Emden
Middle of Harvest Month (August), 1567
Late summer hung heavy with greenery no longer new, goldenrod in fading profusion, and herb gardens going to seed. Mornings and nights grew cooler, days grew shorter, and a few flocks of early migrating birds chattered and honked in their temporary home in the fields along the shores of the Ems Estuary.
For more than a week now, Aletta had awakened each day with fresh memories of this momentous time a year ago. For it was in Harvest month that Pieter-Lucas had paid her that hurried early morning visit enroute to the Great Church. Then came the long days of silent wondering, and finally, that unexpected conversation with Vader Dirck and his stern warning to “dry your tears and put Pieter-Lucas from your mind….”
How life had changed since those devastating words! And how persistent the memories and tears they spawned!
One golden hazy morning, Aletta awoke before the sun had risen, something she hadn’t done since summer had arrived with its long days and short nights. In her heart a strange presentiment disturbed her with a feeling she couldn’t quite define.
Was it anticipation? Oma had promised that today she would take her, along with her granddaughters, Maartje and Rietje, out into the fields where they would spend the day gathering wild herbs to replenish her dwindling stores. She’d looked forward to this outing for days.
Nay! It was an unpleasant feeling that nagged her.
Apprehension, then?
Nothing would come clear except that it seemed certain this day held some events of especial importance. “Control your imagination,” she told herself. She turned over and attempted to go back to sleep. Instead, the uneasiness grew both in intensity and vagueness.
Could it have anything to do with Moeder Gretta? Impossible! For weeks now she’d been bright and growing stronger every day. Perhaps Pieter-Lucas was in trouble. She’d felt something like this once before at the time when he was facing his angry vader in the church. The feeling had gone on for as long as he lay in the sickbed in the Beguinage.
Hurriedly Aletta dressed herself and crept out into the single large room her family now called home. She paused outside the cupboard bed where her parents slept and trained her ear intensely. All seemed normal enough—two rhythms of steady breathing. She turned back toward her bed when a sudden loud banging on the door froze her to the floor in midstep.
In an instant Vader Dirck was tumbling from his bed and dashing for the bolted door.
“Help, brother, send your daughter quickly.”
It was Hans! “My moeder is very ill,” he rushed on, “and she calls for your daughter to come and nurse her.”
“Come in, come in,” Dirck Engelshofen responded, still sounding a bit dazed from his sudden waking.
Aletta touched him on the arm. “I’m awake, Vader. I go.”
He gave her a gentle squeeze and said, “God be with you, my child.”
To Hans he added, “Keep her as long as you need her.”
Aletta slipped out the door with the bearded messenger, patting her pocket to make sure Tante Lysbet’s herbal was securely in its place.
They hurried along the slumbering streets, silent as the night that gave way to the rising sun just beyond the far city wall. Through Aletta’s mind ran a dozen thoughts, labored memories of all the sick people of Emden she had watched Oma nurse with her herbs. Surely somewhere among these many experiences lay the clues she needed to help the Healer Lady herself back to health and well-being.
At the little house on the water’s edge, Hans shoved open the door. Not until they stood inside did he speak. “Praise God, you’ve come!” He cupped his hand around her elbow and guided her quickly across the room.
Instinctively, she recoiled from his touch. But with Oma in danger, she forced her mind away from her own discomfort.
“What is it that troubles her?” she asked.
“She wails and moans,” he whispered, still hurrying her across the floor. “Her face is swollen and red and of exceeding heat to the touch, and she complains of her side, her head, and her leg.”
Aletta surveyed the room with one broad sweep of her eyes. “What, no fire, no boiling water?” she asked. Then, “Where are the girls? Have they made no poultices for the swelling? Which herbs have you administered to her?”
“I…I know nothing about any of this,” Hans stammered. “She’s never been like this before. I just awakened to hear her groaning and calling for you, and I left to fetch you before I did another thing. I shall fan the embers into fire and rouse the girls…and whatever else you ask.”
Aletta caught her breath and held it long. Had she actually given those demanding orders to the man of this house, the preacher, her elder? No, at this moment he was none other than the son of her teacher. A heaviness weighted her spirit—a combination of compassion and confusion in the presence of a duty never before performed.
Aletta stood looking in on the beloved teacher-turned-patient. Her breathing came shallow, her face was puffed and red, her brow wrinkled in obvious discomfort, and she stirred incessantly. “I didn’t know I cared so much for this woman,” she whispered to herself.
“Great God,” Aletta prayed, “for the sake of your dear saintly child, Oma, please hear me and show me what to do.”
She touched the burning furrowed forehead. Without opening her eyes, Oma relaxed her brow and spoke with marked effort, her voice weak and quavering. “Aletta…”
“Ja, ja, Oma, I’m here.” She took the woman’s hot limp hand that reached out to her and held the fragile fingers gently.
