By late afternoon the light had softened to gold, shadows stretching long across the cobbles. Guild banners vanished one by one into taverns thick with smoke, while lanterns flared at street corners, flames trembling in the chill. Yet Carnival still clung to the air. Clusters of townsfolk pressed about the troupe, eager to clap their shoulders, toss them coins, or trade a word with the parrot who had stolen Antwerp's heart. Pietje screeched obligingly from Joseph's shoulder, earning peals of laughter wherever they went.
'We'll never get back at this pace,' Joos groaned in mock despair, bowing grandly to yet another admirer. 'Too many fans. Fame is a cruel mistress.'
'Cruel to you, maybe,' Rik shot back, tucking his fiddle beneath his arm. 'The ladies want music, not that nose of yours.'
'They want neither of you fools. It's Pietje they adore,' Isabelle said, dry as vinegar.
'Love you, love you!' Pietje squawked, bobbing his head as the crowd howled with laughter.
Carnival antics spilled down the street as they made their way to Willem's inn, giddy with the day's triumph. Jugglers lingered at corners, tossing torches that spat sparks into the dusk. Masked revellers reeled arm in arm, some singing bawdy songs loud enough to shake shutters, others whispering conspiracies behind painted grins. Snatches of music drifted from every square — a drumbeat here, a shrill pipe there — colliding in the air until nothing was quite in tune, yet all of it hummed with reckless life.
But the laughter had roughened with drink, the masks grew stranger as the light failed: horned beasts clashing antlers, painted devils chasing girls who shrieked and darted away, grins that seemed too wide for the faces beneath. Dice rattled in the gutters, arguments over winnings cutting sharp as blades.
Through it all darted a ragged knot of children, quick hands snatching at crusts in the mud, at ribbons trampled underfoot. Isabelle's gaze lingered on them, her smile thinning. She had known that scramble once — she and Joseph both — before there was a troupe to feed them, before there was even a roof over their heads.
Joseph turned his face west, where the wealthy quarter glowed above the rooftops — tall houses blazing with lanterns, windows spilling gold into the dusk. The faint rise of violins floated on the air, sweet and distant, as though it belonged to another world. He clenched his jaw and followed the others through the inn's courtyard gate.
They left the wagon there, its paint peeling but somehow grander than it had looked that morning.
Inside, Willem's inn was already bursting, the press of bodies thick as the smoke from the hearth. Long tables ran the length of the hall, every bench crammed — merchants elbowing sailors, apprentices squabbling with masters, women in lace caps squeezing between them with pitchers raised high. The air was dense with stew and onions, sour with sweat, sharp with spilled ale.
Voices clashed in a dozen tongues. Germans bellowed a drinking song, their tankards slamming so hard the boards rattled. Two Englishmen argued cloth prices, their r's rolling thick as sea shanties. Spaniards gestured furiously over cards until Willem barked for calm. Antwerp's Carnival had pulled them all in: sailors off the Scheldt, traders off the road, strangers from every corner of Christendom crowded now beneath Willem's beams.
At the sight of the troupe, a cheer went up. Tankards waved, voices rose. 'The parrot! The parrot and his fools!'
Behind the counter Willem beamed, sleeves rolled high, face shining with sweat. 'You've done it, my friends!' he boomed, slamming a tankard in front of Joos. 'Packed to the rafters, and every soul in Antwerp talking of the parrot and his fools. You've made my house the place to be this Carnival!'
'To us!' Rik shouted, swinging his fiddle like a banner.
'To us!' Joos echoed, raising his drink like a conquering general. Even Sander, shy and often lost in rhyme, tipped his mug with a grin that almost surprised himself.
Joseph drank too, though the ale was bitter on his tongue. Across the table, Isabelle spread the day's coins in her palm. For once her sharp eyes softened, and her smile — rare, reluctant — caught the candlelight. 'Not bad for orphans who started with nothing,' she said, her voice pitched for the circle alone.
