by Barbara Kyle
The thousand eyes narrowed.
“She is our sister!” the Prophet cried. “The Lord has led her through the valley of the shadow of death! Let them enter!”
The gate rumbled open.
Honor walked into the city after the wagon and looked up, dumbfounded. People were cheering from the walls as if for a conquering hero. Laughing men and women swarmed the wagon and pulled it forward. There were shouts of, “Welcome, Sisters! Welcome, Brother!” A girl tossed down a garland.
Honor heard Hermann breathlessly call to the scout who rode alongside. “Was that really the great Prophet Matthias?”
“In the flesh,” said the scout exultantly. “He brought us our miracle.”
“Miracle?”
As the wagon was led through the cheering streets the scout explained. For months, he said, Prince-Bishop Franz von Waldeck, overlord of the territory before the righteous revolution, had been massing an army of mercenaries several miles from the city. That very morning the Prince-Bishop had finally attacked the eastern gates. The Münsterites had swarmed out and, with God on their side, the scout said, had inflicted dreadful casualties. They had beaten back the soldiers, and the Prince-Bishop’s armored knights had thundered away in humiliating retreat, leaving scores of their men writhing and dying on the plain at the eastern side of the city. To the west, though, where the Deurvorsts had come from, there was no sign of the carnage. All this had happened not more than two hours before.
Amid the clamor Hermann strained sideways to follow the fantastic story. “You fought?” he asked, as though trying to grasp it. Honor wondered, as well. Anabaptists were forbidden to bear the sword.
“And won!” the scout grinned, kicking his horse forward.
Everywhere, people rushed out of doorways with greetings, gifts of sausages, wineskins. Men, women and children danced around the wagon, singing psalms, ecstatic at their deliverance from the might of the enemy and thrilled at the sign of God’s favor embodied in the innocent newcomers.
The Deurvorsts’ wagon was brought to the broad market square. The square was flanked by the cathedral and the former Prince-Bishop’s palace. Hermann and Alma climbed down from the wagon and joined Honor in acknowledging the onion-breath embraces of women. The horse and wagon were led away.
A lieutenant in an iron helmet stalked over. His crooked nose appeared to have been broken more than once. “Brother, are you and your family re-baptized?” He looked Honor up and down, skeptically.
“Of course!” Hermann declared, beaming.
“Well,” the lieutenant grunted, “the preachers will check your story. Meanwhile,” he jerked a thumb at the cathedral, “your family will be billeted there.”
“Billeted?” Hermann asked, startled. “In a church?”
“We’ve had hundreds of you refugees tramp here. Dutch, German, even some Spaniards. There’s more of you than us. Now,” he said gruffly, “you must give over your purse. All goods are held in common here. The Elders”—he pointed across the square to a dozen well-dressed men standing at the door of the palace, the sour-faced Prophet and the yellow-haired young man among them—“they hold the treasury in trust until God can claim His own.” He held out a dirty palm, waiting.
“Gladly, gladly, Brother,” Hermann laughed. Quickly, he pulled three small purses of coins from his clothes. His face was flushed with excitement as he dropped the money into the lieutenant’s hand. He smiled at his wife. “All goods held in common, Alma. Isn’t it wonderful? The New Jerusalem. It’s all we hoped it would be.”
Alma did not answer. She was watching their savings disappear into the lieutenant’s tunic. His grunt was the only receipt he offered before marching away.
Honor distractedly felt for the small bulge of coins tucked inside her underskirt. The brothel owner who had hidden her in Southwark and the ship’s master who had carried her to Amsterdam had both demanded exorbitant sums, and although the Deurvorsts had refused any payment from her, this small purse was the last of her money. She must hold on to it.
Hermann looked around them, his smile undimmed, then said to Alma, “The scout who brought us in, my dear, his dialect was so thick, and what with all this noise I must have misunderstood what he said. These good people rejoicing cannot be fighters.”
Horns blasted. Drums rattled. Honor and the Deurvorsts joined the excited people higher on the cathedral steps and looked out, unsure of what was happening. A bent old woman poked Honor’s rib and cackled, “The victory celebration. You interrupted it.”
