As Above, So Below Read online

  The strong beer and the agitation of the tavern fight must have been working upon Ortelius, for now he committed an uncharitable act. Leaning forward a bit, though not so far as to bring himself back within Floppy Jan’s reach, he spit directly into the beggar’s face, and told him to go to hell. The cripple spat back and dragged himself on his way.

  Meanwhile the two men with no feet had begun fighting savagely over the third coin, repeatedly knocking it out of each other’s hand. Their combat seemed to know no measure; they bit and scratched and hit each other with their crutches. And then, at an opportune moment, a little boy with a hat pulled low over his face darted in among the beggars and made off with the disputed coin.

  “Two dogs, one bone, and the magpie takes it,” said Bruegel, using a broad peasant accent.

  “The boy runs like his ass is on fire,” added Anja. She and Bruegel seemed to revel in Flemish folk-sayings.

  “Be careful they don’t catch hold of us again,” warned Ortelius, still breathing hard. He was already starting to feel guilty about having indulged the sin of Anger.

  Before they’d walked much farther, Franckert popped out of the square’s other tavern, the Dragon. He’d removed his executioner’s hood; and he had a bagpiper and a handsome woman in tow, the slender Hennie van Mander, who was a tapestry designer and a member of the artists’ Guild in her own right. The bagpipe squealed and droned. Franckert and Hennie capered about, hands on their hips, shoulders swaying, feet twirling. Like so many fat men, Franckert was exceedingly light on his feet. He wore skintight breeches with a codpiece that contained—and emphasized—his genitals. The triangular flap of the codpiece was fastened to his trouser legs with buttons at the corners. The codpiece was a fashion that Ortelius found to be of some interest, though not as modeled upon this man’s tun-belly. He wasn’t particularly fond of Franckert. Ortelius had a sense that the loud and hearty Franckert thought him unmanly.

  Several more couples joined in the dance, Anja drawing in Bruegel. Ortelius watched from the side. He ached all over from his tumble in the tavern, and he felt worse and worse about having spit upon Floppy Jan. He’d have to confess it tomorrow morning. Oh, how nice it would be if he could turn off his endless worries and dance like the others. If only a kind, strong man would step up and draw him into the merriment as easily as Anja had done with Bruegel.

  As if conjured up by the thought, a striking, solitary man appeared at the other side of the dancers. Ortelius had seen this fellow around Antwerp before, sometimes in the company of the financier Anthonie Fugger, but he wasn’t sure who he was. An exotic-looking character indeed. His eyes were like a falcon’s, fastening on the people around him one by one, as if searching for prey. For a dizzy instant the man looked straight at Ortelius and, seeing his gaze returned, his lips twitched with the slightest of smiles. But then his attention moved on, drawn to bouncy, singing Anja. Of course. Why would a man of such beauty be interested in Ortelius?

  Ortelius sighed, and tried to think of higher things. At lonely times like these he could sometimes distract himself with thoughts of work. He made a halfhearted effort to see the dancers as an archipelago of moving islands.

  Just down the block a crowd had gathered to light the big damp straw effigy of Old Man Winter—more a pile than a semblance of a man. A slender stick with a white pennant protruded from the mound of straw; this was Winter’s soul. The dancers stopped to watch as the straw flared into life. A gust of wind swept a drift of the smoke their way and—what a reek! The straw was from the stables. Ortelius moved out of the pissy, billowing fumes—and now the mystery man was gone.

  “I’m going home to bed,” Ortelius told Bruegel as the bagpiper paused for a drink.

  “I’ll walk with you,” said Bruegel, dropping the country accent he’d been using with Anja. “I’ve never been much of a dancer. I saw you watching. That’s me too, most times. You’d better come with us, Anja. The Vanderheydens are going to be angry if you stay out too late.”

  “I’m staying anyway,” said Anja. “This is too exciting. Why hurry back to be a stupid maidservant? I’m better than that.”

  “I’ll be the knight for her ladyship,” said Franckert with a bow. Hennie had already started dancing with a different partner. Franckert took Anja’s hand. “Let’s kick up our heels, Anja.”

  “Good night, Peter,” said Anja. “It was nice to meet you, Abraham. Sleep tight and dream about me!” She gave Ortelius a flirtatious hug, flattening her big breasts against him, and even favored him with a wet kiss. She was clearly in the market for a man to take care of her. Gently Ortelius pushed her away.

