Aletta could not sleep the night before Pieter-Lucas was to once again run a mission for William. Her nightlong vigil with apprehension came to an abrupt end when Pieter-Lucas stirred in the attic room above. She lay dead still, head propped up against the wall of her bed cupboard and listened.
“Ouch! His leg is bad!” The message shouted itself through her weary brain.
She knew it the instant he began his cumbersome descent down the long stairway. If only she could keep him here and be his nurse today!
“We’re not children anymore,” she reminded herself. “No longer do we talk about dangerous adventures with the safety of distance and imagination to protect us. We are full grown now, and danger is our everyday companion.”
The deep rhythmic thumping of her heart against the wall of her chest told her that what Pieter-Lucas would face today was no ordinary danger. Just what it was, she didn’t know, but the fear of it brooded over her, building like the clouds and winds of a slow-moving thunderstorm. Where, when, or how would the lightning strike?
She rose from bed at the regular hour and tried to go about her day as any other. But her body craved sleep, her mind clung to the single image of her beloved’s long blond curls and adoring blue eyes. In midmorning, when she and Oma set off to visit their round of patients, she went like a dumb sheep following its shepherd.
They had hardly begun when an out-of-the-ordinary duty overtook them. They turned a corner and discovered two uniformed soldiers under an oak tree. One lay on the ground moaning. The other hovered over him and looked up as they approached.
The hovering man stared at Oma’s apothecary cabinet and called out, “Vrouw, be you physicke?”
With an unusual air of caution, Oma eyed the two men before giving her answer.
“I dispense herbs,” she said.
“Then you will help us?”
“I can try. Only God makes well. What is it?”
“My friend here was injured in an altercation with a fellow soldier. Surly old viper, he’s always practicing his sword-wielding on the rest of us.”
Oma knelt beside them and Aletta followed. The victim had large cuts in one leg and one arm. His wounds oozed blood in the center, but around the edges, they had dried somewhat, sticking his clothes to the skin.
The man prattled on. “Can’t imagine why they ever let that madman join the army, and—”
“Bring me some water from the canal,” Oma interrupted, nodding toward the soldier. A bit startled at first, he obeyed, still grousing as he went. “Soldiers aren’t what they used to be….”
“Shall I mix the Paré salve?” Aletta offered, a feeling of wariness making her uncertain.
“If you please.”
She felt a faint dampness in her palms as she set to mixing the salve. A digestive of the yolk of an egg, oil of roses, and turpentine, the recipe was as amazing as it was simple. “Accidentally discovered by Paré, a French battle physicke,” Oma had told her. She never went anywhere without the ingredients, for it helped so many different wounds.
The talkative soldier returned with his helmet filled with water, and they ignored his incessant prattle. Oma poured water onto the dried spots on the soldier’s leg and arm, loosened up the clothes and lifted, then tore them away. Next, she spread on the salve, dressed the wounds with a clean rag, and gave the patient a few kind words when he cried out in pain. Her work completed, she said to the uninjured man, “Find him a bed in a warm place and give him a pot of hot broth. He should walk no more than necessary until the wounds begin to mend.”
Then directly to the patient, she added, “And may God be your healer.”
Aletta and Oma hurried on to their intended visits for the rest of the day. Both women remained uncharacteristically quiet. Oma never mentioned the strange morning encounter, and Aletta did not ask the questions that perplexed her. When in late afternoon they returned to Oma’s house and Aletta carried the apothecary chest to its place in the herbal pantry, she sensed a melancholy chill enshrouding the household.
At the door, Oma laid a hand on her shoulder. “Compassion is always God’s way,” she said, her voice tinged with pain, “though sometimes costly.”
“You’ve always taught me that no matter what we believe about nonviolence, we must never refuse aid to a suffering human being, whether he be a soldier or not. Is that not so?” Aletta asked.
The older woman cleared her throat. “’Tis very true. Yet dispensers of God’s compassion do not always enjoy the understanding of all His people.” She reached for the door as if to close it, and Aletta knew her time had come to move on.
