Kasteel Batestein, Vianen
13th day of Peat Month (September), 1566
For what seemed an interminable day, Pieter-Lucas and Yaap huddled in the filth and damp cold of the Batestein Kasteel dungeon, waiting. Pieter-Lucas watched the light and darkness filter through the barred window and tried to track the hours. All the while, his newly aroused inner monster grasped at each new discomfort as evidence of injustice and screamed with intensifying passion: “Revenge…revenge…REVENGE!”
By spells, Yaap sat brooding, then babbling, as if trying to reassure himself. “Brederode will soon come to our rescue,” he repeated. “Great and noble man he is, not at all like this ragtag bunch of malcontents he calls his soldiers.”
Occasionally he leaned over, patted the bosom of his doublet where he carried Brederode’s message, and spoke with increasingly uneasy passion. “It’s here! The message that will set us free! It’s safe.” He looked up toward the cobwebby ceiling and pleaded in pious tones, “Great God in heaven, come and deliver us….”
Pieter-Lucas winced. Was Yaap losing his mind? There was no one to hear his thoughts, no powerful stranger to sever their bonds and let them go. If God would just pay attention, He might recall that he, Pieter-Lucas, had come here on an errand of mercy—an errand certain to be doomed if they weren’t released any faster than the exasperating “soon” Yaap kept raving about. He glanced heavenward, then closed his eyes and tried to pretend he was not in this awful place. But it was no use.
Twice that day a greasy wench brought them food. Her stringy hair was tied back with a dark scarf and a soiled white apron pinched in her rotund waist, causing her low-necked dress to stretch scantily over her plump torso.
She never spoke, but wore a smooth, too-pleasant smile as she leaned over them and, with scaly, dirty hands, placed within reach of each boy a hunk of dry stale bread and a mugful of some sort of undefinable liquid. Yaap devoured the pitiful rations, smacking his lips loudly and shouting, “Good gracious, girlie. You are an angel of mercy.”
Pieter-Lucas gulped hard. Hardly his idea of mercy—or an angel! He left his food and liquid untouched. The miserable servant hovered so close that the warm stench of her rancid breath removed whatever appetite his bone-weary body had managed to cling to. He turned his head to the wall to avoid her presence and the imploring invitation on her mute face.
By the time the girl returned to the cell for her second food-bearing errand, Pieter-Lucas’ head was throbbing, and his ankles had swollen to gigantic dimensions. When she leaned over the boys to lay the food before them, he swallowed his nausea and begged, “Please, tell the gaoler to let me go. My moeder’s dying, and I must go to her.”
“And my message is urgent,” Yaap added abruptly.
The girl grinned placidly, as if neither of her charges had said a word. Pieter-Lucas grabbed at her arm, missing it. She shook her head at him with a glaring rebuke. Then silently, she moved away, still smiling.
“Maybe you don’t have a moeder,” Pieter-Lucas said. “But if you do—or ever did—wouldn’t you want somebody to let you out of the dungeon so you could go sit by her side when she was dying?”
The girl curtsied, backed away, unlocked the door with a huge key hanging from her belt, and let herself out of sight, locking the door once more behind her.
At length darkness engulfed the cell. Yaap fell quickly into a sleep punctuated all through the night by occasional grunts, sniffles, and sharp little whimpering cries.
Pieter-Lucas found the silence of night almost as oppressive as Yaap’s worst chattering. Alone with his memories and his fears, he felt himself trapped in that wild Bosch painting once more. In his imagination he heard ghouls moaning in the corners and monsters hissing in his ears while bats slashed at the putrid air above him. At one point he felt certain some evil creature was trying to suffocate him with his mantle. He gasped for air and shouted, “Help me! Won’t somebody hear? Aletta, oh, Aletta, come quickly.”
Refusing to lie down on the crude straw-strewn platform intended for that purpose, he paced about, straining his manacles to their limit. When at length he sat down, he stooped over and pounded hard on the floor, digging a hole through the straw and filth and into the damp, hardened earth with his fists. “Why, why, WHY?” he cried out. Tears streamed down his cheeks, and he shuddered at the sounds of Yaap moaning beside him. For the rest of the night he wrestled with ominous visions and yearned for daylight, never certain whether he was awake or asleep.