“Praise God…in time.”
“Tell me, where shall I begin?”
“My leg,” she managed, attempting to pull up the cover and show it to her. “Fell on sharp stone…wrapped it…Ohhh….” Then she fell silent, slipping into the haze of her searing heat.
Aletta tugged at the feather bag until she uncovered the leg. Midway between ankle and knee it was swollen to twice its normal size, and the skin stretched so tightly over the bulging muscle, she feared it would burst.
She must examine it. She’d seen Oma do such things when she went with her to visit the sick of the hidden church family but had never done it herself. What if she hurt Oma more? As if handling a butterfly with a broken wing, she touched the leg and turned it ever so lightly.
It was as hot as the forehead! Oh, what was that poultice Oma always used to extract heat from a burning leg? Could she find it in the apothecary cupboard?
On the inner side of the leg, the timid novice physicke discovered a festering wound about the size of one of the smallest coins she always carried to market. A yellowish watery liquid oozed from the hole. And on the bed nearby lay a tiny crushed leaf stuck to a dried pool of blood in the midst of a length of old linen cloth.
Aletta’s mind sprang into action. What was this leaf? And why did it not work? Was it not properly applied? Should she replace it? Could it be she used the wrong herb?
A light touch on her arm brought her suddenly to face Maartje and Rietje. Oma’s two miniature replicas, with stray tufts of golden brown hair peeking out beneath their head scarves, stared up at her, their blue eyes wide with questions and brimming with pain.
“Will Oma be all right?”
“Please tell us she won’t die.”
What now? She could not yet be sure herself, much less make rash promises she might not be able to keep. Aletta looked into the imploring little rosy-cheeked faces and a terrifying thought came to her. Had they watched their own moeder die? Perhaps in this very room…this very bed? Was this but one more of the deeply buried secrets to remind her that she did not belong to this mysterious family?
More confused than ever, she fumbled about for words until Hans came to her rescue in his always soothing voice. “We trust in God, who alone knows how many people need our dearly beloved Oma. Her restoration lies in His hands.”
The man was standing with one arm on the shoulder of each girl. Surely he was no stranger to prayers for restoration, nor to death in response. What pain must he be trying to hide beneath the surface of his calm composure?
“Yet, if He is to restore Oma, He will do it with our help.” Hans addressed his girls with sudden firmness. “Now, Aletta, our physicke lady, tell us what we must fetch for you and we will do our part.”
What must she do first? She breathed deeply and waited. For what she was not sure—a word from Oma, a bolt of wisdom, perhaps? Most surely, she needed a repeat of that sure commanding spirit she had felt a few short minutes ago. It did not come. She found only enough courage to begin by saying, “Is the fire ready? Have you hot water yet?”
“Ready, Vrouw Physicke,” Hans replied.
“A large kettle?”
“A large kettle nearly full.”
“Goed. Then you, Hans, sit here to soothe your moeder when she stirs. Maartje, quickly go to your Oma’s garden and pluck a handful of wild thyme. Boil it in the pot on the fire to make a cooling bath. Rietje, bring the candle and come with me to the apothecary. We shall find the herbs to make your Oma well and strong again.”
It was working! As she spoke the words she felt the confident spirit return, and incredibly, she seemed to be saying the right things, almost as if they had not passed through her brain but her lips only.
As always, Oma Roza’s apothecary closet filled Aletta’s nostrils with a feast of delicious aromas, her heart with overwhelming awe, and her imagination with unbridled abandon. It was a paradise of narrow shelves and drawers and bins laden with pottery bottles, pewter boxes, and baskets bearing precious fragrant leaves and seeds and flowers and roots. Bunches of pungent herbs of a dozen sorts hung from the rafters, and a pair of herbal books with yellowed, well-worn pages lay open on the small wooden work counter.
The crowded little room with its single murky window in the roof was Aletta’s favorite spot in Emden. Today she entered Oma’s “healing sanctuary,” as she called it, with a mixture of excitement, apprehension, and terror. Increasingly over the past weeks, Oma had sent her here alone to mix some potion or fetch some ingredient. But the teacher was never far away, always ready with quick instructions.
Rietje, the younger of the two girls, lingered in the doorway and ventured in a quiet voice, “Tante ’letta, you sure it’s all right for me to come in?”
“Why not?”
“Oma never allows it.”
“Oh?”
“She says I’m still too young.”
“And how old might you be?”
Rietje raised her hands, and with both thumbs tucked into her palms, she spread out four fingers of each hand and answered with pride, “I’m eight years old!”
“Well, today I need an eight-year-old assistant for this job. We have to help Oma get well. I can’t imagine she would think you are too young for that sort of job, can you?”
