As Above, So Below Read online

  “I’m glad you’re not sorry for yourself,” said Ortelius, leaning back in his chair, eager to jolly Peter along. “That’s a relief. It makes this visit that much more of a pleasure.” But now he caught a glimpse of Mayken’s troubled face. “What do you think of The Misanthrope, Mayken?”

  Mayken simply shook her head. Peter was tired of hearing her nag him about the picture. She already knew what he’d say anyway, he’d say that they could laugh or they could cry, so why not laugh. She herself found it hard to see any point in acting as if dying were funny, especially when you were going to be the one left behind. If Peter thought he could keep his spirits up that way then good for him.

  A bit puzzled by her silence, Ortelius turned back to Peter. “What’s the glass ball around the pickpocket?” he asked. “The World?” Mayken braced herself for the answer. She’d heard it too many times before.

  “With the Spanish overlords gone from our home, I can openly say that it’s the symbol of the Habsburgs,” said Peter. A hard fanatical glint appeared in his eyes. Despite his assumed airs of mirth, Mayken knew well that his heart was far from peaceful. Thanks to a letter they’d received a few months ago, he’d become more obsessed than ever by the fate of Jonghelinck’s confiscated pictures, with sixteen of his finest among them. “The zakkenroller is the Archduke of Austria,” said Peter, his voice tight. “He’s the one who robs us the most. He robs Peter Bruegel. I have evidence of a plot, Abraham. I have it from Cardinal Granvelle.”

  Ortelius looked askance at Mayken, almost as if he were wondering if Peter had gone mad. “Granvelle is the Viceroy of Naples now, isn’t he, Peter? At the far end of Italy. You can’t tell me that the Cardinal writes you.”

  “It is he who commissioned these pictures,” exclaimed Bruegel, abruptly lightening his humor. He’d grown quite volatile of late. “The work comes due to the good offices of Granvelle’s secretary, this particular man being an old friend of yours and to some extent of mine.” Peter allowed himself a little smile now. Even in his weakened state, he had an excellent sense for the dramatic.

  “You mean Williblad?” sang Ortelius, the years sliding off him. He beamed like a happy girl. “Williblad is in Naples?”

  “The very same,” said Peter. “I had a letter from him in October, shortly after the last time you were here.”

  “I—I don’t suppose he mentioned me?” asked Ortelius wistfully. Mayken’s heart went out to the frail, balding mapmaker. It would be hard to carry passions the world thought wicked or absurd. Not for the first time, it struck her how odd it was that she and this man had shared the same lover. It wasn’t a comfortable thought. But Ortelius’s homely, yearning face spoke to her nonetheless.

  “He did mention you,” said Mayken, gently patting his knee. “Quite warmly.” She wished the discussion were over. She didn’t want to hear Peter shouting about that letter again.

  “Bring the letter,” Peter told Mayken, as if reading her thoughts. Again she shook her head. It was no fun arguing with a sick man.

  “I’ll get it,” piped Little Peter, proud of knowing the family hiding place. “Can I?”

  “Good boy,” said Big Peter, and Little Peter ran across to the corner of the attic where there was a loose floorboard under a bit of carpet. It’s where they’d been keeping the papers they didn’t want Corporal Miguel to see. Even though the spy was gone from their house, by force of habit they were still being secretive. So Little Peter brought Williblad’s letter to Peter, and he read it aloud, sitting in his chair. Mayken braced herself.

  “ ‘Williblad Cheroo to Peter Bruegel salutation. Niay and I have made our way to Naples, a climate much to our liking. We have found employment with the Viceroy of the province, who is none other than our old acquaintance Cardinal Granvelle. The Viceroy is in robust health, that is to say fat as a varken. He often voices his dismay over the dispersal of the hoard he had amassed in Brussels. He particularly regrets the loss of your painting The Flight Into Egypt.’ ”

  “I’m so glad Williblad’s safe,” exclaimed Ortelius. “Captain van Haren didn’t know what happened to him after Amsterdam.”

  “You hear that about my picture?” put in Peter. “They’re becoming more rare and costly all the time. Thanks to the Habsburgs.” There was no trace of his earlier good humor. He gave the paper a loud rattle and read on.

