17

Leaving Antwerp, Hanneke followed the highway south, sleeping under trees and digging turnips and onions from the fields on either side when hunger drove her to it. There were other people traveling away out of the Low Countries; she found company often with others going into exile.

They talked of the future, where they were going, what they would do. No one really knew, Hanneke least of all.

At the border, she helped a widowed farmwife spin her season’s flax, staying there for fourteen days to do it. For her labor she got some clothes and a sack of cheeses, which she took over the border into Germany and sold in a city market for a little money.

The German Empire, a patchwork of hundreds of great and little states, ordered its churches by the principle of cujus regio, hujus religio, meaning that the persuasion of each ruler became the faith of his people. The place where she found herself being Catholic, she made for the Palatinate, whose prince was Calvinist. On the way she fell into company with a German family taking the same road north. The wife was very genial and kept Hanneke by her to talk through a whole day’s travel. Hanneke, glad of the companionship, questioned none of it. They stopped at an inn that night, and foolishly Hanneke let herself be convinced to put her little hoard of money into the hands of the wife for safekeeping over the night. When she woke in the morning, the whole family, kind and kith and kindred, was gone.

When she asked for them the innkeeper laughed at her. A heavyset man in middle age, he watched her through small pale eyes that never seemed to blink. “Gone,” he said. “Sneaked away in the deepest morning, before the sun woke—took your pennies with them, did they?” He laughed again.

She stood still, her hands hanging limp at her sides, and the tears welling like fire in her eyes. Suddenly she wanted her mother with a longing more intense than any hunger, any thirst: wanted her mother and the safety and familiarity of her own home.

“They went on toward Württemberg,” the innkeeper said, and waved his arm vaguely down the road. “If you hurry maybe you can catch up with them.”

She gulped. Even if she caught them, what would she do? She could not force them to give back her money. She shut her eyes. If she thought hard enough, perhaps this greasy kitchen with its stench of pickled cabbage and old beer would vanish, and when she looked up again she would be back in her home in the Canal Street in Antwerp, before the thunderous knocking on the door broke down the circle of her world, that day so long ago when her father disappeared.

“You can stay here, if you want,” the innkeeper said. “There’s work to be done. You can earn your keep.”

She put her hands up to her face, to hold off the sight of this place; she struggled not to hear him. If she wanted it enough, surely she would have her home again and her mother’s arms around her.

An arm did fall around her. She almost turned into the embrace; she almost gave herself up to that safety. Then his hand gripped her breast, and she recoiled from him, striking out blindly, with a blind accuracy catching him squarely on the nose.

The innkeeper howled; he gripped his nose, and with his free hand knocked her down. She fell on her back, her legs kicking up, and in the back of the kitchen the cook howled with laughter.

Hanneke sat up swiftly, tucking her skirts down around her knees. The innkeeper glowered at her. With his huge hairy paw he still held his nose. His voice came muffled past his sleeve.

“You’ll change your answer, I think. Stupid wench. Get to work. Sweep the rooms and scrub the chamberpots, and we’ll think about giving you some dinner. Go on!” He swung his foot at her, and she leapt up and hurried away from him.

She stayed on at the inn, sweeping and scrubbing for her bed and meals, dodging the drunken and lecherous customers, and doing battle daily with the equally lecherous innkeeper, for the rest of the winter. The hard work tempered her. At first she wept for loneliness, but as the days passed she grew content with herself. She felt herself growing whole again, as if the events of the past few years had shattered her soul into pieces that now began to fit together once more.

The inn was popular; every day swarms of strangers moved in, ate, slept, and went off on their way. She watched them as if from a great distance, from a height. Their lives seemed trivial, unconnected to the great matters of the universe. They went on whole-mindedly pursuing their small interests and ephemeral pleasures, unaware of the huge forces that could crush them in an instant, destroy their lives in a single moment. The catastrophe that had seized her set her apart from the passing herd. Her language set her apart: she understood German, and the Germans understood her, but it was like seeing through a gauzy veil.

She felt herself in readiness, waiting only for the insight of purpose. Twice a day she prayed to God to reveal Himself to her, to tell her what to do. Then one day in the spring, while she was emptying out the chamberpots, she heard someone in the innyard speaking Dutch.

