In the midst of the ’tFalder section of Emden’s rutted streets stood the house of Johannes, the printer, and his brother-in-law, Dirck Engelshofen, the bookseller. On the back side of the building, a steep narrow stairway led up the alley wall to the unmarked upper-story rooms where the two men ran Abrams en Zonen.
The roughly glazed windowpanes in the topmost story let in but little of the cloudy daylight and even less of the perpetual breezes. Pieter-Lucas bent low over the drawing table in his attic cubicle. He wiped sweat from beneath the straw-colored curls that hung over his forehead and struggled to keep his eyes from drooping shut.
“Come on, jongen,” he snapped. “Just a few more strokes and you’ll have this irksome title page done.”
He jabbed his pen into the inkwell before him. If only it were a brush and a full palette of paints—rich ochres, brilliant vermilions, blues and greens…. It was paint that ran in his blood, not printer’s ink.
“Abrams en Zonen,” he scrawled across the bottom of the page. Not that it was operated by Abrams and his sons. The name was a disguise designed to give no clue either to the names of the owners or to the nature of their religious persuasion. The Children of God were masters at this kind of survival deception. With one more dip of the pen, he finished it off with the date, “MDLXVIII.” The action was as mechanical as climbing the stairs to this daily meeting with discontent.
Last fall he’d been hired to draw cartoons for the books printed here. At least that was what Dirck Engelshofen had told him. To his disappointment, he soon learned that the books in this printshop seldom required a cartoon but always a title page. So title pages were his domain.
What dull projects they were! Like the books themselves, mostly small booklets or polemical pamphlets created to spread the doctrine of the new faith. Nothing like the ones he used to admire in The Crane’s Nest back in Breda, with their elaborate designs and letters scrolled into exquisite pictures. Whenever Pieter-Lucas tried to insert even a small design or add a flourish to a letter, Johannes would send him back to his cubicle to “do it right.” That meant taking all the joy and beauty out of it.
“Only the message counts.” The short little man with pointed nose and piercing voice repeated this phrase to settle every dispute. It was enough to drive an artist into a shrieking fit.
“Six more days!” Pieter-Lucas laid down his pen with a sigh, uncoiled his torso, and extended his arms in a muscle-bulging stretch. “Aletta Engelshofen will soon be mine, and I’ll take her and my paintbrushes and be gone from this dreary printshop forever!”
Pieter-Lucas blew on the page before him. Satisfied that the ink was dry, he got to his feet and straightened slowly. Ever since he’d been attacked while trying to defend Opa’s painting in the Great Church in Breda, he’d had to struggle with a lame leg. Not as bad as Opa’s leg after his encounter with the madman in the alley, yet it did cause an occasional discomfort and a perpetual limp.
“I’m too young to hobble,” he sputtered.
With strong fingers, he massaged the leg until it consented to carry him with the freshly completed title page down a flight of stairs to the big room. Here, half a dozen men worked at their jobs—engraving plates, proofing text, operating the printing press, assembling and wrapping books. In the far corner by the bookshelves sat Gillis, Johannes’ orphan servant, teaching six-year-old Robbin Engelshofen to read.
Pieter-Lucas approached his future father-in-law. Seated on a bench in the proofreaders’ nook, Dirck Engelshofen was a straight tallish man with a clean-shaven chin, precisely trimmed mustachio, and pearly gray eyes.
He’d barely laid the title page on the table when there came a muffled knock on the door that led into the bookshop. The entire room fell into a lightning-strike silence. No one ever knocked on that door. Friends and family walked through it. Customers rang a little bell on the counter in the bookshop. Strangers did not know about the hidden stairway that led up to it from the alley.
To Pieter-Lucas, the secrecy of the bookmaking and bookselling business seemed strange in Emden. This was a city of refuge, where religious groups of every kind lived side by side in relative peace. Yet all were refugees who had been chased from somewhere else and feared to trust each other. He’d heard it said that Emden was known as the nest where Anabaptist eggs were hatched and given wings to fly all over the world.
Dirck Engelshofen moved quickly across the room and opened the door a crack. From the other side a deep voice simply asked, “Abrams en Zonen?”
Pieter-Lucas started. The inquirer knew the name! What about the purpose?
“And who would you be, if you please?” Dirck Engelshofen asked in reply.
“My name is Dirck….” The voice trailed off as if the man had debated whether to say more and decided against it.
