Batavia (54 page)

Further, Jan Willems Selijns gives evidence that, though Jeronimus gave orders for Wouter to kill him, Wouter interceded and managed to save him. It is possible, just possible, the
raad
concludes, that even through all the blackness of Wouter Loos’s soul there remains a glimmer of light.

One man who signed the Mutineers’ oath but who is nevertheless quickly deemed innocent after questioning is Hans Hardens. Though the soldier had some minor involvement with some of their acts, it is obvious that this shattered man only nominally joined under the most severe circumstances. For Pelsaert, it is nigh on inconceivable that a man could swear loyalty to a band that first killed his child and then whored his wife before killing her, yet it is clear this is precisely what Hardens has done on the simple grounds that the alternative was his own certain death. In the face of it all, Pelsaert feels that in terms of punishment there is nothing they can visit upon this man that would approach what he has already been through and what his conscience will do to him every day for the rest of his life.

28 September 1629, Batavia’s Graveyard and aboard the
Sardam

After ten days of such examination, the guilt of Jeronimus and his closest remaining cohorts – Lenart van Os, Mattys Beer, Jan Hendricxsz, Allert Jansz, Rutger Fredricxsz, Jan Pelgrom and Andries Jonas – has been so firmly established that it is beyond all doubt. Jeronimus, to begin with, has confessed to nearly all of it. The Broad Council is all but ready to wind up its inquiry and deliberate on the appropriate sentences for them when Jeronimus – who else but? – suddenly recants all of his previous confessions and swears he is innocent after all.

Pelsaert is stupefied, and addresses him directly. ‘Why, pray tell, do you mock us in this manner? Have you not, on previous occasions, without torture, confessed everything from your plan to
foment mutiny and seize the vessel
to the murders you ordered?’

Jeronimus could not be more charming in reply, his hands outstretched in supplication, at least as far as his ropes will allow him. ‘I beg for both the
Commandeur’s
forgiveness and his understanding,’ he says simply. ‘It is true that my words of one time do not match my words of another time. But this is only because it is one of my last two remaining desires on this earth for you to take me to Batavia with you, where I may be examined at your leisure. I know I have done much wrong, and I assure you I crave no mercy for it. But, Commandeur,
I still dream that one day
, before I die, I may even be able to see my beloved wife Belijtgen in Amsterdam once more.’

Enough! Pelsaert can no longer bear Jeronimus’s erratic testimony. There is nothing for it but to call for the canvas to be reattached around Jeronimus’s neck and for water to be brought – at which point, of course, the evil one again freely admits everything. Jeronimus is obviously as guilty a man as any who ever lived, and he deserves to live no longer.

There remains, however, an important issue to resolve . . . and, after Jeronimus has been led away once more, Pelsaert puts this issue to the Broad Council succinctly: should we take such a gruesome villain as Jeronimus Cornelisz (who is with all unthinkable misdeeds and horror besmirched) in captivity on our yacht to Batavia to bring him before the Honourable Lord General Jan Pieterszoon Coen, who could give him the justly deserved punishment, or should we follow the strict order of our Lord Masters that villains and criminal evil-doers must not be brought to Batavia if doing so will put
ships and men in further danger
?

The obvious decision is finally reached. To take them back to Batavia is too great a risk – they would, after all, be once again carrying a great treasure, thinly defended, and would have on board hardened criminals impregnated with the bad life, together with others who sipped a little of the poison and may have liked its taste.

The bulk of the punishment must be exacted here on the Abrolhos. And yet, still there is a complication. Jeronimus, suspecting that his days are nearing their end, has sent a message via the
Predikant
that
he desires to be baptised
and further begs that he have time to bewail his sins so that at last he might die in peace and in repentance.

If it is simply a ploy by Jeronimus to gain more time, it is nevertheless a clever one. Pelsaert is powerless to refuse such a request from a man who is even seen to be seeking to save his own soul, so he decides that he can indeed be baptised in two days’ time, and then executed the following day – though he keeps the prospective execution date from Jeronimus. Upon the
Commandeur’s
instruction, the
Predikant
tells Jeronimus only that he can be baptised – something that appears to ease his troubled mind.

