On a cool blustery morning with only a thin veil of clouds scudding across the heavens, Hiltje knew she had to bake some bread. She stood in her kitchen and tried to decide where to begin. Three days ago, when the baker first refused to sell her bread, she had begun growing her own yeast culture. As much as she could remember, she did it the way her moeder had done it years ago in a pot. She mixed meal and water with a spoonful of honey and some already fermenting hops from the shed behind the barn where Joris brewed beer for the family. She set it in the back of the fireplace to keep it warm and had watched it bubble ever since.
“Looks plenty bubbly enough to me,” she said, holding the yeast pot for Gretta to examine. “What think you?”
The older woman shrugged. “Just remember, I’ve never made bread before, never even watched my moeder do it.” Then peeking into the yeasty pot, she agreed. “It does bubble…and begins to send off a breadlike aroma.”
The time for decision had come, and Hiltje must sound more sure than she felt, or they would all go hungry. She smoothed her apron down with nervous hands and said, “First, I think we call the children to clean the oven, then build a fire.”
“Sounds wise,” Gretta said and helped her gather their four children in the innyard.
Together they all converged on the long deserted bread oven. They cleaned out at least a six years’ accumulation of weeds, leaves, and storm-blown sand from the oven above, its firebox beneath, and the ground all around it.
Hiltje sent her daughters, Clare and Tryntje, climbing up to the top of the old structure with a long-handled broom wrapped in rags. They shoved it down through the chimney to remove any bird nests, spider webs, and debris that lodged there.
“Bring the washtub and all the buckets you can find,” Hiltje told the boys. “Fill them with water and place them near the oven. And don’t forget to bring the ladders out where you can grab them in a flash if you need them,” Hiltje sputtered as the boys ran off to do her bidding.
Gretta shook her head. “I’ve never even been this close to such an oven. Only the bakers had them in the cities. Too dangerous for the rest of us, we were told.”
“More than one city fire has been started by an oven flame leaping out of its bounds,” Hiltje said.
Gretta shivered. “Can we get the fire hot enough to bake the bread and still not burn down the inn?” she asked, her dark eyes flashing with a kind of wariness that seemed to match the sharpness of her nose and chin.
“This oven sits too far from the inn to do any damage,” Hiltje countered.
“And if a spark gets away? Old thatch goes quickly up in flames. I’ve seen it.”
Hiltje fought down a growing uneasiness and tried to reassure her fearful “city” guest. “This is not the city. My moeder has fired this oven many times, and her moeder before her even more times. I’ve never heard any stories of fires in this inn. Besides, the boys have the buckets and washtub ready in the event of a mishap.”
By the time she’d assembled kindling twigs and wood, all stood in readiness. The children gathered around for the lighting of the fire.
“Let me do it, Moeder,” Christoffel begged, extending his hand.
Something inside Hiltje felt like a quickly twisting knife. Joris should be here to do this. Nay, rather, if he were here, they’d still be going to the sign of The Pretzel for their bread and not have to worry about resurrecting crumbling ovens and trying to draw recipes from a brain where they did not exist.
Without saying anything, she handed the tinderbox to her son and watched as he struck the flint, created a spark, and soon had the wood afire.
Shortly Hiltje noticed Gretta holding her arms at the elbows and moving about uneasily. Her eyes grew wide, staring at the growing fire, mumbling something unintelligible beneath her breath.
“Now into the house we go to make the dough,” Hiltje said, taking Gretta by the arm and trying to sound as if she were in charge. “And you, jongens, keep the fire going and watch for sailing sparks. Clare, Tryntje, go to hanging out the feather bags to air.”
Once inside the kitchen, Hiltje and Gretta conferred and mixed and kneaded until the lump of dough they produced was smooth and spongy. Hiltje punched it with her finger and watched the hole fill up to make a solid round ball.
“Is it ready?” Gretta asked eagerly.
“Nay,” Hiltje said. “I seem to remember that my moeder let it sit by the fire and grow until it had reached twice its size.”
No sooner had they set the bowlful of bread in the corner of the hearth than a dreadful shriek came from the barnyard.
“Fire! Moeder, come!”
