The Queen's Bastard

by Robin Maxwell

  The uniformity of the residential streets, the sameness of the rows of narrow red brick houses, three storeyed with three windows to each floor, filled me with wonder at how they could ever distinguish their own home from amongst them. And the city was clean, so clean I marvelled at it, the housewives even on the Sabbath sweeping their well scrubbed stoops with neat pairs of wooden clogs lined up near the door.

  Gabbling all the way Dirk and Jacqueline finally brought me to 24 Blancken Stadt in a serene row of houses across from a tree lined canal. We removed our shoes and tramped up a dark narrow stair to find ourselves in the bright front room of a comfortable but plain Dutch home, beautiful smells of cooking food wafting up from the kitchen. I was enjoined to sit, and in a moment Jacqueline returned holding the hand of an aproned matron, all suffused in a cloud of pastry flour, very plump with those same sky blue eyes as her children, and a jolly laugh. This was the twins Moeder. She welcomed me heartily in Dutch, and Jacqueline translated, saying it was good to have another young man at her table, as three of her other sons were gone off to the war, all that was left being Dirk who was too young.

  The dining room behind the front room was dim, and even in the day lit by candles, since the only windows in the long narrow house were frontwise. Already seated at the head of the trestle was Jan Hoogendorp, a tall wiry man with sleeves rolled up over well muscled arms, possessing the broad mouth his twins bore. With all of us seated the table was still only half filled, which I could easily imagine overflowing with his strapping sons. I was invited to sit, and my mouth watered as Moeder and Jacqueline brought out plates of herring and cabbage and pale steaming dumplings.

  Jan was, I came to learn, a fisherman, owner of several boats which worked the waters of the North Sea. That intelligence alone caused me to look upon the otherwise unimposing man with awe. To think that someone would go again and again by choice into the belly of that terrible beast made me shudder. I admitted to Jan my fear of the sea and my loathing of it.

  “Here in Holland the water is our element,” he said in good English — he had learnt it for his business, selling hundreds of barrels of salt fish abroad. “We live by it, die by it. But most of all we have learnt to rule it. This land you see all round you, we took from the sea.”

  Dirk interrupted. “Here we say, ‘God made the sea, men of the Netherlands the shore.’”

  “Ja,” his Father went on. “It is an artificial country made by Hollanders who by their will alone preserve it. But like herring, it is not to everyones taste.” He took a whole fried fish and filled his mouth with it.

  “King Philip calls the Netherlands the country nearest to Hell,” Dirk told me seriously.

  “And he should know,” added Jacqueline, “for he is the Devil himself.”

  “Philip,” said Moeder incensed, the very name sounding a blasphemy. She had finally taken her place at the table and begun heaping her own plate with food. Tho she spoke no English she knew our subject and was eager to expound upon it in Dutch, her pink face turning a violent shade of red as she spoke.

  Jacqueline translated her Mothers words for me. “He was trouble from the day of his good Fathers abdication. Philip hated the Low Countries. Came here but twice in his life and wanted to make us all into Spaniards. And when we said no to him, to his stinking Inquisition and his Auto da Fé, he sent his monstrous Duke and murderous army to destroy us. He executed twelve thousand of our citizens and two of our highest Counts! All we wish is to rule our selves and pray in our own way. If you ask me he is a haughty, fat lipped little worm who does not even like food! I tell you,” said Moeder, spearing a dumpling, “you should never trust a person who does not enjoy eating.”

  Truly, I was finding a new education at this dinner table. “So Philip rules the Netherlands from Spain?” I asked.

  “His aunt, Margaret of Parma, is the Governor General of the Low Countries, but she acts wholly at the bidding of the King,” answered Jan.

  I saw the twins tittering between themselves and demanded to know what was so funny.

  “Margaret of Parma has a mustache,” giggled Jacqueline in answer.

  “And a shaggy beard,” added Dirk, stroking his chin.

  “But what is not funny,” proclaimed Jan, “is what the King has done to the man who would save us all from this persecution. William of Orange was once a prosperous Prince and beloved by all. Now, because he defies Philip he is a fugitive, penniless, having sold his lands and possessions to sustain our rebellion.”

