As Above, So Below

by Rudy Rucker

  Nine

  The Sermon of John the Baptist

  Antwerp, October 1562

  Ortelius sat comfortably in his study, examining a Roman coin in the green-stained afternoon light that slanted through his round-paned windows. The coin showed Nero, the last of the Caesars, and dated from thirty years after the death of Christ. It was a fine piece, purchased in Rome. According to the dealer, the coin was from a treasure trove that a peasant had plowed up: a hundred gold and five hundred silver coins sealed into a little red pot. Holding the coin close to his face, Ortelius imagined the fingers that had touched it, the eyes that had seen it—the slaves, the merchants, the persecuted Christians, Nero’s brutal legionnaires—perhaps this coin had passed through the hands of some aging soldier who’d seen the earthly face of the Savior. Deep in his peaceful reverie, Ortelius was wholly outside of time.

  But now there was a distant clamor, a strange dog barking in the hallway. Rome began slipping away, and when curly-haired little Helena came twittering into the study, the talismanic coin had become but a worn disk of metal. “It’s Peter Bruegel to see you, Mijnheer Ortelius.” Her eyes were quite round with excitement.

  Bruegel was lively and of a sanguine color, quite unlike the wrung-out pale wretch who’d passed through Antwerp six months ago. Waf pranced at his side, beating his long tail. Bruegel wore a broad-brimmed red hat and a brown wool cloak. A big square satchel hung from his shoulder. And if Ortelius had any lingering fears about the state of their friendship, Bruegel’s broad smile allayed them.

  “Amsterdam was good to you, Peter?” said Ortelius, springing to his feet to embrace his friend.

  “It was fine,” said Bruegel. “A peaceful city of deep canals. The Hollanders have wonderful veal dumplings. I sold some drawings to a fellow named Herman Pilgrims. Ate a lot. Painted. Looked at ants. And, as you suggested, I spent some time with the scholar Dirk Coornhert. He’s going to write verses to accompany some of my engravings. I see you have my Two Monkeys well installed.” On his way north, Bruegel had made Ortelius a gift of a little foot-square piece he’d done in Mechelen on a leftover bit of panel: an image of two chained monkeys with Antwerp in the background.

  “Ah, and there’s my convex mirror too,” continued Bruegel. “I’ll come back and fetch that as soon as I’m properly settled in Brussels. Easy there, Waf, you’ll sweep everything off the shelves. How are things with Anja, Abraham?”

  “I set aside the amount you gave me,” said Ortelius, slightly miffed to have Anja be the topic of Bruegel’s very first question. What about Ortelius’s own travels to Austria this winter, his longings, the compromises he made to keep up his position in the world? Or what about the growing wave of the Reformation in Antwerp and Ortelius’s role in it? Frankly, Ortelius cared not a fig about the slatternly troublemaker Anja. And talking about her stirred up all his old guilt about having indirectly helped her betray Bruegel. But of course he didn’t mention any of this. “And I had Helena tell Anja a small sum is there for her dowry. To tell you the truth, I haven’t thought about Anja in months. Helena!”

  Helena reappeared so quickly that she must have been right outside the open door.

  “Mijnheer Bruegel is worried about Anja,” Ortelius told her. “What’s the latest word?”

  “It’s all right for me to speak of Anja to you, Mijnheer Bruegel?” said Helena with a timorous air. “You’re no longer angry with me?” Evidently Bruegel had at some point vented his choler at her over that tiresome business with Williblad. Couldn’t it finally be forgotten? What had Williblad seen in Anja? wondered Ortelius, not for the first time. You’d think he’d want to be with someone more cultured.

  “Never fear, Helena, I’ve had a good rest in Amsterdam,” said Bruegel. “I’m glad to be free of Anja. But I do worry about her. Give me the news.”

  “She left Martin de Vos, you know, because he beat her,” began Helena.

  “Just as I feared!” cried Bruegel, beginning to pace around the room. So much for his calm state of mind.

  “Did you tell me this before?” Ortelius asked Helena.

  “Mijnheer Ortelius has a poor ear for gossip,” Helena said to Bruegel, favoring Ortelius with a rude roll of her eyes. “I was about to tell you that Anja’s moved in with another painter. A fellow named Peter Huys. His pictures don’t earn so well, but he gets steady work as an engraver. The big news is that he’s asked Anja to marry him.”

