by Barbara Kyle
From an open window at the end of the corridor she heard the smash of glass from the square, then a peal of wild laughter. She placed her hand on her belly and made a silent vow. As she had once rescued lives from the fury of the Catholic state, now she promised that, whatever it required from her, her child would not be born in this Protestant hell.
In Amsterdam, Leonard Legge kindly thanked the Dutch housewife for her time, touched his hat to her, and stepped away from her threshold. As soon as the woman had closed the door, Legge dropped his smile and spat on the ground. “Bugger all foreigners,” he growled. He wondered if the stupid woman had even understood his questions.
He’d asked the questions so many times, they now seemed meaningless even to him. “Had the lady or gentleman seen an Englishwoman named Mistress Thornleigh in these parts? Did the lady or gentleman have any information of any person who had seen such a woman?”
Legge glanced down the street. A half-block away, on the far side of the street, his master stood asking the same questions of a tousle-haired housemaid. Legge saw the maid shake her head. No luck there either, it seemed. As usual. Legge wondered how long his master would continue this useless search. Last month, they had knocked on half the doors of Antwerp. And now, thanks to the hazy recollection of a half-drunk Antwerp sailor, they were disturbing the fat housewives of Amsterdam. It seemed to Legge that they might as well be searching for a special grain of sand upon the seashore.
Legge watched his master turn away from the house—with every rebuff his shoulders seemed to slump a fraction more—and trudge on to the next door. He was exhausted, that was plain. And the Lord knew he was not yet fully recovered to health. After Legge had fished him out of the Thames and carried him to his home, Legge and his wife had been sure the man would die of his arrow wounds. But he had not died. He’d lost an eye, and hadn’t been able to stand for some weeks, but he had clung to life. Just as Legge, very much in need of a new master, had clung to the chance to leave England for a while in this man’s service.
Legge sighed at the futility of it all as he knocked on the next door. An old man answered and scowled at the strange face. Legge launched again into his round of questions in execrable Dutch. The old man shook his head irritably and made to shut the door.
Then a woman, younger and far more curious, came to the man’s side. Legge repeated his questions. Oh yes, the woman said brightly, wiping her hands on her apron. A young Englishwoman had come to her neighbors, the Deurvorsts. Eagerly, she pointed next door.
Legge, energized by the discovery, begged her to wait. He ran the half block to fetch his master. Together, they hurried back to speak to the woman. She repeated what she had told Legge.
Richard Thornleigh’s one good eye opened wide with hope. He thanked the woman, and started to run to the house next door. But the woman called after him, “She’s not there now, sir. Gracious, no. She went with the Deurvorsts when they left Amsterdam. Oh, two months ago at least. And where they went, only the good Lord knows.”
33
Immortality
Honor and Pieter continued to live as outcasts in the ruined deanery, but Honor set her mind to finding a way to escape. She made cautious, regular excursions to reconnoiter the city wall. If she and Pieter were to get out, the wall would be their first obstacle. All the gates were barricaded, and the Elders’ lieutenants constantly patrolled the perimeter for signs of treachery within, lest some Judas throw open a gate to the enemy. Meanwhile, outside the walls, the Prince-Bishop’s troops were camped, ready to murder any Münsterite who dared emerge. That, Honor knew, would be their second obstacle.
On one such outing she discovered a sally port near the western gate. She found that this small door, obscured by the piled rubble of the barricades, had been left unbarred. Apparently, it hadn’t been thought necessary; Münsterites had not exactly been rushing out to meet the enemy’s fire. This, she thought, might be the door to freedom.
She also befriended the scout who had escorted the Deurvorst’s wagon into the city that first day. He lived far from the cathedral and knew nothing of her changed, outcast state. In the long, still afternoons, she chatted with him at his post below the eastern gate. Once, though he was not supposed to, he took her up on the wall for a look out at the Prince-Bishop’s troops camped in the distance. During these encounters she casually probed him for information about the movements of the soldiers who patrolled the wall. Somehow, she hoped, if given enough information, she could devise a plan of escape.
