Joris awoke with a start and sat straight up in bed. Where was he? A loud familiar snoring came from the other side of the bed.
Am I home? Surely no one snores like my Hiltje. But how and when did I come here? He scratched his head and felt a dull pain. A procession of fuzzy thoughts marched through his brain—memories of excruciating pain, flashes of faces coming at him through a foggy and desolate darkness, sounds of voices—weeping, calling, whispering.
He pulled back the curtains of the bed cupboard and stared. A pale light filled the room and silence held it lightly. From somewhere out beyond, a rooster crowed. Carefully, so as not to disturb his sleeping vrouw, he moved toward the edge of the cupboard and attempted to sit up and let himself down to the floor. But his head swam, his legs wobbled like unwieldy stilts, and he had to grab on to the bed to keep from falling.
“Joris!” came Hiltje’s voice and instantly she was tugging at him. “You can’t get out of bed.”
“Why not?” he asked, dumbfounded first by his weakness, then by her highly unusual advice. Couldn’t a man even leave his own bed without being browbeaten by his vrouw?
She shoved him solidly back down under the covers, and he found no strength to resist her. “For weeks now you’ve been lying as still as death,” she said, “like a man with his head in a sock….”
“What do you mean?” He shook his head and tried to clear the fog that kept him from understanding what had happened.
“Joris, Joris,” she cried out, tucking the feather bag under his chin and patting his shoulders as if to anchor him to the bed. “Have you no memory of the long days and nights we’ve spent in this spot?”
He frowned at her and did not answer. What was she talking about?
“Nor do you remember anything you said in your sleep—or out of it?” she prodded.
He shook his head and shuddered. What kinds of secrets had he divulged? He listened to her sigh the sort of deep gut-wrenching sigh she always used when she couldn’t get rid of an impossible inn guest or when she insisted he ought to be more firm with Christoffel for misbehaving.
“You ran away from us all, forever ago,” she began in the haranguing manner that made her Hiltje. “You said you were going to visit your brother in Ghendt. We waited and waited for your return. Then one day Dirck’s son brought you home on his horse. All bloodied and groaning with pain, you were, not a stuiver in your pocket, no knapsack on your back, a lump on your head. You’ve lain in this bed ever since. That was weeks ago. We’re halfway through Wine month already.”
Straining to remember, Joris shook his head and mumbled, “Then it’s time I get up.” With great effort he pushed himself up again on wobbly arms and attempted to swing his feet over the edge of the bed.
She grabbed and held him fast.
“Not until you have had something to eat to give you strength,” Hiltje insisted, then called out, “Oh, Clare! Come quickly, Clare!”
Feeling suddenly faint, he leaned against the wall of the cupboard, moaning, “What is wrong with me?”
“On your way home from Ghendt, you were nearly killed by some robbers,” Hiltje said, “and the herbal healer daughter of Dirck and Gretta has spent days giving you first one herbal cure, then another, watching and waiting for you to come to your senses. She called on the hermit sisters down the lane several times, and they gave her everything they had, from borage to distilled wine. Look at you, Joris, you’ve lost your paunch, and the skin hangs like a monk’s robe on your arms and chin.”
He looked at his arms. They were sagging. Then into her eyes, and she was looking into his. He saw compassion and concern there, of her deepest kind. She was always a worrisome woman—that he’d known for years. This time, though, he fancied that she worried for him, not at him.
Clare and Tryntje were both padding across the room now, rubbing their eyes and crying out, “Vader! You’re awake!” Shortly Christoffel stood behind them.
“Now go, girls,” Hiltje ordered, “and fix your vader a cup of broth with an egg and a handful of borage sprinkled on top. Add it at the last, remember, so it turns not the whole thing bitter.”
The girls scurried off to do their moeder’s bidding, and Christoffel came close and stood beside his vader. He laid a hand on his arm and just stared, saying nothing, his face a portrait of uncertainty—like the old portrait of Isaac on the altar. The portrait he must change now that he had new faces. Wait! What was that Hiltje had said about his knapsack?
“Vrouw,” he said, “where did you say my knapsack is?”
