9 August 1642
Matthijs's heart was pounding in his chest as he pumped his legs faster and faster just to keep up with the young lady in front of him. They had been running for nearly ten minutes straight without letting up and his legs were beginning to feel that familiar sensation of fatigue and strain. He breathed in hard but each time he was choked with the dust of debris and the asphyxiating hold of smoke. Shouting flooded his ears and nearly drowned him in the noise. Like a man looking at the sun for the first time after days of sleep, he was slowly readjusting to the influx of sound around him.
Sound... that was how he had remembered waking up that morning. The night before, he thought it would be another day of blunted senses, of strange white light, and puzzles to solve when he woke up. Instead, there was no light that greeted him as he slept. Instead, he awoke to the sound of a whistle; a whistle then an explosion. Katarina was standing to his side looking down at his resting body saying deafening words to him that he could barely recognise in the commotion. All around him it was drab, it was dim, and the smell of gunpowder pervaded the air.
“Get up Matthijs we have to go!” he remembered the young lady repeating more and more as he shot upright: the adrenaline was taking over his sensibilities. He was sucking in the dirty air harder and harder as if the new switch from internal noise to outside noise made him fear that he wasn't breathing at all. He clutched at his neck as if something was blocking the passage while Katarina tugged on his arm violently. “We have to leave now!”
It took a few seconds for Matthijs's groggy vision to adjust to the dim lighting. He was in some kind of lobby-- to where he did not know. Some abandoned building was his only guess although the furniture seemed like it was recently turned over as if someone had left in a hurry just recently. “What's going on--” he tried to ask but his voice found a kind of traction in the air despite the cacophony of noise around him that startled him.
Katarina wasted no time in pulling him off his feet. For the first time, Matthijs discovered that he was covered in dirt. The girl started dragging him along towards the nearest exit. Outside, it was a chaotic mess of men women and children with their carts and horses all heading in one direction down the street. It was at that point that Katarina had begun their ten minute sprint.
Matthijs had not been used to a panic like this... but he could somehow guess what was happening. The whistles through the air was the sound of a shelling-- whether it was towards the city or outgoing he had not bothered to analyze. Knowing what little he did of Antwerp, he also guessed where the young Russian was leading him: they were heading towards the docks. They were trying to escape. Whenever Matthijs looked up at the dark gloom of the evening sky, he could see the cover of grey clouds being illuminated by an orange haze: he knew the city was ablaze.
With that mystery solved, he now turned his attention to how he escaped; why he escaped. He already knew that his experience could not be explained by some kind of dream. A simple probe by his hand at where the sword had penetrated his chest revealed that there was no injury just like before. His memories of that white room were too vivid to be anything less than reality. But how did he get out of there? As he heard his shoes tap against the wood of the harbour, he looked towards the young lady in front of him with more questions waiting to dive off his tongue. As he watched her, he noticed that she didn't seem like all this running was tiring her out at all...
“Get on!” Katarina exclaimed as she pushed him towards an unensigned barque along one of the piers.
“Katja, what's going on?!” Matthijs screamed above the noise of the panic behind them. “I'm not getting on any boat without knowing what this is all about!”
“The city is under assault,” Katarina tried to explain as quickly as she could speak her Russian leaning Dutch. “The Spanish and the rebels are fighting for control and we must evacuate.”
“Where is my--”
“If you're looking for your patron, I'm afraid he's dead,” Katarina said flatly and continued talking despite Matthij's stunned reaction. “Last month, the Spanish raided the meeting house where all the delegates were and almost everyone was killed...”
The young lady stopped her explanation as she watched the blank expression of Matthijs's face descend. The boy's body slid down to the damp boards of the dock floor until his knees touched the ground and his limp hands dumbly lay on either side of him with knuckles to the wood. “So the Spanish came and killed everyone...” Matthijs was still trying to process the thoughts in his head. His low voice was talking to the boards underneath him. The grisly and dark gnarled wood reminded him of that dark spot that had been etched into the meeting room from the paper fire. He let the darkness seep into him as he sat on his legs apathetically.
