Aletta spent the day before the christening of Petronella’s son helping to prepare for the celebration. She joined Oma Maryka in scrubbing the miller’s house from attic roof to entryway door until the cobwebs and chaff were gone and all stood in readiness for the feast that would follow the ceremony.
When the big morning dawned, however, Aletta did not awaken until Pieter-Lucas aroused her. She could hardly pry her eyes open and drag herself from bed. The room seemed to heave around her, and it was almost more than she could do to splash a handful of water on her face.
“Great and merciful God,” she prayed beneath her breath, “help me. This day, of all the days, I cannot feel like this.”
From the bag she would tie round her waist, she pulled out a leaf of garden mint and slipped it into her mouth. Even its fresh taste upset her stomach. Why must she continue to be plagued with these discomforts day after day? Since Pieter-Lucas was with her, she had no reasons to be distressed.
Of late she could never seem to feel awake in the mornings. Often after she returned with Pieter-Lucas from the morning sup and sent him off to work in the stables, she must spend one more hour in bed before she could face her day.
Until today, she’d succeeded in smiling whenever Pieter-Lucas was by her side. This morning, though, nothing worked. At every move, she detected her husband watching her. “Dear me,” she sighed to herself, “how shall I ever come through this day?” She turned her back to him so she could brush away a tear and slide another mint leaf into her mouth.
Before she could resume her feigned composure, she felt Pieter-Lucas’ arms around her waist and his breath on her neck. “What is it that plagues you this morning, my love?” he asked in a tone so gentle that she burst at once into a shower of tears and buried her face in his embrace.
“I must call one of the Julianas,” he said.
“Nay, nay! I am not ill,” she protested.
“What then?”
She sniffled. “It’s just…” Ja, what was it? Was she lonely? That couldn’t be. Sad? Nay! What, then?
“Just what?” he asked, an edge sharpening his voice.
“I don’t know.” Then, with enormous effort, she went on. “I only know that Petronella and Maarten are counting on us. We must help them christen their baby.”
“And how do you think it will make them feel if you drag yourself through the christening procession into the church, weeping at the least provocation?”
“But I promised Petronella,” she insisted, twisting the hem on her shawl into tight little spirals. “Let me lie down while you go to the morning sup.”
“And leave you alone in this state?”
“Go on,” she pleaded. “Let me rest and I shall feel better. Trust me.”
Without waiting for his response, Aletta lay on the bed and pulled her knees up into her tummy. Pieter-Lucas spread a cover over her body. She patted his hand and tried to reassure him. “Fret not, Pieter-Lucas. A short hare’s nap will restore me.”
The last thing she knew was the warmth of a kiss on her forehead, the shuffling of her husband’s feet across the rushes, and the latching of the door. Her head swam gently and she was drifting into a dream world of clouds and soft colors, indistinct images and sounds.
When she came awake again, Pieter-Lucas sat beside her on the bed, holding her hand in his, a worrisome expression wrinkling his brow. “Juliana the Younger sent you a decoction that she claims is good against all crudities of the stomacke,” he said.
Aletta sat up, yawning, and smiled easily. The world did not swim as it had earlier. “Is it bitter or sweet?” she asked.
Pieter-Lucas sniffed at the cup of liquid in his hands. He made a face and answered, “You try it. I’m not the one with the sickness.”
She put it to her lips and tentatively sipped the lukewarm liquid. Mixed or boiled in honeyed water, it had a slight garlicky fragrance and a bitter bite.
“What is it?” she asked.
Pieter-Lucas shrugged. “What do I know about such things? I only implored the countess to give me something that would restore my vrouw immediately.”
How like a man to ask for an instantaneous cure! Aletta had seen many a solicitous husband show his deep concern in ways most impatient. Oma Roza once said, “Men feel strongest when they can protect their vrouws, and when they cannot do it, they fly into a disarray from which they can in no way recover until the illness has gone. Helpless they are, all of them!”
She recalled the laughter with which Oma had punctuated her statement and chuckled. “Could it be brewed pappenkruit mixed with a powder of Garlick Germander in honeyed water?” she asked with studied seriousness.
He shrugged. “I only want to know, does it work?”
She lowered the cup from her mouth. “I think it is helping already.”
“So quickly?” He stared, his expression a combination of joy and puzzlement.
“With the help of the hare’s nap!” She laughed.
Still eyeing her curiously, he reached into his doublet, saying, “I also brought you something to eat. Surely you will grow hungry before the feast at the miller’s house.” He handed her two thick pieces of dark bread and a chunk of yellow cheese.
