The Folly of the World (27 page)

“No need for all that,” he said, pushing her through the door of the coach.

“Sorry,” she said, falling over the count’s long knees. The inside of the box was tight and rather flimsy-looking, with only the single padded bench to sit on. How had she ever thought these vehicles spacious? Wurfbain helped her across him and she flopped onto the seat, damp and jittery, as Sander inserted himself on the other side of the count and closed the door. The chains rigging the contraption together jingled as the driver cracked the reins dramatically, and they bounced off at a fair clip.

The drive was so rocky that Jolanda later marveled at her strength of guts in not losing what little breakfast she’d managed, though part of the credit there was probably owed to the count’s endless quizzing, which kept her mind off her queasiness. Sander was quieter, and twitchier, for the duration. At first they followed the thick row of brilliant green reeds bordering the Oude Rijn, but before very long the stomach-churning bumpiness of the road through the outskirts gave to clattering stones as they entered Leyden proper, the stone walls scintillating silver in the rain.

“Right-ho, Graaf and Lady,” said Wurfbain as the coach slowed to a stop. Jolanda stuck her head out the window, braving the wet to get a look at the church. She saw only rows of ordinary brick buildings on either side of the road, and the back of another halted carriage in front of them. Sander pulled her back into the box, having leaned across the frowning count to reach her.

“Neuking bumpkin,” Sander grumbled. He looked a little better since they had reached town, but still far from hale—his sickly verdancy had faded to a complexion devoid of any color at all, like grass bleached by the sun; a pale noble in bad need of a crap or a nap. Or both.

“Sir Jan Tieselen,” said Wurfbain. “Bow before your sovereign.”

“Eh?”

“Your sovereign’s name being…”

“John, everyone knows it’s Count John,” said Sander, turning to the window, where a steady throng of chattering peasants
drifted past, their spirits apparently drier than their coats. “John, the
cunt
of Holland.”

“John of…”

“John the Cuntbitch, Cunt of Holland.”

“Very funny. No, John of—”

“Bavaria,” said Jolanda, forgetting not to interrupt. “John of Bavaria.”

“And how, then, did a Bavarian barbarian come to oversee we free people of Holland and Zeeland?” Wurfbain asked her, but he was looking at Sander.

“He put Countess Jacoba on the run, and—”

“Earlier,” said Wurfbain. “Start earlier.”

“Earlier?” said Jolanda. “Aye, soooo… when the old Count of Holland, William, when he died, his daughter Jacoba was supposed to rule beside her husband, John. John of Brabant. That early?”

“Which John?” asked Wurfbain. “There are an awful lot of Johns, in Brabant as elsewhere. And no ayes, remember, no ayes.”

“Aye. Yes. Sorry. The sixth,” said Jolanda. “No, shit, the fourth. Anyway, John’s in the Hook party, like us, but he’s weak, and people took issue with him and Jacoba, particularly folk in Dordrecht, which is where the couple was when things went sour. John, not the Brabanter she married but our uh, steward, the Bavarian, he’s Jacoba’s uncle, and a Cod, and he stole his niece’s birthright, making himself count of Holland. So they’ve been fighting ever since, Jacoba’s Hooks and her uncle John’s Cods, and he’s mostly won out, despite being an enormous arsehole.”

“Very tidy,” said Wurfbain. “We might make a lady of you yet. But never,
ever
refer to John of Bavaria’s theft as such—don’t forget, we Hooks are in a delicate spot, with our Jacoba on the run. Ah, and those from Brabant are Brabançons,
not
Brabanters. As for you, I wouldn’t advise that.”

Sander put the stopper back in the small bottle he’d been drinking from and tucked it into the fold between the bottom
cushion of the seat and the brocade backing. He muttered, “Shouldn’t be here. Won’t work.”

“Nonsense,” said Wurfbain brightly. “Why, with Jolanda’s wits and your credentials, you’re—”

“Getting out,” said Sander, fumbling with the latch on his door. “You lot get hanged if you want. Not me. Getting out. Forget it, the whole thing. Keep my coin, I’m out.”

“
No
, you are
not
,” said the count, rapping Sander’s knuckles with the gilded cane he had hereto steepled his hands upon. “If you leave this carriage you will be caught by sundown and tortured through Pentecost, do you understand me?”

