As Above, So Below Read online

  “It’s all done but the hammering,” said Bengt presently. He was talking about the three new paintings he’d been helping Bruegel with. They’d spent quite a bit of time on these works, as there were no new commissions coming up—other than Noot’s panels of theWillebroek Canal, which Bruegel didn’t feel like painting. But now the new pictures were finished, and it would be the work of the next two days to crate them up and send them off.

  “As it happens, Franckert’s good ship Luilekkerland is in Brussels,” said Bruegel. “We’ll put our boxes aboard before they leave tomorrow. Franckert can collect his panel when he meets the ship in Antwerp. And he’ll see that the two big ones continue on to Amsterdam. Can I have some more porridge, Mienemeuie?” His stomach felt better when he ate a lot. “And something for Mayken, too.”

  “And what does the little Mama want this morning?” asked Mienemeuie, setting aside her sulk. Young Mayken had always been her special pet.

  “You decide,” said Bruegel, happy to see the cook’s humor lighten.

  “If I myself were the size of a cow with a calf, well, I think I’d like a cup of tea and a bit of bread,” said Mienemeuie. “I have a nice loaf that I hid in the oven where the pig and the monkey wouldn’t think to look for it.” That’s how the Coecke household spoke of the two soldiers: José the pig and Carlos the monkey. “Trust a man to stay away from an oven. Are you and Bengt going down to the Grand’ Place today, Mijnheer Bruegel?”

  “In an hour or two,” said Bruegel, not wanting to reopen the topic in front of Little Peter. “There’s no rush.” He, Bengt, and Little Peter headed upstairs, stopping off to give Mayken her breakfast.

  At first everything looked fine in the studio. The disorder of the soldiers’ beds and equipment was off in a far corner. A sweet-smelling pile of alder lumber stood ready to be made into crates.

  In their walled-off corner, Bruegel’s three new panels were calm in the morning light, with Bengt’s linen copies to one side. His Amsterdam patron Herman Pilgrims had commissioned two peasant paintings, a Peasant Wedding and a Peasant Dance, each of them over five feet by three feet in size. At the same time, Bruegel had been working on a small panel for Hans Franckert, finally painting the image of the Peasant and the Birdsnester that he’d thought of a few years back.

  It was the Peasant and the Birdsnester that the soldiers had vandalized.

  The picture was a two-foot-by-two-foot panel. In the middle ground, a man in a tree was seizing a fledgling from her nest. The foreground of the picture held a peasant pointing back over his shoulder towards the tree with the nest that he trustingly assumed was still his. To achieve a new optical effect, Peter had modeled the peasant upon his own reflection in his convex mirror, which made it appear as if the peasant were about to fall right out of the picture and into the viewer’s arms. To give the peasant a sufficiently guileless look, Bruegel had based his features upon Little Peter’s face, a friendly pie with two big blue eyes.

  It was of course the peasant’s distended codpiece that had attracted the attention of the soldiers. Nearly every day, Carlos would point at it and say, “Mas grande,” each day laughing harshly as if he’d made a fresh joke. And this morning or last night Carlos the monkey had climbed over the walls of the storage enclosure, gotten out a brush loaded with white paint, and had inexpertly attempted to daub a man’s prick atop the codpiece’s bulge, leaving a ragged streak like pigeon shit on a window pane. The brush lay tossed onto the floor.

  “God help me,” said Bruegel, his stomach blooming with pain. He wanted to step forward and get to work fixing the damage, but for the moment his force was gone. He looked around for his chair; it was set against the storeroom’s wall where Carlos had used it to climb up. With tottering steps, Bruegel made his way to the chair and sat down. How fragile everything suddenly seemed. His paintings were but the thinnest films of oils and pigments, easily scratched, easily rubbed out, easily smeared, upon wood panels so easily broken and burned. He himself was but a sack of blood and bile and choler, fit to burst and leak at any time. And out in the world, evil piled upon evil, with no end in sight.

  “I’ll clean it off,” said Bengt, carrying the panels out into the main room and getting a palette knife and an oily rag. With calm, skillful motions, he scraped off the still-wet white paint and wiped its traces away. The picture itself had been quite dry already, and hardly any of the final coat was damaged. It would need only a few minutes of touch-up work. “I’ll mix the colors you need,” said Bengt, looking solicitously at Bruegel, who was bent over in his chair holding his stomach with both hands.

