The Folly of the World

by Jesse Bullington

  “Griet’s your friend who put you in touch with Lansloet, about working here?” asked Jolanda idly.

  “Her? Nay, never a woman less like the two of you. I mean Griet from the tales, her who raided hell itself—Mad Griet.”

  “Oh!” said Jolanda, as flattered as she’d ever been. “I don’t know how I’ve given you such an impression of me—I’m just a girl of Dordt, same as any other.”

  “No,” said Lijsbet with the hard certainty of rain coming after a red dawn. “You’re not.”

  It felt good, sitting there in her bedroom with Lijsbet, combing out her maid’s hair and talking through all the troubles, big and small. In that moment there was nowhere Jolanda would rather be, nothing she should prefer to be doing. Which meant she should do something to screw it all up, maybe. “I’ll tell you a secret, Lijsbet, if you promise not to hate me for it.”

  “I don’t think I could hate you, m’lady,” said the maid, though there was something to her voice, some note Jolanda couldn’t quite pin down. Not with Lijsbet facing the window, anyway, the backs of heads being a wee bit less emotive than faces. Time to tell her, then, the spilling of the secret as queer a mingling as hunger with nausea, desire with disgust. It felt good to tell.

  “It’s just… I really wanted to…” Jolanda stopped combing lest Lijsbet lose her temper again and do herself some mischief. “I wanted to go to war. Not against the countess, of course, but even if it had been her we were fighting, I wouldn’t have declined… I mean, ever since Jan first started teaching me the sword, I’ve daydreamed of using it, you know, really using it, to do some good with it. So I’d hoped we would, me and him, go to some battle, some war, and truth be told, one side’s as good as the other to those who are just in it for some sport.”

  “No good ever comes from spilling blood, and I think you’d find it other than sport,” said Lijsbet, though not in the icy tone Jolanda would’ve expected—she sounded easy as ever, and Jolanda relaxed as the maid continued. “And go on with the brush and get it over with, unless you’re prolonging my agonies to a purpose. But no. Or yes, I mean yes, of course you want to go to war. Not much of a secret, that—swords on your wall, daggers stuffed under your bed, that absurd jester’s suit you like dancing about in—you thought I’d forgot!”

  “I wish you would!” said Jolanda, and then they were laughing together at the memory—the sparring lesson Jolanda had given Lijsbet was doomed to giggly failure from the moment the maid had caught sight of her mistress’s brigandine armor. Silly to behold, maybe, but practical—if Jacoba and her Englanders actually made it to Dordrecht, as Wurfbain insisted they eventually would, it would be incumbent upon the Tieselens to drop any pretense of neutrality and help the Hooks take the city. Wurfbain implied there were even more Hooks in Dordt than Jolanda and Sander knew about, that admitting an invading army might be easily done if sympathetic militiamen were manning the gatehouses…

  “So no, Lady Jo, I don’t hate you for being such a bloodthirsty brute,” Lijsbet said when they had both settled down. “But I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t glad you and Master Jan are loyal to the countess, and don’t deny it, I know you are, even if you can’t admit it out loud for fear of Codfoolery. I’m sure those crooked Cods have got Graaf Jan paying his due, but a lot of the nobles, they make quite the show out of being on the field themselves, as I hear it. I offer my thanks every Sunday that this house hasn’t gone to war.”

  The walls of the house shook around them, as if God himself were leaning on the building. Or the devil. Sander on the stairs. The door burst open, and there was the mad graaf, red-faced and wild-eyed as any hanged man on the end of a noose. Instead of his usual, perpetually dirty hose, he wore thick leather pants and a massive steel codpiece in the shape of a ram’s head.

  “Jo!” he shouted, though she was five paces away. “Get your kit!”

  “My kit?” She hadn’t seen him look this crazed since his exchange with Hobbe in the count’s coach that fateful Easter morn. “What kit, what are you—”

  “War!” He hooted, and she still couldn’t be sure if he was terrified or elated. “We’re off to war! Now! Now, now, now, we’ll miss the boat!”

  Lijsbet seemed to be shriveling up into her gown where she sat on the floor. Looking back and forth between her maid and Sander, Jolanda asked, “When? With who?”

