The Folly of the World (38 page)

“No, no,” said Jolanda, jumping out of her chair. “I won’t have you help me with such a task. Why don’t you…”

“Make you a flask of horehound? It will be cold as I don’t know what, going anywhere in a boat this time of year.” Lijsbet’s smile looked almost genuine.

“Thank you,” Jolanda said, and meant it. Her maid vanished down the stairs, and Jolanda stared out the window, trying to sort it all through. They were really going against Wurfbain and the Hooks…

Sander had apparently meant what he said about leaving
now, now, now
, for Jolanda had only just stopped cogitating and laid out her armor when he burst back into her room and demanded to know why she wasn’t ready yet.

“I didn’t have Lansloet to help me dress, for one,” she said, too annoyed to be properly embarrassed at his barging in when all she wore was an undershirt that barely reached her hips.

“Where’s Lizzy?” he asked, clanking over to her. He hadn’t slipped his surcoat over his plate yet, and his sparkling cuirass, greaves, and gauntlets made him look like some bastard son of lobster and tankard. She suspected that a solid shove would result in his falling onto his back and remaining there, tortoiselike, until somebody helped him up. She would have tried it, too, just to see if she was correct, but lest he rescind his invitation she held her hand. For now. “My mother’s mussel, you don’t even have underwear on, idiot! You’ll chafe your chafables, you don’t—”

“Look away,” she said, blushing and snatching up the linen sling she had been about to step into when he’d clattered into her room. Getting it into place, she turned back to see him rooting through her chest, flinging clothes up in the air behind him like a dune rat excavating sand from a burrow. “Oi, get out of there!”

“Getting your shit together,” said Sander. “Might be on campaign for months, need to have plenty of warm—what’s this?”

He turned, the sack full of her savings dangling from one gauntlet. Arsehole. She snatched it from his hand, but the cloth caught on the jagged edge of his finger, sending a spray of coins across the floor. For a moment they both stared in silence as the groots went spinning, but then Sander held up his silver palms.

“Sorry, sorry. But gather all that and bring it with you, we might need it.”

“
We?
” Jolanda’s initial relief that he wasn’t giving her a hard time over hoarding any and all money she had lain fingers on since becoming a lady was somewhat mitigated by his casual appropriation of it. “Why don’t you bring your own coin, eh?”

“I’m bringing what I’ve got, yeah,” said Sander. “But I don’t keep a lot here. Burglars. And we don’t have time to go by Laurent’s and free up more, so just keep track of what we spend and I’ll reimpurse you.”

“Reimburse,” said Jolanda, hefting on her plate-lined leather doublet. “Every pfennig.”

“Yeah, yeah,” said Sander, and lodging a gauntlet under either armpit, extracted both his hands in one tug. “That’s not going to hold, let me, let me.”

Jolanda awkwardly raised her arms to let Sander tie off the laces on her doublet. His fussiness about knots would be comical if it didn’t border on the totally obsessed. “If you die in battle, I’ll never get this thing off now.”

“Cut it,” said Sander, straightening up and admiring his handiwork. “Best-kept secret about ropes, you can cut the buggers in a pinch. Now, hurry it up and get the rest’ve your kit on. Christ, but you’re slow as rent from a farmer. I’m going to go see that the servants are readying themselves, and we’ll be off.” Sander turned to go, but this last made Jolanda pause midway through donning the next piece in her complicated puzzle of armor, a splinted vambrace for her left arm.

“What do you mean, readying themselves? Lijsbet and—”

“Everyone’s coming,” said Sander, but while he’d looked back at her, he wouldn’t meet her eyes, the dirty neuker getting all gruff again. “Everyone.”

“Why?” said Jolanda. “Don’t servants usually stay behind and mind the house? Who ever heard of bringing a cook to war, or a handmaid?”

“Everyone comes!” Sander bellowed, the mad bastard going crimson. “I don’t
care
what’s
usually
done, we ain’t leaving nobody!”

“Lijsbet’s not coming,” said Jolanda, immune to his raging idiocy by this point in their relationship. “If you make her go, I’ll stay behind.”

Sander sputtered, but no actual words solidified from the froth.

“I mean it,” said Jolanda, tossing the tubular arm guard back onto the bed. “She won’t want to go, and I won’t make her.”

“None of them
want
to come,” Sander growled, his jaw set. “Lansloet and Drimmelin are giving me grief aplenty without your meddling in—”

“End of story,
Sander
,” Jolanda said, satisfied to see him wince at his real name. “She doesn’t go.”

