The Folly of the World

by Jesse Bullington

  “And when’s that, anyway?” said Sander. “When we get our own place?”

  “Very soon now. Even sooner than I would have preferred, but your inspecting the Gruyere jewels so thoroughly will necessitate a hastening of plans—Simon will be back in Dordrecht to warn his brother in no time at all, and we don’t want them getting too far ahead of us.”

  “His brother?” What the fuck were they talking about? “Whose brother?”

  “Jesus, Sander!” Jo shouted, the little bitch pissed off at him, now. “Simon’s brother is Braem, the elder son of Jan’s father’s wife’s brother, Rutger Gruyere. How’s that hard to remember?”

  “Wait, him?” Sander recognized the name Gruyere now. Well, it sounded familiar, anyway. “Yeah, I knew that. Obviously. The one I grabbed, that Simon, he’s… he’s who, now?”

  Hobbe groaned theatrically.

  “You need to keep this straight,” Jo said. “Simon and Braem are Jan’s cousins, and since every other heir died in the flood, they’ve received everything that was Jan’s father’s—the Tieselen house in Dordrecht, the wine importation business, and, if the waters ever recede, all of Oudeland.”

  “Sure,” said Sander, remembering now. “Gotcha.”

  “You’ve had almost a year to learn this stuff,” said Jo. “You at least need to remember who it is that’s going to want to kill you when we’re done with this.”

  “No worries there,” said Sander, trying his damnedest not to glance at the count seated between them. “I got that part firm in fist, daughter dear, and it ain’t the tail I’ve a hold of, neither.”

  “Jan,” Hobbe said patiently. “I don’t want to kill you.”

  “Provided I do as you say,” sneered Sander.

  “Correct. I hope you’re not still sore about our tiff during the drive?”

  “Me? Nay, I ain’t given it another thought.” The cobbles ended and the coach began to rattle over the rough road. Sander felt like he might throw up again.

  Hobbe sighed. “You’ll have calmed down enough to realize it was Jan who told me about your nightmare, yes?”

  “Yeah, my—wait, he what?” It was disorienting enough, having a conversation with someone all up on you with the seat cramped like this, but this particular conversation…

  “When I met him in Dordrecht, just before you set out to Oudeland for the ring. He told me everything. He said you fell into a canal during your escape from the gallows in Friesland, and disappeared for ages and ages. When you found him again, you told him you couldn’t remember what had happened.”

  “That so?” Sander’s heart began to imitate the carriage wheels, bouncing around his chest as it picked up speed. The count was lying, obviously—Sander had told Jan that much, sure, but nothing more, certainly nothing about the Belgians.

  “Jan said you took to talking in your sleep after your reunion in Rotterdam,” Hobbe went on affably. “He said that when you awoke, you claimed not to remember anything, but while you dreamed, you muttered quite a bit, and from that he pieced together what had happened. Belgians from Belgium and all that.”

  Sander just stared, not sure what the devil was going on. Jan had told Hobbe what?

  “Jan said it sounded like you’d washed downstream from Sneek and were rescued by some exceptionally ugly lepers. Peat-cutters, by trade, an old man and wife and their children. Apparently these poxed peat-cutters nursed you through the winter—you were very sick, having fits, but they did their best to keep you warm and fed, being good Christians. Even in a fever-state you ate them out of house and home, it sounds like, until the end of spring.”

  “… What?” Sander finally managed, concentrating on that black stretch of lost time and imagining dim glimpses of dirty, deformed faces looming over a pallet, where he lay shivering. He shivered again, there in the coach. This was bullshit. Had to be.

  “And then,” Hobbe continued, turning to Jo and waggling his eyebrows, as if he’d hit the good part of a favorite story, “and then, it seems, you had a different sort of fit entirely, mistaking your saviors for monsters. Belgians, you called them. Belgica is the old Roman name for Holland, of course. I have heard that in the wilds of France some peasants still speak a bastardized Latin—it seems likely to me that your lepers similarly retained some of the old language, and you overheard them speaking this gibberish.”

