Batavia Epub

by Pete Fitzsimons

  Jeronimus could not be more charming in reply, his hands outstretched in supplication, at least as far as his ropes will allow him. ‘I beg for both the Commandeur’s forgiveness and his understanding,’ he says simply. ‘It is true that my words of one time do not match my words of another time. But this is only because it is one of my last two remaining desires on this earth for you to take me to Batavia with you, where I may be examined at your leisure. I know I have done much wrong, and I assure you I crave no mercy for it. But, Commandeur, I still dream that one day, before I die, I may even be able to see my beloved wife Belijtgen in Amsterdam once more.’

  Enough! Pelsaert can no longer bear Jeronimus’s erratic testimony. There is nothing for it but to call for the canvas to be reattached around Jeronimus’s neck and for water to be brought – at which point, of course, the evil one again freely admits everything. Jeronimus is obviously as guilty a man as any who ever lived, and he deserves to live no longer.

  There remains, however, an important issue to resolve . . . and, after Jeronimus has been led away once more, Pelsaert puts this issue to the Broad Council succinctly: should we take such a gruesome villain as Jeronimus Cornelisz (who is with all unthinkable misdeeds and horror besmirched) in captivity on our yacht to Batavia to bring him before the Honourable Lord General Jan Pieterszoon Coen, who could give him the justly deserved punishment, or should we follow the strict order of our Lord Masters that villains and criminal evil-doers must not be brought to Batavia if doing so will put ships and men in further danger?

  The obvious decision is finally reached. To take them back to Batavia is too great a risk – they would, after all, be once again carrying a great treasure, thinly defended, and would have on board hardened criminals impregnated with the bad life, together with others who sipped a little of the poison and may have liked its taste.

  The bulk of the punishment must be exacted here on the Abrolhos. And yet, still there is a complication. Jeronimus, suspecting that his days are nearing their end, has sent a message via the Predikant that he desires to be baptised and further begs that he have time to bewail his sins so that at last he might die in peace and in repentance.

  If it is simply a ploy by Jeronimus to gain more time, it is nevertheless a clever one. Pelsaert is powerless to refuse such a request from a man who is even seen to be seeking to save his own soul, so he decides that he can indeed be baptised in two days’ time, and then executed the following day – though he keeps the prospective execution date from Jeronimus. Upon the Commandeur’s instruction, the Predikant tells Jeronimus only that he can be baptised – something that appears to ease his troubled mind.

  Just as the sun is about to sink, the wind to pick up and the birds to cry out that they are calling it a day, Pelsaert is ready to announce the formal sentencing. At his behest, all the survivors from the Batavia – there are just under four score of them left from the original ship’s complement of 331 – gather with the crew from the Sardam as the prisoners are brought forth. For most of the survivors, it is the first time they have seen all of the Mutineers together in the last ten days, since the wheels of justice began to crush them.

  And yet, rather than screams of anger, shouts of upset and general baying for the blood of the guilty, there is a total stunned silence as the prisoners are lined up before them, as the survivors barely recognise them.

  These murderous criminals who once appeared the most ghastly of all beasts, swaggering incarnations of the Devil in red velvet and gold lace, are now no more than raggedy red men held in fetters, emasculated ghosts, spectres not long for this world. They are the walking dead. And the effect is nowhere more pronounced than with Jeronimus. For he is at neither head nor tail of the line, nor even dominant in the middle, but merely three along from the left end, trying to shelter among the men who were once his disciples, but none of his fellow accused bar Pelgrom will even acknowledge him, they simply stare balefully straight ahead.

  And now Jeronimus comes to life a little, jeering at the crowd of onlookers with imprecations for a few seconds, before pathetically attempting to win them over with entreaties the next. But, of regret for what he has done, for what he has wrought, there is none.

  The Predikant, who is in the crowd, staring intently at Jeronimus himself, mentally forms then and there the words he will later report: ‘if ever there was Godless Man in his utmost need, it was he’.

