Emden
Late in Summer Month (June), 1567
On the wonderful mornings that followed each winter snowstorm, Aletta loved Emden. The icy-white fairyland outside her windows brought her genuine delight. But with the coming of spring those mornings were rare. For the most part, spring in this far north country was gray, slushy, and drizzly. Still unsure of so much about life in this place, the young refugee girl from Breda grew impatient with the long damp cold that seeped into every chink and crevice of the little harbor city.
Shut up inside Oma’s dingy old house, she learned to stay close to the enormous ceramic stove in the corner. She resented the windows and doors always tightly tethered against the fierce winds that blew across the thawing estuary at the mouth of the Ems River. She choked on the close, putrid air and longed to pry open a window.
Ever since that frightening night last fall when Hans prayed over Moeder Gretta, she’d grown steadily better. Yet, at Oma’s insistence, the Engelshofen family stayed on through the winter with their kind rescuers. “My patient still needs the herbs and the quiet of this place,” their healer woman hostess said. Vader Dirck, as usual, did not argue. Aletta’s fear and mistrust of Oma Roza had diminished until she felt free to respect the woman as an expert physicke and to learn from her with unfettered eagerness.
By late Flower Month (May), the long cold had begun to wane and a less ambivalent spring promised something better. Dirck Engelshofen finally moved his little family into a tiny house just inside the thick walls of Emden. Oom Johannes’ household lived next door, and between them both and the street stood the printshop of Oom Johannes’ friend, Gerard.
Every day about midmorning, Aletta returned to Oma’s kitchen bearing a gift of freshly harvested garden produce, which she exchanged for the herbs that made her moeder grow stronger daily.
“’Tis so good to see Moeder bustle about,” Aletta told Oma on almost every visit. “The once vacant little eyes now snap with life. Gone are the hollow cries and wild ranting spells.”
Yet, for all the good things happening, Aletta struggled with an undefined restlessness in Emden. The houses didn’t look at all like what she’d grown up with, the people of Emden spoke more languages than she dreamed existed, and even Robbin no longer played at home under her supervision. Instead, Oom Johannes kept the boy busy helping Giles in the printshop and learning to read. Her apprenticeship with Oma and the joy of having her moeder in her right mind helped to brighten the daily grind.
With a sudden burst of newness, early Summer Month (June) budded in a dozen shades of green and resounded with the haunting voices of meadowlarks. Deep in her heart, Aletta often ached to go home, to hear the three short taps on her window shutter and look into Pieter-Lucas’ big blue eyes. Oh to hear his deepening voice and feel the touch of his hand on hers!
On Sundays, the homesickness grew so intense she had to exert great effort simply to coax herself out of her feather bag. To the call of bells ringing from the tower of the Catholic Church, she went with Vader and the rest of his family and Oom Johannes’ household to the big room hidden away at the back of Hans and Oma’s house.
Without statues or paintings or organs or priests or altars, they met here for what they called worship. They knelt on their faces and prayed in silence. They sang hymns about suffering great pain and martyrdom. Then different men of the congregation took turns reading from a big Bible that looked much like the one Vader had brought along from Breda. Either Hans or one of the other men preached a long and tedious sermon.
She was beginning to feel less a stranger amongst these loving, God-fearing people. After all they’d done for her moeder, she could have no doubt they were her friends. Yet deep down underneath the common sense of it all, she feared that no church hidden in a home could ever feel like a real church, and these friends, for all their kindness, could never replace Tante Lysbet and Moeder Kaatje and Pieter-Lucas.
On a Sunday morning in late Summer Month (June), everything in the blooming summer seemed to be calling her back to the Great Church in Breda. Vader was sitting in the chair by the window, waiting for the rest of the family to prepare for the walk to church. Close to tears, Aletta sidled up to him and spoke softly into his ear, “Is this not the day we would celebrate the Processie of the Holy Sacrament if we were at home in Breda?”
Visions filled her of long-ago days when Pieter-Lucas took her by the hand and led her to the many wonders of Breda’s holy festival. On this Sunday every year, the whole city honored the miraculous healing powers of the tiny host wafer kept in a vial in her grand old church. Aletta had never known anyone who was healed by it, but everyone knew the stories. Thoughts of the bright costumes, colorful Bible story pageants, flashing and sounding trumpets, happy shouts of children, smells, and tastes of festive foods made her yearn to go back!
