5

Every morning before dawn, Michael opened the ovens and raked over the coals and laid on more charcoal. While the ovens were heating, he went around to the front of the bakery and unrolled the awning and opened the shutters and the door. Now the sun was rising.

The ovens were hot, and his mother would be up, shuffling around in the small dark room at the rear of the bakery, exhaling deep sighs in place of words or prayers. The first loaves were ready for the ovens, little round buns that Antwerpers loved in the midmorning, some plain, some stuffed with fruit or jam. There were forty-two of these; Michael knew already the names and faces of those who would buy thirty-six of them and could have guessed to the moment when these regular customers would appear, who would pay with a penny and who with a real, and what each one would say to him in the course of the transaction.

The other six buns were part of the day’s surprises. Michael loved surprises. He slid the tray of buns into the top oven.

He swept the shop and went out to sweep the street in front. Up the way, past the broom hedge, the wine and oil shop was open, and old Philips was out in front sweeping his part of the street. He and Michael waved to each other. Michael did not bother to smile. Philips was nearly blind. He needed only the gesture. Stooping over the broom again, Michael scrubbed away at the cobblestones. Sometimes it seemed that the older he got the less interesting his life became.

But now here came Melisse, a seamstress who lived down the street above the flower shop, a covered dish in her hand. Michael straightened, his curiosity jumping alive.

Melisse wore a dirty apron over her long sober dress. Her hair was pushed carelessly up under a worn coif, and her long thin face was hollow and baggy with fatigue. Coming up to Michael, she tugged on his sleeve and turned back the cloth over the dish.

“My baby’s sick, Michael, dear,” she said. In the dish was a mess of egg and herbs and milk. “Let me set this in your oven, just for a moment, just to cook the goodness in.”

He took the dish; giving a look over his shoulder into the shop, he covered the slop over again. His mother disapproved of charity—and Melisse was gossiped to be a secret Calvinist. Michael smiled at her. “Come back in half an hour.”

“Not too long, now,” she said. “I don’t want the egg to be hard; he won’t eat it if it’s hard.”

“Don’t worry.”

“But it must be warmed all the way through. Maybe I should stay and do it myself.”

“No, no, go on, and come back in half an hour.”

Melisse lingered, frowning. Michael took the dish into the shop and set it on the table inside the door. His mother called him. He went back into the kitchen, to help her knead the dough.

Jeanne-Marie hated the sunlight. Her kitchen was like an anteroom of Hell, gloomy and low, the pent air thick with odors of yeast and decaying fruit and old flour and souring milk. The old woman padded on her broad bare feet from the cupboard to the table where she worked, every few minutes fetching up a sigh so tremulous she might have been about to weep. Her clothes were impregnated with flour, and her body shapeless with fat, so that she reminded Michael always of one of her own great floury rolls. When he came into the kitchen she gave him a buffet on the ear.

“What are you doing out there? Who are you talking to? Come work this dough and earn your keep like a decent Christian man.”

Side by side they stood at the table punching and pounding the dough, warm and moist at first, sticking to Michael’s hands as he pulled and folded it and pumped it with his arms.

Out in front of the place the door opened.

Michael kept his eyes on the dough. He knew what would happen, every step, like an old dance.

His mother shuffled to the kitchen door and peered out. “Michael!” She waved him frantically over to her side.

“Yes, Mama.”

“Who is that? Is that Moeller?”

He looked. Of course it was Moeller, who came in every day at this time, with his penny, to buy a fruit bun for his wife and a plain bun for himself.

“Yes, Mama.”

“He’s a Calvinist. You go and give him what he wants. See he doesn’t cheat you.” She pushed him forward out the door. “Hurry up before he leaves and we lose the money!”

While he was giving Moeller a cherry bun and the plain bun, two more regular buyers appeared.

“Good morning, Michael.”

“Hello, Vrouw Arliss. What may I sell you today?”

“Oh, the usual, Michael.”

“Hello, Vrouw Schenck. What may I sell you today?”

“What we always have, Michael.”

He wrapped the buns in soft paper, careful not to smear the sweet filling that oozed from the side. A strange girl came into the shop.

“Thank you, Vrouw Schenck. God be with you.”

“And how is your dear mother, Michael?” Vrouw Schenck loved to talk.

“Very well, thank you.”

The strange girl had gone to one side of the shop and was staring at the loaves of bread left over from the day before. Her long gray skirt was patched, the hem worn, but the stuff was very fine. He craned his neck to see if she wore jewelry.

“Have you heard the latest about Melisse, Michael? I understand her husband has left her again.”

He mumbled something to Vrouw Schenck, his curiosity absorbed by the stranger.

“That’s what happens to people who don’t mind their ways,” said Vrouw Schenck, comfortably. “If she’d only—”

The strange girl was leaving. Michael brushed rudely past Vrouw Schenck, saying, “Yes, yes, you’re perfectly right,” ready to stop the girl at the door. But she had only gone to look at the sweet buns. Embarrassed, he faced his old customer again.

