The Dutch (23 page)

The two almost needlessly introduced themselves, for the girl had been long expecting to meet someone like him. Jon found himself overwhelmed by the attractive and appealing young woman continuing to grasp his hand. Her long black hair ran an orderly endless path down her back which seemed to have no end. The sensuous curves of her well-proportioned, petite body could not be hidden by the bulky apron she wore for gardening. Jon found himself enjoying the simple pleasure of holding her hand and felt no urge to release his hold. A voice within him kept repeating a single word, “Yes,” reminding him that previous lords of the Droger Land imagined the ancient gods spoke to them in times of exhilaration. He soon learned that Maria also believed in heavenly voices when she confided to him that the stars had predicted a young lord would carry her to a faraway place where “ancient gods would protect her.” Jon told the girl “My Lady, if those gods don't protect you, I will.” Then neither he nor the girl felt the need to say anything else and neither felt compelled to release their grip.

Maria Theresa Schraldi was the youngest and most remarkable of the admiral's three daughters, all attractive, educated and privileged young women. Her two sisters had married two of the sons of the “twenty wise men” who governed Venice, but Maria had been intended for a far different nuptial. As the youngest daughter, Maria was expected to one day enter a convent to become a “Bride of Jesus Christ”. In Venice, it was a custom among the great noble families to give one of their children to the church. The child would first be trained as a priest or nun in the hope that the child would one day rise to the rank of Bishop or Mother Superior and many did for noble birth was a prerequisite for any high church position. The system bound together the church and the ruling families of Venice. Yet Maria's commitment was made at her baptism when no one could foresee this child was to be special. Her parents had no idea Maria would have a gift for acquiring knowledge. The first sign came when the three-year-old girl learned to read and write in Latin by attending daily mass with her mother. The gift fascinated her father who hired scholars to test the limits of Maria's learning skills. They reported the toddler had an amazing ability to remember detail and was absorbing all they could teach her. Her proud father soon hired more knowledgeable tutors to continue her education. By the time she was twelve, the age a girl pledged to the church usually left home, the admiral had made a determined decision. He would not part with this favorite child and found a series of excuses to keep Maria with the family. He ignored his wife's objections that it was sinful to delay Maria's departure. By the time Maria was thirteen, the admiral had negotiated a dispensation regarding the family's prior commitment to the church. The admiral had decided Maria would not be cloistered away. Instead he decided she would be given a huge amount of freedom to explore and discover the world around them. It soon became apparent Maria was most interested in the world above and Maria's interest in astronomy played to the admiral's vanity. He believed heaven wanted her to marry and pass on her gifts to “his” future generations. Long before Jon arrived in Venetian waters, the admiral thought that he and God had an exceptional plan for this daughter. The plan needed a very special young noblemen to share his daughter's life and father the admiral's grandchildren.

Maria was five when she developed a fascination with the cosmos. In the daytime she found a charm in every passing cloud formation and was thrilled to look upon the heavenly stars at night. At ten, she knew more about heavenly bodies than most astronomers. Yet it was in astrology that the girl's knowledge astounded everyone. At first, using tables charted by astrologers, she correctly prophesied important events like the bounty of the next harvest or the severity of the coming winter. By the time she was thirteen, incorporating her own observations, she began forecasting events that affected people directly. Soon important members of the nobility and clergy sought her advice on what the stars foretold about their future. Maria predicted favorable outcomes with uncanny accuracy and learned to remain silent or mute her forecasts when she foresaw a negative conclusion upon those who sought her advice. At seventeen, Maria was considered a gifted scholar by the academic community. It was an extraordinary achievement at a time, when females were barred by Venetian law from higher education. Yet those same stars had warned Maria that her talent for forecasting would not last forever. Soon it would wither. They told her that her real destiny lay as a wife and mother of a great and noble lord in a land far away. When she met Jon she knew the Netherlands was a long way away.