Vader Dirck looked up at her with an expression that shifted in rapid succession from surprise to tender reflection to panic. “Shh,” he said shortly. “In this place, we dare not to speak of popish ways or festivals.”
Aletta drew in her breath and answered simply, “So I’ve seen, Vader. We are not papists while we live in Emden, are we?”
She watched a gentle smile nudging at the corners of his mouth. “Nay, rather, we are counted among the faithful Children of God.”
“Is that the name of Hans’ church?” She had so often searched for a name, and no one had given her anything better than this. “It doesn’t sound like the name of a church.”
“They usually do not like to be called by a special name,” he said.
Robbin had joined them now. “Are we Anabaptists, Vader?” he asked.
Vader rumpled the boy’s hair with his big hand, smiled, and replied with another question, “Where did you hear that name?”
The boy shrugged. “I don’t know. Just heard it.”
“Well, whoever told you that is probably not one of them. It’s a name outsiders like to use,” he said quietly. “But most, like Hans and Oma, don’t like it.”
“Why not?” Aletta asked. “What does it mean? Something to do with baptism?”
“I think that no one knows for sure just what it means,” Vader said, standing to his feet and grabbing his hat from the rack by the door, “and these people would rather be known for their love of God than their practice of baptism. And now that our beautiful moeder is ready, we go to the church without a name, to worship the God whose name is the Lord.”
All the way to church Robbin chattered continually, and Moeder held his hand and smiled at him and answered his questions. Aletta walked next to her vader and busied herself pondering who these Children of God must be. Surely Vader and Moeder did not belong to them. However, when Robbin asked Vader if we were Anabaptists, he hadn’t answered.
Fine, pious people, they all seemed to be. Something about their strong faith in God coaxed Aletta to feel secure with them. No “Eye of God” glared down upon her from the ceiling of their meeting place. In fact, they had no pictures of any kind in their church, nor statues nor colored windows—just cold, barren walls and empty corners and high windows that looked out on the clouds and the occasional patches of blue sky where a gull could be seen now and then.
She had to admit that the words she heard in this strange, unchurchlike room offered a sort of reassurance she wished hard to believe in. And often, in a way she could never explain, she felt as if God was in this church more than any other where she’d ever been. Here He was not the hovering eye, examining her for every evil deed and thought for which He could take some special delight in chastising her. Rather, she envisioned Him standing at the front of the room, sometimes moving among the rows of worshipers. His arms reached out and a warm vaderlike tenderness beckoned them to come and lean into His embrace.
Yet, could she fully trust the people who worshiped here? For all their godly words and kindliness, they also guarded many secrets. They would not talk about their former homes or occupations or the friends and families they had left behind. Oma had told her that they came to Emden as refugees, fleeing from something, even as her family had done. She’d said that if they worshiped in their hometowns as they did here, they would have been imprisoned or hanged.
Aletta didn’t understand. These folk were not at all like the Calvinists—destroying images, planning wars. They simply went about their business, helped others in need, and carried a staff in place of a sword. Surely no one could fear such people or mean them harm.
Perhaps it was not so simple as it appeared. Something in the secrets they held from her must account for it all. Did they hide a dark and sinister side that made them the hated enemies of all other religions and forced them to flee here from every corner of the world? Why, then, did the other religions not torment them in this place as they did in other cities?
Today more than ever, Aletta sat through the worship service in her own tightly sealed cocoon. “Great God,” she prayed in silence when the congregation all fell on their faces to pray, “please keep us as safe as these friends try to make me feel. Guard us from the pitfalls that haunt their mysterious secrets.”
But Aletta felt empty inside. She wondered whether her prayer rose above the rushes on the floor where she prayed it. The service seemed endless. The singing of the hymns, mostly about the suffering of persecuted believers, drew tears from her eyes, and the speaker for the day delivered his sermon in a monotone that allowed her mind to roam freely back to Breda’s festivals and to Pieter-Lucas. Just when she thought the worship service had finally come to an end—they’d sung the last song and said the last prayer—an old man with long hair and a full white beard stood by the preaching table and began reading from the Bible once more.
“As Jesus stood on the mountain before He ascended to His Father, He commissioned His disciples to ‘Go, then, into the whole world and proclaim the Gospel to the entire creation. Whoever believes and lets himself be baptized shall be saved, but whoever believes not shall be condemned.’”
