The crisp cold air of early Christmas morning sent the antiphonal sounds of jubilant church bells bouncing about from corner to corner all over Leyden.
“Unto us a Savior is born!” they seemed to say.
The old familiar message bore a special meaning to Leydenaars this year. With soldiers all around they knew how desperately they needed a Savior! On all other days they might chafe and fret at the borders of Spanish soldiers ringing them in behind their walls. And they would threaten the men who sat at council tables in the town hall. Today, though, they would take time out to rejoice and do their religious service. Calvinists, Catholics, loyalists, glippers, and patriots—all would tell themselves they hoped in God to save them because they were standing for whatever they saw to be His cause.
In the old warehouse freshly turned into a center for refugees, Joris lived in a cocoon, largely unaware of what went on in the streets of the city, fearful of finding out. Neither was he aware it was Christmas morning, nor was he thinking of religious services or a savior. He sat on the edge of his cupboard bed, feet dangling above the floor, hair mussed, struggling simply to come fully awake. He looked up at his vrouw, already dressed and with her hair tied up neatly beneath her headdress.
“Why all the bells?” he asked.
“’Tis Christmas morning and the girls and I go to church!” She smoothed out her skirts and rested both hands on her hips, looking at him with stars of triumph shining in her eyes.
“Not to the Pieterskerk!” he retorted. Pain pierced his innards at the mention of the name. Never could he forget the priest’s invective against Willem’s supporters as marranos! Nor could he ever forgive!
“We go today in search of candles and swells of organ music,” Hiltje said. “It’s Christmas, Joris! And strange to say, I feel a yearning in my soul to hear the mass and feel the wafer on my tongue….” Her voice trailed off and she raised her eyes heavenward.
Joris shook his head and frowned. “Whatever has happened to you, Vrouw, that you speak such words?”
“Who knows?” She shrugged and didn’t look him in the eye.
He stared hard at her. “After all these years, Vrouw! Never has Christmas made a difference to you before.”
She lifted her eyebrows and asked, “Would it be so awful if your vrouw decided to care about religion for once? I thought you would be glad!”
“Too late for that,” he mumbled, “too late.”
“What do you mean?”
“You wouldn’t understand if I told you.” Something inside Joris began to quiver. After so long of holding his deep secret, he could not tell her now. Nay, he couldn’t do it.
Hiltje edged up close to him till her elbow nudged his arm and he felt her breath hot on his forehead.
“So I don’t understand that you are indeed not the Christian you have so long pretended to be?”
“Who told you that?” Joris grabbed at his chest and felt his heart racing beneath the ribs.
“You’ve said it in more ways than you know, ever since you came home,” she said, her voice registering a strange combination of triumph and fear.
“How?” he demanded. Surely he hadn’t told her a thing.
“In all your callings upon Yahweh and your delirious ravings about being a Jew—and that painting of Vader Abraham that you buried in the bottom of your chest.”
Joris gasped. “Great Yahweh, indeed!” Reaching out to her with both hands, he pleaded, “Oh, my vrouw, turn not against me. I cannot help what I was birthed to be. I’ve tried all these years. God only knows how desperately I’ve tried to be a Christian….” He felt his energy trail off into weakness.
Smiling, she took his outstretched hand in her chilled and bony hands all roughened by years of innkeeping. As she pressed his fingers, he felt the same tenderness in her touch that he had felt back when they were young and passionately in love.
“When I first knew your secret, I was fearful and angry,” she said softly. “But I watched you struggle for life and saw you strengthened by your faith in Yahweh, and my fear began to give way to acceptance. I now know that you are no less my husband just because you were birthed a Jew.”
What did she mean by all that? He took her by the arm and squeezed with what little strength he had left. “You must keep it as our secret, my vrouw,” he whispered.
“That I can do. In exchange, I ask that you let me go now. I know not why, but something is burning inside me, and I must go, Joris.”
He sighed. “Only stay away from the Pieterskerk.”
