The Folly of the World

by Jesse Bullington

  Then another tedious day in the kitchen, with Karnöffel becoming impossible when Sander threw down his cards in a huff and refused to play anymore on the grounds that it was an evil game indeed where the Devil trumped the Pope. Jo did not recall such piety when he had been the one to draw the Devil instead of she in previous hands. She finished the hat she’d begun knitting for herself with the small bundle of wool Jan had bought her on their walk back from the new harbor the day before, and although it was a shapeless, rather ugly sort of cap, she was nevertheless pleased with herself. It was sky blue, and matched the cloak he had given her—she could tell Sander was jealous of her new cape, but rather than pleasing her, this somehow made her pity the mad bastard.

  That night Jan sent her into the workshop again, and she quietly moved one of Primm’s stools to the door with the resolution of watching Jan and Sander through to the bitter end of their business. Jo could not quite make sense of how watching them made her feel, for it seemed equal measures nausea and hunger, pain and pleasure, and she could in no way account for the jealousy she felt toward Sander, considering how wracked he appeared throughout the proceedings. The workroom was too damn hot, in any event, and the stool too damn hard, but watch them she did.

  The peephole did not grant her a wide view of the kitchen, for the door was thick, but anytime Sander seemed to be drawing them away from her range of vision, Jan brought the other man up short, insisting they couple there in the middle of the room. Even without the occasional glances Jan cast at the door, she would have suspected his intentions in keeping them thus situated, and every time his eyes flicked in her direction, she felt herself go cold and squirmy, as if she were the one up to mischief.

  This night she did not flee when Sander knelt in front of Jan and undid his codpiece, though the site of his engorged, reddish instrument jutting out only to be gobbled by Sander reminded her uncomfortably of the disagreeable mutton she had eaten the first day. Jan groaned softly to have himself consumed by the larger man and, seizing Sander’s shaggy locks, thrust himself deeper into his partner’s mouth, which caused a spluttering on Sander’s part. She expected this to be met with violence or at least reproach from the chronically antagonistic Sander, but his only response was to issue his own muffled groan and drive himself farther toward Jan’s crotch, threads of drool catching in his beard as he gagged himself on his lover’s cock.

  This went on for some time, and Jo began to assume that this was the extent of how men fucked each other, that what her brothers and the fisherboys had alleged about one another was mere filthy invention. Then Jan abruptly removed himself from Sander’s mouth, and both shimmied out of their clothes. Sander lay back on the ground, propping himself up on his elbows and spreading his legs. Jan knelt between his partner’s knees, a jar he had retrieved from somewhere beyond Jo’s sight in one hand as he slowly pulled back Sander’s foreskin. Jan then hunched down to kiss the exposed tip of Sander’s erection, which was more purple and knobby than his own, and then set to licking his way down to the man’s balls.

  Jo could scarcely breathe, telling herself how revolting it was even as she pressed her forehead harder against the door, licking sweat from her lips. Jan was tonguing Sander’s sack, and then went lower still. At this Jo pulled away from the door, refusing to believe it, remembering the feel of his lips on hers, the taste of that very tongue, and then she was back at the peephole.

  One hand tugging vigorously on Sander’s cock, Jan straightened up and dipped the fingers of his free hand into the wide clay jar. They emerged glistening, and he ducked back down, now properly taking Sander into his mouth even as those shining fingers vanished between the man’s thighs. Jo told herself it wasn’t what it looked like, but as if Jan heard her, his shoulder shifted, causing Sander to grunt and buck. Then Jan abruptly released the cock from his mouth, straightening up but remaining on his knees, his hand working between Sander’s legs.

  Sander was squirming and panting as Jan’s wrist canted back and forth like the lock on one of Primm’s crossbows. Sander lowed cowishly and drew his knees almost up to his chin, rocking his lower body even farther off the floor to meet Jan’s busy fingers. With his free hand, Jan shoved their shed clothes underneath Sander’s raised arse, cushioning the man’s tailbone as Sander settled back down. Then Jan removed his fingers, making Sander gasp and again rock his arse up in the air, as if the floor scalded him. Jan dunked his hand back into the jar and wiped something greasy on his cock, the oily sheen of it making his organ look like some bloody weapon, and his fingers went back between Sander’s legs.

