As Above, So Below Page 36

  “If there’s enough disorder, it gives him an excuse to bring in his troops,” said Williblad. “When the burghers see the ruined church, they’ll turn against the Gueux. They’ll welcome Philip’s army. I was a fool not to think of this before.”

  “Before you smashed Jesus?” said Bruegel angrily. “I can’t believe you did that. Are you quite mad?”

  “I thought you and I were agreed that religious statues are shit,” said Williblad with a grin. “Note that I never laid a finger on any of the paintings. Save for this one. Lord but it’s heavy.”

  “We’re almost at my house,” said Ortelius, looking away from Williblad. He didn’t know how he felt towards him anymore. “The picture can live in my little museum, until such time as it’s safe to restore it to the cathedral. You recognized that Walloon, Peter? He was one of the three who attacked us and Plantin years ago.”

  “Indeed,” said Bruegel. “And Franckert and I saw this same man burn down a barn at a peasant wedding.” He turned his attention to Williblad. “You and Niay did well to save us from the Walloon. I’m deeply grateful. But, you know, it’s no good to blame the image breaking on Spain’s provocateurs. It’s our own Beggars and Calvinists who do this to us. And it’s despicable. I ask again, how could you? You and your Gueux friends are cripples, if only on the inside.”

  “He has a point, Williblad,” said Ortelius, trying to soften Bruegel’s words. “You style yourself a healthy pagan, but the Catholic evil, the Gueux fever, and the Calvinist dysentery have fully infected you.” In fact he felt as strongly as Bruegel. He couldn’t forget the image of Williblad’s fellow rioter smashing Christ’s head.

  “Niay and I saved your lives just now,” shouted Williblad, resorting to anger as he so often did. “And this is how you thank me?”

  “It’s true,” said Bruegel, his voice breaking in an odd, despairing laugh. “Your combat skills have put me in your debt. So I’ll repay you—how? Christ with his shattered head tells me you must learn to paint. Yes, Williblad, preen yourself as would-be artist no longer, rather now do learn the hours and years of labor that we color-mad wights do varnish away. When would you like your first lesson, my liege?”

  Williblad gave Bruegel a savage look, but seemed unable to formulate a response. Instead he turned to Ortelius. “I’m going to look for Niay,” he said. “Farewell, Abraham. You and I are done.” He turned on his heel and disappeared down the street.

  A pang of grief shot through Ortelius, followed by relief. Losing Williblad was like pulling an aching tooth.

  Fourteen

  Lazy Lusciousland

  Brussels, January–August 1567

  As it happened, Williblad was one of the people whom William of Orange chose to single out when he went through the motions of arresting some people for the “Beeldenstorm”—as the orgy of image breaking came to be called. After the business with Granvelle’s assassin, William had an abiding dislike for Williblad, and of course any number of witnesses had seen the half-American pulling down Christ and His cross.

  The image breakers had stripped every church in Antwerp and the monasteries and nunneries as well, even going so far as to descend into the monks’ cellars to stave in their barrels of wine and beer. Three of the ringleaders were hanged in September, but as the weeks and months went on there was still no word of Williblad’s case. Mayken worried about him whenever she had a spare moment, which wasn’t all that often, what with taking care of Little Peter and handling the business affairs of the family workshop.

  And then, on a snowy day in January, Williblad turned up at Mayken and Peter’s doorstep, with his friend Niay Serrão in tow. Niay carried a bundle of their possessions in a striped blanket slung over her shoulder.

  “Williblad!” exclaimed Mayken and impulsively reached out to pat his shoulder. Her former lover looked more worn than ever. His spell in prison had given his skin a dull, silvery tone. “How did you get out?”

  “William was too cautious to hang me straight off,” said Williblad, shrugging off Mayken’s friendly touch. He was here as a mendicant, unwilling to risk riling Peter. “I still carry a bit of royal protection from my days with Cardinal Granvelle, you know. And then the fact that I’d been seen saving your father’s picture worked in my favor. In the end, Ortelius was able to pay a sum to get me freed. But I’m not going back to living with him. I’m settling in with Niay.”

  Niay greeted Mayken cheerfully. Unlike Williblad, she was strong and well. Mayken couldn’t help but notice that Niay wore a gold and ivory necklace that looked to be a rosary looted from the Our Lady Cathedral.

