The Folly of the World (57 page)

Shoot her and run, thought Poorter as he offered up the bow, die with honor, you sheep! “Be
very
careful, the metal bar on the bottom will fire the bolt as soon as you apply pressure, and it really doesn’t take much to—”

“Be very careful,
Lady Meyl
,” said the sinister dowager, taking the crossbow and turning it to face Poorter without even pausing to admire the filigree on the trigger plate. “Now, then, Master Primm, shall we talk of Jan Tieselen, Sander Himbrecht, Hobbe Wurfbain, and all your other friends?”

“I…” Poorter thought he might be sick, and didn’t trust himself to rise from the crouch he still held beside her chair. From this end his beautiful bow looked terrifying. “What… ah, what about them?”

“Poorter Primm, I said that I might abide a fool—
not
an idiot.” Lady Meyl narrowed her blue eyes at him. “This weapon is quite heavy, so I suggest that you expedite this by answering quickly and honestly, and not asking questions of your own, which is a loathsome habit. Do you understand?”

Poorter nodded, because you couldn’t provide any faster an answer than that. Everything might be fine, this might be totally
unrelated to the various frauds and impersonations that had been plotted under Poorter’s roof, this might have nothing to do with—

“Sander Himbrecht isn’t really a noble, is he?” said Lady Meyl, and Poorter gave up. He fell from his crouch onto his knees, awkwardly clasping his hands together before his breast as she drove the blade home. “You know it, I know it, Hobbe Wurfbain, Zoete Van Hauer, and Jan Tieselen all know it—he’s a fake.”

“It wasn’t my fault,” said Poorter. “They made me, they did, I never—”

“That was not the question I asked,” said Lady Meyl. “But while we’re on the subject, who
made
you? Lie but once and you’re a dead man, Primm—we know everything, we just wish to hear it from your lips.”

“Sander, Sander did, and that little bitch, and, and, and…” Poorter Primm hung his head. “And Count Wurfbain.”

“Exactly as we suspected,” said Lady Meyl, pushing the point of the crossbow directly into Poorter’s forehead, the brass stirrup on the end cool against his sweaty brow. “I can expect that you’ll put your signature to a full confession, one that names the perpetrators of this fraud, from architect to impostor? A confession that leaves no doubt as to the depth of this deception? Now, now, do not weep, Master Primm, do not weep. I mean it, do not
dare
shed a tear in my presence, or I shall stick you like the rat that you are. You don’t wish to wind up like your cohorts, do you?”

“Of course not,” said Poorter, trying to keep it together. “And what about… you said… you mentioned Jan?”

“Jan is a friend,” said Lady Meyl. “He shall be well looked after. You, Master Primm—”

—They were going to hang him, they were going to have him ripped limb from limb, they—

“Are going to be let off with a slap on your prodigious rump. You shall make minor financial restitution to the city, per
annum, in exchange for this cooperation, but otherwise life will go on for foolish, foolish Poorter Primm,” said Lady Meyl, at last lifting the crossbow away from his face. He looked up to see her nodding at one of her men. The thug removed a roll of vellum from beneath his cloak and spread it flat on Poorter’s table while a second removed an inkpot and quill from the folds of his. Poorter tried to stand, but his legs were still too weak. The third man, considerate fellow that he was, seized Poorter by the ample armpit and hoisted him upright.

At last Lady Meyl began properly examining the bow in her hands, and Poorter scanned the document held open before him. He had learned letters out of necessity arising from the sundry crossbow manuals he’d acquired over the years, but didn’t put the skill to use often enough to be particularly competent. When he’d finally picked over the document twice, he licked his lips, looked to where Lady Meyl sat, the grande dame again watching him with the bow leveled. This didn’t make a lick of sense, even he knew it read all wrong, and—

“Something amiss, Master Primm?” asked Lady Meyl.

“May I… may I ask a question?” said Poorter.

“So long as you’re quick about it,” said Lady Meyl.

“How exactly did you come to discover the plot? Not that ours were any match for your wits, my lady, it was always a question of time, not—”

“A servant recognized his name,” said Lady Meyl. “Sander Himbrecht is indeed of Dordt blood, it seems. He was born and came of age in the Groote Waard, but frequented our fair city often enough to gain a certain reputation. He, like his father before him, was a thief and a swindler, up until the day he became something much worse—a killer.”

