From one back street to another, Johan and Samuel zigzagged to Elspeth and Hans’s house, checking at each intersection to make sure no one followed them from the prison. From the square, they heard the crowd cheering as the executions took place. In the alley behind the house, they looked both ways to make sure there were no soldiers to see them at the home of heretics. Then they climbed over the fence and crept to the back door. It was locked.
Samuel knocked and whispered, “Mareili, it is us. Open the door.” He knocked again. A moment later the lock clicked, and the door cracked open. Annalisa peeked out. She let them in and locked the door behind them.
Johan peeked out the window but saw no one. “Has anyone been here since we left?”
“I was watching for you at the window, and I saw soldiers coming down the street. Mother and I were frightened, and so we locked the door and hid. They were talking and laughing about the executions as they walked by. We thought they might try to come into the house, but they went on down the street.”
“It is not safe in Basel.” Brow furrowed, Samuel clenched and unclenched his fists. “Mareili, we are leaving Switzerland tonight. We cannot go back to the farm, so we will take only what we brought with us for the visit.”
Johan’s mother’s mouth opened in surprise and then she burst into tears. “Not go back? Why do we have to go, Samuel? All my mother’s beautiful things are in our house on the mountain. Can’t we be secret believers and stay in our home.”
Samuel shook his head. “I would have us stay if I could, Mareili, but I am sure the authorities already know we are Anabaptists too. Elspeth is my sister. We were lucky to even get out of the prison today. Johannes Oecolampadius has determined to stamp out the Anabaptists. The climb up the mountain will no longer keep them from finding us.” He paused and wiped his eyes with the back of his sleeve. “They martyred our dear Elspeth and Hans today. I will not see you and my children suffer the same fate.”
Mareili’s face twisted, and she burst into tears. “But who will care for our animals, for Lisle?” Annalisa threw her arms around her mother and wailed.
Samuel tried to quiet them. “Hush, hush. You will bring the soldiers.”
“Why do they hate us so, Father?” Johan slammed his fist against the wall. “What have we ever done to them? Why can’t we follow Christ the way our hearts tell us to do?”
“Their hatred is not about our beliefs. It is about money.”
“Money?”
Samuel placed his hand on Johan’s shoulder. “When parents baptize a baby, the act places the child on the church’s and the city’s tax rolls. So if Anabaptists refuse to baptize their children, our fat clerics and rich aldermen lose income. If all the people became Anabaptists and refused to pay the baptism tax, those extortionists would have little left since they no longer collect indulgences.”
He shook his head. “No, Johan. They will do their best to destroy every last Anabaptist.” He put his hand on his wife’s shoulder. “It is too late for us to say we are not Anabaptists, Mareili. By our visit to the prison, they have connected us to Hans and Elspeth. Our neighbor, Wilhelm, is watching the farm. He has always wanted it. I will send word to him, somehow, that I am giving it to him. We cannot stay, we must go.”
“But how, Samuel? What will we do?”
“We will slip down to the river after dark. I know a man who travels to Mainz on his barge to sell goods. I have sold my hay to him for many years. He is a good man, and he will help us. I will go now and make arrangements. Have everything readied when I return.”
Johan opened the drapes a tiny crack and looked out. Groups of Reformist soldiers passed up and down the street. After a long day of heretic hunting, most of them were drunk. They laughed and cursed the Anabaptists, and some were singing crude songs. The light from their torches crept through the small opening into the room, illuminating the tapestries and paintings hanging on the whitewashed walls and the simple wooden cross hanging over the mantle. Johan shut the drape and stood in the darkness waiting for his father to return—his mother and sister were asleep on the couch, their simple belongings packed and ready to go.
There was a creaking sound, and then Johan heard the back door of the house open and the sound of a step in the kitchen. “Hssst, Johan. It is I.” His father came in. He looked tired. “I have made the arrangements. We leave tonight. My friend will give us a good price for our fare to Mainz. Now we must find the money Hans has hidden. Close the drapes tight and then help me.”
Johan pulled the drapes and returned to his Father’s side. Samuel took the tinderbox down from the mantle and struck a light to a piece of the char cloth inside. When the cloth was flaming, he lit a candle from it. Then, Johan and his father knelt by the hearth and ran their fingers along the stones, searching for the loose one Hans had mentioned. When one shifted under Johan’s hand, he pushed harder. “Papa!” he whispered. “Here it is.”
The stone made a scraping sound as it loosened. Johan slid it out, laid it on the floor, and reached into the hole. He pulled a heavy a heavy cloth-wrapped bundle from the hollow and carefully placed it on the hearth.
His father unwrapped it, revealing a beautiful golden crucifix on top of a leather bag. Johan hefted the bag. He handed it to his father, who opened it and took out a few coins.
“Hans has blessed us, the dear man.” He returned the coins to the bag. “Enough gold is here to buy a horse and a cart when we get to Mainz and supplies for our journey to Krakow. We will take only the clothes we have. We leave everything else behind.” He held up the cross. It gleamed in the small light from the candle. “But we will keep this. It will remind us of my brave, sweet sister and her husband.”
Johan felt tears start in his eyes. “I do not want the gold, Papa. I want them.”
Samuel put his hand on his son’s shoulder. “I know, Johan. It is a hard thing.”
They were quiet for a moment, remembering their loved ones. Then they rose.
“How will we travel all the way to Poland, Papa?”
Samuel wrapped the cloth around the bag and the crucifix. “Ernst will take us down the Rhine to Mainz, and from there we follow the Via Regia to Poland. I’ve heard the old Roman road is still passable after all these years. With a horse and cart, we should be able to travel fifteen miles a day.”
“How long will the trip take us?”
