ANNO DOMINI 1729
Utrecht, The Republic of the United Netherlands

 

SOMEONE FIRES A SHOT FROM the church tower. I look up, because that’s what you do when they take aim at you, but nothing is visible in the darkness above the hanging lanterns. The open square offers no cover, so I press my back against the rough stone wall surrounding the cathedral ruins, still warm from the summer sun.

A hand grabs my arm and pulls me aside. I barely manage to avoid stepping into a patch of fresh horse dung. A drunken laugh sounds from across the street.

“The laws of the divine nature in action,” Raphael whispers in my ear. His perfume almost masks the reek of the manure. “Hide.”

“What is it?”

Raphael Peixoto’s face is hidden in the shadows under the brim of his hat, but I don’t need to see the wry smile around his mouth to know it’s there. After he pulls me through the overgrown gate into the ruins, I wait for his Spinoza. The philosopher is always on his lips, and Raphael has a quote for every precarious situation, no matter the time.

But once inside, he pushes me against the wall and presses a finger against my mouth. “Beware the impersonal wrath of God in the trajectory of a leaden ball, Gysbert.”

For years the ministers have been fulminating about the wrath of our Lord, brought down on the Republic by the moral failings of its people, but this pistol shot? “Only the custos, you pompous fool,” I whisper. High above us, we hear the man cursing “sodomites and bougers” as he chases trespassers off his gallery. He is notorious for his short and violent temper. The days when the Dom Tower guard ran his own tavern in the second-floor chapel are long gone.

“Darkness doesn’t make you invulnerable, dear boy,” Raphael insists, peering upward.

“I didn’t know you cared.”

“Nothing whatsoever. Still, best to hide that pretty face.” Again the sardonic smile, then he disappears behind a bush.

 

WE’VE BEEN WALKING THE CLOISTERS and the Domkerkhof churchyard, two Academy students in search of some dirty work after a day listening to professors droning. It doesn’t usually take long before someone approaches me, attracted by my youth and my clear countenance, unmarred by the pox. But for some reason the night watch has been out in force all evening, and the guards’ whistling and rattling have scared away most of the regulars. I walk around for a while, before deciding to call it a night.

Two watchmen enter the ruins, carrying lanterns. One remains standing before the gate, while I see the other accosting someone with a hat like Raphael’s.

Where is Raphael? I whisper his name and realise I am alone in the dark. The watchman’s lantern moves in my direction, bobbing slowly. Suddenly I am rigid with panic, unsure where to go, certain I cannot stay here. I have visions of being arrested and interrogated, having to face the incredulous looks of my friends, the disapproving gazes of my professors. From the corner of my eye I see an arm beckoning from behind the Holy Font, but I hardly notice.

“Gysbert! This way!” Raphael’s voice tears me loose. Quickly I shuffle in his direction.

The Holy Font is not actually a baptismal font, but our name for a broken, slanting, and half-buried column popular with devotees of certain acts the custos would no doubt find horrifying. Quite certain the trail of fluid running down its side isn’t rain water, I hesitate before crouching behind it. Only when I see the guard looking in my direction, I duck down.

Too late. Has he spotted me? We try not to breathe as we listen to the footsteps approaching through the grass.

But the lantern bobs past. I nudge Raphael and nod at the darkened gate. “Coast is clear.”

His breath hisses between his teeth. “No. That’s the trap. They’re waiting outside.” He points at a narrow opening next to another pillar stump. “We go past the Thomas chapel.”

“And then? The Munster Gate is closed by now.”

He grins. “But have you seen the ivy on the wall there? Come on.”

I watch how he quickly moves over to the pillar stump. There he looks around, before beckoning me. I get up, but immediately a loud voice commands us to come out, by order of the bailiff. I drop to the ground again. When I peer through the shrub, a watchman is standing next to the pillar stump, and Raphael is gone.

I crawl backwards, my coattails brushing the dirt, until my shoes touch the crumbling remains of a wall. The rough ground scrapes my hands painfully, and suddenly I smell my own sweat.

A third lantern appears. On my knees I shuffle sideways, trying to hide under a huge wall ornament partially buried in the grass. By now I’ve completely lost my bearings: the ruins of the former cathedral are a place of pits, unexpected corridors, and black holes. And in the darkness, we like to joke here, all holes are the same.

I crawl underneath yet another shrub, losing my hat to the bramble and tearing my stocking. Then the ground gives way.

I grab at the branches, but immediately I slide down into a pit. Sand covers my face as I claw upwards. Spitting and coughing, I slither down a steep incline, until I finally land painfully on a floor of damp earth.

When I’ve wiped enough grit from my eyes to look around, I see what appears to be a subterranean passage. Next, a pair of sandal-shod feet. I look up. A swarthy face gazes down at me in astonishment.

 

THE YOUNG MAN IS DRESSED as if for a stage play: a loose brown tunic, leather bands around his wrists, black hair cut short. His eyes reflect the light of the small terracotta oil lamp in his hand. Peasant boy, I think, looking at his bare muscled legs and arms. I’m not surprised: the Domkerkhof attracts both low and high alike, and in his loose clothes he looks like the Ganymede of the ancient Greeks, just before Zeus abducted him. Our unnatural desires are nothing if not quintessentially human.

When he speaks I don’t recognise his strange tongue, though it has a hint of Spanish.

“Who are you?” I ask. “Don’t you speak the language?”

He is silent, his eyes blinking rapidly. His next words are Latin.

A learned peasant boy, then. For a moment I’m so surprised his words slip past me. It must be some Vulgar dialect, because I have difficulty following it. “Nil intellego,” I say. “Tardus. Tardior.” Slower.

