Batavia (34 page)

‘Madam,’ Jeronimus essays to justify his actions to her, ‘after what happened to you on the
Batavia
, I simply cannot allow such a beautiful woman as you to remain unprotected among so many dangerous ruffians.’ In response to Lucretia’s sullen stare, he continues. ‘It is only in here, under my care, that you will be safe,’ he coos. ‘I urge you to
avail yourself of my hospitality
.’

Jeronimus’s words might sound like an invitation, but his henchmen have already made it absolutely clear that she has no choice. It is in this tent that she is to stay.

There were just 20 women originally on the
Batavia
, and between deaths and those who have been put on Seals’ Island and Traitors’ Island there are only a handful of them left on Batavia’s Graveyard, in the company of scores more men who have, for the most part, been without sex for over eight months. Lucretia believes it is no coincidence that, generally, it is the older wives whom Jeronimus has placed on the other islands, while the younger and fairer have remained here. It is also the reason why Jeronimus was so insistent that gunner Jan Carstenz accompany Wiebbe Hayes to the High Islands, thus leaving his beautiful wife, Anneken Bosschieters, alone and unprotected.

Already, many of the men, particularly those dressed in red velvet, hover around Anneken, as if she is a bitch in heat and they are sex-starved dogs. No matter that Anneken has made it very clear she wants nothing to do with them, still they circle closely, leering and making suggestive comments. For her own protection, Anneken washes herself only at night, wading into the waters, and even then she remains fully clothed.

Tryntgien and Zussie Fredericxs have been less successful in fighting off their attentions, as their former protector, Tryntgien’s husband, Claas the upper-trumpeter, has been long gone with the skipper and the
Commandeur
in the longboat and may
never
return. With so many men on the island and so few women, something had to give, and, among other things, that has been their chastity. Together with another woman from the lower deck by the name of Marretje Louijs, they have become, by force,
‘algemene dienst’
, women for common service, and they must satisfy the sexual needs of some of the leading Mutineers.

As to Anneken Hardens, it doesn’t even make any difference that her husband, Hans, is right there among them and that they have a six-year-old daughter, Hilletje, always at her mother’s skirts. Still, many of the red velvets hang close. All the pretty, blonde Anneken – she with the long plaits always elegantly tied with red ribbons – can do is to try to get her husband, Hans, to calm himself and assure him that they will be fine.

The
Predikant’s
fair daughter, Judick, has been in a similar position, as the strutting Coenraat van Huyssen has acted with a threateningly proprietorial air towards her, notwithstanding the fact that the young woman wants nothing more than to be with her family.

And yet, though the presumption of the other women is that Lucretia has also totally succumbed to the threatening atmosphere that surrounds them all, that is not the case. She refuses to sleep in Jeronimus’s bed, preferring the discomfort of a mat beside it. In response, Jeronimus actually tries to
woo
her with his charms, proposing that she could play empress to his emperor – all of which moves her not a jot. When wooing fails, he tries anger, berating her for her supreme ingratitude to him, after he has done so much for her! How can she deny him, after he, the ruler of this island, the Company’s most highly esteemed official, has especially selected her to be with him for her own protection, has taken her from her small hovel to install her in his magnificent tent and offer her the only genuine bed on the island, no less, with real sheets and pillows (all of it salvaged from the
Commandeur’s
cabin)?

Alas, nothing seems to impress her. She sits still in his tent, barely speaking, not bothering to argue, refusing to engage with the silken-tongued beast and only staring bleakly outside, almost as if the only thing that keeps her sane is the thought she might one day be out there again, reunited with her real husband, and not in here with the disgusting Jeronimus.

The
Kapitein-Generaal
is at his wits’ end to know what to do. Rape her? He is too proud for that. Have her killed, then? Well, yes, but that would rather defeat the purpose, and the truth remains that she is such a beauty, even after everything she has been through, she is the only woman on the island
fit
to be his consort.