  “Now!” Sander looked like a child trying to mollify his bloated bladder by hopping from foot to foot. “With, uh, Jacoba—her! We’ve flipped, Jo, we’ve flipped, and to hell with Hobbe and his precious countess—we’re Cods now! Hurry, hurry, or we’ll miss the boat! Put your kit on, big cloak over it, something hooded—they won’t let you come if they know you’re a girl, so big hood, and you’ll wear the helm from my suit—saints know I won’t stick my head in a jug, metal or no, for count nor country! War! Shit!”

  Then he was gone, banging down the hall to his room and hollering for Lansloet. Jolanda stared at the empty doorway for a long time, not wanting to look back at Lijsbet. She didn’t want to see the sorrow on the maid’s face, nor have the maid see the excitement on hers. Not for their turning into Cods, whatever that might entail—Jolanda had nothing but respect for the indomitable countess, and becoming her adversary would have chafed, had it not been for what Sander had said about their turning on Wurfbain. Jolanda knew she couldn’t have it both ways, and if going against Wurfbain meant going against Jacoba, then so be it—she’d never met the countess, of course, so couldn’t say if she was undeserving of such treachery, but she knew Wurfbain, the sinister, selfish poot, and was thrilled that Sander had finally bucked from the tight reins of the count. When she’d given Sander a hard time at the supper table about sitting out every interesting conflict instead of rebelling against Wurfbain, she had never dreamed he would invite her along even if he did get off his increasingly fat arse to join some foreign fray.

  “M’lady,” said Lijsbet, resting her hand on Jolanda’s shoulder. The maid had risen as silently as the sun, and now stood behind her mistress just as she had when combing out Jolanda’s hair. Once again neither could see the other’s face, and Jolanda let out a long sigh. Before she could think of something to say, Lijsbet put on a chipper tone and said, “I’ll fetch some ribbon to tie your hair back, if it pleases your knightly sensibilities, and then array Sir Jo’s jester dress for inspection.”

  “No, no,” said Jolanda, jumping out of her chair. “I won’t have you help me with such a task. Why don’t you…”

  “Make you a flask of horehound? It will be cold as I don’t know what, going anywhere in a boat this time of year.” Lijsbet’s smile looked almost genuine.

  “Thank you,” Jolanda said, and meant it. Her maid vanished down the stairs, and Jolanda stared out the window, trying to sort it all through. They were really going against Wurfbain and the Hooks…

  Sander had apparently meant what he said about leaving now, now, now, for Jolanda had only just stopped cogitating and laid out her armor when he burst back into her room and demanded to know why she wasn’t ready yet.

  “I didn’t have Lansloet to help me dress, for one,” she said, too annoyed to be properly embarrassed at his barging in when all she wore was an undershirt that barely reached her hips.

  “Where’s Lizzy?” he asked, clanking over to her. He hadn’t slipped his surcoat over his plate yet, and his sparkling cuirass, greaves, and gauntlets made him look like some bastard son of lobster and tankard. She suspected that a solid shove would result in his falling onto his back and remaining there, tortoiselike, until somebody helped him up. She would have tried it, too, just to see if she was correct, but lest he rescind his invitation she held her hand. For now. “My mother’s mussel, you don’t even have underwear on, idiot! You’ll chafe your chafables, you don’t—”

  “Look away,” she said, blushing and snatching up the linen sling she had been about to step into when he’d clattered into her room. Getting it into place, she turned back to see him rooting through her chest, f
linging clothes up in the air behind him like a dune rat excavating sand from a burrow. “Oi, get out of there!”

  “Getting your shit together,” said Sander. “Might be on campaign for months, need to have plenty of warm—what’s this?”

  He turned, the sack full of her savings dangling from one gauntlet. Arsehole. She snatched it from his hand, but the cloth caught on the jagged edge of his finger, sending a spray of coins across the floor. For a moment they both stared in silence as the groots went spinning, but then Sander held up his silver palms.

  “Sorry, sorry. But gather all that and bring it with you, we might need it.”

  “We?” Jolanda’s initial relief that he wasn’t giving her a hard time over hoarding any and all money she had lain fingers on since becoming a lady was somewhat mitigated by his casual appropriation of it. “Why don’t you bring your own coin, eh?”

