As Above, So Below Page 41

  Meanwhile Mienemeuie and Bengt cleaned up the studio, moved the soldiers’ equipment down to the basement, and transferred Bengt’s possessions back into the attic. Of the soldier’s possessions, they hid the shirt, pants, and boots that Carlos might have worn had he really run away. They could burn them another day.

  A little before noon, a horse and wagon arrived to haul the four boxes down to the harbor basin. Shitting out so much blood had left Bruegel feeling rather faint. Bengt, Williblad, and the teamster handled the loading of the wagon. The unmarked box with Carlos was only a little thicker than the others, and seemed not all that much heavier. Oak panels were massive things.

  Just to see things through, Bruegel rode along on the wagon to the harbor. Bengt and Williblad followed on foot, with Niay coming along as well. It was in fact almost time for her and Williblad to start their day’s work at the Pepper Berry. After all yesterday’s turmoil it seemed odd to imagine anyone going to a normal day of work.

  The Luilekkerland bobbed cheerfully in the black harbor water, her flags and pennants flying. Captain Adam van Haren gave them a warm welcome. It was a simple matter for Bruegel to privately explain to him about the fourth crate.

  “I’ll see that it falls overboard on a high tide running out to sea when we hit the Scheldt tomorrow,” said van Haren. “It’ll float out with the rest of the garbage. Don’t worry about a thing.”

  “What if it drifts to shore?”

  “The box will bear no witness. And in these times it’s common to find a body.”

  “How soon are you leaving?” fretted Bruegel, still not at rest. “I’m worried the Spaniards might think to come down here and search the ship.”

  “I’ll put a lookout in the rigging, and we’ll weigh anchor if we see them coming,” said van Haren. “Meanwhile we’ve still got some lace to load.”

  “Could you have your lookout send someone into the Pepper Berry and warn me too if there’s any sign of the Spaniards?” asked Williblad. “I’m sure there’s nothing to worry about, but if they come down here it just might be for me instead of you. I wouldn’t care to face the Council of Blood.” This last was the name for Alva’s tribunal, which was currently handing down scores of death sentences every day.

  Van Haren agreed. Niay and Williblad started their day’s work at the Pepper Berry; Bengt and Bruegel returned home. Waiting in the garden were three armed men: José, a sergeant, and some new Spanish soldier. The sergeant was an all-too-familiar figure: the Walloon with the heavy mustache, brown leather jerkin, baggy leather pantaloons, red socks, and smooth blue cap pulled down low over his round head. Tilting back his head to see out from under his cap, the Walloon gazed nearsightedly at Bruegel. Though this was the fourth time they’d met, the sergeant still seemed not to recognize him.

  “I like to see the room where the soldiers were lodged,” he said in his thick French accent.

  The nape of Bruegel’s neck tingled as he led the three soldiers up the stairs. But there was nothing to see in the studio except Bengt’s copies of Bruegel’s new pictures, and these were of no interest to the Walloon.

  “Where you put Carlos’s equipment?” he wanted to know. Bruegel led them down to the basement, and showed them José and Carlos’s things.

  “Corporal Miguel will live here now,” said the Walloon, indicating the new soldier, a long-nosed fellow with thick lips and a narrow chin. “He speaks a little Flemish. He going to notice everything that happen and tell me. He going be in charge of José.” The Walloon paused and glared at Bruegel. “Miguel don’t believe in ghosts. If there more trouble in this house we burn it down.” Bruegel said nothing.

  And then they were back out in the yard, and it seemed as if everything would be all right. But still the soldiers lingered.

  “Williblad Cheroo,” said the Walloon, pointing at the shed in the corner of the yard. “He live here, no? The image breaker. I see him doing it couple years ago. Antwerp was wrong to free him. José say Cheroo live here with the woman named Niay. She a kind of witch, I think, from what José tell me. I hope they not good friends of yours, because when we finished here, we going to the Pepper Berry to arrest them.”

  The soldiers took everything out of the shed and threw it on the ground, searching for evidence or, more likely, for valuables to steal. But they found little more than Williblad’s fine winter cape and the looted rosary that Niay wore for a necklace. They took these and clattered down the street towards the harbor. Bruegel felt sick with worry for his friends. He hoped the lookout would spot the trouble coming.

