As Above, So Below Page 16

  “I poorly understand you,” said Father Michel, his face grown cold. “Do you mock me, Lord de Hoorne?”

  Bruegel eyed the swollen, aggressive cast of the monk’s upper lip. “I have it! Your besetting sin is Anger, no?” The bagpipers hit a particularly high squeal just then, and the dog Waf pushed out from under the table, raised his head, and howled. Old Gilbert Hooft winced and got to his feet to drag his dog outside. At the same time a hubbub broke out near the barnyard door. Franckert was showing off his strength by holding a shrieking, laughing peasant woman high up over his head. “I better go see about my tenant,” said Bruegel to the monk. “But am I right about you?”

  “You are,” said the monk, recovering his good humor. “I have a terrible temper. I was so angry when those soldiers hanged those three people this week that I very nearly got myself arrested. The abbot had me say three hundred Hail Marys to calm down. If only the Inquisitor and the Rode Rockx had let me pray with that man and those two women. I’m sure I could have brought them back into the Church. I knew them well. They called themselves Anabaptists only because they were hungry and in despair. The Spaniards and their Rode Rockx kill us as heedlessly as a butcher’s boy swats flies. One fine day a fly will bite them back.” As he said this, Father Michel’s upper lip began sticking out again.

  There was a crash; Franckert had slipped and fallen. Bruegel got up and went to see. Franckert was flat on his back with his head beneath the skirts of the dark-haired woman who’d landed on top of him. She seemed no worse for the experience, though she took her time getting to her feet. Hans rose up beside her, his codpiece noticeably distended. He beat his dog-fur hat against his buttocks, cocked it rakishly on his head, and asked the woman, “Shall we dance now, Veronicka? Oh, and let me introduce my landlord to you, the great Lord Peter de Hoorne.” Franckert turned his big head to his other side, where another woman stood smiling. “Will you dance with Lord Peter, dear Betje? The four of us can do some special dance steps from the village of Grote Brueghel.”

  Nothing loath, Bruegel accompanied Franckert into the barnyard to jig about with blond Betje and the dark Veronicka. More and more peasants showed up, until there must have been a hundred guests in all. Most stayed out in the barnyard, for the Wagemaekers made sure that never more than twenty or so entered the barn, lest the Rode Rockx arrive and accuse them of hosting a seditious cabal.

  Bruegel was happy out in the open air. Betje soon left him for another partner, and he sat on an empty barrel to one side, peacefully watching the dancers. He had no wish to get entangled with another woman today. Nobody paid him much mind, though the dog Waf stayed at his side. Waf seemed to have taken a liking to him.

  Bruegel noticed Joop’s hoop lying beside the barrel, and thought to take out his pen and folded-up papers to make a quick sketch from memory of how Joop had looked coming across the barnyard. There was a nice vacant spot still free in the foreground of Children’s Games; he could paint Joop and the hoop in there tomorrow. Once he’d finished his memory sketch, he turned his attention to the crowd around him, drawing the faces and costumes of some of the people who weren’t in wild motion, and making written notes about the colors of their clothes.

  Two of the most noticeable figures were a man and a woman just arriving, the man running ahead and dragging the woman by the arm, the two of them hastening lest they miss a single minute of this rare afternoon of fun. The man had a hard, humorless face, a face like a root or a gnarled piece of wood. The woman in her starched white headgear resembled nothing so much as a plump-cheeked goose. How desperately they wanted some pleasure. The man kicked up his back leg and the woman followed his lead, her cheeks slightly wobbling. The squealing rhythms of the bagpipe whirled them around, but still their faces showed no joy. It crossed Bruegel’s mind that his constant labor on his artwork was a bit like this. But what else was there to do?

  Suddenly the beer supply had run out. Franckert howled in comic dismay, then enlisted Joop to take him in a wagon to the village inn to fetch another keg. Before leaving, Franckert gave out that it was “the Lord de Hoorne” who’d provided the money for the extra beer. The peasants gave Bruegel a cheer. Veronicka sashayed over to watch him draw. She was a handsome woman with full lips and sun-browned skin, well past girlhood.

  “You’re very talented, Lord de Hoorne,” she said. “If you had to work for a living, perhaps you’d be an artist.”

  “It’s the noblest trade,” said Bruegel, curious to see what she’d make of this remark.

