The afternoon sun was already halfway to the line where pasturelands met leaden skies when Pieter-Lucas finally saw the first blurry outline of the towers and rooftops of Leyden. He nudged Blesje’s flank and urged him forward.
“Make haste, old boy, for Aletta and the children lie almost within reach. The sooner we get there, the more hours we can steal with them.”
He pulled his cape tightly around his body, shielding it from the penetration of a windblown shower of misty rain, and mumbled, more to himself than to the horse, “If we are lucky, this could be our last trip to Alkmaar. Don Frederic can’t hold the city much longer. Spanish soldiers are terrified of rising water! Landlubbers of the most frenzied sort!”
He laughed at the Spaniards’ fear. To every Lowlander it was nothing but unthinkable cowardice. Then he remembered the slaughter of Jemmingen and the Spaniard he had pushed into the swirling waters, and his laughter turned to a shudder. The point here was not fear of water, but fear of war. No matter how you looked at it, war was ugly, never laughable.
He rode on in gloomy silence, hearing only the occasional call of a pair of gulls soaring overhead and Blesje’s hoofbeats on the damp trekpath beneath him. Shortly they entered a small dense stand of oak trees. The moisture hung heavier here, and he heard it dripping all around him on the carpet of orange and brown leaves, like the weeping of the eaves of a thickly thatched roof. He’d only passed a handful of trees, however, when he heard another sound, not a part of the wood, yet coming from it.
“Do you hear that, Blesje?” he asked and his heart picked up its tempo. “It’s the moan of a man.”
Everything he’d learned in this business of running messages for a prince told him to rush on past or go back and find another way around the wood. He’d no idea what dangers might be lurking in a planned ambush nearby. His life was important to the whole land and to his prince. He only had to remember the tragic loss of Yaap up in Friesland. If Yaap had lived, Pieter-Lucas would not have to be doing his job these days.
He also remembered how he’d found Yaap dying in the peat bog beside a road. Pieter-Lucas had been on an urgent mission that morning, too, when he heard the man’s moans and, not knowing who he was, struggled sorely over what to do. But Hans, his Anabaptist weaver-preacher, had taught him that a part of nonresistance was offering help to all who suffered. So he’d stopped. He couldn’t save Yaap’s life, but he did carry his message, which probably saved Ludwig’s army.
Quickly now, he searched the wood all around him. He found not a sign of life moving anywhere. The moaning came from a spot directly beside him on the left of the pathway. He brought Blesje to a halt and, squinting into the dimming light, discovered a crumpled human form that had been shoved facedown into a thicket of bramble bushes.
“Robbers!” Pieter-Lucas gasped.
Wary, yet no longer questioning what he must do, he lept from the horse. The man lay heaped in a large bloody ball. His clothes were ripped, and there was not a sign of knapsack or staff.
“Ach! My head” came the weak moan.
Pieter-Lucas knelt beside him in the damp sandy soil and tried to roll him over.
“Oh!” the man cried out, resisting all efforts to move him from his prone position.
“I must give you a drink, then put you on my horse and take you to a healer lady,” Pieter-Lucas explained. Lifting him would not be the easiest thing he’d done. The man was solid and rotund and obviously suffering from some injuries that would probably be made worse by being moved. Yet move him he must if he was not to die by the wayside. Surely this was no place to bring Aletta so she could attend to him.
Ignoring the man’s painful protests, Pieter-Lucas managed at last to turn him over enough to give him a drink of beer from his skin bag. As he did, the man stared at him through puffy dark eyes. A gash across his forehead was streaked with blood like a hundred battle wounds Pieter-Lucas had seen before. Something in the face caught his attention. Dark eyes and hair and mustache, sharp nose. Where had he seen it before?
Ah, but of course! He started.
“You are the keeper of The Clever Fox Inn! Joris the innkeeper!”
The man stared on at him, not uttering a word.
“Your family is grieving that you have taken so long in returning,” he went on. Then Pieter-Lucas wrapped Joris’ limp arm around his neck, put his shoulder into the man’s chest, and struggled to raise him to a sitting position.
