Pieter-Lucas stood still for a long while in the growing light of dawn, the fog dripping around his ears. He stared down at Yaap’s body, and his fingers fumbled with the black felt cap his friend had given him. A ray of sunlight lay across the quiet bloodied face. “I am so sorry, Yaap,” he mumbled. “So sorry!”
A sound of crackling twigs nearby brought him suddenly out of his reverie.
“Think, jongen,” he scolded himself. “You cannot leave him here. Remember what designs the Spanish soldier will have when he returns.”
Hastily he dragged the body back away from the road, deeper into the wood, and gave him a burial of sorts in the boggy mud. He covered it all with willow branches and undergrowth. When he tucked the cap under his arm and walked away, he felt slimy inside. How could he abandon his friend?
In his mind he heard the final raspy whispered warning once more. “Aremberg’s coming! Hurry!”
“All right,” he retorted, “I go! I go!”
He cast a hesitant glance down the way he’d just been walking. Appingedam and the pamphlets would have to wait! Turning left instead of right, he hurried back over the causeway that traversed so many leagues of crinkled peat fields and glowering willow forests. He trod the way alone in the early morning solitude and fought an overpowering wave of sadness all the way.
“Ach! Yaap,” he moaned, “you were my friend, more than I ever knew! Until I saw your still face with the gaping mouth and staring eyes, I only thought of you as a talkative traveling companion—and Willem’s trusted messenger. Ach! If only you’d come back. We need you, Yaap. What will happen now to the revolt? How can Ludwig do without you? And what of our vaderland—and Opa’s promises—of Leyden and Aletta’s Master Painter, and…”
When he reached the pathway that led off the main road to his secret shelter where he’d left his farmer’s disguise, he stopped. “I’m dressed to visit a merchant—in my own street clothes,” he said. “Once I’ve delivered my message to Ludwig, I must go on to the farmer’s house in Winschoten. I’ll need the farmer’s disguise. No time to go for it now!”
His mind grappled with the dilemma and his hands reached down to smooth out his clothes. In horror, he discovered what the grayness of predawn had hidden from view. His hands and clothes were splotched with blood!
“I must take the time!”
Without another thought, he turned into the pathway and rushed to the shelter. Here he wiped his hands on the damp leaves and piles of moss-grown peat and changed into the farmer’s costume. His bloody clothes he rolled into a ball and stuffed securely into a corner of the room. He packed his knapsack into the produce basket, covered it all with what was left of the cabbages and carrots, and hurried on his way.
About midday, not long after passing the road that would have led him directly to Emden, he began hearing voices in the wood alongside the road. Just ahead, off to the left, a wooded eminence of ground held a cluster of white buildings. Pieter-Lucas had never been inside, but he had espied it through the trees a time or two. Known as Heiligerlee—Holy Lion—it housed a cloister of monks.
Why all the voices? As he drew closer, he saw through the sparse willow wood the prince’s orange-white-and-blue flags fluttering in the breeze.
Ludwig’s troops? He gasped. In this idyllic spot? He turned down the little lane that led to the cloister and moved around to the back entrance, where a lush green vegetable garden spread out before him, and beyond, cattle grazed. Suddenly thankful for his farmer’s disguise, he maneuvered around the little knots of horses, weapons, and soldiers and slipped in through the kitchen unchallenged. He followed the sound of voices and the inviting aromas of meat soup and sour bread into the great dining hall. Here he found Ludwig, Adolph, and their officers eating and drinking and telling loud stories.
Behind them, a noon sun streamed through the single long narrow window located up beneath the roughhewn rafters supported by plain white plastered walls. Pieter-Lucas felt small and obscure as he approached the great military men and touched Ludwig lightly on the arm.
“Your Excellency, Count Ludwig,” he said and watched the man turn his pointed chin and snappy dark eyes in his direction. Without waiting for an invitation, Pieter-Lucas hurried on. “Your messenger, Yaap, sends news that Count Aremberg follows in your train—two hours, maybe three, behind you.”
Count Ludwig’s face sprang to life and he thundered, “Aremberg? Two hours behind us?”
The room turned into a buzzing hive of words and questions. Sitting beside Ludwig, Count Adolph looked at Pieter-Lucas with a skeptical frown. “Why did Yaap not come himself?”
“He lies buried in a bog on the edge of the wood, within a long bowshot of Appingedam,” Pieter-Lucas said, each word an exercise in defying pain.
“What?” Ludwig roared.
“I watched a Spanish soldier gun him down. Just before he died, he gave me the message. They were his last words. I buried him with my own hands beneath the swamp willows.” He felt an unbidden lump rise in his throat, almost too large to be swallowed.