  “No,” Sander whispered. He envisioned a misshapen man on a dark stream bank holding up a sputtering rushlight, searching the moonless night for Sander, who had sleepwalked away. So the husband—call him Belgian, sure—had come looking for Sander, and then Sander had wrestled him to the ground, beat him, stabbed him with a piece of bone. Then he had gone looking for the wife. For the kids. “No.”

  “It’s not your fault,” said Hobbe, patting his shoulder. “You were out of sorts, sick in the pate. I was curious, so I investigated a little, and it seems that there was indeed a nearby familial leper colony that was eradicated by an assailant or assailants unknown. No survivors, you understand, or I should be able to provide you with further details.”

  Sander stared with unabashed horror at Hobbe. This was worse than a conspiracy of monsters, worse by fucking leagues. He could picture it all too well, lepers old and young leaping on him with their peat blades, croaking their damn Friesland-talk as he killed any he could lay hands on, until they pushed him back into the black water, their tools crack-crack-cracking into his already feverish skull, driving him into the current that would take him downstream…

  “Maybe it’s unrelated,” said Hobbe, his voice coming as if from a great distance, a great depth. “Maybe the massacre was unpaid mercenaries raiding, I don’t know, the peat supplies, or just someone who hates lepers. All that I can be sure of is that Jan claimed to put together such a story from your sleep-talk. He said he would talk to you as you muttered away the night, trying to help you preserve the memories when you were awake as well as dreaming, but in your sleep you insisted you didn’t want to. He said when you were awake, he would fish about to see if you could recall anything, but it only annoyed you.”

  Sander certainly remembered Jan getting on his nuts in that regard, badgering him about where he might have been and what he might have done between Sneek and their reunion. The notion that all along Jan had known or at least suspected what had happened but not volunteered the information stung like a wasp to the asshole. Of course, that meant that Sander had known all along, too, that he had simply kept it locked up deep inside and refused to let himself see it.

  It might not be the first occasion Sander had done it, either, remembering how firmly he had convinced himself that he was leaving home for good simply because he wanted to and not because he had tossed his drunk father into the shallow well and locked the lid in place. It was only from the dreams that began long after he fled that Sander really remembered what he had done that night—the sounds of his father scratching at the soft wooden walls of the well, the splashing and crying bubbling up through the darkness of slumber.

  “I apologize for using the information to frighten you earlier, but you must understand that I couldn’t have you running off on me at the last moment, not when we’re so close to success.” Hobbe yawned. “That was one of Jan’s suggestions, as it happens. ‘If you ever need to really get Sander’s attention, just tell him you know about the Belgians.’ I didn’t anticipate it having quite such a strong effect, so I thought it best to come clean about everything sooner rather than later—it occurred to me during the service that my mention of it might lead you to think something, I don’t know, unnatural had happened, and not—”

  “Shut it! Just… shut it! Cunt!” Sander exploded, clenching his fists until they ached. Jo had squirmed around in her seat and was looking at him with the wide, stupid expression she sometimes wore when she was upset, like when she’d realized what Jan was about as he strangled her. Sander turned away to the emerald blur of reeds outside his window. He put a hand on the door. “I’m walking back. Or you got something smart
to say ’bout that, too?”

  Hobbe didn’t reply other than to lean forward and bang his cane against the fore wall of the coachbox. The vehicle slowed, and Sander fled into the rain. Jo tried to follow him, but he waved her off, and then the carriage was moving again, the manor lying somewhere beyond the storm that seemed to pick up the moment he left the carriage. Fuck-knuckles. Looking over the empty fields to one side and the Oude Rijn beyond the rushes on the other, Sander felt his throat constrict even as his fists finally relaxed, clubs becoming hands as if thawed by the warm rain.

  What was better, being a mad killer or the world being full of monsters? What was more likely, Hobbe telling the truth before the service, or after? It would be the tidiest trick of all, if Hobbe was working for them, to make Sander think he was mad, when really he hadn’t killed anybody at all, just demons.

  Other than the people Sander knew he had killed, of course, there were plenty of those, but as for leprous peat-cutters that even now he could only half-remember…

  Remember or imagine?