“Can you stand and walk with my help?” he asked.
“I’ll try” came the grunted reply.
With great effort and several false starts, Pieter-Lucas got him at last to his feet and pulled him to his horse. Here he helped him into the stirrup, then shoved him up and onto Blesje’s back. Holding the man’s doublet firmly, Pieter-Lucas swung himself into the saddle behind him and wrapped him securely, first in his cloak, then in his arms. He gave Blesje instructions to “ride gently, old boy,” and they started off.
“My vrouw and her whole family are at your inn,” Pieter-Lucas told Joris. “You are in the best of good fortune, in spite of your misfortune, for my vrouw is an excellent healer lady. She will know what to do to make you as whole as new.”
The thought of carrying a suspected marrano through the streets of Leyden sent a chill down Pieter-Lucas’ back. After the warnings both Jakob and Dirck had given him, he would have gone any other way just to avoid it—if he knew any other roads. On his own, he might simply take off over pasturelands. But they often had boggy spots, and more than once while pursuing such a course, he’d ended up in a corner between ditches of fast-flowing water. Alone and on foot he could pole jump most any ditch, but he was neither alone nor on foot, and clearly Joris was not fit for pole-jumping.
By now Joris was leaning heavily against Blesje’s neck, breathing noisily. So Pieter-Lucas pulled the cape up over his head to cover it completely. Keeping utterly silent, as if somehow that would hide them from those they had reason to fear, they slipped across the bridge and through the Koe Poort into Leyden. Then they skirted the city just inside the walls.
“Great God,” Pieter-Lucas breathed a prayer each time he saw people coming his direction, “protect us from this man’s enemies and help me to keep him from falling off the horse.”
No one spoke to them. No one stopped them. They reached the Zyl Poort on the other side of the city without incident and hurried toward the man’s home.
About halfway down the trekpath along the Zyl river, Joris began to stir and mumble a string of barely audible words. Gradually they grew louder until he uttered a desperate cry, “Yahweh! Where is the ram? Yahweh! Where is the ram?”
He was out of his head! And wasn’t that word, Yahweh, the Jewish name for God? Then the rumors could be true after all. Pieter-Lucas trembled.
He didn’t know that he’d ever met a practicing Jew before. Most of the little he knew about Jews he’d learned from Hans when he gave him lessons on becoming a member of the Children of God.
“Many people hate the Jews passionately.” He remembered how Hans’ statement had shocked him.
“Wasn’t Jesus a Jew?” Pieter-Lucas had asked.
“He was,” Hans had answered. “His disciples were too. So were the men who carried Him off to Pilate and had Him crucified. To this day, many Christians still call Jews Christ killers. Sad to say, those who believe in defending their church with a sword will not hesitate to cut off a man’s head and steal his property just because he refuses to convert from Judaism to Christianity.”
That had never seemed quite right to Pieter-Lucas. Nor was it right that these same people burned other Christians too. As far as Pieter-Lucas knew, the preachers of those who called themselves Children of God were the only ones who taught their people to break their swords and live only by the Bible. Hans had assured him that, while he would always pray and work for the conversion of every Jew he ever met, he would also treat them with as much compassion as any other man, whether they converted or not.
“If we don’t show them God’s love in the name of Jesus, how will they ever believe that Jesus loves them too?” That was another of Hans’ unforgettable lines.
Pieter-Lucas felt the man in his weary arms and pondered how he could show him kindness. “The way the Children of God handle things like war and Jews is the right way,” he mumbled to himself.
The Clever Fox Inn lay just ahead. Inside, the man’s vrouw was grieving over his strange journey and the cruelty of her neighbors who had somehow learned the truth, which she still thought was a vicious lie. How could Pieter-Lucas tell her the truth? How could he be certain it was the truth? A man’s mad ravings could hardly be final evidence against him. Or could they?
Pieter-Lucas rode Blesje up to the inn and kicked on the door. Hiltje opened and stared at him with consternation.
“What’s this?” she demanded. “I don’t run a house for sick people.”