A damp breeze wrapped itself around Aletta as she rushed home. She shoved Oma’s troublesome words out of mind by telling herself that Pieter-Lucas may be home. When she did not find him there, she felt no surprise, only a sad apprehensive ache.
He did not come in time for the evening meal. She ate little, said little, and had ears only for a knock on the door. Even when her brother, Robbin, tried to coax her with his words, “Smile, sissy, smile,” she all but ignored him. Methodically, she cleared the dishes from the table, leaving one plate with a cup and spoon in Pieter-Lucas’ place.
“Think you that he comes yet tonight?” Moeder Gretta asked.
“He promised,” she answered.
“Remember,” Moeder said, busying herself with the washing of the dishes, “some promises lie beyond our power to keep.”
Aletta sighed. “How well I know, Moeder.” It was the knowing of this very thing that tormented her so deeply. Surely he had done all in his means to get home by nightfall. So what had prevented him? His leg? Or something worse? She fought to keep her imagination from suggesting answers.
Moeder Gretta extended an open palm, facing upward, before her. “Tomorrow lies in the palm of Almighty God,” she said, “along with today. He protects as well one day as the other.”
What if He had decided not to protect? An old vision from Aletta’s childhood crept into her mind. Back in the Great Church in Breda, an enormous eye was painted on the ceiling just above the place where the people sat for services. “The Eye of God,” her vader told her, “staring down at us.” He never said more, yet Aletta felt God must be watching for her to misbehave so He could punish her.
While she no longer felt the Eye glaring at her since her vader had helped her pray for God’s forgiveness, still there were moments—like right now—when she was tempted to wonder what she’d done to make God angry again. Or was it Pieter-Lucas who had erred this time?
Yet how? Together they had both submitted to everything Hans and his elders asked of them. No one would ever know how many times they’d resisted a temptation to defy the impossible waiting rules, to run away and find a priest to marry them.
“What more, God? What more?” Her heart ached with the desperate words.
Just then a knock came on the door. Not the three short taps Pieter-Lucas always used, but one gentle insistent rap. Yet perhaps just this once…Aletta stood fixed to the floor as Vader Dirck answered the summons. Robbin followed hard on his vader’s heels and stood by his side.
Vader pulled the door open. Standing in the framed darkness, Aletta saw Hans with her vader’s old friend Barthelemeus and a stranger with a long white beard.
“Nay, nay!” Aletta murmured, clasping her hands over her mouth and staring at the visitors. If only willing could make it so, they would be transformed into her blond, blue-eyed bridegroom in an eyeblink!
The stranger spoke in tones so low she had to strain to hear.
“Forgive us that we disturb your evening,” he said with the smoothness of a nobleman. “We must meet with you and your partner in the printshop immediately.”
Who was this strange intruder? Did he have a secret word about Pieter-Lucas? Was it so bad that she, Aletta, could not be told? Her vader was a wise man and she should be able to trust him. But as she watched him step into the night, she trembled.
Robbin tugged at her hand, pulling her down to his level. He put his mouth close to her ear and said, “That stranger who just came to our door, you know, the man with the long white beard?”
“What about him?” Aletta asked.
He lowered his voice to a whisper, and his lower lip trembled. “He came to the printshop with a bag of books.”
“When?”
“Yesterday.” He pinched her cheeks with miniature fingers and pushed them around till she was looking him squarely in the eye, then spoke, emphasizing each word as if his life depended on it. “Oom Johannes chased him away and banged the door!”
“What sort of books did he carry?” Aletta asked.
He shrugged. “I don’t know, but Oom Johannes was really angry when Pieter-Lucas chased after the man!”
Aletta watched the boy’s eyes open wide and felt a bit of his alarm. As much to calm herself as to console the frightened child, she encircled him with her arms and said, “It’ll be all right, Robbin. With Vader to take care of us, you know we are always safe.”