“My, my, Michael,” she said, and sniffed. “I can see my friendship’s wasted here.”

“Vrouw Schenck, I’m sorry—”

The housewife drew herself up like a strutting pigeon and marched out the door. Michael grimaced. It would not do to lose a good customer. He stood looking at the back of the stranger, wondering why he would risk certain profit for the sake of a new face.

“May I help you?” he said.

The girl turned. She was a little younger than he was, and not pretty. Her pale hair hung down in disorderly braids over her shoulders. She said, “Do you sell your stale bread?”

“We give it to the Church,” he said.

Her face fretted with disappointment, she glanced behind her once at the sweet buns and started toward the door. Michael got in her way. “Wait.” Her dress was rich; he wondered what fate had brought her to search for day-old bread. “Is it for you? Are you hungry?”

From the back of the shop came his mother’s sibilant hiss. “Michael!”

He waved at her to be quiet. At his question the girl’s face had gone suddenly blank. “I feed it to the birds,” she said, with an edge in her voice that suggested he should keep his interest to himself.

“Michael!” his mother called, in a hoarse loud whisper. “Who is she? Is she Catholic?”

“The Church gives bread to the poor,” Michael said.

The girl raised her pale eyebrows into polite arches. “How very kind of the Church.”

Not a Catholic. He looked her over again, intent, and saw her hands, soft and fine as a noblewoman’s. She was making for the door again and he blocked her way.

“Wait. Who are you? I’ve never seen you before, and I know everybody in this quarter of Antwerp.”

“I’ve got to go,” she said. “My mother’s waiting for me.”

“Michael,” his mother shouted. “Get rid of her!”

“Wait.” He lunged past the stranger, grabbed the nearest sweet bun off the rack, and brought it to her. “Here.”

Her eyes widened, softening her face; slowly she took the bun from him, her gaze unwavering from his, and lifting the bun took a bite. Her hunger overwhelmed her discipline. She stuffed the delicious sweet into her mouth, chewing hard on the sticky mass. Michael smiled at her, triumphant.

“Who are you? Where do you live?”

“Michael!”

She managed to swallow the lump of bread in her mouth. Now that she had eaten of his charity, she could not deny him a little courtesy, and she said, “My name is Johanna van Cleef—I live over in the Swan Street, above the Kelmans’ kitchen. Do you know them?”

“Kelman,” he said. “Two buns in the morning, a long loaf at night.”

She was going. He did not stop her, having now some connection with her after she left the bakery. He smiled at her, and, her mouth stuffed with another greedy bite of the bun, she gave him back a broad cheerful grin. She went out the door.

“Michael!”

“Coming, Mother.”

When Hanneke came around the corner into the Swan Street, the Spanish soldier was sitting in front of Kelman’s house. Her back stiffened. On straw legs she made herself walk down the gentle slope toward the house; her mother was in that house, her mother.

The Spanish soldier watched her come with his smoldering black eyes. He was very young, her age perhaps, although he had managed to grow a little feathery mustache. He was always dressed in fine clothes, trunk hose and doublet and leather shoes, exotic as a papingo among the plain Dutch people on whom he was quartered. As she came closer, Hanneke’s stomach rolled in panic. He had only been here a few days but her fear grew more intense every time she saw him.

Now she was going in the gate, his gaze full of her, his black eyes like the eyes of a jungle animal, hypnotic and evil. She made herself meet his look the whole way from the gate to the door.

Inside, she leaned up against the wall a moment, recovering. He was still there, just the other side of the door. She went back through the house to the kitchen, where the Kelmans’ cook hummed over her pea soup, and let herself out the back door, to the little wooden stair up to the attic room.

Her mother was sitting in the window, staring out. The floor and the top of the table and the cupboard bed were spread with bits of clothing, books, and linens. Hanneke closed the door. She had to fight down a surge of hot anger at her mother, who ignored her and began to sing.

Taking off her shawl, Hanneke hung it up on the hook by the door. The room was smaller every time she came back to it. The two women had little enough—a few bundles of clothes, a box of books, a chair, a chest full of embroidered linen for Hanneke’s dowry—but with space so dear it all had to be neat, or the room was a chaos. When she did not go out roaming the streets Hanneke’s mother spent the day opening drawers and boxes, taking out her possessions and laying them about, and there was never anywhere to step or sit or even to stand.

Hanneke said nothing to her mother. She set about cleaning up the room.

Her mother broke off singing. “Where were you?”

“Out,” Hanneke said.

She folded the linen bedsheets intended for her wedding night and laid them back into the cherry wood chest her father had given her when she was twelve. She hated touching these things, seeing them, thinking about the blasted world they tied her to.

“That boy was here again,” her mother said.

“What boy?”

She knew which boy: Michael Rijnhardt, the baker’s boy, who had been coming into Kelman’s backyard every day to look up at the window of Hanneke’s room.