“How knew you he was Yaap?” Ludwig demanded.
Pieter-Lucas pulled the bloody cap from his bag and handed it to him. “Here,” he offered. “He sent this to you.”
Ludwig took the cap and turned it over slowly in his hands. “Ach! Gracious and merciful God, let it not be so,” he mumbled, shaking his head in disbelief.
“He was my friend,” Pieter-Lucas stammered, feeling his voice go limp.
Ludwig stared at him sharply. “How?”
“I tended his horse at the kasteel stables in Breda and went with him to Dillenburg.”
“I knew you, too, then?”
Pieter-Lucas felt the count’s eyes probing him. “We last met when Yaap and I delivered a message to you in Groningen. I was in search of a healer lady, and you sent me to Emden.”
“Ah! Young Van den Garde!” Ludwig lay a hand on his arm. “Wait here while I put my troops in readiness. Then I have orders for you as well.”
“But,” Pieter-Lucas began to protest. Already two missions lay before him—the pamphlets and Aletta. Neither of them could wait for yet another.
Count Ludwig raised his right hand. “Just wait,” he said. The firmness in his voice made further protest impossible.
Pieter-Lucas backed away and leaned against the doorframe. One more day was passing! What sort of supernatural force was tugging at all the threads of his life, trying to unravel him and his Aletta? He sighed and folded his arms across his chest, tapping a foot nervously.
Already Count Ludwig’s voice bounced off the thick walls. “Time to array ourselves for battle.”
From the group, one soldier spoke up with agitated manner. “This is hardly a place to fight a battle.”
“Nay, but it is,” Ludwig retorted and motioned with a wide sweep of his arm.
“The monks who live here are peaceful men,” another soldier interrupted.
“Without our swords we scarcely could have persuaded them even to feed us a meal. How think you that they will allow us to invade their serenity with a battle?” shouted yet another.
“All popish monks, they are.” Again from the first dissenter.
Ludwig raised a hand high and stamped his foot. “Silence! Aremberg lies not more than two or three hours behind us, with who knows how many Spanish troops. We’ve only time to put ourselves in order. No spot could be more favorable to our cause. The firm high ground is ours to hold, leaving our enemies to flounder in the bogs, in which no Spaniard is equipped to fight. Now, here is my plan….”
For the next few minutes, Ludwig gave each commander his instructions. Some were to line up along the roadway where Aremberg would pass and engage his men in battle. Others would remain hidden behind one of the hills. None were to leave the high ground that cordoned off the bogs, and they were to accomplish a victory by forcing the landlubber Spaniards into the unfamiliar boggy terrain, where they would be entrapped by the sticky muck and drawn to their suffocating deaths.
Pieter-Lucas listened aghast at the impetuous enthusiasm of Ludwig and watched the men yield quickly to the influence of his fiery manner. In the pit of his belly, he felt pummeled by the awfulness of men planning to destroy other men and rejoicing at the prospects of a victory where blood would run in rivers at their feet.
“I’m more of a Child of God at heart than I realized,” he mumbled to himself.
When the last of Ludwig’s commanders had filed out the door, the nobleman turned to Pieter-Lucas. “When I sent you to Emden in search of the Healer Lady of East Friesland, did you find her?” he asked.
“I did.”
“Know you how to find her once more?”
Pieter-Lucas swallowed hard. “Ja, Your Excellency, that I can do.”
“Then for the cause of Willem and the Low Lands, go and bring her to us here. I can ill afford to lose my wounded men.”
Pieter-Lucas looked at him long and hard. “I cannot promise that she will be persuaded,” he said lamely. “She belongs to a sect that refuses to bear arms.”
“Do your best, but do return—with or without her.”
Ludwig moved to go through the doorway. Pieter-Lucas stopped him. “Your Excellency.”
“Ja? Can it not wait?”
“Nay! I only encountered Yaap in the course of a mission for Prince Willem, which I interrupted to bring you the message.”
“What mission?”
“Two days ago, a white-haired gentleman, a friend of Count Brederode—he calls himself Dirck—entered our bookshop in Emden with a parcel of your brother’s pamphlets.”
“So Willem’s got Dirck Coornhert passing out his Justification?”
Pieter-Lucas nodded. “He sent me to deliver them to…certain contacts of the printery where I draw title pages and cartoons.” He took care not to reveal his Anabaptist connections to this Lutheran commander of the Calvinist troops.
Ludwig shook his head. “My brother and his bloodless campaigns! While he’s still passing out pamphlets, Alva will swoop down and cut us all to pieces.”