  “Tell me about your tenant Hans,” asked Veronicka. Evidently she had no interest in discussing art. “Is he really married? And how much land does he farm? His hands feel too soft to be a farmer’s.”

  “Hans is indeed a bachelor,” said Bruegel. “As for his hands, well, he’s so prosperous that he hires men to do his hard labor.”

  “Can you draw a picture of his house for me?”

  “Sorry, I’m busy drawing something else. That frog-faced man asleep against the wall. I like his clothes.”

  “Draw that old sot? Who cares about him. Excuse me for a minute.”

  Veronicka disappeared around the corner of the barn. After a minute, Bruegel gave in to lust and peeked after her. She was squatting on a patch of straw. Catching Bruegel looking at her, she flipped her skirt towards him, revealing herself. He withdrew to his perch on the barrel. And then Veronicka returned.

  “That’s a handsome sword that you have, Lord de Hoorne.” She reached out to finger the hilt.

  “Call me Peter.” He looked down at the sword. “See, there’s enamel on the hilt and a unicorn etched onto the scabbard. A very fine piece of work. Would you like to see the blade? It has gold chasing upon it.”

  “Oh, better not unsheathe it here. You might frighten someone. Where is Grote Brueghel, Peter?”

  “A bit north of here, and to the east. A long day’s ride.”

  “Do you think you and Hans will sleep here tonight?”

  Bruegel looked up at Veronicka. Her cheeks were flushed beneath their tan. Was it him or Franckert that she was after? “What about you?” he asked. “Are you married?”

  “Yes, but my husband wouldn’t come to the party, the fool.” For “fool,” she used the Flemish word zot. “He stayed out in the fields to get the last of our grain in. He thinks it might rain. But I wouldn’t miss this wedding. Tilde’s like a little sister to me. And I love to dance. Oh, here come Hans and Joop with the beer. Would you like a pot of it, Peter?”

  The thought of Veronicka putting the blue cloak over her zot of a husband rather spoiled the lustful thoughts he’d been starting to have of her. “Yes, thank you,” he said evenly. “I’ll have one. But there’s no hurry. Don’t worry about me until the first rush settles down.” Bruegel watched her swaying her hips across the barnyard. What was Anja doing right now?

  The afternoon slipped into evening, and then the bride and groom emerged from the barn to ride off together, the two of them mounted upon the groom’s powerful horse. They weren’t going far; the groom’s cottage was in the woods beyond the village. Father Michel said a final blessing over them, and Gilbert Hooft cheered himself hoarse to see his son set out on his new life.

  The bagpipers declared their work done and sat down to eat and drink for quite a long time. And then they, too, went on their way. A core of some forty guests and family remained, working to finish off the lees of the beer and the last scrapings of porridge.

  Bruegel was ready to go home, but Veronicka was enjoying Franckert’s lusty suit too much to let the big man loose. She kept luring him forward and then pushing him away, alternating her kisses and her protestations. She put Bruegel in mind of a goosegirl using a stick and a piece of bread to herd a hissing gander.

  Night fell, a moonless night with low-hanging fog. The fog thickened into a steady fine drizzle, and the full company withdrew into the barn. Mevrouw Wagemaeker lit some candles, giving strict injunctions that the candles stay in the middle of the table and that nobo
dy smoke. The barn was stuffed with hay and straw. It made Bruegel uneasy to see the candles in the barn.

  Bruegel found himself seated between Gilbert Hooft and Father Michel, and again Waf placed his head in Bruegel’s lap. Would this day never end? He’d eaten and drunk and sketched as much as he cared to, but Franckert and Veronicka were hidden somewhere in the shadows behind the piles of straw. Perhaps the matter between them was coming to a head.

  “I remember my own wedding feast,” Hooft told Bruegel, his grating voice quieter than before. “More than half of the people who were at that table are dead now, these twenty-two years gone. My wife too, God bless her memory. It was good of Tilde and my son to give us a fresh wedding. My wife would have—” Hooft broke off, ran his hands across his face, and resumed talking. “I’ll tell you something, Peter. When I was young I thought there was only one life story: mine. I felt like a single arrow shooting up into the sky. But life’s not solitary, it’s something that everyone does. Always have done, and always will. It’s like a forest with the old trees falling and the saplings coming up.”