The parched July weeks crept by.
Usually, Honor and Pieter spent the cool of the day in the deanery, for no citizens went out among the derelict cathedral buildings. When night fell, the two of them would slip out into the market square. There, they joined the dogs and the few other shadows—other “heathen,” Honor surmised—who emerged from God-knew-where to scavenge in the mounds of refuse left after the communal meals. Water, at least, was not a problem. There was a well in the cathedral precincts.
When they did venture out in the day, Honor found she could pass without notice if she moved quickly and was alone. Pieter had to be more careful. Honor had cut his long curls, then had successfully begged a rag picker for some not-too-tattered breeches and shirt to replace the small cassock. Pieter looked like a boy now, but it was not enough; his golden hair, green eyes and sweet face were too well known by too many of the citizens. But since he was better at scavenging—nimbler with his hands, and faster on his feet—he often took the chance of going to find food. At such times, he always brought home more than Honor did, though usually his return route involved some imaginative detours through the side streets to shake off an irate citizen or two before he could double back to the cathedral close.
But even the communal cooking pots were daily rendering less and less. Choked by the ring of enemy troops, Münster was beginning to feel hunger. Some of the city’s dogs and cats were going into the huge kettles now. “Well,” Honor had muttered as she and Pieter sat on the bed one night reluctantly examining a suspicious-looking bone, hungry though they were, “at least when we forage now there’ll be less competition from dogs.” Pieter had laughed. But the situation had not seemed funny to Honor the next day when, watching from the bedchamber window, she saw a crowd assemble in the square and heard a preacher shout out the penalty for hoarding food: execution.
One morning she heard a noise downstairs. She tiptoed to the landing, but saw no one below. She climbed down the ladder and went to the front door. On the threshold lay a small bundle, an embroidered linen kerchief knotted around some lumps. She unfastened the cloth and found a stick of cured sausage the length of her forearm, a fist-sized chunk of cheese, and a half a loaf of rye bread.
“It’s a miracle,” Pieter said, his mouth watering at the treasure trove. “God sent it.”
Honor looked down the path. The squat figure of a woman was hurrying away between the trees. “No,” she said, with a small smile. “Frau Deurvorst brought it.”
“Yes,” Pieter agreed, and added triumphantly, “but who sent her?”
Honor laughed. “Little theologian.”
She put away half of the cured sausage. The rest of the food she and Pieter gobbled then and there.
After that, things got slowly worse.
One evening after a day when the city had seemed strangely quiet, Honor was stooping to pick up crusts under a table in the square when she heard two other scavengers, an old couple, whispering. It seemed that the night before, the Prophet Matthias had beheld a sign of crossed swords in the evening sky. Fired with holy zeal he had ridden out with a small band to smite the enemy. He had failed. The Prince-Bishop’s troops were now displaying his severed head on a pike below the walls. Honor imagined the head, shriveled and crusted with flies after a day in the baking July sun.
Leaderless, the city seemed to shrink into a stupor of fear. People whispered in shuttered houses. Münster was waiting—for deliverance or destruction. Finally, the nervous preachers cal
led an assembly. Citizens shuffled into the square, like frightened cattle, Honor thought, watching from the deanery window.
There was a shout. Matthias’s disciple, the handsome, yellow-haired young man, strode out of the palace dressed in billowing blue silks. Since the day she had arrived with the Deurvorsts, Honor had discovered who he was: Jan Bockelson, a twenty-four-year-old actor-poet from Leyden. His smile was radiant as he stood on the palace steps and addressed the people. He declared that he was taking up the Prophet’s mantle. From henceforward, he said, he would guide the Elect. Relief rippled through the crowd. Calm was restored. Women fell to their knees, sighing.
Jan of Leyden threw his arms wide, rings sparkling, and issued a proclamation. In view of the excessive number of single women in the city, he said, and in light of the Elders’ detestation of fornication, the Elect were commanded from that day forward to take several wives each.