That voice! Where had Pieter-Lucas heard it before? He moved forward to get a closer look. Neither tall nor short, the man carried himself in his dark suit and cloak like a gentleman. He had a well-creased face with a broad sculpted nose and a mouth that resembled two short straight lines pinched together in the middle. Slipped into the frame of a perfectly trimmed white beard, it gave the impression of hiding beneath the wide floppy brim of his dark square-topped hat. Though his eyes were a soft brown color, they revealed a soul that was neither soft nor settled. Pieter-Lucas had seen them before somewhere. But where?
“Dirck…?” Dirck Engelshofen left an obvious blank space for the visitor to fill in.
“Ja, that it is.” The man paused. “I’ve been told you have a book-producing enterprise here, and I have brought something which I trust you will be willing to help me distribute. ’Tis a document of great importance to all who champion the cause of freedom in the Low Lands.”
The man reached into a black bag hanging from his waist and shortly produced a pamphlet. Before he could put it into the hands of Dirck Engelshofen, Johannes shoved his way between the men and pulled the door open a trifle wider.
He reached for the pamphlet and read aloud with a studiedly officious tone, “The Justification of the Prince van Oranje”—Johannes glanced up at his caller, then went on—“against the false lies, by means of which their perpetrators seek to accuse him of injustice.”
“Our Prince Willem van Oranje?” Pieter-Lucas asked, his body edging toward the door. “How did you come by this document?” He heard the words tumbling from his mouth and looked into the stranger’s penetrating eyes.
Before the startled man could answer, Pieter-Lucas pointed a finger toward him and blurted out, “We’ve met before in the dungeon of Batestein castle. You persuaded Brederode to free my friend Yaap and me.”
The man’s mouth softened into a faint smile, and he made as if he would speak. But Johannes had a firm hand on Pieter-Lucas’ shoulder, shoving him back into the room. “Nay,” he interrupted, “we do not find your document of any importance in this place.”
He began to shut the big door, but Pieter-Lucas grabbed and held it forcibly open. “Listen to the man, Johannes,” he pleaded.
“At the least, we might let him tell us the purpose for this,” Dirck Engelshofen interjected, his tone conciliatory.
Johannes stood with feet apart, hands planted on his hips, and glared at them both. “What think you two?” he demanded. “We are not in the business of entertaining strangers who come unbidden onto our premises, armed with pretty-looking pamphlets that bear the trusted name of some popular exiled prince.”
“But I told you, this man is no stranger,” Pieter-Lucas insisted.
“What know you about him?”
“He saved my life. If he hadn’t pleaded my cause before Count Brederode, I’d have been left to rot in that old Beggar’s dungeon.”
“So?” Without another word, Johannes shoved the door shut and leaned his short rotund body squarely against it.
Johannes was usually a mild-mannered man. When once riled, though, he reminded Pieter-Lucas of a wild animal resisting capture.
“Let him in,” Pieter-Lucas pleaded.
“Like a fox into a hen house? What sort of fool do you take me for, jongen?”
“He is no fox. He’s a good man.” Pieter-Lucas towered over him, glaring. His whole body trembled. “Either let him in or let me out!”
Pieter-Lucas watched the sweat beads pour over Johannes’ balding head and dribble down from under his flat tam cap. The man stood resolute and for a time said nothing, only muttered unintelligible words under his mustache. Then, with a manner as markedly calm as he had been agitated minutes earlier, he stepped back from the door and said, “Go then, if you must. Just remember, under the thatched roof of this shop, I am the master and not accustomed to allowing my employees to come and go at will.”
Pieter-Lucas hesitated only long enough to breathe in deeply and look back over his shoulder. Dirck Engelshofen had returned to his worktable but gazed intently at him. In the expression in his eyes and the quick flash of a smile, the young man saw concern and approval, covered with a gauzy mask of warning.
“I’ll be back soon,” he said, then went through the door and limped down the stairs into the drizzly alley below. He looked first to one side, then to another, mumbling, “Which way did he take?”
Hesitating only an eyeblink, he dashed off over slippery cobblestones toward the lowering sun. At the far end of the alley, he searched in all directions. No sight of the dark cloak, the full white beard, or that distinctive broad-brimmed hat. As he stood, the heavens opened and dumped a heavy cloudburst that sent him backing into the shelter of an overhanging doorway.
“Jongen.” A voice at once deeply resonant and greatly restrained startled him.
