The Sea Beggars Read Online Free Page A

going to try to destroy us.”
    Her mother’s face seemed to fall still. She clasped her hands in front of her. “Wait until your father comes home.”
    â€œMother—”
    â€œDon’t talk to me. Wait until your father comes home.”
    Hanneke was struggling against a rising surge of panic. She lifted the broadside again and stared at it. But her mother was right: there was nothing to do except wait. Slowly she turned and climbed the stairs again, to go back to her station, to take up her place, and wait.
    Word of the King’s decision came swiftest along the canals, shouted from barge to barge and barge to shore, shouted back again by voices hoarse with disbelief. Jan heard it standing on the third step of the stair up from the wharf.
    He said, “Oh, my God.”
    The loading crew, some on the wharf, some on the steps above him, said nothing. They let fall whatever they were carrying and turned and ran up onto the canal bank; the foreman, coming from the end of the wharf, brushed past Jan on the steps so roughly Jan lost his balance and nearly fell into the water.
    â€œWait,” he called, but no one waited.
    On the canal, the long low scow whose boatman had called out the news was sliding away toward the next wharf; from that platform, already the men were crying out in despair and anger. Jan looked down at the litter of dropped bundles on the wharf and scrambled up the ladder to find his father.
    Halfway across the high-piled yard to the back door of the factory, he stopped. Why was he looking for his papa, like a little boy afraid of the dark? His hands were damp with sweat. What Mies had said to him only a few days before returned to him like bells ringing in his mind: If we had not settled the issue of the Inquisition, things would be a lot worse … In the factory before him a loud voice rose, the words inaudible, but the tone one of outrage. Jan went to the gate and let himself out into the street.
    If his father challenged him over leaving his work, he would say he went to spy, as Mies had hinted he should do.
    The trouble was that he had no idea where to go to do that. He walked aimlessly down the street, in the opposite direction from his home, into the middle of Antwerp. A tinker passed him, burdened down with pots and pans. At the corner, where this street met the broad thoroughfare that led past the Bourse and down to the river, several women in scarves and shawls were talking intensely together. Jan turned into the great street. A boy ran past him, yelling, “The King’s a bastard!” in French. The usual press of horse-drawn carts and bustling people on foot crowded the street, but here and there the traffic had slowed and knots of people stood around talking.
    Beyond the rooftops that fenced the lefthand side of the street rose the single off-center spire of Antwerp’s cathedral. When he saw it Jan’s hackles stood on end. Yes. Swiftly he bent his steps there, to the center of the Catholic faith, to the visible enemy.
    He came into the square before the cathedral, into the back of a great restless crowd. Everyone seemed to be staring at the ornately carved stonework of the huge old church. He passed a woman with her little boy by the hand who as Jan went by snatched the child up and hurried away with him.
    Along the front of the cathedral the throng reversed itself: in the square they all stood facing the church, but before it were ranks and ranks of men with their backs to it, facing the square. They carried clubs and rocks; they were Catholics. Defending their church. Jan clenched his teeth. He pushed his way through the mob, unwilling to stand still, his heart thumping. He had to elbow a man out of his way and the man wheeled and glowered at him and swore in a keen voice. Others ignored him. Everyone was staring across the little strip of open ground at the Catholics, who stared back at them.
    Jan hated them; he did not know how he came to the