The Folly of the World (55 page)

“But only because you’d never felt that way ’bout a lass before and was all mixed up, aye?” Jolanda rolled her eyes.

“No,” said Jan, “though that does sound like something I’d have said before, doesn’t it? No, I was going to kill you because you were dangerous to me alive. You’ll see the wisdom in not leaving witnesses to my plotted deception, I think. Now, however, it’s changed, and you’re much more useful as a crony than a corpse. We were all quite worried about you, by the by, disappearing after your father’s arrest—so happy you’re safe. Laurent cautioned that even unwed you could complicate my claim, being a closer blood relation to the soon-to-be-departed Jan Tieselen, but I’m sure that you and I will be able to work something out. I hope Hobbe and the rest appreciate the humor in all this—I, the actual son of the actual graaf, having to assume the identity of a cousin twice-removed.”

“Laurent’s supposed to be our lawyer,” said Jolanda. “Why’s he helping you?”

“Plenty of reasons. I’ve known him a lot longer than you have, don’t forget, from before I even dreamed I’d have to resort to such
measures to become graaf—my father introduced us when you were still learning not to eat birdberries. Wurfbain wasn’t the only one who assumed treachery when you and Sander came back with the ring instead of me, and like Wurfbain, Laurent’s been only too happy to shift allegiances, now that I’ve miraculously returned and pledged fealty to both lawyer and count’s respective causes.”

“Meaning money,” Jolanda sneered. “Like the groots you nicked from my room.”

“Jo, I just want us to be friends again,” Jan said, and she might have laughed at the absurdity of it if he hadn’t looked so earnest. She’d forgotten how honest he could make himself appear. “I am… I was a monster. I was… like a windfall apple, shiny and appealing without, spoiled and mealy within. I exploited you, I exploited Sander, and for that I’m sorry.”

“Which is why you murdered all those people, those kids and our servants, and pinned it on Simon and Sander?” said Jolanda, disquieted to find herself actively enjoying this exchange. She had figured this cunt’s scheme out during the first hour of her long fortnight of sitting in a loft and thinking, thinking, thinking, but she mustn’t let herself get cocky.

“Did you put it together all on your own?” Jan sighed. “I really didn’t expect Cousin Simon to take the fall, nor could I predict Braem’s being murdered, baselessly, at the hands of our Sander, gentle lamb that
he
is. Certainly simplifies things, I’ll admit. Did you know Braem was trying to help you two when Sander murdered him? It’s rather a funny story.”

Jolanda couldn’t imagine that it was, but since Jan was showing his hand without being prompted, she didn’t interrupt. That was basic Karnöffel, right there.

“Braem always was the smarter one, to hear father speak of my cousins, which is odd—usually younger sons are sharper, because they have to be, but that certainly wasn’t the case with the Gruyere brothers. No matter. Braem suspected skullduggery from the first and, aided by that meddlesome Meyl bitch, he’d
spy on Hobbe whenever he came to town, hoping to prove the count had planted you. Hoping to find evidence of the truth, in other words. Cousin Braem never could prove it, but he did stumble on something quite a bit more alarming after Simon was arrested—me.

“We caught him spying, but since there were already quite a few corpses floating around Dordt, we tried to bring him into the fold rather than dispatching him outright. We all shared a common enemy, after all, in you and Sander, even if we had slightly different ideas about who should succeed you. We almost convinced him, or he played it well enough at least, but the…
particulars
of my resurrection, as well as certain particulars regarding the true nature of Count Hobbe Wurfbain, well, let’s just say he didn’t have the stomach for it. That he managed to give us the slip only for Sander to slay him like a dog is… well, it’s ridiculous, but, as I think I mentioned, rather perfect—now we don’t have to worry about either Gruyere, or, for that matter, Sander.”

“But you didn’t have to come after us at all,” said Jolanda, keeping to solid ground rather than the slipperier turf he was baiting her toward with all his
particulars
. “You’d just showed up and asked, we’d have given it all back to you, left Dordt and never come back. No, I think you liked killing our servants and those kids, setting us up, plotting with Wurfbain to do us in.”