Pieter-Lucas felt the protective pressure of a hand on his left shoulder. He glanced sharply back and straight into the bearded face he had been so furiously seeking.
“Heer Dirck?” he gasped.
“Be still,” the man warned, unsmiling. “Follow me. Not on my heels, but at the distance and speed of a large lumbering coach.”
His cryptic message delivered, the man crept out into the continuing rain. Pieter-Lucas followed as he’d been instructed. Up one street and down another he sloshed through the deepening puddles, careful to keep the outline of the dark cloak and flat-topped hat in sight. All went well until the cloak tails disappeared to the right. When Pieter-Lucas drew near the spot where he calculated that the man had turned off, he found no street. And not one of the identical shop fronts stood ajar or gave other indication that the man intended him to follow that way.
Pieter-Lucas wiped at the raindrops running over the narrow band on his hat and washing his face. Why did he feel so compelled to go on with this secretive following of a man he’d only once met in a drafty pest-ridden dungeon? Renewed thoughts of Aletta and their wedding challenged his logic. For all his protestations to Johannes, he had to admit that the shadowy figure of the man he’d been following through the now diminishing rain was far more a stranger than an acquaintance.
He halted in the middle of a puddle and pondered the course of reason. “You don’t have to go on, jongen,” he said in a voice so low he scarcely heard it himself. “No one is pursuing you at knife point.” Involuntarily, he looked back over his shoulder to make sure his statement was true.
Perhaps Johannes had been right. He knew not where he was going nor who he was following nor where the pathway would lead him. And what would Aletta say when he didn’t return? Once before he’d left her to pursue an errand of mercy. Misfortune had befallen him, and he didn’t see her face again for months. He couldn’t do that again.
At that instant he noticed a narrow space between the buildings. It was one of those mysterious, nearly hidden alleyways of the sort that used to both fascinate and terrorize him when he was a child. Many were the evil plots he imagined to be directed against him at such spots. Almost like a crack in the wall, it opened up, barely wide enough for a body to slip through sidewise. Did he dare to try it? Was it a trap?
Before he could make up his mind, he felt a strong hand on his arm tugging him into the alley and heard a hoarse whisper in his ear. “This way, jongen, this way.”
Without thinking, he jerked free and prepared to run. The man who had stopped him held him firmly. “Fear not,” he said. “No danger here.”
Pieter-Lucas prodded himself toward composure. A Van den Garde may never wield a sword. But one thing he would never be was a coward—it mattered not what Hendrick had said about it.
To his surprise, Pieter-Lucas found that the way down the tight little alley still held a trace of the charm of his childish forays. He had to remind himself he was a man now, following the lead of a man. This was a real adventure—no imaginary escapade. Together he and Dirck made their way between tall brick walls until they came at last to a dead end. The man in front rapped gently on a small door on the left wall. Pieter-Lucas shivered with excitement in the cool dampness of impending twilight.
Then, all in a flurry, the door opened and the shadowy man pulled Pieter-Lucas up a tightly curved flight of worn stairs. A buxom matron led the way, carrying a lighted lamp and babbling continuously, grousing about her bothersome visitor and his irresponsible ways that were unbefitting a gentleman of his station. The air smelled of stale pipe tobacco, musty books, and sour cabbage. At the top of the stairs, the woman handed the man her lamp and left them. They climbed on up into an attic room with neither doors nor windows. It was heated by the chimney passing through from the lower floors.
The man gestured for Pieter-Lucas to sit on the three-legged stool at one side of a small table, where he set the lamp. Then he removed the pack from his shoulder beneath his cloak and sat on the other stool. He rested his elbows on the table and looked intently at Pieter-Lucas.
“The day we first met in Old Brederode’s dungeon seems like an eon ago.” Heer Dirck smiled weakly and never moved his gaze from Pieter-Lucas’ face.
“You remember me?” The possibility left him unsure whether to admire the man or fear him. The smile may be disarming and the eyes gentle, but they held a restlessness that pierced clear through their object.
“Stepson of the Beggar Hendrick van den Garde,” he answered evenly.
Pieter-Lucas gasped in reply and shifted his hands abruptly to his lap.
“I never forget a mistreated prisoner,” the man continued, “having been one myself. Falsely accused, you were, even as I.”
“You said this afternoon that your name is Dirck. I should remember more.”
“For now that’s quite enough. As for me, I’ve no need to ask you either your name or the nature of the journey that brought you to this place…” Dropping his voice to a whisper, he added, “From Breda and Dillenburg.”