“That I know,” Pieter-Lucas said calmly, “but I thought you would want me to bring your husband home to you.”
“Joris?” Her hands flew to her mouth, and she charged out the door and pulled back the cape. “Ach! Ach! Ach!” she moaned. “Where did you find him?”
“Along the roadside, just the other side of Leyden. Now call my vader-in-law to help me, then show us where to put him.”
Dirck burst through the doorway and without a word helped Pieter-Lucas lift the unconscious man off the horse. They followed Hiltje’s bustling lead into the family room, where they eased him into his cupboard bed. The distraught vrouw almost shoved them away in her eagerness to get to him.
“My vrouw will tell us what to do to restore him,” Pieter-Lucas offered. Hiltje ignored him and was already patting her husband’s face, calling out to him, trying to rouse him.
Pieter-Lucas turned to Dirck. “Where is Aletta?”
Dirck beckoned him to follow, but before they’d reached the doorway, she was coming toward them, her apothecary chest in hand.
“What happened?” she asked, her eyes full of concern.
“I found Joris alongside the road. Robbers attacked him, I think. He has a lump on his head and blood coming from his head and arm.”
“Was he awake when you found him?”
“Halfway. Before we’d reached the inn, he was rambling with madness and has since fallen into a noisy sleep. Look! His vrouw cannot seem to rouse him.”
“Has he a heatte?”
“I think not. Shall I go for water to clean out the wounds?”
“If you please,” Aletta responded, approaching the bed. “Don’t let the children come in. And you, Vader, stay by me. I may need your help here.”
Pieter-Lucas grabbed a pitcher from the table beside the bed and hurried toward the kitchen. His mind whirred with memories of that long summer night up in Friesland when he and his newly wedded vrouw had spent half a night attending the wounded on a battlefield. How he had admired his angel of mercy! Compassion and tireless energy hovered over her like a halo over some saint in a cathedral painting and lent grace and beauty to each move she made.
He would go to the end of the earth to fetch an herb for her if she but said the word. And once he stepped out into the innyard to go to the well for water, he thought for an instant that that was where he’d gone. Half the yard lay in a heap of black soggy ashes. Christoffel and Robbin were sifting through the rubble of what had no doubt been a building of some sort. The dull acrid smell of wet ashes stung his nostrils and throat.
“What’s happened here?” he said under his breath.
He dashed toward the well and began lowering the bucket into the water far below. What would Joris say when he discovered it?
A darting thought made him stop short with the bucket perched on the rim of the well. He’d never seen this innyard in daylight. Once or twice he’d led Blesje from the stable, but always before sunup. How big the shed was or how many other buildings may have stood with it, he had no idea.
“That wasn’t your vader’s painting studio, I hope,” he shouted to Christoffel.
The boy looked up at him, face smudged with ashes, eyes wide and wistful. With a faraway kind of voice, he said, “Nay, just the stable.”
Pieter-Lucas stood where he was for a moment and took in the whole scene while confused questions ran through his brain. Did the innkeeper really have a studio in the inn? Or was the whole story he’d heard from the boy’s mouth nothing more than a wild tale designed to deceive him? He still couldn’t believe this disappearing innkeeper was a painter. But if he didn’t get to him soon with the water, the wounded man would no longer even be a living man of any kind.
Pieter-Lucas emptied the water into the pitcher, then dashed through the door and back to the room. Here in the light of a freshly lit lamp he found Aletta still hovering over her patient. Hiltje was sitting on the edge of the bed, cradling his silent head in her arm. With her other hand, she waved a sprig of lavender under his nose and whimpered, “Joris, my Joris, come back, come back!”
Pieter-Lucas poured water into a basin on a table by the bed, then submerged a cloth and handed it to Hiltje to hold to the lump on Joris’ head. Then he and Aletta set to work cleaning out the wounds on the arm and spreading them with a healing Paré salve. As they did so, the man began to groan. He let out an enormous shriek of pain, then opened his eyes and stared about him.
“Joris!” Hiltje shouted. “You’re alive and awake!”