  But no, that was just an excuse, wasn’t it? Something to keep him from saying to himself, all right, Sander, you were a little barmy there for a little while, but you’re better now, anything to avoid the unavoidable, to prolong the inevitable.

  And they always had an excuse, didn’t they? They, them, those—the rich men, the graafs and their bullyboys, the freemen, the knights, the mercenary chiefs, the militiamen, the lords and ladies…

  And now he was one of them. Would that he hadn’t drowned his old da, so the wicked asshole could have seen his son become a graaf before being hanged for whatever crimes Sander saw fit to charge him with. Sander smiled to himself and set off down the road after the coach, thunder rippling across the sky as his stupid noble’s shoes filled with mud.

  Autumn 1425

  “The Best Straps Are Cut from Someone Else’s Leather”

  I.

  The day after the Feast of Saint Alberic, when Graaf Tieselen and his daughter had entertained a remarkably vulgar Flemish graaf and his brat as a favor to Count Wurfbain, the Lady Jolanda spent her afternoon taking her new servant around to the various markets. This sat predictably poorly with Drimmelin, for the cook preferred to do the shopping, but the sun was out and Jolanda would be damned before she would sit inside just so the older woman could get her haggle on. No doubt Drimmelin turned a pfennig or two for herself in the process, but that was just one tough tit—Jolanda liked the market on fall days like this, with the breeze akin to cool hands on a warm cheek rather than the slapping palms of winter.

  Mistress and maid set off with baskets in hand, toward Groenmarkt. At this time of day Varkenmarkt would be less busy, but the grain market was closer, and Jolanda preferred to get the meat last to prevent it from leaking on everything else. The crowds were certainly out in Groenmarkt Square, necessitating a clumsy dance through the stalls with five new partners popping up for every step a lady might take. Jolanda was glad to be in the midst of the madness—she was never quite sure how to behave around new people, and Lijsbet wasn’t making things any easier by keeping her own mouth shut. Better than a blatherer, aye, but it made it difficult to get a feel for whether the girl was smooth or coarse, coming from a softer situation or a harder one.

  “What did Drimmelin want, rye or barley?” Jolanda asked the girl when they broke another wave of townsfolk and found themselves pressed against two sizable bins of grain.

  “Don’t you decide such things?” Lijsbet replied. Was that a sly smile turning up her plump lips as she said it? Jolanda wasn’t sure if the girl was being cheeky or genial, and she felt her cheeks flush with the heat that always seemed to be a puff of breath away from flaring up inside her, everyone from count to kitchen-hag putting her on edge. This was some test, the servant trying to feel out the parameters, find out what she could get away with, how far her new mistress was going to let her stray from prim silence. Which meant it was on Jolanda to play her back, depending on what advantage she saw in—

  God’s wounds, not every wee thing needed to be thought to death. Jolanda had spent so much time pretending to be a rich arsehole, she was beginning to think like one. If Lijsbet turned out to be a scheming cuntbitch, they’d just sack her. Still…

  “I am of the mind that it is always efficacious to let a servant choose what she might, so that one may judge her true worth accordingly,” said Jolanda, raising her eyebrows severely at Lijsbet. “I put it to you, then, and caution that your response will dictate whether your services are further required in my house—rye or barley, girl, barley or rye?”

  The servant cocked her head at Jolanda, that hint of a smile returning for an instant before dropping away as her mouth opened and hung there. Lijsbet’s cheeks colored furiously, and her basket squeaked in her hand. She’d doubted at first, but Jolanda’s hard expression had convinced her.

  “I’m just riding your tits,” Jolanda said with a grin. “I don’t care what’s in the bread so long as it’s soft, aye?”

  The servant’s blush darkened and her eyes widened, and then they were both laughing.

  “Tell you, it’s a relief,” Lijsbet said as they gained a quiet alley after loading her basket with rye flour. “I was in a house off Gravenstraat afore, and it was awful. Lady was cold as February ice, and the master, well… was glad to be rid of there. But then that Lansloet, he made me think, I don’t know, there weren’t no smiling to be had in your house, neither.”