“It looks wonderful!” she said. “Already I feel the hunger growls in my belly.”
The swimming in her head had vanished—the heavy drowsiness as well. Rising from the bed, she proceeded to dress and put her hair in order. All the while, she nibbled on the bread and cheese and continued to drink Juliana’s herbal cures. Once more she sensed that Pieter-Lucas did not take his attention from her, but now it brought her joy instead of weeping.
“How do I ever get on when you are away?” she remarked as they set out on the long pathway that led to the church on the side of the hill. She tucked her arm snugly into her husband’s and added, “I feel like a princess on the arm of my prince!”
“Are you sure you feel well enough for this day?” Pieter-Lucas asked.
“Perfectly well,” she answered, wondering herself at the feeling of well-being that possessed her.
He laid his hand on hers and, in a manner so sagacious that it made her smile, said, “I may be no healer of any sort, but this seems to me an exceedingly strange malady—afflicting you from the moment of wakefulness, then going as quickly away as it comes and returning day after day.”
Strange indeed! Or was it? Aletta gasped, then clapped a hand over her mouth.
Pieter-Lucas stopped and cast a worried glance at her. “What is it now, Vrouw?”
Aletta’s heart was racing. Caught between elation, disbelief, and fear, she stammered, “I…I…Oh, Pieter-Lucas!”
“Are you ill again?” he demanded.
“Nay, nay!” She began to chuckle.
“What, then?”
Her laughter turned to tears—happy tears, accompanied with a smile so big she felt her face would burst. Still, she felt powerless to speak.
“What did Juliana put in that recipe?”
She heard the bafflement in his voice, felt it in his arms holding her tightly, saw it in the lines around his eyes and mouth.
At last she spoke. “I know not what you shall think, Pieter-Lucas, but I think my malady is not only not strange but it may be wonderful!”
“Wonderful? How?”
“I believe this strange malady is telling us something,” she said.
“What is it telling us?”
Aletta closed her eyes momentarily before looking up into the face of her most beloved on earth and saying, “Perhaps that we are going to have a child!”
“A child?” His mouth dropped open, his eyes widened, and he did not move.
“Oh, Pieter-Lucas”—she grabbed at his arms—“you are to be a vader.”
“Me? A vader?” he stammered. He flashed her a dazed smile, then folded her in his arms. “And you, my beautiful vrouw, a moeder?”
Aletta snuggled into his embrace. “After all the women in a family way that Oma and I have attended with our herbs,” she mumbled into his chest, “why did I not suspect this from the very beginning?”
Arms around each other, they floated down the hill as if on a white gold-rimmed cloud. All too quickly they arrived at the entrance of the pathway that led to the church where guests and family were gathering. With a heady delight, they found their place in the christening party and marched with the procession into the church.
Two city elders led the way, each carrying a pair of lighted candles.
“Symbols of good deeds,” the minister had told them when he instructed them in their duties as godparents. Whose good deeds or what they had to do with the ceremony he had not made clear. But the candles added a glow, a fragrance, an elegance that kept the tears near the threshold of Aletta’s eyelids.
Next, the minister carried the baby, and behind him walked the elderly oma from the miller’s house, carrying a blanket, a christening gown, and a small jar of salt. Pieter-Lucas and Aletta came after her, with Petronella and Maarten behind them. Finally came the handful of guests—mostly neighbors and fellow workers from the kasteel.
When they’d been seated, the minister put the baby in his moeder’s arms. He exorcised any demons that might be at bay from the premises of the church, from the home where the child was being raised, and from the entire village. Then the singers began a mass.
Aletta sat close to her husband. How like the christening masses back in the Great Church in Breda, she thought. Though these folks were followers of Luther rather than the Pope, it had always seemed to Aletta that their services adhered to the old Papist ways more often than not. Probably Hans would not be happy to see them in such a service as godparents for a baby’s christening. But Petronella was her friend, and…
The minister began his sermon.
“Beloved in the Lord Jesus Christ, we are gathered here to perform the service of Holy Baptism. Though we have all experienced this rite, in our propensity to forgetfulness I fear we do not often remember to what end we were baptized. Through this act, this infant is committed to God and made acceptable to Him, set apart to a life of holiness and service of Almighty God….”
Aletta’s eyes began to slip closed and she leaned against Pieter-Lucas, struggling to remain alert. Now and again a cry from the child startled her, but until the sermon had ended and the priest had asked the godparents to take their places before the baptismal font, she continued to struggle with drowsiness.
