The Folly of the World (23 page)

“Yes, well, it’s already quite late, and—”

“This’ll be simple,” said Sander, and Poorter’s frown deepened to see the girl dig her fingers into the wheel itself and break off a fat piece of cheese, leaving brown smears in the finger furrows. “You get what was coming for Jan and we’ll give you your cut. Be on direct, then.”

Poorter cocked his head at the madman. “What do you mean, ‘what was coming to him’? He was going to, that is, his plan was to assume the person of Graaf Tieselen. That was his plan.”

“I know about his plan, cockstand.” Sander snorted as he got up to refill the empty mug he had pushed in front of Poorter without result. “What I’m saying is graaf has coin, aye? So you go and get it.”

“And how do I accomplish that, without the graaf to whom it belongs?” Poorter said, trying so hard not to smile that his eyes watered. The madman was not to be provoked, and Poorter rightly supposed that taking pleasure in Sander’s ignorance would ire him greatly. “ ‘Excuse me, I’m here to retrieve the graaf of Oudeland’s gold? Yes, yes, I know he drowned in the flood, but he had a secret nephew who’s inherited it all, and upon whose behalf I’m retrieving it. He’s just not around at the moment.’ ”

“You take the ring, you thick-pated sheephead,” said Sander irritably, draining the mug he had just filled and sticking it back under the tap.

“ ‘See, I’ve got his ring—all the proof you people who’ve been spending the fortune that is rightfully yours require in order to turn it over to me, yes?’ Come on, Sander, think! Jan was the heir,
official or not, and no heir, no graaf. No graaf, no groots. I can take the ring, certainly, and sell it for you, but anything else is—”

“You be the graaf,” said the girl, cheesy white saliva webbing the inside of her mouth as she talked through her food. “Wear it and all, be the graaf.”

“My dear child,” said Poorter. “I am known! Broadly! No one would believe I am related to—”

“Not you,” said the girl. “Him.”

Poorter’s laugh died on his lips as he realized the little idiot was serious. “Preposterous. Jan would have had enough trouble passing himself off, but Sander—”

“Sander what?” said he, his scowl giving way to an even more disturbing smile. “Sander what, you pudding sack?”

“Jan really was the graaf’s son,” said Poorter, hoping an appeal to the natural order of things would soothe the madman. “Bastard or no, Jan was of noble blood, Tieselen blood. He looked the part, could act the part, was—”

“—A fucking crook who would step on a baby in the street if it meant keeping his boot out the mud,” said Sander. “How you know he weren’t lying about being a bastard and all? How you know it weren’t a story he cooked up to feed whatever lawyer he got writing down his lies, eh?”

“That very ruthlessness you speak of!” Poorter countered. “The true mark of the upper class, is it not? He—”

“My papa’s ruthless as he,” said the girl. “Worse, maybe, I dunno. And he’s poor as they come.”

“Sander, don’t be foolish,” said Poorter, deciding the best course where the child was concerned was to pretend she wasn’t there. Answering her only seemed to deepen the hole, and he was already up to his ankles in seepage. “No one would believe it. The lawyer knows Jan, knows he’s legitimate—no, not legitimate, obviously, but knows he’s got the blood, yes? He’s not likely going to mistake you for Jan, is he?”

“And you think this lawyer’s honest?” Sander shook his head,
refilling his mug once more. He was beginning to sway slightly in place. The girl kept tearing pieces from the cheese with her grubby fingers despite the dagger sitting right there beside it. “You think any of them what ran with our dearly departed was on the level? We’re all foxes and cranes at the table here, Poorter, yourself included, eh?”

“Foxes? Cranes?”

“Means we’re all throwing in with each other for our own ends, dummy. Or you been putting us up and helping Jan cheat them who’s rightfully come into the holding of this Tieselen’s business for some kind of higher purpose?”

“It’s, it’s idiotic,” said Poorter, whatever patience his interest in self-preservation had mustered finally routed in the face of such unrelenting stupidity. “I’m not going to give you the name of the lawyer, nor where to find him, nor anything else. It’s another flaw with even considering any sort of furthering of Jan’s plan without the man himself—I am known here, and any attempt on the part of you two to run some sort of game will result in my being the one most easily found and taken to task for it when you are discovered. Which you will be! Immediately! As soon as you step out of this goddamn house! Look at you, man, you look like a gleaner! And what would you do with her, eh?”