Hiltje dashed into the yard in time to see a tiny flame with a long smoke tail curling from the thatch on the stable roof. Christoffel was putting a ladder in place, then clambering up, dragging a wet rag with which he tried to smother the flame. By the time he reached it, it had grown too big for the rag to cover and was spreading quickly across the thatch.
“Save the horses!” Christoffel screamed.
The girls scurried into the stable. Hiltje, Robbin, and Gretta were passing buckets of water along to Christoffel, who dashed them onto the now hungry flames.
“Back off!” Hiltje shouted at her son. “Go to the inn with a wet mop. Sit on the rooftop and beat off any burning sparks that may sail there.”
Leaving Robbin and Gretta to keep pouring water on the barn, Hiltje went to help her girls tether the horses to a tree in the front of the inn. They all returned to draw water from the well and pass along buckets to keep the water on the fire. In no time the entire stable was wrapped in flames. Still they doused it, hoping it would not spread. When the roof collapsed, pulling the walls with it, it sent an enormous shower of sparks heavenward.
“Throw water on the inn!” Christoffel screamed from his perch above the studio.
Hiltje turned to do that and discovered the figure of a man on the ridge of the roof at the kitchen end of the inn. He, too, had a stick in his hand with a wet rag and was waving it at the dangerous flying sparks. Like a flash, two new flames sprang to life along the ridge of the inn roof between the men. Frantically they swung at them with their rags. Hiltje scrambled up the ladder with a bucket, while the newly arrived man met her halfway and took it from her hand, transforming both flames into a cloud of hissing steam.
It was Dirck, Gretta’s husband! She turned to go for another bucket and found Robbin at her feet handing one up. The bucket line continued passing empty buckets down, full ones from the well, up the ladder, along the rooftop.
“Have to soak this roof,” Dirck shouted down at Hiltje. “Sleeping sparks roar to new life when we do not watch.”
“If only the heavens would open and shower down upon us,” she yelled back. Her mind began now to fret and fume. Day after day when she did not want it, the rain always fell. Why not today? What if the tall linden trees bordering the pasture behind them, with their autumn-dried leaves, should burst into glowing candles and spread more sparks?
What would Joris say when he came home, if he ever did? Joris, Joris, Joris! The name crescendoed in her brain like the thundering of an approaching horse. Where was he? Why did he not come? If he’d stayed home in the first place, she never would have had to build a fire in the oven, and this would not have happened.
Maybe…an unthinkable thought began to form in the farthest back reaches of her weary mind. Nay! She shoved it back down and grabbed for another bucket. The thought would not go away. What if Joris is a Jew, and he’ll not come home again ever, and all this happened as a curse of some kind? Hiltje didn’t know much about curses, only that they happened and could wreak dreadful ruin on their victims. She’d heard a lot of stories in her years of living in the inn. Stories both about curses and Jews. Amazing the things people talked about when they were warmed and filled with Delfts beer!
She passed another bucket to Dirck and tried to block out the thought that had just left her feeling dead inside—dead and deserted and hopeless! From out beyond the Zyl she heard a roll of thunder and saw a bright glow from a distant flash of lightning. Minutes later the first drops of rain began to fall like a refreshing promise.
****
From her hard seat in the coach that had bumped and jostled along the roadways all the way from Dillenburg, Aletta sat waiting. She looked out on the typical countryside inn through a veil of shivering autumn leaves and dripping sheets of water from the rain shower finally slowing to a stop.
“The Clever Fox Inn.” For the hundredth time she read the words on the large sign that hung just beyond the coach doorway and sighed. She hugged Kaatje to her breast and watched plumes of smoke diminish and disappear from behind the old wooden building with its low-hanging, shaggy roof.
Somewhere, probably inside the building now that the rain had taken over the fire-fighting job, were her moeder and brother, Robbin. How she’d yearned to see them again! Could Pieter-Lucas be here to meet them? Reluctantly, she stifled the burst of eagerness that threatened to overtake her.
Lucas pranced about the coach, his little legs a never ceasing rhythm of motion. Even as he leaned against his moeder’s knee and raised a pleading face toward her, his feet didn’t stop moving. “Can we go in that house, Moeke?” he begged.
“When Opa comes for us, jongen,” she said, trying to soothe him, all the time wishing desperately that it would be soon. Her back and shoulders and head ached from so long sitting and so much little-boy wiggling, not to mention Mieke’s perpetual prattling.
