The Folly of the World

by Jesse Bullington

  “But no more!” cried Sander, extending the sandy lamb joint to Von Wasser. The hertog took it, and Sander pulled him to his feet. They stood facing each other, close enough to bite each other’s throats, and Sander went on, barking in the man’s face. “I figured it out! I quit Wurfbain! He’s wroth! Wroth as God! But I quit him! He threatened to ruin me! To ruin my family! Threatened I don’t even know! And! I! Told! Him! To! Stuff it!”

  Another nigh-sinister silence, and Jolanda knew they were good and truly fucked now—Sander hadn’t been so mad after all, there at the end, he had tried to explain, but it was too little, too late. It would take more than loudly crashing a feast to convince every Cod in Holland that the Tieselens had changed their Hookish scales, and now—

  —Von Wasser went for Sander, and Jolanda set her foot to charge, hand on her sword, and—

  —Von Wasser threw his arms around Sander, and a great cheer went up through the crowd. They had bought it? They had really, truly bought Sander’s mad story?

  Aye, apparently they had, as the Cods of Dordrecht fell over one another to be the next to formerly introduce himself to the neighbor they had studiously ignored in public and certainly mocked in private. Much ado was made over Jolanda and her patchwork armor, and the confirmation that Graaf Tieselen had indeed brought two servants rather than squires or mercenaries made the nobles roar with laughter. This sat poorly with Sander, but there was no pleasing the dotty fool.

  “Lady Jolanda,” said a shapely silhouette standing between Jolanda and one of the bonfires, the voice frustratingly familiar. “How wonderful that you and your father have… come around. May I invite you to join my table?”

  Squinting at the black figure, Jolanda had no better idea of who the woman might be. Anything beat hanging behind Sander, though, as Von Wasser and the rest clobbered his back and rode him for being such a no-good-stinking-Hook for so long—either Sander would pick up on their condescending jokes at his expense and fly into a rage, or he would take what they said as sincere compliments and become even more of a conceited doofus than usual. And so Jolanda curtsied to the mysterious woman, saying, “It would be my absolute pleasure, m’lady.”

  “Excellent,” said the woman, and as she turned back to the feast, Jolanda saw her face in profile and gasped—it was Lady Meyl, the widowed mother of Willem Von Wasser and the richest woman in Dordrecht, if not all of Holland. Jolanda had only met her the once, at the Hooglandse Church in Leyden; every time she had glimpsed her in the Dordrecht markets and church she had prayed the noblewoman would say hello, maybe even invite her to her manse, but not once had the imperious old biddy acknowledged Jolanda’s existence. Indeed, Lady Meyl was as skilled at avoiding your eyes with her own as Sander was at hitting your nerves, yet now Jolanda was following her to a royal table at an epic feast held beneath the winter stars on a windswept strand, the dowager’s pale, pearl-laced gown trailing in the sand behind her like something from a dream…

  Jolanda’s initial disappointment that Lady Meyl simply planted her ample bottom on a bench rather than first introducing Jolanda to their tablemates was somewhat assuaged when she saw that there were no other ladies present, only a handful of noblemen clustered at one end of the bench. These braying fops were clearly as drunk as a brewer’s fart. The seat was rough and frigid under Jolanda’s arse, even through her reinforced leggings, and the nearly raw meat cooled within moments of being laid on the frosty plates. Ice crusts of wine spotted the board, with globs of frozen fat and cold-brittled bones strewn across table and bench alike. Jolanda’s first feast was shaping up to be a lot like one of Sander and Simon’s nights in, only outside on a beach in January.

  “Well, well, well,” said Lady Meyl, pulling a fur blanket off of a snoring figure on the bench beside her and swaddling herself in the bristly thing until only her sharp face poked out. She resembled an enormous hedgehog. “This is a pleasant surprise, having you and your father join us. It’s ever so nice to see you again, Jolanda.”

  “Indeed, it has been too long,” said Jolanda, taking a bite of the lamb a servant had brought her. Ravenous as she was, the bloody, gamy meat made her feel like a wolf. “I trust in God that all is well with you, my lady, both here and at home?”

