The Pilgrim Conspiracy

Fragment 1 – Flight from England (January 1609)

We made it. We’re safe.

For now.

In the year of our Lord 1608, John (Robinson – Piet van Vliet) and William (Brewster – Piet van Vliet) led us to freedom. We cried out ‘Let my people go!’ but it did not soften the hardened heart of the king. And so we were forced to leave our beloved England, creeping away in secret, like thieves in the night. True, the seas did not part for us, and the king’s soldiers were not drowned, but we were able to escape on a ship sent by God. However, at first, it was only the men who escaped.

We had been betrayed a year earlier. We had paid an enormous sum to an English captain to take us to the Netherlands, a country where religious liberty still prevails. To avoid drawing attention to ourselves, we walked in small groups from Scrooby to Boston on the east coast. Once we were on the ship, we found out that we had thrown in our lot with a monstrous man. The devil take him! We had barely even set sail before a ship of the king’s fleet appeared. The captain had reported us. They arrested all sixty of us, the men, the women and even the little children. To amuse the public – and, I am quite certain, to also make them afraid – we were made to walk through the city in a long procession. The crowds pelted us with rotten fruit and eggs … They threw us into prison, a dark, filthy dungeon infested with rats. The bread they gave us to eat there was mouldy, and the water they gave us to drink was foul, but even there, we gave each other strength. Even there, we found comfort in singing and prayer.

John spoke so beautifully when he quoted Paul’s famous words, saying to us: ‘But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, things that are not, to reduce to nothing things that are.’

After a month, it was decided that we had been sufficiently punished. We were sent home, burdened with shame and bereft of all else.

But if they had thought that this defeat had put an end to our desire to leave, they were wrong.

A year later, in the year of our Lord 1608, we tried again. Our group had grown and now numbered at least one hundred souls. The blessing of the Lord was upon our work.

Or so it seemed.

We men went on foot. We started in Scrooby in Nottinghamshire and went over the border to the neighbouring county of Lincolnshire and the stretch of shore between Grimsby and Hull that we had chosen for its remoteness. The nearest settlements, Immingham and Killingholme, were no more than a few farm cottages. We were so vulnerable, all too visible to anyone who was paying attention. Leaving the country without permission was forbidden, and a watchful shepherd boy or farmhand pausing to rest could easily have brought an end to our second attempt to escape. On the way, we drank from streams, catching the water in our cupped hands, and we ate the meagre rations that we had brought with us.

It had been arranged that the women and children would make the journey by water. Their boat, with all our possessions on board, arrived before us. But it ran aground in the shallows, and they were forced to spend the night on shore.

When we were reunited with our families early the next morning, we saw the Dutch captain’s ship sailing into the estuary. But the tide was too low for him to reach us, and time was running out. As many people as possible were ferried to the ship by boat. The men went first, a decision that we came to regret because no sooner had we boarded the ship, a company of soldiers came rushing along the beach towards us. How we despaired, we men, when we saw our women and children being dragged away by the merciless soldiers of King James’ army. We could only watch from the deck as our ship was tossed about on the surf. One man wanted to jump overboard to rescue his wife and children, but he would surely have been drowned by the powerful waves. And what could he have done if he had reached the shore? One man against the might of so many soldiers, all armed to the teeth?

I write ‘men’, but there was also a boy among us. He was under the special protection of Josh Nunn, one of the other leaders of our group. The boy never left Josh’s side, often keeping tight hold of his hand – and when that was not possible, he held onto his coat.

The captain ignored our pleas and weighed anchor. And so, cowards that we were, we watched our wives and children being roughly led away as the ship sailed towards the open sea.

Not long afterwards, we were caught in the most horrendous storm. Many of us were convinced that this was where our story would end. We were blown adrift almost as far as Norway, and our journey took two weeks instead of the two days that the crossing should have taken.

