The Folly of the World (37 page)

If only Simon didn’t have such an obvious motivation for being sweet to her, Jolanda might have let herself indulge in daydreams of his genuinely having changed, having become a more serious sort of fellow—as it stood, she was wise enough to recognize that he was simply changing his wooing tactics. Probably. It also would have made things easier if he would stop following her from afar, as he sometimes did—he no doubt thought it was gallant, minding her from the shadows to make sure nobody gave her trouble, but instead it was downright unsettling, forever feeling eyes following you from an alley, constantly catching glimpses of a hooded figure ducking around corners when you checked over your shoulder. If she hadn’t confirmed it was him by once dodging into an alley and then lying in wait until he came rushing along after, it would have been truly disturbing, having a watcher always at your back… but aye, it was just Simon.

“I tell you,” said Lijsbet, “we ought to find a way to get Simon
down here for supper. Nothing’s better than watching him and the count squirm at each other’s company.”

“Anything’s better than Wurfbain’s sermons to us novices,” said Jolanda. “Been left out of every feast and court dealing since we arrived on account of our politics, but he still talks down to us, like we might turn on the countess if he wasn’t here to remind us not to.”

“Dull as it is to hear it over and over, m’lady, I’m glad you’ve got a friend like the count—I’ve served in a few houses, as you know, and it’s saddening to know how many otherwise witty lords and ladies are swayed into folly by the counsel of Cods.”

“Be that as it may, I can understand their outrage about Jacoba’s double-marriage business,” said Jolanda, bored enough that baiting her maid seemed like a worthy diversion. “It would be bad enough, marrying an Englishman, but when you’ve already got one husband here—that’s an awful way to go about winning local support.”

“That Brabançon she married before was jelly-boned as a pickled herring,” said Lijsbet. “He’d been a good husband and protected her claim, she wouldn’t have needed a new fellow—believe you me, m’lady, I know what it’s like to have a husband abandon you to your own wits, and it changes a girl’s outlook. Besides, it’s not no double-marriage, or it shouldn’t be; whatever that Cod-bought pope says now, he promised her a divorce ages ago!”

“Oh my,” said Jolanda in mock surprise. “Besmirching the holiest man in the world as well as praising the villainous countess—you’re on quite a tear today, aren’t you?”

“Yes, yes, she’s so villainous, asking what’s owed to her by birth. She was cheated, as everyone knows, cheated and run off like a stray dog by your so-called local support. Only thing the countess did wrong was put her trust in courts and church, in her friends. Can you imagine what she must be going through? To be born to greatness, only to have some, some
fraud
come in and take everything? She’s right to be mad, and right to rally any
army she can, even if they are a pack of Englanders.” Lijsbet had stopped combing in her passion.

“
Really
, Lijsbet,” said Jolanda, trying to enjoy the ire she’d raised in her maid, but rather put off by some of the character of the girl’s speech. “You ought to be careful about who you say that to—most of your sheephead friends at market wouldn’t take kindly to your advocating for foreign armies fording the Maas!”

“So they say, but they’re eager enough to tongue the ass of a Burgundian like Duke Philip! I’ll take a woman of this land, born and bred, with foreign support, to a foreign man forcing his way into ruling us with the support of greedy locals.”

“But Philip never would have been able to if her uncle hadn’t chosen him,” said Jolanda, remembering the last supper where all this had been discussed at length between Wurfbain and Laurent while Sander dozed in his chair at the head of the table. “Old Count John’s grave is barely cold and already you’re lamenting Philip’s succeeding, when all he’s done is—”

“John was Bavarian,” said Lijsbet hotly, “meaning he had just as little claim to us as Philip. None, I mean, none at all.”

“Bavarian or not, he was Jacoba’s flesh and blood,” said Jolanda. “A good ruler is a good ruler, no matter where he is born.”

“Ha! How good was he, to steal his niece’s crown and end up murdered by his own knight? John the Pitiless, they called him, and that sounds right to me, as I don’t pity his passing. Problem with those foreigners is they’re like rats, you can’t just kill one, you need to burn the whole nest. Kill a Bavarian, and a Burgundian grows in his place. If the flood hadn’t come, they never would have got away with it, mark me, it’s all these corrupt merchants with their blood-dripping riches coming in from dirty foreign deals, all this, this, jamming a lever under the world and wrenching it out of joint, until—”

“
Lijsbet
,” Jolanda said, now every bit as enflamed as her maid and turning in her chair to face the haughty servant. “I will
remind you that the house you serve, a house that has supported Countess Jacoba unfailingly ever since my father and I came here,
this
house, stands, as a matter of fact, on the fortune brought in through the importation of foreign goods. Or were you unaware that the Tieselen farmlands are now, as they have been for some time, under fucking water, and that our breeding has much less to do with our situation than the foresight of the old graaf in transitioning himself into mercantile interests?”

