As Above, So Below Read online

  “Damn right,” said old Bengt. “Our William the Sly kept the Antwerp gates locked tight as a maiden’s crack while Margaret’s troops were killing off the rebel army. No sir, William wouldn’t let his Calvinists and Lutherans run out to join the fight! So now the rabble’s saying that if it hadn’t been for William, the rebels might have won.”

  “I hadn’t heard that,” said young Bengt.

  “Yes!” said old Bengt. “Prince William reckoned that if the gates were opened, the royal army and the vagabonds who travel with them would rush inside to pillage the city. Antwerp’s the richest town in the country, and many’s the idler who’d like to plunder her. There was no point in risking it for the sake of those raggedy-ass rebels. And by God, William was right. I watched the whole thing from the walls. Margaret’s troops are a bloodthirsty lot of torturers and butchers. Walloons and Spaniards. They would have mowed those reformed Antwerp cookie-eaters down with the rest of them. But try telling that to a frothing Calvinist who thinks God helped him break the cathedral statues. So now the Calvinists and Lutherans are running William right out of Antwerp. And he’s too sly to come back to Brussels. So we’re packing up.”

  “What about the Bosch?” asked Peter.

  “How do you mean?” said old Bengt with a veiled half smile.

  “The big triptych of the Garden of Earthly Delights!” exclaimed Peter. “The painting with all the naked people in it, Bengt. It’s the most precious thing William owns. Is he taking it with him?”

  “I knew it!” said old Bengt, with a wheeze of laughter. “The Prince was right. Told me that would be the one thing Peter Bruegel would ask me about. The painting with the naked people and the giant birds. You artists are crazy. And, God help me, my son’s one too.”

  “Maybe Master Bruegel should keep the picture for William,” suggested young Bengt.

  “Don’t do that,” said old Bengt, shaking his finger. “William says that when Philip’s troops get to Brussels, they’ll be looking for the Bosch. Don’t sit on the manure pile if you don’t want to get fly-bit. That big Bosch has Hell on one of the side wings, and they say there’s nothing the Foreigner likes better. Now, don’t tell anyone this, but one of the things I’m taking care of here is to get that damned picture sealed up inside one of the Nassau palace walls. It’s too big to take to Germany.”

  “But is it really true that Philip is sending an army to Brussels?” asked old Mayken in dismay.

  “That’s what Graaf de Hoorne’s brother wrote him from Madrid,” said Bengt. “One of Philip’s generals is to pull out four regiments from Spain’s Italian provinces. Spanish soldiers seasoned by a few years in Sicily and Naples. The scum of the earth.”

  “Oh, what can we do?” cried Mayken’s mother, sounding old and querulous. “God help us!” If mother was panicked, who could Mayken turn to?

  “Maybe he’s mistaken,” said her good husband. “It’s not too late to pray.”

  With the Dance of the Bride shipped off, Peter started work on his Adoration of the Kings in the Snow. He’d been thinking about it off and on all winter, periodically staring out the studio window to sketch the falling snow. But before painting the snowflakes, he had to paint the scene behind them, which was a humble and touching Nativity in a Flemish village, glowing with a snowstorm’s yellow-green light. It was June by the time Peter reached the final stage of brushing on the snowflakes, bigger and blurrier in front, smaller and sharper in back.

  The finished Adoration of the Kings in the Snow was Mayken’s favorite picture yet, a thing of true enchantment, with none of the sarcasm and pain that Peter had put into the Adoration of the Kings he’d painted at the time of Little Peter’s birth.

  This new Adoration was just what Master Coecke had said a painting should be: a window looking into another world. Or no, more than that, it was a door. When Mayken gazed at the little painting long enough, she felt herself transported to the Nativity—not to an image of God’s birth but to the actual event itself. With so much evil in the world, God had come to save them in the form of a newborn baby. The baby was a seed that would take time to grow, the start of a long and gradual salvation, but, yes, He had come.

  When summer came, Mayken decided to give her beloved, hardworking husband a special party. It so happened that Peter reckoned his birthday as June 20, 1527, the day he’d appeared on the doorstep of Anja and her veterinarian father’s cottage back in Grote Brueghel. So June 20, 1567, was his fortieth birthday—although it was more normal to celebrate someone’s birth on the saint’s day for their name. But June 20 was handy, a good day to celebrate! Though Peter welcomed the thought of a feast with his friends, he didn’t have the bent of mind to organize one. Mayken arranged the party all by herself, keeping most of the details secret. The locale was to be at the port in the St. Catherine’s district, on the other side of the Grand’ Place that lay at the heart of Brussels.