  He passed the rest of the afternoon trying to draw his vision of the baskets and the masked beekeepers. Little Peter sat next to him with a charcoal and his own piece of paper, drawing what he said were tigers. Bruegel was too lightheaded to make much progress. Time had slowed to a crawl. He and Little Peter played with the baby, chatted with Mayken, looked in on old Mayken in her studio, then tried to draw some more. Near sunset, Bruegel could stand the suspense no longer. He walked down alone to make inquiries at the Pepper Berry. And, yes, the Luilekkerland had sailed, and, yes, the lookout had warned Williblad and Niay in time for them to get aboard.

  “Have a beer,” said Raos the innkeeper. “Relax.” Bruegel took a large foaming mug and seated himself on a bench in front of the Pepper Berry. All day he’d been faintly tasting blood at the back of his throat, and it was good to have the thick, sweet lager wash the sensation away. The sun was low in the sky, gilding the dirty stones of the harbor with warm light. Bruegel ate some bread with his beer, which helped settle the pangs in his stomach. Today, this very day, he’d become the father of a second son. He was well content.

  In his mind’s eye, Bruegel floated out along the Willebroek Canal, caught up with the Luilekkerland, smiled at the escaped Niay and Williblad, peeked into the crates and took one last look at—oh, not at Carlos, may God bless his soul and forgive his killers—took one last look at his Peasant Dance and Peasant Wedding. Bruegel savored the thought of these two pictures, secret mementos of the doomed celebration he’d attended with Franckert, these eight years gone.

  All around him, life was going on. On the bench beside him a red-faced woman was arguing with a toothless man in a cap with flaps down over his ears; on the cobblestones before him two little girls were playing jacks with a leather ball and a handful of pig vertebrae; a new ship was gliding into the harbor with sailors scrambling up into the rigging to strike the sails; a gull and a crow were fighting over a fish head at the wharf’s edge; two young men were coming around the corner singing a new Beggar song about yesterday’s executions—life was endlessly rich and endlessly various, and it could take a man eight years simply to paint one single moment of one single day.

  Bruegel took another sip of his beer. The things he’d painted, he’d painted right. It might be that his stomach was going to kill him before long, and half his life’s work might be out of sight in storage, but he knew he’d painted things that mattered. He’d painted what he saw, and more than that, he’d painted what he couldn’t see, the God that fills the world, as above, so below.

  Sixteen

  The Magpie on the Gallows

  Brussels, January–September 1569

  It was winter again, the season of black bile, the earth frozen hard, the snow and ice so cold that they seemed made of dry metal rather than water. The sun was orange on the horizon and night was coming fast. Mayken added some wood to the fireplace in her mother’s studio. Money was short this winter, and the Coecke house wasn’t so well heated as usual; this was the one room other than the kitchen that they always kept warm.

  With no particular work to do, Mayken’s mother was sitting in a rocker by the fire knitting. She’d taken to wearing spectacles for close work. As an artist, she wasn’t content to knit ordinary things; rarely did she knit even a hat with less than three colors.

  Little Peter was at the table, daubing with some watercolors. Bengt was at the other end of the table, working on a drawing based on hi
s copy of Peter’s Luilekkerland painting. They hoped to sell it to Jerome Cock for engraving. Peter lay sprawled upon the couch, staring out the window at the low winter sky, brooding over something, his lips slightly moving. Baby Jan lay asleep on his stomach.

  Each morning Mayken was at pains to thoroughly wrap the boys in the colorful wool outfits old Mayken made them, and they were flourishing like greenhouse tulips. Jan was sturdy and lively, with a ready smile, and Little Peter was more fun to talk with all the time. But her poor husband was wasting away. Though Peter didn’t like to discuss the matter, it seemed there was considerable blood in his stool every morning. His stomach gnawed at him between meals and in the nights, and of late he was finding it harder and harder to swallow. This week he’d been too weak to do any work on his two new pictures. Always more pictures, though with each one, Mayken wondered if it might be the last. By some slow alchemy, the unthinkable had become a constant background to her thoughts. If nothing changed, Peter must soon die. A sad thought on a gray morning.