His visions and nightmares were interrupted abruptly by the sound of Yaap shrieking out in pain. Pieter-Lucas opened his eyes and glanced around the cell. “I must have fallen asleep,” he mumbled to himself. “There’s daylight filtering through the cobwebs that join the bars over the window.” He stretched his muscles involuntarily. “Oei, but I’m stiff!”
“Where am I?” Yaap demanded with a deep, groggy voice. “Let go of my legs. Let go, I say. Ouch!”
“We’re the guests of your noble friend, the Great Beggar.” Pieter-Lucas edged the words with sarcasm. “We’re enjoying our own private room in Lord Brederode’s fine castle. Don’t you remember?”
“What? Where? Brederode?” the older boy stammered, looking about him with darting eyes.
Pieter-Lucas’ emotions fluctuated between disgust and pity. Was this the same young man he had admired and trusted, the one who brought him here supposedly as a gesture of kindness?
If Moeder were here she would say, “He could use some cheering words.”
But Moeder wasn’t here. And from deep down inside, Pieter-Lucas heard the voice of his latest companion. “Ignore him! He’s a Brederode sympathizer who spent all day ignoring your pain, prattling about the Beggars’ glorious beginning. Leave him alone and let him fret now in his own predicament. It’s a part of the revenge you owe your Beggar vader—the only part you can play for now. But there will be more….” Pieter-Lucas squirmed. Who was this monster, anyway?
“Who’s there?” Yaap cried out, turning toward the door.
“Who’s where?” Pieter-Lucas responded. “Nobody’s here but you and me.”
“Nay, they’re coming for us. Can’t you hear them on the stairs? I told you they’d come. Thanks be to God!”
By now Pieter-Lucas did hear. Raucous voices echoed down the stairway outside the cell. Then the key clanged in the lock and the door heaved open with an ominous creak of old wood rubbing against old wood. Two or three men—it was still too dark to see for sure how many—tramped into the cell and stood before the prisoners. One man carried a lighted torch which he lowered to the level where they sat. He kicked at them, rousing them with his boot.
“Good morning, boys. Nice sleep?” Hypocritical politeness barbed his icy words. It was the gaoler who’d ordered them chained. Pieter-Lucas refused to look at him.
Yaap responded with enthusiasm. “You’ve come, I knew you would…Brederode? My message is urgent!” He began digging around in his doublet for the document.
The gaoler shone the torchlight full in their faces. Pieter-Lucas felt the heat and backed away toward the wall. The man spoke again, “Here they are, Hendrick. What think you?”
Hendrick! Pieter-Lucas felt his heart pounding and shrunk deeper into the shadows. Vader Hendrick?
“Do you know these upstarts who claim to be from Breda?” the gaoler asked.
“Ja, but of course I know who they are.” Cold, aloof, gloating, it was Vader Hendrick indeed, looking just the way he did the last time they’d met. Flames of that same mad anger flashed from his eyes—hot with passion and at the same time cold with calculating, soul-piercing hatred.
“From Breda indeed,” the man said. “A couple of knaves of notably questionable character, undoubtedly dangerous spies for King Philip.”
Pieter-Lucas gasped and his muscles bounded, ready for action. Hendrick wasn’t through.
“The young one there”—he nodded his head toward Pieter-Lucas—“he’s the deluded, devoted son of a woman who stubbornly persists in her papist ways. Her husband, the boy’s supposed vader, is a pious warrior for the new faith, forced to flee for his life, so vicious was her gossip about him.”
Pieter-Lucas screamed out, “Lies! Lies! My moeder has never uttered so much as an unkind word either to or about her despicable, unworthy husband. What’s happened to your memory, Vader Hendrick? Did you crush it beneath your trampling feet in the Great Church, where you hacked the life out of so many other precious treasures, including my anointing?” The long-familiar name felt like slime sliding off his tongue. He spat in the straw and wiped his mouth with the cuff of his doublet.
