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.