Captive Secrets (37 page)

He wanted this marriage even less than Gretchen did—if that was possible. He had never had much use for the Spanish. Furthermore, Gretchen's words now came back to taunt him. He too had heard of the piety of Spanish women, that they hung a rosary about their necks and prayed constantly to God to see them through their wifely “duty.” Would this one do that? Then perhaps it would be just as well if she were as homely as he suspected. She would doubtless smell of an unwashed body beneath her many layers of clothing and more than likely reek of garlic. Perhaps her father had merely wanted her out of his sight . . .

As his horse cantered along toward home, Regan turned his thoughts to the Javanese women he found so entrancing. Their comely looks, the clean and fresh scent of the sea hanging about them like an aura . . .
They
at least appreciated a man. They sought his favors and actually thanked him for “honoring” them.

Ha. He knew that it was mainly because they felt it to be good luck to sleep with a white man; nevertheless, they were so uncomplicated . . so refreshing . . .

Like Tita . . .

He decided he would not bed the Spanish woman if he didn't like her looks. He would lock her away in the chapel and forget about her. Then it immediately dawned upon him that he did not have a chapel. He must see that one was built immediately!

What a far cry from Gretchen Señorita Córdez was sure to be. Brutal, fiery Gretchen, who had long wanted to marry him. As if he would marry her! She amused him, pleasured him, but he would never take her to wife. She was useful when his pent-up frustrations and hatreds began to get the better of him. Gretchen could take it, and could mete out some furies of her own! He laughed at himself as his horse quickened its pace, instinctively knowing it was nearing home.

He ought to pack off Señorita Córdez to Chaezar Alvarez, he thought. To that damned Spaniard!

Chaezar Alvarez held much the same position for the Spanish-Portuguese Crown in the Indies as Vincent van der Rhys had once held for the Dutch East India Company. Now Regan occupied that position. Based in Batavia, both men were responsible for the trade of their respective nations among the vast archipelago—Sumatra, Celebes, Borneo, Timor, Bali, New Guinea, and thousands of smaller islands, as well as Java—sometimes called the Spice Islands. Theirs were positions of great responsibility: charting courses, warehousing cargoes, cataloging every yard of silk and pound of spice . . . in addition to keeping diplomatic channels open with the many inland chiefs and sultans.

Before Regan's father had come to take up his post on Java some twenty years before, the Dutch had not been faring well against the Spanish and Portuguese. The Netherlanders were too businesslike and aggressive to suit the gentle ways of the natives, whereas the Hispanic traders, educated by more than a century of world exploration, took the time to bring gifts and make friends with the tribes of the various islands. But the Dutch were determined to beat the Spanish and Portuguese at their own game. The efficient but personable Vincent van der Rhys, an established D.E.I. official in Amsterdam for some years, was sent out to manage the East Indian trade. A highly popular man and a born adapter, he succeeded marvelously well in his new post.

But Vincent van der Rhys's early days on Java had been lonely ones. Not only had his only child, Regan, been left behind with an aunt in Amsterdam in order to complete his education, but Irish-born Maureen, Vincent's ailing wife, had died en route to the islands. The middle-aged Dutchman was left only with his task of diplomat/trader. Nevertheless, a few years after his arrival in Java it became clear to all that the Dutch dominated the Spice Island trade at last.

Seventeen-year-old Regan van der Rhys sailed into what was later to be known as Batavia four years after his father, and set himself to the task of learning the business. At about that time a slick, sophisticated Spaniard only a few years older than Regan arrived in the harbor: Chaezar Alvarez, son of an impoverished Malágan don.

Regan had never liked the darkly handsome Chaezar, but the ratio of Europeans to native islanders in Batavia was so low that it behooved the small trading colony—officials of the two Crowns, sea captains, and merchants, and their wives—to band together, if not for safety, at least for social commerce and friendship in this island paradise so far from their homelands. Such friendships as did develop, however, did not begin until after business hours, for the days were spent in an aggressive competition for trade.

