Batavia (40 page)

In the madness of the murders, the wanton killing of the Survivors on Seals’ Island as the Mutineers run wild, it is perhaps not surprising that they miss something. For, on the lee side of the island, out of sight of the main killing ground, they neglect to notice that Cornelis Janszoon, with another seven men, including Cornelis the once fat trumpeter, have slipped into the water holding the makeshift boats they have been constructing. Though unfinished, they float, and quietly – oh so quietly, oh so
carefully
– the men start kicking away, wary of making the tiniest splashing sound that might reach the Mutineers’ ears over the continuing screams from the island.

In the end, the Mutineers feel well satisfied that they have completed the bulk of the task assigned to them. Ten men and six boys have been killed, while another half a dozen are badly wounded. These last are quickly dragged into the water and dispatched by drowning. There are some 15 youths missing, and about eight men, but now that it is dark it will be too hard to find them, and they can be dealt with sometime in the near future. Four women, including the now widow of Gabriel Jacobsz, Laurentia Thomas, have been spared.

16 July 1629, Batavia’s Graveyard

Throughout these blustery days and chilly nights, the bitter calculus of sexual relations on Batavia’s Graveyard is played out: 35 Mutineers over five women – a constant throughout night and day. And, given there is not a whole lot of other amusement to be had on these infernal islands – apart from killing – having at these women is a very popular pastime. Put simply, from the latter days of June it has been made clear to these women by the likes of David Zevanck that everyone on the island has to provide a service to the community or face the consequences, and the chief service of these particular five is to be found between their legs.

One who is deeply aggrieved by the new decree – and her husband more so, though he has to accept it if he wants to live – is Anneken Hardens. Six weeks earlier, she was happily married with a beautiful child. Now, that child is dead, her husband has at least nominally joined the Mutineers and she has found herself practically frogmarched to one of the two tents for the women for common service, where she has been obliged to move in with the once haughty but now shattered sisters Tryntgien and Zussie Fredericxs. She has a very clear choice: does she want to live or die? In the last fortnight, there have been so many killings it is obvious that all of their lives hang by a single thread. The older women who were sent to Traitors’ Island were killed before their very eyes just a week earlier, while if the women who went to Seals’ Island are still alive after the attack the day before, it is surely only just.

Here on Batavia’s Graveyard, the sisters Fredericxs decided they wanted to live and so have accommodated the endless stream of Mutineers who treat them as little more than vassals – vessels into which they can empty themselves. Certainly, the sisters had sympathy for Anneken, but, on the other hand, there was no escaping the fact that with her also in service
their own burden would be lightened
a little.

True, there are other females on the island who are not in common service, such as Mayken Cardoes and the
Predikant’s
daughter Willemyntgien, but Mayken still has a young baby and is always sickly herself, and, through some unexpected sense of decorum, tiny Willemyntgien, who has only just gone through puberty, is left aside. Wybrecht Claas, the skinny little servant girl of the
Predikant
, is another who is spared.

And then, of course, there are those two bitches from aft of the mast, Lucretia and Judick, living a life of luxury in their fine tents as they look after the needs of just
one
man apiece. Jeronimus and Coenraat, of course, are of sufficient status to demand they be kept for their own exclusive use. The sisters Fredericxs can barely bear to look at them, so unfair is it all, though, for the most part, they stifle their rage for fear of the power of the men the bitches are with.

For his part, while Jeronimus has still, in fact, been unable to persuade Lucretia as to his own charms, he is yet confident that she will see sweet reason. Outside his own tent, he also recognises that with so few women to be shared among so many men there is enormous potential for trouble unless it is all strictly regulated. In recent days, some fighting has broken out among the Mutineers over access to the women for common service: who goes first, should fringe Mutineers have access to the more desirable of the women, such as Anneken Bosschieters, and so forth. The only way is to share and share alike. (With the exception of himself and Coenraat, of course, who don’t intend to share their beauties with anyone.)

With all this in mind, Jeronimus decides that the oath sworn just four days earlier is now out of date, and so forms up a new one. Gathering his Mutineers to him in front of his tent – for by now there are way too many to get into his tent all at once – Jeronimus reads them the new, improved oath:

Click Here

And so they all sign, as before, including Hans Hardens, who is consecrating a document that formally consigns his own wife to whoredom at the hands of the murderers of their little child.

Still not content that everything is locked down, however, Jeronimus also meets with all of the women for common service, one by one, and obliges them to sign their own oaths, whereby they swear not only eternal fealty to him but also to make their bodies available to whosoever of the Mutineers demands what used to be their sexual favours but are now their sexual
duties
, whensoever they demand it. They must also promise to be obedient to the men in all they should desire of them, not just in sexual matters. In return, he, Jeronimus, pledges himself on his soul and salvation that all those who sign need no further have any fear or mistrust that they will be killed, as they will be under his personal protection against those forces on the island that might be prone to doing them harm.

What alternative do they have but to obey this man born of the spawn of the Devil? This division of women is duly chronicled in a resolution by which they ‘bind themselves on their soul’s salvation and by the help of God to be true to each other’. Each woman signs, and the sexual activity on the island proceeds on a more ordered basis.

For the women for common service, there is now constant sex, around the clock. For the Mutineers, there is also regular sex, although they go about it in different ways. Jan Pelgrom delights in going from woman to woman as his whim takes him. He arrived on these islands a virgin and now has sex on tap like beer from a gushing barrel – life has never been better. The one woman he covets but decides to stay away from, because both Wouter Loos and Lenart van Os growl at him when he looks at her, is Anneken Bosschieters.

