by Patty Jansen
Still, she continued, speaking even more quietly now. “Some people can make trees grow very quickly. So quickly that they can trap their enemies inside.”
His eyes widened. “The tree in the market square. The one with the ugly speckled leaves.” His voice was no more than a whisper. “It cries.”
Johanna nodded, and she knew for certain. Only people with magic could hear the cry of Alexandre’s angry soul. “This is what I mean. Some people can make trees do their will. Other people can shape fire into creatures.”
“You call that magic?”
“Yes. What do you call it?”
“Art.” He drew something from his pocket and held it in the palm of his hand: a finely made octagonal wooden box. A faint orange glow emanated from a dragon pattern of inlaid wood and mother-of-pearl on the lid.
Johanna held her breath.
“Touch it,” he said.
She reached out and brushed the very tips of her fingers over the wood. She saw the inside of a ship’s cabin. A couple of lamps hung from the ceiling. Li Han sat by the window. On his lap he held a bundle of cloth that looked like a jacket or robe and he was pulling a needle with bright red thread through the fabric. On the back of the jacket he had embroidered the top half of a dragon in exquisite detail.
Li Fai’s mother Wen Mei sat at a desk surrounded by jars of paint and brushes. She was painting on silk cloth held in a wooden frame. Johanna recognised the flowers she was drawing: a daisy, a dandelion, buttercups, cornflowers, poppies. Behind her on a low shelf against the wall stood a number of finished drawings, of ducks, rabbits, deer, cows, and one with a couple of green frogs.
“Do you see what the wood says?” Li Fai asked.
“Yes. I see your parents. Your mother is drawing plants and creatures from our land. Your father is doing embroidery.”
He nodded. “The box contains my art.” The glow of the dragon pattern on the lid had intensified.
He opened the lid and some brightly glowing thing came out.
Johanna gasped and withdrew her hand.
The thing cavorted through the air between them, trailing sparks in its wake. Eventually it settled in the palm of Li Fai’s hand. It was . . . a miniature dragon. It crouched like a dog waiting for its master to throw a stick, swishing its tail. Its eyes were buggy like a frog’s, and roved from Li Fai to her and back.
Li Fai said something and it jumped into the air before running over his arm, across his shoulder, behind his head, over the other shoulder and down his other arm. Then it jumped onto Johanna’s knee. She gave a squeak and shrank back. It ran over the seat before jumping onto the ledge under the window in the coach door and jumped from there onto her shoulder, and used that as a springboard to jump to Li Fai’s hand, where it sat back on its haunches, waiting for the next command.
“What is it?” Johanna asked. She ran her hand over her knee, checking the dress for fire damage, but found none.
“This is my art. This is my dragon. It does what I say.” He again gave it a command, and it jumped from his hand to Johanna’s knee and crouched there, looking at her like a little puppy.
“It’s cute.”
“You can touch it.”
She carefully reached out and touched the creature’s back. It was smooth and firm. “It’s warm.” The flames that trailed off the flanks and the comb-like plates over the creature’s spine weren’t hot, as she expected.
“That’s because it’s a dragon.” That clearly explained everything.
“I’m not familiar with dragons.”
It yawned widely, and then dropped onto its belly, resting its head onto its forepaws.
“It likes you.”
Johanna chuckled. “Where did you get this creature?”
“You don’t ‘get’ dragons. When a child with the art is born, the child’s grandfather goes to the dragon temple and receives a box. The child is then schooled to fill it with whatever art he or she excels at.”
“So . . . if I grew up in your lands, my box would have. . . ?”
“A small tree.”
Johanna tried to imagine what that would look like. She imagined opening the box and a little tree would gently unfold from inside. The branches would be supple and thin, waving as if moved by an unseen breeze. That breeze, of course, would contain stories other people could read. The tree drank the water that told yet others their stories. In that moment, she understood the power of wood magic and knew that she had never understood it before.
Her voice was soft when she said, “Could you show me how to make a tree grow in a box?”
He shook his head, his expression sad. “I don’t know if I can. I can try, but it is something for a child to learn. I haven’t taught children.”
“Do you have any children?”
“I have not yet been married.”
Which wasn’t the same thing at all, but it seemed rude to point out the difference.
She was vaguely aware that the coach had stopped. Li Fai snapped his fingers. The dragon jumped up into the wooden box, leaving a warm spot on Johanna’s knee. Li Fai shut the lid. The mosaic dragon on the lid glowed for a second or two before fading.
There were footsteps outside, followed by Anton opening the door. “We’re at the gentleman’s ship, Your Majesty.”