The man shifted slightly, then raised his head and added his commentary. “We followers of Jesus believe not, as do the papists, in saving grace administered through the sacraments. But we do heed Jesus’ words. For if we would call ourselves His followers, we must obey His commands. Hence, we baptize all who have been taught the Gospel of repentance and who believe that their sins have been taken away, not by their own works of holy living, but through the shedding of Christ’s sacrificial blood….”
Those who believed their sins were taken away? Aletta suddenly heard the words as if for the first time. Was that the condition for being embraced in those arms she sometimes fancied that Jesus held out to her in this plain sanctuary without images? A parade of all her sins—every disobedience and unkind thought or word—descended on her like a horde of angry soldiers. Frantically she searched the plain bare walls for one simple painting of Christ! If only she could look on His face and find reassurance of the words about His forgiveness.
The walls stared at her, more plain and bare than she had remembered them, and not so much as a flicker of candlelight danced across the heavy ceiling beams on this Sunday morning.
But when she closed her eyes, she saw Christ moving among the people, beckoning with outstretched arms and inviting words. “Come to me, and I will give you rest.” How she longed to go, to trust, to be wrapped in His strong embrace. Yet, it seemed as if she held her sins like a large bundle of dirty rags in her arms and heard Him say, “Give them up, my child, so I can hold you tight.”
His words only made her grip them the tighter. If only there were a priest to whom she could confess! But to approach Jesus and give her sins directly to Him? The more she struggled the more incapable she seemed of letting them go. Gradually the picture faded, replaced by the warm smile and open arms of Pieter-Lucas.
The old man’s voice was droning on, calling her back. “…ours is a voluntary baptism of conscious adults, symbolizing and bearing witness before this body of believers of their repentance and faith for the washing away of all sins.”
A baptism for adults? What was this strange thing these people believed was so important? She knew she’d been baptized as a newborn back in the Great Church of Breda. Often in desperation, she had clung to that ritual for hope that the hand of God would not strike her dead for her sin of disobeying Vader’s orders about Pieter-Lucas and Moeder Kaatje. Now, was she to believe another baptism was needed? Would it relieve her of this awful weight of guilt? Would it free her from the forbidden, yet ever recurring memory of the boy she’d spent a lifetime loving?
Nay, but if that was what it meant, did she ever want to have her sins forgiven? She cherished the memory of Pieter-Lucas more than life and breath. How could she allow anything to take it from her? Besides, how could it be a sin to love her childhood sweetheart? To disobey her vader’s orders not to see him, ja, that must be her only sin. Ach! but Vader had commanded her to “forget about him” as well. That she simply was not ready to do.
Suddenly the tight little room grew suffocating under the summer sun that beat down on the heavy thatch roof. Frantically she searched the room. There had to be a way to get out without calling attention to herself. But, no, she was seated squarely in the middle of the women’s section, pinned between Moeder on one side and cousin Annie on the other. Nothing would do but to wait it out.
Was this the way a seed pod felt when it had ripened to the point where it was ready to burst and spit its seeds out to the wild and dizzying winds? She squirmed in her seat. “Make haste, Heer Preacher, with your dull goings-on,” her heart pleaded. She simply could not sit still any longer.
The patriarch seemed not to be thinking of haste, certainly not of Aletta’s restlessness. In his quiet, calm, meandering manner, he went on and on, explaining every detail of what these people believed about this most important institution of baptism. Vaguely aware of each new point in his speech, she suspected that if she’d paid closer attention, she would have learned all about why they rebaptized adults who had been baptized as babies, what the symbolism involved, and how to counter arguments from papists and Calvinists and Lutherans and a dozen other sects against their way of doing things. But what could all such controversies matter to her today? They had nothing to do with her or with Pieter-Lucas.
At last the elderly speaker said, “We have here this morning two believers—a brother with his wife—who come inquiring after baptism. They have satisfied the brethren of our fellowship that their faith is genuine and their repentance sincere. We invite them to come now.” He nodded toward the men’s section, where from the far side of the row a man stepped up and walked forward.
“Vader!” Aletta gasped in a spontaneous whisper and clapped a hand over her gaping mouth.
From the corner of her eye, she saw her moeder’s sharp glance and heard a subdued, short “shh” escape from a mouth that scarcely moved. Then Gretta Engelshofen, too, stood to her feet and promptly joined her husband.
Together they stood before the old preacher and answered a long list of questions. Aletta could not believe what she heard.
“Do you believe truly that your sins are taken away through faith in the shed blood of Jesus Christ?”