She threw up her hands and looked as if she might burst into a flood of tears. Not that he’d ever seen her cry, but that was the way the children looked when they were about to do so. “Ask the robbers who attacked you in the road! The way you looked, you were fortunate to come home with your life. Who could worry about a knapsack?”
Joris’s mouth went dry. He felt Christoffel’s eyes boring into him and heard his voice, soft but urgent, “Were the new faces in your knapsack?”
He looked up at Christoffel, shook his head, and said with genuine pain, “I’ll find more, I promise.”
“What are you talking about?” Hiltje asked.
“Just painter’s talk,” he said and stared at his son, wanting to say more.
Hiltje jumped from the bed and waved at the boy with shooing motions. “Now, off with you, jongen, so I can dress and be about the day’s business. And you go do the same.”
Christoffel turned, saying nothing, then hurried across the room toward his own cupboard bed.
****
Near the end of a long day of hard riding, Pieter-Lucas entered through the Koe Poort and headed for the town hall at the center of Leyden. How he wished he could skirt the inside of the wall and go straight for Aletta by the way he had carried Joris home in a heap of bloody senselessness. But today he must first deliver an urgent warning from Prince Willem to the burgemeesters.
Just as he’d expected all along, Alva was going for his revenge for his defeats at Alkmaar and on the Zuyder Zee. It would be a parting legacy to leave behind on his own soon departure from the Low Lands. Already Don Francisco Valdez, his most able of military captains, was preparing for a siege of Leyden. Hole-peepers had reported to Willem that they planned not to bombard Leyden as they had done with such prolonged expense to Spanish life and treasury in both Haarlem and Alkmaar.
Rather, they would blockade Leyden, imprisoning the citizens in their own city, that they might perish by starvation. Then “some wintry night, when the canals and ditches are frozen hard, I may succeed in surprising and overwhelming them,” the retiring Alva had boasted.
Pieter-Lucas delivered the message and started from the building. Before he could reach the doors, a trio of burgemeesters stopped and led him quietly into a side room where they tethered the door and encircled him tightly. In rapid succession the men fired questions at him, waiting only shortly for his answers.
“You and your family are staying at The Clever Fox Inn these days, is that not so?”
“That we are,” Pieter-Lucas answered. “What difference should that make?”
“You may or may not have heard the rumors about Joris, the innkeeper.”
Pieter-Lucas felt six eyes staring at him. “I have heard some rumors.” That much he was willing to concede.
“What you may not have heard is that they were started as a part of a plot by the glippers in our midst to entrap the man.”
“Glippers? What have they to gain by such a scheme?” Pieter-Lucas asked.
“If they can intimidate the innkeeper, they might persuade him to give over his inn for the boarding of their soldiers.”
“So long as they have a live rumor to hang over his head, they believe he has not much choice in the matter.”
“We foresaw this weeks ago and tried to persuade him to dismantle the inn and move into the city. But he flatly refused—like so many others have done.”
“Then just before the priest began to circulate the rumor, old Joris fled—on some secretive mission.”
“Making him look all the more guilty of the accusations.”
Pieter-Lucas shivered. “So the glippers were the men who robbed him on his way home, intending, no doubt, to kill him so they could take over The Clever Fox Inn?”
“Indeed. In fact, they thought they had accomplished it. But news has been circulating of late that he lives yet.”
“And what can I do to save the man, his inn, and my family all at once?” Pieter-Lucas asked.
“You must warn him immediately of his danger. Tell him under no circumstances is he to yield to their pleadings.”
“Under no circumstances, is that clear?”
Pieter-Lucas stared at the three men surrounding him, his heart beating wildly. “What, then, is he to do when they continue to hassle him?”
“Stand firm. He must refuse to give lodging to the Spanish army.”
“Or any other army, for that matter. These men may pose as patriots and suggest the men they’re bringing him are Beggars or some such.”
“He must not listen to them!”
“Not for a minute! Remember, it is a traitorous plot.”
“You must convince him of this, keep him from giving in!” The man who spoke the final words was pointing directly at him.
“What if they try to force him with swords?” Wild thoughts spun around in Pieter-Lucas’ brain. “What will happen to my family?”
“We will be watching and rescue you all. Just be prepared, when we say the word, to flee into the city.”
“All of you!”
“But not until we say the word!”
