The Folly of the World

by Jesse Bullington

  Rather than releasing him, Jolanda squeezed him until he groaned, really digging into his ribs. “Charms? Don’t call ’em that again, it’s awful. Only reason I didn’t have anything on was the dye. You want me to ruin something nice on account of modesty in an empty room?”

  “Could be a suitor, though, yeah?” said Sander, doing that annoying thing where he only partially responded to what she’d said, too caught up in his own harebrained thoughts. “I’ve heard you’re not as bad in the face as some of those rich bitches, and that counts for a lot with young lads.”

  “You’re a charmer yourself, Papa,” said Jolanda. “Maybe it was some lovelorn poot working up the courage to knock at your backdoor.”

  There was a pause, and Jolanda wondered if he was smiling or frowning. She could barely make out his silhouette, even with her eyes somewhat accustomed to the darkness of the shuttered room. He muttered, “Something about a canal.”

  “What?”

  “Canal runs behind the house, should’ve done something clever about canals and backdoors. Too tired to think straight. To bed with you.”

  “Aye,” said Jolanda. A thought came to her, inspired, perhaps, by the general peculiarity of the night, and she blurted it out before she could stop herself. “We should go ratting sometime, you and me. Sounds like fun.”

  “Not what you’ve said about the practice before,” he muttered, the mad bastard sounding all stiff and awkward again. “Besides, we need to start thinking about your future. I won’t live forever, and we’ll never marry you off if you get a reputation for being moon-touched as your old da.”

  Well, that was one sure way of making sure the evening was ruined after all—the prospect of marrying some elderly bachelor was about as appealing as eating fishhooks. One thing she’d learned from all those bad times that had come before her current situation was that older men were only after their own interests. Of course, Simon’s arsehole older brother, Braem, was proof enough that younger fellows could be pretty much the same. “I’ve told you once, I’ve told you a—hey!”

  Sander had swept her off her feet, and she was too startled to fight back—how the hell could he see her well enough to pull that off in the dark? He had one hand behind her knees and the other sweaty paw ’round her back, and was making for the bed, she guessed. She tensed an elbow, ready to jab his collar and set to squirming free if he didn’t drop her at once, when he spoke in that odd, quiet voice again, “Told me a hundred times. Like I could make you do something you didn’t want to.”

  “Well,” said Jolanda, not sure how else to respond. This was a different sort of Sander than she was used to, and it unnerved her a great deal more than his usual bluster and crank.

  “Do me a boon, though,” said Sander, leaning forward a bit and depositing her with an almost tender clumsiness on the bed. “When you go out, take that new Lizzy girl with you.”

  “When?” Jolanda asked as Sander pulled the blankets up around her. Although it did not occur to her until after he left and she lay alone in the dark, unable to sleep, no man had tucked her in since her brother Pieter had left home.

  “Anytime,” Sander said. “From now on, anytime you leave. And carry a blade tucked away with you. Villains everywhere, looking to get their grope on.”

  “Nice,” said Jolanda, trying not to let him spook her out again after the night she’d had. “Goodnight.”

  “Night,” he said, and a few moments later the door opened, letting in the hint of whatever light he’d left burning in his room down the hall. Seeing him outlined there, his figure somehow blacker than the room had been before he’d opened the door, she suddenly remembered what had sounded so familiar about Sander’s claim of dreaming while awake. He and Wurfbain had talked about just that during the coach rides to and from the Easter service in Leyden, something she’d written off at the time as just another example of a madman’s folly. It had been a dreadful, tense exchange, something about Sander maybe hurting, no, killing a bunch of lepers up in Friesland. A family of them. How they’d nursed him when he was sick only to have him murder the lot.

  Jesus Christ preserve her.

  “Wait,” she called, anxious for an answer, any answer. “Those dreams, where you were awake when they were happening? How did you wake up from those? How did you make them stop?”

  “I couldn’t,” said Sander, closing the door behind him and leaving her to the dark.

  IV.

