City of Dreams (17 page)

“It doesn’t matter what they might think.” Lucas was coming to himself again. “Or what Sally might or might not want. I won’t permit you to marry my sister. Spoiled goods she may be, but she’s still worth ten of you, Van der Vries. And as you say, I am her sole guardian. Good night to you, mijnheer.” Lucas turned to go.

“Barber. Lucas. One moment more. Consider this. I might be tempted to report the facts to the authorities. I admit the juffrouw Sally’s proficiency in her art sways me, but after all, I am a physician, a man of standing. So you can see … And there is one other thing for you to take into account.”

Lucas did not move. “What other thing?”

“If you will give me your sister in marriage, I am prepared to pay you forty guilders.”

Lucas’s hand was still on the door, but he didn’t push it open. “Why?” His voice was a harsh whisper. “Why do you want her? How can she possibly be worth such a sum to you?”

“Under the circumstances, dear future brother-in-law, I do not think you should concern yourself with such questions. But if you must know, I am extremely fond of the juffrouw. From the first moment I saw her.”

“Fond.”

“
Ja
, fond. Forty guilders. It is a great deal of money. The measure of my feelings.”

For long seconds Lucas did not turn around. When he finally did, more seconds went by without his saying a word. The two men stared at each other.

Finally Lucas spoke. “Sixty guilders, not forty,” he said. “Make it sixty guilders, and you have a bargain.”

V

Dear God, what would she say to him? What could he say to her? That it was the only solution. That otherwise Van der Vries was going to turn them over to the authorities. That if she didn’t marry the Dutchman she was as good as dead, Lucas was a bankrupt, and both their lives were finished. This way both had a chance.

All those things. More things. He would think of more convincing arguments. But not now. Now he had to find Ankel Jannssen.

It wasn’t yet nine of the clock. There was still a faint light in the sky, and when it was gone the watchman would make his rounds and call the curfew. But no one even pretended to enforce that law down by the docks.

Lucas heard the revelry from the Wooden Horse halfway down the street. When he pushed open the tavern door, the noise was deafening and the smoke blinded him. Just like the last time.

Lucas blinked a few times, looked toward the table where Jannssen had been sitting when they met before. He recognized no one.

“Barber!” someone called. “Over here. I’ll buy you a drink, man. Rum or geneva?”

Lucas turned. A trapper was shoving his way through the crowd, waving his tankard at Lucas. He’d deloused the man a few days previously. “Haven’t felt this good in years,” the trapper shouted over the din. “First time I can remember not itching. Name your pleasure, barber.”

“Thanks, but I’m not come to drink. I’m looking for Ankel Jannssen, the butcher. We’ve business. Do you know the man?”

“Aye. But I haven’t seen him tonight.” The trapper turned to some men standing nearby. “Jannssen the butcher, who’s seen him?”

Someone said that Jannssen had been in earlier, but he’d left. And no one could suggest any other tavern he might be drinking in. “Probably went home to that fat and sassy wife of his,” a voice shouted. “If I had something like that waiting for me, I wouldn’t waste my time drinking with the sort you find here.”

Lucas escaped to the street.

It was full dark now. The waves slapped rhythmically against the pilings of the wharf. The clouds parted for a moment and Lucas saw three brigs riding at anchor, their tightly furled sails like white fingers pointing to the sky. He put his hand over the pouch hanging from his belt. Sixty guilders. All he had to do was find Ankel Jannssen, give him the money, and the butcher would sail away in one of those ships. Sweet Jesus, what was he waiting for?

Lucas broke into a run. Apparently the watchman had already come by. The streets were empty, the houses mostly dark. Lucas made straight for Hall Place.

The butcher shop was tightly shuttered. Lucas stepped into the road and craned his head, searching for a crack of light from the windows above. Nothing. He studied the houses across the way. Every door was closed and every window dark, but it wasn’t yet ten of the clock; there might easily be eyes watching him from behind some of those closed shutters.

After he gave Jannssen the money, after the man went away—what were he and Marit going to do then?

Forget it. Put it away. The problem was to get to Jannssen, to make sure he was going to keep his word. Thirty guilders only, at first. That will have to be the arrangement. The second thirty he gets when—

“Lucas. Thanks be to God.”

The words were a soft whisper on the hot and humid night air. Lucas couldn’t tell where they’d come from, only that Marit had spoken them. He spun around to face the shop. The clouds completely covered the moon now. Lucas tipped his head back, straining to see her in one of the windows.

“Not up there, Lucas. Over here. Look.”

She was in the alley beside the building, close to the wall, a black-on-black smudge in the night. Lucas went toward her. When he got close he saw that despite the heat Marit had wrapped herself entirely in her dark gray cloak and pulled the hood forward over her hair and face. “Come.” Her whisper was hoarse and urgent. “Stay by the wall and follow me.”

She led him along the alley, then around a corner to the rear of the shop. Lucas had no idea where she was taking him, or to what end. “Marit, what are we doing here? Where’s—”

“Ssh. Later. Come.”

One moment Lucas was squinting at her shrouded form, struggling to see her in the darkness, the next she was gone. He looked around, panicking at the thought that he’d lost her.

“Lucas, look down. By your feet. There’s a door.” Lucas crouched. He had the impression she was holding open some sort of overhead hatch. “Sit on the ground and slide in feet first,” she whispered. “Quickly.”

He sat down, pushed his long legs through the opening and slid forward on his back. The drop was only a few feet; then he was standing on something firm, but cushioned. Sawdust, he realized. They were in the storeroom.

