The Folly of the World

by Jesse Bullington

  “Fisherboys,” she replied, her heart hopping along with her tangle of escaped hair and slipping wipple—that bend in the beach was Snail Bay or she’d eat her veil.

  “Who?” The wind reduced his bellow to a mutter.

  “Fishermen!” Jolanda shouted back. “Fishermen!”

  “Ask them if we’re close!”

  “Aye!” Though she didn’t have to, not anymore—that was the cove where she’d learned to swim, the place she’d spent more time in than in her own home, baiting more traps than there were days in a year, bringing up more shellfish than there were numbers. It was the only place the snails dwelled, and from the first occasion she’d dove all the way down to their blind depths and felt them resting there on the bottom, she knew that it was a special place, reserved only for her. She hadn’t been stupid enough to bring one of the rough-shelled creatures up with her, otherwise her father would have dispensed with the laborious trap-setting process and had her swimming down there every day. Much as she loved the water, doing a thing that pushed the shark’s share of the labor from the shoulders of her shitbird brothers to her own knobby pair seemed stupid as sin, even to a child of her limited wits.

  On autumn days, though, when the sun sank before the Vespers bell even pealed over the blackthorn from Monster, she would come running down the dunes and fling herself into the warm water—the rest of the time she stayed with the sea, but when her brothers and father were gone from the bay, she’d chance a swim, a dive, a prayer down there at the bottom where the shellfish crept and crawled. Home.

  The fishermen had seen Jolanda and Sander coming and paused what they were doing, riders being a rare enough sight on that dismal spit to attract interest from its residents. The winter sky, rough slate as you’d find in any quarry, gave precious little indication of the hour, but to judge by the number of times Jolanda’s arse and legs had gone from sore to numb to aching sore again, she’d put it somewhere near dusk—the men were home for good, then, if they had any sense. Most of the fisherboys she had known had lived farther back behind the bay, if not in Monster proper, but there had been a few families on this side of the inlet, tucked up in the dunes. She was still trying to remember the names of the ones who’d lived around here when she got close enough to recognize Comijn amongst the men, the shittiest of her shitbird brothers.

  Here it was, then—what she’d come for. The wind gave them enough respite for her to hiss at Sander, “Whatever’s said, you keep shut and follow my lead, aye? Call me Lijsbet if you call me anything.”

  “Eh?” said Sander, raising a brow in obnoxious if unconscious imitation of Wurfbain. “Call you what, now?”

  “Lijsbet Tieselen,” she said, her heart trying to squirm up her gullet. “You’re Jan, same as ever, but I’m Lijsbet. Don’t fuck this up, or I’ll make you sorry, Sander, I swear it.”

  “I told you all about me falling out with Hobbe, but you’re playing games now, leaving me out the story?” said Sander, but didn’t raise his voice. Good Christ in all his glory, there were the twins, and Jetse, and the youngest, Gerard, who had grown from perpetually snotty kid to equally drippy teenager—hang her from a hook if this pack of fisherboys weren’t her shitbird brothers to a man!

  “Later,” Jolanda said, feeling her face go as dark as her glove-hidden fingers. “Please. Just let me do what I will.”

  “Long as it gets us out of this wind!” he shouted, though it hadn’t really picked up enough to necessitate such volume. He gave her a wink, the blessed idiot, and she turned to her brothers.

  “Ho there!” Jolanda called to her bedraggled family. Devil’s hoof, but they looked bad—the few years had not been kind to the boys, each and all looking worse then she’d left them… although Comijn had at last grown into his bulbous nose. They lacked proper clothing for an amble on the beach, to say naught of braving the winter sea, most swaddled in ragged blankets rather than oiled cloaks. Jetse had one of their mother’s old gowns over the rest of his kit, though it was thin enough that it took her a moment to even make out where halter ended and stained shirt began.

  None of them answered Jolanda’s greeting, save to look collectively at their feet now that Sander had thrown back his hood and let the wind carry his cloak over his shoulder, showing off his orange velvet doublet and the thick gold chain wound ’round his neck like the gaudiest noose. His stubbly face had erupted in pimples since they’d left Dordt, and his clothes were sandblasted to the point that he looked more dune than duke, but Jolanda knew her brothers had never seen a man dressed so fine; to think Jan’s ratty raiment had seemed impressive when he’d called on the Verf clan!