  “ ‘When I assured the Viceroy that I could arrange for him to purchase some new pictures by you, my position with him was assured. I am again one of Granvelle’s secretaries, with the responsibility of advising him on his art purchases, much as I did for Fugger.’ ”

  Peter paused again, glaring as if daring them to interrupt. Stubbornly Mayken held her tongue. “Listen to this next part, Abraham!” said Peter.

  He continued reading, his flushed meager face growing smooth and tight. “ ‘The Cardinal reports that the Habsburg court has a keen taste for your work. Dear Peter, I trust you recall my belief that the confiscation of Jonghelinck’s paintings came about so that your works might find their way to the Archduke of Austria. Granvelle confirms this. He himself helped de Bruyne bring about Jonghelinck’s financial ruin.’ ”

  “Aha!” shouted Peter, furious all over again, even though he’d read this letter dozens and dozens of times. “Aha! Aha! Aha! The zakkenroller in the imperial orb! He cuts away my heart as I slink off to die in the woods!” He burst into a cracked fit of coughing, finally having to fetch up a cloth to his face and spit out some blood.

  “That’s enough, Peter,” said Mayken, more sharply than she meant to. “Calm yourself. You don’t have to read the whole letter.”

  “I can read it myself,” said Ortelius, holding out his hand. There was a slight tremor in it that broke Mayken’s heart. The poor man was desperate for news of Williblad’s feelings for him.

  “No, no,” said Peter, selfishly clutching the letter to his chest. “I’ll read the rest. The rest is easy.” He patted off his mouth, took a sip of water, took a breath, and resumed.

  “The redoubtable Niay is a maid in the Viceroy’s household, one among several. She finds it agreeable as there is little work for her to do. There are some Javanese here as well, though Niay has lost her old love for shadow puppetry—for reasons you may well recall.’ ”

  Peter read over that part quickly. Mayken very well knew the reasons why Niay no longer liked shadow puppets, but Ortelius didn’t, and in these times there was certainly no reason to tell him. Peter pressed on.

  “ ‘The Viceroy’s table is quite to our liking and we are lodged in a room with a window opening out onto an orange tree. The villa is on a hill with a view of the Bay of Naples that looks good enough to paint. Perhaps I shall undertake a second work in my own American style! Since coming to work for the Viceroy, I’ve brought my wardrobe back into a befitting state. The tailor has made me three costumes of silk and velvet: one yellow, one maroon, and one green. The Neapolitans are very clever with these things. The fasteners on my clothes are Turk’s-head knots of silk cord which fit through loops of the same cord, and my boots are of a remarkable softness.’ ”

  “I’d like to see him,” said Ortelius with a faraway smile.

  “ ‘The Viceroy instructs me to offer you a commission for two paintings. He places no restriction on the subjects, so long as there are no gross and obvious offences to the Church, the Crown, or the personage of His Worship. As payment for the two works, he offers you four times the commission he paid for your Flight into Egypt. Upon receipt and approval of the new works, the Viceroy will send you a letter of exchange for the Medici bank in Antwerp. The Viceroy desires that you paint the new pictures on canvas rather than panel, both for ease of shipping and so that it will be easier for him to take these treasures with him should he again relocate in haste. I implore that you temper any lingering bitterness towards the Viceroy and fulfill this commission. Your acquiescence in this matter will appreciably enhance my standing in his household.’ ”

  Peter paused. He seemed to have recove
red from his little fit of fury. “And here’s the part about you, Abraham.” He read out the end of the letter.

  “ ‘Please give my warmest regards to Mayken and Little Peter. I often think fondly of Abraham Ortelius, remembering the many kindnesses the dear man did for me. Greet him as well. Do know that Niay and I are most content in our new home. With warm affection, Williblad.’ ”

  Peter folded the letter and handed it over to Ortelius, who studied it and then passed it to Little Peter to stick back under the floor. Mayken was glad they were done with the letter once again. It grew tiresome, indulging the whims of a cantankerous invalid.

  “Praise God,” said Ortelius, still lit up by the joy of having heard Williblad mention his name.

  “Except he hasn’t sent that letter of exchange,” said Mayken, sour with Peter’s self-indulgence and angry at his impracticality. “It’s a poor price they offered anyway. And Peter’s been painting these pictures for free for four months. I don’t trust Granvelle.”