Whistles and muffled voices sound from above. The night watch is still there.

Touching the cold stone wall, at first I guess I’m in a crypt underneath the ruined nave. Do they know of this place? Any moment now I expect them to call down, demanding that I come out.

I look at the stranger’s face. At least he doesn’t know who I am, and that somehow reassures me. “I need help,” I say. “Hide me. Please.”

 

AS HE WALKS AHEAD OF me, the dark unfolds into a narrow corridor with openings on both sides. Pulling aside a curtain, he ushers me into a smell of leather, wax and old sweat. Dim light reveals neatly made bunk beds and empty coat pegs along the walls. I recoil when my hand brushes against a mail shirt hanging from one of the pegs. But most unsettling is the corner fireplace, which seems to double as a kitchen: a piece of dark bread and a chunk of dried meat lie on a wooden plate. The room looks and smells as if it’s been lived in for ages. This is not a crypt.

“What is this place?” I whisper. “Who are you?”

His answers come rapidly, and my sadly underused academic Latin is hardly up to the task. He tells me I shouldn’t be here—something I wholeheartedly agree with—because my clothes are barbarica. His cohors is charged with guarding the traiectus. I am lucky that his centuria is out, otherwise I would have been removed from the castellum immediately. He is the only one left, because…. The rest of his words flow past me in a meaningless stream.

He must be insane, living underground, imagining himself to be…what? A Roman legionary? Nevertheless I decide to play along, because listening to his raving is preferable to spending the night in a cell underneath City Hall. So I tell him I’m being chased by enemies, but I don’t say who. His grin is more uncertainty than mirth.

There is some parchment on a low table, next to a reed pen and an inkwell. I see some kind of map or diagram, but when I lean in to look closer, he pushes me away. “Praeteritum arcanum adhuc,” he says. The past is still secret? What does that mean? For a moment there is something else in his eyes, something complex, old, ancient. Then it’s gone.

I step back. There’s a stack of parchment in a corner, and I see more under the beds. Unsure about how to continue, I ask his name. When he tells me, I’m not sure I hear him correctly. But I repeat after him: “Ilurtibas,” and he nods and grins again. He can hardly be called handsome, yet each time he grins he raises his left eyebrow, which gives him a pleasantly rakish look.

“Gysbert Coolsaet,” I say, laying my hand on my chest.

He tries, but his tongue is so used to his soldier’s Latin and his own strange vernacular that it’s hard to recognise my name on his lips.

“And where are your comrades?” I ask, as casually as possible. I don’t want to run the risk of confronting a roommate who fancies himself the king of Spain.

A shadow passes over his face. “I don’t know.”

“Well…when will they be back?”

Confusion in his eyes. “I don’t…. They left in the past, and the past is hidden. Yesterday…last week…” He shakes his head. “Centuries ago? Anyhow, I couldn’t join them. So I started writing. To pass the time.”

I gaze at the stacks of parchment. Time has certainly passed here.

And that’s it. Even my tolerance for insanity has its limits. “I’m sorry. I’m tired and cold.” My legs feel as if they are about to give way. “Are we safe here? Can I take some rest?”

He points at one of the low bunks, saying that it’s probably all right to sleep there.

 

WHEN I WAKE UP, MY teeth are chattering, though I have my coat wrapped tightly about me. The fireplace is cold. In the faint lamplight I see him watching me from a bunk across the room. He has a thin blanket, which I eye longingly.

I’m not used to sharing a bed with a soldier, not even a scholarly one, but I’m relieved when he beckons me over.

 

WE END UP IN EACH other’s arms, fumbling and uncomfortable, our bodies somehow unwilling to come together, despite the cold and the closeness of the cramped bunk. After a while we lie still, as if poised in equilibrium. And we talk.

At least, we try. But his Latin is not an academic language. Strange meanings emerge from everything he says. Every word we speak, every gesture we make takes on special urgency, because we have so little common ground.

He tells of battles, campaigns, friendships, loss. Time becomes fluid when he speaks of centuries that might have been days, and nights that stretch on forever. Repeatedly he refers to himself as a praeteritorum custos, and gradually I realise he does not just think of himself as a soldier, but as a watchman: a guardian of things past.

“But what is there to guard?” I ask.

“All of it,” he says, making a sweeping arm gesture. And again that ancient wisdom in his face, as if the young soldier is only a disguise. But it’s just shadows, I know, and my imagination.

“This is a place of gods. Mithras was here, Wodan, and Hercules Magusanus. But before we arrived, before the Batavi and the Frisii lived here, gods were worshipped whose names even Jupiter and Minerva don’t know. The god of the flight of the ruff in autumn. The goddess of the wind in the young reed. The god of the path the shadows of moving clouds trace across the fields. Their holy places, long gone. Their remains sink deeper and deeper. They must be protected.”

“Against what?”

“The past must not be disturbed.”

I am too tired to keep questioning. Drifting in and out of sleep, at one point I start awake from a dream in which I see Raphael waving at me from the bushes, before his face changes into that of a watchman. At the same time I’m always aware of Ilurtibas’s warm and muscular body—right next to me, but somehow ages removed.

 

A PUNGENT SMELL OF BURNING wood wakes me. Ilurtibas is poking up the fire, his silhouette black against its light. The darkness in this place still feels like something timeless and eternal. My shoulders are stiff from the cold. I sit up and straighten my clothes. “I have to leave,” I say. “Probably morning by now. Is there another way out?”

He nods silently, keeping his back turned to me. A more obvious expression of unease is hardly possible, so I get up, ready to leave.