  “The Lady Tieselen greets you, villains!” Sander said as they halted their horses before the grimy crew. From here Jolanda could see that the stringing rope in the bed of their boat had, at most, a dozen small fish along it. Small wonder they looked so hollow of cheek, if that was indicative of the general quality of their casting. “Is this how you honor a noblewoman who deigns address you?”

  “Ya want us ta bow?” asked Comijn, looking up and staring dead at Jolanda. At first she thought he’d recognized her, was having a laugh, but then she saw he wore the same bulging-eyed, shivery expression he always donned when their father was taking out a bad snail crop on his brood—he was terrified.

  “Of course you bow!” said Sander, and all five of Jolanda’s brothers fell to their knees. She covered her smile with her hand—this was absurd. All that was missing was her father lined up with his shitbird offspring and she’d have done all that she needed to ensure happiness until the end of her days—if she got some kind of purple-dealing arrangement set up, then so much the better, but this, this, right here, was worth coming back to this dreary, colorless place.

  Quick as it came, though, the pleasure turned, like a delicious morsel, once swallowed, revealing itself to be mere conveyance for a sizable hook now tugging at your guts, the line in your throat making you gag, but the worst, the absolute worst, being the knowledge that you took the bait of your own volition. Mind, the sight of her brothers’ threadbare knees buried in the pebbly sand didn’t make the animosity they had beat into her any less tangible, it wasn’t as if she was going to invite them home to Dordt so that they could all live happily ever after, it was just… she knew how cold and coarse that sand was. More than one of these men had, in their youth, ground her face-first into it on account of some perceived slight or honest injury, and now that she was on her horse she was returning the favor…

  Except it felt awful instead of wonderful. She felt… she felt like how she imagined Jan must have, watching her treading water out there in the dark sea, not knowing if she’d drown or come ashore and risk his mercy. Or how he must have felt when he’d put the noose ’round her neck, a detail of his murder attempt that she suspected he’d done just to somehow bother Sander. If this was a victory, then so was the kicking of smelly dogs, the pummeling of slow children, the killing of some moony mussel who stepped on your shoe at the market and didn’t apologize.

  She looked at Sander and saw him looking back at her, waiting for further instruction. What sort of fickle fate put her and that lummox on horses while leaving the rest of her kin to the sea? What made her trust and, aye, care for a murderous, stupid arsehole more than her stupid and arseholish but certainly not murderous brothers? The fate she was given, she supposed, and one to be carried through to its conclusion. She sat straighter on her horse, much as she longed to dismount and give her legs a rest.

  “Stand, fishermen, stand,” Jolanda said, waiting for one of them to meet her gaze—one with better eyesight or memory than Comijn evidently possessed. It had only been three years since she’d left, so one of them was bound to recognize her, and then she could leave again, be done with them for good. She had promised herself a hundred times she would someday come back and lord herself over these shitbirds, and by God she would see it through, even if it now seemed petty, vicious, pointless.

  They stood, and she saw more than
one wince at the exertion. She wondered how long they had been in the boat, which led her to wonder what they were even doing on this side of the bay. No harm in asking, and the more she talked, the sooner they’d find her voice familiar, peer closer at her, put it all together, and then… what?

  Only way to find out what lay ahead was to walk there, and so she did, asking, “What are you doing on this side of the bay?”

  There was no answer from the downcast men until Sander cleared his throat, which got Jetse talking, fast and rough. By all the tongues of men and beasts, he had an accent on him, and Jolanda found herself struggling to understand her brother as he pointed to a faint path through the marram grass on the nearest dune. “Ma wiff und aye dwill dar, und ur bairns und hur mudder’s well, und ma brudders thar drop me hare.”

  “You catch that, m’lady?” asked Sander, clearly enjoying himself. Such a goddamn bully, to take sport in the fishermen’s obvious anxiety. She wondered how they would have reacted if Sander had kept on the plate harness he’d worn to Brouwershaven.

  “Aye,” she said, letting a bit of her own old accent creep in there. Anything? Nothing. “And the rest of you, what place do you call home?”

