When the bells of Leyden’s many churches began to call for worshipers, their insistent plea wafted out across the pastureland, garden plots, and waterways of the surrounding area. Almost instantly, the pathways came alive with pilgrims. Under a canopy of gentle mist, the people pulled cloak hoods over their heads and flooded through city gates.
Crossing the Zyl Poort Bridge, Hiltje moved a bit closer to her husband. As on every other Sunday, the feel of the city walls and cobblestones resonating with the sound sent a shiver up and down the length of her body. But this morning the bells seemed to be sounding a death knell. The burgemeesters’ orders to demolish buildings had spread over the whole countryside. Fear loomed, huge and somber, an ominous bank of storm clouds—coming from Alkmaar and the North Sea.
Like a moeder hen, Hiltje reached out to make sure her brood followed as they mingled among the crowds of city dwellers and country folk making their way through the ancient streets. A disquieting spirit pressed against her from all sides, and she heard it in the low mumble of anxious voices.
Time was, when Hiltje was a child, that Leydenaars all went to the same kind of church and cared about the same things. But ever since the outburst of the new faiths—Calvinism and Anabaptism—the citizens began to divide up into groups. And since the revolt had begun, divisions were growing sharper.
Patriots lined themselves up on the side of Prince Willem and his campaign to bring freedom from Spanish rule. Loyalists supported King Philip’s authority. Once the burgemeesters threw their official support behind Willem, a new name appeared. Glippers were the strong loyalists committed to doing all they could to keep Leyden both Spanish and papist. Most Leydenaars lay somewhere in between. They’d like to be free from Spain and generally thought it was all right for Calvinists to be Calvinists. They wanted to believe in Willem but weren’t too sure, especially about his ragtag army of unruly Beggars.
When it came to orders to raze their buildings, all but the staunchest patriots in Leyden balked. That was a bad idea!
On this hazy Harvest-month Sunday morning, when the last bell had stilled its clapper, Hiltje sat with her family in the folding chairs they’d brought with them for the purpose. Even this hallowed spot seemed filled with apprehension.
The priest conducted the service as he did on every other Sunday. His obeisant flock proceeded to stand or kneel as the liturgy dictated. Hiltje’s seasoned memory carried her through the rituals, while her mind drifted off in pursuit of things that really mattered. She always did this. Even when she joined her husband at the altar and let the priest slip a wafer onto her tongue and put her lips to the cool silver chalice of red wine, she was usually counting how many guests had to be fed back at the inn or making a mental list of things she would need to purchase at the market.
This morning, though, she found herself watching all the other worshipers, wondering how many of them, too, had wandering minds. Their beloved Leyden was in danger—a fear none but the gray heads among them had ever experienced before. Not since the days when her own moeder was a young woman had an enemy come near with arms and violent intentions. Even then, so Moeder had told the story, when their warlike enemies from the neighboring province of Gelre had swept through the surrounding countryside plundering and destroying homes, they never entered the city.
And now? The burgemeesters were ordering all who lived in those same surrounding areas to dismantle their buildings—with their own hands! What if Prince Willem won Alkmaar and turned Alva back so he never reached Leyden’s environs? Who was willing to destroy their homes when they knew it might be for nothing? She felt the pressure of Joris’ arm and shoulder, rigid and immovable against hers.
He, for one, will never remove a plank of wood or a spadeful of dirt from The Clever Fox Inn, she told herself. In matters such as these, my Joris will take his chances.
While the congregation knelt to the droning of the choir’s chants, Hiltje stole a glance at her husband. Hands tightly folded, head bowed, lips softly moving as if in response, as always he was the picture of a devout worshiper.
Joris never talked about religion. But she watched him worship, listened to his exhortations to the children to “make sure the whole world can tell by the way you speak and live that we are Christians of the most avid sort in this household.”
Often, too, he went out alone in the night, and while he never told her where he went or why, she knew he had a secret shrine out there somewhere—a spot he called his own and used it for some sort of evening prayers. She’d heard him mumble about it when he returned, thinking she was asleep.
There were times, however, when she felt an air about him that made her question something she couldn’t quite identify. But then, what did she know about such things? In her family, religion was a matter for the men to ponder and decide.
“Women tend the fires and children and the purse, and just go with their husbands to church,” her mother always taught her, “unless they are called to give their lives to the church.” That had never happened in her family—not that anybody could recall.