All of us on board were despondent, praying, sick, nauseous, vomiting incessantly, growing weaker each day, roaming like ghosts over the deck and through the holds while our little ship was at the mercy of the elements. We had not brought enough supplies for such a long crossing. Our salvation was that there were fewer of us on board than we had initially planned.

Josh shared his food with the boy, the same scanty ration that had been given to the rest of us, which made the lad the best-fed passenger on the whole ship. No one knew who the child was, and no one dared to ask where he had come from. We knew that he was an orphan and that just like Josh, he did not have another living soul in the world, but we knew no more than that.

They often retreated to a quiet spot belowdecks where Josh talked to the boy endlessly, like a seller on a market stall persuading a customer to buy his wares. The boy appeared to repeat his words, nodding his head earnestly as he spoke.

Then, after our terrible journey, we finally arrived in Amsterdam. News of what had happened to our women and children eventually reached us: they had been dragged from prison to prison because nobody had been able to decide what should be done with them. After all, hadn’t their only crime been a desire to be with their husbands and fathers? So, at long last, they were given permission to leave England and allowed to join us.

By August 1608, we were all together again, around one hundred and fifty men, women and children. In Amsterdam, we joined John Smyth, a good friend of our own John. You see, we are not the first Separatists to flee England because of James I. But our peace was short-lived; here too, we found discord. John Smyth felt increasingly drawn to the ideas of the Mennonites, who only baptised adults and not children, and he wanted to impose these ideas on us.

‘Our’ John decided that it was time to go, to leave Amsterdam behind us. He wrote a letter to the council of the city of Leiden.

The year of our Lord 1609 had only just begun.

Chapter 3

Peter closed the museum and went to the Lipsius Building to get a coffee and something to eat in the university’s restaurant. Then he took a slow bike ride to the Jean Pesijnhofje near the Pieterskerk where Fay opened the massive courtyard door just as he arrived.

‘Hey, sweetheart,’ she said, her voice warm, as always. She brushed his cheek lightly with her lips, like a butterfly’s kiss, and put her arms around him. ‘I’m so glad you’re going with me tonight,’ she said.

He locked his bike, and they headed for the Rapenburg canal, arm in arm.

They were going to the open evening that night at Loge Ishtar, a Masonic lodge that accepted both men and women. Fay had joined the lodge three years ago. Every two weeks, its members met in the Masonic Hall on the Steenschuur canal where they not only learned to understand themselves better, Fay had explained to Peter, but also guided each other on a path of contemplation, reflection and self-improvement. Together, they thought about how they related to each other and to the world around them.

Peter knew that Fay had felt a sense of belonging in this community right from the start. She had told him about its members’ genuine commitment to each other, and their shared desire to work on their own personal development and use this as a foundation from which to help create a better, more beautiful world.

‘I had a very odd visitor in the museum today,’ Peter said.

‘Another direct descendant of the Pilgrims?’ Fay asked wryly.

‘No, actually,’ Peter replied, laughing. ‘This one was actually descended from a Huguenot from Leiden who emigrated to South Africa in the nineteenth century.’

The Huguenots were Calvinists, Protestant followers of the Swiss religious reformer John Calvin. They were persecuted on a massive scale in sixteenth-century France. After the horrific St Bartholomew’s Day Massacre on the night of August 23rd and 24th in 1572 when countless Huguenots were murdered, a great number of Calvinists fled France. Many of them settled in the Netherlands, where names like Montanje, Parmentier and Labuschagne are still common in Leiden.

‘Do tell,’ Fay said invitingly.

‘Like I said, it was very odd,’ Peter went on. ‘Willem Hogendoorn came in with a group of tourists. There was a South African couple with them who come from Orania. I googled it on my phone when they left. It’s a sort of free state that was set up by whites after apartheid ended. Black people are absolutely not welcome there. They have their own money, schools, newspapers, legal system, their own local government, you name it. His oupa’s oupa, as he said – his grandfather’s grandfather – left Leiden in the early nineteenth century. He was one of the original founders of the Orange Free State, which was similar to what Orania is now. And he saw a lot of that same pioneer spirit in the Pilgrims, people who move somewhere else to make a fresh start and build their own community in a place that they believe God has chosen for them.’

