Pieter-Lucas came awake to the sound of a loud repetitive banging. Startled, he tightened his grip on Aletta, lying curled up in his arms. He buried his face in the locks of silken honey-colored hair and muttered, “Nay, a thousand times nay.”
For the moment, he had no idea where they were, how long they’d been here, nor what time of day or night it might be. Nor had he any intention of leaving his bed. But the knocking persisted until he pried open his eyes and glowered at the door. A slender ray of sunlight filtering through a single high windowpane shone directly on the keyhole.
Ach! This was the big old castle sprawled over Dillenburg’s hill. When they’d entered here, he’d closed the wooden door and fancied that was enough to lock the whole world outside. No catastrophe could be sufficiently urgent to pull him from his bridal chamber before he was ready.
Pressing Aletta closer, he kissed her neck and mumbled at the unseen intruder beyond the door, “Go away—far, far away!”
But the knocking went on, accompanied now by a young man’s voice. “Gerard, chamber servant to Count Willem, with a summons from His Excellency.”
For a long moment Pieter-Lucas did not move. Then reluctantly he slid his hand along his vrouw’s arm and let her go. She grasped his hand and whispered, “Leave me not.”
“Willem summons,” he said. “I must go.” He wrapped her up in one more lingering hug, then dragged himself out of the bed and across the room, where he pressed his mouth against the rough timber door. Fearful that his voice would defile the Aletta-hallowedness of the room, he spoke barely above a whisper.
“Ja?”
“Count Willem requests your immediate presence,” came an urgent reply.
Pieter-Lucas scratched his head and combed his unkempt curls with his fingers. He pulled his breeches on over his nightshirt, then opened the door a crack.
“Tell him I come,” he said to the courier, a young boy who stood barely as high as Pieter-Lucas’ shoulders.
“I am to bring you with me along.”
“Then give me an eyeblink more,” the still-drowsy young man begged.
He turned back to Aletta sitting on the edge of the bed. Since their second wedding ceremony behind the chapel at Heiligerlee, he’d not once left her side, and it felt as if he were tearing his very self asunder. He went to her, bent over, and planted a kiss on her forehead.
Holding both his hands in hers, she begged, “He cannot take you away so soon!”
“I shall do my best.”
It should be so simple. He’d already more than fulfilled his obligations to Yaap and Ludwig, and he’d never promised Willem a thing. Yet…he lived in this place, at the prince’s mercy—and there was a war….
He watched his bride open her mouth, say nothing, close it again. Her struggle to be cheerful spread a thin veil over her disappointment and wrenched at his heart. How could he leave her?
Not allowing himself to look into her eyes again, he disentangled his arms from her grip. “I’ll return before I go anywhere,” he assured her, “just as quickly as possible!”
“Tot ziens,” she whispered.
He felt her anxious smile follow him to the door. Slipping into his shoes and pulling on his jacket, the reluctant bridegroom followed Willem’s courtier out into the chilly air.
In the reception hall where Pieter-Lucas had given Willem Ludwig’s messages, he found the prince pacing the length of the room, hands clasped behind his back, eyes staring straight at the floor ahead of him.
“Alva’s revenge has struck!” Willem lamented.
The words sent a shudder down Pieter-Lucas’ backbone. He stood in shocked silence, afraid yet curious to hear more.
“I knew Ludwig’s victory in Heiligerlee would enrage the old cat,” he muttered. “In one day, he passed sentence on my brothers and me, banning us forever from the Low Lands, confiscating the last bit of our goods. Then with a flourish of the same pen that signed our banishment, he ordered the execution of our imprisoned noble friends. Finally, he razed and torched the stately old House of Culemborg, where Brederode held the first banquet of Beggars two years ago. And he promises more!”
“More, Your Excellency?” Pieter-Lucas swallowed down the revulsion rising from a troubled stomach.
“The indignity of Aremberg’s defeat simply lit a torch to a pile of brushwood set in place and awaiting a spark. Nothing will stop the conflagration. Not a corner of the Low Lands shall escape.”
“What must I do?” Pieter-Lucas asked, urging his heart to stop racing so.
“My brother Jan and I are preparing an urgent reply to some fresh intelligence just received from Dirck Coornhert.”
“Where is he?” Pieter-Lucas’ mind whirled.
“In Duisburg, near Cleve, on the Rhine. If you depart after the morning meal, by riding hard you should yet reach him by sundown and be back tomorrow.” Willem pulled a scrap of paper from his doublet. “Here. Study these directions well. Inscribe them on your mind, then destroy them before you leave.”
Yaap had once told Pieter-Lucas that a secret messenger never carried written directions. He swallowed hard.
“From now on, Alva will ensure that none of us has a moment of leisure to enjoy our exile.” Willem was through the doorway and nearly out of sight before he’d finished.
Pieter-Lucas stood numb in the middle of the floor. He tried to convince himself that the prince’s words were but the empty delusion of a man burdened with the weight of a troubled world and a petty drunken vrouw. But he knew they were true, and he dare not disappoint his prince, who clearly thought of him as Yaap’s replacement. And so, for the moment, must he be.
