Over Troubled Waters

HISTORICAL SHORT STORY ALISON CARTER

In this story, set in the 1890s, Isolda knew her struggle was a tale as old as time…

Every inch of this city was familiar to Isolda Van Hecke – she had lived here all her life.

It amazed her that her father did not know it as she did.

Jan Van Hecke was always busy, always looking at a ledger or tapping at his counting machine as if his life depended on it.

Isolda, now twenty years old, had recently discovered that her papa had never visited the Begijnhof convent.

Ordinary citizens could walk in its leaf-strewn courtyard and benefit from the peace that it offered.

They were allowed to stroll along the fronts of the little terraced houses that faced the cobbles.

Here, the pious single women of Bruges lived and worked, attending their simple brick chapel daily.

Isolda and her father lived 20 minutes away from the Begijnhof, but he had never been.

“I don’t need peace,” he told her. “Peace is not my business.”

But Isolda loved her pearl of a city.

Since she was old enough to go out alone, she had spent countless days popping into every church and standing on each bridge, watching the boats.

More recently, she had not been alone on her perambulations.

With her, these days, walked Sevrin Breydel, whenever he could.

His stride was longer than hers and he had a nervous energy that drove him on.

“Stop, Sevrin,” Isolda loved to say. “How can I keep up with those legs of yours?”

And he’d come to an abrupt halt and apologise, just as though they had recently become acquainted.

But they were in love.

They had been ever since he had dashed out of the city hall, the Stadhuis, in search of turpentine and had nearly knocked her over.

They walked as often as they could and they argued about who had fallen in love first, a fight that Isolda immensely enjoyed.

Jan knew of the existence of Sevrin, but was choosing to pretend that he didn’t.

One afternoon, when the days were starting to lengthen into spring, Isolda asked her father to walk with her.

“It’s nice to see the city in different lights and hear the Belfort’s carillon play as you cross the centre.

“Didn’t you go walking with my mother when she was alive?”

“That was a very long time ago,” he said.

He was still looking at a column of figures.

“Even so,” Isolda said. “Just as far as the Spinolerei. The views are lovely.”

Grudgingly, Jan agreed. He said that they could call in at the house of a brewer that he hoped to insure on the way.

“Always business,” Isolda said.

They set off and, when they were on a long street with no interesting things to see, Isolda suggested she tell him a story.

“Why?” Jan asked.

Most people like stories. They like art, too.

There was a silence between them when she said that.

Sevrin was a painter, apprenticed to the master who was decorating the Stadhuis.

Jan did not want his daughter to be with a painter, especially one who was barely trained.

“So, my story,” she said. “It’s true and it’s about our very own city.”

She told him about when the Romans had begun their conquest of Belgium.

“Gaul, as it was then,” she said.

“I know that much.”

Isolda told him about an old sailor who no longer went to sea and who lived with his beautiful daughter Minna on the banks of the river Reie.

“In Bruges?”

“Yes, in Bruges. I said that. Are you still thinking about work?”

“I think I left a calculation incomplete.”

Jan respected figures and money.

He had earmarked a young man who worked for him on an ad hoc basis as a husband for Isolda, but she had no interest in this person whatsoever.

“Listen, Papa,” she said. “The sailor felt he hadn’t much longer to live and he was worried about Minne.

“He decided that she should marry as soon as possible.”

Jan asked how far they were going to walk and if she had enough at the house to cook supper, or if she wanted to stop at the market.

Isolda said she had enough and kept walking. “He wanted a man called Horneck as a son-in-law, who was from a nearby settlement.

“But Minna loved Stromberg, a farmer from a neighbouring tribe.

“Minna was well aware that her father was unhappy about her choice and so she was silent about Stromberg.

“She just kept putting off her father when he talked about a wedding.”

Jan was beginning to pay attention.

The canals they were crossing were glassy and bulbs were flowering in the window boxes of the houses along the water.

Even Jan seemed drawn to the beauty of the scene.

Sevrin loved Bruges as much as Isolda did and was delighted to be given the chance to paint the new murals in the hall of the Stadhius.

An artist called Albrecht De Vriendt had been commissioned to design its decoration.

He’d suggested a whole history of Bruges, with all its famous men and women, and had demanded a small army of painters for the job.

Sevrin was enthusiastic about the work done so far.

“We had to tear down partitions before any consideration of paint and brushes,” he told Isolda. “It’s heavy work.”

She could listen to him talk about beams, dust or nails all day.

She adored his voice and the way he paused as he made a point, his left heel balanced on the cobbles, ready to carry on walking.

