The Folly of the World (36 page)

But the truth was, Sander was having a hard time getting excited about the prospect. What the hell was wrong with him these days, where brawling a French ponce didn’t fill his cup?

“Men have been executed for talking of the countess in such a fashion,” Jo finally said, glancing at Sander—was she signaling that she wanted to go home, or that she wanted Sander to stick up for the exiled liege they’d never laid eyes on?

Simon refilled his glass and said, “Only because the dirty bitch had them killed for daring to speak the truth. She’s a tyrant. I swear that even in the unlikely event of an English invasion, this defender of Dordrecht will be the first to lay down his life to ensure the ignoble Jacoba never again sets foot on our lands.”

“We would appreciate the sacrifice, Simon,” Jo said coldly.

“Even a dead man’s hand has more use than the all of a living coward,” said Gilles, winking at Jo over his mug. Taking a sip,
the Frenchman made a face and said, “This is the worst wine I have ever tasted, and I have been to Champagne.”

“That’s where we get it from,” said Sander. He should be dueling this cunt over such a remark, but prideless for a pfennig, prideless for a groot. Or something. Besides, he quite liked that line about dead men and cowards, seemed like you could start a really good fight, saying that to somebody. Didn’t make a lot of sense, though: “What use is a dead man’s hand?”

“Pardon? Ah, a dead man’s hand is—no, not just a dead man. A dead man who…” Gilles furrowed his brow and silently moved his lips. Then he brightened a bit, and holding a fist over his head, jerked it in the air and stuck his tongue out. A lot of folk might’ve been flummoxed by the display, but not Sander.

“Hanged, yeah? Hanged man?”

“Yes, a hanged man’s hand is… special. For a witch, yes? Such a hand is called…
gloire
? You have gloire here in Holland, yes?”

“Glory, yeah, glory is glory,” said Sander, now really feeling the eels of anxiety nipping at his nerves—first there was talk of hanged men, and now his old sword came to mind, waiting for him in that tree in the meer… Wait, was that an insult about not having glory in Holland? Probably.

“A witch will take a hanged man’s hand, yes? Chop chop.” Gilles placed his own on the table and mimicked hacking it with his mug, which led to wine splashing all over his glove. The stuff would leave a stain, Sander knew from experience. The Frenchman removed his soiled glove and held it up, then crushed it in his fist as he continued. “Taking the hand away, the witch, she mashes it up. Like a
charcutier
turning sausage, yes? Taking the fat. Then she uses the fat, the fat and… everything, to make a
chandelle
.”

“A candle? Why would anyone do such a thing?” Simon looked a little peaked, probably thinking of a different missing body part on a different sort of dead person.

“Candle is—Merde, apologies!” In shaking his glove back out,
Gilles had spattered droplets of wine on the faces of everyone at the table. Sander licked a sticky pearl from his lips. “This candle is Hand of Glory. You have Hand of Glory in Holland, yes?”

“No,” said Sander. If they did, he sure as hell for the wicked would have heard of it before. The thought of such a thing made his teeth hurt, he couldn’t say why. “What’s the candle for, spells and evil rites and all?”

Gilles shrugged, slipping his pale hand back into the glove. “Different things. You light the candle in the house, and all of the… not-sleepers, those people in the house will go to sleep. Or you hold the candle, and people will not see you, even if you stand before them. Different…
stories
, yes, different stories, but the same is hanged man’s hand for candle, candle for sneaking inside and outside of the house. Good for the thief, maybe. Hence, even a dead man’s hand has more solid use than the all of a living coward.”

“Witchcraft is not, nor shall it ever be, more useful than a God-fearing man, coward or not,” said Simon, making the sign of the cross. He seemed to have swung back around to being disgusted by Gilles. Probably from the realization that he’d just spent some time insulting the politics of his only wealthy friends in the service of buttering up a foreigner whom he’d probably never see again.

“Maybe,” said Gilles. “Dead man’s hand being better than the whole of a coward is only a… saying? Something that is said?”