“Fine!” Sander shouted. “Fine! But don’t tell me! Don’t you tell me nothing, you come to regret that! Nothing!”

Then he was clomping out of her room, kicking coins as he went, and Jolanda asked the eternal question of just what in all the names for sex was wrong with the man. She would regret not having Lijsbet with her, she knew, for any number of reasons, but she would be dead before she’d make her friend march against Countess Jacoba. Glancing at the sundry articles of clothing Sander had scattered in his eagerness to hurry her along, Jolanda’s eyes settled on the blue cloak Jan had given her back before everything went to hell.

Picking it up, she ran the cloth between her fingers—the weft felt much rougher to her now than it had when she’d first received it, back when the serge was the softest garment she’d ever felt. So long ago. Jolanda sighed. It was too small to properly conceal her face and armor and all, so she would have to borrow one of Sander’s cloaks for the passage. Tossing it onto the bed beside her swaths and straps of reinforced leather, she resolved to give it to Lijsbet as a parting gift—the girl had often commented on how much she liked it, plain though it was. Something to remember me by, Jolanda thought, and then put such sentimental thoughts aside to properly fashion herself for war.

B
y the time Sander had herded everyone out of the house, he was ready to burn the place down and be done with it once and for all. For a moment he’d thought Drimmelin meant to murder him with her cleaver rather than quit her kitchen, and who knew, if he hadn’t been wearing armor, she may well have made a go of it, the cow. Whereas the cook had been wrathful as a riled angel, Lansloet had seemed on the verge of utter despair when Sander told him to pack his shit and meet them out in the street. There had been flustered protests, but no begging, thank the saint of girls and bitches. When the two older servants realized Lizzy would be staying behind to keep house, there would no doubt be a fresh wave of tears to crest or be drowned under, but for now it was steady, steady as guiltless prayer. At long last Jo and Lizzy came out on the stoop where Sander was waiting, the latter meaning to accompany her mistress to the boat, and then Drimmelin arrived, dragging a trunk of crockery and provisions. Still no Lansloet, though.

It was possible the old ferret had gone out the courtyard and through a neighbor’s window to hide, or jumped into the canal to make a swim for safer harbors. If he had done either, he might have been saved, but instead Sander found him lamely hiding behind a crate in the attic. Given the option of walking out on his two stork’s legs or jumping from the garret window, Lansloet took the stairs, head held high, and then, at last, they were dealt with. The events of the day had kept Sander busy enough to avoid thinking about the bottomless pit of excrement he was rapidly sinking into, but as he locked the front door and slyly slipped
the key to Lizzy, everything began floating to the surface again, like a lump in the throat.

No matter, no matter, he told himself as he led the motley procession down the street, the afternoon sun sparkling on the ice-paned windows of the houses flanking them, the slick cobbles gold as groots. No matter. He was getting them out of Dordt, and
now
, goddamn it. They crossed the channel at Wijnbrug and there lay the old harbor, the green waters as calm as his heart should be, if only the stupid chunk of meat should listen to him.

Simon and his mussel-mouthed brother, Braem, sat in the dinghy pulled up to the stairs at the start of the quay. Theirs was the only vessel taking to the meer this late in the day, the Gruyere brothers looking sullen as plague-stricken paupers. Simon in particular appeared the color of the water, but nowhere near so bad as he had earlier in the day, before everything had gone straight to the devil’s doorstep. Amazing, what the twin forces of wine and wisdom could effect—he’d been in a bad way when he’d shown up, no doubt about it.

“There’s another,” Simon had gasped in the foyer that morning, with Lansloet barely cleared off down the hall. At the time Sander hadn’t had the slightest suspicion that before the day was out he’d be skipping town with his whole family in tow, but that was the thing about mornings—bloody things had a way of getting out from under a fellow. “God’s blood, Jan, I found another child!”

“Shut it!” Sander had shoved him against the front door, and then waited. The house was silent. Because of course it was not like Jo or one of the servants was going to leap out and start accusing him of anything, but still: “Outside, cunt, outside. We’ll take some air, we’ll take some beer, and you’ll tell me everything.”

“Another one, Jan, another one!” Simon’s voice kept leaping up and down, like a lapdog bouncing for treats. “Out at the warehouse. In the mud. Right by our dock!”