  “It is pure shit, is what it is,” said Lady Meyl. She sounded tired, which, aye, made sense, late as the hour must be. “Between your father and that Van Hauer bitch, Zoete, Count Wurfbain has brought any substantial civic development to a standstill in Dordrecht. Now, now, don’t protest, I heard the graaf’s poetic speech and I’m sure that all is forgiven, but you asked if all was well with myself, both at home and here, and I am answering you in an honest fashion.”

  “I do appreciate your honesty, my lady,” said Jolanda, breaking the plug of ice on a jug of wine and filling a goblet all the way to the top. Anything to get the taste of sheep blood from her mouth. “And it’s true I cannot claim to understand all that goes on with my father’s business and the politics of Dordrecht. But I am confident that from this day forth we will all enjoy a strong shift from whatever stagnation Wurfbain’s plotting has inflicted upon our city.”

  “I’m sure you understand more than you let on, young lady,” Meyl grinned, showing that she had very few teeth left in her dull gums. That explained the bowlful of meat slurry she kept stirring up, to keep from freezing, and the whistling sound that accompanied every one of her matronly exhalations. “Clever as you are, I wonder you let that Hobbe push your father around as long as he did.”

  “He doesn’t listen to me,” Jolanda said in her defense, to which Meyl responded with a burp. Recognizing this audience as an opportunity as exceptional as it was unexpected, Jolanda went for it before she lost her nerve: “Begging all your pardons if I am out of turn, my lady, but I know I may speak for my father when I say that we are in need of the counsel of a wiser, more experienced nobleperson now more than ever. We are not from Dordrecht, after all. Having fallen under the sway of Count Wurfbain, the dastardly Hook, we have little idea of what might truly do the most good for our adoptive city, and of course her citizens. If there was a learned Cod we could turn to for guidance, we—”

  “Fie on Cods and Hooks alike,” said Meyl with more passion than she had heretofore displayed. “If you must listen to a word I say, pray do it for the sense it makes rather than the party I supposedly belong to.”

  “You’re not a Cod?” said Jolanda, confused and, truth be told, a little relieved.

  “I’m a woman of Dordrecht,” said Lady Meyl. “Whatever that means. As for Hooks and Cods and what have you, it’s a plain fact that a divided city is a chaotic one, and having Wurfbain sticking his nose into our business is no good for anyone. As it happens, I counted Jacoba as a dear friend and one of the wisest young women I ever met. That was before all that bad business with her uncle, and now this. The only reason I came along with my son was that I hoped to have a chat with her, if she were captured, but she’s slipped away again, and so it’s a sore ass and numb fingers for no reason at all. None.”

  “When’s the next battle?” asked Jolanda. “I mean, is it known, or do they figure that out later, or what? I gather we, er, the Cods won this one.”

  “There won’t be, I don’t expect,” said Meyl, and yawned. “They trounced her good, this time—she’ll recover her spirits, of course, she always does, but I can’t imagine her new husband will be very pleased, having all his thousands of men hacked to pieces and shot full of bolts on the strand there. Sir Boomsma, that’s one of Willem’s friends, finally got to fire his precious cannon at the English, an occasion we’ll never be hearing the end of. And so the war is over, my dear, but I still envy you your armor—it has to be warmer than my satin, mink pelisse be damned.”

  “Oh,” said Jolanda, trying not to be too disappointed. “Jan—that is, my father—said the war would go through the spring and maybe the summer.”

  “Your father is an idiot,” said Lady Meyl, though not unkindly. “Just like my son, there. I think they�
��ve taken to each other well enough—that’s the rub, child, we should all be such marvelous friends, Hook and Cod, man and woman, rich and poor, if only we could laugh in each other’s faces instead of behind one another’s backs. Ahoy there, boy, bring me that plate. Yes, you!”

  Jolanda was surprised to see Lansloet appear between them with a currant tart nearly as large as his frown. This was simply a fiasco, and Jolanda looked sadly out to the black sea. More to herself than Lady Meyl, she said, “I don’t suppose most feasts are quite like this.”