That certainly sounded like Sander, so why was the confession saying that—

“He murdered his own father,” Lady Meyl continued. “He drowned him in a well. His neighbors saw, or saw enough, and
came to the Dordrecht militia for assistance when they were unable to catch this Himbrecht on their own. They never caught him, though my sources in the militia say they suspect he returned here from time to time. He’s something of a menace beyond our borders, as well—a sheriff from some remote Frisian village journeyed here seeking justice a few years ago. Apparently our Sander killed a man in their town, Snell or Snuck or something, and when they arrested him for the crime, he claimed to be a rather important member of the Dordrecht community, so they had better let him go.”

“Did they?” asked Poorter, not having heard this version of the story Jan had told him after Sander temporarily disappeared prior to the scheme really taking off.

“Of course not. They tried to hang him, but he escaped, murdering a priest in the process, and several of their militia. They searched for him, but when nothing came of it, the sheriff came here to report the incident and see if our militia might know where to find the knave. We could not help them… until now, that is. He’ll swing for them yet, and I daresay they’ll be sure to do a more thorough job of it the second time around.”

“I see,” said Poorter, because he got that part of the confession, that all made sense—sending Sander up to Sneek to be hanged seemed fine and good, even if Poorter suspected the people of Dordrecht would be angered to miss out on the public execution of their notorious child-killer. “It’s just… I don’t understand what I’m signing, my lady. Lady Meyl.”

“There’s no
shame
in being illiterate,” said Lady Meyl, but she sounded as if there decidedly was. “It says what everyone already knows—that Sander Himbrecht killed the children found in the meer, but was clever enough to pin the deed on Simon Gruyere. Yes?”

“Yes?” A very queer thought came to Poorter, but before he could follow it and see where it led him, Lady Meyl was talking again:

“Sander Himbrecht is in league with Count Hobbe Wurfbain—I cannot speculate as to which one found the other and proposed such an evil plot, as the fellow I had investigating the matter was recently assassinated in an alley by persons unknown. The important fact, as that ever-so-confusing confession makes abundantly clear, is that they worked together to murder orphan children, who were then dumped like refuse into the meer.”

“Gruesome,” said Poorter, which earned him a scowl from the lady with the crossbow. He decided to let her finish before supplying further commentary.

“Himbrecht and Wurfbain had the goal of framing someone for the murders but their target was not, as it happens, Simon Gruyere. They were actually hoping to accuse Graaf Jan Tieselen, but when the graaf and his daughter unexpectedly left the city to join Duke Philip’s army at Brouwershaven, the conspirators must have grown impatient. The corrupt militiamen in Wurfbain’s pocket thus accused the Gruyere boy, obviously hoping to coerce him into implicating Graaf Tieselen. I visited this Simon in his cell, and he swore to his innocence, as well as that of Jan Tieselen.”

Poorter couldn’t have interrupted even if he wanted to, his throat tightening, his innards knotting. Lady Meyl thought…

“Sander Himbrecht then went to the Tieselen house on Voorstraat to call on the graaf and his daughter, who were
most
upset at his arrival. A Tieselen servant named Lansloet, whose acquaintance my own dogsbody had made while we were all returning from Brouwershaven, knew the villain at once—this Lansloet was a sheephead from birth, and beyond merely recalling the name of a wanted man, thought he recognized Himbrecht’s face from its regular appearance in the stocks. Seeing the graaf’s obvious distress at Himbrecht’s presence but knowing, as we all do, that Graaf Tieselen can be too proud to ask for help, this brave servant came straight to me, wanting the graaf’s friends to know a murderer was loose in his master’s house. Good that the servant did not take this information to the militia, but then he is
local, and so must know how cheaply our sworn protectors can be bought.”

Poorter was accustomed to being the smartest man in the room, but since he was usually lording his wits over a cat, it wasn’t always the most rewarding experience. To his increasing delight, Lady Meyl continued.

“I chose to send the servant home and wait until the morning to act on this information, to catastrophic result: all in one night Wurfbain, Himbrecht, Zoete, and their confederates gained access to the Tieselen house, murdered that loyal servant Lansloet,
and
the cook, kidnapped the Lady Jolanda, who has been missing ever since, and finally assassinated Simon Gruyere in his cell, making it appear to be a suicide and forging a confession that implicated Jan Tieselen. I immediately presumed they were holding Lady Jolanda ransom to exact a similarly fraudulent confession from her incarcerated father, whom I have not been permitted to visit despite my efforts, and lo, this very morning their lawyer Laurent announces that a new document has come to light! Can you guess what it says?”