Coenraat van Huyssen, at this point, feels free to follow Jeronimus’s lead. If Lucretia is the prize beauty on the island, reserved for the
Kapitein-Generaal
, then the second prize is the
Predikant’s
oldest daughter, and he now moves to take her. Though demure in her dress, and her approach – with her eyes either looking up to God in the skies or down to the ground, where her essential shyness can find solace – there is a young and voluptuous womanliness about young Judick that van Huyssen cannot ignore. And nor does he care that his every approach has been firmly rebuffed by her, or that her two oldest brothers, Bastiaen and Pieter, and her father glare at him whenever he tries to talk to her.

Such rebuffs might have put an end to the matter in Amsterdam, but it is
not
the end of it here. For van Huyssen is keenly aware that, alongside Zevanck and Stonecutter, he is one of the most powerful men on the island after Jeronimus.
Nee
, he will not be denied the woman of his choice.

When Judick makes it absolutely clear that she would sooner die than be with a man out of holy matrimony, Coenraat’s confreres make it clear to her that this is no problem – and their behaviour in the last few days gives that threat some force. To soften it for her, Coenraat says he would be very happy to marry her at the first opportunity that they are off these islands, and would do so legally and before all the world as his witness. However, he does not think it fair that he should have to wait to be with her until such time as they could be so conjoined, and so insists that she move into his tent immediately and that their betrothal be consummated forthwith.

Such is the sense of malevolence now abroad on the island, and so powerful have Jeronimus and his red-velveted henchmen become, that after much but hurried family debate it becomes clear to all of them old enough to discuss it that she really has no choice. At least if she is with Coenraat, she will have protection from all the others and won’t have to become a
woman for common service
. Though deeply upset, both the
Predikant
and his wife understand that Coenraat is indeed their daughter’s best option. The
Predikant
asks only one thing of the henchmen – that his daughter Judick have just one more night with her family, in their family tent, before she goes to Coenraat’s tent the next day.

Permission denied. Only ten minutes after the
Predikant
puts this request to Coenraat via an intermediary, a posse of gold-laced and red-velveted armed Mutineers arrive outside the
Predikant’s
tent. Judick must accompany them to Coenraat’s tent on the instant, for he is waiting, or face the consequences. Those consequences are not strictly spelled out, but they would clearly involve violence of some description.

Tearfully, Judick understands that, for the safety of herself and her family, she must go with the Mutineers to Coenraat’s tent. But, please, give her at least a minute. The Mutineers grant their rough assent, and the flap of the tent is closed. For one last, precious minute the virginal Judick is embraced by all of her family, by her father and mother, by her strong adult brothers, Bastiaen and Pieter, by her young brothers, Johannes and Roelant, and by her two young sisters, Willemyntgien and Agnete.

Agnete, just 11 years old, cannot quite understand why everyone is weeping so, but she knows her adored oldest sister is about to leave them and will not be sleeping in their tent that night, and
that is enough for her to soon lead the howling
.

Shortly thereafter, one of the Mutineers, uninvited, opens the flap and the light floods in. It is time. Judick slowly disengages herself from her family’s embrace and goes with the Mutineers towards Coenraat’s tent . . .

8 July 1629, Batavia citadel

It is no small thing to look through a window and regard a fine view that first formed in your mind many years before, a dream that you have personally made reality by the power of your personality and the sheer force of your will. And, as is nearly always the case, Governor-General Jan Pieterszoon Coen is feeling well satisfied on this morning as he looks through the enormous bay window overlooking Batavia’s harbour, his gaze transfixed by a group of hard-working stevedores unloading yet more spices from the bond store three floors beneath him and loading them into the small boats that will take them out to yet another
retourschip
, soon to be on her way back to Amsterdam.

