The Folly of the World

by Jesse Bullington

  “It was only sticking out a little,” Simon said, as if that made everything better. “I was able to get it all under. You know how it is out there, the top of the mud is all wed with the ice now, thick as plates, except the slip in the marsh where we bring up the boats; I’ve kept that well loose all winter. That’s where the child was, in the mud on the edge of the slip, so I could just give it a push down, out of sight under the top of the ice, and—”

  “Why,” Sander groaned. “Stupid, stupid, cunt, I asked why.”

  “You told me to,” said Simon, but perhaps seeing from Sander’s expression that this was not an acceptable answer in the least, added, “you said I shouldn’t tell anyone until the ice melts, when—”

  “That was the other one, Simon, the other one, the one that wasn’t at my fucking warehouse,” Sander hissed into the man’s ear, feeling the same bizarre satisfaction at this exchange that he had upon trouncing Gilles back in front of the White Horse. “That one made sense to forget about, but this, this one, you…”

  Sander trailed off, a thought coming to him. A sight arrived at the same time, though, from the corner of his eye—a hooded figure watching them from back the way they’d come. This took precedence over his musings, to say the fucking least, until he realized the man was just pissing against the alley wall, and then disappeared back onto Groenstraat. Simon was blathering on about how he didn’t know why this situation was different, and yeah, that reminded Sander of what he’d realized before being distracted by the pisser. Simple goddamn Simon.

  “It’s not another body, idiot,” Sander said with a sneer, turning back to the blathering Gruyere. “It’s the same one. Somewhere between now and when we found it, the tide shook it loose from Trash Island and washed it over there, is all.”

  “No,” Simon said with the certainty all fools possess for the wisdom of their folly, “it’s not, it can’t be, it—”

  “It’s another dead kid missing its head in the meer? Think, you clot, think, what makes more sense—two kids getting done the same way and dumped near our warehouse, or one getting tide-kicked less than fifty paces from where it started? I swear, Simon, you had me worried for a—”

  “A boy,” said Simon, his eyes suddenly fierce as they’d been on the steps of the Leyden church that Easter so long ago, before Sander had taught him who was the harder man. “This was a boy, Jan, the other was a girl. Or don’t you remember? Too busy drinking nice wine and having nice parties to remember exactly what we found? I remember, Graaf, I do, because I sleep out there every night His Worship doesn’t invite me in, like an abbot giving a bunk to a beggar, every night I’m out there and she’s out there haunting me, all because you wouldn’t let me tell the militia, you wouldn’t, and now there’s another. So now what? Now what do I do, Graaf? What?”

  Sander hadn’t the slightest idea, so he asked, sure, stupidly, but it had to be asked, “You’re sure it’s a boy? Even without a head?”

  “Pretty sure I can tell the difference,” said Simon, tapping his plain lead codpiece. “I pushed him under, but couldn’t get him deep. You can still see the bump under the ice and mud, Jan, they could still see!”

  They. Like a quarrel hitting its target, the old fear speared Sander through the heart. They might see, mightn’t they? He didn’t even realize he had seized Simon by the throat and was throttling him until the lad landed a lucky knee to Sander’s codpouch, reminding him of the corporal world. How had things got this mixed up, Simon having proper gear to gird his junk but Sander wearing naught but thin leather over his tenders?

  “—wrong with you?” Simon gasped as Sander released him and stepped back, wringing his own hands now. That was even worse than a dead kid or two popping up in the mud, losing himself like that. “Why?”

  “Lost my temper,” Sander decided. “Sorry, Simon, but Christ, why are you so thick? Why did you have to go and…”

  “And what?” Simon said, rubbing his neck, making a big show out of how hurt he was, the whinger. “You still haven’t told me what I did wrong, or what I should’ve done different! You haven’t told me anything, you’ve just, just…”

  Simon looked like he might be about to cry. The goddamn child. And here Sander had been anticipating seeing him again, now that the gift he had spent all winter working on for Simon was finally finished. A few weeks after Christmas, sure, but good things took time. “Look, Simon, I need to think on this.”