  “No,” said Lady Meyl, tearing into the sweet with her fingers and popping little bits of mushed-up tart into her maw. “They are, though not so whore-heartedly cold, obviously, and there are women in attendance beyond the camp sluts and we few stray ladies. When we’re all back and settled, I’ll have you and the graaf over and you can see for yourself that feasts are every bit as wretched in town as they are in country.”

  “Oh,” said Jolanda, brightening. “That would be lovely!”

  “No it won’t,” said Meyl as she stared off into a bonfire, the salty wind lashing fur around her features making her resemble a barbarian queen of old. “You’ll see soon enough, my child, you’ll see soon enough.”

  V.

  Mackerel the Second was a gargantuan bay, and even after two days of travel the horse made Jolanda anxious—she’d been very much looking forward to having a real ride again, on solid ground, but now that she had a steed of her own, she found the creature alien as something from the sea. She had such fond memories of the first Mackerel, of learning how to control the beast under Jan’s careful, quiet tutelage, but from the moment she’d mounted the horse Hertog Von Wasser sold her, she knew the equine was going to be trouble—there was no warmth in his titan’s eyes as he surveyed her over his shoulder, only an emotionless curiosity, as if he were constantly reevaluating his initial assessment that riders did not make good eating.

  She was doing better than Sander, at least—his horse threw him three times the first day. That it had only pitched him off its back twice on the second he viewed as a great improvement, and to his credit he never punched the animal, despite his threats. Jolanda recalled how adamant Von Wasser had been that Sander take that particular mount, whereas Jolanda was free to choose from the half-dozen animals made available by the deaths of their riders in the battle that Sander, Jolanda, and the servants had narrowly missed.

  A great day for Holland and a great day for its steward, Philip the Good, whom Jolanda glimpsed once or twice through the throng of hangers-on that constantly swarmed him like ants upon a juicy bone. Duke Philip was departing for Middelburg, on the southern island of Walcheren, but before he and his retinue moved on, Sander was able to finagle a brief audience with His Highness. It was barely long enough to get through the mandatory kneeling, groveling, and apologizing for missing the fight. Of course, to hear the ribbing Von Wasser and the rest gave him, the fact that Graaf Tieselen had shown up at all was seen as a great exceeding of expectations.

  The night of their arrival in Brouwershaven, they all piled into the crowded hospital tents and slept amidst the injured and dying, lodgings being hard to come by in the Zeeland port’s army-infested inns and houses. Despite the surprisingly warm welcome he’d received from the rich men of Dordt, the next morning Sander seemed eager to be off from his new friends, but not in the direction she’d hoped. Jolanda repeatedly tried to talk him into returning to Dordrecht, as being away from home just as Wurfbain must be plotting some revenge seemed the height of folly, but he would hear none of it, maintaining they stay away “until things cooled down,” whatever that meant. At least their journey to Brouwershaven wasn’t a complete waste, as Lady Meyl seemed as shrewd a woman as Jolanda had ever met, and winning new allies was never an ill venture. With Wurfbain gone from sole guardian to nemesis, Jolanda suspected they could do with as many of those as possible.

  Since fleeing the endless revel of Brouwershaven was of paramount importance to Sander, Jolanda eventually coughed up the coin for two horses and passage off the Zeeland island, back to the mainland. A small mercy was that she convinced Sander to let Drimmelin and Lansloet find their own way home with Lady Meyl and Hertog Von Wasser’s people, whenever they cleared off, rather than humping along on another horse. The triumphant hertog and his mother, being of one of the few old-money sheephead families to financially survive the flood, would likely stay in Zeeland as long as Duke Philip’s court remained there, and so even if the two servants were colluding with Wurfbain, it wasn’t as though they would beat Jolanda and Sander back to Dordrecht. The deciding factor for Sander had been that if the servants returned separately, he could charge them with delivering his plate armor, sparing him from wearing the uncomfortable suit on the road. For all the shit he talked about her armor being worthless, she certainly got a lot more wear out of her brigandine than he did from his steel shell. When pressed for where he meant to travel “until things cooled down,” Sander would just shrug and mutter, “anywhere but here,” and so Jolanda picked their course.

