The Folly of the World Read Online Free PDF Page B

moving in on a beached mackerel.
    “Dyeing some—” Jan began.
    “Like the front’ve your breeches with her fuckin maidenhead?” said Verf, and then, as if concerned he had spoken over his guest’s head, elaborated, “Her fuckin cunt blood?”
    The revulsion on Jan’s face doubtless helped his cause as he spit into the fire and said, “Christ’s cross, no! If I wanted that, I’d take it on the strand and not come knocking, don’t you think?”
    The eldest two boys were now on either side of him, and Jan saw they held shell-hammers aloft, ready to crack his kernel—he wondered briefly if dye could be made from human remains, but then Verf called them off.
    “Back, boys,” said the father heavily, as if it pained him not to have his guest murdered. “Want Jolanda to tend your wife and help you in the dyein, eh?”
    “Yes,” said Jan, trying not to reveal his relief as the sons retreated back to their side of the hut.
    “No,” said Verf, but then another of the boys cupped hand to ear and whispered to his father, who nodded and amended himself. “How much?”
    Jan dumped his purse of fake groots on the floor of the hut. He had no concerns over Verf recognizing the money as counterfeit—the cross-stamped coins were convincing enough that the dye-maker might circulate the lot of them without anyone being the wiser. They were thus just as valuable as genuine currency, and after Jan eyed Verf and confirmed from his host’s expression that the girl was as good as his, he returned the bulk of the coins to the pouch, leaving only three on the floor. Jan had no idea how much dye-makers brought in, but if the state of their home told him anything, they didn’t earn much. Unexpected, that, Jan mused; considering how infrequently he saw purple clothing, he’d have thought they would turn a pretty pfennig for—
    The door screeched and the girl, Jolanda, stood framed against the night, her left side hidden behind the doorframe, her hair jutting out like a hedgepig’s quills. She must have fallen several times along the trail, for thick scabs of sand clung to her face and arm and leg and tunic and bound hand, and she stared at Jan, motionless, eyes shining. She would have seen his horse, but came in anyway, he reflected, and again he took a chance on hernot stabbing him in the back. Turning back to Verf, Jan saw that the dye-maker wore an inscrutable expression as he watched his silent daughter—sad or wrathful, bored or amused, who could tell on that driftwood-twisted face?
    “I—” Jan started, but was cut off by Verf.
    “We ain’t heatin the dunes, chit. Shut it and meet Lob.”
    “Lubbert,” said Jan, but no one cared.
    Jan heard her drop the knife in the sand before her sandy left hand slid into the light, and then she closed the door behind her. Her already too-high tunic was shorter than when he had returned it to her, the edge ragged from where she had cut it. If her father noticed, he did not say, nor did he comment on the binding that had already soaked crimson on her right hand. Instead Verf told her to get her arse to cooking for them and their new friend, Frieslander though he may be, and turned back to the handsome stranger. She made a lewd gesture as soon as she was behind her father, and Jan was unsure if it was directed at him, Verf, or all concerned, and then she disappeared into the thicket of siblings filling that side of the hut.
    “Three groots hardly seems—” Verf started, but then the girl gave a furious shout, one of her brothers presumably snickering something of import to her.
    “Sell me like a whore to that arsehole?!” The girl reared up before her father, the boys parting like some mythical Purple Sea around her. “
Sell
me?! To
him
?! You know what he did to me, on the goddamn beach?”
    Jan felt a sudden surge of nausea, like a ghost had reached its spectral hand into his stomach and set to rooting around in his guts. The ghost of avoiding an ass-beating at the hands of