Kasteel Batestein, Vianen
27th day of Peat Month (September), 1566
Hours, days, nights ran into each other and formed a blurred portrait of anguish in Pieter-Lucas’ dulled brain. The colors clashed, the paints dripped in ugly, globby streaks across the canvas of the straw-covered dungeon floor soiled with human waste and crawling with nondescript vermin.
At times he felt so numb from his long confinement that he had to cajole his memory into telling him why he’d come to this wretched hole in the first place. On one such day, the tomblike silence of the underground world was shattered by sounds of a wild party descending the stairs.
“We have guests,” Pieter-Lucas said, while visions of tipsy Beggars come to make fun of their plight splashed fear and disgust across the canvas.
“Brederode?” Yaap asked.
“Ja, sure, Brederode indeed. You don’t think he’s ever going to come, do you?” Pieter-Lucas laughed, but without gaiety. During their stay they’d seen a good many Beggar soldiers and cell keepers of one sort or another. And every day the silent, greasy wench paid her regular visits with unappetizing victuals. Yaap never missed an opportunity to remind them all why he was here and that his message was urgent. But Brederode? Indeed it did begin to appear as if he were a phantom from some old nightmare.
The door creaked open, and a small group of men practically fell through. The gaoler led the way. Behind him came a refined-looking white-bearded gentlemen wearing a dark suit, long cloak, and a wide, floppy-brimmed hat, followed by a big staggering man in the plain drab costume the Beggars had adopted as their hallmark. A short stocky soldier in an oversized Beggar’s cap came in last and stood dutifully at attention.
“As drunk as he is, that tall one must be your Great Beggar come to call, after all,” Pieter-Lucas said out of the side of his mouth and jabbed at Yaap with his elbow. The older boy started, then sat rigid, staring.
“Some hero!” Pieter-Lucas chuckled derisively.
The odor of liquor surrounded the group, and the two “noblemen” moved unsteadily, as if to signal the fact they’d just come from the castle wine cellar. Brederode, the more drunken of the two, stumbled through the doorway laughing raucously. With one arm he swung at his companion, barely managing to sling around his neck a long heavy chain with a large undefinable medallion hanging askew.
“Long live the Beggars!” Brederode drawled. “Long live Dirck Volckertszoon Coornhert, secretary of Haarlem!”
The full-bearded man ducked and nearly tumbled. “God have mercy on us when Dirck Coornhert dons a Beggar’s penny,” he retorted, pulling the chain off over his head and tossing it to the floor just beyond Pieter-Lucas’ reach.
Pieter-Lucas felt a surge of anger awaken an energy in him he thought he’d lost. If only he could reach it, he’d trample that Beggar’s penny beneath his feet and finish off the man who dreamed up this whole ghastly idea.
Brederode turned his attention to the two boys and nearly stumbled into the straw beside them. “So, these are the two prisoners you tell me you’ve had here for a day or two?” His tongue slurred the words.
Pieter-Lucas looked at Yaap. They exchanged glances of incredulity. In a barely audible whisper, Pieter-Lucas exclaimed to his companion, “A day or two?”
Yaap shrugged and rolled his eyes.
“Ja, Mijnheer,” the gaoler answered.
“Which one of you has the message from Count Ludwig in your pocket?” He looked back and forth between the boys, his bleary eyes moving slowly in rhythm with his head as it jerked from side to side.
“I do, Mijnheer,” Yaap responded. With fumbling excitement, he thrust his hand into the inner fold of his doublet and pulled out a smooth, well-pressed piece of folded paper with a heavy wax seal on one side and the name Hendrick Count van Brederode scratched across the other.
“Bring the torch closer,” the man ordered. In the flickering light, he examined the seal. “It’s Ludwig’s all right.”
Then, with clumsy fingers, he tore the letter open and scanned its contents. All the while his huge body swayed, his head nodded, and he gave off occasional great echoing belches.
“When did Ludwig give you this letter?” the man stormed, his voice sounding like a cannon. He looked at Yaap, his eyes throwing daggers.
“I…I remember not the exact date,” the boy stammered, “but it was on the day he wrote it.”
“The very day he wrote it?” Brederode roared. “Did you see him write it?”
“I did.”