“If you don’t lower it, you’ll be lowered yourself,” Sander cautioned, though the street was empty before them, and, yeah, behind them as well. It was a bit warmer that day, and positively
blazing for January, which made the whole city stink like fresh shit and old fish. Goddamn Dordt. Sander directed Simon over the bridge, down Groenstraat, and up an alley; adding some time to their trip to the White Horse ought to give the loudmouthed cunt a chance to calm down. “Start at the bottom, I mean, and we’ll see how high we get before I have to tell you to shut it.”

“Went out to relieve myself this morn,” said Simon, wringing his hands and shaking his head and nearly walking into the canted wall of the alley. “There was some drift caught in the mud and ice at the foot of the dock. It was too dirty to tell what it was, maybe a log, I thought, or some bundled-up garbage that went overboard. So I passed my water over it, as you do, as you do, just for a lark, and oh my dear Savior, Jan, as the mud burned away from my stream, I saw, I saw!”

“A dead kid?” Sander supplied, wishing that for once he wasn’t so damnable wise, that he was wrong and Simon was distraught over something,
anything
, other than—

“I
pissed
upon it,” said Simon, and released a deep, lung-rattling moan. Sander cuffed him. “A child, saints forgive me, I spilled the wine of my belly upon a child! Another headless, butchered child!”

“That wine of your belly’s going to be a red when I’m done with you, Simon, you don’t shut it.
Now.
” Sander’s mind turned over along with his guts. Another child. Another murdered child laid at his doorstep. What did this bode? Had Simon already gone to the militia, or—

“I didn’t know what to do, I didn’t, so I just, just, pushed it down with an oar, under the ice, and—”

“You
what
?!” They were halfway down the alley, and Sander was disturbed to notice the walls on either side were pockmarked with windows. From down here he couldn’t tell if any were open. He pushed Simon against a wall and ground his weight into him, trying not to enjoy it too much and to stay focused on the task at hand. “Why in all the fuckwords in French did you do that?!”

“It was only sticking out a little,” Simon said, as if that made everything better. “I was able to get it all under. You know how it is out there, the top of the mud is all wed with the ice now, thick as plates, except the slip in the marsh where we bring up the boats; I’ve kept that well loose all winter. That’s where the child was, in the mud on the edge of the slip, so I could just give it a push down, out of sight under the top of the ice, and—”

“
Why
,” Sander groaned. “Stupid, stupid, cunt, I asked why.”

“You told me to,” said Simon, but perhaps seeing from Sander’s expression that this was not an acceptable answer in the least, added, “you said I shouldn’t tell anyone until the ice melts, when—”

“That was the other one, Simon, the
other
one, the one that wasn’t at
my
fucking
warehouse
,” Sander hissed into the man’s ear, feeling the same bizarre satisfaction at this exchange that he had upon trouncing Gilles back in front of the White Horse. “That one made sense to forget about, but this, this one, you…”

Sander trailed off, a thought coming to him. A sight arrived at the same time, though, from the corner of his eye—a hooded figure watching them from back the way they’d come. This took precedence over his musings, to say the fucking least, until he realized the man was just pissing against the alley wall, and then disappeared back onto Groenstraat. Simon was blathering on about how he didn’t know why this situation was different, and yeah, that reminded Sander of what he’d realized before being distracted by the pisser. Simple goddamn Simon.

“It’s not another body,
idiot
,” Sander said with a sneer, turning back to the blathering Gruyere. “It’s the same one. Somewhere between now and when we found it, the tide shook it loose from Trash Island and washed it over there, is all.”

“No,” Simon said with the certainty all fools possess for the wisdom of their folly, “it’s not, it can’t be, it—”

“It’s another dead kid missing its head in the meer? Think, you clot, think, what makes more sense—two kids getting done the same way and dumped near our warehouse, or one getting
tide-kicked less than fifty paces from where it started? I swear, Simon, you had me worried for a—”

“A boy,” said Simon, his eyes suddenly fierce as they’d been on the steps of the Leyden church that Easter so long ago, before Sander had taught him who was the harder man. “This was a boy, Jan, the other was a girl. Or don’t you remember? Too busy drinking nice wine and having nice parties to remember exactly what we found? I remember, Graaf, I do, because I sleep out there every night His Worship doesn’t invite me in, like an abbot giving a bunk to a beggar, every night I’m out there and she’s out there haunting me, all because you wouldn’t let me tell the militia, you wouldn’t, and now there’s another. So now what? Now what do I
do
, Graaf? What?”