“Well… yes,” said Jan, grinning at her. That dug in like leech teeth, that truth, and she felt any doubt over her plan melt away like frost weeping off the porridge pot on a winter’s morn. “Mind, Hobbe took more convincing than you might expect—he wasn’t happy to see me when I arrived in Leyden last summer. My not being dead complicated things—you can’t imagine how much it hurts, to hear your old friends and accomplices describe your being alive as a complication.”

“I think I might,” said Jolanda.

“Well, maybe you do,” Jan allowed. “But Hobbe of all people quickly realized what had happened, how I had returned, and
since the two of you had already caused him quite the headache, reverting to the original plan of my being in charge of—”

“What’s that mean, ‘him of all people’ knew why and how you come back?” Jolanda demanded, disappointed with herself for asking, furious with him for making her. They were falling back into their old pattern, her questioning, him enlightening. “Suppose you tell me,
of all people
, just what the shit is going on? You’re not dead, you’re not a ghost, you’re the same old mussel you always was, but Sander hacked you up in front of me. How did you… resurrect, like you said, from that?”

“That’s a bit of a secret,” Jan said, leaning forward in his chair and leering at her. “One that not even those who learn of it often care to remember, as evidenced by dear Sander, or Braem’s poor reaction to discovering it. It’s difficult to explain, but if you really want to know…”

“I do,” said Jolanda, not at all sure that she did, wondering what he meant about Sander…

“Very well. It’s all very Christian, but then we’re as Christian a land as you’ll find—the miracles of Lazarus and the Savior all rolled up with the Deluge of Noah. So I shall do unto you as was done unto me, and then you’ll know, simple as that—how does that sound?”

“Why don’t you just tell me?” she said, incensed with herself for letting him get under her hide the way he had. Terrible as the idea of Jan cheating death surely was, she was suddenly convinced this wasn’t Jan at all, this was someone else entirely. Someone, or aye, laugh it up,
something
else. Funny, she had found succor in the idea that this Jan was an impostor but an hour before, yet now the notion seemed infinitely more diabolical than his simply returning from the dead.

“Marry me, Jo, and never think of it again,” said Jan, and this time, bizarre though it was, he seemed to really and truly mean it. “Marry me and be safe. Your only other option is to go where I’ve gone, and, between you and me, I don’t think you’d like that.”

“You can still let us go,” she whispered, hating her cowardice. “You can. We both loved you, Jan, we both trusted you—and you can trust us.”

“I wish that I could,” said Jan, sounding as though he was trying to convince himself as much as her. She knew from experience what that sounded like. “Hobbe won’t hear of it, even if I thought it was wise. But I’ll tell you what, Jo—I think I will take you where I’ve been, and that way you can decide for yourself what it all means. Just like me, just like Sander.”

“Sander?” Jolanda wanted to bludgeon him into silence, wanted to do something, anything, that would shut him up.

“As I said, he doesn’t even remember,” said Jan. “I do, however, and so does Hobbe and our confederates. Or rather, Sander doesn’t remember much—he’s never mentioned Belgians to you? Nothing about eels?”

Belgians were, of course, Sander’s personal bugbear that he occasionally invoked, but it was the comparatively mundane mention of eels that set her teeth to aching. Sander never mentioned eels, never even had them served at his table, but that had always sat fine by Jolanda, after what she’d seen in the sunken house. The house where they had deposited Jan’s corpse…

“No? I asked you a question, Jo, don’t tell me you picked up Sander’s bad manners from association with the mad bastard?”

Jolanda decided, emphatically, that she didn’t want to know what Jan was implying, didn’t want to hear anymore. One thing she
had
acquired from spending so much time around Sander was his chronic nasal drippage, and producing something solid, she spit it in Jan’s face. He went quiet, but only, she suspected, to prevent it from getting in his mouth. “Shut it, you godless poot, just shut it.”

Using his sleeve to get the mess off his upper lip, Jan said, “You asked, I answered.”