Just as the sun is about to sink, the wind to pick up and the birds to cry out that they are calling it a day, Pelsaert is ready to announce the formal sentencing. At his behest, all the survivors from the
Batavia
– there are just under four score of them left from the original ship’s complement of 331 – gather with the crew from the
Sardam
as the prisoners are brought forth. For most of the survivors, it is the first time they have seen all of the Mutineers together in the last ten days, since the wheels of justice began to crush them.

And yet, rather than screams of anger, shouts of upset and general baying for the blood of the guilty, there is a total stunned silence as the prisoners are lined up before them, as the survivors barely recognise them.

These murderous criminals who once appeared the most ghastly of all beasts, swaggering incarnations of the Devil in red velvet and gold lace, are now no more than raggedy red men held in fetters, emasculated ghosts, spectres not long for this world. They are the walking dead. And the effect is nowhere more pronounced than with Jeronimus. For he is at neither head nor tail of the line, nor even dominant in the middle, but merely three along from the left end, trying to shelter among the men who were once his disciples, but none of his fellow accused bar Pelgrom will even acknowledge him, they simply stare balefully straight ahead.

And now Jeronimus comes to life a little, jeering at the crowd of onlookers with imprecations for a few seconds, before pathetically attempting to win them over with entreaties the next. But, of regret for what he has done, for what he has wrought, there is none.

The
Predikant
, who is in the crowd, staring intently at Jeronimus himself, mentally forms then and there the words he will later report: ‘
if ever there was Godless Man
in his utmost need, it was he’.

Pelsaert reads out the deliberation of the Broad Council: ‘We have therefore unanimously resolved and found good, in the best service of the Company and our Honourable Lord Masters, and have given the matter our utmost consideration. After long examinations and much searching, in order to turn from us the wrath of God and to cleanse the name of Christianity from such an unheard-of villain because, even under Moors or Turks, such unheard-of abominable misdeeds would not have happened or been left without being punished, I would not speak of Christians, that they should murder each other without extreme hunger or thirst – we have sentenced the foresaid Jeronimus Cornelisz of Haarlem, together with the worst and most willing murderers, who have made a profession of it. Accordingly we sentence and condemn with this, that firstly Jeronimus Cornelisz apothecary, and later
Onderkoopman
of the ship
Batavia
, shall be taken to Seals’ Island, to a place made ready for it in order to exercise Justice, and there firstly to cut off both his hands, and after this shall be punished on the gallows with the cord till death shall follow, with confiscation of all his money, gold, silver, monthly wages, and
all claims which here in India he may have
against the profits of the General East India Company of our Lord Masters . . .’

At this news of his fate, Jeronimus is seen to slump a little but makes no sound. He has been hoping against hope that he will be put on the yacht to get back to Batavia, giving him another six weeks or so of life, in which time anything could happen. Now, he finds, he has but a short time to live.

The other sentences are almost equally grim. Each man will have all his kit and wages confiscated, the implication being that each of their families will receive nothing. Jan Hendricxsz, Lenart van Os, Allert Jansz and Mattys Beer are all sentenced to have their right hands removed before they are hanged, while Jan Pelgrom, Andries Jonas and Rutger Fredricxsz are to be simply hanged with both of their murderous hands intact. When his own sentence is announced, a series of wrenching sobs bursts forth from Jan Pelgrom.

Pelsaert goes on. The following criminals are to be taken to Batavia for further interrogation: ‘Wouter Loos of Maastricht, soldier, but who has been made captain of the rebel troop after the capture of Jeronimus Cornelisz, Jacop “Stonecutter” Pietersz of Amsterdam, petty officer of Jeronimus alongside Zevanck and Coenraat van Huyssen, Hans Jacobsz of Basel, cadet, Daniel Cornelisz of Dort, cadet, Andries Liebent of Oldens, cadet, . . . Cornelis Jansz of Haarlem, sailor, Rogier Decker of Haarlem, formerly boy to Jeronimus,
Jan Willems Selijns of Amsterdam, cooper.’