For an eyeblink, the six-year-old snuggled into her embrace. Then he pushed back, smiled at her, and fingered the ends of the laces that held her bodice together. From the other side of the room, Moeder Gretta’s voice called, “Come, jongen, let’s get to bed.”
Aletta sent him padding across the floor to his moeder. Then she walked to the window and sat beside it, staring into the blackness of the night with its faint patches of fuzzy golden lamplight coming from windows up and down the street.
She remembered what it was like to be six years old and have no bigger weights to carry than the pain of a wounded knee or the nagging fear that she’d never learn to read well enough to sample those beautiful big books on Vader’s shelves. Vader always seemed to love to take her in his lap and teach her to read a few more lines.
She’d never forget how safe she felt in his lap. She was a woman now, and Vader couldn’t help her anymore with the things that made life difficult. Things like delivering babies and mixing Paré salve for strange wayside soldiers and wondering where her bridegroom was, whether he’d be home in time for their wedding next week…
She daubed at dampening eyes and listened to the ominous noises coming from the printshop above. Footfalls crossed the floor and the voices, subdued at first, grew quickly excited. At times she recognized Oom Johannes’ loud stormy shouts. What sort of urgency fed the flames between those men up there? With each succeeding outburst, Aletta found more dampness to daub.
As from some faraway place, Aletta heard Moeder Gretta calling, “Aletta, my child, sit no longer waiting. Your bridegroom comes not before another day.”
She looked up but found no words to answer. In the flickering light of the table lamp, she watched her moeder remove her headdress and loosen her hair from its plaited bun, letting it flow down in sparkling silver ripples around her narrow shoulders.
“If you would be awake when he comes, you must sleep while it is night. Come now.” Moeder’s voice went on as she continued removing the layers of her daytime clothes. When she had nothing left but her long underdress, which at night became a sleeping gown, she crossed to where Aletta did not move from her chair beside the window.
Aletta reached out, taking her moeder’s hand in her own, and said, “I wait until Vader comes back down.”
Gretta frowned. “You may wait a long time. For myself, I go to bed, and if you are wise, you will do the same. Good night and rest well.”
“Rest well, Moeder.”
Aletta watched the woman who had once given her birth. The whole idea carried far more meaning than it had even a week ago, before she’d helped Emilia through her nightmare of a birthing. How tiny Moeder looked, swallowed up by that billowing nightdress, defenseless against whatever storm was raging above them. How could she treat this like any other night? What did she know that Aletta had not been told? Was she privy to some plot being formed, both under Aletta’s nose and behind her back?
Moeder had scarcely climbed into bed when Aletta heard the footsteps from above descending the back stairs. Closer and closer they drew until the door at the rear of the room opened and Vader entered with the white-haired man close behind him. Each of them lugged a bulging bag, which they set down on the table.
Books? Aletta sat motionless in her dark spot beside the window, scarcely breathing. If this smooth-appearing stranger was indeed the one who had come to the printshop with the prince’s pamphlets as Robbin insisted, then no doubt he had sent Pieter-Lucas away on his urgent errand. If so, how genuine was that errand? After all, Pieter-Lucas had not returned when he promised. She stared hard at the man. He must eventually do something to betray his true character, and if only she could remain undetected long enough, she would catch him.
Without missing a move, Aletta watched both men. They crept to Vader’s cabinet, where they pulled out more books—among them, his big old Bible. He wrapped it in his cape, then stuffed it, too, into his bag. What danger awaited them so grave that he must part with this most precious of all his books? He had learned to read from that one. And where were they going to hide them? Aletta clasped her clammy hands around each other, twisting the fingers until they pained.
Now Vader and the visitor were removing clothes from their pegs on the walls and stuffing them into the bags of books, pulling pictures from the walls and laying them among the linens in Moeder’s linen chest. One by one, Aletta watched all the things that made this house their home disappear from their places and leave emptiness behind.
The stranger reached for a picture just beyond the window where Aletta sat and tripped over her feet. He drew back, hands raised, nearly falling backward in his haste.
