As Above, So Below Read online

  “There’s several hedge sermons a week now,” Ortelius told Bruegel. “I’ve attended a number of them. It’s fascinating to hear what the different preachers have to say. Two weeks ago, I heard a fellow talking about how it’s been fifteen hundred years now that people have been adding things onto the teachings of Christ. Of course one likes to say the Pope is infallible. But is it so? We’ve been to Rome, Peter, we know what their Popes are like. What if Christ speaks to us in our hearts, rather than only through a Bishop or a Pope?”

  “I wouldn’t care to leave the Church,” said Bruegel, uneasily looking around. “I was baptized, I go to confession, I attend mass, I’ll be buried in the Church and, God willing, I’ll be married there too. Why not? The Church is Christ’s body on Earth.”

  “I agree,” said Ortelius. “But the Church has become the tool of those who hate us. It’s the body of Christ, but a body plagued with warts, wens, buboes, and all other manner of bilious growths. These hedge sermons concern freedom as much as they do religion. The Foreigner’s Blood Edicts against heresy are simply an excuse for killing us as he sees fit. And his bishops enforce them. The hedge preachers are the surgeons for reform. It’s our duty as citizens to support them.”

  “Tell me more about the preachers you’ve seen,” said Bruegel. They paused at a street corner to wait forWaf to catch up with them. He’d been busy rolling in something, and as he drew near they could smell that it had been a dead rat. “Pfui!” Bruegel pushed Waf away with his foot, and now the dog ran on ahead of them.

  “This summer I saw a little German Anabaptist who called for the murder of all the nobles and the priests,” said Ortelius. “His audience was quite a rough crowd: beggars and thieves, the lowest of the low. I slipped away early. But the Calvinist preachers are almost respectable; any number of tradesmen and small gentry go to hear them. They say that religion should be entirely separate from the government. Very sound. Unfortunately the Calvinists are iconoclasts.”

  “Iconoclasts?” said Bruegel. “How do you mean?”

  “The Calvinists say religious art should be destroyed,” said Ortelius. “They say a house of worship is no place for paintings and sculpture. They liken a statue of Our Lady to the Golden Calf; they say that God commands us not to worship graven images.”

  “I’ve seen some paintings of Mary that are bovine indeed,” said Bruegel, not taking this very seriously. “If the Calvinists should ever prevail, perhaps I’ll be glad that I never receive commissions from churches.” They were drawing near the city gate. “This fellow Hendrik Niclaes, what sect is he?”

  “Niclaes insists he’s a good Catholic,” said Ortelius. “Though I doubt the Inquisitors would agree. He speaks strongly in favor of individual prayer.”

  “Oho,” said Bruegel. “I heard much about prayer from Viglius van Aytta while I was staying in Mechelen. Aytta serves with Granvelle on Margaret’s Consulta. Once at dinner I mentioned that I sometimes pray to God for help with my painting. Our man Aytta delivered himself of a memorable tirade.” Bruegel cocked his head and drew back his chin, putting on the persona of the choleric Aytta. He shook his finger admonishingly at Ortelius, and spoke in a voice made old and cruel and thin.

  “ ‘Those who pray in private have a contempt for all religion, and are neither more nor less than atheists. This vague, fireside liberty should be by every possible means extirpated; therefore did Christ institute shepherds to drive his wandering sheep back into the fold of the true Church; thus only can we guard the lambs against the ravening wolves, and prevent them being carried away from the flock of Christ to the flock of Belial.’ ”

  “Hush now,” said Ortelius, a little chilled to imagine such mad, cruel words being said in earnest. How terrible it was that God’s own Church had become a cause for hatred. Perhaps Bruegel felt he could sit to one side and take his religion as it came, but Ortelius, for one, could not. “We’re at the gate.”

  Ortelius told the city gatekeeper they were out for a sunset stroll, and the man asked no further questions. No doubt he knew perfectly well where they were really going, but there were few in Antwerp who supported the Spanish rule.

  “How golden the light is just now,” remarked Bruegel. “Look at the side of van Schoonbeke’s windmill.”

  “We’ll follow its shadow into the woods,” said Ortelius. “Come on, Waf, don’t tarry. Faugh, but he smells foul. In all honesty, I don’t know how you can keep such a brute, Peter.”

  “Ah, but he’s such a clever dog,” said Bruegel, bending over as if to pet the big white dog and then, smelling him, thinking better of it. “Waf can say his own name.” He picked up a stone and shied it into the woods. “Run after it, Waf, and we’ll follow you.”