“I hope you threw something at him,” Hanneke said.

“He looks like a very nice boy.”

“He’s a Catholic.” Hanneke slammed the chest lid shut. Her gaze traveled the room, littered with the fragments of their past life. “Mama, why can you not keep all this shut away?”

“Have you seen Jan?”

“No, Mama.”

She lowered her eyes to the chest; whenever she thought of her brother a hard lump formed in her throat. She rubbed her fingers over the deep carved roses on the lid of the chest. She would never marry now. When she was a little girl she had always assumed someday she would find a handsome charming man who would fall entirely in love with her and take her for his wife, but now she knew she would never marry. No one wanted the daughter of a hanged man. When she felt the familiar stinging in her eyes she scrubbed angrily at them with her hand. What right did she have to cry? Roughly she got to her feet, lifting the chest, and heaved it up onto the shelf beside the cupboard bed.

“Help me, Mama.” She stooped to gather up the books strewn about the floor.

“Do you know where Jan is?”

“No, Mama.”

Her mother climbed down from the window, reached for a book and put it away in the box, reached for another book. Hanneke gathered up the mess around her. Her brother had not come to see them for some time. He was gone, she thought; she had the sense of an emptiness in the city that meant he was gone. She sighed. A soft sound behind her brought her gaze back to her mother. The old woman sat with an armload of her husband’s books clutched to her breast and wept. Hanneke tore her attention away. Her mother’s grief frightened her. This mirror of her own fear made her fear more real. Furiously she busied herself putting away the rest of the books. After a little while, behind her, her mother began to sing again.

He had been gone too long; his mother would scold him like a child when he got back to the bakery. Michael scuffed his shoe through the inch of new snow that lay over the cobble street, his gaze pinned to the door of the factory. The sun had set over half an hour before and the snow thickened the night as it fell. His mother was right; he should be there to help her, and not standing here in the street like a mooncalf. As he turned to go, the door opened.

Hanneke came out under the little white lantern that hung over the factory door and pulled her shawl up over her head. In the steady silent downsifting of the snow she was only a shape, but Michael recognized her at once; although he had known her only a few weeks he knew her in every nerve end, every sense, as the only thing worth knowing. He went forward to meet her, and she stopped and frowned at him.

“What are you doing here?”

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I couldn’t help it—it bothers me that you must walk home alone after dark.”

“Please, Michael.” She walked on past him down the street.

Michael fell into step beside her. Longing to take her by the arm, to guide her and protect her; certain of the rebuff if he tried. It was that distance between them which gave his feeling for her its electric poignancy. He wondered sometimes, if she had accepted him, if he would not have swiftly tired of her.

She was cold. The snow fell on her head and shoulders and she shivered.

“Will you take my coat?” he said humbly.

She shook her head.

“Must you work so late? All the other women have since gone home.”

“I must sweep up after them,” she said. “That’s my duty there.”

“What times are these,” he said, “when such as you must work.”

That drew a swift angry look from her. “I’m glad of my work. At least I can care for myself and my mother.”

“I meant—”

“I know what you meant,” she said, her chin up in the air. “Your pity is quite misplaced.”

There was nothing he could say to that. They walked along down the hill toward the Swan Street, through the light cottony snow; everyone else was indoors and the street was empty. The little round-backed bridge lifted them over the frozen canal. At the height, she stopped and looked away down the canal, frowning; she did this every time they crossed the bridge, and he had concluded that she was looking at the tall stately house down on the next street. Her shawl had slipped back from the crown of her head and the starched wing of her cap was wilting in the snow. She turned and walked on.

“You need not go on any farther,” she said. “My home is just over there.”

He knew that. She always said that. Just as she always paused, looking at the Kelmans’ house, and seemed to gather herself for an assault.

“Perhaps when the snow stops we can go skating together,” he said.

“I have no skates.”

“I will bring you a pair. My mother’s old skates.”

Someone was coming toward them, two people, one tall and stooped and the other a child. Hanneke drew back a little, to give them wide room to pass. Michael shifted to one side, shielding her from them, and turned to her again to press his invitation to skating.

“Once the snow stops the canals will be like glass. We’ll have wonderful races.”

“Mistress van Cleef?”

The tall stooped man came up before them, his shoulders hunched in the cold, his hands stuffed under his coat.

“Who are you?” Hanneke asked sharply.

“I am Clement de Vere,” he said. “I’m a printer. I met your father briefly during the—” His gaze shifted to Michael and abruptly he cut off. The little boy beside him looked solemnly up at the three tall people. “I heard you were in need,” said Clement the printer. “I came to offer you what help I can.”

“I need no help,” Hanneke said.

“I admired your father.” Again the printer glanced at Michael and cut short what he would have said. Michael thought suddenly: He is a Calvinist. He wondered how Clement had escaped the persecutions. “If I can do anything—”

“Nothing,” Hanneke said, in a voice thin with strain; and suddenly she burst out, “You’ve done enough, haven’t you? You and all your kind. If not for you he’d still be alive—all this would not have happened—” Her hands balled into fists before her, shaking in the air. “Leave me alone. Please leave me alone.” She lunged forward, pushing between Clement and Michael, not running, but walking very fast toward the Kelmans’ house.

