The Sea Beggars

by Holland, Cecelia;

  He found a groom to take his horse, and leaving his retainers to keep out of the way of all this hubbub he went into the palace in search of his friend the Prince of Orange.

  Orange was in his living quarters, on the second story of the south wing, overseeing the removal from the walls of the mirrors and paintings and their packing into crates. When he saw Count Horn, he smiled and held out his hand in greeting, but his face remained grave as ever behind the courtly mask.

  “My dear friend.” Horn came to his side, his gaze surveying the clutter of packing and goods that took up all the space in the room. The carpets were rolled up and tied fast, and even the ornate fastenings on the windows were coming down. “Are you moving to another palace?”

  That seemed impossible. The Palais de Nassau had been the seat of the Princes of Orange for their last several manifestations; no finer house stood in the Low Countries.

  Orange still wore his smile, but his dark eyes were hooded and morose. “I am moving my household to Germany, my friend,” he said.

  “To Germany! Whatever for?”

  “This past week I have had news that the Duke of Alva is leading the Spanish armies in Italy north, to take them through the Alps and bring them here. I do not mean to be within his reach when he arrives.”

  Horn stared at him, his lips parted. With a shake he brought himself out of his astonishment, laughed, and plucking at the snowy masses of lace at his throat adjusted his enormously expensive coat. “You must be joking, my lord. You’d abandon the field to the enemy before he even appears? After your brilliant success at Antwerp?”

  Orange had lost his smile. He watched Horn with an impassive face, cocked his hand to a servant standing nearby, and said, “I beg your pardon, my dear Count. I have been unforgivably rude—will you join me for a glass of wine?” A nod to the servant sent him hurrying off.

  When they had gone out onto a little balcony, where the sun shone warmly and the evidence of the Prince’s activity was gone from view, Horn relaxed. He felt now that this would make a splendid joke—the Prince’s loss of nerve at the mere mention of the name of the Duke of Alva. In spite of the disruption of his household, Orange’s staff was still perfect in his service; within moments the servant brought a flagon of a very fine pale Moselle wine, and another servant presented Horn with a tray of sweets and fruits for his selection.

  “You will be the laughingstock of Brussels, you know,” said Horn, lifting a candied lime to his mouth. “And after all the expense and bother of moving everything out, you’ll only have to move it all back in again, when the season starts. I hope you don’t break that mirror from your salon; you’ll never find another as handsome.”

  “If you want my advice, you’ll leave as well,” said Orange.

  He sat, not on the embroidered cushion of the chair to Horn’s left, but on its carved wooden arm; he looked very restless.

  Horn laughed. “I am not afraid of Alva.”

  Orange said nothing.

  “We are in control here,” said the count. He leaned forward over the silver tray of sweets, his fingers poised, searching out another candied lime. “The Governess had to rely on you to help quell the iconoclasts, did she not? The country is restored to order—”

  “There are many who call me traitor now on both sides,” said Orange. “The Governess hates and fears me the more because of my work in Antwerp, and the Calvinists hate me for refusing to shelter their army there.”

  “That will pass.” Horn licked sugar from his fingertips. “Alva is a barbarian. The Netherlands is a civilized place.”

  “Alva is not a barbarian,” Orange said sharply. “I know him far better than you do, and he is as subtle and keen witted a man as there is in Europe. Let me tell you something. Years ago, when the Emperor was still alive, he sent me and two others to France, after the conclusion of the treaty between him and Henri the Second, to secure the provisions of the treaty.” Orange picked up the wine flask and filled his friend’s cup. “One day I found myself in the company of Monsieur le Roi de France in a wood at Chantilly, where he was enjoying a picnic supper, and Monsieur le Roi turned to me and began talking about ‘our common plan.’ I knew nothing of this plan, but I held my tongue and listened, to know more. Soon it became clear that those who knew me better than Monsieur le Roi had kept the Common Plan from me, because they knew I had no heart for slaughter and persecution, and this plan was for the slaughter and persecution of every heretic in Europe. Beginning with the Low Countries.”