She looked at her daughters, Clare and Tryntje. Going through each ritual with obvious eagerness, they were as devout for their seven and nine years respectively as she could imagine. Even she had been that way herself at their age, and she wouldn’t want to deprive them of the benefits of such childish piety. Somehow it seemed to help make girls into strong women. She didn’t worry that they would always be this way, though. Life had a way of balancing things out. Already she was teaching them to run an inn, and in time that would become their primary occupation of mind. They were her daughters, after all.
By the time the priest began his sermon for the morning, Hiltje already felt as if she’d been in this cold damp sanctuary for half a day. As on every other Sunday, the robed man was cajoling his parishioners to remain loyal to both Church and the absentee foreign King Philip. Hiltje bristled. Absolutely, she did not trust the King of Spain, nor did she trust the glipper priest who defended him with such passion.
“Must a priest of God preach to us about kings and swords and revolts?” Hiltje had questioned Joris more than once.
Joris never looked her in the eyes when he answered this question. “I guess the fate of the church—and the priest’s livelihood and head—may be determined by this revolt,” he had suggested.
“That doesn’t make it right,” she had countered.
“To a glipper, I don’t think right and wrong make any difference,” he answered with a strange tone akin to anger in his voice.
Hiltje wondered what kept him going back to church. Probably the same thing that prompted her to return week after week.
“Something a woman’s got to do,” she told herself, “unless she wants to be called a heathen and face the executioner’s sword!”
This morning the priest grew eloquent, impassioned, then agitated as he harangued his flock from the old pulpit. “Your ears these days are being filled with subtle evil words from our burgemeesters. Dangerous admonitions they give you—to raze your buildings outside the walls, prepare to resist the forces of Alva when they come, to rally round the tricolor flag of the prince with its usurped lion pretending an authority never given by God or His Church!
“I command you to turn a deaf ear to it all, whether you hear it from the lips of a swaggering Beggar in the harbor or from Van der Werff, the chief burgemeester! For if you let it filter in and ruminate over it, you will be tempted to collaborate with Heaven’s enemies. To all who yield to such traitorous ideas, I can only cry out in warning, May God have mercy on you!”
Hiltje looked at her son sitting on the other side of his vader. He tapped his foot nervously on the grave-slab floor, hands clenched into a frustrated double fist. He clamped his teeth and jaws and stared with fire in his eyes. Nothing could anger that boy faster than when someone made his beggar heroes out to be villains.
She stared hard at him until at last she caught his eye and smiled guardedly. “Hold on to yourself just a few more minutes. It can’t last much longer,” she tried to tell him with her eyes. He looked instantly away, and the priest went on with his seemingly endless tirade against the men whom he perceived as enemies of peace and tranquility.
When at last the service ended, the family picked up their chairs and hurried out the door. No one spoke a word all the way home.
They’d barely stepped inside the inn when Christoffel grabbed his vader by the arm and pleaded, “Vader, you can’t let them take our studio!”
Joris replied in his most patriarchal manner, “Nobody is going to raze any buildings at The Clever Fox Inn!”
Hiltje chuckled and mumbled, “Just as I said—not a plank or a spadeful!” Then ordering her daughters to “Follow along now, girls,” she headed for the kitchen.
****
The sun had scarcely risen when Joris found two men on his doorstoop. One wore the official dress of a burgemeester—dark breeches and many buttoned doublet, long black cape and wide-brimmed hat with a fluffy ostrich feather. The other’s ashen gray clothes and bowl dangling from his waist identified him as a Beggar leader.
“Pieter Adriaanszoon van der Werff, Chief Burgemeester of Leyden,” the first introduced himself.
Joris had never met the man but knew about him. A Leydenaar from birth, exiled for a time by Alva as a religious rebel, just last year he was not only returned but placed in his high office through Prince Willem’s influence.
“Montigny de Noyelles, Military Governor of the city,” said the other.
Joris choked down a gasp. This man’s reputation did nothing to commend his cause. Profligate, overly fond of the bottle, sacrilegious—undoubtedly he was not the kind of Beggar Joris wanted Christoffel to fix his eyes on.
“Ja?” Joris muttered, staring through the open upper door, regarding his visitors with anxious reserve. What had brought them to his inn this morning? Surely they were not going to order him to raze his property! Not way out here! Not that he would do it, of course. But saying “nay” to the men at the head of the city in whose shadow he rested for protection—that was not so simple! These men could wipe him and his home off the land and into the Zyl River.
“May we come in?” asked the burgemeester. “We have a matter of importance to discuss with you.”
Joris cleared his throat and asked, “What sort of matter?”
“A matter that affects your livelihood,” the Beggar said quickly.