Clement was left facing Michael in the soft whispering snowfall. He said, “I beg your pardon, sir.”

“Thank you,” Michael said. “For her sake.”

“I pray God she is right, and needs no help,” Clement said. “These are wicked times, when women are thrust alone into the world.” He took hold of the little boy’s hand and led him away through the dark street.

Michael looked after him a moment. He was a good Catholic; he had been to Mass only that morning, and prayed for the King and the purification of the Faith. His mother said he was mad to have to do with Calvinists. Yet they seemed no threat to him, only to themselves. Hanneke was right: but for their own follies, none of the horrors would have befallen them. Perhaps someday she would return to the Faith. He thought not; there was that in her mettle which would not bend. He loved that in her. He loved her. Smiling over that, he made his way homeward through the snow.

She did not go skating with Michael. On the Sabbath she prayed all the morning, and went out in the afternoon to walk and pray. The snow had fallen all the week long but had now stopped, and Antwerp was half-buried in it, drifts against the walls and fences, conical heaps on top of the chimneys that came crashing down as the sun warmed them. From the bridge over the canal she looked down and saw the children sweeping the ice clear; where they had made a clean surface, the ice was already traced with curves and circles from their skates. On the slopes, they ran with their sleds and jumped down on them and flew bumping and screaming over the packed snow.

On the Sabbath they ought not to do so much. She turned away, wishing she could go skating with Michael.

Nonsense even to consider it. She walked home, enjoying the sunlight. That too was probably a sin: enjoyment on the Sabbath. Along the eaves of the houses she passed, the snow was melting into long icicles that dripped and splashed in a kind of music. Someone was playing the virginals in the house next to Kelman’s, and not sacred songs either.

The Spanish soldier Carlos was walking in the garden. Hanneke tensed, her mouth dry. Every day, this happened—every day. Grimly she went forward through the gate, and he swung and attacked her with his stare. She stared back. Every step an effort, she walked by him to the door.

He said something, low, in his own tongue. She slammed the door on him.

In the kitchen, the oven was cold; Kelman at least kept the Sabbath that well, forbidding his cook to work. A pot of cold meat stood on the table. The housemaid sat at the head of it, mending her hose with a needle. When Hanneke came in, on her way to the back door, she said, “That friend of yours was here, Mistress van Cleef.”

Hanneke was on the verge of saying, “I have no friend.” Instead she said, “Thank you,” and went out to the back stairs.

Something hung on the latch of the door to the attic room. She went up swiftly to see it, her heart galloping, and took it from the door: a wreath. In the dead of winter when no flowers grew he had clipped sprigs of holly and wound them together, the berries bright in the glossy green foliage. A thorn pricked her thumb when she lifted it from the latch. She sat down on the top step and sighed.

No one had ever left a courting wreath on her door before. It broke her heart that it had to be now, when she could not take it. What did he think, that she could invite him into the tiny room, the same room where she and her mother slept? In a rage she flung the wreath down into the yard.

It lay there on the snow, bright as a banner, the red berries like blood drops. She sucked the drop of blood from her pricked finger. Leave it there. When he came back to see the fate of his token, he would see that she rejected him. She beat her fist on the stair rail. No one had ever left a wreath on her door before. No one ever would again. It was terrible, terrible: everything evil happened to her, even the good things made evil by circumstance.

She ran down the steps into the yard and picked the wreath out of the snow. It was hers; let people think what they would, it was hers. Someone loved her. She took it back up the steps and inside the room and put it away in the bottom of her dowry chest.

Thereafter Michael met her every night when she left the factory and walked her home, except when his mother found work enough to keep him at the bakery, and Hanneke did not discourage him. She would not let him hold her hand, and they spoke of other things than love.

White the marble altar, white the linen altar cloths, white the candles that burned above. Carlos prayed to this whiteness as if to God Himself, whose purity and intensity sustained the world, even this imperfect world of the Low Countries. With the others of his column he knelt at the tinkling of the bells and bowed his head and offered prayers for the King, for the Duke of Alva, for the redemption of this foul and evil country from the heretics, and the power of prayer, the memory of other prayer, filled his throat with an uncomfortable lump and brought him near to tender tears.

He crossed himself, standing, and with his fellow soldiers lifted his voice in response to the priests. This was their Mass, the earliest, the first Mass of the day; none of the Dutch were allowed to attend. Probably none of them would have: the Dutch Catholics seemed as alien to him as the Calvinists he longed to destroy. They cared too much for profit, they were always cheating the Spanish soldiers, or arguing that they took too much of the country’s worth, when they were here to protect the country’s true worth if the fools would only see.

Here, shoulder to shoulder with his brothers of the sword, Carlos found himself home again, and safe.