  A pause, and then Comijn spoke up, though his eyes stayed shoe-fixed. “Me und the rest, we’re in our fadder’s house ’cross the bay.”

  “At least I can understand this one!” said Sander. “Oi, lad, there a town with an inn nearby?”

  “Nay,” said Comijn. “ ’Twas, but none run it no mur.”

  “Well, shit,” said Sander, dropping the snooty lilt he’d adopted and addressing Jolanda in his normal tone. “I’m not sleeping on sand again. What say we take advantage of these gentlemen’s hospitality?”

  Jolanda felt dizzy, and hunkered down in her saddle. “Hospitality?”

  “You’ll lend us your roof on a cunting night like this, won’t you?” Sander grinned at Jolanda’s brothers. They were quaking, but from nerves or the rising wind, she knew not. Comijn quickly nodded, rubbing his hands together, but still not looking up. She remembered her brothers as being feral and fearless, even when Jan had come to take her away, yet these men were as skittish and shy as beaten pups. “Settled, then—you know the way, I trust?”

  It took Jolanda a moment to realize Sander was addressing her. “Oh. Uh, yes, I was told the purple-maker had five sons—are you his children?”

  “Six,” said Comijn. “Papa had six, but Pieter went way years ago.”

  “How didja know ’bout us?” said Gerard, wiping his nose on his sleeve and staring with obvious wonder at Jolanda’s horse. “Can I… touch it?”

  “You may,” said Jolanda. “I know about you… as I have come to buy purple dye from your father. I was told the man with five sons in Monster brewed the dye, and I mean to offer him a very lucrative proposition.”

  “Danno whut one of thum is,” said Jetse. “But na matter. Dye’s gone, Papa’s died, und I’m ta home, if iss right with you?”

  “What?” Jolanda said, though she had made out enough to know she was too late. Monstrous as he’d been, it had never occurred to her that the old man might be mortal.

  “Our fadder died a year back,” said Comijn. “And we’re out’ve purple.”

  Oh. Jolanda had nothing to say to that. When the silence grew long, Sander asked, “When’ll you get more?”

  “Mur purple?” That was Comijn, maybe, she couldn’t see so well, the sandy gusts picking back up. “Never. Sir, I mean, never, sir.”

  Sander looked to Jolanda but she didn’t want to ask, didn’t want to know. Curiosity was for cunts; some questions didn’t have a good answer… just shut it, Sander, she thought, and as if she’d said it aloud and he was being contrary, he said, “And why not?”

  Gerard was beneath Jolanda, petting Mackerel II’s neck, and she forced a smile. He stared up at her, too stupid or young to be as scared of the rich. No recognition on his wind-burned face, only the dullest of curiosities.

  “Snails gone,” said Comijn. “Ways back we come to catch less, then lots less, und now we ain’t pullt none up in a year. Bay’s got cold, too. Chill und hollow. No snails, no purple.”

  That stabbed her the way she ought to have been stabbed at hearing her da had died. What was wrong with her, sitting on a high horse above her family, hiding her tears behind veils of swirling sand and imported silk? And all for some shellfish destined for a hammer, instead of the man who’d birthed her, raised her, and, aye, smiled at her, too, from time to time—yet the thought of there being nary a snail in Snail Bay was the saddest thing she’d ever heard.

  She needed to get her shit together; Sander was staring. She tried to think about it in hard terms—this explained why they were even leaner than she’d left them, why they were piling five men into a two-man dinghy. No purple, no Papa, no prospects. Except Jetse, she supposed, who’d married some poor girl, saints save her.

  “Go home, iss right with you?” Jetse repeated, and aye, of course he wasn’t waiting on his brothers for an answer, he was waiting for permission from Sander. From her.

  “Go home, then, Jetse,” she croaked, tired as she could remember feeling. He was off like a dune rat chancing an open patch amidst the blackthorn, not peering closer at the handsomely dressed stranger who somehow knew his name, not looking back at his brothers, away, away, away. If only it weren’t so cold, she would insist she and Sander sleep in a bole in the dunes, or under an overturned boat, anywhere else… but it was too cold to sit outside on principle. “The rest of you go ahead, and make your home ready for us. We shall ride around the bay and arrive there soon. Take this for your trouble.”

