The Folly of the World

by Jesse Bullington

  Sander had found a bit of sport here and there since becoming graaf, but having Jan back in him was… well, there wasn’t nobody that set Sander aflame like that, neither before nor since they’d first thrown down on each other. It was tight like the first time he’d had someone in there, but with none of the pain. No, that wasn’t right, because the pain was there, hell, the pain was what made it so sweet—it was the pain without the, whatsit, discomfort. As if that made any sense. Point was, taking Jan to the root in one agonizingly slow go while the smaller man drooled onto Sander’s cock and then worked it in his noble-soft fist was worth anything that might come later, and when he felt those spunk-sticky fingers at his throat, the fire burning up his backside could incinerate the whole world…

  Yet for all the, well, perfection of it, the experience was a strange one.

  No, not strange—bizarre, appalling, nightmarish. This was a man he had murdered, after all, yet Jan’s flawless, toned body offered not a single scar to let Sander pretend that his lover had only been hurt and hadn’t, you know, fucking died back in the meer. He had died, Sander had killed him. Just not good enough.

  If there had been any niggling doubts as to Jan’s authenticity, they were assuaged by the medallion bouncing against his sweaty chest as they made love, the medallion Sander had taken from that cheeky warden way back when. The last thing Sander had done before shoving Jan through a hole in a mud-and-reed-covered roof was to kneel over his corpse and tie the pendant around his flayed neck. Christ’s crown, he’d thought it would help Jan find peace down there in the dark water, a guardian saint ’round his throat in lieu of a decent Christian burial…

  Sander came back to himself from the fever-dream of their coupling on the chill tile floor of the kitchen. What in all the devil’s schemes was he doing, fetching cheese and more wine for his fuckmate in the dark of the night, as if he had a mundane paramour awaiting his return and not some monster that wore the face of a dead man? He barely made it to the latrine before puking into the pot, and he lay on the tile, shivering, until Jan’s silhouette appeared from the blackness and helped him back to bed.

  “Will you?” Sander asked the darkness, Jan’s heavy legs woven between his, as welcome and familiar a sensation as a cool pillow squeezed there on a warm summer night.

  “What?” said Jan. His voice was sluggish with drink, his breath pungent with cock. What was most queer about his reappearance was how jovial he seemed—this was Jan when he was between schemes, content to drift straight for a while instead of looking for an angle. Sander’s favorite, amongst Jan’s many, mostly inscrutable, moods. He was going to snore tonight, Sander could tell from his voice, but that was all right. Sander might snore, too, who could tell if he snored? How did—Jan’s fingers tugged on his hair, just hard enough to make him flinch. “I said, what?”

  “What?” Sander snuggled tighter against the ghost.

  “You said will you. Will I what?”

  “Will you?” Sander remembered then, and shuddered. “For what I did out there, will you… are you going to kill me?”

  Jan was quiet. Sander imagined if he opened his eyes, he might catch a glimmer of Jan’s teeth shining in the dark, a glimmer like you’d see from a patch of moonlit rushes out in some dismal swamp. Jan’s lips settled on Sander’s, and they kissed.

  “I already have,” murmured Jan, and Sander smiled in the blackness. This was worth it. Anything was. Sleep took him, as it takes us all eventually, whether we wish it to or not.

  The problem with dreams is they sometimes get weird and bad instead of staying nice, and even if they don’t, right, you still wake up, wondering why you’d thought that was such a good vision in the first place. The wake-up for Sander, or maybe the turning point from sweet dream to fucked-up nightmare, came when he started out of his empty bed, sweaty blankets swaddling him like a winding sheet. Twisting around, he saw the room was empty, save for himself and the usual clutter. Except for the familiar dull aching in his posterior and throat, he could almost dismiss the previous night as one intensely bizarre dream.

  No such luck. It was all real, it had all happened, and now Drimmelin was pounding meat down in the kitchen, making Sander’s headache pulse in time with the knocks. She’d woken him up with the racket, and provided a welcome irritant to focus on, rather than the fact that he’d been up all night fucking an unquiet spirit. Clenching his hands into fists, he bawled, “Shut it, cook! Quit that racket!”