“Let me ask you this, cunt—why are you doing this to us?” Jolanda was losing her temper again, knuckles itching for some sport. “We loved you! We loved you, and you made us do what
we did, and now you’re back and you said you were sorry, that you’re changed, but I don’t believe you! I don’t, ’cause you’re the same as old, gloating over your secrets, hinting at your wisdom! You ever love anyone in your life, you cruel bastard, or are people just a means for you?”

“No, I…” Jan shook his head and took a sip of his neglected wine. “I never meant to betray Sander. We would be living here together, he and I, if not for you.”

“And who got the ring, eh?” Jolanda saw it shining on his uninjured hand, wondered if he’d stolen it or simply asked Sander for its return. She couldn’t stand how smug he looked, refusing to even rise at being spit on. “Who near-killed herself diving for a piece of jewelry?”

“It was never even necessary,” said Jan, holding his splayed fingers up to admire the band, and that more than anything sealed it for her. Before he could say another word, she was on him, riding man and chair backward, but to her frustration he made no effort to defend himself, even when she broke his nose. Such a cunt. He damn sure came alive when she went for the ring, but by then it was too late for rebellion—she was atop him, her knee grinding into his throat, and only when he went limp and unclenched his fist did Jolanda remove her leg so he could breathe. Aye, killing him here and now would be sweet, but for all she knew, it would just get her hanged by the militia and then he’d come back again, yet another in an endless row of Jans, numerous as angels in a church window.

“You won’t mind I take it back, then,” Jolanda said as she removed the ring and got off him, wiping her split knuckles on his bloody, wine-stained shirt. A pendant had slid out from under his collar, the dull necklace hanging down behind his head like a cut noose. He just lay there, staring up at her crook-nosed and curiously sheepeyed, serene as a swimmer drying out on some warm shore. She righted the chair, then went to the kitchen just as the new servant rushed in to check on his master.

At least Jan hadn’t moved the beer and mugs, and she stood in the kitchen drinking two pints in quick succession before going back down the hall to the foyer. She paused by the coat pegs, considered what she saw there, and then removed two hanging cloaks—the sky blue cape Jan had given her and the short fur mantle Sander had made for Simon. She jammed them into her satchel, spit on the floor, and opened the door.

Out on the sun-sparkling cobbles of Voorstraat, Jolanda stood and considered the fate that had brought her here. Flexing her bloodied hand and admiring the gold ring resting in its palm, she smiled to herself and set off toward the harbor. No time for more questions meant no time for more answers, thank all the saints who love us.

Time to go mad.

S
ander was noble enough to have luxuries like a frypan for the smoky little fireplace and a barrel of wine in his cell, but obviously not so much of one as to be allowed to stay in his house until they hanged him. Or chopped off his head or something, if he was really unlucky. Which obviously he was.

Who was that buddy of Hertog Von Wasser’s the guard had told him about? Brilling? Belding? Beiling. Some knight or noble on the wrong side of things in the Hook and Cod squabbles, he’d been given a month or year or something to live at his home and get his affairs in order before they buried him alive, but then, he hadn’t murdered any servants. No, none of the real richboys would do anything that strong, but Jesus, being buried alive seemed about as bad an end as you could find, even if you went looking for such a thing.

Thing was, Sander couldn’t die. Ever since the militiamen dragged him out of the river and worked him over, he was having a right bastard of a time keeping things straight in the old brain-tankard, but that was a point he was sure of—he couldn’t die yet. He knew what was awaiting him, down there in the dark, and he wanted fuck-all to do with it—Belgium was hell, right, and he’d be damned before he went there.

Rather, before he went there
again
, permanent-like. Avoiding that end wasn’t as simple as they made it sound, neither, getting talked at by a priest; confession might not cut it, bad a life as Sander had led, and with nary an honest telling of his sins in all that time—no, what needed doing was to lead a good long life
yet, before he went back down there. No guarantee he could avoid it altogether, but that was all the more reason to put if off as long as possible.