The Folly of the World (11 page)

“I doubt that,” said Jan.

“Roll your fucking eyes again, Jan, fucking roll ’em!”

“Shut up,
Uncle
,” said the girl. “I don’t know what he even meant, so shut up and finish the story. And what’s a Jan?”

“He’s fucking Jan,” said Sander, “not Lobby von Frisian or whatever the shit he told you, fucking Jan.”

“Is that true?” The girl sounded hurt, and Jan’s eyes narrowed, the only sign he was probably peeved.

“I go by a lot of different names, Jo,” said Jan. “So many I lose track of them myself.”

“That fucking crook seem like he ever lose track of anything to you, Jo?” Sander said with satisfaction. “He was running some game, same as always.”

“Jo,” said Jan, “it’s like this—”

“Just shut up!” She looked like she might cry for some stupid womanly reason, her fists balled up, her cod-belly white face now streaked with red. “Shut up!”

“Thank you for that,” Jan said coldly, digging his fingers into Sander’s shoulder as the girl sped up, walking in front of them. “What the fuck’s gotten into you? You finally lost your wits altogether, you mad bastard?”

“My mistake,” said Sander, happy to have traded his anger to
Jan in exchange for the man’s calm and unwilling to swap back even if his partner was trotting out the
mad bastard
s and
lost-your-wits
es. “We sheepheads aren’t known for being clever, are we?”

Jan released him with a curse, and stormed ahead. He put his hand on the girl’s shoulder, but she pulled away from him. Sander smiled to himself and also picked up the pace, coming up along her other flank and resuming his story.

“So anyway, we didn’t want to pay some cheat-price to get our sheep into the city. So what do you think we did?”

She was staring straight ahead, her face set, and they passed the cross street they should have taken to get to Poorter’s shop. Jan didn’t steer them down it, and Sander didn’t correct their course. There wasn’t any hurry, and it was good to be back on Dordt streets, dour though they were. Seeing what had happened to the place was akin to watching a dog you owned but never particularly liked get beat—you might not care for the dog so much, but it was your fucking dog, and who enjoyed seeing an animal take a hiding?

“We dressed them sheep up like men, with my da’s coat and my drawers and this old straw hat we shared, and we’d lift ’em up and walk on either side of ’em, like this.” Sander dipped his arm under the front of Jolanda’s armpit and wrapped it around her back, and pissy or no Jan did the same, so they hoisted her up and half-carried her, the heels of her bare feet bouncing on the cobbles. She was giggling despite her obvious reluctance as they walked her down the street, Sander smiling over her head at Jan. “So in we’d walk past the militia, the city watch, who back then didn’t charge just to come in for local folk but did for our sheep, right. We’d wait until dusk so the gate would still be open, but it’d be dark enough that the sheepy in his pants and coat and hat might look like an old man or drunk or such we was helping along, and in we’d walk right past the stupid fucking watchmen supposed to be eyeing old Himbrecht to make sure he and his son didn’t sneak no mutton in without paying the toll.

“Now, one of these militiamen was an old piss-catcher who—
from Tilburg, I mean, a dirty sod from Tilburg, and every time we walked past them watchers with a sheep ’tween us, he’d give us a hard eye from up in his tower, but he never come down. So we been doing this for years, walking the sheep inside, and finally I see him stand up and squint down at us and I think for sure we’re nabbed this time, but then he sits back down and I hear him say to his partner up there,
You Dordrecht… you Dordrecht… you—”
Sander fell into a sniggering fit.

“What?” said Jolanda, squirming away from them and dropping back to the cobbles. “What did he say?”

“He said,
You Dordrecht boys look just like sheep when you get old
,” said Sander, and cackled. Jolanda blinked at him.

“That didn’t really happen,” said the girl, but she wore the expression of one who hoped it had. “You’re a lying mussel, just like him.”

“The devil take me if I am!” said Sander. “I heard him myself.”

“Well, it’s not really funny,” she said.

“You just don’t have a sense of humor,” said Sander, crossing his arms.

“And that’s why you call people from Dordrecht sheepheads?”

“Yeah,” said Sander, disappointed in her reaction.

“So why do you call people from the other place, the burg, why do you call them piss-takers?”