“Adultery?” someone in the crowd gasped.
“By no means,” Jan of Leyden said with a laugh. “Polygamy.”
There were murmurs of disbelief. A man giggled.
Jan smiled. “We will follow the example set by the Old Testament patriarchs, by Abraham, by Isaac, and by Jacob. In this way we will stamp out harlotry and increase the Elect.”
There was a heavy silence. Someone cried, “Sin!”
Jan of Leyden’s sunny smile hardened to a diamond brilliance. “It is the will of the Lord that the Elect shall multiply as the sands of the sea. All who refuse shall incur the wrath of God, which will sweep them from the earth!” He turned on his heel and disappeared inside the palace.
For days, preachers in pulpits throughout the city expounded the new Edict. Every woman, they declared, must marry one of the Elect. Adulterers would be executed. Any woman with two husbands would be beheaded. Jan of Leyden himself immediately married the beautiful young widow of the Prophet, and ten other women.
When Honor heard of it she shook her head in disgust. Another manifestation of the sickness gnawing at this deranged place, she thought. But not long after, the Edict was brought personally home to her. She was on her knees picking dandelion leaves at the edge of the waste patch where the privy was adorned with Holbein’s Virgin, when her wrist was grabbed and she was wrenched to her feet by a burly man. She twisted under his grasp. Shielding her eyes from the sun, she looked at his face. She recognized him. He was one of the thick-necked peasants from the Harz Mountains who camped in the nave of the cathedral. Often, when she had lived there with the Deurvorsts, she had seen this man watching her as she passed.
“I marry you,” he said. The declaration was only a string of grunts, and Honor stared, not comprehending the dialect.
“Marry!” he barked, as if to someone deaf.
Now she understood. “No!” she cried. She tried to pull away. His grip tightened, and he scowled as though he meant to strike her. Frantically, she looked around. There was no one in sight.
With her free hand she tugged at her dress, stretching it taut over her belly. “Look!” she protested, English words tumbling out in desperation, “You don’t want me, I’m five months pregnant!” But her slender body was lithe with the hard living, and the mound below her navel still small. The man’s face slackened with lust at the sight of her breasts, swollen by pregnancy, under the light fabric. Instead of discouraging him she had inflamed him.
He started to drag her away. She dug in her heels, but he jerked her hard, and pain flared up her arm. Suddenly, a high-pitched wail stopped them both. From behind, Pieter came flying at the man and butted him in the small of his back. Without releasing Honor the man swung a massive fist. It smashed into Pieter’s face and he sprawled back, blood dripping from his lip. The peasant yanked Honor again. Again, she heard the high-pitched cry. This time Pieter chomped down on the beefy wrist. The man yelled in pain and let go. Honor and Pieter ran. They didn’t stop running until they reached the deanery.
After that, Honor didn’t dare go out in daylight for fear that the peasant would see her again and claim her. She was under no illusions about the Elders’ will to invoke the penalty for disobeying the Edict. “All who refuse shall incur the wrath of God which will sweep them from the earth.”
But it turned out that many of the Münsterites felt an equal dismay over the Edict. A few days after the incident with the peasant, Honor awoke to drumrolls. She hurried to the window. People were rushing into the square. They seemed to be forming into two distinct parties. There was shouting and, from a side street, the dull popping of gunfire. She hurried outside and down the path to the edge of the close. Two cannon were rumbling across the square towards the Town Hall. The people were running now. One part of the crowd, the larger part, was swarming toward the smaller one. Honor did not dare go any nearer, but she could see that the larger group was engulfing the smaller one. Down the street the canon boomed. The crowd cheered. Honor caught the arm of a young man limping by her and holding a rag to his temple. “What’s happening?” she cried.