  Moeder was nodding vehemently, having heard Williams name. “Fadder uff de Fadderland,” she managed to sputter, and everyone applauded her efforts at English. Then she lapsed into Dutch.

  “This poor man who has given all for freedom of his countrymen has suffered so badly,” translated Jacqueline. “His first wife was a terrible shrew, and a drunkard as well who ran off with another man. This is the Gods truth! And then the Duke of Alva, the Devil’s spawn, kidnapped Williams only son and sent him as a prisoner to Spain where he still lives today. Imagine, he may never see his boy again. Ach, he has suffered so! When his army was beaten the first time and he was outlawed in his own land, William travelled around on a sorry old nag and was forced to write his Mother to find a pair of his discarded hose so he could be presentable when he went to foreign courts begging money for the cause. Poor man! At least he has joy of his new wife. Lady Charlotte, her name is. Did you know she was once the abbess of a Catholic nunnery who ran away with him and renounced the faith to become a Calvinist? She is very beautiful, so tis said. And they have three little girls. Would you like more dumplings, Arthur?”

  Well, I had more dumplings and more herring and more beer until I thought I would burst. All the afternoon long listening to Moeder storytelling and Jacqueline translating, I began to hear and know the Holland tongue in a new way, and learnt a good many words and their meanings. Mister Jarrett had been correct. I did have an ear for language. Twas a gift, and I vowed silently to make use of it.

  Then Jacqueline suddenly blurted, “Why do you wear only one glove, Arthur?”

  “It covers a deformed hand,” I replied. Without thinking, I had for the first time not used the lie about the scars from a bad burn.

  “May I see it?” she asked guilelessly.

  “Jacqueline!” exclaimed Jan sternly.

  But I was comfortable with this family, and all at once the deformity seemed trivial, and I knew I would not be judged for it. I slipped off the gauntlet and laid my hand on the table. Jacqueline gasped in delight. “An extra finger!” she exclaimed.

  “Tis hardly a finger,” argued her brother, “just a bit of flesh.” To me he said, “Why do you cover it with a glove, Arthur?”

  I did not immediately answer. I had never thought upon it, had always simply worn the glove. But I knew now it was for shame. My Mothers shame. “Is it not unsightly to you?” I asked.

  “Not at all, not at all!” Dirk exclaimed. His twin vehemently agreed.

  “Then I shall wear the glove no longer,” I announced, surprising even myself.

  “May I have it then?” asked Jacqueline fingering the glove and this time horrifying her Mother.

  With mock gravity I handed her the symbol of my childhood pain, and thought there would be no more perfect guardian for it than this sweet and openhearted young girl.

  We had begun devouring a rich butter and honeyed pastry when Dirk appealed to his Father for permission to join with the resistance. But the sight of Moeders jovial face collapsing into a teary puddle, and Jan saying “And who then would I have to help me on the boats?” quelled all discussion, tho I thought I saw a strange glint in his sisters eye when Dirk spoke his passionate plea. It seemed almost Jacqueline her self wished to fight the Spaniards, tho of course that was quite impossible, for she was a woman. No one beside my self had seen that spark and I dismissed it, thinking it only a reflection of the candlelight in a pretty blue eye.

  When I took my leave of the Hoogendorps I was made to promise to
return as often as I was able, and to think of their home as my home since I was far away from my own in a strange land. I swear I never knew the real meaning of hospitality till that day or what motherly love should feel like. I was at once warmed and saddened, for my own Mother had shown me little more than the back of her hand all my life.

  Soon I had no time to brood. Alva was on the move again.

  One of his more recent targets had been the town of Leyden. The siege had lasted six months, with the citizens desperate and starving, the Spanish surrounding them on land in forts they had built, and the Dutch fleet anchored helplessly outside the dikes. William of Orange, with no other way to save them, had urged the townspeople to breach their dikes, to open their sluice gates so that the land should be inundated, allowing entrance of the Sea Beggars barges. The people had cried out that their rich polderlands would be ruined by saltwater, but William had persisted saying “Better a drowned land than a lost land.” Finally desperation had won out and it had been done. The dike was dashed open and the sea had rushed in, the Hollander ships passing thro the breach. Tis said these sailors were a fearsome sight in deed, outlaws of the ocean dancing wildly on the decks, snarling, soot blackened faces, cutlasses clenched in their teeth, and their war cries of “Better Turks than Papists!” echoing over the face of the newmade sea.

