The Folly of the World (26 page)

“When’s that to be, then?” she had demanded, refusing to relinquish the squirming cat from her arms despite both feline and count’s obvious preference that she be dropped at once. “How long you putting us up?”

“Until you’re ready,” Wurfbain had replied with only a hint of annoyance in his gentle voice. “The duration of your tutoring depends entirely on how sharp a study you are.”

“Little bitch doesn’t listen to a word of her betters,” Sander had said. “Reckon on having her until she’s a crone, you’re waiting on improvement!”

Which had led to a row. Which had led to their hasty ejection from Primm’s house. Which had led to her failing, in her rage, to remember to smuggle Margareta out under her cloak. She missed the cat, especially when she arrived at the dark, foreboding house that rose from the harlequin fields bordering the banks of the Oude Rijn. Jolanda immediately disliked the place; it was altogether too reminiscent of another manse she had but recently quit, the dim halls as cold and lonesome as if they were filled with meer water.

Jolanda’s bedroom was bigger than the hut where she had grown up, and at first she had preferred to sleep on the thick rugs covering most of the floor rather than the too-soft bed. Her handmaiden, Fye, insisted she get used to the latter, however, and so she’d given it a go. It was a bit like wearing shoes, she found—what was miserably uncomfortable for the first few months eventually became, well, still uncomfortable, but not so miserable. A bit like the rest of her life, come to think of it.

Staying confined to the rural manor for so long was maddening, but whenever the creepy count left on business, Sander let her accompany him on his walks through the countryside. The way he would wait until the two of them were out of sight of the house before stripping off his boots and hose and hiding them in the tall grass bordering the paths through the fields was one of the things that finally convinced Jolanda he was not entirely mad. For all his outbursts and strange fancies and obsessions, he too preferred the feel of dirt and grass under calloused heel and spread toe, and that, more than even his rescuing her from Jan, made the difference in her mind.

Not that he wasn’t an obnoxious neuker most of the time, always trying to act clever when it was clear as the Oude Rijn on a calm day that he was even more mixed up about the world than her, and she’d been in it half the time as he—but still. Sander was all right.

Except he was Jan now.

That was something. Sander was Jan. Just as he always
should’ve been. That was, Sander should’ve been the one to try and murder her out in the swamps, and Jan should’ve rescued her. That made much more sense. Instead… instead something else had happened, and just thinking about it made her wish Jan had finished the job, that she’d never woken up to such a mad world where the very thought of taking a swim in the nearby river filled her not with joy and expectation but instead a sharp, bone-deep dread.

After leaving the submerged graveyard of Oudeland and becoming lost in the meer, it had taken them well over a week to find their way back to Rotterdam. Neither wanted to return to Dordt, at least not then, and that miserable voyage was the hardest time of Jolanda’s life. Sander had barely spoken to her for the duration, and then ineffectively tried to dump her at a Rotter convent—
try those Beguine sluts
, the nun who had answered the gate had told them after Sander tried to sell her the girl. Not that Jolanda would have let the crazy bitches keep her locked up, but it nevertheless stung to be rejected by the old biddy, who’d stormed off after offering her enigmatic suggestion. That had been a curdled dram to drink.

Hell, beyond the obvious issue of Sander’s idiocy and nasty nuns, it had been a struggle to figure out just what was going on, with her, with life. Jan had never cared about her except as a submarine draft animal, she knew that much from the moment he’d put the rope ’round her neck out on the crypt. But taking it in, really swallowing the lump of it and making it a real part of her, that had been rough. Nobody had ever cared about her before, so why did she care if they didn’t now? What had she expected from a man who had near-drowned her the first time they ever laid eyes on each other?

Everybody just wanted something, was all—her father had only seen her for the work she could do, and then the groots he could trade her for, and her brothers had wanted the extra food they’d have if she weren’t around, or the extra blankets, and even the most sheep-eyed of the fisherboys had only wanted her for
what she looked like from across the waves: a half-furred fanny and a budding pair of tits.