‘Well, that’s not so unusual, is it?’

They walked along the Rapenburg. The evening was still light, and the air was crisp. Reflections of the trees and grand townhouses shimmered in the tranquil water of the broad canal.

‘No, that’s not really what was unusual,’ Peter said. ‘It was that the man was so blatantly racist … He said it was a shame that apartheid had ended because South Africa was a mess now. And that the Pilgrims and the other American colonists had gone about things in a much better way than the South African colonists because they had wiped out the indigenous people there.’

‘You’re right, that is unusual. You don’t often hear people say that sort of thing quite so brazenly.’

‘That’s what surprised me,’ Peter said. ‘Of course, I know that there are people who think like that, but I was quite shocked, to be honest, that he had no qualms about saying it so candidly, especially to someone he’d only just met.’

‘I’m sure there are plenty of people who really do still think like that,’ said Fay.

‘Anyway … I didn’t call him out on it. I suppose I was a bit of a coward, but I didn’t want to get into a pointless argument with him.’

‘That was very sensible, darling,’ Fay said, giving his arm a gentle squeeze.

They passed the Van de Werfpark and crossed the canal via the Groenebrug before turning left onto the Steenschuur, where the door of the Masonic Hall stood invitingly open.

The building was also home to an all-male Freemason’s lodge. Loge La Vertu, or the Virtue. It had been established in 1757, making it one of the oldest groups of Freemasons in the Netherlands. The lodge’s national serial number was 7. The lodge with serial number 1 was the oldest in the Netherlands, L’Union Royal in The Hague, founded in 1734.

An elderly man was waiting in the open doorway to greet them. Dressed in a black suit with a white shirt and a red bow tie, with a neat grey goatee, he looked every inch the proper gentleman. All that was missing was a monocle.

Fay gave him a quick hug. The gesture seemed a little over the top to Peter, but once they were inside, he realised that this was how the lodge members usually greeted their Masonic brothers and sisters.

They hung up their coats in the entrance hall and went into the spacious function room. The room was painted the mint green of a hospital ward. Mounted on the walls were display cases containing awards and insignia, along with objects that Peter couldn’t even recognise let alone guess what they might be used for. Pride of place had been given to a large official portrait of King Willem-Alexander.

The room looked dated and old-fashioned, like a 1980s-era social club. Simple tables had been arranged in groups with a doily and two freshly cut carnations in a small vase in the middle of each one. Plain but functional chairs had been placed around them, as though ready for the imminent arrival of a bridge club.

Peter got two cups of coffee from a small bar in the corner. He carefully carried them over to Fay, keeping his eyes on the tray like a child taking part in an egg and spoon race.

He handed a cup and saucer to Fay, who was chatting to some of the other visitors. Since he’d so far not had a chance to smoke his daily cigarillo, he decided to take the opportunity to slip outside for a few minutes.

The double doors that led to a tiled-over back garden were open. A few people were smoking under a large, sloping glass roof that looked a little like a conservatory without walls.

Sven, one of Peter’s students, was standing among them. He was wearing a T-shirt with the words WE WILL NOT DANCE ON THE GRAVES OF OUR FATHERS printed in faded letters over an image of a stern-looking Indian. Every now and then, he pushed a pair of diminutive but showy, round spectacles back up the bridge of his nose. He was accompanied by a larger young man whose undersized shirt strained across his muscular torso.

The two young men crossed over to Peter. Sven looked ill at ease, as if he was in no mood for a conversation just then but realised that he couldn’t ignore his lecturer.

‘Hello, sir,’ said Sven. ‘Are you a member here?’

‘No, I’m not a member. My girlfriend is. I just came along with her tonight out of curiosity. What about you two?’