“Did Count Ludwig not tell you that this message required haste?”
“He did, indeed.”
“Then why did it take you fifteen days to deliver it?”
“Fifteen days?” Yaap sat up straighter and shook his head vigorously. “Nay, but before Roland had chimed one more time after Ludwig sealed it up, my friend and I were on the road. We drove our horses hard all night and arrived here with the next daybreak.”
Brederode rested his hands on his hips and glared hard at both boys. Pieter-Lucas hardly knew whether to fear the man’s loud voice and stormy disposition or to laugh at the ridiculous sight he posed, still swaying under the influence of the drink he had such a reputation for being enslaved to.
“Then why did you not tell the guards at my gate that you carried an urgent message?”
“I did that, but…”
“Well, finish. But what?”
“They refused to believe my story…accused me of being a spy…threw me here…insisting I must wait until you came.”
“And you have spent fifteen days here holding my message while I lived in my rooms above, oblivious to it all?” His voice crescendoed till it filled the cell.
For once, Yaap seemed speechless. Brederode turned to his gaoler. “What is the meaning of this, Jacobus?”
“You were not back from Amsterdam yet when the boys arrived, Mijnheer.” The gaoler’s words tumbled out in awkward haste.
“But I’ve been back from Amsterdam for over a week now. And you’ve kept these boys locked up all this time without telling me about their message?” The Great Beggar stood feet apart, hands spread, mouth gaping.
“Uh…Oh…please, Mijnheer, I can explain,” the gaoler stammered.
Brederode yanked the man’s belt off and with it the ring of jangling keys. He grabbed him roughly and shoved him to the floor, nearly toppling his own tipsy body in the process. “Explain, indeed!” he bellowed, his words still slurred. “Beg, rather. Beg for your life! It’s time you sat on this floor in irons for fifteen days.”
He motioned to the silent soldier in the doorway. “You, there, dumb man with the hat over your ears, you fasten him to the wall—ankles and arms—and if he gives you trouble, I’ll finish him off here and now.”
The soldier followed orders, and the big man zigzagged across the cell until he stood over the quavering gaoler.
“And when this revolt suffers a defeat because I did not follow Ludwig’s instructions in timely fashion,” he roared, “I’ll be back to hang you from the gallows.”
Brederode stumbled toward the door, beckoning to his companion and mumbling curses into his helter-skelter beard. Before they’d reached the door, the man he called Coornhert hung back.
“Pardon me, Great Beggar,” he said, motioning toward the boys on the floor.
“For what?” Brederode drawled.
“Perhaps ’tis no account of mine, but methinks these boys have served their time and all unworthily no doubt as well.”
“Ah, ja, but sure. You, there, with the hefty hammer”—he motioned to the soldier standing once more by the door—“loosen their chains…give them decent lodging for the night…prepare their horses…bring them to my council chamber at dawn.” Turning to nod toward Yaap, he nearly stumbled once more. “I’ll have a letter ready for you to take to Ludwig by morning.”
The stout little soldier pried the irons from the boys’ arms and freed them for the climb, on wobbly legs, up beyond the haunted stench to a terrifying new beginning. Tomorrow Yaap would ride off on one more mission, while Pieter-Lucas would head for home and Moeder Kaatje and Aletta—provided Blesje waited to carry him!
He stumbled up the stairs on legs so stiff and painful they all but refused to move. How would he ever be able to ride a horse? But with each step that dragged him closer to the inevitable, he felt increased energy. Once at the top, he stopped, inhaled deeply, and told himself, “Your time has come, jongen, to face life alone, to be a man!”
****
29th day of Peat Month (September), 1566
Arriving home in Breda in a rousing late afternoon thunderstorm could hardly be called a warm welcome. Leaden skies poured out their contents in an angry torrent and sent currents swirling over the city’s cobblestones and around Blesje’s ankles like a renegade river. Across the old bridge, through the fish market, past the church whose tower was swallowed up in the heavy clouds, Pieter-Lucas urged his horse onward.
“Just a few more steps, Blesje.”
Visions of Aletta’s pink cheeks and inviting smile pumped fresh energy into his limbs. He looked longingly in the direction of The Crane’s Nest and felt his legs turn to porridge while his heart beat wild rhythms against his ribs. If only he could go straight to her. He sighed, then directed Blesje toward the Kasteel stables.