She rushed to the common room window and leaned out to see. Below her was a little party of horsemen. They were plainly, even rudely dressed, and the innkeeper was ignoring their entrance, having sent his son to see to them. There among them was a red-headed man, a little stooped and sober in his manner, whose face she knew immediately although she had seen him only once before, when he rode into Antwerp a long long time ago. It was William, Prince of Orange.

She drew back from the window, one hand on the sill. Her heart was beating painfully hard. No need to run to him now. There would be time enough to talk to him, in the evening. She knew she would talk to him—that great things would come of it. God had brought Orange here to her. Stooping for the stack of chamberpots, she went off to finish her chores.

“Aaaah.”

The boot came off reluctantly, like a layer of living skin; Orange wiggled his toes. They had been riding for three days. One of the men was bringing him a cup of wine, and he reached for it, smiling his thanks, his throat parched.

“What a rat’s hole.” His brother Louis paced up the room, kicking at the rough furniture and the stacks of their baggage sitting around it. “Of all the inns in Germany, we had to find the worst.”

“We’ll only be here a few days,” said Orange. “Until the others come.”

“Why wait for them? Why not go on and let them catch us?” Louis dropped into a chair. His face was sour with bad temper. “God’s blood. Rather a bivouac in the field than this.”

“We need an army to bivouac,” said the Prince. The wine was harsh and made his head pound. He held out the cup to his servant. “Water this somewhat, please. Halfway.” Turning to his brother again, he said, “I pray you, keep your chafings to yourself—you will infect all our company with your malaise.”

Louis growled at him. Raising one arm, he flung it over his eyes.

Orange sighed; he struggled against his own low feelings. Leaning forward, he scratched and rubbed his aching boot-bound feet. The servant had gone for a jug of water. The others of his company sat slumped around the room, none talking, busy with their own private complaints. The shadows in the corners, the gloom that lay over them palpably as the dust of their travel, were more real than the high-flown cause they pretended to honor.

His heart sank. This was what it came to, then, all the great words, all the resolution: a little troop of exiles in a shabby German inn, the largest thing in their minds their piles and boot sores. The door opened.

At first no one moved; they were all too tired to move. The woman who came in among them was only a servant anyway, from her coarse clothes. She came into their midst, tall, big boned as a boy, her fair hair bundled under a rag around her head, and the Prince of Orange saw the ardent temper in her eyes and thought for an instant, She’s mad. He sat up straight, warned.

“Running away?” she said, her voice clear and sharp in the quiet of the room.

The others stirred, facing her; one by one, in the gloom, their heads lifted toward her.

“Is this your course? When your people are dying and need you, you run away?”

She was talking to Orange himself. He licked his lips, surprised, wondering what he should answer. Her face held his gaze. Her features were common enough, wide-spaced eyes in the broad square face, a heavy-lipped mouth, a large nose: the looks of a woman of the Dutch countryside. Yet her fury glowed forth nobly, a radiance of truth.

“Did you know,” she said to him, her words like a whiplash, “that we are dying, that we are being murdered and tortured, that we are being driven out of our homes and down the streets of our own cities by the Spanish? While you run away?”

“Who are you?” he asked.

“My name is Hanneke,” she said. “I am from Antwerp. On the day I left, with my hands red with the blood of a Spanish soldier, they were hanging people by the tens and hundreds.”

“Antwerp.” Someone sighed, in the dusty, gloomy margin of the room, and moved closer.

“We needed you,” she shouted into the face of the Prince of Orange, “and you weren’t there. You ran!”

“Stop your tongue!”

The Prince’s brother Louis sprang forward, hot, to confront her. He flung out one arm toward Orange.

“He has lost everything in your cause, stupid woman—all his money, all his lands, even his firstborn son, sent into prison in Spain. How dare you speak like this to him?”

“Hold.” Orange took Louis by the arm and drew him back, and drawing him away he stepped forward himself to take the girl by the hand. “Sit down, Hanneke of Antwerp, and tell us what you have witnessed. Give us fuel to stoke our dying resolution.”

For a moment longer she stood like a column of marble, her face blazing with the intensity of her feelings. Her fingers tightened on his. Her eyes grew luminous with tears. The Prince stretched out his other arm to her, and she came into his embrace and put her face against his chest and wept. The others crowded around her, speaking comforts. The Prince, cradling her against him, saw their weariness drain away, their faces alive again with sympathy, with their purpose and their cause; she had brought them back to themselves. God, as usual, had provided what was necessary even in their despair. He touched her trembling shoulders, pleased and grateful.