  “I’m bringing what I’ve got, yeah,” said Sander. “But I don’t keep a lot here. Burglars. And we don’t have time to go by Laurent’s and free up more, so just keep track of what we spend and I’ll reimpurse you.”

  “Reimburse,” said Jolanda, hefting on her plate-lined leather doublet. “Every pfennig.”

  “Yeah, yeah,” said Sander, and lodging a gauntlet under either armpit, extracted both his hands in one tug. “That’s not going to hold, let me, let me.”

  Jolanda awkwardly raised her arms to let Sander tie off the laces on her doublet. His fussiness about knots would be comical if it didn’t border on the totally obsessed. “If you die in battle, I’ll never get this thing off now.”

  “Cut it,” said Sander, straightening up and admiring his handiwork. “Best-kept secret about ropes, you can cut the buggers in a pinch. Now, hurry it up and get the rest’ve your kit on. Christ, but you’re slow as rent from a farmer. I’m going to go see that the servants are readying themselves, and we’ll be off.” Sander turned to go, but this last made Jolanda pause midway through donning the next piece in her complicated puzzle of armor, a splinted vambrace for her left arm.

  “What do you mean, readying themselves? Lijsbet and—”

  “Everyone’s coming,” said Sander, but while he’d looked back at her, he wouldn’t meet her eyes, the dirty neuker getting all gruff again. “Everyone.”

  “Why?” said Jolanda. “Don’t servants usually stay behind and mind the house? Who ever heard of bringing a cook to war, or a handmaid?”

  “Everyone comes!” Sander bellowed, the mad bastard going crimson. “I don’t care what’s usually done, we ain’t leaving nobody!”

  “Lijsbet’s not coming,” said Jolanda, immune to his raging idiocy by this point in their relationship. “If you make her go, I’ll stay behind.”

  Sander sputtered, but no actual words solidified from the froth.

  “I mean it,” said Jolanda, tossing the tubular arm guard back onto the bed. “She won’t want to go, and I won’t make her.”

  “None of them want to come,” Sander growled, his jaw set. “Lansloet and Drimmelin are giving me grief aplenty without your meddling in—”

  “End of story, Sander,” Jolanda said, satisfied to see him wince at his real name. “She doesn’t go.”

  “Fine!” Sander shouted. “Fine! But don’t tell me! Don’t you tell me nothing, you come to regret that! Nothing!”

  Then he was clomping out of her room, kicking coins as he went, and Jolanda asked the eternal question of just what in all the names for sex was wrong with the man. She would regret not having Lijsbet with her, she knew, for any number of reasons, but she would be dead before she’d make her friend march against Countess Jacoba. Glancing at the sundry articles of clothing Sander had scattered in his eagerness to hurry her along, Jolanda’s eyes settled on the blue cloak Jan had given her back before everything went to hell.

  Picking it up, she ran the cloth between her fingers—the weft felt much rougher to her now than it had when she’d first received it, back when the serge was the softest garment she’d ever felt. So long ago. Jolanda sighed. It was too small to properly conceal her face and armor and all, so she would have to borrow one of Sander’s cloaks for the passage. Tossing it onto the bed beside her swaths and straps of reinforced leather, she resolved to give it to Lijsbet as a parting gift—the girl had often commented on how much she liked it, plain though it was. Something to remember me by, Jolanda thought, and then put such sentimental thoughts aside to properly fashion herself for war.

  II.

  By the time Sander had herded everyone out of the house, he was ready to burn the place down and be done with it once and for all. For a moment he’d thought Drimmelin meant to murder him with her cleaver rather than quit her kitchen, and who knew, if he hadn’t been wearing armor, she may well have made a go of it, the cow. Whereas the cook had been wrathful as a riled angel, Lansloet had seemed on the verge of utter despair when Sander told him to pack his shit and meet them out in the street. There had been flustered protests, but no begging, thank the saint of girls and bitches. When the two older servants realized Lizzy would be staying behind to keep house, there would no doubt be a fresh wave of tears to crest or be drowned under, but for now it was steady, steady as guiltless prayer. At long last Jo and Lizzy came out on the stoop where Sander was waiting, the latter meaning to accompany her mistress to the boat, and then Drimmelin arrived, dragging a trunk of crockery and provisions. Still no Lansloet, though.