“Can’t be long now,” Mieke spouted. “Haven’t seen a whisker o’ smoke since th’ rains started a-comin’, and surely ain’t no fire a-smolderin’ anymore.” She paused to poke her head out. “Ja, here comes yer vader now.”
Before she’d finished her last statement, Mieke was already lifting Lucas up and out and setting him on the ground, where he ran to meet his grandfather.
“Now, c’mon, Vrouw ’Letta,” she coaxed, taking the baby and helping Aletta to her feet.
Vader met her at the doorway and helped her to the ground.
“Is Pieter-Lucas here?” she muttered.
“Not yet, but within a day or two—as quickly as he can,” Vader said, looking at her with that special protective look he’d always reserved for his daughter.
“I know,” she mumbled.
She looked beyond Vader to see Moeder Gretta already stooping down to greet her grandson and Robbin hurrying forward to scoop up the boy in gangly arms. Aletta reached out and embraced her moeder. Almost she’d forgotten how small and bony her body was.
“O Moeder, my moeder, how long it has been!” she said as they squeezed each other.
“How very, very long indeed!” Moeder answered.
Then shoving back and holding each other at arm’s length, moeder and daughter looked with excited admiration at each other.
“What a fine and beautiful young moeder my daughter has become!” Gretta said.
“And you, Moeder, look far more lovely than I had remembered in my happiest dreams.”
“Where is that baby?” Gretta asked.
Mieke shoved her way in between them and placed the child into the eager grandmother’s arms. “Ain’t she a beautiful one?”
“Ah! Just like the little one I birthed so many years ago,” Gretta said, her sharp-featured face turning into one huge smile.
They made a triumphant procession entering The Clever Fox Inn, Lucas waving from his grandfather’s shoulders, Robbin close beside, Gretta holding her prize out for the whole world to see, Aletta and Mieke following behind all aglow.
When they’d come through the doorway, Vader Dirck said with jovial grandeur, “My family, if you please!”
One by one the innkeeper’s family, ash-smudged and sweaty and reserved, stepped forward and greeted their new guests. When Aletta greeted Hiltje, she thought she’d never seen so sad a face in all her life. Her wide eyes were underlined with deeply sagging bags and looked ready to rain tears. Without a smile, the woman spoke while wiping sooty hands on her apron. “Welcome to The Clever Fox Inn. It gives me pain that you must find me so covered with ashes and mud and not even a crust of bread in the house. Your moeder and I tried our best, but it seems it was in the stars to heap disaster upon us.”
A hint of an attempted smile softened her face ever so slightly, and she laid a gentle hand on Kaatje’s head, murmuring, “What a pretty little one.” With a wary half glance at Aletta, she added, “So tiny she is…for such long traveling. Here, you need a bed.” She showed Aletta a worn wooden cradle with a low stool beside it.
“My thanks to you,” Aletta said.
Assuming an air that went with being mistress of the house, Hiltje began giving orders all around the room, and Aletta knew the celebration was over.
“Clare and Tryntje, revive the fire in the hearth and get the soup going. Jongens, do what you can to care for all the horses.” Clapping a hand over her mouth, she asked, “Ach! Did the fire leave us any straw for fodder?”
“We’ll find some, Moeder,” Christoffel said.
“Where?” she demanded. “The harvest was all in the loft of the barn.”
“Not quite all,” Christoffel insisted and both boys started for the door.
Once they’d left, taking along little Lucas who refused to be parted from his Oom Robbin, Vader Dirck said, “I shall pack my family all into the coach and take them into the city to Jakob de Wever’s.”
“Nay!” Hiltje retorted.
“My family, with children and one more horse—so many mouths needing sustenance—will only add to your worries these days,” he insisted.
“You forget,” she said, “that I run an inn here, and I have ample experience in watching over the needs of far more than this little handful!”
“I am sure of that, and I know you do it right well. But…with your barn burned to ashes and…”
She grabbed him by the arm and pleaded, “Leave me not alone here with my children and this inn with its ashes—and ghosts of a husband run off and—Ach! Promise me you’ll stay at least until my Joris returns!”