“You,” she said, glaring at the man. “You thief. How is it that you fooled my vader into emptying all our belongings into bags so you can carry them away?”
Stunned surprise turned to amusement on the face before her. “Why, no one has ever accused me of being a thief before. Perhaps your vader can best explain.”
She moved quickly to where her vader stood over Moeder’s chest, a picture in hand, his mouth hanging open. Pointing at the stranger, Aletta demanded, “Who is this imposter, and how have you let him beguile you so?”
Vader laid down the picture and smiled. “I should have known you were awake here somewhere watching.” He paused, then went on, stopping at each word as if hesitant to go further. “This man is God’s voice of warning.”
“How can you believe the warning of a stranger, especially in Emden, where we all know we are in no danger?”
“He’s a close friend of Barthelemeus, who has also brought us troubling news from home this day. We must leave at once!”
“Moving again? Nay, Vader. At least not before morning,” she pleaded. Her legs tottered and her head swam lightly.
“We must do all possible under cover of darkness, child.”
“B-but where can we go that’s more safe than Emden?”
“We board a small boat….” He paused.
Aletta stared at him, not believing. “Board a boat?” The words felt so strange stumbling from her mouth that she couldn’t even be sure she recognized them.
Vader continued, his voice heavy with hesitant compassion. “Barthelemeus takes us to Engeland with him.”
“Engeland?”
“There is no other way.” He gestured toward her. “And it’s only for a time.”
She shook her head vigorously. “Vader, you know I cannot leave this place while Pieter-Lucas wanders about delivering pamphlets for this stranger you have invited into our house. And next week is our wedding day. How could you forget?”
Startled, he responded, “Forget? Never! In fact, I’ve spent the last hour begging for more time simply so that we might complete the wedding first.”
“What, then, could make it so urgent that we cannot wait one more day? I know he’ll be home tomorrow.”
Vader drew a deep breath and let it out slowly. “We must go now while there is yet time, for those who pursue us will not wait for a wedding or anything other.”
“Who would pursue us and why? Are we not with friends in this place?”
Vader laid a hand on her shoulder. “’Tis more complicated than you can know, my child.”
Reaching up, she grabbed the flaps of his doublet, looked straight into his eyes, and pleaded, “Vader, please be plain with me. I am no longer a child to be protected by ignorance. I am a woman about to be married!”
Vader Dirck smoothed the hair back from her face. He held it in both big hands, gazed deep into her soul, then cleared his throat. “I shall try. It appears that trouble follows us from Breda.”
“From Breda? After all this time? How?”
“Barthelemeus tells me that Alva’s men have spread rumors about me, claiming that they uncovered a pile of books about witchcraft in the shelves of The Crane’s Nest.”
“Witchcraft? You never owned such books!”
“I know. The rumors are untrue, of course, but the inquisitors are searching for us all the same, and our word will avail not at all when once we are apprehended and called before Alva and the inquisition of his Blood Council.”
Stunned, she leaned against her vader and let him hold her in his arms for a long quiet moment. Everything within her trembled, so she could hardly get out the words. “Vader,” she began, “can one more day make so much difference? Are Alva’s men outside Den Dullart awaiting morning’s light to spring upon you?”
He remained silent, stroking her hair with his warm firm hand. Just when he seemed ready to answer, the white-bearded man came closer and spoke at last. “Forgive me if I intrude. This young lady needs to know that I brought you the latest intelligence that makes your immediate flight necessary.”
Aletta looked at him sidewise and, still clinging to her vader, challenged, “We’ve never met you before tonight. How, then, could you know such things?”
A faint smile lifted the corners of his mouth, and his beard nodded slowly in the flickering lamplight. “I, too, am a hunted man. ’Twas one of my watchmen reported to me this night that a group of Alva’s inquisitors, in disguise of traveling merchants, lies dangerously close by. I, too, must flee.”
She hung her head and answered simply, “I see.”
