As soon as the evening meal was over and Willem’s brother Jan had read from the big Bible, Aletta slipped away to the fragrant stillness of the herb garden. Surrounded by her precious herbs, she was nearly contented as she awaited the return of her Pieter-Lucas. He would be home this night.
But he did not come, and the wait grew endless. When the first stars appeared in the deepening sky and a faint sliver of a moon peeked over the nearby hills, the plants seemed to fold themselves up for the oncoming night. The chill of the breeze that rustled through the lindens, the oaks, and the willows began to seep in through her bones.
Somewhere deep inside, she felt a wave of fear chilling her soul and heard an inaudible voice tormenting, He’s traveling in strange places and in darkness.
“He has Blesje with him,” she protested aloud.
What could a horse do if something went wrong?
“Nothing will go wrong! I’ve spent my day praying him Godspeed!”
Think you not that Countess Juliana and her whole family prayed Adolph Godspeed when he last set out over this same road, and—
“Stop!” she shrieked out into the wind.
Her dialogue with fear led her out of the herb garden, and soon she was climbing the pathway up toward the road. At the gate tower, where her husband had given her that memorable farewell kiss yesterday morning, she lingered as if rooted. Gazing out over the hill, the village, the River Dill, across the fields and beyond to the hazy layers of purplish mountains, she remembered the words Jan had just read in the eating hall. “Unto the hills, I lift up my eyes…but in God…I will lay my firm foundation.”
A soft sigh drained the tightness from her body. “Great God,” she prayed, “keep my Pieter-Lucas wrapped in Thy mighty hand.”
Then she smoothed out her skirt and spoke briskly to herself. “Young woman, you cannot stay out here all night.”
Straining against the memories that bound her here, she coerced her steps at last back up the hill toward the kasteel. She had scarcely entered the courtyard when a curdling scream from the apartment of Willem and Anna pierced the air. A tirade of babbling obscenities followed.
Princess Anna was yelling at her husband again. It was no secret how much the woman hated Dillenburg. She spent her miserable existence making sure everyone knew it. But she was not happy anywhere. When they still lived in Breda, the whole city knew about her frequent fits of anger, her childish pouts, and amorous infidelities. Until she came here, though, Aletta had never actually had to listen to any of it.
The deranged words came clear. “You want to play the field hero and free your precious Lowlanders? I shall not stop you. But while you are gone, I shall free myself from the confines of this chicken coop. I shall go to Cologne and sell my jewels to rent an elegant room and dance and drink and enjoy the life of a princess.”
Aletta felt her blood run cold. How could a noblewoman act so selfishly? All she cared about was merrymaking, reading tawdry love tales, and casting sheep’s eyes at every man that came in view.
“Addled by overmuch strong drink,” Pieter-Lucas always said.
Shivering with the dampness of nightfall and the terrors of what she’d just heard, Aletta hurried inside her room. She lighted a lamp, then lay across the bed and wept. A shrieking princess, a husband roaming the countryside, rumblings of war—must she and her beloved Pieter-Lucas live this way always?
How long she lay there questioning, struggling, grieving, she had no idea. In her mind, she fancied that all the people and places that had ever been dear to her were passing by in one giant procession. Not a one lingered long enough or drew close enough for her to apprehend or clasp to her breast. Even the herb garden at the foot of the hill greeted her with drooping plants and wilted blossoms, then vanished.
“Great and merciful God,” she cried out, grabbing at the corner of the feather bag, “don’t let Pieter-Lucas be dragged past me too. Bring him tonight back to my side and let him place his hand again in mine….”
She gasped in midsentence and could say no more. Her tears seemed finally spent. With visions of Pieter-Lucas’ smiling face and open arms calling to her through the mists of the drowsy exhaustion those tears had spawned, she drifted into sleep.
The next thing she knew, the arms she had dreamed of were wrapping her up, and Pieter-Lucas’ voice was whispering in her ear, “My beloved vrouw, I’m back.”
She came awake instantly and entwined her arms around his neck. “Pieter-Lucas, my love, I missed you so.”
He caressed her head with his lips and mumbled into her hair, “If I had my way, I would never leave your side again…never!”