  Once they’d pushed through some bushes, they found a well-trodden path into the trees. And up ahead was a crowd of people.

  “It’s a real Antwerp mixture,” said Bruegel, looking pleased. Like Ortelius, he enjoyed crowds, particularly those as diverse as this one. Looking at Bruegel, Ortelius played a private game of trying to see the scene with the acuity of his artist friend’s eyes.

  Closest to them was a Chinese spice merchant with a skull cap, silk breeches, and a long pigtail. At his side was a bearded gypsy in a striped blanket reading the palm of a tall well-dressed man with a green-and-yellow silk scarf pulled across his face. The gypsy’s wife wore a conical Chinese hat, and next to her was a Turk in a turban with a spike in the middle. To the right of this group sat three burgher ladies in fine silk dresses, and farther on was a pair of pug-nosed Flemish peasants wearing caps with earflaps. A whole council of dark-robed men in ruff collars stood beyond them. Overhead, some city boys wriggled in the crotches of trees. Ortelius and Bruegel pushed in as far as they could, ending up behind a short, blond youth with a red cap four times the size of Bruegel’s. On the far side of the crowd the close-cropped head of Nicolas Jonghelinck was visible. His alert blue eyes noted Ortelius and Bruegel’s arrival; he gave them a slight smile and a nod.

  In the midst of the crowd, Hendrik Niclaes was standing on a stump preaching. He was a sinewy man with a kind, tired face.

  “The Kingdom of Heaven is within you,” he was saying. “Seek and ye shall find. This is what our Lord told us when he walked among men. God is in this grove as much as in the churches of the foreign bishops, Christ is in your heart as much as in the bread and wine of their mass. Pray with me now, my dear ones.” Niclaes paused in silence, bowing his head and folding his hands against his chest. A late afternoon shaft of light illuminated him. Many in the crowd bowed their heads as well. Glancing over at Bruegel’s folded hands and unbowed head, Ortelius couldn’t decide if his friend were praying, looking at the faces in the crowd, or just waiting to talk to Jonghelinck.

  Hendrik Niclaes preached some more, speaking of prayer, and then of love, of a brotherly love for one’s fellow man. “The only way to know peace is to be peaceful,” he said. “And love is the only path to love.” As he spoke, the sun sank below the horizon and the sky grew pink, then orange, then gray. Niclaes ended by mentioning that he had a book of his teachings to sell; two peasant-clad assistants produced a great market basket with the books hidden beneath a layer of straw. The crowd broke up into conversing knots and Waf ambled forward to sniff at the basket.

  Ortelius turned to say something to Bruegel, but his friend was off like a shot, pushing his way through the people. By the time Ortelius caught up with the red-capped Bruegel, he’d all but sold Nicolas Jonghelinck a painting.

  “A large Tower of Babel, then,” Bruegel was saying to the solemn, thin-lipped financier. “I painted a miniature of it years ago in Rome. It’ll be a bit like the Colosseum and a bit like St. Peter’s Basilica. The vanity of the human lust for power, eh? Ah, here’s good Ortelius. Shall we three walk back to the city together? If you want to stop by Abraham’s, Nicolas, I can show you my latest work. A miniature Suicide of Saul done for William of Orange.”

  “I’d love to see it,” said Jonghelinck. “I’v
e heard rumors of the three great Hell paintings you did for Margaret in Mechelen. They say one’s still in her Wonder Chamber, but two were sent away. One to Madrid and the other to Vienna, I believe. It’s a shame I won’t see them.”

  “The Vienna one would be my Dulle Griet,” said Bruegel with a smile. “Never fear, I have a watercolor sketch of that one stored with my things at Abraham’s.”

  “Oh, thanks for telling me,” said Ortelius, pretending to be put out, though secretly proud Bruegel trusted him. “A fine thing to be sitting on, the next time my house gets searched.”

  “There’s nothing heretical or subversive in my paintings,” said Bruegel cockily. “Cardinal Granvelle himself buys them. As for Margaret’s dislike of the Dulle Griet, well, she’s a cretin. And why would you worry about my paintings when you have a copy of Niclaes’s book?”

  “You’ve read it, Abraham?” said Jonghelinck, reaching into his cloak to draw out a little leather-bound volume. “I just purchased it myself. The Land of Peace. I liked what Niclaes said.” He squinted at the book through his pince-nez spectacles, cradling the small volume in one huge hand. “No publisher’s imprint on it, of course, but I’d swear it’s Plantin’s font.”