  Pelsaert reads out the deliberation of the Broad Council: ‘We have therefore unanimously resolved and found good, in the best service of the Company and our Honourable Lord Masters, and have given the matter our utmost consideration. After long examinations and much searching, in order to turn from us the wrath of God and to cleanse the name of Christianity from such an unheard-of villain because, even under Moors or Turks, such unheard-of abominable misdeeds would not have happened or been left without being punished, I would not speak of Christians, that they should murder each other without extreme hunger or thirst – we have sentenced the foresaid Jeronimus Cornelisz of Haarlem, together with the worst and most willing murderers, who have made a profession of it. Accordingly we sentence and condemn with this, that firstly Jeronimus Cornelisz apothecary, and later Onderkoopman of the ship Batavia, shall be taken to Seals’ Island, to a place made ready for it in order to exercise Justice, and there firstly to cut off both his hands, and after this shall be punished on the gallows with the cord till death shall follow, with confiscation of all his money, gold, silver, monthly wages, and all claims which here in India he may have against the profits of the General East India Company of our Lord Masters . . .’

  At this news of his fate, Jeronimus is seen to slump a little but makes no sound. He has been hoping against hope that he will be put on the yacht to get back to Batavia, giving him another six weeks or so of life, in which time anything could happen. Now, he finds, he has but a short time to live.

  The other sentences are almost equally grim. Each man will have all his kit and wages confiscated, the implication being that each of their families will receive nothing. Jan Hendricxsz, Lenart van Os, Allert Jansz and Mattys Beer are all sentenced to have their right hands removed before they are hanged, while Jan Pelgrom, Andries Jonas and Rutger Fredricxsz are to be simply hanged with both of their murderous hands intact. When his own sentence is announced, a series of wrenching sobs bursts forth from Jan Pelgrom.

  Pelsaert goes on. The following criminals are to be taken to Batavia for further interrogation: ‘Wouter Loos of Maastricht, soldier, but who has been made captain of the rebel troop after the capture of Jeronimus Cornelisz, Jacop “Stonecutter” Pietersz of Amsterdam, petty officer of Jeronimus alongside Zevanck and Coenraat van Huyssen, Hans Jacobsz of Basel, cadet, Daniel Cornelisz of Dort, cadet, Andries Liebent of Oldens, cadet, . . . Cornelis Jansz of Haarlem, sailor, Rogier Decker of Haarlem, formerly boy to Jeronimus, Jan Willems Selijns of Amsterdam, cooper.’

  Others, meantime, are to be rewarded for their loyalty and endeavour, none more so than Wiebbe Hayes, who: ‘when he was on the High Island with 47 souls, protected them faithfully and preserved them bravely from the murderous party that intended to put them all together out of the way . . . We have found good, since there are no officers over the soldiers, to appoint the said Wiebbe Hayes a sergeant, with a pay of eighteen guilders a month. Also we make Otto Smit of Halberstadt for his faithful help to Wiebbe Hayes a corporal on a pay of 15 guilders per month.’

  With all of the announcements made, Pelsaert lowers the document to a table and publicly signs it, followed first by a troubled-looking Salomon Deschamps and then by the other members of the raad.

  What to do, what to do?

  Finally, it has come to this. After almost two weeks of interrogation and torture, the perfidious Pelsaert – was there ever a man so wretched risen so high? – has Jeronimus in a vice, the hangman’s noose swinging back and forth in readiness before the fevered brow of the Onderkoopman’s imagination, as he spends yet another night in the hole. Somehow making
it all worse is that Pelsaert has held back the date of execution, though he has heard the reason he has not been immediately executed is to afford him time to ‘repent’.

  Repent! Repent for what? After all, he hasn’t personally killed a single soul. His own bare hands have not been sullied by blood; he has merely acted in the best interests of those who would survive. Culling the population was necessary to preserve the short supplies they had, for the alternative was to have them all die a terrible death of starvation within just a few weeks. The situation needed a strong man, and if he was the only one strong enough, then so be it! Do they not know of the chaos he found, and how he imposed the order that was so desperately necessary? They do not. Either that or they do not care.

  Nor do they see what is obvious to him, that what he did was neither good nor bad. For, whatever actions he took, God Himself put the same into his heart, and as God is perfect in virtue and goodness, so He is not able to send into the heart of men anything bad, because there is no evil or badness in Himself.

