'You have been sentenced for the sin of harlotry to twenty strokes of the whip.' His voice was stern and harsh.
'Please let me go. I don't want to play this game.'
'This is no game.' He came to her, and though she pleaded with him for mercy he lifted her and led her to the tripod. He tied her hands high above her head with the silken ropes, and she peered back at him over her shoulder with her long yellow hair hanging over her face. 'What are you going to do to me?'
He went to the table against the far wall and, with his back turned to her, picked up something. Then, with theatrical slowness, he turned back with the whip in his hand. She whimpered and tried to free herself from the silken bonds that pinioned her wrists, twisting and turning as she hung on the tripod. He came to her and placed one finger into the opening of her nightdress, and ripped it down to the hem. He stripped away the tatters and she was naked. He came to stand in front of her, and she saw a huge bulge under his leather apron, evidence of his arousal.
'Twenty strokes,' he repeated, in the cold, hard voice of a stranger, 'and you will count each one as it falls. Do you understand, you wanton little whore?' She winced at the word. Nobody had ever called her that before.
'I did not know I was doing wrong. I thought I was pleasing you.'
He cut the whip through the air, and the lash hissed close to her face. Then he went behind her, and she closed her eyes and tensed every muscle in her back, but still the pain of the stroke defied her belief and she shrieked aloud.
'Count!' he ordered, and through white, quivering lips she obeyed.
'One!' she screamed.
It went on and on without pity or respite, until she fainted. He held a small green bottle under her nose and the pungent fumes revived her. Then it started again.
'Count!' he ordered.
At last she was able to whisper, 'Twenty,' and he laid the whip back on the table. He was loosening the strings of his leather apron as he came back to her. She hung on the silk ropes, unable to lift her head or support herself. Her back, her buttocks and the tops of her legs felt as though they were on fire.
He came up behind her, and she felt his hands on her lower body,
drawing her red, throbbing buttocks apart. Then there was a pain more dreadful than any that had gone before it. She was being impaled in the most unnatural way, ripped apart. Agony tore through her bowels, and she found fresh strength to scream and scream again.
At last he cut her down from the tripod, wrapped her in a blanket and carried her down the staircase. Without another word he left her sobbing on the bed. In the morning when she tottered to the cubicle and sat on the commode she found that she was still bleeding. Seven days later she had still not healed completely, and another red rose was delivered to Gertruda. Trembling and weeping quietly, she climbed the staircase to answer his summons. When she entered his chamber the tripod stood in the middle of the floor and, once again, he wore the hood and apron of the executioner.
It took months for her to gather her courage, but at last she went to Elise and told her how Mijnheer was treating her. She lifted her dress and turned to show the welts and stripes across her back. Then she bent over and showed her the torn, festering opening.
'Cover yourself, you shameless strumpet,' Elise shouted, and slapped her cheek. 'How dare you make up filthy lies about such a great and good man? I shall have to report you to Mijnheer for this, but in the meantime I will tell Stals to lock you in the wine cellar.'
For two days Louisa crouched on the stone floor in a dark corner of the cellar. The agony in her lower belly was a fire that threatened to consume her very soul. On the third day a sergeant and three men of the city watch came to fetch her. As they led her up the stairs to the kitchen yard she looked for Gertruda, Elise or Stals but there was no sign of them or any of the other servants.
Thank you for coming to rescue me,' she told the sergeant. 'I could not have borne it another day.' He gave her an odd enigmatic glance.
'We searched your room and found the jewellery you had stolen,' he said. 'What terrible ingratitude to a gentleman who treated you so kindly. We shall see what the magistrate has to say to you.'
The magistrate was suffering from the effects of the previous evening's overindulgence. He had been one of fifty dinner guests at Huis Brabant whose cellars and table were famous throughout the Low Countries. Koen van Ritters was an old friend, and the magistrate glowered at the young female prisoner arraigned before him. Koen had spoken to him about this hussy after last night's dinner, while they puffed on their cheroots and finished off a bottle of fine old cognac. He listened impatiently as the sergeant of the watch gave evidence against her, and laid before the magistrate the package of stolen jewellery that they had found in her room.