Then, lifting her eyes to his face again, she said, “Still, I cannot leave without Pieter-Lucas. How would we find each other? Even if he came first and we all moved on together, how many more months must we study with yet another group of elders before we can be married? Oh, Vader, we have both waited so long and so patiently, and—”
“I know, child, I know. I have arranged it all,” he began, then cleared his throat before proceeding. “Not in the way I wanted to, but in the only way open to me.” He paused. In the lamplight, she saw tenderness and pain glistening in his eyes.
“How so, Vader?”
“You will stay here with Hans and Oma. Hans has instructions to complete the wedding immediately upon Pieter-Lucas’ return.”
She looked up at him and tried to smile. Never had she loved him more. But his words filled her with confusion and a sort of unsettling presentiment of disaster.
“How can I have a wedding without you, Vader, without Moeder and Robbin?” She fought to keep her voice even and her cheeks dry. “Wait with me, please.”
“If there were some other way, believe me, I should take it.” He gathered her into his arms, and she wept on his shoulder. Her sobs were dredged from a spot far deeper than she had any idea existed, and she felt his body tremble against hers.
With unspeakable anguish crushing her soul, she gathered up her own belongings and stuffed them in the bag she had twice before used for this purpose—when they fled from Breda, then later from Antwerp. All the while her heart cried out, Great God in the Heaven, keep us safe and bring us back under the same thatch once more, and watch over my Pieter-Lucas…. Please, God, please!
She heard no answers. But in her mind, she pictured the Eye of God again. All the anger was gone. It filled up to the brim with tears that spilled over onto her searing soul and eased her anguish.
****
Later that night Hans the Weaver stood at the window of his low-ceilinged house on ’tFalder harbor, strumming his fingers on the sill and watching the encroaching blackness of the night. This midnight darkness in the month of Flowers did strange things to him. Not gray and hovering for days as the long nights of winter. Rather, like the passing of a scudding thundercloud, it cast a heavy mantle over everything in its pathway, then lifted quickly. For reasons that he could never quite define, he always seemed eager to hang on to these short nights. But never more so than tonight.
“Great and merciful God,” he murmured, his nose lightly grazing the leaded windowpane, “let the darkness hold until Dirck Engelshofen has finished bringing his family to safety in the ship anchored out on Den Dullart.”
Hans ran his fingers through tangled hair and stroked his beard. From her apothecary pantry in the far corner of the room, he heard his moeder clear her throat. Turning from the window and walking across the room, he found her rummaging through bottles and boxes and sprays of herbs, packing them into her portable apothecary chest.
He put his arm across her shoulder and felt the bones through her layers of clothing. Dear, dedicated healer lady that she was, she never seemed to tire of these fragrant herbs and of the mixing of concoctions to alleviate the sufferings of others.
“Moeder,” he said, “you pack as if you planned a long journey.”
“You find that strange?” She spoke without looking up, continuing with her work. “Dirck Engelshofen’s enemies sent him into flight this night. What is to hinder your enemies from sending you on your way the next?”
“What enemies?”
“Must I tell you who your enemies are?”
“Jan and Leonard, the rabble-rousers?” These two men had joined the group last winter when the big Waterlander group of Anabaptists had an explosive meeting and banned them. “They are noisy and bothersome,” he admitted, “of the sort that get pushed around from group to group. I don’t think of them as enemies—just a bit arrogant.”
“Arrogance can be deadly, son, believe me.”
“But they’re still young. We mustn’t be too hasty in judging them. You taught me that yourself. Besides, at our last meeting the elders decided that if the men cause one more altercation, we will ban them.”
Oma Roza stopped her work at last and looked squarely at him, her hands forming a protective shell around a box of herbal seeds or powders. “Arrogant young men often do irreparable harm of the kind no ban on earth could ever cure. Have you forgotten the dreadful story of your own vader?”
“How could I forget it?”
