The Sea Beggars

by Holland, Cecelia;

  Their faces were blank. They were thinking about it. Still no one had walked out. He leaned forward, ready with his most weighty argument.

  “Destruction it will be, if Antwerp should rise as other cities are rising. Heavy blows will call forth heavier yet, from the Spanish monarchy—and they say that even now the King has ordered the tercios of Italy to prepare to march north under the leadership of the Duke of Alva.”

  “Alva.”

  That name struck them. They straightened, their faces tight with new apprehension. Mies van Cleef uncrossed his legs. Did he see his only son battling with sticks and stones against the greatest warrior in Christendom?

  “Will you help me?” said the Prince of Orange.

  “I will,” said Mies van Cleef, and rose, the first of all, and came forward to shake the Prince’s hand.

  Dressed like a doll in glittering clothes, a jeweled crown on her head, the little black image of the Virgin rode in her car at the head of the Assumption Day procession down the crowded streets of Antwerp. Hanneke watched her from the steps of the Guildhall, where standing higher than the people before her she could see over their heads. She had never seen the famous Antwerp Virgin before. It was smaller than she had supposed. Why was it black? Very old, it was, and silly in its fancy clothes. Priests pulled the car along, and other priests scattered incense before and after it. Troops of boys in white, with candles, sang in the car’s wake. After them came scores of common people, praying, scourging themselves, some walking on their hands and knees, doing penance for their sins.

  Hanneke bit her lip. Something in this reached even into her Calvinist heart, some ancient longing. The crowd before her stirred; the image was passing directly before them now.

  “Mollykin, Mollykin,” someone called, in Dutch. “You are taking your last walk.”

  Laughter in the crowd. The priests ignored it, hauling the car along with ropes over their shoulders. It seemed heavy, although the figure itself was no bigger than a baby and even the jeweled clothes could not weigh so much. Now the singing boys were going by, their candles held upright before them. Too young for discipline, they slid their gazes toward the crowd and some hurried their pace, running into the ones ahead of them. Frightened.

  Now here came the penitents, and these suffered much for their faith. The crowd pelted them with rotten fruit and clods of earth and shouted curses and jibes at them. Hanneke slipped down from her vantage point and went away.

  She had to be back at once, before she was discovered gone. Yet she longed to stay out here in the city. The excitement in the crowd charged her with vitality. Something great was happening here, an undercurrent of passion, of rising intensity, that she felt along all her nerves, a giddy expectation. As she went through the streets she looked curiously at the faces she passed. Into the shops and doorways. There seemed many more people than usual out in the street. She stopped on a corner, to look around her, and a boy thrust a broadside into her hand.

  “I have no money—”

  He was already running off. She looked down at the long heavy sheet of paper.

  WAR! the top row of print read. WAR! WAR! WAR!

  That raised every hair on her head stiff as wire. Her gaze flew down the page.

  There was an army coming—two armies. A swarm of Beggars out of the west country was hurrying toward Antwerp; an army of Catholics pursued them, much outnumbering them. Her heart galloped. Folding the broadside into quarters, she stuffed it under her apron sash and went on through the streets to her home.

  “Lackey!” Jan shouted. “Traitor! Spaniard!”

  Mies clenched his teeth; he fought the urge to strike at his son’s red contorted face. “Sit down. You’ll hurt your leg.”

  “My leg is perfectly well!” To prove it Jan walked in a little circle around the room. “How could you do this, Father? The fate of the whole world hangs in the balance—”

  “The fate of the world,” Mies said heavily, and sat down in his chair. He leaned on the arm, looking around him at the shelves of books, and wondered again where Hanneke was. Always she was here when he came back, like a piece of the furniture, waiting for him. His son stormed across the room to face him again.

  “The time has come to choose, Father—to choose between God and truth and all the evils of the past. You can’t just say it’s too dangerous. You can’t really mean to put the factories and the piles of cloth and the money before God.”

  Mies shifted in the chair, his fingers tight around the ridged wooden arm, his gaze not meeting Jan’s. He said, “I see no sign that God is asking such a choice of me.” Mercilessly he refused to hear the inner voice that whispered Jan was right.