“I think you have
said
quite enough.
Monsieur.
” Simon spit the last word like a grapeseed. “Unless—”

“
Simon
,” Jo said in exasperation. “You’ve already annoyed half the table, and insulting the baron won’t take back all the nasty things you’ve said, so just—”

“Unless you care to have those blasphemous lips shut for you,” Simon concluded, crossing his arms across his chest.

“Blasphemous?” The Frenchman seemed more bemused than insulted by Simon’s challenge, thank all the saints who listen.
“What is blasphemous? Do you not tell tales here in Holland? Did you not disparage the Countess Jacoba for punishing those who merely speak their minds?”

“Speak their minds?! Why, I—”

“
Simon
,” Sander said, having had more than enough of the punk’s flip-flopping for one night. “Shut it. Have a word outside with me, Guy.”

“Gilles,” said he, raising an eyebrow. “But of course, Graaf.”

“Jan,” said Sander, leading the Frenchman to the door of the tavern. The name burned acrid as ever on the tongue, but you got used to it, like wine. The White Horse was right full, but it was cold enough that there wasn’t a lot of overflow on the street—people who couldn’t cram inside simply went somewhere else. Out on Kuipershaven there wasn’t much wind, but it was still snowing. Sander tried to get excited about what was coming next, but simply felt cold.

“What is it, Jan?” asked Gilles, snowflakes falling onto the frozen wave of his hair and sticking there like freshly ground salt caught in the crust of a pudding.

“It’s like this, you frilly fucking ponce,” said Sander, the words suddenly warming him in a way no fire had down the many long winter nights in the Tieselen house, reviving his strength like no tea nor philter ever could. Gilles was staring at him, his eyes dark as his hair, dark as all the hidden devils of the world, and Sander went on, happier than he could remember feeling. “I’m going to take you into an alley and you’re going to suck me to the root.
Or
, and you have a choice here,
or
I’m going to beat the ever-loving shit out of you, and
then
you’re going to suck me to the root. Your choice, you French pansy, your choice.”

Gilles’s lips pulled back so slowly it was goddamn sinister. Sander half-expected them to just keep receding forever, all the way to the man’s ears, revealing… he didn’t know what. Eel’s teeth, maybe, or a dog’s. Finally, the Frenchman said, “Where is this alley, Graaf?”

“Good answer,” said Sander, feeling his heat rise instead of
diminish at this unexpected but very welcome response. Come to it, he wouldn’t have exactly been at his best in a scrap, getting over a fever and—

—Gilles came at him like Sander didn’t have time to think of what, something fucking fast and mean, and then both men were on the ground. The cobbles were frosted, and cracked Sander’s skull something fierce, even though he’d angled his neck during the fall to prevent just that. Gilles’s fists were pummeling Sander’s innocent guts into porridge, left and right, left and right. He was just fortunate the man hadn’t been of a mind to stick him with a dagger or he’d already be dead, or close enough.

But what if Gilles did have a knife, what if Sander’s belly was just too stupid to feel it? That moment of terror was what truly brought Sander back to life, the old Sander, the true Sander. He could feel the Frenchman’s muscular thigh grinding between his legs, through his ornamental codpouch, could see Gilles’s snarling face above him, sheer delight painted across the knight’s face. Nice, thought Sander,
very
nice, and cock and man shot upright in the same burst of excitement.

Sander would have bit Gilles’s face if he hadn’t have been so pretty, but in his time as graaf he’d come to appreciate beautiful things for more than the pleasure their destruction brought. So, instead, he bit the bastard’s shoulder, gagging on velvet cape as he wrenched a hand loose from under the Frenchy and punched the fucker in the throat. They were rolling then, over and over, the frozen street clobbering one side and fists clobbering the other, and Sander laughed a mad, desperate laugh as Gilles hissed a stream of furious French at him. They sounded good, those incomprehensible words coming out of Gilles’s bloody mouth, and Sander kept trying to kiss his opponent. This only incensed the man more, which in turn only got Sander to burn the hotter.

Best night he’d had in ages, and it was only getting better—ten pfennigs said he sweet-talked the Frenchy into going home with him, once the brawl was resolved. Good night, indeed.