  Ortelius looked around to see if anyone were listening. Happy to be in the know, he indulged his love of gossip. “It’s one of Plantin’s assistants who’s been running them off. Christopher turns a blind eye.”

  “Well, enough skullduggery for now,” said Jonghelinck. “Let’s head for town.” On the way out they passed the shrouded man who’d been having his palm read by the gypsy. The figure struck Ortelius as uncommonly familiar. He walked another twenty paces and then it came clear.

  “I’ll catch up with you on the road or at my house,” Ortelius told Bruegel and Jonghelinck. “I just remembered I have to talk to someone.” The men continued onward, accompanied by Waf. Ortelius hurried back to the tall man with the scarf around his face, who’d just said something to the youths with the basket of books. One of the youths had turned white-faced and was hurrying away; the other youth was dragging the basket into a thicket and heaping leaves upon it.

  “Williblad?” murmured Ortelius. “Williblad Cheroo?”

  “Hush.” A hazel eye glared at Ortelius from above the green-and-yellow scarf. “I can’t be seen here,” said Williblad—for it was indeed he. “It could make great problems with my new employer. Follow me.” Williblad headed off into the woods, tracking a path that only he could see. Soon they were alone in a dim clearing and Williblad lowered his scarf.

  “So who is it that you work for, Williblad?”

  An odd smile played across Williblad’s lips. “Don’t tell your friends I was here or they’ll attack me, Abraham.”

  “I promise to keep your secret.”

  “I work for Cardinal Granvelle.”

  Ortelius felt his throat go tight with fear. “You’re an informer?”

  Williblad’s expression was of impatient contempt. “Do you think so little of me? That I would condemn my old friends to the Tyrant’s Inquisition?” His breath smelled of cloves and gin.

  “Although you work for Granvelle, you’re against Spain?” said Ortelius uncertainly. He never quite understood Williblad’s intricate, resentful allegiances.

  “You want the truth?” said Williblad with a sigh. “I’m against everyone. That’s why I’m so alone. You’re a rare exception, Abraham. You have an outlaw soul.”

  The skewed compliment made Ortelius’s head spin. “Why do you hate all the others?” he asked, eager to hear more.

  “Give it some thought, man,” said Williblad impatiently. “The conquistadors who raped my mother and murdered her husband were white men—Spaniards, yes, but I’m sure Low-Landers would have done the same thing. So I hate Europeans. My own tribe of Indians expelled me and put me upon Fugger’s ship, so I hate them too. Fugger cared for me, but he took me lightly. I hate him. Granvelle is a swine and an intriguer. I hate him. Though I will say he was the only one to offer me a job commensurate with my skills.”

  “I would have given you a job, Williblad,” said Ortelius softly. “But you never asked. You’re sure you don’t hate me?”

  Williblad gave him one of his rare smiles. “No. You and some others in your circle are among my friends. Those of you who’ve treated me with respect. I would never inform on such as you.”

  “So why are you at a hedge sermon?”

  “To warn Christopher Plantin. I’d expected to find him here.”

  “Plantin?”

  “The Inquisitors will search his shop tonight. I heard Granvelle arranging to send them. Christopher must leave the country. Make sure that he gets the message. I mistrust those fellows who carried the basket of books. In their panic they could neglect to warn him.”

  Williblad’s voice was low and calm. Ortelius stared at him, more fascinated than ever before. Williblad returned his gaze. For the first time, Ortelius was sure that Williblad knew he lusted for him.

  “Come this way, Abraham,” said Williblad, lithe as a man half his age. “We’ll find the road. Take my hand.”

  They picked their way through the woods. Ortelius wished the brief walk would never end. Ah, to hold Williblad’s strong, firm hand. And then they were out on the road. It was quite dark now, and Williblad left his face uncovered.

  “How are things in Brussels?” asked Ortelius, just to hear his dream man talk.

  “Good.” Williblad dropped Ortelius’s hand. “There’s a new woman I’m seducing. Perhaps you know her. Little Mayken Coecke.”

  “But Bruegel wants to marry her!” burst out Ortelius.

  “I know it,” said Williblad. “As does Granvelle. He urged me to court her. I’m not quite sure why. Perhaps he wants to see Bruegel suffer. As do I. Bruegel insulted me at the Landjuweel. Remember how everyone laughed at me? I aim finally to show him who’s the better man.”