Poorter had his suspicions, but she still had his bow, and so he stayed mum.

“This document, signed and sealed by Jan Tieselen himself, confirms the existence of a heretofore-unmentioned cousin named Sander Himbrecht. It is worth noting that this brazen, lowborn impostor installed himself in the Tieselen house a week ago, not even waiting for this ridiculous letter to be forced from the true graaf’s hand. It further goes on to state that the Lady Jolanda Tieselen is to
marry
this Cousin Sander, or else forfeit any claim to her father’s fortune. I have the worst suspicion that the poor girl will turn up any day now.”

Lady Meyl seemed about spent, smacking her thin lips as she concluded. This all made a great deal more sense now, Poorter thought as he gave the confession a final skim and picked up the quill. “Expertly deduced, Lady Meyl. And so by putting feather
to confession I give justice wings, so to speak, and you will in turn arrest the, er, fraudulent parties?”

“Do you take
me
for a fool, sir, to wait on your dithering to act?” Lady Meyl elegantly rose from the chair, accidentally firing the crossbow in the process. The bolt flew into the ceiling and hung there, quivering, as Poorter completed his belated crouch. As if it had been intentional, she dropped the spent bow on the empty chair and began walking to the door.

“I had my son and his men arrest Sander Himbrecht hours ago, and by now the fraud is on his way to Sneek in chains. He is a born liar, to hear Willem tell it, and my son knows a tale when he hears one. He gets that from me. I should like to execute the scoundrel here, rather than giving the Frisians the satisfaction, but it simplifies matters if the third new graaf on Voorstraat in as many years simply vanishes. Imagine the ignominy of a public unmasking and execution—I should be mortified, as should any decent citizen of Dordrecht, to admit that even for a fortnight a common cutthroat was able to pass himself off as noble.”

“Brilliant,” said Poorter, and meant it. Now there was no chance of Jan coming after Poorter for throwing him and Count Wurfbain under the cart with this confession. “And the rest?”

Lady Meyl frowned. “Wurfbain, Laurent, and Zoete must have caught wind of my movements, for all three are missing. If they’re hiding on the island, we’ll find them, even if we have to search every house, and if they’ve fled, well, then we’ll just have to come up with another means of catching them. In any event, each and every one of them is finished in Dordrecht once you sign that.”

“Ah, yes, of course,” said Poorter, dipping the quill, shaking it off, and then scrawling a “PP” on the bottom of the vellum. “But what of, ah, the Tieselens? I trust you’ve freed Jan, and located his daughter?”

“Not yet,” said Lady Meyl, nodding at one of her silent men, who leaned over Poorter’s shoulder and blew on the ink. “But
we’ve had several informants report seeing the Lady Jolanda flee from the house on Voorstraat not an hour before we arrested Sander Himbrecht—he must have been keeping her captive in her own home, only to have her break away. She’s a wise child, and I anticipate that once she calms down, she’ll head straight to my estate for asylum. Once she does, I shall take her to release her father—I want her to be the one to let him out.”

“But will the people stand for it?” asked Poorter. “I mean, the graaf is accused of killing children, and his own servants—what will people say if he’s released without so much as a mutilated face or a flogging? I thought you meant to keep all the Wurfbain and Sander business quiet, so as to spare yourself embarrassment, and—”

“Spare us
all
the embarrassment of your continued prattling,” said Lady Meyl. “Tieselen is as innocent as he is foolish, which is to say absolutely—I am an excellent assayer of character, and that man is no more a killer than Sander Himbrecht is a nobleman. This beleaguered city has suffered enough tribulations without another honest son being cut down by forces beyond his control—it is time, at last, for the flood to recede and the sun to return.” Something about Poorter’s expression must have prompted her, for she added, “And even if he was guilty as the devil, so what? It’s only a couple of servants, which were his, and a few homeless brats—the
people
of this fair city you’re so concerned about upsetting kill just as many of those beggar-orphans through neglect each winter. We’ll simply hang those militiamen who were in Wurfbain’s employ and announce that Graaf Tieselen’s confession was a forgery—I think Jan shall be only too happy to agree with such a course, don’t you?”