“Barring any unforeseen circumstances…” Samuel rubbed his jaw... “about six days down the Rhine and two months from Mainz to Krakow. We will need to wait in Mainz until the roads are passable. Let us pray for an early spring.” He pocketed the coin bag and placed the cross with their bundles. “Come now, Johan. Let us rouse the women and prepare for our trip. We must leave soon.”
They started for the stairs, but Johan heard a noise outside and grabbed his father’s arm.
The two of them crept to the window. Pushing the drape apart just far enough to see, Johan spied another group of soldiers walking in the street. Their torches cast strange shadows on the walls of the houses across the street.
They stopped at the corner several yards away. Their loud voices carried to the house. One soldier produced a wineskin, and the men passed it around, laughing as they did.
“Quite a day in the square,” a soldier said. “One those heretics won’t soon forget, I’ll wager.”
Another man laughed. “A waste of good wood, if you ask me. We should have bound them and thrown them in the river.”
“I expected them to scream more.” The third soldier took a long pull on the skin. “But they went like lambs to the slaughter. They faced death with courage, you must admit.”
The first man spoke again. “Yes, you must…” He was silent for a moment. “The woman never flinched. I’ve been in battle and seen men screaming before less terror than that, but she…” The soldier took another drink. “I will not soon forget the peaceful look on her face as the flames engulfed her. Her behavior was not what I expected.”
Johan stiffened. They were talking about Tante Elspeth! He took a step toward the door, but his father clasped his shoulder with an iron grip.
“Johan!” Samuel hissed. “Do not move.”
“But, Papa, they are talking about Tante Elspeth and Onkel Hans. They burned them, and they’re laughing about it. Those men are murderers. I hate them.”
“Those men had no choice. They followed orders, and in doing so, they witnessed our Father’s peace that passeth all understanding. By his power, Elspeth and Hans stood strong, Johan. And now they are with him in heaven.
Samuel turned Johan toward him. “You must put away your hate as did our Lord Jesus when he asked his Father to forgive those whose torture would soon end his life.”
But Johan knew he could never forget… or forgive.
In the pre-gray hours before dawn, the Hirschberg family slipped aboard a large barge anchored downstream from the Middle Bridge on the Rhine River. The bargeman was a stout older man who hurried the family to the small cabin at the stern. “Stay in here until I tell you to come out. If the soldiers see you, my life will be forfeit, too.”
Seabirds flocked around the barges, their melancholy cries filling Johan’s heart with loneliness for their home on the mountain. He gazed back at Basel once more and then followed his mother and sister inside.
Annalisa wrinkled her nose. “What’s that smell?”
“That’s from people doing their business in the streets.” The bargeman pointed to a small ravine on the shore. “The rains wash the sewage into that little gully over there and dumps it into the river.” He chuckled. “Don’t worry, leibchen, we’ll soon be well away from the city.”
“I thank you, Ernst.” Samuel clasped the man’s hand. “You are saving our lives.”
“You’ve done plenty of favors for me over the years, and your crops have always been the easiest to sell downriver. Besides that, you are saving me the money I would spend to hire crewmen for this trip. Now keep out of sight until I call you on deck.”
That afternoon Johan and Annalisa sat in the bow, seeing a world they’d only read about for the first time. They marveled at the ancient castles built on both shores of the Rhine and watched bargemen rowing or poling boats and barges upstream toward Basel or down toward Mainz. Vineyards and fields on the bank slipped by. After a long silence, Annalisa turned to her brother. “Do you think we will ever return to our mountain?”
A great emptiness welled up inside Johan. “No, sister.” He shook his head. “I do not think we will ever see Switzerland again.”
A day after they left Basel the Hirschbergs crossed the Swiss border and floated downstream on the Rhine between France and Germany. As they passed a large city, Johan saw an enormous spire that rose high above the crowded houses and public buildings. He pointed and asked, “What place is this, Herr Ernst?”
“This is the city of Strasbourg, and that is the great cathedral, Notre Dame de Strasbourg. Some say it is the tallest building in the world. I have yet to see taller. The Catholics owned it.” Ernst spit into the river. “But the city gave it to the Protestants five-years ago, which angered the papists, who then tried to burn it down.” He smirked. “But the brave Protestant lads drove them off.”
“That’s good to hear. I hope they killed all the Catholic pigs…” He turned and walked away. Hand on the rail, he stared at the Rhine’s blue waters sliding beneath the bow.
“What is wrong with me?” he murmured. “I used to think I should respect others, but now I want to kill all the Catholics and Reformists because they murdered Tante Elspeth and Onkel Hans.”
“Yes, Johan, what you are feeling is wrong.”
Johan jerked around.
Brow furrowed, Mareili came and stood by her son. “You have changed, Johan, and not for the better. You’ve grown bitter. I have never seen that in you.”
“Tante Elspeth loved people, Mama. She and Hans lived the way Jesus taught, and what did it gain them? Persecuted by Reformists and burned to death by Catholics who believed they were saving the church. I hate them! I will always hate them.” He pounded the railing with his fist.
“You are wrong to hate, Johan.” Mareili shook her head. “Jesus said if someone strikes us on the face, we should turn the other cheek. Brother David taught us…”
Johan stiffened. “Did Brother David teach us how to escape the Reformists and the Catholics? Did Brother David tell us how to save Tante Elspeth and Onkel Hans? Where was Brother David when they came for the Anabaptists? I did not see him at the trial. Where was he hiding?”
“Johan…”
“Always it is the same, Mama. The leaders go free, and the followers pay the price.” He turned his back on his mother. “Yes, I have changed. I am sick of being a passive sheep waiting for slaughter. One day the Anabaptists will rise and kill their oppressors, and when they do, I will be with them.”