With arms extended, he chopped at the air. “Get the Healer Lady now! The deliveries can wait.”
“I go then,” Pieter-Lucas said. At least it would bring him to Aletta sooner.
“And, jongen,” Ludwig said, pulling the blood-stained cap from his pocket and handing it to Pieter-Lucas, “it’s yours—and his job, as well, as soon as you return with the Healer Lady.”
“But I’m not a messenger!” Pieter-Lucas gulped and felt his eyes widen.
“You are now!” Ludwig frowned at him. Without waiting for an answer, he was gone through the door.
Pieter-Lucas left by the way he had come in, through the back door and around the old buildings. Where before soldiers, horses, and weapons had been scattered in chaotic state about the grounds, now groups were forming, some marching into place, others hiding, all seeking dry ground, solid footings, strategic positions. Muskets rode in silence on the shoulders of their sharpshooters; horses pranced and paraded; brightly colored flags and banners waved across the pasture and over the gently rolling hills that surrounded the monastery.
It looked like a grand festival spread out over the countryside. From the corner of the cloister, Pieter-Lucas took one last look at the scene. Just beyond him moved a pair of banners carried by mounted cavalrymen. “Now or Never,” read a blue one. “Win or Die,” said the other on a brilliant orange sash.
“This is no festival,” he said to himself. “If Prince Willem’s House of Oranje doesn’t win this battle or those that follow, the revolt will die—and I will never get to Leyden….”
Pieter-Lucas tossed his knapsack over his shoulder and hurried down the road. Eager visions of his soon-to-be bride urged him ever forward. An occasional wash of unhindered sunlight warmed his back, and the forests all around him swelled with bird songs. The gentle protests of his clumsy leg he was able almost to ignore. One nagging question, though, followed him all the way.
How could he tell Ludwig that he could not fill Yaap’s cap? The idea of trying to fill Yaap’s bloody cap was as preposterous as it was frightening. He had a limp, he had no stomach for war, and he was about to take a vrouw. Besides, Ludwig’s sister, Juliana, had a job for him painting pictures for the herbal she was creating, Willem used his frequent help in the stables, and they’d both promised to send him to Leyden.
Most of all, he was a painter. Carrying messages from battlefield to battlefield, dodging Spanish soldiers’ bullets, was not for him. He shuddered. Someone else must do it.
No matter how loudly he repeated the logic to himself, one tormenting voice kept sounding in his ears. This is wartime. Think you that Willem’s going to let you sit around painting pictures with Yaap gone and Ludwig begging you to wear his cap?
“Then I’ll have to take my bride far away where no one can find us,” he argued.
Ha! the voice laughed back. Where are you going to find such a place? And if you do, how will you still your conscience?
His mind staggered around in never ending circles. His heart pounded, and his feet moved faster and faster.
On the shores of Den Dullart, he approached a boat tied to the landing. A bearded older man with black jacket and tam sat nearby. He puffed on his long-stemmed pipe, blowing a cloud of tobacco smoke into the air and looking toward Pieter-Lucas.
“Boat for hire,” the man offered, a tone of eagerness edging his voice.
“To Emden?”
“To Emden,” the man replied, stepping into the boat that rocked gently with the slapping of the water against its bow. He guided his passenger in with him, then loosed the moorings immediately and began rowing across the water.
“In a hurry, I see,” the man observed.
“Me?” Pieter-Lucas nearly laughed. Never had he seen a boatman move so fast and strain so intently at the oars.
“Ja.I saw you racing down to the water like as if you had the devil on your heels. Who you fleeing?”
Pieter-Lucas gripped his knapsack and pulled himself as far into the corner of the boat as possible. The man went on. “You’re luckier than some of the men I’ve carried out here. A lot of soldiers going off to the war smoldering out in these bogs. But then, you probably know more about that than I do.” He paused, his expectations of an answer hanging heavy in the air between them.
“So I’ve heard,” Pieter-Lucas said, careful to maintain a wary tone.
The old man chuckled. “Funny thing about men. Think they’re brave and strong and war is some exciting adventure. But let ’em see a battle—and not enough gold—and they can run home faster’n a scared hare across a heath.”
He paused only long enough to catch his breath, then prattled on. “Y’ know, people run away from many things. I’ve seen thieves running from their accusers, women running from their vrouw-beating husbands, children thinking any place must be better than home…”
Pieter-Lucas tried to close his ears. That was one thing a secret messenger must never do. Had to have his ears always scrubbed for those little markers that might lead him on a trail going somewhere he had to go. Not that he was a messenger, and yet, just for now he had to be one till he’d gotten Aletta back to Ludwig’s camp, and…Maybe it was safer to listen than to let his mind carry him any farther down that terrifying path.