“Tried to sell me off at a nunnery,” said the girl. “After we was out of the meer and back up in Rotterdam. That old sister on the other side of the gate wasn’t having none of it, but this loon kept saying they had to take me on, even if they couldn’t afford to give him more than a few mites for his trouble. She went back inside, left him cold when he told her he’d rape me if she didn’t take me in. Must’ve smelt the cock on his breath and known him for a lying fucking poot.”

There was a brief silence as Sander finished drinking the most recent mug he had poured, and then he hurled it at the girl. At least, Poorter hoped it was aimed at her—it flew between host and child, foam spattering their faces as it shot past and exploded
against the privy door. Shards of clay skittered back around their feet, and a crash came from Poorter’s workshop that sounded suspiciously like a ten-groot commission landing on the stone floor.

Poorter and the girl were on their feet as one, but before he could find and throttle the cat or she could return fire with her mug, a clear knock drifted through the house. Poorter paused. The girl did not, her mug grazing Sander’s shoulder and shattering against the keg. Then the madman was moving forward, an obscenely happy expression on his face, but Poorter’s voice somehow arrested his charge.

“Please!” was all he managed, but seeing how well it worked, he reiterated it. “Please!”

The knock came again, three loud raps. Sander raised his eyebrows, whispering, “Let’s just stay quiet till they go away.”

“Stay. Quiet,” Poorter growled. “I mean it.”

He closed the kitchen door behind him. A quick glance confirmed that the commission had indeed been knocked from its joist and lay forlornly on the ground. He didn’t want to look closer to see if the stripe running up the side of the ash butt was a crack or just a shadow, instead hurrying to the door. He paused, his hand on the latch, a dreadful thought occurring to him: He hadn’t inquired how Jan had died. Or where.

What if they had murdered him? Much worse, what if they had murdered him and left witnesses? What if they had been followed?

This could be a very large problem. Poorter chided himself, as he usually did when people rapped at his door, for not having a peephole installed.

He would never actually spring for the expense.

Knock, knock, knock. Hellfire. Poorter flung open the door, taking a deep breath as he did.

And nearly choked on it. Count Hobbe Wurfbain stood before him, his brilliant crimson hose tucked into high gray boots, his magenta doublet wreathed by a lavender cape trimmed with
vair that mirrored his florid complexion and neatly kempt, hoary goatee. A taller man, even by Holland or Zeeland standards, and a handsome one, despite his age, and, of course, a rather notorious one. He had a velvet hat of some foreign style that Poorter detested on sight, and before the crossbow-maker could recover from the delightful shock of having such a wealthy client on his stoop, that very ugly hat was doffed, the count offering a bow that was mirrored by his pair of footmen.

“Master Primm,” said the count.

“My lord Wurfbain,” said Poorter, finally remembering to bow himself. “This is an honor indeed, sir. Welcome to my humble shop.”

“Yes,” said Count Wurfbain, and there followed a silence that was awkward by anyone’s standards. Finally, the count arched his pale brows and asked, “May I come in?”

“Ah,” said Poorter, hoping his face didn’t reveal his displeasure. It did. “At the moment, actually, it so happens that I, unfortunately, am indis—”

“Capital!” said Count Wurfbain, advancing fast upon Poorter. The count had clearly not listened to a word he’d said, and Poorter found himself stepping aside at the last moment to avoid bumping into the noble. This was absolutely bloody typical where Poorter’s luck was concerned. “Now then, where is he?”

“Ah,” said Poorter as the count looked curiously around the dim workshop. “Who?”

“My dear old friend,” said Count Wurfbain with such warmth that even though he’d never officially been introduced to the count before, Poorter was a little hurt when he realized he was not the person in question. “Shut the door, Primm, you’re letting in the damp.”

Glancing back, Poorter saw the footmen had vanished rather than follow their master inside, but quick as he was to shut the door and turn back to his guest, the count was already flinging open the door to the kitchen.

