by Rudy Rucker
“But couldn’t the constables still recognize the Ill-Burnt by their shaved heads?” asked Mayken.
“I’d wager that most of the Ill-Burnt ones caught ships for England before the sun went down,” said Ortelius, finishing his egg and picking up the shell. As he talked, he took a bit of lead from his pocket and began sketching a world map onto the eggshell, starting with the view of England and the Low Lands he’d been imagining before. “England’s all but Protestant these days, you know. I was in England last month to visit my sister. She has a fine son. I call him Carbo because of his father’s name being Cole.” Ortelius smiled at his little pun and glanced up from the egg. He did what he could to keep himself amused.
“I’m heartened by the tale of the Ill-Burnt,” said Bruegel. “We can have our freedom if we take it. What manner of man cast the first stone?”
“None other than my dear Nature’s nobleman, Williblad Cheroo,” said Ortelius, warmed by his remembered pride. In the proper context, rash folly could be exemplary courage. He turned the eggshell in his fingers, and sketched the proud peninsula of Florida. “Not so much because he loves Calvinism, you understand, but because he hates executioners.”
“That’s Williblad all over,” said Mayken.
Ortelius set aside this morning’s sour words and smiled to think of Williblad. Having the man from Florida in his bedroom made it an exotic treasure chamber. How could Williblad speak of leaving? And how could it be that Ortelius sometimes welcomed the thought?
“And it was the Day of the Ill-Burnt that brought William of Orange to Antwerp?” pressed Bruegel, not wanting Mayken’s thoughts to linger over Williblad. Bruegel remained a bit uneasy about the other man’s hold upon his wife’s fancy.
“That’s right,” said Ortelius, coining out of his reverie about his partner. “The beadles and bailiffs had completely lost control. The lower elements were running riot. The mayor called upon the Regent, and she in turn deputized William to rule Antwerp for the nonce. One of William’s hereditary titles happens to be Burgrave of Antwerp, so he had a plausible claim to power. When he and his little army arrived, we all cheered him. Lord knows, any solid burgher like myself wants order in our town, preferably a rational and humanistic order such as our pragmatic William the Sly can provide. Many have taken to wearing wide-brimmed black hats like Calvin, and if you walk down an Antwerp street of an evening these days, you can hear Calvinist psalms being sung—but what harm does that do anyone? Does the Risen Christ care if a plate of collection money goes to Geneva instead of to Rome? Does our Savior care about a hat?”
“Well said,” agreed Bruegel. “And what’s the status of the Spanish taxes in Antwerp these times? Nobody asked me for the Twentieth Penny when I brought in my paintings yesterday.” Ordinarily, one out of each twenty pennies exchanged in any transaction were to go to Philip.
“No, William hasn’t been collecting taxes,” said Ortelius, sketching away on his egg. With his years of practice, he could finish the whole world in a matter of minutes. “It’s a way of ensuring his popularity. I’m sure the Regent and Philip are quite upset. But tell me about your three new paintings; I never got to see them.”
“As it happens, one was of the hedge sermon you and I went to some years ago,” said Bruegel. “I made it The Sermon of John the Baptist. I’m sorry I didn’t show it to you, Abraham. But with everything in such disorder, I wanted to make sure I found William and got paid before something untoward happens. And I gave him a Numbering at Bethlehem and a Slaughter of the Innocents as well. I did these as a pair of winter scenes in a Flemish village, a place like my own Grote Brueghel. It was pleasant to paint snow in this heat. Not that I painted all of it.”
“Bengt brushed on most of the white for him,” said Mayken. “And it worked out very well. Prince William was pleased with them, no, Peter?”
“Not pleased enough,” said Bruegel. “He looked at them for half an hour, then put them back in their crates to send to his estate in Germany. Dillenburg. At the very least, he could have sent them home to Brussels. All my roses go to pigs.” He winced and pressed his hands against his stomach. “I can’t be bitter. It hurts me. I’ll say something nice. One of William’s courtiers deemed the Slaughter of the Innocents a ‘wonderfully apropos image for our times.’ ” Bruegel winced again. “Did I mention that it shows Spanish and Walloon mercenaries killing babies?”
