As Above, So Below Page 7

  “Slow down, big boy,” she called in a coarse accent that set the viewers to laughing.

  “Spin with me, Nisa!” said Mopsus, twirling her in a clumsy pirouette.

  The vuile musician redoubled his efforts. He made a screeching sound by dragging the knife blade across the little shovel, and he drummed on the shovel with the handle of the knife. The two attendants had hollow, raiding gourds that they shook to the beat. Nisa kicked off her slippers and danced in her socks, which had great holes in the heels. Her garments flapped with abandon.

  “City folk got nothin’ on me,” said Mopsus, crouching down and starting to dance his way into the makeshift tent. “Time for bed, Nisa!”

  “Hold on, thar,” cried Nisa. “I gotta talk to my bridesmaids.”

  The shapeless attendants bounced over to Nisa, swaying their veiled heads in a rhythm syncopated to the screeching and banging of the coal scuttle. Nisa and her bridesmaids put their heads together, briefly dancing as one.

  “Not enough wedding loot yet, Mops, my lad,” exclaimed Nisa, tossing her head so that her dirty hair writhed like a nest of snakes. “We gotta dance up some more coin before you can think about opening my oyster.”

  Nothing daunted, Mopsus continued his jigging, leading Nisa in a circle around the ragged tent. The attendants reached out into the crowd, waggling their gourds, which had coin-sized slits in the tops.

  The screeching of the coal scuttle was annoying Ortelius, but when he looked over at Bruegel, everything seemed redeemed. Like the mirror upon his back, Bruegel’s eyes contained the whole scene, they made it wonderful and whole. Just then a girl with thick blond hair and a plump, pleasant face appeared at his side. She wore her hair with the ends cropped off at shoulder length, an unusual style that gave her a playful, rakish air.

  “Peter! Isn’t this fun? That musician is a wonder. All he uses is a knife and a shovel! I can’t get over how many people are here!”

  “Hello, Anja. This is my friend Abraham Ortelius. He deals in maps. Would you like a waffle?” Bruegel took the last waffle from his headband and handed it to Anja.

  “Thanks! Hello, Abraham.” Anja nibbled off a corner of her waffle and smiled. She had a chipped front tooth. “I’ve never seen a map—well, I’ve seen maps, but I’ve never held one in my hands. It shows the world as a stork sees it, eh? Have you lived in Antwerp all your life, Abraham?”

  “Yes,” said Ortelius. One of the head-wrapped attendants danced forward to shake a gourd in his face; he dropped in a coin. “Should we go inside the tavern and get a pot of beer?”

  “I want to see Mopsus and Nisa go in their tent first.” Anja giggled. “I’ll find you later in the Blue Boat.”

  “Oh, we can wait here with you,” said Bruegel. “There’s no great hurry.” It was almost night, and Ortelius was cold, but he waited too, not wanting to leave Bruegel’s company.

  By now the attendants had gotten all the money the crowd seemed willing to give. They crossed their arms, hiding their gourds deep in their sheets, and stood before the tent, rocking from side to side.

  “Have we raised enough dowry?” called Nisa.

  The attendants bowed three times and the musician played even louder.

  “Let’s celebrate the splice!” whooped Mopsus, taking Nisa by both hands. “The bridal chamber’s ready!” The filthy tent looked too low and awkward to hold the pair of rubes, but the attendants took hold of the ridgepole and raised the whole tent up off the ground, its cloths and pennants waving crazily. Mopsus and Nisa danced on under there; the attendants dropped the tent; the poles fell loose; and everything collapsed to the ground, with the vuile bridal pair orgiastically flopping beneath the cloths like two great fish.

  “Finis coronat opus!” called the musician, and stopped his racket. The players sorted themselves out from the collapsed tent and looked to see how much money was in the gourds.

  Inside the fire-lit Blue Boat tavern, Bruegel, Ortelius, and Anja settled down in a corner with three pots of beer, which Bruegel insisted on paying for. The serving maid brought the foaming pottery mugs and laid the copper and silver coins of Bruegel’s change upon the table. He slipped off his mirror and his travel-stained jerkin, looking hale and robust in his wool tunic. Franckert was nowhere in sight, which was fine with Ortelius. If he had to share Bruegel, then Anja was more than enough.

  “Are you married?” Anja asked Ortelius, sizing him up. She smiled flirtatiously, and her big cheeks squeezed up under her pale blue eyes.