  She did not, and so he stomped on the floor. To no avail. Cupping hands to mouth, he directed his next holler to the heavens. Or rather, the attic: “Lansloet! Lansloet, shut her up!”

  Nothing but the banging. Which, yeah, wasn’t coming from the kitchen beneath him, but the front of the house. It couldn’t be someone knocking, not this loud and early and insistently. Could it? He didn’t pull up so much as fall into a pair of hose, and hauling on a shirt, he stumbled down the hall without even taking his morning shit. That first one after a serious fuck could be intense anyway, so no harm in putting it off. The knocking was even louder out here in the corridor, and he yelled again, “Lansloet! Lansloet, you cunt, get that!”

  Nothing but the banging. He detoured into Jo’s room, which was open, and made straight for her window to have a peep at who was out there making the ruckus. Cracking the shutters just enough, he saw… the tops of three heads he didn’t recognize. Men’s heads, if he had to guess, but a fat lot of good that did. Turning to Jo’s bed, he hissed, “Get your ass up and ready, we’re out of here. Never thought I’d see the day, but the game’s got too bent even for—Jo?”

  Talking to an empty bed. Christ’s crotch, what a morning. She better be out with that Lizzy and the rest of the servants, because if there was a single cunt in the house ignoring the racket, he’d… where could everyone be? He stomped down into the foyer, and the oddness at last maneuvered its way past the phalanx of headache, hangover, and his general morning irritability—where in the name of God could everyone be?

  He felt a chill all the way to his marrow, and the pounding at the door filled him with a dread unmatched in all his days… except for last night, granted, where his dead lover had returned, but that had all worked out for the best… Hadn’t it?

  Sunday.

  It was neuking Sunday, and everyone was at church. Everyone except these nutsacks knocking at his door, and Sander threw open the door to let them know exactly what the Graaf Tieselen thought of rude bastards skipping the service to harass dozing lords in their own homes.

  The sheriff and two militiamen. Huh. Last time the sheriff had visited, he’d come alone, not flanked by a man-ox and a wee scowler with a shitty little crossbow aimed at Sander’s face. This looked like some straight-up bullshit of the Old Sander variety.

  “Sheriff,” said Sander slowly, palms up so the twitchy one with the bow wouldn’t get the wrong idea. Wait a tic, where the shit was his ring? He never took the thing off, yet there was a pale band of skin instead of gold around his greasy ring finger, just where—Jan.

  Motherfuck.

  “Graaf Tieselen,” said the sheriff, looking a good bit softer than he did alone, overshadowed as he was with the beefy militiaman beside him. Big man was carrying a maul, like he was come to help raise a barn instead of… what the shit were they doing here? “We’re here to… we have news.”

  “Oh.” News was all right, or could be. “What sort of news?”

  “Your man Simon…” said the sheriff, and was he looking away on purpose, not meeting Sander’s eye? “He dead.”

  Sander blinked. He tried to ask “What?” but nothing came out. The whole world tilted, but the doorframe caught Sander as he pitched to the side. There was some mistake… Sander was going to get Simon out, they’d said he wouldn’t be killed for at least another month, plenty of time to spring him. Christ have mercy on the humble sinner, Sander hadn’t even worked up the stones to visit the man yet… or had what happened after Sneek happened again, his losing track of time? Had he been asleep f
or weeks, months, and missed any opportunity to save his friend? The sheriff had been talking this whole time, and Sander shook the tears from his eyes, the quills from his heart, and got out the word he’d choked on: “What?”

  “I said he implicated you, my lord,” said the sheriff, and by the way the cunt looked at Sander’s bare feet instead of his face, Sander knew he was about to get fucked in a rather epic fashion. “Before he hanged himself in his cell, he swore that you were the one who—”

  If that militiaboy’s bow had been one of Poorter’s instead of some piece of shit, Sander would have been deader than a thrice-stuck rat, but even at such close range the weapon missed Sander completely. Credit to the lad, who fired as soon as Sander jumped back in the doorway and slammed the door, but quick reflexes are no substitute for quality materials. The bolt had flown into the parlor, but Sander made straight for the kitchen, where he’d seen Glory’s End waiting the night before—when he’d gone to fetch the snack for Jan he’d wondered what she’d been doing on the table there, but now he knew, yes he did, and these militia mussels were—whoa!