“That's what they say,” Katarina responded while lowering herself to his level and allowing her beautiful dress to scrape against the trodden wood. “I was at the embassy when it happened... though I don't believe it was the Spanish who did it.”
“What?” Matthijs jabbed his head upwards to look at those sedated eyes looking back at him.
“The Spanish agents wouldn't kill their own,” Katarina began to explain, “and I saw that the assassins were killing even the Spaniards who came inside to see what was going on...”
“Who then?” Matthijs wanted to know immediately.
“The same three who had taken you...” Katarina answered swiftly. The quick response forced a rasp out of Matthijs parched throat.
“Who... are they...” Matthijs muttered under his breath tortuously.
“I will help you find out,” Katarina was talking swiftly again, “but right now we must leave... Despite what I know... the Dutch are not ready to believe it; they'd rather believe their hearts and start this revolution. We have to leave the city--”
“And go where?” Matthijs demanded. It was obvious he was more rooted onto that dark gnarled wood as if he, at any moment, would transform into a dead trunk himself.
“Out of here,” Katarina said standing up again. “My father chartered this boat, he'll meet us in Amsterdam...” Katarina paused to watch the young man's expression continue to twist and turn like the wood's fingerprints on the floor. “You can't stay here, Matthijs we have to go!”
Matthijs quietly rose to his feet. His breathing became more even and he looked towards the young lady while flaring his nostrils with every inhale. “Let's go then... I'll sort this out later...”
Katarina smiled and grabbed Matthijs's hand to tug him towards the ramp.
---
The Silent Room was busier than usual: silent ones were quickly moving flags across the grand map while messengers rushed in and out of the chamber with lightning exchange. The sound of whispers and foosteps filled the air like the milling of a beehive. “I'm afraid the news is grim, sir,” one of the aides on the side of the table spoke up as he read a parchment just handed to him. None of the men were sitting today: everyone was on their feet. “Our garrisons were ambushed last week and already half of them have either been killed or captured. The other half are trying to regroup southward,” the man reported while pointing towards the retreating Spanish standard on the grand map across the room.
“How many is the count now?” the one presiding at the end of the table asked from the shadows.
“We estimate that the rebel strength is at sixty thousand, at least, thanks to the last report-- it's probably grown by now thanks to the... incident,” the man hesitated to say the last bit of information.
“They've taken most of the major cities-- Breda... Gronigen... Amsterdam... and soon Antwerp will be theirs; the garrison can't hold out any longer,” another one reported.
“Sir,” one of the men from the other end of the table added hurriedly, “when they took Amsterdam, they captured the supply convoy headed for Oslo...”
The man at the front of the table slammed his fist at the wood underneath. “Reroute the next supply shipment through any of the ports in Kent that can handle it-- send the word out now.”
“Even if we do that, sir,” the man continued to add while handing off the order to a courier simultaneously, “the regulars in Scandinavia will be without supplies for at least another month-- and the mercenaries in Oslo will have no pay...” The information silenced the buzz as all the men around the table internalised the news. The entire Russian campaign rested on the hands of those soldiers and those generals and this surprise conflagration in the Netherlands had cut their legs off from underneath them.
“It appears we'll have to trust them not to desert,” the man on the other end sighed bitterly. “And where the hell is Covington?!”
---
Covington kept the bandage on the gash on the right side of his torso as tightly pressed as possible. It wasn't only a good idea to stop the bleeding, but he didn't want any drop of his blood to leave a trail for
them to follow. He had been running for most of the night and already blood was pooling only in his brain and heart with whatever left going to his legs to keep going. He was sure he was going to die if he hadn't taken a break a few hours back to suture this fresh wound. It had nearly been a month-- a whole month since he first took injury from
them but they had not stopped chasing him. Since then, he had been in at least three engagements all of which ended in the same way-- blood and his hard bought escape.
His instincts had led him northward. A month's travel would have normally taken him far, but he was forced to be as cautious and silent as the dead of night. He only traveled in the darkness of the evening and spent most of his days avoiding the public places. There were times when he would rest in the woodland areas of his journey and wake up thinking the three were already jabbing their bladed weapons down at his stomach.