“I am going with them,” she said to the innkeeper.

The German’s jowly face swung toward her. “What?”

She waved her hand toward the Prince of Orange’s party, assembling in the innyard; the people they had come here to meet had caught up with them, and they were ready to go on. “I am going with them.”

The innkeeper spat onto the floor, a practice he did not allow his customers. “So. This is how I am repaid for taking you in and keeping you and putting up with your foul temper all these months.”

“I worked for my keep,” she said, startled; she had not expected this from him.

“Some sweeping,” he said. “A few chores done. Pagh. Go on, anyway; you are a useless girl, anyway.”

She turned toward the door, where her few belongings waited, tied into a bundle inside her heavy cloak. Outside, in the sunlight, her new companions waited in the dust.

“Hold,” the innkeeper said, behind her.

She turned, and he dug into his purse and took out a coin, rubbed it between his fingers, saw it was a golden guilder, and put it back in the purse. “Nay, hold.” He fumbled among his hoardings a moment longer and dug up a silver mark. “Here, take it.”

She hesitated, weighing this unexpected action in her mind, and he pushed it at her. “Take it.”

She took the money, and he turned away; they separated without more goodbye than that.

With the Prince of Orange, she walked on down the road toward the neighboring duchy, whose master was Lutheran. Here, the Prince told her, he hoped to find support for a new attack on Alva—money for an army, mercenaries, supplies. She understood none of that, and cared nothing for it: all that mattered was that he meant to go back.

“I’ll go with you,” she said.

She had no horse; she was walking along beside the Prince’s stirrup, looking up at him. Abruptly he threw down his reins and swung out of his saddle to walk beside her.

“You shall go back to Dillenburg,” he said. “To my mother’s home. You’ll be safe there.”

Before she could answer his brother Louis pushed his horse up between them. “Here,” he said. “Let her ride behind me. You must ride, William.”

“I am content to walk,” said the Prince. He held up his reins to his brother. “Lead my horse, if you will.”

“You cannot walk,” said Louis. “You are a prince. You cannot walk like a common peasant.”

“Oh, can I not?” the Prince said pleasantly. “Why, my brother, I should think that a prince should be able to do more than a common man, not less.”

“Exactly,” said Louis.

“Then I shall ride sometimes, and walk others,” the Prince said. “Lead my horse.” He smiled at Hanneke, as if they shared a secret.

“William,” his brother said, “you have no sense of your own greatness.” He spurred his horse away, leading the Prince’s after.

“I haven’t any wish to be safe,” Hanneke said.

“Whatever do you mean?” the Prince said.

“When you go back to the Low Countries, I shall go with you.”

“To what end?”

That stopped her; she had no answer for that. She knew she could not carry a pike or a musket. She stared away across the fields they were passing, where men and women stooped to hoe and plant. The land dipped away down from the road; there on the far slope, where it rose again, a hitch of oxen drew a plow across the golden ground, the furrows darker than the fallow.

She said, “God will tell me what to do.”

“I think you do what God desires of you,” the Prince said, “in being what you are. You inspire us all.”

“Not I,” she said firmly.

She wanted more to do than that, more than simply to be, like a statue in a church, something to stir living hearts.

They walked on a little way; it was warm for the season, and the fine dust of the road rose in clouds under their feet. Taking her arm, the Prince moved to the side of the road, where grass grew up beside the ditch, and they walked there, still arm in arm.

“Hanneke,” he said, “what will you have me do in the Low Countries?”

“You must drive the Spanish out,” she said.

“The King is Spanish. We cannot drive them out entirely.”

“Then make them be honest with us. Or we must have another king.” She frowned at that, wondering if that were possible, and a new thought struck her. She looked around keenly at the man walking beside her. “You could be our king.”

He shook his head. At the corners of his mouth creases appeared, like a smile beginning. “Then everyone will say I have done it all for my own ambitions. I will not have that said of me. Or of your people.”

“We must have a Calvinist king,” Hanneke said, “or we will never be safe.”

As soon as she said it, she was sure it was true, and suddenly new truth appeared before her, like a new world rolling up over the horizon of her mind.

“I am not a Calvinist, Hanneke,” the Prince was saying.

“A Dutch king, at least.”

“Nor am I Dutch.”

She shrugged, less interested in what he said than the vision growing clearer before the eyes of her imagination. “Certainly we must have a new kingdom.”

