With the rising of a thinly veiled sun, the melting snow dripped faster and faster from the eaves of the ancient thatch of Maarten de Smid’s apartment above his blacksmith shop. It had turned into an uninterrupted stream running toward the sloppy puddles on the mossy cobblestones two floors below before Tante Lysbet heard it.
Breda’s grand dame of herbalism and midwifery walked toward the window, careful not to waken Maarten’s wife and freshly birthed son resting in the cupboard bed on the back wall. She looked at the dozen streams of water, pulled aside the window curtain, and surveyed the cobbled street below. For no good reason she could possibly conjure up, the sight she saw there set her heart to beating in her throat. Three men walked toward the blacksmith shop. Two Spaniards in dress uniforms with gold braids and shiny buttons carried long curved swords at their sides. Beside them strode the local bailiff, a plume feather bobbing atop his hat with each approaching step.
Lysbet was not the sort of person to listen for sounds in the night or watch for suspicious goings on in the streets.
“Fear is nonsense!” she always said whenever she heard it in the voices of her neighbors. “Almighty God vindicates every man, woman, and child who holds a clear conscience.” She’d learned the line from her moeder and, with only one exception, had found no good reason to suspect otherwise.
When her former employer, Dirck Engelshofen the bookseller, uprooted his family and fled the city, imagining his wife was under surveillance as a suspected witch, then she had wondered. But that was a year ago.
She couldn’t deny that the entire country tottered near the brink of war. A growing number of Lowlanders were ready to rise up in revolt against the oppressive arrogance of their absentee foreign sovereign, King Philip of Spain. Son of the late Holy Roman Emperor, Charles V, he refused to honor the charter agreements issued by his ancestors to the cities of the Low Lands. Nor would he allow his subjects to worship God in any way other than that prescribed and administered by the Holy Catholic Religion. Tante Lysbet had no doubt that a just God would one day call King Philip to account.
And in the meantime? Many of her fellow Bredenaars crouched behind bolted doors, fearing the arrival of tramping boots, clashing halberds, and clanging chains. Ever since King Philip’s henchman, the Duke of Alva, had arrived in the Low Lands, they’d all heard repeated tales of confiscations and executions from other cities.
“I shall squeeze those Dutchmen like soft butterballs,” the arrogant Spaniard had reportedly boasted. Lysbet regarded the words as empty threats. Always she pictured the butter squeezed through iron fingers running out and forming itself into new butterballs.
Besides, in no city was fear as preposterous as in Breda. Lysbet could count on the fingers of one hand the people who had ever been executed here for heresy. And they were all foreign refugees, no doubt godless criminals at heart to begin with. In Breda, no righteous man or woman would ever die at the hands of the authorities. In her mind, that had always settled it.
Why, then, did those three men in the street below unsettle her so?
Begone, foolish fears. Since her conscience was clear, why did her hands feel so clammy? Nay, ’twas but an evil spirit tormenting her.
Resolutely she moved from the window and crept on tiptoe to the sleeping cubicle behind her. Something in the deep silent slumber of both mother and child mocked the stubborn pounding in her own heart. And in her ears rang an inexplicable warning: “Run for your life! RUN FOR YOUR LIFE!”
Then the voice changed and so did the words. Heavy footfalls and voices approached up through the worn stairwell. The words were unintelligible, in a language she’d grown accustomed to hearing in the streets ever since Alva’s Spanish soldiers came to be boarded by the citizens of Breda.
When the three men she’d seen in the street below filled up the distance from floor to ceiling in the small apartment, Lysbet spread her arms eagle-wing fashion to protect her patients and protested, “Be still. The new mother sleeps.”
Ignoring her, one of the soldiers spoke in accented words, “Thees eez the one?”
Without waiting for an answer, both soldiers unsheathed their swords and pointed them at the distraught midwife. “Be you Lysbet de Vriend?”
“Nay.” She held her voice firm, while every muscle in her body quivered. They were looking for Betteke, called de Vriend (friend) because of the many unselfish ways she befriended others. Hardly a criminal deserving of arrest.
