Tom Holt - Flying Dutch

“How can you say that?” he snarled. “Consider some of the so-called great kings of history. Look at Xerxes! Look at Barbarossa! Look at Napoleon!”

“I thought,” interrupted the stranger, “he was an emperor.”

“Same thing,” said the young German. “Look at Ivan the Terrible,” he continued. “Look at Philip of Spain!”

“I did,” said the stranger, “once.”

Something about the way he said it made the young German stop dead in his tracks and stare. It was as if he had suddenly come face to face with Michaelangelo’s David, wearing a top hat and a frock coat, in the middle of the Champs Elysées. He put down his glass and looked at the stranger.

“What did you say?” he asked quietly.

“Please don’t think I’m boasting,” said the stranger. “I don’t know why I mentioned it, since it isn’t really relevant to what you were saying. Do please go on.”

“You saw Philip of Spain?”

“Just the once. At the Escorial, back in ‘85. I was in Madrid with nothing to do—I’d just got rid of a load of jute, you could name your own price for jute in Madrid just then, I think they use it in rope-making—and I thought I’d take a ride out to see the palace. And when I got there—took me all day, it’s thirty miles if it’s a step—Philip was just coming home from some visit or other. As I remember I saw the top of his head for at least twelve seconds before the guards moved me on. I could tell it was the top of his head because it had a crown perched on it. Sorry, you were saying?”

“How can you have seen Philip of Spain?” said the young German. He never doubted the stranger’s word for a moment; but he needed to know, very badly indeed, how this could be possible. “He’s been dead for two hundred and fifty years.”

The stranger smiled; it was a very peculiar smile. “It’s rather a long story,” he said.

“Never mind.”

“No but really,” the stranger said. His accent was very peculiar indeed, the sort of accent that would always sound foreign, wherever he went. “When I say long I mean long.”

“Never mind.”

“All right, then,” said the stranger. “But don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

The young German nodded impatiently. The stranger took a pull at his beer and sat back in his chair.

“I was born in Antwerp,” he said, “in 1553.” He paused. “Aren’t you going to say something?”

“No,” said the German.

“Funny,” said the stranger. “I usually get interrupted at this point. I’ll say it again. I was born in Antwerp in 1553. Fifteen fifty-three,” he repeated, as if he wished the young German would call him a liar. No such luck. He went on, “…And when I was fifteen my father got me a job with a merchant adventurer he owed some money to. The merchant was in the wool trade, like more people were then, and he said I could either work in the counting-house or go to sea, and since handling raw wool brings me out in a rash I chose the sea. Funny, isn’t it, what decides you on your choice of career? I once knew a man who became a mercenary soldier just because he liked the long holidays. Dead before he was thirty, of course. Camp fever.”

“Well, I worked hard and saved what I earned, just like you’re supposed to, and before I was twenty-seven I had enough put by to take a share in a ship of my own. Not long after that I inherited some money and bought out my partners, and there I was with my own ship, at twenty-nine. Dear God, I’m sounding like one of those advertisements for correspondence courses. Excuse me, please.”

“Anyway, soon I was doing very nicely indeed, despite the wars and the Spanish taxes—the Spanish were pretty well in charge of the Netherlands then, you remember, what with the Earl of Leicester and the Duke of Parma and all that—and I was all set to retire at thirty-five when I had a stroke of bad luck. Two strokes of bad luck. The first was the bottom falling out of jute, just when I’d got a ship crammed with the stuff. I’d put every last liard I had into jute, and suddenly you couldn’t give it away. I hawked it all round Spain and Portugal and people just stared at me as if I was trying to sell them tainted beer. It was amazing; one minute you had perfect strangers accosting you in the street begging you to sell them some jute, the next thing you know jute is out. I’m not even sure that I know what jute is. I’m absolutely positive I don’t care.”

“And then I had my second stroke of bad luck, which happened just off Cadiz. I happened to run into the celebrated Francis Drake, who was on his way to singe the King of Spain’s beard. You’ve heard of Francis Drake? Oh good.”

“When I said you couldn’t give the stuff away I was exaggerating, because actually that’s exactly what I did. I needed some persuasion, mind, but I think it was the way Sir Francis drew up alongside and said that if I didn’t surrender my cargo he’d blow me out of the water that tipped the scale.”

“Well, after that there was nothing much I could do except wait until Sir Francis had finished messing about in Cadiz harbour and go for a drink. Even that wasn’t easy, what with the bombardment and so forth—one of the depressing things about licensed victuallers as a class is the way they dive for cover at the first little whiff of gunpowder—but eventually I found a tavern that wasn’t actively burning down and where they were prepared to sell me fermented liquor.”

The stranger paused and looked at the bottom of his glass, but the young German didn’t take the hint. He appeared to be spellbound, and the stranger carried on with his story.

“I’d been sitting there for a while, I don’t know how long, when this man came in and sat down beside me. It’s odd the way people sit down beside me in liquor-shops—no disrespect intended, of course, perish the thought. Anyway, he had this huge box with him, a sort of junior crate, and he was obviously worn out with lugging it about. Tall chap, thin, nose on him like an umbrella-handle, about your age or maybe a year or two older. I thought he was Spanish, or Italian, or he could have been French at a pinch. Anyway, a Southerner. Well, he looked even more miserable than I felt, which would have made him very miserable indeed, and I remember wondering if his trunk was full of jute. Incidentally, I’ve often wondered what Sir Francis did with all that good stuff he took off me. I bet he had no trouble shifting it at all.”

“Do excuse me, I tend to get sidetracked. This Southerner came and sat down in this tavern, and I offered to buy him a drink. He seemed offended.”

“‘I can afford my own drink, thank you very much,” he said. “That’s the least of my worries.” Brittle sort of bloke, I thought, highly-strung.

“‘All right then,” I said. “You can buy me one.”

“He looked at me, and I think he must have noticed that I was still in my sea-boots and general working clothes, because he suddenly became very much less hostile.”

“‘If you could tell me where I could find a ship to get me across to England,” he said, “I’d buy you as many drinks as you like.”

“‘England!” I said. “You don’t want to go there. The English are a load of thieving bastards, they’ll kill you for the buttons on your doublet.”

“He shook his head. “Better than being burnt alive,” he said. “And that’s what’s going to happen to me if I stay around here much longer. I’ve got to get to a Protestant country double quick.” ”

“I didn’t like the sound of this, but he wasn’t going to give up. “If you find me a ship that’ll take me to England,” he said, “I’ll pay you a hundred pistoles, cash.” ”

“To a refugee from the jute trade, this sounded too good to pass up, even if the man was clearly three sols short of a livre tournois, as we used to say when I was a boy. “What would you pay me if I could provide a ship myself, then?” I asked.”