  Little Peter peeped out at the newcomers from behind Mayken’s legs, and Waf delightedly jumped up to put his paws on Williblad’s shoulders.

  “Peter said he’d teach me to paint,” said Williblad. “And Niay has plans to work for a Javanese fellow who owns a tavern.”

  “Let’s tell Mother you’re here,” said Mayken, unsure what to say. Yes, Peter had, in a fit of emotion, said he’d teach Williblad to paint. But to have Williblad live under their roof was unthinkable. By now Mayken trusted herself, but she mistrusted Williblad. He’d be certain to stir up a fight, given the chance. On the other hand, it was freezing cold outside and Williblad looked a bit desperate. What to do? At times like this it was a relief to have her mother to turn to.

  They trooped up to the second floor to find old Mayken at a table covered with scraps of paper, rolls of linen, and tangles of colored wool. She was designing a new tapestry for Marcus Noot, with Hennie van Mander busy with a charcoal pencil at her side. Marcus wanted a tapestry of the Brussels town hall with himself and the other City Fathers standing in front of it, a design which everyone in the Coecke house found ludicrously literal. But Marcus was adamant, and a friend, and had the money in his pocket for quite a rich tapestry, so old Mayken was executing the dull commission. Hennie was helping her translate some sketches of the City Fathers’ faces into tapestry designs.

  Neither of the women looked happy to see Williblad; they knew all about the troubles he’d caused. “The house is a bit full already,” observed old Mayken, peering over her little spectacles. “You’ll have to ask Peter.” She liked to give the appearance of passing the hard decisions back to her daughter and her son-in-law. But in the end she always had her piece to say. And Mayken could see that her mother hadn’t yet made up her mind.

  In his attic studio, Peter was working on his Dance of the Bride, a big panel filled with dancing, carousing peasants, their legs and arms as fat as sausages, their codpieces bulging as never before. Peter’s stomach had stopped bothering him, and he’d said he felt like painting something cheerful for a change. And indeed, whenever Mayken looked at this picture, she had to laugh. The fat Franckert figure was turning out particularly droll. Pale Bengt was painting a copy at Peter’s side, and Hans Franckert himself watched from a chair, fully clad in one of his peasant costumes. He and Hennie had come down for a stay of three weeks after Christmas.

  “Hello, Peter,” said Williblad. “Will you teach me to paint?”

  “The image breaker!” said Franckert, a half smile on his face. He was wearing a pink leather jerkin and skintight red breeches with the slit in front held together by a huge codpiece that Mayken knew from Hennie to be padded out by a rolled-up pair of stockings. Bengt regarded Williblad with a frown.

  “You really want to learn?” asked Peter, pondering Williblad’s request.

  “I’m ready to try,” said Williblad in a noncommittal tone. Niay squatted down to play with Little Peter; she made a pair of geese with her fingers and set them to quarrelling with each other, much to the boy’s delight. “But the main thing is that Niay and I need a place to stay,” admitted Williblad finally.

  “Aha,” said Peter. “I suppose I can ask around town.”

  “I thought perhaps I could stay here,” persisted Williblad.

  “There are limits,” said Peter. “Even for a man who saved my life.” Franckert had begun to smile.

/>   “What about the shed in the garden?” suggested Mayken’s mother, who’d come up to the studio as well. “In these times it wouldn’t hurt to have an extra man around to protect the house. One of the apprentices used to live in the garden shed years ago. That fellow Cornelius. Remember, Peter?”

  “It leaks,” said Peter shortly. The memory of Cornelius seemed to pain him. Mother had found a weak spot, and Mayken sensed Peter’s opposition giving way.

  “I’m sure we can fix it up,” said Niay, springing to her feet. “I’d love to try. I’ve never had my own house.” She walked gracefully across the studio and looked out of the window. “That’s it down there? It’s sweet. In the Americas or the Indies, a Sangaji might live in a hut that size. A chief.” She turned back and flashed Bruegel a bright smile that lacked a few teeth on the sides. “Let us stay, Sangaji Peter.”

  “I suppose it’s God’s will,” said Peter with a half smile.