“Piss-catchers,” said Jan. “Tilburg’s a textile town, and they use urine to bind the dye color, as I’m sure you’re aware. So they catch their piss instead of dumping it out.”

“Bah!” said Sander. “That’s not why!”

“Why, then?” asked the girl.

“It comes back to my gran’da,” said Sander. “He was passing through Tilburg one winter and this old wifey let him come in to stay the night since her husband was gone. He was already blind drunk, my gran’da, and so when she had her back turned, he took one of her crocks to make his water in, and—”

“Here we are,” said Jan, and to his disappointment Sander saw they had indeed meandered back to the low house where Poorter kept shop, his door another nondescript gray break in the winding wall of buildings. “Stories later, we may be in town for some time if the Muscovite isn’t about.”

“It probably wasn’t funny anyway,” said the girl, but when he went to pop her upside the head, Sander saw she was grinning at him.

P
art of the reason Poorter Primm loved Dordrecht was that the city, like himself, had once been grand despite its heritage and well respected despite its coarseness, only to fall victim to the sort of luck that would make a toothless beggar lying half-dead in a ditch with a drowned dog for a pillow and a rat waiting to bite his dick every time he passed out shake his head sadly and say, “Tough tit, old man, tough tit.” This shared ill fortune made him feel a solidarity with the place beyond mere civic affection, and he had long since resolved to never leave the island if he could help it—if things were this bad within Dordrecht’s walls, he couldn’t imagine what they were like without. Besides, it was getting better, slowly but surely, and who knew, in another decade or two the city might fully recover from the flood that had sunk Poorter’s business into a miserable mire as surely as it had done the same to the Groote Waard.

A knock came at his door, which was intensely frustrating, as Poorter had eaten something evil the night before and had only just unfastened his belt for the fourth time that morning. Wincing at the chamber pot, he closed his eyes and breathed deeply, like an archer trying to steady himself for the shot, and his guts stabbed outward again. The luck of the sheep, all right: live in the shit, get fleeced often, and all to end up as mutton, Poorter thought glumly as he waited for the tempest in his belly to calm before answering the door. The knock came again, but this time he recognized it for what it was—two sharp raps, a pause, and three slow, light ones. The return of the Tieselen bastard banished Poorter’s cramps and he
hurried to the door, a silent prayer on his lips that the madman who had so recently haunted his house was not attending his master.

He was, Sander giving him a nod from behind Jan, and there was also a moppet on the step behind them. He was about to run the urchin off, but something about her feral looks gave him pause, and then he realized she was with the two men. A memory came unbidden to Poorter of a happier time, when he had opened this door to find none other than the count of Holland himself at his step, along with a trio of visiting French dignitaries whom Count William intended to outfit with the finest—and most expensive—pieces Poorter had on hand. Now the count was dead of dog bite, Dordrecht was an island, Poorter had the trots, and instead of nobility throwing coin at him he had three shifty hoods dirtying his stoop with the obvious aim of an invitation inside and, if his luck was really shit, a prolonged stay on the floor of his kitchen. Poorter’s luck was, as usual, ludicrously lousy, and it would be a week before they left for more than a few hours at a time… But he didn’t know that yet.

“Master Primm,” said the bastard with a bow. “How does Providence treat you, old friend?”

“Shortly,” said Poorter, “and without the courtesy of pretense that all is somehow not what it most certainly is.”

“That’s Poorter,” Sander said, elbowing the urchin. “He’s like that, but not such a bitch as you’d think to look at him.”

Poorter offered the psychotic layabout and the child prostitute or whatever she was a winning smile and ushered them all inside. Jan was being his usual charismatic self, complimenting Poorter on his stained bedshirt and cluttered workshop, but Poorter’s attention remained on the girl. Both Jan and Sander could be trusted, at least insofar as they were likely to request that he put them up and therefore wouldn’t nick something immediately, but Poorter hadn’t scrounged the little coin he had to his name by being the sort of fool who would turn his back on an unknown child.

