‘So I had supposed. Who were they, then?’ asked Hew.
‘Fly by nights, free lancers, looking for a chance; they hoped to turn a profit from your sins. They never meant you harm. For though,’ he added cheerfully, ‘they would have slit your throat, and left you in a ditch, as soon as they grew tired of you, there would have been no malice in it.’
‘That,’ said Hew, ‘is good to know. And yet I do not understand what happened at the inn.’
‘I warned you,’ Robert said, ‘that something wisna right. Papists there, the lot of them. You’d think,’ he snorted in disgust, ‘that with all their chaff and chanting they wad be a bit more cheerful, would ye no’? It was the wee bit lassie that betrayed you.’
‘I thought it was the Welshman,’ whispered Hew. ‘Surely, not the girl.’
‘The lass,’ insisted Robert, ‘who went looking through your things, and saw Jacob’s question book, and kent it for a creed. And did the silly hussy not then take it in her head, that you were one of they preachers, who go about the countryside stirring up the crowd and are a nagging thorn in our Spanish masters’ side. So she goes running to those men, who were camping in her barn, and they imagine there is profit to be had. And she it was, of course, who slipped the potion in your drink.’
‘But Robert,’ Hew objected, ‘You were gone all night.’
‘And so I was, and more the fool, in telling you to bolt the door,’ the soldier answered with a smile. ‘I went out for my piss, and look around the yard, and nothing did I see. Then coming back, I found I couldna wake you from your snores, and so I spent the whole night sleeping in the stables with my horse. And no more did I know of it, until I saw you taken by the Spaniards through the yard.’
‘When you turned your back on me,’ Hew reminded him.
‘You cannot doubt I turned my back. For there were six of them and one of me, and even with the Welshman, I did not like the odds. I gathered up our things, and slipped away, precipitate, for want of better help. The Welshman, for his part, I sent to follow after, to find out where you went. Few men are more useful, than one who knows both sides. He it was who brokered the exchange.’
‘Your pardon, Robert, for I have misjudged you,’ whispered Hew. ‘I thought you were a man for hire.’
‘You do not see it, do you, sir,’ the soldier sighed. ‘For that is what I am. There is a difference, plain and clear, between a man for hire, and a man who lies about the side that he is fighting for. I think you do not follow it. Suppose that in your court, you act for the defence; you do not hope to damn the man, and see that he is hanged. Yet in another case, where you will prosecute, you find yourself upon the hanging side, and no one says that you have turned your coat. You paid me, sir, to see you safe to Ghent, and that is what I mean to do. And if another man should offer me another sum, to stop your passage there, then I should turn it down, just as the lawman in your court will not accept a bribe, to prejudice his case. That does not mean that in another case, he will not fight upon another side. And so it is with soldiering. Each battle is a separate case that I will fight, according to the task, and if I do accept a task, then I will see it through. If I hold your colours, then I work for you. And so, when you were taken hostage at the inn, I rode here to Antwerp for audience with the prince, for he, I knew, would gladly hear your case.’
‘But why,’ asked Hew, ‘the secrecy, the walk, the wood, the horse . . .’
‘With the help of my Welsh friend, we set up an exchange, for a captured Spanish captain and a purse of Spanish gold. You were brought to, and recovered from, a secret, neutral ground.’
‘Then my rescue,’ said Hew, ‘has cost the prince dear.’
Robert Lachlan shrugged. ‘The captain, in the scale of things, had proved of little worth. And yet it was enough, to persuade the band of renegades they took a bigger prize. As to the rest, then you shall hear it from the prince himself, for here he comes.’
The prince had entered with a smile, and Hew attempted to sit up, as Robert Lachlan left the room. ‘I pray you,’ Willem said, in French, ‘do not get up. You see, that now our roles have been reversed, and I find you in bed. You must excuse my deshabille, when first we met; my people have grown used to it, and I forget it must perplex a stranger, to see me holding court like a grande dame in her salon. My physicians have forbidden me to rise before the noon, and yet I find that much can be accomplished still in bed. I have seventeen physicians,’ he concluded with a smile, ‘and I cannot help but think that the time of my recovery, has been protracted by the sum of seventeen.