  Sander didn’t even realize he’d slipped until he came back to himself, lying flat on his back with what felt like a walnut pushing out of the back of his skull. He must have only been out for a moment, for he heard the front door opening down the hall, the sheriff bawling and a bell ringing. Sander scrambled up only to slip again, his bare feet unable to get traction on the slick tile, but he caught the edge of the table and evened out, upright and ready for what came next. He was soaked to the skin in whatever the goddamn cook had spilled; he’d ring her out, leaving the kitchen a bloody—

  Bloody was right. The window was still shuttered but enough light snuck through that he could see he was covered with the cold, wet liquid, the floor suddenly feeling tacky beneath his toes instead of slippery. No time to suss this out, where the devil was Glory’s End? Popping the shutters open, he saw his sword was missing, but at least he knew where all the blood had come from.

  He’d always distrusted Lansloet, but it seemed that suspicion had been unjustified. That, or the traitor had gotten what he deserved. Except no, Sander corrected himself, nobody deserved that, he was just trying to make himself feel better about seeing his servant flayed and—

  Christ’s mercy, no, there was Drimmelin as well, her head sheared clear off and resting on her prone back and—

  “Murder!” the sheriff cried from the kitchen doorway. Behind him the massive militiaman had doubled over, puking his belly up like a kid on his first proper drunk.

  “It’s not what it looks like,” said Sander, but the sheriff wasn’t paying him any mind, gaping at the two mutilated corpses. Fuck it. Sander was up and crouched in the windowsill in an instant. Looking down at the canal, he grinned—funny how you always end up right where you start. A bowstring twanged behind him, these chumps unaware he was blessed lucky where such things as bolts were concerned, and the day he got took down by—

  —No, shit, they had him, a quarrel sticking his left buttock and sending him toppling out of the window. Warm as the last few days had been, the water was cold as a lover’s betrayal, and as soon as Sander surfaced, he realized just how fucked he was—it was too cold to breathe, say naught of swimming. For a moment he considered letting the icy water take him down to the well, with all its Belgians and sundry mysteries, but then the big militiaman was poking his long maul down from the window, and Sander seized it, letting himself be pulled out of the canal like a dead rat skimmed from a barrel of beer. Once they had him back in the kitchen, the three men proceeded to give Sander the worst hiding in a life full of positively epic beatings.

  Ah well, he thought as he lay sprawled in the blood of his servants, boots and fists and weapon-hilts pummeling him into a pulp, the rain that falls today doesn’t fall tomorrow.

  VII.

  When Jolanda crept out at dawn the morning after Jan’s reappearance, she had intended to return as soon as she had made sure their boat was safely moored at its bollard in the harbor, but after confirming that the vessel was present and ready for a rapid departure, she lost… well, not her nerve, but her ability to just walk back into the quiet house as though everything were normal. After starting awake in her gloomy room she had been in such a hurry to get away, to be anywhere else, that she hadn’t even put her armor back on, instead creeping from her room and down the stairs in the shift she’d slept in and the first gown she tripped over. The dress was far too ostentatious for a walk to the harbor, but so it went.

  Now, with the prospect of returning to the Jan-haunted house on Voorstraat, she wished she’d taken the time to both arm and armor herself. She had the dagger she always kept in her bag, sure, but why hadn’t she secured herself in the leather and steel suit? Come to it, why hadn’t she brought everything she needed to make away and never look back? It wouldn’t take much, just a few changes of clothing, the coin she and Sander hadn’t spent returning from Brouwershaven, and her sword.

  Because she wouldn’t leave Sander to Jan’s mercy, was why. Because she wouldn’t quit the city without first warning Lijsbet to steer away from them, to quit the Tieselen house and stay with her aunt, with anyone. Once upon a time Jolanda would have been able to just run, but no longer… yet she couldn’t go back to the house, not yet. She needed time to think, a place to rest until she was even capable of thinking straight; she needed friends she’d never made, sanctuaries she’d never secured.