The men gaped at her. “Aha! So you not want to cooperate?” They shook their heads with exaggerated mock outrage and looked toward the bailiff, who up to this point had remained silent. “What say you, señor…bailiff? This is the woman we seek, que no? Right?”
Nay, it could not be. Lysbet shook her head, blinked her eyes, swallowed hard. Why could she not awaken from this ludicrous nightmare? Surely the bailiff would set them straight. He knew her well.
Without looking at her, he muttered, “Ask her.”
The soldiers came closer and their swords brushed against her apron. “Lysbet, housekeeper of Pieter van Keulen, the goldsmith? That is you, que no?”
Her heart cried out, Great God, Nay. Let them not find her. Tante Lysbet had known the servant girl since her days in the orphans’ house, long before she became Van Keulen’s housekeeper. A simple girl she was, but with an amazing winsomeness and a faith so deep and pure it shamed all who knew her. Lysbet knew the wild wooded spot where the girl lodged and had been watching out for her since she fled there after the goldsmith was arrested. Each day Lysbet took her food to eat and dry peat for a fire to warm herself.
The tightness in her muscles intensified. Must she lie to these men and tell them she was the woman they sought in order to protect Betteke? Or tell the truth so she might stay on here and care for the newborn child and its mother? Surely, the soldiers would never think to search for Betteke out in the wood.
She lifted her head and asked, “Do I look like an eighteen-year-old housemaid? If he wills to do so, the bailiff can direct your minds on the path of truth.”
The choking cries of a newborn called from the cradle behind her. Lysbet moved toward the infant, but her would-be captors blocked her way.
“You go not so easily free, señorita,” barked one soldier.
With a voice as smooth and cunning as sticky honey, the second asked, “If not Lysbet de Vriend, who, then, are you?”
What could she answer that they would not use against her? What did they want from her anyway? Money? She had none. Secrets? Also none. If you tell the truth, your righteousness will vindicate you. The memory of her mother’s voice prodded her.
“I am simply Lysbet,” she said with quiet dignity. She left her voice suspended in the air now filled with increasing howls from both infant and new mother. She turned to attend to the patient at her back, but a soldier grabbed her by the arm and yanked her across the room.
“Aha, but of course. This is Lysbet the Physicke.”
“Midwife and healer to Gretta Engelshofen, bewitched wife of the bookseller,” added the second soldier. With a nod toward the bailiff, he added, “You should have kept the orders straight.”
Lysbet froze to the spot.
“So…you are Lysbet, physicke to Mad Gretta?” She felt the tip of a sword press the question into her left ribs.
“Nay,” she answered quickly.
“Nay?” The second sword point jabbed her in the right ribs.
“Physicke, then, of the wife of Dirck Engelshofen?” The question came in honeyed tones again.
Like a fly entrapped, Lysbet lifted her head and strained against her captors’ grip, crying, “Let me go. I’ve done nothing wrong! Unless it is a crime to dispense God’s mercy to the suffering.” She spat out the words with as much sarcasm as she could show.
By now the young moeder was screaming hysterically from her bed cupboard across the room. Lysbet called out to her, “Be calm, Petronella. Our God will care for you.”
Surely He must do it. The woman was young, only a girl, and this her first child. Her moeder was newly dead, and she had no family living nearby. Lysbet felt a rush of tears and swallowed them back.
The soldiers laughed. “And who will take care of you, Lysbet, harborer of witches?”
Lysbet bristled. She opened her mouth to make a defense, then thought better of it. Instead, she pleaded with the foreigners. “Have you no mercy on this poor moeder?”
“Ah, we are very merciful to the innocent. But as you say, her God will care for her.”
“And she has a husband. What could she need more?”
They laughed again. Lysbet protested vigorously, but the bailiff stepped forward and bound her hands with chains at the wrist. Then all three men hustled her with brusque movements down the stairwell, through the noise and flying dust of the blacksmith’s shop, and out into the puddles of melting snow.
“Let me go,” Lysbet screamed. “I am innocent.”
