The Folly of the World (28 page)

—Hobbe snared Sander’s elbow, which almost led to the ponce catching it in the chin. But then Sander saw the count was trying to pull him over to a gap in a row of churchgoers, Jo hissing at him to step out of the aisle, but he couldn’t hear her over the coughing, scraping, squeaking, rustling riot of the church.

Sander continued to sift through his convoluted theories throughout the service, only coming back to the church when the bleating jester at the front hit an especially high note of Latin. There was so, so much for Sander to riddle out, and stretches of warm relief were bookended by cold flashes of panic as he vacillated between a calm certainty that Hobbe was simply playing on his fears in order to manipulate him and the mind-rattling terror that each and every member of the noble congregation was in cahoots with Hobbe
and
the Belgians. That the monsters and the
counts of Holland were collaborating to get Sander’s fucking ass was a shit prospect. By the time Hobbe leaned over and whispered in his ear, Sander was drenched in sweat.

“That’s it, Jan, we’re off,” said the count. “Now as we leave, I’ll introduce you to whoever happens to be about, so I need you to pull yourself together. Now. Or you and the girl will pay for it. Simply be a good boy and we’ll have a private chat later, you and I, but if you’re bad…”

Sander awkwardly stepped in place, getting the life back into his dead legs until Hobbe let him enter the stream of nobles leaving the church, Hobbe and then Jo following him out. As they moved slowly toward the open doors, through which Sander could see that the rain had begun again, the count chatted with an older woman draped in fancy pelts and another lady Sander recognized as Zoete, the noblewoman who came around the manor to tutor Jo in the arts of being a rich female. Hobbe introduced the dowager to Sander, but her name swum away even as he heard it and he made no effort to net it again.

Thankfully, the ladies seemed more interested in Jo, and so Sander was free to further ruminate on the possibilities—whatever the means, the end seemed to be that Hobbe was a conniving motherfucker who knew more than he ought to, and thus a dangerous enemy. Stupid cunt thought he could control Sander, though, which was something Sander could use to his advantage—meant he didn’t have to be in a hurry, meant he could bide until he found out what he needed to, until he found a way to get Jo safely away from the evil nobleman.

“Something amusing?” Hobbe asked after the women parted their company at the door. Sander realized that the fantasy of smothering Hobbe with a pillow on the night he and Jo escaped the manor had caused him to grin like an idiot. They were atop the stairs just outside the church, at the crest of a velvet-and-satin wave waiting to break down upon the line of carriages as soon as the rain let up or one’s personal coach was sighted in the queue.

“Nay,” said Sander. “Just thinking ’bout what you said.”

“Papa?” said Jo, taking his hand and giving it a squeeze. “Are you all right?”

Nice of her to ask when she was clearly the one shitting herself, the girl washed-out and trembling as a water lily on a choppy day. He squeezed her fingers back, but must’ve done so a mite too hard, for she scowled and yanked her hand away. Her anger brought some color to her cheeks, and he smiled at this. “Just fine, Jo, just—”

“What is the meaning of this?” A squirrelly young man in a red cape had appeared on the steps before them. “Who the devil are you?”

It took Sander a moment to realize the lad was addressing him, but when he did, he comported himself pretty damn well, he thought. “I’m Jan Tieselen—and whose honor I got?”

“
What?!
” The man’s thick blond mustache made Sander think he might be a decent sort, his odd response notwithstanding. “
What?!
”

“Damn,” said Sander, realizing he must have bungled his introduction. Taking off the hat he had mauled between his fingers into an orange velvet lump during the service, he bowed as best he could without this worked-up twit giving him space to properly do it. “I am Graaf Jan Tieselen, at last returned from my, uh,
tenure
in the East. Whose, ah, acquaintance I got the credit of making?”

“Bullshit,” the nobleman sneered, turning to Hobbe. “Who is this man, Wurfbain, this, this—”

“Jan Tieselen,” Sander said a third time. The fancy-caped fellow was now giving him his full attention, probably due to the fact that Sander had darted out his hand and grabbed the man’s cock and one of his balls through the puffy junk-pouch of his hose—fashionable or no, this ponce was going to learn the value of a real codpiece. Sander squeezed hard enough to blanch the man’s face, but not enough to make him collapse. Yet. “And I’m a graaf
you don’t ignore without result. Cunt. Now tell me your fucking name ’fore I geld you.”

