Tipping the Balance

By Huberta Hellendoorn

Tipping the Balance was inspired by love for the author's birth-place, Warnsveld in Gelderland's De Achterhoek; the seasons, small farmlets with golden fields, the leafy lanes and rivers flowing slowly through the landscape. Jenneken's life is shattered when she learns that her mother Alida's knowledge and use of herbal remedies is considered to be witchcraft and that she must undergo a weighing trial in Oude- water. Jenneken fears also for her own safety as she has followed her mother's teachings regarding the healing quality of flowers and herbs. Both mother and daughter experience persecution and after a hor-rific discovery realise that their lives are truly in danger. Their only option is to run for freedom. Where will they go? Will they survive?

 

'Set at a time in history when women were persecuted for their knowledge and wisdom, Tipping the Balance is the entrancing story of the power of a mother and daughter to transcend injustice. Based on true occurrences and movingly written, this is a book which ex-poses ignorance but speaks also of the capacity of the human spirit to endure and to thrive.' 

PADDY RICHARDSON (fiction writer, New Zealand)

Huberta Hellendoorn was born in The Netherlands in 1937 and emigrated to New Zealand in 1960. Her articles have been pub-lished in Dutch and New Zealand publications, and her short sto-ries have been broadcast on Radio New Zealand National and pub-lished in literary journals such as Sport and Takahe. Her poems have appeared in The Otago Daily Times.

In 2009 Huberta published The Madonna in the Suitcase, a book about her daughter with Down syndrome which was adapted for radio and broadcast on National Radio. Her memoir, Astride a Fierce Wind, was published by Makaro Press in May 2017. 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Aspekt Publishers B.V.
• Release date: Mar 26, 2024
• ISBN: 9798224219759

Book preview

A Warm Recommendation

It is a great pleasure for me to recommend this novel by Huberta Hellendoorn!

Huberta (in Dutch we call her Huubje, which is hard for Anglo-Saxon mouths to pronounce), née Visser, was born in Warnsveld, a village near Zutphen in the East of the Netherlands, in a region called the Achterhoek. I know her very well because she happens to be a second cousin to my wife Gerdien. I have never met Huberta in person because she left our country when she was only 22, newly wed to Bart Hellendoorn. But we regularly speak to each other on the phone.

Huberta has now lived the by far greatest part of her life in New Zealand. While raising a family she worked for thirty years in administrative positions at the University of Otago, also acquiring a BA in Classical Studies as a mature student. But her time still had to come. Stimulated by friends and colleagues, she began to develop her gift as a story-teller, a non-fiction writer, a novelist and a poet. Her short stories have been broadcast on Radio New Zealand National and published in literary journals such as Sport and Takahē. The Dutch newspaper De Stentor wrote extensively about her in 2010.

Huberta successfully self-published The Madonna in the Suitcase, a book about her daughter with Down syndrome. Huberta writes about the hardships inherent in raising a child with special needs, but also shows the joys and triumphs Miriam’s life has brought to her and her family. The book was adapted for radio into five episodes and broadcast on National Radio.

With the support of a mentorship through the New Zealand Society of Authors, Huberta wrote an unpublished novel, The Orange Garden, which afterwards she changed into what it really was: an autobiography, which she called Astride a Fierce Wind, released by Mākaro Press in May 2017. It is the story of her life as an immigrant, and what it means to leave one home behind and cross the world to find another. But it is also the story of her life as one facing huge difficulties and yet choosing to see beauty and strength and freedom and love. Huberta’s memoir is a celebration of the Dutch way of life as well as of her adopted home, Dunedin, on the South Island of New Zealand. It is a tribute to fierce motherhood and firm friendship, a story written with courage and a belief in the transformative power of words, as her publisher puts it in a description of the book. A story, I would add, that clearly manifests the literary qualities that Huberta has developed.

And now, here is the historical novel Tipping the Balance. In 2010, the New Zealand Society of Authors awarded Huberta a manuscript evaluation through its NZSA Manuscript Evaluation Service. The book is based on events that really happened. It is a story about a woman in the Achterhoek, the region from which she, Huberta, came herself, but living there a few centuries before her. Huberta found the inspirational topics for the novel, as she tells us at the end of this book, in a work written on the Achterhoek by Willy H. Heitling (d. 1998). These topics are very limited. So Huberta could have done two things: she might have tried to find many more details on the story and to work these into the novel. She could also choose to limit herself to these few details, and leave the rest to her imagination. She chose the latter, and of course she was perfectly free to do so.

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Here is the result! After The Madonna in the Suitcase and Astride a Fierce Wind, this is her third great literary achievement. I wholeheartedly recommend it, and trust it will find many readers, not only in English speaking countries, but also in her old motherland, which she still loves so dearly.

Dr. Willem J. Ouweneel

Retired professor of philosophy and theology

Prologue

1694

They say she is a witch. Her hair is black as the night without the moon, without the stars. Her eyes are like the sky in the height of summer, blue as cornflowers in the fields and her skin has absorbed the golden sunlight.

She gathers herbs in the early daylight, and all day she works on the land, in spring planting out seedlings that will grow to their fullness in the fertile earth. The morning rain and midday sun, snow and ice are her companions. She knows which plants can be used for teas and infusions to ward away the fearful illnesses that run through the lonely villages.

They come to her in secret. They say, ‘Make me a tea for my warts; make me a tea for my aching chest.’ She knows they risk the wrath of the priest, the wrath of their neighbours. She knows what she does is a danger to herself and to her visitors. But men come with aching muscles, women come with their monthly complaints. Mothers bring their little ones, holding out tiny, dirty hands, or crusty heads covered up with cloths. Their eyes plead. How can she refuse them?