  “Are you all right, Papa?” asked Little Peter, who hadn’t even noticed the smear. He’d been busy looking out the one particular attic window he always liked to check. It looked onto a schoolyard. Little Peter’s face was bright and clear. And to think Mayken was about to have a second baby. Yes, yes, still and all, life was good. One had to think that. Life was good.

  “I’ll be fine in a minute,” said Bruegel, sitting up. “Maybe I ate too much breakfast. How are the little peasant girls today?”

  Little Peter skipped over to the Peasant Dance and looked at the two girls Bruegel had painted into the lower corner. The smaller of the two looked to be Little Peter’s age; she had a bell tied onto her arm so that she wouldn’t get lost. Her older sister was holding her hands to teach her to dance. Sitting above them was a squinting bagpiper, with a happily drunken man leaning close to savor his music. It was unbearable to think of these precious images at the mercy of the soldiers, to have his unprotected panels in the hands of a monkey and a pig.

  “I should be sleeping up here to watch over them,” said Bengt, looking up from the paints he was mixing. “They wouldn’t dare do it in front of me.”

  “But what if they did?” said Bruegel, slowly getting to his feet. “If you laid hands on them, they might kill you. Those men shouldn’t be up here at all. We simply have to convince them to live in the basement. Niay can talk to them some more. Perhaps I could pay them something. A pity we’re so low on funds.”

  “How about Master Coecke’s ghost?” said Bengt all of a sudden. He nodded to the old scimitar hanging upon the wall.

  “That’s a thought,” said Bruegel, taking the brush and palette that Bengt handed him. He looked down at the palette, part of his mind wordlessly comparing the new colors to those on the panel, part of his mind chattering along, comparing the situation with the soldiers to the time he’d dressed up to spook Bengt. “I like the idea,” he said presently. “But we’ll have to be careful. Best get Williblad and Niay in on it too. Niay can tell them about the ghost again before they go to bed.”

  “What ghost?” asked Little Peter alertly.

  “Your grandfather Coecke,” said Bengt. “He’s been seen in this attic from time to time, waving a scimitar and wearing a green silk turban. Maybe he’ll teach the filthy monkey and the stupid pig not to touch your Papa’s paintings again.”

  “Could the ghost chop off someone’s head?” asked Little Peter uneasily. The lad was hearing a lot of scary things today.

  “He doesn’t have to,” said Bruegel. “When people see him, they run away.”

  He focused his attention upon his brush and palette, shoving about the globs of paint till he had the exact three or four shades of gray-blue that he needed to repair the peasant’s codpiece. And meanwhile the planning, talking part of his mind was babbling like a waterwheel. But it wouldn’t do to say too much in front of Little Peter.

  “We’ll try and finish as much of the crating as we can this afternoon, Bengt,” said Bruegel, drawing a deep slow breath to calm himself down. “Before they come back.”

  “Good,” said Bengt.

  Steady now. Dab, dab, dab, and in a few more minutes Bruegel was done. He and Bengt leaned the panels against the walls to clear out space for the crating. And as a precautionary measure they turned the panels so it was their backs that faced out into the room.

  Bruegel and Little Peter found
the two Maykens at old Mayken’s worktable on the second floor. Little Peter became absorbed in playing with a box of buttons, and Bruegel quietly told the Maykens about what had happened to his painting, and about the action he planned.

  “His ghost again?” said old Mayken with a little laugh. “My poor dead husband, dug up over and over like a dog’s favorite bone.”

  “Think it through, Peter,” cautioned Mayken. “These men are armed. I’ll never forgive you if you get yourself killed. Talk it over with me again this afternoon.” How round and solid she seemed, how full of life. Bruegel kissed her cheek and caressed her curves.

  Out in the garden, Bruegel and Bengt found Williblad and Niay. Those two had been living in Bruegel’s shed for a year and a half now. Bruegel’s old rivalry with Williblad was all but forgotten and they’d become true friends. For his part, Williblad had become less mercurial and more generous with his smiles.

  The four of them walked down to the Grand’ Place together, Bruegel explaining his new plan. In the excitement of his scheming, Bruegel almost forgot where they were going. But the sight of the scaffold dispelled all thoughts but of the executions. They’d arrived a little late.