  Horn licked his lips. The taste of the lime still clung to his mouth. But Henri II was dead, he reminded himself, and so was the Emperor.

  “I sat there in the wood in Chantilly,” said the Prince, “and listened to him speak of killing his own subjects—some by the sword, some by the rope, and by fire—as if he talked of treading on locusts who devoured his fields, or pulling up weeds in his garden. He thought I knew of every detail. He thought so because one of the other hostages was a chief framer of the Common Plan, and had been sent to France especially to acquire Monsieur le Roi’s support for it.”

  He leaned forward, his dark, hooded eyes sharp. “That hostage was the Duke of Alva.”

  Horn pressed his lips together. For a moment he entertained a high hot anger at the Prince of Orange for this overdramatic speech, for trying to frighten him.

  “He is coming here to destroy heresy in the Low Countries,” said the Prince. “The Beggars have given him the excuse, and into the bargain they have quenched all sympathy they could have enjoyed with the Catholics.”

  “All the more reason to stay,” Horn said, in a full courageous voice. “To stay and fight.”

  “To stay and be wiped out.”

  “What can he do to us? He can hang a few peasants, but we are the greatest men of the Provinces, my dear Prince—we are Knights of the Golden Fleece, stadtholders, counts, and princes—he cannot touch us.”

  As he spoke Horn relaxed, reassured. He drew a deep breath, happy with himself.

  “I hope you are right, sir,” said Orange.

  “Of course I am right.” Horn finished his wine and set down his cup. “However, if you’re leaving—I don’t suppose you would sell me that mirror? You’ll break it certainly, hauling it off to Germany.”

  The Prince of Orange laughed. “It’s yours,” he said. “I’ll send it to your palace this afternoon.”

  “A noble gesture. When you return, you shall have it back.”

  “Only see that it is not broken in my absence, Count.”

  “Be sure of it,” said Count Horn, pleased.

  The Prince of Orange intended to make his departure from the Low Countries covertly, and so he returned to Antwerp for a while, after he had sent all his possessions to Germany from Brussels. But a few days after he reached Antwerp he gathered up his servants and his retainers and rode off to the gate of the city.

  The people in the streets knew him at once; everyone in Antwerp knew him, from his work during the iconoclasm and his rule since then, and they loved him. A small crowd followed him as he rode through the city toward the gate. A boy ran up beside his horse, calling, “Where are you going? Oh, where are you going?”

  “To Dillenburg,” said the Prince, in breezy fashion. “For the hunting. I am only going to Dillenburg, friends—no cause for alarm.”

  The boy would not be put off; he ran alongside him, still crying out, “Where are you going? Oh, where are you going?” And the crowd grew larger that followed along after him.

  He smiled at them; he tried to reassure them, but his smile was tight and forced, and as if he gave off an aura of uneasiness and tension the crowd, swelling in numbers with every step, grew more distressed. They pressed after him to the gate.

  “Oh, where are you going?”

  “Goodbye,” the Prince said, and turned and waved to them. “I shall come back soon—have no fear.” He smiled at them; he rode out the gate, still smiling, but many saw the sweat that stood on his brow, and many saw the smile st
iff as a grimace, like the rictus of death.

  Don Fernando Alvarez De Toledo, Duke of Alva, gathered under his banner the three tercios of the Spanish soldiery stationed in Italy and marched them north through the Alpine passes. In slow orderly progress, he led these thousands of men, beneath their banners of the Virgin and the saints, from the Catholic south to the reformed north of Europe, and from the rocky heaths of Scotland to the swampy Polish plain, the Protestant Christians tensed like bowstrings. Alva knew the effect of his march, and being a patient man he was content with that for now and kept his troops in good order and made no trouble on the way.

  Tall, with hair and beard gone white in the service of his King and his God, he rode usually near the head of his columns. He knew everything that happened in the army and he gave every general order himself. His son was one of his officers, but Alva treated Don Federico de Alvarez no differently from any other Spanish soldier; he expected absolute discipline and unfaltering courage from everyone he commanded, the same discipline and courage he demanded of himself.

