The fugitives sword, p.12
The Fugitive's Sword, page 12
part #1 of Lord's Learning Series
“With spear in rest so lively dressed,
In armour bright and gay,
With hey, trim, and tricksy too
Their banners they display.”
Jorrit ran into the Englishman and stumbled, caught from falling by a strong grip.
“Now we are here, and you wait. Be silent until I come back.”
Then Jorrit was alone in the utter dark.
He heard a burst of distant laughter from somewhere in the city and then the bell striking the hour telling the world it was now eight o’clock. Curfew was at nine. A cough came from the street nearby and Jorrit’s heart jumped. Then there were low voices as a group of men walked past the end of the passage. He was not afraid, of course, it had just startled him. There was nothing to be afraid of. Just because it was dark that didn’t mean anything, or that he was alone with a pack of gunpowder on his back…
Jorrit swallowed hard and tried not to think about that. But it was impossible. Like trying not to think of all the bad things you’d done when you went to church. The terrible question that had been lurking unanswered at the back of his mind sprang up and ambushed him. What was the Englishman going to do with the gunpowder? You used gunpowder to fire guns or to blow things up. Perhaps, Jorrit thought rather desperately, he was simply selling it to some citizens who wanted to have their own supply should they need to defend themselves. But in his heart, he knew that was not so. The gunpowder was meant for something and for the life of him Jorrit could not think of any good ‘something’ that could be.
So, what should he do? Should he stand here and wait for the Englishman to come back and take the pack and do what he had planned? Or should he run now, try and find a soldier and give them the pack? Except if he did that then they would want to know all about what Jorrit had been doing and how he came by it, and they might not believe he knew nothing about what the gunpowder was for. Then they would beat him to try and make him tell them.
He could run away now and throw the pack in the river where no one would see. Then hide somewhere until the Englishman had left the city. But all he could think of was that cold gaze boring into him, and somehow, he knew for certain that if he ran away the Englishman would find him. In fact, Jorrit was sure the Englishman would not leave Breda until he had done so.
That thought kept him standing there in the cold and dark, startling at every sound and praying fervently that soon this task would be done and he could go home to Moeder Machteld. Of course, she would scold him and maybe box his ears for being out all day and back so late. But then she would feed him with a big bowl of erwtensoep, which was bound to be left from supper, and he would go to sleep in the safety of his truckle bed in the attic.
The hand on his shoulder came a moment after the sound of leather on stone, but just enough after, so Jorrit had pulled away, and the hand could not grip him. He was about to dodge and run when the Englishman’s voice came from the darker shadow beside him.
“Good to see you are not daydreaming for once. Now give me the pack. I will be but a very little time more here. Then we can go, and I will see to it that you are well rewarded for your work today.”
Jorrit needed no second bidding. He slipped out from the pack as soon as the Englishman had begun to lift it from him. The relief left him slightly dizzy as the Englishman went back behind the house. This time Jorrit heard the door open and another man’s voice that sounded either impatient or angry, before it closed and there were only the night sounds again. A dog barking a few houses away and then yelping as someone silenced it. The tramp of feet as some soldiers came along the street. A shout of woman’s laughter and giggling. The marching feet came closer and then a low voice hissed an order to be quiet and the footsteps were not so loud. Then they stopped completely and there were more low voices.
The skin across the back of Jorrit’s shoulders tightened and his whole body seemed turned into a statue.
They were coming to this house.
The officer was telling some of the men to watch the front, others were to check the stables, the rest—
Jorrit turned and ran—straight into a high wall at the end of the passage. Following it round, he found himself at the back of the house in a courtyard. The courtyard was illuminated enough by windows in the houses hemming it in for him to see the shape of an outbuilding hunched against the far end. The only hope of escape was a gate which he supposed led to the stables. The stables where the soldiers would be.
Heart hammering, he turned to the house and tried the door. Unbelievably, it was not locked and opened to his hand. But it had barely done so when the Englishman filled the doorway. Behind him in the small room beyond was a well dressed merchant, and his servant who was bent over the pack.
“Sir,” Jorrit squeaked, his voice sounding like a reed pipe to his own ears, “soldiers, sir.”
For a moment, the Englishman looked at him as if he had spoken in a foreign tongue. Then he cursed, looking out across the courtyard as if searching for the soldiers. “We have been betrayed. If we can hide the powder, they will have no evidence and we may yet prevail.”
“Sir!” Jorrit’s yelp was the only warning he could give as behind the Englishman’s back the merchant’s expression had changed to one of profound satisfaction and Jorrit saw the nod he gave to his servant.
The Englishman was slow to react, but at least, thanks to Jorrit’s warning, he took the heavy sap on his shoulder not his head and his sword was in his hand a moment later. Then everything happened so fast Jorrit struggled afterwards to put it in order in his memory. He saw the servant swing the sap again but this time the Englishman was ready, and his sword slipped under the man’s arm and into his chest. Then somehow it was running through the merchant too even as he was drawing a pistol from under his coat. Both men lay dying, spluttering blood on the floor. The Englishman picked up the pistol and grabbed a handful of the black powder, trailing it over the floor towards the door before snatching up the nearest candle.
