The tavern crouched by the docks like a battered hulk, its shutters rattling in the wind, its doorway spilling smoke and laughter into the street. Inside, the air was a stew of tar, ale, and sweat, thick enough to choke. Sailors leaned over dice games, apprentices shouted for drink, and the floorboards shook with the stamping of boots.
Bram stood in the doorway, chest puffed, grin wide, as if he owned the place. 'This is it,' he declared, sweeping his arm as though he'd led them into a palace. 'Best tavern on the quay, and a crowd that pays in coin, not cabbage leaves. You'll thank me before the night is done.'
Isabelle's eyes shone, sharp and eager. 'At last,' she said, adjusting her bodice with brisk fingers. 'A proper house, not scraps on street corners. Antwerp will know us yet.'
Joos muttered something about the stench, Rik only shrugged and tightened his bow, but the mood among them lifted. Willem was not with them — some excuse about the accounts at the inn — and without him, Bram strutted all the louder, like a rooster in an empty yard.
Joseph trailed behind, unease prickling. The tavern was full, yes, and laughter spilled easy — but he had learned to hear the difference between laughter that welcomed and laughter that sharpened. This place smelled of both.
The landlord clapped his hands, bellowing for silence. Dice skittered to a halt, mugs thudded to tables, and the room's chaos turned, expectant, toward the space Bram had claimed near the hearth.
'Antwerp's finest fools!' Bram announced, bowing low with a flourish that sent whistles through the crowd. 'Step close, step lively — we'll give you a show fit for dukes, if you've the coin to match!'
Rik's fiddle screeched into a jig, Sander tumbled forward with a rhyme about sailors and salt beef, and Joos waddled in with his padded belly, sausages strung about his neck. Laughter broke, rough and loud, the kind that rolled quick but bit sharp at the edges.
Joseph leapt to his mark, Pietje squawking from his shoulder. The parrot's mimicry earned a roar, and for a moment the crowd surged with them — mugs raised, voices bellowing. The heat of bodies, the stench of ale and tar, the press of smoke against the rafters — it felt like being swept into a tide that could lift them high or drown them.
Yet even as he capered, Joseph's eyes roved the room. A pair of men near the back did not laugh; they weighed the troupe like merchants weigh wares, their smiles thin, their coin-pouches heavy. A soldier leaned on the wall with arms crossed, not clapping, only watching. The landlord too lingered by the counter, counting silently on his fingers as if tallying already what he owed — or what he might keep back for himself.
Isabelle strode on, sharp as ever, her verse snapping like a whip. The crowd whooped, Bram barked a laugh too loud, and the performance spun forward. But Joseph felt it — the uneven ground beneath the merriment, the way some eyes glittered not with joy but with calculation, as though Carnival's revel was only a mask for business done in shadows.
The play should have flowed as easy as any tavern song, but Joseph felt the cracks. The laughter came, yes, but too sharp, too eager to see them falter. Coins clinked against tables, yet none made their way forward to the cap Rik had set down near the hearth.
Between lines Joseph caught sight of Bram, grinning wide, bowing deep — too deep. And stranger still, a second cap lay at his feet, one he had brought himself. He nudged it forward with a boot, flashing his teeth as if it were all part of the act. But why two? Why not the troupe's own?
Joseph's stomach tightened. Bram was not only playing to the crowd; he was playing to the landlord, who leaned against the counter with arms folded, smug as a man who already held the purse.
When Rik ended a verse, Joseph slipped near Isabelle, muttering low beneath the noise. 'Something's off. They laugh, but they're not giving.'
'Keep your head in the play,' she hissed back, eyes fixed on the crowd. Her smile did not falter, but her jaw was tight. 'Bram promised the takings would be better than a week of fairs.'
'Then why's he keeping a cap of his own?' Joseph pressed, before he was swept back into his part.
From the corner of his eye he saw Bram slap the landlord's back, the two of them sharing a grin that had nothing to do with the stage.
The unease gnawed at him. They had played in plenty of taverns where the crowd was rough, but this felt different — laughter that tested them like a dog worrying a bone, and Bram's too-ready cheer hiding something Joseph could not yet name.
The play limped to its end with a chorus from Rik's fiddle and a bow from Joos that drew one last burst of laughter. The crowd clapped, tankards thudded, but when Rik passed the cap, only a scatter of coins fell in — nothing close to what Bram had promised.
'Better than Haarlem, eh?' Bram crowed as he swept back to their table, cheeks flushed from ale rather than applause. He tossed a coin into the air, caught it with a snap, and grinned wide enough to hide the hollowness of the heap. 'Didn't I say Antwerp knows how to reward its players?'
Joseph frowned at the meagre take. 'That's reward? Barely a week's bread, if we stretch it thin.'
'Aye,' Rik added, bow still in hand. 'You swore they would pay double. This isn't half.'
Sander leaned forward, his rhymes spent, his voice sharper now. 'Where's the rest, Bram? That crowd dropped more coin than this.'
'Patience, patience.' Bram dropped onto a bench with swagger, waving his hand as though brushing away their doubts. He leaned close, voice pitched low, though his grin stayed bright for the room. 'The landlord keeps the purse. Crowd pays him, he tallies, then passes it on. Keeps it neat. No brawls over loose coin.'
'So we trust him with our bread?' Joseph asked flatly.
'He's a man of business,' Bram replied easily. 'And he knows me. Wouldn't cheat a friend.'
'Then let's see our share now,' Rik pressed.
Bram spread his hands wide, grin never slipping. 'Tomorrow. He settles after the week's end — tavern custom. I'll collect it myself and hand it to you, fair as daylight. Better this way than chasing drunks for pennies.'
Joseph's unease sharpened, but before he could speak again, Isabelle appeared, skirts brushing the bench as she dropped beside Bram. Her cheeks were flushed, her smile easy. 'It was good,' she said, though her eyes flicked once at the thin heap of coins.
'Good?' Joseph echoed. 'Thin, more like.'
'You worry too much,' Isabelle cut in, brushing the complaint aside. She leaned back against Bram's arm as though it belonged there. 'Bram's right — it'll come. This is Antwerp. We're in bigger halls now, not village greens. Trust the process.'
Bram chuckled, sliding his arm comfortably along the back of the bench, his voice booming with cheer. 'See? My sister knows sense when she hears it. Next week the purse will be heavier, I swear it.'
Rik and Sander exchanged doubtful looks, but Joseph sat back, jaw tight. Bram's promises rang too loud, too easy. The coins on the table glinted dull and thin, and he could not shake the feeling that their reward was slipping through someone else's hands.
Later, when the others lingered over their mugs, Joseph stepped out into the lane to clear his head. The night air was damp, heavy with the stink of spilled ale and horses. At the corner, lamplight caught a movement — Bram, pinned against the wall by the innkeeper. The man's fist was tight in Bram's collar, his words low but sharp, the kind that carried the edge of threat even if Joseph could not catch them.
Bram's grin was gone. His eyes darted, his hands raised in placation.
The innkeeper shoved him once more before releasing him. Joseph took a step forward, and both men looked up.
'All in good fun!' Bram barked too quickly, straightening his coat as if nothing were amiss. He clapped the innkeeper's shoulder with forced cheer. 'Just settling accounts — rough trade in Antwerp, eh?'
The innkeeper said nothing, only spat into the gutter before heading back inside.
Bram laughed, hollow, running a hand through his hair. 'Don't look at me like that, Joseph. Man was drunk, that's all. We were jesting.'
But his smile never reached his eyes, and when he brushed past, Joseph caught the tremor in his hands.
The unease gnawed deeper. Whatever account Bram was settling, it was not one Joseph trusted to end well.