The elderly oma took the child from his parents, laid a blanket across his body, and sprinkled the blanket with grains of salt. “Symbol of the acceptance of the religious doctrine, while making the unfruitful water effective as a sacrament,” the minister explained to the guests as it was being applied.
Next, Oma placed little Maarten into Aletta’s arms. He stared wide-eyed up at her, and she felt a new kind of awe sweeping over her. She baptized him with her tears, then handed him to Pieter-Lucas. They exchanged the kind of deep-sprung smiles that none but newly expectant parents can appreciate. Carefully, inexpertly, Pieter-Lucas presented the child to the priest.
The minister prayed over little Maarten, then sprinkled him with water from the font. Finally, Oma removed the blanket, dressed him in his christening gown, and gave him back to the minister. He gave the parents a final word of admonition. “You, entrusted by God with this immortal soul, shall teach him by word of mouth and by example so that he may be born again into eternal life and be useful as God’s instrument, for which purpose he was born into the world at this time.”
The minister placed baby Maarten in Petronella’s arms. With glowing faces, the young parents turned and faced their friends. Then Petronella announced, “You are all invited to the miller’s house to join with us in a feast of celebration in gratitude to God for this child.”
How thin she still looked, Aletta noted. But the color had returned to her face and the sparkle to her eyes, and she was going to be well enough to bear more children.
****
The summer’s late-night darkness had already settled in over the village when Pieter-Lucas and Aletta left the miller’s house. They made their way along the River Dill and up the long serpentine pathway to the kasteel. A large moon cast its luminous haze across the landscape and turned their steps into starlike silver markers.
Pieter-Lucas held his vrouw tightly to him. Why had she not said a word since they’d left the feast? He sighed. Was there anything so strangely incomprehensible as a woman?
“Are you tired, Little One?” he asked at last.
“Not too tired to walk with you at my side,” she said, then added in a dreamy voice, “Will you still call me Little One when our baby is born?”
He chuckled and gave her an extra squeeze. “Always!”
Once more she fell silent. He made several other attempts to engage her in conversation, but she never offered more than a cryptic response.
“What is it, my love?” he asked at last.
“What is what?”
“The thing that keeps you so quiet tonight.”
He heard and felt her sigh. It was smooth and deep breathing in, then released in soblike jerks.
“My thoughts,” she said shakily.
“What thoughts could distress you so much that you cannot talk all the way home from such a happy celebration?”
She did not answer. Instead, from the body he continued to hold close, he felt and heard a series of sighs and sniffles. He planted a lingering kiss on her forehead and said nothing. She reached up and squeezed his hand, and her whole frame shook with sobs.
He’d never seen her like this before. It must be the carrying of a child in her belly. He remembered his moeder, Kaatje, who had always carried a baby in her belly, never one in her arms. He could scarcely recall a day when Kaatje was not weeping.
They had reached the gateway that led through the kasteel walls before Aletta stopped sobbing and spoke. “Pieter-Lucas,” she ventured, “when our child sees the light of day, how shall we avoid christening him?”
“Must we avoid it?”
She stopped in the middle of the road and lifted her face to his. Her cheeks glistened in the moonlight. “But…I thought we were Children of God.”
So that was it! Feeling trapped, he scrambled for an answer. He hesitated.
She went on. “Surely you can’t forget what Hans taught us!”
“Forget? ‘Baptism is an intelligent act of witness to faith, chosen by the person being baptized, not by his parents.’ I could recite it in my dreams.”
“Then you know we must never baptize any of our infants.” Her voice held a heavy tone of disappointment.
“If we lived still in Emden, I must agree. But sometimes even Children of God must make exceptions. It’s a matter of getting along in the community.”
“Nay, Pieter-Lucas, it’s a matter of right and wrong.”
“Oh? Your parents were secret Children of God, yet they had you baptized and took you to the Papist church as long as they lived in Breda, a Papist city.”
She shook her head. “Nay, they did not baptize me.”
“What?” His heart seemed for the moment to stop still. “Surely…”
“My vader told me himself.”
“But that’s impossible,” he protested. Then taking her head in his hands and holding her so the moon’s light could illuminate her face, he went on. “Think you for one moment that Dirck Engelshofen would have been allowed to continue to sell books in Breda if he had not baptized his daughter?”
She reached for his hands. “Hear me well, Pieter-Lucas. As you know, when I was born my moeder was suffering from the madness freshly come upon her that very day, and no one thought it strange when they delayed the ritual. Shortly thereafter, Vader took us all to Antwerp to stay with their families for a time, and when we returned it was assumed the thing had been done while we were away.”