  Jan’s hand tarried only a moment this time, before going to one of Sander’s splayed knees. Holding the big man steady, Jan scooted closer and hunkered down. Sander’s eyes were closed, the man muttering some fervent prayer or vicious curse, and Jan turned to the door and offered Jo a wink, which was just… she didn’t even know what. Then Jan turned back to the quivering man beneath him and set to his business. Sander’s leg mostly obscured the penetration as Jan slowly eased himself forward, two fingers pressing down on the ridge of his cock, but Jo wasn’t so thick as to not recognize a buggering when she saw one.

  Despite her resolution to stay until the finish, that was enough for her. The unexpected stiffness and accompanying back-twinge as she withdrew from the peephole almost made her cry out, but she caught herself and stayed quiet. After a moment of reflection on what she had seen, a deep sense of shame settled over her like an itchy blanket on a hot night, and she slunk to her bedding. She didn’t want to be here, didn’t want to have anything to do with these nasty poots. Especially Jan.

  Or maybe not? Maybe she wanted him to kiss her like he kissed Sander when they were just setting in? Maybe she wanted…

  She wanted to die, or, failing that, to fall into a deep enough slumber that she could convince herself the whole night had all been one of her rare nightmares.

  Sleep, however, proved slippery as an eel, escaping between her fingers each time she almost seized it, so the morning found her as unrested as she was uneasy. She stayed on her pallet of rags long after noises began to come from the kitchen, and only when Primm began to stir in his loft, his snores giving way to phlegmy throat-clearings, smackings, and swallows, did Jo rise with a miserable sigh. She went to the kitchen, but as she put her hand on the door, she heard Sander barking at Jan and paused.

  “—fuckin kid, Jan! It’s not right!”

  “Keep your voice down,” came the reply that she barely made out, and she pressed her ear to the peephole. “You asked.”

  “Yeah, but I thought—”

  “Quiet. Down.” Jan’s voice was hard as she’d ever heard it.

  “Don’t. I’m tellin you, if you give me any heed at all, don’t.”

  “I give you heed, Sander, more than any else. But I can’t let you ruin this. She—”

  “—’s a little fucking girl!”

  There was a pause, and she wondered if they were waiting to see if Sander’s newest outburst had awoken her. Just as Jan began to speak again, Primm launched into an especially moist snort from above, and she only caught the end of what was said:

  “—a woman, and a capable one at that, not some mooncalf or babe, so spare me your moralizing, Sander. After all you’ve gotten into, I’d think you’d be the last one to be a bitch about this. Or are you just jealous I might use your rope on her?”

  “Cunt!” Sander shouted, and before Jo could move, the door flew open, cracking her head and sending her sprawling. Sander stared down at her, livid, and pointed a blackish nail in her face. “Stupid little slut! Get to fuck! Out, before I brain you!”

  “Not in the house.” Primm yawned, his ladder squeaking as he descended. “Please.”

  “Fat fucking pudding sack!” Sander bellowed. “All you, you, fucking meat-bag pudding sacks!”

  And then Sander was wrestling with the front door, throwing back the latch and launching himself into the drizzle, his final curse wafting in with the stink of mildew and
offal. Jan stood in the kitchen doorway, watching Jo as she picked herself up. Her scalp was bleeding into her eye, a cracked goose egg. She could tell he was cross, but wasn’t sure if it was with her or Sander or both of them.

  “Clean yourself up,” said Jan, turning back to the kitchen. “We’ve got a lot to do if we’re going to get a move on tomorrow.”

  Walpurgisnacht 1423

  “Belling the Cat”

  I.