  “I’m a confirmed bachelor,” said Ortelius, raising his voice to be heard. “I have my mother and sister to take care of.” A guitarist had just begun to play. The musician was a sensitive-looking, long-legged man with slick red hair and a tidy goatee.

  “Abraham is not a ladies’ man,” added Bruegel, fingering his green cap. “His mother, his sister, the Virgin Mary, and Mother Earth are the only women he cares about.” He gave Ortelius a friendly, reassuring smile as if to show he thought no ill of him.

  “Oh,” said Anja, not really understanding. “It’s a fine thing to be religious.” She glanced around the room, perhaps sizing up the other available men. A few people had started clapping along in rhythm with the guitarist, whose voice was surprisingly loud in the small room. He was singing in Flemish about a soldier who shits in his pants—it was understood by all the locals that this was a reference to King Philip, a Spanish Habsburg who in October had become the new ruler of the Netherlands, taking over from his father, the Emperor Charles. This was understood, that is, by all the locals except Anja.

  “Is that song actually about—” she began, but Ortelius cut her off.

  “Don’t talk politics,” he cautioned, and drew his finger across his neck. More than one of Ortelius’s acquaintances had been hung, beheaded, or burned at the stake by the occupying Spanish rulers. Some had been executed for sedition, some for what the ecclesiastical courts called heresy.

  “To Michelangelo!” said Bruegel, raising his pot of beer. “As above, so below. It’s wonderful to see you, Abraham. And don’t worry about me trying to sell you pictures. It’s more than enough that I’m able to talk with you.”

  Ortelius felt warm all over. The three companions drank; it was a fine sweet bubbly ale, not a thin lager.

  “What was Peter like as a boy, Anja?” said Ortelius, smiling at his friend. “Was he always cheerful?”

  “Not always cheerful,” said Anja. “But always drawing. It was wonderful to watch him work on his lessons. The things he’d show me on his slate! It was like a magic window. Once he drew a picture of his teacher pissing at the moon, eh? My big brother, Dirk, stole the slate and brought it to school to show around. I think Peter got a whipping.”

  “The teacher only said he was going to whip me,” put in Peter. “But after school he asked me to draw a picture of you squatting in the grass, Anja.”

  “He did not!” Anja reddened and laughed. “Peasant!”

  “No more,” said Bruegel with a smile. “Now I’m a cultured man. I live in Antwerp, the greatest port in the world. I’m a member of the St. Luke’s Guild of artists. I’m friends with the scholarly Abraham Ortelius.”

  “You were raised a peasant, Peter?” asked Ortelius. “I remember you said you grew up on a farm. I’d like to hear more about your childhood.”

  “Can I tell him, Peter?” asked Anja.

  “All right,” said Bruegel. “But don’t spread this around, Abraham. And don’t tell anyone else but him, Anja.”

  “It was my family that raised Peter,” said Anja. “And, no, we’re not peasants, not really. Papa didn’t have any education, but he was such a good animal doctor that the old Graaf de Hoorne deeded him a little farmhouse free and clear—Papa had saved the old Graaf’s favorite horse. And pretty soon Papa started doctoring the tenant farmers as well. We were on the de Hoorne Ooievaarenest estate in the village of Grote Brueghel, not that the de Hoorne family was there very often. Mostly they just came for the harvest.” Grote was Flemish f
or “great” or “big,” and Ooievaarenest meant “Stork’s Nest.”

  “Ooievaarenest,” murmured Bruegel, savoring the word.

  “Peter was a foundling,” continued Anja. “One June morning when I was three, he appeared on our doorstep. Squalling his head off. My mother was going out to milk our cow and there was Peter. I heard the noise and I ran to see him. He was so cute.” Anja rocked over towards Bruegel and kissed him on the cheek. “I thought God had brought Peter to be my baby brother. My mother couldn’t have children anymore. But Peter wasn’t a brother, he was a boarder. The old Graaf de Hoorne happened to be on the estate that month—though actually it was no coincidence—and he stepped forward to tell father he’d pay to see the foundling well taken care of. My parents didn’t formally adopt Peter, as they didn’t want to dilute my brother’s inheritance. I think it was my mother’s idea to call him Peter, and my father’s to name him after our village. Peter Brueghel from Grote Brueghel.”

  “They spell it with an H,” put in Bruegel unexpectedly. “But I might drop it to look more cosmopolitan.”

