XXXVII
When Nele and Soetkin returned from Bruges, they found Claes in the kitchen, sitting on the floor like a tailor, sewing buttons on an old pair of breeches. Titus Bibulus Schnouffius barked his welcome; Claes smiled, and Nele smiled in answer. But Soetkin did not take her eyes from the road, gazing continually in hopes to see her beloved Ulenspiegel.
All of a sudden she broke silence. “Look,” she cried, “here is the Provost-Marshal. He is coming along the road with four sergeants of the peace. They cannot be wanting any one from here, surely! And yet there are two of them turning off by the cottage!”
Claes looked up from his work.
“And the other two have stopped at the front,” Soetkin said.
Then Claes got up.
“Who can they want to arrest in this road?” his wife continued, and then: “O Christ! They are coming in here.”
“Look to the money!” cried Claes. “The caroluses are hidden away behind the fireplace.” And with these words he ran out of the kitchen into the garden. Nele understood what he meant, and saw that he was going to try and make his escape over the hedge. But the sergeants seized him by the collar, and now he was hitting out at them in a hopeless endeavour to break free.
“He is innocent!” Nele cried aloud amid her tears. “He is innocent! Do not hurt him. It is Claes, my father! O Ulenspiegel, where are you? Where are you? If you were only here you would kill them both!”
And she threw herself on one of the sergeants and tore at his face with her nails. Then she cried out again: “They will kill him!” and fell down upon the grass in the garden, and rolled there in her despair.
Katheline, hearing the noise, had come out from her cottage, and stood up straight and immovable, gazing at the piteous scene. Then she spoke, wagging her head:
“Fire! Fire! Make a hole! My soul wants to get out!”
Soetkin meanwhile, who had seen nothing of all this, was talking to the sergeants who had entered the cottage.
“Kind sirs,” she began, “what is it that you are looking for in our poor dwelling? If it is my son you want, he is far away. Do you feel equal to a long journey?”
And she felt quite pleased at the way she was handling the matter. But it was at this very moment that Nele began to cry aloud for help, and when Soetkin had made her way into the garden, it was to see her husband seized by the collar and fighting on the pathway near the hedge.
“Hit hard and kill them!” she cried, and then: “O Ulenspiegel, where are you?”
And she was about to go to the assistance of her man when one of the sergeants caught hold of her, not indeed without some danger to himself. And Claes was fighting and hitting out so forcibly that he would certainly have escaped had not the two sergeants with whom Soetkin had been talking come out to aid their fellows in the nick of time. So at last they were able to tie the hands of Claes together, and to carry him back to the kitchen, whither Nele and Soetkin had already come, crying and sobbing.
“Sir Provost,” Soetkin said, “what crime has he committed that you are binding my poor husband thus with cords?”
“He is a heretic,” said one of the sergeants.
“Heretic!” cried Soetkin, looking towards her husband. “You a heretic! These devils are lying!”
Claes answered:
“I resign myself into God’s keeping.”
And they took him away. Nele and Soetkin followed behind, in tears, believing that they also would be summoned before the judge. They were joined by many of their friends and neighbours, but when these heard that it was on a charge of heresy that Claes was walking thus in chains, fear came upon them and they returned incontinently to their houses, closing their doors behind them. Only a few young girls had the courage to approach Claes and say to him:
“Whither are you going to, Charcoal-burner, in these bonds!”
“I go unto the grace of God, my girls,” he answered them.
So they took him away to the town gaol, and Nele and Soetkin sat themselves down upon the threshold. And towards evening Soetkin besought Nele to leave her and to go and see if Ulenspiegel had perchance returned.