Pieter-Lucas climbed the last of the stairs that led from the Engelshofen’s family rooms up through the printery and on to his sleeping quarters in the attic of Abrams en Zonen. He set his lamp on the low windowsill and rubbed his hands together slowly, firmly, massaging down the excitement. “One more thing before I run off for a day,” he told himself.
From their hiding place behind the table, he pulled the wedding canvas and Opa’s tools. He spread the tools on the window ledge and propped the canvas close to the lamp, then seated himself on the three-legged stool and scrutinized his work.
“Almost finished!” He whistled. “Just a few more lines of shading and a title!”
The scene he had begun those many weeks ago was filled in now. Background, actions, and faces glowed with redolent colors and transported him into his dreams—his and Aletta’s.
Almost too eager to control his hands, Pieter-Lucas dipped into the paintpots with his knife and mixed them on his palette until he had produced several swatches of varying shades of bluish gray. Gently, as if handling a fragile piece of blue pottery, he took down the painting and laid it in his lap. “A line here and a dab there, a little shading under this cheek,” he mumbled, adding the finishing touches.
“Can it be ready?” Could it ever be ready—good enough—to give to his bride?
He propped his chin with its day’s-end stubble in his hands and leaned his elbows on his knees, staring hard at the painting. He could not move his eyes from the figure of Aletta standing by his side before the altar. The longer he stared, the more erratically his heart raced. How pleased she will be! Only six more days!
“Time for titling,” he announced to his world of title pages.
With a tender delight such as he’d never before given to creating a title page, he swirled his brush in the dab of shading paint he’d just mixed. Then he scrolled a line of gorgeous letters across the top of the canvas:
THE MASTER PAINTER AND HIS HEALER LADY
“One thing more it needs,” he decided. In a frenzy, he mixed paints again until a pearly white color emerged. Carefully, so as not to smudge the fresh lines with his hand, he created a simple dove, wings outspread, hovering over the heads of bride and groom. He smiled, tilted his head to one side, and said aloud, “A dove is for anointing!”
He set the masterpiece up to dry, then stowed away his tools and paints. Thoughts of the less-than-pleasant duty awaiting him at sunrise knocked at the door of his consciousness. “Go away!” he ordered them. “Tomorrow waits until tomorrow. Tonight I am Aletta’s anointed Master Artist.”
Like a man engulfed in a golden fantasy, he wrapped up in his blankets, lay on his sleeping mat, and drifted off into an expectant bridegroom’s dreams.
****
Daylight had scarcely brushed the line of rooftops when Pieter-Lucas rose from his sleeping mat. Over the shirt that served him night and day, he pulled on the tight-fitting hosiery-breeches and short doublet of a Frisian country peasant, then draped them with a long dark cape to shield against the wind that blew with a perpetual chill. A furry cap and platform clogs completed his costume. He grabbed Dirk’s bag of books and his own knapsack, into which he’d stuffed the street clothes he pulled off last night, and headed for the stairs.
He lingered by the titling table long enough to survey the painting and, for one choice parting moment, give his heart to the excitement it spawned.
“No one must find this treasure,” he mused, slipping it down behind his worktable, taking care that the damp surface did not touch the wall.
At the bottom of the two flights of stairs just inside the back door, he packed Dirk’s bag of books into the generous-sized market basket that completed his farmer disguise. Then he stepped out into the moist morning air and gathered enough straw to protect the books and enough cabbages, carrots, and onions from Moeder Gretta’s garden to fill up the basket and hide the intent of his trip.
He’d not yet reached the street when his lame leg began to hurt. Only rarely did it cause him real pain, and then it came without warning or reason. Why this morning, of all mornings? “God, did you not remember I have to be home before sunset?” he sputtered under his breath as he limped toward the harbor.
At the edge of Den Dullart, he joined a group of local farmers boarding the boat that took them every Saturday across the waterway to sell their produce in the markets of a handful of Frisian villages. Once at the market, he would seek out the stall of a man whose name he did not know, but who both bought and sold garden vegetables. He would exchange his basket with all its contents for an empty one and whatever messages the man might wish to send with him. The man, in turn, had his own ways of distributing the books to the Children of God scattered over all of Friesland.
The sun was nearing its zenith in the sky before Pieter-Lucas lugged his heavy basket through the single street of the village of Siddeburen.
“Should have been here long before this hour,” he groused. “Good thing I don’t have to go farther today.”
He stood in the market square beneath the shadow of the church clock tower and surveyed the little clusters of tables, stools, and stalls. Nearby a woman sat on a stool cooking pancakes over an open fire. Everything in his bone-weary body yearned to sample her offering, to sit and rub his leg in the near warmth of the midday.