Back in their room, he found Aletta barely dressed and with an unconvincing smile painted across her face. He, too, must feign lightheartedness. He swept her up in his arms. “Come quickly, Little One,” he invited. “The morning meal is served, and it is the rule of the house that all must eat—at seven and ten in the morning, two and five in the afternoon, and eight in the evening.”
She frowned. “What happens if you don’t?”
“They’ll call you the Hanged Maiden and make you pay a fine to a large stone statue of a maiden with an iron ring out in the garden.”
Together they laughed a brittle laugh. Nervously, he took her by the hand and led her to the door. Here she grew sober, pulled him to a stop, and asked, “Willem thinks you are his Yaap messenger, doesn’t he?”
He patted her arm and struggled with his words. “I fear wartime makes us all into things we are not. I go not far this time.”
“Not back to Friesland, then?”
“Nay,” he assured her. “Willem says I shall be home tomorrow.”
She hooked her arm into his and gave him a half smile. “May Willem be right.”
He looked long into her wistful eyes and said something he could never believe to be true. “Perhaps the war will soon be over.”
****
A billowy wind gusted around the hilltop in Dillenburg. With one hand, Aletta tightened the wrap of her dark cape across her shoulders. With the other, she clung to Pieter-Lucas as they plodded down the road that was taking him away from the kasteel. At the gate he took her in his arms. “Pray me Godspeed,” he begged.
“And a safe passage,” she added.
“At least I go not to a battlefield wearing a soldier’s uniform and toting a sword.”
Neither did Yaap! Remembering, Aletta forced a smile and said, “I am most grateful.”
He hovered over her with adoration in his eyes. “You are a brave woman, my love,” he whispered.
His parting kiss was so long and so deep that she nearly forgot it had to come to an end. When at last he pulled his lips away, his arms still lingered about her. Her heart vibrated like the strings of a fiercely plucked lute.
She watched him mount his old friend, Blesje, and ride off over the bridge, down the hillside, and out of reach, waving as he went. The wind brushed the dampness from her cheeks and wafted the kisses she blew toward him on the path below.
“Great God in the Heaven,” she whispered into both hands cupped over her mouth, “Prince Willem may think he’s another Yaap, but we all know better. He has paint in his blood, a limp in his leg, and a vrouw who yearns to hold him close.”
When the last glimpse of her new husband had vanished behind the roofs of the village, Aletta turned sad steps toward the herb garden. At the morning sup, when Pieter-Lucas had presented her to Juliana the Younger, the noble lady had invited her to meet her there.
Aletta found the weed-fringed pathway that led her down the hillside and through an opening in the fence. Flower Month had filled the trees with bright new greenery, singing meadowlarks, and cuckoo birds. She stopped at the entrance and let her eyes roam freely over the plot of growing things.
Stepping into the enclosure, she breathed deeply. Delicious aromas of rosemary, sage, savory, thyme, and lavender blended with other unknown fragrances. Plucking a sprig of rosemary, she crushed the needles between her fingers and, holding them to her nostrils, inhaled slowly and smiled. “Did my Pieter-Lucas draw your aging branches and needles for the Countess Juliana? Or,” she added, examining a clump of bright new calendulas, “your sunny blossoms of last season?”
With the discovery of each new plant, she imagined she felt her artist husband’s presence at her side, heard his voice, watched his fingers sketching. “Someday,” she mused, “when he returns…
“In the meantime,” she went on, her skirts brushing against a spreading bush of lavender, “I shall follow the countesses up and down these rows and learn new ways to transform these lovely leaves and flowers, stems and roots, into life-giving potions.”
When she was stooping down to look at a patch of unknown shoots, she heard a sound of weeping coming from beyond the large clump of berry bushes to her right. “You should have waited for the countess,” she chided herself.
Standing quickly, she fled through the maze of plants and out into the pathway. She had reached halfway to the kasteel when Countess Juliana met her. She wore a large white apron over her plain dark dress and carried a basket on her arm.
“So you have already been there,” she said.
“I fear I did wrong,” Aletta confessed.
“But I invited you.”
“I should have waited until you came.”
“Why? It has no gate with locks.”
“I…well, I was enjoying the plants so much, I did not realize until I neared the patch of berry bushes that I was not alone. Then I heard weeping beyond the berries, and my heart smote me greatly for rushing in to disturb someone’s vigil with sorrow.”
“’Tis my moeder, Juliana the Elder.” The noblewoman smiled and laid a hand on Aletta’s arm. “She has a bench in that corner where she often repairs to think and pray, and just now her heart is sore grieved over Adolph.”
“After this I shall take care to avoid her grieving spot,” Aletta finished.
“She expects us all to come and go,” Countess Juliana assured her. “Come now. I can only show you a few of the plants today. One of my patients in the miller’s house on the edge of the village needs a call. I should like to have you accompany me.”
“Nothing would make me happier. I spent my whole time in Emden doing just that with Oma. Everyone called her Healer Lady of East Friesland.”
“You learned much from her?”
“Very much! And I am eager to learn from you as well.”
