Swords From the Sea

by Harold Lamb

  "A good day, yonker," his voice boomed at me. "Where is there a cart going to Leyden town?"

  "God keep you, my master," I piped up. "Here." And I pointed out our cart, with the dog sleeping in front of it. When he climbed up the dike top and saw it, he laughed. Noticing how I was working at the sundial I had made, he sat down and pulled out a pocket compass with a needle that pointed to the north. By it, he set my dial true.

  A long, stooped man this mariner was, fair as a Viking with his red beard. He stood as if leaning into the wind, his hands swollen by fisting ropes, his shoulders bent by hauling at tiller shafts. His clothing hung from him stiff as armor plate, only mended with cord. Curiously he gazed at the fishing craft and the flat land beyond.

  "What port are you from, mynheer?" I asked.

  "No port." He shook his head idly. "From the seas."

  Now I thought that this gentle, lonely master was one of the fellowship of navigants, coming in from the waters that do lie beyond the knowledge of us townsfolk, and I forgot all about the sundial. "Have you been upon the Sea of Darkness?"

  "Old vrouws' tales!" he snorted. "Do not listen to them, boy." Then he saw the disappointment in my face, and tugged at his beard. "Why, boy, I have seen fish that fly through the air off Madagascar-aye, and spouts of water drawn up to the sky."

  While I was drinking in this marvel, old Ludowyk came up, counting the coins in his hand. When he saw the man from the sea he hastened his steps. "Come away, boy!" He took me by the hand.

  "A good day, Ludowyk," said van Straaten.

  "A bad day, when you show your face again." Ludowyk seemed to be angry. "I hear say how you have come back with an empty ship."

  The stranger rubbed his big hands together. "Why, no, I have some fox and miniver skins, and whale ivory," he said.

  "Pfut! And is that the treasure of Cathay?"

  Whereupon Ludowyk hauled me away, walking fast. "The Devil," he muttered, "looks after his own."

  When I asked how that happened, he grumbled. Nick van Straaten had tried to winter in the north, beyond Norway, beyond the North Cape, in the floes of the Ice Sea. Half his crew had deserted at the wardhouse of the cape, and others had sickened and died. But van Straaten had lived through the winter. "Ya-he hath no fear of God. To go into the ice floes with his ship. Nay, he seeks what may never be, and will not turn back. Let it be a lesson to you, boy."

  For Nick, he said, had been no older than I when he left the clam digging to gain his living on the Lofoten fishing banks. All his years he had spent out there, until he was master of a lugger, with which he plied up and down to Boulogne, until he had been able to buy that bark of his. So far, good. But with that bark he had gone to seek a way to Cathay, at the world's end. To Cathay, with its silk, and pearls, and lacquer and elephants' tusks.

  He thought that up beyond the North Cape there was a way by water to Cathay, in spite of the ice. And he sought there for this northeast passage, on the top of the world.

  "Pfut!" said Ludowyk, "now he is poorer than a herring fisher. He lacks guilders to outfit his boat."

  It was better, old Ludowyk said, not to think of the fantasies of the deep seas. Here in Leyden we grew fruit and made good cordage and cloth as our fathers had done-getting a good price at the Amsterdam market. We were better off than any seafarer. "A penny earned is a penny got."

  Truly, it seemed to be as he had said. For I saw Nick van Straaten thereafter sitting at the tavern tables to drink, and hanging around the canal to speak with the cloth merchants, who turned a deaf ear to him.

  That evening, in front of the Pieterskerk after candlelighting I heard him roaring at our good burgomaster, Adrian van der Werf, as if he were opzee-drunk.

  "When will you lift up your eyes, my master? The Spaniards hold fast the New World. Aye, they have seized upon the firm and continent land of America. Already Balboa bath sighted the ocean that lies beyond."

  Patiently the burgomaster listened, leaning on his staff. He was a rich and kindly sir, and very wise. "But they have not yet found a sea passage to the northwest," he said.

  "By the three dead men of Cologne," shouted Nick, "how will we find open water unless we seek for it?"

