The Folly of the World

by Jesse Bullington

  “It’s, it’s idiotic,” said Poorter, whatever patience his interest in self-preservation had mustered finally routed in the face of such unrelenting stupidity. “I’m not going to give you the name of the lawyer, nor where to find him, nor anything else. It’s another flaw with even considering any sort of furthering of Jan’s plan without the man himself—I am known here, and any attempt on the part of you two to run some sort of game will result in my being the one most easily found and taken to task for it when you are discovered. Which you will be! Immediately! As soon as you step out of this goddamn house! Look at you, man, you look like a gleaner! And what would you do with her, eh?”

  “Tried to sell me off at a nunnery,” said the girl. “After we was out of the meer and back up in Rotterdam. That old sister on the other side of the gate wasn’t having none of it, but this loon kept saying they had to take me on, even if they couldn’t afford to give him more than a few mites for his trouble. She went back inside, left him cold when he told her he’d rape me if she didn’t take me in. Must’ve smelt the cock on his breath and known him for a lying fucking poot.”

  There was a brief silence as Sander finished drinking the most recent mug he had poured, and then he hurled it at the girl. At least, Poorter hoped it was aimed at her—it flew between host and child, foam spattering their faces as it shot past and exploded against the privy door. Shards of clay skittered back around their feet, and a crash came from Poorter’s workshop that sounded suspiciously like a ten-groot commission landing on the stone floor.

  Poorter and the girl were on their feet as one, but before he could find and throttle the cat or she could return fire with her mug, a clear knock drifted through the house. Poorter paused. The girl did not, her mug grazing Sander’s shoulder and shattering against the keg. Then the madman was moving forward, an obscenely happy expression on his face, but Poorter’s voice somehow arrested his charge.

  “Please!” was all he managed, but seeing how well it worked, he reiterated it. “Please!”

  The knock came again, three loud raps. Sander raised his eyebrows, whispering, “Let’s just stay quiet till they go away.”

  “Stay. Quiet,” Poorter growled. “I mean it.”

  He closed the kitchen door behind him. A quick glance confirmed that the commission had indeed been knocked from its joist and lay forlornly on the ground. He didn’t want to look closer to see if the stripe running up the side of the ash butt was a crack or just a shadow, instead hurrying to the door. He paused, his hand on the latch, a dreadful thought occurring to him: He hadn’t inquired how Jan had died. Or where.

  What if they had murdered him? Much worse, what if they had murdered him and left witnesses? What if they had been followed?

  This could be a very large problem. Poorter chided himself, as he usually did when people rapped at his door, for not having a peephole installed.

  He would never actually spring for the expense.

  Knock, knock, knock. Hellfire. Poorter flung open the door, taking a deep breath as he did.

  And nearly choked on it. Count Hobbe Wurfbain stood before him, his brilliant crimson hose tucked into high gray boots, his magenta doublet wreathed by a lavender cape trimmed with vair that mirrored his florid complexion and neatly kempt, hoary goatee. A taller man, even by Holland or Zeeland standards, and a handsome one, despite his age, and, of course, a rather notorious one. He had a velvet hat of some foreign style that Poorter detested on sight, and before the crossbow-maker could recover from the delightful shock of having such a wealthy client on his stoop, that very ugly hat was doffed, the count offering a bow that was mirrored by his pair of footmen.

  “Master Primm,” said the count.

  “My lord Wurfbain,” said Poorter, finally remembering to bow himself. “This is an honor indeed, sir. Welcome to my humble shop.”

  “Yes,” said Count Wurfbain, and there followed a silence that was awkward by anyone’s standards. Finally, the count arched his pale brows and asked, “May I come in?”

  “Ah,” said Poorter, hoping his face didn’t reveal his displeasure. It did. “At the moment, actually, it so happens that I, unfortunately, am indis—”

  “Capital!” said Count Wurfbain, advancing fast upon Poorter. The count had clearly not listened to a word he’d said, and Poorter found himself stepping aside at the last moment to avoid bumping into the noble. This was absolutely bloody typical where Poorter’s luck was concerned. “Now then, where is he?”