But when he slowly rises and turns around I step back in shock. Instead of Ilurtibas’s youthful face, a grey-haired old man looks at me. He wears the same tunic, but it hangs loose on his gaunt frame.

“Who…?” I have to clear my throat.

“I am called Ilurtibas. I think you…know me.”

I shake my head. “You are not…where is Ilurtibas? I need him to show me the way out.”

“And you think I don’t remember? A senile old man, is that what I am?” He clacks his tongue. “Have it your way. But you’re right, it is time for you to leave now. Come.” He steps into the corridor and snaps his fingers with barely concealed impatience.

I hesitate. Waiting here for Ilurtibas would be the sensible thing to do.

The old man keeps looking at me. “You have trusted me this far, Gysbert. Why doubt me now?” The corners of his mouth turn up as he raises his left eyebrow. And the smile that yesterday was rakish, is a sardonic grin on this face: the bitter joy of someone who has seen too much. But it’s the same grin.

 

AS HE WALKS AHEAD OF me in the corridor, we pass other rooms similar to his. “Empty contubernia. None have returned yet.” In his aged voice it sounds like a ritual incantation repeated daily.

Around the corner, I grow more mystified with every room we pass. There is a storeroom filled with jars of grain, another one with dried meat, stockfish, cabbage. One room looks suspiciously like a heathen temple, and there is even a simple bathhouse. But no sign of other people, anywhere.

At the end of a long passage we come to a low arch. And beyond it, the labyrinth starts.

It exists as little more than glimpses caught in the lamplight, as it moves and shifts along tunnels and pathways. The whole place seems to be made of walls, pillars, and arches, whole or broken, a bricolage of stone and masonry. Walls are built on top of each other, through each other, or next to rows of bricks supported by layers of pebbles, scattered over blocks of tuff. We pass the immense foundations of the Dom Tower, burrowing down through it all. When we go deeper, the walls become wooden stakes.

I come to a dead stop, wrapping my arms around me, shivering. Is this still Utrecht? “Where are we?”

“History,” says the old man. He draws up his shoulders. “It sinks ever deeper. Look.” He points at a rift in the wall.

Lights. Lights glimmering in the deep. Like looking down on the stars of an underworld firmament. But I’ve seen enough now. “Get me out of here,” I whisper.

He nods. “The past wants to remain hidden.” When he looks at me, it’s as if his eyes have seen that past, all of it. His gaze bores into me, and I turn back to the rift again, afraid he sees too much. Then he beckons, and we walk along a broad tunnel to a double gate of weathered wood. “This is the via principalis. I can’t leave the castellum. You must find your own way out.” He puts a hand on my shoulder.

I pull open the gate and step into a draughty corridor. When I glance back at him, the old man is gone. It’s the young Ilurtibas standing there, an unreadable expression on his face. Before I can ask him where he was, he raises his hand and pushes the gate shut.

 

AFTER WE DELEGATE TERVAERT TO fill us another bottle of Rhine wine at the tavern, I throw in an offhand remark: “Well, what about that rumour of a secret subterranean labyrinth?”

The morning’s lectures concluded, four of us are spending a sunny afternoon under the trees of the pall-mall court just outside the city walls, watching the youths swing their mallets, whistling at the girls. I haven’t seen Raphael for days, but ever since I emerged from the strange underground warren, I’ve been thinking of Ilurtibas’s words.

“Rumour?” Cuylman’s speech is slurred. His soiled wig is hanging lopsided on one ear. Three sheets to the wind already, and the pockmarks on his face have taken on a purple hue. “There’s all kinds. All kinds of. Stuff. Beneath the Domkerkhof. That’s not rumour. That’s fact.”

“Such as?” Nieuwmeyer demands. I wait in silence. Cuylman is the man to ask, I know, given his other interests besides drinking and whoring.

“The Dom wasn’t the first cathedral built there. Actually.”

“First to collapse when the bishop sneezed, though,” Nieuwmeyer snorts.

“Franks. Franks had some kind of castle.” Cuylman pushes a finger in his ear and wiggles it vigorously. “And the Romans.”

I try not to show my surprise. “What about the Romans?” I ask.

Inspecting the brownish glob on his finger, Cuylman says, “Latest thinking, they had some kind of garrison here. Camp or some such. Lots of coins around.”

“Coins?” Nieuwmeyer rubs his nose. “Know your Pliny, old man. Roman soldiers were paid in salt.”

Cuylman gives him a glassy stare.

Then Tervaert returns from the Maliehuis with two flasks of wine. “Call that a rumour?” he says, refilling our cups. “Let me tell you gentlemen a rumour. Have you heard about Peixoto?”

“What’s he done now?” Cuylman asks.

“Appears to’ve gotten himself collared near the Vreeburgh privies, a few days ago.”

I feel every hair on my arms standing up. Raphael. Rumour has transformed Domkerkhof into Vreeburgh, but I dare not correct it. I take a swig of wine to hide my apprehension.

“Privies? What’s wrong with the canal?” Nieuwmeyer, always slower on the uptake.

“That’s disgusting,” says Cuylman. “No surprise from a cursed Israelite, but really…a filthy bouger? Never expected that.” He leans heavily against the wooden fence surrounding the playing field. “Now, him!” he blurts, pointing over the fence. “Him I’d suspect.”

An elderly man with an old-fashioned black wig and a walking stick strolls along the path, two servants at a respectful distance behind him. The embroideries on his elegant pale blue justaucorps and waistcoat glitter in the sunlight, and his buckled shoes are perfectly polished.