“We believe.”
This couldn’t be her vader, her moeder.
“Do you desire to walk in the resurrection of Jesus Christ and be buried with Him in death so that you might rise with Him to a new life of repentance from your great sinful ways?”
“We do so desire.”
But they had no great sins to repent of!
“Is it your desire by the strength of God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit to lay aside all old popish and sinful ways?”
“It is our desire.”
“And finally, do you promise to henceforth believe and live according to the divine word, and in case you should be negligent, that you will receive brotherly admonition according to the order of Christ in Matthew chapter eighteen for the banning of the unfaithful?”
“We promise.”
Vader Dirck, a member of the Children of God? The man who always hid his Bible in Moeder’s linen chest, took his family to the Great Church, and never committed himself to anybody for anything at any time? Nay, but she must be in a dream!
Vader held Moeder by the elbow and together they knelt on the floor before the table. The preacher picked up a large pitcher and gently poured the water it held first over Vader Dirck’s head, then Moeder Gretta’s. A group of stately men gathered round them, laying hands on their dripping heads. All fell on their faces to the floor, and Hans prayed a long prayer reciting back to God all the details from the sermon about baptism. When they rose, they shook their hands all around and embraced.
Finally, the congregation sang one more song, and the faithful filed out of the room in sober silence. Never had Aletta felt so alone, so confused, or so homesick.
****
Gerardus’ Drukkery
Monday evening, Late Summer Month (June), 1567
The last of the workers in Gerardus’ printery had gone home for the evening. Dirck Engelshofen sent Robbin on ahead and lingered in the early advancing shadows.
“Run on home, son,” he instructed. “Tell your moeder I come soon.”
“Can’t I stay with you, Vader?” the six-year-old begged. “Please let me stay.”
“Nay, Robbin.” Dirck was firm. “If you go not now, Moeder will worry about us both. I need you to be my messenger. I will not be much longer. Just these few last pages to proof, and I come speedily across the way.”
Slowly, a disappointed pout clouding his little face, the boy moved toward the door.
“Watch your step and fall not into a hole between here and there,” he warned and watched the door shut solidly behind his son.
Dirck lighted the lamp mounted on the wall just above his head and sighed. “It’s been such a long day, the work with these words so tedious, and I wish I could throw it all out and just browse through my old books in The Crane’s Nest.”
How often since he’d fled from that spot so dear to his heart, he’d yearned to go back. The books he brought along were mostly his favorites. But the others? If only he hadn’t had to leave so many behind. Were they still hidden safely away in those bolts of fine cloth in Barthelemeus’ attic rooms? Dirck shook his head, rubbed it with a vigorous hand, then turned back to the pages before him on the high, wide table.
“An Exposition of the Our Father,” he read aloud. It was a sermon penned by a preacher who had since been beheaded for his faith—the last in a collection of sermons Gerardus insisted Dirck must finish before morning. He dipped his pen in the ink and had begun to mark a repeated word when a knock came at the door. Before he could reach it, the door opened and in walked a traveler.
“Dirck, friend,” the words burst from obviously eager lips.
“Barthelemeus!” Dirck slid out of the bench and ran to embrace his brother from the academic circle.
“I can’t believe I’ve found you,” Barthelemeus said, grasping Dirck by both arms and looking at him with happy wonder.
“What brought you to these far north parts? Business or something life threatening? But here, take a seat,” Dirck interrupted himself. The two men found seats before the fireplace where no fire burned.
“Ach, Dirck! The story is long and it is not beautiful what has happened to our lovely city. My time has come to flee. I’ve brought my wife and children, and we stay for a time with her family nearby.”
Dirck slapped him on the back and smiled broadly. “Then you will be our neighbor once again. Long live the academic circle of The Crane’s Nest!”
Barthelemeus shook his head and raised his hand. “Not so eager.”
“Nay? Why not? I find it a great reason to rejoice.”
“Only, Dirck, that I stay here not too long. We hope soon to move on to England.”
“England? Whatever would draw you there?”
“Business is good for Lowlanders in England. As you know, I’ve made several trips there with my wares in recent years. Just now, with all Breda in a ferment, awaiting the soon arrival of the Duke of Alva, I decided the time had come.”
The name of the Duke of Alva spoke volumes about the terrors of the future before them all. Sent by King Philip to replace Margriet as his regent, he was known to be as fanatical about enforcing the Inquisition as his king. He was a sharp and ruthless military commander with thousands of hardy, well-disciplined troops.