Throughout Europe, two misconceptions from antiquity had been undergoing challenge at this mid-point of the Renaissance in Italy. The first, the view that the world was flat, was first refuted by the Portuguese mariners who made their way around Africa. Their belief that the world was round were later confirmed by the Spanish, French, English, and Dutch seafarers that set sail on long ocean voyages to the New World. The disappearance and reappearance of so many ships beneath the vast horizon provided visual proof that the Earth was not a flat surface.

The second mistaken belief, the idea that the Earth was placed in the center of the universe by God, was harder to overcome. The theory probably began with the Greek Hipparchus and was copied by Ptolemy, the great Egyptian astronomer, who published his findings in the second century. Ptolemy's theory was embraced by the Catholic Church because it followed scripture as laid down in the Book of Genesis. It provided physical evidence that man must be the most important of God's creations. Ptolemy's published works had the sun, the planets, and even the stars rotating around the Earth. Only fifty years earlier, Nicolaus Copernicus challenged this false belief with mathematical evidence. He correctly put the sun at the center of the universe. His death, a few months after publishing his theory, and the problems associated with the outdated Julian calendar at the time, made the Church less antagonistic to this view, and even the Pope studied Copernicus's theory for the Julian calendar had lost its accuracy.

The problem arose because there is an eleven minute difference in time between an actual year and a calendar year. Those eleven minutes multiplied over fifteen centuries, since the Julian calendar was created, made it impossible for the church to accurately identify the day to celebrate Easter and other important Holy Days. The inaccurate calendar also caused problems for farmers who needed to know the exact date of the winter and spring solstices. Since Copernicus' death, the Church had found other ways to correct the discrepancies in Julius Caesar's calendar. With the problem solved, astronomers were urged to turn away from Copernicus' ideas and return to Ptolemy's theory. The Church wanted to keep the Earth at the center of God's universe. When some astronomers procrastinated, they were pressured to conform. In another fifty years, the most famous scientist of the time, Galileo, would face the Inquisition for using a telescope to confirm Copernicus's observations. Maria wisely did not involve herself in such controversy; she understood that a less terrestrial world rotated around her and she had learned to wisely deal with her surroundings.

Maria became a very well rounded young lady and her social skills became important to Jon and Gustoff as they traversed the Venetian landscape. Maria's ability to converse in Jon's language was useful at home, where her father was the only person who spoke French and was frequently away. In his absence, Maria became the logical one to act as guide and interpreter at important events the young officers were required to attend. Her demeanor and ability to banter about a wide variety of subjects helped even Gustoff to relax. Together, the three enjoyed the balls, masquerades, and dinner parties they attended. Maria had, early on, insisted that the admiral's tailor embroider Jon and Gustoff with new uniforms. She suggested the charcoal great coats be trimmed in purple lace and gold leaf. Maria enjoyed arriving at social events with the dashingly, and now well dressed young officers on each arm. It was her beauty that made the trio a memorable sight and Maria saw to it that their public behavior was above reproach. Since French was usually a second language at most of these events, Gustoff could sometimes be left to his own care allowing Maria and Jon to sometimes slip away.

They always did so only on the evenings that had a clear night sky. The two would travel by gondola into the heart of the city, always to visit the Botanical Gardens at Venice's University of Padua. At the center of the garden was a meadow which was a gathering place for astronomers and astrologers on any given clear night. Prior to the voyage, Jon had little interest in the light of the heavens, but in preparing to command the Jachtschip, he attempted to learn about the positioning of a few stars. He knew he needed more than a compass and good charts to successfully navigate the long voyage to Italy. The success of his venture depended on the ability of his ship to avoid the dangerous coastlines. It was the reason he hired an experienced master who could take correct readings from the night sky. As captain, Jon wanted to learn a simple method to verify the master's readings. The system he choose, developed by Greek mariners, focused on a single visible star, usually the Pole star, that rose and set at a fixed location. Sighting on that one star allowed a navigator to check the accuracy of the ship's compass. During the voyage, the master taught Jon more about sighting heavenly bodies and helped him become comfortable using a quadrant. That instrument, held firmly in one's hands, always had to be sighted by a second person. The holes along the upper edge of the instrument gave an angle. The master taught Jon that even the sun itself could be used for a sighting, but warned the young captain these results only estimated the ship's location. At this point in history, no system existed which gave a ship its exact location.