“A new kingdom,” he said, and looking at her he did smile.

“One where everyone could live in peace. Where everyone could work, no matter what your faith, and where children would not be hanged, and where they had to give you a fair trial when you were arrested, and you couldn’t be arrested at all except for a very good reason, and—”

“Can we not have the old kingdom still, only make it more just?”

She lifted her face toward the sun. “A kingdom where the true king is God Himself.”

“I think,” said the Prince, “we are talking of two different realms now.”

Hanneke did not reply. The idea she nurtured delighted her; she felt it grow and swell in her mind, quickening, robust. Ahead, the spires of a town appeared above the round crest of the road, and with a few light words the Prince turned to his horse and mounted. She walked along the side of the road, her arms clasped over her stomach, protecting something within her.

The duke looked dismayed. “By God, sir, it grieves me to see you fallen so low in the world. I knew you had lost much, in the unpleasantness, but to see you like this …”

He shook his head a little. The duke was a Lutheran; like many of that persuasion, he let his faith lie small and quiet in the back of his life, a Sabbath matter. He wore satin clothes and the newest in white starched collars, and on his shoes were buckles coated with diamonds. His court also was very rich and orderly.

The Prince of Orange exchanged a bow with him, and they went to walk in the duke’s garden. The duke was fond of flowers and had a variety of the very newest sorts, brought from all over the world. Troops of gardeners kept the place immaculate. The two noblemen walked along a gravel path that threaded a way through the clipped hedges and beds of spring violets.

“Alas, you came too early in the year,” the duke said. “In July the bloom is magnificent.”

“I came,” said the Prince, “because there are people dying by the hundreds in the Low Countries, people to whom every moment is vital.”

A twig from a pear tree had fallen into the path and the duke frowned down at it, nudged it with his polished shoe, and called a gardener to pick it up. “A very unfortunate situation,” he said, over his shoulder, to the Prince. “All Europe rocked when Horn and Egmont were executed. I cannot think when last such noble heads rolled from the block—not since the bloodbath in England, I fancy.”

“They died because they trusted King Philip,” the Prince said. “I do not. I know Philip, and I am certain now that he will not concede—”

“Ah, now.” The duke led him on to a bed of odd-shaped plants, with pale green leaves like knife blades shooting up from the soil. A few lifted red and yellow cups of flowers toward the sun. “These are at last showing flowers. Aren’t they marvelous?”

“Philip will not concede anything unless he is forced to,” said the Prince. “Yes, they are lovely. What are they?”

“From Turkey. I don’t remember what they are called. I sent an expedition there expressly to bring them back. They grow from bulbs, like onions.” He bent over the nodding flowers, one hand behind his back. “Unfortunately they have no scent.”

“You have my sympathies. Let me remind you that Philip is a Hapsburg, and your Emperor is his cousin.”

The duke straightened swiftly, whisking his arm around before him again, and set off down the path. “The Emperor is a reasonable man.”

The Prince gave chase. “There may someday be an emperor who is not.”

“We are very secure here in Germany. Our religious quarrels are settled.”

“When Rudolf dies, who then? He will have no heir of his body. His brother is a fool. His nephews, on the other hand—”

“The Emperor is still in his prime years.”

“But when he dies …”

They were walking swiftly along the gravel paths, the Prince two steps behind the duke; a pair of gardeners weeding rose beds saw them coming and dodged to one side.

“We have settled all that,” the duke repeated, and coming to the end of the path he had to stop and turn. He faced Orange, his hands raised, palms out, as if he would thrust him back. “We do not need more disruptions here.”

“I’m not asking you to disrupt your own duchy, or the Empire, at all. Only to remember your fellow Protestants in the Low Countries. I have a young woman in my retinue who—”

“I have no money,” said the duke.

“If you would listen to her, she could tell you—”

“Nor have I any available troops. I must ask you—”

“If you listen, she could tell you tales of such horror—”

“I can do nothing!” the duke shouted.

In the silence after his bellow, the two men stared at one another, eye to eye. A sheen of sweat appeared on the duke’s brow. He took a napkin from his sleeve and patted his forehead.

“Now, if you will excuse me, sir.”

“Thank you for giving me hearing,” said the Prince, in a leaden voice.

“You are welcome, sir; I am sure you are very welcome.” The duke went swiftly past him, brushing against him, and once past sighed, as if set free of some trap.