  “The GH cluster is Flemish indeed,” said Ortelius. “Coming from the Low Lands, one gets more respect with a Latinate name. My Flemish name is Ortels, for instance. You could make a clean sweep of it and drop the E as well, Peter. Brugelius. But we were discussing genealogy, not philology! Do you know anything of your blood parents?”

  “Ortels?” interrupted Anja. “Your name is Ortels? I know your maid. Helena. I met her at the laundry. She’s fun. And now you’re asking who’s Peter’s real father? It’s Graaf de Hoorne, I’m sure of it.”

  “Everyone always thought the father was someone from the de Hoorne household,” put in Bruegel. “Anja and I often discussed the question; she likes to think it was the old Graaf himself. The King Stork of the Ooievaarenest. My mother seems to have been one of the de Hoorne servant girls, a woman named MariaVerhaecht. She was buried on the estate the same week I was born, dead in childbirth, a poor stork-pecked frog. I often visited her gravestone.”

  “Little Graaf Peter,” said Anja. Though he didn’t think anything of it just then, Ortelius noticed that Anja was toying with the coins of Bruegel’s change, sliding them about on the table.

  “It’s not at all certain the old Graaf was my father,” said Bruegel. “Although he was very good to me over the years, it’s possible that was only because my true father was some member of his retinue. The Graaf was an exceedingly honorable man. It’s just as likely that my father was Jan Vondel, the tutor of the Graaf’s son Filips, a boy nine years older than me. Vondel was known to be given to dancing with the maids and the peasant girls. And I think he was even a bit of an artist. Of course Anja always preferred the idea of me being bastard nobility.”

  “Did you ever ask de Hoorne or Vondel?” said Ortelius.

  “I didn’t want to repay the old Graaf’s kindness by seeming to press any claims. In any case, he died when I was sixteen—shortly after I became Master Coecke’s apprentice. And as for Jan Vondel, well, he was killed by a peasant woman’s jealous husband at a harvest dance the same year that I was born, the rake. Of course I could ask the new Graaf Filips de Hoorne about it, but he might not even know. As I say, he was only nine when I was born. And this way Anja’s still free to think I’m gentry. Her secret Viscount.” Bruegel reached over to tousle Anja’s thick mop of blond hair.

  “Don’t forget that every year, Graaf de Hoorne stopped by the house to see how you were doing,” said Anja. “And it was the Graaf who paid to send you off to school with the Brothers of the Common Life in s’Hertogenbosch after Father said you had to leave.”

  Ortelius smiled at Anja. The girl was a fount of information. “Why did Peter have to leave?”

  “For one thing, Anja’s brother, Dirk, hates me,” put in Bruegel.

  “Dirk always said that vuile vagabonds left Peter on our stoop,” said Anja. “He claims he saw them. Even though Peter wasn’t adopted, Dirk was always anxious that Peter might somehow interfere with Dirk inheriting the farm. But that wasn’t the real reason Father threw you out, was it, Peter?” Anja nudged Bruegel and giggled.

  Bruegel looked embarrassed and changed the subject. “Well, now that Dirk’s finally got the farm, he must be satisfied.”

  “That’s right,” sighed Anja. “Poor Father. He died too young.”

  A fight suddenly broke out at the next table. A red-faced, bare-shouldered woman had started screaming at one of the two men she was sitting with, an olive-skinned Spanish Moor with a downturned mouth and a pointed, scraggly beard. He cried out a curse in Spanish. A beer pot shattered against the wall: the Spaniard had thrown it at the woman. A black-toothed Flemish sailor at the next table grabbed hold of the Spaniard’s ear and dragged him down to the floor. The Spaniard had his hair tied in a high ponytail with two long curling feathers in it; he wore a white tunic and baggy black silk pants. He was a tough character, and he was giving as good as he got. Ortelius shifted a bit to one side to avoid the flailing limbs. He was anything but a pugnacious man. The innkeeper appeared and emptied a bucket of dirty, greasy water onto the combatants, but they kept going at it.

  A quick little movement of Anja’s hand momentarily distracted Ortelius’s eye. With everyone’s attention focused upon the fight, the girl had slid Bruegel’s coins off the edge of the table and into her lap. She was a sneak. Before Ortelius could try to decide how to react, the cultured-looking guitarist across the room stopped playing and the barroom brawl’s drama entered a new phase.

