Joseph could not settle. The inn roared around him — sailors pounding the tables, Rik scraping wild tunes from his fiddle, Joos holding forth on a tale so absurd half the room leaned in to catch every word. Willem thundered back and forth with trays of ale, barking at serving girls while smoke from the hearth mixed with the sour tang of bier. Tallow candles guttered in their sconces, dripping fat down the beams, their flames wavering as if struggling to keep pace with the uproar.
The others thrived on it. Rik grinned at every cheer. Joos swelled with each laugh, his lies growing taller until he had juggled torches for a Spanish duke. Willem himself beamed, for every jest meant another mug sold. Apprentices slammed dice in the corner, the clatter rolling like distant thunder, while a sailor beat time on the table with the butt of his knife, keeping rhythm with Rik's bow.
The room roared around them. Sailors thumped their tankards in rhythm with Rik's bow, calling for bawdier tunes until even the rafters seemed to shake. Joos climbed onto a bench, acting out his impossible tale with flailing arms, while a group of apprentices goaded him to fall into the fire. Two men argued over dice in the corner, their shouts cut short when Willem himself strode over, cuffing one about the ear and hauling them apart. The air thickened with woodsmoke, sweat, and spilled ale, every breath a draught of Carnival itself.
And yet, for Joseph, the noise clattered hollow. Each cheer jarred against his chest, each laugh felt a little too sharp. He had never felt so out of step with the revelry. The ale he drank sat bitter, the bread dry in his mouth.
It was the note — the stupid, reckless note.
What had he been thinking, scribbling a message to a merchant's daughter and trusting it to a street boy? Even if she received it she would never answer. She could not. He might as well have dropped his words into the Scheldt River and prayed the tide carried them back. More likely he was laughing stock amongst the street boy and anyone he chose to inform.
If Isabelle ever guessed, she'd flay him. A player chasing silks? A fool chasing ruin. And she would be right.
Still, he remembered her as clearly as if she stood before him: the tilt of her chin, the flash of her eyes in the torchlight. For one instant he had felt seen, not as a jester or a beggar, but as himself. That glance had undone him more surely than hunger ever had.
He shifted, restless, and glanced toward his sister.
Isabelle was not bent over her usual stack of coins. Tonight she sat across from Bram, a dyer's journeyman who had begun lending Willem his strength about the inn. Indigo stains still shadowed his cuffs, the mark of his trade, though his hands were busy turning his hat between his palms. He leaned close, voice pitched low. Isabelle laughed — not her usual sharp bark but something softer, warmer. Yet her eyes gleamed the same sly way they did when she had fixed on a mark, as though even in company she never quite stopped reckoning.
Joseph watched them from across the room, unease gnawing sharper with every passing glance. Bram bent his head close, speaking in a low, steady way that carried none of Joos's bluster nor Rik's swagger. There was a weight to him — shoulders square, hands calloused but careful as they turned his hat — that made him seem less a Carnival flirtation than a man staking quiet claim.
Isabelle leaned forward, her laughter softer than Joseph had ever heard it, her face bright in the glow of the hearth. For once she did not glance at the coins she might win, nor at the apprentices gawping from the benches. Her gaze lingered on Bram as if she found something worth measuring in him, something she could not tally on her fingers alone.
Joseph's frown deepened. Isabelle thought herself the spider in every web, but tonight it was not clear who was snaring whom. She was clever, too clever, and she had charmed half the journeymen in Antwerp this week. Isabelle thought she was using Bram — weighing his worth, testing what might be coaxed from him. But Joseph had seen the way Bram's gaze lingered, the way his hand brushed too near the purse at his belt. Was Isabelle the one being weighed this time?
He clenched his jaw. She never let him so much as glance at a girl without mocking him for a fool, yet here she was, leaning forward as though Bram's words were spun of gold.
'Pretty fool! Pretty fool!' Pietje shrieked from the rafters. The sailors roared with laughter, Joos wove the interruption into his story, Rik drew his bow across the strings like thunder.