A coup had been attempted, he told her breathlessly. A disgruntled ex-alderman named Mollenbecke had gathered a bunch of hotheads and at midnight they had broken into the homes of Jan Bockelson and the Elders. They’d taken them as prisoners to the Town Hall. The ringleaders were holed up there. But, he grinned, the citizens were rallying. “Have to stand together now,” he said, “and beat back the Devil Bishop.”
It was all over in an hour. Under bombardment the rebels were driven out. Jan Bockelson and the other captives were freed to the cheers and embraces of the crowd. Honor hurried back to the deanery.
She watched as Mollenbecke and seven co-conspirators were tied to the lime trees. A judgment seat was carried out for Jan Bockelson. The people crowded around him as he sat smiling, the huge sword of justice resting across his knees. He passed the sentence of death, then asked if any good citizen, as a service to God, would fire the first shot. Two young men rushed forward, eager for the privilege. When the eight ringleaders slumped, dead, the crowd cheered again.
Fifty-eight other rebels were then brought forward. Jan and the Elders dispatched them personally with the sword of justice, beheading the fifty-eight, one after another. The corpses were hauled away. The people went home, satisfied.
The next morning Honor awoke and heard no birdsong. She realized there had been none for days. All the birds had been killed and eaten. She knew that the time for planning had run out.
Something the man had mentioned during the coup stuck in her mind. “Beat back the Devil Bishop,” he had said.
She left Pieter sleeping, shoved into her pocket the leftover piece of Alma’s cured sausage, and went out of the house. She walked across the city to the eastern gate and saw the scout trudging up the stairs to the wall. She hailed him and asked if she could come up for a look. She drew from her pocket the piece of sausage and offered it. He looked around. It was noon, hot and quiet, and most of the other guards were sitting or lounging in what shade they could find along the wall. No one seemed to be watching him. He shrugged. “Why not?” he said, and jerked his head for her to follow.
What she saw from the wall made her heart beat fast with hope. A month before, she had looked out on this same view of the plain. The besieging army had then been camped a couple of miles away. Now, their camps had crept closer. They were digging trenches. They had moved cannon into position. There was, in general, an unmistakable increase in activity. The Prince-Bishop was preparing to attack.
She turned and said as much to the scout. He was furtively munching the sausage with his back to the other guards. He swallowed and wiped his mouth and said to her with grim confidence, “We’re ready for them.”
Honor knew this was her chance. If the Münsterites succeeded in repelling an attack on the eastern gate, she reasoned, the Prince-Bishop’s troops might fall back in the confusion of defeat just as they had done on the strange day she and the Deurvorsts had arrived. That would leave the other gate, the western gate, clear of outside troops.
/> She thanked the scout and hurried back to the deanery. Now, it was just a matter of waiting.
The attack came the very next day. Late in the afternoon Honor heard shouts and gunfire and the noise of hundreds of feet running through the square.
The scout had been right; the Münsterites were well prepared for the attack. They swarmed out the eastern gate and, incredibly, against all odds, beat back the Prince-Bishop’s army for the second time. The city erupted in victory celebrations.
Honor had already told Pieter that they must wait an hour or so for darkness, because if her calculations were wrong they would need the cover of night for any hope of surviving outside the walls. They watched the celebrations from the cathedral close.
People capered through the streets, sang psalms, gleefully fired the already gutted houses in the Catholic quarters and left them to smolder. At dusk Jan of Leyden, laughing, swept out of his palace with his eleven wives. He treated the people to an outdoor feast for which the Elders’ private stores and cellars had been opened. Thousands of people choked the square. Tables were squeezed in. Bonfires roared. Musicians and actors piped and sang, and Jan and the Elders moved among the dazzled throng and served them with food and wine from their own hands. The people stuffed their sunken cheeks and danced in the firelight, intoxicated with the almost forgotten belly-heat of wine. Honor and Pieter watched from the cathedral shadows beyond the bonfires ringing the square. As the people became more drunk, Honor frowned; she and Pieter would have to make their way through this throng to get to the sally port.