  “The man values my art,” said Peter simply. “That makes up for his sins. We’ll have our money before Easter, Mayken, long before the city’s gift runs out.”

  “I’m sure you enjoy the freedom to pick the subjects that most speak to you,” said Ortelius in a soothing tone. He gave Mayken a sympathetic look. She could see he understood how burdensome it was for her to be with Peter during these last times. “Assuming you don’t write a full explication on the back of The Misanthrope, I’d say there’s no obvious offense to the Crown, Peter. Your modes of thought are too subtle, too oblique. And your panel of the blind leading the blind—how apt an image for these times.”

  “God knows it’s more to my taste than painting some men digging a ditch for the city,” said Peter. “Yes, the work’s going well, even though I’m terribly weak from shitting out blood. There’s little left of me but bile, choler, and phlegm. It’s a blessing to have those soldiers gone from the house. In the last two weeks, Bengt and I have all but finished these two paintings. Speaking of money, did you bring something for me, Abraham?” This was a question Mayken wanted the answer to as well.

  “Not everything you hoped,” said Ortelius, unrolling the bundle he carried. “I sold your little panel of the crippled beggars to Plantin. And Jerome Cock is engraving your drawing of Summer, the one with the reaper’s scythe sticking out. Fine. But nobody wants to print your Beekeepers. I tried others besides Cock; they all feel the same. There’s too big a risk of it being deemed heretical. It’s your misfortune that there happens to be a new Calvinist tract called The Beehive of the Holy Romish Church. The Inquisitors are quite frantic to burn the author of the book, and Cock feels that if he were to publish your drawing he might end up facing the Council of Blood.”

  Ortelius unpacked Peter’s Beekeepers drawing and unrolled it on a clean spot of the floor, weighting its corners with some heavy pebbles Peter kept about the studio for just that purpose.

  “Spooky, eh?” said Peter, looking down at the sinister masked beekeepers manipulating the hives. “That’s the executioners with de Hoorne’s and Egmont’s heads in their baskets, you understand. And see the man climbing up the tree? That’s Williblad escaping to Naples. I drew it to give him good luck and it worked.”

  “Where are the heads?” cried Little Peter, jumping to his feet. “Is Uncle Filips’s head in that basket?”

  “Oh, Peter,” protested Mayken. “Must you always stir him up with your fantasies?”

  “When I saw the execution, it made me think of beekeepers,” said Peter stubbornly. “And this is what I drew. Not that anyone has to know that. So remember, Little Peter, it’s our secret what’s in the basket. Jerome Cock’s onto the wrong scent entirely. How can he imagine this has anything to do with Calvinists?”

  “Well, we couldn’t help but notice that the church in the background has no cross on top,” said Ortelius. “One might say it’s a Calvinist church. They don’t have crosses, you know.”

  “But the picture is beekeepers,” protested Mayken. It was a shame not to sell this well-made drawing. Why did men make everything so complicated? “We’ve never even seen a Calvinist church,” she added. “Are there really such things?”

  “There was one in Antwerp,” said Ortelius. “Alva’s men had its roof torn off. And now the former members of the congregation dangle from the rafters.”

  “Well, well,” said Peter, clearly upset, but trying to keep an even tone. “I suppose we’ll perforce add the Beekeepers to our studio collection.” There were a number of his smaller paintings and drawings on the walls. “Bengt, mount it in a paper mat so we can hang it.”

  “The Spanish might always come by to inspect your studio again,” said Ortelius. “There could be trouble if they saw it.” What a fussy old maid he could be, thought Mayken, thoroughly tired of this discussion.

  “This will put them off the scent,” said Peter, taking out his pen. He was overexcited, not really himself. He knelt down next to the drawing and began slowly inscribing a proverb on the corner. “Dye den nest weet, dye weeten, dyen roft, dy heeten,” he intoned.

  These days Mayken sometimes wondered if her husband weren’t breaking down under the strain of his wasting disease. This was that same motto he’d used about Williblad and Mayken. “Who knows the nest, knows it, who robs the nest, has it.”

  “Explicate,” said Ortelius, humoring his friend. “I do but ill perceive your meaning, Mijnheer.” He let out a scholar’s dry chuckle.

