The Actor
Cornelia clasps Nella’s hand on seeing the Englishman again. Rezeki’s killer wanders into the chamber. His wild hair has lost its lustre and he wears a bloodied bandage on his shoulder.
‘That’s not his blood,’ Nella murmurs. ‘It would have healed by now.’ Jack peers up to the gallery and Nella notices how it is Agnes’ turn to shrink into her seat.
At the sight of him, a real-life English devil, the schepenbank sit up. ‘Are you Jack Philips, of Bermondsey, England?’ asks Slabbaert.
Jack seems momentarily uncertain in the face of the spectators’ stares and whispers. Nella, remembering his consummate performance in the hallway after stabbing Rezeki, cannot work out if he is terrified or just pretending.
‘I am,’ Jack replies. He throws down the two words like gauntlets at Johannes’ feet, his strange Dutch echoing through the chamber. A few people in the gallery snigger openly at Jack’s accent.
‘Hand him the Bible,’ Slabbaert intones and a court clerk stands up and brandishes a small, dense copy. ‘Place your hand on it and swear you will tell the truth.’
Jack places his tremulous fingers on the top cover. ‘I will,’ he says.
Johannes’ face is an unreadable mask and Jack does not return his gaze. ‘Do you recognize this man?’ Slabbaert points to Johannes, but Jack keeps his head bowed. ‘I said, do you recognize this man?’
Still Jack doesn’t look. Is this guilt, or feigned fear, just one of the tricks Jack learned in the playhouses by the River Thames? ‘Are you deaf?’ Slabbaert says, a little louder. ‘Or do you not understand me?’
‘I do understand,’ says Jack. His eyes flick towards Johannes, lingering on his crooked legs, his tattered-looking cloak.
‘What charges do you bring to him?’ asks Slabbaert.
‘I bring the charges of a sodomitic attack, assault and bribery.’
The schepenbank rustles with excitement. ‘Let me read your statement out to the assembly.’ Slabbaert clears his throat. ‘ “I, Jack Philips, of Bermondsey, England, lodging at the sign of the rabbit off the Kloveniersburgwal near Bethani?nstraat, was summarily seized and sodomitically abused late in the evening on the twenty-ninth of December. My abuser was Johannes Matteus Brandt, merchant of Amsterdam and bewindhebber of the VOC. I was taken against my will, and was stabbed in the shoulder for my resistance.” Was there anything else you wished to add?’ asks Slabbaert, peering over his eye-glasses.
‘No.’
Cornelia turns to Nella. ‘Did he just say that the Seigneur stabbed him? Does that mean Toot’s safe?’ she looks, as if she can hardly believe it. ‘One small miracle, Madame.’
But Nella cannot feel so pleased. The lie sets his servant free, yet it binds Johannes tighter to the threat of death.
‘And everything in there is correct?’ Slabbaert says, referring to the statement.
‘Yes, Seigneur. Except that when he stabbed me, he only just missed my heart.’
‘I see. And where did he seize you, Mr Philips?’
‘On the Eastern Islands. I work now and then as a stower at the VOC warehouses.’
‘And how did he appear to you?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Well, how did Johannes Brandt behave before he – seized you?’
‘He was frenzied.’
How does Jack know a word like that in Dutch? Nella thinks.
‘Did you speak together?’
Jack is warming to his performance now. With a mastery of the actor’s pause, he waits, letting the chamber hear nothing but their own wonderings and the falling rain.
‘Did he speak to you?’ Slabbaert repeats.
‘He called me his little niece and asked me where I lived.’
‘He called you his little niece?’ Slabbaert turns to the schepenbank. ‘On all levels of life these men are unnatural. They even steal the language of the family and turn it to mockery. Did he say anything else, Mr Philips?’
‘He said he’d been watching me,’ says Jack. ‘He asked if he could come back and see my lodgings.’
‘And how did you reply?’
‘I pushed him away and told him to leave me alone.’
‘And after you pushed him?’
‘He took me by my coatsleeves and dragged me against his warehouse.’
‘And then?’ Jack goes silent. ‘And then?’ presses Slabbaert. ‘You were abused?’
‘I was.’
‘You were sodomized.’
‘Yes.’