For a long while he still held her head in his hands, and they stared hard at each other. Now it was his turn to keep the silence. Were they Children of God? That was her real question.
No doubt Aletta was one in heart. As for himself, he’d tried hard to believe it didn’t matter what faith he called his own. Down under his doublet where no one could see, he believed in Jesus Christ, the Son of God, born of a virgin, crucified, buried, and risen again. He tried to trust Him and live the way He did as much as possible. Beyond this, what could be important enough to argue about?
Pieter-Lucas could no longer look into the eyes of his beloved. For once he had to admit that if Aletta would speak no more about it, he would be content to live like Coornhert, refusing to align himself publicly with any one of the many confusing religions. “Someday,” the mild-mannered man had told Pieter-Lucas on one of their long visits, “the perfect church shall emerge from all the confusion and bloodshed. Until then, no matter how much I may disagree with the Roman church, neither shall I take up with any of the sprouting little groups along the way.”
Pieter-Lucas could never say such things to his vrouw. He felt her eyes probing him, waiting for his answer. It must be the answer she wanted or she would again dissolve into those maddening tears. But how could he know what that answer was?
“Whatever you and I do about our baptism,” he ventured at last, “must wait till this war is over.”
He heard her gasp and stroked her arm as he went on. “As long as I must fulfill Yaap’s mission, I dare not to do anything to offend either the Calvinist Beggars or the Nassau Lutherans.”
Aletta stared up at him. “For myself, I can wait, Pieter-Lucas. But we must find a way to keep from christening our child.”
“Hans taught that baptizing a baby who knows nothing of what is happening is useless. So what tragedy would occur if we christened our child in order to keep the peace?”
Aletta hesitated. “I don’t know all the answers, Pieter-Lucas. I only know that christening a baby says to the whole world that your child belongs to the religion of the church where it is done. Can we declare our child and ourselves Lutherans?”
Pieter-Lucas felt a heat building within. “What is wrong with being Lutherans until this war is over?” he challenged her. “Is Prince Willem’s Lutheran family not pious enough? They read the Bible five times a day—they’re kind to their servants and charitable to the villagers. Countess Juliana prays for her sons and their messengers. They’re not Papists. How, then, can the baptism of their infants be so great an error?”
Between sobs, Aletta continued, leaning into his chest and pouring out her confusion. “I know not all of what is right and what is wrong,” she began. “But when I see images in the church here and think about the baptism, I must ask who is right—Hans and my vader, or these God-fearing Lutherans.”
“Is it not possible that both could be right?”
“I don’t know, Pieter-Lucas. I only know that I fear nothing more than arousing God’s displeasure.”
“Think you not, then, that Maarten and Petronella have displeased God when they baptized little Maarten? And we, as well, for being the godparents?”
Aletta was quiet for a long while. Finally, pushing herself back from his embrace, she looked up and grabbed both his hands in hers. “Nay, that cannot be. Nell and Maarten have never sat at Hans’ feet, and they have done what they know best to do.”
“Ah, so! Then ’tis not always a clear choice between right and wrong.” He reached for her face and smoothed back the dampened curls from her cheek.
“That may be. For me, though, one thing is clear just now. I simply cannot even think of presenting our child for christening.”
“Nor can I think how we shall avoid it.” Pieter-Lucas fought down a rising inner turmoil. Caught between the demands of Yaap’s mission and the relentless faith of his vrouw, how would he ever manage to protect both her and the child she would soon bear?
Aletta had ceased her sobbing. “I see you do not understand,” she said. “I must simply trust God to show us both a way.” Her voice was once more calm.
Without another word, the two walked hand in hand through the sleeping kasteel grounds. Pieter-Lucas struggled with his thoughts all the way and yearned for a way to believe as his vrouw believed—and to be quiet.
That is not the lot of a good and careful husband, he told himself. For only when I wrestle away the thoughts that threaten her, can she live in peace.
Having settled this his duty, he felt relieved. Who knew whether indeed God would answer her prayer? Stranger things than that had already happened to them since they had left Breda.
****
Every day Aletta went to the herb garden to gather supplies for the Julianas’ apothecary cabinet. Nearly always, before she climbed the hill with her basket load of precious plants and flowers, she would take time to walk through the garden or sit on the Pondering Bench and soak up the beauty and healing warmth of the old place.