“Nay,” he chided himself. “Work first, then eat and rest and head straight home.”
Reluctantly he moved off, the aroma of the freshly baking pancakes following him. He passed a potter, the knife sharpener with his giant whetstone wheel, the butcher, the fishmonger, the baker. And today he even saw a lace maker. A dentist had a victim ensconced in his chair, and next to him a noisy merchant boasted of the miraculous cures in the tiny bottles of bloodred liquid he held up for inspection. He found only one produce farmer, but he was not the one with Anabaptist connections.
He limped on by, aware that the man stared at his load of vegetables. When he’d gone the circle around and was again approaching the pancake lady, he knew the man he sought was not here.
What now? Once or twice before this had happened. He’d had to run all the way to the farm in Winschoten or to the weaver’s shop on the outskirts of Appingedam. But both points lay several hours’ journey from here. In neither case could he possibly make it home by sunset, even if his leg were not troubling him.
Beckoned again by the smells of baking pancakes, he stopped before the enticing wares. “A hungry man has but straw for a brain,” he told himself. “Eat first, then I’ll have a mind to decide what to do.”
He rummaged in the drawstring pouch hanging on his belt and produced a coin. He held it out to the squarish woman with leathery skin and dingy white headdress.
“An extra stuiver for a dollop of bee’s honey.” She did not look in his face but scraped the cake from the pan as she spoke.
“If you please.” He reached back into his bag and offered her a second coin.
As he sat on the edge of the market square munching the pancake and a carrot from his bag, the answers began to come clear to his weary mind. He must go to the house of the weaver in Appingedam. It was a trifle closer than Winschoten. True, he could not go there as a farmer. He would have to stop at his hideout along the way and replace his disguise with his own clothes, and that would take precious daylight time.
“Great God,” he sighed. “I’m too weary to go on.” He stood to his feet, swaying slightly. Pain shot through his leg. Had Aletta known this was going to happen last night when she urged him not to go away? If only she were here—or he there—his dear healer lady’s smelly poultices, tender touch, and warm smile would put this leg back in order.
“No time to waste wishing for what cannot be,” he cajoled himself. “Willem’s pamphlets must go through, no matter how far the journey or how painful.”
He hoisted the flexible-sided basket with difficulty to his shoulder, slung it over his back, and held it by the handles. Hobbling out of the market square, he left the town by a different way than he had entered.
The road ran from Winschoten in the south to Appingedam in the north. Known as the Would-Weg (Wood Way), it ran mostly through a wide soggy peat bog where Frieslanders dug fuel to heat their homes. A scrubby forest grew over the bog. Here and there the afternoon sun sent a shaft of brightness through the openings in the deep layer of brushwood and trailing willows, creating an illusion of spirit presences darting about.
Pieter-Lucas knew that one misstep could plunge him into an irrecoverable disaster. All through the afternoon, he struggled to keep to the pathway, at times, simply to keep moving. About halfway to Appingedam, he turned down a little side lane, largely obscured by the low thicketlike woods on both sides. The way through the morass here was narrower than the main road, but he had not far to go.
With eyes keenly focused in the dimming light of the dense woods, he spotted the shelter he often used on longer courier trips for changing disguises or for resting through the night. On the back side of a hillock of solid ground stood the dilapidated remains of a house sagging into the side of the hill. Originally built of blocks of peat on a frame of fir tree trunks, all that remained was one trunk and a small section of peat walls and roof that ended in a pile of moss-grown peat.
With painful effort Pieter-Lucas stooped to enter the low doorway. A large ring of toadstools greeted him in the damp musty air, and tiny pricks of light came through from holes in the boggy thatch.
“At least it’s not raining,” he mused, seating himself awkwardly on a log stool he’d once set up with a block of wood for a table. On his breeches, he scraped the mud off a carrot, tore the skin off an onion with his fingers, then took a bite of each. Cool, sweet, pungent, they teased his mouth deliciously.
“Had no idea I was so hungry again!” He chuckled at the thought.
“And sleepy,” he added when he’d finished his meal. But had he time to sleep and still reach Appingedam before nightfall so he could arrive home by sunrise tomorrow?
“Just a short hare’s nap,” he promised himself. “Won’t take much, and perhaps my leg will complain less if I let it rest.”
He dumped his load of vegetables onto the makeshift table, then flattened out the large soft basket on the floor with its thick carpet of moss. He lay down, propped his feet on the log, and spreading the cape over his body, he drifted into a deep slumber.
The next thing he knew, he opened his eyes and felt the rough surface of the basket beneath his back. The darkness of the room was no longer pierced by pricks of light from outside.