“If you must,” Joris grunted and opened the door, taking care not to disguise his displeasure.
With pounding heart, he watched the swaggering bearing of the Beggar and the eagerness with which both men searched the room with their eyes before they seated themselves at one of the tables.
“You have a more commodious tavern here than it appears from the outside,” said the burgemeester. “How many people will the rooms hold?”
Joris hesitated. Then gesturing toward the tables, he answered, “As many as we can feed at the tables—fifteen, twenty, twenty-five if we pack them tightly.”
“You are aware of the prince’s orders to raze all the buildings outside the city?” the Beggar asked, his voice forceful if a bit icy.
“Surely not all the way out here!” Joris fought to keep his voice from rising. His toes tapped the floor, and he could feel the muscles of his face twitching.
The burgemeester drew a circle on the table with his finger. “I wish I could agree with you. I know well what a service you have already rendered to many of the men coming and going on business with the revolt.”
Impatiently the Beggar interrupted. “Of course you will be happy to comply and go to work immediately.” He smiled too broadly and ended on a hollow-sounding note of triumph that rankled Joris clear to the core.
Determined to keep his voice as low as possible lest he rouse Hiltje—or worse yet, Christoffel—Joris placed both hands on the end of the table where the men sat. Leaning toward them, he said, “You must be aware that the longer my building stands, the longer I can serve your messengers and fellow Beggars.”
He saw a fire smoldering in De Noyelles’ leathery face. However, the man had scarcely opened his mouth, when Van der Werff was drawing himself up, putting his shoulder forward, and speaking.
“You realize it is a game of chance, Joris. I know full well that in the razing, you and your family stand to lose much, although we ask you not to destroy, only to dismantle it all. We shall offer you a place to store the planks and windows and furnishings inside the city. Once the threat of a siege is past, you can reassemble it as new.”
Joris paced the floor beside them, his arms swinging in rhythm to his accelerating steps. “And where shall we lodge? How do we continue to gain a livelihood?”
The Beggar jumped in. “This is war! At such times we all live wherever a door opens to us with a place to lay our heads and eat whatever crumbs fall onto our host’s table and pray for a speedy end to the troubles!”
“The other choice,” said the burgemeester smoothly, “is no more pleasant. If the Spaniards decide they can use your inn to their advantage, they will simply put you and your family to the sword and occupy all this you have built with your hands. If not, they may still put you to the sword and torch the buildings. At best they would force you at sword point to operate it for their benefit and on their oppressive terms.”
Joris pounded his fist on the corner of the table and faced both men with fire in his eyes. “When the last of my neighbors between here and the Zyl Poort have flattened their houses, I shall do the same. Until then, remember, I do nothing in haste.”
“Either way, you strike a bargain for haste,” Van der Werff protested.
“How so?”
“If you wait from this end, you may have very little time to work at the other.”
“Uncomfortably little time!” Noyelles added, a look of exasperation flowing out of his eyes and setting his feet and hands to stirring.
The burgemeester sighed. “When the day comes that the deed must be done at the farthest extremity, I fear we may have no choice then but to put it to the torch.”
“And you’ll have no time to retrieve any of your priceless possessions!” Noyelles finished.
“In the meantime,” Joris spoke with growing agitation, “when our far neighbors in Alkmaar prove themselves better than Don Frederic and bring him to his knees in defeat, I will not have dismantled my life for no good cause.”
“Do not fasten your hopes on so slender a slip of good fortune,” the Beggar warned, his voice heavy with mockery.
“Indeed!” The other man nodded heartily.
Joris planted his hands on his hips and spread his feet wide. Assuming the air of the innkeeper and owner in charge of his property being bedeviled by men with official appointments, he said, “I repeat. When my neighbors have all complied, and when the noble houses Steenevelt and Zylhoff have been razed, you may come back here and find me busy with the hammer and spade. Until then, I remain in this place, committed to serving the revolt with rooms and victuals and the best Delfts beer in Holland.”
The two men stirred uneasily on the bench. Joris watched them nudge each other and exchange unspoken messages with their eyes and furrowed brows. Finally they pushed themselves from the table and stood to leave.
Van der Werff sighed. “Very well, Joris. We have laid the choice before you. When time slips by and you do not hear from us, think not that we have forgotten. We expect you to be a man of your word.”
“That I have always been, and I see no reason now to alter my ways,” Joris said flatly.
“Just remember this,” De Noyelle added, “we allow nothing to hinder the revolt—especially not the stubborn will of a paunchy innkeeper.”
