This would bring Alva on him, eventually. He shook to think of that—of what would happen to his little boy, alone and cast out, as Hanneke van Cleef was cast out. Yet he could not forgo it; he owed this to the people who had died already, Mies and the others, the hundreds of others. Even if no one read, if no one heeded, yet he had to go on shouting at them: Fight!
He gave the sheet to his son, to hang up to dry, and picked up a clean piece of paper. The smell of the fresh ink as always gave him courage. At least he was doing something. He laid the field of white across the tympan and pushed it down firmly onto the pins.
6
“Haw! Haw!”
The oxen lowed, under the whip; with a squeal of bare axles, the wagon lurched up over the rutted road and jounced down again. The carter stood up on his seat and plied his whip furiously. The oxen were tired, and the road ruined by the unseasonable rains, and the oxen lowed again, protesting.
The Prince of Orange swore under his breath. He looked up into the sky; there was perhaps an hour of sunlight left, and his army still was strung out along the approaches to the ford in spite of his orders. The columns would not march in tight rows. Their disarray had them dangerously spread out over the rough hillside on the German bank of the river. He spurred his horse into a gallop across the road ahead of the oxen and up the hillock beyond, to get a broad overlook of the whole business.
What he saw made him swear again. He had hired mercenaries by the lot, veterans of the French civil wars, and probably he had been too eager for numbers and not keen enough for quality. Half of these men sauntered along in no order at all, swinging their pikes, stopping where they would to talk or rest or drink from their belt flasks. The supply train clogged the main road. The soldiers milled around behind it, and at one wagon they had even gotten into the supplies of food and were sitting up there eating the bread intended for their dinners once they reached the Low Countries.
“William!”
Straight and handsome on his dapple gray horse, Orange’s brother Louis cantered up and saluted him. “What do you think? Over there’s the best campground.” He pointed across the river, at the smooth green hollow of the meadow beyond the ford.
“If we can get to it,” said the Prince. “Here. You go down there and get those men off the wagon. Lead them up to the river’s edge and wait. I’m going down to see the ford. We have to cross the wagons first and we may need to use the men to do it.”
Louis wheeled his horse and galloped down across the slope; he rode boldly, if not elegantly, and all the men loved him; as he passed, they cheered him. He raised one arm in answer. William smiled, pleased with his brother, and trotted away down to the river.
Swollen by the recent rains, it ran full to the high bank, the water muddy and swift, and on the far side it overflowed the bank and stood among the reeds and grass of the low ground. The Prince sharpened his eyes for a long look across at the campground. Its green allure might be deceptive. Perhaps it was marshy too. He pressed his horse around toward the wagon train.
Now the vanguard of his disorganized army was meeting the river’s edge. For nearly a quarter of a mile on either side, the few horsemen let their mounts drink, and the soldiers were sitting down on the bank and dipping their hands and faces into the rushing water. The heavy ox-drawn wagons were still lumbering along the road, and would be over half an hour getting here. The Prince looked fretfully at the sky again, where the sunlight was already waning, and returned his glance to the river. He did not want to cross that rushing water in the dark.
With a wave to the wagons to stay where they were, he turned his horse and rode into the river. The water was deeper than he expected. His horse stiffened and tried to back off but he spurred it forward and after a few steps the horse put its head down and splashed across.
The water surged up to its belly. The Prince lifted his feet, mindful of his freshly polished boots, and the horse snorted and plunged through the deep. The current struck it. Its hoofs slipped, and it spun around to keep from falling. The Prince caught his saddle with his free hand. If he fell off his horse in front of his whole army he would hear about it all his life. The horse recovered, its ears pinned back, and bolted for the far shore.
Shaking and snorting, it trotted up through the marshy flooded bank. The Prince tapped it with his spurs, and it set off at a rocking canter across the green meadowland. The edge of the meadow was damp, but as the ground climbed away from the river, it dried out: a good place to camp. Near the center of the meadow, he turned to go back.
“No! Damn it!”
All along the river, without orders, without discipline, his army was crossing after him. The first of the wagons was plunging into the swollen current where he had just nearly lost his seat. He galloped back toward them, shouting to them to stop.
They ignored him. The foot soldiers were wading out into the brown water, using their pikes for props. One or two of the horsemen had reached the center of the stream, and even as he watched one rider lost control of his horse and fell with a splash into the river.
“Go back—” On the far bank, Louis was galloping up, to stop the wagons, but two of them had already rolled out into the ford. The oxen bellowed. Perched on the high seat of the first wagon, the driver rolled his whip out across the sky and shouted curses. The wagon lurched. The lead ox went down to its knees, dragging the other with it, and the wagon floated up off its wheels and swung around downstream on the surging river.
A wail went up from the army. Louis was charging to and fro, through the low brush and trees along the bank, turning back the men at the edge of the river, but too many had already gone into the water. The wagon was floating off downstream, dragging the panicked oxen after it. The driver looked around once, threw his whip to the left, and dove off to the right. The submerged wheels of the wagon hit the bottom, the current pushed the upstream side high into the air, and the whole wagon tipped over, spilling barrels and bundles of camp supplies into the water.