“Where am I?” he muttered.
“In your bed,” Hiltje answered eagerly.
He frowned. “How? Ach! My aching head!”
He put his hand to his temples, then closed his eyes once more and sighed so heavily he nearly shook the frame of the old cupboard bed.
With frantic movements, Hiltje began again waving the lavender beneath his nose. “Nay, nay! Faint not away,” she pleaded.
Joris grunted something unintelligible, then moved his leg and began to moan, “Ow, that hurts. What happened?”
“Looks like some highway robbers clubbed you, stole your coins and whatever else you carried, then left you by the roadside,” Hiltje said.
He stared at her, agitation brimming from his eyes and wrinkling his forehead into a massive frown. “Ja? Ja! I was almost home….”
Pieter-Lucas caught the man’s stare directed at him and watched his face writhe into a grimace.
“Who are you?” Joris demanded, his voice still weak but heavy with bewilderment.
“Pieter-Lucas, husband to the daughter of Dirck,” he said gently, pausing to watch the dull stare.
“This man found you by the roadside and brought you home to us, Hiltje said, almost impatiently. “He’s a good man.”
“Oh,” he said, his voice flattening out to nothing, his eyes closing once more.
“Move aside, Hiltje,” Aletta coaxed, “so we can cleanse and dress the gash in his head.”
“Nay!” She surrounded him with both arms and offered Aletta a look that combined defiance with fear.
“Then you may help me,” Aletta conceded, taking the cloth from her hand, washing it out and offering it back to her.
Hiltje held it limply. “Me? I’m no healer.”
“A vrouw is always a man’s best healer,” Aletta said with a smile.
Pieter-Lucas stood watching. Admiration flooded him clear to his toes. With a gentleness like he’d never seen in any woman—not even the Julianas from Dillenburg—she showed Hiltje how to spread on the salve and cover the wounds with a length of cloth. Each time the innkeeper groaned or turned his head, she reassured him in ways and words that only Aletta could ever think of.
Pieter-Lucas turned away and walked across the room to his vader-in-law, sitting on a three-legged stool, staring out the window at the charred ground beyond. “She’s got a touch like no other,” Pieter-Lucas said.
Dirck smiled up at him and nodded. Then his face grew sober, his voice hushed. “Got to keep the man down until he’s completely healed.”
Pieter-Lucas shrugged. “Think that’ll be difficult?”
“Could be. When he sees his barn is reduced to ashes and…”
“And what?” Pieter-Lucas asked. “And learns about the rumors?”
Dirck didn’t answer right away. Instead, he leaned the heels of his hands on the edge of his seat and sighed, nodding his head firmly, slowly.
“Ja?” Pieter-Lucas asked. “What then?”
“Don’t know, son, don’t know. After all, I don’t know these people much. They’re not even Children of God, and here I go sitting in this man’s room watching my daughter spread healing salves on his mortal wounds and worrying about him as if he were a brother.”
Pieter-Lucas thought for a long moment. In his mind he heard echoes of all sorts of lessons about Anabaptism from Hans and words from the Holy Book and a dozen preachers, and before he could sort it all out, he heard himself saying, “Not only does our belief in nonresistance refuse to wield a sword. It always searches out ways to make a man our brother and do him good.” Then leaning over and whispering into Dirck’s ear, he added, “Even if he is a Jew!”
Dirck started and jumped up to face him. “Shh! Don’t say it aloud,” he whispered. “You don’t believe it…do you?”
Pieter-Lucas nodded. “I fear I do. I’ve heard Jewish words proceed from his mouth.”
“Ah!” Dirck breathed out long and quietly, then searched the room in every direction. With his mouth almost in Pieter-Lucas’ ear, he concluded, still whispering, “Then we have to do him good—especially if he is a Jew! That’s the way of the Book!”
A rustling in the rushes came from the other side of the room. Pieter-Lucas looked up to see his vrouw coming toward them, her cheeks rosy and glowing warm in the lamplight. He went to her, circled her waist with his arm, and led her out of the room.