“I shall take care,” she said. “And you shall trust me.” She kissed him on the forehead, then pulled free and was soon gone.
Hiltje had scarcely closed the door when Joris suddenly felt a heavy drowsiness overpowering him. He no longer remembered why he was worrying or where his vrouw had gone—nor did he care. He crawled back into his bed and drifted off into an uneasy sleep.
He dreamed that Hiltje was dragging him through the doors of the Pieterskerk, where they were greeted by demons with flaming eyes and carrying long forks. The creatures snatched him up and carried him to the altar. Here the glipper priest bound him with strong cords and raised a knife above his head. The dreaded clergyman was laughing an evil laugh, and Joris was cowering, searching for a way to burrow down through the altar and escape. He felt his whole body shudder, and then someone was shaking him and shouting, “Vader! Vader! Wake up!”
Joris grabbed at the hand that shook him and screamed out, “Help me, save me from the demons and the glipper’s sword! Ach! God have mercy!”
“There are no demons or glippers here, Vader.” The voice was Christoffel’s and the altar beneath him felt like his bed. Joris pried open his eyes. The lids were heavy and sticky and resisted his efforts. At last they yielded, and he saw his bed curtains framing the face of Christoffel.
“You had a bad dream, Vader,” the boy said.
“Am I safe now?” Joris felt a quaver in his own voice.
“Aren’t you always safe in this building?” Christoffel asked.
Joris sat upright with a start and looked out through the bed curtains. “Where’s my vrouw?”
“She and the girls went to church. Remember?”
Joris mussed his hair with one hand. “That must be why I dreamed about altars and a priest with a knife,” he moaned.
“An altar with a priest and a knife?” Christoffel stared at him wide eyed. “Like your picture, Vader? Was the man you drew—the one without a face—was he the priest from the Pieterskerk?”
Joris shrank back away from Christoffel. “Nay, never! I do not draw priests. Priests are angry men, son. They call us by vile names.”
“Like marranos?”
Joris gasped and cowered back into the corner of his cupboard. “Never say that word into these ears, do you hear? Never!”
“What does it mean, Vader?”
“It’s a very bad word, and long ago and far away when the priests called my opa by that name, they chased him from his home. That’s always what it means.”
“What? That they are getting ready to chase you away?”
“Ja, that’s always what it means.”
“Why would they chase your opa or you?”
“Stop!” Joris shouted, then turned to the wall, where he dug under the edge of his featherbag and pulled out the roll of pictures. He took them in his arms and held them to his breast.
“Was your opa the man with the knife?” He heard Christoffel’s voice.
“Nay!” he responded, his heart beating a heavy rhythm, his head beginning to throb with the pain that had come to be his familiar companion ever since he came home from Ghendt.
“Who was he, then?” Christoffel went on.
As if in a fog, Joris heard himself answering, “Abraham, Vader Abraham!”
Christoffel climbed up into the bed beside him and grabbed him by the arm. “It’s the same one!”
Joris pulled away from him and frowned. “Same as what? There’s only one Vader Abraham!”
“While you were gone, Dirck read to us from his big book, the Bible, about Abraham offering his son on an altar and an angel stopped him and there was a ram in the thicket.”
Joris felt his breathing stop and gasped. “It was a Bible, not a Torah?” He felt himself in a faraway daze.
He heard Christoffel ask in a quickly fading voice, “What’s a Torah?”
Unable to answer, unable to think about anything else, Joris hugged the picture in his arms and rocked back and forth on his knees. “Ach! Vader Abraham!” he moaned. “I have betrayed you. Ach! Can you forgive?”
Christoffel was shaking him and shouting something, but Joris did not know what the boy said. All he could do was hold the picture tightly and go on rocking on his knees while he felt hot tears rolling down his cheeks.
“Vader Abraham!” he wailed. “Vader Abraham! Ah, Vader Abraham!”
****
Before the bells had stopped their ringing, Hiltje and her girls made their way into the Pieterskerk.