Today, though, the summer afternoon had grown so warm that Aletta decided not to linger but to return directly with her basketful of clippings. She was just snipping the last of the leaves for the day from the rosemary bush beside the stone wall when she heard the distant barking of the hunting hounds, followed by a rustling in the leaves of a nearby linden tree. Next came a solid thud on the ground. Startled, she looked up to see a slight-framed woman, arms askew, righting herself from her tumble to the ground. The woman brushed at her skirts and smiled at Aletta.
“Looks like as if’n I finded th’ right spot,” she said with animation. “An’ the right person, to be sure.”
Aletta straightened and held tightly to the rosemary sprigs in one hand and her cutting knife in the other. “Oh, ja?” she asked, puzzled. “Who might that be?”
The woman grinned, stretching her upper lip over a row of dark snaggled teeth. “Aletta, th’ healer lady what I’se been telled ’bout.”
Aletta shuddered. “And who are you?” she asked, her eyes following the woman’s every move and her hand instinctively tightening its grip on the knife. Who indeed? A familiar figure she was, but just who, she couldn’t quite recall.
“I come from your old friends th’ schoolmeester an’ his vrouw. We all been a hassled from our nestin’ places in Breda. Guess ye was, too, only ye an’ yer family went long b’fore we did, leavin’ that bookshop to th’ cobwebs an’ rats.”
Aletta frowned her forehead into a squint and asked, “Lompen Mieke?”
The little woman clapped her hands and chuckled. “Ye knows me. Ye knows me.”
“What brought you here?” Aletta asked. Everything she knew about this woman told her to run, to chase her away, to call the kasteel guards. But inside, where she knew things but couldn’t explain them, she sensed a calmness bidding her, instead, to trust.
“I come fer a basketful o’ herbs what the meester’s vrouw can use to heal th’ people what keeps a-runnin’ to us fer help. Lots o’ sick’uns, there is, an’ she never done learnt how to heal ’em.”
“How did you know where to find me?”
“I kin find anybody, if’n ye jus’ tells me the name o’ the village where they be. I heared your husban’ a-tellin’ the meester that ye was here in Dillenburg. Besides, he talked ’bout a healin’ garden. Jus’ made sense to look over th’ wall, seein’ how that’s where most noble ladies keeps their gardens.”
Aletta dropped the last of her rosemary snippings into the basket, along with the knife. She held the basket tightly and asked, “My husband told you about the garden, too, and the herbs?”
Mieke gestured wildly at the same speed that the words burst forth from her lips. “He promised me that he’d bring ye to us soon, with th’ herbs what we needed. But he hasn’t come an’ folks is a-dyin’. We couldn’t wait no longer, so I tells th’ good vrouw I’se comin’ to get ye with yer herbs now, b’fore any more folks dies off.”
Aletta stared, her mouth open. Why had Pieter-Lucas never mentioned this to her? “Tell me, Mieke,” she ventured, never taking her eyes off her visitor for an eyeblink. “What sort of herbs does the meester’s vrouw need?”
“She doesn’t know—only that some o’ th’ people’s a-dyin’ fer lack o’ somethin’. Me thought sure ye would know what sort o’ healin’ powders to send.”
Aletta sighed. What could she say to this vague request, coming from a mind so devoid of understanding?
“Mieke,” she began, “the herbs in this garden are not mine to give to you. ’Tis the countesses of the kasteel that own them.”
“If they’s healin’ ladies, then it seems to me as how that’s what th’ plants are fer, an’ there’s no chance they can say ye nay.”
“I still must ask.”
Mieke stamped her foot in the dirt and made little shooing motions with her hand. “Then what ye waitin’ fer? Be gone an’ at it,” she urged.
Aletta stifled an impulse to laugh outright at the audacity of this crude little person challenging her. “First of all, I need to know, are the people mostly ill with coughs and heatte and rawness in their heads?”
Mieke pursed her lips and nodded her head while a look of assumed importance knit her brow. “Coughs indeed an’ runnin’ sores, but most o’ all, lotsa women birthin’ screamin’ babies. Ooei! Some days an’ nights, it’s enough to make ye stuff yer ears with rags.”
Aletta’s mind raced with a quickly growing list of things she could send. “But,” she said suddenly, “how will the meester’s vrouw know what to do with them?”
Mieke pranced excitedly, pushing up closer to Aletta. “That’s why I begged yer husban’ to bring ye along with th’ herbs, so ye can teach her how to use ’em.”
“That I cannot promise,” Aletta retorted.
“An’ what’s to stop ye?”
“Mieke, I am married to my husband, and I must have his permission to take myself along.”
Mieke stared at her, her eyes growing wild. “Then don’t stand here any longer. Get ye at it. I’ll be a-waitin’ here when ye comes back, b’fore the clock sings out again.”
