by Rudy Rucker
Meanwhile the peasants had organized themselves to guard the thatch of the house, lest it too catch fire. And there was big Franckert, passing a bucket from Veronicka to Mevrouw Wagemaeker on the roof. Spotting Bruegel, the farmwife paused long enough to shriek imprecations.
“You fancy piece of shit! This is all because of you and your prick sword! I hope they hang you!”
“She make sense,” said the Rode Rockx sergeant, who suddenly appeared holding the bridle of his horse. “You should hang.” He turned to consult with the captain, but the captain was momentarily busy with tilting up the big jug of gin.
Joop nudged Bruegel and mouthed, “Run!” Bruegel took off, but not down the track that led to the main road. He circled behind the house and through an apple orchard, quickly losing himself in the fog. After several minutes of frantic running, he tripped over some brambles and fell to the ground. He pressed himself into a thicket and lay there panting, straining his ears to hear if he were being pursued.
He heard the distant yells of the peasants, the pop and rumble of the conflagration—but nothing more. He sat up, pushed aside the thorns, and looked towards the Wagemaekers’ farm. The drifting fog cleared for a minute and now the blaze could be clearly seen. Sparks and great chunks of burning straw were shooting up into the sky. The fiery chunks were like witches and demons. Then the fog came back, softening and dimming the fire like a finger on wet paint. The mist was suffused with a wonderful pink and yellow glow. Bruegel rested for a time, letting his mind go out into the colors. Gradually his heart slowed down. And now finally he had the time to weep for Father Michel, for Gilbert Hooft, for the shattered joy of the peasants’ simple wedding day.
After a time he thought he heard the rustling of leaves nearby. Was someone following him after all? But the Rode Rockx would have been on horses, wouldn’t they? Again a stealthy rustle. Could it be Death himself? Bruegel got to his feet and took off running again, the unlucky borrowed sword slapping against his leg.
He was looking for the road to Antwerp, but he couldn’t find it. Was he heading in the wrong direction? Or perhaps he’d crossed the road without noticing? It might have been possible to mistake the road’s muddy track for a patch of plowed field. He might have run right across it. Bruegel still kept thinking he heard something following him, which made it that much harder to get his bearings. Finally he decided to just head for the faint glow of Berchem and make a fresh start from there. He’d take his chances with avoiding the Rode Rockx.
Soon he could hear the drunken laughter from the inn, and with the hooting came a carrion smell, an evil, deathly stench. The fog was coming and going in thick blotches. Bruegel moved slower and more cautiously, and at the same time the ground underfoot grew slippery. Something bumped softly against his face—pale skin, ragged nails—a foot? Yes, the putrid bare foot of one of the hanged Anabaptists, slimy with the shit of the martyr’s last evacuation and, it seemed to Bruegel, slightly phosphorescent with decay. His gorge clenched; and then he was bent over vomiting out all of the long day’s beer and gruel.
When he could straighten up again, Bruegel backed off from the body and tried to peer ahead. The road ran right by here; he had only to reach it without running into another of the three stinking bundles that had been two women and a man. Over to the right seemed best, but as Bruegel turned that way a piece of the fog detached itself and grew solid. It came at him, low and white. He let out a low groan of terror, biting back the scream that might attract the Rode Rockx.
A long narrow white head poked at his crotch. It was Waf the dog, writhing and wagging his tail. Bruegel fell to his knees and embraced the beast, filled with fresh grief over old Hooft, dead on his son’s wedding day. He clung to Waf till he could calm himself, and then he dried his face upon the dog’s curly white hair.
“Waf,” whispered Bruegel. “Good dog. You come home with me. I’ll be your new master.”
Bruegel walked back to Antwerp in the fog, Waf quietly trotting at his heels. He kept thinking about the monk’s slit throat, about the puddle of rainwater on Hooft’s face, and about the vile softness of the suspended foot.
Was there nothing to be done against the grasping tyrants whom blind history had placed in control of the Low Lands? Surely it was his duty to act against them. A direct fight was hopeless, but there must be some small thing he could do to help undermine the foreigners. Even as Bruegel thought this, the fog once more seemed to form the lineaments of Death. He walked faster, hoping this was a night when he’d find his Anja at home.
