The Lovers of the Monnikenhof

The Monnikenhof was not an abbey, despite what the name suggested. It was an estate, broad and handsome, built on soil that had smelled of river clay and willow shoots for centuries. The baron who lived there was no great lord — no man with a seat in the States or a voice in the Council — but he owned enough land to call himself independent, and enough pride to do so.

He had one child, a daughter. And as it goes in tales where fate plays a part: she was beautiful. Not in the manner of paintings — not pale and aloof — but in the manner of someone who crosses the yard barefoot in the morning grass, unaware of being watched.

Across the water, on a domain that was larger and older, lived the Count of Rekkem. He had a son. A young man with a straight back and a quiet voice, who hunted because it was expected and read books because he wanted to. The two met at a fair, or after a service, or perhaps while crossing on the ferry — the story does not say exactly. What it does say is that they saw each other and something began that was stronger than caution.

The young count asked his father for permission. Not to court the baron’s daughter — he was already doing that — but to marry her. The old Count of Rekkem listened, said nothing, and refused. Not with shouting, not with a fist on the table, but with the cold courtesy of a man who considers it beneath him to explain why something is impossible.

A baron, he said, is not a count. A small estate along the Vliet is not a castle domain. There are better matches. There are daughters from families with older names, weightier titles, more land. His son would marry as was proper — not with the heart, but with the head.

The son tried again. And again. Each time the answer was the same: no, simply no, without room for negotiation. The count spoke to the parish priest, to the notary, to everyone who held influence. The message was clear: whoever helped the two could expect opposition. The baron understood the signal. He forbade his daughter to leave the Monnikenhof.

But prohibitions are walls, and lovers are water. They found ways. In the evening, when the farmhands slept, she crept off the estate. He waited by the stream, under the willows where the dark was so thick you could rely only on sound. They spoke softly, held each other’s hands, and made plans they both knew they could not keep.

On the baron’s land stood a well. Not the kind you see in fairy tales — no wishing well with a bucket and a chain — but an old, deep shaft that had once yielded water and now stood dry. Or so they said. Nobody went there willingly. The rim was overgrown with moss and the opening so dark you could throw a stone in and wait a long time before you heard anything.

What exactly happened, no one knows. The story says only this: one morning the two were found. Together, in the well. The baron’s daughter and the count’s son, entwined as if they slept. The water had taken them the way night takes a candle — softly, completely, without giving back.

Whether they had jumped or fallen, whether it was an agreement or a desperate act of the moment — that was whispered about but never spoken aloud. The village kept silent, as villages do when shame is greater than grief.

The baron could not stay. The house was too full of her — her footsteps on the stairs, her laugh in the kitchen, the empty chair at the table that nobody dared remove. He left, and the Monnikenhof stood empty, like a body without breath.

The Count of Rekkem, who had been silent all that time, did something no one expected. He donated the estate to the Bernardine sisters — an order of nuns who lived by prayer and silence. There was one condition: every night they were to pray at the well. Not for the souls of the dead, not for forgiveness, but simply: pray. As though prayer itself were the only language that could still say something where words fell short.

The sisters accepted. “Whether we pray at night or during the day,” they said, “it makes no difference to us.” And so the Monnikenhof became a convent, and the well a place of prayer instead of sorrow.

Later the estate was absorbed into the larger whole of the Sint-Bernardus Abbey, which had stood on the banks of the Scheldt since 1246. The monks knew the story; everyone in Hemiksem knew it. And though no one said it aloud, it was an open secret that the older brothers sometimes still lit a candle at the old well in the evening — not because it was required, but because some promises weigh more than rules.

The Monnikenhof has long since vanished. The abbey was closed during the French Revolution, sold, burned, rebuilt, and eventually turned into a town hall. But the name remained. And whoever asks an older resident of Hemiksem where the Monnikenhof once stood will always receive the same answer: a pointing finger, a brief silence, and then — “there, where the well was.”