The Day That Came Back Every Year
Knight Allaert had the hermit drowned because the man told him something he did not want to hear. The hermit reproached him for his sinful life. Allaert could answer a reprimand with an order; he expected the water to take care of the rest.
This old story of an annual death was placed at the medieval predecessor of Castle De Haar, near Haarzuilens in the province of Utrecht in the middle of the Netherlands. It is a tradition, not a family history proven by archival records.
The hermit lived simply and prayed. Allaert did not live simply. He could have walked away when the man began to speak. Instead, he chose to have him thrown into the water.
Just before he drowned, the hermit spoke a curse: every year on that day, someone in Allaert’s house would die.
Then it was quiet. Allaert had got what he wanted.
On the following November day, his eldest son died in an accident with his horse. Allaert called it bad luck. Horses could fall without the help of a dead hermit.
The next year, his second son died on the same day. Allaert did not say the date aloud. Anyone who did received the look people remembered from the day the hermit had addressed him.
In the third year, his wife died of grief for her children. It was that November day again. At the table, three places now remained for people who no longer sat there. Allaert had one son left, a boy of seven.
He said he did not believe in the curse. As the next November approached, he spent less time near the moat.
On the fateful day, he returned from a ride during a thunderstorm. Lightning showed the tower for an instant. On the upper gallery stood a servant with the child in his arms. The man was out of his mind. Below him lay the moat.
Allaert shouted. He had made people obey him all his life; now his voice caught beneath the tower. The servant threw the boy into the water.
The knight watched him fall. He could not command his son back. For the first time, he spoke not to another person but to God. He confessed what he had done to the hermit and begged forgiveness.
A hunting dog leapt into the moat. Allaert saw its head rise again, his son held fast. The dog swam to the bank.
The boy was alive.
The story says nothing more about the servant. Allaert had one child left. He had not saved him himself.