“One time a man jumped into my boat ’cause the bailiff was after him,” the boatmen continued. “Something to do with his religion. Probably he was a Rebaptizer. They’re always on the run, you know. I carried him across Den Dullart with the bailiff and his men chasing us in another hired boat. Once on the other side, they finally caught my passenger, and if they hadn’t been so busy with him, I’m dead certain they would’ve arrested me as well. Dangerous even to give aid to a heretic, you know. Ach, me! Such gloomy times, these.”
How much longer was this trip going to last? They should have reached Emden by now. Pieter-Lucas peered ahead in search of Emden’s harbor. Instead, he discovered they were headed straight into the Ems River, south of Emden.
“Where are you taking me?” he demanded.
“To your destination.” The boatman rowed harder.
“You agreed to take me to Emden, but we’re on the way to Jemmingen.”
“I take you to your destination.” The man’s even calmness was exasperating.
“Not unless you change your course.” Pieter-Lucas grabbed at the man’s arms and tried to wrest the oars from him.
“Easy, there,” the boatman warned, “or we’ll both end up treading water in the reeds, and that’s not where either one of us ever thought of going.”
“What sort of trick is this?” Pieter-Lucas shouted.
“Before the day is over, you’ll thank me for saving your life, jongen,” he replied.
“Saving my life? From whom or what?”
“You’ll learn that all in good time, jongen, all in good time,” the voice went on with maddening steadiness.
“Who are you?” Pieter-Lucas shouted.
“All you need to know is that I’m pretty skillful at using oars for a weapon. Now, just sit still for another eyeblink or two. We’re almost there.”
“Where?” Pieter-Lucas exploded. “The only there I’m interested in is Emden, and you’re taking me down the Ems River!”
The boatman rowed on, silent at last. Straight ahead, on the eastern bank of the river, Pieter-Lucas saw the form of a lone mounted horseman. Waiting for him?
Almost instantly they were drawing up alongside the horse and beaching the boat. Wary of the stranger, yet eager to be free from his troublesome boatman, Pieter-Lucas dropped his coins in the man’s outstretched hand and disembarked. At least he had reached Emden’s side of the water. He prepared to bolt toward the north. But the horse and rider blocked his way.
The rider was completely cloaked in a black cape. Even his eyes remained half hidden by the wrappings.
“Mount with me quickly,” he urged.
Pieter-Lucas examined the stranger. “How can I trust you when I’ve no idea who you are or where you plan to take me?”
“I am no stranger to you, Pieter-Lucas van den Garde.”
“Dirck!” In a flash he knew the voice, then the eyes. Hesitantly, he mounted.
They were already moving—away from Emden. “Where are you taking me?” Pieter-Lucas challenged his abductor.
“To your friends,” Dirck answered.
“But I have no friends out here, and I have orders to find the Healer Lady in Emden and return with her to Heiligerlee before sunset.”
“Heiligerlee! Is that where you passed on my pamphlets?”
“Nay, it’s where I found Ludwig preparing for the imminent arrival of Aremberg’s troops. He sent me back to Emden to bring the Healer Lady. By now he already needs them.”
“I take you directly to the woman you seek.”
“Out here? Halfway to Jemmingen?” It made no sense.
“The Healer Lady is nearby, along with a few others.”
“My bride?”
“Both of the women are safely hidden away in a spot so remote not even Alva could sniff out their whereabouts.”
“Hans and his people haven’t fled from Emden, have they?” The thought seemed spectral, even as he put it into words.
“I fear many of them have.”
“Since I left?”
“Just last night they came this way.”
“Who would want to do them harm?”
“I see you have yet to learn one important lesson, jongen. Every man has enemies in this world, and none has more than an Anabaptist preacher and his printer.”
“But why?”
“Every flock has its troublemakers, and sometimes they are strong enough to arouse suspicions. Every printer has a past that he can never be certain will not follow closely on his heels.”
“I knew Hans’ group had troublemakers.” Pieter-Lucas remembered the quarrelsome newcomers. “But the rest of the flock would never turn against him. And in Emden?”
“Even Emden may turn into a trap.” Dirck’s words sent a chill through Pieter-Lucas’ body.
“Where can they go?” he asked. “I thought it was the last house of refuge for people who don’t agree with the authorities—or with each other.”
“Engeland, Silesia, even a few spots in Germany. God will always preserve some havens of refuge in little obscure places.”
“Must they forever be on the run like hunted hawks of prey?”