But Sander, he could’ve left her anywhere, anytime, even after the nun had sent him packing. Instead, he’d helped her track down the stable in Rotterdam where Jan had said he’d boarded Mackerel, except that the horseman had played ignorant, even when Sander grabbed him by the hair and shouted in his face. As she lay in the colossal bed in the overgrown Leyden house, Jolanda wondered where she would be if they had recovered Mackerel and then parted ways as she’d originally planned, her taking the horse instead of accompanying Sander back to Dordrecht. Hurrying away from the stable before the proprietor could recover from the sucker punches Sander had liberally administered, he’d promised her a share of the fortune he’d been sure Primm would secure now that they had the ring.

It had seemed like such a simple thing to hear him say it, but even in the boat back to Dordt she’d suspected it was a foolish plan. Yet here they were, a few turns of the seasons later.

Nobles.

More or less.

A year before, she’d been an ignorant child, dodging work and the blows she earned as a result, and now she was a lady. Or so Wurfbain assured her—she didn’t feel much different, although she was learning to fake that, too. Her instructor in these impossibly intricate matters was the Lady Zoete Van Hauer, a blond, bosomy noblewoman who called twice a week. Zoete could go from severe to silly in the blink of an eye, but the constant about the handsome older woman was that she never gave the slightest hint that she might suspect her clumsy pupil of being an impostor.

Still, other than Sander, there wasn’t a person Jolanda met that didn’t make her feel all stupid and obvious, a thief caught in the act, a hound trying to walk around on her hind legs and speak man’s words with a bitch’s tongue. Even when Fye turned down the bed for her and tucked her in, the elderly maid’s eyes,
for all their kindness and pity, seemed to dig into Jolanda, like a crow pecking at something juicy. She never felt at ease, not with the servants, not with the guests Wurfbain occasionally brought home, and certainly not when he made her go out in public.

“Church,” Wurfbain said on Easter morning. “Something you’ve both been lacking, I think.”

Sander yawned. Jolanda blushed. She hadn’t been inside a church since leaving home, and the thought of the confession she’d have to make was horrifying. She looked up at Sander with sudden worry, thinking how much worse his impending penance must be than hers, for she had heard from the way the count talked of poots that to be a sodomite was as bad as being a killer. Which Sander also was, aye. Yet he didn’t seem concerned by the prospect, and so she tried to allay her fears as well.

“That of course means unveiling you, but I think you’re ready.” The man’s snowy eyebrows went up so often when he addressed them that Jolanda wondered why he ever bothered relaxing them. “I have decided, however, that your dear daughter will need to be ever present as you enter society. Considering.”

“Considering what?” demanded Sander.

“Considering your mind, dearest Jan, is a sieve,” said Wurfbain, scooping a runny piece of egg with his bread crust and popping it into his mouth. He never got any food in his mustache, Jolanda noticed. Never.

“That a fact?” said Sander in his quiet, calm, I’m-about-to-attack-you voice.

“It’s something I noticed immediately upon meeting you, of course,” continued the count, seemingly oblivious to the danger he was in. “Which is why I’ve spent as much time on Jolanda as I have.”

Sander’s eyes, the only part of him that gave away how furious he was at times like these, now shifted to Jolanda. Why the hell should he be cross with her? Fickle as the dawn, his temper.

“Spending time on Jo, are you?” said Sander.

“Yes. Tutoring her so that she can whisper in your ear when you’re in danger of embarrassing yourself. The pretext of course is that being raised abroad, your Dutch is not as good as hers, and so she will occasionally need to translate.”

“What?” Some of Sander’s fury was edged out by his confusion.

“Who is Francis van Borselen?” Wurfbain asked breezily.

“Oh,” said Sander, and the rest of his wrath departed, pushed out by the tongue he pressed into his cheek as he stared off into space. His lips began moving soundlessly. Jolanda glanced at the count but did not speak until he asked her.

“Do you know, Jolanda?”

“He’s the Graaf of Ostrevant, in Zeeland,” she said at once, and for Sander’s benefit, added, “I think?”

“Exactly,” beamed Wurfbain, his eyes closed, perhaps from the brilliance of his own sunny smile. “Borselen’s a Cod, and thus no friend of ours. Your daughter will remind you whose favor we curry and whose toes we step on. Politically,” he hastened to add, “only political foot-stomping, my boy. And in the event you forget to whom you are speaking, or the details of your country-mouse backstory, she’ll be right there to provide you a cue. If you’re separated and find yourself in need of her, simply feign confusion and hurry off to find her. ‘
Pardon, pardon, my daughter, she translate something for me.
’ ”

“Yeah, I get you,” said Sander, warming to the plan now that he realized it would be less work for him, the lazy ball-washer. “Jo follows me around, keeps me out of mischief.”