Satisfied she hadn’t filched anything from the workshop, Poorter held open the kitchen door and Sander, never one to stand on ceremony when he could sit on his ass, immediately took the nicest chair and would have put his feet up on the second best if Poorter hadn’t arched his eyebrows and pointed at the man’s mucky boots. Sander pulled them off, clods of filth spattering the woven reed mats covering the stone floor, and handed them to Jan, who had already stripped off his. Poorter noticed that the girl didn’t wear shoes, further confirming his suspicions that she was some beggar-child they had picked up for purposes best not inquired after. Unless… But Poorter dismissed the notion at once, the idea of either of them getting on a woman no more likely than his getting on an otter.

“Arcubalistarius, I have need of your service,” said Jan after he had exhausted his empty platitudes and his two companions had set in on the leftovers Poorter had offered them, the same bluish mutton that he blamed for his morning’s bellyache.

“Anything, my friend,” said Poorter, smiling back. “Provided, of course, that I can provide.”

“Specifically, I have need of your floor.”

“Indeed,” said Poorter, assuaging his irritation by admiring the amount of sour lamb Sander was putting away, the man first sucking the fat from the cobalt-streaked meat, swishing it about in his mouth, and then chewing the flesh itself with a relish that bordered on the obscene. The girl had nibbled a little but put the rest back on the plate they shared, the runny grease leaving the tips of her dirty fingers shiny. Her hands and forearms looked badly bruised, and at the thought of harboring some abused child Poorter felt his indigestion return. “For what duration?”

“That depends entirely on uncontrollable elements,” said Jan. “But I’ll have an idea soon. I have to run some errands, if you wouldn’t mind keeping an eye on these two while I’m out, and then we’ll discuss duration over supper. My treat.”

“Indeed,” said Poorter. “And shall I invite Laurent as well?”

“That shouldn’t be necessary,” said Jan. “I’ll call on him this afternoon.”

“Is that wise?”

“Wiser than his calling here, given the circumstances. Where are you keeping my things?”

“Stay here, I won’t be a moment,” said Poorter, ducking back into his workroom. He was a portly man, and not predisposed to haste, but he hurried between the cluttered tables with both speed and alacrity, eager to get back to the kitchen before his cutlery went missing. He lamented his lack of maid or apprentice for the umpteenth time, but the last pair he’d employed had eloped with one another and a small fortune in his completed crossbows and finer components, including a filigreed lock plate that cost more than he paid the maid in a month. If his guests were to steal the knife he had provided them with, he would be cutting his meat with arrowheads.

Fishing out the satchel Jan had entrusted to him during the bastard’s last visit, Poorter returned to the kitchen door, but paused at hearing a quiet exchange between the men:

“Can’t anchor me, you plaguebitch!”

“No, but I can beg that you listen to reason. When we’re back, you can go out as much as you like, but until then do us both a favor and be patient. I’m sure he has some cards.”

“I have a Karnöffel deck,” said Poorter, entering the kitchen when it became evident the conversation was over. “And a chessboard. I have much to do today but you two—where’s the girl?”

The small kitchen had only the table the men sat at and another, narrower board beside the cooking hearth, and as she was neither at the first nor under the second, she was not in the kitchen. She had either snuck into the workshop after him and crept up into his loft or—the sound of retching came from the tiny closet in which he kept his chamber pot. Relieved, Poorter tossed Jan his pack, and the man began to strip without even loosening the drawstrings on the bag. Sander leered at him as he
did, and Poorter wearily went back to the workshop, opening sash and shutter to let in what murky light dripped down with the resumed rain.

Jan went out a short time later, his brightly colored velvet doublet, embroidered shirt, and spotless hose almost blinding compared to the dusky, dusty ensemble he had arrived in, glossy black turnshoes squeaking on the floor of the workshop, a hooded cape pulled over his freshly rinsed hair. The bucket in which he had washed his face and hair shone in the watery afternoon light, the sheen on the surface a greasy mirror to what remained on the plate Sander had cleared of mutton. But then the madman raised the dish and set to licking it, spoiling the dichotomy. The girl was out of the closet but looked far from hale, and the sight of Sander polishing the plate with his tongue brought a fresh grimace to her hollow cheeks. Poorter would have sympathized, had he been the sympathetic type.

The front door closed behind Jan, and Sander immediately stood up, dropping the plate on the table with a clatter. “Right, that’s me out. Spot me a groot.”

“I will not,” said Poorter, bristling at the demand, expected though it was. “And Jan—”