“It’s night!” he said, clambering to his feet and poking his head out through the doorway. A soft mist filled the night air, but through the trees he saw a faint glow as the moon tried to break through. A chorus of swamp frogs croaked in rhythm. Overhead an owl screeched.
“Not only did I not make it home by nightfall,” he moaned. “I didn’t even reach Appingedam!” A vision of Aletta sitting by the window watching for him pricked his conscience. “And all because of a farmer that didn’t go to market and a wretched leg!”
Shivering in the damp cold, he yanked at the farmer’s hosiery-breeches and doublet and scolded himself. “You’ve wasted enough time, jongen. Now, make haste!”
He had barely started to pull on his breeches when he heard a sharp cry arising from the pathway about at the point where he’d left it to climb the hillock to his shelter.
“Ouch!” The voice echoed through the woods.
“What is it?” A second followed.
“A farmer’s cabbage!”
Pieter-Lucas suppressed an enormous guffaw and pushed the hair back from his ears. He strained his eyes, hoping to see something on the pathway below. The voices continued.
“Impossible!”
“It’s a miracle!”
“A miracle?”
“Ja! Cabbage for starving soldiers—in a swamp?”
“I told you we should’ve deserted Ludwig long ago,” one said.
“Ha! Like I said, never should’ve joined him in the first place,” snarled the other.
“Confounded rich noblemen!”
“Living like kings, driving us like slaves!”
“Starving us half to death!”
Deserters from Ludwig’s army! Insolent traitors! Pieter-Lucas’ heart drummed its anxious rhythms. He should go grab his cabbage away and tell these grumbling dissenters how Willem and his brothers had sold and pawned their family’s treasures in order to raise funds. And for what? To feed and pay the likes of these scoundrels!
“If we can ever get out of this accursed swamp and find Aremberg, we might have a chance to be real soldiers,” one voice was saying.
“With gold in our bags,” the other finished. “At least Alva’s captains pay their troops!”
On impulse, Pieter-Lucas turned back into the room and grabbed as many of the onions and cabbages as he could carry. Outside the door, he threw an onion directly toward the spot from whence the voices came. It landed with a solid thud followed by two loud cries.
“What was that?”
Quickly he threw another, which hit one of the men, invoking a shriek of pain. Next he heaved a cabbage, then another onion and one more cabbage. Suddenly all the creatures of the night fell silent except for a lone owl that began to shriek. One mournful call followed another, until the whole bog echoed with its eerie voice.
“Demons!” screamed one of the men.
“Let’s get out of here!”
Pieter-Lucas struggled to keep from laughing outright. He heard a scrambling of feet and the voices moving deeper into the bog. Next he heard a gigantic crackling sound, followed by groans and a muffled splash. A soldier had fallen into the bog.
“Help! Pull me out!” The cries filled the swamp with a muted soggy echo in competition with the owl.
“I come!” shouted his companion. Then came another crashing splash and still more cries, and Pieter-Lucas could restrain himself no longer. He covered his mouth with his cape and laughed.
“That should keep them busy for a while,” he told himself. “By the time they extricate themselves from that mess, this onion-throwing demon will be far from here, and the wretches will never come back. He continued chuckling as he pulled on his waist-length doublet and old felt hat. Quickly he packed Dirck’s pamphlets into the knapsack, along with a few carrots and onions for munching down hunger growls. Then stuffing his farmer’s disguise into the basket, he hid it away in the darkest corner of the shelter and started down the little hill, feeling his way along the trail. His eyes adjusted to the dim rays of light shed by the watery moon till he could faintly see the trees.
The rest had been good for his leg. He was able to move with a minimum of hobbling. In no time he reached the main road and was on his way once more to Appingedam. He’d gone only a few steps on the road when he noticed that the loud chorus of swamp noises was giving way to something very unlike a swamp. A steady swishing-thudding sound like the tromping of a million feet and horses’ hooves was coming down the road to greet him. Through the trees he saw an occasional flicker of light.
“An army,” he whispered. “God, make it Ludwig van Nassau, not Aremberg.”
He took refuge behind a grove of tall willow trees and set himself to observe the procession.
At the head of the line marched several foot soldiers carrying lighted torches. Their faces, long and sober, looked ghastly in the lurid light they carried. Their uniforms could be either Spanish or Lowland. One looked like another to Pieter-Lucas in the dark. Directly behind the first troop came two men mounted on horses, looking neither to the right nor to the left, speaking not a word. Pieter-Lucas peered cautiously at their faces. He had to know whether these captains were friends or foes.