Just as he reined in the horse, a bolt of lightning split through the sheets of rain and cast an eerie luminescence across the little cityscape so full of beckoning memories. Fleeting, uneasy thoughts darted undefined through his mind.
Pieter-Lucas dismounted from Blesje, returning him to the care of the stableboy on duty. With nothing more than a hasty, “I’ll be back later,” he bounded back out into the sloshing rain and wild thunder, headed for the Beguinage. At the corner of Annastraat, he let himself be enticed by the sight of the bookstore again, and his steps slowed in their path down Caterstraat. “Nay, jongen,” he admonished himself. “First things first. Moeder, then Aletta.”
But his eyes searched for the light of the lamp that always gleamed from Aletta’s window. “Strange,” he mused, “where is it? Tante Lysbet always keeps a light burning there. Maybe the storm is hiding it. But even the shutters are closed!” A loud crash of thunder spoke like an alarm bell, and he had to drag his unwilling body on to the Beguinage.
“Maybe she’ll be with Moeder—and her newborn child.” A chill gripped him, and he felt his body twitch. At least Dirck Engelshofen could not chase him from Aletta’s side if he found her there. The Beguinage was the one safe haven left in Breda, a place for healing, not for pain.
He rang the bell, and the black-robed lady with the white starched hood that answered his call invited him to come in, remove his soaking wraps, and be warmed by the little stove in the corner of the simple room.
“Please be seated,” the woman said, neither unkindly nor with reassurance. “Sister Gertrude has been expecting you.” She disappeared and left Pieter-Lucas with his mouth gaping, trying to ask the questions about the only things that mattered to him. The air had an unexpected chill that matched the weather, and the uneasy thoughts he had so easily dismissed out in the streets were growing into threatening clouds.
When Sister Gertrude entered the room, her face wore a planned-looking smile. “I am glad you have come,” she said. “God has smiled upon your travels?”
Pieter-Lucas shuffled his feet and looked down at the cracked red tiles of the floor beneath them. He cleared his throat, then spoke with a dry mouth. “My journey was filled with disappointments and not a few hazards, I fear. But tell me, how fares my moeder and her newborn child? She has given birth by now, has she not?”
“That she has….” The woman’s flat voice hung suspended between them.
“Well?” Pieter-Lucas prodded. “And is it well? A girl or another boy?”
“It was a girl. Right beautiful she was.”
Pieter-Lucas’ heart seemed to stop. He knew it already. “How long did she live?”
“Not past her difficult journey into daylight. The angels delivered her to her Heavenly Father’s bosom quietly and without suffering.”
The rumble of thunder and cascading of raindrops played a dreary funeral dirge on the roof of the Beguinage as Pieter-Lucas sat swallowing the pains that rose up to choke him. Sister Gertrude did not speak, but in a way he could not explain, he almost welcomed her presence. At last he asked the inevitable question. “And my moeder…is she…with…my sister?”
“Your moeder rests in peace beside your sister. She never knew the child did not live. To the end, she believed she heard her cries, and that belief gave her great comfort.”
Tears were welling, more and more difficult to suppress. “And Aletta, my friend from next door, was she with her when she died?”
“She stayed with her to the end and bathed your moeder’s cheeks with her own tears. No daughter ever loved more dearly.” The Beguine’s voice flowed through the room like warm milk sweetened with honey yet spiced with a bitter herb.
Pieter-Lucas stood and made for the door. “I must go to her,” he started.
“Your moeder?”
“Nay, to Aletta. She will take me to Moeder Kaatje’s burial place….” His voice trailed off, and he reached for the door latch, vaguely aware that his hostess went on talking, yet not hearing a word. Midway across the threshold, he felt the woman grip his arm and heard her shout,
“Jongen, hear me.” Annoyed, he paused, not looking back at her. “You will not find your friend,” she went on, her words more forceful than he dreamed she was capable of.
“What do you mean, I will not find her? She did not die too?” He wheeled about and stared into the somber white-framed face.
“Nay, jongen, but she is no longer in Breda.”
“What?”
“Sometime during the night following Kaatje’s death, the wagon of Abarth de Koopman slipped out of the gates of Breda, and rumors have it that it was carrying Dirck Engelshofen and his family.”