“And when we say to leave, you must see to it that no one dallies. We will raze the buildings at once. Do you hear? At once!”
“I hear,” Pieter-Lucas said. “Will I see your faces when it happens so I know the orders came from you and not from the enemy?”
The men hesitated, looking at one another. Then one spoke for them all. “At least one of our faces.”
“And you will do as you are told. That is agreed, eh?”
“I shall,” Pieter-Lucas stammered, though the spinning of his head went on. What had he agreed to? So far as he knew, these men were unfeigned patriots. But these days, in Leyden, you never knew for sure who had changed allegiances since last you saw him.
“Now, be on your way and waste no time about it!” The man with the largest voice said the last word, all the while pressing his finger into Pieter-Lucas’ chest. Then the circle opened to let him through. Dazed, he moved out into the late afternoon on trembling legs, shaking his head all the way.
He slapped Blesje on the flank and prepared to mount. “What next will this war bring to my family, old boy? What next?” Today, riding out of the city and toward the trekpath, Pieter-Lucas felt like an old man with a heavy black bag strapped to his shoulders.
****
In a rare moment when Hiltje was not watching over his every move, Joris took to his still-wobbly legs and made for the kitchen door. He’d been growing steadily stronger ever since he awoke several days ago. And he’d become eager to go out to the stable and stroke the horses. He longed to climb up into the loft and don his prayer shawl and intone the Sh’ma in the moonlight. How or when he’d ever get away at night, he couldn’t imagine. Not the way his vrouw hovered over him. He couldn’t even turn over in bed without her grabbing at him.
“What’s she so afraid of, anyway?” he’d asked himself at least ten times a day. True, he’d evidently come home badly beaten, though he couldn’t recall how it happened. All he remembered was walking along the road not far from Leyden, thinking about the promises he’d made to God in Ghendt and wondering how he was going to make good on them. The rest was gone!
This late afternoon, looking out into a world made golden by the sun slipping to the horizon at pasture’s edge, he still had no answers. With amazingly difficult effort, he stepped up over the doorsill. Leaning against the doorframe, he looked up, as if intending to count how many halting steps it would take to reach his destination.
He gasped! The stable was gone! And the old oven was tumbled into a heap of charred bricks. The leaf-bare branches of the lindens beyond were blackened and the ground a mass of fresh green sprouts of grass on a background of more black. Ashes? A fire? He took his head in both hands and groaned, “Nay, it cannot be.”
Numbly, he wandered out into the yard until he stood where once the stable had been and stooped to pick up what was left of the ashes. “My prayer shawl!” he whispered, sifting the ashes through his fingers. “Hear, O Israel, Yahweh is One Yahweh!” he went on. “How will I ever be able to teach my children in His ways? Am I too late?”
For a long while, he allowed his fingers to roam over and through the ashes, while in his heart there smoldered a faint spark of hope that somehow he might yet uncover even a tiny piece of the shawl.
“Ashes! Nothing but ashes!” he began to mutter, a wild and dizzy feeling growing in his mind. Surely this was not real. He must still be lying in his bed dreaming. He looked up from the grimy graveyard of his best intentions. There, standing nearly on top of him, he saw four legs. He hurried to his feet, automatically wiping smudgy hands on his breeches, and faced two strangers.
“Are you Joris, keeper of The Clever Fox Inn?” asked one of the men.
Joris swallowed and spread his hands out behind him in a struggle to gain his balance after standing so quickly up. “That I am,” he answered. “And you?”
“Representatives from the army of Prince Willem,” said the other.
Joris stared at them askance, his brow wrinkled, his eyes squinting. “Beggars?”
The men laughed nervously. “Not all Willem’s men are Beggars,” said one.
Joris sensed a hollowness in the men’s words. They didn’t even wear uniforms. Dressed like ordinary burgers, they were. Merchantmen from Leyden. While he didn’t know them, he’d seen them before—he was almost sure of it.
“So what is your business for Willem?” Joris asked, wishing for a door or a post or a stable wall to lean against. He began to walk back and forth, his clogs scooping up ashes. It was easier than standing unsupported.