“Why do we not go to the church in de Wever’s attic?” Tryntje asked.
“They have no celebration on Christmas day,” Hiltje said. “And just once more I must hear the big organ and take the mass.”
“But Vader said we must not go there again,” Clare insisted, her eyes big with concern.
“Your vader is not well.” Hiltje took them each by a hand and they followed.
With renewed determination she led the way to the old familiar church with its high steeple and colored-glass windows. They set up their seats in a spot near where the family always used to sit.
Aware of disapproving stares from people who once were her friends, Hiltje looked straight ahead. In a way that never had happened before, the grandness of the old place, the deep strains of the organ, and the choir chants gripped her soul. She followed the rituals with her mind, for once, and recited each prayer with a devoted attention to match that of both Tryntje and Clare.
The recitation of the mass stirred something new in her. What that something was, she couldn’t say. She only knew it welled up inside, and she thought she saw Jesus himself standing there at His altar, with arms outstretched.
She knelt before the priest, for once eager to receive the wafer on her tongue. But he reprimanded her with his eyes and passed her by. She read in the movement of his lips that dreaded word, marrano! In the eyes of her mind, the priest had shoved Jesus back into a corner and loomed over her as a stern judge.
Dear God, her heart cried out from a sense of the most excruciating desolation, never before have I seen myself as a sinner when I knelt in this place. Today it shouts at me like a million angry voices. It stares at me like eyes filled with raging fire. Oh, turn me not away. Even if my husband is a Jew, I beg for your forgiveness for my many sins.
Did the Jesus she had envisioned moments ago still stand with arms outstretched, even though the priest now stood between them? For all his arrogant self-importance, this glipper priest could not change the heart of God. How she knew that, she didn’t know, but she knew it. Was there some word she’d heard in one of the Bible readings that told her this?
“Come hither to Me, all you who are weary and burdened down, and I will give you rest.”
That was it! The words echoed through her brain and seeped down into her heart. Nothing here about the need for a priest to decide whether God would let her through or block the way. He didn’t even say, “Unless your husband is a marrano or a Jew, you can come to me.” For a long moment she let the wonder of this newly discovered truth fill her with a kind of joy she’d never dreamed existed.
When the priest tapped her on the shoulder and scowled down on her, she rose to her feet. With head bowed, she walked down the long aisle and out through the doors, her daughters close behind. She paused on the threshold and looked back at the imposing altar. While she could not see Jesus standing there, it didn’t matter any longer. In a way she could not explain, it seemed that He was walking out the door with her.
In the street, Clare said, “Vader was right. We never should have come here.”
“Why not?” Hiltje asked.
“Because the priest wasn’t kind to you.”
“And he didn’t read from the Bible,” Tryntje added.
“If we had not come, we would not have known for sure that the service of the glipper priest at the Pieterskerk is no place for us.” Hiltje looked down at her girls and began to hope that they would never lose their religious fervor.
“Moeder,” Tryntje said at last, “is there a story about Christmas in the Bible?”
“I…I never thought about it,” Hiltje stammered. “It must be there.” As if a ray of light had flashed through the darkness of a winter night, she saw how terribly important it was to know what the Book said about the Jesus she had seen standing at the altar.
“Can we ask your friend?” Tryntje suggested.
“You mean Magdalena?”
“Ja!”
Hiltje hesitated.
Clare grabbed her moeder by the hand and begged, “She is kind to us, Moeder. She would tell us.”
“And not grow angry,” Tryntje finished.
Hiltje straightened her shoulders and breathed deeply to recapture her moederly air. “First,” she said, “we go to see how your vader is doing. Then later we pay Magdalena a visit…and maybe Jakob might read to us what God’s Book says about Christmas day. But we shall not ask them why they do not celebrate it in their church, do you understand?”
She looked each girl in the eye to make sure they got her message. What she saw there were mystified expressions. What she heard were two solid promises. “Ja, Moeder, we shall not ask.”