“Are you sure it is here?” Hanneke whispered.

“Sssh.” The Prince’s brother Louis of Nassau waved his hand at her; they walked slowly down the alleyway, picking a path through the darkness around heaps of garbage. Something small and furry leapt up onto the low-hanging roof ahead of them and scurried away. Hanneke hoped it was a cat. She clutched her cloak tighter around her, fighting the urge to look back.

“Hold,” said Louis, and stopped before a doorway. He knocked.

The door opened slightly; in the thin sheet of light that emerged Hanneke could see Louis’ profile. A voice said in German, “Who is it?”

“Friends,” said Louis. “Children of God.”

The door opened. “Come in then, brother.”

They went into a little room crowded with people. On benches along the walls sat women in dark clothes; at one end of the room, opposite the end where the door was, stood a wooden lectern. When Hanneke and Louis came in all heads turned toward them.

“Peace,” Louis said, and lifted one hand. “God be with all here.”

“And with you also, brother.” A tall man came down the room toward them, holding his hands out. “And with our sister too.” He reached out his hands to Hanneke, who clasped them and bowed.

They took their places among the congregation, and the meeting went on, with a prayer and a song. Hanneke looked covertly around her. These plain strong faces might have been Dutch. It had been long since she went to a Calvinist meeting. Her breast ached with a sudden surge of memories. She bowed her head and prayed, thinking of the new kingdom.

The idea had grown to dominate her waking thoughts. The new kingdom seemed so compelling and real that she knew its appearance on earth was imminent. The people were in travail now, and God, the Divine Midwife, would bring forth of them the Golden Age. It would come. She prayed for its coming in a voice that quavered with intensity.

There was a sermon, quiet and well reasoned, about the need to keep the mind and heart pure. A child began to cry, somewhere in the crowd of dark clothes and sober faces, and was quickly silenced. Beside Hanneke, Louis of Nassau leaned forward, intent, his eyes shining. The richness of his clothes and the heavy gold ring on his hand set him apart from these German townspeople. She saw how the others looked at him and hoped they understood that the ring was not an ornament but a mark of his rank.

When the sermon was over, he rose in his place, and every head turned toward him.

“Brothers and sisters,” he said. “I came among you as a stranger, and you took me in. My companion and I are forever grateful to you. We are exiles, wanderers, people with no place, our country overrun by savage enemies. Now we come among you to ask you for your help.”

The tall man, who had given the sermon, still stood by the lectern. He said, “Tell us who you are, brother, that we may know your history and your plight more fully.”

“I am Louis of Nassau,” said the Prince’s brother. “As for my companion, her history, and her plight, it will serve all simply to know that she is Dutch.”

A gasp went up from many throats. Hanneke felt their eyes on her and dropped her gaze, her throat hot and itching with embarrassment.

“The Dutch people are dying,” Louis said. “The time has come when we must all give everything we can, or stand by and watch a whole nation perish in the name of idolatry and blasphemy at the hands of the Spanish. We must give, or be party to the massacre. We must—”

From the end of the room there was a crash that brought everyone up onto his feet.

Hanneke wheeled toward the door, every hair standing up on end. The tall man rushed forward; the congregation stirred and shifted their feet, and Louis flung back his cloak and put his hand to his sword. All eyes turned toward the little door where he and Hanneke had come in.

Another thunderous crash rocked it, and the wooden door shattered from top to bottom. It burst inward, flying off its hinges.

In the crowd women screamed, and the whole mass of people pressed backward, toward the wall. Through the opening where the door had been a man in half-armor strode, a torch in one hand and a cudgel in the other. After him came more men in shining breastplates, with torches, with clubs.

“What is this?” Louis marched forward. “Whose men are you? Give way, damn you!” He pulled out his sword, rasping against the scabbard, and the torch light bounced along the blade and glanced off the walls.

“Louis!” Hanneke leapt after him, to stop him.

Before she could reach him, the soldiers fell on him. He braced himself, his sword raised, a lone man between this little army and the cowering men and women of the Calvinist congregation, and the soldiers struck him down. Hanneke shrieked. She rushed forward, past the soldiers now tramping down the room, and knelt over the Prince’s brother, her arms out to shield him.

He lay on his side; blood welled thickly from a cut on his forehead, but he was breathing. She gripped his arm and shook him, trying to rouse him. He was unconscious. A scream behind her pulled her attention around.