  “Jan!” His wife appeared in the doorway. “My dear husband. What is this unseemly shouting? I am sure you can be heard even in the street.”

  “Where is Hanneke?” Mies asked her.

  “God is calling us,” Jan said, bending forward, his hands curling before him into fists, “to join the army of Christ. If we turn our backs now—”

  “Jan,” his mother said. “You must not speak to your father in that tone.”

  “He’s a traitor!” Jan roared, and stalked away across the room. Indeed his leg seemed much sounder, although he still limped.

  Mies said, “We must preserve Antwerp. Thousands of people depend on us—” Hollow these arguments, meaningless even to him; the only meaningful one the one he could hardly find expression for: his abhorrence of disorder, his vision of the world dissolving into chaos in the acids of hatred and intolerance. Downstairs the door to the street opened and shut.

  “You should be in bed,” his wife was saying reproachfully to her son. “Your leg is still so sore and swollen—”

  “Mama, I’m fine,” the boy bellowed, and wheeled on Mies again, his eyes shining, his cheeks streaked with tears. “You will not join us? You will not answer God’s call?”

  “God’s call,” Mies said, “is for harmony and peace. Not for—”

  “Spaniard!” Jan jerked back his head and flung it forward, and through his pursed lips flew a gout of spit that sailed across the space between them and struck Mies on the cheek.

  His mother screamed. Mies gripped the arm of his chair, stiff with rage, his ears roaring, his mind at a white boil. Before him stood his son, weeping.

  “Father!” Hanneke rushed into the room and sank down beside his chair. “How dare you?” she shouted at Jan.

  “Do you know what he’s done?” Jan said to her. “He’s joined the Spaniards! He’s taking arms against God—fallen in with the Prince of Orange and the Governess, the tools of this world—”

  Mies sprang up from his chair, swiped at his cheek, and shouted, “Go! Get out—get away from me, you Godless impious wretched son, you ungrateful devil!”

  “You’ve made your choice, Father.” Jan walked toward the door.

  His mother threw herself on him, seized his arm, crying, “Wait! Wait!”

  “Let go of him,” Mies shouted. “You saw what he did—how he treats his own father. Let him go, Griet!”

  Jan was struggling to reach the door; his mother clung to him with all her strength, and he had to drag her weight along with him. Hanneke caught Mies’ hand and pressed it to her cheek.

  “Father, please—where will he go? Father, please.”

  Mies lowered his suspicious gaze to her. “Where were you?”

  “I—”

  She lost her breath, but in the red flames that suddenly kindled in her cheeks, in her lowered eyes, he saw what he dreaded to see, that she too disobeyed him, that she too broke from the order of the household and did what must not be done. He thrust her away.

  “God is coming,” he said. He went to the window, to the light and air, his back to his family. “And He will find impious sons and bold unruly daughters, and all system fallen away.” He put his trembling hands on the windowsill and leaned his weight on them. Unaccountably his own eyes burned with tears. He shifted his body, finding himself fearful of resti
ng on the window frame, as if weakened by the weakness of its inhabitants the house itself would not hold up its master’s weight. Behind him a door slammed. His wife burst into uncontrollable weeping. His daughter sank into a chair and began to pray.

  In Antwerp all normal life stopped. The Prince of Orange and his recruits patrolled the streets, hoping to keep order by their presence and example, but in the crackling heat of an August night, with phantom armies approaching on every wind of rumor and the wretched poor turned out idle on every corner, a mob of folk shouting that Christ was coming burst into the great cathedral and tore the holy images from the walls, broke the altar, chopped open the shrine of the Virgin with an ax, and hacked the little black doll to pieces. They stole her precious clothes and the outfittings of the altar and tried to set fire to the cathedral itself, although the massive building withstood the feeble torches without a lasting mark. Then the mob ran through the streets of the city, shouting their visions of the coming of Christ and throwing pieces of the broken icons into Catholic gardens, and went to attack a monastery next.