  "In the Ice Sea?" Van der Werf tapped his staff on the cobbles. "No human hands, shipmaster, can build a ship that will break through ice floes."

  Nick's big hands twisted in his belt and his face grew red. "There is no sea unnavigable, and no land uninhabitable!"

  It was then that a lady in a dark shawl coming from the doors of the church stopped by them, looking curiously at the circle of men. I did not know her face.

  "Be that as it may, shipmaster," said van der Werf, "these merchants of Leyden have no will to risk their goods in a venture to Cathay."

  And Karol Bockman said that the markets of Amsterdam and Haarlem were good enough for him, God be praised. Some of them laughed, although not the burgomaster. Nick stared around at them, and swung away, biting at his beard.

  He almost blundered into the lady with the shawl, because she stepped in front of him, holding up her train. She loosened the rope of pearls clasped around her throat, and held them out to the voyager.

  "I would like well," she said in a clear voice, "to find a way to Cathay. Take these and seek it."

  Van Straaten chewed his red beard, amazed, as were we all. Those matched pearls would outfit his ship and buy him a lading. "Faith," he blundered, "you do not know the risk-"

  Her dark eyes seemed to look through him, and she smiled. So small she was, her hair jet against her white shawl, she seemed to be a slender image in the shadow of the church. "This is little indeed, my master, to risk for the treasure of the world. Besides, I have no need of them now."

  The pearls would have slipped through her fingers into his, but he reached down swiftly and kissed her hand. "My lady, no."

  Slipping her arm into his, she drew him away from the merchants. I heard someone name her, Lady Margaret, and someone else said that she was of Spain. But no one knew much of her.

  A little way behind, I followed them-he striding along beside her, his head sunk in thought. Her voice chimed like the smallest bell of the carillon in the tower. Aye, a silver bell. At her door he bowed, and stood, cap in hand, until she had gone in. Then he drew a deep breath and looked up at the first stars, as if at something beckoning to him.

  "By the three dead men," he swore, "she is a brave woman."

  Then I saw that he had the string of pearls in his fist.

  "Luck, yonker!" He laughed. "In spite of the Devil himself, this time I shall find the way through the ice."

  Lady Margaret, Ludowyk said, was a lonely, praying woman who had been a duchess and had lost her husband in the Netherlands war.

  In truth, the Lady Margaret kept to herself, with her silent maid. When I watched her in the kerk, I noticed that she wore no rings, or indeed any precious stones after she had given away the pearls. Once I did see a finelooking officer knocking at her door, and by his cloak and the Venetian lace at his throat I judged him to be no Hollander. He had a thin, dark head and when he walked with her to church that evening he kept the center of the path as if by right, making us townspeople step aside. Yet he didn't seem to be aware of us.

  After the prayers he held her back at the doors until they two were alone, except for me. His voice, swift and whispery, sounded angry.

  "Nay," she drew away from him, "here, we speak Dutch."

  The officer swore to himself. "Excelencia," he cried, "you cannot remain in this pesthouse."

  "I have left a pesthouse for this."

  "But-why?"

  "Is not the man who loved me dead in Flanders? Is not my house empty except for authority?" She gathered her cape about her. "In Toledo I had to look into the eyes of men who might soon be dead. And I was afraid."

  He tried to see into her face in the dim light. "Afraid? In Spain? I do not understand." He moved his shoulders as if shaking off a load. "When you are tired of this prank, send word to me.
And I will get you out of here if I have to beg a tercio from the duke to do it."

  "No." She held out her hand to him. "Adios."

  She watched him walk away across the cobblestones. Then she beckoned to me. I thought that she was like Mynheer van Straaten, who went away to look for Cathay. Only he was not afraid. I thought she was beautiful as an angel in a painting. "You look for something," I said, "like Mynheer van Straaten."

  "Perhaps I do." She smiled, pleased. "I had a writing from him."

  He had been gone then a year. The Spanish lady showed me the writing on a half sheet of stained paper, where she kept it in a box by her window:

  "To the Most Gracious Lady Margaret, dwelling in the painted house by the Canal, Leyden: Greeting. Know that by reason of the setting of the ice we must winter on the shore of that sea called the Ice Sea, beyond the seventieth degree of latitude, in all good hope of finding clear water to the northeast the next summer. Nicholas van Straaten, shipmaster."

