The Folly of the World

by Jesse Bullington

  Good.

  Except a ghost drifted by him just then, and Sander felt his head begin to float at the end of his neck.

  Jan.

  Jan Tieselen was right there, in the midst of the throng of living men. Sweet Jan, the real Jan, not himself, the impostor, not Sander pretending to be Jan, but the man Sander had kissed five hundred times if he’d wept for him once. The man Sander had loved. The man Sander still loved. The man Sander had killed.

  Jan.

  Sander couldn’t breathe, couldn’t move.

  Jan was back.

  V.

  Fast as the ghost of Jan appeared before Sander, it was gone. Or rather, past Sander’s table, the black cloak it wore rippling across its shoulders, an empty mug hanging loosely from each hand. It picked its way around two tables instead of floating through them, and rather than disappearing into the rear wall of the tavern it placed the mugs on a table where a young woman sat, alone. The ghost scooted around the edge of the wheel to sit beside her on the bench that ran along the wall, smiling good-naturedly at the sloshed merchant he bumped in the process.

  Jan.

  The ghost winked at the young woman, who, from this angle, Sander could only make out in profile. Then the specter looked straight at Sander, and the woman turned slightly, following Jan’s gaze, to look at him as well. It was Jo.

  What devilry was this? What witchcraft? What madness? Sander felt himself choking on his tongue, the whole tavern beginning to shimmer and waver. What was happening to him?

  “Come on, Papa, time to go,” Jo was saying, putting her hand on his shoulder. He flinched, did a double take. She’d materialized at his side, Lizzy and Simon staring at him with unabashed curiosity. Lowering her voice to a plaintive mutter, Jo pressed a napkin into his shaking hand and said, “Wipe your face, man, you’re crying. Must still be a little sick, huh?”

  “Jo,” he gasped, glancing between her and the other Jo that still watched him from the back wall. He’d expected the second Jo to have disappeared when he looked back, and the spectral Jan as well, but no, the pair of impossibilities sat there, watching him, as if ghosts and doppelgängers had just as much right as any grain-seller to swill an ale at the White Horse on a Saturday eve.

  “Jesus,” Jo said, his Jo, and her voice sounded as strained as his must. He saw that she was now staring at the ghosts as well, her eyes wide. She could see them, too. They were real. He was so relieved, he could kiss her. The warm flush of relief only lasted until she turned back to him and said, “That man there, is he your brother? You could be twins!”

  What? Sander blinked at her, wondering just what the hell was wrong with her shit-brown eyes, and almost asked as much. Instead he looked back at the two mysteries and saw that the man wasn’t Jan, after all, and the woman definitely wasn’t Jo. She was too young, and too pretty.

  More importantly, though—all importantly, even—did the man’s face resemble what Sander saw in his polished mirror on mornings when he could be bothered to look at himself? Maybe a little. Yeah, sure, maybe a lot. That must have been why he looked so familiar—he looked like Jan, all right, just not the old one! Mostly: the wavy frame around the dashing stranger’s face was much darker than Sander’s hay-colored coif, and peering closer, he wagered his own mustache and goatee weren’t so neatly trimmed, nor his hair so well brushed and shaped. The fellow looked good all around, and not just in a not-actually-a-fucking-ghost-set-loose-from-hell-for-vengeance sort of way.

  Shit, the man had noticed Sander staring and was getting out from behind his table. Not good. Jo was running her mouth, but all he could hear was his own voice shouting in his brain’s ears, telling him to run like fuck—given the alarming omen he’d just witnessed, what good could come from sticking around? Yet Sander felt rooted to his stool, stuck fast the way that poor headless bitch must be welded to the icy mud of Trash Island. Do something, man!

  Nothing. The handsome stranger bore down on Sander, a stormy force of nature in all its inescapable, idiot fury. The woman who wasn’t Jo remained seated, but Sander could see her watching the man’s approach, which somehow made it all worse—she was like some saint bearing witness to a miracle. Or a divine massacre. The room spun, but the man remained upright, and then he was there and—

  “Monsieur? Sorry, sir,” the man corrected himself, and all at once Sander felt the fear flee his bones. This joker might look a little like the new Jan Tieselen, but he didn’t look anything like the old one, and on top of that, the day Sander got tail-tucked by a Frenchman was the day he deserved to be haunted. “My companion and I could not help but notice that you and I, perhaps, are sharing some resemblance?”