They turned and left. Joris shut the door behind them and instantly felt Hiltje’s arm around his middle. He stood once more with hands on hips and feet spread wide in the rushes and said, “We shall never remove one plank nor one spadeful of dirt from The Clever Fox Inn!”
Hiltje squeezed him hard, and he thundered, “Never!”
****
Sweating and more bone weary than he’d been for a long, long while, Pieter-Lucas pushed open the door into his apartment. A flicker of anticipation quickened his steps across the floor to the bed where his vrouw lay sleeping. Peeling off his doublet and trousers, he climbed in beside her, enfolded her in his arms, and kissed her awake.
“Pieter-Lucas, my love, God brought you home,” she said drowsily.
“Are you well?” he whispered.
“Perfectly well, and the children too. Oh, Lucas will be so happy to see you! You cannot imagine how much he misses his vader.”
“Nor can you imagine how much I miss his moeder.”
“Ah, but I do, I do, I do,” she said and laughed lightly.
“You must tell me all that happened while I was away.”
“In the morning,” she said with a tone of motherly authority that always brought a smile to his heart, “when you’ve had a good night’s sleep.”
He needed nothing worse than sleep. With that he could not disagree. But with morning light he must leave again.
“There are some questions I must have answered,” he mumbled, “and I may leave again early tomorrow.”
“Nay, not so soon,” she protested.
“Alva has invested Alkmaar—three days ago—and I know not what urgent messages Jan will need me to run to Ludwig and Willem. Tell me, how is Kaatje’s foot?”
He heard his vrouw’s silence and answered his own question. “No better, is she?”
“Nay! The Julianas have tried all they know. Only God knows the remedy, or whether there is one.”
He held her close and nuzzled his nose and lips down into her hair. Did God know indeed? Pieter-Lucas’ mind told him it had to be so, but in his heart he questioned.
“At least you are safe here for now,” he whispered.
“I fear even that is not true,” she protested.
“Just a little longer, my love.” He stroked her arm gently.
“Nay, it is as I thought it might be, Pieter-Lucas. Mieke hears the cooks and the servants grumbling because we have not yet let them do a feast for Kaatje’s baptism.”
“What? I haven’t been at home enough to do such a thing.”
“Mieke says they already have all the plans for the feast made and are angry because we have not made a date for it to happen. Further…” She paused and he felt her warm moist hands gripping his. “Worst of all, they are saying that the reason we have not baptized the child is that we are ‘dopers’!”
“Dopers?” Stunned, he lay immobile and remembered the words of Jakob de Wever, “Bring her here as quickly as you can!” What was that he said about how the Children of God would always be in danger no matter where they chose to live? Was it worth it? If only Aletta were not so insistent, Pieter-Lucas would be willing to go through with the baptism, to keep the peace, until this war was over.
But he knew she would not budge. One time, before Lucas was born, they’d argued almost to the point of irresolvable anger over it. If anything, over the past four years, she had grown more firm in her convictions. So little time they had together. He could not let disagreement and anger consume their precious moments.
“Oh, Pieter-Lucas,” she pleaded, “we must leave this place now before the Julianas have turned completely against us and put us outside their gate.”
“Surely it will not come to that!”
“You said it yourself, Pieter-Lucas. They have the right to demand that we live like Lutherans in their Lutheran household. It is the law of this land, you know. We shall never be safe until we live with our own people.”
“I cannot take time to move you there now.”
“Did you find the group in Leyden? Are my vader and moeder on their way there yet?”
He sighed, reluctant to tell her what Jakob de Wever had urged him to do. She needed nothing to encourage the venture at this moment when he simply had to run quickly from place to place and could not be dragging a family along with him. “Your vader and moeder are supposedly coming soon,” he admitted cautiously.
“Then we can stay with them!”
“I think their place will not be large enough….” He let his voice trail off lest he’d end up telling her the whole story. Not tonight!
“Pieter-Lucas, if there’s a group of the Children of God in Leyden, they will make a spot for us somewhere. They never turn out a refugee! You know that well, and you know that I know it well.”
“I know, it’s just that…You must wait a little longer. I will take you as soon as I can, I promise.”
In the silence of the dark, they clung to each other and neither spoke another word. At last her arms released him, and he heard her breathing rise and fall to a different rhythm from that of the children across the room. Pieter-Lucas spent the rest of the night prying away at the gigantic perplexity. It loomed like an immovable boulder in the pathway before him, bordered on either side with a deep snake-infested swamp.