  Peter, Mayken, Little Peter, old Mayken, Bengt, and Waf arrived at the harbor basin near sunset to find among the barges a lovely high caravel bedecked with pennants and ribbons. Realizing the ship was there for him, Peter broke into a smile and gave Mayken a kiss. Peter loved ships. Lute music drifted down from the caravel’s poop deck, which was crowded with festive figures silhouetted against the glowing horizon. At the water’s edge, old Mayken’s friend Marcus Noot was eagerly pacing the cobblestones, waiting for them. Mayken felt very happy. Everything was working out perfectly. Her hair was nicely arranged in a coiled braid, and she was wearing a new blue watered-silk overdress with a low-cut square neckline, and under that a white linen chemise.

  “Come aboard the Luilekkerland!” exclaimed Noot. “And let me be the first to wish you a happy birthday, Peter!”

  “Luilekkerland!” repeated Peter with a laugh. The name meant something like “Lazy Lusciousland”—it appeared in folktales as a magical place where food was everywhere and nobody had to work.

  “Hans Franckert’s name for the ship,” said Marcus Noot. “His fleet of one. He’s been using her to import spices and pigments from Lisbon, sending paintings and lace back in return. Usually she docks in Antwerp, but Hans brought her down the Willebroek Canal so we could celebrate your birthday on her! Getting that canal built is the best thing I’ve accomplished in all my years as a City Father. In fact, I’ve been meaning to make a suggestion to you about it, Peter. What if—”

  “All aboard!” called Franckert, leaning over the taffrail with a great mug of beer in his hand. There was a weathered-looking sea captain at his side.

  “It shall cost them dear!” piped Little Peter, stamping his foot.

  “Up with you, my scamp,” said big Peter, hoisting the boy onto his shoulders and carrying him up the gangplank to the Luilekkerland.

  Franckert was already a little drunk, and now, as he continued to gesticulate, his flat green cap slid off his head and dropped into the harbor water. It had been some time since Mayken had seen Franckert hatless, and he didn’t look good at all. He was bald for one thing, with only a few greasy scraps of hair at the sides. And the flesh he’d accumulated upon his neck looked pale and pasty, like sweaty curds of thickened bile.

  “Shit!” shouted Franckert as his hat fell. And when it hit the water he added, “Leave it there, it’s ruined now. I’ll find another.”

  Mayken was suddenly struck by how bad the harbor smelled: like decay and human offal. Foolish of her not to think of this before. She prayed the air would be better on the high deck.

  Just then Waf rushed past her and wormed through Peter’s legs to be the first aboard, very nearly toppling her husband and her son off the plank and into the vile black water where, yes, some kind of dead animal was floating, a cat or a rat or a dog that—Mayken thought in momentary fit of choler—should really be Waf himself. She ran up the gangplank to give the hound a good scolding. He grew more willful every year. And now of course he was the first one up the companionway to the high deck where their friends were gathered, Waf pushing himself forward, whini
ng and thrashing his tail and nosing around for food.

  With her humors addled by the days of preparation and by her concern that everything turn out well, Mayken felt almost like throwing the beast overboard, but bald Franckert handed her a mug of beer and a fresh radish and, yes, everything was fine on the high deck after all. Waf composed himself and lay down under the table. A sweet evening breeze came in from the woodlands across the water, and if you didn’t concentrate on your nose, there was no smell from the harbor at all.

  “We’re on a ship, Mama!” exclaimed Little Peter, waving a big pretzel that the smiling Abraham Ortelius had handed him. “We’re at sea!” Not that the ship was really going anywhere. They’d decided to simplify things by keeping her at the wharf for the party.

  “Let the captain show you how to sail, my boy,” said Franckert. Seeing him sweaty and hatless, Mayken realized for the first time that it cost the man some effort to play the merry reveler. A noble effort in its own small way. “Mayhap he’ll hire you on as first mate!” Franckert told Little Peter. “Let me present Captain Adam van Haren to you. Captain, these are Mayken and Little Peter, the wife and the son of the greatest artist in the Low Lands.” Adam van Haren had a brown, smile-creased face and a shock of blond hair bleached to near whiteness. He doffed his little black cap, gave Mayken a formal bow, and took Little Peter to look at the tiller.

