The Dutch (9 page)

The family maintained the independence of their land because each early lord learned from his predecessors; while other more powerful domains and whole nation states succumbed, the Droger Land remained relatively independent and under the control of the family for five hundred years. It survived events like the Saxon exodus to England by knowing when a massive bribe of food would divert a desperate fleeing horde around the homeland. Even the victorious Frisians, after defeating the Roman Army, found themselves bound by marriage and trade to respect the autonomy of what they knew was a former Roman entity. It wasn't really until the fourth century that the family's survival skills were really highlighted. As sea levels suddenly rose again, causing the depopulation of vast areas of the Netherlands, the family met this challenge of nature. It used its military strength, generosity, and engineering skills to protect the homeland from the rising waters and the social unrest all around it. While entire provinces fled inland or took flight on ships, the Weirs built the first earthen barriers in Holland to protect precious farmland. To avoid conflict, desperate neighbors who were departing were peacefully supplied with an abundant amount of food for their journey.

In the sixth century everyone in the Droger Land, including the ruling family, worshiped the Saxon god Seaxneat, known as the Sword or Creator god and the godmother Verthus, who it was said gave women the power of birth and healing. The family truly believed in these deities. In 496 A.D., the Frankish King Clovis, who ruled most of Germany and parts of the Netherlands, converted to Christianity. The Catholic Religion had little support in the Low Countries where Seaxneat, Verthus and even Woden were worshiped by Clovis's non-Frankish subjects. This powerful king now demanded his Lowland subject's convert to Christianity. The Weir family was content with their ancient gods that had promised that the family's reign would continue for eternity. Yet, they understood the drastic ramifications of disobeying the will of this brutal warrior monarch.

After much procrastination, the Droger Land accepted the new religion, while other more powerful local entities openly rebelled and were destroyed by Clovis who championed the Catholic Faith. A duchy within Clovis' domain was any reasonable size territory ruled on the king's behalf. The word duke was of Germanic derivative, referring to any warrior-lord the king appointed to govern in his stead. To reward the Van Weir's conversion, King Clovis confirmed the Droger Land would be a Duchy but awarded the family patriarch only the title of Baron. King Clovis thought the Droger Land too small and insignificant to be ruled by a Duke.

On the night before the acceptance of Catholicism, the family gathered in the lord's forest to bid the old gods farewell and worship them one last time. Under sacred trees within the lord's forest, they told those deities they were saddened this wondrous land they had created became inhospitable to the creator gods. They promised the ancient gods the family and its future generations would remember them and keep the commitment to be good stewards of the land they conceived. They beseeched the old gods to understand that the universe, the one that they and the family knew so well, was changing. They told the ancient deities that they hoped it might one day change again and the old gods could return. In the interim, the family had faith that the ancient gods would find a way to assist them from wherever the gods resided. The Weir's were confident those deities would continue to aid them for eternity, even from afar.

After being humiliated by this forced conversion, the family never felt comfortable with the Catholic Religion and would feud for two hundred years over the new Church's authority and influence within the realm. They had some leverage after a Baron of the Droger Land and his retainers were on the shield wall with Charles Martel, when Martel turned back the Moslem threat to Europe. The Drogerlanders were repeatedly helpful in subjugating the still heathen Frisians who maintained the religion of their forefathers long after most of Western Europe had converted to Christianity. Since the Duchy had championed Christian causes in times of great need, even the ever-growing powerful Catholic Church was wary of direct confrontation with this influential family. The family, who understood power, saw this new church as a rival for the hearts and loyalty of their people. The family preferred their old gods, and found this new Catholic religion demanded too much worship, too much allegiance and too much financial support. The family successfully refused attempts by the Catholic Church to appropriate land for churches and monasteries. It donated only enough acreage for the construction of a modest church and small chapel on the Droger Land itself. Over a next few centuries, a number of over-zealous priests suffered “accidental' deaths or “disappeared” following confrontations with the ruling family. The family privately thought the ancient gods intervened when excommunication and an end to their rule, loomed on the horizon because of the antagonism.

The first Viking raids in the eighth century swiftly ended those controversies, when members of the prominent Catholic hierarchy in Holland fled from the wrath of the invading Norsemen. As the Vikings settled permanently on the coast, the flight became a flood of Catholic refugees. The family helped bishops, priests and nuns escape the Norsemen and make their way to safety to the east. Pope Eugene II, the Church's 99th Pope, issued a proclamation in 826 A.D., making all Christian Lords of the Droger Land, “Defenders of the Faith.” That piece of paper helped keep the power of the church in-check for the next seven hundred years until the Protestant Reformation solved the problem.