“Thanks be to you, my love,” he said, still whispering, “for caring for the man.”
“’Tis God will touch and heal,” she reminded him. “And He will. I know it.”
“When I return from Alkmaar next time, perhaps he will be well and we can move into the city.” He kissed her on the forehead.
“You’re not leaving soon, I hope.” She grabbed at his arm and looked at him with eyes full of pain.
“Hinder me not, my love,” he said with a deep sigh. “I only stopped here to see you briefly on my way, and I’ve already been detained longer than was prudent.”
“It’s night outside,” she reminded him. “Surely you will not start out now.”
He enfolded her in a lingering embrace.
“Nay,” he whispered into her golden curls that escaped around the edges of her cap. “I shall not leave before I’ve slept, but before the light of day bursts forth, I must go.”
Arm in arm they walked toward the kitchen, where aromas from the evening meal hung heavy in the air. Perhaps these frequent visits were worse than the more infrequent ones while the family stayed in Dillenburg. At least then he had fewer partings to rip his heart in pieces.
****
Eight days later Pieter-Lucas returned to The Clever Fox Inn. He sailed through the door in the rays of afternoon sun, shouting out good news for all to hear.
“Alkmaar is relieved! Without another fight! Don Frederic could not move even one of his soldiers toward the city. He had to admit defeat and lift the siege.”
“Where did they go?” Vader Dirck asked.
“To Amsterdam, the only city in the North still loyal to Spain,” Pieter-Lucas said. Aletta hurried to him, Kaatje in her arms and little Lucas running ahead of her. He swept them all into strong arms and went on. “Then yesterday the sea Beggars defeated the Spanish fleet on the Zuyder Zee. And there is a rumor that Alva will soon be recalled to Spain!”
Christoffel clapped his hands and called out, “Long live the Beggars!”
Little Lucas did the same, in mimic. Aletta watched his chubby hands meeting awkwardly and wished he might never have to know what it all meant.
“Does this mean the war is over?” she asked, her heart leaping at the prospect.
“I wish it did,” Pieter-Lucas responded. “At least it means the Lowlanders are proving that we will not sit down and let Alva run over us any longer.”
“Then Leyden is safe at last!” Christoffel said in a triumphant tone.
Pieter-Lucas turned toward him. “Don’t count on it. Alva is a man of revenge! I’ve seen it before. It’ll take more than a battle defeat or two to stop his plans. Whoever Philip sends to take his place most likely has something even worse in mind for Leyden.”
Christoffel came toward Pieter-Lucas, raising a fist at the end of a strong arm. “The Beggars are strong and fierce—and they’ll win!” He concluded with a firm punch of his fist and a screwed-up nose. Robbin joined with him and the two boys began an arm-wrestling match, with little Lucas struggling to get between them and join in their game.
Aletta opened her mouth to speak once more to her husband when Tryntje tapped her on the arm and said with urgent voice, “Come, my moeder needs you.”
“What is it?” Aletta asked, her mind suddenly filled with thoughts that did not cause rejoicing. She handed Kaatje to Pieter-Lucas and hurried after the girl.
“She cries,” Tryntje said.
Aletta put an arm around a trembling shoulder and tried to console the girl. “She’s sad, Tryntje. Your vader has been sick for many days, and she never leaves his bedside.”
“I know,” the girl said. Then shaking her head, she added, her own voice quavering on the brink of tears, “But Moeder never cries. I think she grows sick too.”
Ever since Pieter-Lucas brought the innkeeper home, Joris had not left his bed. Sometimes he awoke and actually talked with his vrouw. But mostly he slept, often tossing restlessly, grimacing and crying out in pain. With the help of the older children, Vader Dirck and Moeder Gretta managed the inn, though they had few guests. Mieke did the marketing and helped with the little ones while Aletta attended to the needs of Hiltje and the ailing patient and tried to teach Clare and Tryntje something about herbal cures.
They had all grown weary of the long wait through the anxious days, but Aletta worried over the man. He’d obviously taken a blow to the head, and she’d known of more than one person to die of that sort of injury.