“Dare threaten me, you cunt?” said Sander, the reddening hand Wurfbain had struck shooting out to the count’s throat, the chains of the coach jangling and the whole box shifting as Sander fell upon the man. Jolanda found herself incapable of moving, half-buried as she was under the uprooted Wurfbain. Over his shoulder she saw that several passersby had stopped to peer through the window, evidently delighted to see the noblesse throttling one another. And on Easter!

“I do,
Sander
, I do, indeed,” whispered the count. He had never before called his pupil by that moniker; even when he was acknowledging the ruse, which was not often, he never used the man’s real name. Wurfbain went on, as though they were continuing a pleasant conversation postponed by the refilling of glasses. “You murderous sheephead thug, you listen to me, with both ears. I know all about you, and I have men who can find you wherever you go, and—”

“All about me?” Sander faked a laugh. It sounded painful, desperate. “What’s there to know, fancy man?”

“All your secrets.” Wurfbain’s lips had pulled back, his mouth resembling a deep wound, all blood-red gums and bone-white teeth. “We both know what I’m talking about.”

“Secrets…” A shadow of fear passed over Sander’s face, like the pulsing current of a winter stream momentarily darkening
the thin ice atop it, but quick as that it was gone again. “I haven’t got any secrets.”

“No? What about Sneek, you mad buffoon?” asked Wurfbain, still pinned to the seat beside Jolanda. “What about
that
?”

The color returned to Sander’s face, and how. He looked purple as Jolanda’s arms, and she wondered if his eyes would pop out like those of a sunbaked fish, so wide did they bulge. She didn’t understand what was happening—Sander should have punched in the count’s face for continuing to take a tone after being warned, but instead the larger man released Wurfbain and fell back, blocking the window with his wide shoulders and earning boos from the small crowd of townsfolk who had gathered beside the coach.

Then, just as quickly as it had struck, Sander’s terror palpably withdrew, leaving him bristling mad again. “Jan was there, that cunt. Helped me get away. He told you about it.”

“Ah, yes, he brought you your sword as you were fighting your way through the mob,” said the count, his voice never rising above a whisper. “But what about after? When you went into the canal? When you went under? And all those long weeks and months after? Whole seasons, Sander, gone—did you tell your beloved Jan about where you were that Christmas? That Shrovetide? That Easter? Do
you
even remember?”

“I told him.” Sander choked on the words, clearly trying to convince himself of something. “I told, I told about losing them months, about—”

“Belgium?” Wurfbain said lightly. It was an odd, ugly-sounding word that Jolanda didn’t recognize. Based on Sander’s appalled expression, it wasn’t the sort of word you’d want to recognize. “Did you tell him about your Belgian playmates, you nutty bastard?”

Sander’s face fell and his shoulders slumped. His eyes were brimming with tears. Strange as it was, this relaxed Jolanda, even as she wondered just what in heaven they were talking about, wondered at Sander letting somebody other than Jan call him mad to his face.

“Nobody gives a quick shit that you murdered a Frisian, and then murdered some more when they tried to hang you,” said Wurfbain, leaning toward Sander and patting the man’s trembling knee. “Sneek’s a long way behind us. I don’t bring that up, or the Belgian business, to threaten you. I simply mention them so that we understand each other,
Jan
. I know who you were, who you are, and rest assured, if you ruin what I’ve worked so hard to achieve with your… cowardice, then I will have you tortured to death. Slowly.” Perhaps as an afterthought, the count turned to Jolanda and smiled as he added, “And the dye-maker’s daughter. Slowly, Jan.”

Sander was silent. Jolanda was silent. The coach lurched forward a few dozen paces and stopped again.

“Or you can both be filthy, filthy rich until the day you die, old and happy,” Wurfbain said, looking back and forth between them. “Your choice!”

“He really say all that?” Still smashed against the door of the carriage from the weight of his fear, Sander looked over the count’s head, at Jolanda. “You hear him say that, ’bout…’bout Sneek, and afterward and all? He say that?”

Jolanda nodded, and Sander put his hand in his mouth, biting down and closing his eyes. Wurfbain swatted her arm lightly, winked at her. She flinched, a burst of hatred burning through her—she wasn’t sure what he had meant with his speechifying, but he had clearly intended to hurt Sander with his words, and succeeded wildly. To say fuck all of threatening to torture her if Sander ran off.