As clearly as if he still sat facing the circle of elders in Hans’ hidden church, Pieter-Lucas heard Johannes’ piercing voice interrogating him, “You are ready to face death for the crime of being a baptized Child of God?” The question came suddenly alive.
Dirck sighed. “The likes of Hans and Dirck Engelshofen will only be able to stop running when Prince Willem wins this war and brings some order to the Low Lands.”
“Until then?” Pieter-Lucas asked.
“No doubt you’ve heard the song these people are so fond of singing when their way seems filled with ferryless rivers and overturned coaches.
“Those who in God do trust,”
Pieter-Lucas joined him on the second line.
“And never in shame do stand,
Both young and old, men and women,
God strengthens with His hand.”
“For these people,” Dirck said, “survival is not a matter of military campaigns against a foreign tyrant, but of faith in a God strong enough to go with them, even through a hawk-hunting ordeal or a furnace of fire.”
“I know,” Pieter-Lucas said, then fell silent.
He spent the rest of the ride out over the boggy countryside and through another grove of brushwood and swamp willows wrestling again with the questions that had followed him all the way from Heiligerlee. If he refused to fill Yaap’s cap and shoes, would Dillenburg close its doors to him and his bride? If so, where could he take her? And if he didn’t do his part in driving Philip and Alva from the Low Lands, how could he and Aletta ever find a way to go to Leyden?
The circle had only one end. He must take Yaap’s place!
Nay! That I cannot do!
He could not think about it anymore. Instead, he closed his eyes, surrendered the canvas of his imagination to the master skill of his mind, and dreamed of Aletta. His memory took him back to that day—it seemed like a lifetime ago now—when he’d had to leave Breda on an errand for his dying moeder.
“Promise you’ll wait for me to return,” he had begged of his childhood sweetheart, “and you’ll never give your heart to another.”
With that soft kind voice, the likes of which there could be no other on earth, she had said, “My heart is yours—always has been—always will be.”
“Always!” How often since had that magical word revived flagging hope!
Everything in the memory of this girl with the golden ringlets, deep blue dancing eyes, and tender touch set a wonderful fire in his heart. All unanswered questions about courier duties and wars slipped momentarily into oblivion.
His dream jolted to an abrupt end at the entrance of a squat farmhouse on the edge of a forested bog. Dirck was nudging him to dismount.
Reluctantly Pieter-Lucas climbed off the horse and stepped lightly over the soggy ground, taking care to avoid the unpredictable flock of clucking hens swarming in every direction. Dirck knocked on the door, and a bent old farmer opened to them. He smiled and, taking the horse’s reins from Dirck’s hand, motioned them across his foot-worn threshold. They entered a smallish room heavy with the mingled smells of peat smoke, vegetable stew, and barnyard animals.
Pieter-Lucas blinked in the dim light as he held his breath and followed Dirck through a door beside the hearth into a large room. The roof and ceiling sloped sharply down to a long row of oiled paper windows nearly at floor level. Around a long table near the inside wall, a group of men sat on benches, their faces lightened as much by a pair of lamps as by the windows.
An uncomfortable silence hovered over the room. Pieter-Lucas looked around the table. Hans was there, the weaver, the one-armed fisherman, the chief elder, and three other faithful members of the flock. Where was Dirck Engelshofen?
Pieter-Lucas was searching the group a second time when Hans spoke. “Good afternoon, Heer Dirck and Pieter-Lucas.” He gestured toward empty seats at the end of the benches.
“Ja, thank-you, Brother Hans,” Pieter-Lucas stammered. “We’ve not come to sit. I bring an urgent message for our Healer Lady. I must see her at once.”
All eyes were staring at him now.
“She is here, is she not?” He looked from Hans to Coornhert and back, all the while feeling the warmth and color rise to his cheeks.
“She is indeed here,” Hans said. “But tell us first what is the nature of your message. You found one of our families in dire straits?”
“Nay. Not one of our families. Rather, Count Ludwig and the troops of Willem van Oranje are being pummeled, even as I speak to you, by Alva’s men. His wounded need the herbs and healing touch of our Oma. Please let me go to her.”
The chief elder glared at him. “How can you ask such a thing? You know we are lovers of peace, not supporters of war.”
Pieter-Lucas felt his breath come rapidly and his stomach form into a hard knot. Ignoring the elder, he turned to Hans. “Tell me, Brother Hans, does your moeder offer her healing services to all suffering human beings as you taught me in our disciples’ lessons? Or must she confine them to those who refuse to carry arms?”
Hans shifted on his stool. “My moeder has been gifted by God with so large a heart of compassion,” he began, “that she would never let anyone, no matter what his mission, go unattended—not even if he intended her the greatest of personal harm.”