When the guard at the Antwerp gate asked Bruegel why he was out so late, he said that he’d been chasing after his new dog, Waf, who’d been in pursuit of a rabbit. Bruegel and Waf padded through the empty nighttime streets and made their way to the building of the Four Winds press. Waf followed Bruegel all the way up the stairs. Not ready yet to risk disappointment, Bruegel went to his room before looking in the studio for Anja. He washed himself, fed the dog some bread and water, and only then did he carry a candle down the hall into his studio, with Waf close at his heels. And there he found Anja, plump and rosy, tucked into bed and fast asleep, her hip a finely curved mound beneath the featherbed. She looked wonderfully alive.
“I’m back,” said Bruegel touching her face.
“What’s that dog?” said Anja when she woke. “What a long thin head he has. Is he kind?”
“His name is Waf. He’s come to live with us. They killed his owner, and they nearly killed me.”
“Who?”
“The Rode Rockx. They came and burned down the barn with the wedding feast. And they were going to hang me. I have to do something to fight the Spaniards and their mercenaries, Anja.”
“What a world.” Anja’s face was still on her pillow, with her hand pulled up next to her cheek. She crooked one of her fingers. “Come get in bed with me, Peter. You’re not hungry, are you? I made us some potatoes and mussels, but when you were so late, I ate them all up.” Her voice got a bit lower and quieter, as it always did when she was telling a tall tale. What a relief it was to see her—so fully herself, so fully of this world.
“Maybe Waf and I should devour you, little pig,” said Bruegel, seized by exhaustion’s giddy merriment. “Bring her to earth, noble hound!” He nudged Waf forward.
“What kind of silly name is Waf?” Anja reached out and touched Wafs back while the dog gently sniffed her face. “Waf waf waf. I’m glad you’re home, Peter. I missed you.”
“Where were you last night?”
“I told you. I was sitting up with Anthonie Fugger’s granddaughter Elise.”
“You were with Williblad Cheroo,” said Bruegel. “Or with that idiot Martin de Vos. He can’t paint at all.”
“Maybe I was with both of them,” said Anja with a shrug. “Bing bang, one after the other. Why don’t you marry me, Peter? I’d be faithful to you then. But if you’re not going to marry me, I need to keep scouting for a husband.”
“You enjoy your intrigues so much I doubt if you’d ever stop.” Bruegel sighed, taking off his clothes. “But never mind.” He didn’t have the heart to argue. “This day’s knocked the wind out of my sails, Anja,” he continued. “The feast was so happy, a crowd of faces and bodies in motion, everyone talking and looking and feeling things. And then—zack—all of a sudden two men are cut down by the sword. I saw Death brush by, he took a clerk and a monk. I’d just been talking with them. Can you imagine? I should do something against the killers, I say. At the very least, I should draw political lampoons.”
“We die and then we burn in Hell,” said Anja, her voice soft and oddly wise. “With the good big world all gone. All the more reason to dance while the music still plays. Hold me, Peter.” She moved over to the far side of the bed, making room and pulling down the featherbed invitingly. Her pink-tipped breasts were wonderful to see. “What would you do for me if I stopped lying for a year?”
“Don’t promise something impossible,” said the naked Bruegel as he folded up some drap
ery by the door to make a bed for the dog. “Just try lying a little less. Keep it within some pardonable measure. Maybe I should find a way to count your lies. Sleep here, Waf. Good dog.” He hurried across the room and hopped into bed with Anja. “Did anyone come looking for me today? Any business?”
“No,” said Anja. But then she caught herself. “I mean, yes. That MaykenVerhulst and her daughter, Mayken Coecke, were here to look at your Children’s Games. What an ugly pair of women they are. Very cold to me. Stuck-up kiekerfretters.” The word meant “chicken eaters,” and was a common nickname for people from Brussels. Anja stretched her arms out towards Bruegel. “You like me better than them, don’t you, Peter?”
“You’re the one I have in bed. Oh, God, I’m so glad to still be alive. I wonder if you and I should make a baby. Before Death takes us.”
“We’d have to marry if we had a baby,” whispered Anja, molding her body against his.