“Nay.” The girl smiled, smoothed down her white starched apron, and gazed in wondering amazement around the little room.
Aletta wasted no time but began at once turning pages in the herbals until she found a recipe she and Oma had concocted many times. “It says here we need chickweed and violet leaves. Think you that you can find some in the garden, my little helper?”
“I know where they are,” Rietje offered.
“Go quickly, then, and bring them back while I prepare the fenugreek and linseed powders.”
Maartje had already returned with the thyme leaves and was boiling them with chunks of marshmallow root. When the bath was ready, Hans dipped large cloths in the wild thyme bath and wrung them out so that Aletta and Rietje could bathe Oma’s body. Each time the compresses touched her and the fragrant liquid soaked into her feverish skin, she sighed and groaned. Little by little the skin began to sweat, releasing the hot humors that caused her so much grief.
When the leaves of chickweed and violet had softened in their bubbling pot, along with the marshmallow root, Aletta strained them into a paste and mixed a poultice with the fenugreek and linseed powders, all in a base of warmed hog’s grease. She applied the concoction to the wound, freshly cleansed by the wild thyme bath, and secured it with a cloth.
Aletta ordered her regiment with a skill she had never dreamed she possessed. Not only the girls moved at her every word, Hans, too, spent the entire day looking in on his moeder and following Aletta’s instructions.
“Fetch me an ox tongue from the market.”
“Awaken Oma and give her a cup of this hog’s fennel tea. Careful, now, to see she is fully awake and takes it only in small sips.”
“Answer the knock at the door. Oma may have no visitors today.”
All day long Aletta guided the devoted family as they fluttered over Oma, coaxing her body to heal. Together they watched with growing courage as her heat subsided, her swellings diminished, and she complained less and less of pain. In one last effort, Aletta and the girls concocted a tasty ox tongue soup boiled with generous handfuls of borage.
“‘God’s cheering-up medicine,’ Oma always calls it,” she told the girls.
“We know all about borage,” Maartje offered. “Oma fills our bowls with it every time we are sad or angry.”
“Or whenever we don’t want to do what she tells us. She puts it in everything,” Rietje explained with exaggerated emphasis.
Finally, just before the rest was done they tossed a few sprigs of chervil into the pot.
“For flavor,” Rietje said, mimicking Oma’s didactic manner.
“Did your Oma tell you that?”
“Ja,” Maartje answered. “Rietje always says what Oma says.”
“Good girl. Someday she will be known as the Healer Lady of Emden. But did Oma also tell you that you must not add chervil too soon?” Aletta cautioned.
“Nay. Why not?”
“Chervil too long cooked will surely turn the best of soups bitter. So my moeder always says.”
“Oh!” Rietje looked astounded, then screwed up her nose and giggled.
“It smells so good, Tante ’letta,” Maartje exclaimed.
“It’s nearly ready now. We must beat up the white of an egg and mix it with the soup in Oma’s cup.”
“Whatever for?” Maartje asked. She stuck out her tongue and twisted her mouth and nose into a nasty-taste grimace.
“It’s good for soothing the belly so it does not plague her with windiness and pain. Now, Rietje, you set some plates on the table. Maartje, slice some bread and set on the butter. You shall all taste the soup that you have made while I give Oma hers to sip.”
Oma was already awake when Aletta parted the bed curtains and approached her. The old lady smiled. Her eyes opened wide for the first time all day. Aletta wiped the sweat from the face that had lost its puffiness and reddish color and again showed the wrinkles of her years the way they all knew her.
“Your granddaughters helped me to prepare a pot of fine ox tongue soup,” Aletta said. As best she could with the cup of soup in one hand, she settled herself and her layers of skirts on the edge of the bed. “We hope you like it, Oma.”
“You put borage in it?”
“Ja, Oma, with a touch of chervil.”
“And the white of an egg?”
“Ja, ja. I believe that was all?”
Slowly, deliberately, the graying head nodded and a smile curved her lips.
Aletta dribbled the soup into the parched mouth one spoonful at a time and watched her swallow. Between sips, Oma smiled her approval.
“Delicious,” she exclaimed at one point.
“You’re looking better,” Aletta offered. “The last time I changed the poultice on your leg, the wound had given up its angry scowl and a bit of its extra size.”
“Praise be to God, I am feeling much better.”
“You frightened us with your hotness and your swollen leg.”
“And myself as well. You’re a fine physicke, my child. So like an assistant I once had. I never thought I’d find another. God has prepared you, anointed you…”
“’Tis only that you, Oma, are such a good teacher,” she stammered. “I simply found your recipes and could not forget the things I’ve watched you do to bring healing to your patients all over Emden.”
“I pray you, take care that you never make the kind of trial I made yesterday, do you hear me?”
“What trial, Oma?”