There were shouts and cheers as grimy but smiling soldiers marched into the square. They were followed by a black clump of preachers, then a procession of rowdy, costumed actors. At the palace doors the twelve elders stood in a line and looked on approvingly.
The actors cavorting at the rear of the parade were parodying the princes of the Church. One, dressed as the Pope, was strapped at the waist to a hurdle, and a long carrot was jammed in his mouth. Then came a wheeled platform carrying fat cardinals counting money bags, and leering saints who swiped at women’s breasts. The crowd roared with laughter. The platform was hauled by six sweating, manacled prisoners in harness.
Hermann was distressed by the obvious misery of the prisoners. He plucked the sleeve of the cheering old woman, “Who are they?” he asked, pointing.
“Captives?” Alma asked anxiously.
“No,” the old woman said. She spat into the dust. “They’re the scum among us. Drunkards. Fornicators. Filth.”
A band of teenage boys burst through the crowd. With ropes they were dragging a life-sized, painted wooden image of a saint. In the distance behind them the black column of smoke that Alma had noticed earlier could still be seen billowing outside the walls.
“That’s St. Mauritz’s,” the old woman winked, following Alma’s gaze. “Up in smoke!” She laughed.
The boys dragged their church booty facedown like a prisoner, making its rigid feet carve channels in the white dust. People formed a circle around them. One of the boys straddled the statue, raised his dagger, plunged it into the saint’s eye and gouged out wood pulp.
Honor shuddered. Her vision blurred. She closed her eyes and saw the narrow roof on London Bridge again, saw the arrow ripping into Thornleigh’s eyesocket, saw him fall. His blood pooled crimson on the backs of her eyelids. She felt for the step and sat, shivering.
From the crowd two men rushed forward with swords to attack the statue. They hewed off its arms, then its head. A woman scurried out clutching a kitchen knife and hacked at the trunk in a frenzy to destroy the hidden genitals. The crowd clapped and stomped.
“Good God,” Hermann whispered.
There was a thunder of moving feet. Honor opened her eyes. The crowd was rushing to the edge of the cathedral close where the six manacled prisoners were being tied to the lime trees.
“Sinners!” a woman shrilled.
As a dozen guards armed with muskets filed in front of the prisoners, the Prophet Matthias climbed the cathedral steps. His arms flew up. The guards aimed at the captives. The crowd hushed.
“And all the sinners of my people shall die by the sword,’” the Prophet intoned. “God will have nothing unclean in his city. He will have a holy people to praise His name!” He dropped one arm in a chopping signal. The guards fired. The prisoners slumped dead over their ropes. The people cheered.
Hermann Deurvorst’s face drained to the color of the dust.
32
The Elect
The Festival of Victory lasted for three days.
The market square was the nerve center of the red-eyed, delirious city. By day, under banners that proclaimed THE COMING OF THE LORD IS NIGH thousands ate at communal tables, and in the open air the preachers conducted mass baptisms, the blessed symbol of personal freedom. Several young people killed themselves immediately after the rite, inflamed by the ancient teaching that promised everlasting glory to those in a state of innocence following holy immersion. By night, the square flickered with th
e watch fires of the freelances who had deserted from the Prince-Bishop’s troops.
All day, Honor wandered the streets. Isolation was unbearable, for every thought of Thornleigh brought waves of grief that made her almost physically sick. So she plodded through the city to numb herself, dazed by the shocking sights. When evening finally stalked in from the plain, exhaustion would force her back to the cathedral, a stone hulk stripped of its treasures. Months before, the citizens had pried open its tombs in the nave. They had shattered the stained glass windows, smeared the wall paintings with lime, shoveled dung into the font. Honor would pick her way through the smoky cooking fires of the camped refugees to get to the niche the Deurvorsts had settled into, a small chapel in the north transept. The chapel was the tomb of a crusader Baron, and his sleeping marble effigy took up most of the space. There, Honor would eat a little bread and cheese, sip some water, then fall into a black and dreamless sleep.