  Jeronimus tosses, turns. He cannot sleep, and nor does he want to. For if he has perhaps just a score of hours left to live, why waste them with sleep? Not that this existence, the tight grip of fear in his stomach, the terrible looseness of his sphincter, the shocking awareness that he will soon die, is any existence he cares for. But at least he is conscious, not embarking on that sleep of death that will likely soon be his for all eternity.

  Working himself into a frenzy of fear, of self-delusion and self-righteousness in equal measures, Jeronimus pens two letters to his fellow Rosicrucians back home in the Dutch Republic declaring his total innocence, citing the charges as pure fiction, wilfully false accusations, scuttlebutt of the highest order, made by others to save their own souls. Once the letters are completed, he calls out to the under-steersman Jacop Holloch from his tiny prison cell deep below the fo’c’sle, proffering the two missives through the metal grating. ‘See these reach the intended without any other’s knowledge,’ he commands imperiously, still assuming his self-titled position of Kapitein-Generaal, ‘and be quick about you!’

  Bemused, Holloch, who has pledged no fealty to Jeronimus, immediately passes on the correspondence to the Commandeur.

  29 September 1629, Batavia’s Graveyard and aboard the Sardam

  The following morning, a staggered Pelsaert reads out Jeronimus’s distortions and outright fabrications to the Broad Council, who collectively shake their heads in sheer disbelief. Despite countless testimony proving his guilt beyond any doubt, including his own testimony, still this Devil’s spawn continues to claim his innocence! Will he never repent? Is there no destiny for this man other than a hell worse still than the one he created on the Abrolhos?

  Still, it is troubling enough that Pelsaert decides to again mass everyone on the island and read to them Jeronimus’s wickedly mendacious letters. ‘No, no, all lies,’ the crowd screams in unison, safe now with Jeronimus and his Mutineers behind bars to voice their hate for this man and his cronies. ‘Dood hem! Dood hem! Kill him! Kill him! Dood! Dood! Dood!’

  From deep within his hole aboard the Sardam, the malevolent Rosicrucian can hear his countrymen’s cries for his life across the small stretch of water. And, even more chilling, from the direction of Seals’ Island – the only island in the area with enough soil sufficiently deep to build three gallows side by side – comes the regular drumbeat of approaching death, the sound of the eager knocking of hammers driving nails hard into the wood as if into his very skin.

  That evening, returned to the Sardam, Pelsaert descends to the forward bowels of the yacht to inspect his number-one prisoner. It takes Pelsaert some time for his eyes to adjust to the darkness, but presently he is able to see at the back of the hole a silent rat-like figure staring back at him. Even more unnerving, however, is the unbearable stench coming from this prison. Pelsaert instinctively covers his nose with a silk handkerchief.

  ‘Well, when will you have me killed?’ demands the ‘Kapitein-Generaal’ of his legitimate counterpart.

  After a pause, Pelsaert decides to tell him. His last day on the earth will be the day after the morrow, Monday 1 October.

  Jeronimus Cornelisz reacts with rage. ‘Nothing more? How can one show repentance in so few days? I thought I should be allowed eight or 14 days! Well, you and them all want my blood and my life, but God will not suffer that I shall die a shameful death. I know for certain, and you will all see it, that God will perform unto me this night a miracle, so that I shall not be hanged.’

  Forewarned, upon leaving, Pelsaert orders the guard that no one should be allowed close enough to hand the prisoner a knife or anything else with which he could harm himself. However, unbeknown to the Commandeur, Jeronimus has secreted a vial of poison on his person, a soupçon of Mercurium sublimatum, the same poison that he used to try to kill the daughter of Mayken Cardoes. In the darkness, he removes the vial from beneath his tunic and, with a rush and a cry, downs the poison in one gulp.

  The result is not as he planned.

  About one o’clock in the morning, Jeronimus is doubled over with pain as green vomit projects at regular intervals from one end, even as a watery brown paste further sullies t’other. Twenty times and more, he is assisted from his cell as the poison takes effect, in Pelsaert’s delicate words, ‘from below as well as from above’.