He went with the others in a long slow file to receive the Body of Christ, and after prayer and thanksgiving he marched out with the rest to the square before the cathedral to hear the day’s orders. There was nothing new; they were all to report to the field by the river for drill, and then to take the rest of the day at liberty. He liked the drill; the liberty he dreaded. Most of the men went to taverns and got drunk but Carlos had promised his mother not to fall into sin. So he spent the day in the garden of the house where he lived, listening to the incomprehensible chatter of the housewife and daydreaming, occupations relieved only by the occasional appearance of his dear one, his heart’s desire, his beloved, his Hanneke.

Now, on his way to drill, he walked off from the rest of his column through the side streets to the long low brick building by the canal where she worked. It had appalled him to discover that this was where she came every day, and for some time he had struggled to reconcile this new information with his image of her as pure and delicate and deserving of his love, but slowly he had fit her into a story in which wicked parents denied her, deprived her of her fortune, and cast her out, so that like the princesses in old stories she had to toil with her pretty fingers until the prince should come.

This morning, as usual, she was out in front of the long low building, sweeping the walk. Her back bent, her head wrapped in a white cloth. She would work hard, his Hanneke, without complaint, because she was truly noble, and in the end he would rescue her and she would love him for it. The sound of her withy broom reached him across the empty street, whist-whist-whist, as she stirred the snow along the front of the brickwork.

The sun was climbing above the gabled roof of the building, a pale disk in the cold gray sky. He would be late for drill; the sergeant would call him out in front of the others and berate him, even give him extra marching for punishment. Carlos smiled, thinking of it. He would bear it well, because for Hanneke’s sake he would bear anything, any torment, any burden. He lifted his hand to his lips and kissed his fingertips and threw the kiss across the street to the figure bent over its busy broom, and turning he went away through the hostile streets of Antwerp to join his column.

When Hanneke came home in the evening her mother was gone. The door at the top of the wooden staircase stood open and a line of snowdrift lay deep into the room. She went around the room, as if something there would tell her where her mother was, and shutting the door firmly behind her she started out into the dark city to look for her. She was so upset about her mother that she paid no heed to Carlos, in the front doorway of the house.

The sky was clear and the night was bitter cold. There was no wind. She walked quickly to keep warm, hurrying down one street, then the next, walking every street in turn on the way to her old house, but on the way she saw nothing, and at the house in Canal Street, where now some officers of the Duke of Alva’s army lived, there was no sign of her mother.

She called; she went down to the bridge to look along the canal. The cold made her teeth chatter. She was hungry, too, and tired, and longed for her bed. Up and down the streets she went, calling, looking into corners and alleyways. Gradually beneath her anger and resentment and hunger and weariness she began to be afraid.

The watch came by, and she asked them had they seen her mother; they had not. They told her to get home, that they would look—four old men in threadbare doublets, a lantern on a pole above their heads. To placate them she pretended to go back to Kelman’s house, but when they had gone she circled around behind them and went on searching for her mother.

In the deep night the city was much different than during the day. Dogs prowled through the lanes and fought over bits of garbage behind the houses; on the rooftops sometimes she saw the low sinuous shape of a cat running by. She saw no people. The houses were closely barred. When she called out her voice sounded off into the darkness with the peculiar hollow resonance that meant there would be no answer. Sometimes she was too afraid to call—afraid to bring attention to herself.

In the dawn light finally she gave up looking and sat down beside a wall to rest, and overwhelmed by the sleepless night she dozed.

A hand shook her awake. “Girl? Oh, girl, are you all right?”

She startled awake, every hair turning, and looked into the face of a little boy, solemn as an alderman. She had seen him before; where, she could not remember.

“I’m all right,” she said, and started to get up.

“Come with me,” he said. “You can come to my father’s shop and lie down.”

“I’m all right.” For a moment, her mind clogged with fatigue, she had difficulty remembering what she was supposed to be doing. “I’m looking for my mother.”

“Your mother.”

“She wandered off—she’s not—not well. She goes off, sometimes, wandering.”

“Do you remember me?” The boy walked along beside her, down the street; they were near the center of the city, and the people going up to their jobs and down to the wharves crowded around them. “My father is Clement de Vere, the printer. My name is Philip.”

“Philip,” she said, mechanically. The crowd was so thick here she could see only a few feet away.

“My father’s shop is just around the corner here. Come and rest a little.”

Too tired now to resist, she let him lead her that way. The printer’s shop was down the street from the Bourse, where men traded in money. Over the door of the shop hung a sign in the shape of a wooden ruler and a curling sheet of paper. The air inside stank of lead and ink. Clement’s boy sat her down on a chair just inside the door and went off into the back of the shop, where the presses stood like trees.

The smell bothered her nose. The shop was dirty, the counters gray with dust, the boxes of type that lined the walls dripping cobwebs. A gray cat slept in a ball on the stool by the fire. The warmth reached her and she started toward it, reaching out her hands to it, sighing. Clement’s boy came back with a cup of steaming soup.