Nonetheless, his rigorous training in the far north and his occupation as a spy made him all the more keen to take on this hardship. A spy for the Imperial government of his caliber knew this game of evasion from an early age-- unfortunately he was never trained to sustain it for this long. Who were these three that they could track him all the hours of the days?
He stopped at a nearby tree and placed himself quietly against its bark. He made sure that his bloodied side was not near the point of contact to avoid any residue, but he knew that his very presence there would be enough evidence that he had passed in that direction. He would curse the situation but he had no breath to do it. He was already falling into a cold and stiff sleep. Tomorrow, he thought to himself as he drowsed off; tomorrow he would finally reach his destination: Amsterdam. It would be there that he would find a ship back to the Peninsula.
---
“You all had a long journey to get here, then,” Arturo remarked as he sat on his end of the small table. The “safe house” that he had promised the visitors was no more than an inconspicuous shack near the edges of one of the Madrid slums. If it weren't for the quiet men holding position along the corners of the room, one would think it would have served better to have the meeting where the small group was staying.
“Yes,” the man named Diego replied while looking about as cautiously as ever trying to ascertain the mood of the watchers on all sides, “from Oslo, to Amsterdam, and now here.”
“And this is the young man you spoke to me about?” Arturo quietly brought his eyes to the boy sitting to the side of the large men.
“My name is Iñigo, Señor, Iñigo de Balboa,” the young man bravely spoke for himself.
Arturo studied the young man's face quietly for a second or two before nodding an acknowledgement to the introduction. “My name is Arturo Remirez,” he said to them without taking his eyes off of the young man, “and I would like to be of help to you in any way I can.”
“We know you know about
them,” a female voice interjected and pulled Arturo's attention towards her serious face. “We need protection from them,” she insisted. The young girl next to her, Arturo noticed, shared her mother's deadly stare.
“It was thanks to you that they knew to came here?” Arturo asked her quietly. The interesting aura that the lady was giving off seemed to animate his hands into wringing against each other. He was already in deep thought.
The woman that called herself Amatallah nodded her head and crossed her arms over her chest. “The fact that you aren't hurrying us into a safer location only shows that you either don't take us seriously or aren't initiated enough to know the importance of this boy here.”
Arturo narrowed his eyes at her; not as a sign of hostility, but as if what she had just said broke a narrow patch of clearing through a cloudy exterior and Arturo was shielding himself from the light coming through. “Amatallah is not your real name, is it?” he intuited. “You must be that young lady...” Arturo smiled broadly. “We thought you had disappeared.”
Amatallah was unphased. Instead, she shook her head with some level of disagreement. “Your
Room must not be as good as it once was if someone like me can slip quietly away.”
Arturo was similarly unalarmed and continued his smile. “Either way, it's good to know you're still alive and well, Miss Leyla.”
“It's good to know you're still alive and well, Miss--”
“I'm afraid I only called you on a regular line, Juliana,” the woman on the other side laughed, “it's my fault, I should have told you it wasn't secure.”
Juliana smirked in return, “It's alright. I was more surprised that you sent your son to ask me your favour.”
“It was his idea-- he wanted to take more initiative in his role,” the woman on the other side explained.
“Kids these days--”
“Don't make yourself out to be that old, Juliana,” the woman on the other side laughed again. “Plus you still look as young as I remember when you had my class in the Academy; or so my son guessed.”
Juliana found herself blushing but kept her voice even. “I still remember when he was just a little boy that you used to bring to the lessons with you. Who would have known he'd get so tall.” The woman on the other end of the line gave a little chuckle.
“Don't tell me my best student has a crush on my dear little boy?”
“You are incorrigible,” Juliana replied while shaking her head and pursing her lips; she didn't even raise her voice. “I am glad that the last assignment wasn't so hard for you, though. That must have been rough, though. Especially seeing
him again.”
“I'm sure it was just as painful for him, too. Him and his wife.”
“You'll have to tell me that story sometime like you promised.”
“Maybe once I retire,” the lady laughed. “For now, good luck. I'll check in with you again.”
“Good night, ma'am,” Juliana smiled, “It's good to hear some familiar voices again.”
Chapter CXXV: Familiar (coming soon)