****
The church bells had fallen silent when Aletta stepped out into the streets, wrapping herself and Kaatje in the warm snugness of her cape. The city lay frozen beneath a cloud-free sky. Icicles hung from every wide overhanging roof, and piles of old snow cowered in doorways and corners. A howling wind whipped around the hems of Aletta’s skirts and tugged at her cape. She drew it tighter around herself and Kaatje and grabbed at the low-hanging bellpull outside the gate of the Beguinage. The bell sounded from the other side of the wall, as clear and crisp as the frame of sparkling ice crystals that glistened in the archway above the gate.
No answer came. Three more times she pulled on the bell before the old gate shuddered open, scraping and complaining in its track, and a Beguine appeared in the opening, her eyebrows pinched into a tight half frown.
“Ja?” the little lady questioned.
“May I come in and pray in your chapel?” Aletta asked.
The Beguine’s frown deepened. “The Beguines are in their Christmas mass. Have you no church of your own?”
Aletta shifted from one foot to the other, nervously trying to keep the cold from seeping through her street shoes. What could she say? Surely not that her church met in an attic and did not observe Christmas! “I come here often for herbs,” she said, “and always the sister leads me to your chapel to pray. I feel near to God here in this place of healing. Besides…” Nay! The things that broke her heart this day could not be divulged to an unknown Beguine with a scowling countenance.
“Besides, what?”
Aletta gulped and fought down the anguish she felt rising in her. “Besides…when the mass is over and the hermit sister—I know not her name—is free, I need a fresh supply of herbs as well.”
An expression of discontent gripped the face framed by the woman’s Beguine habit, and Aletta felt a distinct air of resignation combined with disapproval. Without a word the Beguine opened the gate just wide enough for her to pass through and motioned her in. Then walking ahead she led her the full length of the courtyard and into the chapel. Never once did she look back, nor did she speak. Inside, the sister showed her to a seat in the last row at the end farthest from the door.
“You may go no farther,” she whispered, “and keep that baby quiet.” She hurried off to her place among the others.
Aletta slipped onto her knees on the kneeling bench, clutching the child to her breast and leaning her forehead on the rail before her. With eyes closed, she smelled the aromas of old wood, bodies, burning candles and incense, and heard the droning intonations of the priest saying mass. How very, very long it had been since she had attended a Christmas mass—a mass of any kind. In fact, if her vader could see her now, he would not be pleased. Nor would her moeder. And Pieter-Lucas? Who knew what Pieter-Lucas would think?
“Great God,” she cried out, “where indeed is my Pieter-Lucas on this morning? So long he has been gone. Not that it does not often happen so. As long as he is on business for the prince, I never know when he will return. This time, though, something in my spirit tells me all is not well.”
Always, fear gripped her at the moment when Pieter-Lucas left on one of Willem’s missions, but this time she had soundly warned him not to go. As always he had tried to soothe her fears while insisting on the absolute necessity of his mission. He left, reassuring her that no matter how long it took, he would be back.
This time the fear had not loosed its grip with the passage of time. Instead, with each day it grew more intense, until now, more than two weeks later, her whole inner being was bound up by it. Besides, there was little Lucas—still so thin and wan and listless—and the never ceasing burden over Kaatje’s twisted foot.
She wiped her eyes on her cape and gave way to a wordless mourning, made gloomier by the continuing recitation of the Latin words and the chanted response of the sisters. She had forgotten how sad a mass could sound—and on this Christmas morning, her breaking heart sought desperately for some words of comfort!
Just when she thought she could hold no more grief and hot tears were gushing over her cheeks, Kaatje began to stir. Aletta moved to a sitting position on the bench behind her and, under cover of her cape, opened her bodice and offered the child a breast. Her mind now a blur of nothingness, she heard the priest recite a line of words she had come to understand.
“Benedicat vos omnipotens Deus, Pater et Felius et Spiritus Sanctus.”
Vader had once told her long ago when she was a child in the Great Church in Breda that it was a benediction: “Blessed be thou of the Almighty God, Vader, Son, and Holy Ghost.”