A sword pricked the small of her back, and one of the Spaniards, garlic reeking from his breath, said, “Be still, or we shall fasten a screw to your tongue.” Then throwing a length of nondescript cloth over her face, the bailiff tied it so tightly around her neck that she could no longer see even the light of day, and her wails of anguish produced nothing but muffled cries. With each thudding step, the sword pierced into her flesh till she felt rivulets of warm blood trickling down her back.
Nay, nay, nay! she screamed at her own heart. I am righteous. I shall be vindicated.
For what seemed like hours, Lysbet was jerked along, slipping over endless cobblestones, spattered with freezing mud, aching from a pace rendered inhumane by enforced blindness. Where were they taking her? The question drove her mad with a frenzy of fear until she heard Roland chiming out the hour from his clock tower. He sounded so near behind her that she felt the vibrations beneath her feet and knew they must be crossing the market square before the Great Church.
When at last the party slowed down and dragged her over a threshold, she knew they had entered The Crane’s Nest, the bookshop of Dirck Engelshofen.
“Remove the blindfold,” a soldier shouted to the bailiff, who followed the sharp orders almost before they were given.
Like a manipulated puppet in the grand procession of the Holy Cross on Pentecost Sunday, Lysbet thought. Had he no spine, no mind to think his own thoughts, to do what he knew was right?
As the restraint came off, the ruffled nursemaid breathed deeply and rearranged her flattened nose in an attempt to recapture her dignity. She blinked her eyes several times against the light.
One of the Spaniards stood smiling at her. She averted the gaze of his eyes. “So, does this place not make you feel more at home?” That annoying poisonous smile colored his voice, dripping deadly sweetness from each awkwardly accented syllable. She did not answer him.
“What a pity,” he went on, “the dear bookseller was forced by his possessed wife to leave this lovely cozy spot.”
“Even more’s the pity he did not take all her devilish books along,” the other soldier added, grinning like a naughty child. “You will show them to us, que no?”
Lysbet did not lift her head, nor did she speak. She ignored the men’s intrusive stares and studied the patterns of grout between the dark floor tiles. Here in this very spot she had read the books that taught her to worship God in new ways. Here she’d seen love enacted in Dirck Engelshofen as he cared for his ailing wife. Many had called the woman mad. “Beloved of God and precious,” her husband said again and again in the tone of voice he used when talking to her, in the tender look in his eyes when he looked at her, in the patience he exercised when she screamed at him in one of her demented rages.
“You will show the books to us?” The question came again, along with a sharp prod from the point of the sword.
Lysbet gasped at the pain, then said simply, “I know of no such books to show.”
“Aha! The woman’s memory not so good anymore, eh?”
“She needs a story to remind her. Tell her, Señor Bailiff, about Mad Gretta’s last confession.”
The bailiff cleared his throat in sharp staccato rhythm and spoke stiffly. “Ah, ja. When Vrouw Engelshofen stood before the examiners…” He cleared his throat again, and Lysbet, still staring at the floor, watched his feet shuffle nervously back and forth across the line between tiles. “She confessed,” he said.
Lysbet knew in her bones that he lied. She looked up into the official’s eyes and demanded, “What did she confess?” She noted his shifting eyes and marveled at the uncomfortable sense of delight it gave her.
“Ah, ja, but she confessed her guilt.”
“What guilt?” Lysbet had an odd feeling of control.
Before the bailiff could answer, Lysbet felt the swords in her back once more. The soldiers laughed and one bellowed out, “As if you knew nothing. You stall for time.”
“Tell her the rest,” demanded the other.
The bailiff coughed again and went on. “Well…of course Mad Gretta confessed that she had hidden her books of magic in this house.” He moved his hands nervously back and forth and did not look at Lysbet. “She said that you, Lysbet, would know where they are.”
“I should know the whereabouts of books of magic that never did exist? What a venomous lie!” She felt the swords probe deeper yet into her sides.
“All goes much easier with you when you lead us to the books quickly, señorita.” The tall soldier’s voice sounded gruff.
“Nay,” Lysbet cried out, taking care neither to move nor to breathe deeply lest the swords draw more blood. “There are no books. Gretta was no witch. She has not been executed.”
“Tie her!” ordered the fat soldier. “We go to search the midwife’s quarters above.”