  Why the fuck was everything a question with grapesippers? Out of sheer instinctual surliness, Sander would have liked to refute the Frenchman’s claim, but his tongue was still soldered with bitter drool to his palate. Jo was saying something, but Sander’s ears were suddenly ringing like the final peal of the Saint Nicolaas Church’s bell, and so he didn’t hear what she said. It had the right effect, though, the handsome stranger smiling slightly before he spun around and left without another word. Nicely done, Jo, send the asshole packing! He’d have to thank her, soon as he was able, and—

  Wait a tic, what? The Frenchy had reached his table, but rather than sitting his ass back down, he took his two empty mugs and then offered a hand to his lady. Ah, they were leaving the tavern altogether, good, better, go on back down to grapetown, fuckers, get on the next Tieselen hulk and piss off back to—

  Fuck. Simon appeared out of the teary blur that was Sander’s periphery and set two stools down between Sander and Jo. Goddamn Simon. Jo was scooting her stool back, standing up, curtseying, and no no no, what had she done, the stupid bitch, what had she done? Unbidden by his whining, bestial brain, Sander snapped to his feet so fast he nearly upended the table. The horizontal wheel rocked back down flat again without a single mug falling over, which had to be some sign, didn’t it, that not everything was fucked?

  “My thanks to you again, Lady Jolanda,” said the French ponce, bowing. “This is my cousin, Christine, and I am the Baron de Rais, Gilles de Montmorency-Laval.”

  “My father,” Jo said, her voice soft as a baby bird in a nest of wool scraps. If he could bullshit half as good as her, Sander would have been pope instead of just—“the Graaf Jan Tieselen. He is recovering from a malady, and, alas, his voice has been slowest to recuperate from—”

  “We do look alike, don’t we?” Sander blurted out, which was admittedly true, aside from this fop’s jet hair. He willed himself to not be mad anymore. Was he really so out of his gourd that something as commonplace as resembling a stranger, albeit a Frenchman, sent him into fits? Best not to answer that, especially considering that at first he’d thought this man looked like someone else entirely—what kind of a gentleman doesn’t know what his own face looks like?

  “Yes! I saw you looking, and it was like the mirror looking,” said the Frenchy, and holding up his gloved hand, he waved it slowly through the air. “Yet not a mirror, I see now for myself!”

  Sander felt the madness draining out of him at the Frenchman’s mundane attempt at humor. “Right, you see now. Not a mirror. So…”

  “So we must be friends!” The Frenchman mistook Sander’s dismissive wave as an invitation to sit, and his cousin did the same. Now that she was closer, Sander had no idea how he’d mistaken the girl for Jo—or for a lady. Unless his eyes were betraying him anew, this strumpet was cousin to a different patron or three every night Sander braved the White Horse. Considering how hard she and Simon were trying not to look at each other, she’d been his cousin a time or two. She couldn’t be fifteen years old, the dirty sod.

  “More fun not to drink alone,” Gilles said, and with a clucking sound and a wave of his hand, he effected the impossible—he brought Eckert waddling out from behind the bar.

  The barman had his whores working the room, but no wenches and no runnerboys, preferring to make everyone crowd up to th
e bar—no doubt to keep folk from ever getting settled enough to notice how uncomfortable his stools were, or the damp draft that plagued every wall and corner. Yet here Eckert came, oily sweat clinging like a diadem to his fat brow, a bottle in each hand. Sander saw with some satisfaction that the bottles bore the Tieselen seal. The greedy filcher had no doubt drained the good wine out and replaced it with equal parts water and pigeon blood, but the fact that he was promoting Sander’s business warmed his heart a bit toward the miserable fucking asshole.

  “Sire,” huffed Eckert, placing the bottles on the table. The fatty hovered, as fatties are fucking wont to do when they suspect a crumb’s about to fall, and Gilles offered up a gold coin.

  “Are you a knight, then, good master, or do old Eckert’s good manners exceed his vocabulary?” Simon asked, breaking the seal on a bottle, pulling out the rag, and filling his empty mug to the brim. Good dig, Simon, put the Frenchy in his place!