“Nay, Mieke, you may not wait here, nor can I have it all assembled before the clock strikes one more time.”
Mieke stamped her foot again. “I knows yer tricks. Ye fancy people always works th’ same. Ye thinks if’n ye sends me away, I’ll not come back to hound ye more. But ye’re wrong! Pay yer mind to me, Healer Lady. I ain’t a-goin’ to be chased off without what I comed fer.”
“I will come back to you, Mieke. You can trust my word. But you cannot wait inside the kasteel grounds.” Aletta was firm. “You climb back over the wall and do not return until the sun lies low in that sky.” She pointed in the westward direction. “I shall meet you here with an answer of some sort. If you come snooping around before then, I cannot promise you’ll not be chased off by kasteel guards or hunting hounds.”
Mieke stood, hands on hips, glaring at her defiantly.
“Do you hear me?” Aletta asked.
“I hears, but I move not from this place,” she said.
“Then I shall have to call both the guards and the hounds, and they shall remove you forcibly. You were not invited here, and you do not belong in this place. Now, go, Mieke, go, and I shall do all I can to help you with your request.”
With a saucy look in Aletta’s direction, Mieke turned and clambered over the wall as quickly as she had come. Aletta heard the woman’s raspy voice whistling a tune along the outside of the wall. Then she fled, basket tucked over her arms, toward the kasteel stable where Pieter-Lucas curried the horses this afternoon.
If Mieke spoke the truth, why had Pieter-Lucas not mentioned her request? The question resounded in her brain with each step pounding on the pathway. She must find an answer quickly before Mieke came bursting back across the wall. Something told Aletta that no army of guards or hunting hounds would ever stop this slippery little woman once she had determined to get a thing.
She shoved open the stable door and stepped gingerly across the threshold. The strong odors of horse dung and urine assaulted her sensitive stomach and sent it into the kinds of upheaval that early morning brought to her each day. So overpowering came the urge to wretch that she fled at once behind the stable and vomited into the sour rotting straw.
Leaning against the side of the building, gasping for breath, wishing for a clean-smelling spot to sit and ease the pounding and swimming of her head, she heard Pieter-Lucas’ voice.
“Aletta! What do you here, retching in the straw with your face as pale as an apparition?” He draped her arm around his shoulder and helped her to a low stone fence on the edge of the barnyard, where he sat beside her.
Aletta smiled at him, grateful for the shade of a spreading willow, and said simply, “Will our child always have such surprises for us?”
Pieter-Lucas shook his head. “Not like this, I hope. Are you feeling better?”
She nodded. “Not having to smell the horses helps. The heat hinders, but it will pass. Whatever else, I must ask you some questions.”
“Questions? About what?”
“Lompen Mieke!”
He started. “What about Lompen Mieke?”
“She just climbed over the fence in the garden—”
“In the Julianas’ garden?”
The look of incredulity on his face made her laugh. “I never would have thought it, either, but it’s true,” she assured him.
“However did she find you?”
“Said you’d mentioned Dillenburg and the garden, and that if she knows the name of the village, there’s nothing she can’t find.”
Pieter-Lucas shook his head. “That woman! What did she want?”
“If her story is true, you already know what she wants.” Her eyes sent him question marks.
“If Mieke tells a true story? What do you mean?” he stammered.
“She says you made her a promise that you have never mentioned to me.”
“Just what did I promise her?”
“That you’d bring your vrouw with a basketful of herbs to Duisburg to help Vrouw Laurens with the refugees.” She watched him carefully as she spoke.
Pieter-Lucas grew agitated and gestured with a pointed finger. “What I finally told her when she would not leave me till I said what she wanted to hear was that I would see what I could do about taking some herbs on my next trip. But I flatly refused to take you there, and she heard me well!”
“Did Vrouw Laurens ask you for my help?”
“I only talked to Meester Laurens. He told me they had no reliable healers in Duisburg and that his vrouw was struggling to do the best she could, learning as she went. I simply told him you were learning from the Julianas in their garden here. That little hole-peeper, Mieke, was listening from who knows where and accosted me on my way out of the yard.”
“Why did you not tell me?” Aletta puzzled over her husband’s uneasy manner.
He shrugged and worried a pebble with his toe, not looking at her as he spoke. “I won’t take you there.”
“Why not?”
“It’s no place for you. Especially now, with your tired mornings and heavy stomach. You need to stay here where the Julianas can take care of you.”