  By the end of the day, Williblad and Niay had made the little wooden shed quite livable. Like old Mayken, Master Coecke had been something of a pack rat, and the cellar of the Coecke house was filled with damaged or unusable goods. Williblad and Niay lined the walls of their shed with stained carpets, covered their floor with cracked tiles, shielded the leaky spot of their roof with an oak panel too badly warped to paint upon, and made up some bed ticking from a great sack of odd-lot skeins of wool. Both Williblad and Niay were nimble with their fingers; they patched up two broken chairs and made a table from an empty barrel. To complete their homemaking, a rusted old armor cuirass was pressed into service as a stove. Little Peter ran back and forth, dogging Williblad and Niay’s steps. The boy was fascinated to have these colorful new creatures in his garden.

  During the first week, Williblad made an attempt to learn painting, but in his own fashion. Disdaining to work from a drawing, Williblad said he’d directly limn what he saw in his mind. Alla prima, as the masters said. He took thin and thick brushes, scooped some oil colors from Peter’s paint pots and set himself up beside Bengt, daubing away at an oak panel several feet across. For Williblad, nothing but the finest materials would do.

  Mayken peeked in at them, enjoying the sight of three painters in the family workshop, with Waf lying on the floor at their feet. She hoped it was a harbinger of the great family painting dynasty she and mother dreamed of.

  On the first day Williblad said he was painting flamingos and alligators; he used a great deal of yellow, white, green, and red. But his birds and beasts were so smeary, that on the second day he decided they were flowers, and now the expensive blue paint came into play. The oils were rather more slippery than Williblad had expected; on the third day, his panel had become a murky, mottled gray. On the fourth day, Bengt scraped Williblad’s paint off for him, and Williblad made a fresh start. He would paint a Tequesta shaman’s magic snake. All through the fifth day, the shape came along tolerably well. And by the end of the sixth day, Williblad had created a jagged rainbow of colors that swooped from one edge of his panel to the other, with the shades blending from one to the next in quite a pleasing progression. The Tequesta design showed up nicely against the gray background left over from his first attempt. On the seventh day Williblad carried the still-wet painting around town fruitlessly looking for patrons, and after that he rested.

  Meanwhile Niay found work as a scullery maid with her Javanese friend Raos. Raos’s tavern was called the Pepper Berry; it was a little place in the St. Catherine’s district near the docks at the terminus of the Willebroek Canal. This neighborhood was nearly as cosmopolitan as Antwerp, alive with the Turks, Moors, and Malay lascars who sailed upon the barges and ships.

  Williblad decided not to be a painter, and began looking for work too. But his name was in bad odor among the merchants and nobles of Brussels, thanks to his old entanglements with Granvelle and his plots. As the well-loved Peter and Mayken were sponsoring Williblad, he wasn’t directly run out of town—but nobody would give him a job.

  In the end there was nothing for it but that Williblad work with Niay at the Pepper Berry. He became Raos’s barkeep and bookkeeper. Niay also enlisted him to help with some kind of show at the Pepper Berry; she called it a wayang kulit, and it had something to do with shadows.

  Life ran on peacefully in this wise, and Williblad and Niay continued living in the shed.

  Inevitably the day came when Williblad managed to catch Mayken alone and to try his old charms upon her. It was a rainy morning in February. Franckert and Hennie had gone back to Antwerp, both Peter and Mayken’s mother were at work in their studios, and Little Peter was watching Mienemeuie make him a waffle. Mayken had put on a coat and a big hat to run across the muddy garden with two cups of hot chocolate for Williblad and Niay, barely avoiding getting tripped up by Waf, underfoot as always.

  She found Williblad alone in the dim, cozy room, stretched out on his bed staring at the carpets on the walls. The rain drummed hypnotically upon the low roof. The room smelled faintly of Williblad’s sweet breath, and of the musky tang of Niay.

  “Little Mayken,” said Williblad in a caressing tone. “You brought me chocolate.”

  “Where’s Niay?”

  “Off buying potatoes. Come sit here next to me on the bed, my angel.”

  “That’s never going to happen again, Williblad,” said Mayken. And, looking within herself, she realized that she meant it. Even so, her mugs clattered as she set them down upon the barrelhead that served as a table. “We’re getting too old,” she said, taking a step back towards the door, bumping against Waf, who was peering in after her. She noticed some odd-shaped pieces of filigreed leather lying upon the table.