The soldiers were herding the Calvinists around the room. One reached the lectern and threw the Bible down from it into the middle of the floor and overturned the lectern itself and smashed it with his foot. The Calvinists rushed along ahead of the clubs and the torches. A woman cried out; she had dropped her child and stooped to pick him up, and the soldier behind her knocked her sprawling to the ground.

“Pigs!” A soldier with a black beard marched the length of the room. “We don’t want your kind around here. Get out! Get out or fry, you pigs, like the crackling meat you are. Pigs!” He thrust his torch into the wreckage of the lectern, and the dry wood caught fire.

The people screamed. Madly they charged toward the door, away from the flames. Hanneke pulled Louis’ arm over her shoulders and staggered up to her feet. Running people, hurrying past her, bumped into her and nearly knocked her down. With the weight of the Prince’s brother on her back, she stumbled toward the door. They were fighting, up there, fighting for a way out. Smoke eddied through the room. Her nose burned. The building was set afire. She could hear the flames snapping. Her heart banged in the base of her throat. Run—run—

Coughing, her back bowed under his weight, she hauled Louis out after the screaming mob into the alleyway. There, the soldiers had lined up, so that every Calvinist who came out of the burning building had to run past a row of clubs and kicks. She staggered after the last of the mob. A hard boot glanced off her shin. Something struck Louis on the back; he took many of the blows intended for her. She dragged him out to the street and laid him down there, and turning she looked back down the alley.

The building at the far end was all afire now. Its light blazed the length of the alley. Every piece of garbage, every pebble on the ground threw long dancing shadows toward her. The soldiers were shrinking from the heat, crowding the alley, their clubs hanging in their hands. She sucked in her breath. There could be more people there, trapped in the flames. She stepped forward. The soldiers saw her coming; they raised their clubs, their faces turned toward her like dogs expecting meat. She ran back the length of their line to the door.

They laughed when they saw her coming. One tripped her and she fell headlong. She got up to her hands and knees and scurried along a few yards like an animal before the strength returned to her to get up onto her feet again. A club struck her so hard on the arm it numbed the limb to the shoulder. She rushed into the shelter of the burning building.

There was no one there. She had come back for nothing. The flames enveloped the whole end of the room, so hot her eyes hurt, and her breath was painful. God, she thought, God, is this how You protect Your people?

She turned to leave; her eyes caught on the Bible, lying in the middle of the floor. The flames shot up all around it, but the book itself was untouched, save for a little char around the edges of its leaves. She ran forward, gathered the heavy book in her arms, and went out the door.

They were waiting for her, the line of soldiers, moving back a little out of respect for the flames. Waiting with their clubs and feet and their leering looks, their laughter; waiting with the flames glinting on their breastplates. Waiting as Carlos had waited for her. She wrapped up the Bible in a fold of her cloak and started down the alley.

She was out of breath, and her legs hurt; she did not run, but walked, holding up her head, waiting for the blows. They did not come. Something in her face drove them back, their arms sagging, their lips losing their mirth. Between them and the fire, she flung her shadow over them, and their breastplates dimmed. The Bible clutched in her arms, she walked slowly down the alleyway and drove the soldiers on ahead of her into the street.

When she reached the street they were gone. The Calvinists stood in a little knot in the cold moonlight. Most of them had fled; only a few were left. Louis was sitting up at their feet, one hand to the cut on his head.

Hanneke went up to the tall man who had delivered the sermon and laid the Bible in his hands. “Is this yours?”

“By God’s grace,” the man said, and gripped her hand painfully hard.

Louis lifted his head, the blood dappling the side of his face like paint. “You must go to the duke and tell him of this outrage. Whose men were those?”

The other people laughed, rough unhappy laughter. The tall man stroked the leather cover of his Bible. “The duke’s men,” he said. “The duke sent them. It is no use.” He shook his head. “No use.”

No use. Hanneke looked at them all, standing with slumped shoulders under the moon, their faces slack with fatigue and despair. God, she thought, when will You bring forth Your kingdom, so that people like these and me will have some place to stand?

Louis surged up onto his feet. “Come,” he said, and grabbing her by the hand went off down the street.

“Where are we going?”

“To see the duke.”

She sucked in her breath, startled. He towed her along beside him, her feet flying to keep up with his long swift strides. Yes. Confront the duke. She skipped a little, to catch up with him.