The Weir family found the Viking invaders brutal but practical men who soon discovered that even long ships could not penetrate the marshlands. The Vikings lost a number of strong raiding parties that were annihilated by the feisty defender of the Droger Land. In desperation, the Viking war lord on the coast hired a Berserker war band of four hundred ravenous drug induced warriors to lead the next attempted invasion. These Viking supermen, known to sometimes act more like beast than men in battle were also unsuccessful. The waist high water of the marshes inhibited the power of their charges. It allowed the arrows of the Droger Land defenders to pierce their bare chests as if they were mortal men. The Berserkers, kept from firm ground, were decimated in the water and few returned alive to the coast. The Vikings decided reluctantly that it might be more appropriate to trade with, rather than plunder the defenders. An almost cordial relationship developed between neighboring Viking chieftains and the Weir family. During the hundred and twenty years of Viking occupation in Holland, Viking genes assimilated into the Weir family tree, not by rape or subjugation, but through a series of arranged marriages. A number of beautiful and bright Viking girls, the daughters of high chieftains, became matriarchs of the newly named v
an
Weir Family, as they were referred to in respect by the Norsemen.

During those “Dark Ages” all the van Weir patriarchs made great efforts to improve the material defenses of the realm. A sizeable town had developed across the common green from the keep. The town was enclosed by strong walls and the keep became the Lord's Castle when a moat and drawbridge were completed atop the old Roman fortification.

It became a very strong castle when a larger gate house and an inner curtain with supporting towers were constructed. The two watchtowers at each end of the Droger Land were enclosed by stone walls making each a formidable fortification able to garrison soldiers and offer places of refuge for the growing population. In the twelfth century the family felt relatively safe, as they were protected by water and the existing fortifications, along with the fact they had carefully nurtured relationships with neighbors. These conditions, in 1189, allowed the family's oldest son and heir to accompany Philip II of France on a Crusade. This lord and his retainers fought valiantly for Richard the Lion Hearted of England when Richard captured Cyprus. They also gained recognition for their courage when the Crusaders captured the important city of Acre. However politics ended their stay in the Holy Land, when the then new Lord of the Droger Land, after his father's death, sided with the French King Phillip in his ongoing feud with the English king. The new Baron returned to Europe with Phillip and arrived home laden with plunder and a respect for the advanced culture of the East.

In the thirteenth century, events beyond the control of the Van Weirs made the Duchy harder to defend. Land reclamation was championed across the Netherlands as a way of adding farmland. The new dykes built along the coast and the sheer volume of similar projects by neighbors reduced the width of the marshlands which protected the Duchy in the north. The revival of the Frisian Monarchy left little room to antagonize any Dutch allies or even Frisian friends and enemies for reclaiming land needed to feed their populations. Over the next few decades, the van Weir's watched as a third of their beloved marshlands disappeared and neighbors inched closer to the Duchy. The van Weir's knew that had the original deities remained, those gods would never have let such things happen.

The sight of this beautiful girl, freezing to death before his eyes, led a reasonable young man like Henri to make the worst possible decision one could make. He attempted to slide down the ice covered slip to reach her. Slide he did, as he skidded past the maiden and crashed through the broken ice into the cold water. The freezing water aroused his own survival instincts, and with difficulty he pulled himself from the river, picked up the frozen girl, and began struggling to reach the top of the slip. The steep slope of ice became an almost insurmountable barrier. His new soft leather boots became his only tool for survival on the frost-covered slip. While holding the girl in his arms, he balanced himself on one leg and kicked a notch with his free foot through the upper sheet of ice and through the underlying layers of earlier ice and snow. Henri's kick-and-step approach allowed him to gradually climb the embankment, but each kick damaged his now congealing feet while the bitter cold wind afflicted both their bodies. To make matters worse, they were being pelted by a sudden recurrence of freezing rain before they reached the midway point of the slip.

By the time they reached the top, the sleet had frozen them together as a single icy entity that staggered the last fifty yards to the sanctuary of Henri's cabin. He used the frozen cord of the girl's hanging crucifix to manipulate the door's latch, for his hands and arms had grown numb around the shivering maiden. The door finally opened and they fell to the floor in front of the warm fire place. The nude girl had enough composure to mutter in French, “Kind sir, you must treat me like a lady.” The heat from the fireplace helped Henri break from their frozen embrace and after thawing his hands in a kettle of warm water he was able to at least clumsily grasp objects. He threw wood, rather than slower burning peak on the fire and poured some warm ale into the girl's mouth. While continuing to shiver uncontrollably, she immediately threw up the brew along with a huge amount of river water. He slapped some of the melting ice from her body, first from her head, her breasts, and a huge cluster around her most private area. He then poured the remaining warm water from the kettle over her near frozen hands and feet. He dried her off as well as he could, carefully placing her nude body on his bed, and covered her with every woolen blanket he possessed.