'Prisoner is to be transported to the penal colony in Batavia for life,' the magistrate ordered.
Het Gelukkige Meeuw was lying in the harbour, almost ready to sail. They marched Louisa from the court room directly to the docks. At the top of the gangplank she was met by the head gaoler. He entered her name in the register, then two of his men locked leg irons on her ankles and shoved her down the hatchway to the gundeck.
Now almost a year later the Meeuw lay at anchor in Table Bay. Even through the thick oaken planking Louisa heard the hail, 'Longboat with supplies. Permission to hook on?'
She roused herself from her long reverie, and peeped through the chink in the joint of the port-lid. She saw the longboat being rowed towards the ship by a mixed crew of a dozen black and white men. There was a big, broad-shouldered ruffian standing in the bows, and she started as she recognized the man at the tiller. It was the young one who had asked her name and thrown the fish to her. She had fought for possession of that precious gift, then divided it with her little blade and shared it with three other women. They were not her friends, for there were no friends aboard this ship, but early in the voyage the four had forged a pact of mutual protection for survival. They had gobbled down the fish raw, watchful of the other starving women who crowded round them, waiting for an opportunity to snatch a scrap.
She remembered, with longing, the sweet taste of the raw fish now as she watched the heavily laden longboat moor against the side of the ship. There was a hubbub of banging and shouting, the squeal of sheave blocks and more shouted orders. Through the chink she watched the baskets and boxes of fresh produce being swung on board. She could smell the fruit and the newly picked tomatoes. Saliva flooded her mouth, but she knew that most of this bounty would go to the officers' mess, and what remained to the gunroom and the common seamen's kitchen. None of it would find its way down to the prison decks. The convicts would subsist on the weevily hard biscuit and the rotten salt pork, crawling with maggots.
Suddenly she heard someone banging on one of the other gun ports further down the deck, and a masculine voice from outside called softly but urgently, 'Louisa! Is Louisa there?'
Before she could answer, some of the other women howled and shouted back, 'Ja, my dot tie I am Louisa. Do you want a taste of my honey-pot?' Then there were shrieks of laughter. Louisa recognized the
man's voice. She tried to shout to him above the chorus of filth and invective, but her enemies swamped her with malicious glee and she knew he would not hear her. With rising despair she peered through her peephole, but the view was restricted.
'I am here,' she shouted in Dutch. 'I am Louisa.'
Abruptly his face rose into her view. He must have been standing on one of the thwarts of the longboat that was moored below her gun port
'Louisa?' He put his eye to the other side of the chink and they stared at each other from a range of a few inches, 'Yes.' He laughed unexpectedly. 'Blue eyes! Bright blue eyes.'
'Who are you? What is your name?' On impulse she spoke in English, and he gaped at her.
'You speak English?'
'No, you weak-wit, it was Chinese,' she snapped back at him, and he laughed again. By the sound of him he was overbearing and cocky, but his was the only friendly voice she had heard in over a year.
'It's a saucy one you are! I have something else for you. Can you get this port-lid open?' he asked.
'Are any of the guards watching from the deck?' she asked. 'They will have me flogged if they see us talking.'
'No, we are hidden by the tumble-home of the ship's side.'
'Wait!' she said, and drew the blade from her pouch. Quickly she prised out the single shackle that still held the lock in place. Then she leaned back, placed both bare feet against the port-lid and pushed with all her might. The hinges creaked, then gave a few inches. She saw his fingers at the edge and he helped to pull it open a little wider.
Then he thrust a small canvas bag through the opening. 'There is a letter for you,' he whispered, his face close to hers. 'Read it.' And then he was gone.
'Wait!' she pleaded, and his face appeared in the opening again. 'You did not tell me. What's your name?'
'Jim. Jim Courtney.'
'Thank you, Jim Courtney,' she said, and let the port-lid thump shut.
The three women crowded round her in a tight circle of