The bailiff took a long chain from his justice bag and shackled her feet together, just far enough so she could stand without losing her balance, but not far enough to allow her to walk freely. With a second chain, he tethered her hands, and with a third, he joined the two lengths together.
“Nay, nay, nay!” Lysbet screamed. “I am an innocent Bredenaar…you cannot treat me so…. God have mercy!”
Once more the bailiff threw the length of cloth over her face and anchored it around her neck, muffling her screams and nearly cutting off her breath. Finally, he grabbed her around the waist, pulled her down to a sitting position, and tied her to a three-legged stool.
“Almighty God,” she cried, not at all certain He could hear her prayers any better than the bailiff could hear her smothered voice. “What have I done to deserve this? I am innocent. Gretta is innocent. There are no books of magic in The Crane’s Nest! Almighty God, are you listening?”
Vaguely she heard the Spaniards’ shouts of revelry and the thunderous tromping of heavy boots in the attic room above the bookshop. Her back and side stung with raw wounds. Her head ached. Her sack prison was intolerably hot. She gasped for air…her body was slumping…her mind floating….
****
Lysbet awoke with shafts of sharp sunlight lying across her face. Where was she? What happened? Why was her head so dull, her body so racked with pain, her bed so hard and cold? She tried to stretch her arms, but they could not move. Gradually, a world of excited voices drifted toward her.
“We found it! Eureka!”
“This your box, señorita, que no?”
My box? Señorita? She felt strong hands tugging at her body, lifting her up from what she discovered to be a tile floor and pushing her into a standing position against the wall. What was she doing here? The widely grinning face of a fat Spanish soldier greeted her, and it all came back. She had swooned in the presence of these miserable godless tormentors? She tried to reach down and smooth out her rumpled dress, but the shackles held her fast. At least her head was no longer covered. Tears of angry shame smarted around the crinkly edges of her eyes. She fought them back.
“Señorita Lysbet, wonderful midwife of Breda”—the smooth-tongued words of the tall Spaniard brought her back to the reality of her nightmare—“tell us about this beautiful wooden box.” He thrust a familiar small box at her. Its intricately carved birds and flowers made her gasp.
“Where did you find this?” she demanded.
“Aha!” both soldiers shouted with obvious glee.
“She knows it,” said the fat one.
“Tell her, friend, how we uncovered it hidden in the far corner of her sleeping room, behind the piles of Señor Engelshofen’s extra books.”
It did indeed look like her box. Her vader had brought it to her from the market in Antwerp on her tenth birthday, the day she knew she wanted to become a Beguine sister. “Use it to preserve your most prized treasures,” he had told her. And she had. Her first prayer book, a lock of hair from the first baby she had delivered, the wooden crucifix her dying mother had laid in her hand, the yellowed pamphlet from Tante Anastasia with the story and last words of her grandfather, who had been beheaded because he did not follow all the orders of the Church.
But she had left her box in her room in Maarten de Smid’s apartment, and its key nestled right now in her bosom, hanging from a chain around her neck. She eyed her captors narrowly and waited, trembling.
“Your treasure box, que no?” The fat Spaniard’s toothy smile sent shivers up her spine.
“I left no such box in this place,” she insisted, fighting to preserve a calmness she did not possess.
“We shall see,” suggested the tall one. He approached her seductively and reached his hand inside the neck of her dress. “She carry a key here somewhere,” he said with glee.
Lysbet drew back, but without the use of her hands she was powerless against his rough advances. She leaned forward, trying to reach the intruding hand with her teeth, but he yanked her head back by the hair and commenced to search for the key. For what seemed an eternity, he allowed his hand to roam freely over her upper body, all the while muttering, “Has to be here…treasure box keys always hang close to heart…. Aha, Eureka!”
He grabbed the key and yanked it from her bosom, wrenching the chain off over her headdress. “Now we see how perfectly it fits.” He rubbed his hands together, then with exaggerated ceremony inserted the key into the lock and turned it.
Lysbet sat rigid, pretending not to care or see. Almighty God, she prayed in silent desperation, Your Son made blind eyes to see. Send him now to make scales of blindness to fall upon the seeing eyes of these wicked men. They must not see Tante Anastasia’s pamphlet. Hear me, O God….