  “No, no, no, it’s like a wheel,” interrupted Father Michel. His voice was slurred, but his tone was sharp. The beer seemed to have put him into a choleric humor. “The year is a wheel and so is a man’s life. I’ve worked it out in detail. I have a sharp mind for figures, you know, much keener than you realize. Suppose that a man or a woman’s allotted span is seventy-two years, which is twelve times six. This means that your life is like a year of twelve months, and each of these great months lasts six years.”

  “In what month does an infant begin?” asked Bruegel.

  “In March, of course,” rapped out the monk. “With the first shoots of spring. A man’s midlife is his September and death comes in his February. I’m twenty-two, so I’m in the midst of my June. It’s simple. How old are you, de Hoorne?”

  “I’m thirty-three,” said Bruegel. “So where does that place me in your cosmic year? September?”

  “No, no, you’re August fifteenth,” shot back the quarrelsome monk. The beer seemed not to have affected his calculating abilities.

  “But what if Peter’s not going to live to seventy-two?” demanded Gilbert Hooft in a challenging tone. “What if, God forbid, he should be fated to die at, oh, let’s say at my age. At the age of forty-two. What happens to your little wheel-year then, eh, Father?”

  “Are you trifling with me?” said Father Michel, his eyes glinting pugnaciously. “You don’t know what kind of prodigy you’re dealing with!” He paused for a second, his lips moving. “Thirty-three out of forty-two years gone, would put de Hoorne in mid-December. With only January and February to come.”

  “Then I better practice my ice-skating, because I’ve still got a long distance to go,” said Bruegel. He’d had enough of this gloomy conversation and in any case numbers bored him. “Excuse me now, but I want to find my tenant.”

  He got up and walked across the room to peer into the shadows of the barn. Waf followed him, curious to see what was up. “I’m ready to leave, Hans!” hollered Bruegel.

  There was an answering shout, but not from Hans. The shout was in French, and it came from outside. There was a sound of men dismounting from horses, and then two Rode Rockx appeared in the barn-door, both of them armed with swords. Sensing the threat from them, Waf began violently barking.

  “Beaucoup de paysans,” said one of them, a tall, gray-haired captain with a dissipated air. He wore a knee-length gray dress-coat over his red jersey. His face was stiff and resentful, the face of a cruel drunkard. His reddened eyes were preternaturally alert.

  “Many, many peasant in one room,” said his companion in heavily accented Flemish. This mustached Rode Rockx sergeant wore a stained brown leather jerkin atop his red blouse, and he had sagging leather breeches with red socks. His dark, rain-soaked cap was pulled so far down onto his forehead as to nearly cover his eyes. He looked oddly familiar; the sight of him filled Bruegel with foreboding. He tilted back his head to see out from under his cap—and now his gaze fell upon Bruegel, fixing him with his squinting eyes. “Many peasant and one gentleman,” he said.

  Bruegel suddenly realized where he’d seen the sergeant before: he’d been one of the three who’d attacked him, Ortelius, and Plantin after the Carnival. But the sergeant showed no sign of recognizing him. He didn’t look to be the type who remembered anything for more than two or three days. Or perhaps he was nearsighted. Even so, it was a very serious thing to have this evil man here as a last uninvited guest at the wedding.

  The mustached sergeant picked up a candle and held the flame high, using his free hand to make counting gestures in the air. “Thirty peasant,” he said after a bit. And now he pointed at Bruegel. “Perhaps zis one tells zem to make a revolution. Zey make cabal by ze light of candle.” His tone was mocking. Politics weren’t really on his mind. “Quiet, if you please, your dog, monsieur, or I will kill him.”

  Gilbert Hooft came quickly to Bruegel’s right side and leaned over to hold Waf by the collar, trying to shush him.

  “Demande qu’ils nous donnent a boire,” said the captain.

  “Ze Capitaine say you must give us two bottle of jenever,” said the evil sergeant, lurching forward to hold the candle close to Bruegel’s face. “Good Flemish gin, n’est-ce pas? And he forget to say that we would also like to have some peasant maiden to fuck.” Bruegel made himself very still within.

  “I can get the jenever for you,” called Wagemaeker’s wife, her voice shrill with fear. “One bottle is all we have. But it’s a big one. Wait. I come directly.” She hurried off to the house.