The whole inn thrummed with Carnival's fever — smoke, song, and ale. But Joseph felt smothered.
He pushed from his stool, needing the cold.
Outside, the yard smelled of wet earth and horses. The air bit sharper than any knife. Joseph leaned against the wagon wheel, staring at the pewter sky. His breath fogged into the darkness, vanishing as quickly as the hope he tried to smother. Beyond the inn's wall came the faint murmur of Carnival still spilling through Antwerp's streets: a drumbeat here, a drunken song there, as though the whole city were awake save him.
She won't come, he told himself. She can't. And if she did, what then? A girl like that belongs to pearls and painted halls, not to barns and ragged inns. Forget her.
And yet the thought of her clung like smoke. The turn of her head, the flash of her eyes — he felt them branded into him, more vivid than the roar of the crowd or the coins in Isabelle's apron. He had known hunger, cold, the ache of days without bread, but this new hunger was stranger, sharper, lodged beneath his ribs where no food could reach.
Joseph pressed a hand there, muttering to himself, forget her, forget her. But the more he spoke it, the more her face rose before him, refusing to be banished.
The door creaked. He half expected Isabelle to follow, sharp words ready. Instead it was Rik, bow still tucked under his arm, hair wild from the heat inside.
'Why sulk out here?' Rik asked, grinning. 'The whole inn's ready to crown us kings, and you mope like a priest at a feast.'
'Too loud,' Joseph muttered.
'Too loud?' Rik snorted. 'You were born for noise. Come back in — they'll buy us another round if you only lift that bird above your head and squawk.'
Joseph shook his head. Rik shrugged and vanished back inside, the fiddle starting up before the door had even swung shut.
Joseph stayed. The quiet yard suited him better, though his thoughts roared louder than the inn. The note. The girl. The danger. He pressed a hand to his sleeve where he had tucked the stub of charcoal that had written those three words — I would see you again. Foolishness.
A gust of laughter from within cut through his brooding. He turned back toward the doorway. Isabelle's voice rang out above the din, light and lilting — almost girlish. It made his stomach twist. She leaned toward Bram, her hand brushing his sleeve.
Joseph narrowed his eyes. If she mocked him for chasing shadows, how could she defend this?
The door banged open again, spilling light and noise into the yard. A boy stood there, no more than ten, barefoot in the mud, cap askew.
'Message for the bird-man,' he piped.
Joseph froze.
The child held out a folded scrap, grubby from his grip.
'From who?' Joseph asked, though his voice cracked.
The boy only shrugged, palm open.
Joseph fumbled for a coin, pressing it into the boy's hand. Quick as a magpie, the child vanished back through the gate.
Joseph stared at the scrap, heart hammering. His fingers shook as he broke the fold.
Tomorrow, after dusk. The chapel of St. Andries. K.
The letters blurred, then sharpened again. She had answered. She had dared. She wanted him to come.
He pressed the paper against his chest, breath shuddering.
'What's that?' Isabelle's voice knifed from behind. He spun, too fast, to see her in the doorway, Bram's shadow just behind, hat still twisting in his hands.
Joseph clenched the scrap into his palm, forcing a grin. 'Nothing. Rik's nonsense. He scratches verses when he's drunk.'
Isabelle's eyes narrowed. 'Best not be from who I think it is.'
Joseph lifted his chin, careless. 'You think too much, sister.'
'And you think too little.' She let it hang, then turned back inside. Bram lingered a heartbeat longer, watching Joseph with a look he could not read — sly, appraising — before following her in.
Joseph exhaled hard. He smoothed the parchment open again, tracing the letters with his thumb as though they might vanish.
Tomorrow, after dusk. The chapel of St. Andries. K.
It was madness. Ruin. Yet even as the word formed, he felt the pull of it lodge deeper, fierce as hunger, certain as breath. He knew he would go.
Above, the bells tolled the hour, iron and unyielding. He tucked the note close to his skin. Carnival was folly, they said. But perhaps folly was the truest thing he had ever known.