“That little crushed leaf—did you find it in the cloth tied to my leg?”
“I saw a crushed leaf in the cloth indeed, but I had no idea what it was.”
“An herb called all-heale. I bought it once at a market square. The huckster who sold it to me recited a long list of wonder-working claims for it. He said that it had been known to heal deeply ulcerated wounds long given up by the best of physickes.”
“Know you of anyone else who has used it with success?”
“Nay, none.”
“Then why, Oma? You always told me…”
“I know, I know, my child. That is why I feared to use it on a patient before I had tried it on my own self.”
“Oh, Oma, what dangers you put yourself in! What would we ever have done without you?”
“If no one had ever risked, what would we know of the healing properties of any of our herbs? ’Tis a part of the calling of a healer, my child.”
The old lady finished her soup, then grasped Aletta’s hand and said, “Tonight you may go home and rest with your family. With Hans and the girls, I shall be fine. You’ve taught them well.”
“If you are to be fine, ’tis time now to close your eyes and sleep once more.” Aletta pressed the woman’s hand to her own lips, then tucked it under the covers, wiped the last remains of the soup from her wrinkled face, and let herself down to the floor.
“Sleep well,” she whispered and paused long enough to assure herself that all was in order. Oma smiled, closed her heavy eyelids, and promptly slept in peaceful, steady quietness.
Aletta turned from the bed to find Hans standing behind her. “Ah!” she started.
For an uncomfortable moment, the man said nothing, just looked down at her. The gentle warmth of his eyes terrified her. She looked at the floor and heard him say, “Only God knows how often I give Him thanks for the goodness He has brought to us in this house through the coming of your vader and his family to Emden.”
Panic gripped her in the chest, the panic this man’s nearness always precipitated. So different from the peaceful sense of protection she felt when Pieter-Lucas stood by her side. Involuntarily, she edged away slightly. Feeling oddly aloof from her own voice, she listened to it stammer with a labored politeness that masked her fright. “Very kind of you, thank you.” Clearly, she was no longer the physicke in charge. Hans had once more assumed his threatening position as the man of the house, the preacher, her elder—and that something else she feared more with each encounter.
He stood with his hands behind his back, ignoring her discomfort, and continued his speech. “My moeder has so long prayed for you to come and learn the herbal arts from her. So many of our people here need her expertise and God’s touch through her herbs. You cannot know how blessed of God you are to be called to wear her mantle.” He paused, shifted, and moved his hands into a clasped position before him.
Blessed? Indeed! So it seemed every time she worked with the herbs. So it seemed when she enjoyed Oma’s presence and laughter and wisdom. Even in the young girls’ chatter and companionship she found pleasure. But what sort of blessing was it when this man’s hovering attentions must ever go with it?
Fighting to distance herself from him again, Aletta spoke in short, nervous syllables. “Oma rests. Her leg and head are better. I think you do not need me more this day. I go to home for now.”
Hans raised his hand and opened his mouth, but Aletta did not stop talking. “If she awakens, give her more hog’s fennel tea. If the heat returns, bathe her in wild thyme and dress her wound with a fresh poultice. Let her not throw off her covers. I shall be back tomorrow, early.”
Continuing to ignore the man’s attempts to interrupt, and without looking directly at him again, she brushed across the room to where the girls cleaned up dirty dishes and scrubbed the long wooden table.
“Must you go to home already, Tante ’letta?” Maartje asked.
“Not yet, please,” begged Rietje.
Aletta smiled and rested her hand on Rietje’s head. “Oma has in you two darlings the very best physickes in Emden. How much you have learned this day. Tomorrow I shall return, and together we shall learn what next to do for a patient whose heat has been consumed and whose wound is no longer angry.”
She hugged them, one in each arm, bade them “Good night, rest well,” then donned her cloak, secured her scarf, and went for the door.
Hans waited for her there. “I…I…” he stammered, opening and closing his mouth several times before he managed to speak. “I thank you for your expert services.”
“And I you, for your assistance. Good evening.”
With half a bow, he opened the door and let her out into the early evening fresh sea air.
****
A vigorous wind was whipping the water into noisy slaps against the sides of the few boats scattered along the harbor wall at the end of the street. It had also stirred up huge piles of white billowy clouds in the heavens. Aletta moved dreamily through the streets of Emden, ignoring the people who swarmed around her. She passed through the city gates, on beyond the group of houses where her family lived, and out into the field where Oma would have brought her today to gather herbs if all had gone as planned. A light filmy haze hovered over the harbor, the city, the wheat fields ready for harvest. The marshes throbbed with the steady chanting of a migratory feathered choir.
She seated herself on a large boulder beside a narrow beaten pathway and gazed upward at a pair of black-headed gray gulls soaring and dipping through the summer sky. The sun tipped their wings with silver, and the patches of blue sky behind them seemed to say they had some regal purpose in God’s magnificent creation.