“How can this be?” He glared at her. “Aletta promised she would be here when I returned—and she does not lie!”
Sister Gertrude spoke with an unconvincing calm. “A young woman does not always have the power to keep her promises. As I said, her whole family is gone.”
“Where did they take her?” he demanded.
“Not a soul in Breda seems to know. It was a secret operation.”
“And Tante Lysbet? Surely she must know. Or did she go along?”
“Ach, I fear I have no answers for you—only more rumors.”
“Ja, and what do the rumors report?”
“I’ve heard it said that a person thought to be the housekeeper was seen running toward the birch wood shortly before daybreak. Beyond that, silence.”
“Someone must know!” Pieter-Lucas shouted.
“God only can know such things.”
God indeed! Pieter-Lucas wanted to scream or stomp his feet or shake a fist toward the skies.
Sister Gertrude touched him gently on the shoulder. “Come with me,” she said. “I shall take you to your moeder’s burial spot. Only, first, you must know that the Beguinage holds some secrets rarely exposed to anyone from the outside world. The place I am about to take you is one of these. But first you must promise me that you will never betray this secret to another soul.”
“Why should I promise?” Dark thoughts furrowed his brow and narrowed his eyes to a squint.
“Because I asked you to.”
“But why?”
Sister Gertrude hesitated. “Beguines do not normally meet such challenges to our authority here. But, if you must know, in some people’s minds your moeder will always be associated with her husband, the image-breaker. It could go very ill with her remains, and with those who guard those remains, should their whereabouts be revealed.”
“Curses on the memory of that wicked Hendrick van den Garde!” Pieter-Lucas muttered.
The Beguine drew in her breath sharply, straightened her body, and rebuked him, her voice heavy with clerical aloofness, “Leave the vengeance to Almighty God. Just give me your word.”
“All right, you have my word. Now, take me to her.” He followed out into the courtyard and through the herb garden, past the last apartment to a tall thicket of briar bushes with a scanty fall leaf cover. In the far corner, up against the brick wall that separated the Beguinage from the prince’s Valkenburg Park, a low, narrow opening let them into the thicket. Bushes spread out over most of the enclosure, with only a small open patch letting in the daylight and the rain. The ground was covered with a wild coarse plant, and a path ran through the middle.
“Here, beneath this spot, we buried your moeder, her infant folded in her arms,” Sister Gertrude said.
Pieter-Lucas looked at the place she indicated. “But there is no marker, nothing to assure me that this is even a true burial place. How can I be sure of what I do not see?”
“Jongen,” she spoke with indignant pride, “I am a woman of honor, a Beguine sister. Like your friend, Aletta, I do not lie. Your moeder and I have known each other well over the years. I could tell you more, but, as I say, the Beguinage has its secrets.”
Vaguely aware that the woman had moved away and left him alone, Pieter-Lucas stooped down and ran his fingers through the ground cover till he felt a break cutting a straight line that squared off into a corner. Satisfied that indeed the ground had been broken here, he fell to his knees and tried to picture Moeder Kaatje lying beneath him in the heather. He saw her as she had looked when she told him of her vow and bade him Godspeed on his trip in search of Hendrick. Her eyes were hollow, sunken, her skin wrinkled and grayish. Her hands were twiglike as they grasped his and she spoke her final warning, “God will always win!”
God will always win, indeed!
“Cold, unmerciful God,” he screamed out into the abating storm. “Cruel God of the Beggars, who claims victories over weak and innocent bereaved women and young men with long lives before them. I need you not!”
Great sobs broke out, then, tearing loose from his very heart. For a long while he lay his face on the ground and let his tears mingle with the drops still falling from the briar bushes. Then the tears stopped, and he curled his big hands into hard fists. Fueled by all the pent-up anger of what now seemed like a lifetime of frustration, he pounded a hollowed-out hole in the heather.
“Oh, Moeder, Moeder, my moeder!”
A surprising shaft of sunshine, slanting low from the direction of the Kasteel market square, fell across his shoulders and warmed the dampness of his curls. Looking up, he saw above the rim of the thicket a wide, perfectly curved rainbow. The huge transparent palette of intense hues of violet, blue, green, yellow, orange, and red glowed at him against a backdrop of the dark clouds. From long ago and far away, Moeder Kaatje’s voice rang in his ears. “A bow in the cloud is God’s promise in the heart.” She used to say it to him every time she saw a rainbow.