Yaap stood and moved toward the visitors, protesting loudly, “Heer van den Garde, surely you cannot be so confused! You know I’m Yaap, loyal messenger to Willem van Oranje and Ludwig van Nassau! I’ve brought an urgent message for Brederode from Count Ludwig. And this”—he gestured toward his companion—“he is your own flesh and blood, your only son.”
Hendrick van den Garde laughed. His forked beard bobbed in the other-worldly torchlight like the demons of Pieter-Lucas’ dreams. “Didn’t I tell you they were knaves? Such fantastic stories and fiery accusations they can create. Tell me, friend, does this wild one look like a respectable messenger of the Nassau family?”
“If he did, do you think we would have shut him up in this place?” the gaoler replied.
Yaap retorted again, “Heer van den Garde, I cannot believe…” He shook his head and stared in amazement. “Surely you know your own son? Look at him….”
Pieter-Lucas searched the shadowed face of his vader. But the man refused to look directly at him. “Nay, Yaap,” he spit out the words, “this man is not my vader.”
For one long moment, Hendrick looked at him, his eyes wild, uncertain, almost frightened.
“I would not own his likes.” Pieter-Lucas spoke with a strength that he didn’t know he possessed.
He swallowed hard the great lumps of agony that multiplied in his throat and brought with them a whole army of unwelcome tears dredged from the depths of a broken soul. He cursed the tears, lifted his head high, and spoke with renewed composure, “My moeder lies near the time to be delivered in childbirth. Neither she nor her unborn child will live through the ordeal, lacking this one thing—her husband’s presence at her side. If you know where he may be found, please tell him that his faithful Kaatje calls for him.” He paused, searching for a glimpse of warmth in the hard face.
The man’s square jaw was set, the heavy eyebrows never moved, and the eyes avoided his pleading gaze. He spoke as if condescending to the whim of a weak child. “If I see your moeder’s husband, I’ll send him home—if he is so disposed, that is…and has time to spare after we’ve finished off the idols in a few more dens of iniquity.”
“If he is so disposed? If he has time? What sort of traitorous husband is that?” Pieter-Lucas shouted. With energy born of rage, he pursed his lips and spat in the man’s direction. His lips tingled.
Yaap strained forward in his chains and spoke in an urgent tone, “Can you not find at least one tiny speck of kindness in your hardened soldier heart and let this loyal son go free to sit by his moeder’s side and watch her die?”
The cell vibrated with silence, broken only by the crackling of the torch flame and the melancholy ringing of a distant church bell. Hendrick van den Garde said flatly, “Let him go, then, to his moeder. Rebellious child, he should have stayed there in the first place.”
The men started for the door, but Yaap shouted after them, “Aren’t you going to free him?”
“Hold your mouth, you troublemaker, spy,” the gaoler snapped. “We’ll let him go when the Great Beggar says to let him go, and not a day sooner.”
“But when…?” Yaap begged.
The gaoler looked back over his shoulder, a derisive grin drawn across his face. “Soon,” he said with mock sweetness.
“By then it will be too late,” Yaap protested.
The two Beggars ignored him. They climbed up out of the hovel, their heavy, clumping steps and rattling armor echoing off into the distance. Yaap howled and pleaded, hurling desperate words at the locked door. “Let us go, let us go. Our missions cannot wait!”
He broke into loud, heartrending howls of pain, interrupted by wails of “Where are all the brave and noble men? Great God, send Brederode!”
Pieter-Lucas felt his head swim and his stomach churn. Once more he vomited into the straw. No more tears threatened to flow. His mouth felt hot, dry, and sour.
“God, just let me die,” he mumbled. “It’s no use anymore. Moeder’s dying. Her child is dying. Even Aletta won’t have me once Moeder tells her about her vow. Where are you, God?”
Shivering in the damp, he waited for an answer. None came. No voice, human or divine, no return of Hendrick van den Garde, no fluttering wings of angels, no peace or joy or hope—nothing but a miserable, noisy cellmate howling at an ancient locked door.
In desperation, he screamed out, “God of the Beggars, begone. I want no part of you. Go…!”
His last word echoed around the cell and pounded in Pieter-Lucas’ numbed brain.
“GO…Go…go…”