“I hope you can run.”
The door was open, but Jorrit stood as unmoving as the two dead men on the floor beside him, men who had been alive a few moments before and were now—
A hand pushed him hard in the small of his back.
“Run!”
Jorrit ran.
He wanted to tell the Englishman that there were soldiers all around but there was no chance as they were running across the courtyard. He stumbled and found himself being lifted from his feet and almost thrown into the outbuilding. The weight of the Englishman landed half across him and as it did, so the very heavens cracked open with a flash of light and a roar louder even than a thunderstorm right overhead.
His ears rang with sound and when the Englishman pulled him to his feet, he could barely hear anything. Somehow, he found himself on the roof of the outbuilding and then dangling over the wall. A moment later he had dropped down and was running for his life.
The Englishman ran ahead and was shouting as he went.
“Vuur! Vuur!”
Fire. No one could afford to ignore that. Before they had run two streets, everywhere was in chaos with people tumbling out of their homes, both servants and their masters rushing to help. As Jorrit knew well, in the city fire was the biggest danger, and even here in the better parts, with brick and stone built houses, no one was safe until it had been put out.
The Englishman stopped running a street further on. When Jorrit reached him, he was doubled over, one hand bracing himself on a wall and Jorrit thought he must be short of breath or have a pain in his side. But then he realised he was wrong. The Englishman was laughing—great gulps of laughter as if he was possessed by it. If there had not been so much uproar around them it would have drawn attention to them both. As it was, the Englishman was able to recover himself until he stood gasping, one hand still on the wall.
“You know what is so funny?” he asked but did not wait for Jorrit to reply. “When I came into Breda this morning, I could not say for certain that I had ever even killed a man. But in the course of this day, I have taken four lives with my sword alone and maybe twice as many more with the explosion.” The Englishman paused and then the laughter returned and Jorrit, who could see nothing funny in that at all, wondered if he was in the presence of a madman. He stepped away, thinking that, promised payment or not, all he really wanted now was to go home. The laughter stopped with something that sounded very like a sob of pain or anguish, instantly stifled. For a few moments there was silence from the dark, then a hand gripped his shoulder.
“We are not safe yet, Jorrit.” Then “Do you have another name? Or is it just Jorrit?”
“Muyskens. Jorrit Muyskens.” As soon as he had spoken, he regretted it.
The Englishman gave a low whoop of fresh laughter.
“Little mouse? You were poorly named, Mouseykin. Today you have been braver than most men. But I need you to be brave one more time. Then I have a whole guilder with ‘Jorrit Muyskens’ engraved upon it for you to take home to your Moeder Machteld with my gratitude. Will you help me?”
A whole guilder?
Jorrit had never had so much money in his life before. But after the events of the day, he was wary. There was no point being promised a guilder if it cost him his life.
“What do you want me to do?” he asked.
“I do not know this city well. Away from the main streets of it, that is. I need to find a way out before they have the fire out and start looking for me with serious intent.”
“But the man at De Haring, Meneer Klaasen won’t he—?”
The hand on his shoulder tightened into a claw.
“For all I know he is a party to this betrayal. He was quick enough to try to get me drunk before he sent me out, and had I been alone, I would be dead or facing torture and then death. No. You, Mouseykin, are the only one I can trust to get me out of this.”
Jorrit swallowed hard. If he was caught helping the Englishman to escape or anyone ever found out that he had done so… On the other hand, a whole guilder… But how could he get the Englishman out of Breda? It was not exactly easy to leave completely unnoticed in normal times and with the siege on, everywhere was watched more carefully. No one wanted a repeat of the occasion when the Dutch had captured the city some thirty years ago by smuggling soldiers into the city hidden in the peat barge that was still on display in the market square. Unless… Although surely if the Englishman was a smuggler he would already know? Except of course he wasn’t. He was something else altogether or he wouldn’t have brought the gunpowder.
The hand on his shoulder was heavy. No matter who the Englishman might be or what he was doing in Breda, the sooner he was gone, the safer Jorrit would be. Then he remembered something Klaasen had said.
“If you have money then one of the night-boats would take you.”
“Night boats?”
“They slip in and out under cover of darkness on nights when the moon is dark and the Spanjaardsgat—the water gate is open to admit supplies. They go to fish along the river and even out to sea. They have not been going because of the palisade which the Spanish put across the river, but if that has been swept away…” He hesitated, realising that to go on would betray his knowledge of who the Englishman might be. “I’ve heard that sometimes smugglers will pay to go with a boat.”
He could not see the Englishman’s face as it was lost in the shadows, but Jorrit could feel the intensity of his gaze.
“Nor Flaunders chere lettes not my syght to deme
Of blacke, and white, nor takes my wittes away…”
He laughed again, but this was a very different sound, short and cold. “Then if you know, little mouse, how we may get to these boats by ways diverse and subtle, deliver me there and you will get your gold.”
Jorrit knew most of Breda back and forth and inside out. There was no alleyway he had not walked a dozen times and no small side passage or stairs that he had not explored at least once. Now it was he who led, and the Englishman followed, every bit as deft and sure, even one place where Jorrit thought no adult would fit through, and though it scraped his skin the Englishman did not complain.