  Sander had evidently found a wee pox along with the mutilated corpse, and so spent the next three days in bed. The lengthy haze of aching limbs and pitching around in sweaty covers was occasionally punctuated with leek-and-garlic soup, horehound tea, and fever dreams of decapitated children, prancing Belgians, and, of course, a covered well, from which floated the admonishments of his father and Jan and all the other men Sander had ever killed. It was even worse than it sounded.

  Eventually the illness passed, but the first afternoon Sander quit his bed Simon showed up, pasty and stammering to have a talk—so much for rest. The last thing Sander wanted was Lansloet eavesdropping on their conversation, and so he led Simon to the White Horse; the best place for a quiet word was a loud tavern. Jo and that Lizzy girl accompanied them, which rather defeated the purpose of leaving the house for privacy, but Sander was too weak to fight the girls on it. On the walk Sander would’ve sworn they were being followed, but that was surely just the fever shadowing him.

  “That so?” Sander asked, keeping his voice to a whisper even with Jo and Lizzy across the tavern, fetching the ales. He’d told them four, but having Simon acting the donkey put Sander in a mood to keep two for himself.

  “Haunted,” said Simon, with a sincerity that gave Sander chills in spite of himself. Or maybe it was just the chills giving him chills; goddamn pox. “Every night since we found her, she comes to me, begs me to tell someone!”

  “How’s she do that?” said Sander, truly curious.

  “I told you, in my dreams. I cannot rest, and when at last my eyelids shutter, I—”

  “I got that,” said Sander. “I mean how does she beg you to do anything, not having a head?”

  “Oh,” said Simon, pursing his lips. “Well, she has one in the dreams.”

  “Then how you know it’s the same dead kid you’re dreaming of, eh?” said Sander, something of a savant these days at using his wits to trump his fears.

  “Jan, she…” Simon lowered his head. “Pray, Cousin, do not be cross, if I confide something to you.”

  “So long as you hurry up with it.”

  “She… sometimes, the girl, that poor, naked creature, she…”

  “She gives you a hand job?”

  “No! It’s just… it is her, the girl we found, I have no doubt that it is she, but sometimes… well, she looks like Jo. She possesses Lady Jo’s head.”

  Sander leaned in, motioning Simon to do the same, and when they were close enough to kiss, Sander rapped his hairy knuckles on Simon’s brow. “I don’t want to hear another word about this, Simon.”

  “But—”

  “Shut up,” said Sander. Jo and her maid were taking the beers from the bartop and turning back toward the table. The White Horse was as mobbed as the dive ever got, the usual threesomes and foursomes of flood-ruined nobles, coin-loaded merchants, and so-so guild members crowded around the boarded-over spokes of the tavern’s cart-wheel tables. Sander recognized more of the merchants and boatmen than he did Simon’s peers, but the broke snobs certainly knew him—the hatred in their eyes as the Cods glanced his way was about as subtle as a sick dog’s fart. “Not another word. Not to nobody, and certainly not to Jo and her girl.”

  “But—”

  “But nothing,” said Sander, though he’d come to realize that only one thing would appease Simon. “Winter’s come in the last couple of days; I’m sure you noticed that out at the warehouse. Say you tell the militia now, with fresh ice covering the mud and meer, and they manage to get out there. They’ll see the ice ain’t cracked, see yo
u’ve been sitting on this ’stead of telling them right away.”

  Simon stared blankly at him, the thick plug.

  “Meaning you look even more suspicious. Like you found out days ago but waited to report it. Anytime you wait to report a thing, it looks suspicious. Like you didn’t want to tell.”

  “But we did find her days ago,” protested Simon. “And—”

  “We, nothing, cunt, we nothing—you want to get the crow eyes of every hungry militiaman in town directed on you and what you might have to steal, go ahead, but leave me out of it. I won’t tell you another word on the matter, save this: you want to tell someone, do yourself a favor and wait ’til the ice breaks up. Then you pretend to find her, otherwise you’ll look even guiltier.”

  “I can’t wait until spring! I am benightmared by her nightly hauntings, and—”

  “Shut it,” said Sander sharply. “Oi, that’s two for me and two for Simon, didn’t you lasses get nothing for yourself?”