“I know. I know,” she whispered, “someday…”
Long after Pieter-Lucas had fallen into a sound sleep, Aletta lay awake hearing Anna’s voice. “Dear husband,” she whispered over his sleeping body, “I may not be always happy with the lot that falls to me in this ugly war. Every moment when you are gone fills me with loneliness and fear. But as long as I can remember the princess’s selfish ranting words, I shall never rail on you or demand my own frivolous pleasures at the cost of whatever noble cause God joins you to.”
She covered him with her kisses and prayed, “God, in whom I have fixed my firm foundation, keep me ever true to this promise.”
****
Pieter-Lucas stood in the courtyard watching Aletta start off for a visit to her ill friend Petronella. Each fold of her yellow skirt and blue shawl hung in precise order. A large basket swung from her arm, her steps were light and graceful.
He felt a quick jab in the ribs and remembered the servant boy who had just summoned him to a meeting with Counts Willem and Jan. “Come now,” the boy bantered, “can a vrouw be that interesting?”
“Just wait till you have one.” Pieter-Lucas grinned.
He followed the boy into the main building, up stairs and down hallways and at last through a pair of high arched doors into a large room with windows on one side. Already, several places around the huge table that filled the center of the room were occupied by an assortment of messengers and official-looking personages. The sound of subdued voices rippled over the room.
Pieter-Lucas had scarcely settled into the seat indicated to him when Juliana von Stolberg, Countess of the Kasteel, entered the room. Straight of stature, pleasant of face, with movements of grace, she joined her two sons, Willem and Jan. Jan seated her, then himself. Willem, looking as old and burdened as if the weight of a world rested on his shoulders, took his place between them at the head of the table.
How unlike brothers the two Nassaus looked. Wherever Willem was lean, Jan was roundish—eyes, face, chin, and torso. One thing both they and their moeder had in common today was a sober countenance that clouded the entire room.
“We have called you to our chambers this day,” Willem began, “to lay out the strategy, which, after much thought, discussion, and prayer, we have decided upon.”
He paused and looked around the table, gazing intently into each face. “You have each been chosen to play a specific part in the battle that lies before us.”
Resting his hands on the table, he leaned toward them as if pleading for a life-and-death cause. His melancholy urgency reminded Pieter-Lucas of the many times in Breda when he’d watched the prince pacing the length of the kasteel gallery, hands behind his back, head down, uttering no words but pounding out each step on the blue and gold tiles with a silent fierceness of energy.
Willem spoke in a low-pitched voice. “In retaliation for his defeat at Heiligerlee, the Duke of Alva has unleashed his vengeful spirit on my noble friends. In the past two days, nineteen of them have lost their heads on the scaffold.” He paused, wiping the perspiration from his brow before going on.
“We have received reliable reports that sometime in the next few days he plans to stage a gigantic spectacle in the Grand Place of Brussels, at which he will remove the heads of two of my respected brothers in the Order of the Golden Fleece, Counts Egmont and Hoorne. All of this in spite of the well-known fact that both men have steadfastly refused to join our revolt and have maintained their loyalty to the cause of His Majesty King Philip. When this unspeakable deed is completed, Alva will march with his own troops to Friesland, intending to wipe out Ludwig’s army in person.”
An air of terror gripped the room. No one spoke or sighed or coughed or shuffled a foot beneath the big oak table. What would Willem do? He would not stage an armed resistance in the Grand Place—that was not his way, and it would be doomed before it began.
The prince straightened and lifted his chin. “For these next days,” he said in a clear strong voice, “you will be the eyes and ears of this revolt. While I attempt to raise more troops and the funds to hold them with me, I shall need you to see and hear what goes on in the Grand Place, the apartment and Council Chambers of the duke, the streets of Brussels, and the military encampments where the duke recruits and trains his men.”
Spies, hole-peepers, intruders on the back stairs! Pieter-Lucas sat immobile and tried not to think what it meant.
With an almost detached swiftness, Willem addressed each man around the table. “Wouter and Nicolaas,” he began, “you are to mingle with the crowds in the Grand Place and nearby streets. Change your guises whenever it seems advisable. Listen to the words around you and pay special attention when officials come near. Let nothing miss you.”
To the next two men, he said, “Allard and Joost, you will enter every official building possible, witnessing councils, any hidden proceedings, and intimate conversations.”