“Are many people fleeing at this moment?”
“Many are preparing so as to be ready to flee at a moment’s notice. You might do worse than to move on to England yourself, Dirck. A fairly large community of Lowland printers of all kinds have fled there to wait out the storm. Can you not see The Crane’s Nest on a street in the land of your vaders?”
Dirck chuckled at the idea which had often crossed his own mind. “Someday, perhaps. For now, things are quite calm here. The printing goes well. We are blessed with a fellowship of brothers and sisters that have helped us in more ways than you and I have time to talk about. And believe me or not, brother, but my wife has been delivered of the curse that has lain on her these many years, and she and I just yesterday submitted ourselves for believer’s baptism.”
“Och! You talk of miracles, Dirck. Slow down. Your wife was delivered from a curse?”
“That she was,” Dirck reassured him.
Barthelemeus smiled. “I seem to recall that Old Meister Laurens always did say her malady was a curse of some sort.”
“I know,” Dirck said, nodding his head.
“And the two of you argued over that point continually, like dogs worrying an old rag.”
“We did,” Dirck conceded. “I never could imagine who would have done such a thing to her.”
“What changed your mind? Did Gretta finally enlighten you?”
“Nay, to be truthful with you, we still have no idea where it came from. Rather, Hans, the weaver-preacher in whose home the Children of God meet, had met with a similar case. We stayed with them in their home when we first came, and his moeder, who is the herbal healer lady of these regions, actually first suggested it. They finally persuaded me to try taking Gretta before the elders. They prayed over her, and she was clearly delivered.”
“After all these long years!” Barthelemeus let out a low whistle. “That is the sort of news to put joy in a man’s heart.”
“Joy like you can’t imagine,” Dirck agreed. “But now, tell me about Laurens. Where has he fled?”
“Meister Laurens, flee?” Barthelemeus threw his head back and laughed. “That will never happen. You know it as well as I. He is like so many in Breda who have never felt the claws of the king’s lion in their flesh. They tell themselves they can always sit and look on as a cat in the top of a birch tree rather than venture out into the dark cold unknown night of exile.”
“No one knows that feeling better than I,” Dirck recalled.
“In fact, Laurens has sent a letter by my hand—made me solemnly swear I would not fail to deliver it to you.”
He reached into his bag and pulled out the paper. “But first, I need to tell you a few things he doesn’t explain in his letter, starting with a story to amuse you. Shortly after you left, all Bredenaars awoke one morning to find on their doorstoops copies of Strong Evidence That People May Have Commemorative Images But May Not Pray to Them.”
“So! The Lutheran didn’t need my help, did he?”
“The story doesn’t end there.”
“What more?”
“Remember Phillip van Marnix?”
“Prince Willem’s and Ludwig’s friend? The ‘noble with the golden pen,’ we used to call him in the book business. Did he write a paper too?”
“Indeed he did. No name on it, but his literary fingerprints were all over it. Of The Images Destroyed In The Netherlands In August 1566 was the title.”
Dirck chuckled. “Sounds like him.”
“He took every point in the Lutheran tract and answered it with Scripture and gave examples of image-breakings in the Bible as justification for their actions.”
“I might have guessed it had I given it some thought. And did he pass his tract out to all the doorstoops as well?”
“That he did! Caused quite a stir and the formation of a visible group of Lutherans in the city.”
“Lutherans in Breda? Can’t imagine it!” Was Barthelemeus getting carried away?
“Most of us had no idea, either, till these pamphlets were spread over the city. Then, it was like the argument out in the open just drew them all out of the woods.”
“Makes you wonder what else might be hiding yet, just waiting for another literary dialogue,” Dirck suggested.
Barthelemeus shrugged. “Who knows? I’ve about decided that most anything can happen anywhere in these days. Does any news at all travel up this far? Have you any idea what’s been going on?”
“Ja! With all the merchants, soldiers, and refugees coming and going, we probably hear more than you’d guess.”
“Then you no doubt know that Prince Willem took most of his belongings and his household and fled to Dillenburg.”
“In Grass Month (April), ja, we have heard, along with rumors that from there he is planning a revolt.”
“That may or may not be true. Takes time to determine what’s rumor and what’s fact, as you know.”
Dirck knew it all too well. “Like a thousand Beggars coming from Antwerp turning out to be a fistful.”