Shit.

Shit, shit, shit.

Also: shit.

A voice was raised, but the anxious blood crashing behind Poorter’s ears deafened him as he ran to put out a fire that never should have been kindled, a fire that might well burn his fucking house down.

“—So good to see you again,” the count was saying, pumping Sander’s hand. The madman looked, well, like a madman. A drunk, filthy, wild-eyed madman with a beard like an untended hedge and hair like rotting straw, and the count had his lily-white hands around one of Sander’s brown ones, just shaking away at it like he was trying to draw water from the stunned lunatic’s mouth. “Haven’t aged a day, have you?”

“I haven’t?” said Sander, confusion giving way to some darker glimmer in those beady eyes of his, and Poorter searched in vain for his voice to somehow forestall the impending disaster. It was Agincourt all over again, the sun blacked out by a rain of arrows, but this time there was no pleasant little Dutch river town to retire to once the day was miraculously won.

“Let me introduce…” Poorter finally got out, but it was a whisper, and he had absolutely nowhere to go with it. Let me introduce this mad murderer? Let me introduce this raving imbecile? Let me—

“The graaf and I are old friends, old friends,” said the count, finally releasing Sander and turning to Jo. She had resumed her seat in front of the cheese while Poorter was answering the door and now stared aghast at the nobleman, a wedge of dirty Gouda smushed to paste between her fingers. “I have not, however, met his lovely daughter. No, no, please don’t get up, pet.”

The urchin had clearly not intended to rise, but as he sashayed toward her, the cheese slipped from her fingers. He knelt on one knee and reached for Jo’s hand. She recoiled from him, her eyes huge as hen’s eggs. Shrugging, the count rose empty-handed and looked to Poorter. Poorter gulped.

“My lord, there, there has, there was…” Again, Poorter was lost, and threw up his hands in frustration.

“There
is
,” said the count, giving his flustered host a condescending pat on the shoulder as he pursed his lips and turned back to Sander and Jo, “an
enormous
amount of work to be done. We’ll keep them at my estate outside Leyden until they’re passable, which may take no petite span of time. Until then, not a word, Master Primm, not a word, but when they return, old boy, when they
return
…”

“Return?” Poorter gasped on the word, as though it were composed of noxious swamp vapors.

“When they return,” said Count Wurfbain with a cocksure wag of his finger, “they will be Graaf Tieselen of Oudeland and his lovely daughter. Obviously. Who else could they be?”

T
he Bumpkins would be arriving in less than three hours, and the new girl had only just knocked, timidly, at the white birch door of the house on Voorstraat. Lansloet knew who she was but acted as if he didn’t, standing with silent expectation to see if she was as mousy as her feeble knock. She was, and he knew her name was Quakeyshakes before she even told him her real one.

“Sir, I… I am… my name is. Lijsbet. And I… Griet told me to come. Sir.” When Lansloet opened the door, Quakeyshakes had pulled her hood back, dislodging the white wimple beneath it in the process, and the rain was making her greenish-brown eyes blink like those of a landed carp. Lansloet leaned sideways in the doorway, out of the draft. As she rambled, he casually settled a hand at belt level and flattened his palm into something like a beckoning shape, careful to do so as slowly and subtly as possible.

Lansloet waited, silently gazing down at the bedraggled creature on his stoop. There were two thin ridges of mud on the lip of the bottom step where she had wiped her rag-swaddled shoes before knocking. The rain would take care of the mess, and it showed some small measure of wits on her part, but he would nevertheless take her to task for dirtying his stairs.

Quakeyshakes waited, her face now streaming, her sluttily exposed auburn hair wearing a net of rain beads. Her gown was clean, cut from a single piece of pale blue linen, and she had a white shawl around her shoulders—likely a folded apron. She must be very cold, her wide frame shuddering, and Lansloet wondered if she had a warmer but less presentable garment in the covered wicker basket weighing down one trembling elbow. She was perhaps sixteen or twenty, and thus fifty years his junior, but still he thought her far too old for such folly—she must know the position was hers, regardless of how ratty her cape was, and yet…