  Where to go? She considered Poorter Primm’s, but now had some idea that the violent visitor he had been so reluctant to admit to hosting may well have been Jan, and she would have been wary of sleeping with only Primm watching over her in the best of times. Lady Meyl, then, but that would involve some sort of explanation as to why she was seeking refuge from a woman she’d met all of twice, and after a mostly sleepless night Jolanda was ill prepared to concoct some plausible excuse, let alone offer the truth, which was pure madness—Jan’s impossible reappearance complicated matters that were far from simple to begin with. She ended up just walking around the brightening city, unsure what to do next, until a hullabaloo of whistling and bell-ringing and shouting drew her back toward Voorstraat. Once there, the crowd quickly validated, if not her worst suspicions, then at least some fucking dire ones indeed.

  “It’s Graaf Tieselen, they’ve arrested Graaf Tieselen!”

  “Hang the Hook!”

  “Killing kids with that Gruyere man of his!”

  “Killed his servants!”

  That last accusation was the hardest, and by the time Jolanda had worked herself through the mob, toward her door, she was crying. Just as she was about to address the militiamen barring the stoop of her house from the more mischief-minded members of the crowd, a hand fell on her shoulder and a familiar voice whispered in her ear.

  “Don’t go, mistress, the folk’ll be mad for your blood, they realize who you are.” Lijsbet steered Jolanda, too exhausted and relieved to even speak, back through the crowd. When at last they reached a less-thronged alley, Lijsbet threw her arms fully around her mistress. When Jolanda finally broke the embrace, she saw that her servant was also weeping. “Is it true, Jo? Did the graaf… are Lansloet and Drimmelin…”

  “No. I don’t know,” said Jolanda, her voice breaking. “I don’t know, but he wouldn’t. I’m so tired, Lijsbet—is there anywhere we can go?”

  “I…” Lijsbet pursed her lips, nodded to herself. “Right, so I need to come clean—I wasn’t staying with my aunt when you were gone, nor minding my nephews last night… You know my husband left me, and he’s not coming back—I mean, if he did, I wouldn’t have him, I’d run first, I would…”

  “Lijsbet,” said Jolanda wearily. “What are you talking about?”

  “I’ve been lying about where I’ve been off to,” said Lijsbet. “I’ve got a fellow I’ve been spending time with, a… a Jew, m’lady. I know I should have told you, but I… well, I didn’t want you thinking less of me. I promise I never shirked in the house
on account of him, I’d only see him when I was dismissed, and—”

  Jolanda sucked her teeth. “I’d have thought you’d know better, Lijsbet, than to get mixed up with some horned cheat. I didn’t know there were any in the city, seducing innocent girls with their spells and—”

  “M’lady, that’s the veriest nonsense,” said Lijsbet shortly. “I’m sorry to correct you, but it is—why I didn’t say anything before, I knew you’d act like this. He doesn’t have horns, nor a tail, and he doesn’t cast spells—he’s a cobbler, and—”

  “Lijsbet,” said Jolanda, offering her maid a watery smile. “I’m fucking with you. The graaf’s the one who told me all that, and I shouldn’t need to tell you what credence I give his tales. Can we stay with your Jew, is that why you brought him up?”

  “Yes,” said Lijsbet. “Yes, of course, I’m sorry, it’s just what people think about him, you know, and I’m just flustered, too—you and the graaf acting so queer ever since you came back, and I’ve been worried about Simon, and so I’ve been with my Solomon, he takes my mind from it, and if I hadn’t spent last night with him, I might… like Lansloet and Drimmelin. Jan might’ve—”

  “Lijsbet,” said Jolanda. “Not another word about it. He—” Jolanda’s skull ached as she forced herself to call Sander by his hated persona—“Jan didn’t kill them. Somebody’s after us, after Jan, and me, and Simon. Now, can we please get out of here?”

  “Of course, of course,” said Lijsbet, and they were moving off down the alley. “You can stay with us there long as you need. His mother’s gone to Tilburg to visit her sister, so it’s just us, and he’s got a secret loft where he does his praying, so even when the shop’s open, you’ll have a bit of privacy. It’s tight in there, nothing like you’re used to, but it is what it is.”