  “Ah,” said Poorter as the count looked curiously around the dim workshop. “Who?”

  “My dear old friend,” said Count Wurfbain with such warmth that even though he’d never officially been introduced to the count before, Poorter was a little hurt when he realized he was not the person in question. “Shut the door, Primm, you’re letting in the damp.”

  Glancing back, Poorter saw the footmen had vanished rather than follow their master inside, but quick as he was to shut the door and turn back to his guest, the count was already flinging open the door to the kitchen.

  Shit.

  Shit, shit, shit.

  Also: shit.

  A voice was raised, but the anxious blood crashing behind Poorter’s ears deafened him as he ran to put out a fire that never should have been kindled, a fire that might well burn his fucking house down.

  “—So good to see you again,” the count was saying, pumping Sander’s hand. The madman looked, well, like a madman. A drunk, filthy, wild-eyed madman with a beard like an untended hedge and hair like rotting straw, and the count had his lily-white hands around one of Sander’s brown ones, just shaking away at it like he was trying to draw water from the stunned lunatic’s mouth. “Haven’t aged a day, have you?”

  “I haven’t?” said Sander, confusion giving way to some darker glimmer in those beady eyes of his, and Poorter searched in vain for his voice to somehow forestall the impending disaster. It was Agincourt all over again, the sun blacked out by a rain of arrows, but this time there was no pleasant little Dutch river town to retire to once the day was miraculously won.

  “Let me introduce…” Poorter finally got out, but it was a whisper, and he had absolutely nowhere to go with it. Let me introduce this mad murderer? Let me introduce this raving imbecile? Let me—

  “The graaf and I are old friends, old friends,” said the count, finally releasing Sander and turning to Jo. She had resumed her seat in front of the cheese while Poorter was answering the door and now stared aghast at the nobleman, a wedge of dirty Gouda smushed to paste between her fingers. “I have not, however, met his lovely daughter. No, no, please don’t get up, pet.”

  The urchin had clearly not intended to rise, but as he sashayed toward her, the cheese slipped from her fingers. He knelt on one knee and reached for Jo’s hand. She recoiled from him, her eyes huge as hen’s eggs. Shrugging, the count rose empty-handed and looked to Poorter. Poorter gulped.

  “My lord, there, there has, there was…” Again, Poorter was lost, and threw up his hands in frustration.

  “There is,” said the count, giving his flustered host a condescending pat on the shoulder as he pursed his lips and turned back to Sander and Jo, “an enormous amount of work to be done. We’ll keep them at my estate outside Leyden until they’re passable, which may take no petite span of time. Until then, not a word, Master Primm, not a word, but when they return, old boy, when they return…”

  “Return?” Poorter gasped on the word, as though it were composed of noxious swamp vapors.

  “When they return,” said Count Wurfbain with a cocksure wag of his finger, “they will be Graaf Tieselen of Oudeland and his lovely daughter. Obviously. Who else could they be?”

  Feast of Saint Alberic of Utrecht 1425

  “Casting Roses Before Swine”

  The Bumpkins would be arriving in less than three hours, and the new girl had only just knocked, timidly, at the white birch door of the house on Voorstraat. Lansloet knew who she was but acted as if he didn’t, standing with sil
ent expectation to see if she was as mousy as her feeble knock. She was, and he knew her name was Quakeyshakes before she even told him her real one.

  “Sir, I… I am… my name is. Lijsbet. And I… Griet told me to come. Sir.” When Lansloet opened the door, Quakeyshakes had pulled her hood back, dislodging the white wimple beneath it in the process, and the rain was making her greenish-brown eyes blink like those of a landed carp. Lansloet leaned sideways in the doorway, out of the draft. As she rambled, he casually settled a hand at belt level and flattened his palm into something like a beckoning shape, careful to do so as slowly and subtly as possible.

  Lansloet waited, silently gazing down at the bedraggled creature on his stoop. There were two thin ridges of mud on the lip of the bottom step where she had wiped her rag-swaddled shoes before knocking. The rain would take care of the mess, and it showed some small measure of wits on her part, but he would nevertheless take her to task for dirtying his stairs.