Hanneke exhaled an exclamation. Her stomach ached at the smell, and the warmth made her head stuffy. She wrapped both hands around the cup to warm them and Clement’s boy dispossessed the cat of the stool so that she could sit down. While she sipped the hot pea soup he sat on the floor and turned the pages of a book.

“What’s that you’re reading?” she said, when the soup was gone.

He held up the book for her. On the spine was printed DE REVOLUTIONIBUS ORBIUM COELESTIUM.

“On the turning of the heavenly spheres,” she said.

“Do you know Latin?”

“A little. My father let me learn—he had a great respect for learning.”

“My father said Mies van Cleef was as brave a man and wise as there was in Antwerp.”

“Yes,” she said. “Yes, he was.”

Now somehow she had let him down, had lost his wife and son, and herself become a drudge in his factory. She stared into the fire, too worn even to care.

“I have to go work on the presses soon,” Clement’s boy said. “Is there anything else I can get you?”

“No—thank you, I must go home now myself.”

“We can go part of the way together.”

They went out to the street again and started across the city. The boy still had the book under his arm. Hanneke said, “How old are you?”

“I’m nine.”

“And you are reading a book about the heavenly spheres? What does it say?”

“It’s a wonderful book. It offers a new system of the world, and many proofs and arguments in its favor—” The boy held out the volume to her, his face eager. “That the sun and not the earth is the center of things, and the earth and all the planets and stars turn in circles around the sun.”

Hanneke laughed, taking the book and turning it in her hands; it fell open to a page of neat printed letters. “That’s mad. The earth doesn’t move.”

“His arguments are very mighty,” said Philip. “Perhaps it does, and we are so used to it we don’t notice it.”

Again she laughed; in her fatigue her mind slipped away easily from the powerful architecture of the ideas she had grown up with, and she lifted her eyes toward the sun, blazing in the ice blue sky above Antwerp. It moved; she saw it move, day after day, rolling across Heaven to its rest.

“It only seems to move,” the boy said, “because we are moving past it.”

Her gaze still lifted to the sky, she let herself imagine that, and the planets wheeling all in concert; if that were so, then now in the sky above her were little worlds, invisible in the sun’s veil of light. Under her feet, suddenly, the earth seemed to grind slowly forth into motion.

“It’s mad,” she said. “It’s so mad that if he has proof, then it must be true.”

That sounded like madness itself in her ears. She lowered her eyes to Clement’s boy.

“Thank you very much,” she said. “You found me in extremis and gave me charity, and I am most grateful to you.” She put out her hand.

The boy took it, beaming. “I am glad I could help you.”

“Goodbye.”

“Goodbye, Hanneke.”

He went off, turning once to wave, and she watched him go away into the crowded street. A church bell began to ring somewhere. Only nine, she thought, and already reading such grave books. The moment’s talk of ideas, of books, took her back to the days before her father’s arrest; she felt suddenly much stronger. She remembered talking to him about the things she read. He had never cared much for stars and the motions of the planets, but he had loved to talk of ideas. Still thinking about the stars and her father, she turned into the Swan Street, toward her home.

He was late for Mass, Carlos Demedos knew, and also knew he would not go to Mass at all this day; the sun was fully risen and still the Dutch girl Hanneke had not come home. He had been waiting for her all night, in the Kelmans’ garden, and now, gnawed with fear and rage, he left the yard and walked up the street toward the center of the city, watching for her.

Gone all night. He knew what that meant—he guessed even whom she had been with, the broad-faced, blue-eyed baker’s boy Michael she had been seeing so much of lately. He clenched his teeth. For Carlos she could not spare a gentle word. To the baker’s boy she gave—

She was coming. He saw her at the end of the street, walking swiftly, her basket over her arm. Quickly, without forethought, he moved back into the shelter of the sprawling linden tree beside the wall.

She came toward him, tall and slender as a young tree, her cheeks flushed with the chilly sunlight, her pale hair encased in a tight cap, and his heart contracted. She was so beautiful, to have betrayed him, so young, to be corrupt. When she passed him he leapt out and caught her arm.

“Where have you been? Slut!”

She recoiled from him, her entire body flexing in surprise, and he gripped her skirt in his other hand. A swift glance showed him the street was empty, but in full daylight anyone might come along, at any time, and he pulled her over toward the tree’s covering protection. She struggled. Her breath whistling between her teeth, she pulled at her skirt and wrenched her arm in his grasp, and suddenly broke into a babble of her hard-edged throaty talk, pleading with him.

“Slut,” he said. “You slut.” He understood nothing of what she said. She understood nothing of him; as he snarled at her the helplessness of it all brought tears to his eyes. He loved her, and she had betrayed his love, and he could not tell her so. He flung his arms around her and kissed her.