‘They serve to tell me, nonetheless, that you have not been hurt, which I am pleased to hear.’
‘Your grace,’ said Hew, ‘I thank you, sir, with all my heart, for my safe delivery.’
‘For that,’ the prince replied, ‘you have to thank your servant, Robert Lachlan. Robert is a good man. Once, he saved my life.’
‘You do not mean . . .’ Hew could not help but glance at William’s face. The Prince of Orange touched his cheek with a regretful smile. ‘Alas, it was some other time. I fear my life is held in great account, and is worth far more to others, now, than it can be to me. Then what am I do? Do I turn my people from the gate, when they desire to speak with me, for fear that they will take my life? What sort of man does that, cannot be called their prince.
‘But you are come from Scotland, as I understand. That place is dear to us, and helps us in our cause. Your king is green and young. How does he bear up, in these heavy times?’
‘He is young, sir, as you say,’ admitted Hew. ‘At present he is under thrall, and struggles to hold power. He is susceptible to influence.’
‘God help him, then,’ Prince Willem said, ‘for it is hard to be a prince, and harder still to be a boy. He has not, I think, been blessed with that close loving childhood, which I once enjoyed.’
The comparison placed James in harsh, unflattering light; strutting and hysterical, fearful of attack from strangers and from friends. William’s selfless sacrifice could not be more remote. The thought appeared disloyal, and Hew pushed it from his mind. ‘I cost you a captive, for which I am right sorry, sir,’ he changed the subject quickly.
‘The Spanish captain? He was not worth much,’ the prince conceded generously. ‘It cost us more to feed him than the benefit it brought us to keep him in our care. I understand that you are going to Ghent, on business of the Scottish Crown?’
‘To the begijnhof, there, your grace, if it still stands,’ said Hew.
A shadow crossed the prince’s face. ‘It does, though it is much diminished, and is damaged by these wars. Ghent has a Calvinist republic, of some fierce intensity. It was never my intent, to suppress the Catholic faith; it was never my intent, to persecute and purge. The inhabitants of Ghent are a proud and stubborn band, that fear and fight oppression, and have always suffered for it. They are in danger now, of giving up their town, for the sake of a regime which is too extreme and cruel. Yet one can only do so much,’ he spread his hands. ‘If you will go to Ghent, I cannot promise what you’ll find, but I will do my best to help you on your way. You could, if you wish, ride back towards Sluis, and take the canal from the Sas van Gent; that is the quickest route. But more safe and less conspicuous perhaps, is to take a barge along the river Scheldt, starting here in Antwerp. The river route is longer, and more intricate, yet it will take you there with little fuss. There is a boatman has a barge that sails this afternoon. He lives aboard the lighter with his family, and the quarters may be cramped, yet he will get you there by dawn.’
The prince held out his hand for Hew to kiss, that Hew received in awe, to brush before his lips, and later on that day, he went with Robert Lachlan to a mooring on the Scheldt, and from the quiet river bank set off at last for Ghent.
Chapter 21
The Spinsters of Ghent
The Scheldt wound its slow and peaceful way to Ghent, through soft flattened marshlands and flax fields lined with windmills, where Hew and Robert Lachlan fo
llowed in a Flemish boatman’s barge. Beyond the city walls they glimpsed the high tower of the belfry, the churches and cathedral; the Gravensteen and citadel stood harsh and sober garrisons, a grim reminder of the forced suppression of the town. The walls did not enclose the city as a whole, for the confluence of rivers formed a part of its defence, and Hew saw a bewildering array of locks and ports and gatehouses, where the level of the water flow controlled the passage of the boats. A hundred bridges opened up and closed, and the crisscross of the rivers and remains of the canals divided up the city into scores of islands, circled by waters of deep brackish green. The honey strands of flax left retting in the dew had mellowed to the palest grey, that gave the land the look of sheets of water, and the scent of clover, wheat and liniment. Down river, where the retting sheaves had choked the river bed, the flax had ripened to an acrid pungency, distempered in the waters of the sluggish Leie.
