The City of Tears by Kate Mosse

Author:Kate Mosse
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: St. Martin's Publishing Group

CHAPTER FORTY-NINE

The setting sun was painting the tops of the towers of Sint Antoniespoort a burning red when Piet rushed into the attic room at the top of the house.

‘Is it true? Is Alis here?’

Minou looked up from her sister’s bedside and smiled. ‘Yes. Salvadora would say it was a miracle.’

Piet glanced at Alis lying still beneath the covers. ‘When did she arrive?’

Minou looked out through the small, square window and saw it was nearly sunset.

‘Early in the afternoon.’

Piet’s face was creased with worry. ‘Is she hurt? Ill?’

‘She is exhausted. She fainted, so we carried her up here. She’s been sleeping ever since.’ Minou paused. ‘I sent Frans to Lastage to fetch you some hours ago.’

Piet ignored her unasked question. ‘And she’s said nothing in all that time? About where she has been or how she—’

‘Nothing.’ Minou put her hand out and touched the tapestry. ‘Do you remember this, Piet? Alis managed to carry it all the way from Puivert.’

For an instant, Minou closed her eyes, remembering how the light fell on the tapestry hanging in the solar in Puivert while her family talked and lived beneath its gaze. The colours were faded now, but the vibrancy and movement in the stitching was unchanged. The Reydon-Joubert family in their finest clothes. She and Piet adorned in gold thread and silver and jewelled beads, with two-year-old Jean-Jacques in velvet breeches with his wooden rattle and seven-year-old Marta in her vivid blue dress and favourite cap with red stitching.

She opened her eyes to the Amsterdam dusk. ‘Where have you been, Piet? Frans said he couldn’t find you.’

Piet looked around, as if fearing to be overheard, then closed the door and the window. But for the expression on his face, Minou might have laughed at the idea that their conversation at the top of the house could possibly be overheard in the street.

‘Change is coming,’ Piet said, his voice stiff with anticipation. ‘Hendrick Dircksz is under pressure at last.’

Minou joined him at the window. ‘Is he no longer in charge of the town council?’

‘For now, the Stadhuis is still under his control, but his influence is declining. The massacres in Naarden, in Haarlem, the wholesale slaughter of women and children by Spanish troops, these crimes are not forgotten. Dircksz held out for too long against signing the Satisfaction. Even now, he refuses to comply with many of the terms.’

‘Why did he agree to sign at all?’

‘The “Beggars” forced him to at the point of a sword. But –’ Piet was warming to his theme – ‘by continuing to support the Spanish occupation against the Prince of Orange – when every other major city in the north and west of the Province has joined the Revolt – Dircksz is destroying Amsterdam’s prosperity. Too many ships pass us by these days in favour of Baltic ports. Merchants are moving their warehouses to England and Denmark.’

‘Commerce, then,’ Minou observed, ‘rather than sovereignty or faith.’

‘Dircksz and his fellow burgomasters bowed to commercial pressure, yes. But if they continue to deny us our churches, they must go.

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