“Amen!” the sisters added in chorus.
“Blessed be thou,” she whispered to Kaatje. Where that blessedness would come from when the child began to try to walk, Aletta could not imagine. What could the name of the Vader and the Son and the Holy Ghost have to do with it? Certainly there was no blessedness for herself in all of this.
The Beguines filed out of the chapel in silence. Aletta turned her face toward the wall and hunched over her nursing child, wiping the flowing tears on her cape. When the rustle of stiff black skirts had ceased and the chapel stood empty and silent, she raised her head and looked toward the altar where a towering wood-carved crucifix hung, illuminated by the flickering light of a crescent-shaped ring of fat fragrant candles.
Drawn by some irresistible warmth, she walked to the front of the chapel. Standing with her toes nudging the edge of the platform that held the altar, she pulled Kaatje’s little body out from under her cape. Slowly she unwrapped the misshapen foot and held the girl in outstretched arms, presenting her to the Christ hanging on the cross above her.
“Great and merciful God,” she prayed aloud, “how often have I asked Thee to heal this tiny foot, whether by herbal cure or a special touch. Yet still it dangles helpless and foreboding. On this Christmas morning, when the priest has spoken of blessedness, I hold Kaatje up to Thee and ask again for a healing touch like Jesus gave to the girl in Opa Lucas’ painting. I bid Thee, as well, to bring my Pieter-Lucas home that he might see the miracle I seek from Thee and be a vader to his daughter—and son.”
The statue of Christ did not look at her. The thorn-pierced head drooped against his naked unmoving breast, and the eyelids did not flutter open.
Aletta held Kaatje close and let her own tears drizzle over her. “Vader in the Heaven,” she prayed between sobs, “art Thou as blind to my plight and as deaf to my cries as this dead wooden Christ on the wall?”
The pressure of a gentle hand lay on her shoulder. She tightened and turned quickly to see the hermit sister looking at her, the embodiment of compassion.
“Let me see the crippled foot,” the sister begged.
Aletta started, pulling the child tightly to her breast. In a moment of unguarded grief, she had divulged her secret—the one she’d up until now so diligently kept hidden. The realization terrified her. But the warmth in this quiet little woman was so gentle she felt her heart melt before her. Without speaking a word, Aletta held the leg out. The sister took it in both hands and examined it with care.
“She was born with this malady?”
Aletta nodded, the memory of her moment of discovery twisting like a sharp dagger in her heart.
“You have tried herbal cures?”‘
“All of them in my book, and all that the Julianas found in all their books.”
“Nothing has helped?”
“Nothing.” She had no heart to find more words, no energy to speak them.
The sister tucked the leg snugly into its wrapping, saying, “’Tis a curse!”
Aletta gasped, grabbed the child free from the woman’s touch, and began to retreat. The sister took a firm hold on her arm, thrust her face up into Aletta’s, and went on, “Tell me, what vow have you broken?”
“I make no vows and have none to break,” Aletta stammered, pulling free from the tight grip of fingers no longer feeling gentle to her touch.
“Payment of a vow will be required, whether your own or that of another,” the sister said.
Stunned, gasping as if for air to breathe, Aletta fled across the chapel from a voice no longer soothing to her ears. Kaatje was crying inconsolably beneath her cape. Mad with a helpless frenzy, Aletta shoved open the door and stepped out into the frosty morning sunshine.
In an instant this cozy place had turned from a sanctuary into a prison of terror. How could she have forgotten about the dread of the popish world of curses and vows from which she had been rescued when her family took refuge among the Children of God? Scurrying across the Beguinage grounds, her confused brain threw up to her the dreadful image of the “Eye of God” in the ceiling of the Great Church staring down at her in every service, reminding her of her many misdeeds.
She started through the gate, only to hear the piercing voice of the stranger who had admitted her with reluctance. “Did you forget your herbs?”