Her struggling doubled. She flung herself from side to side in his grasp, whining, twisting her face away. The broad touch of her body against his, even through the thick layers of their clothing, brought all his nerve ends tingling alive. He wanted her so much, to hold her, to love her, to have her love him. He crooned endearments to her, and she struck at him with her hands; he tried to kiss her again and she bit at him.

“Whore,” he cried, despairing. “Slut.”

He bore her down to the ground under the linden tree. She cried out, her arms thrashing, and he pinned her down with his weight. With one hand he yanked at her skirts. She had no right to deny him what she gave to someone else—to the baker’s boy. When his hand touched her bare leg she gave out a low wail. A wild rush of exhilaration flooded him. She was in his power now.

Her fist thudded off his forehead. He grappled her arms down again, his breath hot in his lungs. Pressing her down under him, he wrenched at his points and codpiece.

“My girl,” he said, his voice harsh with exertion. “My girl. You’re mine.” His hard manhood freed at last, he aimed it up between her thighs and shoved.

She screamed. The sound spurred him. He rode over her like a god, enormous, full of power, the power welling in him, overwhelming. He poured out his power into her, a gift of love, himself overflowing into her body, bursting beyond himself into the world.

When he drew out, there was blood on his organ. So he had been first, not the baker’s boy.

“My dear one.” He put out his hand to her face.

She spat at him. Tears slicked her cheeks. Released of his weight, her body rolled limply to one side, and she buried her head in her arms. Carlos got to his feet, looking around them. The street was empty still. No one seemed to have witnessed it, but she had made a lot of noise, and probably behind the walls around them people listened and knew. Pulling up his hose, he fastened the points and hooked his codpiece into place and yanked down his doublet.

The girl was sitting up. Bits of dead leaf clung to her fine wheaten hair. He bent to help her up and she shrank from his touch. Firmly he possessed himself of her hand and pulled her onto her feet. They faced each other, her arm flexed in his grip, and looking deep into her eyes, he thought of taking her and smiled at her.

She swung her free hand at him. He thrust her away, propelling her down the street toward Kelman’s house. “Hurry.” Her dress was filthy and stained with blood. If anyone saw them, there would be trouble, perhaps for Carlos and certainly for Hanneke. She ran off down the street, and he followed her, one step behind her, to protect her; he had that right now, a matter of pride.

They reached the wall in front of the house, and she dashed in the gate and slammed it shut in his face. When he got into the garden she was gone.

He shrugged. His body was still warm from the fulfillment of his lust. She was here, somewhere; he would see her tomorrow, the next day, the day after, and when he could, he would take her again. In the end, full of him, she would have to love him. He went in through the front door.

When she reached the little attic room her mother was there, asleep in the bed, snoring. Hanneke sobbed. She had forgotten why she had been out all night searching. She looked down at her ruined clothes. It hurt still; when would it stop hurting? She bunched her skirt up in her fist and pushed the wad of cloth up against her groin, to staunch the blood.

She had only four dresses. This one was ruined now, so she had only three left. Going into the corner, where the washbasin and the pitcher stood in a cabinet, she stripped herself to the skin. She was sore all over, her back from the rough contact with the ground, her thighs from trying to hold him out, her breasts from his weight on her. There was blood all over her thighs. She clenched her teeth against the sobs in her throat.

“Hanneke?”

Her mother. Whatever it required of her, she must never let her mother know what had happened. Stooping, her back to the old woman, she gathered up her filthy clothes into a knot.

“Hanneke! Where have you been? Why are you naked?”

“I’m bathing, Mother.”

“Where were you all night?”

“I could ask you that, Mother. Where were you?”

That silenced the old woman. Hanneke stood still a moment, waiting to hear some answer, but the bed creaked, and the sheets rustled, and when she glanced over her shoulder she saw that her mother had rolled over to put her face to the wall.

Hanneke was supposed to be at the factory, sweeping and scrubbing. She was too tired for that now, too tired and too unhappy. She bundled the bloody cloth away into a back corner of the cupboard and got into the bed with her mother to sleep.

At the Kelmans’ front gate, Michael found the foundryman from the shop at the corner of the street, collecting all Vrouw Kelman’s old pots, and the housewife herself leaning over the wall sharing a morning’s gossip with him.

“Well,” said the foundryman, “the word is that the Prince is bringing a great army of Germans, and Lord Alva is removing every soldier he can find to go fight them.”

The housewife folded her arms on the top of the wall. “That explains why my Spanish boy went off so quickly last night. God keep them.”

“Orange is coming,” Michael said, surprised into forwardness.

“So they say,” said the foundryman. He dumped a broken pot lid on top of the rest of the things in his sack, which clanked. “Lord Alva will master him.”

He hoisted the jangling sack up onto his shoulder. Suddenly Vrouw Kelman flung out her arm.

“Wait—wait—I remember one more thing.” She ran away into the house, spry as a girl, for all her bulk.