She worried over Hiltje as well. No one could persuade her to leave her husband for anything, nor would she laugh or cry or talk with anyone except about his condition and the herbs Aletta dispensed. Her daughters faithfully took her food to eat, but often it lay untouched.
Aletta walked behind Tryntje into the dingy room, which now reeked with the heavy odors of chamber pots, herbal potions, and sickness. It echoed from corner to corner with loud wailing sobs. Hiltje sat on a stool with her head resting facedown on both arms spread out on the bed. Clare stood with a hand on her moeder’s shoulder and continually begged, “Stop, Moeder, stop!”
The girl looked up at Aletta, tears streaking her own cheeks, and her face suddenly wrinkled far beyond her nine years.
“What is it?” Aletta asked.
“I don’t understand. When I came into the room, Vader was mumbling in that strange voice he uses when he’s not awake. Then he sat straight up in bed, looked at Moeder, and said very sadly, ‘Don’t tell Hiltje, but I’m really a Jew.’ Then he lay back down and fell asleep.
“Moeder screamed at him, ‘How could you? Nay! Nay!’ He didn’t answer and she’s done nothing but cry and shout, ‘Nay!’ ever since.”
Aletta gasped. “Do you know what he meant?”
“Nay. It must be something pretty terrible, though, to make Moeder so sad.” The girl latched on to Aletta’s arm now and pleaded, “Oh, please, Tante ’Letta, can you do something?”
“It sounds like she suffers from a broken heart, and we have not so many herbs for that sort of cure, but I shall try.”
Aletta lay her hands on Hiltje’s heaving shoulders, rubbing them gently. “My dear woman,” she said, her own heart overwhelmed with vicarious pain, “calm, calm now. Whatever your husband says to you, just remember his brain is not working the same as it did before his injury.”
“Nay! But I fear he speaks the truth,” she cried out and went on sobbing.
“Still, Hiltje, still. When he is well, he will put your mind at rest.”
She did not answer. Aletta prayed silently, Great God in the Heaven, you are the only healer that can touch this woman’s heart—or her husband’s body and brain. Show me what to do next, show me what to do.
Almost without thinking, she reached into her bodice and pulled out Tante Lysbet’s tattered old herbal book. How many things she had been through with this treasure! It had helped her deliver a baby when no one had shown her how. She’d used it for creating salves for all wounds that Paré salve would not help, potions for coughs that refused to go away, little roots hung about the neck to chase away stubborn evil humors. Now she must search its pages for a cure for a broken heart.
She found nothing but borage. Everyone knew about borage and everyone used it when they could find it. It didn’t always work, and Aletta continually searched for something better. She hadn’t tried it with Hiltje yet because there was none growing in the inn garden. She’d brought many herbs with her from Dillenburg, but borage must be fresh.
Turning to Clare and Tryntje who hovered nearby, she asked, “Do you know what borage is?”
“Borage? I’ve heard of it,” said Clare.
“Is there an herb garden anywhere nearby? Anything this side of the city?”
“There is the cloister of the hermit sisters,” Tryntje said and Clare nodded.
“Where is it?” Aletta asked.
“Just down the river a few paces and off to the east at the end of its own tiny path,” Clare explained.
“They have a whole big garden full of herbs.” Tryntje spread her arms wide.
“Moeder always said there isn’t a thing they can’t heal with one of their herbs,” Clare added.
Aletta felt a quickening in her heart. “Can you take me there, Tryntje?”
“Me?” The seven-year-old pointed to her chest and her eyes lit up. “Ja, if you will let me go. We both go there whenever Moeder needs anything.”
“And what shall I do with Moeder while you’re gone?” Clare asked.
“I’ll send my own moeder in to help you,” Aletta said. Then rubbing Hiltje’s back once more, she promised, “I go to fetch an herb for your sorrow, and we come directly back.”
