Chapter 6

I had to save her. I had no idea where they had taken

Jenny, so I went to the only person I knew might be

able to help. I went to Brother Peter. He was on his

knees before the altar when I came in. His attitude

toward the religious wars and the Jacobite wars,

toward the whole rotten affair, had gone from

distaste to out-and-out disgust. When I came in he

was in the middle of praying, and his face was

streaked with dried tears.

Your Grace is sufficient.

Your Sacrifice our hope.

We are broken.

You are broken—broken for us.

We are beautiful.

You are beautiful—beauty for us.

You hear our cry.

You heal our hearts.

Blessed be your name.

In the shadow of the cross,

On blood stained ground,

Even in the depths of hell—there

You are with me.

My rod, my staff, my comfort.

Hallelujah!

Paradise lost.

Fallen, broken, hurting.

Beauty swallowed by pride.

Forgive us, Lord, restore us.

Free us from ourselves.

Guide us home to thee.

Paradise found.

The furnace is ready.

Through the fire glorify thy name.

May we never deny thee.

Be with us in the flames.

I coughed a little to clear my throat, and he

finally realised I was in the chapel with him. In a

moment both of us were on our knees, humbled

before God.

"Did you hear what happened?"

"Yes, and I have taken action. The only thing

left to do is pray."

Brother Peter had already asked a few

trustworthy people if they had seen where the

soldiers had taken the young captive. When they all

said no, he asked them to ask others who could be trusted in the Catholic and the Protestant

communities. There was no news yet, and he was

right—we had to pray. In despair we both cried out

to God.

We prayed for an hour solid. In mid flow, a

young boy suddenly interrupted one of the prayers.

"Come quick! I know where they took her!"

Without a second's hesitation we both

followed the boy, who was running fast toward an

old bell tower in the centre of Inverness. There, a

dark-skinned woman argued with the jailer.

"You must release her at once!"

Brother Peter stopped in his tracks. She

turned her head slowly, and as she did so, the light

of recognition flared in his eyes. Though she was a

woman of some age, she was beautiful, both in

appearance and spirit. I knew without question that

he had found his beloved.

"My love."

"Peter!"

They embraced each other, and then she

pulled away and began to tell her story.

As she spoke, she told me more about the

story of my own wife. There was some information

I had not yet discovered about her: she was in fact a

modest hero. The girl who was being held in the

tower was not just Jenny my beloved, but Jenny the

abolitionist. She had been working fearlessly to

abolish all kinds of slavery, and she feared plans of

future empire expansion would further ignore her

ethical view of the world. This was how she had

met Rose, the freed slave whom Brother Peter had

once courted.

Once I heard all this, I became impatient

with the whole mess and simply pushed my way

past the angry jailer, shaking on the bars and looking around the walls to see if there was an easy

way in. The guard approached to throw me out of

the entrance, but Peter and Rose began to argue

with him, distracting him from the task. Rose began

to insist that I had the right to see Jenny and that he

should respect young love.

"Were you not young once?"

It took some time, but he finally agreed to let

me in.

I was made to wait in a tiny entrance hall,

with an artist's depiction of the passion of the Christ

hanging in a gilt frame. It was an extremely bloody

depiction of the death of Christ, and I had no

stomach for it. I had seen enough bloodshed to last a

lifetime. But the blood was not all that offended me.

The thing that annoyed me most was that Christ

who had died to set people free was hanging on the

wall in a place of captivity.

After some time staring at the picture, I was

led in to see Jenny. She was chained next to the

young, dark-skinned girl who had been captured

before the massacre of my village. It was a small

cell; the other prisoners were men and boys and

were crammed into another cell. We hugged and

cried together. When it was time to go, I whispered

promises that I would free her—not knowing how I

could.

When I came out, I was surprised to see

Peter and Rose holding hands. It seemed he had

been wrong about her marrying.

"This time I will marry you, my sweet

Rose," he said as I approached.

"But, my love, what about being a monk?"

"I have been planning to give it up. I am not

strong enough to make reforms from within the Catholic Church, and thus I am joining the

Anabaptists."

As we went back to the chapel to try to hatch

a plan to save Jenny and the other young girl, Peter

began to tell a story he had read in an illegal

Anabaptist pamphlet. He told of how a man in 1569,

called Dirk Willems, an Anabaptist whose doctrine

was Jesus, peace, and baptism, saved his enemy's

life even though he knew he would be burned to

death afterwards. To burning he was taken, all in the

name of love. As he was burning, he said seventy

times, "O my Lord; my God," and other things like

it. Peter retold a short piece he had written about

this moving story:

Day of the Martyrs

Gathering of light.

Sacred assembly of love.

Age of war, hate, and strife.

The day of the martyrs has just begun.

Blood stained standing stones.

Anabaptists'tears, angels'song.

The day of the martyrs has just begun.

Ice cracks, foe falls.

Pilgrim saves.

To burning he must go.

Stands fast, dies slow, proclaims love for

all to know.

The day of the martyrs has just begun.

The planning went on late into the night, and

finally it became clear that it was virtually

impossible for us to free the prisoners without

risking our very lives. This became even more

abundantly clear when the messenger boy who had

announced where Jenny was came with the sad announcement that the other young girl had been

killed for trying to escape. We all sat in shock for

some time, and the messenger boy joined us. Rose

had travelled in America and England, and in her

travels had met John Woolman, an itinerant Quaker

preacher who openly opposed slavery and war. She

suggested we adopt his practice of worship and sit

in silence to see if the Lord would minister to us

there. Our first plan was to break Jenny from prison

non-violently if we could, but by force if we had to.

But in the still small voice that came in the silence,

we all began to sense that this was not the way.

"I don't have all the answers," I said at last

into the quiet, "and I do have questions. I cannot be

proud in this matter, but I feel I have a solution to

our problem. Violence should be seen as the last

resort, not the first. As for risking all of our lives further, I do not see how this could be a good

thing."

I had an idea, one that would take some time

to convince the others to accept. The cost would be

high, but not too high to pay. I could not tolerate

cruelty to animals, never mind humans, so I was

hardly going to let anyone be cruel to my beloved,

to kill her in cold blood for no real crime. It was

time for action.