The elder stroked his long beard and cleared his throat importantly. “However, we must keep her safely guarded in this refuge.”
“Men are dying to wrest our vaderland from the Papists, and you insist on keeping the Healer Lady here?” Pieter-Lucas’ anger surprised even himself.
The elder stood to his feet and pointed at Pieter-Lucas. “Today you show us your true nature. No Child of God will ever beg us to support any war, in any way.”
“No man hates war more than I,” Pieter-Lucas retorted. “Just this morning I watched a good friend gunned down by a Spanish warrior, not because he fought, but only because he carried a life-saving message to Count Ludwig. I am well ready to take vows of nonviolence for myself.”
He paused to swallow down the anguish that rose into an unwieldy lump in his throat. “But the men who fight to win us access to our vaderland must have help if they would live to complete the job. If there is not in this flock any more of what Hans calls a ‘neutral compassion,’ then I must reserve my vows for the ears of God alone.”
Pieter-Lucas felt a hand on his shoulder. “Brothers,” Dirck began, his deep voice vibrating with the authority of wisdom. “Am I given to understand that this one man speaks as the sole voice of your fellowship? Or is it customary to engage in questioning and calling upon Almighty God for guidance?”
All eyes turned to Hans. With obvious discomfort, he began. “We have already arrived, through much questioning and prayer, at the decision that no baptized member of the group assembled here is to venture out of this place on any mission that could possibly be used against us. Under other circumstances we might reconsider.”
“Your compassion is not unconditional, then?” Dirck asked.
Hans stirred uneasily. “In all but crises such as this, it is. At times wisdom dictates a temporary withholding of some sorts of charity.”
“Oh?”
Hans sighed, then said with the air of a man before the Chief Inquisitor, “We are already in enough difficulty because of my moeder’s kindness shown just yesterday to a wounded soldier in Emden.”
The chief elder interrupted. “That soldier was arranged by our enemies as a test, that they might have evidence of her unfaithfulness to present against us.”
Hans picked up his speech. “If we are to regain our flock in Emden, we must show an unusual sort of caution just now, one that involves rejecting your proposal as practical folly, no matter how much we might approve of it in principle.”
“Your decision, then, is final?” Dirck asked.
“In our present plight it must be.”
Openmouthed, Pieter-Lucas glared at Hans, whose face was a portrait artist’s study in anguish. He must take his case directly to the Healer Lady and be on his way. He barged through a doorway he had spotted and into a smaller room, where he found Oma, her two granddaughters, Aletta, and a handful of other women sitting on low stools in a corner near the window.
“Pieter-Lucas!” Aletta cried. She sprang to her feet and came to him.
“Thank God you’re safe!” he said, reaching out with one arm and holding her. For a long moment they gazed into each other’s eyes, and he had to fight to restrain himself from giving her a full embrace.
He turned to Oma. “Count Ludwig and his army are embroiled in a bloody struggle with Alva’s men. He’s sent me to bring you with your herbs to help his wounded. Your elders will not let you go. I beg of you, for the love of God and our fellowmen, at least to give me a supply of your healing salves, that I might take them to the soldiers myself.”
Aletta grasped both his arms in her hands. “I go with you, Pieter-Lucas.”
“Nay, I could not take you there, Little One. ’Tis mine to protect you, not lead you into harm’s way.”
“But I will go. Oma and I decided it already.”
“How did you know?”
“We heard it all through the wall. You cannot go alone. You know nothing of this healing business. Further, I will not let you leave my sight again.”
Pieter-Lucas looked at the young woman and encircled her once more in his arm. A war of urges stormed through his being—urges to protect, to possess, to keep her next to his heart every moment, to be done with the whole war business, to ignore both Hans and Ludwig and carry off his bride into some faraway land of perpetual bliss.
When he looked up, he saw Oma staring at him, nodding her head. “Hans is right,” she said. “I dare not to leave the flock just now. But Aletta is also right. She will be a valuable helper to you. I’ve taught her all I know, and she can teach you all you want to learn. Her apothecary chest is well stocked with herbs and salves for treating wounds.”
“B-but…” Pieter-Lucas began his protest.
Oma lifted a hand and shook her head, then said, “You are well able to protect this woman. Here,” she added, handing him a large lumpy bag. “It’s filled with old rags enough to bind up a hundred battle wounds. And remember, our God goes with you.”
Pieter-Lucas stared at Oma. “You mean it, don’t you?”
“I do.” She nodded.
Still a trifle dazed, he half smiled at the young woman still by his side. “I must ask your vader’s permission to take you off alone before our wedding.”