Together they walked through the rows. The noble healer lady talked in a subdued voice and avoided her moeder’s praying corner as she introduced Aletta to a handful of her plants: bearclaw for digestive difficulties, liver floweret for wounds both internal and external, coltsfoot for coughs, and herb-grace to take away crudity, rawness of humors, windiness, and old pains of the stomach. The more Aletta heard, the more she yearned to know.
Often as Juliana introduced a plant, she would begin with the comment, “This one your Pieter-Lucas drew for me.” Then she would launch into a fascinating story of its unusual origins or properties or uses.
All too soon she announced, “No more for today. I take a snippet of fresh borage to bring cheer to my patient, and we go. The woman we visit fled with her husband and newborn infant from their home the end of Spring Month. She had endured terribly long and hard birth pains and much ripping and seems never to have recovered from the weakness brought on by prolonged flux of the wombe.”
“Is there a cure?”
“I’ve tried many potions and read all the books in search of a remedy. My moeder and I have concocted a new recipe, which I’ve brought today and pray it works.”
“Did they come from far?” Aletta asked.
“I know only that it was a long journey of many weeks.”
“How tragic! It’s amazing that the moeder did not die en route.”
“Young moederhood defies impossible threats,” Juliana said.
“And the baby?”
“He does much better than his moeder. Like a miracle child.”
Aletta remembered Emilia and sensed a growing eagerness to help this patient. All unintentionally, her feet quickened their pace. Yet why the urgency? She was not the healer lady here. She must be calm inside.
****
The aging mill lay beside the river at the spot where the water rushed around a bend in rippling rapids. Unlike the wind-driven mills of the Low Lands that Aletta was accustomed to, it had a large wheel that dipped into the water and powered the stones that ground the grain, setting up a dreadful shuddering clatter.
An elderly stoop-shouldered woman met the two herbalists at the door of the house. “Oma Maryka,” Juliana had explained. “Her husband owned and ran this mill until he died. Now his son keeps it going still. They mill all the grain we consume at the kasteel. They also crush herbs for us. When my patient and her husband arrived with their baby, this family offered to give them lodging. In exchange, Maarten helps with the millwork whenever he is not busy at the blacksmith shop at the kasteel.”
The older lady escorted them up two flights of creaking stairs. They were worn smooth and sagged in the middle. The whole building trembled and hummed with the sound of the gears and millstones and crushing grain below.
They found their patient asleep in her cupboard bed on the wall. The baby slept in his basket near the hearth in the large single-room apartment. Aletta gazed in wonder at the child with his chest rising and falling in perfect rhythm and his breath making soft airy noises. How either he or his moeder could sleep with all the noise and rattling, she could not imagine.
Oma Maryka stood beside the young woman, wiping her hands on her apron. “She’s slept nearly the whole day. Could hardly even coax her to nurse the infant.”
“You gave her the decoction I left with you when I came last?” Juliana asked.
“Ach, surely so!” she said. “I give her just a little four times a day as you instructed. But when she stands to her feet, she grows faint and complains that her head pains and swims miserably.” She shook her head and added, “I know not what will happen to her—and that baby. Dear me, dear me…”
Juliana parted the bed curtains and looked in. She motioned Aletta to come closer.
Softly, hardly above a whisper, she said, “You see how pale she is.”
Aletta clapped a hand over her mouth and gasped. “Petronella! How thin she’s grown!”
“You know her?”
“We played together in the streets of Breda when we were girls. We’ve shopped together for fish in the market. We’ve sat together in The Crane’s Nest, reading some of my vader’s big books. Not long before my vader took our family from Breda, her moeder died, and she went to live with an older sister in Geertruidenberg. I had no idea she had married. Maarten, son of Nicholaas de Smid, is her husband?”
“His name is Maarten, and ja, he is a smith. That is all I know.”
“His vader was the blacksmith who shoed Prince Willem’s horses in his shop,” Aletta explained. An odd mix of pleasure and dread bubbled up inside of her.
Juliana nodded. “Aha! That’s why he brought Nell here.”
Instinctively, Aletta sat beside her friend on the bed and took her hand in one of her own. She lay the other on her forehead. “Petronella, you cannot slip away from us. Not now, with this splintery-new son with the perfect nose, smooth skin, and pudgy little fingers. He needs you.”
Aletta let all she’d ever learned about herbs slip out of mind. For now she was no herbalist, only a friend who must find help. Turning to Juliana, she pleaded, “You must have something in your apothecary that can restore her. You must!”
“We hope and pray this latest recipe will do it,” Juliana said. Then gently she jostled the patient’s shoulder and called, “Nell, oh, Nell, time to awaken.”
Petronella stirred slightly and her eyelids fluttered open.
“I’ve brought you a friend, Nell,” Juliana said, smiling.
Aletta stroked Nell’s arm and smiled at her. “My Petronella!”
Never taking her gaze from the now wide-opened eyes, Aletta watched a look of puzzlement give way to the light of recognition.
A smile spread over the tired face, and Petronella spoke in labored, breathy tones. “Aletta! How can this be?”
“The story is too long for now. In the days ahead, as you mend, we will talk.”