  It was possible the old ferret had gone out the courtyard and through a neighbor’s window to hide, or jumped into the canal to make a swim for safer harbors. If he had done either, he might have been saved, but instead Sander found him lamely hiding behind a crate in the attic. Given the option of walking out on his two stork’s legs or jumping from the garret window, Lansloet took the stairs, head held high, and then, at last, they were dealt with. The events of the day had kept Sander busy enough to avoid thinking about the bottomless pit of excrement he was rapidly sinking into, but as he locked the front door and slyly slipped the key to Lizzy, everything began floating to the surface again, like a lump in the throat.

  No matter, no matter, he told himself as he led the motley procession down the street, the afternoon sun sparkling on the ice-paned windows of the houses flanking them, the slick cobbles gold as groots. No matter. He was getting them out of Dordt, and now, goddamn it. They crossed the channel at Wijnbrug and there lay the old harbor, the green waters as calm as his heart should be, if only the stupid chunk of meat should listen to him.

  Simon and his mussel-mouthed brother, Braem, sat in the dinghy pulled up to the stairs at the start of the quay. Theirs was the only vessel taking to the meer this late in the day, the Gruyere brothers looking sullen as plague-stricken paupers. Simon in particular appeared the color of the water, but nowhere near so bad as he had earlier in the day, before everything had gone straight to the devil’s doorstep. Amazing, what the twin forces of wine and wisdom could effect—he’d been in a bad way when he’d shown up, no doubt about it.

  “There’s another,” Simon had gasped in the foyer that morning, with Lansloet barely cleared off down the hall. At the time Sander hadn’t had the slightest suspicion that before the day was out he’d be skipping town with his whole family in tow, but that was the thing about mornings—bloody things had a way of getting out from under a fellow. “God’s blood, Jan, I found another child!”

  “Shut it!” Sander had shoved him against the front door, and then waited. The house was silent. Because of course it was not like Jo or one of the servants was going to leap out and start accusing him of anything, but still: “Outside, cunt, outside. We’ll take some air, we’ll take some beer, and you’ll tell me everything.”

  “Another one, Jan, another one!” Simon’s voice kept leaping up and down, like a lapdog bouncing for treats. “Out at the warehouse. In the mud. Right by our dock!”

  “If you don’t lower it, you’ll be lowered yourself,” Sander cautioned, though the street was empty before them, and, yeah, behind them as we
ll. It was a bit warmer that day, and positively blazing for January, which made the whole city stink like fresh shit and old fish. Goddamn Dordt. Sander directed Simon over the bridge, down Groenstraat, and up an alley; adding some time to their trip to the White Horse ought to give the loudmouthed cunt a chance to calm down. “Start at the bottom, I mean, and we’ll see how high we get before I have to tell you to shut it.”

  “Went out to relieve myself this morn,” said Simon, wringing his hands and shaking his head and nearly walking into the canted wall of the alley. “There was some drift caught in the mud and ice at the foot of the dock. It was too dirty to tell what it was, maybe a log, I thought, or some bundled-up garbage that went overboard. So I passed my water over it, as you do, as you do, just for a lark, and oh my dear Savior, Jan, as the mud burned away from my stream, I saw, I saw!”

  “A dead kid?” Sander supplied, wishing that for once he wasn’t so damnable wise, that he was wrong and Simon was distraught over something, anything, other than—

  “I pissed upon it,” said Simon, and released a deep, lung-rattling moan. Sander cuffed him. “A child, saints forgive me, I spilled the wine of my belly upon a child! Another headless, butchered child!”

  “That wine of your belly’s going to be a red when I’m done with you, Simon, you don’t shut it. Now.” Sander’s mind turned over along with his guts. Another child. Another murdered child laid at his doorstep. What did this bode? Had Simon already gone to the militia, or—

  “I didn’t know what to do, I didn’t, so I just, just, pushed it down with an oar, under the ice, and—”

  “You what?!” They were halfway down the alley, and Sander was disturbed to notice the walls on either side were pockmarked with windows. From down here he couldn’t tell if any were open. He pushed Simon against a wall and ground his weight into him, trying not to enjoy it too much and to stay focused on the task at hand. “Why in all the fuckwords in French did you do that?!”