  Jan had put up with just about enough of both Sander and Jolanda’s shit, respective and collective, and to make things worse, the Muscovite, Andrei, seemed much more honest than Jan had originally taken him for. One whisper of Andrei’s thick foreign accent and Jan had assumed he was at least a thug, if not an outright cutthroat, pimp, or rapist, but the more they talked the less crooked the Muscovite seemed. This could be a serious problem, as Andrei had permanently settled in Dordrecht and therefore the potential for complications grew with each oar-stroke.

  Jan had half a mind to stick his sword in all three of them and finish the quest himself, but obviously he wouldn’t, preferable though it might seem in the moment. He and Andrei had found Oudeland again together, true, but that was some time ago, and all the meer looked the same to Jan’s land-loving eyes, whereas the Muscovite claimed to remember the way. Then Sander and Jolanda each had their uses, annoying though they had proven of late…

  Either one he could have handled easily—the ride to Rotterdam with Jolanda hadn’t been bad, and he knew that for all his idiosyncrasies Sander was agreeable enough in isolation, and a solid partner to boot—but put them together and, saints alive, it was like juggling cats, or some similarly onerous task that was liable to leave one bitten, bloody, and annoyed for even thinking such a thing would be feasible in the first place. He ought to just leave them to each other when all was said and done, which was no less than they deserved, given their behavior. Jolanda’s jealousy at least made a kind of sense, given that she was a moonstruck little girl, but Sander’s behavior was simply bizarre—perhaps he really was losing his mind for good this time.

  The girl sat in the front of the large rowboat, the Muscovite’s scrawny gray tabby purring in her lap. Behind her, Jan leaned against the piled gear, while behind him Sander and then Andrei manned the twin sets of oars from their respective benches, propelling the craft over the surface of the inland sea. The Muscovite, though shorter than Sander, had the brawn to bear out his claim of having rowed up and down every river on the continent, and across several seas besides, and as fast as they were skating across the water, Jan could tell the man was putting less than his all into his strokes. Sander’s oars had slapped more often than they cut at first, but now he had his stride.

  “We fly!” Andrei laughed, nodding down at the water. Glancing over the side, Jan saw the shadowy frames of houses just beneath the boat, the thatch of their roofs long since claimed by tide and rot. The sight must have been a common one for boatmen who plied these waters, but the Muscovite clearly still delighted in it. “Like angels, Rutte, like angels!”

  “Like crows,” Sander grunted. “And his name’s Jan.”

  “Eh? Jan? Not Rutte?”

  “That’s right, Andrei,” Jan said with a sigh, not turning. How many times had he told Sander to use the alias around their foreign accomplice? “Jan.”

  If discovering that the man he had known as Rutte for over a year was actually called something else bothered Andrei, he gave no indication: “We fly like crows, Jan!”

  “Indeed.” Jan smiled to himself, imagining the Groote Waard as it had been in his youth, imagining himself lying in the sheep meadows watching the clouds, imagining the sight of a boat cutting through the puffy white sea above. He waved up at himself. He waved down at himself. The vessel glided along the open water, occasionally slicing through a fence of young reeds where a dike crossed the sunken countryside, and Jan felt a deep, cool tranquillity swell in him, just as the deep, cool waters had swelled in under the doors of farmer and graaf alike. He was coming home.

  With this thought came another of the rare stabs to his chest, a sensation that only Sander inspired with anything resembling regularity. After all this time, not just from the point of the flood but ever since he had found out as a boy what might be his if only he could find a way to seize it, here he was, and with the means of his salvation at hand. The digging pain in his heart intensified, not from this homecoming, however, but from the sudden and intense concern that all might come for naught—the girl might not be able to find the prize in the dark depths, or the house might have filled with mud, or it might be gone entirely, the old bastard might not have perished in his house but instead tried to flee with everything he had, taking it all with him, only to be washed away, anywhere in the wide drink, gone forever. Gone. What then?

