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The Widows Bosbeecq liked their servants to be at work at five in the morning; it discouraged sloth. But once on the job, the workers enjoyed surprising freedoms, the principal one being that they were exceptionally well fed. The widows liked to prepare the food themselves, leaving to Marie de Pre the cleaning of rooms, the sweeping of the stoep and the ironing of clothes sent upstairs by the slaves. They were good cooks, and being country women, felt that one of man's major requirements was an adequate supply of food, and where growing boys were concerned, downright gorging was advisable.

'It must have been God who brought us here,' Paul said frequently, and on Sundays he led his brood across the canal to the French church for prayers. One Sunday the widows intercepted him as he was about to leave: 'You should attend our church now. It's just as close.'

The idea stunned De Pre. It seemed almost blasphemous that he should abandon the church of his fathers, the place in which French was spoken, and attend a different one which used Dutch. He had never considered this before, since he was convinced that God spoke to mankind in French and he knew that John Calvin did. It would have surprised him to know that Calvin's principal works had been written in Latin, for the solemn thunder of Calvin's thought had reached him in French translation, and he could not imagine it in Dutch.

He discussed this with his family, even though the boys were scarcely old enough to comprehend the difference between French, the correct language of theology, and Dutch, an accidental: 'Within the family we must always speak French. It's proper for us to speak with the widows in Dutch, and you boys must always thank them in that language when they give you clothes or toys. But in our prayers, and in the services at the church, we must speak French.'

He told the widows, 'I went to see your church and it must be the finest in Christendom, because ours is certainly a small affair. But we have always worshipped God in our own language . . .'

'Of course!' the widows said. 'We were thoughtless.'

The fact that De Pre now lived in the Bosbeecq house, with no further obligations at the weigh-station, did not mean that he lost touch with

Vermaas. On Sundays, after church, they would often meet to discuss affairs pertaining to the Bosbeecq ships, and one fine April day they stood together at the bridge leading from the French church as the two widows came down the cobblestones, attended by their servant.

'Pity you're married,' Vermaas said.

'Why? Marie's wonderful . . .'

'I mean, if you weren't married, you could take one of the widows, and then the house . . .'

'The widows?'

'Never be deceived about widows, Paul. The older they are, the more they want to get married again. And the richer they are, the more fun it is to marry them.'

'They're older than my mother.'

'And richer'

'Who are those men?' Paul interrupted, referring to the horde of strange-looking men who seemed always to be clustered about a building which abutted onto the French church.

'Them?' Vermaas said with some distaste. 'They're Germans.'

'What are they doing here?'

'They line up every day. You must have seen them before this.'

'I have. And I wondered who they were.'

'Their land has been torn by war. A hundred years of it. Catholics against Protestants, Protestants killing Catholic babies. Disgraceful.'

'I knew war like that,' Paul said.

'Oh, no! Not like the German wars. You French were civilized.' He made an ugly sound in his throat and drew his finger across it as if it were a knife. 'Slash across the throat, the Frenchman's dead. But in Germany you would . . .'

'Why do they stand there?'

'Don't you know what that building is? You've been working here for more than a year and you don't know?' In amazement he led De Pre across the bridge and into the Hoogstraat (High Street), where a sturdy building surrounding a courtyard bore on its escutcheon the proud letters V.O.C.