  “Indeed I am,” said Gilles, which spoiled things a bit. “A son of France, away from home. I go to war, good stranger, whenever she shall have me, but for now… foreign education. Are you a knight of Burgundy, then, or some other place? Forgive me, I have traveled far and cannot recall who, at this moment, you bow before—who is the present swamp lord?”

  “Good Philip of Burgundy is indeed our current steward,” said Jo as Simon fumed. “But an heir of France such as yourself can surely appreciate that, as with a violent bowel ailment, the pain and indignity of having a Burgundian usurper is but a temporary complaint, even if it seems eternal at the time. On an utterly unrelated note, how is your Dauphin these days?”

  Sander had no fucking idea what Jo was saying, but Simon turned an even deeper shade of scarlet and the Frenchy laughed, so it was probably something bad about Duke Philip. As far as Sander was concerned, a little idle shit-talking about the Cods and their champion sat just fine—the Hook allegiance Wurfbain assigned Sander and Jo had proved a comfortable enough fit, once it became obvious that every other noble in Cod-loyal Dordrecht despised the new Tieselen heirs sight unseen.

  When Count John had died they’d had the perfect opportunity to hand things over to his niece Countess Jacoba, put an end to these civil wars for good… but of course the Cods couldn’t have that, hence this Burgundian bullyboy taking over. Not that Sander thought it was as simple as Jacoba versus Philip, Brabançon versus Burgundian, Hook versus Cod; you’d have to be thick as Simon to buy into all that. No, it was all about rivalries between neighboring cities, desperate nobles fighting hungry merchants, rich pitted against richer, same as ever—the war was a justification for every brawl that blew out of proportion, every dispute that came to blows, from a pair of Papendrecht peasants fighting over a pasture all the way up the Netherlandish ladder. If anyone asked Sander, he’d have set them straight…

  “In response to your query, sir, I am a son of Dordrecht,” said Simon, with a tad more pride than Sander would have expected from a warehouse-dwelling ratman living off the scraps of his faux cousin. “As for the homage I pay, you need look no farther than to your right, where the wealthiest graaf in the city has offered you a seat at his table.”

  “That would be me,” Sander offered the smiling knight. Not too shabby at all, this one, and if what they said about Frenchmen was true, Sander might have a decent chance. What they said about Frenchmen being that they’d fuck anything with an opening, of course, mossy knotholes and pig snouts included. “Nice cloak.”

  “Thank you, Graaf,” said Gilles, touching the drape of charcoal velvet clasped around his neck with a fat gold chain. “I like your wife’s, it is very… blue.”

  “Daughter,” Jo said quickly. “Daughter, not wife. But thank you, monsieur, you are too kind—it is an old thing, more warm than pretty.”

  Glancing at Jo, Sander saw she wore the cloak Jan had given her back in Poorter’s kitchen, a lifetime ago. Two years, was that all? Ever since they’d come ashore after… the incident, he hadn’t seen her wear it once. He would have remembered. That damn cloak had caused a rather tremendous row between him and Jan before they’d met up with the Muscovite, though of course Jo wouldn’t know that, Sander having waited until she was out buying supplies with Poorter to bring it up, and—

  —Christ, what a life they’d lived! Jo was staring at him, and he tried to smile at her. Even he could tell it probably looked more like a sickly grimace.

  “—war with the English?” Simon was asking, his usual joie de vivre apparently restored. Taking a sip from the wine that the now respectfully silent Lizzy had poured him, Sander understood why—this wasn’t watered-down dreg-drippings after all, this was actual Tieselen Orange, and somebody other than Simon was footing the bill. In all his nights of swilling under Eckert’s roof, Sander had never been served a drink half as good as the cheapest stuff he imported, and yet here it was in his mug. Just how much had that French gold coin been worth?

  “But of course,” said Gilles. “It is what we excel at, defeating the Englanders any chance we receive. And you? It is much… funny, much funny, your Jacoba running to London, begging help with the Englanders to win again her crown. She is marrying one Englander, and already she has one husband here, yes?”

