‘Conscience? That doesn’t sound like the Robert Cecil I know.’
‘It’s close to the truth – and that is the best cover I can have.’
That evening, as they eat salted fish and hard bread beneath the darkening sky, the herring buss rolling with a motion that has Bianca feeling permanently queasy, Nicholas asks Jan van der Molen how it is that a Protestant still calls a Catholic town his home. Just as they have since leaving Woodbridge, they communicate with a rugged but efficient mishmash of Dutch and English.
‘I could have left with all the other Lutherans and Calvinists – gone north into Holland,’ Jan says. ‘But I was born in Den Bosch. I’m damned if I’ll leave simply because the King of Spain, the Bishop of Rome or the Holy Roman Emperor says I must believe in their heresies.’
‘Do they not persecute you?’ Nicholas asks.
‘We keep our voices low and our faith to ourselves: those of us who remain. On the surface, we pretend to be good Catholics. But inside – well, you don’t eat a fine plump herring for the skin, do you?’
When Nicholas translates this for Bianca, she laughs. After six years in Protestant England she knows exactly what he means.
Like all fishermen, van der Molen is at heart an optimist. It is only in the afternoon of the second day following their sighting of land that a town slowly begins to emerge from that hazy membrane between earth and sky. It appears to be moving slowly across the flat land, propelled by little wheels that turn out – as they draw closer – to be the turning sails of a multitude of windmills.
The little vessel moors in the shadow of the Pickepoort, a magnificent multi-spired gatehouse set into the Den Bosch ramparts. Beyond the sloping walls and the modern brick bastions, the slate roofs of fine houses and the slender spires of churches pierce the wide summer sky. Nicholas tries again to offer Jan van der Molen money. He refuses. ‘It might be wiser if you avoid the obvious lodging places,’ he says. ‘The owners like to keep in with the Spanish by reporting on the movements of newcomers.’
‘Where would you suggest?’
‘Why, my house, of course. If you don’t want the citizens of Den Bosch to think all Englishmen and their wives stink of gutted herring, you’ll need the services of my Gretie and her washing tub.’
With a grateful smile, Nicholas hoists the bags over his shoulder and nods to Bianca to follow. As he crosses the wooden bridge into the town and the shadow of the Pickepoort swallows him, he has the sense that his exile has truly begun.
Across town, Hella Maas sits in the doorway of a merchant’s house in the Markt square, huddled in her Beguine’s gown. She holds her arms tight around her body, like a vagrant trying to stay warm in winter. The stone step is brutally hard against her flesh. She is hungry. She hasn’t eaten much above a stolen bun for days, and she aches as though she’s been beaten. She takes in the scene before her in stiff jerks of her head, as though she fears calamity might pounce the moment she relaxes her guard. She studies the fine façade of the cathedral of St John the Evangelist, and the surrounding merchants’ houses with their zigzag eaves like dragons’ teeth or a flight of stairs, seen end-on. She envies the pigeons that fly up to settle upon them, because – if she could follow – she would climb those stairs into the pale-pink wash of the Brabant evening and sit with the angels amongst the clouds.
That is where Hella has imaged her sister, Hannie, and her parents have been sitting for the past thirteen years – where they will sit for all eternity. But now she knows differently. They are suffering a never-ending torment, the like of which she has never imagined even in her worst nightmares. And it is all her fault.
From her vantage point she has a good view across the square to the front of the cathedral of St John the Evangelist. She watches the burghers and their families, their faces solemn yet expectant, disappear inside. When she closes her eyes the image of the great Gothic façade remains etched into her mind. So too does the image that she knows lies within.
Why, she wonders, has God not seared the truth of it into the eyes of the congregation, the way He has into hers? How can they go willingly into the cathedral, see what she has seen and come out again as though there is nothing amiss? Why do they not fall to their knees and weep in terror?
She tilts her face towards the sun, thinking she might stare straight into it, so that the image of hell that is so dazzlingly clear to her might be burned away. In the moment before Hella’s eyes fill with blinding sunlight, a dark shadow falls across the doorway in which she crouches. She senses someone standing over her, though all she can make out is a blurred silhouette. And then the silhouette speaks.
Hella recognizes the voice at once. It is a voice from her past, deep and masculine. A voice she had thought she would never hear again. A voice from a time of sorrow.
‘Well, little Hella, I should have thought to find you here, so close to God’s house,’ it says. ‘Do we have time left in which to speak? Or is Judgement Day already at hand?’
10
For three days Nicholas and Bianca lodge with Jan van der Molen, his wife Gretie and their strapping twins Johannes and Willem, who clamour endlessly to be allowed to accompany their father on his next voyage even though they have yet to reach their tenth birthday. The family occupies the lower two floors of a narrow-fronted, five-storeyed house beside the Binnendieze. Its back wall is a cliff of brick descending into the canal. The window of the guest chamber gives only three possible views, all limited: a sliver of sky, a slash of dark water beneath their washed clothes drying on a rope beneath the sill, or the wall of the house opposite. But the hospitality is unstinting. Though not rich, the van der Molens can offer their guests a plentiful supply of eggs and cheeses, tasty meat pies and sweet appeltaerten. Salted herring, it seems, can sustain a man only so far.
On the third day Bianca can no longer disregard the ache that troubles her. It is not an ache of the bones, but of the soul. And it has got worse since the day she first entered Den Bosch.
‘I haven’t prayed before a Catholic altar since I left Padua,’ she tells Nicholas. ‘The last time I made confession was when Cardinal Fiorzi came secretly to London. I need to seek absolution.’
‘Shall I remain here?’ Nicholas enquires.
‘No. Come with me. If you’re going to pass for a recusant, you ought at least to be familiar with the interior of a Catholic church.’
Nicholas knows exactly what Robert Cecil would say about him accompanying her: that he is endangering his immortal soul even by setting foot inside such a place. That the Roman Mass – and all the flummery that attends it – is nothing but the Antichrist’s means of luring foolish folk to their eternal damnation. And that the so-called priests who perform it do so only to line their purses, stealing the hard-earned coin of those too simple to see they’re being gulled.
For his own part, having lost his first wife, Eleanor, and the child she was carrying, he has asked himself too many questions about God’s plan to find an easy way back to Him. He has read a little Lucretius. He knows that he is not the first man in the world to doubt the existence of the Almighty. But there again, why should he not accompany his wife if she has need of spiritual comfort? And she is right about his need of education.
When he asks Jan van der Molen, the Brabantine nods in approval. ‘The burghers will expect it of you both, if you’re not to raise too many eyebrows,’ he says, assuming that the request is part of his guests’ need to pass themselves off as papists. ‘Even more necessary if you plan to make a living here.’ He claps Nicholas on the shoulder. ‘God will know what is truly in your heart. He does not expect us all to be martyrs.’