  Groaning, realising he is not going to die after all, Jeronimus asks for some Venetian theriac – a mix of opium, sugar and other soothing products. Once it is delivered, it brings some relief.

  Just as a dose of this poison failed to forever silence the baby, it has only made this man cry like one.

  30 September 1629, Batavia’s Graveyard

  It is 9 am, and on the eastern shore of the desolate island, on the lee side of a large piece of sail that has been set up to give them some shelter from the wind, the Predikant is about to begin his service. The services have been mercifully resumed from the moment of the arrival of the Sardam, yet Pelsaert now realises that the congregation is missing someone who is clearly most in need of God’s salvation through baptism.

  With a nod to two particularly burly sailors, Jeronimus is sent for, but within minutes they are back, with a message from the evil one. He refuses to come and will not have anything to do with talk of the Lord, or with the Predikant.

  Pelsaert nods with no little satisfaction. See how miraculously the Lord has had Jeronimus again reveal his godlessness before all the people. If there be a remaining scintilla of doubt as to the man’s pure evil, then surely this final infamy from him has shredded it. Pelsaert in turn nods to the Predikant, who begins.

  ‘Oh, dearly beloved Lord, Father of us all, we, your children, are gathered here to worship Your infinite wisdom and grace . . .’

  And yet there are still more messages to come from Jeronimus, each more evil than the last. Finally realising any further attempts to postpone his death are an utter waste of his time, Jeronimus gives full vent to his true feelings. Don’t you see, Commandeur, all he has done was sent into his heart by a God perfect in virtue and justice and so by corollary his actions have only been virtuous and just?

  None of it makes any impression on Pelsaert, who merely notes it all down as further proof of Jeronimus’s lack of a soul. He is ever more impatient for the proper punishment to be meted out to this gruesome, murderously misguided man.

  1 October 1629, Batavia’s Graveyard

  Alas, on the day marked for this punishment, Monday 1 October 1629, the wind blows sou’ by sou’-west with such force and with such great stormy showers that it is not possible in the morning to go to Seals’ Island and deliver Jeronimus and the other evil-doers unto death according to their sentences. Throughout the early afternoon, the entire encampment waits tensely for a break in the weather, to determine if today is the day they must die – with none scanning the skies more intently than the condemned men themselves – but by late afternoon it is clear they will be allowed to live for at least another day.

/>   2 October 1629, Seals’ Island

  At last, the day has come. On this morning, the wind is still blustering from the west, and yet it is quieter than the day before and it looks as if it will be possible to get the eight bound prisoners on longboats and take them to Seals’ Island, where the gallows loom large across the water.

  Though the wind remains gusty, and the waves gutsy, the trip across the deepwater channel does not take long. Together, the two boats bringing this gallows party to its destination nudge the shore with a small crunch of coral.

  As the heavily manacled Jeronimus comes ashore, guarded closely by Wiebbe Hayes and Otto Smit, his way is suddenly blocked by an unexpected apparition. It is Lucretia, who has gone to Seals’ Island in advance with a boatload of Survivors who insist on witnessing proceedings. She is pale, thin and seems fragile in the buffeting wind.

  ‘Say it,’ she says to Jeronimus straight out. ‘Say it before these witnesses what you know to be the truth, that never was I with you in your tent willingly but that I was forced to submit to your hideousness by both you and your criminals.’

  Jeronimus stares back, momentarily softened at her sudden appearance yet startled at the force of his love’s words. Before, she may have wept, shied away, been totally cold, but never to this point has he seen such fury, such passion in her. He gazes at her beauty in odd wonderment, as though he thinks he might have met her a long time ago but can’t remember where . . . before his eyes look over her head and he focuses, seemingly for the first time, on the gallows in the near distance.

  ‘Say it!’ she shouts, snapping him back to attention.

  Those gathered tightly around Jeronimus are equally startled. Though her intervention has delayed the prisoners’ procession, none of them makes a move to hurry Jeronimus along. Instinctively, all feel that this is not something that can be rushed.

  Still Jeronimus has not spoken.