“Maybe so,” said Bruegel. “Maybe we should marry anyway.” The real and present Anja seemed more important than his old dreams of joining the Maykens. Even so, a sense of caution held him back. “Would you stop lying to me then?” he murmured. Anja pressed against him wordlessly, reassuringly. He grew aroused. Sex was the only adequate answer to Death.
Yet even as he and Anja rocked together, with his eyes closed Bruegel could see Death, grinning and nodding and using a violin bow to saw little marks into one of his long, bare, white leg bones, keeping track of years and months and lies. Was it August or December?
Their lovemaking reached its climax. Death’s jaws opened; a swirl of snow turned everything blank white.
Seven
The Parable of the Blind
Antwerp, August 1561
Anja hurried down the morning streets of Antwerp, all in a sweat.
Against her better judgment, she’d let Williblad Cheroo cozen her into spending the night with him once again. He was such a handsome man: fine smelling, smooth skinned, most wonderfully shaped in his private parts, and vigorous far above what one might expect from someone well into his fourth decade. But now she’d slept with him once too often, and trouble was in the air. Peter’s stick was full of notches.
Last fall, after Peter had nearly gotten himself murdered at that peasant wedding, his high emotions had led him to say that he wanted a child and that he might marry Anja. But immediately his long-cherished ambitions to marry that Mayken brat had flared up, and he’d started looking for a way to get out of what he’d promised. Like some hateful lean-shanked schoolmaster, he’d cut a long bare stick off a tree and begun notching it to track Anja’s virtue.
Each time that, in Peter’s high and mighty opinion, she lied to him or deceived him, he made a notch upon his stupid stick. He decreed that if the stick became full before a year was over, their life as a couple would end. If Peter was really so eager to find a way to duck out of his marriage proposal, why should Anja enslave herself to his whims? There were always special treats she wanted, and tiresome tasks she’d rather not do. And so the notches began.
This needn’t have mattered, for if Anja were to bear Peter a child, he’d be honorable enough to marry her—and his whittled scrap of kindling could go hang. Anja dropped all the artifices she’d been using to keep herself from quickening—and waited for results. Yet all through fall, winter, and spring she remained barren. And the notches grew.
Anja visited a midwife to be bled and fluxed, but it failed to correct the disharmony of humors. The midwife said Anja and Bruegel’s couplings were fated to remain without issue. Anja kept this to herself. Perhaps she could get pregnant just the same. With the coming of summer, she covertly got Ortelius’s Helena to reconnect her with Williblad Cheroo, expecting this dashing man’s powerful ministrations to swell her belly.
With the resumption of Anja’s dalliance with Williblad, the notches upon the stick began to multiply in earnest. Initially she didn’t notice the damage, for most of the time Peter didn’t leave his precious stick out in the open. She’d foolishly imagined she was deceiving him about her visits to the Fuggers. But two weeks ago, with her belly still flat, she’d spied the nearly used-up piece of wood upon his bed and, in a sudden panic, she’d sworn off Williblad.
Anja walked faster. If only she could only get back to the Four Winds before Peter went into his studio then he might not notice that she’d been gone. Lately he’d been sleeping apart from her, always alone in his own room.
The problem was that yesterday the cheerful little Helena had greeted Anja in the market to press upon her a lovely fragrant magnolia blossom from Williblad. Anja had felt it only right to stop by Fugger’s to thank Williblad—and the usual lustful venery had ensued. This final notch could finish her.
The street ahead was blocked by two peasants with produce-laden carts. It was a market day, and more than that, it was the day of the great fair and national theater contest known as the Landjuweel. Anja and her girlfriends had been looking forward to it for weeks. But if Anja didn’t get home soon, Peter’s anger would ruin the day.
The farmers’ carts had locked wheels. But they were in a sanguine humor, and rather than arguing, they were laughing and taking their time, introducing their horses to each other, exchanging gossip, and now—oh, Lord—even taking out sausage and a jug of beer to share. One cart was filled with cabbages and carrots, the other with cheeses and cans of milk. The carts reached from literally one side of the narrow street to the other; they were touching the stone walls of the buildings and there was no way around them.
“Drunk bumpkins,” said Anja, climbing up into the cart of carrots and picking her way across it to hop over to the milk cart.