Eventually they began moving again, Wurfbain testing her on the differences between Leyden’s old Pieterskerk and the new Hooglandse Church until the latter came into view through Sander’s window, which he was no longer blocking, having finally slithered back down onto the bench. After that, Jolanda forgot to keep offering Sander reassuring glances as the coach came around the side and then the front of the mighty building. It was the biggest thing Jolanda had ever seen, so large it hurt her
eyes to look upon it—squinting at the spiny spires cresting the front of the church far, far overhead, she felt herself grow dizzy.

They slowed to a stop as a man and a woman draped in fur-trimmed, well, everything, ascended the stairs, the open doors of the church flanked by militiamen whose attire was nearly as fine as that of the noble couple entering the building. Sander leaned forward, sticking his head out the window and spoiling the view, but before Jolanda could tell him to move his fat head, he puked down the side of the coach.

“Jesus fucking Christ,” said Wurfbain, his constant smile straining so hard Jolanda wondered that he didn’t pull something. Sander retched again, and as he hung farther out the window, Jolanda saw that the couple on the stairs had turned and looked back at them with disgust—justifiable, she had to allow, and she sank back into her seat, wishing she could blend into the soft cushions and be left behind. Wurfbain put a white-gloved hand on Sander’s heaving shoulder and murmured, “There we are, as noble an appearance as any I’ve witnessed. Now, get the hell out there, Jan, before we slow things down any more.”

Jolanda closed her eyes, told herself it would be all right. In the precious blackness she heard Sander spit. Then the door of the coach creaked, and crockery shattered, startling her eyes open. Sander had knocked the bottle he had tucked into the seat cushions onto the ground, and as he stood blinking miserably beside the coach, Jolanda realized it had stopped raining and the sun was out, shining upon their entrance.

“Come then, m’lady,” Sander said, leering at her as Wurfbain surreptitiously wiped off the madman’s face with a handkerchief. The count resembled an embarrassed mother cleaning up her boy with a washrag in front of unamused company. “The cunt of Holland awaits!”

T
he sun might have finally showed its craven face, but outside the coach it was still damp as a used whore’s thighs. Or so Sander had heard; he’d never lain with a woman, bought or free, in all his life. His stupid, overlong calfhide noble shoes slipped halfway up the wet stairs of the church, but he regained his balance and advanced on the massive double doors. He offered the crowd of peasants fanned out in the square on the far side of the line of carriages a knowing nod. People were laughing. Lots of them.

Fuck ’em. He was Graaf Jan Tieselen, and he was going to fucking church on Easter.

Except now the ruse, the meeting of predominantly Cod nobles who would hate him for being a Hook even if they didn’t suspect his fraudulent nature, all of it was eclipsed by a much greater and more pressing concern:
Hobbe fucking Wurfbain
. It was only through the most steadfast concentration that Sander had kept thoughts of that aquatic Frisian nightmare from his mind over the last year, and now the count had dredged it all up, rubbing his nose in it. The ponce wasn’t just a ponce; he knew more than anyone, he knew about Sander’s dream about Belgians and—

But what if it wasn’t a dream? Shit, fuck, piss, if Hobbe knew about it, then it couldn’t just be a dream, could it? How would he know about it if that were all that had happened, a knock on the head when he went into the canal, a prolonged dream-fit or something—Saint Lizzy’s crack, had he really just pretended it hadn’t happened? That it wasn’t a big deal that he didn’t know where he’d been or what he’d done a year ago? Or for months on
either side of last Easter? Well, he knew that somewhere in there he’d been down in the world’s biggest cunting well with a pack of demons. No, worse, a pack of
Belgians
, whatever the shit a Belgian was, but that hardly made up for all the time he’d lost. He—

—Had entered the church without even noticing, the vaulted ceiling stretching high as heaven above him, rich people everywhere, staring and covering their smiles with kidskin gloves, Hobbe whispering something behind him as Sander strode forward up the aisle of the packed church. It was white, the church, white walls and white chapels and white pillars and white statues. Too white, it was, the sort of white that made filth stand out all the brighter.

Sander must have met Hobbe during those now-forgotten times and then told him all about his Belgian dream. Yes. Sander imagined the scene, bearing down on it, hammering the fantasy into a memory—it might not’ve even been Hobbe, it could’ve been any random asshole, the story eventually finding its way to the count. Saints knew, each and all of them in heaven, that the first thing Sander would do after having a dream like that would be to tell anyone who would listen, especially if he was out of his head from… whatever it was that made him go out of his head, and—