  “Peter Huys?” said Ortelius, still trying to be part of the conversation. “I can’t quite—” He was always at a bit of a loss when it came to the changing details of Antwerp’s mating dance.

  “Good Peter Huys!” exclaimed Bruegel. “Bless the man! You know him, Abraham. A round fellow, a few years older than us. He paints imitations of Bosch; technically second-rate, yet exceedingly droll. I recall a fat naked egg-shaped man whose top half was a beehive with two eyeholes; the man was wearing black boots.” Combined with the happy news about Anja, the thought of the beehive-man made Bruegel laugh out loud. “Dear Huys,” he repeated. “Do he and Anja get along well, Helena? Did she tell him about the dowry?”

  “Anja says Peter Huys is like you without the clouds and mountains, Mijnheer Bruegel,” said Helena. “And, yes, he’s satisfied with her dowry, such as it is. In fact he hadn’t expected so much as a stuiver. He loves Anja for her merry self. They’re posting the banns this week, and it’s none too soon, as she’s already carrying his child. Much of the dowry went for a cradle and some linens.”

  “Anja with child,” said Bruegel in a wondering tone, and fell silent. It occurred to Ortelius that for all the years Bruegel had lived with Anja, her womb never quickened to his touch. No wonder he looked discomfited. Perhaps this meant he’d never be a father. Bruegel ran his hand across the round flank of Ortelius’s terrestrial globe and stared vacantly down at Waf. “Lie down, boy, lie down by the fire.”

  Ortelius did what he could to break the mood.

  “Don’t stand there gaping at us, Helena, bring Mijnheer Bruegel some beer. Cheese, bread, and sausage, as well, whatever you can find. And a pot of tea for me. You’re hungry, aren’t you, Peter?”

  “I am,” said Bruegel, sitting carefully down on one of Ortelius’s chairs as Helena left the room. “I’ll try not to break any furniture. Remember that time with Hans Franckert? It was the day I got my first commissions. How goes it with the great oaf? I trust he and the others won’t be scared to be seen with me anymore. I’ll never forget how you came to stand by me on the day Granvelle shipped me off to Mechelen, Abraham.”

  “Thank you, Peter,” said Ortelius, pushing away his memories of having gotten Helena to be Williblad’s messenger. “You deserve good friends. Franckert was married last month to Hennie van Mander. What a celebration they had. Four bagpipers and a roast pig.”

  “Franckert married, too!” said Bruegel with a sigh. “What a lot can happen in six months. I feel like a laggard, Abraham. All I do is to make paintings and think about how to sell them. I cark and swink and fiddle with pigments, but I’ve no flesh and blood to call my own.” He sighed again. “Well, let’s not linger over my failure to start a family. The game’s not over yet, eh?Tomorrow I’ll be in Brussels, and then we’ll see. Oh, that little Mayken. What I’d give to have my arms around her. So is there any chance the good Franckert might finally buy an oil from me? I need some commissions so I can set up a proper studio. I’m tired of living from hand to mouth.”

  “I don’t think he and Hennie have much left after the wedding,” said Ortelius. “Hans has had some reverses. He started dealing in spices this summer, and he made the mistake of selling a large shipment of cloves to the Walloon army’s quartermaster. They gave him damn-all in pay, and told him that if he wanted satisfaction he could go to the Foreigner.”

  “What of Anthonie Fugger?” said Bruegel.

  “You haven’t heard?” said Ortelius. “The House of Fugger’s about to go under. Spain owes them five million gold florins, and everyone’s come to beli
eve there’s no hope of the Fuggers getting it back. Their credit is ruined, and they’ve begun selling off their assets. I’ve managed to acquire a few of Anthonie’s portrait miniatures. See them over there beneath your Monkeys?”

  “I suppose you’ve been dealing through your friend Williblad Cheroo?” asked Bruegel, an edge in his voice.