Barthelemeus cocked his head and pointed a finger directly at him. “But don’t forget, they did as much damage as if they’d been a thousand.”
“Well…” Dirck didn’t feel like an argument at the moment.
“Rumors or no, I can tell you this much for certain. The Beggars have declared all-out war. They will win the freedom for all Calvinists to practice their religion alongside the papists—or die trying.”
“They don’t really think they have a chance, do they?”
“Indeed they do! They’ve stockpiled the home of Antonis Backeler with arquebuses, halberds, and armor of all kinds. They’ve already launched forays against Philip’s sympathizers all over Flanders and South Brabant.”
“No wonder Alva is on his way.”
“Ach, but the retaliation has already begun. Philip and the governess keep issuing new ordinances, some of them falsely in the name of Prince Willem. The city council refuses to enforce any of them, so they’ve been appointing new city councilors and passing even more repressive ordinances.”
“Where will it all stop?”
“On a battlefield somewhere. Or, more likely, a series of bloody battlefields. A good time for you and me to be hiding in our trees.” Barthelemeus leaned forward in his chair and dropped his voice nearly to a whisper. “To give you an idea how bad it is, just days before I left, the unthinkable happened. The latest city council actually arrested Pieter van Keulen.”
“The goldsmith?” Dirck knew him well. A Calvinist, indeed, but not of the Beggar sort. “Why him? I always said he would be the one influence to keep the rest of them in line.”
“They say he was one of the image-breakers.”
“Nay, nay, nay! Not van Keulen.”
“The whole city is in an uproar over it. Even papists who knew the man have been heard to testify that he is a good, peaceful, and righteous man. No one has ever seen or heard him slander or tell a lie or act in any way like a rebel.”
Dirck shook his head as if it would remove the words he’d just heard. “If all Calvinists were as godly as Pieter van Keulen, and all papists as godly as Lucas van den Garde, our leaders might never have given birth to the movement of the Children of God. Did they give him no warning so he could flee?”
“What he knew I have no idea. Only that on three or four occasions he had already made ready for flight, the last of these just a week before they took him. As Meister Laurens said, ‘He indulged in one catnap too many in the lowest branches of the tree outside the city prison tower.’”
“At least he left no family, his wife being already deceased and no children living in Breda.”
“But my wife was concerned for his housekeeper, Lysbet de Vriend. She has on occasion done some work in our household.”
“Is she that peasant girl his wife picked up at the orphans’ house several years ago? Illiterate, not too bright, she probably is unable to fend for herself with him out of the way.”
“But with an amazingly devout spirit, my wife tells me. In fact, it is reported that the girl is capable of reading from her master’s Bible.”
“I’ve heard that report too. Sounds a bit hard to believe, but God does stranger things.”
“My wife wanted to bring her along with us, but the woman insists it is her duty to stay and attend him faithfully in prison, with food and other necessities. We do wonder what will become of her.”
“She should be safe enough,” Dirck said. “What about her could pose a threat to Philip or the papists?”
“Strange times, Dirck, strange times.”
“I can’t believe they’ll hold van Keulen for long.” Dirck sighed. “Never would I have thought it could happen in Breda.”
“Laurens and I have discussed it at length.”
“And what sort of conclusion did you reach?”
“We believe the new council members Margriet has recently appointed did this as some sort of example to try to frighten the rest of the city. Which means it may last for a very long time and not end too happily.”
Dirck shook his head. “May God have mercy on us all. So far, in these regions we’ve had nothing more than the usual disagreements between the congregations that seem to thrive in numbers and varieties up here. So far even these have not touched the group that meets in Hans’ hidden church. We need to pray much that it stay this way.”
Barthelemeus stirred in his chair and handed the Meister’s letter to Dirck. “I think I’ve told you all you need to know before you read this.”
Dirck took the letter, eagerly turned it over, and loosened the seal, revealing a full page of Meister Laurens’ precisely formed words. “Aloud? Ah ja, he says here, ‘To be read aloud at the upcoming convening of the most esteemed academic circle.’” Dirck nodded and exchanged smiles with Barthelemeus.
“‘On this lovely afternoon, I sit in my place in The Crane’s Nest, and I imagine that you two sit with me.’
“You still have access to it? They have not taken it away yet?” Dirck asked.
“The old building still stands as if you had closed up the shutters and put out the fire for a long winter night’s sleep,” Barthelemeus said. Gesturing with his hands, he went on. “Outside, the crane stands yet on the edge of her nest of chicks that never grow older, and the stone lodges yet in her claw. We guard the key that you left with us and still meet there on occasion.”
