The Queen's Exiles (30 page)

He nodded with a faint, sad smile. “Some gambles are worth the risk.” As he looked at her, love shone in his eyes. “I’ve never regretted the times I’ve been a fool.”

A bell rang in the fo’castle, startling her. She looked down at the shadows in the waist of the ship and saw two men come sleepily across the moon-drenched deck. They spoke with Curry. The change of watch, she realized. In a few moments they would come up here to the quarterdeck.

“You should get some rest,” Adam said.

She struggled to collect herself. “You too.”

“Fenella, if things don’t go well tomorrow . . . if something happens and I don’t come back—”

“No, none of that. I’ll say good night now and—”

“Listen to me. I want you to take the ship—
your
ship—as soon as we go ashore. I’ll leave crew enough on board. Just go. Any survivors among us will be welcome aboard the other vessels. Or, if we lose, taken prisoner. So get away before then. Sail to England. Wait for your husband there.” He was tugging a ring off his finger. “And take this. It will get you an audience with the Queen. Show it to her. She’ll take care of you.”

Fenella spent a sleepless night in the berth alongside Claes. He slept soundly.
If something happens and I don’t come back,
Adam had said. She could not bear the thought. His touch lingered from the moment he’d placed the ring on her palm and closed her fingers around it. A gold signet ring with the seal of a thorn bush, his family’s symbol.
It will get you an audience with the Queen,
he had said.

A new thought stole over Fenella. The restlessness that had plagued her quieted, its turmoil turning into something more calm but also more intense, like a flame, small but steady. She lay listening to the ship whisper to itself: the moan of ropes, the murmur between sea and hull. In Fenella’s mind, an idea was forming.

There
was
something she could do.

T
he Sea Beggar fleet lay at anchor in the broad River Maas and the
Gotland
rang with the voices of men preparing the attack. Boats splashed into the water, lowered by the boatswain’s crew. Weapons clanked through the lower deck where the crew was being issued pistols and pikes, and boots thumped as men hustled out from the fo’castle. Voices rang across the water from ship to ship as the rest of the Sea Beggars prepared.

Fenella stood amidships with Berck, both of them loosening ropes on blocks that held a rowboat on a boom. Spring sunshine swept the forward deck, but she and Berck stood in the shadows of the mainmast and its furled sails.

“Are you sure about this?” he asked her with a frown of concern.

“Lord Thornleigh’s orders,” Fenella said. A lie, or near enough. She glanced shoreward at the city of Brielle rising up just beyond the beach. Its walls looked impregnable. Fortified towers rose beside the two main gates. The gates were closed.
Sure about this?
No, she was sure only that the blood of men would spill if the Sea Beggars attacked. Maybe Adam’s blood. Maybe Claes’s. “His Lordship said he’d put me ashore before the assault,” she added. “Ask him, if you want.”

Berck glanced toward the stern where Adam, his back to them, was giving commands to a gang of men. “He should have done it before now,” Berck muttered.

“Not his fault, I said no at first. I’ve changed my mind.”

“So Claes wants this?” Berck asked, skeptical. “Seems you’d be safer staying aboard.”

Claes was belowdecks helping with the preparations. To avoid answering Berck she glanced at the activity around Adam. “Time for you to join them. And for me to push off.” She nodded to the line he held. “Lower it.” Together they let the rowboat down and it hit the water with a splash. Fenella swung her leg over the bulwark, about to descend the rope ladder.

“Wait,” Berck said, stopping her. “Claes couldn’t mean for you to go alone.”

“I’ll be fine. His Lordship needs every man here.”

Berck looked torn. “Say the word and I’ll come with you, Fenella. I’ll get you safely away, to Brussels or to the coast.”

His offer touched her, because she knew how eager he was to take part in today’s action. The change in her old friend still amazed her: Berck, once so stolid and morose, leaving his barge and his beer to join this band of desperate men.
He’s not the only one,
she thought with a shiver of surprise, recalling Adam’s words last night:
You’ve changed
.

“Berck, I’ve been taking care of myself for a long time,” she assured him. She forced a smile. “Next time we meet, you and I, we’ll share a pot of ale and you’ll tell me what a hero you were today.”

She took a last look at Adam. He was busy organizing a load of pikes for a boat and hadn’t seen her. She went quickly over the bulwark and down the ladder.

Rowing toward shore, she felt the sunshine like a hand on her back to halt her, warning her to stay away from the city. She glanced over her shoulder at the walls and towers coming closer, then back at the Sea Beggar fleet getting smaller. The sounds from the fleet thinned, and the city seemed silent, too, its stone walls blocking the sounds within. Rowing, she could hear only the squeal of her oars in the oarlocks and the creak of a windmill on the beach.

