From his seat atop Blesje, Pieter-Lucas lowered his head against an afternoon assault of sleet blowing toward him. Each breath sent a knife’s thrust through his nostrils and down into his throat.
“Not much farther now, old boy,” he said, prodding Blesje onward. “Here’s hoping this is our last trip to Dillenburg for herbs before spring. We’ve had a cold winter.”
Not only cold, but for a messenger of the Nassaus, disheartening!
Pieter-Lucas had spent the autumn months crisscrossing the countryside, running messages for a war that Alva refused to fight to any sort of finish. All through Oat Month (October) and halfway into Tallow Month (November), Alva lurked ever in Willem’s shadow, provoking him from the sidelines until the prince ran out of money and his mercenary troops forsook him.
The campaign lost, the prince of Oranje took Pieter-Lucas with him on several fruitless trips around France and Germany. Beaten but always with an ember of optimism still smoldering in his heart, he went on selling or pawning what remained of his personal and family belongings and begging his friends to once more come to his aid. Nearly without exception, they sent him home as empty as when he’d come to their doorsteps.
Not only did the cause of the revolt appear to be all but dead, Willem’s hopes of regaining his vrouw’s allegiance also ended that awful winter. Following through on her mad threats, once Willem left for the Brabant campaign, Princess Anna had removed herself to Cologne to live what she insisted was the rightful pleasure-mad life of a princess. On one occasion, Willem sent Pieter-Lucas with a letter begging her to return. He’d found her, large with Willem’s unborn child, carousing with her wild friends. She read the letter, shredded it to pieces, tromped on it, and shouted her answer at Pieter-Lucas.
“I might bury him with my own hands, but return to his arms? Never!”
That night he’d returned to Aletta in the little corner of a farmhouse in Duisburg, trembling and more grateful than ever for his warm, wonderful vrouw. As hard as he’d fought the idea of wintering in Duisburg, it only took one visit to Anna to show him that anywhere on earth was acceptable, since he had a vrouw like Aletta.
The stream of refugees continued to grow, even in the midst of the coldest weather. People were fleeing now, not just for reasons of religion. The Duke of Alva’s many military battles had brought Spain into deep debt. So he imposed exorbitant taxes on the Lowlanders to pay for the war that had been waged to take away their freedoms. The time had come for Protestants and Catholics alike to seek refuge from the unreasonable demands of a foreign sovereign.
The services of Aletta and a growing sisterhood of healer ladies were constantly in demand. From the rising of each new day’s sun to the setting of the same, they administered herbs, distributed food, and delivered babies. Pieter-Lucas watched her unceasing smile. And as her belly swelled, he saw her steps drag a trifle more slowly at the end of each succeeding day.
At night when she crawled into bed beside him, his merciful vrouw would rub her tummy and say in a smooth and delighted voice, “Our little Lucas grows, ‘Vader.’”
“What makes you so sure it’s not Kaatje?” he would question.
She’d shrug and toss a “You will see” at him.
Then they’d laugh and embrace, and she’d add, “Whoever it is, ’tis a great enough miracle to fill each day with golden sunshine!”
She would fall asleep instantly, leaving Pieter-Lucas to lie awake wondering. Would she be all right? Would the baby live? Babies were born every day, and Duisburg had a real midwife now. It was the only way he would ever consent to keep her here instead of taking her back to Dillenburg. Besides, he had never seen her more robustious or happy! Yet in the middle of the night he could not forget that his own moeder had died in the childbirth bed.
But that was Moeder Kaatje, and she was old and had lost many other babies, he told himself. Aletta is young!
Still, the deep unsettledness never seemed to go away until daylight. Then all day he would watch with the fascination of an awestruck child the increasing roundness of her beautiful body, the blush of her cheeks, and the smile of contentment on her face. He felt gratitude well up inside—and pride. He shook his head and asked, “This is my vrouw?”
“In only a few more days I am going to be a vader,” he said to Blesje as they passed the first house on the edge of the village. “Can you believe it?”
Pieter-Lucas’ heart was racing now in spite of the sleet and the wind. Each clop of the horse’s hooves brought him closer to his love on this cold-to-the-bone afternoon.
He entered the little house on the edge of a farm, halfway expecting to find it empty. Aletta would probably be out attending to her patients unless the midwife had decided it was her time to stay abed and await the birth. But neither of these happened. Instead, Mieke greeted him at the door—with fingers pressed against her lips. For once she was quiet and seemed intent on keeping him that way as well.
He winced, feeling everything tighten inside him. “What are you doing here? Is my Aletta ill?” he whispered.