For a moment Lijsbet defiantly stared down at her mistress, and then, abruptly, both women burst out laughing. They sounded like a couple of cranks at the White Horse, coming to blows over the affairs of people they’d never met nor seen, over events that had less to do with their lives than a sudden storm when they were swimming or a run of luck at the Karnöffel table. Lijsbet sobered first, and knelt down in front of Jolanda’s chair. She suddenly looked on the verge of tears, and Jolanda wondered just what in the name of the nine valiants had gotten into her maid today.

“I’m sorry, Lady, truly I am. You’re right that I forget my place, but I hope you know me well enough to see that it’s not through pride or scorn, but just my silliness—I love you like a sister, though I know it’s presumptuous to say it like that, but I do, and sometimes I just… well, act stupid as I would around a sister, instead of minding myself better, the way I ought to around someone of your station. I promise,
promise
, that I’ll never say such foolish things again, nor take such a tone. I—”

“Oh, shut it,” said Jolanda, pushing back her maid’s veil to tousle her auburn hair. “I’ve never had a sister, and until meeting you I never wanted for one. Now I know better. I’m lucky to have someone who will tell me what they think when I ask, instead of what they believe
I do
. Now, turn ’round so I can do yours, it’s tangled as I’ve ever seen.”

Lijsbet obliged, pulling her wimple the rest of the way off and shaking her hair out. “You’ve spoilt me, m’lady—I never dreamt I’d work for good, righteous people in this den of Cods, and I get
so carried away, I offend even those I love, those who’re doing more to help the countess than a wretch like me ever could. Say you’ll forgive me, Lady? Please?”

“Already done,” said Jolanda, and meant it. Removing the comb from where it was lodged painfully in her own hair, she set to working it through her maid’s. “I provoked you, Lijsbet, and cruelly—I meant to tease you, knowing your passion for the countess. I’d be a fool not to know by now that you have some love for the woman exceeding even what the graaf and I possess for her.”

“Well, it’s in my bones—my mother came from Hainaut, and my da’s brother Bertie died at Gorinchem, trying to win the day for her. Now that things are getting hot again, I truly wish she triumphs, drives those Burgundy bastards back to where they came from. Even if she did marry an Englishman. She reminds me of Griet,” said Lijsbet wistfully, resting an elbow on Jolanda’s blanket-draped knee. “Just like you do. Women who won’t stand for nonsense.”

“Griet’s your friend who put you in touch with Lansloet, about working here?” asked Jolanda idly.

“Her? Nay, never a woman less like the two of you. I mean Griet from the tales, her who raided hell itself—Mad Griet.”

“Oh!” said Jolanda, as flattered as she’d ever been. “I don’t know how I’ve given you such an impression of me—I’m just a girl of Dordt, same as any other.”

“No,” said Lijsbet with the hard certainty of rain coming after a red dawn. “You’re not.”

It felt good, sitting there in her bedroom with Lijsbet, combing out her maid’s hair and talking through all the troubles, big and small. In that moment there was nowhere Jolanda would rather be, nothing she should prefer to be doing. Which meant she should do something to screw it all up, maybe. “I’ll tell you a secret, Lijsbet, if you promise not to hate me for it.”

“I don’t think I could hate you, m’lady,” said the maid, though there was something to her voice, some note Jolanda couldn’t
quite pin down. Not with Lijsbet facing the window, anyway, the backs of heads being a wee bit less emotive than faces. Time to tell her, then, the spilling of the secret as queer a mingling as hunger with nausea, desire with disgust. It felt good to tell.

“It’s just… I really wanted to…” Jolanda stopped combing lest Lijsbet lose her temper again and do herself some mischief. “I wanted to go to war. Not against the countess, of course, but even if it had been her we were fighting, I wouldn’t have declined… I mean, ever since Jan first started teaching me the sword, I’ve daydreamed of using it, you know, really using it, to do some good with it. So I’d hoped we would, me and him, go to some battle, some war, and truth be told, one side’s as good as the other to those who are just in it for some sport.”