“Will you be apprenticed?” the Englishman asked him as they came close to the harbour.
“I’m to be so, if someone will take me.” Jorrit was sure he had no need to explain to the Englishman that most decent masters wanted payment for an apprenticeship. Unless things were very different in England, it would be obvious that Jorrit’s only hope was that someone might take him from charity—or from the importuning of Moeder Machteld who was fierce in her efforts to see her boys well placed in the world.
“Is that what you want? To be an apprentice?”
They were walking by the river now and Jorrit was looking for the boats that were pushed to the edge of the docks furthest out. Those owned by the least wealthy who might be more willing to take the risk for a price.
“No, sir. Seppe and I, we always wanted to be soldiers. All our games were…”
He trailed off. After today, to talk of playing at soldiers, of himself and Seppe pretending they were with the seventy who had hidden in the peat barge and heroically captured the city, all that seemed to belong to another Jorrit, a Jorrit who today had changed so much he was not sure he knew himself anymore.
He had expected the Englishman to laugh and say the same as all the adults he had ever been foolish enough to speak of it to had said. That soldiering was something all young boys might think a great life, but that when he was older, he would understand that being a cooper or a cordwainer was much the better way to live. Instead, the Englishman gripped his shoulder lightly.
“You have the heart and courage for it and better yet the brain. You would make a good soldier. I hope you may be one someday.”
For some reason, Jorrit found his eyes pricking sharply with moisture and he had to blink that away as they reached the boats. Once there, his job was done.
The nearest vessel was a substantial fishing boat which would have a crew of six men or so. It rode high in the water and was clearly ready to leave. He stayed back as the Englishman spoke quickly with the master and the chink of coin changed hands and awaited his own payment.
“These are good men,” the Englishman said as he returned to where Jorrit was waiting. “They say they can take me where I need to go.” He reached into a pocket as he spoke. “So, all that remains is for me to thank you for—”
“Hold there!”
The shout that went up was from further along the dock. Soldiers. But how…?
“That is the one, him and the boy with him.” Klaasen’s voice.
Jorrit froze and then found himself flying from a push and falling onto the deck of the fishing boat, landing heavily on a pile of netting.
“Cast off, now!”
The Englishman’s words were punctuated by a ragged volley of musket fire.
Jorrit turned his head to see the Englishman standing beside him, his sword in one hand and the pistol he had taken from the merchant in the other. The fishermen, torn between duty and fear, did as he demanded and the boat moved out into the receding tidal flow, picking up speed as it went.
“If you do as I say, I will leave you as soon as we are away from Breda,” the Englishman told them. “You will be safe enough to set us ashore at any place where you can.”
Jorrit heard the words, and his heart sank. They were leaving Breda, and he had a sudden certainty that he would not be able to return. The night was dark, with clouds covering whatever moon there might be, and the boat moved silently, drawn by the current. Jorrit scarcely dared to breathe. The river took them through the Spanjaardsgat, past protective forts and earthworks. He could see lights here and there and knew that there would be soldiers keeping watch. The Englishman was right that the Spanish would have no real interest in stopping a boat from leaving, but the Dutch certainly would.
They were almost clear of earthworks and safe away when there was a shout from above and behind followed by the sharp crack of musket fire. Jorrit had his face buried in the netting again when the Englishman dropped suddenly and rolled onto the nets beside him, then lay still.
Chapter Eight
In the darkness Jorrit felt, but could not see, when the Englishman stirred. That was a huge relief as until then it had seemed he might never wake up, so long had he been unconscious. A short time after the first stirring, the Englishman’s breathing changed and then an inevitable cough from the cloying reek of fish.
“We are in the place they put the catch,” Jorrit said quickly. “You must have hit your head on a spar. There was blood.”
The Englishman sat up slowly.
“No,” he said. “Not a spar I think. It was a musket ball.”
Jorrit said nothing to that. After all it was clearly not a musket ball, or the Englishman would be dead.
“They took my sword.” His voice held a bite of outrage.
“And your purse,” Jorrit said, unhappily. “I couldn’t stop them. I tried.” He was hurting still from the beating the men had given him. “They said they will take us back to the soldiers when they have their fishing done.”
He didn’t say anything either when the Englishman moved around the cramped space trying to find some way out. After all it is what he had done when the men first shut them in. He tried battering on the hatch, but to no avail. And just as Jorrit had, the Englishman gave up after a time and sat down again.
“They will have to open the hatch for the fish,” he said as if that would solve all their problems. Then he fell silent and Jorrit was left wondering if he had fallen asleep or passed out again. What Jorrit was not sure the Englishman knew, though, was that this was not a fishing boat of the river—this was one that would take the tide out to sea. It might not even put into Breda with its catch. Indeed, if the palisade had been restored it might well prefer one of the other ports. He decided the only reason the two of them were even still alive was because the fishermen knew they could not expect to return to Breda ever again unless they brought the men the soldiers had been seeking. No doubt they would have some brave story of having overcome the Englishman and not mention that he had been knocked unconscious barely had they set out.