“So you took my advice!” It was Williblad, standing in the kitchen door rubbing his eyes. He was wearing a curious costume: a shapeless gray robe with a cloth belt. “Hello, Mayken and Peter.” Waf trotted over to lick Williblad’s hand.
“Greetings, Williblad,” said Bruegel. “That’s right, it was indeed you who first suggested a Slaughter. I’m in your debt. Lie down and chew your bone, Waf.”
“Good morning, Williblad,” said Mayken in a honeyed tone. “Abraham told us of your heroism on the Day of the Ill-Burnt.”
“Best not speak of it,” said Williblad with a frown. “Mark my words, the executioners will return to their duties. As you well know, the Regent Margaret still refuses the League of Nobles and their requests to moderate the Inquisition.”
“Her adviser Berlaymont called the nobles gueux,” said Bruegel. “Beggars. Our Dulle Griet was frightened by the firmness of the League, and Berlaymont sought to comfort her. ‘What, Madame, fear of these beggars?’ The nobles took up the name for themselves, and ever since then, ‘Vive les Gueux,’ has been the rallying cry all over Brussels.”
“We know all about it,” said Williblad. He gestured down at his loose gray garment. “That’s why I wear a Beggar’s robe. I have a wooden bowl that I carry with me when I go out.” He wedged his tongue between his lower lip and front teeth, twisted his arms like a palsied rabbit, and lurched across the room, dragging one foot behind him. “I’m a Beggar,” he said in a spitty, barely comprehensible voice. With great grunting and clatterings of the chair, he clumsily took a seat at their table. He worked his jaw, hunched forward, and stuck his face close to Mayken’s. “Do you have something for me?” Ortelius winced. Williblad’s fantasies grew ever more obstreperous.
“Don’t mock the cripples,” said Mayken. “It’s cruel. They’re men and women like you.”
“She’s right,” said Bruegel. “A little more trouble with my stomach and I’ll be so bent that I’ll have to crawl around on a handcart. Be fair, Williblad, if Ponce de Leon’s sailors had broken your legs, you’d be walking on kneepads too.”
“I’m evil,” slurred Williblad, sticking to his act, his breath fragrant with gin and cloves. “God hates me.” Beneath the table, Waf whined uneasily. This was more than japery, it was a confession of despair. It made Ortelius’s heart ache to know that life with him made Williblad so melancholic.
Williblad laid a theatrically trembling hand upon Bruegel’s cheek, but Bruegel ignored him and shrugged off his touch. “What are you spending your time on these days, Abraham?” he asked. “Antiquities?”
“Maps,” said Ortelius, handing Bruegel his globe-sketched egg. “Now do stop it, Williblad. You’re upsetting everyone. Eat a proper breakfast and we’ll have a nice day.” Williblad cocked a fierce eye at him, but then relented, slouching back in his chair. “More maps than ever,” continued Ortelius. “I don’t know if you remember that Williblad once got me a contract to give Fugger a copy of each new map I made. Fugger’s gone off to Augsburg, but I’ve been doing something similar for the merchant Gilles Hooftman.”
“That’s how I met my Frans,” put in Helena. “He came here to pick up the book of maps for Hooftman. Here, Williblad.” She set a plate of potatoes and herring before him. He mimed an extravagant gesture of thanks and began to feed himself with an exaggerated daintiness that made Mayken giggle.
“How do you mean, a book of maps?” said Bruegel.
“I gave him the idea!” exclaimed Williblad. This was something he was genuinely proud of.
“That’s right,” said Ortelius fondly. “Williblad and I were talkin
g about the stack of maps I gave Fugger, and how hard it was to keep them straight, and then Williblad suggested I make all my maps the same design and the same size. And sew them together! I’ve started making up map books by hand for my best customers. And next I’m planning to publish them as a real book.”
“A book with no words?” said Mayken.