  “Yes, yes, you’re all of twenty-two,” said Williblad. “But I suppose it’s me that you’re talking about. Don’t you want me to give you another baby?”

  “Stop it!” said Mayken, laughing at his sally. “Little Peter isn’t yours, you vain man. Haven’t you looked at him? He’s pink.”

  “As Peter tried to teach me, the mixing of colors is a subtle thing,” said Williblad, his smile as long and beguiling as ever. “In any case, I’d be glad to help again.”

  “No,” said Mayken firmly, and when Williblad made as if to get up from his bed, she scampered back to her house. She’d known the test would come, and was glad to see how easily she’d gotten past it. And if Williblad still wanted her—well, that was fine, that was a nice thought to carry around, a little flattering. And for that matter, there was some attraction between Peter and Niay as well, not that Peter was likely to do anything about it. All his passion went into his art—and into his love for Mayken and Little Peter. Their family life was strong and solid, thanks be to God.

  Though things were peaceful in the Coecke house, the world outside was seething. In the wake of the Beeldenstorm and its riotous image breaking, the Regent Margaret had made some concessions to religious freedom. In return, the Gueux and the League of Nobles had all but disbanded. Prince William remained in charge of Antwerp, Graaf de Hoorne was entrusted with calming the town of Tournay, and the Graaf Egmont began to pacify Flanders. Even so, many Low-Landers remained in open rebellion, and it was said that King Philip was planning to wreak some terrible vengeance upon the Low Lands.

  Williblad still claimed that King Philip had instigated the image breaking to drive a wedge between the rebels and the middle classes. But Mienemeuie repeated a popular story that when the Tyrant heard of the image breaking he’d torn his beard for rage, saying, “It shall cost them dear! I swear it by the soul of my father! It shall cost them dear!” For some reason this tale greatly amused Little Peter, and he made it a habit, whenever the fancy struck him, to launch into an imitation of Philip: capering about, plucking at an imaginary beard, and crying, “It shall cost them dear!”

  In the southern Low Lands, the Calvinists took over the city of Valenciennes, and the Regent Margaret sent an army to lay siege to them. To the north of Brussels, Brederode raised an army of rebels, who fought a series of battles with the Roy
al troops. The rebels met with some success, but in March Brederode’s men were massacred—literally hacked into pieces—right outside the walls of Antwerp, upon the very spot where Moded of Zwolle had preached. Full news of the battle was brought to the Coecke house by William’s falconer Bengt Bots.

  “I’m back in town to help collect some things for the Prince,” the brown-faced old Bengt told them, sitting on a chair in Bruegel’s studio. He looked over at the original and the copy of the Dance of the Bride. “Big codpieces on these fellows,” he observed. “Did you paint any of it, son?”

  “That one’s all mine,” said young Bengt, indicating the copy. “We’re shipping Master Bruegel’s original off to Amsterdam tomorrow.”

  “Perhaps it’ll ride on the same scow I’m loading up. Prince William’s cleaning out the most valuable things from the Nassau palace. All the falcons, for one.”

  “He’s not coming back to Brussels?” asked Mayken, feeling worried. Was Brussels abandoned to the eagles of war?

  “Going to Germany,” said old Bengt. “To his estate in Dillenburg. Wants to keep his head on his shoulders, he does. He saw a letter from Philip’s envoy in Paris to Margaret, saying she’s to shorten Prince William—chop off his head the first chance she gets. The Tyrant’s out to kill all our high nobles: Graaf de Hoorne and Graaf Egmont as well as the Prince.”

  “De Hoorne?” said Peter, looking upset. Mayken well knew Peter’s special feelings for Filips de Hoorne. She’d come to believe his notion that Filips was his half brother. Of all the men Mayken had known, few seemed worthier to be called noble than her wise, long-suffering, hardworking man. Her horn of plenty.

  “Don’t worry, he and Prince William are both heading for Germany,” said old Bengt. “They’ll be well out of it before Philip’s army arrives.”

  “But it’s not fair for the Regent to want to kill them,” protested Mayken. “They’ve been helping to keep the peace.” The world had grown so mad and full of hate.