  Sander groaned as she dug into her saddlebag and withdrew the largest of her three purses. Part of her still wanted to hurl it at their feet, where it could split like a honeycomb and spill its treasure across the sand and shallows, but instead she gingerly lowered it to Gerard, who took it with wide eyes and delivered it to Comijn. He received it with the same reverence possessed by those who held the Christling in the altarpiece of the Saint Nicolaas Church, and all four of the remaining brothers stared up at her now, too awed to simply fear her any longer. They might have stayed that way for a very long time if Sander hadn’t barked, “Well, get on and ready the house, then! And see that most of that coin goes to buying us a decent supper and drink from that village of yours—I’ll be well angered if there isn’t a warm fire, a warm meal, and warm ale awaiting us!”

  They didn’t thank her, turning and shoving the boat off and squeezing in without a backward glance, away, away, away, across the bay. Sander and Jolanda watched them go, then Jolanda led Sander inland, along the shore of Snail Bay. Sander did not say anything, though he clearly must know what she was about now—though she didn’t use her bedroom mirror in Dordt as often as Sander used his, the peacock, she had seen enough of her own nose and chin and ears in the fishermen to know that Sander must have recognized the same, even if all the talk of purple hadn’t been enough to clue him in. At least he held his tongue, for once.

  It was very dark by the time they had circumvented the inlet, passed through Monster, and found the trail through the dunes to Jolanda’s ancestral home, the cloudy night sky and wind-cast sand doing precious little to aid them in their search. When they arrived at the black hovel, Sander kept avowing Jolanda had led them astray, that this couldn’t be the place, but even without the shallow impressions in the stained sand where the purple pots had rested or the familiar angles of the listing shack, she would have known it by the smell—even after all these years, it reeked of piss and sea-rot and too many people in too small a space.

  “Don’t see a fire going,” Sander finally said after they had stood there in silence for a while, staring at the desolate house. “Think they’re back in town, getting food and all?”

  “I suspect they’re halfway to ’S Gravenhage by now,” said Jolanda.

  “What’s that, a better provisioned village?”

  “It’s a woodland where they can hid
e out. They’ve nicked off with my money, Sander.”

  “Nah, not those boys—they were shitting their breeches, no way they’d be so bold!”

  Jolanda closed her eyes, listened to the wind squealing through the chinks in the driftwood walls, and imagined she could hear it groaning through the empty cauldrons that used to rest out here, in the shadow of the blackthorn. They must have sold off the purple pots once they realized the shellfish weren’t coming back. Sander was cursing now, but she simply smiled and went to the door—at least this way she could set the place aflame when they left in the morn.

  Home.

  Februari 1426

  “Everything, However Finely Spun, Finally Comes to the Sun”

  I.

  Home.

  Sander hadn’t believed he’d ever think of Dordt that way, but here they were, back on Voorstraat, and damned if it didn’t feel like the end of a journey. That was a new sensation, it was, the sense that the road actually stopped at a certain point, that you could quit it as long as you wanted instead of just until the search party passed by or you got kicked out of the tavern. As they approached through the gloaming, snow again powdering their crowns, Sander saw light spilling through the shutters of the parlor window and let out a long, happy sigh. Much as he’d feared Lansloet and Drimmelin returning before them and conspiring with Hobbe, over the last few weeks of awful, drafty inns with awful, nasty food, he’d been even more scared that the servants might not beat him and Jo back to Dordt. Duke Philip must have drawn his court away from Zeeland, and once that happened, Von Wasser and the rest of the Cod locals would’ve been eager to be home to crow about their victory.

  “Happy?” Sander asked his moody compatriot. Even burning down that hovel at the beach hadn’t cheered her up, angels only knew why. When he’d finally called her on the fishermen being her kinfolk, she’d fessed readily enough, but not provided more than a sour “aye.” Probably raw they hadn’t recognized her, but what did she expect? It wasn’t like she was merely dressing a mite differently these days; she looked totally unlike the rabid little bitch Sander had met in Rotterdam, ten years older instead of three, human instead of monster. “To be back, I mean?”