“Renswou, Baron Big Nose,” says Tervaert. “Well, what do you expect? Plenipotentiary for Utrecht at the Peace of 1713, no? That close to that many foreign diplomats, anyone’s bound to pick up some of their…habits.”

“Prattle,” I say. “That’s sixteen years ago.” But I’m not even fooling myself. I’ve seen the baron strolling the Dom cloisters, I’ve recognised the look in his eyes, the hunger, the dull resignation to the certainty that his wealth will buy him everything but true companionship, genuine brotherly love. I’ve even heard whisper why he is called “that gentleman with the big nose.”

“So where’s Peixoto?” Nieuwmeyer asks.

“Locked up at Catheryne Gate, I presume. Maybe City Hall.” Tervaert smirks.

The world seems to recede. As I close my eyes and steady myself against a tree, a memory surfaces: Raphael Peixoto, two years my senior, opening a tavern door and motioning me into a new world which I had never known existed. The Wine Wreath near Saint Paul’s Gate offered drink, merriment, and what Raphael called “the dirty work.” At first I loathed the ostentatious effeminacy of many of the regulars—the powdered perruques, the rouged cheeks, the vulgar perfumes—but then I found that the company of stable hands and cab drivers could be just as fulfilling. My world expanded, and I, Gysbert Coolsaet, son of a respectable merchant family, learned things about myself which would otherwise have been kept hidden, locked away as unspeakable secrets, silently poisoning my being.

“What’s this, Coolsaet?” pulls me back to the present. “Can’t hold your drink? Gentlemen, the boy is in need of a glass of orgeat!” Tervaert starts bawling the latest drinking song.

Cuylman is sitting in the grass with his chin on his chest, which allows me to make a joke of it, but the joy of the afternoon has evaporated. I excuse myself, pleading academic duties.

As I cross the Malie Bridge and look at the arbours and pleasaunces on the Lepelenburgh bulwark where the well-to-do are enjoying themselves in the sun, oblivious to anything beyond their garden fences, I feel as if I’m invisible. I want to scream, I want to tell somebody about Raphael, I want to ask what’s going to happen to him. I’m not even sure if it’s Raphael I care about, or the sudden revelation that whatever happens to him, might at some point also happen to me.

If my faith were stronger, I would pray. If I were a papist, I would go to confession. But prayer has not helped me in the past, and I’m not sure that God even listens to someone like me. I hope Raphael’s God listens to him. His father is one of the Jews of the Portuguese nation, allowed back into Utrecht during the great speculation craze of 1720. They needed his money then. They don’t need him now. They certainly don’t need his son.

 

IN MY ROOM ABOVE THE wine merchant’s shop, I try to concentrate on my reading. Raphael has lent me his copy of Spinoza’s Opera posthuma. The infamous freethinker’s Ethica distracts me for a while, but my thoughts keep wandering, so later that evening I go out and roam around the city for a while. The urge to talk to someone has become unbearable, but I don’t dare trust anyone not to hand me over promptly to the bailiff—the only difference between a Jew and a sodomite being, as far as my social circle is concerned, that a sodomite might actually be willing to part with a guilder or two in exchange for his pleasure.

Of course I end up on the Domkerkhof again. The shrub behind the Holy Font is undisturbed, the tunnel entrance surprisingly easy to find. As I slide down the hole, I don’t even wonder why no one else has discovered this tunnel. In a place like this, apparently other laws hold.

Before I can lose my way in the dark he appears in front of me. It is Ilurtibas, but he is neither the young man nor the old codger. This is Ilurtibas in the prime of his life, a soldier and legionnaire. “Quis es?” he demands in a deep and resonant voice, and it’s almost as if the echoes call the corridor behind him into being, as if nothing existed there before his footsteps solidified it.

“A friend of mine has disappeared,” I blurt, ignoring his question. Lord, but the relief of getting that off my chest, even in halting Latin!

In his contubernium I ramble on about Raphael, about how we met during a lecture on Saint Augustine, how he showed me what lay beyond the limits of my world, how he taught me to navigate the currents of our dark desires. I tell him how I feel about Raphael—something I have never told Raphael himself. I tell him that I sometimes imagine us to be Achilles and Patroclos, or Alexander and Hephaistion, and I try to explain why that feeling makes me stronger, as if it helps me to become a better man. Other people would be shocked at what they’d perceive as a tale of innocent Christian youth corrupted by the perverted Jew, but Ilurtibas just listens.

I’m not sure he truly hears, though. His face is still a hard mask. Finally he asks, again, “Who are you?”

Have I misunderstood after all? “Gysbert Coolsaet,” I say, unsure. “Remember?”

“That is what you have told me. But you shouldn’t be here. I know who let you in, and that shouldn’t have happened. It’s my duty to throw you out.”

“Ilurtibas…” I shake my head in exasperation. Now that my story is done, the questions return. “Who are you? Every time you look different. I’ve heard tales of witchcraft, but this…and your writing…” I glance at the parchment on the table. When I look up, I involuntarily take a step back, and hit my head on the edge of a bunk bed. The soldier is gone, and now the old man is standing in front of me again.

He looks past me. “Not my duty to tell you. Not anymore. The duty used to be everything, long ago. The watch, the camp life.” His gaze glides across the parchment. “The historia. But now I only have to make sure there’s a proper ending.” He looks up at the low ceiling. “History moves in waves, you know, one flowing over the other. A new wave washes away the sediment of an older one. But never completely. There are places in this world where waves meet and strengthen each other, where they rise up in a peak in which time is bundled together, into a single point full of meaning and possibility.” He gestures at the sheets on the table. “The history of this place turns into the future. It is a Metamorphoseon my spirit has moved me to write, in which all things are turned into new and strange forms. I see now that you have not been written yet. I thought you were just a local who had wandered in by chance. But no one else has done so in centuries. You belong to later times, the waves above, the higher layers, the temples of that new god, the cruciform foundations.”