Regan's distaste for Chaezar Alvarez was based less on his Dutch dislike of the Spaniard's affected grandeur and suave pretense than on the iniquitous role Alvarez had played in ruining Vincent van der Rhys . . .

In 1615, when Regan's son was four years old, he embarked with the child and his wife, Tita, on a voyage home—to the Netherlands. It was to be a sentimental journey as well as one made for business reasons of his father's; it was to be a voyage of discovery and enlightenment for Tita and their child. But it was never to be completed. Before their ship, the
Tita,
captained by an old friend of Vincent van der Rhys, reached Capetown for reprovisioning, it was attacked by a shipful of Spanish-speaking pirates. Tita was murdered before Regan's own eyes, by the quick thrust of a Spanish broadsword, and the last time he saw his son—before he himself was prostrated by the butt of a Hispanic musket—the screaming boy's chubby hands were gripping the ship's wheel as a filthy bandanaed heathen lifted him to his battle-bloodied shoulders. Regan's memories of those scenes were indelible. As indelible as his enduring puzzlement that he, of all the crew, should have been singled out for survival—provided, indeed, with food and drink and set adrift in the ship's dinghy while the other passengers and the captain, dead or dying, were pitched overboard mercilessly. Someday, perhaps, he would learn the reason.

Two days later, or three—for his memory of the hours adrift was unclear now, eight long years after—Regan had the good fortune to be spotted by a brigantine, again Spanish, but one of the merchant ships out of Java and bound for Cadiz. His good fortune lasted only until he was aboard-ships. Accused of being one of the crew of a recently demolished Dutch pirateer which had preyed on Portuguese and Spanish vessels approaching the African coast, he was manacled, impressed in the gallows of the ship, and taken to Spain—where, imprisoned without trial, he spent almost six years in a hellhole of a dungeon in Seville.

For nearly five years, the grief-stricken D.E.I. Chief Pensioner had given his son up for dead—butchered along with Tita and his grandson. Until, one day, a merchant ship out of Rotterdam reached Batavia with the news that a Dutchman of Regan's description was an inmate at one of Philip III's infamous prisons in Seville or Cádiz—he was not certain which.

The news, however vague, aroused the elder van der Rhys. Further inquiries, made warily by one of his captains who, anchored at Cádiz for imaginary repairs and unnecessary reprovisioning, elucidated that a “Vanderrí,” as the contact called him, was prisoner in Seville. And that, yes, the man was probably twenty-eight or —nine and blond-headed.

On receipt of this further information, Vincent van der Rhys made an unpleasant but necessary visit to the offices of the Spanish Crown in Batavia.

Yes, Chaezar Alvarez said, he would do all that he could; he was only too happy to know that his competitor's son still lived. But, he went on, inviting the aging Dutchman to a velvet-upholstered chair, there would be expenses . . . strings to pull . . . And, what was more, he confided to van der Rhys, Spanish trade had been hurt substantially over the past few years by the competence and persistence of the Dutch, and he, Chaezar, would welcome some of that trade. Or some of the profit from that trade. It would enhance his own position with his masters in Spain, might earn him a promotion, a return to the homeland . . .

Hundreds of thousands of gold sovereigns and a good portion of the Dutch trade later (Dutch ships were delayed by van der Rhys and reached their rendezvous with island chieftains later than the Spanish and Portuguese merchants), Chaezar Alvarez sent a letter to his godfather, Don Antonio Córdez, in Cádiz, in the hope that the old statesman and shipbuilder might sway Philip . . .

Now, four years later, Regan had repaired his father's losses, his personal fortune, and had reestablished the Dutch East India Company as leader in the Indies—all the while concealing his father's shady dealings with the Spaniard, Alvarez. But the strain had been too much for the older man. His son regained, his honor and name untarnished, Vincent van der Rhys died.

“Alvarez!” Regan muttered, almost as an oath, as he reached his front gate. He knew Gretchen had amused herself with the slick Spaniard while he sat rotting in that Spanish jail! Alvarez . . . Regan's jaw contracted into tight knots just thinking of that Spanish swine.