In the unsteady light of the torches, he recognized the sharp-featured face and pointed beard of Ludwig that protruded beneath the heavy metal battle helmet. And the man by his side? He, too, looked like a Nassau—Adolph, perhaps, from the royal court of Denmark. Adolph was the one brother Pieter-Lucas had never met, but he’d seen his portrait hanging in Dillenburg’s great hall. He felt relief drain strength from his legs and shoulders and leaned into the mossy tree trunks to wait out the passage of the troops.
Apart from the incessant massive footfalls and the subdued cloppings of horses’ hooves on the soggy roadway, the slow but steady advance was accompanied by a mist-shrouded silence. It sent shivers down Pieter-Lucas’ spine. Good thing Hendrick van den Garde couldn’t see him crouching now behind these trees.
“Go back to your paintbrushes!” Pieter-Lucas could hear Hendrick’s raspy voice and feel its venomous sharpness as clearly as if he were really speaking.
But Hendrick was not out here. Or was he? After all, he was one of the militant Beggars that made up a large part of Ludwig’s patriot army. For all Pieter-Lucas knew, Hendrick might be marching past him at this very instant. He found himself staring into every face illuminated by a lighted torch, searching for that strange and violent man, hoping never to see him yet unable to stop looking.
For what felt like hours, the troops filed on and on. Foot soldiers, musketeers, pikemen, cavalry—the parade grew endless. When the last mounted soldier had passed, Pieter-Lucas ventured out onto the road. The air, laden with smells left behind by the large cavalry, seemed swarming with strange spirits as well. Here and there through the trees that lined the causeway, he saw a glimpse of sky, already lightening. Daylight would make the way easier to see—and a lone merchant lad easier to spot.
A growing swell of disabling fears tumbling through his brain fed his footsteps with new energy. Oh, to be through with this whole business and to arrive safely back home with his Aletta! Never again would he leave her side. Why, oh why, had Willem chosen him for this mission?
He trudged on, apprehension accompanying each step. His eyes looked about, searching for stray soldiers. If he met some, how could he persuade them that he was no Alva sympathizer nor a spy? These were, after all, days when no one believed the words or explanations of anyone he met along the road.
And if any soldier—Spaniard or Lowlander—should discover he was headed for an Anabaptist weaver’s cottage, even God himself could not help him! If he could believe all the things Dirck had told him, then it might be true that Willem would allow him the right to live like a Child of God in a land of exile.
But Ludwig’s soldiers? That was another color of a horse. Many of these men were Beggars—wild Calvinist rebels who boasted about fighting for freedom to worship God as they pleased. That’s all it was—freedom only for themselves and their ways. They had no more patience with a Child of God who wanted the same freedom than with a Papist set on taking their freedom from them.
By the time Pieter-Lucas could see ahead to the break in the woods, a diffused light invaded the blanket of fog creeping into the edges of the woods. In the ghostly stillness shrouding the predawn world, a sudden chill crept over his body, and he wrapped his arms snugly in his cloak.
Long ago he used to beg his friend Yaap to tell him stories about his life as a messenger. It all sounded so exciting, so noble, chasing through dangerous places, knowing you were helping the prince’s just and righteous cause. But at the dawning of this new and dreadful day, the adventures and dangers of a messenger no longer held any excitement for him, only a tormenting disgust and dread. Perhaps Hendrick was right, and he was a coward after all.
His melancholy reverie was interrupted when he looked up and saw through the fog the figures of two men, one obviously fleeing from the other. At the edge of the wood, he could barely see the pursuer raise his arm and point it toward the other. Pieter-Lucas heard a loud crackling shot ring out and echo through the woods, the disastrous news spreading from tree to tree. The victim staggered on a few more paces, then crumpled into the roadside bramble bushes with a moan. Pieter-Lucas darted once more behind a clump of trees, where he stood motionless and tried not to breathe.
Stunned, he watched the pursuer hurry to the body and turn it over. He appeared to meet with no resistance as he rummaged through his victim’s garments. With increasing frenzy, the man ripped at the clothes. Finally he stood, kicked the body, and let out a storm of curses. Empty-handed, he turned and marched off into the fog, his boots tromping a loud battle cry down the pathway.
Pieter-Lucas clung to the tree. Appingedam lay just beyond him, almost within reach. Yet what if he should encounter the man with the firearm before he reached the town? He pictured it all too clearly. Once the soldier had shot him, he’d confiscate the contents of his knapsack. What better evidence could he ask to incriminate his victim than a stash of Willem’s campaign pamphlets?