The Prince rushed his horse into the river, headed downstream of the wreck, where half a hundred men were struggling in the stream. “Seize hands,” he shouted. “Make a line across the current—we can save some of it—”
Some of the men heard him; in the center of the stream a barrier of linked arms and bodies formed, chest-deep in the forceful rushing current. Others ignored him. They scrambled for the shore, wailing and cursing as they went. He forced his mount over the slippery river bottom toward the line of men who were obeying him. His horse lost its footing and fell, and he clung to the saddle with hands and legs, his breeches soaked, the river banging his back. The sky wheeled madly over him. Abruptly the horse lurched back onto its feet again. He swung it around, forcing it back toward the men in the center of the river.
The goods spilled from the tipped wagon were floating downriver, kegs and folded tents, and even a cooking pot bobbing on the current. He reached the line of men just as the first of the goods reached them. Leaning out from his saddle, he caught an outstretched hand, and a barrel struck the man he was holding and tore him out of the grip of the Prince and drove him under the water.
The others screamed. Breaking their cordon, they fought and struggled with the river, trying to reach the safety of the land. The Prince shouted at them but they heard nothing. Another barrel smashed into a man wading waist-deep in the water and carried him off into the center of the river.
The Prince’s horse neighed. Thrashing the water, it bolted for the bank, and the Prince made no effort to stop it; there was nothing more to be done anyhow. Ahead of him the last of the soldiers were dragging themselves up the bank, and the goods lost from the wagon were floating swiftly away out of sight down the river. He rode up after his men to the dry land.
Louis came up to him. “Are you all right?”
The Prince took the napkin he held out and wiped his face. “God’s bones. What a disaster.” He looked upstream, at the disorder of his army, scattered all over the low brushy hillsides; som
e had already begun to make their own camps here. On this bank near him two or three men lay exhausted and soaked on the ground, gasping for breath. The second wagon to enter the river was stuck halfway into the ford. The Prince shook his head, low spirited. If this was a harbinger of the whole campaign, God was about to try them all very sorely. He gave the dirty linen back to his brother and rode up to help haul the stranded wagon back to land.
Neat as a housewife’s sewing box, the Spanish camp covered the lower slope of the hill, its fires in rows, its tents in circles around the fires, its men fed and at their work, some standing sentry duty, some cleaning their weapons, some already asleep. The Duke of Alva rode down between two rows of the fires, looking over the camp. Beside him his son, Don Federico, waited for his father’s comments. The night had not quite fallen, and he had not eaten; he was hungry. He knew he would get nothing until his father had assured himself of the camp’s perfect security.
“Where is Orange?” Alva asked.
“Across the river, two leagues away,” said Don Federico.
His gaze fell on his father’s hand on the reins. Alva’s hands were bony and the veins stood up like ropes, an old man’s hands. He was an old man. Why then would he not stay in an old man’s palace and let his son do his work? Don Federico looked in the other direction, across the slope, where in the deepening twilight the fires gleamed in rows like golden stitches in a velvet cloth.
“He hasn’t tried to cross the river yet?” asked his father.
“He tried,” Don Federico said. “The river is still high from the storm and he lost a wagon and some men. It was very disorderly.”
He sniffed, disapproving of such incompetence even in his enemies. All soldiers had to know how to do certain basic things, or they were not soldiers.
“Well, you’ve done a good job,” Alva said. “As usual. Thank you very much.”
“I don’t understand why you had to come out here at all,” Don Federico said. “I am thoroughly capable of handling the entire campaign. You could have stayed in Brussels and done the larger business of governance.”
Side by side on their fine-bred Spanish Barbs they rode down the lines of fires toward the center of the camp, where the commander’s tent was set. Behind them came their aides. Don Federico beckoned, and one of his young men dashed up and saluted.
“Go see that the table is set and the dinner ready when his Grace my father dismounts from his horse.”
“Yes, Excellency.”
“No need for anything special for me,” said Alva. “I’ll just have some plain soldier’s fare. A hard biscuit and a cup of soup.”
Don Federico would have a roast hen, fresh bread, butter, wine, and pears with cheese. He slapped his thigh.
“Why are you here? What if there’s a rising in one of the cities, in support of Orange—what will you do then?”
“There will be no rising,” Alva said comfortably. “They are too afraid. What do you intend to do about Orange?”
“I’m going to wait until he crosses the river, back him up against it, and hack him into little pieces,” said Don Federico curtly. “In the meantime, however, my men have not been paid. Something I hope you mean to rectify.”
“I think,” Alva said, “you would be shrewd not to allow him to cross the river.”
“I can’t fight him with a river between us.”
“He outnumbers you by almost two to one.”
“His men are rabble. Mine are Spanish troops. But if they are not paid, they will not fight. When will you have the money here?”