“Simon,” the man gasped. “Simon Gruyere, please, I, I meant no—”

“ ’Course you didn’t,” said Sander, releasing the ponce—the last thing he wanted was to hold on long enough for one of these other assholes to notice and make a scene. “Now that we’re met and all—”

“You mad cur!” the ponce hissed, slipping backward on the stairs. “You have no, no
concept
of whom you’ve made an enemy!”

“That’s where you’re wrong,” said Sander. “Simon Gruyere’s the name of the cunt, and I don’t aim to forget it.”

Jo giggled behind them, and to Sander’s surprise Hobbe laughed as well, the count taking a step down the stairs to put himself between Gruyere and Sander as he addressed the offended noble. “Tell your brother to start packing. You boors have just been hooked!”

Gruyere abandoned whatever retort he had been levying at Sander and stared dumbstruck at Hobbe. The rain dribbled off his tremulous mustache, and Hobbe descended the stair past him, wiggling his fingers in a silly little wave as he did so. Sander followed the count, imitating Hobbe’s gesture. Jo caught up with Sander and took his hand, smiling up at him.

The exhilaration of barking down that Gruyere bitch had cheered Sander considerably, but clambering back into the coach to sit beside Hobbe, he was well reminded that not everything was so grand. The count was giving him a peculiar look that might have been either annoyance or pride, Sander wasn’t sure which. He decided to be optimistic:

“That went well, eh?”

Hobbe laughed until he wept, then regained his composure, wiping his face. Looking back and forth between Jo and Sander, he started again, hooting with mirth as he shook his head. Finally, he managed,

“No, no, no, not at all. That was
dreadful
. Dreadful. You grabbed his pouch!”

“He learned a lesson from it,” Sander said defensively. “Won’t happen again, tell you that.”

“Aye, he had it coming,” said Jo. Sander’s victory was short-lived as she added, “But that don’t mean you ought to give it to him.”

“Exactly,” said Hobbe. “John fancies himself a knight of legend, despite his picking fights with his own niece. Grabbing another noble like that at court where he might see is about as stupid a thing as you could manage without special instruction. Jolanda, on the other hand, did wonderfully. Did you enjoy yourself?”

“It weren’t so bad,” Jo allowed. “Zoete’s friend was nice enough.”

“Lady Meyl Von Wasser? She’s the evilest Cod in Holland. Charming enough to exchange pleasantries with at an Easter service, certainly, but Hook women like you and Zoete will never be invited to join her sewing circle, even when you’re all neighbors in Dordrecht.”

“And when’s that, anyway?” said Sander. “When we get our own place?”

“Very soon now. Even sooner than I would have preferred, but your inspecting the Gruyere jewels so thoroughly will necessitate a hastening of plans—Simon will be back in Dordrecht to warn his brother in no time at all, and we don’t want them getting too far ahead of us.”

“His brother?” What the fuck were they talking about? “Whose brother?”

“Jesus, Sander!” Jo shouted, the little bitch pissed off at
him
, now. “Simon’s brother is Braem, the elder son of Jan’s father’s wife’s brother, Rutger Gruyere. How’s that hard to remember?”

“Wait, him?” Sander recognized the name Gruyere now. Well, it sounded familiar, anyway. “Yeah, I knew
that
. Obviously. The one I grabbed, that Simon, he’s… he’s who, now?”

Hobbe groaned theatrically.

“You need to keep this straight,” Jo said. “Simon and Braem are Jan’s cousins, and since every other heir died in the flood, they’ve received everything that was Jan’s father’s—the Tieselen house in Dordrecht, the wine importation business, and, if the waters ever recede, all of Oudeland.”

“Sure,” said Sander, remembering now. “Gotcha.”

“You’ve had almost a year to learn this stuff,” said Jo. “You at least need to remember who it is that’s going to want to kill you when we’re done with this.”

“No worries there,” said Sander, trying his damnedest not to glance at the count seated between them. “I got that part firm in fist, daughter dear, and it ain’t the tail I’ve a hold of, neither.”

“Jan,” Hobbe said patiently. “I don’t want to kill you.”

“Provided I do as you say,” sneered Sander.

“Correct. I hope you’re not still sore about our tiff during the drive?”

“Me? Nay, I ain’t given it another thought.” The cobbles ended and the coach began to rattle over the rough road. Sander felt like he might throw up again.