  It had come, she said, from a fishing craft of Norway. No other letter arrived.

  After three more years had passed, Ludowyk shook his head, saying that van Straaten and his men would be frozen to death in that pagan limbo long since.

  But before then the trouble had come to Leyden.

  Old Ludowyk spat when he heard about the new tax. "One per centum on houses, two per centum on boats and nets, ten per centum on the price of herrings sold. Devil fly away with such thieves!"

  As one man the burghers of Leyden refused to pay this new tax of Philip of Spain, whose army was advancing along the Meuse.

  Then came a cavalcade of Spanish officers to talk with Adrian van der Werf, in the Pieterskerk square. They said that Hollanders would become rebels if they failed to obey an order of the throne. After that, Spanish flags were hauled down in the city, and the burghers gathered in the streets to talk of what they would do if war came.

  I saw men digging out on the earth ramparts, and cannon were brought in on barges from the ships. The tavern lights showed late at night, for men waited about to talk after the day's work was done. The ramparts of Leyden, they agreed, could not be stormed-so wide was the water moat; and we had plenty of gold in the treasury at the statehouse.

  Then we found that the road to Haarlem was cut off. Our goods could not go to the market there. Haarlem was besieged, and so our goods piled up in the warehouses.

  The day that Haarlem surrendered we heard the big bells tolling in the statehouse tower. And Ludowyk said that no one could go by road or canal to the sea, because of the Spanish soldiers.

  Hot with excitement, I ran to the door of Lady Margaret's house. The maid spoke sharply to me about taking off my shoes; then she led me out to the garden where the Spanish lady sat by the flowerbeds, listening to the tolling.

  "My lady," I cried, "I will take you out of the walls in Ludowyk's cart."

  "But why, yonker?" she asked.

  "Because tomorrow, surely, the siege will begin. Aren't you going?"

  "No," she said gently. "I would like to stay here, if I can."

  Some of the burghers believed that the Spanish woman must be a spy, to stay shut up among us. Ludowyk said that spies do not go about dressed for all the world to see, and she had been a duchess somewhere or other, so she must have a whim.

  That was a March day, when the first tulip shoots were showing. The next day we saw men in steel morions out on the road, and the bridges were drawn up. Then we could make out tents among the outlying farms and cannon appearing along the lines of the old dikes.

  Yes, that was in March. In October when thin ice coated the water of the canals, we were still waiting in the casements along the ramparts and the flag was still over the statehouse tower. We waited by our firelocks and pikes, sitting in the places we had dug out because we could no longer stand on our feet except for a little while. We were skeletons perched like ravens on the dirt wall.

  Bright shone the moon that night, gleaming on the patches of ice. Behind us rose the black ribs of houses, shattered by the great bombards of the Spaniards. But we did not look up any more at the whine and rumble of the shot. Indeed by then the Dons did not trouble themselves to work the bombards often. Like us, they waited, beyond that wide moat of water, still and clotted with the flesh and clothing of men. The glow of their campfires lay along the flat skyline, and out there in the tent lines they waited, eating their fill at night.

  Broken barges lay here and there in the water. When, at first, they had tried to push bridges of boats across to us in the town, we had scattered the barges with shot or fought back the steel-covered regiments of attack with our pikes. No man of theirs had set foot in Leyden, and from the statehouse tower one could see the crosses of their cemeteries in the lowlands behind their artillery. But we did not hate now those far-off soldiers in steel. Our hatred gathered where we sat together like this, and it turned on one man, Adrian van der Werf, who came at times with some of the burghers to inspect the ramparts-for we of the watch could not go back into the houses, on account of the pestilence. When he passed by now, we turned to look the other way. Van der Werf had set his mind against ours. He would not send the message to the Dons that would surrender Leyden.

  But-as we all knew-we were cut off from the world. No ships at sea could reach us, and on land there was no force able now to face the Span ish regiments. We were caught in a ring of steel weapons that could not be broken. We were starving ...