  The scaffold stood draped with black cloth in the middle of the Grand’ Place. It was set up like a high stage; its sinister gravity reduced the massive and heavily ornamented buildings around the square to scenery. Several thousand Spanish troops dressed in full battle array were standing at attention around the scaffold, with half the town of Brussels crammed in around the edges of the square. Though the sun was bright, the square felt grim and dark. Upon the scaffold were a little table with a silver crucifix, a black velvet cushion, two wrought-iron spikes, a Marshal, a Bishop, and a lumpy shape beneath a dark cloth.

  “That’s Egmont,” someone told Bruegel. “Already dead. Hoorne is next.”

  There was barely time! Bruegel furiously pushed himself towards the elaborate stone house of the Baker’s Guild, where the two condemned men had been brought for the execution. And now the door swung open and Filips de Hoorne appeared, his bald head uncovered and his hands unbound. He wore a plain dark doublet with the collar cut off. His blue eyes seemed to be taking in every detail at once. How long might one’s last walk seem to take? With a final effort, Bruegel wormed close to him.

  “Bless me, brother Filips!” he cried.

  The Graaf gave him a faint smile.

  “Brother? Why not. Though Father always credited you to my tutor. Bless you, brother Peter. Pray for me.”

  The crowd lurched and the Graaf was swept onwards. Bruegel was able to push as far as the back row of the ranked troops. Filips ascended the steps of the black-draped scaffold. He glanced sadly down at the covered shape of Egmont’s remains, then turned his attention to the Marshal, who held a placard with the de Hoorne coat of arms reversed: a deliberate dishonoring of the family escutcheon. Filips spoke to the Marshal so heatedly that the man took a step backwards and laid the placard down upon the table with the crucifix. Filips stepped to the edge of the scaffold and raised his voice to speak a few words to the crowd, but with all the troops between him and the citizens, he couldn’t be heard. The Bishop held out the silver crucifix for Filips to kiss, but Filips refused him, kneeling down on the boards of the scaffold to pray on his own. In a few minutes he rose again to his feet, pulled a dark cap down over his eyes, and knelt upon the velvet cushion at the front of the scaffold, his head bowed, the bare nape of his neck exposed. There was a billowing in the material that hung from the scaffold’s sides. The executioner stepped forth and ascended the stairs, a powerful red-haired, red-bearded man with a great sharp sword in his hands. He placed his left hand upon the top of Filips’s head, raised the sword high in his right hand, and severed Filips’s head from his shoulders in a single blow.

  Blood from the severed neck jetted out onto the front row of troops. The executioner took the cap off the head and held up the bare head with both hands. Filips’s eyes were open; his mouth was twitching. The executioner walked the circuit of the scaffold, and then with an abrupt gesture he impaled the head upon one of the two iron spikes.

  Bruegel screamed. It was too horrible to imagine the sensation of the iron spike pushing up through Filips’s neck, piercing the back of his throat, and blindly crunching through his skull’s gentle filigrees of bone. In the shock of the execution’s moment, the world around Bruegel had seemed soundless. But now, as he screamed, it was as if his own voice awakened his ears. All around him others were groaning and crying out as well.

  The executioner retrieved Egmont’s head from under the cloth and impaled it upon the other spike. Four soldiers carried up a pair of coffins, and the two men’s bodies were laid within. The Marshal and the Bishop descended from the scaffold, leaving the heads and the coffins on display. The soldiers loosened the ranks, allowing the citizens to press close to the scaffold and fully absorb its lessons.

  Bruegel stood rooted to the spot, numb to the jostling of the crowd, staring at Filips’s head and praying for the dead man’s soul. As he prayed, a kind of light seemed to grow behind his eyes until finally he seemed to see the kind face of Christ. Though the men of the Church were evil, Christ was still good. “Help Filips,” prayed Peter. “Help us all.”

  “I love you, Peter,” Christ seemed to say. “Don’t be afraid.” Life was a turbulent dream. The words fell away and Peter was alone in the Light, the divine light that floods every part of creation, on Earth as it is in Heaven.

  Presently Bruegel’s friends found him. “There you are.” It was Williblad, Niay, and Bengt. “We should kill them,” said Williblad.

  “Who?” said Bruegel, blinking his eye, coming back to himself.

  “Any of them we can get our hands on,” said Williblad. “Carlos and José.”