I’m surprised at how much I want to accept his words. He sounds like a doting old man, but I remember the labyrinth outside this room, this barracks, and there is seductive logic to it.

This time he does not stop me. The handwriting is dense, virtually unreadable, and what little I can make out is colloquial and full of neologisms—Ilurtibas is no Spinoza or Ovid. It appears to be a painstaking description of the tunnels, in dated entries. As I leaf through a few pages, I see Julian dates but no ab urbe condita or even a single consular year, no starting point to his calendar. There are maps that seem to change from year to year, as if the maze is in constant transmutation.

Feeling slightly embarrassed, I ask, “Who was emperor when you…?”

“The august Antoninus Heliogabalus is princeps,” he says without hesitation in a deep and powerful voice. I don’t dare to look up, but I know the soldier is standing next to me again.

As I try to remember the position of Heliogabalus in the ranks of the heathen rulers, Ilurtibas grabs my shoulder so hard it hurts. I look up in surprise, and now it’s the young man looking down anxiously. “Who is princeps…where you are from?”

It’s difficult talking to three different people at once. How to explain that his empire fell apart a long time ago? “We…” I begin. “The Dutch people only recognise the absolute authority of our Lord Jesus Christ the Redeemer. Our leaders are just regents.”

I expect him not to believe me, but he nods slowly. “New gods have taken over. Old ones are buried. Again.” He sits down. Elbows on his legs, he stares at the ground. “I didn’t know. Not really. But it’s clear, isn’t it?” He looks around the small room, the empty bunk beds, the dark doorway. “Buried,” he whispers. “It’s been so silent here. More silent every day, ever since you turned up.”

I sit down next to him, self-consciously putting my hand on his shoulder. “Ilurtibas…”

But he turns away and says gruffly, “Get out.”

 

AS DAYS AND THEN WEEKS pass, eventually panic gives way to reason, a relentless academic detachment forcing me to think things over logically. I ask around, only to realise that I don’t know any of Raphael’s friends. Our fellow students just repeat the rumours Tervaert has been spreading with obvious relish. I visit Raphael’s rooms, but his landlady only scowls at me. When I muster up the courage to inquire at the Magistrates’ Court, it leaves me none the wiser. At night I roam the Domkerkhof in vain.

And finally I decide on another way.

 

THE DOM TOWER CARILLON ANNOUNCES the half hour when I see Baron Renswou alighting from his carriage. He takes a pinch of snuff from a small jewelled box, then enters one of the coffee houses on the north side of the Domkerkhof. I take up position against the ruined wall, underneath a relief showing three women spinning a single thread. The pagan image depicting the inevitability of fate seems fitting all of a sudden.

I try to keep an eye on the entire street. This is not a reputable area, and already I see some drunks brawling on a nearby corner. High above me I hear the tower custos screaming again. He must have a clear view of the men using the place as a rendezvous spot. I pull my hat down over my forehead. The cheap wig and smelly clothes I’m wearing belong to the wine merchant’s assistant. I must avoid another confrontation with the night watch.

When Renswou comes out, I follow him as he makes his way past the tower to Oudmunsterkerkhof square, and on through the cloister gate. He turns right, so I go left, staying in the shadows, hurrying along the walls surrounding the moonlit courtyard. On the other side I slow down and lean against the cloister wall, hands behind my back, one leg casually crossing the other—the way I’ve seen them do it, the baron’s boys.

Other men walk past, arms akimbo, elbows stuck out with clear intent, trying to catch my eye, but I carefully ignore them. I’ve been here so often, but suddenly it feels like the first time again, the day after Raphael had explained what was going on, giving advice, warning about who to avoid.

From the corner of my eye I see Renswou approaching. Heart pounding in my throat, I force myself to relax. The wig itches fiercely.

He walks past me, and I remain motionless, waiting. A moment later he approaches again, closer this time. Then I feel his shoe stepping on my toes.

I push up the brim of my hat. He looks into my eyes. For a moment I’m afraid he will see me instead of the simple boy I’m pretending to be. But his hunger is unmistakable. Suddenly I feel pity, followed by misgivings over what I’m about to do.

He turns and walks off. I push myself away from the wall.

In his carriage, riding slowly through the countryside just outside the city, the old baron mutters what he wants me to do, and what his driver is going to pay me afterwards. He turns around and pulls aside his justaucorps. I make as if to oblige, but instead I lay my hand over his mouth, push him into the cushions and whisper, “I don’t want money.” He struggles, but not very hard. He is used to this game. Gently I pull off his wig, exposing a blotched pate. I can feel his surprise. “I want information.”

WITHOUT HIS WIG HE LOOKS thin and frail in the little moonlight that enters the carriage. “You should make inquiry at the Magistrates’ Court.”

“I have. They won’t tell me anything.”

He shakes his head. “What do you think I can do, boy?”

“You have influence in government. You could find out….”

“I can tell you what they will probably do to your friend if he confesses to his unspeakable sin. At best he will spend the rest of his life rasping brazilwood, or he will be banished. More likely, being a Jew, he will be executed.”

I am stunned. While Renswou fumbles for his snuff box, I try to regain my voice. “His unspeakable sin, but…it’s your sin as well.” And mine.