  The final clash had come in the midst of a terrible storm at midnight, some Spanish ships sailing out to meet the Zeelanders whose flat bottomed ships fared better in the shallow water. They say the battle was fought by the brilliant glow of cannon blast and great bolts of lightning, all amongst the tops of trees and roofs of submerged houses, Dutch sailors leaping into the shallows and pushing their boats onward by human fury alone. The Spaniards, who had seen nothing like it, were terror struck, their ships boarded and burnt, and fortresses seized by shrieking pirates who dispatched them with grappling irons and bloody swords, and threw them headlong into the ocean. Alvas troops were thus routed from Leyden and a victory won. But this was one amongst many more losses, and the Spaniards again were moving north.

  At the height of summer a dispatch was sent to our commanders at Haarlem that the Spanish had built a fort near Gouda, five days travel south of our garrison. A decision was made to attack, and to the dismay of the burghers of Haarlem, all but a few of the English ranks there were to take part. Together we were fifteen hundred strong, infantry and cavalry combined — or that is what the muster said and the High Command was told, tho really we were no more than twelve hundred, if that. The discrepancy, result of corruption and dead pay abuses, seemed of little import as we departed in fine fettle and formation, uniforms crisp, boots spit and polished, artillery wagons rumbling importantly down the red brick avenues of Haarlem and out the ancient gates.

  Moving south we passed the great bleaching grounds with miles of “hollands” — fine white linen — spread like a stark white sea under the blazing sun. Then we traversed a thick beech forest which charged me with my first pangs of homesickness, for the broad paths and lush verdant canopy of trees, the smell of damp earth, moss and mushroom, the sound of birdsong all evoked Enfield Chase and my bittersweet childhood. Now I was in the company of men marching to war, and as we finally passed out of the familiar forest into the Hollander landscape that was so alien to my senses, I felt something in me dying, tho the death was neither painful nor terrifying. Seated on my high horse I looked back once and saw behind me the wood from which we had emerged, and slithering from it like a long snake the army of which I was a part. In that instant I was reborn a soldier.

  We were two days out when the full natural stupidity of our Captain, young Lord Holcomb, made itself known. Midday he halted our company and announced that we would now practice formations. His men, standing at attention under a scorching sun waiting for further word, watched as the nearsighted nobleman — elegant in his starched doublet of fustian faced with blue taffeta — squinted through his brass rimmed spectacles at a small volume I recognized as Leonard and Thomas Digges military textbook “Stratioticos.” I had often seen Holcomb poring over this treatise which calculated various marching and battle formations by algebra and arithmetic, and wondered if his lack of practical experience, together with the mystified expression on his face as he contemplated the passage in Digges, would spell trouble for our company.

  “All right then,” he called in his most authoritative voice which still squeaked with nervousness. “We shall execute the Ring Maneuver.” Thus with one eye at his book he led us marching in single file round and round in a series of ever diminishing circles in whose centre, to his dismay and the stifled amusement of his men, he suddenly found himself entrapt. “Back, back I say! Give me light to see my book!” he cried with irritation. Then utterly flustered he elbowed his way from the spiral of humanity and bleated petulantly, “Fall in, shoulder your arms and march on!”

  But that was not the end to our troubles. Countryfolk had left their polders, taking with them their cows and stores of grain so we were soon running out of rations — an eventuality our inept Master of Victuallers had never envisaged. Our horses were better fed than we were, and the sounds of grumbling men and growling bellies was everywhere heard.

  On the morning of the fourth day I was called before Lord Holcomb. His tent was very fine, laid with silver plate and hung with heavy rugs to keep out the morning chill, furs on his broad cot. An adjutant sat polishing the Captains sword as Holcomb and two other company leaders, Billings and Medford — both older and I hoped wiser — stood gazing down at a map of the Netherlands. Holcomb did his best to appear commanding, though I thought he looked not unlike the flustered captive of his own circular drill formation.