  There was a light footstep on the stairs; it was their unwelcome lodger, the Corporal Miguel, more spy than soldier, coming up from his lair in the basement. He glided into the room, his long nose pointing this way and that, and paused behind Bengt, studying his work. “It’s for fun,” Bengt said without looking up. “A fairy tale. Nothing of politics or religion.”

  Though Miguel understood Flemish, he didn’t answer. After another penetrating look around the room he proceeded upstairs to the studio, not that anything had changed there for the last few days. Mayken would have liked to dandle Jan for a distraction, but if you took him off Peter’s chest when he was sleeping, he always began to cry. She looked out the window at the bleak monochrome street, then poked the fire again, wishing there could be some good news.

  And then, behold, mother’s friend Marcus Noot was at the front door, stamping the snow off his feet. Mayken’s mother let him in, exclaiming with joy at what he told her. Marcus came up to the second floor to share his good news, sonorously reading it from a scroll of paper that had been slit to ribbons at the bottom so that a big red disk seal could dangle from one of the strips.

  “On this same day, by this Communal Council it was decided that Master Peter of Bruegel shall be discharged of the Spanish soldiers quartered in his house, and that the masters of finance of this city shall offer to the same Bruegel a certain gratuity in order that he may pursue his activity and his undertakings in this city.”

  “What?” exclaimed Peter, his haggard face lit by the first real smile that Mayken had seen for weeks. It was like seeing the sun come out. Peter sat up, cradling little Jan in the crook of his arm. “This is really true?”

  “A proper triumph of truth,” said Noot, and when Miguel popped out of the staircase with his large dark eyes staring, Noot pointed at him and called, “Adios!” Miguel silently padded over to examine the proclamation in Noot’s hand.

  “The city is paying the cost for you and José to lodge yourselves elsewhere,” explained Noot, reaching into his pocket and brandishing a plump little purse. “You and José are to pack up and leave tonight, Corporal. Pick any inn you like.”

  Miguel peered at Noot’s scroll some more and finally murmured a question.

  “That’s right,” said Noot. “I can give you this month’s money right now, my man.” He extracted two coins from the purse and handed them over. Mayken noticed the purse was still fat. She wondered if perhaps Noot might give them some of that too. Their diet was down to potatoes and mussels. “Mind that you sign a receipt for me,” Noot told Miguel. In another moment, he and the Spaniard had finished their business. Miguel sidled down to the basement where he could be heard talking to José.

  Little Peter ran over to look at the seal on the city proclamation. “It’s a picture in wax, Mama!” Mayken examined it with her son; the seal showed an archangel with a sword. That’s the kind of help they needed in this hard time. An archangel.

  “You’re wonderful, Marcus!” Mayken’s mother was saying, her arms around their friend. She kissed him on the cheek, knocking her spectacles askew.

  “Perhaps now Peter can do some work on those paintings of the Willebroek Canal,” said Noot. Catching Peter’s neutral expression, he added, “Or not.” Peter had told Mayken he lacked the energy and will to document the building of the canal and that he only wanted to paint a few last things from within his head. One day, in a particularly sardonic humor, he’d gone so far as to say that the best thing about his terminal illness was that, with any luck, he’d die before he had to paint the Willebroek Canal. Mayken always rose to the bait and scolded him mightily when he’d say things like that. It was what he expected her to do and she did it. In the waning of their time together their common rituals had begun to seem like formal dance steps, tiresome but at least familiar, something to fill the hours before the arrival of Death.

  “In any case I convinced the City Fathers that you deserve a little peace of mind,” concluded Marcus Noot. “A gift from the city.” With a flourish, he handed Peter the whole plump purse.

  “A miracle,” said Peter simply. “Thanks be to God.”

  Things were a bit better for the rest of the month. The fire in the attic studio was lit again, and Peter and Bengt went back to working up there every day. At the end of January they had another guest: Abraham Ortelius.