Again he pounded the heather and cried out, “Nay, Moeder, the God you talk about only breaks His promises. ’Tis in my hands now. This time I shall win! You shall see!”
He shoved the voice from his heart, stood to his feet, and hurried out of the strange burial ground. Through the herb garden and on to the Beguinage gate he went. “Time now to find Aletta,” he told himself. He nodded to Sister Gertrude, who waited to let him out.
Crossing the threshold, he grunted a perfunctory “Thank you” and walked out into the street. He hung his head and knotted his hands into angry fists. With each step, he stomped in fury and demanded of the stones beneath his feet, “Where is she? In all of Breda, you alone may hold the secret of the disappearance of my beloved.”
Their answers came like taunts—maddening visions of a series of happy scenes played out here. Finally, he envisioned himself with Opa and Aletta on that memorable last Artists’ Pilgrimage. All the lovely dreams he had shared with Aletta in this place now lay scattered in shreds across the cobbles.
He looked up once more. This time, The Crane’s Nest stood before him, completely painted with the now fading bow of colors. He took a step forward, and as he walked, the rainbow grew fainter until it dissolved altogether. A shaft of sunlight rested on the window shutter which was indeed pulled to and tethered against the brick wall. Unable to resist the lure of one sunny ray of hope, Pieter-Lucas bounded forward and tapped three short taps. As from habit, he jumped up on the doorstoop and waited. The sunlight followed him and held him for a long heart-thumping moment in its warmth. He pressed his ear against the big door of the house. Just one sound, one little movement, one of Gretta Engelshofen’s mad whimpers…Nothing stirred. He pulled back and noticed a large bolt hanging on the door.
“Never have I seen a lock secured from the outside of this door,” he gasped.
The sun had vanished. A blast of wind shrieked around the corner of the house, driving a fresh pelting of rain into Pieter-Lucas’ face and whipping at the protective cape he raised above his head. Madly, he dashed around the entire house, checking all the windows, looking for a sign of life in the bookstore or a curl of smoke from the chimney. All he found were more tethered window shutters, another foreboding exterior bolt, and a soggy booklet, rolled up and stuffed in the handle of the door that led into the bookshop.
Newborn hope leapt in his heart. “A note from Aletta?” It had to be. Why else would anyone leave a wad of papers in this place?
With clumsy haste, he yanked at the pamphlet, dislodging it. Then, pressing his body up as close to the door as possible in order to gain protection from the rain afforded by the tiny roof above the doorstoop, he opened the pamphlet with the sort of eagerness that propels a dying man to grasp at a floating plank. “She had to leave a message here somewhere,” he murmured. “She wouldn’t go without it.”
He examined every inch of the pages and both covers for some hand-scribbled words, a picture, or some note tucked in between the now sticky sheets. But he found nothing but words printed in solid blocks across the pages, and on the front an odd title, Strong Proofs That Men May Have Commemorative Images, But None That They Can Pray To.
“Strong Proofs! Rubbish and flapdoodle!” he fumed. Throwing the pages to the ground, he dashed back out to the alley and on to his own house. “She wouldn’t just disappear without leaving me a clue…unless…oh, nay, it could not be! She could not fear Moeder Kaatje’s long-ago vow…. Nay, I will not believe it. God, what have you done? Nay…nay…nay!”
He tore around his house again and again, searching every chink in the bricks, every unsecured piece of woodwork, shaking the rain-soaked bushes, and prying up every loose cobblestone on the walk. The whole place resounded with the maddening patter of raindrops whipped about by a moaning wind. Not a word from the beloved girl who had promised to wait for him….
Exhausted, empty of all thoughts but the vague consciousness of a wrenching pain buried so deep he could not even tell of what sort it was, he dropped at last to the doorstoop of his own home, made sacred by Aletta’s often presence. He sat staring out into the storm and gathering darkness, half hoping for a flood of water to sweep him away into some ocean of oblivion.