With great effort, he removed the frozen boots from his swelling feet and ripped off his remaining wet clothing, joining the girl under the blankets. Henri massaged the girl's arms and legs and torso, ignoring her cries of pain, until her body turned from pure white to a more normal red tone. His efforts to warm the girl raised his own body temperature and soon excruciating pain came from his defrosting feet, which were now swelling and bleeding from the abuse they suffered on the trek up the slip. Despite the agony, he found himself stiffening which caused him, a moral young man, a more severe type of discomfort. He was at first embarrassed and then pleased when he noticed the girl had fallen into a deep sleep. Almost cowardly, he allowed his exhausted mind and body to collapse into unconsciousness. The naked girl next to him became an imaginary participant in his first sexual experience, but only in his tired dreams.

The next morning he was awakened by the faint conversations of a cluster of women nearby. The oldest matron, a local midwife, was applying an herbal ointment to his feet. The ointment had an alcohol base, and although the woman was gentle, Henri cringed each time the ointment or her fingers came in contact with his toes. He had severely damaged or torn off all his toenails on the slip. At first, Henri failed to notice that the Ice Princess was holding his hand. Fully clothed, in garments too large for her, she seemed drained but in good physical shape and still breathtakingly beautiful. Her healthy presence calmed him and he relaxed and drifted back to sleep and again dreamed of his new companion. In this next dream, they were both clothed and occasionally exchanged occasional innocent but affectionate glances.

When he awakened later, night had returned, and the room was lit only by candlelight and the glow of the fireplace. Mrs. Rudderman sat by his bed and smiled as he opened his eyes. She had prepared an herbal tea for him that was spiked with sarsaparilla, which he found tasted quite delicious. Henri faced the matron's pleasing silent stare until she volunteered an answer to the question he found difficult to ask.

“I made her take rest, Henri; she had been in the water a long time before she reached the shore.”

Henry softly asked, “Who is she?”

Mrs. Rudderman replied, “I don't know for sure, but there were Franciscan priests and French sailors out in the storm early this morning searching for her, or her remains, but none of our neighbors betrayed her to those papists.”

Mrs. Rudderman paused, “Reylana, she speaks French with a Spanish accent. I think she might be a novitiate on the run, which is enough reason to give her shelter.”

The matron then began filling a bowl with stew and placed it near Henri while placing an almost motherly hand on his head. “Tomorrow we will learn more about her. The storm was still howling when she walked all the way to the main house in bare feet, to get help for you. It was obvious she was very weak from her ordeal! She seems more concerned about your safety than her own.” Mrs. Rudderman continued, “I think she could be a Morisco, even with her blond hair and light complexion, maybe a descendant of someone once held captive by the Moors.”

The plight and persecution of the Spanish Moriscos (Muslims who had voluntarily converted to the Catholic faith) would have drawn little sympathy in Rotterdam at this time. Most Dutch people felt that this particular Spanish persecution appropriate even under the banner of the hated Inquisition, for they believed that the followers of Islam were a threat to all Christianity. Netherlanders, like all Christians in Europe, were wary of the powerful Ottoman Empire. They distrusted former Spanish Muslims who were forced by Christian conquest to become followers of Christ. They were particularly suspicious of those who maintained their Muslin names, wore traditional Muslim dress, and continued to speak Arabic while publicly professing to be fellow Christians. The Islamic threat always loomed on the horizon and the people of Europe were fearful of being betrayed from within.

As the Catholic Church began combating the Reformation, it had begun using the same tactics of the Morisco Inquisition against Protestants, which made some new believers less resentful of the Arab converts. That very year a great council of Catholic leaders had met in Trent for the second time to turn back the Reformation. At the insistence of Charles V, the Holy Roman Emperor, Protestant leaders were invited and they arrived with two nonnegotiable demands. The first and most important demand, that all Bishops be released from the oath of obedience to the Pope. The second required that the decisions of any high church council be deemed above those of the Papacy. Together, these demands were the ultimate challenge to Papal infallibility. All Europe knew when these demands were rejected outright, that the full power of the Catholic Counter-Reformation and the might of the Inquisition would be directed against the Protestant heretics. The actions taken by the Papist would soon make Protestants more sympathetic to the plight of the Moriscos, although like most European Christians, most Dutch people had been indifferent or in-agreement when the other prominent group of non-believers, the Jews, were persecuted and eventually expelled from Spain fifty years earlier.

Yet, some of the wealthiest Jewish refugees had found asylum in Holland. They were allowed to immigrate to a few enlightened and tolerant Dutch cities whose nobles appreciated their talent for building wealth. Soon their contributions were obviously helping the economic growth of those cities. Relatively small groups of Jews assimilated, prospered and became accepted over time. Reylana's beauty, apparent Visigoth ancestry, and the ability to speak French would now allow her entrance into any of the growing Protestant communities in the Netherlands. Being so far removed from her Moorish roots, she too would also have that opportunity to settle in safety.