She doesn’t use words for the telling. She uses her hands to explain what her eyes can see and know of the healing power of plants. These plants come from the earth-mother and she must respect their energy. There is no fear when she touches her visitors’ skin. It is only the accusing looks and downcast eyes of the people who pass her in the village that make her fearful. She must make her journey, accompanied by her husband, Hendrick, and her daughter, Jenneken.

Her future will be decided in Oudewater.

I

That autumn day had started well. I’d woken early; my parents were still asleep in their bedstead, and I didn’t want to wake them. I opened the door of my own bedstead and looked around our living space, a happy and comfortable space.

Our home was in a small hamlet nestled in the bend of a wide river. Like all the others our cottage was made of mud and stone grey and brown, a single room. But Hendrick – my father – had made it cosy. He’d told my mother when they got married, ‘Alida, I will make the house so comfortable and warm for you that you will never want to leave it.’

A table made of irregular slats of knotty wood stood in the middle of the room with rough-cut benches on either side. My father created this furniture from a tree he had cut down before he married my mother. There were candles on the table and Mam had sewed long, narrow cushions in bright colours for us to sit in comfort.

I got out of bed, wrapped a shawl around my shoulders and, carefully opening the door, stepped outside.

I noticed the dew on the meadows was getting stronger and some trees were beginning to lose their leaves. Taking a deep breath, I inhaled the fresh air. Everything around me looked beautiful, and I knew I was lucky to live in this rural part of the Low Lands of Holland. But most of all I knew I was lucky to have parents who loved me and made me feel special.

Blackie, our dog, came out of her kennel, a wagging tail letting me know how pleased she was to see me. I stroked her soft coat, her head. Her dark eyes glowed. ‘I’ll feed you soon.’ The tail moved even faster. But everything changed from that day. Everything I had thought normal became abnormal. There was

no turning back to start again with a pattern of regularity. No longer that pattern of waking up happy in the morning, feeding the animals, having a quiet breakfast and following the routine my parents had established ever since my father became a worker on Baron van Mallen’s estate.

I remembered the last time the Baron came. He arrived on his white stallion and told Father where to thin the trees on his land. That day, while the men talked, I’d looked at the Baron’s green velvet jacket and black riding trousers and wanted to touch his sleeves, made of material as soft as the leaves of a chestnut tree in early spring. His leather boots were shinier than I had ever seen before. I became aware of how other people lived, wearing soft, beautiful  clothes and I wondered what it might be like to live in a huge castle, with tasty food and servants to clean and cook.

That morning I listened to the Baron’s deep, loud voice as he told my father, ‘I have big plans for this part of the county. I want to develop new meadows – the land is extremely waterlogged and in need of ditches. Also, I want to get more cows, and more horses to pull the ploughs. Strong women pull the ploughs now but I want to change that.’

I had been proud of my father who loved working on the land and whose work was respected by the Baron.

After breakfast on that day everything changed. Mam said, ‘Jenneken, I’d like you to go to the village. I need buckwheat flour to make pancakes for our midday meal.’

The moment I left the miller’s to make my way home, I was followed by shouting children from the village. My heart nearly jumped out of my chest as stones whizzed around me, some slamming against the back and side of my head. I whipped around, my right hand up in the air, ‘Stop it, stop it now! Go back to your homes.’

They stopped and grinned. Even though I was shaking I began running as fast as I could through the sandy paths of our quiet village, the cloth sack with the buckwheat flour tight in my arms.

The voices behind me became stronger and I could understand the words. ‘You can’t pretend any longer, Jenneken. You’re a witch too – witch, evil witch. Just like your mother.’

What was going on? What had I done to make the children of our village, some of them my friends, start chasing me? Accusing me?

I ran faster. Would they catch up on me? What would I do? What would they do?

‘You’ll be weighed too. On the big scale in Oudewater. And then you’ll be burned to death!’

What was that about weighing? About dying? Why would I need to be weighed in Oudewater? Where was that? Burned to death? My hands were slippery as I tried to hold on to the flour.

I heard a voice, shouting. Derek, the son of my mother’s friend, Grietje. I thought he was my friend. We always talked when we met in the village. Sometimes he took my hand. Why did he sound so different?

A sharp pain. Blood trickling down my neck.

I wanted to get home but how could I outrun them? I knew I would be safe if I could reach the turnoff. From there I would see our house where my mother was waiting to make our pancakes.

The priest was standing in the wide oak doorway of the church as I raced past. He looked forbidding in his black cassock. His face was as dark as the cap he wore on his head. He took long, fast strides to the church gate and held up his hands to the persecutors. ‘Go home, you scoundrels. You ought to be ashamed. There is no need to accuse Jenneken. She is innocent. It’s not up to you to pass judgement.’

I hoped they would take notice of the priest’s words but still I ran. I had hardly any more air in my chest. I was so afraid.

The voices faded and I looked back. The path behind me was empty. I sent a thank-you prayer up to the blue sky. And there was the turnoff; I could see a tiny wisp of smoke coming out of the chimney of our cottage. I let out a deep sigh, stood still for a minute and once my breathing had become steady, walked as fast as I could towards home.

I kept thinking of the priest’s words. Why did he call me innocent? Who was the guilty one?

Mam waited at the door. Her eyes were squashed together, her lips were nearly one line. The same look she had that day when I’d swum out too far in the river. ‘You’re bleeding! Who hurt you? Tell me. Tell me what happened.’

Her voice was as shrill as the sound of a crow waiting for its prey to become more visible.

‘You look as if the devil has chased you.’ If only she knew.

I couldn’t make her fear worse. I said, ‘I ran as fast as I could because I knew you were waiting for the flour. I caught my face on a branch.’

‘Come on. Let’s go inside, get