Although it had happened before he was born, Hans knew the story only too well. Fiery ambition and unbridled arrogance had turned his vader, Jan van Leyden, into a mad, polygamous, self-proclaimed Messiah. Unfortunately, the men who set him up as King David in the city of Munster practiced believer’s baptism, as did the nonviolent Children of God groups. Calvinists, Lutherans, and Papists failed to recognize the differences between the groups, calling them all Anabaptists. They used the outrageous arrogant acts of those few demented men as an excuse to treat all who rejected infant baptism as mad and violent Munsterites.
“Sometimes, Moeder, I wonder if Vader had not been martyred for his rabid cause, what quietness might have possessed him in his later years.”
She shook her head and shuddered. “Nay, son, he was one of the men who grow never wiser with years—only wilder!”
Hans patted his moeder’s shoulder and spoke reassuringly. “Surely the men in our little flock here are not of that demented sort.”
“How can you be sure of that?” The authoritative air in her calm voice told him that she knew whereof she spoke.
“I’m just…well, they can’t be that bad,” he stuttered.
“You may turn a deaf ear to your moeder’s wisdom if you choose,” she said, returning to her work. “I only pray God will open your eyes before you—or we—have been mortally wounded by these influential young men.”
Far down deep in the place where he could make no excuses or retreats, Hans knew she spoke truth. “You are right, Moeder,” he said at last. “I shall prepare myself. Long ago, after my Lucia Elise died, I remember how you always said we should never let flight take us unexpectedly. I fear too many years of relative safety in this haven of refuge have made me complacent.”
He kissed her on the cheek, then moved out into the room. Where should he begin? Halfway to the old wooden chest where he kept his Bible and a few precious books and papers, he was stopped by a soft persistent knocking on the door. Moving slowly, he paused with hand on the latch and prayed, “Gracious God, be our strong tower and sure refuge.”
He opened the door and found Aletta there, clutching a large dark bag. Beside her stood the white-bearded stranger he’d met earlier this evening. A quiet dignified man with noble bearing and thoughtful manner, he, like all the rest in Emden, was a refugee. Also like the rest, no one dared to ask from what he fled. Dirck Engelshofen seemed confident he could be trusted. While Hans had no idea what the man’s theology was, neither could he bring himself to mistrust him.
“Come in quickly.” He gestured them through the door.
Oma moved to Aletta’s side and relieved her of her bag before leading her to a comfortable chair beside the tall ceramic stove next to the herbal pantry.
They had scarcely entered when Hans heard a scuffling of feet approaching from the street. He squinted through the dark frame of the doorway into the anxious face of a faithful member of his congregation.
“Aelbrecht,” Hans exclaimed, pulling him inside and bolting the door. “What brings you here?” The man had only one eye and no family and lived off the charity of various members of the flock. Nothing could ever hinder him from helping a brother in need, and Hans counted him amongst the truest of his friends.
“Ach! Brother Hans, they’re scheming to catch you.” He spun around in frantic little circles, scooping up the air with his hands as if he would gather all their belongings. “I told you they were up to no good,” he chattered on. “I knew it, but I didn’t know what I knew. It’s time to go, Hans, time to go—”
“Calm down,” Hans interrupted. “Who is scheming what and why and where?”
“No time to explain. Just move.”
Hans grabbed the man by the arm and subdued him into one spot. “We go nowhere until you have told us what we flee and why.”
The man winced, pulling to free himself from his pastor’s grip. Hans saw a wild and fearful pleading in the agonized face that looked up at him through his seeing eye.
“The troublemakers, Jan and Leonard, have spread lying rumors to all the flock, and they plan to accuse you and ban you before the congregation.”
Hans gasped. “When?”
“Tomorrow morning. There’s no time to dally!”
“What lies do they tell?” Hans asked.
“That your vader was the notorious Jan van Leyden, Messiah of Munster, and that Oma uses herbal magic to entrap and drug the flock so you can set yourself up as Messiah of Emden!” Perspiration stood in beads on Aelbrecht’s forehead.
