The Queen's Lady (64 page)

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.

At the height of the celebrations a preacher climbed the palace steps and threw up his arms. “Brothers! Sisters!” The musicians quieted. “The Heavenly Father has revealed His commandment!” cried the preacher. “It is God’s wish that His holy servant, Jan of Leyden, prophet of God, defender of the New Jerusalem, shall reign among us as King of this holy city. King of the New Zion!”

Jan of Leyden sprang up the steps, splendid in silk as orange as the flames lighting him from the square. His eleven wives followed and shuffled into a horseshoe behind him. “Brethren,” he called out, smiling, “God has appointed me King of the whole world. His will be done!”

There was a cheer, and underneath it the whimpering sigh of women. An Elder placed a golden crown on the new King’s head and two pages hurried forward to flank him, one bearing the Old Testament, the other the jeweled Sword of Justice. From his row of wives Jan beckoned forth the former widow of the Prophet, called her his Queen, kissed her, then laughed like a child. The people stamped, ecstatic.

Thunder rumbled. Honor looked up. A storm was brewing.

“Now. We go,” she whispered to Pieter. She took his hand firmly, and together they emerged from the shadows.

Her idea was to skirt the edge of the square then dash for the western gate, but the throng was so dense that the revelers had spilled down into the side streets as well, and Honor and Pieter found they had to push their way through the crush of bodies. Nevertheless, they made good progress and had got three-quarters of the way around the square when they came up against a long table. People were standing and sitting, laughing and eating all along its length. Honor tugged Pieter. “This way,” she whispered.

But Pieter’s eyes were feasting on an aromatic roasted hind end of piglet on the table. He stopped and leaned over to it, ready to tear off a handful. “Forget it,” Honor said, pulling him back.

A woman’s voice sang out, “Aw, let the little one have it, dearie. Why not?” Her laughing red face was slick with sweat.

“That’s right,” a man beside her said. “Plenty for all.” He slapped the table. “Up with you, lad, and help yourself.”

The woman slipped her hands under Pieter’s arms and lifted him against her withered bosom and set him down on the table. “Why, it’s the little God-boy!” she cried. “Look, Hans.”

“So,” the man snorted, “the little piggy wants a taste of piggy, eh? Alright.” He tore off a chunk of the pork and dangled it in front of Pieter’s mouth. “Let’s hear some of that papist piggy talk, boy. Here you go. Let’s hear you pray for it.”

Pieter looked at the succulent piece of meat and licked his lips. Honor stood to one side, unable to do anything. If she created a scene it might prevent her and Pieter from getting away. Pieter didn’t understand the peasants’ German, and she could see that he didn’t know what they were asking of him, though he looked ready to do anything for a bite of the meat.

“That’s right, give us some of your heathen mumbo jumbo,” the woman said with a laugh. “Sing for your supper, boy.” She made an extravagant sign of the cross over Pieter’s chest, ending with a swipe at his crotch. Suddenly, Pieter seemed to understand. He crossed himself to placate them, then grabbed for the meat.

The man snatched it away. “Where’s your manners, bumboy? The lady asked for some mumbo-jumbo.” He made a whining, sing-song parody of a priest saying mass. “Like that.”

Pieter understood. With eyes fixed on the chunk of pork he began to sing a
Kyrie Eleison
in his sweet soprano voice. The man let him have the bite.

Pieter chewed and swallowed and sang again, louder. The couple slapped their thighs and laughed. Others beside them joined in the merriment, and soon Pieter was singing the mass and gulping mouthfuls and frantically crossing himself like a puppet whose handler was pulling too many strings at once.

Honor was sickened. If only they would tire of it and let him go!

Suddenly, a strained voice rose above the clamor. It came from the far side of the square. It was a male voice, loud, and raw with anger. “The King laughs, but tomorrow my children will still be starving!”

At the long tables the people hushed. The sparking of the bonfires was the only sound.

“Brother”—the King smiled across at the man as friend to friend—“this hardship we are undergoing is merely God’s test. The Elect must be proved fit to ascend to His side in heaven.”

There was fevered grinning at the tables as each citizen reamed his heart, desperate to be sure that he was fit.

The King turned to a movement near him. One of his wives, a thin, pale young woman in white, had come forward and was standing at his side. “The man is right,” she said simply to him. “How can we and the Elders live in plenty when the people starve?”

Jan’s face turned livid above the fire glow. He reached behind him for the Sword of Justice. He swung it up, flashing fire, and brought it whistling down on his wife’s neck. Her head was sliced off and rolled down the steps.

There was appalled silence. Honor reached out to cover Pieter’s eyes.

The King wiped his glistening face with his sleeve. The corners of his mouth jerked up. His actor’s voice rang out, clear and irresistible. “‘And power was given unto them over the fourth part of the earth, to kill with the sword!’ Only the sinless shall prevail!”

Silence.

Then, a thin voice wailed, “Praise the King!”

A wild, deafening roar of approval went up. Music surged back to life. The young woman’s bloody head and body were carted away. Dwarfs tumbled. People ate in greasy, frantic handfuls, laughing, electrified by the glory of their exalted status. God’s Elect.

Honor was pulling Pieter off the table when someone yelled, “And death to the sinners!”

The couple who had been laughing a moment ago at Pieter now turned and glowered at him. The man repeated in a growl, “Death to the sinners.”

Honor yanked Pieter to her side. She turned, ready to run, but she saw, only paces away, the thick-necked peasant from the cathedral staring at her. He took a step toward her. She wrenched Pieter’s thin shoulders around in the opposite direction and pushed him past the scowling couple.

She heard the man’s voice behind them, “Don’t let the sinners escape!”

She and Pieter fought forward through the packed bodies. They reached the edge of the square and broke into a run.