  Lizzy giggled, placing both of her mugs on the table in front of Sander. “Here you are, sir, and I’m glad you’re feeling so hale as to dare two whole water-thin ales.”

  “Lippy trull!” Sander cried, hoping to disarm the girls with his charm and send them off again so he could finish up with Simon and set to getting properly drunk. “I’ll have a third, Lizzy, but this time buy yourself something wet while you’re up.”

  “My name is Lijsbet,” she lightly replied. “Lizzy is what you call a very old aunt or a very young child, and being something between, I would beg the courtesy of a proper name.” Almost as an afterthought, she added, “sir,” but with none of that edge that Lansloet honed onto the word. She curtsied, the soiled end of her gown flipping a little of its icy sludge onto Simon in the process. She weren’t so bad, this girl.

  “The hell with that,” said Jo, sitting down at a stool beside Simon but not relinquishing either of her ales. “These are for us, bought with my own coin. Let the gentlemen prove their gentility by stepping their fat arses to the bar themselves.”

  “Lady Jo, I should be honored to enjoy the privilege of purchasing you a refreshment, if only you did not already have a pair before you,” said Simon, flicking off the slush Lijsbet had deposited on the thigh of his hose. Credit where due, the ponce pulled his shit together fast. “Perhaps next round?”

  “Come on, Simony,” said Sander, bumping the table as he stood and causing both the beers before him to slosh foam onto the table. “You can buy me one.”

  “Alas, I fear I may have spoken in haste,” Simon said, following Sander to his feet. “And so it is a question of credit rather than coin, but nonetheless I shall be—”

  “Shut it,” Sander hissed, as they were sidling up to the bar. “Let’s get this straight, Coz, and now—you tell who you want, when you want, but I was never there, and you never told me nothing. Or did you already tell that cunt brother of yours about it, tell him I was out there with you?”

  “I—” Simon looked as ill as Sander had felt all week.

  “I’ll know if you’re lying.” Sander put an arm around the smaller man and squeezed his shoulder, lowering his voice even more. Old blubbertub Eckert was coming toward them—leave it to a barkeep to only be prompt with service when you’re hoping he’ll be slow. Sander held up four fingers to prevent the fucker from getting his pendulous jowls any closer. “I don’t care if you told Braem or not, but if you lie about it now I’ll know, and I’ll put you out on your ass. You’ll be dead to me, Simon Gruyere, I mean it.”

  “I haven’t told him yet,” Simon whispered. He looked earnest enough, and handsome, his eyes shining in the light of the smoking oil lamps behind the bar. “I haven’t told anyone yet, not even a priest. That’s why I came by, I had to talk to some—”

  “Good boy. You really want to tell, you wait until the ice thaws a bit, and then you find her body.”

  “I find her when it thaws?” Simon asked as if it were a difficult concept to grasp.

  “Yeah, thicky-Simon-thicky-cousin. It’s too early for this weather to hold, so don’t worry about being night-haunted all winter long. When it warms back up enough to get a boat out there easy, you pretend to find the body and tell your brother and the militia and God and anyone else you want. Point is, you go tonight and tell them you just found her today, they’ll know you’re lying, as she’ll be under ice by now, and if you tell ’em you found her three days ago, they’ll wonder what took you so long to bring it up. Get it?”

  As Sander whispered all this to Simon, a table of boatmen beside them roared with laughter, and Sander wondered how much his dim-witted friend had heard. Enough, it seemed, as Simon nodded and whispered back, “So when the ice is broken up enough to row over to Trash Island, I report her?”

  “Got it. But I mean it when I say I don’t know nothing about it, here on out. I’ve got enough to worry about without the militia sniffing around ’cause you said I was with you when you found some dead girl. Get me, Simon? You and me, we never found nothing out there. It gets warm enough, you go and pretend to find her, stir up the mud and all, then you go to the militia, and then, only then, you come and tell me, your boss, like you’d report anything else of note you found out near my warehouse. Got it?”

  “But—”

  “Got it?” Sander squeezed Simon’s shoulder hard enough to make the fop grimace. It was an easy-enough scheme, why the hell was Simon so soft in the head?