“You’re telling me you came not to Abrams en Zonen on a whim, then.”
He shook his head slowly while the flickering light flashed rays of silver through the white wool of his beard. “Nay, I rarely go anywhere on a whim.”
“How did you know to search for me here—and why?” Pieter-Lucas felt his heart racing. As he had always imagined it, unbelievable things happened to those who slipped through these magical cramped alleyways.
“Prince Willem told me I would find you in the printer’s nest of the Anabaptists. Awaiting a wedding day. Is that not correct?”
“How comes Prince Willem to know all that?”
Dirck chuckled. “You know not his ways as well as I anticipated. But then, perhaps you have been away too long.” He reached across the table and laid a reassuring hand on the young man’s arm. “He awaits your return.”
“The prince wants me to return to Dillenburg? Nay, that cannot be.”
“Ja, but he does.”
“Why?”
“Your loyal services are of great value to his cause.”
“Willem van Oranje said such things?”
“I swear to it.”
How could it be? For the few months he lived in Dillenburg, he had run some messages for the prince. But as he ran, he’d been mostly preoccupied with a relentless search for his lost love. He was not at all like Yaap, who had neither a woman at home nor paint in the blood to divide his loyalties. From this special friend, Pieter-Lucas had learned what it meant to be a messenger for his prince—a total sacrifice of time and life and passion.
“Not the sort of life for me,” he’d said every time they returned from a trip.
Pieter-Lucas cleared his throat and tapped nervously on the table with the forefinger of his right hand. “If he knows so much about my plans and where I lodge, how is it that he sends you here to tear me away from my soon-to-be bride?”
“His mission is urgent.”
“How urgent? In only six days, my bride and I will be wed, and I take her back to Dillenburg.”
“First he needs you here in Friesland.”
“To deliver the pamphlets?” Pieter-Lucas asked, not taking his eyes from the wrinkled face.
The man reached into his black bag and took out the same pamphlet he’d produced earlier at the printery. “Here.” He placed it on the table before him with a gesture so reverent Pieter-Lucas almost feared to touch it.
Pieter-Lucas read the words on the cover in a subdued voice. “Justification of the Prince van Oranje against the false lies by means of which their perpetrators seek to accuse him of injustice.” Gently he lifted the cover, then leafed through the handful of pages, not reading, mostly wondering. Why had the prince written this? How came Heer Dirck to be peddling it?
“Every Lowlander needs to read it,” Dirck said. He leaned forward and added an emphatic, “Now!”
“But why? Since the prince fled to Dillenburg, he’s in no imminent danger.”
Heer Dirck went on, his manner agitated, his voice lowered. “So you have not heard King Philip’s most recent proclamations through Alva?”
“I only pick up snippets of gossip from the Beggars in our streets. Most recently they have gathered outside Emden, planning for a battle confrontation with the Duke’s troops somewhere nearby. But I know not more than a little of that matter.”
The man stood to his feet, picked up his stool, and brought it closer to Pieter-Lucas’ side. Seating himself again, he spoke in a hushed voice, muffled by his bushy beard. “In Dry-Stick Month (February), Alva issued a summons to Willem van Oranje and his brother Ludwig van Nassau, along with four other noblemen, to appear before his infamous Blood Council within thrice fourteen days from the date of the proclamation. The penalty for disobedience was perpetual banishment from the country and confiscation of all estates and goods.”
“Surely Alva did not expect them to walk into such a trap!”
“Perhaps not,” the man replied, “but Alva will never leave a trap unset.”
“I suppose you’re right.” Pieter-Lucas nodded while his mind spun in dizzy circles.
“Most recently,” Dirck said, his voice heavy with sorrow, “Willem’s son, Philip Willem, was abducted from his classes at the University in Leuven and carried hostage into Spain.”
“Unthinkable!”
“Indeed!” The older man nodded. “The prince has decided that his time to act has come. He is planning a many-pronged military invasion under the command of Ludwig. But if his strategies are to succeed, he must have the support of all the Lowlanders—not just Beggars and other Calvinists, but Papists, Lutherans, and Anabaptists, as well.”
“Anabaptists?” The thought startled Pieter-Lucas. “The whole world knows they will never carry a sword, under any circumstance—not even in self-defense.”
Dirck nodded. “Willem knows that very well, and he asks not for their swords.”
“What, then, does he expect from them?”
