After events in Malta, old allegiances and grudges seemed meaningless. It was time to cast that off, and forge a new path.
I lost who I was, and wandered, unnamed, for a time. I was drawn back to the sea. But not the azure waters of home - rather, the cold, dark waters of the North Sea. A strange, unforgiving place. Eventually, I took the name Jan Janszoon, and became a privateer based in Haarlem. I found myself invovled in the 80 Years War, harassing Spanish shipping. I had always found something romantic about the way the mortals struggled for independence during their short lives, and I find myself drawn to help. I had seen many empires rise and fall. This time, the Spaniards were the windmill against which I decided to tilt. These minor acts of piracy filled the void, and were entertaining enough, but truly, it was nothing more than a distraction - and it was hardly profitable. I found that I could be more successful if I were a little less picky about which ships I plundered.
I had never lost my taste for trade, either. During my travels over the years, I had also collected many rarieties from the east. I had taken some bulbs from the Ottomans. Eventually, I was able to convince a botanist at the University of Leiden to cultivate these. I had some hopes that there might be some more profit in this endeavour.
Before too long, I would move back to the Mediterranean, and thence to the Barbary Coast, where I would extend my activities. I would form new allegiances, abandon another family, I would cast off my religion again - for what is religion, to an ageless one such as myself - what are gods, if we are not? Here we are. Born to be kings. We’re the princes of the universe.
But I get ahead of myself. Before all that, there was the armistice, in Amsterdam. A city I had grown to know fairly well in these last few years, when I was at port. It was a cosmopolitan place, a hub of commerce, a port of call for refugees, smugglers, businessmen, diplomats . . . and travelers from a hundred cities. My immortal colleagues would fit in well here - or better than anywhere else, at any rate.
My worst fear was that I would encounter that tremendous bore, Mr Collins, again. Doubtless he would attempt to hold court and lecture us badly on things we all knew better than he, perhaps by praising Isabella, and try to finagle us into stategies of “mutual self-interest”, despite us all knowing there could, in the end, be only one (and it was not Juan). Perhaps he’d try to give us fencing lessons again. Perhaps The Worker had got the better of the deal, after all.
Ah well, as it was said: If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs and blaming it on you, then yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it.