  “No,” said Ortelius, his pulse quickening, as always, at the thought of the divine man. “Williblad left Fugger’s employ to try and find a new station before the final collapse. But it seems no other merchant in Antwerp will have him. He’s made too many enemies over the years.” Unfortunately, Williblad hadn’t approached Ortelius for a position. Ortelius would have hired him in a heartbeat. In fact, he’d wanted to tell Williblad this, but before he got the chance, his vision of beauty left Antwerp. “He moved to Brussels a few months ago,” continued Ortelius. “It’s said he found himself some kind of position there, though he doesn’t want to tell any of us what it is. We still see him in town every few weeks. Perhaps he’s again a secretary. I think he wishes he had a trade and a family of his own, the poor man. He’s not happy. He’s very taken with your picture of the Two Monkeys, you know. He visited here once, and I showed it to him. He quite took your meaning—about how hard a thing it is to be a pawn for the highborn and the rich. Williblad envies your artistic gifts, Peter, really he does.”

  “Am I to pity the man who stole my woman?” stormed Bruegel. “Forgiving your and Helena’s roles in the business is one thing, but to forgive my archrival? I’m afraid I’m not that enlightened yet. Enough about the wretched Cheroo. And you say Fugger’s fallen on hard times? I hope Jonghelinck’s not bankrupt too?”

  “No, he’s doing well. He was smart enough to unload his Habsburg loans last year. He’s still a city tax collector, and they let him keep a cut of what he brings in. He’s also in a partnership with a Frenchman named Daniel de Bruyne, importing wine from Burgundy. They’re making good business.”

  “I should have a talk with him.”

  “As it happens, I can take you to see Jonghelinck later this afternoon,” said Ortelius.

  “At his estate?”

  “Not exactly,” said Ortelius, enjoying the chance to act mysterious. A heretical “hedge preacher” was expected outside the city walls in an hour or two, and Ortelius and his friends were planning to go hear him. Hearing sermons by hedge preachers was an entertainment that had come into popularity while Bruegel had been out of town. Recently Ortelius had been going to one or two a month.

  Of course Ortelius was as good and devout a Catholic as ever, but in these times, with the Foreigner using the clergy for his own worldly purposes, any reasonable man could feel the Church to be in need of reform. Heresy was, after all, a somewhat elastic concept when a man could be excommunicated and burned for owning a Bible. Many of the hedge preachers had useful and interesting things to say. And of course there was the pleasant excitement of sneaking out to see them—not all that mortally dangerous an act, either, as so many people had begun to attend, including intellectuals as well as the disaffected lower classes.

  “Hush, I can’t tell you more now,” Ortelius told Bruegel. “Here comes Helena.”

  Helena pushed aside some of the piles of books on the long table and set out the victuals. Waf watched with interest from where he sat before the fire. There was a lull in their conversation while Bruegel did justice to his food and drink. Bruegel was a slow, thoughtful eater. It always seemed to Ortelius that his friend got more enjoyment out of his food than other men did.

  “You say you were painting in Amsterdam, Peter?” asked Ortelius. “Is that the new picture in your pouch?”

  “Indeed,” said Bruegel, who held a pickle in one hand and a wedge of soft cheese in the other. “It’s a commission that I got from William of Orange just before I left Mechelen. It was no small feat to convince so practical a man of affairs to buy a new work of art. Especially when his palace is already full of them. Like selling fleas to a dog. But I persuaded our William the Sly that my new work could serve the twin purposes of annoying Granvelle and impressing his new wife. He gave me a horse and a few florins to paint him The Suicide of Saul. We agreed upon a miniature, conveniently enough.”

  “Can I look at it?” asked Ortelius as Bruegel continued eating. Bruegel nodded, so Ortelius opened the flap of the square pouch and drew out a flat box, about two feet by one foot in size.

  “Set it down on the table and take the lid off carefully,” said Bruegel, biting into a piece of bread.

  With gentle fingers, Ortelius lifted off the elegantly carpentered lid—and uncovered a miniature world: a cosmic view of a river landscape with a rocky bluff filling the foreground. Crawling up through a defile in the bluff was an army of armored soldiers bearing lances. The massed lances formed a swirl of lines like the spines of a hedgehog, like the stalks of wheat in a trampled field. So many men in such a small picture. It reminded him of a dream he’d once had about a map that had tiny moving people within its dots of cities.

  “There was a flat stone in the garden of the inn where I stayed,” said Bruegel. “One day this summer the ants crawled out from under it. It was their wedding day, with the new queens and their suitors in long, new-fledged wings, stiff and awkward. All morning they milled about, one on top of the other, drying their wings in the sun. And in the afternoon, one by one, they took to the air. They didn’t know they were posing for my picture. As above, so below.”