Without answering she moved ahead out into the street. Here a quickened memory assaulted her with the terrifying image of herself sitting at the deathbed of Pieter-Lucas’ moeder, Kaatje, listening to her tell of a vow made in her youth. After her first husband’s death on a long-ago Christmas morning, the woman had entered the Beguinage of Breda, taking her infant son, Pieter-Lucas. She’d vowed to give the rest of her life to this religious order but later allowed Hendrick van den Garde to woo her away and marry her.
All her life since, she’d conceived many children but lost them all, either before or at birth. As she lay dying, she urged Aletta to help Pieter-Lucas keep her vow by giving himself to the priesthood, lest something worse befall him. Aletta could never forget the woman’s final words to her. “God will always win!”
The Children of God had taught her that vows were popish things, neither born nor honored in heaven. She and Pieter-Lucas had disregarded the woman’s warnings and married. Aletta had born three children. Her firstborn, Lucas, had been robustious enough until they came to Leyden and he met with some affliction that left him weak and sickly. Her second, a daughter, died while being birthed. The third she held even now against her bosom. She was living, breathing…crippled.
“You are not cursed, my child!” Aletta cried into the bundle in her arms.
****
All day long Hiltje found reasons not to go to Magdalena’s. Not that she didn’t want to hear the Bible account of the birth of Jesus. Never had she wanted anything more. In fact, she sensed in a surprising new way that He was a real person walking beside her. Way down deep inside she felt a growing desire to learn all the Book had to say about Him.
The truth was she feared talking to Magdalena, lest she would learn that these people she had come to trust might indeed be Anabaptists.
But her girls prodded her continually and reminded her of her promise until, in late afternoon, she told Joris and Christoffel they were going to Magdalena’s for a short visit and would be home soon. On the way down the street, around the corner and over two more streets, she reminded the girls of their promise not to ask the wrong question.
They found Magdalena cheerful as ever and soon were seated by the low-burning fire and sipping a weak vegetable broth.
“My girls and I have a question,” Hiltje began, her palms sweaty and her voice a bit unsteady.
Startled, Magdalena looked from face to face and laughed lightly. “You think I have answers?”
“We are sure of it. We want to know what the Bible says about the Christmas story.”
“Ah, so!” the plumpish woman said with a sigh of relief. “Indeed I do know the answer to that one. You probably wonder why we Children of God do not celebrate His birthday nor call this day Christmas.”
Hiltje felt the woman’s eyes staring at her as if expecting a response. She saw her girls sitting silently with heads bowed over the hands folded in their laps. Ever so slightly she nodded her head.
“Christmas is a popish name—the mass of Christ,” Magdalena explained. “Because the popish church has turned the celebration into an almost pagan rite, we observe not the day as such.”
“Is it a sin for you, then, to read the story to a neighbor on Christmas day?” Hiltje couldn’t believe the eagerness beating in her breast.
Magdalena smiled. “’Tis never a sin to read from the Book. Shall I call my husband to do it for you?”
Clare and Tryntje were nodding and wriggling with an enthusiasm Hiltje knew she was feeling, though she dared not to show it the same as they did. With a studied effort at control, she said, “If you please.”
Magdalena beckoned to her husband, and he was soon seated at the long table by the hearth, with a candle shining on the big old Book.
“‘The birth of Jesus was now in this manner: for when Mary, His mother, was betrothed with Joseph, before that they had come together, she was found to be with child by the Holy Ghost….’”
The warm deep voice and the incredible words set a fire to glowing and growing in Hiltje’s heart, more intense and more consoling than she had guessed could ever be. She and her girls sat in rapt silence, listening to the old story in new words. In what seemed no time at all, she heard him read, “‘But Mary treasured up all these words together, meditating over them in her heart. And the shepherds returned to their fields, glorifying and praising God for all things they had seen, just as the angels had spoken to them.’”