They went through the dark city, over muddy streets and streets slippery with cobblestones, past the hooked and barbel spires of the church that once had been Catholic and now was Lutheran, to the palace of the duke, where Louis’ name and obvious nobility got them entrance in spite of the late hour. When they came to the chamber where the duke was taking his late evening cup, the overdecorated footman at the door told them that the Prince of Orange was there also.

Hanneke said, “Good, then.”

Louis paused, one hand to his chin. Younger than his brother, he was much handsomer, as if practice had improved the design. He said, “I am not sure we should not wait.”

“Wait,” Hanneke said. “Did those soldiers wait? People might have died in that fire.”

“We don’t want to confound my brother’s mission.”

“If you are cowardly—” She started for the door. The footman, before it, was looking, startled, from one to the other of them.

“What do you intend of my master?”

Louis, scowling, turned his uncertainty and temper on the servant. “Let us through.”

“My master does not enjoy being disturbed at—”

“Let us through!” Louis shoved the man violently to one side and rushed at the door. Hanneke followed in his wake.

They plunged through the doorway into a room elegantly carpeted, the walls hung with portraits. A little fire burned on the hearth, where two or three spaniels were sleeping; before the hearth sat the duke and the Prince of Orange, each in a little bowlegged chair, while a servant bowed between them, offering a tray of delicacies to eat.

The duke was turning to look at Louis and Hanneke. He wore a blue satin coat, the sleeves embroidered in gold and silver thread and slashed with pearl-gray velvet, and his beard and mustache were trimmed to perfect curves.

“My lord Louis of Nassau,” he said, looking surprised and disapproving. “I did not remember extending my leave to you.” His gaze rested on Hanneke; he sniffed.

“My lord,” Louis said, and looked at his brother, who was stooped down over his knee to stroke one of the spaniels. “I went to meeting tonight,” he said.

“I warned you against that,” said the Prince calmly. In his worn brown coat he looked like a commoner. “What happened to your head?”

“I beg your pardon?” the duke said. “My lord, I desire some explanation of this unseemly intrusion—some reason why I should welcome you and not order you out.”

“Tonight I was at meeting,” Louis stated firmly, loudly. He advanced two steps to plant himself before the duke, but his hands slipped behind his back, and Hanneke, seeing his fingers twine and intertwine, knew how this authority cowed him.

“What sort of meeting was this?” the duke asked, blandly.

“A Calvinist meeting. An assembly of the children of God, for the purposes of worshiping God—”

“Nonsense,” said the duke. He waved at the servant with the tray of sweets, and he withdrew rapidly into the corner of the room. “Such goings-on are outlawed in my duchy.”

“Nonetheless,” Louis said, still louder—shouting now, his voice ringing from the walls. “I was there, with dozens of other men and women, and we were attacked—set on by soldiers who threw us into the street and burned our meeting place.”

The duke leaned back in his ornate little chair. “Excellent. So ought all outlaws to be treated.”

“Outlaws.” Hanneke strode forward, going up between the two chairs, almost into the hearth. “You deem us outlaws, who want only to obey God? Your men, sir”—she stooped to say this into the very face of the duke—“your men tried to burn a Bible.”

“Who is this woman?” The duke’s lips twisted in distaste. “Some common peasant out of the fields? Who is she?”

The Prince was standing. “With your leave, my lord—”

The duke’s voice overrode him. Higher than before it cried, “Who brought this dirty person in here? Who is she? Get her out! Get the dirty wench out!”

The Prince bowed. “By your leave.” He started toward the door, taking his brother in tow, one arm out to herd Hanneke before him. “Come on, now, friends—”

She did not move. She stood staring down at the duke, who was waving a scented napkin at her as if she had brought some miasma with her into his expensive little room. She said, “God have mercy on you, and on all your kind. When we are safe in our own kingdom, you shall fall on such times you will pray to God to relieve you of them in death.”

“Hanneke—” The Prince had her by the arm. She leaned against his pull.

“Then think of those you might have helped but instead hindered,” she said to the duke.

“Get her out!”

“Think of Christ, Whom you might have emulated but instead have crucified a second time!”

“Get her out of here before I call my men to take her out by violence!”

“Hanneke.” The Prince dragged her away to the door.