That morning, Mrs. Rudderman, as promised, accompanied by Reylana, brought Henri a hearty breakfast and fresh dressings for his battered feet. Reylana was now attired in new and well fitting clothes similar to those worn by the daughter of any prosperous noble family in Rotterdam, and only her beauty distinguished her from any other wealthy Dutch girl. Once Henri had eaten and his bandages changed, the girl told a remarkable story. While occasionally pausing, searching for an appropriate French word, she softly told of the events which led to her arrival in Rotterdam. She started by telling Johanna and Henri that her father was a successful jewelry merchant from Valencia and a man gifted in the arts. Her ancestors had voluntarily converted to Catholicism in the early thirteenth century, when the area was conquered by the Christian King Jaime I of Aragon. For over two hundred years they owned a large hacienda outside the city of Valencia and were active members of the Catholic Church. Their farming hacienda was adjacent to a Franciscan convent, where Reylana and her mother regularly attended mass. Her father contributed generously to the convent and supported the good sister's work on behalf of the area's poor. Reylana said one of her childhood joys was to bring sweet water to the appreciative nuns as they tilled the dry soil around the convent, growing food for themselves and the needy.

She went on to explain that fifty years earlier, when the king and queen were shamefully expelling the Jews from Spain, Valencia and the Inquisition was at the center of those activities. The port city became an embarkation point for Spanish Jews who refused to renounce their beliefs and were ordered to leave Spain. After the last of Spain's Jews converted or departed, she said the Inquisition became less active. The area became more prosperous for the local people had acquired Jewish property and land at ridiculously low prices. Fearing a similar fate, most of the conquered Moors in the area voluntarily converted to Christianity. As a result, Reylana's home town was equally divided between long-term Catholics families like her own, and the Moriscos whose conversions were much more recent. She said that after the Moors converted; Valencia became peaceful and tranquil, lacking any social strife or disorder.

She related how those peaceful times changed when the Pope appointed a Jesuit as the new Bishop of Valencia. With the support of the King and royal officials, the new bishop re-instituted the Inquisition and targeted Morisco landowners and other wealthy Moriscos merchant families for not being true believers. If a family were accurately or falsely charged with being secret followers of Islam, their home would be ransacked and the targeted Morisco family killed. All property found would be confiscated and divided among the church and the crown. These confiscations became an important source of new wealth for each group. Since few of the accused families actually survived these attacks, victims seldom had a chance to profess their innocence, which made the Inquisitors and their collaborators even bolder. Soon the older Catholic families with unblemished reputations for piety were also being attacked. With tears in her eyes, she vividly described how a single day, nearly two years earlier had changed her life forever. She was returning home with her chaperone and found her parents and grandparents murdered and learned a mob was searching for her. The chaperone took Reylana to the convent where she found sanctuary with the nuns. For over a year, the Jesuit Bishop, who wanted her for trial, negotiated with the Mother Superior of the Franciscan nuns, who was truly attempting to save her life and soul. In the end, an agreement was reached where Reylana would renounce her inheritance and enter the Franciscan novitiate. The authorities would allow her safe passage to a convent in Brussels, with a provision that if she ever returned to Spain she would be put to death. Reylana said she was on the final leg of that journey, when a winter storm forced the French Carrack that was transporting her to seek safe anchorage in Rotterdam. She impulsively decided to escape by jumping onto the packed ice and sprinting to an unknown fate, while the ship's crew was preoccupied with the storm. A patch of weak ice interrupted her near perfect getaway and sent her plunging into the estuary. The fight for survival in the ultra cold water stripped away her clothes and possessions, except for the simple wooden crucifix she received from her late father.

Mrs. Rudderman listened intently to the girl and accepted her story for she wanted to believe what she had heard. The newer Calvinist beliefs, which Johanna was beginning to explore, taught her that all things were preordained by God. The Lord had taken her husband but had given her Henri, the type of young man any mother would want for a son, and now the same God was giving her the beautiful Reylana, who would make a wonderful daughter.

Henri realistically recognized that certain parts of Reylana's story did not make sense, but the fire that burned within him for the girl made the discrepancies meaningless. He did know from his sea captain friends that Valencia was anything but a quiet and peaceful place. They city had the reputation of being the most rancorous port in the world. He also knew that a decade earlier, open warfare had erupted between nobles and guild members, and even the King's Viceroy with a garrison of Spain's best soldiers, had a hard time restoring order in the region. It was also well known that the merchants, such as the girl's father, were strong supporters of the guilds that produced the merchandise they sold. They had also been accused of financing the conflict because the traditional nobility opposed every attempt the wealthy merchants made to purchase noble status. No, Valencia was not the peaceful place she described, but it was a good story. Henri was more than willing to set aside his doubts and accept a few harmless lies. Since the first time he saw her miraculous appearance at the slip, he knew he wanted her forever.