  “But Williblad—” began Ortelius.

  “Enough,” said Williblad, placing a finger on Ortelius’s lips. Helpless with desire, Ortelius pushed his lips out, wantonly savoring the touch. “Remember to tell no one you saw me here. Especially not Bruegel. I’ll give him my news of Mayken at the proper time and in person—so I can savor the look upon his face. And, oh yes, make sure Plantin receives his warning. My horse is tethered behind this windmill here. Farewell, Abraham.” As if to fully seal the secret, Williblad leaned forward and placed a soft kiss upon Ortelius’s lips. And then he was gone, silently blending into the darkness on the other side of the road.

  Ortelius walked dizzily back to town, over and over brushing his fingers against his mouth, trying to recall the sensation of Williblad’s kiss. As he came in through the city gate, he saw a carriage just leaving. Plantin and his wife. So they’d gotten the message after all. Just as well Ortelius didn’t have to give it himself. It would have been hard to explain how he knew the Inquisitors’ plans.

  Helena had already let Bruegel and Jonghelinck into the house; Ortelius found them in his study, looking at Bruegel’s new miniature, with Waf lying on the floor beside the fire.

  “There you are, Abraham,” said Bruegel. “What’s kept you?” Waf sleepily beat his tail against the floor.

  “A—a fellow cartographer. You wouldn’t know him. He’s preparing a new view of Brussels. Are you two quite comfortable? A glass of wine?” With Williblad’s kiss still fresh on his lips, Ortelius needed time to digest what he’d just heard. There was no rush to tell Peter the bad news.

  “That would be just the thing,” said Jonghelinck. “Would you heat up the poker to mull it with, Abraham?” Ortelius busied himself with positioning the poker, taking as long as possible, giving his mind time to spin. Why did someone as beautiful as Williblad have to act so evil? Why torment Peter in the same way for a second time? It was like a horrible recurring dream.

  Meanwhile Jonghelinck drew his new book out of his coat pocket. The sight of Niclaes’s little volume made Ortelius tremble, knowing as he did that the Inquisi
tors were even now raiding Plantin’s print shop in search of it. He felt sick and dizzy with his secrets. Williblad after the young Mayken! Bruegel had spoken of nothing but Mayken for the last five or ten years! To lose her to Williblad would crush him.

  “Put it away,” said Ortelius to Jonghelinck, more sharply than he meant to.

  “Indeed,” said Jonghelinck, slipping the book back into his pocket. “Tell me more about your plan for the Tower of Babel, Peter.”

  Ortelius went to the hallway to call Helena for some wine and cake. Little of the next hour’s conversation registered with him, and then he was seeing Jonghelinck to the door. He went upstairs and bid good night to his old mother, then made his way back to the study. Bruegel was sitting there, sketching some of the faces he’d seen at the hedge sermon. Ortelius could hardly meet his eyes.

  “Is something wrong, Abraham? You don’t seem yourself tonight.”

  Ortelius felt a wave of pity for his friend. He wanted to tell him the truth. But Williblad’s kiss had enslaved him, at least for now. He hardened his heart and held back his secret. “I suppose I’m a bit chilled, is all. Let’s have another glass of wine.”

  “Fine,” said Bruegel, though he was already a bit red in the face. “It’s such a joy to hear Flemish spoken properly again. I could sit here and chat all night. I’ll be on my way early tomorrow, though. I’d like to reach Brussels before nightfall.”

  “Is the young Mayken aware of your plans?” probed Ortelius.

  “That’s still a bit of a problem,” confessed Bruegel. “The old Mayken’s all for the marriage. She and I—” He got to his feet and checked that Helena wasn’t listening at the door, then poured himself a bit more wine and flopped back down upon the couch. “Can you keep a secret, Abraham?”

  “Certainly,” said Ortelius gloomily. He felt dreadfully unworthy of his friend’s confidences. But the rush to confess was upon Bruegel, and he took no note of Ortelius’s unease.

  “I had sex with the old Mayken when I was seventeen. It was while she was carrying young Mayken. Sometimes I worry that the girl knows. It happened like this. Master Coecke had gone off to North Africa aboard the fleet of Emperor Charles the Fifth. It was when Charles went to war against Suleiman the Magnificent’s Admiral Barbarossa. Charles brought Master Coecke along to depict his triumphs. And indeed, in the fullness of time, Master Coecke helped produce a colossal series of extravagant tapestries, The Conquest of Tunis.”