Others, like Mattys Beer, have clear favourites. In Beer’s case, he only has eyes for Zussie, despite the fact that this woman is also the regular concubine of Jan Hendricxsz, and Mattys must always ensure that the massive Jan is well sated and well away before he takes his own turn – for Jan is not prone to waiting around for anyone.

Zussie’s sister Tryntgien – whose husband, Claas Jansz, was last seen on the longboat heading north with the skipper and the
Commandeur
– is not the particular favourite of any of the more powerful men on the island, and for that reason she receives the most attention. Of them all, she is the safest one to be with without arousing the ire of the most powerful Mutineers – and so is the busiest of them all.

As for the non-Mutineer men, of course, there is no sex at all. Ironically, this is one of the very few things they have in common with the
Kapitein-Generaal
at this point, as, to his stunned amazement – and he is in fact more than a little hurt – Lucretia still refuses him.

16 July 1629, Hayes’s Island

Who on earth can this be, this half-drowned man lying before them on the beach?

Why, it is Cornelis Janszoon of Amsterdam, who aboard the
Batavia
fulfilled a minor clerical position. Now, Wiebbe Hayes and his men can only just recognise him. When they last saw him, he was a jolly, plumpish type of man, with a friendly word for all and an aspect about him of one who, while perhaps knowing hardship, had not known horror. But that has all clearly changed.

As they haul his exhausted body out of the water and get him onto dry land, not only is Janszoon emaciated and seemingly aged ten years but also his hunted, haunted eyes bespeak a man who has witnessed and experienced things in the last four weeks that he never imagined could exist on this earth, or even in hell.

‘Treachery!’
he croaks at them. ‘
Verraad
, treason . . .
moord
, murder . . .
bloedbad
, bloodbath . . . massacre . . . mutiny . . . dead . . . all dead.’

While the soldiers gasp and grimace as Janszoon’s account tumbles out – each story worse than the one preceding until he gets to the last dreadful afternoon and evening, where it seems nearly all but him on the island have been wiped out – Wiebbe Hayes simply listens patiently, digesting every detail. He is stunned that such events have been occurring on Batavia’s Graveyard since their departure, yet it certainly provides an explanation as to why no one has come for them since the lighting of their bonfires. This changes everything.

What Janszoon is revealing to them now, while monstrous in its own right, puts an equally monstrous complexion on their own situation. Can it be that Jeronimus has actually sent them all here to
die
? Has the
Onderkoopman
sent them to an island on which he was convinced that no water existed, in the hope they would all perish? That would certainly fit in with what Janszoon is telling them about the ruthless program of elimination that Jeronimus appears to have embarked on.

Within the next few hours, the words of Cornelis are supported by other refugees from Seals’ Island, another six in total, who stagger ashore and tell equally horrifying stories of the reign of Jeronimus and what it has wrought. Each man is welcomed, fed, watered and accommodated the best he can be. Part of it is through simple decency, but part, too, because Wiebbe Hayes is beginning to realise that, for what is coming their way, they will be needing every healthy man they can get.

18 July 1629, Batavia’s Graveyard

While pleased with the death count after the first attack on Seals’ Island, Jeronimus wants the job finished off. There are still four women and 15 boys on the island, each lad a potential danger to them should the rescue yacht perchance arrive and get to them first. And eight men are unaccounted for, too, but though the Mutineers have carefully been watching the shores of Seals’ Island since the first attack, they have not seen a single one, and they have come to the reluctant conclusion that perhaps the men have escaped to the High Islands to join Wiebbe Hayes. They will find out, soon enough.

For this attack, they decide the job is best done at night, and it is to be led by the ever-faithful David Zevanck, together with his accomplices Coenraat van Huyssen, Mattys Beer, Gijsbert van Welderen, Jan Pelgrom de Bye and Jan Willems Selijns. Oh, and one more. Jeronimus has decided it is time for 40-year-old soldier Andries Jonas to get another murder under his belt.

‘Do you have a knife?’ Zevanck asks the old fellow, pleasantly enough.

‘Yes, but it is not very sharp,’ old Jonas replies.

‘Why,’ Zevanck replies, laughing agreeably, ‘you may have mine.’

Jonas gratefully accepts the offer, but on the instant he grasps the hilt of the knife, Zevanck bursts forth in an entirely different tone.

‘Now,’ says he, leaning in closely, ‘take it and
cut the throats of the women
. Leave the chasing after the young fellows to the others.’

18 July 1629, Seals’ Island

Late that evening, well after the sun has gone down and the stars have begun to twinkle in the moonless sky, they set off. This time, they are to give no warning to those on the island. After landing some 100 yards away from where they did the last time, they creep ashore. The only noise is the crunching sound of their clogs on the shards of broken coral and shells that make up the beach as they head slowly towards the glow of the fire they can see about 300 yards to their south.

There! As they crawl over a small dune, they can see the desultory fire and the four women, including the heavily pregnant Mayken Soers, sitting grimly around it, not talking. The familiar, queasy smell of boiling sea-lion meat fills the air, as they are downwind of the cooking pot atop the fire. Of the cabin boys, there is no sign, though the likelihood is that they will be found sleeping in their two little humpy tents, visible about ten yards distant from the fire. The fact that none of the men are apparent is a probable sign that they really have escaped to the High Islands, but still the Mutineers must proceed with caution. Through the use of hand signals alone, Zevanck directs Gijsbert van Welderen and Mattys Beer to approach the tents. He now lifts a hand, having the men halt, ready to charge into a tent apiece as soon as they launch the main attack. Meanwhile, he takes Andries Jonas and the others and comes at the women from opposite directions to ensure that no one escapes.