The noise around them seemed to ease, the roar of Germans and Spaniards dulling to a hum as the troupe leaned in.
'Is it true you two were barely more than children when you set off?' Joos asked, curiosity tugging the foolishness from his tone.
Isabelle nodded. 'Ten years gone. Our parents taken by fever. The house sold, the neighbours quick to forget us. We had only each other, so we learned to survive.'
Joseph glanced at the coins — proof they had survived. 'We begged, we stole a little, we sang for scraps,' he admitted. 'Mostly we walked. Always to the next town, hoping the next crowd would be kinder.'
'And in Amsterdam,' Rik put in, wagging his bow, 'they found us starving by a canal. Me with my fiddle, Joos with his nose. A pair of misfits. We were made for each other.'
'Or doomed,' Joos said gravely, before dissolving into laughter that rattled the mugs.
Willem leaned in from behind the counter. 'And Sander?'
The boy flushed, tugging at his sleeve. 'Only this year,' he admitted. 'Ink-stained, half-starved, dreaming rhymes no one wanted. They gave me a place.'
'A family,' Isabelle said simply. Her eyes flicked round the table, daring anyone to gainsay it.
The mugs clinked again, rough but heartfelt, and for a moment the tavern's roar seemed far away.
Joseph looked round the table and felt a tug in his chest. Rik, already drumming a rhythm on the wood. Joos, nose red as his mask, laughing too loudly. Sander, glowing shyly under the attention. And Isabelle — stern, sharp, always counting coins, yet the one who had kept them fed when no one else would.
A family. Not by blood, not by law, but by hunger shared, by laughter traded for bread, by the stubborn refusal to let the world grind them down.
For a moment pride swelled in him — not the kind his father might have wanted, but something fiercer. He might never march in a guild or sit in a merchant's hall. But here, with this ragged family, he belonged.
And yet… even in that warmth, the image intruded: a girl's bright eyes among silks, laughing as though she had known him all her life.
The mugs thudded back to the table, foam spilling over the rims. Laughter swelled again — Joos thumping Rik's back, Sander chanting scraps of rhyme no one caught over the din.
Joseph raised his cup with them, but his smile had slipped inward. The warmth was pierced by another image: a face above the crowd, eyes fixed on him as if motley and feathers were more than jest.
He stared into the froth of his ale, the sound of her laugh tugging behind his ribs.
When he looked up, Isabelle's gaze was already on him. Sharp, cutting. Nothing of warmth left.
'Only some of us remember why we perform,' she said, low enough to be swallowed by the tavern's roar.
Joseph blinked. 'The crowd laughed. The coins—'
'Not because of you,' she cut in. 'You were staring at the stands as if a girl in silk might climb down to follow you. Keep your eyes on the crowd, Joseph. They're the ones who feed us.'
Heat rose up his neck. Pietje pecked at crumbs, oblivious, as though mocking him with every bob of his head.
'It was nothing,' Joseph muttered.
'Make sure it stays nothing,' Isabelle warned. Then she turned away, bartering with Willem for supper, apron heavy with coin.
Joseph sat in the press of noise, the ale sour on his tongue. Isabelle was right — she always was. A player could not afford dreams. And yet when he shut his eyes, he saw hers still: that bright gaze through the crush of Carnival, laughter that seemed meant for him alone.
The pull caught like a hook beneath his ribs. Dangerous. Foolish. Irresistible.
Joos slung an arm around his shoulders, bellowing half a verse, Rik's bow shrieking a jig. Joseph forced his grin, lifted his cup, and let the noise swallow him whole.
He had learned how to wear masks on stages from Paris to Amsterdam: hide the truth in laughter, bury the ache in applause.
Above it all, Pietje tilted his head, eyes gleaming, and loosed a cry that rang too close to truth:
'Pretty fool… pretty fool…'
But somewhere beneath the din, the girl's eyes burned still.