“Prince Willem also knows the Anabaptists believe in doing acts of kindness to the oppressed and injured—bestowing gifts of food, performing acts of healing, opening homes in hospitality, perhaps even giving a few gold coins.” He paused, then spread out his hands toward Pieter-Lucas. “Can you not see how important this is?”
“I…perhaps,” he stammered. “But surely my part can wait just one more week, till the wedding is past.”
Dirck shook his head. “Time we do not have! Ludwig’s forces are already gathering in the fields near Groningen, and Alva’s troops approach from the south. Six days from now a major battle may be over, and the prince’s cause either be saved or lost!”
Pieter-Lucas punched a fist into his hand and ground it hard. “There must be another way.”
Dirck lowered his head, folded his hands on the table before him, and hesitated briefly before looking up and speaking again.
“King Philip has placed all Lowlanders—three million men, women, children, including you and me and your bride—under sentence of death for heresy! In the whole land only a handful of persons, especially named, are exempted.”
“Impossible!” Pieter-Lucas shouted.
Dirck raised a hand and, with a shrug, sighed.
“But it cannot be!”
“We’re all condemned to die! Once the revolt fails in the Low Lands, even the leaders of Emden may no longer be able to give us refuge.”
“Nay. Emden must always be safe. Alva has no power in Germany!”
“Jongen, war has many ways of altering the boundaries of power. Mark my word, if the prince’s cause goes down to defeat, all Anabaptists everywhere will hang or drown or burn.”
“Not in Emden!”
“Ja! In Emden!”
A steady rhythm of shocked silence beat against Pieter-Lucas’ ribs.
Heer Dirck rearranged his collar and sat erect, and without looking directly at Pieter-Lucas, he said, “You have experience with courier runs for Abrams en Zonen, ja?”
“I have,” the young man said simply. He knew the circuit well—Appingedam, Winschoten, Harlingen, Groningen…. He’d run it many times. Dangerous job it was, especially with Beggar troops and Alva’s men prowling about everywhere. Yet deep down in the pit of his stomach, he knew he had to do it—for Willem and for Aletta. The rhythm in his heart turned from shock to terror, arising from a sense of duty he simply could not shake.
If he left in the morning, he could take the pamphlets to a certain vegetable merchant at the market in Siddeburen. This tradesman often carried books to the others for him. He could slip out at dawn and be home by nightfall.
“Well, jongen?” The deep voice at his side interrupted his plans.
“I go!” He stood and headed for the door.
“At daybreak?”
“At daybreak!”
Dirck handed him a sturdy leather bag, and Pieter-Lucas stepped out into the sunset. An image of the kindly old face framed with a snowy white beard engraved a pattern of comfort into the unsettled grooves of his mind—the place where he wondered how he’d tell Aletta.
****
An uneasy near-silence hung over the workroom of Abrams en Zonen following the departure of Pieter-Lucas and the stranger. Johannes puffed and mumbled to himself like a low rumble of receding thunder. The workers had stopped their customary chatter, while Gillis and Robbin took to whispering their reading lesson in the corner.
Dirck Engelshofen stared unseeing at the sheets of manuscript on the proofing table before him. What was there about that stranger who carried his name and spoke like a nobleman that aroused his own curiosity, yet made Johannes so angry?
“I should worry about Pieter-Lucas out there running after him,” he told himself. “Who knows where he’ll lead him and to what purpose? Yet I cannot fret.”
Why, then, were his fingers drumming a succession of rapid little patter beats on the table? And why did his whole being so restlessly resist the call of the pages awaiting his attention?
He slapped his knee and straightened himself on the bench, then barked a sharp silent command to his reluctant spirit. Back to your task, old man.
Running a hand through his hair and smoothing his mustache down along his upper lip, he forced his mind to read. “Baptism is the betrothal of the soul to the heavenly Bridegroom. The Supper is…” They were nothing but wooden words marching across the page!
Dirck leaned his elbows on the table, and resting his chin in his hands, he dreamed of the old days back in Breda, when his friends Barthelemeus and Meester Laurens used to come by The Crane’s Nest to talk about the day’s events, the dangers, and to exchange ideas. If only he could call his academic circle together. They might know something about this other Dirck who refused to identify himself by any other name. Barthelemeus, the traveling cloth merchant, went everywhere and knew everybody. Meester Laurens, the schoolmaster, could explain where they came from and what this meant and whether they should be trusted or not—and why.