“So…” Jolanda suddenly felt rather ill, like she had after eating Primm’s lamb that first day in Dordrecht. “So I have to, I, I’m to be with him all the time, around all the people? The nobles?”

“Absolutely. All the time.” Wurfbain nodded, taking another bite of egg. Jolanda pushed her hardly touched plate away and dipped her hands in the finger bowl. It wasn’t fair, having to pick up Sander’s slack as well as studying the different knitting styles
and points of etiquette and the names of a hundred people she’d never laid eyes on and still making time for the sword, which the count had only relented to let her learn after she’d agreed to do all the rest. Foolish goddamn neuker. Wurfbain waved them away, saying, “Change into something nice. The count of Holland will be at the service, so no shilly-shallying—better we queue up late to catch the right sort of attention, but we don’t want to be
too
late. Tout de suite.”

Toot sweet? Service? Oh—Church. Now Jolanda didn’t think she would be sick—instead, she was sure of it. Count of Holland? Church? Bullshit.

She was nearly in tears when she got to her room, but Fye was waiting with a gorgeous new gown, a mantis-green-and-lamb-white damask affair with silver ivy embroidered across the chest. It looked like it was made for a princess or queen and not some dirty little fraud from the sea. The handmaid helped her into it and the matching veil, offering encouragement as she did—so far as the woman knew, Jolanda really was a noble girl from a distant land, and so in the servant’s mind she shouldn’t have anything to fear beyond embarrassment regarding her provincial ways. If only.

Looking at her reflection in the polished silver mirror Fye held up, Jolanda scarce recognized herself, a real lady looking back at her… until she noticed her purple hands jutting out of the sleeves, and the tears broke through. She was supposed to tell people they were birthmarks if anyone was rude enough to inquire, but she knew somebody would recognize the dyed skin for what it was, and then they would be unmasked and it would be all her fault and…

“There, there,” said Fye, embracing Jolanda with her pillowy arms. “It’ll be good to get it over with, miss, it will, and you’ll get to see the church, which is no small thing!”

“Thank you,” Jolanda muttered, her apprehension not so much allayed as displaced by the awkwardness of being coddled. Fye was all right, but was clearly trying to fill the mother-shaped hole in the girl’s life—a void Jolanda was not in the habit of
noticing until it was pointed out to her. “I’m… that’s good, Fye. I’m good now. Let me go.”

“Bah, such a tough thing!” said Fye, releasing her. “Keep your father quiet in there if you can.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Jolanda said with a sigh. Babysitting Sander was bad enough in the manor, but doing so in a church, and in front of a pack of kingly men all looking down on them… that was some dumb shit, right there.

A knock came at the door; Sander was there in a baby-blue doublet, a moss-green mantle, and bright white hose, looking as itchy as a flea-plagued hound in the finery. Jolanda realized he was even less comfortable about all this than she was, and she accepted the trembling palm he extended with a little thrill of pleasure at his nervousness. Hard man like him scared of going to church!

Wurfbain was waiting in a carriage before the manor’s impressive portico, the coach’s latten trim gleaming through the light morning drizzle. The four horses and driver behind them waited stoically, already soaked themselves, but the count impatiently waved at Sander and Jolanda from the window of the box. Jolanda was down the stairs in an instant, eager to see the interior of this new, ostentatious coach, but at the edge of the muddy drive Sander swooped her up from behind, an arm hooking under her armpit and the other catching her behind the knee. She barely stopped herself from planting an elbow in his throat—old habits and all.

“Ruin your gown, idiot,” said Sander as he carried her to the coach. “Some lady, prancing around in the muck like a suckling pig.”

“Why, thank you, Graaf Jan!” she said with a laugh, the priggish expression on his face almost convincing her they might pull this off after all—he certainly looked tart and stodgy as a nobleman. Quite before she realized what she was doing, she kissed him on his cheek, which caused him to jerk his face back and grimace.