In her sorties she saw ransacked Catholic houses and the shells of looted churches. Church towers had been broken down and turned into platforms for ordnance. Church bells and the coating of steeples had been melted down for bullets. Priceless carved altars and ancient tombstones had been rammed up against the bolted city gates.
Packs of grubby boys—the people sneeringly called them Angels—roamed from dawn to dusk, foraging. One evening Honor saw the Deurvorst’s wagon overturned in an alley. The chairs had been pilfered, the clock was gone, and Angels scrabbled over the box like mice, scuffling through the broken remnants of Alma’s pots and ladles. Another morning, stopping by a waste lot embroidered with wildflowers, she noticed a couple of Angels trying to trap a cat behind a privy, and her eye was caught by a richly painted church panel depicting the Virgin. She recognized the style of the magnificent work as Hans Holbein’s. The painting had been propped up as a makeshift wall for the privy.
Honor noticed that the homespun clothing on many of the people she passed was oddly adorned—velvet sleeves on a woman collecting dung in the square, a feathered silk cap on a grimy water-carrier—and she gradually realized they were wearing the abandoned goods of long-fled Catholic burghers. And there was a strangely disproportionate number of women. The young scout, meeting her one day by the well, had explained—for Honor understood more German than she could speak—that most of the Catholic citizens had left the city early in the revolution and had left their households in the care of wives or daughters until they could return. But six months later they had not returned, and women now outnumbered men three to one. He also told her how the Elders had set a day the previous February for the banishment of all the remaining unbelievers—all those who had refused to be re-baptized. Hundreds had been forced out of the gates into the driving sleet of a vicious winter night. Those who had not perished in the cold were massacred the next day by the Prince-Bishop’s knights. After that, no one had dared to leave the city.
Into these troubling surroundings Honor and the Deurvorsts settled as well as they could.
About two weeks after their arrival, Honor was carrying water back to the cathedral late in the afternoon. She trudged with her bucket past the citizens who were setting supper on the communal tables, and had reached the lane that ran down the side of the cathedral when she heard angry shouts. She looked over her shoulder. A couple of women were beating a little girl away from a supper table in the square. One woman threw a clump of manure at the child. The child broke into a run. Several women chased her. The girl sprinted down the cathedral lane, her long golden hair flying as a half-dozen women pursued her, hurling stones at her back. The girl ducked into a chapel porch. The women stopped in a cluster, still jeering and pelting the open porch door with stones. Honor could not understand the volley of German words, but the abusive nature of them was clear enough. Then, having vented their anger, the women turned back to the square. They stomped past Honor, still muttering their indignation. Curious, she set down her bucket and started down the lane.
She looked into the porch. In a dark corner the girl, perhaps seven or eight years old, Honor guessed, sat on the floor hugging her drawn-up legs with her head lowered between her arms. Poking from her tattered dress, her legs and arms gleamed white and thin, like peeled sticks.
Honor wondered what the child had done to provoke such fury from the women. She held out her hand. “Are you hurt?” she asked.
The child’s head snapped up. With a snarl she lunged for Honor and bit her hand. Honor jumped back. The child, too, retreated as quickly as she had sprung, and cowered in the corner again. They stared at one another. Honor was more astonished than hurt; the bite had been no more than a nip, and the teeth had not broken the skin. But what kind of terror could have prompted such an attack?
Huge green eyes took up half the child’s grime-streaked face, and her hair, falling in long, golden curls, was spiked with dried leaves and twigs. Despite the dirt, Honor was struck by the child’s beauty. She moved a step closer. The child flinched and cowered further into the corner.
A man was lounging at the inner door, cleaning his teeth with a toothpick, and he leaned around and stuck his head into the porch. “Don’t worry, sister,” he chuckled, “that one’s got no real bite left.”
“Who is she?” Honor asked, staring at the lovely face.