Now she went with him, seeing this was hopeless. Going out, past the white-faced footman into the antechamber, she realized how hopeless it really was, and her mood sank; her body felt made of lead, impossible to move. She trudged along with the Prince and his brother, fighting against tears. The palace was darkened for the night. They walked alone through corridors and rooms lit by single candles set into the walls. In the main hall a woman was down on hands and knees washing the marble floor.

Had she done wrong? For the first time she wondered if she had made a mistake—if some subtler way might not have won what they needed, the support of this rich, light-minded man. Yet it seemed to her that any cause which depended on such people was doomed.

Perhaps they were doomed, all doomed. Perhaps the Catholics were right.

She stumbled. The Prince caught her arm and helped her keep her feet.

Were they right—the Catholics, who claimed to have known the truth all along, who said the Calvinists were sinners who deserted God? Oh … oh …

She heard herself moaning and clamped her lips shut. Her legs wobbled. Hurrying after her companions down a darkened corridor, she fought the cold invading trickle of doubt. God’s will be done. Was it arrogance, to think to know God better than other people did? Satan’s sin, to put her own vision first. God’s will be done.

At last they reached the sanctuary of the Prince’s rooms. She crept into a chair and put her face in her arms, terrified.

“Well,” the Prince said, “fortunately he had already declined any interest in our cause, and therefore your display will have few serious consequences.”

With a taper he went around the little room lighting the candles on the tables and the walls. It was a very small room, only large enough for a bed and a chair; perhaps it had been servants’ quarters, before the arrival of the penniless Prince of Orange made it necessary for the duke to find some extra space. The Prince wondered where the servants were being kept—in a stable somewhere, perhaps.

He smiled at that; he smiled at his brother, sitting hunchbacked on the bed, his hands clasped between his knees.

“I’m pleased you’re not badly hurt. Surely it wasn’t as savage an onslaught as you made out.”

“It was,” said Louis. “I might have died, William. Some of the others pulled me free, or I would have died.”

In the chair by the window, Hanneke lifted her head a moment, her face a full moon against a background of shadows.

“You were foolish to go,” the Prince said. “Knowing what you put at risk.”

“Foolish?” the girl said, in her rough low voice. “To do God’s service?”

“You are wise indeed, girl, if you know God’s service so well.”

She flinched at that, her eyes shining in the candlelight, her face luminous; he thought again, as he had before, She’s mad. For a long moment their eyes met, the whole space of the room between them. There was no challenge in her look, only a sort of desperation, searching, and longing. Finally she lowered her eyes.

“If you had seen what I have seen you would not suffer fools like this duke to stand in your way.”

The Prince grunted. His temper slipped; before he could catch hold of his tongue, hot words were leaping forth.

“Again, it’s I who’ve failed, is it? You come at me with more reproaches—if only I would do this, if only I would do that. What of you, Hanneke? When will you submit to God, and devote yourself to God, rather than challenging me to do it? I cannot save the Dutch; you must save yourselves.”

She flung her head back, her cheeks flaming red with the heat of anger. She sprang up from the chair. They faced each other like adversaries. The Prince regretted his outburst; always he preferred to keep his true thoughts secret. She faced him like a lioness, muscular and poised, her hands fisted at her sides.

Then her face changed. Under his gaze the warm red subsided from her cheeks, and her glowing eyes dimmed. Her mouth softened. She turned a little, curving her body away from him, as if to shelter him from the full fire of her temper. Over her shoulder she lifted her head and nodded to him.

“You are right. God has shown me what to do. God has been speaking to me all these months and I have not understood.” She smiled at him. “Thank you for making me understand.”

“Hanneke,” Louis said.

Amazed, the Prince saw she was leaving. She was going to the door; she was pulling her coat closer around her, as if she meant to face some winter blast of wind. He put out his hand to her.

“Where are you going?”

Her face swung toward him again. “Where God means me to go.”

“Where is that?”

“To the Low Countries. To my home. To make the New Kingdom.” She opened the door and went out.

“Hanneke.” Louis got up and started after her. The Prince caught his arm.

“No. Let her go.”

“But—”

“Let her go, Louis. She was never ours anyway.” The Prince put out his hand to draw the door shut. What she had said rang in his mind. Mad, mad, surely mad. As Christ Himself had probably been a little mad. Belatedly, he wondered if he should not go after her—give her money, words of hope, directions home. Smiled at himself: the mother in him. Godspeed, Hanneke, he thought. And pulled the door closed.