“And you, Pieter-Lucas, son of Kees”—his penetrating gaze and authoritative voice made Pieter-Lucas feel the weight of the revolt on his own shoulders—“you are to play the half-blind street beggar and sit with your bowl before the place where they have confined Egmont and Hoorne. You will sit there until you have learned their fate, either from what you see or from reports that your ears tell you. Be on especial lookout for deeds of importance done with impunity before a blind man. Your fancy will guide you into all the ways you can use this scheme to your advantage.”
His fancy indeed! Already he pictured himself looking out at the color and action around him as if through a secret peephole. He also saw himself being kicked, ridiculed, stumbled over, chased away by some beggar with a prior claim to the space he chose, hauled off to the magistrates and left to rot in a prison tower in the heart of Brussels.
But Willem had asked it. What choice did he have? He moistened dry lips and forced out the words, “That shall I do, Your Excellency.”
Willem’s gaze lingered on him. “You would make your vader very proud.”
Pieter-Lucas felt a thrill dart through his body. When Willem said vader, he did not mean Hendrick, the imposter and image-breaker who had sliced Opa’s painting and pierced Pieter-Lucas’ leg. Hendrick and his fellow Beggars had joined the revolt, but they were violent men who did things their own way and paid little attention to Willem.
Nay, Willem always called him “son of Kees,” Willem’s former stableboy and dear friend. Pieter-Lucas had never known this man who actually fathered him, but he knew that Kees would have left his carving and his painting and undertaken this dreaded hole-peeping duty because he loved the prince and the Low Lands more than his own life. Pieter-Lucas must do the same. And when God in heaven allowed him to return and pick up his paintbrushes, he would do it with a clear conscience, for he would be acting like a son of Kees, not of Hendrick!
Willem addressed the whole group. “You will leave today, immediately after the late afternoon meal and spend the night in Keulen’s Proud Stallion Inn. The instant you have firm news of which there can be no doubt, you are to run to me with it.”
“We come back here?” Pieter-Lucas asked.
“Nay, I leave tomorrow for Strasbourg and know not where I will be when you have news. You will return to the Proud Stallion, where you shall be met by either Gillis or Paulus.” He gestured toward the two men at the far end of the table. “They will lead you to me. If you find neither of them, return to Dillenburg and bring your word to Jan.”
With both hands on the table, he leaned once more toward them. “This is a secret mission,” he said. “Not one word you’ve heard here today may find its way out into the kasteel—not to your vrouw, your friends, your families. Is that clear? Not one word.”
Pieter-Lucas nodded, along with the others, and rebuked the wrenching of his new bridegroom’s heart with the reminder, It is your duty, jongen.
Willem straightened. “And now, my moeder has a word for you.”
He helped her to her feet, then stood behind her, his hands clasped before him, his head down. The countess looked out over them, her compassionate face sober.
“The mission my sons are sending you to fulfill is of utmost importance. God only knows how many of your observations may provide the guidance needed to plan the next moves in this revolt. While you are away, I will carry each of you on my heart all day every day, as well as at night whenever I am awakened from sleep. Further, I shall carry each of your names to the chapel and present them to the God whose cause we fight. I will ask that He build a hedge of thorns about you and fill you with wakefulness to danger and understanding of all you see and hear. Most of all, I will ask that He bring each of you back with His perfect safety.” She looked down and obviously struggled to remain stoic.
Raising her hands at last, she beckoned them. “Come now, I lead you to the wardrobe room, where you shall be given your disguises.”
Pieter-Lucas and the other men rose from their seats and followed her in silence.
****
Aletta stood at the door of the millhouse, staring at the chaff-filled cobwebs that draped themselves around the lintel and posts. She listened to the cumbersome old millstones groaning and shrieking in their relentless grinding process. “Gracious God,” she prayed, “don’t let Petronella be so crushed by her physical illness today as on my first visit.”
When the elderly woman of the house had let her in, Aletta slipped up the stairs and into the room undetected by her patient who was propped up in bed, nursing her baby. The frail young moeder held her baby’s pink fist in her hand as if it were a rare jewel and hummed a soft refrain. A stray shaft of light played with her uncapped hair and brushed her cheeks with a faint rosy blush.
Aletta moved with gentle steps toward her friend, loathe to disturb the tranquil scene. So absorbed was Petronella in her son that Aletta was nearly upon her before she stopped humming and acknowledged her presence.
“Ah, Aletta, the countess’ new herbal concoction has done wonders.”
“Thanks be to God,” Aletta whispered. She pulled a chair close and sat down.