Something in the unhindered abandon of this special pair of gulls gave her hope that someday she, too, would know the freedom to dip and soar with the one young man to whom she had promised her heart’s devotion. Pieter-Lucas, her Pieter-Lucas! How she yearned for him! How could she go on without even knowing where he was or when or whether he would ever find her in this lonely, isolated place?
“Great God,” she prayed, “carry my voice to Pieter-Lucas and lead him to my side. We made a vow. A vow, Great God. Does that not matter to you whose eyes look down on all we do and say?”
Aletta sat on her stone remembering pleasant days of long ago and trying to forget Hans’ gentle but frightening eyes and Vader Dirck’s stern words of a year ago that had caused so much grief. She watched the sky turn from blue to pink to a dazzling gold. The sun slid down between the billowing clouds and hovered just above the estuary on the far horizon. Numberless flocks of birds chattered in the fields just beyond her, filling the twilight air with a mesmerizing din.
Where her mind was when she first became aware that her vader had joined her, she never could remember. The golden sky had darkened into gray, but the world was still dusky light all about. How long had he stood there? Did he speak? Or did he simply look on, perhaps reluctant to intrude into her sacred meditative sanctuary?
When she saw him, she wondered at the total lack of panic or joy that she felt.
“My child,” he spoke, his voice rising, then dropping off into a profound pause.
“How did you know to find me here?”
“I only knew. I understand your adventure as a physicke went well.”
“You went to Oma’s in search of me?”
“And to see how the old lady fared. I heard many kind and grateful words about you, Aletta. Words to make a vader proud.”
“’Twas Oma’s tried and proven recipes, and the eager assistance of her granddaughters did the work.”
He cleared his throat and walked a bit away then back. She did not look up but felt him staring down at her.
“Why did you leave so soon?”
“My duty for the day was done, Oma slept, and…”
“What more? Why did you not return directly home?”
Aletta dug her toe into the loose pavement of crushed shells and tiny gravel. Still not looking up, she answered at last, “My thoughts called me here to be alone.”
“Thoughts about the herbs and your obvious aptitude for the healing arts? Or thoughts of Oma and her weaver-preacher son?”
Startled, Aletta looked up. He still stared down on her. “Why ask you such a question?” she asked.
In the waning light of a day reluctant to be gone, Vader Dirck’s figure stood like a towering silhouette. He knelt down on the path beside his daughter and studied the ground in silence for a long while before he answered.
“Hans is a fine and upright man—a godly and humble man, you know.”
“I know.” Who could ever question that?
“Never will he become wealthy, and as a leader in the brotherhood of the Children of God, his life will always be—ja, and always has been—in danger—his and all his family with him.”
“How so, Vader?”
“You know the story of his wife, do you not?”
She shook her head.
“She died at Hans’ side in a filthy prison where they both were held captive, and for nothing more than the capital sin of being rebaptized. Only by God’s miracle did he escape, bringing what remained of his family here to a safety that lasts perhaps only for the moment.”
“Why do you tell me all this?” Little tremors began to quiver in the pit of her stomach. Her imagination sketched the first shadowy lines of a picture she did not care to see.
“Because you need to know it if…” His voice slid away like the sun over its horizon.
“If what, Vader? Oma tells me that who they are and whence they come is secret information to be guarded. It’s almost as if to tell too much would endanger their lives.”
“You’re right, my child,” he said.
“Then, why do you tell me? How did you learn it?”
Vader Dirck took a long deep breath, laid his hand on her arm, and answered slowly, “Hans told me, and you need to know it as well, because…well, because he put to me a question which I cannot answer without your help.”
“My help? Vader, you know it all.”
“Nay, not all. For weeks, now, since he first talked with me, I have struggled to know how I must ask you. An hour ago, he put it to me once again.”
Aletta swallowed back a flood of tears that arose in her throat. The picture Vader Dirck was sketching grew frighteningly clear.
“What must you ask me?” She did not really want to hear.
“It’s this way, Aletta,” he said at last. “Hans the weaver-preacher has asked my permission to give you special instruction in order to prepare you for believer’s baptism.”
“Prepare me for believer’s baptism? Why me?” She shuddered at the thought of so much close contact with this uncomfortably friendly man.
Vader looked helpless; no answer came from his lips.
“I do not even know that I will ever want to be rebaptized,” she went on. “What is Hans thinking—that now that you and Moeder have been baptized, I must do the same simply to unite the family? That sounds not like what I hear him and the others preach.”
“Nay, child, of course that is not the reason.”
“Vader, I am still young. You and Moeder have only just now submitted to baptism. If you could wait so long, why must I proceed before I fully understand the reason for it?”