“How dare you?” he snaps. “What I do is of no concern to the likes of you. Anyway,” he lifts a thumb tipped with sweet-smelling powder to his nose, “no doubt your friend is in solitary confinement under City Hall by now. He will be tried in secret and extra ordinaris.” He inhales and closes his eyes, the better to enjoy the tobacco. “If he is found guilty, you will not hear of him again.”

 

I DO NOT KNOW WHICH Ilurtibas I will meet when I walk into his contubernium—the boy, the soldier, or the sage. He sits hunched over his parchment like an archetype, scribbling with his reed pen, observing, measuring, and fixing the history of his subterranean world.

“Those tunnels outside the gate,” I ask him. “Where do they lead? How far?”

For a moment I’m afraid he won’t answer me. But when he looks up, his face is that of the soldier. It isn’t unfriendly, but it looks tired and resigned.

“I don’t know,” he says, and he puts down his pen with a controlled and patient movement, as if he is a busy father who knows he must make time for his children. “I am not allowed to leave the castellum. I must guard….”

“I need to get to into the City Hall cellars,” I interrupt him. “Northwest of here. Maybe one hundred thirty passus.”

He frowns. “The gate road,” he says. “Just outside the porta sinistra. It runs west to the vicus. There’s a path north, along the wall. But it only leads down to the river.”

“River? What river?”

He shows me a plan of the castellum and the vicinity, in brown ink on parchment. I try to reconcile his topography with my crowded Utrecht inner city. I feel faint, unsteady, as if I am torn between two realities. A river ran there, hundreds of years ago?

But I see Raphael’s face before me, and imagining what they’ll do to him is worse than actually knowing. “Show me that path,” I say. “Please.”

Again we follow the via principalis to its end. As he pulls open the gate, he looks back at me. “What if you get caught?”

“I won’t,” I say, desperately feeling for the certainty in those words.

“Is this friend really that important to you?”

“I…” What more can I tell him that I haven’t already? What language does he understand? “He is my brother-in-arms.”

He is silent. Then he turns away and points into the dark. “Go then, fool. There’s your path.” Before I know it he is gone, leaving me standing with a small oil lamp in my hand.

“Ilurtibas!” I call after him, but the corridor has already disappeared.

 

THE ONLY SOUNDS IN THE damp tunnel are my breath and the shuffling of my shoes on the sandy floor. I don’t know how far I walk before it forks into a number of narrower passages with small holes in the walls. I press my eye to one of them and draw a sharp breath. Three women are sitting chained to the floor of a bare room.

Dungeons. I must be under City Hall already. Frantically I start looking through every one of the spy holes.

 

I HARDLY RECOGNISE HIS FACE under layers of grime. Raphael lies alone in a tiny cell. His lower legs are blackened and bloody.

I have to call his name four times before he reacts.

“Father?” he whispers. “Have you come?”

The dullness of his voice scares me. “It’s me. Gysbert. Are you hurt?”

“Gysbert?” He rolls aside, curls up and turns away, as if he does not want me to see him. Then he reaches out one hand to me. “Gysbert, I’ve written letters, I’ve asked the warden, but…” A tremor in his voice. “Everyone here calls me filthy names. Father won’t come. He won’t see me. I’ve begged him to, I only ask for a visit. A clean shirt. A bit of money. But he won’t…” His voice breaks and he falls silent.

“What have they done? Why are you here?” My teeth are chattering, but not from the cold. What happened to the cheerful, insouciant young man I knew? How have they managed to break his spirit so thoroughly?

“Thumb screws,” he whispers. “Flogging. Shin screws. But after the strappado, I couldn’t hold out any longer. Gave them names. May have given them yours, can’t…can’t remember.” After a while he continues, “Why won’t Father come see me? Just once? Maybe bring a clean shirt?”

“Raphael! Listen! What’s going to happen? Is there a date set for the trial?”

The painful sound in his throat is laughter, I realise. “Trial? Trial was last week. Our sin isn’t tried in public.”

“But, then…what?”

“Tomorrow…” he whispers. He pushes himself up to look at me. I try not to recoil from the naked desperation in his eyes. “Go. Ask Father to come quickly. Please. Ask him to bring a clean shirt.”

 

BUT RAPHAEL’S FATHER IS OUT of town. When I call at his house, Gideon Peixoto is in Antwerp and will not be back for some days. His wife tells me that no letters have arrived from City Hall. She immediately starts writing a request to the Magistrates’ Court, dismissing me with an accusatory look that suggests my bad influence is entirely to blame for her son’s predicament.

Back in my room, I sit motionless on a stool. The darkness swirls around me, conjuring up images of Raphael’s torture, mingled with visions of Ilurtibas’s “hidden history.” I’m so exhausted I can’t tell which is which.

Noise from downstairs startles me awake. Gruff, insistent male voices interspersed with the habitual sarcasm of the wine merchant’s wife. Then they come stumbling up the stairs. And I remember Raphael’s words, ominous in their simplicity. I may have given them your name. Before the consequences of that remark sink in, I’m at the side window, pushing up the sash. Someone raps on the door. “Mister Coolsaet?”

The narrow alley is pitch dark.

“Mister Coolsaet! By order of the bailiff of the city of Utrecht…” When I let myself drop, a cart breaks my fall, but I cry out as my foot doubles under me.

A hoarse shout above me. Then, someone at the window. “He’s down there! Get him!”

Ignoring the pain in my ankle, I limp into the dark as fast as I can. Behind me I hear pounding on the locked alley door. I curse myself for my carelessness—but I’m also stunned. How can this be happening to me, a respectable citizen from a reputable family?