The child stared up at her. His eyes widened and he continued suckling out of the side of his mouth. Aletta felt her heart warm under his scrutiny. “Beautiful child!” she mused.
“Like a perpetually fresh sprig of borage,” Petronella said, smiling, “he cheers my soul, even when my body grows too weary to go on.”
He stopped nursing. Petronella lifted him to her shoulder and patted his back.
“He looks robustious enough,” Aletta remarked.
“A true miracle, since we had to flee with him so soon…”
Aletta leaned forward in her chair and laid a hand on her friend’s arm. “Tell me, Petronella, what sort of danger forced you to flee at such a time?”
The young mother lowered the baby from her shoulder and cradled him in her arms. For a long while, she rocked him gently. Both women watched his eyelids flutter shut and his tiny mouth make empty sucking motions.
“Forgive me.” Aletta broke the silence. “I should not have been so eager. You need not to give me an answer.”
Petronella looked up, a weariness akin to pain in her eyes. “Nay, but I want you to know it all—from my lips, not another’s.”
“Perhaps not today.”
The moeder sighed. “Today is what we have. Who knows about tomorrow?”
“Petronella, we are both young.” Aletta bade her ruffled heart be still.
A thin smile curved Petronella’s lips, then vanished. She gazed at the boy and began. “My labor with this child was long and grueling, and…and the midwife had a dreadful struggle to free him from his wombe bed.”
“Was it Tante Lysbet?” Aletta felt her heart quicken at the thought of the woman whose instructions had so recently turned her into a midwife.
Petronella hesitated. “It was.” She hugged her baby, nodded her head, and wiped her eyes on his blankets.
“You have not to say more,” Aletta spoke gently.
“You must know the awful truth.” She sniffled. “Forgive me that I stumble. It’s just that Tante Lysbet was dear to me as well.”
“She was dear?” Aletta heard the words burst forth from her own mouth. “What…what does this mean? Surely Tante Lysbet is not gone!”
“Nay…I mean, I know not what has become of her since we left.”
“What, then, is the awful truth you do know?” Aletta asked in a manner more demanding than she intended.
Petronella laid the child on her lap. “Once the birthing ordeal was past, the child and I both slept. The next thing I knew, Spanish soldiers burst into my home and took Lysbet away in chains.”
“In chains!” Aletta gasped. “Whatever was the accusation against her?”
“I had no idea. I think she knew not either.” She paused and swallowed hard. “Later, Maarten told me that they had accused her of possessing books of witchcraft.”
“Witchcraft? Tante Lysbet?” Aletta stared in disbelief.
Petronella simply shrugged.
Aletta stammered, “What did they do with her?”
“Maarten told me they dragged her off to the tower prison at the Gevangenpoort. But we could not stay to see what would happen. We knew that our son was in mortal danger in Breda from that moment on.”
“Ach! Awful indeed!” Ghastly visions burst into Aletta’s imagination. Too well she knew what punishment was reserved for witches—and the babies they delivered.
Petronella reached out and grabbed Aletta’s hand. “I was so afraid, Aletta, so afraid. Before that day was over, Maarten had gathered together a bag of food and clothes, as much as he could carry. When darkness fell, we left our little home.”
Aletta squeezed her friend’s hand and shook her head. “You…you gave birth to a baby in the middle of one night and the next you were traveling—afoot in the cold?”
She nodded. “Fear makes us do strange things for our children.”
Aletta stared at her. “Where did you go?”
“A strange and wonderful thing happened that first night,” Petronella said, her voice smooth and filled with wonder. “I was so weak and fearful, and Maarten led us along so gently, always insisting God would take care of us. Even he never dreamed that we would spend the night under the watchful eye of an angel.”
“An angel?”
“Of sorts! Or so it seemed.”
“How?”
“We were creeping through the woods just outside of Breda and stumbled across an old crumbling building inside a hedge of roses.”
“The hidden studio of Pieter-Lucas’ opa!” Aletta squealed.
“I had no idea what it was,” Petronella said, “but it provided a bit of shelter.”
“In its decaying condition, was it not dreadfully cold—with a newborn?”
“That was a part of the miracle. Inside, we found a simple little woman who heated broth for us on her fire and gave us her bed—such as it was. Never could I have imagined that a pile of dirty rags beside an open fire would invite me to rest. But we were warm, and I slept soundly the whole night through.”