“Little hussy,” said one of the farmers. “I can smell your spice box from here.”
“Pig,” said Anja, and hurried down the street. She could hear drums and bagpipes in the distance. There were hundreds of musicians in town for the Landjuweel, some on their own, and some to back up the theatrical performances.
A printed piece of paper blew past. Despite her rush, Anja stopped to pick it up. Something about the shapes upon it looked familiar—yes, this was surely another of Peter’s anonymous lampoons. Instead of working for money, her man had been wasting his time all this year drawing savage cartoons of the absent King Philip, of Philip’s half sister, Margaret, and of Cardinal Granvelle. The Spanish Philip had appointed the Italian Margaret as the Regent of the Low Lands, and the Frenchman Granvelle was the Regent Margaret’s chief adviser and the true ruler of the realm. The Low Lands was at the mercy of foreign murderers and thieves, nothing new, but this year Peter couldn’t stop thinking about it.
Anja’s hasty steps slowed and stopped as she studied the reckless lampoon. Granvelle was drawn in the shape of a fat, untidy hen, perched upon a nest of dark eggs. Hatching out of the eggs were—alligators like the ones Williblad spoke of?—no, these were bishops on all fours, their pointed hats like hungry snouts. A few of the bishop-chicks were up on their hind legs, pecking and scratching for—Anja looked closer—the scavenging bishops were eating little bags of gold, except for the one up in front, who’d just scratched open a burrow that held tiny people kneeling in prayer. This bishop-chick had his head cocked to one side; his cruel mouth was open in an expression of gloating triumph.
Hovering above the wattled mother-hen Granvelle was an imperial orb with a little cross on it, the cross pointing down, and poised upon the orb was a hideous, beaked Satan surrounded by buzzing, verminous demons who drizzled shit and piss upon Granvelle and the bishops. Satan held out two taloned fingers as if conferring a blessing, but instead of pointing towards Heaven, his fingers pointed down at the filthy chicken. A scroll above Satan was inscribed with some writing, not that Anja could read.
Most people thought the lampoons were funny, but seeing this one today made Anja sweat even more. Peter was flirting with death. Even to be caught with one of these drawings could lead to torture or execution. What might the authorities do to the man who took such savage jo
y in drawing them? Someone passed by Anja then, saw what she held, and snickered. She folded up the paper, stuffed it into her damp bodice, and hastened on her way, thinking.
The topic of the lampoon was something the coffee drinkers at the Four Winds had been chattering about for months. In January, everyone had been happy because the Flemish nobles had convinced King Philip to withdraw the Spanish troops from the Low Lands. But then the Foreigner had gotten the Pope to appoint a pack of new bishops to the Low Lands, twice as many as before. Ordinarily the local nobles were allowed to decide who became a bishop, dispensing these plum positions to family, to friends, and to the better-loved local priests. But Philip had chosen to select the new bishops himself from Spain, both as a deliberate affront to the nobles and to ensure that his new ecclesiastics would be coldhearted, fanatical, and cruel in pressing forward the madness of the Inquisition.
As part of the new order, Bishop Granvelle had become a Cardinal, the Primate of the Low Lands. Everyone hated Granvelle now, from the highest nobles down to the lowest tanners, dyers, and apostate priests.
The drawing of the praying people in the burrow had to do with the Edicts of Blood that King Philip was so zealous to enforce. One of the Edicts decreed that it was a proof of heresy for a Low-Lander to be found praying or reading the Bible with no priest present to watch over him. To pray alone was a capital crime, punishable by hanging or by burning at the stake. The less agonizing fate of hanging was for those sinners willing to confess their heresy while suffering their preexecution tortures upon the rack. Those unwilling to confess were burned. It happened to more citizens every day. Thus Peter drew the bishops clawing open the burrows.
But all this fighting and biting among the men and their laws meant less to Anja than a raisin in a pot of porridge. She’d always supposed that God, Christ, and the Virgin were too busy to notice her, just as she was too busy to worry much about them. As for the bishops and the heretics, Anja went to mass once a week, and that was enough. Why waste more time on it? What she cared about was how to hold on to Peter. And if Peter were to drop her, then where could she find another man?