  “Yes, yes, I have it,” Simon said quickly, and Sander let him go, digging into his purse to pay for the beer Eckert was bringing them. Finally.

  By the time they’d navigated back to the girls, Jo and Lijsbet were each down a mug and whispering to each other. At Simon and Sander’s return they broke into an awful snigger that echoed from one mouth to the other and back again. At least Simon’s spirits were restored, having some foolish chits to flirt with.

  Sander settled down on his stool and drained his first beer in two long pulls. He still felt sore in the throat and brow, and drinking the tart, malty piss in as few swallows as possible seemed expedient. Goddamn Simon. Like it was so hard to understand. Militias were corrupt, as a rule, and none more so than Dordt’s. If anyone knew it was Sander, having had more than one run-in with the fuckers during his youthful oat-sowing on both sides of the city walls. Wouldn’t that just make some graybeard militiaman’s day, recognizing Sander Himbrecht after all these years?

  Even a pack of plaguebitches like the Dordt watch would’ve figured out it was Sander who drowned his father in the well before hastily quitting the Groote Waard way back when—no doubt whatsoever their shitheel neighbors had gone straight to the city to report the crime once they found the old man’s body. Any one of those old assholes on the milita identified Sander and they could hang him twice: once for the patricide and again for impersonating a noble, to say fuck-all of some headless corpse at Trash Island.

  What the devil was wrong with him that he’d agreed to come back to this place with Jan in the first place? That he’d never considered how easy it would be for some old-timer to take one look at his face and pin him for murder? He must be as mad as they said, to take the risk of setting foot in Dordt for a single day, let alone permanently settling down here…

  No matter, because he wasn’t going to be talking to any damn militiamen. He would forget he ever saw the body. He could do that. Forgetting was becoming something of a specialty of his, and top of the list was forgetting he ever gave himself the sweats worrying about being fingered for an ancient crime—he was safe here. Safe.

  “A Rotter, eh?” Simon was saying to Lijsbet. Sander forced his attention to their conversation, dull though it was destined to be. Dull beat deranged any day. “A fellow Cod through and true, or did you perchance flee to Dordt for our reputation of harboring the odd Hook?”

  What the shit was Simon even talking about? Something about his gibberish rang a bell, but it wasn’t a very big one, about the size of the hand ringer Lansloet shook to announce dinner and supper
. Sander enjoyed wordplay as much as the next cultured noble, but also like most of his peers, hated few things more than ones that went over his head.

  “Simon Gruyere,” Jo answered before her maid could, “I imagine if you spoke a bit louder, you could ensure that our continued association with your person fully ruined our good standing in society, instead of only partially so. I’m sure there aren’t any Hooks left on the island, unless you know something the rest of us don’t.”

  Ah, that was it, Hooks versus Cods, as in loyalists to the exiled Countess Jacoba of Hainaut versus supporters of Good Philip of Burgundy, steward of Holland, Zeeland, and all the rest, regardless of what the countess and her coterie of broke-ass nobles, Hobbe included, might think. Sander hadn’t caught the drift at first, thinking Simon was talking about cod fishing. Would that he was—politics were infinitely less interesting than how to properly bait a line.

  The thought of fishing reminded Sander that he still needed to take a boat out to Oudeland and go after that catfish, the biggest beast he’d ever seen. Thinking about the monster churned up other memories of that affair, however, and Sander ruminated on the same grim thoughts that had colored his nightmares of the days before.

  He was slipping, Sander thought glumly as he finished his second beer, he was slipping. Where? On what? Slipping at the top of a staircase, on the edge of a well, in the mud of Trash Island. Strange fevers where whole days passed with his scarce noticing, save for the waking dreams that seemed so real yet couldn’t be, unfounded fears that unknown conspirators were out to get him, that he was being spied upon and followed everywhere, that any moment the militia was going to pinch him… those were all faults of the old Sander, not Graaf Jan Tieselen. He had to hold on, had to dig in, set his heels, say no to madness—he’d done it before. Hadn’t he? The past was the past, and this, this, he thought as he knocked a knuckle on the table, this was real.