The men cleared their throats. “Since Alva’s humiliating defeats in Alkmaar and on the Zuyder Zee, he’s begun his revenge. His men are about to raise a massive siege to strangle Leyden. And Willem needs The Clever Fox Inn to house a regiment of his men to fight off the blockade.”
Joris frowned. “I was told that Willem wanted us all to dismantle our buildings to keep the Spaniards at bay. Now you say he wants to board his men here. What shall I believe?”
His visitors exchanged uneasy glances, then shrugged and smiled too eagerly for Joris’ comfort.
“Aha, but that was weeks ago,” said one.
“The war has changed everything,” added the other.
Joris stared at them, saying nothing, wishing they’d go away and let him find his way back to bed.
“So we have come to alert you that tomorrow we shall bring Willem’s men here to lodge them in your quarters.”
Joris bristled. A fresh flow of strength possessed him and he spoke up quickly. “You cannot do that.”
“What is to stop us?”
“My inn is occupied by permanent guests, and I am too ill to care for so many soldiers just now.” His palms grew stickier with each word. His mind brought back pictures of the dining room swarming with noisy, swaggering Beggars. It was the last thing he wanted.
One man drew closer to him and laid a hand on Joris’ shoulder. Leaning his head forward, he spoke with an entreating tone. “I know those Beggars are rowdy creatures. If I owned a decent inn like this one, I would not want to let them in either. If you refuse them, though, most likely before the week is over, the Spaniards will come and force their way in. You will have to accept them at sword point.”
“Spanish soldiers can be really ugly,” added the other man. The grin that spread across his face made Joris more uncomfortable than the thought of either Beggars or Spaniards in all his rooms.
The first man reached for the black money bag tied around his waist. Shaking it till its coins jingled, he said in a honeyed tone, “Besides, as Willem’s men, of course, we are prepared to pay you enough coins to make up for all the loss in business this nasty war has already occasioned.”
Joris stared at the men who were both grinning like naughty boys. Beggars with coins to jingle? Nay! Something didn’t hold together here. He had to stop them.
Feeling weak and trembly all over, he raised a hand and said, “Come back tomorrow, if you must have an answer.”
The men straightened in response, their smiles vanished, and they assumed a rigid military pose. “We will be back tomorrow, not for your answer but for your rooms. We did not ask your permission, we simply gave you warning.”
One man thrust his face up close to Joris’, poked a finger in his chest, and said, “You know, if you do not cooperate, you could find yourself locked up in the tower dungeon in a cell reserved for marranos like you!”
Both men laughed loud devilish laughs, then turned on their heels, mounted their horses, and took to the trekpath. Dazed, Joris stumbled toward the house.
“Did they call me by that most despicable of all names? Surely not! No one in Leyden knows my secrets.” He shook his head and felt it ache. Every part of him wished for a bed where he could put both body and mind to sleep till this awful war was past. Ach, but what would tomorrow bring? Inquisition? In Leyden? Nay!
Just as he reached the house, a young man walked around the studio end of the inn and hurried to him. Bewildered, Joris stared at him in the fading light. He’d been here before…. Ah, ja, that messenger who always came at night.
“Sit, Joris. I have urgent news, and you are not well.” His visitor was guiding him to a bench near the door and sitting with him.
“Pieter-Lucas is my name,” he began, “and my wife has been your herbal healer for these days.”
“Humph!” Joris grunted. “What do you want with me?” If he also asked him to take in a bunch of Beggars, he’d throw out the whole family.
“Those men that just talked with you,” Pieter-Lucas said quickly, “I knew they were coming.”
“Because you’re one of them, ja? Well, I’ve already decided, the answer is nay, nay, nay!” Joris waved a finger in his face with all the strength he could muster.
Pieter-Lucas raised a hand in protest. “Nay, I’m not one of them. They’re not from the prince at all. I was sent to warn you not to be fooled by them.”
“But they said—”
“I know what they said. I heard it all. Lies, they were all lies.”
“Who are they, then?” Joris sighed.
“Glippers!”
“Glippers?” A menacing picture of the priest from the Pieterskerk filled his fuzzy brain.
“One thing they said is true. They will be back.”
“I won’t let them in. I’m still the innkeeper here!” Why did he not feel as strong as he sounded?
“You can’t stop them, do you hear me? They’ll bring with them a whole army of Spaniards!”