Hobbe sighed. “You’ll have calmed down enough to realize it was Jan who told me about your nightmare, yes?”

“Yeah, my—wait, he what?” It was disorienting enough, having a conversation with someone all up on you with the seat cramped like this, but this particular conversation…

“When I met him in Dordrecht, just before you set out to Oudeland for the ring. He told me everything. He said you fell into a canal during your escape from the gallows in Friesland, and disappeared for ages and ages. When you found him again, you told him you couldn’t remember what had happened.”

“That so?” Sander’s heart began to imitate the carriage wheels, bouncing around his chest as it picked up speed. The count was lying, obviously—Sander had told Jan that much, sure, but nothing more, certainly nothing about the Belgians.

“Jan said you took to talking in your sleep after your reunion in Rotterdam,” Hobbe went on affably. “He said that when you awoke, you claimed not to remember anything, but while you dreamed, you muttered quite a bit, and from that he pieced together what had happened. Belgians from Belgium and all that.”

Sander just stared, not sure what the devil was going on. Jan had told Hobbe
what
?

“Jan said it sounded like you’d washed downstream from Sneek and were rescued by some exceptionally ugly lepers. Peat-cutters, by trade, an old man and wife and their children. Apparently these poxed peat-cutters nursed you through the winter—you were very sick, having fits, but they did their best to keep you warm and fed, being good Christians. Even in a fever-state you ate them out of house and home, it sounds like, until the end of spring.”

“… What?” Sander finally managed, concentrating on that black stretch of lost time and imagining dim glimpses of dirty, deformed faces looming over a pallet, where he lay shivering. He shivered again, there in the coach. This was bullshit. Had to be.

“And
then
,” Hobbe continued, turning to Jo and waggling his eyebrows, as if he’d hit the good part of a favorite story, “and then, it seems, you had a different sort of fit entirely, mistaking your saviors for monsters. Belgians, you called them. Belgica is the old Roman name for Holland, of course. I have heard that in the wilds of France some peasants still speak a bastardized Latin—it seems likely to me that your lepers similarly retained some of the old language, and you overheard them speaking this gibberish.”

“No,” Sander whispered. He envisioned a misshapen man on a dark stream bank holding up a sputtering rushlight, searching the moonless night for Sander, who had sleepwalked away. So the husband—call him Belgian, sure—had come looking for Sander, and then Sander had wrestled him to the ground, beat him, stabbed him with a piece of bone. Then he had gone looking for the wife. For the kids. “No.”

“It’s not your fault,” said Hobbe, patting his shoulder. “You
were out of sorts, sick in the pate. I was curious, so I investigated a little, and it seems that there was indeed a nearby familial leper colony that was eradicated by an assailant or assailants unknown. No survivors, you understand, or I should be able to provide you with further details.”

Sander stared with unabashed horror at Hobbe. This was worse than a conspiracy of monsters, worse by fucking
leagues
. He could picture it all too well, lepers old and young leaping on him with their peat blades, croaking their damn Friesland-talk as he killed any he could lay hands on, until they pushed him back into the black water, their tools crack-crack-cracking into his already feverish skull, driving him into the current that would take him downstream…

“Maybe it’s unrelated,” said Hobbe, his voice coming as if from a great distance, a great depth. “Maybe the massacre was unpaid mercenaries raiding, I don’t know, the peat supplies, or just someone who hates lepers. All that I can be sure of is that Jan claimed to put together such a story from your sleep-talk. He said he would talk to you as you muttered away the night, trying to help you preserve the memories when you were awake as well as dreaming, but in your sleep you insisted you didn’t want to. He said when you were awake, he would fish about to see if you could recall anything, but it only annoyed you.”

Sander certainly remembered Jan getting on his nuts in that regard, badgering him about where he might have been and what he might have done between Sneek and their reunion. The notion that all along Jan had known or at least suspected what had happened but not volunteered the information stung like a wasp to the asshole. Of course, that meant that Sander had known all along, too, that he had simply kept it locked up deep inside and refused to let himself see it.

It might not be the first occasion Sander had done it, either, remembering how firmly he had convinced himself that he was leaving home for good simply because he wanted to and not
because he had tossed his drunk father into the shallow well and locked the lid in place. It was only from the dreams that began long after he fled that Sander really remembered what he had done that night—the sounds of his father scratching at the soft wooden walls of the well, the splashing and crying bubbling up through the darkness of slumber.