Dirck shook his head and felt a surge of longing for the old place. Swallowing a lump in his throat, he resumed the reading. “‘Today I face a dilemma of a sort distressingly new to this old schoolmaster, descended from a long line of schoolmasters, none of which to my knowledge ever had to face this same perplexity. I pass it on to you in hopes that as you discuss it between you, you might be given the wisdom to agree with the conclusion I feel constrained to make in the matter.
“‘It appears that Margriet, in her remaining days as governess before the arrival of the Duke of Alva, is desirous of making one last good impression on the king. Hence, she has required of the nobility that all sign an oath of unquestioning loyalty to the Catholic religion and to His Majesty, King Philip.’
“Interesting to see which nobles sign and which refuse,” Dirck interjected.
“You can be sure Prince Willem didn’t.”
“That was probably the drop that made his bucket run over and finally drove him into exile.”
“It was indeed!”
Dirck returned to the letter in his hand. “‘But the governess didn’t stop with the nobles. Now she brings her oath to Breda, and before the summer is passed, all midwives and schoolmasters will be required to sign it.’
“Midwives and schoolmasters? Curious choice of designations.”
“Both having influence on children.”
“What other groups are being required to sign?”
“None!”
“What else does Laurens say about this strange oath?
“‘In our oath we must promise, in addition, never to use heretical books or spread false doctrines.
“‘The standards for judging heresy and false doctrine are not made plain. But I fear with the coming of Alva that a new brand of inquisitors is about to search our books and lessons, brothers. All ideas not totally sanctioned by the pope and king, no matter how subtly expressed, will soon be detected and used to condemn our books and our persons. I only pray they do not find a trail to pursue the seller of the books that still lie on these shelves.’
“Surely we’ve not left anything there to create danger.” Dirck hoped he was right. “Especially since the trail from Breda to Emden is anything but obscure. What will ever happen to Laurens?”
“Read on,” Barthelemeus prodded, waving his hands in circular motions.
“‘As for this old schoolmaster, you know my intents and the nature of my devotion to God and to His sacred Word. Hence, it will come as no surprise when I tell you I plan not to sign the oath, not even if Margriet herself should place it before me at the point of a sword. My Prince Willem refused to sign it, can I do otherwise?
“‘Which means, I will not be teaching my schoolboys another year. What I shall do to provide bread and cheese for my wife, God only knows. Perhaps I shall be joining Pieter van Keulen in the tower. I only know I trust in God who does not let His children die of hunger for the bread physical so long as we persevere in faithfulness to consume and break with others the bread spiritual.
“‘Almost I hear your words and will fill my heart with what my memory and imagination supply of the perpetual nourishment of our friendships. Now grace, mercy, and peace be with you both from God our Father and His Lord Jesus Christ. Pray for me, brothers, that God will be gracious.
“‘I leave this place and lock it securely.
“‘Laurens.’”
Both men sat in silence while Dirck folded the letter and wiped a tear from his cheek.
“I fear,” Dirck said at last, “that I should not have the courage to act so faithfully.”
“Nor I,” Barthelemeus added, “which may be the reason we have fled and our dear brother stays behind.”
Barthelemeus stood to his feet. “We don’t have Meister Laurens here to give us our final word of wisdom and send us on our way. But I must go.”
“You will be back, I trust, and we can both imagine that the crane hangs above the doorway.”
“Here, Dirck,” Barthelemeus said, handing him his large black bag.
“What is it?”
“I brought as many of your books as I could stash away among the bolts of cloth.”
Did he hear right? “Blessings on you, a thousand times over. Just before you came here tonight I was thinking of my books and wondering whether they lay yet in the protective covering of your attic.”
“I brought all you left with me. Further, Laurens and I went through the others and picked out a few more we felt were not safe to leave for the roaming eyes of the Inquisition. I could not carry them all in one bag, but will bring more on my next visit.”
Together, they emptied the books from the bag, and Dirck placed them on the bench beside where he must return to work. It was almost more than he could manage to add each volume to the pile without opening a single cover.
“Now I go,” Barthelemeus said at last. He took his bag and stepped out into the darkening evening.
Dirck returned to his proofing table. How would he ever capture his mind again and focus it on the last sermon in the collection? With a mind full of news and a pile of old familiar books at his side, how could it be? How could it be?