Hans braced himself against the onslaught of the impossible words. How had news of his family made its way to this place? Never had he or Oma breathed a word of it to another living soul. Even his daughters knew it not—nor must they learn it from these men who intended him such harm.
“And how do they plan to remove me from the church? It is my home.” Hans spread his hands in a gesture of surprised confusion.
Aelbrecht’s shoulders trembled and he shook his head in long strong movements. “It’s too awful. Just get out of here tonight, before it’s too late.”
Hans laid a hand on the man’s arm, as much to steady himself as his friend. “Nothing could be more awful than what you have already divulged. I must know my danger before I decide whether to stand and fight it or flee.”
For a long while, the man appeared to be struggling for control of overpowering emotions. Then wincing, he said, “I still can’t believe it myself, Brother Hans, but they are going to turn you over to the city authorities.”
“City authorities?”
Dirck, the stranger, spoke up now. “What better way to remove you from your place? No city magistrate wants to let a son of Jan van Leyden run loose in his streets, especially if he has been told the man has messianic ambitions of his own.”
In the penetrating sober gaze of this outsider, Hans saw a look he feared to interpret. He heard the unspoken question, How much of the rumors are true? He must not admit to anything, either to the stranger or to his own friend Aelbrecht. He bore no guilt, nor did his moeder—only scars inflicted by the madman of Munster.
“For all these years, I’ve lived here as a law-abiding weaver, plying my trade, shepherding the flock God brought under my thatch,” he said. “If I had such mad intentions as they allege, why would I wait so long to attempt them? Have I ever given anyone reason to believe I was possessed of messianic delusions?”
Aelbrecht shook his head. “Never! Those men are jealous and arrogant over their favor with men in high places. Wolves in sheep’s clothing set on destroying this flock.”
Hans stared at the floor and felt his hands grow clammy. “How came you by this information, my friend?” he asked.
More composed now, Aelbrecht replied, “I’ve never trusted those men. From the beginning I knew they intended to send you to the stake. So I played friendly with them and waited for them to let the truth be known. Little by little I’ve been putting some of their strange conversations together, and then tonight I happened upon them when they didn’t know I was nearby. Their tongues were loosed with wine and they babbled all I needed to know.” He grabbed Hans by the arms and begged, “Believe my words and flee—now!”
“I believe your words,” Hans replied, “but how can I flee and make it look to the whole world as if I’m guilty of all they say? The least I can do is to stand and defend myself. God’s true sheep will know the voice of truth when they hear it, and they will not follow these impostors.”
The white-bearded stranger spoke again. “If I may be so bold, I who have had much experience with both your rabble-rouser traitor sort and with city magistrates, I beg of you, Hans, listen to the warnings of this brother. Think not that you can do better by your courage. If the magistrates have already been warned, there is nothing you could possibly say or do to waylay their understandable fears.”
“I fear not imprisonment for myself,” Hans said. “But what of my flock? Who will tell them the truth?”
“Have you no elders who will plead your cause before the rest?” Dirck asked.
“I should hope they would all stand with me.”
“They will, Brother Hans, and you know I shall always stand, though they strap me to the stake with you,” Aelbrecht boasted.
“Then the answer is quite simple,” the stranger said, taking charge of the situation.
“How?”
“You must flee from here now. Your elders will plead your cause before the rest. If they are wise and credible men, they will soon settle the difficulty, ban the troublemakers, and open the way for you to return.”
“But where shall we flee?” Hans wanted to believe it could work so easily.
“I myself am a man in flight,” the stranger told them. “I go before daybreak and you may go with me.”
“Where?” Hans asked.
“A couple of my longtime friends, themselves refugees from many years back, have a farm out in the remote peat bog country just east of the Em River. Their house is dedicated to the harboring of refugees.”
Hans eyed the man thoughtfully. If only he knew more about him. “That is more than kind of you, friend,” he began slowly, unsure which word to put before another. “Are these people allied with the Children of God?”