Vader looked toward Moeder, then around the room, as if taking each one into account before he could give an answer to this most unusual request.
“You’ve still no idea how long he will be gone?” he asked at last.
Hiltje swallowed hard and bit at her lip. She shook her head. “Worst of all, somebody’s started ugly rumors about Joris in the city, and the baker refuses to sell me bread. So we were trying to bake some ourselves when the fire got away and burned down the barn.” Her tale spent, along with her strength, she stood with head bowed.
“I’ll get ye some bread,” Mieke offered.
Hiltje looked at her, then back at Vader Dirck.
“If anybody can get the bread, Mieke is the one,” he said quickly, reassuring.
“Ye gots coins?” Mieke asked, her hand extended.
Once more Hiltje hesitated, until this time Gretta spoke up. “It’s all right, Hiltje. You can trust her.”
“Here,” she said, pulling a pair of coins from her bag and putting them in the outstretched hand. Then, with wildness in her eyes, she added, “Tell not a soul you come from The Clever Fox Inn! Do you hear me? Not a soul!”
“Vrouw, ye’ll learn it soon enough that when Mieke’s out to git somethin’, she doesn’t tell a soul nothin’ what he oughtn’t to be a-hearin’.” She paused and smoothed down her ragged-hemmed dress, then snatched a large basket sitting by the door. “I’se on my way,” she said and disappeared out into the afternoon.
“I hope the baker gives it to her,” Hiltje moaned. “Hei! But she doesn’t even know where to find him!”
Aletta smiled in spite of herself. “You don’t know Mieke. There’s nothing she can’t find, nothing she can’t get when she sets her mind to it.”
“You’re sure she can be trusted? Looks like a street thief to me. Only she’s not got shifty eyes.”
“She’s been living with us now since before little Lucas, over there, was born. She was my midwife with both children. I’d trust her with my life in any circumstance.”
“Where did you get her, anyway?”
“That’s a long story. Ask her. She loves to tell it to anybody who will take the time to listen.”
Vader was standing near Hiltje now. “I can take our horse and coach into the city and leave them with Jakob de Wever. If he has room I’ll come back and get your horses to board there as well.” He sighed. “If only the war weren’t threatening, but maybe it won’t reach us here.”
Hiltje looked at him darkly. “What makes you think that?”
“The Spaniards are losing Alkmaar—or so I’ve heard. May not come to Leyden after all.”
Hiltje shook her head and gave off a mocking laugh. “I don’t believe it. When the Duke of Alva sets his eyeballs on a city, he goes after it, and Leyden’s been in his eyes for a long, long time. He’s still got a lot of glippers here yet, too—priests, people in high places.”
Aletta gulped. Pieter-Lucas had warned her there would be dangers here. But nobody had told her that The Clever Fox Inn would be their new home. Who was this woman, Hiltje, anyway? Not a Child of God, surely. Didn’t talk like one, didn’t look like one. And why had her husband run off, with war almost at the city gates? Vader Dirck had only told her that they were staying in an inn for a short time while the Children of God family cleaned and repaired the building where they were all to live and open the printery.
Vader started for the door. “I go and come quickly back.”
Hiltje stared at him for a long moment, one hand on her hip, the other cradling her chin. “While you’re there,” she said slowly, “can you find out who started the rumors about my husband and why?”
“What rumors?”
“Ask anybody you meet. The whole city knows them.”
“Are you sure you want to know?”
“Very sure!”
“Rumors are easy to hear but not so simple to track.” Vader was gone.
When he had closed the door, Kaatje was beginning to cry for her next meal. “Gretta, take your daughter to her quarters,” Hiltje said. Then without warning, she threw up her hands, let out a shriek, and started for the kitchen. “Must be bread dough all over the kitchen! Gretta, come back when you’ve shown Aletta her room and tell me what to do with runaway bread dough when you got no oven to bake it in. Dear me, dear me!”
The room Hiltje had chosen for Aletta and her family was located above the kitchen, warmed by the chimney coming through.
“She wanted you to have her warmest room for the baby,” Moeder Gretta explained.
“I think she is a kind woman,” Aletta said, opening her bodice and feeding Kaatje. “Now go on, Moeder, to help her with the bread.”
