“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 th
roat 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.
The Sea Beggars Page 31