  Quakeyshakes waited, her face now streaming, her sluttily exposed auburn hair wearing a net of rain beads. Her gown was clean, cut from a single piece of pale blue linen, and she had a white shawl around her shoulders—likely a folded apron. She must be very cold, her wide frame shuddering, and Lansloet wondered if she had a warmer but less presentable garment in the covered wicker basket weighing down one trembling elbow. She was perhaps sixteen or twenty, and thus fifty years his junior, but still he thought her far too old for such folly—she must know the position was hers, regardless of how ratty her cape was, and yet…

  At last her eyes fell from Lansloet’s imperious face. As she took in the frozen hand gesturing toward the interior, and the fact that he was no longer filling the doorway, her strained smile softened into something more genuine.

  “Oh, right, sorry, sir.” Quakeyshakes blushed as she took the steps, entering the foyer with a sharp wiggle that dotted Lansloet’s shirtfront with droplets. He had once seen fleas abandoning an old dog, and the image sprang to mind now. Time to break the silence.

  “You will not shake yourself like a wet bitch when inside this house,” Lansloet said, careful as ever to keep his voice to a whisper despite his irritation. A soft voice kept people close at hand, and lord or lady, butcher or beggar, nobody was happy with a close-talker. Those who were ill at ease and keen to be away tended to give up more advantages than comfortable folk, and a low tone ensured he would be taken very seriously indeed should he raise his voice above a rasp.

  Except the girl seemed not to have heard him, turning her head slowly from left to right, taking in the fine, fur-trimmed cloaks hanging on the rack beside the still-open front door, the brown and black pairs of high leather boots on the floor beneath the garments, the buffed stairway leading up to the second floor, the warm, bright hallway leading to the kitchen, the double doors opening to the parlor opposite the stairs, and then, at last, Lansloet again. She blinked. Her blush had faded to a pale rose, and then her cheeks blanched completely to something like the gamy yellow fat on an uncooked rack of lamb.

  “I’m so sorry, sir, didja say something? To me?” Quakeyshakes had lowered the basket from her elbow and now held it in both hands.

  “Yes,” said Lansloet, and said no more. He was quite aware of how he must seem to this girl—a mean old beanpole of a man, with a face like a long, withered pod. So what if he was?

  “Sorry,” she said, the basket’s handle creaking mournfully in her hands. “I don’t always hear so good. My da was a smith, a real guild one, and the clanging—”

  “I said do not shake yourself off like a wet bitch in this house. Ever.” Lansloet’s chicken-bone fingers went to his chest and sharply flicked across the gray shirt, but whatever water she had moistened him with had already been absorbed into the cloth. Quakeyshakes flinched, stammering an apology, but he raised a hand and she fell silent. “Nor shall you dirty my stoop with your boot scrapings. This home shall neither be filthified nor dampened by your presence. Understood?”

  “I… yes,” she said, eyes falling to her basket. The woven willow had caught quite a bit of rain, and in silence they listened to it dripping onto the oak floor. Her face went from pear flesh-pale to cherry-skinned, her knuckles tightening on her load with a squeak. “If I may, uh, if… if I can take this to my quarters, I’ll come and mop up in here. Sir.”

  “In time,” said Lansloet. Over the many years and masters he had served, Lansloet had developed a method for letting himself smile without ever displaying it on his face. It was as if the grin spread across someplace so deep and dark that not even its faintest edge could be seen on his eternally frowning lips. He was smiling that secret smile now, wondering how long it would take her to notice he was again holding his hand at his waist, motioning toward the parlor door. About thirty heartbeats, as it turned out. The heartbeat was Lansloet’s preferred method of timekeeping, his own being as reliable as finding frivolity at a feast.

  “Oh! Sorry, sir, I’m… I… I don’t.” Quakeyshakes was moving for the parlor when he cleared his throat and directed his eyes to the still-open front door behind her. Throwing the mutts a bone from time to time was just common sense for maintaining respect and order. “Oh! Yes, sorry, sir.”