“Who’s to say what a book can be?” said Ortelius, full of the excitement that this new project gave him. “I’ve decided to call it the Theatrum Orbis Terrarum—that’s ‘Theater of the Earthly Globe,’ Mayken. There’s a Chamber of Rhetoric called the Globe Theater in London, you know. And no, the book won’t be completely without words; we’ll have labels and captions in Latin. Martin de Vos is designing the engravings for the caption cartouches. They’re to look like leather and stone, you understand, it gives the book an air of solidity. De Vos is a competent fellow, grown marginally less annoying than in the old days. Remember when he flipped over the table full of plaster saints in Rome, Peter? Calvin would have liked that. Calvin hates art, and I rather think it’s because he’s a blockhead with no eye for beauty. A Swiss, can you imagine? Of course Calvin justifies his prejudice with the Second Commandment, and terms religious statues and icons a form of idolatry. It’s a message that’s well received by the rabble. For them, anything that they can’t eat and turn into excrement is a waste of money.”
“I’d smash a statue of a saint any day,” said Williblad, slipping a bit of his herring to Waf. “When I helped Fugger dissolve his holdings, those were the least valuable of the items he owned.”
“Ah, Williblad, you always rush to extremes,” said Bruegel. “Certainly there is some grain of sense in what Calvin says. As Erasmus puts it. ‘The stupid and thickheaded give their devotion to images instead of to the divinities they represent.’ But one can’t be indiscriminate. The best of images contain the divine within them. Any man who’d raise a finger against a van Eyck or a Bosch is a zot.”
“How about the paintings of your Master Coecke?” said Williblad. “There’s several of them in the Our Lady Cathedral, well varnished and most tediously Italianate. Tempting targets.” Ortelius wondered if Williblad remembered that Master Coecke had been Mayken’s father. Probably so, but he’d say anything to get a reaction.
“Are you the first to think of a book of maps, Abraham?” said Mayken, sidestepping the quarrel that Williblad perversely sought.
“The Italians have made some attempts at such a thing,” said Ortelius. “But they mix everything into a jumble with no two images laid out the same way. I discussed the idea of a uniform map book with Mercator not so long ago, and he said he’d been considering something like the same idea. He’d wanted to call his book an Atlas, after the mythical Greek giant who carried the earth upon his back. Be that as it may, he’s being good enough to let me finish my version first. And Plantin is eager to see it into print. This will be my magnum opus.”
“I do little on my own, but my illustrious friends learn from me,” said Williblad equably. His breakfast was finally settling in. “Did I hear talk of a hedge sermon today?”
“What do you think?” said Bruegel to Mayken. “Maybe I should get back to the studio.”
“Oh no, let’s see the excitement,” said Mayken. “Since Abraham so kindly invites us, we’ll make a day of it and stay another night. It’s good to have a change. Mother and Mienemeuie will be happy to have Little Peter to themselves. And Bengt can perfectly well gesso the two new panels on his own, Peter. It’s best for your health if you’re not around while he’s putting on white lead.”
“I only hope he’s mixing in the proper amount of massicot. Too white a gesso kills a picture.”
“Two new panels?” said Ortelius, marveling as ever at his friend’s relentless productivity.
“I have commissions from some fellows I met in Amsterdam,” said Bruegel. “A Herman Pilgrims and a Willem Jacobsz. And praise God for that. To tell you the truth, I’ve about lost my taste for selling paintings to my local countrymen. They underpay me and they box my pictures away. These Hollanders look to be worthier customers. I’m going to paint a little Adoration of the Kings in the Snow for Pilgrims. He’s given me free rein, and I’m going to try something new. I’m going to paint the snow as it looks while it’s actually falling. Big, blurred flakes in front, and smaller flakes farther away. Jacobsz wants a large painting of peasants, and I’m making him a Dance of the Bride. I’ll have Franckert come and model for me in my studio while I’m working on it. Nobody swings a codpiece so well as he.”
“Well, let’s stir our stumps and go see some peasants in action,” said Williblad. “Or, lacking peasants, we’ll see the dregs of Antwerp. Wait while I fetch my wooden Gueux bowl.” He headed up to the bedrooms, with Waf trotting after him.
“Can I tie up the dog in your garden?” asked Bruegel. “I don’t want to have to worry about him in the crowds.”
“You’re just mad at Waf for liking Williblad so much,” said Mayken, half joking.