  “I don’t live so far from you,” Bruegel told Ortelius as they walked off down the Meir, which was Antwerp’s broadest street. “Come by and see me tomorrow. I think I told you I have a room above Jerome Cock’s shop of the Four Winds? You only need ask for me at the shop. I’ll show you my engravings of the Alps.” His voice trailed off in thought, then resumed. “Did you notice that little man in the main square wearing yellow and blue motley with his right side all red? I’d like to paint him. May the dear Lord God bring me some patrons!”

  Ortelius was still thinking about the feel of Anja rubbing herself against him. Absurd. Women weren’t for him. What a curse it was to be so unlike the mass of his fellows. Not that he wanted to change. As long as he never discussed it with the priests here, it didn’t even feel like a sin—and if it were a sin, then surely his loneliness was penance enough. It was good that Bruegel knew and accepted him.

  “Look up ahead of us,” said Bruegel, pointing to a tall man carrying a package. “It’s Christopher Plantin! Hello, Christopher!”

  “Happy Carnival, Peter,” said Plantin, waiting up for them. “And Ortelius too. Has Bruegel got you out carousing?” Plantin was a tall, civilized fellow with slick red hair and a trim goatee. He had a shop selling books and prints; he was a bookbinder and a leatherworker as well.

  “Hans Franckert is the spirit of Carnival, not I,” said Bruegel. “Though Franckert has kept my landswoman Anja, I soberly follow the good Ortelius to my early bed. Have you got that new shipment of paper from Lyons, Christopher?”

  “Indeed,” said Plantin. “I’ve set some aside for you at the shop. And you, Abraham, I haven’t seen you since you got back from Germany. How was that?”

  “It was wonderful. I stayed with our friend Mercator. He sold me some beautiful new maps I can market. There’s a very good one of Flanders.”

  “Mercator paid dearly for that map,” murmured Plantin. “Remember how the Inquisitors pretended to think Mercator was out in the fields practicing witchcraft, when all he was doing was surveying the land?”

  “Yes, and that led to his heresy trial,” said Ortelius, lowering his voice as well. “Mercator told me the details. Is it a sin to show our land as God must see it? Mercator now thinks the Spaniards persecuted him because of a passing fear that our people might use his maps to plan a rebellion. It’s a blessing that, in the end, his maps weren’t proscribed, and that I can sell my copies in freedom. Mercator sends his greetings to you, by the way. He likes it much better in Duisberg. A man can breathe there.”

  “The stink of the Inquisition fills our streets like the shit in Philip’s pants,” murmured Bruegel, and then raised his voice back to normal. “And what keeps you out this late, Christopher? Have you been in the taverns?”

  “Nothing so Flemish as that,” said Plantin, looking a bit abashed. “No, as it happens, I was home with my wife, putting the final touches on a gilded leather satchel for our new King Philip’s minister, one Bishop Granvelle, born Antoine Perronet. I’m shamelessly ingratiating myself with the new regime. I made a special book for King Philip, you know, and he liked it so much that Granvelle requested a tooled pouch for his state papers. A rush job. I’m bringing it to the royal villa. We three can walk a ways together.”

  “What kind of book did you make for the Foreigner?” asked Bruegel incredulously. Since Philip had hardly ever been in th
e Low Lands, and spoke no Flemish, the locals often referred to him this way.

  “A poem of praise, translated into Spanish and set in beautiful type,” said Plantin shortly. “As long as Philip’s here in Antwerp, why not make an impression on him?”

  “Christopher wrote the poem himself,” said Ortelius, giggling at the memory of it. This was the kind of conversation he enjoyed. “It’s most fulsome.”

  “Anything for commissions, I suppose,” said Bruegel. “The Spanish are taxing our local customers into poverty.”

  The Meir street was lined with houses locked up tight, some with chinks of light showing through the shutters. Drunken revelers straggled past, many of them in masks. The street was icy in spots, with mounds of gray, cleared-away snow along the sides.

  “I’ll be glad when Lent starts next week,” said Ortelius. “Carnival is a dangerous time.”