“No good ever comes from spilling blood, and I think you’d find it other than sport,” said Lijsbet, though not in the icy tone Jolanda would’ve expected—she sounded easy as ever, and Jolanda relaxed as the maid continued. “And go on with the brush and get it over with, unless you’re prolonging my agonies to a purpose. But no. Or yes, I mean yes, of course you want to go to war. Not much of a secret, that—swords on your wall, daggers stuffed under your bed, that absurd jester’s suit you like dancing about in—you thought I’d forgot!”

“I wish you would!” said Jolanda, and then they were laughing together at the memory—the sparring lesson Jolanda had given Lijsbet was doomed to giggly failure from the moment the maid had caught sight of her mistress’s brigandine armor. Silly to behold, maybe, but practical—if Jacoba and her Englanders actually made it to Dordrecht, as Wurfbain insisted they eventually would, it would be incumbent upon the Tieselens to drop any pretense of neutrality and help the Hooks take the city. Wurfbain implied there were even more Hooks in Dordt than Jolanda and Sander knew about, that admitting an invading army might be easily done if sympathetic militiamen were manning the gatehouses…

“So no, Lady Jo, I don’t hate you for being such a bloodthirsty brute,” Lijsbet said when they had both settled down. “But I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t glad you and Master Jan are loyal to the countess, and don’t deny it, I know you are, even if you can’t admit it out loud for fear of Codfoolery. I’m sure those crooked Cods have got Graaf Jan paying his due, but a lot of the nobles, they make quite the show out of being on the field themselves, as I hear it. I offer my thanks every Sunday that this house hasn’t gone to war.”

The walls of the house shook around them, as if God himself were leaning on the building. Or the devil. Sander on the stairs. The door burst open, and there was the mad graaf, red-faced and wild-eyed as any hanged man on the end of a noose. Instead of his usual, perpetually dirty hose, he wore thick leather pants and a massive steel codpiece in the shape of a ram’s head.

“Jo!” he shouted, though she was five paces away. “Get your kit!”

“My kit?” She hadn’t seen him look this crazed since his exchange with Hobbe in the count’s coach that fateful Easter morn. “What kit, what are you—”

“War!” He hooted, and she still couldn’t be sure if he was terrified or elated. “We’re off to war! Now! Now, now,
now
, we’ll miss the boat!”

Lijsbet seemed to be shriveling up into her gown where she sat on the floor. Looking back and forth between her maid and Sander, Jolanda asked, “When? With who?”

“Now!” Sander looked like a child trying to mollify his bloated bladder by hopping from foot to foot. “With, uh, Jacoba—her! We’ve flipped, Jo, we’ve flipped, and to hell with Hobbe and his precious countess—we’re Cods now! Hurry, hurry, or we’ll miss the boat! Put your kit on, big cloak over it, something hooded—they won’t let you come if they know you’re a girl, so big hood, and you’ll wear the helm from my suit—saints know I won’t stick my head in a jug, metal or no, for count nor country! War! Shit!”

Then he was gone, banging down the hall to his room and
hollering for Lansloet. Jolanda stared at the empty doorway for a long time, not wanting to look back at Lijsbet. She didn’t want to see the sorrow on the maid’s face, nor have the maid see the excitement on hers. Not for their turning into Cods, whatever that might entail—Jolanda had nothing but respect for the indomitable countess, and becoming her adversary would have chafed, had it not been for what Sander had said about their turning on Wurfbain. Jolanda knew she couldn’t have it both ways, and if going against Wurfbain meant going against Jacoba, then so be it—she’d never met the countess, of course, so couldn’t say if she was undeserving of such treachery, but she knew Wurfbain, the sinister, selfish poot, and was thrilled that Sander had finally bucked from the tight reins of the count. When she’d given Sander a hard time at the supper table about sitting out every interesting conflict instead of rebelling against Wurfbain, she had never dreamed he would invite her along even if he did get off his increasingly fat arse to join some foreign fray.

“M’lady,” said Lijsbet, resting her hand on Jolanda’s shoulder. The maid had risen as silently as the sun, and now stood behind her mistress just as she had when combing out Jolanda’s hair. Once again neither could see the other’s face, and Jolanda let out a long sigh. Before she could think of something to say, Lijsbet put on a chipper tone and said, “I’ll fetch some ribbon to tie your hair back, if it pleases your knightly sensibilities, and then array Sir Jo’s jester dress for inspection.”