  Many old friends from Antwerp were present, such as Christopher Plantin and Jerome Cock. There were a few artists as well, including some youngsters greatly in awe of Peter, and one or two older men, also in awe, but less openly so. Among the artists were young Joachim Bueckelaer and his tall old uncle Piet Aertsen; they’d recently moved from Antwerp to Brussels to set up a new studio. The gregarious Joachim was playing lovely music upon his lute. Mayken had decided not to invite Peter Huys (because she didn’t want to see Anja),nor Nicolas Jonghelinck (because he still hadn’t redeemed Peter’s sixteen pictures from wherever it was in Antwerp they’d been stored). No need to think about old worries today!

  Williblad was in attendance, but in something of a professional capacity, for the drinks and food were being provided by the Pepper Berry tavern, which was only a stone’s throw from where the Luilekkerland was docked. Soon after Mayken and her family arrived, Williblad hurried down the gangplank and across the wharf, returning with a little cask of wine on one shoulder, and followed by a procession of Niay and three more maids from the Indies, each of them bearing a steaming platter of food.

  There was fish baked Javanese-style with cream and nutmeg, mussels and lampreys in curry, a fine red joint of beef studded with cloves, mounds of fried new potatoes with garlic, green beans shining with bacon fat, rounds of brown bread, fresh onions served nearly raw with shaved ginger, and, to end the meal, a huge bowl of berries and sour cream with chopped mint leaves. The aromatic spices quite covered the vagrant odors of the harbor waters.

  As night fell, Bengt and Lange Piet (for “Long Pete”) Aertsen moved about the ship, hanging and lighting paper lanterns with candles in them. Lange Piet was known for painting peasant scenes using live models. He and Peter had become friends quite recently; Lange Piet and his nephew, Joachim, had come by the studio to see the progress of the Dance of the Bride, and, just for the fun of it, Peter had gotten them to pose as peasant dancers. Lange Piet was dressed in full propriety tonight, complete with a ruffled lace collar, though the lute-playing Joachim was dressed more casually, in a loose linen shirt tied together with red ribbons.

  Little Peter followed Bengt and Lange Piet around, fascinated by the colored lanterns. Up on the high deck, the guests were lolling back in their chairs, nibbling at the berries and sipping a little more wine. Mayken and Peter sat side by side. Captain Adam van Haren was passing around a long clay pipe of the newly popular American tobacco. Williblad in particular liked the stuff; he said his tribal elders had smoked it when he was a boy.

  “This year’s been good to me,” said Franckert, presently. He’d found a sailor’s hat to cover his scalp. Sitting here wreathed by smoke he looked at ease again. The scene he’d helped set was a success; this was the kind of moment he lived for. And now he crowned the moment. “And you know, Peter, I’m finally ready to buy a picture from you. Can you paint me a Luilekkerland?”

  “Paint this ship?”

  “No, no, paint me the fairyland of plenty, the place where a roast pig trots by with a knife tucked into a flap of skin on his side, where a roast goose flies down to your plate, where the roofs are tiled with pies, the fences are made of chains of sausages, and pancakes push out of the ground like prickly-pear cactus.” Franckert gestured to sketch out his image of the picture. His joy in doing this was so palpable that Mayken felt like hugging him, sweaty neck-rolls and all.

  “That sounds like good fun,” put in young Joachim Bueckelaer, striking a chord on his lute. “I’d like to see this picture.”

  “I’ll paint it,” said Peter, smiling. “With some plump, lazy fellows lying on the ground.”

  “A fitting image for us in the Low Lands,” intoned Ortelius. Mayken could tell that seeing Williblad happy with his Niay had put the old maid into a bilious humor. “We’re like Nero,” he continued. “We fiddle while Rome burns. Meanwhile the Duke of Alva is on his way to massacre us.” Mayken felt like kicking him for spoiling the conversation.

  “What?” cried Mayken’s mother, who was alert for any hint of danger these days. “Philip’s sent the troops?”

  “The Spaniards are swine,” said Captain van Haren, exhaling a cloud of tobacco smoke. “One day we’ll have a fleet of Sea Beggars to bring them to their knees.”