  The Prince got there first, with a few of his helpers, and they stood between the screaming Calvinists and the monks huddling and praying in the chapel, and by calm words and the power of command the Prince got the crowd going elsewhere.

  Among those who stood beside him that night was Mies van Cleef, the cloth merchant, who searched the crowd with his eyes and yet seemed afraid of seeing something there.

  That night passed, and the next, and the next, with no more incidents, although sometimes in the night huge crowds gathered, some Calvinist, some Catholic, and prayed and heard preaching and made loud talk in the streets. Everyone knew an army was marching toward Antwerp, the Beggar army, with a horde of harassing and tormenting Catholics at its back.

  On the day when the Beggar army first came in sight of the city walls a mass of Calvinists gathered at the gate, all armed with pitchforks and clubs and pieces of stone torn up from the street pavings, prepared to go out and join them. The Prince went to put himself between them and the gate and ordered them home.

  “You must not leave the city,” he shouted, trying to lift his voice above their clamorings. “You’ll be destroyed. The Governess’s army is twice as many as the Beggars and you combined. They are mounted, heavily armed, well led; the Beggars are a rabble. Stay here—do not destroy yourselves.”

  Then came what he most dreaded, a messenger from the Beggars, asking him to open the gates of Antwerp to them, to give them refuge. From atop the wall beside the gate, the Prince of Orange looked down at the exhausted messenger, riding bareback on a farm horse, and told him no.

  “You must let us in,” the messenger called, in a voice flat with fatigue and hopelessness. “They are eating us alive. We need shelter—food—we’ve come so far—”

  “I cannot give Antwerp to you,” said the Prince. “We must preserve something of our country in the face of this madness.”

  “You are our only hope.”

  “Then you have no hope. Go; I cannot help you. None here can help you, but only Christ our Lord. Go, before you are pinned against these walls and slaughtered.”

  “Go where?” the messenger cried.

  “Go home.”

  “We have no home.” The messenger reined his limping plow horse away and rode off down the slope.

  At that a wail went up from the Calvinists packed into the street inside the gate, and they lunged forward, broke the gate, and spilled out onto the road and the green slopes along the road, rushing to join the Beggars. The Prince seized the nearest horse and galloped through their midst to their head.

  “Stop—go back—you’ll be slaughtered!”

  Alone, he put himself between them and the Beggar army, now creeping into view along the rounded horizon, and seeing him the mob slowed and stopped.

  “Go back.” He spread his arms, as if he could herd them all back into the city. “Go back—don’t give the Governess’s army the excuse to attack Antwerp.”

  Someone bolted forward from the mob, trying to rush past him, and he swung his horse to block the man’s way. “Go back—please—I beg of you.”

  The man struck clumsily up at the elegant figure on the horse that stopped his progress. The Prince warded off the blows with his arms. “Go back—go back—please—I implore you.”

  At that a sigh went up from the mob, when they saw him shielding himself from the blows of the Calvinist, not fighting back, not striking down his attacker, and pleading for his attacker’s own safety; they even found the power to raise a cheer for him, and turning they made their way back into the city.

  A few stole away, hanging back from the fringes of the mob. Most of them returned to Antwerp; the great gates closed, and the bar went across them, and the city shut itself to the Beggars. And after that there was no more trouble.

  Jan gripped a pole in both hands, his breath coming harsh and short between his teeth; his eyes were itching with dust. Far down the plain the Beggar army was streaming into view over the horizon. He straightened, prepared to be overcome by the majesty of their appearance—ready to see God’s angels in the sky above them. His skin tingled, and his blood thrashed in his veins; at any moment, he knew, something great would happen.

  Nothing happened. Far off over the plain the Beggars were running along the road and over the meadows beside it. They kept no order; they wore no armor or insignia. No banners flew over them. No angelic light shone around them. Hesitantly he started forward through the knee-high grass, clutching his weapon, his injured leg throbbing painfully with each step.