This year, as every year – and notwithstanding the terrible battle they underwent to beat back the forces of the Sultan of Mataram seven months earlier – Batavia is on track for a new record in terms of the amount of spices sent back, and the Company will be well pleased. The only thing that does not please him on this fine morning is the vision of the
Frederick Hendrick
, anchored just beyond the
retourschip
and bobbing gently in the sheltered waters. She arrived the afternoon before, and he was not long in hearing that she bears ill tidings, a terrible saga that has befallen the
Batavia
, though the details are still sketchy. And on that subject . . .

A knock on the door alerts him that he is shortly to have company.

‘Your Excellency,’ an aide breathes respectfully, after gliding to his side, ‘Commandeur Pelsaert, of the
Batavia
, has arrived and requests an audience.’

Coen nods, and takes his place. Sitting behind his huge oak desk, made from the finest timbers of Germany by the finest carpenters of the Dutch Republic, Governor-General Coen bids Pelsaert to enter with a languid hand of come-hither but does not rise from his desk, let alone offer him a handshake in welcome. The two men appraise each other in a few moments, one with trepidation bordering on outright fear, the other with the same cool disdain with which he greets most of his underlings, and indeed even some of his nominal superiors.

From the moment of meeting the Governor-General, Pelsaert is disconcerted by his eyes. It is not that they are cold, glassy and unseeing, for that by comparison would be relatively easy to bear. It is that they seem to see too much, focusing with barely a blink at a point that appears to be about two yards behind his interlocutor. It is as if he is
looking right into the other man’s
soul
, ferreting for weakness, or, better still if he could find it, falsehood.

‘
Uwe Excellentie
, Your Excellency,’ Pelsaert begins, using the standard form of obsequiousness to far superior officers that the VOC in general, and Coen in particular, values so dearly. ‘It is a great honour to be in your august presence.’

Another man, under such circumstances as these, might have waved away such formalities and quickly asked him to get to the essence of the story, but not Coen. Coen always takes overt sycophancy as his due, the more thickly laid on the better, and
never
rushes anybody when they are in full flight. At last, though, there is simply nowhere else to go, and Pelsaert begins his formal report.

‘I only wish that I had better news to impart,’ he begins hesitantly. ‘In fact, I bring the most grave and unfortunate tidings of our voyage.’

Coen raises a disingenuous eyebrow and bids him continue, which Pelsaert does.

‘I beg to advise that the
Batavia
has been lost upon the Abrolhos Islands, that she has foundered upon a reef there . . .’

Oddly enough for a saga that is now in its tenth week – and the beginnings of which now seem to be at least ten years ago – Pelsaert does not take long to recount the whole thing. For what else can he say but that Skipper Ariaen Jacobsz made a severe miscalculation as to their proximity to
het Zuidland
; that the
Batavia
foundered on the very reefs that the venerable VOC was so gracious and specific to warn them about; that after deep consideration of their position, as
Commandeur
, he decided that the best thing he could do, both from the point of view of the VOC, first and foremost, and also of the survivors, was to make a trip to
het Zuidland
to look for water, and, failing that, to make the long voyage here to Batavia for help, with as many of the ship’s crew as the longboat could carry. There are many details to add to this, of course – that, at the start of the saga, Lucretia was attacked and named Jan Evertsz as one of her assailants; that Skipper Ariaen Jacobsz was on watch when they hit the reef; and not forgetting his
key
point that he is sure that much of the VOC’s cargo can quickly be recovered – but, all up, Pelsaert is through with his account in just a little under two hours.

For around 30 seconds, Coen does not speak. He simply sits there, looking straight through Pelsaert as he twiddles the tips of his moustache into particularly fine points. Little does Pelsaert know that, among other things, Coen is reflecting on his own experience. Just under two years previously, on his return journey to Batavia, Coen’s own ship, the
Wapen van Hoorn
, came perilously close to a similar fate, straying to within two miles of
het Zuidland
before – because it was during the day – the breakers were sighted and
the ship was turned in time
to avert tragedy. There, too, the skipper seriously underestimated the distance they had travelled, in that case by 900 miles.