Batavia (36 page)

Even though those rafts have not yet been fully finished, the main thing is that they can at least float – as the signal from Hayes has changed everything. Where there is smoke, there is water – and there is therefore no reason to stay here any longer.

Now, how much water Wiebbe Hayes and his men have found, and what the conditions on those islands are like – for to have survived this long with that many people they must have found some kind of food – is not certain. But what
is
certain is that things simply have to be better than they are on Traitors’ Island.

So Jansz gives the orders. ‘Everyone into the rafts, and quick about it. The
Onderkoopman
has made an oath that we can join Wiebbe Hayes once our rafts have been built and we have seen the signal. Now is our moment!’

With great enthusiasm, thus, the provost divides the 14 survivors on the island between the two rafts, putting himself on the same one as his wife and child. Together, they make their way through the shallows towards the deepwater channel, where they soon come into full view of those on Batavia’s Graveyard. It is David Zevanck and Coenraat van Huyssen who are among the first to see them, and they quickly make their way to Jeronimus’s side to inform him. What should they do?

‘Pursue them,’ Jeronimus replies coolly, his face betraying not the slightest emotion. ‘Stop them.’

Zevanck heads off to do exactly that, pausing only to gather his favourite silver sword, the one he spends endless time polishing and sharpening. This will be the perfect weapon for the job. Jeronimus has said to ‘stop them’, and ‘stopped’ they will be. There is nothing else for it, lest the now potentially formidable, well-watered foes on the High Islands be further reinforced by the provost’s party.

On the rafts, the provost and his people have proceeded a mile from their starting point and are making reasonable headway through the channel alongside Seals’ Island when, as hot a day as it is, Claudine Patoys, with child in arms, notices something that chills her to her very soul. Coming out from Batavia’s Graveyard is a fast yawl, and it is heading in their direction! She quickly alerts the others, and they all stop their paddling to stare. Surely they aren’t being
pursued
, are they? It isn’t as if they are doing anything wrong, is it? Of course they are doing nothing wrong. But within a minute, as the sunshine glints off cutlasses and swords, it is obvious that not only are they being chased but also their pursuers are armed!

What can they do? Now taking up their poles and makeshift oars as if their lives depend on it – because there seems every chance that they do – they furiously push and paddle their way forward in the vain hope that they can outrun the yawl and escape these dire straits.

Within three minutes, it is clear that their quest is hopeless – not that they stop poling and paddling because of it. Within seven minutes, the pursuing yawl is just 100 yards behind their two rafts, easily close enough that those in the lead can hear the hot cries of anger coming from behind them across the water.

‘
Waar gaat u naartoe?
Where are you going?’

There is so much ominous portent in the question that neither the provost nor any of his people, all rowing furiously, reply.

So, standing in the prow of the yawl, David Zevanck switches from asking questions to issuing commands. ‘
Blijf staan!
Stand to!’ he bellows to them across the waves, through hands cupped around his mouth. ‘In the name of the
Kapitein-Generaal
, I command you to
blijf staan
!’

They do no such thing.

And now, in shaken horror, the 110 members of the ship’s company on Batavia’s Graveyard, and some of those 40 poor struggling souls on Seals’ Island, watch what happens next.

The yawl of Zevanck and van Huyssen has no sooner overtaken the two makeshift boats from Traitors’ Island than the Mutineers are leaning over and viciously swinging their swords at the provost and all the rest! The provost’s party is all but entirely defenceless, except for the oars, with which they are uselessly trying to parry the Mutineers’ brutal thrusts. When Jan Hendricxsz leads three others in leaping from their yawl onto the rafts, flailing their swords – nearly overturning the rafts from the weight of Hendricxsz alone – four of the provost’s men leap into the water, despite the fact they can’t swim. There follows a small amount of desperate splashing and then they are seen no more. Another four men, who are able to swim, take to the sea. Still trusting in Jeronimus, they head for the shore of Batavia’s Graveyard to seek refuge with the
Onderkoopman.
Surely
he
will stop all this murderous madness.