Dirck cleared his throat. “They are indeed children of the living God. Are we not all? In a way that seems strange to both sectarians and Papists, they ask not for a declaration of a man’s theology before they lend him aid. Which sort of bigotry he flees matters not. Their doors stand open.” He said no more, just stared at Hans with eyes that would not let him go and waited.
Except for an occasional shuffle of feet, the whole room had fallen silent. Hans surveyed it all around. Oma’s apothecary closet and the hearth where she created her healing brews, his weaving loom and piles of wool in the corner, the door that led into his hidden church—how could he leave it behind? He looked into each of the faces ringing him in the golden-hued lamplight. Aelbrecht, who incarnated pathos and a plea for protection; the stranger with his indisputable wisdom and offer of escape; Aletta, who’d been entrusted to his care; his moeder with her apothecary bags packed for flight; his own young daughters sleeping in the attic room above; they all looked to him, the king of this miniature besieged castle. He must decide for them all!
The expectant hush unnerved him. How could he run now? Coward! He could hear his flock shrieking at him and see the name engraved on his tombstone, if indeed anyone would consider his burial place worthy of a marker at all.
And if he stayed and fought it out—and lost? What, then, would happen to his moeder and her herbal ministrations? To his daughters, left orphans when he was carted off to prison? To Aletta, whom he was committed to deliver safely into the arms of her betrothed?
Why must this be so difficult?
For a long and heavy moment, no one moved. Hans’ heart seemed to stop beating its rhythm in his chest. Then he heard the faintest sound of weeping and looked up to see Aletta leaning her head on Oma Roza’s shoulder. His moeder held the young woman securely in the circle of her arm and murmured soft words to her.
“Moeder,” Hans said at last, “you who have weathered far more storms of threat and flight than I can dream, tell me what course of action your wisdom declares.”
The woman looked up at him, her eyes glinting in the lamplight, her hand stroking the head of her trembling assistant. “Son, the wisdom God has bestowed on this old woman says that we must all depart now! You serve not your flock well by allowing the wolves to ravage their leader, nor would I see my granddaughters thrown into their den.”
“But, Moeder, what of the words of Jesus that say, ‘the good shepherd puts his life at stake for his sheep’?”
“He also says that if they ‘shall strike the shepherd, then the sheep of the flock shall be scattered.’ I have prepared for this flight, as you have already observed, and I have no doubt the time has come.”
Aletta lifted her head from Oma’s shoulder and looked imploringly up at Hans. “Leave me not here alone,” she cried out.
“If we go, you go along,” Hans tried to reassure her.
“I cannot leave without Pieter-Lucas!”
“But…” Hans began.
“I will not be parted from him again, Hans, until you have joined us in marriage. My vader promised.”
Hopelessly, Hans ran trembling fingers through his hair. He had indeed promised her vader not only to protect her but to marry her as well. Yet if they all stayed here, he could be arrested by morning and imprisoned, with no more chances to save himself or anyone—certainly not to perform a wedding.
“When will he return?” Hans’ question felt lame even to his own ears.
Between sobs, Aletta replied, “Surely by morning. He said he had not far to go. He expected to be here by nightfall of this day. I know his leg was in pain when he left. But I must be here when he returns—for he will come.”
“I am the one who sent the young man on his errand,” the stranger said calmly. “I shall take full responsibility to reunite the two of you.”
Hans watched the frightened young woman still cradled in his moeder’s arms. Staring at the stranger, she challenged him, “Do you know where my Pieter-Lucas is?”
“I’ve no way of knowing that for certain,” he replied.
“Then what can you possibly do to bring him to me?”
“I know the boatman who must return him to these shores,” he said with authority in his voice. “I shall arrange with him to deliver your young man to you.”
Hans watched fright melt gently into rest in Aletta’s face. Then quickly, lest he lose his nerve, he breathed deeply and announced, “We go.”
“Great God,” he prayed as he removed his books from the chest and cast a longing, uncertain glance at the loom in the corner, “protect us—shepherd and flock and all—that your enemies may know that you are the one and only true God with might and majesty and great compassion.”