She watched the box lid spring open. Both Spaniards hovered over the little box, looking into its depths like pirates gloating over stolen gold pieces.
“Aha! What treasure you guard, señorita.”
She heard the shout and felt an elbow jabbing her upper arm.
“Look! Look! Look at the treasure!”
Eager not to appear guilty by fear, Lysbet looked at the books the Spaniards were waving before her. Thanks be to God, Tante Anastasia’s pamphlet was not among them. Was this the miracle she’d prayed for?
But her joy was short-lived. For her captors were waving four booklets in her face. Too small to be Bibles. Nay, worse!
“The Magical Arts!” the fat soldier called out. “Ways to Practice Witchcraft! How to Live Like a Witch and Not Be Detected!”
The tall one shoved one final title under Lysbet’s nose and grunted, “Spells and Potions to Use Against the Clergy! So these are your treasures? Tell us, what more you hide in your bosom?”
Lysbet shivered. How could God betray her so? “I know nothing of these books—or any books like them,” she said. “Before Almighty God in heaven I swear that I have never seen them before. Nor did Gretta Engelshofen.”
Both Spaniards laughed a loud howling laughter that sent visions of hellish monsters dancing in Lysbet’s mind.
“The witch lies,” they bellowed.
“Cover her head again,” the fat one barked to the bailiff.
“And give her back her precious key,” ordered the other, “that it may go with her to her new home and remind her of the awfulness of her deeds.” With rough movements, the fat one slung the key on its long chain over her head. Then he lifted Lysbet’s chin with his finger and spoke with mock affection. “Come, dear lady, we take you to a strong tower of delights.”
Lysbet closed her eyes and choked on the tears that ran down her throat. Powerless to do aught but pray and wait, she yielded to her rough captors and sent strong words heavenward. Almighty God, do you care any more what will happen to Vrouw de Smid and her newborn child, open to false accusation of being brought into the world by the aid of a witch? To Gretta Engelshofen? To Betteke behind that hedge of thorny roses? To Lysbet the Physicke?
****
In the far north country of East Friesland, the days were tapering off into long twilights. Pieter-Lucas van den Garde walked to the house of Hans the weaver-preacher just after the evening meal and did not carry a lantern. His business would be swift.
Straight and tall, the nineteen-year-old pulled his cape close around his body in the icy wind. He made his way quickly through ‘tFalder, the refugees’ ghetto bordering the eastern side of the harbor of Emden. At the house with the steep thatched roof that sloped nearly to his shoulder, he knocked boisterously and waited.
The door opened and the preacher appeared. Not quite old enough to be Pieter-Lucas’ vader, Hans was a gentle man. But tonight, his long bushy beard and heavy brows seemed to hold a foreboding air. And the low shaggy beams of the large single room, combined with the blended aroma of herbal brews, weaver’s wool, and burning peat, made Pieter-Lucas feel hedged, trapped.
“Come in.” Hans gestured toward the roughhewn table by the hearth.
Pieter-Lucas looked around the room. Hans’ moeder, Oma, was busy at the hearth stirring a pot. His two daughters helped her.
“I must talk with you alone,” Pieter-Lucas said.
Hans arched his eyebrows and sighed. He picked up a lighted lamp and Pieter-Lucas followed. Across the single room, past the large loom at one end, they slipped through the secret panel in the wall that led into the hidden church where Hans’ flock met on Sundays to worship. Children of God, they called themselves, while the rest of the world mocked them with the name Anabaptists (Rebaptizers).
The room was cold, and the sight of the backless benches in the lamplight sent a shiver down Pieter-Lucas’ spine. Hans was staring at him.
“What is it, jongen?”
Pieter-Lucas twisted the old felt cap in his hands and said, “Ever since Harvest Month (August), Aletta and I have met with you to learn to become members of your church. Every week we’ve come. Do you realize it’s been seven long months? At Christmas you allowed us to become publicly betrothed and told us that as soon as the New Year had come, we could set a wedding date. Here it is Spring month and still we wait! How much longer?”