  “First time you’ve done that, I wager,” said Simon, and perhaps Sander inflated at this or something, because the smaller man immediately changed his tune. “I mean, sorry, yes, of course you do. I’ll just go to the Horse, I was supposed to meet Braem there at noon anyway, and—”

  “Come on home with me, Simon,” said Sander, realizing just what a liability this stupid noble was—broke, desperate, and knowledgeable of a rather foolish decision Sander had made last autumn. If only he’d let Simon report the first body to the militia right when he’d found it, all this would be… well, all this would still be substantially fucked by the arrival of a second corpse, but it might not be as bad as it was now.

  Or maybe this was better? Point was, keeping Simon close by was crucial until Sander could be sure what to do next, and keeping him away from his scheming brother was even more important. Fortunately, Sander knew just how to assuage Simon’s fears, which were manifesting themselves at present in a torrent of verbal diarrhea about how he had to go to the tavern.

  “Come on, Coz,” said Sander, slinging an arm over Simon’s shoulder and leading him back down the alley. “I still need to give you your Christmas present, it wasn’t done last time I saw you.”

  “A present?” asked Simon, perking up. “What is it?”

  “A cloak,” Sander said, when they were back in the parlor and the gift was given. Normally he wouldn’t have stated the obvious, but by the way Simon was running his fingers through the short fur and staring wide-eyed at the garment in his hands Sander thought he might be confused. “Had it made special and all. Something to keep you warm out at the warehouse.”

  “For… me?” Simon at last looked up from the mottled cloak, and Sander saw there were tears in his pretty brown eyes. Yessssss. Sander hadn’t been sure if the spoiled little fop would appreciate the present, but apparently falling from his lordly status as brother to the interim graaf had humbled Simon more than he usually let on. “You made me this?”

  “Well, I didn’t,” said Sander. “Had a woman make it up for you. Was harder than you’d think, finding someone on the island to do the job properly.”

  Simon swung it over his shoulders, trying it on. It was a little short, but available materials were what they were, and it looked good on the man, the dark patches of fur contrasting his light curls and mustache. He couldn’t stop touching the thing, and swung it back off, holding it up to admire the play of firelight on the varying hues—it was almost piebald, as unique a cloak as any in Holland. Simon held it up and buried his face in it, rubbing the soft garment against his face.

  “The whole thing,” Simon breathed. “The whole thing’s fur. I cannot believe it. The whole. Damn. Thing. This must have cost a fortune!”

  “More than I expected,” Sander admitted, which was uncouth, yeah, but if Simon was going to comment on the price, Sander wasn’t going to play it down. That old bitch had charged him an arm and a leg for it, and even still balked at the task until he agreed to keep it a secret that she had sewn it, should anyone ask.

  “What is it?” Simon asked, rubbing his cheek on it again. “It’s so sheer. Otter?”

  “Better.” Sander had outdone himself. Here it came, the big revelation, the only thing that could make the gift better, more personal, more perfect. If he didn’t get a dick-sucking out of this gift, Simon just wasn’t a dicksucker, plain and simple. Which was all right, sure, Sander hadn’t commissioned the piece in hope of sex, he’d done it because Simon was a friend, a real friend, and that’s what friends did for one another. “It’s rat.”

/>   “What?” Simon’s face raced through a series of ugly contortions as he began crushing the garment between his lanky fingers. “You… what?”

  “Rat,” said Sander, his sails drooping a bit at this lack of good wind from Simon. “Our rats, Simon, all the ones we’ve pegged at the island. I saved ’em, skinned ’em, and had that made up. That’s why it’s not bigger, ’cause we stopped shooting out there after… Anyway, yeah, token of our friendship.”

  “You said you were taking them home for Jo’s cat,” said Simon. He looked on the verge of tears again, though not so comely a cry as he usually issued. This one looked… petty.

  “You ever see a cat around here, dummy?” said Sander, feeling a heat spread through his chest. Simon did not like his present. “She had one years ago, sure, but left it with Primm when—”

  Shit, fuck, whore’s piss, what was Sander doing, spilling the beans like that? Simon had no idea they’d been to Dordrecht nearly a year prior to arriving there as graaf and daughter; the whole point, in fact, was that they were long-lost Tieselen relations who had never set toe in the city prior to meeting Simon at the church in Leyden. No matter, though, Simon was still biting his lip and staring at the cloak, not hanging onto Sander’s every misstep. An easy fix, good lies being short and half-honest: “… When we first came to Dordt, she gave the cat to Primm, and we ain’t kept one since.”