Mieke shook her head and motioned him toward the bed cupboard. Here he drew back the curtain and caught his breath. Propped up ever so slightly by pillows, Aletta lay in her place, a wide smile lighting up her face. At her breast she nursed the tiniest human being Pieter-Lucas had ever seen.
“Ah!” he gasped.
He stared at his vrouw and she at him. She looked weary but happy.
“Are you all right?” he asked.
She nodded and reached up a hand to his outstretched one. A newly breathing little life bound them together in awed silence. Pieter-Lucas climbed into the bed and kissed Aletta. Then looking down at the child, he whispered softly, “Welcome, Little One.”
“It’s Lucas!” Aletta whispered back.
“Are you sure?”
Aletta laughed.
“So wrinkled, so small, and yet so perfect. Can it be my son?” Pride and uncertainty fought for possession of him.
The little mouth no longer nursed but puckered into rosebud-shaped sucking motions. Pieter-Lucas stared at the child—his child—in wonder, fearing to touch the matted fuzziness on his round head. He’d never touched a baby before, never been a vader before….
Feeling his voice tremble, he said, “But he came so soon!”
Aletta smiled. “This morning.”
“And you, are you well?” Her obvious weakness frightened him. What if she never grew strong again?
She nodded again.
“Who helped you?”
“Mieke!”
Pieter-Lucas gulped. “But…how?” he stammered.
Aletta laid a hand on his. Her eyelids fluttered open and closed as she spoke. “She followed my instructions, the ones from Tante Lysbet’s herbal. I could have asked for no better help.”
Her eyelids closed and she drifted into sleep. Instantly, Mieke was at the bedside, barging past Pieter-Lucas with the officious air of a midwife in charge. He knew well his expected place as vader of a newborn. He must submit to the whims of the women, by whom all matters related to the birthing process were jealously guarded.
But Mieke? She was no midwife!
He raised a hand as if to stop her, but she rebuked him with a sharp glance that he felt powerless to resist. Then picking up the baby and wrapping him tightly in his infant cloths, she moved toward the cradle stationed between the bed and the hearth, where a kettle of water was bubbling and spitting away.
With a nod of her head, she motioned Pieter-Lucas to follow. When she reached the cradle, she looked down at the baby in her arms and shifted uneasily from foot to foot. Finally she looked up at Pieter-Lucas and said in a tone softer than he thought she was capable of, “There’s somethin’ what I got to tell ye.”
His heart stopped beating! Everything had gone too smoothly, and as he feared, it would all end quickly. “The baby…my vrouw…they will be all right, won’t they? Tell me not that they’re going to die, or…”
Mieke was shaking her head rapidly. “Nay! Nothin’s amiss with either of ’em.”
“What, then?” All the suspicions he’d ever felt about this mysterious street woman seemed rolled into a ball at the pit of his stomach. He had to stifle an urge to grab his son, to protect him from this thief.
“Ye needs to know from th’ beginnin’ that I doesn’t do this here sorta thing right goodly. Truth tellin’ is, I’se never in my life done said nothin’ th’ likes o’ what I gots to say now.” She stopped and took a deep breath. “B’lieve me, th’ old Mieke what ye knowed in Breda, she never would’ve telled ye this, but jus’ know, this is th’ new Mieke a-speakin’ to ye.”
New Mieke indeed! What sort of tricks was she hiding behind that name this time? The longer she held the baby, the more uneasy Pieter-Lucas grew.
“Put the baby in his cradle,” he ordered, his palms sticky. “Then you can talk, if you must.”
She shook her head and edged away. “Nay! But I gots to hold him till I finishes. An’ here I goes, jus’ goin’ to tell it like it is. Long years ’go, back in Breda, when yer opa, the painter, was still a-livin,’ I did him wrong.”
Pieter-Lucas gasped and pointed a finger at her. “You! You were the one….”
“Which one?” she shot back.
“The one that robbed Opa and left him lamed and bleeding in the alley! I always thought it was you.” Heat was rising to his forehead, his fists were forming.
“Ye didn’t see me do a thin’,” she said.
“I didn’t have to see you, Mieke. Who else in Breda would have done it? We all knew you as the thief that roamed our streets and helped yourself to everybody’s belongings.”
Mieke cleared her throat, and the baby started in her arms, then settled once more, his mouth and nose making soft puffing sounds.
“All ye say is true, but I swear to God in the heaven, I didn’t touch yer opa to do him harm,” Mieke said.
“Who did it, then?”