  “Ze bride, I hope she is still here?” said the sergeant with a leer. “We can teach her ze French art of love. Mon Capitaine, he has been to Paris.”

  There was a sudden twitch at Bruegel’s left side, and a slithering of metal. It was Father Michel, his face swollen with unreasoning rage. He’d snatched Bruegel’s sword from its scabbard.

  “Don’t!” cried Bruegel. The image of the three hanged Anabaptists flashed before his eyes.

  “Leave us in peace, you swine!” roared the monk, twisting away from him and stepping towards the Rode Rockx with sword held high.

  “Stop it, you zot,” cried old Gilbert Hooft, throwing his arms around Father Michel’s waist. “You’ll bring punishment upon us all!” The two men struggled, turning this way and that, with Waf snapping at the monk’s legs. With Hooft upon Father Michel’s back, there was no longer much chance of him harming the soldiers, which was all to the good. For even if both soldiers could have been killed, their deaths would have drawn more hornets from the same nest.

  As Bruegel was the one garbed as a gentleman, it was his place to speak. “Forgive the Father,” he called to the sergeant. “The man is intoxicated and half-mad. Please just go upon your way. Mevrouw will have the gin for you outside.”

  The sergeant spat in Bruegel’s direction, then tossed the flaming candle onto the top of the great wall of straw that still had the bride’s paper crown hung upon it. Almost instantly there came the terrible crackle of flame. Meanwhile the tall old captain lunged forwards and stabbed at the two struggling men, impaling Hooft in the back. The crowd moaned. Hooft dropped to the ground, mortally wounded.

  Freed of Hooft’s restraint and maddened by seeing the old man injured, Father Michel charged at the two Rode Rockx, making great sweeping slashes with his sword, the blade glinting orange and yellow from the quickly spreading flames. The battle-hardened veterans dodged him easily. And then the mustached sergeant caught the monk by the wrist of his sword hand and slit his throat with a single practiced motion. He killed the monk as easily as a butcher slaughtering a pig.

  Face lit by the flickering flames, the evil sergeant looked up from his kill, his complexion gone quite red with blood-lust. Bruegel took a step backwards. He was next. The wall of straw had become a solid mass of flame. The guests were screaming and pushing their way out the door. Just as the sergeant was about to set upon B
ruegel, the captain seized him by the shoulder and pulled him towards the exit as well.

  The two Rode Rockx reached the door just as Mevrouw Wagemaeker appeared with the jug of gin. Whooping with exultation, the Rode Rockx seized the bottle and swaggered across the barnyard, guzzling.

  For another moment Bruegel hung back in the barn, looking down at the bodies of Hooft and the monk. The monk’s throat gaped like a demon’s lipless mouth. His dead face wore an expression of extreme surprise. The whole blood of his body was puddled on the ground. How quickly a living man could be emptied. Numbly Bruegel took the sword from the monk’s limp hand and returned it to his scabbard. If only he’d left the sword at home. The flames were raging out of control; the beams overhead were creaking. Meanwhile Waf nosed at Hooft’s face, whimpering. Perhaps Waf’s master was still alive. Perhaps Bruegel could save him.

  “Help me get him outside,” Bruegel called to young Joop Wagemaeker, who’d appeared at his side.

  “All right, but let’s hurry, Lord de Hoorne,” said Joop. “The roof’s going to collapse. And then you should run away. The Rode Rockx are talking about arresting you. To justify what they’ve done.”

  Bruegel and Joop got hold of Hooft’s arms and dragged him out into the mire of the barnyard. The man’s life was leaking out of him as fast as water from a broken pot. “February in September,” murmured Hooft, his glassy eyes reflecting the barn’s leaping flames, and then he breathed no more. The rain fell upon his still face: beading, running, and beginning to form a little puddle where the socket of his eye met the bridge of his nose. Waf flattened himself upon the ground at Hooft’s side.

  Bruegel seemed to see something brushing past him, barely visible from the corner of his eye. The bony, grim figure of Death. The horses in the stable began whinnying with a sound like human screams. Their hooves pounded the stable doors into splinters; they charged out and disappeared into the night. And then, with an upwards explosion of sparks, the ridgepole of the barn collapsed.