Aletta shook her head. “My vader has fled to Engeland.”
“What?” Surely he must soon awaken to discover this was a bad dream.
“Ach, Pieter-Lucas! It was dreadful! He packed our belongings by lamplight, and before dawn the next day, he and Moeder and Robbin had all boarded a boat, leaving me with Hans and Oma.”
“Why now, just when we were ready to marry?” He held her by both arms and searched her face and eyes for some clue that he could use to extricate them from this impossible situation.
“The Blood Council seeks my vader,” she whispered.
“Why?” he gasped.
“Later, Pieter-Lucas, later.” She patted his arm with her hand.
“Then we must go without your vader’s permission.” His heart pounded.
“Go where?” Hans’ voice sounded from behind him.
Pieter-Lucas felt his body stiffen. “Surely you’ll not forbid it!”
“Dirck Engelshofen left her in my charge,” Hans cautioned. “How can I let you two run off together, unaccompanied and unmarried, to some battlefield?”
“But the need is urgent. We’ll return in a day or two, in time for our wedding.”
“Who knows where you may find us in two more days?” Hans said. “When you leave us here, it may be forever, or at least for a very long time.”
Pieter-Lucas stood for a heart-stopping moment, staring at Hans. He could take the apothecary chest and go back to Ludwig alone. After all, he had warned Ludwig that the Healer Lady might not come. Nay! If he should return to find Aletta gone…There was no way to finish the thought!
“I cannot go without her,” he said, holding tightly to her.
Lost in the torment of his dilemma, he realized Aletta was shoving the curls from around his ear with a cupped hand. “There is a way!” she whispered.
“How?” he muttered.
“Marry now!”
Like a shooting star the thought burst through his brain and exploded from his lips. “Of course! Hans, you could marry us now! For what do we wait?”
The weaver-preacher stared at them, an expression of puzzlement holding the features of his face rigid. Slowly he asked, “Are you ready to submit to our baptism?” The words, tinged with a haunting sadness, echoed around the room and bombarded Pieter-Lucas from every corner.
“For how many months have I been telling you that I was ready?” Pieter-Lucas asked in a low voice, hoping not to be heard in the next room. “Now your elders tell me that my promises not to go to war must include all things related to the war. If that is so, I must say no. I know not where the path of duty may lead me before Prince Willem has pried open the doors to our vaderland.”
Hans shook his head slowly. “In a world where men and women are burned at the stake or drowned for nothing more than the sin of adult baptism,” he said thoughtfully, “it is important that a man be truly ready before we baptize him.”
“In the meantime,” Pieter-Lucas said, impatience growing, “daylight grows shorter, Ludwig lies yonder in desperate need of the Healer Lady, and we waste time discussing religion.” He moved closer to Hans until they looked directly into each other’s eyes. “Can you not just marry us now and leave religious questions for later, when men’s lives don’t depend on us?”
Hans hesitated shortly, then whispered, “My elders would say it cannot be done. I think the question is, ‘What would Dirck Engelshofen say?’”
Pieter-Lucas held his breath and felt Aletta’s body quivering beside him as she spoke. “My vader left you instructions to marry us as soon as Pieter-Lucas returned. If he were here, he would beg you to do it now and send us on this mission of mercy.”
“And if I don’t?” Hans asked.
She hesitated, looked up at Pieter-Lucas, then back to Hans. “We have a healing mission to perform and a marriage promise long overdue to be kept.”
Pieter-Lucas added, “We must go, either with your blessing or without. If you force us to it, we will find a clergyman of some other sort who will bless us on the way.”
Pieter-Lucas looked for shock on the weaver’s face. Instead he saw compassion. Hans stood silent for a space, then asked, “After the battle, where will you take your bride? How will you provide for her?”
Pieter-Lucas swallowed down the apprehension. “We go back to Dillenburg, where a door stands always open for us with the Nassau family.”
God, may it be so, he breathed without a sound. He grasped Aletta by the arm and watched Oma move through the floor rushes to stand beside Hans. Moeder and son looked briefly at each other, then up at them. Oma was smiling.
“Come, follow me,” Hans said, the tightness drained from his voice. “We have a wedding to make!”
“Aletta, he said a wedding!” Pieter-Lucas grabbed her by both hands.
“A wedding?” she gasped. Her eyes bubbled over with laughter and adoration!
Through the haze of a moment that could not be but was, Pieter-Lucas took his bride by the hand and led her across the threshold into a room both smaller and darker than the others. Hans already stood beside a table where Oma was spreading a white cloth and laying out an open Bible. One of Hans’ daughters thrust a bunch of bright flowers into Aletta’s hands, and the women formed a half circle around them in the hastily assembled sanctuary.