  In the spring of the year he led his army into the Low Countries.

  As he marched toward Brussels, he studied the terrain. His confidence fed on what he saw. He had been here before, and it was easily understood, this countryside—flat and low, the plain swept toward the North Sea without a barrier more formidable than an occasional wood. The roads were excellent, but the canals were a real marvel, connecting every part of the Provinces. On this flat and open game board stood the major pieces of the opposition, the great cities, divided within into hostile classes, jealous one city of another, intensely competitive.

  The game was almost too easy. Alva entered Brussels without opposition, without even a stir of alarm among the people who lined the streets to watch. He found that nearly all his immediate enemies were waiting, within easy grasp, for him to make the first move. And Alva moved.

  At breakfast, Mies said the prayer as usual, and they all sat down at the table, and the maidservant brought in the hot dishes. Hanneke spread her napkin on her knees, her hands quick with impatience. She had talked her mother into making a rare excursion out to the market today and she wanted to leave before the older woman changed her mind. She watched her father serve himself the broiled fish, wondering if he deliberately loitered over the choice and the removal of the crusty brown filets to his plate.

  He laid the fish knife down along the platter’s edge. Sitting back so that the maidservant could take the plate away to Hanneke’s mother, he raised his eyes to her brother, across the table.

  “You are coming with me today on my shop rounds.”

  Hanneke lifted her head, startled. Mies’ rule of silence at mealtimes was almost never broken. Usually he had settled with Jan what he was to do the night before.

  Jan was bent over his plate. When he raised his head his eyes were dark with temper.

  He said, “I have other plans.”

  “Jan, dear,” his mother said, in soft reproof. She turned to the fish.

  “You are coming with me,” said Mies, in a tone that meant to shut down all objection.

  Jan said, “I see no reason to obey someone who betrayed his God and his God’s faithful—”

  There was a thunderous pounding on the front door of the house.

  “—and who puts profit and goods ahead of truth and justice!”

  Father and son glared at each other across the table. Hanneke gripped her napkin in her lap, her heart pounding. This could not be happening; as well shout God down from the sky as challenge a father over his own table. But it was. The pounding on the door went on, but it seemed to be taking place in another world, unimportant.

  Mies said, “I shall accept no more of this insolence. You are coming with me, or I shall resort to such punishments as are suitable for the misdemeanors of a child.”

  “When you betrayed our faith and our people, you lost your power over me, Mijnheer van Cleef.”

  The front door burst open. Now Mies turned his head, blinking; all the family sat up stiff in their chairs to goggle at the strange men who tramped into their dining room.

  They wore iron shirts and carried muskets. Soldiers. Hanneke’s mouth fell open, and her mother screamed. Mies thrust back his chair. Standing, he strode around the table to the obvious leader of these men, a neatly bearded officer in a black coat.

  “What do you mean by this trespass? Who are you?”

  “You are Mies van Cleef,” the officer said, unruffled. His accent was strange; he spoke in French. He smiled a meaningless pleasant smile at Jan, staring at him from across the table. “You are under arrest.”

  Mies stood still where he was, but he swayed, as if a strong wind shook him, and his face went white. Hanneke’s teeth caught her lower lip. When the soldiers closed around her father, she said, “No.”

  “You can’t take him now,” her mother said. “He hasn’t finished his breakfast.”

  Jan passed behind her chair so violently he knocked her forward into the table; he set himself at the men around his father. Mies shouted. In a wild confusion, the soldiers, their prisoner, and Jan all whirled together in a milling of arms and the soldiers’ long guns. There was a sharp thud and Jan fell to the floor.

  The officer looked amused. His men folded around Mies and walked him out the door, and the officer turned to Hanneke and her mother.

  “This house is forfeit to the Crown. You have until noon to get out.” He jabbed his thumb at Jan. “We will come for him next.” He went out after his men.