Vader Dirck cleared his throat three times before he said, “Your moeder’s people were all Children of God; she grew up with their ways and ideas in the early days when many of them lived in Antwerp.”
“She did? And you, too, Vader?”
“I too believed quite young.”
“Why were you not baptized then?”
“In those days and in that group, the elders considered young people not yet thirty years of age not to be ready for baptism. From then until now, we have not lived in another community of these Children of God.”
Aletta stared at her vader in silence for a long space, letting her mind adjust to the surprising revelations she had just received. He did not return her gaze but seemed to be watching the sunlight fade into twilight gray.
“Do you mean to tell me, Vader,” Aletta spoke at last, “that for all the years you went to the Great Church and took your children there, you let the priests baptize them into the Holy Catholic Church and teach them all the things you disagreed with? Yet, you were no papist in heart?”
Vader Dirck spoke uneasily, never looking her way. “Almost, you speak the truth.”
“Almost? What is not true?”
He looked at her then, took her hands in his, and spoke haltingly, “Just one thing you never knew.” He paused and cleared his throat before going on. “No priest has ever baptized you, child.”
She gasped, pulling her hands free to cover her mouth. “I’ve never been baptized, Vader?”
“Never. When you were first born, your moeder was ill and we postponed the event. Then finally, we made a trip to Antwerp to stay with family for some months. Our friends in Breda assumed we’d had you baptized in Antwerp, and we never had to do it. We did the same when Robbin was born.”
So that was why the “Eye of God” always scowled down on her from the ceiling of the Great Church in Breda. Yet, the man in Hans’ church had said it was because she carried around that dirty load of unforgiven sins, the ones she could not quite give over yet.
“But, Vader, I thought unbaptized children lived in constant danger of…”
“Of what?”
“I never knew what the danger was, only that one dare not go through life without baptism. Every time I felt the ‘Eye of God’ scowling down on me, I trusted my baptism to keep me safe from whatever God would do to naughty children who hadn’t been baptized.”
Vader shook his head and his eyes brimmed with pity. “My dear child, ’tis not baptism protects you from the wrath of God.”
“What then?”
“The forgiveness of your sins.”
“For what purpose, then, is the baptism?”
“It follows belief and forgiveness as a witness to the world that you are now forgiven and ready to live or to die for your faith.”
“If this is so, Vader, why did you not tell your children about it before now?”
“I tried. You will remember that I read to you and taught you to read from the Bible and from the books in The Crane’s Nest. I truly believed you had heard enough to make it clear. I had not realized that the power of a man-made painting on a ceiling could speak so much louder than the words I read to you.”
“But, Vader, every week you took us into the Great Church. We thought you were a faithful papist, and you never told us that some things were right to believe and others not. How could you do that?”
“You ask a hard question,” Vader said, pausing before he went on. “You must understand, child, that there are many in Breda who, if they had a choice, would not practice the religion of the papists.”
“Why have they no choice?”
“Our churches all belong to the Catholic religion. Our Catholic king and the laws that shape our lives will allow none other. If we would worship in public, we must do so as papists. We who call ourselves the Children of God have learned to practice godliness in all places and our religion in private if we would avoid the executioner’s sword. For the few things I did teach you, I could have been swiftly imprisoned if the local priests had known.”
“What about Tante Lysbet? Did you not fear for her to see our private practice of religion, since she lived beneath our thatch?”
“Tante Lysbet knew all along. If the truth were told, one reason she came to live with us was that she might have access to our Bible and our books. Many of the works of Menno Simons and the others lay hidden away in her attic room. There were others, too, who came to The Crane’s Nest to read the books and discuss the new ideas.” She watched him clasp and unclasp his hands uneasily, then look her full in the face, and add, “No man lies in greater danger than a bookseller, my child. No man!”
Aletta felt a strange mixture of awe, disappointment, and excitement churning within her. “How can that be, Vader?” she asked. Was it possible that at last he might be ready to give her answers to the questions she had so long asked in vain?
“When I was about your age,” he began, “I watched a friend die in the public square of Antwerp. William Tyndale was his name. They burned him at the stake for believing much the same as we do and for translating the Bible into the English language so others could come to the same sort of faith. As I stood there choking in the smoke, feeling the warmth of the flames, listening to Mr. Tyndale’s final prayer and cries of anguish, I determined that I would be wiser than he. I would pursue great caution.”
“Oh, Vader,” she said, slipping her arm around his shoulder, wishing for a way to hug away these awful memories.
“Just remember this,” he concluded. “A bookseller with an anointing of God to peddle books that will free men from the shackles of tradition must first save his own head if he would be alive to sell his books.” He sounded as if the last of his spirit had drained from him.