Alva was looking around the camp again. The age betrayed by his hands showed little in his face. His beard was gray and his hair gray, but the hard ledges of his cheekbones and chin and the intensity of his eyes belonged to a man younger than his sixty years. Don Federico tore his envious gaze away and fastened it on the fine order of his campfires. He would be old himself before his father died and left the world to him—old, and out of time.
“Keep him from crossing the river,” Alva said, “and his rabble will become more rabble every day. In the end they will dissolve, like sugar in the rain, without a drop of Spanish blood shed.”
They had come to the central campfire. There a table had been put up, and the cook was standing ready beside it, with a page at his heels carrying a large covered dish. Alva made no effort to dismount. He brushed his mustache back, his attention on the tent, the neat stack of firewood, the careful laying out of camp chairs and tools.
“I’ve never known you to shrink from the shedding of blood,” said Don Federico, suspicious now. “When will I have the money to pay my troops? Then each one will fight like six of Orange’s fools.”
Alva twisted his gray mustache. “I have no money.”
His son hissed between his teeth. That was the meat of the problem.
“When Orange is turned back, and these people in Brussels see there is no hope at all, they will vote me my taxes. In the meantime, the King will send a shipment of silver by sea.”
“Which you expect when?”
Alva’s shoulders moved. He let his reins slide; a groom ran up to hold his horse. “When it comes. There is some difficulty with the plate fleet from the Indies.” He dismounted, stepping down away from his son into the darkness, and turned to the table.
Don Federico sat still a moment, staring at the back of his father’s head. Things were so simple in battle; one struck and won, or struck and died. The complications that grew up around this simple process infuriated him. Money, and the lack of it; orders, and the reasons for them; policy, and the playing off of cause against cause—none of it meant anything on the battlefield. But now he was to have no battlefield.
“Come and eat,” his father said.
With a growl he dismounted and went to sit at the right hand of the Duke of Alva.
In the drizzle of the next dawn, the Prince of Orange’s brother Louis of Nassau led a charge of cavalry across the ford, and before the Spanish army could respond, seized the wood and the little hill to the north of the Spanish camp. The Spanish feinted, as if to attack, but then withdrew, and the Prince could take the rest of his unwieldy army across into the Low Countries.
They marched up the road that led into the heart of the Provinces. The Spanish army moved with them, but ever out of sight, and Orange knew that at the first sign of disorganization in his army the Duke of Alva would attack him. Therefore he sent on his brother and a troop of cavalry to the nearest town of size, to ask for shelter there.
His brother galloped away in the midafternoon; in the evening, as the army was marching down into a narrow valley quilted with fields and vineyards, Louis came back, very red in the face.
“They will not let us in,” he said.
Orange stiffened in his saddle. He was tired and the rapid coming of the night alarmed him, with his men so far from a defensible camp. “What do you mean?”
“They have shut the gates—they say they will not let you in, as you would not let in the Beggars before Antwerp, and anyway most of them are Catholic.”
The soldiers nearest them overheard this exchange, and the word ran off through the army. Orange’s fingers tightened around his saddlebow; grimly he felt the lash of retribution in this event.
He faced his brother. “They have the right, I suppose. We must find a campground.”
“Up ahead, near the middle of the valley, there is a village.”
“Will they let us in?” Orange said, with a fine edge of sarcasm in his voice. He gathered his reins and signaled the advance.
His brother fell in beside him. “I say seize the town. We could do it, especially under cover of night.”
“No,” Orange said briefly.
“We need the protection of a wall! You know this rabble will not be able to defend an open camp.”
“No.”
“William, what a scrupulous man you are at the wrong times!”
Orange gave his brother a quick sideways look and kept silent. The darknes
s was deepening around them; on either side, he knew, the Spanish army lurked.
“Are you going to let a pack of magistrates decide the fate of the Low Countries?” Louis asked, in a hot voice.
“I don’t think there’s much—”
A yell from the front of the line interrupted him; another yell came, and a horn blasted. Suddenly the troops marching around Orange began to run forward down the road. Up ahead the shouting spread, and there was a scattering of gunfire.
“We’re attacked,” Louis cried, and wheeled his horse around to bring up the columns marching behind them. Orange swung his horse out of the line and galloped up toward the front of the army.
There was no sign of the Spaniards. In the dark the road seemed clogged with soldiers and wagons; ahead the army had lost all its order and was streaming forward, every man at his own pace, toward the little village in the middle of the valley. There was another barrage of small arms fire. Someone screamed.
Orange let out a yell; now he realized what was going on, and he spurred his horse recklessly along the side of the road, careless of the people in his way. His men were looting the village.
Some few of the officers in charge of the vanguard had brought their troops to a halt outside the village; it was they who fired off their pistols into the air to keep their men under control. The hot blasts of their guns flashed in the darkness, feeble against the mounting oceanic turbulence of the army that pressed around them, surging forward, all eyes on the helpless village. Orange galloped through their midst. Most of them leapt out of his path; one man reeled off to one side, knocked away by a glancing blow of the charging horse’s forehoof, and one went down under Orange’s mount and was trampled. As he rode he drew his pistol from its holster on his saddle.
The Sea Beggars Page 14