****
The cloister hardly fit any description Aletta knew for a religious house. Nothing more than a thatched hut, it was set, as Tryntje had said, back from the trekpath at the end of a weed-grown pathway. All the way around the ramshackle old hut, Aletta saw rows of familiar plants—dried stalks that had three months ago been bright with red hollyhocks, and purple foxgloves, and low shrubs of old greenery that had bloomed with calendulas. In neat little rows and blocks, there were hundreds of the herbs Aletta had grown to know and use. Her heart swelled up as if it would burst at the sight of so much healing power—and all so close to The Clever Fox Inn! Could it be that there might be something here she had not seen elsewhere, something that could help her own Kaatje? Nay, not now. Joris and Hiltje were in mortal danger at this moment. Kaatje could wait.
The sister who opened the top half of the dilapidated old door at their knock greeted them with a wary smile. Her sharp-featured face was nearly swallowed up in her voluminous nun’s habit.
“Good afternoon, and what can I do to serve you?” she asked pleasantly.
They called her a hermit, yet Aletta felt a warmth in this shriveled-up woman that both frightened and attracted her. “We’ve come in search of a stalk of borage,” Aletta answered, “to bring cheer to a man and his vrouw in much distress.”
“Come you from far away?”
“Nay, only down the Zyl trekpath a short ways…” Aletta hesitated to go on.
Tryntje spoke up, “From The Clever Fox Inn!”
The woman leaned over the doorsill and stared at the child. A smile spread across her face. “Ah, ja, you are the child that comes for herbs. And your vader and moeder are ill?”
“Vader was attacked by robbers, and Moeder is sad to watch him lie so ill in bed.”
The sister opened the whole door now and welcomed them in. “What is this about?” she directed her question to Aletta.
Aletta nodded. “The man was indeed attacked by robbers, and I have given him every herb in my stock. I came here from Countess Juliana of Dillenburg, Moeder of Prince Willem, and she sent me with a full supply. Nothing I’ve tried seems to touch him, and his vrouw does not leave him day or night. She eats so little and sleeps so little that she, too, has grown thin and sorrowful. She has not so much as a plant of borage on the place, and I thought you might have some we could take back and root in the garden of the inn.”
As she talked she was aware that the sister had been joined by another, a taller woman with round cheeks. Both sisters seemed to be eyeing her up and down, as if trying to decide whether to believe and trust her.
“Have you tried rosemarie,” asked the first sister. “It dries the brains and quickens the senses and memory.”
“And balm that opens the stopping of the brain?” asked the second. “It also drives away sorrow and care of the mind, as does saffron when used in moderation.”
Aletta nodded. “All these I have tried, along with marjoreome in his nostrils and a chewing of the combination of pellitorie and luyscruit roots. Nothing seems to work.”
“Also sneezewoort?”
“It is powerful, as is white hellebor, to mightily bring forth slimy phlegm from the brain.”
Both women stood in silence and sighed. “What more?” the first asked of the second.
“Primrose roots, fennell juice, galingale root, sage?”
Aletta shook her head and fought down a huge feeling of hopelessness rising in her breast. “I’ve tried them all. Joris sleeps on and on, waking only now and again to talk to his vrouw. And now that she is so low, I begin to fear for her. Surely the borage will help her if nothing more. With her husband, we must wait and pray. Such illnesses can take much time to begin to heal.”
The women looked at each other, nodded, and started toward the door. “Then borage you shall have.”
“This is not the good time of the year to dig it up and replant it. But we’ve aplenty. Take what you need and come again for more as often as you need it.” The smaller sister was cutting an entire stalk from the large shrub of a plant that grew in a sheltered spot up against the south side of the house.
Aletta took the precious leaves in her arms, thanked the sisters, and hurried home with Tryntje running to keep up with her. These women were going to be her friends. She could feel it. No matter that they lived alone in this desolate place, they had a compassion for bodies and spirits in need. If Hiltje spoke the truth about them, people came here from far around in search of herbal potions, salves, roots, powders, and remedies of a hundred sorts.
Someday, when Joris was well and Hiltje’s household restored to order, Aletta would come back—with Kaatje. There must be a cure for that stiff foot somewhere. Why not here? Hadn’t she asked her Heavenly Vader to show her the way—in this place?