Gretta shrugged. “I’ve no ideas what to tell her. Can she cook it in rolls on a griddle?”
Aletta laughed. “You’re asking me? Wait! Ja, I think I saw a cook do that once in Duisburg.”
Moeder hurried off to the kitchen, and Aletta snuggled her Kaatje close, listening to the delightful suckling sounds her child made. Gently she began to unwind the swaddling bands until the fingers were free to wrap themselves around her own fingers as she nursed.
“Dear Vader in the Heaven,” she prayed, “thank you that this child is beautiful and whole and has not some ailment that would keep her from eating well. We have come now to this place where you brought us. Show me where to find the help we need for her twisted foot. If there is anyone on earth who can bring her healing, let them be here in Leyden.”
She closed her eyes and put her lips to the warm head in her arms. The deep feeling that welled up inside was a contentment that only the arrival of her Pieter-Lucas could intensify. May it be soon!
****
The journey from Diedrick Sonoy’s headquarters near Alkmaar in the far northern hook of the country to Willem’s headquarters in the old St. Agatha Convent in Delft was wild and cold—and long! Every time Pieter-Lucas traveled it, he hoped and prayed it would be the last. North of Leyden, the road was infested with Spanish troops, and its villages held hostage by the terror those soldiers inspired.
So he usually left Blesje somewhere near to Leyden—never the same place twice—and went on by foot or boat or coach. He had hidden in wagonloads of hay or disguised himself and joined groups of pilgrims, even Spanish soldiers. Beyond Haarlem, the road ran along the line of desolate sand dunes that held back the North Sea on the west and kept him frightened all the way.
Always when he passed through Leyden, his heart tugged at him to turn in for an hour or two of rest. But the messages he carried in his shoe or his doublet or sometimes his hat were too urgent for that—unless he happened through there late at night. Even then, rest times must be short.
“When we have won the war, we will have earned our rest,” he’d grown accustomed to telling himself.
Once Aletta had arrived in Leyden…Ah! that would be different. Then he must face a new set of perplexing decisions every time he passed this way.
On this cool windy evening in the beginning of Wine month, Pieter-Lucas retrieved Blesje from a wayside inn just north of Leyden. As they started out and he was trying to fit his body to the saddle on the horse’s back, he spotted the familiar church steeples of Leyden on the horizon, glowing faintly in the light of a setting sun. The tug grew stronger with each clop of Blesje’s hooves.
“I think she’s here by now, Blesje,” he said. “We left Dillenburg over a week ago, you know. Besides, the news we bear from Alkmaar is hopeful, and there’s nothing in my message that Willem can take care of before morning. We can stop now and still be in Delft by then.”
With his heart tripping over itself for joy, he hastened through the Rhinesburger Poort and soon stood face-to-face with Jakob de Wever on the man’s doorstoop.
“Has my vrouw arrived yet?” he asked, his eyes eagerly searching into the room beyond.
“That she has indeed, but not here. You’ll find her out at The Clever Fox Inn.”
Jakob motioned him into the room, but Pieter-Lucas refused. “I have so little time, must be in Delft early in the morning. Just have to see my vrouw and try to snatch a little shuteye with her in my arms.”
Jakob took him by the arm and pulled him into the room, shutting the door quickly behind him.
“What is it?” Pieter-Lucas asked, struggling to go free.
“I’ll only take a short minute. You need to know one thing before you go there.”
“Ja?” Pieter-Lucas grew impatient as the man paused to clear his throat and look for words.
“Your vrouw is well. The children are well. But the innkeeper is in difficulty.”
“He’s home, then?”
“Nay, he’s not been back, and no one has heard from him since he left. But there are rumors all over Leyden that he fled because he is a secret Jew—marrano is the word being passed around from house to house and shop to shop.”
“Is it true?” Pieter-Lucas gasped.
“Who knows but Joris?”
“Do the Leydenaars believe it?”
Jakob nodded. “The whole city has been treating the poor man’s vrouw and her children like a pack of lepers. Nobody will even sell them so much as a loaf of bread.”
“So why have you let my vrouw stay there?” Pieter-Lucas was already reaching for the door latch.
“They just came today. Dirck was here late in the afternoon asking questions about the source of the rumors, which I have no idea of. He said the innkeeper’s vrouw was frightened of being left alone, desperate to have them stay with her.”