  As if on cue, three men appeared from an alley: it was the Spaniard and the Rode Rockx soldier from the tavern, accompanied by a pale, puffy man in a thick, quilted jerkin. It was an ambush. The three men rushed at Ortelius and his friends with a terrible, drunken intentness. The pale man had a face like the pith of a rotten tree, and he moved in an odd, triangular fashion—he was missing an arm. The Rode Rockx raised his great ham fist and struck the back of Bruegel’s head.

  “Run!” yelled Ortelius, and took to his heels. But Bruegel and Plantin’s footfalls didn’t follow along. Ortelius paused at a safe distance and looked back. Bruegel was lying facedown on the ground, stunned by the blow to his head, his cap knocked to the side, his tights-clad legs lying very still. The red-shirted Walloon had the struggling Plantin clenched in a bear hug and the leathery little Spaniard had drawn a knife. The one-armed man was clutching Plantin’s bundle against his chest. The four figures loomed nightmarishly within the round mirror on Bruegel’s back.

  “Help!” screamed Ortelius. “Murder!” A shutter overhead swung briefly open and slammed back shut.

  “Keep yelling and you’re next,” called the Spaniard with the knife. “After I take care of your friend the guitarist.”

  “That’s not him!” cried Ortelius, realizing that it was a case of mistaken identity. “That’s Plantin the bookman! Let him go! Someone help us, for the love of God!”

  One of the house doors opened, and a stocky little man appeared with a flintlock harquebus. But it was too late. The knife flashed, Plantin screamed, and the three attackers went clattering off down the Meir. The harquebus fired, there was a guttural shout of pain and the one-armed man lay felled in the street, Plantin’s package ten feet behind him.

  Four

  The fall of Icarus

  Antwerp, February 1556

  The gunshot snapped Bruegel out of his daze. Slowly he sat up. His head was pounding. The attackers were gone. He felt the hair at the back of his head, thank God no blood. The memory of the blow was clearer than the street around him. A thump that he’d felt more than heard, followed by a pattern of lights in muddy colors. Then a singing in his ears and a jolting fall to the pavement. He felt over his body. The mirror was still upon his back, unbroken. What of the others?

  Christopher Plantin was on his back, his tunic dark with blood. Oh no. Farther down the dim street lay one of the robbers. Dead? There were people around Bruegel talking, fixing things. He listened like a child, taking in what had happened, still too numb to speak.

  Ortelius was leaning over Plantin, consoling him. Plantin was alive, but he was bleeding heavily from a deep gash in his right upper arm.

  “There’s a surgeon who lives upstairs,” called a man with a harquebus. “Hey, Gough! Wake up!”

  “I’m here,” came a quiet voice from somewhere above. “I’m Gough.” Bruegel peered up, moving his head very slowly lest a fresh flower of pain might bloom. He saw a bald man silhouetted in a lit window.

  “Cart him into my hallway, no need to bring him upstairs,” said the man. “I’ll pour some spirits on the wound and sew him up. Maybe cauterize it too. Do you have a fire going, Antoon?”

  “Some coals,” said the man with the harquebus.

  “Then heat up your poker in them,” said Gough. “Have your wife use the bellows. I’ll be right down.”

  “Is my leather case gone?” Plantin asked distractedly. “I worked on it for so long. I embossed it and gilded it and—”

  “It’s over there,” said Ortelius. “But that’s nothing compared to your wound.” He burst into prayer. “Holy Mary, Mother of God, please help this man. Peter—you’re all right?”

  “Yes,” said Bruegel, putting his cap back on and carefully getting to his feet. The pain in his skull was settling down to a steady throb. Nothing, really. He was fine. “How badly is Christopher cut?”

  “Please, Peter, take my leather case to the royal villa,” said Plantin. “I worked so hard. I don’t want to lose their favor.” And then he fell into a swoon.

  Antoon stepped back inside to ask his wife to help get the poker ready. Just about then Bruegel noticed that the pale puffy bandit down the street was up on all fours. In the faint light, he looked like a demon in a grisaille. There was no blood on him; the ball of the harquebus bullet had been stopped by his thick jerkin. Bruegel walked over and scooped up Plantin’s package, which lay on the cobblestones between him and the enemy. The puffy, one-armed man glared, reached for his knife, but then thought better of it and hobbled off down an alleyway. Bruegel had no stomach to pursue him. At least he’d saved Plantin’s case.