“So what do we do—desert the place and let them take over? Just what they wanted all along!” Joris raised a fist. “Nay! That I shall never do!”
“Joris, hear me.” Pieter-Lucas looked hard at him, his eyes filled with a soberness that almost frightened him. “The burgemeesters are coming tonight—to raze the inn to the ground.”
“Nay!” he protested. “They’ll have to kill me first!”
“You’re ready to sacrifice your family?”
“Nay, not my family!” He felt a sudden tightness in his chest and leaned against the younger man’s shoulder.
“Don’t you see, Joris? It’s the only way to keep the Spaniards out. We must begin this moment to collect all the things you need to take with you. When they come with their torches, it’ll be too late.”
The whole world was spinning at a dizzying speed in Joris’ head now. “Where will we go?” he gasped. He felt himself slump to the ground and everything went dark once more.
When he came to again, he was ensconced in his bed. Flickering candlelight pranced about Hiltje as she hovered over him, and the strong odors of herbs nearly gagged him. Something tickled his nose and he reached up to scratch it. But the feather bag held him so tightly around the throat he could not move.
“Joris, Joris, thank God you live!” Hiltje cried out. “Go, Tryntje, fetch the broth.”
“Ach, Vrouw, but I had a dreadful dream,” Joris mumbled. “Some strangers had come to me in the yard and told me they were Willem’s men and were bringing a parcel of Beggars to live in our inn. Then Dirck’s son came after them and told me they were not patriots, but Spaniards. He said we’d have to pack up our valuables and move into the city because the burgemeesters were coming to raze the inn. It was awful, Vrouw, something awful!”
She was smoothing his forehead with both hands. “Rest, rest, husband. Ach me! How did I ever leave you alone to roam around the place?”
He closed his eyes again and felt the worry and fear drain away. When he smelled the aroma of broth, he looked up at Tryntje’s cherubic cheeks and saw childish anxiety in her wide blue eyes.
“Bless you, child,” he murmured.
If only he could just get well again. Ach, but he never should have gone to Ghendt. How much sorrow and pain it had brought to them all. And with the stable gone…and his “new faces”…Nay! But he would find a way.
He let Hiltje hold his head up with her arm and sipped the broth she put to his lips. Never had broth tasted so delicious or felt so warm and soothing going down! Did it presage better days?
****
Once Pieter-Lucas had rolled Joris into his bed, he lingered, standing behind Hiltje, just long enough to see the man open his eyes. Then grabbing Christoffel by an arm and moving him along with him, he rushed to the other end of the inn to round up his own family and prepare them to leave.
Christoffel protested, trying to pull away. “Where are you taking me?” he asked.
“I need to talk to you!” Pieter-Lucas answered. “I must give my family the same urgent message. So you follow me and you’ll learn what’s going on and what you need to do.” He knocked on Dirck and Gretta’s door.
“What urgent message, and who gave it to you to give to us?”
The boy’s saucy tone irritated Pieter-Lucas. Dirck opened the door and Pieter-Lucas said, “Gather up all your belongings and prepare to leave at a moment’s notice. Ask me no questions, just get ready. I go for Aletta and the children.”
As he turned, he heard Dirck say, “We are ready….”
Without stopping to ask how he knew to get ready, Pieter-Lucas, still dragging Christoffel, hurried across the edge of the dining room. “The message is the same for you, jongen,” he said. “Your vader is not well enough to do the job of a man here. Your moeder is consumed with caring for him. It’s up to you and your sisters to gather up everything of importance and pack it into bags.”
“What do you mean?” Christoffel pulled his arm from Pieter-Lucas’ grip and stood at the foot of the stairs.
“The burgemeesters are coming to raze this building to the ground, and whatever you do not rescue before they begin, you will never see again. That’s what I mean!”
Christoffel stared at him, arms folded across his chest, feet planted wide apart.
Pieter-Lucas grabbed him by the lapel and shouted, “If you value those precious paintings of ships and Beggars and whatever, you will heed my warning!”
Then he took the stairs three at a time and burst into the room where his family lodged. They all sat perched on the edge of the bed, their belongings bundled in a row at their feet. Lucas jumped off the bed and ran toward him, calling out, “Vader! Vader!”