The other end of the alley opens on the Old Canal. Escape, for now. But nauseating fear gnaws its way up out of my stomach. There is nowhere to go. My friends, my family—the bailiff’s men may be lying in wait anywhere.

 

“HE BETRAYED YOU,” SAYS ILURTIBAS the soldier.

“He was tortured.”

“But he wasn’t strong enough. He betrayed you and yet you wish to save him.”

I know I should flee, leave the city, maybe even the country. If I have committed a crime, then the fact that I committed it with a Jew makes it twice as grave. Why am I still here? “But I can’t leave him to his fate,” I say. “I owe him this.”

I expect disapproval in his eyes, but to my surprise I see understanding: friendship means loyalty. He nods resolutely. “Then it’s your duty.”

And somehow his words transform it into a commitment, weighing on my shoulders like chainmail. Fleeing the bailiff wouldn’t be half as difficult as fleeing my responsibility now. I close my eyes. “But how?”

That sounds like a request for help, which I tell myself wasn’t intentional. But the words are hanging between us now, and there I leave them.

Of course it’s not that easy. When I open my eyes again, the young Ilurtibas stands before me with a brooding look on his face. “You’ve met the old one,” he says.

“The…yes.”

He bites his lip. “You see? He thinks I don’t know. He thinks he is the end of everything. But I write the historia too, and I read his words. They’re always conclusions. As if he is the end of everything, and after him there’s nothing.”

I remain silent.

He takes hold of my shoulders. “Do you understand what that means for me?” he asks ferociously. “I’m only here to support his decisions. As if I only exist to give meaning to his life.” There is a fierce longing in his eyes now. “I had a life, myself. I was a legionary. We are from Hispania, pia fidelis, faithful and loyal. We’re only auxiliaries, without rights in Rome. They promised us citizenship after our service is done. But how can I earn that honour when I’m buried here?” He grabs my head with both hands and pulls it even closer. “Your friend betrayed you. And now you want to help your betrayer. I have never witnessed such an act of…friendship, of humanity.” He steps back and turns away. “You must save him.”

“I know.”

“For me,” he whispers.

The only sound in the room is the crackle from the fireplace. I feel I should go. Find Raphael and get him out, somehow. No plan, no courage, but I take a deep breath and step towards the door.

The old man Ilurtibas blocks my way. He looks past my shoulder. “It’s more difficult for some, you know,” he says pensively. “Especially the boy… He isn’t used to seeing people. You’ve given him things to think about. Is that good? We will see. He is still dreaming. Just like you. As he gets older he will learn the meaning of duty, and it will chafe him like a pair of ill-fitting caligae, but it will also give him purpose. He will find tranquility in the daily watch, in the compiling of the historia.”

There is a note in his voice that makes me wish it was that simple for me. But my task is of a different order. “And you?” I ask.

He produces a sheet of parchment covered in diagrams and symbols. I recognise the layout of the castellum, but with a map of the city superimposed. The route to City Hall is outlined in red ink. A web of narrow tunnels is drawn between and underneath the prison cells. One of the cells is marked with a strange sigil.

The ink is still wet. I look up.

“Me?” He smiles. “My task is nearly done. I only have to make sure there’s a proper ending. As always.”

 

THE MAP GUIDES ME ALONG the threads woven between the cells. Unlike the first time I was here, I see where to go now. In some places the corridors are no broader than shoulder-width. Steep and narrow stairs sometimes make me stumble, almost spilling oil on the parchment. The architecture here seems to shift as I move through. I’m quite sure there are some passages I walk more than once. But when I round the last corner after one particularly twisted series of gangways, there he lies.

Somehow I have entered Raphael’s cell. I look around, feeling the edge of the opening through which I came in, to make sure I can find it again. Ilurtibas’s command of geometry is powerful but unstable.

Raphael lies curled up on his side, facing the wall. I kneel down and gingerly touch his shoulder. “Raphael, it’s me.”

Again it takes me several tries to coax a reaction out of him. When he turns his head and sees me, he closes his eyes. “They’ve got you too,” he whispers. “Gysbert, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry….”

“No! I’m here to rescue you. We’re going to leave. Can you get up?”

“There’s no leaving this place.” I can hardly hear his words, whispered into the filthy straw underneath his head. “Lasciate ogni speranza, voi ch’entrate.”

“That’s the spirit. Quotes,” I say, joking to ward off his despair, and mine. I start hauling him upright. “Quotes all the way to Paradiso.”

“It’s too late. Listen!” He grabs my wrist. “Can’t you hear them?” He stares at me, his eyes wide open. I hear footsteps approaching in the corridor, muted voices, keys clinking.

No time to lose. “Come on. Now!” I pull his arm over my shoulder and slowly get to my feet, trying to support him at the same time.

A key in the lock. Before we reach the back wall the door swings open. An astonished silence. Then: “What in the name of… You! Stand still!”

Another voice: “What’s going on?”

We’ve almost reached the opening. I stretch out one arm to steady us against the wall. But there are swift footsteps behind me. Hands grab my shoulders and pull me back. Raphael slides to the ground. I thrust my free elbow backwards into the guard’s chest, and I hear a satisfying grunt. But before I can reach down to Raphael, something connects with the side of my head. There is a moment of blinding light.

 

I WAKE UP TO THE sound of someone breathing heavily. A hard floor presses into my back. The small flame of an oil lamp throws flickering shadows against a rough, tuff-stone wall. I groan.

The heavy breathing ceases. “Awake?” Raphael’s voice.

I turn my head. He is sitting against the wall, his ruined legs in front of him.

“What happened?” I manage. “Where are we?”