  “She would do nothing of the sort!” Jo protested, which was stupid—of course the disenfranchised countess would, if she thought it would help restore the power that had now been stolen by two consecutive usurpers. She was too smart not to, by all accounts. Women had it hard enough without trying to play fair when everyone else was cheating. But then the righteous-lady-done-wrong line Hobbe had fed them had always appealed to Jo, and so the girl no doubt had an idealized perception of the Hook’s deposed leader.

  “It is the word of all who listen, as well as all who speak,” said Gilles, making Sander wonder if this was some new proverb or just a clumsy translation. “Watch out if she does—the Englander foolish enough to wed a married countess is foolish enough to go to her house to look for the dowry, even if everyone else knows the Burgundians have already stolen it.”

  Simon laughed at this, his Cod ass forgetting he was drinking Hook wine, and Jo didn’t fire back a retort this time, though she looked upset—might’ve been an etiquette thing, her not being able to sass back to a froggy knight without three maids to hold a pink veil between them, something like that. Sander was once lucky that as graaf nobody could really think less of him for the odd lapse in manners, and twice lucky for not giving a shit even if they did. He supposed since he and Jo were already pariahs amongst the local nobles for their obvious if unproven Hook sympathies, he should at least reap the benefit of now having an excuse to fight this mouthy Frenchman on account of his slandering Jacoba…

  But the truth was, Sander was having a hard time getting excited about the prospect. What the hell was wrong with him these days, where brawling a French ponce didn’t fill his cup?

  “Men have been executed for talking of the countess in such a fashion,” Jo finally said, glancing at Sander—was she signaling that she wanted to go home, or that she wanted Sander to stick up for the exiled liege they’d never laid eyes on?

  Simon refilled his glass and said, “Only because the dirty bitch had them killed for daring to speak the truth. She’s a tyrant. I swear that even in the unlikely event of an English invasion, this defender of Dordrecht will be the first to lay down his life to ensure the ignoble Jacoba never again sets foot on our lands.”

  “We would appreciate the sacrifice, Simon,” Jo said coldly.

  “Even a dead man’s hand has more use than the all of a living coward,” said Gilles, winking at Jo over his mug. Taking a sip, the Frenchman made a face and said, “This is the worst wine I have ever tasted, and I have been to Champagne.”

  “That’s where we get it from,” said Sander. He should be dueling this cunt over such a remark, but prideless for a pfennig, prideless for a groot. Or something. Besides, he quite liked that line about dead men and cowards, seemed like you could start a really good fight, saying tha
t to somebody. Didn’t make a lot of sense, though: “What use is a dead man’s hand?”

  “Pardon? Ah, a dead man’s hand is—no, not just a dead man. A dead man who…” Gilles furrowed his brow and silently moved his lips. Then he brightened a bit, and holding a fist over his head, jerked it in the air and stuck his tongue out. A lot of folk might’ve been flummoxed by the display, but not Sander.

  “Hanged, yeah? Hanged man?”

  “Yes, a hanged man’s hand is… special. For a witch, yes? Such a hand is called… gloire? You have gloire here in Holland, yes?”

  “Glory, yeah, glory is glory,” said Sander, now really feeling the eels of anxiety nipping at his nerves—first there was talk of hanged men, and now his old sword came to mind, waiting for him in that tree in the meer… Wait, was that an insult about not having glory in Holland? Probably.

  “A witch will take a hanged man’s hand, yes? Chop chop.” Gilles placed his own on the table and mimicked hacking it with his mug, which led to wine splashing all over his glove. The stuff would leave a stain, Sander knew from experience. The Frenchman removed his soiled glove and held it up, then crushed it in his fist as he continued. “Taking the hand away, the witch, she mashes it up. Like a charcutier turning sausage, yes? Taking the fat. Then she uses the fat, the fat and… everything, to make a chandelle.”

  “A candle? Why would anyone do such a thing?” Simon looked a little peaked, probably thinking of a different missing body part on a different sort of dead person.

  “Candle is—Merde, apologies!” In shaking his glove back out, Gilles had spattered droplets of wine on the faces of everyone at the table. Sander licked a sticky pearl from his lips. “This candle is Hand of Glory. You have Hand of Glory in Holland, yes?”