  Bruegel helped Ortelius and Antoon to lug Plantin into Gough’s town house. An aged maid appeared, holding up a candle and clucking over the bright red stains Plantin’s blood was making on the black-and-white tiled floor. Though Bruegel was sorry for Plantin, he was glad to see the vivid color of the blood. He’d heard of men losing their color vision from a blow to the head. The maid lit more candles, and then got a wet cloth to wipe up the blood. “If you let blood stand more than a minute, it stains forever,” she said, scrubbing away.

  Now Gough came down the creaking stairs, carrying a little bag of surgeon’s tools. “Who are you people?” he asked.

  “You and I have seen each other before,” said Bruegel, beginning to feel like his old self. “Don’t you recognize me? I’m Peter Bruegel the artist. And this is Abraham Ortels, a dealer in maps. The injured man is Christopher Plantin, a bookseller and leatherworker. Surely you know Plantin. He owns a house with a shop called the Golden Compasses. In Steenhouwerstraat. We’re all citizens.”

  “Very well,” said Gough, kneeling down next to Plantin. “One of you should go to Plantin’s house and fetch a carriage to take him home. And don’t forget to bring the money to pay me. A gold florin.”

  “You go, Abraham,” said Bruegel. “I’ll wait here. I can help Gough. Remember, I was raised by a doctor. And after we sew up Christopher, I’ll deliver his package to Bishop Granvelle.” It might be a good thing to meet some powerful people.

  “Very well,” said Ortelius. “I’m quite ill from all this. Ask Granvelle for justice, Peter. One of our attackers was a Spaniard. The same fellow we saw fighting in the tavern. It was him and the same Rode Rockx. They thought Plantin was that guitarist. Brutes.” And then he was off.

  Bruegel watched Gough draw out a pair of shears and snip the cloth away from the wound, which was in Plantin’s bicep. “Your Spanish friend made a nice clean incision,” said the surgeon, wiping away the blood and splashing on some gin. “But the arm will heal up weak. Some of the nerves and tendons are severed. Is the poker hot yet, Antoon?”

  “I’ll bring it,” said Antoon, and reappeared with a poker whose tip was a dull red. The unfortunate Plantin was awake again. Bruegel gripped Plantin’s good hand, helping him to hold back his screams. Gough singed shut the bleeding veins and sewed the rent flesh together. The blood was lurid in the candlelight.

  “Why did they stab me?” Plantin wondered weakly as Gough tidied up his work and dribbled on some fragrant oil of clove. “What did I do?”
/>   “They thought you were someone else,” said Bruegel. “A guitarist from the Blue Boat. Abraham and I saw two of the attackers fighting with the guitarist earlier tonight.”

  “My arm,” moaned Plantin. “I won’t be able to use my tools.” His thoughts kept circling back to his new leather case. “Go now, Peter. Don’t wait for Ortelius. Take the leather satchel to Granvelle. It’s to be a gift. Granvelle and Philip are leaving for Mechelen at dawn to meet with the French ambassador. If you hurry, they’ll still be awake.”

  “All right,” said Bruegel. “I’ll go now. And if I dare, I’ll try to get some justice for you. It was their soldier who injured you. They should pay.”

  To reach the royal villa, Bruegel walked another ten minutes down the Meir. The farther he got from the city’s center, the more snow lay upon the ground. He scooped up some of the snow in his felt cap and pressed it to the back of his head. This softened the drumbeat of the pain.

  Walking on, Bruegel pondered whether he could really ask for a payment on the injured Plantin’s behalf. Did he dare speak up to so many assembled dignitaries? They were men in a position to do great good or ill.

  The villa was the property of the Fugger banking family, but the accommodating Fuggers had temporarily turned this particular home over to Philip. Antwerp was a center of finance, and Philip’s purpose in visiting was to negotiate fresh loans for Spain. Despite Spain’s ravenous intake of taxes and New World plunder, the Spanish empire lacked sufficient gold to pay their hordes of mercenaries. And a war with France was in the wind.

  The Spanish guards outside the villa were in a lively Carnival humor; they had a bonfire and a good supply of wine. With their metal helmets and cuirasses, they were a bit intimidating, but one of them spoke Flemish. Bruegel pulled his cap on tight and explained that he had a package for Bishop Granvelle from Plantin. The guard, a short man with a squint, accompanied Bruegel up the steps and into the villa’s great hall, his armor clattering.