His fingers tightened on the photograph, the aged paper crinkling slightly under the pressure. The third man’s face, etched in a snarl, seemed to possess a vibrant, unsettling anger that belied the faded sepia tones. Zeger swallowed, the tea Mevrouw van Schoonhoven pressed into his hands suddenly tasting like dust.
“Fury,” Yfke’s voice, a whisper of static near his ear, held an unfamiliar rattle. “That’s… that’s not him.” She drifted closer, pearlescent hem skimming the carpet as she squinted at the silver gelatin print, her brow furrowed in concentration. “But I… I know that rage.” A faint wisp of memory, like smoke, seemed to curl around her spectral head, then dissipated. She pressed a hand to her temple, a gesture of profound confusion.
“Indeed, dear boy!” Mevrouw van Schoonhoven chirped, ignoring the drop in air temperature or concealing her awareness under cheerful bustle. She had, in the brief minutes since her arrival, managed to arrange a complete service onto a rickety side table, with scalloped porcelain and a plate of stroopwafels. “A powerful emotion, fury. Often the catalyst for the past, wouldn’t you agree?” She poured steaming black tea into a cup adorned with blue glazed windmills. “And speaking of municipal lore, your lineage is quite tangled with several others in Breukelburg. Especially the Van der Meers, of course. A messy, winding business, really.” She offered Zeger a stroopwafel. He shook his head, still staring at the photo.
“The man… in the photo,” Zeger began, his voice rough. “Who is he?”
Mevrouw van Schoonhoven merely smiled, a knowing glint in her kind, wrinkled eyes. “Ah, that would be telling, wouldn’t it? But fret not, dear Zeger. The Breukelburg Municipal Archive has an extensive collection. A little visit would enlighten you. It’s just a short stroll down the Lodenweg, past the old bakery. I happen to be on my way there myself.” She tapped his arm with knuckles as hard as walnut shells. “Sometimes, answers are simply waiting to be unearthed, like buried bulbs after frost.”
Before Zeger could formulate a polite excuse to return to his nap schedule, he found himself being gently but inexorably propelled out of the manor’s dusty entrance and towards the misty canal. Yfke floated beside him, her ethereal form flickering with an agitation he hadn’t seen since her initial, dramatic appearance. The image of the furious man in the portrait had clearly unsettled her, far more than any mention of her old fiancé.
The Breukelburg Municipal Archive was no grand civic monument. It was a squat brick box tucked between a herring shop and a shuttered clockmaker. Inside, it reeked of dry rot, damp glue, and vinegar ink. Silt settled through pale streaks of midday sun, dusting towering shelves packed with calfskin ledgers and brittle folios.
Mevrouw van Schoonhoven, surprisingly spry, navigated the labyrinthine aisles with the grace of a seasoned librarian. “Now, where to begin, where to begin…” she mused aloud, though her eyes seemed to have a distinct purpose. She gestured towards a particularly imposing section of shelves. “Start with the merchant registers. Seek out the De Witts. Enormous fortunes built on dry docks and tea crates. Their crest, you know, displays a rather magnificent lion rampant.”
The lion. The 'lion’s gaze' from Yfke’s verses. Zeger crossed the aisle, dragging his slippers along the warped planks, propelled by cold academic habit. Yfke hovered at his shoulder, her form more solid now, her gaze fixed on the names printed on the spines.
He pulled down a heavy ledger, its cover embossed with a stylized lion. Flipping through the brittle pages, he found entries for the late 19th and early 20th centuries. His fingernail scraped down the column of copperplate ink. *Bastiaan De Witt*. The ink bore deep burrs from a steel nib. Date of birth, date of death, cargo syndicate holdings… he scanned further. Then, an entry for a winter assembly at the canal house. *Attendees: Floris van Kessel, Yfke van der Meer, Bastiaan De Witt.*
A sharp stitch caught Zeger under the ribs, startling his slouch into an upright posture. He looked up at Yfke, who stared fixedly at the ledger page. “Bastiaan De Witt,” Zeger murmured, pointing to the line. “The lion. He was the man in the photograph, wasn't he? The one with murder in his eyes.”
Yfke drifted backwards, her face a mask of dawning horror and confusion. “Bastiaan…” The name left her lips as a rasp of static. “Not Floris… it was Bastiaan.” Her fingers pressed hard against her jaw, pupils scanning the row of folio boxes as if searching for an escape hatch. “He… he wrote verses. He slipped envelopes into the briar hedge behind the greenhouse.” Her outline thinned until the book titles behind her chest became legible. “Oh, Zeger. Floris was merely my cousin’s companion. A parlor confidant. Bastiaan… Bastiaan held my promises.” The admission hollowed her cheeks, leaving her translucent grey. “And Floris stood between him and the registry. Floris was his enemy. Not mine.”
Before Zeger could respond, the heavy oak doors of the archive swung open with a groan, and a man strode in, his presence immediately dominating the quiet space. He was tall, impeccably dressed in a tailored charcoal suit, with a sharp, predatory gaze and a perfectly coiffed silver-streaked haircut. This was no dusty scholar. This was a man of power, accustomed to command.
“Mevrouw van Schoonhoven,” he said, his voice a low, gravelly rumble that filled the room. “I trust you’re not permitting any… undesirables to rifle through private shipping ledgers?” His eyes, cold and assessing, swept over Zeger, lingering on the open De Witt ledger in his hands. A sneer twisted his lips. “Ah, the Van Kessel heir, I presume. Zeger, isn’t it? I’m Hugo De Witt. Current head of the De Witt Holdings. I recognized that vacant stare from the probate filings.”
Zeger felt a flush creep up his neck. The comment was a deliberate, public insult, intended to belittle. He straightened, though his hand still held the ledger, as if it were a shield. “Mr. De Witt,” he said, forcing a neutral tone. “I’m merely conducting some… historical research.”
Hugo De Witt laughed, a short, humorless bark. “Historical research? Or scrambling to stave off the inevitable? Your domestic finances, or rather the lack thereof, are recorded at the tax registry, Zeger. Along with two centuries of delinquent assessments on that sinking pile of bricks.” He took an encroaching step forward, boots clicking cleanly on the grit. “The De Witt firm has a long memory. And deep pockets. We hold an active interest in that bend of the water. Prime waterfront. I have kept an eye on it for three quarters, waiting for the legal knot to pull tight. An unrecorded default on the original 1790 deed? An unsettled promissory note owed to the old De Witt dockyards?” He smirked, his gaze unwavering. “Such things have a way of resurfacing, don’t they? Especially when one is desperate.”
Zeger set his heels firmly against the parquet. The open insolence grated across his nerves like ungreased gears. Yfke had retreated toward the darkest bookshelf, her luminescence pulsing between silver and dull slate, both hands clamped over her ears.
“The manor is not for sale, Mr. De Witt,” Zeger said, his voice firm, surprising even himself. “And I assure you, my family’s affairs are my concern, not yours.”
Hugo’s mouth twitched with dry humor. “We shall see, Zeger. We shall see.” He threw a casual nod toward Mevrouw van Schoonhoven. “Keep an eye on him, Mevrouw. Some old bones are cheaper when left under the flags.”
As Hugo De Witt strode out, the doors groaning shut behind him, Yfke gasped, a flicker of memory returning as she clutched her spectral head in pain.