Two members of the schepenbank explode into a fit of coughing, their chairs scraping. In the gallery, people are muttering. One of the youngest children, no more than three years old, stares between the banister spindles in horrified wonder.
The Schout leans forward to Jack, a faint flicker of delight in his amphibian eyes. ‘Did he say anything as he was attacking you?’
‘He said – he said he had to have me. That he would show me how much he loved his little niece.’
‘And did you say anything?’
Jack throws back his shoulders, showing his bloody bandage, puffing out his chest. ‘I told him he had the Devil in him. Then I told him he was the Devil, but he wouldn’t stop. He said he would show a wretch like me what it was to be taken by a man like him. He said he always got everything that he wanted, and he would beat me if I didn’t submit.’
‘We have a surgeon’s account of the plaintiff’s physical state when he came to the Stadhuis with his accusation,’ says Slabbaert, handing copies of it to the schepenbank. ‘He stabbed you, my lad. Any lower and he’d have punctured your heart.’
Lad. Softening English slang – poor Jack the Lad, caught in the dark by Lucifer himself. In light of this clear declaration of where Slabbaert’s sympathies lie, Johannes looks weighed down, as if his bones are made of stone.
‘He did,’ says Jack. At this Johannes looks up. Hastily, Jack turns to the schepenbank. ‘And he beat me. I could barely walk.’
‘This is all lies,’ Johannes interrupts.
‘He can’t speak to me, Schout Slabbaert,’ Jack says. ‘Tell him he can’t speak to me.’
‘Silence, Brandt. You’ll have your chance. Mr Philips, you are entirely sure that the man assaulting you that night was Johannes Brandt?’
‘I am entirely sure,’ Jack says, but his knees begin to sag.
‘The boy’s about to faint,’ Johannes says as Jack staggers towards the floor.
‘Take him out,’ says Slabbaert, waving a hand at Jack. Two guards scoop him up. ‘We will adjourn until tomorrow morning at seven o’clock.’
‘Schout Slabbaert,’ says Johannes. ‘Today was just supposed to be the reading of the charges, and yet you bring out my accuser. What is the game you are playing? When will it be my turn to ask questions? You have sought to defame me and shock the crowd. I must have my say.’
‘You speak too much as it is. We haven’t even had the witnesses yet.’
‘It is written down that it must be so,’ says Johannes. ‘We must both of us have our chance.’ He points at the Bible. ‘Do not show partiality in judging; hear both small and great alike. Bring me any case too hard for you, and I will hear it.’ ‘Deuteronomy. In case you want to check.’
‘You will have your moment, Brandt,’ Slabbaert replies. ‘But for now, we adjourn. Seven o’clock tomorrow.’
Johannes and Jack are led out through different doors. Jack keeps his head down, but Johannes turns briefly to the gallery, where Cornelia and Nella are already on their feet. She holds up her hand, and he nods at her before being bundled off.
People stretch their limbs and exchange expressions of surprise and consternation, morbid picnickers rustling in their pockets for their bags of nuts, their curls of cheese and ham. Agnes hurries down the aisle. Nella is surprised again at the narrowness of her frame, her birdlike steps. Frans Meermans has already disappeared.
She knows she hasn’t got much time. ‘I won’t be long,’ she says to Cornelia. ‘Go back to Marin.’
Immediately, Hanna looks curious, but Nella can only throw Cornelia a warning glance. Not even Hanna can know. Cornelia answers with an almost imperceptible nod.
Making her way round to where Agnes has exited, Nella notices that something has fallen on the floorboards where she was sitting, lying in the dust amid fresh orange peel. Two tiny feet poke out from under the bench, wrapped in a pair of pattens. I know those feet, she thinks, kneeling down in the dirt.
The feet belong to a small doll, dressed in gold. The face is Nella’s, her hair escaping in wisps from a saffron-coloured headband. ‘By all the angels,’ she breathes. This version of herself looks less surprised than the doll back home in the cabinet. It is more level-gazed. Instinctively, she searches the miniature body – for wounds, she tells herself, to arm against any coming danger. But in a dark, rarely visited pocket of her mind, she knows she’s doing it to find any sign of a child. There is none; no hidden bump. Nella pushes away the sadness. At least you have no cuts and breaks, she tells herself. Now is not your time.