“’Twas one o’ my friends what sticked him with a sword. I was th’ one what laid wait fer th’ ol’ man an’ gived my friend the signal. He was s’pose to knock him down so I could rush in and steal his bag o’ gold pieces.”
“Gold pieces?” Pieter-Lucas gasped. “Opa never carried but one gold piece in his bag.”
“So my friend discovered once he had it in his hand. Sended him into such a fit o’ anger that he pulled the sword out o’ yer opa’s sheath an’ sticked him with it b’fore he done runned away. I never seed him again.” She stopped and smoothed the hair back from the baby’s forehead.
Pieter-Lucas watched her for a long moment. Almost he had to believe her words were true. Almost! At last he posed the one more question that might cause her to reverse her story, if indeed it was false. “Mieke, why did you hunt me down to let me know Opa had been hurt and tell me where to find him?”
The mysterious little woman looked him straight in the eye and without a shifting or batting motion said, “No matter what ye an’ th’ rest o’ Breda thinks about me, I wasn’t ever all evil. Ever’ time what I done brung hurt to a body, there was always a deep-down sort o’ pity in my innards, what afflicted me somethin’ fearful.”
Was that why he couldn’t bring himself to try to stop this thief from holding his baby boy? It should have been so easy just to snatch the baby from her arms.
“Fer a lot o’ days I been a-thinkin’ about what I’se done to yer opa an’ a-knowin’ that I has to make it right. Somewhere in the Book, Vrouw Adriana’s read it to me time an’ again, somethin’ about restorin’ what we stealed. But I hasn’t got no gold to pay ye back, an’ I cannot go back an’ do somethin’ fer your opa. I’se been a-askin’ Betteke’s Shepherd, th’ one she called Vader, to show me how to do what’s right by ye.”
Pieter-Lucas stood stunned, still unable to touch either Mieke or the baby. Thieves still trying to trick you didn’t confess that kind of crimes and stand so still before you while looking for ways to make them right.
Finally she held the baby up to him. “Here, this is all I got to give ye.”
“But he’s not yours to give,” Pieter-Lucas protested.
“This mornin’ when yer vrouw was a-birthin’ th’ child, I begged her to let me be th’ midwife fer her, but mostly fer ye! It was all I could do. Doesn’t ye understand?”
“I…I don’t know….” He was probing his mind for something to make it make sense. One thing came suddenly clear. He had to accept his baby as she offered him.
He reached out both arms and let Mieke lay the child there. “I…I’ve never held a tiny baby like this before,” he muttered. The baby sneezed and opened his eyes a crack. Pieter-Lucas’ heart was fluttering so hard he hardly knew what to do.
Mieke was talking again. “I be a-goin’ now, but first, I’se got to ask o’ ye th’ one thing most awful difficult in all th’ world.” She stopped and stared down at her shifting feet, then wiped her hands on her frayed skirt. Finally she looked up into Pieter-Lucas’ eyes and asked, “Can ye forgive me? Please!”
Why did the simple pleading tone of the sharp little voice make him so uncomfortable?
“Forgive you?” he asked, not sure what he was saying. “Why, I…”
“I’se been a-knowin’ that ye cannot seem to b’lieve that what yer eyes be seein’ is a new Mieke. An’ ye keeps on a-mistrustin’ ever’thin’ I says. But that doesn’t change anythin’. Betteke’s Vader done forgived me. An’ if’n ye say Nay, that ugly word’ll jus’ stick in my heart worser than any sword. I know, b’cause ye done sticked me with yer words many, many times b’fore, till I’se bleedin’ all over.”
“What words?” he demanded.
“Ever’ time ye insists on callin’ me a thief or ye accuses me o’ some sorta misdeed, I feels th’ sword again. It’s in your eyes as well. God have mercy on ye, is all I kin say. Now, tell me you’re a-goin’ to change all that an’ forgive me now b’cause ye finally b’lieves this is a new Mieke!”
His words were like swords? Stunned, he moistened his lips and, without looking directly at her, said, “I guess if God’s forgiven you, that doesn’t leave much place for me to say Nay, does it?”
“Then ye’re forgivin’ me? Can it be?”
Pieter-Lucas coaxed his eyes to look at her. The light in her upturned face was clear and pure. A smile played at the crinkly corners of her mouth. The ugly street thief was gone. The mouth and chin and nose were no longer sharp, gnomelike. Instead, he saw a warm soft glow about her. The new Mieke. Could it be? As if in a dream, he heard his own lips stammering, “Ja, Mieke, I’ll…I’ll forgive you.”