A blast of cold air came into the cabin.
Li Fai put the box into his pocket. He bowed to Johanna, meeting her eyes. “It was an honour to be given a ride with you.”
“It was my pleasure.”
He rose and hesitated at the top of the steps. He said in a low voice, “The crate we carried for the shepherd was art. Even when I wasn’t in the hold, I could feel the chill of it. My father was upset with me when I said we should throw it overboard. He agreed to take it and he got the monk’s money. My father does not have art. He doesn’t understand. I said I wouldn’t have taken it, because the art is not a good kind. There was much death in the crate. If it is lost, do not look for it. It is a bad thing.”
He bowed again and then he was gone, leaving behind a cold silence that didn’t dissipate even after Anton had shut the door.
Chapter 9
* * *
JOHANNA STARED OUT the little window while the coach made its way back to the palace. She felt dumb and ignorant. There were places out there where magic was taught routinely to children. Why did she have to be born in a place where it was swept under the carpet, denied and even forbidden?
She imagined Father going up to a building called a “dragon temple” and coming back with a box for her to contain and focus her magic. Her life would have been . . . so much happier. Instead, she’d been angry, she’d bumbled through dealing with magic and trying to hide it. She’d thought that by going to a church that forbade magic she could change people’s opinions of her. Obviously Master Willems still thought that.
What a fool she’d been.
On the driver’s seat, Anton and the driver were telling jokes. Their laughter echoed in the empty streets that glistened with the rainwater.
The coach dropped Johanna off at the bottom of the palace steps. A guard with flickering storm light met her there and accompanied her to the entrance.
Johanna pulled the sides of her cloak together. It always was cold and blustery here. The sea wind whipped up across the wide expanse of the Saar delta on the other side of the palace.
She just came into the foyer when another guard entered from the hallway. His face showed an expression of relief as if he’d been waiting for her. He bowed. “My excuses for the late hour, but you have a visitor, Your Majesty.”
Her heart jumped. “Who is this visitor?” Her first thought was Li Han, wanting a reply about the office, and she was not in a position to give him that reply yet. There was the King’s Council still to be convinced of her plan. Yes, she could override the council and give him permission to find an office along the quayside, but doing so would make her life pretty hard, because many of the men in the King’s Council would never c
ooperate with her again.
“She didn’t say her name. I asked her to wait in the Red Room.”
“I’ll go and see her now.”
Her. Not Li Han, obviously. Johanna’s next thought, while walking down the hallway, was Loesie.
It even made sense. Loesie could feel magic and if this thing that Li Han had taken to the shepherd was something of great magic, Loesie would know about it.
Johanna reached the Red Room. Because there were no meetings tomorrow, no one had bothered to light the fire in the hearth and it was unpleasantly cold in the room. The air smelled of moisture with a faint whiff of mould.
Someone had lit a few oil lights, but they did little to dispel the cloying darkness that hung in this room at the best of times.
On the couch in the middle of the room sat a small person hiding under a hooded cloak of green velvet. This was definitely not Loesie, because she wore only black.
As Johanna entered and the guard shut the door behind her, a pair of pale, slender hands came out from under the cloak and pushed back the hood.
Greetje, wife of Master Willems, now Shepherd Victor.
But what a sight she was. Her hair hung loose down both sides of her face, her left eye was swollen and a nasty bruise coloured her cheekbone.
Johanna gasped and raised her hand to her mouth. “What happened to you?”
Greetje’s chin trembled. Her eyes glittered with tears. Her voice was hoarse, no more than a whisper. “He’s gone mad.”
“Who?”
“My husband.” The tears rolled over her cheeks.
“He did this to you?” Timid, shy Master Willems?
Greetje nodded, choking out a sob. She gingerly wiped her face, wincing as she touched the bruised cheekbone.
“But how is that possible? He is the shepherd.” But that of course didn’t guarantee his behaviour.
Johanna saw the shepherd as he had made his way out of the church earlier that night. He hadn’t even stayed behind after the service to answer questions and talk, as he usually did.
She saw him as she had left him in the church last night: kneeling, praying and chanting, just because she had said the word “necromancer” and hinted that he might want to use his wind magic for the good of Saarland. Because they could do with as many magicians as they could muster. Earlier yesterday, he had argued vehemently against accepting Li Han’s money based on a fear of any magic Li Han might have.
She felt cold inside.
“How long has this been going on?”
“He’s never hit me before, but he’s been acting so strangely in the last few weeks. It’s getting worse.”
“Any idea why?”