  One night we heard the thin ice snapping and something splashed in the moonlight. Then a harquebus roared from the rampart, and another. But we could see little to shoot at. Then we heard a Dutch voice bellowing:

  "By the three dead men of Cologne! Open your eyes, town dogs."

  I stood up then, holding to the wicker backing. And I saw a swimmer breaking through the ice beneath.

  "It is the voice," someone muttered, "of the dead van Straaten."

  Dripping and swearing, the swimmer climbed out of the water and up the rampart. He lay there panting and, even if he was alive, he seemed more like a water animal than a man. Skins covered him, tied together by thongs, and his hair and beard matted about his head.

  "Give a man a hand, skellums," he growled, peering at us. Nay, he did not know me, after these years.

  When we hauled him over the parapet, his skin felt slippery with grease, and his breath reeked of schnapps. Truly he had fortified himself against the cold and wet in swimming the canals to pass through the Spanish lines.

  "What word bring ye from the fleet?" our company captain demanded.

  Nick only wiped the water from his eyes. The ships, he said, were beating offshore in this west wind. It was little or nothing he knew of the siege. The only thing he wanted was to be taken to the Lady Margaret in the painted house by the canal.

  I took him back to the canal, carrying the one lanthorn we had at our post.

  He seemed surprised when I opened the door-for the maid had been dead since Saint Stephen's day-and carried the lanthorn straight into my lady's sleeping room. "Please, Excellency," I said, "the shipmaster van Straaten has come back from the Ice Sea."

  "I am glad," her voice whispered.

  He pulled at his beard and coughed, abashed at seeing her figure on the bed. "My lady," he said, "we have not yet found open water beyond the Ice Sea. Yet from the easterlings of that region I have heard of a mighty river called the Ob-"

  All in a breath he was speaking to explain his return, when he saw her face fairly. Taking the light from my hand he bent over her.

  The skin stretched tight across her teeth, and she did not move. Her dark eyes looked up, out of the mask of a face. Yet, her hair curled softly against her thin cheek. No doubt he had thought of her in her splendor of pearls and lace for those four years. And his long fight with the ice must have preyed upon his mind.

  "You have been brave, my captain," she whispered, "and perhaps in God's good time you will find the passage."

  Still he looked at her. "Have you no bread or wine i
n this place?"

  She shook her head. "Not in Leyden. But we are not afraid, because of that."

  Only then did he realize how near we were to starvation. "By the three dead men of Cologne, I will bring you some-soon."

  "It will take much to feed the mouths of Leyden."

  I pulled him away at that, for it is ill to promise food to the dying. His big hands pulled at his belt as he went, and he swore at each step, demanding that I take him to the burgomaster.

  We found Adrian van der Werf by a fire where the canal crossed the old channel of the Rhine River. The west wind had driven the water inland, through the canals, so that the banks were flooding, and the burgomaster was working with some hand-werpen to move children out of the flooded dwellings.

  Van Straaten said that food must be got into Leyden, or it would be madness to hold out. Some plan must be made-

  Van der Werf stared at him. Had he not sought for a plan? "Did you find, shipmaster, the passage to Cathay? Or did you find the ice?"

  "I will find open water yet," snarled the voyager.

  Slowly he went back with me to the rampart. There he leaned with his head to the wind, striking his fist against the earth. "It is sick you are, men of Leyden," he growled. "There must be a way ... ye had but open water and wind."

  He was thinking of a ship, and he grew quiet. "What did Iny lady say? You are not afraid? Fear ... that would do it."

  All at once he became the old Nick I had known, chuckling in his beard. Taking a plank from the parapet he slid over to the water, saying to me to watch at this place when the west wind came again. I watched him swimming away and I envied him the strength that was taking him back to eat his fill.

  The third night after that I slept by the warmth of the lanthorn behind the parapet. I woke hearing a faint crunch, as if a wind wheel had fallen to earth far off. The sound came again and again, until we pulled ourselves up to watch. A stirring and creaking we heard as of wagons moving, the sound carried to us on the wind. Nothing more than that happened.