But this was Emden, not Breda. His academic circle had been splintered. Reluctantly, he forced himself back to the work at hand. “Baptism is the betrothal…”
This time he was interrupted by the door bursting open. He looked up and into a familiar smiling face.
“Barthelemeus!”
“Dirck!”
Dirck jumped to his feet and ran to embrace his friend. “How could you know I was sitting here longing for a meeting of the old circle at The Crane’s Nest?”
“I’ve come fresh from Breda, friend.”
“Ja? Tell me all about it.” Dirck gestured toward the bench opposite his own, and the two men sat. Barthelemeus’ face grew sober as he shook his head.
“I have not much good news, I fear.”
“Alva’s troops have taken the city over, I suppose.”
Barthelemeus nodded. “They swarm the streets and board in the homes—”
“Some lodge in The Crane’s Nest?”
“Just as we anticipated. ’Tis sad, Dirck, sad indeed.”
“And Laurens?” Memories of the man ten years his senior called forth a heart full of respect and apprehension.
Barthelemeus sighed. “He who was so eager for us to flee Breda to safety will adamantly refuse to do the same to the day he dies. And I fear his determination may hasten that day.”
“They’ve imprisoned him, haven’t they, because he refused to sign that oath of allegiance to papism and the king?” Dirck drew his shoulders up, not wanting to hear the answer.
Barthelemeus nodded. “They did.”
“Did you see him?”
Barthelemeus shook his head. “I talked with his wife. They still allow her to bring him food each day. But it breaks her heart to see that he and Pieter van Keulen the goldsmith are forced to sleep on thin mats, along with a vicious murderer from Flanders and a host of unseen vermin that crawl through the straw.”
Dirck swallowed hard. “We knew it would come, Barthelemeus. Why, then, does it pierce me like an arrow shot from some unexpected ambush?”
“I know,” he said, still shaking his head. “It brings me much sorrow as well.”
Their eyes met across the table. Barthelemeus stirred uneasily, tapping his fingers on the table. He did not look up for a long moment.
“You have more news?” Dirck asked.
“They also imprisoned Tante Lysbet in the end of Spring Month.”
“Whatever for?”
“For possessing evil books.”
Dirck started. “What sort of evil books?”
“They claimed they found her little wooden treasure chest in the attic room of The Crane’s Nest filled with pamphlets about witchcraft.”
Not knowing whether to laugh or cry, Dirck stared at his friend, his mouth hanging open, his arms spread flat across the table. “You’ve been having nightmares.”
“Living nightmares,” Barthelemeus said, raising his eyebrows. “When the Spaniards moved into The Crane’s Nest, they said they found a pile of the evil books on the shelves as well. Then they spread word about the entire city that your vrouw was a witch who used your bookshop for a coven where she and Lysbet trained young women in the diabolical arts.”
Dirck sat stunned. “The magistrates of Breda believed that?”
“Humph!” Barthelemeus grunted. “The whole city is under the thumb of Alva and his oppressive representatives. Nobody dares to act by what they believe to be true. They must do as they are told or prepare for banishment.”
Dirck felt disbelief grow into a rage so foreign to his nature that it frightened him. “What will they do to Tante Lysbet? To Meester Laurens? To Van Keulen?”
Barthelemeus shrugged. “God only knows. But, Dirck, there’s still time for you to flee danger.”
“Me?” Dirck asked, pointing to his own chest. “I’ve already fled. They’ll not pursue me here.”
Barthelemeus leaned forward and looked Dirck squarely in the eye. “You know nothing of the long and cruel arm of Alva. He will find you. Believe me, he will.”
“But this is Emden,” Dirck protested.
“You said the same about Breda once. The road is well traveled between there and here. Please take heed to my words, friend. You must flee again!”
“Not now,” Dirck objected. “My daughter is to marry next week. Besides, where else could we go?”
“I take my family to Engeland. At the moment, Queen Elizabeth seems not disposed to root out and prosecute Lowland dissenters. She even entertains ambassadors from Prince Willem, who beg her for military assistance. Come with us along.”
Dirck sighed. “I must stay here, at least until this long-anticipated wedding has passed.” The firmness of his voice belied the trembling of his whole being inside.
Barthelemeus leaned back on his bench and folded his hands on the table before him. “Consider well what I have warned you, brother Dirck.”
“I thank you,” Dirck said, still trying to calm the quavering in his innards.
“Our ship does not leave for a day or two. I shall be back. Perhaps you will change your mind and join me yet.”