A smile engulfed the girl’s face. She clasped her hands and raised them heavenward. “Thanks be to ye, Pieter-Lucas, son o’ Hendrick! An’ thanks be to Betteke’s Vader in the Heaven! Ye’ll never know what a big ol’ lump of stones ye jus’ now lifted off my back.”
Mieke started to scamper from the room, but Pieter-Lucas stopped her. “Wait! I…I need to know that you’ll forgive me too,” he said, suddenly realizing that with this wild woman he’d been acting just like a son of Hendrick.
She cocked her head to one side. Her eyes snapped. “Ye means ye’re ready to break that nasty sword o’ words into a hundred li’l pieces an’ bury it forever an ever an’ never call me a thief again?”
Pieter-Lucas swallowed hard, then nodded. “Never again! I do believe in the new Mieke.”
She clasped her hands together, twirled around three times, then said slowly, “I’se never b’fore forgived anybody b’cause I’se never b’fore been asked to. Not sure how to do it, so I’ll jus’ say, ye’s forgived!” An enormous smile set her leathery face aglowing.
Then, in an eyeblink, she barged off, leaving Pieter-Lucas alone with a sleeping vrouw, a newborn infant, and a host of perplexing thoughts swirling dizzily through his head. A faint whimper escaped from the baby’s lips, startling the dazed new vader. He looked down into the miniature face, watched the eyelids flutter, and began to talk to his child.
“Son, it’s a big mysterious world you just got birthed into. Some things you can’t expect ever to make sense of. One of those is women, especially the likes of Mieke. Wild, strong-mouthed, always outsmarting everybody, I never guessed anything I said or thought ever mattered one clog to her. Now, here she comes telling me my words stuck her like a sword. And once she tells me that she robbed my opa, her very face changes before my eyes—from thief to saint—what is a man to think?”
He paused and let the stillness hold his thoughts momentarily from moving forward. Then, as if he’d never stopped, he went on. “Speaking of swords, that’s one more big mystery. There was a time, son, when I thought I had it all figured out. Like that day in Hans’ hidden church in Emden. I can still see the circle of elders sitting there staring at me, waiting for my answer to the question, ‘When God gives you a son, what will you teach him about nonresistance?’
“At the moment the answer seemed so simple. ‘My son will never carry a sword—only a paintbrush.’
“But that was before Yaap’s death and Heiligerlee and Egmont’s execution and Jemmingen…. I didn’t mean to, but I killed a man, son, and ever since, I’ve struggled to free my conscience. I’ve come close a time or two, but the heavy guilt never quite went away.”
With heart beating a rapid cadence in his breast, he cradled the child in one arm. He reached out a trembling finger and touched one pink little hand that protruded from the swaddling blanket. He smoothed its creamy softness with a gentle caress, then slipped his pointer finger between the child’s curled thumb and fingers. Instantly the tiny hand gripped it—warm, firm, trusting…. Pieter-Lucas’ eyes felt moist.
“Then today that heaviness all went away. As soon as I told Mieke she was forgiven, I knew I, too, was free from the last hint of guilt.”
He stopped and stared at the amazing little creature in his arms, saying nothing for a long while before he went on. “I know you don’t understand anything I’m saying, but I simply have to tell you all. There is one thing more that if you can truly believe it might keep you from the trouble I’ve had to live with. I will tell you now, and I’ll repeat it every day of your life until you know it by heart and feel it all the way into the center of your bones.”
He paused and watched the angelic face and the rhythmic rise and fall of the tiny breathing chest. “It’s this way, son. You come from a long line of men with paint in our blood. It’s an honor, can you hear me? A calling for a truly courageous man! Let no one—nay, no one—ever, ever, ever steal the paintbrush from these fingers. And mostly, never let them replace it with a sword. These hands,” he said, giving the entwined fingers a gentle squeeze, “they’re meant for healing, not for killing. And that’s no act of cowardice!”
For a long while he stared at the sleeping boy, then lifted him to his lips and kissed both soft pearly pink cheeks. Gently, careful lest he drop him, he lay the baby in his cradle, covered him with the blanket, and stood still staring. After a long pensive moment, he stepped lightly across the floor to the bed where his vrouw rested. Sitting by her side, he spoke softly. “Aletta, my love.”
She opened her eyes and smiled.
Pieter-Lucas laid a hand on her arm and said, “What a wonderful child you gave to me!”
She shook her head. “He is a gift from God!”
“And is his moeder, so wise and kindly wonderful, also a gift from God?”
She chuckled. “No more so than his vader, so strong and full of love.”
“And forgiven,” he added.
When he leaned over and kissed her lips, his nose nestled into a tear-moistened cheek.