Aletta stared at the ground, unable to speak, unable to cry, unable to believe the words she had just heard. So much that she had wondered all her life began to make sense now.
“Vader,” she said at last, “please urge me not to prepare now for this new baptism. I am not sure about forgiveness and am not yet ready to die for a faith I may not even possess. Can you not see this?”
Vader sighed, then spoke hesitatingly, sliding into each word. “I do see, my child. I will never urge you, for the way is hard, and I shall always be as cautious for my children as I have been for myself. One day God will urge you as He did me. You must not refuse Him.”
“Nay, that I shall not do. But since you are not urging me, am I to believe my baptism at this time is Hans’ wish?”
“If you must know…” He paused as if searching for an easy way to say some hard thing.
“If you must have my answer for Hans,” she responded, “then I must know the true question.”
“Ja, I see that you must know it all.” He paused. “Hans knows that only when you have been baptized can he gain permission from the elders to ask for one thing he wants very dearly—your hand…in marriage.”
It was not all of her imagination, then. The uneasiness she had always felt in Hans’ too-warm, hovering presence had not been without good reason.
“Oh, Vader, Vader.” She drew into a tight ball, embracing herself to keep him at a distance. “Nay, nay, nay, Vader. I cannot, not even for the godly, goodly Hans. Ask me not to do such a thing. I beg of you, ask me not.”
When he spoke again, Aletta heard in his voice deep tones of the sort that spring from a bleeding heart. “You know that the man and his moeder have been more than gracious to our family. They sheltered us for so long, and his moeder nursed Moeder Gretta back to health. He has taught us all such marvelous words from God’s Holy Book. And he is a kind and loving man.”
“I know, Vader. All that I know. I respect the man and have learned much from him about God and His ways. I have even come to love his family nearly as my own. I owe so much to Oma. She trains me to carry on the herbal healing in the brotherhood when she is no longer able. Maartje and Rietje are charming and sweet and capable. But…but…”
“Is it that you object to a man as old as he, a man already with daughters to raise?”
“Nay, Vader, that is not it.”
“What then?”
“I simply cannot give my heart to Hans or to any other suitor. It is already given. I made a vow, and I must keep it.”
“A vow? Why, that is a popish notion and has absolutely no binding effect.”
“I know that, Vader.” She offered no further explanation. Yet, she could never forget the lure of such a welcome doctrine. Nobody ever longed more than she to extricate herself from Moeder Kaatje’s old and popish vow that threatened to destroy her dreams.
“When you become a Child of God, you, too, will be freed from bondage to vows.”
“The vow of which I speak has naught to do with popishness nor any other sort of religion, nor do I have any desire to be freed from it.”
“What then?”
“’Tis simply that my heart has always belonged to Pieter-Lucas van den Garde. I vowed to wait for him, no matter how long, until you would approve.”
Dirck Engelshofen looked up with a start. Jumping to his feet, he paced along the pathway. The crunch of crushed shells beneath his feet filled the evening for what seemed a long forever. Finally, he said, “I see. You are not a child anymore, Aletta. You are telling me that your love goes deeper than some childish affection for the little friend from next door.”
Aletta reached out to him, and he pulled her to her feet. “Oh, Vader, Vader, Vader,” she cried out. “So long I’ve wanted to unburden my heart to you. One long year ago you gave to me an order I could not obey. ‘Forget about Pieter-Lucas,’ you said. It was impossible. I met with him only once more, but that was the day I vowed to wait for him. Daily, after he left Breda in search of his vader Hendrick, I visited his moeder in the Beguinage until she died—she and her newborn daughter.
“In spite of all you said, never have I forgotten him or ceased dreaming of him or longing for him. I’ve suffered greatly the condemnations of an evil conscience for my sin of disobedience to your command. For all I know, God can never forgive me or save me from the terrors of eternal judgment. But be that as it may, believe me, I can do no other.”
Vader Dirck didn’t say a word but opened his arms wide. She melted into them and sobbed till her whole body shook.
“Can you ever forgive me, Vader?”
“If you can forgive me,” Vader murmured, his cheek resting on her head. “It was too much I asked of you. I had no idea…no idea.” For a long while he held her close and let her weep.
When her weeping had subsided, she held him by the flaps of his doublet and asked, “Vader, do you mean to say it is no longer a sin for me to think of Pieter-Lucas?”
He answered slowly, as if thinking each word into existence with a struggle. “Nay, child, it is no sin to think of him, but I must wonder how possible it is that you shall ever see him again.”
“Torment me not with such questions,” she begged. “God only knows where and when, but I know I shall see him again.”
He sighed and smoothed back the damp strands of hair from her face. “Have you any idea where he hangs his cap and lays his curly head at night? Or under whose table he shoves his feet at mealtime?”
“Not any.”