  “He doesn’t think there should be,” said Jolanda, swinging her empty basket before her. The rains had cleaned these narrow avenues of some of summer’s overripe filth. “He’s as withered a piece of drift as ever washed ashore. Thinks Jan and me indulge ourselves overly much.”

  “Oh no, he never said nothing like that,” Lijsbet said quickly, and with a bit more seriousness. Clever enough girl to know better than to gossip about other servants to the lady of the house. At least, at first. “He and Drimmelin only ever say the nicest stuff about you and the graaf. On my honor, they think nothing but the best of you two.”

  “And what’s your honor worth, then?” Jolanda hoped it came across as teasing rather than insulting.

  “Why, m’lady, I wonder how you come to suppose I was some slut—and here I thought you’s unaware I was turning extra mites sneaking up to the attic with Lansloet!”

  Jolanda shuddered at the thought, and then they were laughing again. Jolanda couldn’t stop herself from wondering if this were all some ruse on Lijsbet’s part to insinuate herself into her mistress’s confidences…. or could be she was just a pleasant young woman. Not everyone was like Wurfbain and his friends. Or herself, Jolanda supposed. Not everyone was a fraud.

  “—such a pervert!” Lijsbet was saying, and then, realizing they had just stepped from the empty alley into the teeming De Waag, burst into another giggling fit. The servant was a blusher, all right, once more turning red as the lamb shanks they would be bringing home, provided the cuts weren’t too pricey. Jolanda laughed along with her servant, but now she couldn’t be sure if she were faking it or not.

  The leeks were nice and thick, and greener than the last time Jolanda had been, but the almonds were positively desiccated. She clicked her teeth as she ran her fingers through a nut bin, the proprietor standing firm on his price even in the face of her displeasure. Lijsbet stepped in and talked him down, not with the fierce indignation that Drimmelin, or, fair enough, Jolanda herself would have employed, but instead with a sweet, pleading tone that revolted Jolanda but got results. The ginger was white rather than yellow, and the parsley yellow rather than green, but what could you expect with the first freeze already here? It’s always the worst guest who arrives early, Sander often said, which was no doubt why he was always the first at the table. The last thing to procure before moving on to the Varkenmarkt was a jar of amylum, and again Lijsbet took charge of the bartering, this time adopting a harder edge to get the seemingly intractable crone to lower her price on the starch.


  “Don’t look now,” Lijsbet said as they wove their way across the plaza, “but there’s a handsome fellow over by the onion-seller who’s got his eyes stuck on your veil, or I’m blind myself. You wouldn’t have a sweeting, would you?”

  “Certainly not,” Jolanda said, her heart kicking in her chest at the prospect of being spied on. She hated how the men of Dordt would ogle a woman as though she didn’t have a stitch on, regardless of her position or escort, and she hated feeling as twitchy as Sander acted. A year and a half in the clear as Graaf Tieselen and he was still imagining shadowy figures watching him from every dark alley, but Jolanda wouldn’t be sucked down into the mad bog where her ersatz father typically dwelt. She kept her face set even as her eyes darted from booth to stall. There were two rooters that she could see from here, but neither had even a halfway-decent-looking man near their stall. “Which one?”

  “He’s gone,” said Lijsbet, frowning. “An older chap, maybe the graaf’s age? Hair the color of my basket.”

  “Narrows it down enough,” said Jolanda. “Brown-haired old creeper. Not many of them out.”

  “Smooth-cheeked, though,” said Lijsbet, dropping any pretense of subtlety and craning her neck all around. “And prettier than most sheepheads.”

  “Oh,” said Jolanda, looking about as well, despite how foolish it made her feel. “Wish I was allowed to carry my sword. Poots wouldn’t stare if they thought I’d give them a poke instead of the reverse.”

  “I don’t think he was a poot,” said Lijsbet. “Nobody’d take you for a boy, m’lady.”

  “Christ, shut it!” Jolanda said, hurrying the last few paces out of the square and starting down ’S Heer Boeijenstraat. Having the tall stone buildings lean over them put her more at ease than how they hung back at the edges of Grote Markt Square. “And everyone’s a poot to me—really gets on Jan’s sack to call folk that.”