He paused and opened his mouth to speak. But he was interrupted by a flurry at the door. It flew open and in burst Mieke, arms flailing, sharp voice calling out in distress, “Help, help! Vrouw ’Letta’s jongen’s done swooned near to dead away an’ his body’s a-burnin’ with a dreadful heatte. Come, Tryntje an’ Clare, with me along to the Beguinage. We have to fetch the hermit sister an’ her herbs.”
“Great and merciful God!” Magdalena cried out.
Without another word the women and girls scattered, leaving Jakob with his Book.
Hiltje and Magdalena found the young moeder with her son just as Mieke had said. Both Aletta and her moeder, Gretta, bent over the boy, washing his body with cool moist cloths, splashing drops of water on his crimson face.
Hiltje went below for water to replenish the dwindling supply. All the way down the stairs and back up she mumbled again and again, “Christmas is for birthing, not for dying. Great God, have mercy! Have mercy!”
Magdalena met her at the top of the stairs and exchanged the pitcher of water for a tiny crock of aromatic liquid. “Can you heat this over the fire so she can give it to him when he wakens?”
Hiltje returned to the fire, poured the healing brew into a cooking pot, and heated it. Christoffel was sitting at the table, tapping a finger restlessly on its rough surface.
“I thought the jongen was well,” he said.
“Though his cough and rattling in the chest were gone, since the day he first took ill, he’s been listless, pale, and sickly looking. Suddenly the heatte returned. If only his vader would come home.” A pain shot through her, remembering how it had felt when her Joris was off to Ghendt. She had no idea why or for how long—but at least an idea where. And there were no soldiers lined up between her and her wandering husband.
“Here, son,” she said to Christoffel, handing him a water bucket. “Go for some more water. We’re going to need it—all we can get.”
By now the liquid was warmed, and Hiltje started up the stairs just as Mieke returned with the girls and a bulging bag. They passed her on the stairs, Mieke mumbling, “Th’ sister says there’s a curse on this place—she’s not about to come near it.”
A curse? Hiltje bristled! “Sounds more to me like a sister that won’t interrupt her celebration, that’s all,” she mumbled to herself.
Aletta was waiting. “His eyes are fluttering. Awake enough to take tiny sips.” She took the crock, then went to the jongen. She lifted his head on her arm and cautiously poured the healing liquid through parched lips, whispering, “Sorry it’s so bitter, son.” For a brief time, he strained to consume it, until he’d nearly drained the crock dry, then laid his head back on his sleeping mat. For one brief moment, Hiltje watched him look up at his moeder with tired sad eyes. In another instant the eyes were closed, and he’d drifted off to sleep.
Aletta did not leave his side but conferred with Mieke about the contents of the bag of herbs sent by the Beguines, then gave instructions to each woman around the circle.
“Mix this powder with a cup of wine and heat it on the fire.”
“Rub his feet with this salve.”
“Find a leather thong to hang this little root around his neck.”
Before Hiltje could receive her instructions, she heard an infant’s cry. Rushing to the cradle, she picked up the baby. She held her to her breast and rocked her gently till she ceased her crying.
Then looking back at the scene of great sorrow at the moment, she saw a circle of women and girls on their knees. They were pressing their faces to the floor, and Magdalena’s loud clear voice was ringing out, “Great and Merciful Vader in the Heaven, this jongen is Thy gift to Aletta and her dear peace-loving husband. Little Lucas, here, is Thy child, as well, beloved by Thee, created by Thee, protected by Thee. We beg of Thee to make these herbal ministrations effective to the restoration of this jongen to robustious health, and in the waiting time speak peace to his moeder’s brave heart. In the name of Thy precious Son, Jesus the Christ, Amen and Amen.”
Hiltje wiped a tear from her eye and rocked the sleeping baby, praying in her own way, “’Tis Christmas, ah, Lord God—a day for birthing, not for dying.”
The tear was replaced by another and another. Underneath the pain she knew the Jesus who had come home from the church with her was still here.
Ever so softly she kissed the baby in her arms and whispered over her, “Your Vader in the Heaven will not go away, child. Never, nay, never!”