“What’s this?” Pieter-Lucas asked, picking up the boy and hugging him. “You’re all ready!”
“Please tell us we need not be,” Aletta answered.
“I wish I could. Who told you we were going anywhere?”
“I telled her,” Mieke said, a grin of satisfaction filling her face.
Pieter-Lucas started. Would he never get used to this hole-peeper nursemaid who saw and heard everything and was always preparing everybody’s way out of trouble before they even knew trouble was in the air? He stood still for a moment, trying to make sense of it all.
Lucas twisted his hat around sidewise and laughed. “You look funny that way, Vader.”
Pieter-Lucas gave him a quick grin, then turned to Mieke. “Go help Dirck and Gretta get ready.”
“I already has,” Mieke said, clasping hands in front of her and swaying her body nervously back and forth. “Want us to take th’ bags down?”
Pieter-Lucas gaped at her. “Ja! Pile them by the door to the kitchen. Then help Christoffel and his sisters round up their things.”
He set Lucas on the floor, and the whole family sprang into action, carrying bags down to the appointed meeting place, then rushing off to help Christoffel and his sisters.
No sooner had he entered the kitchen than he heard noises coming from the yard. “Great God,” he prayed under his breath, “let it be the burgemeesters, not the traitorous Spaniards.” Rushing from the house, he found himself surrounded by more mounted men than he could count in the half darkness. Their faces glowed like spirits in the light of the pitchy torches they carried. Straight in front of him stood the same three men who had apprehended him earlier in the town hall. He sighed his relief.
“It’s time,” the leader said. “The Spaniards will be here before morning. Where is the innkeeper?”
“In his bed. His vrouw hovers over him like a mother hen over an unhatched egg.”
The three men conferred briefly. “We must set him on a horse in the center of the company.”
“Don’t try to separate him from his vrouw, I warn you,” Pieter-Lucas said.
“How many more are you?”
“Four more full-grown ones, four large children, one little boy, and a baby—beside myself.”
“So many?”
“I can go get our coach,” Pieter-Lucas offered.
“Nay, no time for that. Time is life! Who knows at what moment the soldiers may arrive?”
“So what, then?”
“We load the people onto the horses and ride all of us together in a group.”
“Very well. I shall get the innkeeper,” Pieter-Lucas said, not letting the men cross the threshold. “His vrouw knows nothing of what is going on, and if you rush in uninvited and unannounced, she’ll fight you off.”
Pieter-Lucas crept into the sickroom, where he found Hiltje pacing the floor beside her sleeping husband. He tapped her on the shoulder. “Vrouw Hiltje, you and Joris must come with me.”
She stared at him, frowning, but not saying a word.
“You need to know, Vrouw Hiltje, that the burgemeesters of Leyden are even now on your back doorstoop awaiting my signal to come and carry you to safety into the city.”
“I knew they were coming. But so soon? The girls are still packing up our valuables.”
“How did you know?”
“Joris told me he had dreamed it, but I knew it was no dream. That little elfin nursemaid of your vrouw’s, she’s been here warning me. I hoped she was wrong, but I knew…”
“I go for help with Joris,” Pieter-Lucas said, then ran for the burgemeesters.
The next moments were a blur of movement and strange sounds as the men from Leyden emptied the old inn of all its people and prepared them for their journey. Joris was awakened by the hubbub when they lifted him out of his bed. While he screamed and thrashed about in protest, he had little strength to resist and was soon securely settled on horseback with one of the burgemeesters.
Pieter-Lucas scurried about matching riders and bags with horsemen. He committed little Lucas to the care of his grandvader on his own horse. Then he went from horse to horse, searching each face in the light of a lantern, until he’d accounted for every member of both households. Finally, settling Aletta and the baby on Blesje, he climbed on behind them.
Just as the company prepared to start, Joris cried out, “Christoffel…the pictures!”
“Hush, Joris,” Hiltje said from beside him. “He has them.”
“I hope she’s right,” Pieter-Lucas muttered to Aletta, “because what’s not rescued now will not be here in the morning.”
The procession began, leaving behind a trio of men with blazing torches and fast-riding horses. A mistlike dew gathered on their coats and hats and slickened the trekpath. An ominous crackling sound came from behind, and the call of a long-horned owl sounded like a funereal trumpet that followed them nearly to the Rhine.