She laid a hand on his arm and tried to coax him to look at her. “But, Pieter-Lucas, people have been chased from their homes, and they’re ill and dying for lack of some healing gift I can give to them. It sounds to me as if I have no more choice about this than you had a choice about Yaap’s mission.”
“Nay. You are not going!” He snapped.
“Why am I not going?”
“I told you. It’s not safe.”
“You run off all the time to places we both know are not safe, and never yet have you once paid a mind to me when I begged you to avoid some dangerous assignment. I stay behind and pray Godspeed on each mission. Now, why can we not both pray Godspeed on this mission of mercy?”
When he looked at her, a frightening fire smoldered in his eyes—along with dismay such as she’d never seen there before. He grabbed her by both arms and ordered, “Aletta, I am your husband, and you will do as I say! Do you hear me? You will not go with Mieke!”
From behind them came a familiar piping voice. “I brung ye somethin’!”
Aletta turned to the uninvited guest and gasped. “Mieke! I told you to wait outside the kasteel walls. I will come to you later in the garden, as I said.”
Mieke stood firmly, her feet wide, one hand on her hip. In the other, she held a bulging bag. “Ye both needs to see this thing an’ hear its story b’fore ye come to help th’ vrouw.”
She stared at Pieter-Lucas, who persisted in sitting with his back to her. He hung his head and held it in big hands, elbows resting on his knees.
“Why doesn’t ye face me like a man?” Mieke challenged.
When he didn’t move, she scrambled over the stone fence and planted her feet squarely in front of him. “In this here bag, I’se got a treasure box fer th’ bookseller’s daughter.”
Pieter-Lucas lifted his head slightly and asked, “Where did you steal this one?”
“From the bookshop,” she said. “But I had to do it. It b’longed to Tante Lysbet.”
“Tante Lysbet?” Aletta started. “Did they chase her from Breda as well?”
Pieter-Lucas spoke up now. “I forbid you to be pouring frightening stories into my vrouw’s ears. Now, Mieke, take your bag and be gone!”
Mieke did not move, but when she spoke, all the defiance was gone. In a tone softer than Aletta could imagine, the woman began. “I gots to tell ye ’bout the two Lysbets an’ how they done chased the thief out o’ Mieke an’ poured in th’ love o’ God instead.”
Had she heard right? Aletta felt her heart moving toward the strange visitor. She laid a restraining hand on Pieter-Lucas and urged her on. “Tell me, Mieke.”
“Jus’ b’fore Vrouw de Smid birthed her baby, I was in big trouble with th’ soldiers o’ Breda. They was ’bout to throw me into the tower, an’ I had no mind to let ’em. So I was ready to do most whatever they wanted, if’n they’d jus’ let me go free. They sended me to steal Tante Lysbet’s treasure box out o’ her room where she was a stayin’ with th’ Vrouw de Smid. I got it all right, but then I picked th’ lock an’ took ever’thin’ out o’ it fer myself. Figured at least I could sell that much an’ use it to fill my belly fer a day or two.”
Pieter-Lucas was watching the woman now, and Aletta held his arm fast with both hands.
“They was mighty happy to get th’ box, but madder’n a bunch o’ crazed demons b’cause of it bein’ empty, an’ never did b’lieve me when I telled ’em I finded it that way. B’fore I could sell a thing, they throwed me into th’ tower. Two days later, they throwed Tante Lysbet in, as well, an’ next mornin’, they dumped Betteke de Vriend in with us. I treated ’em both downright ugly, I have to say it.”
Pieter-Lucas mumbled to Aletta, “Not hard to imagine.”
Mieke picked up his words. “Nay, I cannot blame ye fer such thinkin’. Ye all knowed me as th’ rotten thief o’ Breda, an’ ye was right, b’cause that’s what I was. An’ if’n Betteke de Vriend hadn’t been so kind to me, even when I treated her so awful, an’ if’n she hadn’t kept on a-readin’ to us day after day from those pages what she’d tored out o’ that book o’ God, I’d still be out on th’ streets o’ Breda, pickin’ pockets.”
Pieter-Lucas stirred beside Aletta, then interrupted Mieke’s narrative at this point. “But you went on stealing, Mieke. You stole the meester’s books, and you must have stolen Tante Lysbet’s box back from the soldiers—if you really have it as you claim. How do we know you won’t steal anything from us or from the prince’s family?”
“Ye doesn’t understand. I stealed the books not from the meester, but from the Spaniards what was a-gettin’ ready to steal ’em from the meester. An’ I gived ’em back to him. An’ as fer Tante Lysbet’s box, I couldn’t let those wicked men keep it after they done burnt her at th’ stake. Jus’ lucky they didn’t burn it with her body!”