  The guitarist set down his instrument, unfolded his grasshopper legs, walked across the floor, and kicked the Spaniard very hard in the ribs. “That’s for interrupting my song,” he said after the first kick, and then he landed another one. “And that’s for threatening a woman of the Low Lands. “The Spaniard’s companion rose to join the fight. The companion was one of the Rode Rockx—or “Red Shirts”—the French-speaking Walloon mercenary soldiers in the employ of Spain. In addition to his red jersey, he wore a brown leather jerkin, baggy leather pantaloons, red socks, and had a smooth blue cap pulled low down over his round head. By now Ortelius had forgotten all about Anja’s petty theft.

  Tilting back his head to see out from under his cap, the mustached Walloon looked stupid, nearsighted, and implacable. He lunged forward, intent on punching the guitarist in the side of the head, but the musician gracefully ducked the punch, quickly turning to slam his elbow into the face of the Walloon, who fell back against a table full of beer pots, flipping the table and drawing the angered drinkers into the melee.

  “I don’t like this,” said Anja, frowning at a wet spot on the hem of clean gray dress. “Let’s go outside. I want to see the other street play, anyway.”

  “Sound idea,” agreed Ortelius, standing to leave.

  “The street plays are over for today,” said Peter, who was staring into his bulging mirror again. “This is a good enough show, isn’t it? Look over there, the woman they were fighting over is leaving with the guitarist, there they go out the back way.” Anja poked him. “Oh, all right, Anja—we can go outside, and, come to think of it, we can still watch them burning Old Man Winter.” He shrugged on his jerkin and slung the mirror across his back. “Don’t leave your mug half-empty, Abraham. I paid for that! Drink it down. Fuel for the fire of the mind.”

  Ortelius gulped the rest of his thick, sweet beer. When he stepped away from the table, his foot hit a wet spot and he lost his footing, falling onto the pile of men thrashing about on the floor. By the time Bruegel and Anja had pulled Ortelius free, he’d caught several pokes in the ribs and a sharp box to the ear. A rush of low-class anger made his temples pound; he felt a mad desire to plant his boot in the contorted, angry face of the Spaniard. Shocking how easily one could sink to the level of the rabble. He managed to keep the unworthy urge in check. Anja and Bruegel helped him outside. The fresh air cleared his head like a tonic.

  They passed a group of people holding hands and dancing in a circle. A few ho
meward-bound churchgoers jostled past, carrying the three-legged chairs that they brought along to sit on during the mass. Ortelius moved aside to give the churchgoers room.

  “Look out—” began Bruegel, taking Ortelius’s arm, but he was too late. Someone had grabbed hold of Ortelius’s leg, high up above his knee. It was, damnation, the repulsive beggar Floppy Jan who could be seen every day near the cathedral, dragging his inert, twisted lower limbs along on a little board with wheels. Floppy Jan normally rested his hands on a pair of wooden props like tiny sawhorses. Right now one of the little props was digging into Ortelius’s thigh, dangerously close to his testicles. Floppy Jan gave off a mephitic stench; his upward staring eyes rolled loosely. “I hurt terribly,” he whined. “Give me alms or I’ll crush your balls.” Ortelius grunted in dismay. As a religious man, he routinely gave alms. But he despised the unclean touch of the afflicted.

  Floppy Jan’s beggar companions pressed forward, none of them more than waist-high. One wore a soldier’s red fez and had legs that stopped at the ankle. He had wooden clogs strapped along his shins, and walked in a kind of kneeling shuffle, aided by two little crutches. Another footless man had fox-tails pinned all over his back—the sign of a leper. His wooden shin pads had spiky projections that propped him somewhat erect. A hunchback with a gaping, drooling mouth pressed against Ortelius’s other leg, his vacant face turned up towards him like a flower towards the sun. Still more of the loathsome shapes were lurching closer, calling out for Carnival largesse.

  “Pfui,” said Anja, looking alarmed. “We don’t have so many of these in our village.”

  “Cruepelen, hooch, dat u nering bern moeg,” recited Ortelius, which meant “Cripple, may it go better with you.” It was the traditional thing to say. What a grip Jan had upon his leg. Damn the man! Ortelius handed a coin apiece to Jan and the hunchback, and threw a third coin towards the others. “Bless you, Mijnheer,” said Floppy Jan, using the Flemish word for “Mister.” Not that he sounded the least bit grateful or respectful. In fact he made a point of giving Ortelius a nasty jab in his privates before releasing him.