  “The troops are coming?” repeated old Mayken.

  “Yes,” said Ortelius, “the Tyrant’s finally picked our executioner, one Fernando Alvares de Toledo, the Duke of Alva, Viceroy of Naples. It’s said that he dresses from head to toe in black. You hadn’t heard? Last month Alva assembled an army of ten thousand Spanish foot soldiers and a thousand on horse; seasoned men from Spain’s Italian provinces. They sailed to Genoa last week, and as we glut ourselves they’re on the march to the Low Lands through the Alps.” Mayken gasped. It was just as old Bengt Bots had warned. How she’d hoped it wouldn’t come to pass.

  “The lanterns are flying,” said Little Peter, pointing out across the lower decks. “Look!” Some of Niay’s companions from the Pepper Berry had come up to join the party, and their motions were gently rocking the ship. The slow swaying make it look as if the lanterns were moving about on their own. Off on one side of the deck, Bengt was involved in what looked like a romantic conversation with one of Niay’s friends. Life is dear, thought Mayken, life is precious. Surely God would protect the Low Lands, this earthly heaven below.

  “I want to commission some pictures too,” put in Marcus Noot, who tended to lag a minute or two behind in every conversation. “It’s what I was starting to tell Peter before. The city of Brussels needs a series of paintings to commemorate the construction of the Willebroek Canal. Wouldn’t that be a plum of a job?”

  Mayken knew her Peter’s expressions well enough to see that the idea bored him to tears. But he gave the polite answer. “What an interesting idea, Marcus. Perhaps I could get to it next year. A project like that would take some proper study. I wonder if I might do a less demanding work for you first.” He turned to Ortelius. “But what’s this, Abraham, you say Alva’s coming through the Alps? It’s finally come to that? What are we to do?”

  “Let’s lie on the ground with shit in our pants and our stomachs swollen up till the Black Duke slits them open,” said Williblad with a weary sigh. “Who’s for more wine? It’s very light stuff, really.”

  “Shit in our pants!” repeated Little Peter, cackling for joy. “Williblad said it!” Williblad grinned at the boy and gave him a wink. Little Peter relished the irresponsibility of the older man. “Shit in our pants!” cried Little Peter again.

  “Stop it, or you won’t see the show,” Mayken told him.

  “What
show, Mama?”

  “Wayang kulit!” said Williblad. “We’re putting it on for your papa’s party, Little Peter. Shadow puppets that are flat pieces of leather. Just wait! I’m going down to help Niay and Raos.”

  On the lower deck Raos, a small Malay man with a clear voice, had unfurled a large white sheet of cloth, suspending it from a convenient bit of the ship’s rigging. He disappeared behind the cloth and lit a lantern to brightly illuminate the screen. Clusters of shadow figures appeared on the left and right edges of the screen, and in the middle there was a shape like a conical tree, intricately filigreed and with some animals pricked out by dots inside the shape.

  The guests trooped down below to get a better look, bringing their chairs with them. Perhaps twenty Malays and Indians had already gathered on the deck; some were sailors from the ship, some were patrons of the Pepper Berry. As many of them sat in back of the screen as in front.

  “This is the wayang kulit,” said Niay, standing in front of the screen to face the guests. “It means ‘shadows of leather.’ In the Indies we celebrate a great event like Sangaji Peter’s birthday with a wayang kulit show. Relax and enjoy yourselves.” She scampered behind the screen with Raos and Williblad, and the show began.

  First there was a knocking sound, which set Waf to briefly barking, and then the tree danced off to one side. There was a gentle chiming of gongs, the tootling of a flute, and now two gnarled shadow figures vibrated out to the center of the screen and began to talk, though not in any language that Mayken had ever heard. They talked for a very long time, their slender arms bobbing up and down. Like the conical tree, their bodies were filled with perforations that sketched out lines of dots to limn their features. You could see their eyes and faces and the draped folds of their garments. The shadows seemed to breathe as the puppeteer turned the flat leather figures this way and that.

  A new shadow appeared, a squat, farting creature named Semar. The conical tree floated to the center of the screen and Semar picked his—or her?—way around it, encountering a fresh set of shadow figures: pop-eyed beastly-faced fellows much larger than the first figures. Giants. On and on Raos’s voice toned, accompanied by the piping and ringing of what amounted to a little musical ensemble.