As the boat came in to dock, Robert Lachlan said, ‘The begijnhof is on the north-west outreach of the city, near the road to Bruges. I will walk with you as far as the gate, and ask after Beatrix. Tis likely they will have a sister there who will interpret for you, if it turns out Beatrix kens no French. There was a time when all the nuns spoke French, and Latin too. Those days are past, I doubt; the convent is much smaller now.’
‘But are you not to come with me?’ asked Hew.
Robert swore. ‘Not I. I lack the softness and the manners that can converse with them, as I confess, the sisters in their veils and hoods unnerve me; I cannot think it natural to see so many women draped and gathered in black cowls. I have had a horror of it since I was a bairn, for then I had a soul. Their habit of the veil sore plagues and vexes me.’
‘What? Afeared of nuns? When you would face the Spanish in the field and fall into a bar room brawl without a qualm?’ teased Hew. ‘Afeared of nuns!’
‘What sane man would not be?’ argued Robert. ‘With their bobbins and their pillows and their pricking and their pins, their spinning and their stitching, they make any man’s flesh creep. And when you gasp your last in the infirmary they flutter round like devils dressed in black, like spinsters, like spiders. Is it not so much a fear, as an antipathy. It is part of it, the sense that they want to save my soul. Tis fearsome as a clutch of lassies wanting you to marry them. But worse than that,’ he shuddered, ‘is when they do not want to marry you, for most of them are married yet to God, though there’s ay but one or two of them that slip away.’
‘Like Beatrix,’ Hew reflected.
‘Aye, like Beatrix,’ agreed Robert. ‘And, God knows, I do not have the words to speak to her, in Flemish or in Scots. That wants a light touch, a lass’, or yours.’
‘I am obliged to you for the comparison.’
‘Ye ken fine well enough,’ said Robert, ‘what it is I mean. The lassie will greet, and I can’t abide that.’
‘You are as soft as butter,’ Hew said sternly, ‘for all your swagger and your roar. A soldier, feared of nuns!’
‘And you are green as kale,’ Robert Lachlan scowled. ‘There is no man alive that does not tremble at the sisterhood. Now, to the gate, and there my part is done.’
They had come upon the gatehouse, across a wooden bridge, for the convent was itself a little island, enclosed within its own high walls and moat, a closed and private enclave, in a city full of citadels. Robert stood for what seemed an age in conversation with the portress, before he stood aside at last and motioned Hew to pass.
‘There is a old nun, Sister Agnietje, will take you to the house of the grande dame – the groot juffer, as they cry her,’ he explained.
‘Is that, then, the mother superior?’ queried Hew.
‘Something of the sort, though they do not call her that. She is elected from the sisters of their own accord, and not imposed upon them by their church – by what little they have left now, of their church. Go with Sister Agnietje, and she will sort the rest. I telt her that you come from Scotland, and have news for Beatrix, nothing more.’
‘That was a long time in the telling,’ noticed Hew.
‘Aye? The sisters lead a sheltered life here,’ Robert Lachlan grinned. ‘So it is only mannerly, to spend some time in courtesies. When she is close enclosed, she is bound to miss the crack.’
‘It seems,’ said Hew, ‘that you have overcome your fear of nuns.’
‘Tis the aulder ones that fright me,’ Robert answered cheerfully. ‘For no doubt I was flyted by one, when I was a bairn. But yon’s a braw wee lassie – Marthe, is her name. The plain one, as I doubt? She disna suit the name. And so I was for telling her, for it is good with nuns, to quote the gospels to them. Tis a thing they like. And like it she did, and a bonny wee thing in her blush. She’s used to working in the gardens, but she hurt her hand, and the infirmer telt her to rest. This is her first day on the gate.’
‘And Beatrix?’ Hew reminded him.
‘Oh, aye. She is here, too, right enough.’
‘And you are quite sure, Robert, that you will not come?’
‘Not for the world. By your leave, sir, I have done what you did ask, and brought you to the nunnery. Nothing would persuade me to go further in. I will go to an inn, sir, and find us a room. The best are in the corn market.’
The portress left them at the gate, returning in a moment with an aged nun, whose eyes were bright within her withered cheeks, dry and creased like paper. ‘Sister Agnietje,’ Robert’s conquest beamed, her cheeks still faintly flushed.