A tremor vibrated in Pieter-Lucas’ chest, and he tapped a toe in the rushes beneath his feet. Last summer when he had agreed to join the little group of believers, it seemed so small a price to pay for the hand of the girl he had loved all his life and could not live without. But the process had stretched out through the gloomy winter months, and his young spirit grew increasingly restless.
Hans nodded his head and after a pause spoke evenly. “I am sorry you find it so difficult to wait.”
Pieter-Lucas’ mouth hung open and his arms waved an impatient gesture. “Is that all you have to say?”
Hans stood expressionless for what seemed to Pieter-Lucas like a long night when sleep refuses to come and every part of the body aches with the dead stop of time.
“Speak to me!” Pieter-Lucas demanded at last, his voice an exploding musket ball of urgency.
Hans raised a hand. “I cannot give you an answer,” he protested.
“What do you mean? You’re the leader of the group that meets in this place.” Pieter-Lucas spread his hands out to the benches on all sides. “You can’t give me an answer?”
“I can feel it with you, son. But I—”
“Nay,” Pieter-Lucas interrupted, punching Hans’ chest with his finger. “You have no idea what I feel. Did you ever have a childhood sweetheart? Somebody you did everything with all your life? Then, when she was finally old enough to become your vrouw, her family snatched her out from under your nose and carried her away to a far country so you had to spend months looking for her? When you found her, her vader promised you her hand, then turned you over to a group of elders who had long forgotten what it was to be young and could only think of ways to keep you waiting?”
Hans was shaking his head, but Pieter-Lucas ranted on, “The bafflement is more maddening than a man can endure. Last year, when I found Aletta and her family here in your house, I was ready to put her on my horse and ride off into the future of our dreams. Instead, I learned that her vader had joined what I had always heard was some strange sect, and if I wanted to claim my bride, I, too, had to become one of them.”
“And you nearly have,” Hans said.
“Nearly! Bah! Repeatedly I have told you that I am willing to live by your cherished beliefs. So why the delay? I feel like a Jacob who’s worked already my fourteen years for Rachel, yet you refuse to tell me how much longer! At least Jacob could count the days.”
Hans’ brown eyes looked softer now. “Give us one more week for an answer!” he said.
“What sort of an answer?”
Hans scratched the back of his head, then stroked his beard and sighed. “I…I cannot say with certainty. All my elders must agree, you know.”
“And if even one of them says I must wait longer, or I do not measure up?”
Hans shrugged, spreading one hand upward.
Pieter-Lucas glared at him. “I’ll tell you what then. I shall not wait one day longer. I am ready for the baptism and the vows you ask. If your elders insist on demanding something more, something they cannot—or will not—explain to me, I will forget the baptism and find another way.” He pulled his worn felt cap down over his ears and started toward the door.
Hans stood beside him and spoke in a sterner voice than Pieter-Lucas had heard from him before, “Jongen, I doubt not your words, and I do understand more of your bafflement than you have any idea.”
“Then?” Pieter-Lucas stood with hands on his hips, waiting.
“I also know that if we allow you to have the thing you want before you are ready to obey the voice of God in all things, the day will come when some men in our fellowship will take it as their duty to ban you from the church and take your wife from your hearth. Far better to practice caution and preparedness today than risk facing the ban tomorrow.”
Pieter-Lucas looked at Hans with smarting eyes. He opened the door and walked through without a final farewell. Before he’d stepped across the threshold, Hans took him by the shoulder.
“One more week,” he said. “You have my word.”
Pieter-Lucas hesitated, then tipped his head sidewise toward his teacher. “After that, I cannot promise to wait another day!”
In the lingering twilight, he hurried through the streets toward Abrams en Zonen, the clandestine printshop where he worked for Aletta’s uncle Johannes. His feet crunched the crusting slush that slickened the maze of muddy ruts and street cobbles. His face stung with the pelting of an icy evening wind. And in his mind, he wrestled with the uncertainties of his tomorrows—and Aletta’s.