The rowboat slid up onto the sandy beach. She shipped the oars and hopped out and dragged the boat farther up onto the sand. To her left a stone pier jutted into the water, the fishing boats tied to it bobbing alongside beneath a crane for loading cargo. To her right stretched the beach, where a damaged two-masted bilander lay careened beside a couple of skiffs hauled up on chocks for refitting, one with the top of its mast snapped off. There was a scatter of gear common in any harbor: ropes and nets, barrels and barrows. She saw no one on the beach. Farther down it, the big windmill’s arms lifted and fell, groaning.

She looked up at the city’s stone wall. The crenellated top was like a castle wall, spiked with square stone teeth. In one of the rectangular gaps a man stood watching her. The sun behind him made him a silhouette, but sunlight glinted off something metal that he held. A harquebus? A pistol? Her heart knocked. There could be no doubt that the townspeople were aware of the fleet that had invaded their river.

She walked toward the southern gate that rose before her. It was almost as wide as the
Gotland
’s beam, a massive wooden barrier, arched and studded with iron. A tower dominated the corner that overlooked the gate, its walls hatched with arrow slits like black crosses. Was the tower filled with soldiers? Were archers standing ready on platforms behind those slits? As she reached the gate she heard a sound from the sally port, a narrow door in the wall beside the gate. A plate behind a metal grill at face level scraped open. Eyes glared at her through the grill. “Who goes there?”

“My name is Doorn. I’ve come from the Sea Beggar fleet. Admiral La Marck has sent a message for your mayor. Please, let me in.”

The plate scraped shut. There was muffled scuffling behind the door. Fenella waited, unsure, nervous. The big windmill groaned. Overhead, a seagull screeched.

A bolt or bar behind the sally port clanked and the door opened. A thin man eyed her. He wore a burgundy velvet robe like an alderman. “Enter.”

The moment Fenella stepped through the doorway noise engulfed her. A crowd of townspeople, who must have been standing silent as she’d spoken outside, moved in on her, clamoring with questions. A sergeant in a helmet shouted at them to move back. Dogs barked. A shutter slammed open on the upper story of a house, and along the street people leaned out from windows to watch. The thin alderman was urgently conferring with three men who had come forward to join him, fellow officials by their fine dress. They glared at Fenella.

She tried to ignore the clamor and spoke directly to the officials. “Is one of you Mayor Koekebakker?”

“I am Magistrate Duervorst,” said the thin man. “You say you’ve brought a message for the mayor?” He held out his hand. “I’ll take it to him.”

“I’ll speak it to his face, sir.”

The officials exchanged tense looks. Then the magistrate nodded to Fenella. “Come.”

She followed him and the other officials up the street, the whole party led by the sergeant. Townspeople hustled after them in their wake. Men and women gawked from house windows and shop doorways. Fenella looked around for soldiers, trying to gauge the city’s military strength. All she saw was citizens and shopkeepers, men and women who looked frightened.
No more frightened than me,
she thought. The officials led her past a church where monks stood clustered at its door, gabbling to one another as they watched her go. A yeasty smell reached her, the aroma of baking bread wafting from a bakehouse. Her stomach gurgled with hunger. Like all the Sea Beggars she had eaten nothing in two days except gristles of salt pork as tough as shoes. Another tower rose at the far end of the street behind houses at a bend in the route, the tower’s crenellated top just visible behind the house roofs. That had to be the northern gate.

Townspeople crowded the steps of the City Hall and more were milling inside it. Guards held the people back as the officials hurried Fenella into a council chamber and shut the door on the crowd. Several finely dressed men stood waiting—councillors, Fenella reckoned. They flanked a man as though he was their leader. Surely this was Mayor Koekebakker. He was a beefy, florid man with a mane of gray hair and piercing gray eyes, and Fenella felt at once that he was no fool. Magistrate Duervorst reported to him and the councillors what she had said at the gate, and Koekebakker greeted her warily. Like the others, he was clearly nervous. They were no doubt aware of the Sea Beggars’ reputation for plundering coastal towns, and never before had the Beggars come in such strength. Koekebakker’s questions were quick and to the point: What were Admiral La Marck’s intentions? Why had he sent
her?
The implication of the second question, sharp with surprise and disdain, was clear: why a woman?

“I played loose with the truth,” she said. “The Admiral did not send me. He does not even know I’ve come. He is busy preparing his men to take your city.”

They gaped at her. The mayor repeated her word, incredulous, “
Take
it?”