“She! Ha! Well you might say so. That’s a God-boy. A little priest tart. Left behind when his keepers were sent packing. At first he tried to run with the Angels, but they kicked him off.” He mouthed the toothpick to one side and grinned. “He’s a filthy little turd, but he won’t hurt you.”
Honor now understood why the women had chased the child from the communal tables. The righteous citizens, she knew, would not tolerate such refuse of the priests near them. She crouched before the boy—she saw now that the “dress” he wore was actually a small cassock that he had outgrown—and held out her hand again, cautiously, as she would to a wounded dog that might bite again. “Don’t be afraid,” she said in her halting German. The man at the door snorted his disapproval and pushed off, back into the cathedral.
Honor waited for some response from the boy. Suspicion glinted in his enormous eyes. His fists were balled. His teeth were chattering. She wondered how to convince him of her goodwill. If the priests had kept him, she reasoned, he may have known no other life than the cathedral. She decided to try another tack. In Latin she asked, “Are you hungry?”
The boy’s mouth dropped open in amazement. His eyes grew even larger.
Again in Latin, she asked, “How many days since you’ve eaten?”
“I…don’t know. I ate some carrots…one day.” The soft voice was unsteady, but the Latin was flawless.
Something in Honor’s breast swelled at this small victory. “Come,” she said, gently taking his hand. “My friends have bread and soup for you.”
Alma and Hermann were resting in the chapel after their day’s labor. They sat on the floor with their backs against the marble tomb as Hermann read aloud in Dutch from his Bible. They smiled at Honor as she came in. She walked by them softly so as not to disturb Hermann’s reading which he kept up even as he and Alma glanced with curiosity at the boy.
Honor could see, beneath their kind smiles, the exhaustion in both their faces. The past weeks had been a trial for the Deurvorsts. Hermann spent his days sweating in the municipal cloth works, while Alma often stood for a whole morning among the milling petitioners in the palace antechambers, waiting to request a house from the Elders who ruled the city. When she was not there she and Honor sewed for hours in the chapel; the Elders’ wives paid well for their fine embroidery, and the payment, in the form of cheese or eggs, or even salt, was a welcome addition to the communally doled-out fatty pork, bread and cabbage.
The boy had crouched near a corner of the chapel. He shot occasional glances out at the camped refugees in the nave, but he was intently watching Honor as she cut a slice of creamy yellow cheese and laid it on a thick slab of rye bread. His whole body trembled at the pungent smells. She offered
it to him with a smile, and he grabbed it with both hands and brought it to his open mouth. Then his eyes darted to her with a shy look, as if he knew he was guilty of bad manners. With a gesture of restraint that touched her heart, he lowered the food, made a quick sign of the cross, and murmured a Latin prayer of thanks.
Hermann abruptly stopped his Bible reading. “What’s he doing?”
“Something he hasn’t done for days,” Honor said with a smile. “Eating.” She was glad Hermann’s English was as good as it was. It was exhausting trying to keep up with the couples’ Dutch and the Münsterites’ German.
“No, I mean what’s that papist mumbo-jumbo?” Hermann said. “Tell him to stop it!”
The boy, not understanding the English words, finished his prayer in a rush to get to the food. He rapidly crossed himself again.
“Stop that!” Hermann shouted. He thudded shut the Bible. His body had tensed and his face was red. Alma, too, was scowling at the boy.
The boy chomped down on the bread and cheese. Without chewing he gulped the mouthful, then tore off another.
“God-cursed little bugger,” a voice murmured in German. Honor saw that it was the man with the toothpick again. He was leaning against the chapel arch. “Priest’s bum-boy,” he explained to Hermann, with a nod toward the child, and made an obscene gesture with his finger at his backside.
“Mind your own business,” Honor snapped.
But Hermann and Alma leapt up as if they had been told a rabid animal was loose. “Get him out!” Hermann cried.
Honor was stunned by his reaction. “But, Herr Deurvorst, he’s starving. And we have plenty.”
“I won’t have such filth here!”
“What are you talking about?”
“He’s a sinner!”
“He’s a child.”
“He has not repented!”
