Die schwarze Galeere. English Read online

to him. And it was frequently very muchso and just the job for him.

  III.Jan and Myga.

  The following evening Myga van Bergen was sitting in one of the high gablehouses behind the city wall on the quayside in Antwerp in the immediatevicinity of her small night light. As the daughter of the erstwhile richand respected merchant, Michael van Bergen, of whom it could now be said:Supremum diem obiit, senex et pauper (Old age and poverty killed him),she was dressed in mourning.

  As when a sack of newly minted gold coins is shaken, fifteen or twentyyears before the name of the firm of Norris and Van Bergen reverberated inthe ears of everyone, for the firm represented one of the richest merchantbanking houses in the whole of affluent Antwerp. Its ships sailed onevery ocean, its warehouses were full of the most precious treasures fromthe Indies and America, its underwriting rooms were full of diligentunderwriters. Twenty years before you could have asked at the StockExchange or at the Oosterling Bank, the great repository of the HanseaticLeague, about the firm of Norris and Van Bergen and you would have heardgood reports of them.

  Now it was a different story. Johann Geerdes Norris had died long ago inAmsterdam and a fortnight since his former business partner had followedhim to the grave in Antwerp as an undischarged bankrupt.

  If you had asked now on the Stock Exchange or at the offices of theHanseatic League about the firm of Norris and Van Bergen, you wouldprobably have been asked to repeat your question more than once andreceived for your answer a shake of the head. Who could still remembernow the firm of Norris and Van Bergen? Only the oldest merchants andbrokers would still know of it.

  But how had such a thing come about?

  The answer to that question is easy to give. When the firm of Norrisand Van Bergen was in its heyday, two hundred thousand inhabitants weregainfully employed in Antwerp. Now they had dwindled to eighty thousand.is that explanation enough for you?

  Let us cast a glance back at days gone by to the twentieth day of Augustin that annus horribilis of 1585. On this day those of the reformedfaith held their last service in the cathedral. After the surrender,which the town had arranged with its mighty conqueror, Prince Alexanderof Parma, the Catholics were to have restored to them the following daythe sacred property of the Blessed Virgin Mary that they had had to leaveso long in the hands of heretics.

  It was a solemn and extraordinary moment when, on 20 August, after thelast Protestant sermon, the rolling chords of the cathedral organ wereheard. A deep silence ensued, people sat with heads bowed praying softlyand fervently. Then there was an unexpected commotion--a noise, half asigh, half a repressed cry of anger rang out in a painful sort of way. Amurmuring arose, the congregation got up from their seats and ran in anundisciplined confusion towards the church doors, towards those greatportals, to which the Catholic portion of the population were alreadylaying siege.

  Triumph and defeat!

  Monks of every conceivable order pushed contemptuously or threateninglypast the humiliated, still crying or complaining heretics, lifting theirwreathes of roses gaily.

  How long ago it now was since they had had to succumb to these very sameheretics who had then cried out to them: "Papen uyt! Papen uyt!" ("Awaywith the priests! Away with the priests!").

  Such a changeable thing is man's fate and triumph and defeat alternate inspiritual struggles.

  On 20 August the merchant banking house of Norris and Van Bergen was stillstrong and well respected. On 27 August the firm was officially wound up.Alexander Farnese entered the conquered town in triumph; Jan Geerdes Norrisleft it with his ten-year-old son and several companions who did not wantto endure a Spanish yoke. Michael van Bergen stayed behind with his littledaughter who was then six years old. Each of the two partners acted trueto character: Norris impulsively and angrily; Van Bergen fearfully and withtimidity. The former flew in the face of bitter destiny and abandoned hisposition to resume it elsewhere, the battle having been lost. The latterbowed to his fate and suffered in silence what he could not hope to alterfor the better.

  But all this was a long time ago and our two protagonists are no longerGeerdes Norris and Michael Van Bergen, but their children Jan and Mygarespectively.

  Into what a frightful, devastated, horrid world had the two poor mitesbeen thrust. How often had maternal lullabies been silenced by the noiseof gunfire both near and distant! How often had their fathers had to takeson and daughter off their knees because they had been summoned by thewarning bell to the walls or to the town hall!