  “Rat fur,” said Simon weakly, and lowering his face, he gave the cloak an exaggerated sniff. A moment of reckoning for Simon Gruyere. It was on him, now, what came next. Sander felt a well of warm, dark emotion yawn before him, felt himself rocking back and forth on the lip of the drop, wondered if Simon would push him over or pull him back.

  Simon winced and bucked his head away, as if the cloak were woven from wet hound hair, freshly dyed in dog shit. Of all the ungrateful vermin farted forth from Satan’s asshole… the cloak didn’t smell like anything, Sander knew, for he’d put it to his own nose time and again, just to be sure. It was a beautiful cape, a one of a kind labor of love, and this little cunt dared to act like he was above it?

  “Never mind, then!” Sander ripped the cloak from Simon’s fingers. “I’ll keep it for myself, you don’t want it!”

  “I—” Simon gulped, clearly too out of sorts from the wine they’d just toasted with to even muster an obvious lie that might placate his master. “No. It’s just… rat?”

  “Our rats, Simon, our bloody rats!” Sander suddenly, stupidly, felt a knot of misery constrict his throat, the way Jan had once—hold up, was he, Sander, crying? What in all the angels’… the angels’… fuck.

  “Jan, I’m sorry, I just wasn’t…” Simon took a step toward Sander, extended a quavering hand. “Today, you know, I haven’t been myself, I was so shaken up, I—”

  “Just leave,” Sander managed. Getting the words through his grief-clogged gullet hurt, but not as badly as the abject pity he saw on Simon’s face. Pity, for Sander, the presumptuous ponce. “Go to the Horse, then. Go to your brother. Cut from the same bolt, you two—think you’re better than us.”

  “No, Jan, that’s not—”

  A loud knock from the front door bounced into the parlor, arresting Simon’s protests and aborting Sander’s half-birthed sob. They both stayed still as the statues in the Saint Nicolaas Church, listening to creaking footsteps make their way from the kitchen down to the foyer. This was just perfect, another visitor, and after the squeak of Lansloet opening the door, Sander caught the unmistakable lilt of Count Hobbe Wurfbain. Of all the slippery cunts in the devil’s whorehouse…

  “Go down the White Horse, then,” Sander hissed, the shell-in-the-bare-foot pain of his friend’s cruelty swept away by a wave of alarm as he remembered why Simon had shown up in the first place—another dead kid in the meer. “Don’t tell your brother nothing. Not yet. I’ll be by later. Don’t go no place else.”

  “Right, yes,” Simon nodded, equally eager to be gone—there was very little love lost between him and the count, what with Hobbe’s engineering the downfall of the Gruyere brothers. “If I just had some groots to keep Braem too drunk to ask any questions…”

  “What questions—no, shut it, here,” said Sander, fumbling with the purse at his belt. A rather brilliant notion had struck him, something entirely, wonderfully clever—they would get Braem Gruyere very drunk, then have Simon take him out to the warehouse to spend the night, as he sometimes did. Such slumber parties were in direct violation of Sander’s orders that Braem not set a single foot on the warehouse dock, the rude whoreson, but he wasn’t so thick a graaf as to think Simon obeyed him in every respect—and besides, he’d once surprised Simon for an early morning’s ratting and found Braem asleep on a pile of Tieselen crate hay, so it went beyond suspicion into confirmed truth. That made it easy: get Braem drunk, get him to go out to the warehouse with Simon, and have those chumps “discover” the dead kid—Braem wouldn’t have to fake his surprise at the find, Simon would have a corroborating witness, and they wouldn’t be lying to the militia when they told them they’d found the body that very day. To top it all, there wouldn’t be any worry, just yet, about having two dead kids found near Sander’s warehouse, since the girl at Trash Island was still under ice and mud, and when she turned up that spring, she’d be farther from his place, not closer to it.

