Armed in Her Fashion

CHAPTER SIX

Beatrix let the flax slip through her raw fingertips. It was the hair of a princess. She would coil it and dress it with star-flowers.

“Still spinning?” Grandfather asked with a little smile. She had not heard him come in to their main room.

She dipped her fingers in her dish of water and paused to smile back at him. “The devil finds work for idle hands.”

“Your mother is late,” said Aunt Katharina.

Aunt Katharina stood behind Grandfather, and everyone’s smiles faded. She was holding the bits of wool for stuffing their ears.

“Is it dusk already?” Beatrix whispered.

Grandfather limped over to the doll-sized window he had cut into the shutters, and put his eye to it.

“Perhaps Margriet could not get away,” he murmured.

“Mother will come,” Beatrix said. “No revenant would be a match for mother, if she met one in the street. Can you imagine? She’d talk it back to Hell.”

“I should hope she’d have the good sense to stay indoors,” said Katharina.

Grandfather closed the little window and sat on his stool by the supper table, shifting the candle so the light fell fully on Beatrix’s work.

“I am surprised you still have any flax left to spin,” said Katharina.

“I spin all I have each day, yet every morning I wake to find the kabouters have refilled my baskets,” Beatrix teased. “Actually, this small basket is the last of it. Tomorrow I will have to spin grandfather’s belly lint. Get it ready, Grandfather.”

“Really, Beatrix,” Katharina scolded.

Beatrix’s stomach rumbled. She wished she could spin them all something to eat. One bony fish between the two of them, tonight. Grandfather looked gaunt. She wished for a chicken. No, a lovely big goose or a swan. They used to land on the fields outside the moat.

“Perhaps I can spin the mist off the canal,” she said. “Wouldn’t that be lovely?”

“You might as well spin air as flax,” said Katharina. “Who’s going to buy it now? The traders are all dead or gone, and the roads shut.”

Grandfather coughed.

“When life gets back to normal, we will be glad of something to sell,” Beatrix said, trying to make her voice soothing but it came out stinging like a nettle.

Katharina held the bits of wool out to her, two hard white twists. Each plug sighed into shape in Beatrix’s ears, suffocating the sounds of the world, as if she were spinning now on the bottom of the sea, fathoms deep.

Grandfather dutifully plugged his own ears. He sat staring at the scratched old table.

A sharp knock at the door. She and grandfather looked at each other, like conspiring children, as if neither wanted to admit they had heard. If Katharina lost faith in the earplugs, who knew what she would do next to try to keep them safe from the revenants. Lock them in the cellar, probably.

Another knock.

Beatrix let the flax fall from her hand. This could be Baltazar. Any knock, every knock, could be Baltazar, her beloved, her husband, her all, returning to her at last. Hurt in the war, perhaps. Wandering, confused. Or a captive, escaped. She would spin his memories smooth. She would put her fingers to his rough lips, if only he would come back to her.

Grandfather opened the little peephole in the window and put his face right up to it, trying to see around to the door.

“What are you doing?” Katharina hissed.

Without answering, Grandfather unlatched the door.

Katharina stood, a knife in her hand. In the open doorway, Beatrix’s mother stood, holding her side as if she had a stitch from running.

“I’m not a revenant yet, Katharina, but I might send a message to Hell and ask to be made into one, if you leave me out in the dark again.”

Beatrix had never seen her mother’s eyes shine like that, like a cornered vixen’s. She pulled the wool out of her ears and Grandfather did the same.

“There’s a bit of bread, Mother,” Beatrix said. She had been saving it to eat before bed, to split with Grandfather. They did that together every night now, shared a morsel before their prayers. But she wanted now to offer her mother something, to take that hungry look out of her eyes. “More than half sawdust, but let me see if I can soften it a bit.”

Mother waved her away. “I’m not hungry. Never mind that now.”

“You’re late,” Grandfather said. “What’s wrong?”

“I’ve been at the walls,” Mother replied. “I’ve seen the chimeras, trying to blow them apart with some infernal weapon. They did not succeed, but they will keep trying, I am sure. We must leave Bruges, all of us.”

Katharina’s mouth dropped open.

“How?

“I have a way. It is difficult. Will be difficult for you, Father. But we must try. To stay here means death.”

Grandfather smiled. “Dear daughter, to go means death for me. I can barely walk from this table to the door without losing my breath. You must go.”

“But we cannot!” Beatrix said. “Our husbands—how will they find us?”

Mother took a deep breath, closed her eyes. “I’ve seen Willem.”

Beatrix knew in a moment what her mother meant. She knew why her mother had not said, “Willem is back,” or “Willem is here.” Yet Beatrix could not help herself from drawing it out, from holding hope in her hands for as many breaths as she could.

But Grandfather had never been one to delay the inevitable. He sank down onto the bench, his face slack.

“Yes, he is taken, he is a revenant,” said Mother.

“But you did not invite him in, Margriet.” Katharina said. It was hardly a question, as if she could not bring herself to make it a question.

“I never wanted that man in my house, even when he was alive.” Mother stared at Beatrix, her eyes now steely. Beatrix squinted but couldn’t quite see her mother behind her words. I have no father, Beatrix thought. I have no father now.

Grandfather put his hand to his forehead. “Willem gone, too,” he said. “So many.”