“Or have you any inkling of what new wild disgraces Hendrick van den Garde has planned and executed in the name of his strange brand of religion?”
Aletta swallowed down an uneasy lump rising in her throat. “Probably only Hendrick knows the answer to that question. Is it not sufficient to know he lives not in Emden, and if he did no one here would know either him or Pieter-Lucas? Oh, Vader, can you not see that everything has changed since we last talked about this back on Pieter-Lucas’ doorstoop?”
He shook his head. “Everything has changed and nothing has changed. So much you do not know. So much I never told you…”
“Indeed, you’ve always treated me like some fragile festival doll with an empty head.”
“Nay, that was never the idea.”
“Why, then, have you refused to talk to me about so many of the things that matter—things that have changed our lives? When we left Breda so hurriedly in the night, I wanted to beg the reason, but you had closed the door to your ears and your heart. The same when we left Antwerp. It was as if you thought I could not understand. Instead you left me always to wonder, to grieve, to fear what strange new thing would overtake us in the night.”
“These many years I’ve simply tried to hold you close, not wanting you to bear burdens too heavy for such young shoulders. When you were still an infant, I promised God I would protect you from all pain and harm. That was my only purpose.”
He took her in his arms and smoothed her head with his big hands. “Aletta, my brave and beautiful daughter, I had to shield you, to give you as much joy in your childhood as possible. Even now, it pains me more deeply than I can say to open your young, innocent eyes to these dreadful truths.”
“Nay, let it not give you pain, Vader. Your words are the healing herbs that purge my mind of its deep dark questions.”
She pulled herself from his embrace, held his arms in her hands, and looked up into his face. “Tell me,” she pleaded, “what do you really know about my Pieter-Lucas since we left Breda?”
“I’ve heard absolutely nothing! Only that King Philip’s Duke of Alva sets about even now to confiscate the lands of the image-breakers and to execute both them and their families.”
“They wouldn’t touch Pieter-Lucas, Vader.”
“He belonged to the household of a wild image-breaker. If he stayed in Breda, when Alva arrived…there is no chance…”
“He lives yet, Vader, I know it. And we shall find each other one day.”
“How can you be so sure?”
“We made a vow before the God of heaven, and He wrote it in His book. I simply know it shall be.”
Dirck Engelshofen sighed. “How long shall you wait?”
“I’ll wait a lifetime if need be.”
“And if he comes not ever?”
“Then, I marry not ever.” Visions of the Beguinage and Kaatje van den Garde’s stiffening body flashed through her mind. And if Pieter-Lucas should choose his moeder’s vow over their own, she would also marry never! Until this moment, Aletta had not allowed her mind to run so far. Now that she had done so, she felt her heart would break beyond repair.
The last glow of evening light had turned into the near blackness of a late summer night, and the birds had ceased their noisy concert when Dirck Engelshofen and his daughter started home in a shared silence. They neared the old city wall before Dirck spoke again, picking up the conversation as if no pauses had occurred.
“Meanwhile, the kind and gentle Hans, the lonely widower, needs a wife to stand by him in the mission to which God has called him. How can I let you reject this worthy man as your suitor? What, pray tell, shall I say to him?”
“Tell him the truth, Vader. Truth is like a bitter herb. No matter how it stings, it is the only thing that can bring light and healing and relief. If Hans is a man of God, he will swallow it.”
The words came out too smoothly, as if she’d practiced them for months. But inside, she sensed a growing fear of what difficult truth the days ahead might bring.
“Ja,” he said with an air of resignation. He patted his daughter’s hand and added, “In the end, we must trust God to do what is best for us all.”
“Thank you, Vader.” Aletta breathed the words softly.
“And if God decides it’s best not to bring Pieter-Lucas back to you?”
“You have my answer, Vader. I have no other!”
They walked on in silence. At the printshop gate, Aletta stopped, grabbed her vader’s arm, and spoke again. “I want you to know that I have learned in these weeks to put my trust in the God of Hans and you and Moeder. But I am not yet ready for baptism.”
“That I can see.” His words were as gentle as the sighing of a summer breeze in Breda.
“One thing more,” she ventured. “As you have forgiven me my sin of disobedience, is it possible that my Heavenly Father will also forgive all the other sins I carry on my conscience?”
Vader smiled. “Possible? More than that. He eagerly waits for you to ask.”
“Even without the help of a priest as confessor?”
“Without the help of any man as confessor.”
Aletta leaned her head against her vader’s chest and prayed aloud, “My Heavenly Father, will you forgive?”
The great burden that had weighted her heart for so long lifted, and a gentle peace settled in its stead.
“The guilt is gone, Vader,” she said. “The ‘Eye of God’ is smiling.”
“And His voice is saying, ‘Thy sins are forgiven thee.’”
“I hear it, Vader, I hear it.”