‘Just curiosity for us, too,’ Sven replied and then introduced his friend in the same breath. ‘This is Erik, by the way. We’re both in the Catena student society.’

Without being asked, Sven took the cup and saucer from Peter’s hand so that he could light his cigarillo.

The man standing next to them appeared to be lost in thought, as if he was mentally preparing himself for what was about to come. When the first wisps of smoke from Peter’s cigar curled past the man’s face, he gave Peter a brief sideways look.

‘Is the smoke bothering you?’ Peter asked, quickly taking a couple of steps away from him.

The man looked at him amiably enough, but he clearly had no idea what Peter had just said. He was very tall, well-built and looked to be in his fifties. His hair was remarkably long for his age and curled out from under a Boston Red Sox baseball cap. His face was so smooth that it looked like he had shaved only minutes earlier.

He said ‘Hello’ in English with an unmistakably American accent and shook Peter, Sven and Erik’s hands with the enthusiasm of someone at a high school reunion greeting old classmates from half a lifetime ago. ‘I’m Tony. Anthony Vanderhoop, to be precise.’

He pronounced his name the Americanised way, as ‘Venderhoop’.

‘But you can call me Tony. And you are?’

‘I’m Peter de Haan, and this is Sven, and this is Erik.’

It must be great to be able to speak your own language wherever you are in the world, Peter thought.

‘You don’t speak Dutch?’ Sven asked. ‘Everything will be in Dutch tonight, won’t it?’

‘No, I don’t speak Dutch, sadly. But my family goes all the way back to the very first Dutch colonists who went to America. One of my uncles researched it all. The way our last name is pronounced has changed over time.’

‘We would pronounce it “fon-der-hope”,’ Erik said, overemphasising each syllable.

‘Yes, just like that,’ Tony said, but when he tried to repeat what Erik had said, it still came out as ‘Venderhoop’.

‘I’m from Boston,’ Tony continued, ‘I’m a member of a Freemasons’ lodge there. We’re a worldwide fraternity, as I’m sure you know, so whenever I’m abroad, I like to visit my brothers … and these days, my sisters too.’

When he said the word ‘sisters’, his mocking smile suggested that he did not entirely approve of female Masons.

‘But will you be able to understand what’s being said later?’ Peter asked.

‘Not entirely,’ said Tony. ‘But I still enjoy meeting my fellow Freemasons. I don’t understand everything that’s being said, but the words and phrases in the rituals are more or less the same, and I know all the gestures and actions too. I understand the meaning behind them, so the words aren’t so important. If you’re a Catholic, you can take part in a mass in a language you don’t know and still understand what’s going on in front of you. In your heart, you still feel like you’re a part of it all.’

Peter, Sven and Erik all nodded.

‘Well,’ Tony said, suddenly bringing the conversation to an end. ‘It was nice meeting you guys. I hope you enjoy the rest of the evening.’

He turned around and went over a group of people who looked like they had been waiting for him. As soon as he joined them, they all started to make their way back inside.

‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ said a loud voice. ‘We’re about to begin.’

Standing in the open doorway was a tall, strikingly beautiful woman with short, straight hair, slicked neatly to one side.

‘If you’d all like to come inside, then we can begin.’

Once he was inside, Peter saw that many more people had arrived while he had been in the garden. He had trouble finding an unoccupied chair.

Fay and some of her Masonic brothers and sisters were sitting on a row of tall stools next to the bar.

Fay had told Peter that one of the items on the evening’s programme would be a series of interviews with lodge members, talking about their backgrounds and their reasons for joining the Freemasons. The organisers had found a good mix of members, not only of different ages but also from the different degrees of Freemasonry: Entered Apprentice, Fellow Craft and Master Mason.

When they were asked why they had joined the Freemasons, they all spoke of a strong feeling of comradeship. Working on yourself as part of a group – ‘the Craft’ as they called it – was what created a bond between them.

