Free The Folly of the World by Jesse Bullington Page B

seemed a terribly unnatural and dismal circumstance. Still, the farther they rode and the more Lubbert opened up, telling her jokes and stories and stick-fighting with her when they broke for the day and he let her strip down to her shift, the more she came to appreciate the magnitude of her fortune. He knew more than she thought there was to know, from the name of the village outside her home—Monster, which she had always just called “the village”—to his intimacy with the names of various plants and birds that all looked the same to her.
    “It’s Frisian, not Frieslander,” he said when she asked him if all Frieslanders were as fucking poncey as he was. They were riding, and though she said it expecting a hard pinch or slap upside the head, none came—a disappointment, as she was bored and had an elbow already tensed to fire into his slight potbelly. “Most ofthem can’t afford such fine clothing, if that’s your question, and even if they could, it’s not practical for hard labor and fishing.”
    “Frisians,” she repeated the word. “Heard you’re all child-rapers.”
    “Rapists,” said Lubbert, “and nobody is all anything. As it happens, Frisians claim descent from Friso, a heroic champion of long ago. This Friso served under the god-king Alexander, who was one of the Nine Valiants—the nine greatest men who ever lived, if you believe the scholars. In payment for his homage, Alexander awarded Friso any land he should choose, any property in all the world. Friso decided on Friesland, and true Frisians are his heirs.”
    “Oh,” said Jolanda, trying not to be impressed. “They are?”
    “No. That’s just what they tell themselves. Friesland is a dank and stormy place, and floods often. Frisians are descended from whatever poor bastards didn’t have anywhere else to go. Perhaps it’s where criminals were banished from worthier lands. Don’t tell a Frisian that, though.”
    “Aye, that sounds more like stiffheads than old kings and all.”
    “For that, they’re stern people, to live in such a place. The Counts of Holland once tried to seize it from them, but the Frisians fought them to a man, and came out the conquerors. Better dead than a slave, is what the Frisians say. What does that tell you?”
    “Better dead than a slave.” Jolanda nodded with approval, thinking on the sword Lubbert had promised to buy her once they retrieved his sunken treasure. “Means if someone tries to put you under ’em, you fight to the death, ’cause if you’re a slave, they might kill you anyway.”
    “No,” said Lubbert, “it means Frisians are madmen who will lay down their lives to protect a mud puddle, so long as it’s
their
mud puddle. And it means if you already have a good thing—all of Holland, say—don’t go pissing away your resources trying to snatch up something else just to have it. It’s like fighting a dog for a bone when you’ve already got a joint of lamb on your board.”
    “Oh,” said Jolanda, and they rode on. She could feel herself getting cleverer the longer she was around Lubbert.
    They took their time getting to wherever it was they were going, cutting northwest for days only to double around to the south again, winding their way from Holland clear to Guelders and then back through Holland again. As the days turned into weeks, Jolanda grew used to riding a horse, the weight of a sword, and spending long stretches of time around another human being who wasn’t constantly trying to beat her, grope her, or both. When they camped near ponds and lakes, she would practice her diving, Lubbert throwing his small iron bar into the center and sending her swimming after it. She always found it, the little bit of muck and waterweeds nowhere near so distracting as saltwater stinging her eyes or waves shoving everything about. The only thing she missed, she thought as she dried out by their fires, were the dunes; the occasional grassy dike crossing the fields was hardly a