  “I remember the suicide of Saul,” said Ortelius, eager to show of his learning. “It closes the first Book of Samuel. Saul was an Israelite king, a suspicious tyrant, unloved by God. When Saul lost his last battle and was on the point of being captured by the Philistines, he fell upon his sword to kill himself, and his armor bearer did likewise.” He leaned over the wonderfully detailed little painting. “And yes, there they are in the corner, Saul already dead, and his armor bearer following suit. How miserable they look. Explain again why William would commission this? I’d imagine a painting of a spaniel with a pile of partridges to be more his style.” Ortelius permitted himself a little gout of venom. In truth he was a little jealous that Bruegel had managed to befriend Prince William of Orange.

  “I suggested the theme,” said Bruegel testily. “I led William to the thought that Saul is like King Philip, with Cardinal Granvelle his armor bearer.”

  “Aha. The death of the tyrant and his counselor,” said Ortelius, peering closer. “But you paint them so sympathetically.”

  “Every man’s death is terrible,” said Bruegel simply. “The end of each man’s world comes in his own lifetime. Mayhap in February, mayhap in September. In truth, the dead king is no more Philip than he is Saul. He’s Everyman. I don’t expect many men other than you to have the wit to grasp this, Abraham.”

  Ortelius’s pleasure at Bruegel’s compliment was slightly dampened by the mention of Everyman, which reminded him again of the mocking caricature of him that Bruegel had put into one of his engravings. Better to focus on the present. He looked at the little painting some more, wondering at the delicacy of Bruegel’s brush. Nobody else could have interpreted the story of Saul in quite this way. A Bible verse was itself like an ancient coin, a token passed from hand to hand down the ages.

  “So what’s the mystery about our seeing Jonghelinck?” asked Bruegel presently.

  “Some of us are going outside the city walls an hour before sunset to see a hedge preacher,” said Ortelius, happy to finally tell his big secret. Things had been developing while Bruegel was off in Mechelen and Amsterdam. A revolution was in ferment, and Ortelius was in the thick of it. “Hendrik Niclaes from the Family of Love.”

  “A heretic?” said Bruegel looking uneasy. “After the trouble with my lampoons, I don’t think I—”

  “Niclaes is worth hearing,” said Ortelius. “He preaches the message of salvation through love. The brotherly kind of love, mind you; he’s something of an ascetic. I have a book of his that one of Plantin’s men secretly pri
nted.”

  Upon his recovery from his stab wound, Plantin had turned his full attention to producing books and was by now the most successful printer in Antwerp, with a dozen employees or more.

  “The Land of Peace,” continued Ortelius. “It’s hidden beneath my floorboards, but I can easily—”

  “No need to show it to me,” said Bruegel hastily. “I don’t want to dangle from the gibbet. I only stopped in Antwerp to check on my friends and to look for commissions. And then it’s off to Brussels to court young Mayken. I had some encouraging letters from her mother while I was in Amsterdam. She’s eighteen now, you know. If I can finally marry into that family, I’ll be settled at last.” Bruegel paused for a moment, contemplating his prospects. How very often Ortelius had heard him hold forth on this long-cherished obsession. Ortelius, for one, had nothing new to say about the Maykens. Sensing his friend’s disinterest in the topic, Bruegel changed back to the subject at hand. “How is it that your Hendrik Niclaes hasn’t been roasted over a slow fire?”

  “He moves too quickly,” said Ortelius. “And now I must be quick, too. It’s time to go listen to him. Are you coming? Jonghelinck will assuredly be there. The meeting spot is the little wood near the van Schoonbeke windmill. It’ll be a large crowd, Peter, you’ve nothing to fear, there’s safety in numbers. The authorities have no choice but to turn a blind eye. And of course you can sleep here tonight.”

  “All right,” said Bruegel slowly. He wiped the food off his hands and took a long last look at his new painting before safely boxing it back up. “Come, Waf. We didn’t travel enough yet today. We’re going for an outing.” He put his hat and cloak back on. “Lead the way, Abraham.”

  It was the very end of October. They walked through the late afternoon streets, greeting the friends they ran across. Most of them seemed to be heading the same way. It was a bright day, though cool, with the sun low on the horizon. Long slanting shadows covered the streets.