  Poor little mites! They had never been able like other children born inhappier times to tumble out of danger in shady woods and on the green grassof meadows. They had never been able to make crowns from the bluecornflowers and the red poppies which grew at the edge of tilled fields.

  The woods were full of the roaming bands of His Catholic Majesty, thewild gangs of the forest beggars and lawless and ruthless ragamuffinsthat had dispersed there from all over Europe.

  The armies of Spain, mercenaries from Germany, England, France and Italy,the soldiers of the United Provinces under the leadership of the Prince ofOrange fought on the green grass of the meadows and pitched their makeshifthuts and tents there.

  Fields of corn, even before the corn in them ripened, even before poppiesand cornflowers bloomed in them, fell victim to the feet and hooves ofinvading armies.

  Where was there a peaceful hamlet to be found on this downtrodden pieceof earth that the King of Spain saw as his own?

  In the dark and narrow sidestreets of the town of Antwerp, behind the highwalls, redoubts and towers of Paciotti, poor children had their playgroundsand these were often unsafe and perilous. Often the houses of honestburghers were changed into dungeons in which those who lived there shutthemselves up, in which they themselves had to be their own jailers toprotect themselves against clear and present danger.

  These two children's perception of the world must have been very differentto that of other more fortunate children and many a fair blossom wasstifled and annihilated in the bud by the dark and cold cloud that hungover these troubled times.

  How often Jan and Myga during the Prince of Parma's long siege had seenfrom their windows where they laid their gaily-coloured dolls and cuddlyanimals war with its attendant horrors rampaging through the streets!

  It had been decided by their fathers and mothers that Jan and Myga wouldone day be a couple while the great firm of Norris and Van Bergen wasstill in existence. When the surrender negotiated by Prince Alexanderwith the town of Antwerp had once been signed, however, Jan GeerdesNorris ripped up the contract of forthcoming marriage between his sonand Michael van Bergen's daughter. By this time the wives of bothpartners were already dead.

  On 27 August 1585 the two children were separated from each other andthe ten-year-old boy and the six-year-old girl sobbed as if their heartswould break at it, but it was wartime and war splits up people who areclose to one another in ways far crueller. It was felt as a matter ofcourse that the two children would have forgotten the earliest memoriesof their childhood soon enough. We shall see if that was indeed the case.

  The years went by and Jan Geerdes Norris passed away as did Michael vanBergen after his fortune had melted like snow in the sun.

  Myga sat in her little room behind the city walls along the quayside inAntwerp. She was in her black mourning clothes, a beautiful young womanstill pale from her long vigils at the bed of her dying father. She wasspinning. Her eyes were full of tears and her heart was full of pent-upgrief and care. The poor child had been quite alone in the great townsince the death of her father and the times were so unruly that the weakin society were virtually at the mercy of all random oppression andinsolence.

  But was Myga van Bergen completely alone in the world?

  Poor child! One of Myga's principal worries was that she was not entirelyalone.

  There was still someone to watch over Michael van Bergen's daughter. Theorphan knew full well that at least one heart had remained faithful to her,that Jan N
orris of Amsterdam would have shed his blood to the last dropfor her. Jan Norris, however, was an outcast, under threat of the gallowsif he fell into the hands of the Spaniards in the streets of Antwerp.And Jan Norris the sea beggar often appeared in various disguises in thestreets of Antwerp.

  Jan Norris had not forgotten the memories of his youth as quickly as JanGeerdes Norris, his father, thought he would have done.

  Jan and Myga were still effectively betrothed to each other. No power onearth could have separated them--they had sworn to each other an oath thatwas mutually binding. What was to become of them, neither of them, aslong as Michael lived, could possibly have said.

  Michael van Bergen had now been dead and buried for a fortnight, but Janhad disappeared months ago. Was he still alive? Had he drowned at sea?Had the Spaniards boarded his ship, caught him and hanged him?

  Who could say?

  What would poor abandoned Myga have done with herself, all alone in theworld, if Jan really had been dead?

  The night gradually drew on, but Myga