The darkness was total. He heard her closing and bolting the half-door half-window by which they’d entered. Then he felt her turn to him. He was at once conscious of the exquisite scent of her, the warmth of her flesh. He reached for her. Marit put up her hands on his chest and held him away. “Wait, Lucas, first I must tell you—”

“I cannot wait.” The words came from somewhere deep inside him, from the place where all these endless weeks he had buried the pain of his loss. “But you’re right, for now we must. Where’s Ankel? I have to see him, Marit. He made me a prop—”

“I prayed, Lucas. Since maybe two hours I have been walking around this place and praying. Then I looked out the window and there you were and I knew God had sent you to me.”

She was no longer whispering. So Jannssen must be unconscious with drink. Damn the man to hell, the one time Lucas wanted him sober and awake he … The intoxicating scent of Marit surrounded him. He could not bear not to touch her. This time when Lucas reached for her she allowed him to take her in his arms. Their mouths met. He drank in her honeyed sweetness. “Marit … Sweet Jesus, how I’ve longed for you. I’ve been mad with missing you.”

He began fumbling with his breeches. She put her hand over his. “Wait, my darling. Please, I beg you, not now. But soon. I swear it.” Once again she was gone.

Lucas waited. A few seconds went by. He heard the sound of a tinderbox opening, of a flint being struck. He saw the faint red glow when the wadding caught. Then the flare of a candle lit the walls of the storeroom. Marit turned to him. She still wore the all-enveloping cloak, but the hood had been thrown back. The candle flame illumined her face. It was streaked with blood. Her hair was crusted with it.

“Sweet Jesus! What has he done to you?”

“Tonight nothing. I am not hurt, Lucas.”

“What do you mean you’re not hurt? I can—”

“Come.” She turned. The candle flame began moving away. Like a moth drawn forward, with no thought for anything except that tiny blaze, Lucas followed.

The stairs were steep and twisted, the passage narrow and cramped. The woman he hungered for was always a few steps ahead of him, just out of his reach.

They reached the upper hall. There were two doors, both closed. Marit went to one of them and stood in front of it.

“Lucas, do you love me?”

“Dear God, woman, do you not know the answer to that?”

“I believe I do,” Marit said softly. She reached behind her and opened the door and thrust the candle into the room.

Ankel Jannssen lay half on and half off the bed. Staring at the ceiling. With his brains hanging out of his split skull. The meat cleaver that had killed him was buried in his head, and there was a pool of blood beside the bed, already dried by the heat of the summer night.

For some seconds neither Lucas nor Marit moved. He did not need to ask who had done this thing. At last he touched the pouch at his belt. Sixty guilders. “If only you had waited,” he whispered.

“I could not.” She turned to a table beside the door and set down the candle; then she turned back to him. “Make no mistake, Lucas. Much as I love you, and God knows I am crazed with loving you, that is not why I did this.”

His hand was still on the pouch at his belt. Sixty guilders. He’d sold Sally to buy Marit, and the money had been put in his hands two hours before. Perhaps at the very moment when she had lifted the cleaver and split her husband’s skull. “Only a little while longer,” he whispered. “If you’d endured one more night, I could have saved you.”

“Lucas, look at me.”

He turned to face her. Marit raised her hands to the neck of her cloak and released the single button that held it closed. Then she dropped the coarse gray garment to the ground and stood naked before him.

Her pink-and-white flesh gleamed in the candlelight. Lucas looked at her full, dark-tipped breasts, the curve of her hips and her gently rounded belly, and despite the carnage a few feet away his breath caught with longing. He wanted her as much as ever. More. But he was paralyzed; held in place by the spell cast by a corpse.

Marit held up her hand. “Wait,” she whispered. “Wait.” She turned around.

The windows were tight shut and there was no breeze in the room. Only Marit’s movements made the candle flicker. As soon as she was still again it burned bright and steady. The light shone on the long blond hair hanging in a single plait down her back. And on the welts that covered her from her shoulders to her ankles. Most were gnarled and knotted scars that had already healed. Many were red and raw and still crusted with blood.

Lucas gasped. Marit swung around to face him. “When he used his fists I could endure,” she said. “When he began tying me to the rail in the storeroom and using a horsewhip, I could not.”

“Sweet Jesus, Marit. Oh, God … Why didn’t you …”

“Why didn’t I what? I am—I was—his lawful wife. No one could stop him. Only if he beat me to death would he be in conflict with the law. Ankel never used the whip where it would show. He used only his fists on my face. He said he didn’t want to spoil my beauty, only mark me enough so all would know I was his property.”

She bent down and retrieved the cloak and wrapped herself in it, as if she needed protection even from him. “I did the only thing I could do, Lucas. Tonight, when Ankel came home from the tavern I knew from the way he looked at me what he was planning. He would sleep for a time. Then wake. Then he would take the whip to me. It had become his custom. So I brought the cleaver upstairs and waited until he slept. Then I killed him. And I prayed, Lucas. I begged God to help me. And you appeared. So I know God forgives me for what I have done. Only one question remains, Lucas. Do you?”

For answer he took her in his arms. He had her there. On the floor. With Ankel Jannssen’s dead eyes watching them. While she was yet streaked with her husband’s blood. It had never been better.

Lucas considered burning the body, but that wasn’t practical. On a hot night such as this every fire was banked and the smell of roasting flesh close to midnight would announce the deed. The only way to rid themselves of Ankel Jannssen’s corpse was to bury it, and for that they had to get him to the woods beyond the Voorstadt. In broad daylight, when all went about their travels. In packages small enough to rouse no suspicion.

Lucas removed his coat and hung it on a peg in the hall outside the bedroom. He began rolling up his sleeves. “Bring me the saw from downstairs,” he said quietly. “The big one you use for disjointing a side of beef.”