Peter found the atmosphere extraordinarily warm and friendly but, at the same time, a little oppressive too.

It was all so very … nice.

It made him think of an evening in his student days and a service he had attended at a Baptist church. A study partner he’d since lost touch with had converted to Christianity. As part of their preparation for baptism, he and some of the other new members had had to introduce themselves to their congregation. He had asked Peter to provide moral support, which Peter had provided by sitting in a pew at the back of the church. When it was his friend’s turn to step forward, he had made eye contact with Peter, and Peter had given him an encouraging thumbs up. There had been many stories that evening, told by people who spoke, often too candidly, about their personal journeys. They revealed the mistakes they’d made – complete with clichéd accounts of addictions to drink and drugs, how they had found the way to Jesus at last, and how the church had become their haven of peace. One by one, they opened up about their feelings of being immersed in a warm bath, of coming home, of finally being able to be themselves, of no longer having to wear a mask …

The very same atmosphere hung over this evening, and there was even the obligatory addiction story.

Naturally, Peter paid the most attention when it was Fay’s turn to speak. She talked about her background in the Orthodox Church, a story that Peter already knew. She said that what she liked about Loge Ishtar was that nobody was asked to renounce their religious beliefs. One member’s guiding principles might come from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, while another’s might be based on the Bible, the Torah or the Quran. And there were even people for whom nature was the greatest source of inspiration.

Eventually, the Worshipful Master – as the chairman of the lodge, Coen Zoutman, was officially addressed – spoke to the audience. He likened his brothers and sisters to travelling companions. Each of them took their own steps on their journeys, but the others gave them support where the path was difficult, and so they made the journey together. He sincerely invited everyone present to travel with them and join them as fellow pilgrims.

‘Well then, ladies and gentlemen,’ he began, but he was interrupted by a woman who suddenly jumped up from her chair. She bumped into the table in front of her, sending her coffee cup clattering to the floor.

She was a tall, heavy-set woman with long hair scraped back into a ponytail, accentuating the roundness of her pudgy face. There were red spots around her neck that had spread up to her chin and cheeks, and there was an embittered look on her face.

A man on the chair next to her raised himself half out of his seat and tugged at her arm in a desperate attempt to make her sit down again.

The whole room seemed to hold its breath.

The Worshipful Master looked at the scene with thinly veiled irritation. Before the woman could say a word, he said, ‘I don’t think this is the right moment, Jenny.’

The man managed to get the woman back onto her seat. She looked around her, appearing to be confused, as if she couldn’t remember why she had been standing up. Her face had turned completely red.

Her companion leaned over to her and spoke in what looked like a gentle but stern voice.

The woman’s shoulders sagged, and she bowed her head, like an athlete who had just lost a race.

‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ the Worshipful Master began again, in a tone that was no less calm than the one he had used before. ‘The moment has arrived that I’m sure many of you have come here for tonight: a visit to our temple.’

Peter smiled. This had indeed been his main reason for coming with Fay: the opportunity to look inside the Masonic temple that was still a place of such mystery to him.

Because however you looked at it, although the Freemasons might no longer have been a secret society, they were still a society with secrets.

Chapter 4

A broad, winding staircase took the visitors up to the first floor of the Masonic Hall. The landing was too small to accommodate them all at once, and a few people had to stand on the stairs. An expectant hush fell over the group.

In the hallway, three loud knocks sounded on a tall door. It opened almost immediately, swinging outwards and forcing the people on the landing to squeeze even closer together. Shortly afterwards, the hallway emptied as they all surged through the door, like water flowing from a bath after the plug has been pulled.

Peter walked into the long hall.

Inside, a man and a woman sat at triangular tables placed on either side of the door. A candle on a tall stand stood in front of each table. A third stand was placed a few metres away, just in front of a large, cube-shaped object that Peter knew was referred to by the Freemasons as the ‘Perfect Ashlar’.