“It’s fine with me to leave Waf behind,” said Ortelius, who wasn’t overly fond of the beast. “There’s a cool, shady spot under my cherry tree. Helena can give him a big bowl of water.”
So Peter settled Waf under the tree in the garden. And then Ortelius, Bruegel, Williblad, and Mayken exited the city gate near the van Schoonbeke windmill, just like the time Ortelius had taken Peter to Hendrik Niclaes’s hedge sermon in the woods. But there was nothing surreptitious about today’s gathering. Jostling crowds stretched out halfway to the horizon, plain as day. French-speaking or no, many of the passersby greeted the gray-garbed Williblad with a call of “Vive les Gueux!” It was a blazing hot day, without a breath of breeze.
“Let’s see who’s the best shot!” said Williblad, pointing to the windmill. A pair of men in wide-brimmed black Calvinist hats were tethering bright red cloth targets to the end of a pole strapped to the windmill’s lowest vane, which was angled towards the ground. “For a few stuivers we can take turns trying to shoot down one of the cloth birds with a crossbow,” explained Williblad. “Be a sport, Peter, and treat us. I’m sure you’ve got pounds of gold from William the Sly.”
“Fine,” said Bruegel. “I learned to shoot a crossbow back on the Graaf’s estate in Brueghel.”
“They’re not birds, they’re Cardinals!” exclaimed Mayken, as they approached the windmill. And indeed the little red cloth objects were doll-like human figures, with paper miters and with eyes and mouths painted on.
“Bring down the Pharisees, good brethren,” said one of the Calvinist-hatted men, a big-jawed fellow with several teeth missing. To Ortelius’s eye, he looked to be an ordinary street ruffian who’d put on Calvinist airs to suit the day’s activities. Two days ago there’d been a Church procession in town for the Feast of the Assumption, and likely as not this same fellow had been there wearing a medallion of the Virgin upon his cap and selling rosaries. “Three bolts for a stuiver,” said the second man. He was distinguished by having one of his ears missing, with nothing but a little hole in the side of his head. “Take aim at the priests of the Golden Calf. I warrant this copper-skinned fellow in the garb of the Beggars can do the deed. Where are you from, my lad?”
“America,” said Williblad, eliciting a whistle of surprise.
Bruegel gave the big-jawed man a couple of stuivers and received the loan of a crossbow and six of the special crossbow arrows, called bolts or quarrels. These were valuable items, with wide, sharp blades. A pair of boys stood ready to retrieve them, one fat and one thin. Ortelius smiled kindly at the boys, but they took no interest in him. They had eyes only for the crossbow and the bolts.
“Would you like a shot, Abraham?” asked Bruegel.
“No thanks,” said Ortelius.
“I’d like to try,” said Mayken.
“Very well,” said Bruegel. “You go first. Here, I’ll arm the bow for you.” He put his foot in a stirrup on the bow, drew back the heavy bowstring with a special hook, and handed Mayken
the weapon.
“Up, up, and up the Romish idolaters ride the wheel of Dame Fortuna,” said the man with no ear, as his partner turned the windmill’s vanes, sweeping the tip of the pole with the targets nearly a hundred feet into the sky. “Have a care when the quarrel falls to earth, little lady,” he told Mayken with a lewd chuckle. “It could cut you a new slit. Let fly when you’re ready.”
Mayken’s bolt shot off to one side and clattered off the masonry of the windmill. The fat boy scrambled up onto the crumbling stairs of the windmill to get the bolt. Bruegel re-armed the crossbow and shot. His quarrel shot up with a whir, rattled against the high vane, but missed the targets.
Ortelius was eager to see his Williblad do well, but Williblad notched the bowstring too far back, and his bolt sailed high over the vane and off into some bushes, sending the two boys scampering in pursuit. This time it was the thin boy who got the prize.
“I’ll shoot again,” said Mayken. Carefully she aimed her quarrel straight up into the still air—aimed it precisely so that when it began to drop, it would head straight for the man with no ear. “Look out,” said Mayken as the bolt began to fall. “It’s going to cut you a new asshole.” Living with Bruegel seemed to have given her a taste for coarse wit. With a hoarse bellow, the man threw himself to one side, and the bolt slammed quivering into the ground where he’d stood.