As Above, So Below by Rudy Rucker

Author:Rudy Rucker
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Tom Doherty Associates
Published: 2002-11-11T16:00:00+00:00

Nine

The Sermon of John the Baptist

Antwerp, October 1562

Ortelius sat comfortably in his study, examining a Roman coin in the green-stained afternoon light that slanted through his round-paned windows. The coin showed Nero, the last of the Caesars, and dated from thirty years after the death of Christ. It was a fine piece, purchased in Rome. According to the dealer, the coin was from a treasure trove that a peasant had plowed up: a hundred gold and five hundred silver coins sealed into a little red pot. Holding the coin close to his face, Ortelius imagined the fingers that had touched it, the eyes that had seen it—the slaves, the merchants, the persecuted Christians, Nero’s brutal legionnaires—perhaps this coin had passed through the hands of some aging soldier who’d seen the earthly face of the Savior. Deep in his peaceful reverie, Ortelius was wholly outside of time.

But now there was a distant clamor, a strange dog barking in the hallway. Rome began slipping away, and when curly-haired little Helena came twittering into the study, the talismanic coin had become but a worn disk of metal. “It’s Peter Bruegel to see you, Mijnheer Ortelius.” Her eyes were quite round with excitement.

Bruegel was lively and of a sanguine color, quite unlike the wrung-out pale wretch who’d passed through Antwerp six months ago. Waf pranced at his side, beating his long tail. Bruegel wore a broad-brimmed red hat and a brown wool cloak. A big square satchel hung from his shoulder. And if Ortelius had any lingering fears about the state of their friendship, Bruegel’s broad smile allayed them.

“Amsterdam was good to you, Peter?” said Ortelius, springing to his feet to embrace his friend.

“It was fine,” said Bruegel. “A peaceful city of deep canals. The Hollanders have wonderful veal dumplings. I sold some drawings to a fellow named Herman Pilgrims. Ate a lot. Painted. Looked at ants. And, as you suggested, I spent some time with the scholar Dirk Coornhert. He’s going to write verses to accompany some of my engravings. I see you have my Two Monkeys well installed.” On his way north, Bruegel had made Ortelius a gift of a little foot-square piece he’d done in Mechelen on a leftover bit of panel: an image of two chained monkeys with Antwerp in the background.

“Ah, and there’s my convex mirror too,” continued Bruegel. “I’ll come back and fetch that as soon as I’m properly settled in Brussels. Easy there, Waf, you’ll sweep everything off the shelves. How are things with Anja, Abraham?”

“I set aside the amount you gave me,” said Ortelius, slightly miffed to have Anja be the topic of Bruegel’s very first question. What about Ortelius’s own travels to Austria this winter, his longings, the compromises he made to keep up his position in the world? Or what about the growing wave of the Reformation in Antwerp and Ortelius’s role in it? Frankly, Ortelius cared not a fig about the slatternly troublemaker Anja. And talking about her stirred up all his old guilt about having indirectly helped her betray Bruegel.

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