Pieter-Lucas held his wife and Kaatje fast in his arms ahead of the saddle and guided Blesje gently. He drew strength and courage from their warmth. Not until they turned west just outside the city walls did he look back. Huge tongues of bright orange and gold reached up toward the heaven, and Pieter-Lucas imagined he felt their warmth as well.
He heard Hiltje’s voice cry out from the center of the pack. “She’s seen the flames!” he whispered. He tightened his grip on his vrouw and drove Blesje onward.
“Is the inn gone?” Aletta murmured from the hollow of his chest.
“All gone,” he answered and soon heard and felt the clatter of horses’ hooves on the wooden bridge at the Zyl Poort.
****
In the pale light of a moon obscured by fleeting clouds, Christoffel climbed the stairs of the old citadel. He brought along Vader’s paintings in a long roll and as many of his own belongings as he’d salvaged from the inn, wrapped in his feather bag.
“If Leyden’s in so much danger that we had to abandon the inn, then just maybe the citadel door might be open,” he mumbled. At the thought, his hands oozed moisture and he quickened his pace.
He hurried to the top where everything looked the same as always. But as was his habit, he shoved against the door with his shoulder. Was that a movement he felt—or did his imagination will it to be so? He shoved again, this time harder. No doubt about it now. The door yielded to the pressure and, with a loud creaking sound, scraped across the grass.
Ecstatic, Christoffel followed it inward until he stood in the middle of a grassy circle. With so little light, he could only make out the faint outline of the heavy circular wall. He headed toward it and found himself in what appeared to be a small alcove with a roof of sorts.
Here he rolled up in his bag and spent the rest of the night pondering the tragedy that had forced them out of their home and the miracle that dangerous times had opened up a door into his fondest dreams. Sometime in the night he drifted off to sleep and knew nothing till morning splashed his face with light and stiff cold breezes stirred around him in his makeshift shelter.
“Oh!” He let the word escape softly from his lips. “It’s just the way I always knew it was. The wall is full of arrow slits!”
Then throwing back the feather bag from his shoulders, he scrambled to the edge of the wall behind him and pressed his face up against the slit nearest him. It did make a wonderful frame!
What he saw through his frame took his breath away. In the distance, thin sporadic plumes of smoke rose from a wide space of darkened earth.
“The Clever Fox Inn!” he gasped and swallowed down a small disturbing lump.
A closer look told him there was more to gasp about. Marching about in ominous formation, just beyond the city wall, were many regiments of soldiers.
“Spaniards!”
For a long breathless moment he stared at them. Then jumping up, he ran around the whole wall, stopping to peer out of each arrow slit. On every side the sight was the same. Soldiers rimmed the entire city!
He crawled back into the alcove and pulled out a long rolled package. Carefully he unrolled it and looked at each picture.
“They’re all here—the ones that count,” he mused, “my collection of ships, the Zyl Poort, Vader’s landscapes, the Beggar, Abraham and Isaac…”
He gulped, then took out a blank canvas from the bottom of the pile and pulled a stick of charcoal from the bag tied at his waist. There would be no more of these from Vader’s charcoal oven, he remembered with a sigh. He held it thoughtfully in his hand for a long while.
Settling himself on a large flat stone beside the arrow slit that looked out on the smoking ruins of his home, he lay the canvas across his knees. He scrawled across the top, “The Siege of Leyden Has Begun.”
“And there’s not a Beggar in sight,” he mumbled to himself.
He reached for the picture of his Oude Man Beggar and propped it up before him. “They’ll come yet,” he muttered.
From inside, way at the back of his mind, he heard a voice prodding, Go to the warehouse where your family spent the night. They’ll be worried about you by now.
After a while, he told his annoying conscience. Besides, Vader knows where to look for me.
Then peering through the arrow slit, he began to draw.
How good the feel of charcoal once more in his fingers! It had been too long—far too long since he’d picked up even one piece of this precious stuff. The horizon, the trees, the plumes of smoke, city gates, and soldiers marching—and through an arrow slit! How could one painter feel so much happiness in his fingers, his eyes, his heart?