  “The Nest is both God and the Church,” said Peter, not looking up from his task. His voice was coming in jagged bursts. “Who knows God, knows God no matter what, and who steals the Church has only the Church. The Tyrant steals our Church and thinks he has our God. Alva makes me ashamed of our Church. Did you hear that he tortured William’s steward until he showed them where to find the Bosch triptych sealed up inside in the wall? The Garden of Earthly Delights. It’s in Madrid by now. Philip has the Bosch, but I know it. Dye den nest weet, dye weeten, dyen roft, dy heeten.”

  Again Ortelius gave Mayken that sympathetic look. “The nest of God,” he said, sententiously clearing his throat. But then he fell silent. Nobody could make sense of Peter’s farrago. Mayken reached over and poked Ortelius, wanting more help. “It’s not such a bad thing, you know, to imagine your paintings in the imperial palace,” essayed Ortelius. Peter glared up at him, his mouth set in a feral grimace, saying nothing. Mayken poked Ortelius again.

  So now the good Ortelius came up with a fresh topic. He began talking about his Theatrum Orbis Terrarum, the book of maps he was working on. He’d brought a rough version of it along.

  The book took Peter’s attention off his obsessions. Ortelius and Peter leafed through it together, taking a little tour of the world, with Little Peter looking on. The two men sat and chatted for the rest of the afternoon, Mayken coming and going. When it was time for Ortelius to leave, he bowed his head and prayed with Peter for his health. And then they embraced for what was to be the very last time.

  A few weeks later Granvelle really did send a letter about the money, and Hans Franckert was able to get the cash from the Medicis. There was another tearful parting when Franckert came to bring the money and to say his last words to Peter. Franckert’s own health was not so good; his skin was turning yellow and he’d lost the roll of fat from around his neck. But he wouldn’t speak of it, he wanted only to talk of Peter, and long after Peter had dropped off to sleep, he sat in the kitchen drinking wine and talking of his old times with Peter.

  When Franckert finally left the house it was near midnight, and he was quite overcome with tears. With most of their guests Mayken didn’t allow herself the luxury of crying, for once she began, it was too hard to stop, and who would run the affairs of the house if she were blinded with tears all the time?

  But seeing Franckert’s kind face so pinched and sad broke down Mayken’s reserves. She cried on his shoulder for quite some time, though when she was done she felt no better than before. For Mayken it
wasn’t a matter of enjoying one big emotional farewell. For Mayken in these last months, each moment was a farewell, every day, all day long.

  Peter and Bengt finished up the two canvases and sent them off to Naples. With everyone impoverished or at war, Peter had no prospects for a new commission other than the Willebroek Canal panels, which he resolutely refused to paint. He began idly making drawings of Spanish soldiers with the faces of pigs and monkeys engaging in every vile and loathsome act. It made Mayken uneasy to see these sheets. What if, in some fey humor, Peter were to sail one of the papers out of the studio window?

  Wearily she remonstrated with him. Why not do another painting, she proposed. A happy painting. Perhaps a cheerful landscape. Just for fun. The idleness was poison for him.

  “All right,” said Peter. “A happy picture for you. There’s an odd little bit of panel that I’ve always meant to put something on. I’ll get right to it.”

  “Don’t overwork yourself.”

  But of course Peter did overwork himself, as he always did when he became engrossed in something. When he worked, it was always at white heat. He finished the new picture in a month. As for cheerfulness: the centerpiece of the new little landscape was a gallows. But at least it was an empty gallows, nicely lit in the sun, and with a lively magpie perched on top of it.

  “That’s you,” said Peter, pointing to the magpie. “And see her mate, down here on the stump pecking out a worm? That’s me.”

  “The gallows looks twisted,” said Mayken, intrigued. “The top and the bottom don’t match. Did you mean to do that?”

  “Or did your father fail to teach me perspective?” asked Peter with a smile. “No, it’s supposed to look wrong. Executions are from another world, a mistaken world, a Crooked World. I saw a gallows like this seventeen years ago, when de Vos and I walked to Italy. What a beautiful day that was. I wanted to put that day into this picture for you. I was young and the whole world was still ahead of me.”