“Ach! If the news from Alkmaar is good, then must the news from Leyden cause a man’s heart to fail. Good night.”
Magdalena met him at the door and thrust a bulging bag into his hands. “Here, young man, take this to Hiltje—some bread and a few vegetables from our garden. Dear soul needs all we can do for her.”
Pieter-Lucas hurried out into the darkening streets, mounted his horse, and hurried toward the Zyl River. All the while, he mumbled, “Always something, always something. Great God, is there no safe place on earth? Oh, to be free to care for the woman who holds my heart and the little ones she’s birthed to me! Ach, how can I go to Delft tomorrow? Yet how can I not? Willem counts on me, and at least Aletta has her vader and moeder with her….” One after another, the troubling thoughts rolled through his confused mind like clouds tumbling over one another across the windblown skies above him.
At The Clever Fox Inn, his knock was answered by the harried-looking woman in charge.
“From your friend Magdalena,” he said, handing her the bag.
Hiltje stared at him. “What is it?”
“Bread…I don’t know what more. She wanted to help you.”
Hiltje shook her head and led him to an upstairs sleeping room. Pieter-Lucas knocked gently, opening the door as he did.
“Pieter-Lucas!” In a flash, Aletta leapt at him from across the room and let him lock her in his arms. Nothing else mattered now, and he would not allow a single worrisome concern to distract him from this pleasure for the few hours he had left.
****
It was still dark when Pieter-Lucas came wide awake. Never had the temptation weighed so heavily on him to turn over in the bed made warm by his vrouw’s body and ignore the call of loyal duty. He kissed his wife on a bare shoulder, then forced himself up and into his clothes. He tiptoed to the cradle and cot where his children slept. The light of a full moon shone through the single window and splashed a golden path across their angelic faces. He stooped over and placed a kiss on each little cheek and let his nose savor the delights of the warmth of soft rose-petal skins.
Halfway across the room, Aletta stood shivering in his way.
“So soon?” she whispered. “The night is not even over.”
Holding her gently against his chest, he stroked her long golden hair and murmured, “Nor is the war, so I must go. Now that you are so close and Alkmaar is nearly won, I shall see more of you—much more!”
Then he kissed her and went for the stairs.
In the dining room below, he found Dirck Engelshofen seated at one end of a table, his face golden and distorted in the light of a lone lamp.
“What do you up so early, ahead of the sun?” Pieter-Lucas asked, his voice almost a whisper.
“I had to talk with you before you leave. How long will you be away this time?”
Pieter-Lucas shrugged. “I really believe the end of the siege of Alkmaar approaches. The fields for miles around it are now flooded, and the people of the city have so brutally treated their would-be captors that the Spanish soldiers, to a man, have refused to fight them again. They are convinced the city is inhabited by demons with supernatural powers.”
“So what will it mean when the Spaniards let down the blockade of Alkmaar?”
Pieter-Lucas sighed. “I wish I knew. Only that I shall not so often run there. Beyond that, I dare not to think. How long must you stay here in this unprotected wayside inn with these people accused of the great ‘sin’ of being the family of a Jew?”
“You must have talked to Jakob before you came last night.”
“I did.”
Dirck made circles on the table with his finger. “I hardly know what to think—or do. Hiltje has been ever so kind to us all, and she and my vrouw have become fast friends. Even Robbin and Christoffel are warming to each other. And Mieke has found a way to persuade the baker to sell her bread.”
Pieter-Lucas smiled in spite of himself. He’d all but forgotten that she was here too. Nothing remained impossible with her on their side. “But…what happens when the Leydenaars discover you are guests here and decide to put you under whatever curse they’ve imposed on the innkeeper?”
Dirck looked hard into Pieter-Lucas’ eyes and said, “I must ask you simply to trust me, son. I know not what I may have to do before this is over. Just remember, your vrouw was first my daughter, and those children are my grandchildren. I shall do what is best for them all—if God will just show me what that is. As you say, you will be back soon. Perhaps you can stay longer next time.”
“Ja!” Pieter-Lucas said. He clapped his vader-in-law on the shoulder, then slipped out of the inn just as the horizon began to lighten.