He’d carry him and the books off to Alva’s captain. Together they’d make a bonfire of the books in some city square. Then with great glee they’d hang Pieter-Lucas’ body from a tree by the roadside, where all passersby could see and shudder and be warned never to give aid to the cause of Willem van Oranje. In fact, that may be what he was planning to return and do to the man he’d already killed and kicked into the bushes.
One thing was certain. Pieter-Lucas could not stay here.
Dangers or no dangers, Willem’s pamphlets had to go through, and he had to get back to Aletta. “Great God in the Heaven”—he found himself praying without uttering a sound—“how can I fulfill my mission to Willem and keep my word to Aletta?”
Only the soft oozing and plopping of thickening fog broke the silence. Pieter-Lucas stood motionless. Instead of any great wisdom, he sensed what he thought were the eyes of the Anabaptist God boring into his soul. No voice spoke audibly through the mist. Yet a clear train of accusing thoughts moved through his brain.
Good and pious Child of God, are you? Of course, when it’ll get you a vrouw! God isn’t fooled, especially when He watches you out carrying messages urging men to carry arms. Now that you are in grave trouble, what makes you think you can call on God and He will answer you—you charlatan?
He covered his ears and growled out into the swamp, “Nay! ’Tis not so. ’Tis not so!” Then softly he whimpered, “Great God of my opa, you know how hard I have struggled to believe all Hans has taught me, and how I did not want to come on this trip but did it anyway because I thought it was what you demanded.” As he stood shivering behind the willow, he sensed one more strong thought possessing him, this time bringing peace. Go forward, Pieter-Lucas, for the cause you pursue is mine. Just never forget that I once died to purchase your soul as well as your mind and will not rest content until you give it all to me.
So clearly did the message come that he began to think it was audible. He shook his head and cast darting glances in all directions.
“What does this mean?”
No answers came—neither through the jabs of his conscience nor through a nearly audible voice. Instead, there flowed over him one clear conviction. He had to take the road to Appingedam.
Through the fog he crept out into the causeway, his whole body shaking. When he reached the spot where the man had fallen, he heard moaning.
“Help! Help!”
Pieter-Lucas started, his feet literally springing from the ground. A trap! He should have known. He prepared to run back the way he’d come. Nay, there was still life in the body gunned down, and he could not leave that man in trouble. He must give aid to any human being in need.
How often he’d heard Hans say, “If you suffer for kindness offered, then in some special way you are walking in the steps of your Savior, and He will care for you in the end.” He never expected to find use for these words on this trip.
Was this God’s way of answering his desperate prayer? How it would ever help bring him back to Aletta, he couldn’t imagine. Yet he knew he had to do it, perhaps only to prove himself worthy to take a Child of God for a vrouw. It was their way, after all.
He stepped off the path, grateful that at least here the ground beneath the plants did not sink into the morass but felt solid. Just enough dawning light came to his aid through the fog so that he could see the man stretch a hand out toward him. He stooped down and took it in his own.
“Thank God, you’re here,” the man groaned.
That weak halting voice—he knew it! Pieter-Lucas drew closer and looked into the face splattered with blood and wincing with pain. Nay! He gasped.
“Yaap? Tell me it’s not you!”
The young man’s eyes opened wide, and he reached out. “Pieter-Lucas…friend.”
Pieter-Lucas swallowed down the tears that rose up in his throat. On their last ride together they had come to this north country, Yaap bearing a message from Willem, and he, Pieter-Lucas, in search of Aletta. They’d seen Count Ludwig in Leeuwarden, and he’d suggested they go to Emden to find the Healer Lady of Friesland. It was a long and complicated scheme for finding Aletta, which worked much easier than Pieter-Lucas had dared to dream.
“Last I saw of you, you had a broken leg,” Pieter-Lucas said. “I didn’t want to go on to Emden alone and you insisted. So I left you in the dubious care of some Beggars in Groningen. But, Yaap, this is worse than a broken leg. Here, let me hoist you to my back. Have to get you to Aletta. She’s a healer lady now. She’ll know what to do.”
“Nay,” Yaap protested, moving his head ever so slightly from side to side. “No time. Go to Ludwig…give him my cap…tell him I’ve seen Count Aremberg on the march.”
“But you need help, Yaap. I can’t leave you here…to…” He couldn’t finish.
“Messages have to get through…not the messengers.”
“Nay, Yaap!”
“Aremberg’s coming! Hurry!” the dying man whispered.
Yaap’s hand patted him on the arm, then slid away. With what little light the dawning day afforded, Pieter-Lucas could see the head roll to one side, the mouth gaping. “Yaap,” he pleaded, “Yaap, come back.”
The only answer that came was the call of a long-horned owl returning from its night of hunting.