what he knows is coming. His arms are bound behind him and his legs manacled together, meaning he can only just walk, but with two burly guards on either side he is brought to the scaffold and made to climb the stairs as the crowd murmurs and surges forward a little, the better to get a good look at him. Like most in his position, he has clearly been tortured to the point that the hanging might almost come as sweet relief, but his face betrays little emotion one way or another. Not fear. Not anger. He is not casting his eyes to heaven as if he expects to go to a better place. There is no muttering of prayers, as is so often the case before such hangings, as the criminals frantically try to find the right words to help them overcome a lifetime of sin and be spared harsh judgement from the Lord. No, none of that.
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