  After closing the door, Quakeyshakes took a step toward him but paused, like a rumbled rat contemplating flight. He nodded, and she turned back to the door, fastening the heavy bolt into place. She would do well enough, he supposed.

  “The parlor,” he said, opening the double doors leading off the foyer and ushering her in. After her initial entrance into the house, he would never permit her to go through a doorway before him, except where the serving of meals was concerned. He should have enjoyed taking her upstairs first, so that her basket would drip all over them and he could then have her wipe them all down again, but there simply wasn’t time. In the parlor, a dark rug, which would soak up the dribbling, covered most of the room—he certainly wasn’t going to let her put her basket down until after the tour.

  As soon as she entered the parlor she winced as if struck, the painting that hung above the hearth clearly affecting her as strongly as it did all who beheld it. Christ had never looked more alarming, the far-too-realistic style of the work making him look as though he were about to pounce from the wall and seize the unfortunate viewer in his long fingers. Lansloet had hated the painting when the graaf had first brought it home, as was natural given its ghoulishness, but upon realizing how uncomfortable it made everyone save for the master of the house, he had grown to love it.

  “His lordship’s chair is to be brushed with a clean, dry cloth every morning.” Lansloet motioned to the cushioned, thronelike lounger in front of the fireplace and its stern guardian. “Then the other chairs, and the tiled table against the wall. The shelves and mantel will be wiped with a dry cloth every third morning. You may use the same cloth, provided the chairs are done first, and then the table. The vases will be removed from the shelves and placed upon the floor prior to dusting. They will then be wiped with the same cloth and returned to their original positions. In the spring and summer the functional vases will be filled with flowers, the decorative vases shall remain empty at all times. Under no circumstances are you to purchase cheaper flowers in the hope of pocketing the difference—I shall know, and you shall be released from service.”

  “I wouldn’t!” Quakeyshakes cried, then blanched again from her own outburst.

  “The girl before you was a sneak and a snatcher,” said Lansloet, displeased with this exhibition of emotion. If her initial timidity was just that, he would be sorely disappointed, and not just because it would necessitate a new nickname. “After being punished, she was released. I will not suffer a thief.”

  In truth, Lansloet would suffer a thief, and did, most of the time. He would not, however, stand for a stupid one. The likelihood of finding an honest and intelligent servant was about the same as finding a master who was both rich and fair. No, the issue was that the girl in question had been an obvious thief, and that ruined it for ev
erybody. If he had to choose between an honest, stupid servant and a crafty, duplicitous one, he would take the cheat every time. Unfortunately, Quakeyshakes already seemed the former, but so it went. They were shorthanded, and the Bumpkins were coming.

  Lansloet knew Graaf Thirstybird would not have given a belch about appearances if the guests were old Dordrecht blood, but as the Bumpkins were new to the city and likely not yet aware of how lowly their hosts were, an efficient supper service was crucial. If Lansloet had known about the impending visit before this morning, when that troublesome Count Wolfmean had arrived unannounced, he would have further put off hiring a new girl until he could find a better advantage in it—as it was, he had been pocketing the discharged servant’s wages for a fortnight without the graaf or Lady Greenplum noticing they were down a drudge, and now he was out of that, as well as owing his cousin Griet a favor for finding him this new girl so quickly.

  Surely Wolfmean had his own designs in forcing the master to host a pair of out-of-town nobles on a day’s notice, but the sly count was every bit as inscrutable in his machinations as Lansloet’s employer was daft and obvious in his. And thank the saints and Mary and the founding fathers of Dordt for that—having served both sorts of men, Lansloet would take the addlepated lord over the cunning one every time. There were those who held that a man could not choose his master, but by Lansloet’s reckoning, such people tended toward dimness. He had been around longer than the building itself, and took it as a point of private pride that no matter who he was bowing to at any given moment, the house was, now and forever, his in spirit if not in literal deed.

  “The dining room is beyond this partition,” Lansloet said, opening the gate section of the high wooden screen. “The table will be wiped clean and polished after every meal, and again before breakfast. After that you will crawl beneath to clean up crumbs and sop up spills. After that you will…”