  “Sir,” said I snapping to attention.

  “We have need of a swift rider and a sound horse,” he said avoiding my eye to admire his fingernails which were far cleaner than my own.

  “I am that, Sir, and my horse is very fit,” I replied.

  “Our companies will proceed towards Gouda, and General Morely has promised reinforcements from the Amsterdam garrison. You will locate the rebel headquarters which we believe to be somewhere in this area.” He flicked his fingers over a section of the map which in England would comprise an entire Parish, tho I knew better than to question him further, for if he had known the location of the Dutch resistance he would have told me of it. The other two captains, for their benefit of years, proved no more knowledgeable or interested than this green lad, and so I waited.

  “You will find William Prince of Orange,” he said.

  “Sir?” I said, unable to contain my excitement.

  He continued in what seemed a tone of boredom. “You will inform him of our movements and our proposed besiegement of the Spanish fort near Gouda, and of the reinforcements from Amsterdam.”

  “And what message would you have back from him, Sir?”

  “We have no need of an answer, Private Southern. If he wishes to lend the support of his ‘army’” — Holcomb exchanged disdainful looks with his fellow officers — “he is most welcome.”

  It suddenly occurred to me that these older men, though rumored to have had good field experience, stood lower in civil rank than Holcomb, and had not yet gathered the courage of their military equality with so highborn a man, and thus let him lead.

  “Do bring us news of his position when you have found it,” Holcomb went on, “and demand to know his movements in the next months.”

  “Begging your pardon, Sir … may I demand such information from a Prince?”

  Holcomb answered me with a withering glare. “Leave immediately and do not return until you have found him. Is that clear?”

  “It is, Sir,” said I, and turning smartly on my boot heels pushed out the tent flap into the soggy morning.

  I packed lightly for my self to make room for Beautys extra food, and strapped to the sides of my saddle the two pistols issued cavalrymen. And I considered my apparel. The officers did not say, but I knew it was a dangerous mission, a lone
English soldier riding thro open country — a sitting duck for Spanish guns. So whilst I proposed to ride out wearing my companys canvas doublet and cassock, and metal helmet, I hid beneath them garb that a Dutch merchant might wear for a journey to Amsterdam.

  Before I left I sought out Hirst and Partridge in their encampment. I found Hirst busy outfitting himself for the carrying of arms that day — a tedious business indeed.

  “Where is our plump Partridge?” I inquired, jumping down from the saddle.

  “Inside still. A bloody maniac he is, with his book of cyphers.”

  “Oh, a maniac, am I?” said our friend as he carried from the tent an arquebus and an armload of equipment, setting them down on the canvas where Hirst had nearly finished his preparations.

  He turned to me and said, “Tis fascinating business, these cyphers. You have codes and symbols in place of letters of the alphabet. You have geometrical figures, like a square that means peace and a rectangle for war. Then a thing they call ‘nonsignificants’ which means a lot of nothing, but they get stuck in a dispatch to confound the enemy. And invisible writing with lemon juice is a fine device, you know. But tis not altogether safe, for anybody but a fool will know a blank piece of paper is a secret message. All you have to do is heat it over a flame and the words come …”

  “Partridge,” I interrupted, “I am altogether fascinated, but I have no time for the complete lecture just now. I’m off.”

  “Off?” said Hirst looking up. “You say it like this is somewhere other than where we are off to.”

  “That is what I am saying, lads.”

  “Where then?” demanded Partridge.

  I punched him medium hard in the shoulder before mounting up again. “You should know better than to ask such a question, cypherer. But tis an adventure to be sure.”

  “Well, best not get yourself shot up just yet,” said Hirst. “The war is just beginning.”

  “God speed,” added Partridge, and I was off.

  On first sight of the Dutch resistance headquarters my heart did sink. Twas pitifully small, maybe five hundred men altogether, the tents in tatters, the soldiers likewise, some with rags bound on their feet for boots. I could see the woeful dearth of heavy cannon. And the carts which carried them — wheels sunk to their axles in mud — might fall to pieces with the slightest jolt.