While Jon's knowledge of astronomy remained rudimentary, he enjoyed these trips. They always meant a long ride in a gondola with Maria, who had a tendency to cuddle in the darkness. Those early star gazers were a sight to behold and Jon took a liking to the people who gathered in the meadow. It would be nearly forty years before a Dutch lens maker, Hans Lippershey, would demonstrate the first refracting telescope and another year would pass before Galileo used the magnification power of the new invention to scan the heavens. These earlier astrologists still learned about the positioning of the stars and planets using only the naked eye. To make matters more difficult, they had to transcribe the data by moonlight without interrupting their night vision. Jon found them and their equipment a delightfully odd sight. Each brought an array of peculiar looking apparatus but most relied on an instrument called a triquetrum. This instrument was constructed with a pole of great length with a long wooden arm attached; the arm was used to sight the star being observed. A third separate shaft of notched wood was used to measure the angle of any object they observed.

Jon found Maria was treated with even greater respect than her birthright demanded. These astrologers and astronomers considered her a talented colleague. Jon noted that they liked to work in pairs, if only to help keep each other awake until anything of interest was spotted. All the observers eagerly shared their observations, tools and astrological tables with Maria and Jon. And often something else, for these night sky glazers brought an assortment of alcoholic beverages to protect themselves from the night chill which they shared. Sometimes, the young couple imbibed too much of the warming potables and Jon was somewhat relieved that Maria always kept her commitment to her father about brevity on these visits. He knew there was an unspoken commitment between the admiral and himself to honorable behavior.

Yet, Jon found it odd that his growing bond with Maria had not seemingly strained his relationship with her father in any way. It was the admiral who had arranged for Gustoff to be present whenever great cannon was poured at the Arsenal, and such casting usually took as long as a week. The admiral must have known that Gustoff's absence would leave Jon and Maria with more opportunities to be alone. Jon would never know that the gondolier who rowed them about was reporting all he heard and saw to his employer the admiral. Those positive reports about Jon's behavior allowed the admiral to disregard complaints by other family members troubled by the growing relationship. The admiral looked upon Jon as a moral young man from one of the oldest noble families in Europe and saw a lot of himself in the brave young man. He trusted Jon to obey the most important unwritten law of hospitality. More importantly, he trusted his daughter and his trust were confirmed by the reports he was receiving from his hired man.

He had no idea that behaving properly would be a problem for Jon and Maria. Both realized they were in love and had been since their first meeting in the garden. Yet both were a bit sheltered from the emotions swirling within their hearts and bodies. Maria knew from her religious upbringing that those feelings were sinful and Jon was similarly distressed. Yet their feelings of desire, with the added burden of opportunity, were a heavy weight on this chaste young couple. The most hazardous times were those frequent gondola rides, coming back in darkness from the university, still feeling the effects of sharing too many glasses of wine with the star gazers. It didn't help that the luxurious gondolas owned by Maria's family were fitted with a small comfortable cabin for protection against the elements. The gondolas were little boats with padded seats and drapes that helped keep away insects at night. The enclosed cabin gave the couple a privacy that made them uneasy, particularly since Maria had a tendency to sit too close to Jon. It was an atmosphere in which an innocent kiss could be explosive and there were a few of them. To distract themselves from these feelings, the couple often talked about the reasons they could never marry. Both felt that their religious differences and the need for parental consent would be the most difficult barriers. Maria knew some members of her family would disapprove of a union with a Protestant heretic and Jon knew the distance between Venice and his homeland made it impossible for his father to approve a marriage. Yet Maria and Jon felt their wedding inevitable since their first meeting in the garden. Maria knew it to be inevitable. Each already felt the other an irreplaceable part of their life. The mere presence of the other brought happiness and joy. One night it was Maria who suggested they do what she had always done whenever she wanted something badly: talk to her father. Yet even Maria with her gift of prophecy could not predict her father's reaction.