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.