  “How’s Peter?” he asked Mayken at the door. With Williblad fully out of the picture Ortelius had regained his old surface polish and equanimity. Yes, his hair was thinning, but he seemed more energetic and collected than when he’d been running after the other man.

  “Peter does poorly,” said Mayken. “He’s a handful. Always talking about dying.” Though she was intimately familiar with the thought by now, speaking of it still made her voice break. “All he can eat is milk, sometimes with a little bread soaked in it. And always he loses blood. We don’t know how long he will last.”

  Up in the attic, Peter was sitting in his chair staring at his two new pictures, a pair of watercolors on canvas, all in tones of blue, green, and gray. Bengt was to one side, working as usual on some copies. Little Peter was playing by the fire.

  “You’ve done well to get new commissions in these times,” said Ortelius, taking a hearty tone. He settled in a chair next to Peter, and Mayken took a seat as well. Jan was safe downstairs with her mother. “Nothing slows the pace of our Bruegel!” continued Ortelius, straining for joviality.

  “I don’t suppose Mayken had a chance to tell you who these are for?” asked Peter, closely regarding his friend. “No, she was probably talking about my health. I’m a terrible worry to her. Guess, Abraham, for whom might these paintings be?”

  “I wonder,” said Ortelius, willingly entering into the game Peter proposed. “It’s an unusual subject matter. Of your own choosing, I’d wager. Nobody but Bruegel would conceive pictures as odd as these. One panel shows six blind men leading each other into a ditch, most saturnine, and the second one—what is it?”

  “I call it The Misanthrope,” said Peter, with a slight smile. “It’s a picture of me about to die.”

  “Don’t say that, Peter,” snapped Mayken. Little Peter was lying right nearby playing with some blocks. She didn’t like for the boy to hear talk like this every day. Even though Little Peter didn’t look up, the stillness of his head told Mayken he was listening. Big Peter glared at her in his most provoking way. His final illness was making him quite unmanageable.

  Mayken disliked The Misanthrope. Unlike all of Peter’s other paintings, it was composed as a circle, a circular scene set against a gray background. The main figure was a bitter-looking, black-caped man walking slowly to the left. His profile, beard, and folded hands did indeed remind Mayken a bit of her husband—turned old and broken and sad. The part of the picture that he was walking into held only a decaying tree and four or five slimy brown mushrooms. He was walking into the Land of Death.

  “Quite traditional,” said Ortelius in a careful tone. “Like
a rondel in a Book of Hours. I see you’ve even written a caption on it. ‘Om dat de Vierelt is soe ongetru / Daer om gha ic in den ru.’ ” This meant, word by word, “For that the World is so untrue / Therefore go I in sorrow.”

  “Master Bruegel and I enjoy the zakkenroller,” put in Bengt, using the Flemish word for pickpocket. “I’m just now copying him. It’s a clever bit of work.” He was referring to the grotesque little figure crouched behind the Misanthrope to steal his purse. The zakkenroller held the heart-shaped red purse in one hand and used a pair of shears to cut the ribbon that attached it to the unaware Misanthrope’s waist.

  Mayken hated the zakkenroller. He looked sly and mean. He was ensconced in a transparent bubble with a cross, his body inside and his arms and legs sticking out. The parts on the inside were drawn a bit darker and fuzzier. Peter had been pleased when he’d achieved this effect; he kept discussing it with Bengt, as if how he laid on the paints was as important as the sad, bitter things that the paints said.

  “And look at these,” said Peter, letting out a chuckle. Though it was beyond Mayken’s comprehension, it pleased Peter to pretend this picture was funny. With a grunt he got to his feet and pointed at some spiky objects painted on the ground before the Misanthrope; these were the “caltrops” that were sometimes strewn on battlefields to lame soldiers and horses. They were four-pointed metal stars shaped a bit like children’s jacks, with their points arranged so that one was always pointing upwards. On the floor beside the painting Peter had a real caltrop he’d picked up somewhere for a model. “The Misanthrope is going to step on a caltrop,” said Peter. He nudged the sample caltrop on the floor, then wagged his finger at Ortelius. “Beware, Abraham. That’s what happens to people who feel sorry for themselves. They get their purses stolen and they step on caltrops.”