Others, meantime, are to be rewarded for their loyalty and endeavour, none more so than Wiebbe Hayes, who: ‘when he was on the High Island with 47 souls, protected them faithfully and preserved them bravely from the murderous party that intended to put them all together out of the way . . . We have found good, since there are no officers over the soldiers, to appoint the said Wiebbe Hayes a sergeant, with a pay of eighteen guilders a month. Also we make Otto Smit of Halberstadt for his faithful help to Wiebbe Hayes a corporal
on a pay of 15 guilders per month
.’

With all of the announcements made, Pelsaert lowers the document to a table and publicly signs it, followed first by a troubled-looking Salomon Deschamps and then by the other members of the
raad
.

What to do, what to do?

Finally, it has come to this. After almost two weeks of interrogation and torture, the perfidious Pelsaert – was there ever a man so wretched risen so high? – has Jeronimus in a vice, the hangman’s noose swinging back and forth in readiness before the fevered brow of the
Onderkoopman’s
imagination, as he spends yet another night in the hole. Somehow making it all worse is that Pelsaert has held back the date of execution, though he has heard the reason he has not been immediately executed is to afford him time to ‘repent’.

Repent! Repent for what? After all, he hasn’t personally killed a single soul. His own bare hands have not been sullied by blood; he has merely acted in the best interests of those who would survive. Culling the population was necessary to preserve the short supplies they had, for the alternative was to have them all die a terrible death of starvation within just a few weeks. The situation needed a strong man, and if he was the only one strong enough, then so be it! Do they not know of the chaos he found, and how he imposed the order that was so desperately necessary? They do not. Either that or they do not care.

Nor do they see what is obvious to him, that what he did was neither good nor bad. For, whatever actions he took, God Himself put the same into his heart, and as God is perfect in virtue and goodness, so He is not able to send into the heart of men anything bad,
because there is no evil or badness in Himself
.

Jeronimus tosses, turns. He cannot sleep, and nor does he want to. For if he has perhaps just a score of hours left to live, why waste them with sleep? Not that this existence, the tight grip of fear in his stomach, the terrible looseness of his sphincter, the shocking awareness that he will soon
die
, is any existence he cares for. But at least he is conscious, not embarking on that sleep of death that will likely soon be his for all eternity.

Working himself into a frenzy of fear, of self-delusion and self-righteousness in equal measures, Jeronimus pens two letters to his fellow Rosicrucians back home in the Dutch Republic declaring his total innocence, citing the charges as pure fiction, wilfully false accusations,
scuttlebutt of the highest order
, made by others to save their own souls. Once the letters are completed, he calls out to the under-steersman Jacop Holloch from his tiny prison cell deep below the fo’c’sle, proffering the two missives through the metal grating. ‘See these reach the intended without any other’s knowledge,’ he commands imperiously, still assuming his self-titled position of
Kapitein-Generaal
, ‘and be quick about you!’

Bemused, Holloch
, who has pledged no fealty to Jeronimus, immediately passes on the correspondence to the
Commandeur
.

29 September 1629, Batavia’s Graveyard and aboard the
Sardam

The following morning, a staggered Pelsaert reads out Jeronimus’s distortions and outright fabrications to the Broad Council, who collectively shake their heads in sheer disbelief. Despite countless testimony proving his guilt beyond any doubt, including his own testimony, still this Devil’s spawn continues to claim his innocence! Will he never repent? Is there no destiny for this man other than a hell worse still than the one he created on the Abrolhos?

Still, it is troubling enough
that Pelsaert decides to again mass everyone on the island and read to them Jeronimus’s wickedly mendacious letters. ‘No, no, all lies,’ the crowd screams in unison, safe now with Jeronimus and his Mutineers behind bars to voice their hate for this man and his cronies. ‘
Dood hem! Dood hem!
Kill him! Kill him!
Dood! Dood! Dood!
’