The foundryman turned to Michael; his grin showed the gaps in his big yellow teeth. “So life goes on, eh, young fellow? I’ll wager you’re glad not to have to go to fight the King of Spain’s wars.”

“I would he did not fight them here,” said Michael.

“Oh, now, better he fight Orange and a pack of paid Germans than send his men around to yank honest folk out of their beds in the night.”

“I suppose,” Michael said.

He straightened. Hanneke was coming out the front door of the house. His throat was full of words he would hail her with, yet he kept silent, surprised at her manner. She came out so quietly, like a little mouse; she peeped out the door and looked all around the garden, her face pale. Michael put up his hand to her.

“Hanneke!”

She startled. The foundryman said, “Well, well, life goes on.” Vrouw Kelman was hurrying up the path from the kitchen door, a clutch of pewter ladles in her apron.

“Hanneke.” Michael leaned across the gate toward her. “Why were you not at your work? I saw the leadman—he said you had not come all day.”

She crossed the garden to him, still peering fearfully all around her, her face very pale. She said, “I was out the night long looking for my mother—she disappeared again; I thought she was lost forever.” Her voice croaked. With the cuff of her sleeve she scrubbed at her eyes. “Where is Carlos?” she asked Vrouw Kelman.

“Did you find her?” Michael asked.

“He’s gone,” said the housewife. “Poor boy. Marched off to fight, the poor thing. If his mother knew, she’d fear for him terribly.”

Hanneke’s face slipped from its taut mask of fear into a smile; the change was so marked that the foundryman let out an exclamation, and Michael reached for her hand. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing.” She drew her hand out of his reach. “Yes, she came back. I don’t know where she was.” She pushed the gate open and went to stand beside Michael, looking up at him. “Was he angry—the leadman? Did he say I could go tomorrow to work?”

“He was worried more than angry.”

“I had to find my mother, and then I was so tired—” He was reaching for her hand again, and she jerked her arm angrily out of his grasp. “Please, Michael!”

He bit his lips, embarrassed; the foundryman and Vrouw Kelman laughed at him. Hanneke was going off down the street. Michael chased her a few steps, caught up with her, and said, “Now where are you going? Why are you so cruel to me?”

“Please don’t touch me.”

“Where are you going?”

“To the factory—to tell them I am sorry and will work the rest of the day.”

“Don’t do that. Aren’t you hungry? Come to the bakery—we’ve made some biscuits. At least come there first, so you won’t be hungry.”

He knew how she longed for sweets, and now her face was nervous with indecision and she wavered in her step. Without touching her, he herded her toward a side street that arched over the canal on the way to the bakery, and she went along with him.

“I saw that girl Hanneke this morning,” said Clement’s boy, standing on the far side of the press; he reached across the press to take the top of the fresh sheet of paper that his father held out to him, and between the two of them they fastened it to the tympan, which would hold it while the print was being impressed upon it. “She was looking for her mother, all night long.”

“Her mother. Did she find her?”

The boy shook his head. He was small for his age, and grave from so much reading; his face had an old man’s solemnity. “I helped her awhile.”

“Good for you,” Clement said.

“I brought her here and gave her some soup.”

“Good.” Clement smoothed the paper on the tympan and reaching to the side lifted the heavy iron frame hinged to the long edge of it and folded it over the fresh paper; this was the frisket, which covered all parts of the paper save that to be printed on. He thought of Mies van Cleef’s daughter with a heart that leapt. Of all those men who had helped the Prince of Orange during the troubles, Clement alone remained alive and free. He wondered why the Duke of Alva had not taken him and knew it would not last long. Carefully he folded the tympan and frisket together down over the typeform.

“Why was her mother missing, do you know?”

The boy shook his head. “She did not say. We talked about Copernicus. I like her—she is very clever.”

“Her father was a clever man.”

He ran the inked form under the platen of the press and reached for the long lever that worked it. His son stepped back out of the way.

This letter they were printing came from Orange; Clement meant to have copies of it all around Antwerp by nightfall. The Prince of Orange was marching to the Low Countries with an army. He needed help—the rising of the cities in his favor, the general outburst of the people against the tyrant Alva—and he would not get it. Clement had never known Antwerp so quiet. People stayed indoors now and peeped through their shutters, and at the sound of trouble hid away under the dining room table. Clement raised the press and pulled the typeform out from under it, and unfolded the frisket and the tympan and lifted the printed page up off the pins that held it fast through the whole process. Black and bold, the letters marched like soldiers across the white paper.

This would bring Alva on him, eventually. He shook to think of that—of what would happen to his little boy, alone and cast out, as Hanneke van Cleef was cast out. Yet he could not forgo it; he owed this to the people who had died already, Mies and the others, the hundreds of others. Even if no one read, if no one heeded, yet he had to go on shouting at them: Fight!

He gave the sheet to his son, to hang up to dry, and picked up a clean piece of paper. The smell of the fresh ink as always gave him courage. At least he was doing something. He laid the field of white across the tympan and pushed it down firmly onto the pins.