  Jan was not a fool. All this had been considered at length, and even if it came to nothing the lawyer, Laurent, seemed optimistic that things should still work out, as had Jan’s other secret confederate, a nobleman of no small stature. But then everything that came after this was less important, if Jan were to be honest with himself, everything beyond this flooded land was dreamlike, insubstantial as clouded breath on a winter’s morn, and only by taking the physical artifact could he transform—it was a witch’s tool, a magic ring, a relic, not something to be faked, as Laurent had suggested. After all, Jan was genuine, so should not his proof be as well?

  Or perhaps Sander’s superstitious nature was simply rubbing off on Jan. The point was, the ring was down there in the dark, waiting, and he would have it, and then he would be graaf instead of grift, count instead of cunt. Finally.

  II.

  Sander was trying to cool his stewing anger at Jan, but he might as well have been blowing on the summer sun. He should have expected something along these lines, considering the coldness of the bastard in question, but no matter how adamantly he told himself he should have seen this coming, he still boiled to think of it. That it bothered him as much as it did was not something he focused on for very long at a stretch—such thoughts were too knotty to properly sort out, and of course if he were in Jan’s position, things might be different and all, but still, it was a dark fucking play no matter what cards you were holding. Graafs and the like had to be careful, Sander got that, especially fake graafs like Jan, and yeah, you didn’t want people talking, spreading rumors, all that, but after all the time and hard work and, yeah, well, call it what it was, love, it felt ruthless as a raven’s mercy. It wasn’t like Jan was staving in Sander’s head, but for some queer reason it felt like his heart had suffered a blow—which was just stupid, since Sander had always been the harder of the two.

  Except maybe he wasn’t, Sander admitted as he gave his oars an especially healthy jerk. Sander might be more eager to wade into a fight or, sure, yeah, a murder or two, but Jan had a whole different sort of edge to him, maybe the difference between a sword and a fish knife or something, a shaving blade. Whatever. Point was, part of the attraction had always been Jan’s willingness to overlook Sander’s more violent excesses; angel’s honesty, the man had shown no more disgust toward Sander’s crimes than he had to the occasional smear of shit on his cock mid-fuck—at worst, a vaguely annoyed sigh, a wipe of a rag, and a resumption of business.

  Why, then, the surprise? No, surprise was all right, why then the anger, the, well, the hurt? That didn’t make half a whore’s lick of sense. Would it have been different if the little mussel had been a lad, some fit little blondie or ginger grinding on Jan? Maybe—or maybe it would have made it worse, devil only knew. Point was, smart tactic or no, Sander would have another wee word with Jan when the girl wasn’t about, and on that wager a betting man might turn a healthy profit on even short odds.

  Then there was this dogdick in front of him, this squinty little ball-washer who had been trying to fuck with Sander ever since they set out. As if reading his thoughts, the Muscovite brought his oars back too fast and spattered Sander’s face with meer water, further fermenting his
sour mood. He was fucking with him, the prick.

  “You fucking with me, you prick?” demanded Sander, setting his shoulders and dragging the oars through the meer as hard as he could, splashing them both as he ripped them up at the end of the stroke.

  “I would not with you, my strashniy droog, not even for money.” The Muscovite smiled over his shoulder, his teeth yellow as old butter. This was accompanied by another spritz from his oars as they came back.

  “Keep it up,” Sander snarled. He considered throwing the man overboard. With his back to Sander, he’d never see it coming. “Keep it up and see, ball-washer. Highest tree catches the most wind.”

  “Velik telom, da mal delom,” the Muscovite sang, his voice rolling across the watery plain, his eyes closed as he rapturously belted out his stupid-sounding ballad. “Velik teloooooom, da mal deloooooom!”

  Sander felt a brief but strong urge to stand and beat the man to death with his bare hands, but he knew from experience that brawling in boats invariably led to his going in the water, and after the whole falling-into-a-canal-and-waking-up-in-hell business he was especially wary of going overboard. Let the prick sing—he’d be warbling another tune when Glory’s End was buried up his ass. Besides, it was bad luck to attack a man on his own ship, rublehead or no.