‘That’s Agnes,’ Robert grinned, ‘to you and me.’ Agnes looked as if she could have been a hundred years of age, shrunk inside her habit to the stature of a child. She did not speak, but took Hew by the hand. Robert grinned. ‘Good luck!’
Hew had thought that the begijnhof would be something like the college of St Salvator, austere and silent cloisters, shuttered from the world. It was not as he expected, for instead he found a labyrinth of whitewashed walls and houses built of red and yellow stone that sheltered in the autumn sunlight; there were gates within gates, and walls within walls, each one opening out onto quiet paths and gardens, knots of herbs and willow trees, here a fountain or a hedge, and there a bench or arbour planted in the shade. Beyond the high brick walls were vines and orchards, wintering plums and cherry trees, rows of figs and pears. The stripping of their fruit and leaves did not disguise the beauty of the trees, that stretched and bared their branches high behind the safety of the walls, protected from the wind. In summer, Hew imagined, they hung ripe and flush with fruit, and light with blossom in the spring. Between the orchard and the square there was a drying green, and a dozen nuns were pegging out clean sheets, soaped and scrubbed and rinsed out in the grey, still moat. The air was scented warm and singed, with hops and flax, and honeyed bread and spices baked upon a fire. And in spite of the industry Hew saw around him – the washing and the drying and the rooting of the pig, the scattering of barleycorn among the scrabbling hens – the begijnhof had a stillness and tranquillity that struck him with new force at every twist and turn; the painted doors and windows netted with white lace, the neatly tended gardens and rows of knotted herbs, a world at peace, in miniature, sheltered from the crowd. It was seclusion, not confinement, and less a shunning or a shying from the world, than a simple, pure integrity, which set the place apart, as of itself, alone. It was quite unlike any other place where Hew had been. He did not feel unsettled there, as Robert Lachlan feared, but restful and at peace, though whether it was yet the quiet, yellow stone of the little town and gardens set round the square, or by grace of those who lived in them, he could not have told. Sister Agnietje held him by the hand, her own hand dry and fragile, like a leaf in his, and warmed him with her smile.
He followed through a maze of walls and wooden doors, through lintels and stone archways engraved with names of saints, until they came to a fine house in the centre of a close, lined with rows of trees. This he supposed was the huis van de grootjuffer, the house of the mother superior. Agnietje led him through the cou
rtyard to a sunlit room, simply furnished, in the plainest style. The nun sat on a high-backed chair, surrounded by a circle of small girls, one of whom stood at the grande dame’s shoulder, reading from a book. The child stopped and stared as Sister Agnietje approached. She spoke a few words in Flemish, beckoning to Hew. The grande dame clapped her hands. ‘Allez, vite, mes enfants!’ The small girls scrambled to their feet, and formed a solemn line by Sister Agnietje. Hew replied in French, ‘Ma dame, I have disturbed the lesson, je vous en prie, I pray you, do go on.’
‘Not at all,’ the grande dame said. ‘The reading hour is now complete. And they will go with Agnietje, who teaches them to spin.’
Hew turned towards the little nun Agnietje, and thanked her as he bowed. She did not respond.
‘She does not understand you,’ said the grand dame with a smile, ‘for sister Agnietje, for all the years that she has spent here, has never learned to speak French. And she does not see you, for she is almost blind.’
Hew exclaimed, ‘I could not tell!’
‘Agnietje has lived here for sixty years. And she knows every turn and path, for here in the beguinage, there is little change. She does not venture out beyond these walls.’
‘But how, then, can she teach these little girls to spin?’
‘It is a long time,’ the nun acknowledged, ‘since Agnietje has made lace. Yet she can spin the finest thread, of any sister in the beguinage. She spins the thread by touch. The flax is all the better spun in rooms of darkness, for the graze of sunlight glancing off the fibres breaks the brittle thread. The flax is spun like gossamer, a fineness and a lightness that makes the threads invisible on all except the blackest cloth. Her blindness is no hindrance in her craft; it is, perhaps, a gift.
‘Walk, Katheline,’ she admonished a small child, too anxious to be out among her friends. The girl dropped a curtsey, ‘Pardon, ma dame Ursula.’
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