  Of course, even with a second witness to the grisly discovery there was the chance the militia would try to pin the crime on those who reported it, as was always the way with corrupt fuckers. That was a substantial portion of the reason Sander hadn’t wanted to cop to having found a body himself, after all, not wanting to have to look an experienced lie-sniffer in the eye and claim he’d never dumped a body in no watery grave outside of Dordt… but this way if anyone was snuffled on by militia swine, it would be the Gruyeres…

  But what if the brothers rolled on him, what if pressure came down and Simon turned to what the cloak was made from? Shit, this plan was awful, what was he—

  “—Thinking?” Who? Hobbe, standing there in the door to the foyer, Lansloet having let the count in without announcement, the traitorous eel. Why was Simon still fidgeting in front of Sander, pretending not to have noticed his old nemesis? Ah, money, yeah—Sander’s hand was still buried in his pouch, and he pulled out a groot, offering it in what he hoped was a casual fashion to Simon, who took it in a manner that was anything but.

  What was the last thing Sander had said to Simon? Had he told him the plan, ordered him to take Braem out to the warehouse, or had he just been thinking that? He’d been so lost in thought he couldn’t remember, and now he couldn’t very well say anything, not with Hobbe here.

  And speaking of, the count said, “I say, are you all right, Graaf? You didn’t respond to your man’s announcement, nor my query regarding your faraway expression, and now you ignore me to pass coin to a peasant. Have I caused offense by arriving earlier than my footman gave notice to expect, to be treated so shabbily?”

  Simon bristled at the peasant crack, but was far too puss to do anything about it. Quick, Sander, quick, before Simon ran off with his coin: “Now, remember, Simon, I shall join you shortly, and until I do, you will keep absolutely silent about everything we spoke of. Everything. I need to think, and so act as though I hadn’t said nothing up until now, other than to keep quiet.”

  Hobbe seemed intrigued by this, Simon simply looked baffled. Sander threw up his hands like Primm would’ve—all this wheedling and plotting and scheming was utter bullshit. Life had been a lot easier when he could just order scrawny cunts like these two around and bottle anyone who lipped off, rather than having to kiss their mutton-buttons.

  And on that very subject… Sander bowed to the bitchy noble, and said, “Apologies, Count, many apologies. I was discussing a… belated Christmas present with my man here. A matter of absolute secrecy, yeah?”

  “That cloak? Handsome,” said Hobbe, eyeing the fur hanging limply from Sander’s hand before returning his bow. Striding over to the fire, he peeled off h
is gloves and waved one at Simon as he said, “Good day to you, Freeman Gruyere.”

  “Good day to you, Graaf,” Simon said, bowing to Sander but not to Hobbe. That was why Sander liked the cheeky little cur, that sort of bad attitude. It was sexy, when it wasn’t obnoxious.

  Hobbe planted himself in Sander’s lounger and put his feet up on the stool. With the count out of eyeshot, Simon made a motion with his fluttering fingers that was either an obscene gesture or confirmation that he’d understood Sander’s message not to blab to Braem. Hopefully the latter. Then the Gruyere stalked out of the room, and Sander pulled up one of the remaining, substantially less comfortable chairs to see what the deuce Hobbe wanted.

  III.

  Jan, Jan, Jan,” said Hobbe after he’d sniffed and found wanting the half-drained glass of wine Sander had left on the tiled table set between the chairs in the parlor. The count must be headed somewhere nicer than Sander’s after this, to go by the ermine trim and purple-threaded codpouch highlighting Hobbe’s black silk ensemble. “What have I told you about fraternizing with the Gruyeres? They’re stray poodles, and if you think they’ll forget who reduced them to such just because you buy them the odd supper, then you’re even sillier than I thought.”

  “Braem’s a plaguebitch, you won’t hear other from me,” said Sander, relieved to be talking about a subject he felt confident to speak on. “But Simon’s all right. No hard feelings there.”

  “No hard feelings? You cost him his fortune, man! You’ve taken his very title, reducing him from wealthy merchant and powerful city councilman to another bleary-eyed beggar getting by on the scraps of his betters—and you don’t think he cultivates the teensiest resentment?”