“And hold it. And when they do, they will be joined by the fighting men of the Brethren.” That was a lie, too. Back in the cove, Adam and La Marck had not even made it ashore to try to contact the Brethren when the Spaniards arrived. But she saw the alarm that her mention of them had on several of the councillors and she plowed on. “I see you know the Brethren, sir, at least by reputation. Good. Their leader is Claes Doorn, and he is out there right now, on the Admiral’s flagship.”

“That cannot be,” a councillor protested. “Doorn is locked up in the Duke of Alba’s prison.”

“He is not, sir. He escaped. How do I know all this, you wonder? Because I escaped with him. Claes Doorn is my husband.” That brought a swift change in them, looks of a new, grim respect for her. It gave her the courage to press on. “He and I have traveled with the Admiral’s fleet, which, as you can see, is formidable. And I’ll tell you something more. They know your garrison is woefully understrength.”

She paused, her heart in her mouth. Koekebakker, stone-faced, did not contradict her. Did that mean Claes was right about the garrison? Or was the mayor craftily keeping silent about the Spanish troops standing ready in the city’s towers?

Magistrate Duervorst, however, could not hold back. “How many ships? How many men?”

“Sixty-eight ships,” she said. “Three thousand men.” The lie was so brazen, so incredible, she feared they would scoff or even laugh. Instead, they looked afraid. They believed her! Her ploy was working! She masked the thrill she felt. “And that’s not all.” She pulled Adam’s ring off her finger, the signet ring of the House of Thornleigh. “The English baron Lord Thornleigh sails alongside Admiral La Marck. This is his ring.”

Koekebakker took the ring and examined it gravely. The councillor nearest him said in awe, “The pirate baron.”

“The same,” Fenella said. “He has come with three warships sent by the queen of England.”

Duervorst looked frightened but bewildered. “But . . . the English queen has abandoned La Marck’s Beggars. She expelled them from her ports.”

“Only to unleash them. The whole world knows Queen Elizabeth is no lover of Spain. She supports the Dutch people’s rightful leader, the prince of Orange. Baron Thornleigh has come as her fighting arm, and his warships are now almost at your harbor. When they reach it their cannon fire will obliterate your walls.”

The men gazed at her in agonized silence. She could not afford to give them time to think. “I have come here to reason with you. The Admiral and his men have no quarrel with you or the citizens of Brielle. They are Dutchmen, too, and would rather not harm you. Their only goal is the overthrow of the tyrant Duke of Alba. So open your gates to them. Welcome them as the liberators they are. Yield to them now, and there will be no bloodshed.”

Silence. Stony faces. Then all the men seemed to speak at once.

“Their strength is vast.”

“What shall we do?”

“Resist!”

“No, no, surrender.”

“Flee! Gather our families and flee!”

“And abandon our property? To go where?”

“There is no time! We
must
surrender!”

Fenella said quickly, “Permitting entry to your fellow countrymen is not surrender.” She had frightened them just as she’d hoped and she hid her exultation. All she needed to do now was calm them. “Simply open your gates and let them in. I assure you, they will neither harm you nor despoil your city. They are your friends!” She smiled. “In fact, your shops and alehouses will profit by their stay. Think of them as paying guests.”

They fell silent, staring at her as though wanting to believe her. She kept smiling,
willing
them to believe. Gradually, all eyes turned to Mayor Koekebakker. He was the only one who had not spoken. Fenella watched him turn Adam’s ring in his fingers, deep in thought.

He looked up at her. “We could flee, as Councillor Jurdens would have us do, but as Councillor Poelman says, by doing so we would forfeit our property. Or we could throw open our gates to the visitors, as Councillor Roehorst and this lady would have us do, and indeed she paints a rosy picture of them enjoying the city and our citizens happily pocketing their gold. But despite her honeyed words for it, that
is
surrender. Surrender to rebels. Treason. Make no mistake, gentlemen, that is exactly what the Duke of Alba will call it. And I assure you that if we willingly let in this rebel horde, the only rosy hue will be the blood spurting from our necks when Alba’s executioner strikes our heads from our shoulders.”

They gaped at him. “Dear God,” Duervorst murmured in horror, “he’s right.” The other men, white-faced, seemed to shrink into themselves.

Fenella felt her victory sink like a man washed overboard. “Wait, please—”

“No, enough,” Koekebakker ordered. He tossed the ring back at her. She fumbled it. It fell and clattered on the floor. As she snatched it up Koekebakker said sternly to his councillors, “We will resist the rebels. Agreed?” No one objected. He strode to the door and opened it and the voices of the crowd in the corridor became a roar. He gestured for the sergeant, and when the man pushed his way in through the people Koekebakker said, “Inform your lieutenants: They are to stand firm and repel the attack.”

“Yes, my lord.”

“And have guards escort this woman to my house. She is not a guest; she is a rebel. Lock her in.”