Aletta turned her face toward Pieter-Lucas. A more beautiful face God never made, he thought. And from somewhere in a distant fog, he heard the words he had all but despaired of hearing. “Marriage is an honorable ordinance of God, instituted in the beginning when He blessed the two human beings first created in His image and joined them together.” The voice that just moments ago had occasioned such despair now flowed with wonder. Deeply drinking in the marvels of the moment, Pieter-Lucas heard only snatches of the preacher’s recitation of all the things he had explained to them long ago, when logical understanding was stronger than ecstasy.
But when Hans looked directly at Pieter-Lucas and said, “Love her as your own body—as Jesus Christ loved the Church and gave himself for her,” he heard every word.
In that instant he knew that marriage was more than keeping Aletta by his side forever. It meant binding himself to ensure her safety, her happiness, no matter what life might bring their way. Was he ready? Was he the man she deserved?
At last Hans asked him the eagerly awaited question. “Do you, Pieter-Lucas van den Garde, promise before God and your friends and family, both present and absent, to love, cherish, and protect this woman till death wrench you asunder?”
Pieter-Lucas looked into Aletta’s soul and smiled, sending a quick prayer to God for help before he said, “That shall I do.” His voice trembled and his heart swelled to the point of bursting. This was the woman who would always be by his side, giving relief to his halting leg, bearing his children, believing in the paint that ran in his blood!
“Do you, Aletta Engelshofen, promise before God and your friends and family, both present and absent, to love, obey, and care for this man till death wrench you asunder?”
“That shall I do!” Her whole being radiated with a glow he’d never dreamed.
With as much measured fervency as if he had all the rest of the day, Hans prayed over them. At the last “Amen,” the groom and his new vrouw stood for a long moment, lost in the wonders only they could see in each other’s eyes.
Then Pieter-Lucas gave the preacher his thanks and helped Aletta gather up the apothecary and her bags. They said their farewells and crept through a low door leading out at the back side of the house. There they found Dirck waiting for them with two horses. One he mounted himself, the other he offered to them.
“Blesje!” Pieter-Lucas exclaimed. “How did you come here?”
“We brought him from Emden when we fled,” Dirck explained.
Pieter-Lucas mounted the horse who had carried him the length and breadth of the Low Lands and waited while Hans helped Aletta up behind him. Then he grabbed the reins and followed Dirck’s lead back through the maze of roads.
The warmth of Aletta’s body pressing up against his back and the reassuring pressure of her arms encircling his waist sent him into a frenzy of indescribable joy. She was no longer his betrothed. She was his vrouw! How soon could they travel alone, free to give the spurs to Blesje and speed onward toward the fulfillment of Willem’s mission and their own resplendent visions?
When they reached the narrow pathway that would take them on alone, Dirck motioned them to stop. “You know your way from here?” he asked.
“That I do,” Pieter-Lucas shouted in the wind.
Dirck sidled up and said, “About your marriage, back there in the farmer’s home.”
“You know?”
The man chuckled. “That surprises you?”
Pieter-Lucas stared at him. “You always know everything, don’t you?”
Dirck held up his hand. “And you need to know one more thing before I let you go. An Anabaptist marriage ceremony is recognized as valid only in Anabaptist circles. All other people will consider this woman to be your mistress.”
“So what are we to do?” Pieter-Lucas’ heart seemed to stop still in his shirt.
“Do not leave Heiligerlee till you have enlisted the services of a priest to carry you through one more ceremony.”
“A priest? What would Dirck Engelshofen say?”
“In matters of life and death such as this, I suspect he would urge prudence.”
“Ja,” Pieter-Lucas said, “that’s just what he’d do.”
“Only make certain the priest records it in his books. Then wherever you go, whoever may ask, you can always satisfy them that you are indeed man and vrouw.” He looked at them both for a long silent space.
Restless eyes of a friend, Pieter-Lucas decided. “I hope we meet again soon.”
“In good time, jongen, in good time.” With a wave of the black-cloaked arm, their white-bearded friend set off to the north, and the newly marrieds rode south into the prevailing winds that never ceased whipping at the far north provinces.
“Was he a true flesh-and-blood man?” Aletta asked, barely audible, her voice vibrating warm breath into the hollow of Pieter-Lucas’ back.
“What do you mean?” he shouted back over his shoulder.
“Was he maybe God’s angel sent to care for us?”
He lifted his head to let the wind blow through his curls and laughed. “There is only one angel here, my love. The one who holds me in the circle of her arms.”