Isolda continued telling her father the story and he didn’t notice that they had walked beyond the Spinolerei.

He would have to visit the brewer another time.

“When the Romans invaded, all the Belgian tribes sent their young men to war.

“Stromberg was among them, but before he left, he made a solemn vow to come back to Minna and make her his bride.

“Her father saw his opportunity, and declared that on the third sunrise she was going to marry Horneck.”

Jan grunted.

“These days, children don’t listen to their parents nearly as much.”

Isolda smiled as they walked.

Her father was getting involved in the tale.

“Minna was in a bad way. She had promised herself to Stromberg, but she respected her father.

“She cried her eyes out for two nights and on the third morning –”

“They had a row?”

“She vanished.”

“Oh.”

She sensed Jan glancing at her. He loved her utterly – she knew that.

If she vanished, he would be bereft.

It was just that sometimes he forgot how important she was to him.

“Minna was wandering the banks of the Roya –”

“The what?”

“That was the name for our river back in the Gaulish days.

“Oh, I didn’t realise we had walked so far.”

They had emerged into the grand Burg square.

The dark entrance of the Basilica of the Holy Blood was in one corner and the Stadhuis was ahead in all its pale, Gothic splendour.

Inside, Sevrin would be working away and Isolda expected her father to stop and glare at it.

But he surprised her.

“Go on with your story,” he said. He kept on walking across the square.

“Well, finally she fell down, exhausted,” Isolda said. “The Roman war ended and Stromberg returned home.

“When he heard that Minna had disappeared, he searched everywhere.

“At last he found her, hidden in undergrowth on the banks of the river.

“But she was mortally ill and she died in his arms.”

Isolda was a step behind her father.

She saw one cuff come up to his eyes and a smothered sniff emanate from him.

Jan was softer than he ever cared to admit.

They walked out of the square and down the shady Oude Burg.

Then they turned south, towards the Church of Our Lady and over another part of the canal.

“The Minnewater Park is this way, isn’t it?” he asked.

“Past the convent, yes,” Isolda said.

“Minnewater,” Jan said quietly. “Is it named after the girl?”

Isolda nodded.

“Stromberg was heartbroken, but determined to pay tribute to his beloved Minna.

“He built a dam in the river to dry out a central section and on it he made a grave where his darling could rest forever. Then he let the water back in.”

They had reached the park now.

Isolda felt the calm that it always brought, with its trees, walkways with citizens strolling past and the still surface of the lake.

Her father placed a hand on a stout plane tree.

“Does she lie here?”

“Under the water. Stromberg placed a rock engraved with her name on the bank where he found her.”

They approached the Minnewater Bridge.

“The site of the bridge is where he built his dam, all on his own.”

Jan was looking out at the swans.

A couple passed by, their arms entwined.

All lovers came to the Minnewater at one time or another.

Isolda’s parents had met inland in Ghent.

She supposed they had never come here when they were courting.

She thought of all the lovers that had passed this way, and she thought of herself and Sevrin.

Her life was tightly bound with his now and she needed her father to be all right about it.

He needed to understand that thwarting love never ended well.

But he was thinking about something else.

“That poor man.”

“Stromberg?”

Jan flapped a hand impatiently.

“The father, who meant well but lost his daughter. My goodness . . .”

His voice dissolved in tears and Isolda put her arm around him.

“You tell a good story,” he said, extricating himself and trying to pretend that he was not emotional. “It’s quite a talent of yours.”

He gave a short, dry laugh.

It’s a good thing girls don’t die in undergrowth any more when they don’t get their own way.

Isolda leaned on the railing of the bridge.

“They don’t die, Papa, but they discover that their respect – for the father who wants them to marry the wrong man – is dented.

“I can see that narrative unfolding. That might happen.”

“More stories, Isolda?”

She shrugged.

Jan stepped back, turned and headed north again, back towards the Burg square.

“We could call in at the convent on the way,” she said. “It’s lovely.”

“I don’t need any more sightseeing,” Jan said. “I have a job to do.”

He walked ahead, but as he strode off, he paused.

“I’m happy, though, to take a look at what they’re doing to the hall in the Stadhuis, when we get there,” Jan said. “But I only have a minute to spare.

“I’m told the old place is getting a proper sprucing up, with all our important figures going up on the walls, including the businessmen that made this city what it is.”

“And who all bought insurance?”

“Do not mock, Isolda. Your bread is bought by the selling of insurance.

“Yes, we should call in. If the young man is there, the one you know, I could shake his hand if I feel that way inclined.”

“That seems like a very good idea, Papa,” Isolda said. “It’s just five minutes away.”

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