  Hanneke shot up out of her place and ran around the table to her brother, groaning on the floor. A glance showed her he was well enough. Her mother sat motionless at the table, staring at Mies’ empty chair. “Where have they taken him? When will he be home again?” Hanneke went out the door to the front sitting room.

  The furniture here was all draped against the dust; the room was used only on feast days. At the window the maidservant and the cook were pressed to the glass looking into the street. Hanneke forced a way in between them.

  Out there the soldiers were pushing Mies into a line of other men, each with his hands manacled behind his back and a halter around his neck linking him to the man in front of him. Other soldiers with pikes and helmets stood around them. The men who had taken Mies pulled his hands behind him and fastened him up to the last man in the line. Hanneke bit her lip. He looked dazed, her father, unready and helpless. His breakfast not even eaten. Among the other men in line, she saw faces she recognized. Near the front of the line was Albert van Luys, the preacher.

  At a gesture from the officer, a man with a hammer strode up to the door of the van Cleef house, took a roll of paper from beneath his arm, and tacked a notice to the door. The officer barked an order. The column of prisoners marched away, soldiers on either side and coming after. The man with the hammer hurried after them, breaking into a run to catch up. She thought Mies turned his head to look back, but the dust of so many feet made it hard to see; within minutes he was gone from sight.

  The day was overcast and cold. Jan shivered without his jacket. At the tower by the river where his father had been taken, he found a crowd of people fidgeting and pacing around, trying to find out what had happened to their own relatives, who had been marched off as peremptorily as Mies. There seemed to be no one who could give them any answers.

  The tower gates were locked and barred and the windows were shuttered. People stood before the doors hammering on them with their fists and shouting. Other people talked in little groups. Jan walked through the crowd, his shoulders hunched, the cold driving him on. He wondered if this had befallen him for his impiety—if God had heard his defiance of his father and with the suddenness of a thunderclap had taken Mies away to punish him. The tower was made of grim gray stone, several stories high. He imagined scaling a rope to one of the narrow windows at the top and bearing Mies away on his back.

  “They’ve taken every important man in Antwerp,” an old woman was saying, near the gate. “
Even some of the Catholics.”

  “They can’t do this; it’s against the law.” A man in black came up to Jan and spoke earnestly to him, as if they knew one another well. “They can’t do this; they must all be released at once.”

  A clump of men stood opposite the main gate of the tower; their heads together, they were planning something, with many calculating glances at the prison, and Jan went over to join them. They let him without hesitation into their midst.

  “We’ll need weapons.” The big bearded man at the center spoke to all of them, his eyes shifting from face to face. Jan knew him, a brewer from the German quarter. “Rakes, clubs, knives, anything. And something heavy to break down the door with.”

  The man beside Jan turned to him and said, “They can’t do this. We are right to free our people, who are false prisoners.”

  From behind the tower a trumpet blew. All the men wheeled.

  A column of pikemen was trotting up the gentle slope from the river. The sun, just breaking through the dense dark clouds, caught on a helmet here and there and on the long leaf-shaped blades of their pikes. Uncertain, the people around the tower waited and watched them approach. Jan flexed his hands. His mouth was dry. He wished he had a sword, a stick, any sort of weapon. The Spanish pikemen reached the tower, swung their long lances down, and charged into the crowd.

  Women screamed; all around the tower, people turned and struggled to get out of the way of the blades. Jan let out a bellow of rage. Whatever these soldiers were, they were cowards, attacking unarmed men and women. Spreading apart his bare hands, he rushed forward at the pikemen, determined to grab one of their weapons and use it on them.

  Shrieking, a woman blundered into him, her hands raised to shield herself; he slipped by her and planted his feet. The line of soldiers swept toward him like an ocean wave, close packed, their pikes laid down horizontal in a moving fence of blades. There was no way past them, no way to take one at a time. They spitted a young man to Jan’s left and threw him down to the ground and while he screamed trampled over him. Jan thrust his hands out, his breath coming fast, in whines. The wall of blades swung toward him. Blood dripped from the points. He backed up, stumbled, fell, and rolled frantically away.