Batavia's Graveyard - Mike Dash [15]
The city had been built around eight main streets, all of which emerged into the Great Market that was the focal point of urban life. It was one of the largest marketplaces in the United Provinces and seethed with activity throughout the daylight hours. Its centerpiece was the Grote Kerk of St. Bavo, which was the largest and, some travelers reckoned, the most beautiful church in Holland, though it can hardly have been a peaceful place to worship. A large covered fish market, fully 60 yards long, had been tacked onto the north side of the church, while not 10 yards away, on the west side of the square, stood the substantial bulk of the New Meat-Hall, where during the week the contemplation of the devout would be disturbed by the unholy racket of cattle being slaughtered.
Not all the city was so grand. Away from the main thoroughfares there were warrens of little passageways and alleys where homes were smaller—just a room or two—and the inhabitants much poorer. A whole quarter of Haarlem was given over to cheap housing for the thousands of women who labored in the bleacheries that had made the city famous, dyeing linen white in pits of buttermilk. There were other poorer areas nearby, packed full of Protestant immigrants fleeing the horrors of the Counter-Reformation. But, crowded as it was, Haarlem was a relatively wealthy place, and the people who lived along the streets leading to the Great Market were the wealthiest of all.
Cornelisz rented a house on one of these eight streets—the Grote Houtstraat, or Great Wood Street, which led from the market south through the city, over the moat, and into the wooded park that ran along the edge of the Haarlemmermeer. The young Frisian opened up a pharmacy on the ground floor and lived above the shop. He had a maidservant and a stuffed crocodile—which hung over the counter and was the principal symbol of the apothecary—and he was popular with his neighbors. He was also accepted by the city, becoming a full citizen, or poorter, of Haarlem at a time when such privileges were never granted lightly. This rank brought with it many privileges, including the right to vote.
Newcomer to Holland though he was, Jeronimus now seemed to be on the verge of great success. He had become a master of one of the most prestigious professions in the United Provinces. He was in business for himself, and his shop seemed ideally positioned to attract a clientele from among the citizens of one of the wealthiest towns in the Republic. In normal circumstances he could have looked forward to a life of prosperity, to the deference of his fellow citizens, perhaps even to a civic career and, eventually, a position on the town council. But the circumstances were far from normal. For Jeronimus Cornelisz, the future held nothing but disease, disgrace, and death.
The first blow fell in the winter of 1627. At some point in the middle 1620s, the apothecary had acquired a spouse. We know almost nothing of Belijtgen Jacobsdr, who appears in the town records as the “lawful housewife” of Jeronimus Cornelisz, not even whether she was Frisian or Dutch. She was probably a number of years younger than her husband was and, like him, of a good family that was not quite in the uppermost strata of Netherlands society. It is not unlikely that she was herself an apothecary’s daughter, since pharmacists tended to marry among themselves, and she certainly assisted her husband in his shop. If she was typical of the middle-class Dutch women of the day, Belijtgen would have been clever, somewhat educated, very capable, and not at all dominated by her husband. Foreign visitors generally lauded the women of the United Provinces as extremely pretty, contemporary tastes running to rosy-skinned and plump young wives and one Dutchman writing admiringly of girls who “could fill a barrel with buttocks, and a tub with breasts.” Jeronimus’s wife may have been all these things. But by December 1627 she was also seriously ill.
Some time in November, Belijtgen had given birth to a baby boy. The pregnancy had not gone well, and Belijtgen