  “That would make us the same as them,” said Bruegel. “We’ll scare them, and that’s enough.” But how small and petty his plan now seemed. Nevertheless, it needed to be done. He had to drive the soldiers from his studio. One step after another in the long winding tunnels of the human anthill. The Light was gone.

  “Niay says she has fresh venom on her special pin,” said Bengt. “It’s from a mollusk that lives in the Indies, you know. They call it a cone shell. One touch of her pin, and your man is paralyzed for hours.”

  Niay grinned, showing her large, gapped teeth, and patted the knot of hair on the back of her neck. A pin with a mother-of-pearl head protruded from the bun, the pinhead worked into the shape of a tiny skull. The same pin she’d poked the Walloon with on the day of the image breaking.

  “If needs be.” Bruegel sighed. “But no killing!”

  The show on the scaffold was reaching its finish. Three hooded monks climbed up onto the stage. Inquisitors. Their dark hanging hoods completely covered their faces. They had two woven rush baskets, each with a domed top and a round lid that fit over its open bottom.

  “Beehives!” exclaimed Bengt. Yes, the monks were putting the two executed nobles’ heads into beehive baskets. The baskets held purple silk cloths to cushion their terrible cargo.

  “They’ll be shipped to Spain for the Tyrant’s delectation,” said Williblad.

  Looking at the shrouded Inquisitors with the baskets under their arms, Bruegel formed a sudden mental image of grim beekeepers in woven straw head covers. People sometimes spoke of the Church as a beehive, with the faithful the bees. The iconoclast bees had smashed up the insides of the hives because the beekeepers were evil and cruel. The horror of the faceless Inquisitors and their baskets made his skin crawl. He tried to summon back his image of Christ, but the fiery ache in his guts distracted him.

  “Let’s go home,” said Bruegel. “Let’s get ready for tonight. And I have to see about Mayken. She could have the baby at any time.” It made his voice crack to speak of the baby. It was a sad world to bring new life into.

  “So we want to frighten the soldiers from your studio?” said Williblad as they walked up the Hoogstraat. “They’ll be in the right
frame of mind for it after this grisly day. José should be easy. I think he preferred the basement in the first place. It’s a better match for his Earth humor.”

  “I’ve heard Carlos talking about deserting,” said Niay. “Apparently the troops aren’t being regularly paid. I heard him say he wants to hop a ship and work his way back to Spain as a sailor. If we scare him enough tonight, he could be on his way.”

  “I just hope our ghost jape will truly spook them,” said Bengt. “I hope I haven’t sent you down on a false path. Not everyone’s so great a donkey as me.”

  “It would be best to befuddle them first,” mused Niay. “Do you have any nutmegs, Mijnheer Bruegel?”

  “Odd you should ask,” said Bruegel with a rueful smile. “Good Filips de Hoorne gave us something like a lifetime supply of nutmegs for Little Peter’s christening.”

  “Give me a dozen of them,” said Niay. “I’ll extract the oil from them and mix it with some gin.”

  “Why?” asked Bengt.

  “A sufficient quantity of nutmeg acts as a poison,” said Niay. “It provokes a peculiar delirium that’s like waking dream. Sometimes our tribesmen undergo a nutmeg ordeal for purposes of divination. Yes, when our little Spaniards return tonight I’ll invite them to make merry—and I’ll madden them with nutmeg gin. They’ll grow flushed, they’ll vomit, they’ll drag themselves to bed, and then the show can begin. You do have gin, don’t you?”

  Bruegel gave her an appraising look. Niay had nearly so great a weakness for drink as Williblad. Was the gin for her or for the soldiers? Was it wise to plan on crazing two armed men?

  “I know where they hide the gin,” said Bengt, proud to be trusted. “Shall I decant a quart of it for her, Master Bruegel?”

  “Don’t you get so drunk that you let them have their way with you, Niay,” cautioned Williblad. Despite his sorrow over the executions, Bruegel smiled to hear Williblad worrying about a thing like this. Williblad and Niay had grown quite domestic.

  “They’ll be too sick from the nutmeg to poke me,” said Niay. “And if they did, what’s the difference after the life I’ve led. It’s just a stick in a hole. Anyway, once I think they’re ready, I’ll bring them up to the attic and—” But now she had to stop talking. They were in sight of the house and Little Peter was running down the sidewalk to them.