Raphael looks at me. “He went back, Gysbert. After carrying us here. He went back. He didn’t need to, but he did.”

“Who?” I ask, though there can be only one answer.

“He appeared out of nowhere, some rift in the wall I’d never seen before. So strange.” He shakes his head. “Knocked them both down, then brought us here.”

Pain throbs in my head when I try to get up. I have to pause and squeeze my eyes shut when I’m sitting on one knee. “How do you feel?” I ask.

“Gysbert…” He looks up at me. “He wants me to take his place. Says history must be guarded. Says he shouldn’t have left his…his castellum, whatever that means.” His grin is painful. “Like a fairytale, eh? A life for a life. Balance must be maintained, all that… As if there can be anything within Creation that is not in balance. Ethica says…” His voice fades to a mumble.

“Shh.” I push myself up the rest of the way. “Rest. I’ll be back for you.”

“But it’s useless. They’ll find us here.”

I see the oil lamp and the map lying next to it, neatly folded. “No, they won’t,” I say grimly. “You’ll be safe here. Sleep.” I grab the lamp and the map, and I start walking.

 

THE EARLY-MORNING CANAL SERVICE TO Amsterdam is packed. Inside the horse-drawn boat no one pays attention to two hungover students, and we try our best to look the part, in our shabby clothes and rumpled hats. The sweet pipe smoke filling the cabin helps me relax and accept the uncertain new reality in which I suddenly find myself.

I don’t want to think beyond the next few hours. Handing Raphael the bottle of wine, I say, “We’ll be there around two. Might as well take our leisure.”

Raphael is still pale. He winces as he tries to arrange his legs more comfortably in his borrowed clothes, without causing the weals on his back to start bleeding again.

“What did Renswou say?” he asks.

The baron was none too pleased when I turned up on the doorstep of his townhouse that morning, demanding money and clothes in exchange for my silence about his scandalous behaviour. I feel sullied and ashamed by that bit of blackmail, but I also know Renswou will be the last one to get hurt.

“He told me the Dom Tower custos has been apprehended for disturbing the peace. The man is acting as an informer to save his own hide. There’ll be public prosecutions. But we’ll be safe in Amsterdam, for now.”

“No.” Raphael shakes his head. “No public prosecutions. Not in this God-fearing Protestant country. The peccatum mutum is the sin of Catholics and sybarites. Of the French, the Italians. They’ll never admit its existence in the Republic.”

The boat lurches. Raphael stifles a groan as his back shifts against the wooden boards.

“You could have stayed,” I say softly. “Regain your strength. Guard the labyrinth, like Ilurtibas asked.”

“I refuse that role,” he mutters vehemently. “Let it lie unguarded. I pray for the day when an enterprising antiquary puts his shovel in the ground to open up history as it should. Otherwise nobody will ever know which Utrechtenaar they killed last night. Or how many more they will kill.” He shivers. “They’ll make sure nobody remembers us, you know. They’ll burn our faces and bury us beneath the gallows. They told me that’s how they do it.” He pauses. “I pray for the day when anyone who even hears the word ‘Utrechtenaar’ will remember who they killed here.” Finally he glances at me. “Will Amsterdam really be safe?”

What is “safe”? Did Ilurtibas believe himself safe in his barracks? I think back to the tunnels, the damp darkness, the close corridors magnifying the sounds of my feet and my panting. I run and I run, my lamp unsteady in my hand, the shadows dancing wildly just ahead. When I reach the cell, it’s empty and the door is open. Am I too late? I search the rest of the dungeons, feeling like a ghost moving between the walls.

In the end I hear the execution chamber before I see it, and at first I don’t dare to look through the hole in the wall. Finally I swallow and force myself to peer into the low, vaulted room.

I have seen executions before, large theatrical performances full of pomp and ceremony in front of City Hall: the bewigged magistrates appearing in their black blood-robes with red sashes, the presentation of the rod of justice, bells tolling, and the announcement of the sentence. The minister leading a communal prayer, the family members wailing.

But this is a sober and secret affair. A rabbi is saying the last prayer of the Israelites. A comforter-of-the-sick stands shuffling his feet behind him, and several guards are positioned against pillars. One of the few seated spectators must be the bailiff. A bored executioner leans against the back wall. I have to crane my neck to see the garrote standing next to him, and the person sitting on its narrow plateau.

He is not wearing his regular tunic, but a simple shirt. His hands are bound, lying in his lap, his feet strapped to the post of his seat. He sits upright, the thick rope already coiled around his neck.

How can they not notice this is not their prisoner? I want to call out to them, to set Ilurtibas free…only to have them go searching for Raphael again? I bite my lip and hit the wall with both fists.

The rabbi ends his prayer. The comforter, a layman clearly uneasy about the Jewish rites, steps to the front and asks loudly, “My son, for the sake of your immortal soul, do you repent of your hideous crime against God and nature?”

Ilurtibas stays silent. Then he looks straight at me. I press my forehead against the wall to look into his eyes, and I know he sees me. As the preparations draw to a close, I realise how presumptuous I am to think I could make his choice for him.

The executioner steps forward. Just before a black cloth is thrown over his head, Ilurtibas whispers two words at me. “Mi contubernalis.”

 

“MY BROTHER-IN-ARMS,” I SAY, AS I pat Raphael on his shoulder. Whatever I tell him now, he knows it will only be to reassure him. I gaze out of the cabin’s rear window across the water. The bubbles in the glass distort the silhouette of the Dom Tower receding in the distance, until I’m not sure if I’m seeing the tower, or just a gnarled dead tree trunk sticking up.