  A trumpet sounded, far away. He wheeled. This was the beginning, at last, the horns of God blasting on the plain of Armageddon. Now he could see horses galloping up over the rolling land. He called out, raising one arm straight over his head, and ran forward to meet them.

  A few strides later he stopped in his tracks.

  The horsemen were riding down the Beggar rabble. Not joining them. Not supporting them. Tiny in the distance, they hacked with their swords at the fleeing backs of the army of God. They were the royalists, then, the Catholics, and they were killing with impunity.

  Jan let out a low cry. He broke into a run again, headed toward the nearest group of the Beggar army. His leg gave way and toppled him into the grass, and he rose and went on, sobbing for breath, his vision yellowed by the dust that rolled in clouds under the feet of the Beggars and their killers.

  Ahead of them a hundred Calvinists were rushing along the road, but the royalist horsemen were rapidly overtaking them. He was too far away to help. Too far away even to die with them. He stumbled over something in the grass and went to his hands and knees, and turning to see what he had fallen over found a body on the ground.

  He lunged up onto his feet and raced on, but they were drawing away from him. The enemy horsemen, striking and wheeling, rode on faster than he could run. He passed a man in tatters who writhed and gasped on his back in the slimy grass. Out of breath, his lungs choked with dust, Jan slowed to a walk and then stopped, his gaze on the horsemen, still small in the distance.

  They were riding off; their trumpets blared again, a tinny little spangle of noise in the silent afternoon. Gradually he heard the other sounds around him, the whisper of the wind in the grass, the twittering of insects, the croaking of the day birds. A butterfly flapped by him. Slowly he turned and spread his attention around him. He was surrounded by a lot of men, dead or dying, scattered in the grass. No army. No angels, no glory of God, only a litter of bloody meat in the August sunshine. He moaned; a noise he had never heard before and did not mean to make rolled up from his belly and leaked out between his lips. He thought what he saw should burn his eyes out. That would be better. That would mean something. Slowly he dragged his feet back to Antwerp.

  “Oh, Who cares?” Jan said. He flung his hand out, loose muscled, flopping his arm down on his knee. “It’s all a damned lie anyway, Hanneke.” He folded his other arm over his face.

 
His sister backed away from him, to the door of his room; she wondered what had happened to him outside the walls of the city. Since he had come back he had said nothing. She went out the door to the corridor.

  The housemaid was singing in the room opposite. The warm odors of dinner drifted through the house. Slowly Hanneke went down the stairs to the second floor.

  Through the open door to her parents’ room, she could see her mother, sitting on the tall canopied bed, combing her hair. Her mother smiled at her brightly, like a child, the long brown rope of her hair hanging over her shoulder. Hanneke went on to the sitting room, looking for her father.

  Mies was there, in the old chair by the fire. Slumped down into his seat, he did not move when she came in, or look up, or speak to her. She stood a moment waiting for him to notice her. His face was slack and dull as a drunkard’s. Aghast, she wondered if he were drunk. He never said a word to her; if he saw her there, he ignored her utterly. She could not think what to say to him. And what if he were drunk? She went down the room to the window.

  Night was falling. The sinking sun cast its light against the tall front of van der Heghe’s house across the street, gilding the windows. Hanneke looked by habit for the storks in their nest on the chimney.

  She gasped. The birds were gone. The nest was knocked halfway off the chimney top. Bits of stick and straw littered the roof line. She turned toward her father, to share this evil, but he was staring into the fire, inaccessible. She looked out again at the house opposite, wondering what had happened—where the birds had gone. It was too early for them to have flown away south. Africa, she had heard, that was where they went for the winter. The name sounded in her mind like a meaningless incantation, a curse in another language. Suddenly she was fighting back tears. She turned blindly to the bookshelf, to find something to read, to forget herself in.

  2

  When Count Horn rode in through the gate of the Palais de Nassau in Brussels, he could scarcely penetrate the courtyard, which was filled with heavy ox-drawn wagons and servants rushing between them and the palace doors. The servants, he noticed, were loading goods from the palace into the wagons, rather than the other way around, the usual order of things. The place looked as if it were being looted.