C
hristmas and the Festival of Fools took too long in coming and then quickly fled, and since Zoete had quit the city to stay with Wurfbain somewhere abroad, Jolanda was not invited to a single feast that season. She was accustomed to being snubbed by the local nobles, of course; even Lady Meyl Von Wasser, who had seemed so friendly when they’d met at the Easter service in Leyden, expertly avoided eye contact during worship at Dordrecht’s Saint Nicolaas Church. Hooks weren’t welcome in the noble houses of the Cod-ruled city, Jolanda got that, but she had hoped for a pity-invitation over Yuletide, even if it came from a guildsman’s wife or a merchant’s widow instead of a proper lady.

She wished she possessed Lijsbet’s easygoing demeanor that earned the maid friends wherever she went regardless of circumstance, but since she didn’t, she was glad she possessed Lijsbet herself—they went to the baths twice a week and skating nearly every morning and spent the afternoons telling stories and playing cards and flirting with lads at the cider and chestnut stalls set up in Grote Markt Square. Just the once, Jolanda gave Lijsbet a sword lesson in the courtyard, but aye, just the once—Lijsbet was a comically bad pupil.

Then war came and ruined everything, as Jolanda supposed wars were prone to do. The local Cod wives Jolanda occasionally encountered at the markets were snootier than ever before to her, and Wurfbain came to visit more frequently than usual, updating Sander and Jolanda on political gossip. He also lectured them ad nauseam on the importance of avoiding any public conflict with
even the lowliest Cod in Dordrecht, for the hated rivals were seeking excuses to ruin the Tieselens and any other Hooks they could finger. The count knew far more than he let on, as usual, but Jolanda gathered that Countess Jacoba had indeed wooed a powerful Englishman to her cause and that all of Britain was poised to crash down upon Holland, restoring the countess to her rightful place. When that happened, the whole world would turn upside down, and the Tieselens, as well as Wurfbain, Lady Zoete, and any other secret Hooks, would be the ones on top.

One afternoon in mid-January, they received word from a footman that Wurfbain had again returned to Dordrecht, and while Lijsbet combed Jolanda’s hair in her bedchambers, the women speculated on what news he might share at supper.

“I have a pfennig that says nothing’s changed from last time,” said Lijsbet, working the boxwood comb with a practiced arm. In the time since she had become a lady, Jolanda’s hair had grown well past her shoulders. It looked much better than she had expected it would, falling around her face in a surprisingly handsome fashion, as even Sander had remarked. Yet she still sometimes longed to cut it all off, to not have Lijsbet run her brutal comb through it ever again, as she did now while doing a passable Wurfbain: “
I bring the exciting news that Jacoba is still in London mustering her forces. Now, please pass your best wine over here, and some of that lamprey, too.
”

“Wurfbain’s not Simon,” said Jolanda, and then in unison, they both added, “unfortunately!”

Ever since the night when Sander had dueled that disquieting French baron in the street and then, to Jolanda’s mortification, accompanied the Frenchman back to his lodgings, a transformation had come over Simon. He was every bit as flirtatious and painfully obvious as ever, but a certain seriousness had replaced his formerly chronic frivolity. He had also taken to church in a way he never had before, and seemed actively concerned with the state of the poor children of Dordt—what charity the
orphans of the flood had received immediately after the catastrophe was long since used up, and while most people seemed content to pretend the young beggars didn’t exist, Simon was constantly talking of the need to protect the wretches from the ravages of weather, starvation, and the obvious perils of living on the street. Considering how rough affairs were for nobles left landless and destitute by the flood, he would point out, imagine the state of their serfs, especially the young ones who had survived flood and famine only to be left adrift on the cruel streets of Dordrecht.

Mind, he was still a mooch and a cad, forever emerging from the crowd to join Jolanda and Lijsbet just after they’d purchased mulled cider or candied almonds from a stall, rather than before they’d laid down their coin, but there was something almost charming about this flagrant behavior. Combine his looks with Wurfbain’s politics and fortunes and you’d have the perfect suitor, Lijsbet has said more than once, but then the maid took her Hookishness much more seriously than Jolanda.