In an instant, all the fight goes out of the provost and his remaining party members. Zevanck’s cronies instruct that outraged but fearful man, standing in front of his cowering wife and crying daughter in an attempt to keep them safe, that both rafts must now make their way back to Batavia’s Graveyard, propelled by the remaining men. The instruction is followed.

At the approach to the shore of the yawl and the two makeshift rafts, the gathered crowd disperse like mice before approaching serpents. These men are killers, and if they can attack innocents like that, without even bothering to go through the pretence of a legal process, then it is clear that no one is safe.

Zevanck is first to jump ashore, and he issues strict instructions to his men that the provost and the survivors of his party must stay exactly where they are on the beach until he receives further orders from Jeronimus. From the beach, the provost watches with trepidation, his child’s arms wrapped fearfully around his legs, as Jeronimus emerges from his tent and consults with Zevanck for all of 30 seconds. What is to be their fate?

Zevanck turns and is running back towards them, shouting. The first shout is carried away by the wind, but the second is all too clear:
Dood hen!
Kill them!

Immediately, Coenraat van Huyssen and the other Mutineers, led by those most brutal of brutes, Jan Hendricxsz and Lenart van Os, fall upon them and butcher the provost, the two children and two of the men. Meanwhile, the four men who have been swimming to shore now arrive. Not having seen the previous conversation between Jeronimus and Zevanck, they run towards Jeronimus, thinking he is the one who can save them, who can put a stop to this cold-blooded murder.

‘Onderkoopman! Onderkoopman!’ they cry, unintentionally aggravating Jeronimus further, as he is now known exclusively as ‘Kapitein-Generaal’ to all in his domain.

Infuriated at the insolent attempt of these people from Traitors’ Island to save their own lives, it is Jan Hendricxsz, surprisingly fast for such a big man, who quickly runs down one of them and holds him underfoot so that another, newly joined, Mutineer, Andries Jonas, can ram his pike directly through his throat until the death rattle is heard. Not to be outdone, with two blows from his own trusty sword, another of Zevanck’s men, Rutger Fredericxsz, kills two more of the provost’s lowly curs.

What, then, of the remaining hapless three women, including the provost’s wife, all of them still on the raft and aghast at what they have just witnessed? Clinging to each other and weeping in complete futility, they have no choice but to wait until Hendricxsz and the other Mutineers return. Are they, too, to be killed?

It seems not, for the Mutineers now sheathe their swords, return to their yawl and, for a reason the women don’t understand, tow them on their raft back out to the channel. Ah, but they do have a purpose in mind. For when they are all mid-channel, the Mutineers overturn their raft and watch curiously – amid all the gasping, flailing of arms and brief resurfacing – as they drown.
Everyone who was once on Traitors’ Island
has been killed.

Of the murders to date, these have been the bloodiest, most merciless and most public. One who witnesses the whole thing, including the drownings, is Gabriel Jacobsz, along with several of his people on Seals’ Island. While they are at least relieved to not be on the same island as the murderers, what they have just seen is beyond alarming. At Jacobsz’s insistence, they redouble their efforts to build their own rafts. Clearly, things are now out of control on Batavia’s Graveyard – or maybe, even, all too firmly in the control of Jeronimus – and the best hope for them all is to get away and seek succour with Wiebbe Hayes and his men.

9 July 1629, Batavia’s Graveyard

The
Predikant’s
daughter Judick – like her mother, a generally sullen if notably dutiful woman – stands stirring the stewing seal meat in her tent and waits and waits and waits . . . wishing that she could wait forever.
Grote God
, my God, if only it were so. But now the flap of her tent flies open, and there before her is her ‘husband’, Coenraat van Huyssen, returned from another day’s killing.

As a little girl, Judick, like all Dutch children, was raised on the legend of Boeman – the ‘bogeyman’ of the Netherlands – who had sharp claws, dressed in black and was prone to kidnapping naughty children who had not done what their parents had asked. Here and now, on the Abrolhos in 1629, it feels like she is married to him. Now, Boeman himself, Coenraat, towers before her, dripping from head to foot with both seawater and blood. Just who has he killed this time?