Not until a strong hand patted him on the head did Pieter-Lucas realize he was no longer alone. Hardly remembering who he was, much less where or under what circumstances, he looked up, startled. The rain had stopped, and in the darkness of a starless night, he could barely make out a human figure towering over him, covered with a dark hooded robe and carrying a small lantern in one hand. With the other hand, the strange guest motioned for him to stand.
Pieter-Lucas grabbed at his cape, wrapped himself in its protective skin, and demanded, “What do you want?”
“I bring you a message from your beloved,” came the answer in a hoarse whisper.
He sprang to his feet and strained to see the eyes that glistened in the occasional flicker of the lamp’s wan light. “Who are you?”
Still whispering, the stranger said, “A familiar friend, whose name I beg you not to ask. Just let me give you the message your heart longs to hear, and I shall be gone into the night.”
Pieter-Lucas’ heart raced, and his palms grew warm and moist. A message from Aletta? What perfect timing! At the same time, a warning sounded deep within. What if this were a Beggar in disguise, come to cart him off to Hendrick van den Garde and some sort of sporting adventure?
Fifteen days in Brederode’s dungeon followed by an uncomfortable encounter with Beggars enroute home from Vianen made him wary of the timing. The trip home from Vianen had turned into a slow torture. His legs pained him so from the long confinement that he’d not been able to move nearly as fast. Then somehow he’d taken a wrong turn in the road and ended up just at nightfall in a drizzly, ominous, owl-infested woods. Too tired to press on farther, he’d taken refuge in a deserted animal shelter.
To his dismay, a nest of Beggars had trooped into a nearby clearing and camped for the night. For hours they sat around a roaring fire, drinking, telling wild tales of image-breaking conquests, laughing, and singing the sort of militant songs Beggars gloat over.
Alerted by fresh memories, Pieter-Lucas eyed the robed figure with more than ordinary suspicion and asked, “How do I know you are not some enemy come to do me harm?”
“Shh, not so loud,” the voice cautioned. “You don’t. Just trust me. If I should reveal my identity, ’twould endanger Aletta and her whole family. Please, heed my instructions, and you will once more be reunited with your lovely young lady.”
“What instructions?” He searched what little could be seen of the stranger’s face for clues. Who could it be? And why must he persist in using that unnerving whisper of a voice?
The stranger drew close enough to whisper directly into Pieter-Lucas’ ear. “No one must hear me say these words…or know I said them. No one, do you hear?”
Pieter-Lucas nodded and a chill tingled the length of his back.
“You will find Dirck Engelshofen and his family in Antwerp.”
“Antwerp? But…”
“Hush, now listen. You must take with you two things if you want to find favor with Aletta’s father. Take some cartoons you have drawn that show the Beggars for the fools you have found them to be, and a drawing of the helleborus niger with the words on this paper written beneath.”
Pieter-Lucas felt a strong hand shoving a wad of paper into his own. Reluctantly, dazed, he took the sheet. What sort of fateful message did it hold?
The stranger continued, “And one other thing. Retrieve the booklet about ‘Strong Proofs’ that you discarded on the doorstoop of The Crane’s Nest this afternoon.”
“Where were you when I discarded it?” the startled boy demanded to know.
“In the rainbow, shall we say?”
“What must I do with the booklet?”
“Read it, burn it, carry it with you. It matters not, only do not leave it here. Now, do as I have said and all will go well. But waste no time. Set off on your journey before the rising of the new day’s sun.”
He turned to go, but Pieter-Lucas stopped him. “You didn’t tell me where in Antwerp.”
“Just inside the Red Gate where you enter the city, you will find the Beguinage. Behind it, toward the setting of the sun, lies The Plucked Goose Inn. Inquire of a stableboy with one eye and a hump on his back.”
“He knows Dirck Engelshofen?”
“You must mention no names. Ask him only for directions to The Sign of the Christmas Rose.”
“And if he does not trust me to bring me there?”
“Tell him the Wilderness Angel has sent you.”
Wilderness Angel? Pieter-Lucas peered, straining into the night. What sort of spirit could this be? The dark, shadowy figure reached out a hand to Pieter-Lucas’ arm with a touch too warm and heavy to be a spirit. Then it drew up close to his ear again and whispered, “One thing more. When all else fails, try Oudewater.”