“And the woman?”
She shrugged. “By morning she was gone. When the baby awakened us just before daylight, I heard loud voices and terrible screams. I hope and pray it was not our angel, but I’ll never know. We never saw her again.”
Aletta held her head in her hands and sighed. If only she could believe this was a dream. “Did you stay there long?” she asked.
“Only one more night. Then we moved on. For the next weeks, or however long it was I could not tell you, we slept in wooded glens and caves and deserted buildings and behind stacks of hay in open fields. We never knew what sort of shelter we would uncover next. We parceled out our food supply as scantily as possible. Still, in a way I could not explain, no matter how ill I was, I never lacked for milk in my breasts, and Maarten’s bag always held food.”
Petronella was looking tired once more. She rocked her baby gently as she spoke, but her breath grew shallow. “God brought us this far, and the miller’s family and the countesses have welcomed and nursed and provided for us.”
“And now you need to sleep again. I have caused you to talk too long. I’m not much of a healer lady to you, friend.”
“Nay, I chose to talk. You forced me not. I haven’t breathed a word to anyone since we arrived. I still know not whom I can trust. I so much want to know all about you….” Below her drooping eyelids, a pleading expression reached out toward Aletta.
“There is enough time for that,” Aletta assured her. “Here, let me put the baby in his cradle so his moeder can rest.”
She lifted the infant from her and let his heart beat against her own as she hugged him to her breast. Then she put him in his cradle and went to Petronella’s bedside.
She leaned over the weary woman, and they exchanged smiles.
“Thank you for telling me your story. One thing you didn’t mention.”
“What is that?”
“Your son’s name?”
Petronella cast an anxious look at her. “Ach, Aletta, he’s not been christened yet.”
Aletta opened her mouth to speak, but her friend laid a hand on hers and went on. “I know it’s not good. If she were alive, my moeder would have carried him off to the church to make sure he received the baptism no matter what. May God forgive me, I was too ill to go into the church, and I insisted it could not be done without me.”
Aletta offered her a reassuring smile. “God’s hand often rests on unbaptized babies,” she said. “I’ve known a few.” She sighed, remembering all her Children of God friends who baptized only adult believers. “But surely you have a name for him.”
She brightened. “Ah, ja, we call him Maarten! There must always be a Maarten de Smid to shoe the horses for the House of Nassau.”
“What else?” Aletta said. “Now I must go.”
She reached into her basket and brought out a vial of Juliana’s elixir. She cradled Petronella’s head in the crook of her arm and poured the liquid through her lips.
“I leave some of this with the oma to give to you, and I shall come back tomorrow or the next day.” Aletta squeezed her hand and added, “My husband awaits me at the late afternoon meal.”
Petronella swallowed the medicine down with a gulp. “Pieter-Lucas?”
“Who else?”
“Oh, I long to hear all about it.”
“Later.”
Aletta bade her friend a soft Tot ziens, planted a kiss on tiny Maarten’s forehead, and scurried home with an eager step.
****
At the kasteel, Aletta found Pieter-Lucas in the midst of a circle of men just outside the door of the eating hall. All were dressed to travel and had bulging knapsacks at their feet. He bounded toward her.
She grabbed him by the flaps of his doublet. “You’re going away again!”
With a gentle arm, he led her around the corner of the building for a spot of solitude. “It is my duty, Little One.”
“But you just came home last night, and you said you did not promise Willem—”
He placed a finger across her lips. “Nor can I say him nay,” he interrupted. “He counts on me, my love, and for the love our vaderland, I must go.”
“You go farther and longer this time,” she said. “I see by your bulging knapsacks. Where? How dangerous is it?”
He lifted her chin with his forefinger. “I cannot breathe a word of it. I can only promise I will be back at my first opportunity.”
Holding her tighter than ever, he nuzzled his nose into the hair hanging loose around her headdress and whispered into her ear, “The only secret I am allowed to tell you is how very much I love you. Nothing under the heavens will ever beckon me like the memory of your beautiful face.”
She looked up into his eyes and plied his shoulders with trembling hands. “Every day, I shall keep my ears attuned to the hunting dogs and my eyes fixed on the roadway running up from the village, until I see you riding toward me.”
She let him kiss her with as much intensity as if she knew he’d never have another opportunity. After all, in the middle of a war, who could know how many more of these precious moments would be theirs?