‘When is dinner ready?’ he asks matter-of-factly, as if it is the most normal thing in the world to be dripping with blood. (By now, it practically is.) Stifling a sob, Judick tells him that it will be perhaps half an hour and then helps the beast to remove his bloody cassock. She then gets a bowl of seawater boiling on the fire so she can hopefully remove the worst of the bloodstains and have the cassock dry again by the following morning. Coenraat always likes to look neat.

The macabre mass murder of the provost’s party has a profound effect on the survivors on Batavia’s Graveyard, who all stood by helpless throughout. Large globs of blood still stain the coral where the last of the men died. A pall of fear, of growing terror, hangs over the island, as each step in the night sounds like death on the march towards them, the shriek of the wind the sound of the souls of those who have just been murdered. Who will be next? What can they, as ‘Survivors’,
do
?

For, in the wake of these open murders, they, too, feel a formal bond with each other, in the sense that they are non-Mutineers and therefore, as Survivors, are all under common threat. On this island, there is no separation between the people ‘fore of the mast’ and ‘aft of the mast’ – there are only those who are with Jeronimus and those who are not.

10 July 1629, Batavia’s Graveyard

And now, in the early evening, Andries de Vries is ushered into Jeronimus’s august presence in his massive tent. After some minimal pleasantries – none of which calm the deeply upset youth, still shocked beyond all redemption by everything that has happened to him in the last few days – the
Kapitein-Generaal
comes to it.

‘Andries,’ Jeronimus says softly to the tremulous young man, ‘I am sorry about that unpleasantness of a few days ago, and I am very glad that you were spared. But I am wondering if . . . you could perhaps render us a small service?’

Andries, wide-eyed and trying not to shake, nods eagerly that
he will do
anything
they ask
.

‘Good,’ Jeronimus replies. ‘Because we have something of a problem with the eleven people in the sick tent. They are all going to die anyway, otherwise they wouldn’t be there, but in the meantime they are only suffering, even as they eat precious food and drink precious water. Really, it will be a great kindness to all of them to stop their suffering immediately. So . . . Andries . . . I ask you now. Would you be prepared to take a knife tonight, and quickly and quietly cut all of their throats? We would take it as a sign of your great friendship to us. Andries, would you be prepared to do that?’

Andries starts weeping pitifully and is unable to speak.

In a harder tone now, Jeronimus asks again, ‘Andries, would you be prepared to do that?’ He leans forward, interested on an intellectual level, apart from everything else, just how this youth will react to the deal he has put before him. Andries is not naturally bad like Zevanck or Pelgrom, but how far could a good man be pushed to do not just evil but the worst kind of evil? For a while, Andries just sits there shuddering with the horror of it all. Finally, though, Jeronimus gets his answer.

For Andries nods his head.

Yes, he will do even that, if only they will spare his own life.

And yet there is still one more thing. Jeronimus has noted that Andries likes to talk to Lucretia. The
Kapitein-Generaal
does not like this. Does Andries understand that, ‘If ever in your life you talk to her again, you will have to die?’

Again, the young man nods miserably. Yes, he understands that.

Good. With a languid hand of dismissal from Jeronimus, he is allowed to leave.

Shortly afterwards, the still-shaking Andries is escorted to the sick tent by David Zevanck, Gijsbert van Welderen and Coenraat van Huyssen. It is a night of yet more shrieking wind, and their eyes sting from the sand whipping off the top of the surrounding dunes like spume from the surface of a swollen sea.

Zevanck now personally hands Andries a very sharp knife, before he is given some quick instruction by van Huyssen on how to cut a human throat. Ideally, you see, you must have the victim face down and then pull the head up, exposing the key vein, which, once cut, will cause the victim to die quickly and relatively silently, if bloodily. Not to worry about the blood, that cannot be helped. The bonus is that, if done right, the victim cannot even scream, which should be useful if Andries is to quickly get through 11 of them in this tent.

Can Andries do it?

There seems to be another pitiful nod, although so badly is he shaking it is hard to tell. But yes, Andries steals into the tent while the trio of Mutineers waits outside and listens carefully. There! First, they hear a cough, then a gurgle, and then the curious ripping sound that a knife makes when it slashes a throat . . . and then a small sob.