Aletta gasped. “Nay! Not Tante Lysbet! They wouldn’t burn her.”
She sat rigid, staring at Mieke, but seeing a picture in the eye of her memoried imagination. Tante Lysbet was standing in her room in the attic of The Crane’s Nest, pulling from her treasure box her mother’s little herbal book and handing it to her. Aletta had carried it in her bodice ever since. It was there this minute, rising and falling with the heavy heavings of her heart.
Pieter-Lucas stood to his feet, stretched out his hand, and pointed a finger directly at Mieke. “I told you not to tell such stories. See how you upset my vrouw?”
Mieke stared at him, her sharp chin held high and fire in her eyes. “I didn’t intend to upset your vrouw. I was only tellin’ it like it done happened.”
“Like you want us to think it happened,” Pieter-Lucas retorted. “Meester Laurens told me Tante Lysbet was banished, not burned—and he was there.”
“But the meester never seed her face b’cause it was covered, an’ like I telled ye b’fore, I watched ’em carry Betteke’s body out the night b’fore—”
“Enough!” Pieter-Lucas interrupted. “Mieke, I want you to go now!”
Mieke didn’t budge. She was rummaging through her bag and talking all at the same time. “First, ye gots to let me give yer vrouw th’ box.”
Pieter-Lucas raised a hand to stop her, but Aletta pulled it down. Quietly, they watched the little street woman take out the box and place it almost reverently into Aletta’s hands.
“’Tis the very one,” Aletta said softly. “No other box has these painted flowers and golden lock.”
Mieke reached into her own bodice and pulled out a long blackened metal chain over her head. Dangling from the chain was a key.
“Where did you find that?” Aletta asked.
“In th’ ashes at th’ foot o’ th’ stake,” Mieke said. She inserted the key into the treasure box lock and turned it, adding, “On th’ mornin’ after th’ burnin’.”
The lock snapped open, and Aletta lifted the lid. Inside lay a prayer book, a lock of baby-fine hair, a wooden crucifix, and a small paper-covered pamphlet. “Too sacred to touch,” Aletta whispered. The tears flowing slowly across her cheeks warmed her heart.
“Mieke,” Pieter-Lucas spoke up again, “if you hadn’t stolen this box as the soldiers asked you to, they wouldn’t have had any evidence against Tante Lysbet, and she might never have been banished—or burned—or whatever.”
He stared at her for a long spell. Aletta drew a sharp deep breath and watched cocky confidence give way to trembling on the dirty little face. Mieke shifted her weight from foot to foot and stammered, “I…I didn’t hurt anybody.”
Before Pieter-Lucas could respond, Aletta blurted out, “Mieke, do you know what you did was wrong?”
After a long silence, Mieke said in a broken voice, “Ja, I knows it now.” She stood twisting the frayed hem of her shawl in her gnarly fingers. “An’ I also knows I could never do it again.”
“How do we know you wouldn’t do it again?” Pieter-Lucas challenged.
“God’s Book done teached me that stealin’s wrong, except like stealin’ th’ meester’s books from the men what was fixin’ to steal ’em from him—an’ sellin’ ’em to buy food fer the meester.”
Pieter-Lucas moved uneasily beside Aletta and questioned the woman once more. “So now that you know it was wrong, what are you going to do about it?”
She stared up at him openmouthed. “Do? What can I do? I’se already begged Betteke’s Vader in th’ Heaven to forgive. Tante Lysbet’s gone.” She hung her head.
Aletta dampened dried lips with her tongue. “I remember reading how Jesus forgave a woman for a great sin and then said, ‘Go and sin no more.’ I think that’s what He would say to you, Mieke.”
Aletta reached out and hugged the trembling figure before her. “What God has forgiven, I am certain Tante Lysbet would forgive,” she murmured. “And so do I!”
With a start, Mieke pulled free from Aletta’s embrace. Her eyes filled with wonder. She wiped her hands clumsily on her skirts and stammered, “N-nobody ever gived me a hug b’fore.”
She turned then and ran away toward the gate. Aletta called after her. “Meet me in the garden before sundown.”
Pieter-Lucas drew Aletta close with his big embracing arms and smoothed her hair with his hand while she stood silent, exhausted. At length, she whispered, “When can you take me to Duisburg, my love?”
She felt a sighing in his chest and a tightening of his arms around her. “When God wills it,” he said at last.
Aletta snuggled into his embrace. She could ask no more.