“It’s done, and past help,” Mother said. “The main thing is that I caught him carrying off a sack full of clinking money and rich things. We were never poor. The bastard has been hiding a fortune from us. And now it’s ours.”

Katharina put a hand to her heart. “But where? What sort of fortune?”

“He was a usurer, and God knows what else besides. A man may make a fortune during wartime, even a man as gormless as my husband. Now he has taken his fortune off to Hell, but it is ours by right, Beatrix. Widows are entitled to one-third, and children to the rest, by custom.”

“When the siege is over, will you go to the bailiff?” Grandfather asked.

“The bailiff is dead.”

“The Count, then,” said Beatrix.

“Bah,” Grandfather said.

“Count Louis is no longer in control of Bruges, not really,” Mother said. “Besides, he is the king of France’s man, and doubtless he would try to apply some barbaric French law.”

“But King Philippe—” Katharina broke in.

“Philippe is no true king,” Grandfather snapped. “He came by it through trickery.”

“What does it matter?” Beatrix asked. “There is no one to give us back what Father has taken. We did not even know we had a fortune, and now it has gone. Let us say a prayer for Father’s soul and for all the souls not yet at rest.”

“I’ll say a prayer for him,” Mother said, “after he gives me my due. If we leave tonight, we will catch him before long. The revenants only walk at night. I can walk until my feet fall off.”

“And if you catch him and he refuses?” Katharina asked. “What will you do, then, Margriet? Beat him about the head with your apron?”

It was then, for some mysterious reason, that the grief and worry burst up out of Beatrix’s throat and a sound like a sob crossed with a hiccup escaped her throat. Beatrix clapped her hand over her mouth.

Mother squatted down to look into her face. Weeds poked out of her apron. Heaven knew where she had been gathering weeds, what garden within Bruges’ walls still boasted a few stalks of anything that could be boiled or beaten.

“I must,” she whispered. “What does Willem need now with silver and gold? It is all going to the Chatelaine and her ally, that pustule. I can’t let the Chatelaine and the French king take what is yours by right, Beatrix.”

“It is suicide,” Katharina said. “How would you even get out of the city walls? What about the chimeras? They will surely kill you if they find you out in the country.”

“Bah. They’re only people. You know who’s a chimera now? Young Julius, you remember, the boy who was soft in the head. Well he’s got a new head now, but he’s still Julius. They’re only soldiers, and I killed my first French soldier when I was younger than Beatrix is now. A rock to the head is as good as an axe, if you aim it properly. There is no more danger outside the city walls than within, especially now that the chimeras are trying to take those walls down. That’s why Beatrix, at least, must come with me, if you and Father will not.”

“Beatrix!” Katharina’s eyes went wide.

Her place was here, in Bruges. Once the siege lifted, Baltazar might come home, wounded and hungry, and find her gone.

But perhaps, if she went out there into the world, she would find word of him. Perhaps Father, or whatever was left of Father, would tell her what had befallen her husband. Or she could ask the Chatelaine herself!

“Margriet, you must not drag Beatrix into this foolishness,” Katharina said.

“You go with your mother,” said Grandfather, unexpectedly. They all looked at him. “It is your wealth, too. The claim is two-thirds yours. You must be there to make it. Perhaps there is enough left of the father in him that the sight of you will soften his heart. There is nothing here for you, nothing to eat and nothing to spin.”

“I cannot leave you here, Grandfather.”

“I cannot come with you, old as I am. I will be fine with Katharina. There will be more food for us with you gone, you little glutton.”

Beatrix laughed. That was true, at least. But to go out there! To go to Hell! She could not imagine it.

Saint Catherine, she prayed in silence, what shall I do?

Grandfather leaned over the table and whispered. “A week ago, it was safer inside these walls than outside them,” he said. “Not so now. We are near starvation, Beatrix, and I will go more happily to my grave if I know you two have some chance. Your mother is right: I can aim a rock, at least, once they come in. Take care of her. Be her better judgement.”

Mother was stubborn. She would go alone, if Beatrix did not go with her. Beatrix might at least be able to prevent her from getting herself killed. Mother was too sharp, too sure of herself.

“The apples are ripening out there, somewhere,” Beatrix said to her grandfather quietly. “I will bring you back a bushel.”

“Keep your apples. I want honey. And figs, oh, fine figs like we used to get, do you remember?”

Beatrix insisted on taking her distaff and spindle, although Mother rolled her eyes. She did not want to be without them, and perhaps, she told her mother, they would find something to spin on the journey, and make a little money to buy food. They did not take any food from Grandfather’s small store, but they took two leather water flasks, the flasks Mother and Father used to take when they travelled on Father’s business, or what everyone thought was Father’s business.

They hurried through the dark streets, back to the Ooste house so Mother could take her leave. They filled the flasks at the conduit.

“Do you remember,” Beatrix huffed as they walked, “what happened when the baker put that mouldy bread in the bottom of the basket, years ago?”

“Hmph,” said Mother.

“You demanded your money back, as was proper. You had every right to that sou. You argued for it until the sun set, and finally you got the sou back.”

“Indeed. That squinting blackguard.”

“And then for five years, we had to walk three streets further to buy our bread. For the sake of a sou.”

“Yes? What is your point, Beatrix?”

“I just wanted to know if you remembered,” she said with a sigh, and hitched up her little bundle of spare linen.