  The boat that carried them and their horses from Brouwershaven dropped them off in Schiedam, and from there Jolanda figured she could add a few weeks to their ride home by detouring west and then north along the coast to Monster, and from there retracing the surreptitious route by which Jan had first brought her to Rotterdam. Such a delay would comfort Sander without letting him stay away from Dordrecht forever, as seemed to be his wish, and so toward Monster they went, without her telling him the reason. He never asked why she might have chosen that particular town to visit, a lack of interest in her motivations that annoyed her a bit, but he seemed to have fallen back into his old, worrisome, worrying ways, and so she tried not to take his self-centered demeanor as a personal affront. Not like the goddamn neuker took much notice of her personal affairs in Dordt, so why should it be any different here on the road?

  Or rather, the strand.

  “Cold as indifference on Christmas,” Sander said when the wind died down enough for them to bandy a few words back and forth, like beggars sharing a mug of something hot. “Hate the sea like I hate all Hooks, I do. Let’s cut over the dunes next break we get.”

  “No,” said Jolanda. “I don’t know the way from the other side.”

  “How you know where we’re going from this side, then? It’s all the same, sand on one side and water the other, and couple of half-wits betwixt the two—whatever you think you know or remember about coming to this place, you’ll find yourself mistaken.”

  “No,” said Jolanda, though not being a half-wit herself, she knew there was wisdom in what he said—for the past two days every stretch of beach they passed reminded her of home so keenly, she had to bite her lip and think of warmer things or give in to emotion. No, not home, but the place she’d grown up—totally different sort of thing. Still, she’d take them clear up to Amsterdam before she admitted defeat on something she should know as well as if a map of the place were dyed on the insides of her eyes. They would find it. She would find it. And then she would move on her father, make him an offer he couldn’t pass up, and load up Mackerel II with enough purple to fill a dozen chests with groots, once she’d flipped the stuff. She’d keep a little for her arms, of course, be done with the woad once and for—

  “Oi!” Sander was shouting to be heard over the steadily rising wind that was making her lean forward, mid-daydream, and close her eyes to slits for all the sand pelting her face. The eternal gray quilt was cracking on its clothesline to her left, ragged strips of dirty lace capping every wind-whipped wave, and she grinned despite the grit it bore into her gums. If this wasn’t home, she didn’t have one at all. “Oi, Jo, we got to get out of this breeze! I’m dying!”

  She didn’t even try to be heard over the wind piping between her teeth, echoing down her throat, filling her lungs with brine and the dust of shells shattering under hoof-fall. Home. The sea almost looked inviting, and for a moment that old madness seized her and she tried to steer Mackerel I
I to the dark border where the sea puffed out as far as it could before drawing back in, a panting, liquid Leviathan. Home.

  The horse wasn’t keen on braving the breakers, and truth be told, neither was she, so she let him drift back to the softer sand to their right, his head down, bearing into the gale. Jolanda told herself it was the season, that it was too cold to dive in, but the truth was she hadn’t gotten in anything deeper than the Dordt baths since becoming a lady. The thought made her queasy, made her throat tight. Too cold, she thought, which it was… but aye, that weren’t the reason.

  Keeping the reins in her left hand, she let her right swing down to the pommel of the sword Sander had commissioned for her after she’d finally bested him in a sparring match, what, over a year ago? Her Tooth, given to her their first Christmas together as father and daughter in the house on Voorstraat. It was a comfort, was a good sword, and she again regretted their tardy arrival at Brouwershaven—she had dearly anticipated the chance to use it.

  Maybe it was for the best, though—she’d have an easier time meeting Lijsbet’s eyes when they returned home, and what quarrel did she have with Englander arseholes that she didn’t with her next-door neighbors? As in, arseholes were everywhere, and who knew, if Wurfbain came for them, she might have a chance to use the weapon soon enough. Wasn’t there something Sander said about the best sword being the one you never drew? No, that definitely wasn’t the sort of saying Sander would repeat, maybe it was Lijsbet…

  “I said, you see that?” Sander had ridden up beside her, but she hadn’t noticed for the wind in her ears and sand in her eyes. He was pointing ahead, and following his gloved finger, she made out a huddle of figures beside a beached boat far down the strand, where the dunes curved inland. “What’s that?”