If the elders put him off again, would he have to choose between Dirck Engelshofen’s wishes and his Aletta? Life had stolen many precious things from Pieter-Lucas—moeder, vader, Opa, everything he’d grown up with. He had only two treasures left. The paint in his blood and the girl in his heart. Both burned in his bosom, and he would never—could never—let them go!
When he’d climbed the steep narrow stairway to Abrams en Zonen, he kicked the street shoes from his feet. He hugged himself in search of warmth, then blew on cupped hands and scurried up one more flight of stairs to the attic with its steeply sloping roof line. This was the cramped room where he designed dull title pages for the Children of God’s verboden boecken and then curled up on his sleeping palette and slept at night. When he’d warmed his hands on the chimney stones, he lighted the oil lamp and set it on the low windowsill.
Next to being with Aletta, this was the part of his day he looked forward to most. Every night before he lay his head down to sleep, he mixed paints and played with colors and formed images on a canvas—always pretending he was the Master Painter of Breda. Aletta had given him that title the day they spent with Opa in the Great Church of Breda, when a priest anointed Pieter-Lucas for the work of an artist. It was these nightly secret appointments and her happiness at receiving each new painting from his hand that gave him hope.
Tonight, though, a heavy sadness, almost a hopelessness, stiffened his fingers as he pulled a small leather bag from its hiding place behind the table where he did his daily work. He untied and loosened the drawstring on the bag. The items he pulled out and spread along the windowsill felt so sacred in his hands that he feared almost to touch them. Three old paintbrushes and a palette knife had been rescued from Opa’s devastated studio. The four pots of paints he had created using his grandfather’s secret recipes. The wooden palette he’d carved himself looked just like the one Opa had used all his life.
He reached for his three-legged stool, determined to paint. Instead, he seemed to see himself already seated on the stool as an old, solitary, white-headed man. Wrapped in a heavy moth-eaten cloak, he was painting dark and splotchy scenes beside a fireless chimney here in this lonely attic. And in his ears he seemed to hear Opa’s voice reciting a puzzling warning he’d given the boy so many times he couldn’t help but memorize it. “This passion to paint is a monster in your blood. Never satisfied, it will always demand more than you can give. Without the hand of God and a good wife to check and soothe and prod and guide, it will consume your heart and mind and leave you with nothing but ashes on your palette.”
Until now, Opa’s strange words had left him shaking his head, wondering. Tonight, they made terrifying sense and echoed around the walls of his brain, quickening the racing of his heart. Why had he not seen it before? Without Aletta at his side, all the painting dreams in the world would turn into choking nightmares.
“Nay, jongen,” he cried aloud. “It cannot be! I will not allow it!”
Possessed of a furious urge to redirect his own fate, he reached behind the table and pulled out a large cloth-wrapped package leaning against the wall. He tore off the covering, revealing the clean framed canvas he’d been saving for the wedding picture he would paint for his bride. Feverishly fearful lest he lose his nerve, he seated himself on the stool and with sweaty hands settled the canvas on his lap, propping it against the wall. One at a time, he wiped his palms on his breeches, then breathed deeply and let the air out in a fine noiseless trickle.
For a long moment he stared at the canvas. Then, all unexpectedly, like the sudden breakthrough of a powerful ray of sunlight on a dismal cloudy afternoon, a dazzling idea began lighting all the lamps in his head. The setting was Opa’s studio in the woods outside of Breda, where he used to paint. In the center, beneath the rose-colored glass window, he and Aletta stood, hands joined, before a clergyman in a plain white robe.
In the shadows of the background to the left, a canvas rested on an easel with tools and paints spread out on a table beside it. In deeper shadows to the right, Hendrick van den Garde was slinking out a half-opened door, a rusty sword dangling from his belt.
“The hour has come, jongen,” he told himself. “The sooner you begin—and finish—the sooner you will be ready.” Not Hans’ idea of preparation for a wedding, but Hans didn’t have it all under his control, and Pieter-Lucas could no longer sit and wait.
He grabbed a chunk of charcoal from the table and began sketching in the figures of a man and woman. His hands trembled. He would work—nay, play—as long as his eyelids did not droop shut. A deep laughter rumbled up from his belly and kept rolling off his lips until it filled the attic and echoed around the rafters.