Greetje shook her head.
“It wouldn’t happen to have anything to do with something that he received from the eastern trader?”
She continued shaking her head, although she didn’t meet Johanna’s eyes. A tear tracked across her cheek. She sniffed. “He’s just gone mad.”
“Can you tell me what happened? You said he’d been acting strangely, but what does he do that is strange? What does he talk about at the dinner table?”
Greetje laughed, not in an amused way. “He rarely still comes to dinner. When he comes home, he goes upstairs. A room up there used to be a spare bedroom. We were planning to put our little one in there when he or she doesn’t need nightly feeds anymore, but he’s taken over the room with scary things.”
“Like what?”
“The room has dark wallpaper. It used to be his grandfather’s smoking room and it still smells of smoke. It has heavy curtains which are always closed. He’s put an altar against the wall and filled it up with . . . awful things, like animal skulls and sheep’s horns and chicken feet and teeth of things that live in the sea I can’t even begin to imagine.” She shivered. “There are crudely-made stone statues and puppets made out of straw.”
Johanna thought of the primitive altar she had seen when staying in that really poor village on the edge of the shifting sands. She suspected these things were all religious relics.
“When he comes home, he doesn’t talk to anyone. He sits on his knees and prays. Often, he cries. He stays in that room for hours on end. His father will ask him to come out, but he never replies. Even if he does come out, he’s not really there. He stares into the distance and then he will just snap at someone for no obvious reason at all.” Greetje sniffed. “I don’t understand. He used to be so nice and gentle. Now, he spends much longer at church and he screams at me when he comes home. He screams at the servants. He doesn’t eat. He scares everyone. He sits on his knees in that room all night, praying. Sometimes he cries.”
“I really need you to answer this: did he receive anything in a crate recently? Something that was taken to him by the eastern traders and that came from a monk in Seneza?”
Greetje looked at her with wide eyes and shook her head. “Not that I know, but he doesn’t tell me anything anymore.”
“Then tell me why he hit you.”
“I just couldn’t bear to listen to his crying and pleading anymore and went into that horrible room. I asked him to please tell us what bothers him so much, so that we can help him, and then he got up and came at me at me.” Her mouth trembled. “He took me by the shoulders and pushed me into the wall. He yelled at me that we were all going to die, that the Triune would pass judgment and that we would all end up facing the Lord of Fire because we weren’t worthy. I asked him why ever he thought we weren’t worthy, because I said he was doing so many good things, and then he started screaming. I was really scared because I’d never seen him like that. His eyes were all red and there was spit flying out of his mouth. I didn’t even hear any of what he was saying. He looked like a madman. He screamed at me to get out and hit me in the face. Thankfully the groundsman came in. He pulled him away from me, but you should have seen the look in his eyes. As if he could kill me.”
She sobbed into her hands, her shoulders shaking with cries. Johanna put her arm on Greetje’s shoulders. Goodness, her shoulders were so thin that she could feel the bones through the coat. “I’m sorry for bothering you, but I have nowhere to go. I have no family left.”
Master Willems, too, had no family that she could call on for support.
“Of course you can’t go back there,” Johanna said. “I simply will not have it.”
“Please don’t call the guards or anyone. He’s not himself. I don’t know. Something has taken possession of him. Please, he’s not a bad man.”
“Maybe not, but all the same, you can’t go back there in your condition until he calms down. You have the little one to think about.”
Greetje looked down and sniffed. “But he will be so angry with me.”
“We’ll worry about that later. First, we’ll give you a safe place to sleep. How long before the little one is born?”
“It could be any day now. I’m so tired.”
Johanna called for Nellie and they installed Greetje in the guest room. The maid brought a nightgown which Greetje put on over her round belly. She looked terribly out of proportion, with her arms and legs very thin and her belly hideously swollen. Her navel had even turned inside out and sat like a little bump on a tightly-stretched water bag.
She was exhausted and had evidently been very cold. She was asleep in moments, her cheeks glowing healthy red.
Johanna and Nellie tiptoed out of the room.
“Well, that is a really terrible thing to have happened to her right now,” Nellie said. “What are you going to do about the shepherd, Mistress Johanna?”
Johanna sighed. “I don’t know. It worries me. The church has so much power over the people. Greetje is right: his words have become so much angrier recently. There is clearly something going on. This is not how it used to be under Shepherd Romulus.”
“No, but Shepherd Romulus had it easy. He never knew about the decision by the Belaman Church to expel the Church of the Triune. He never saw his life’s work burned to ashes. The church was new
and no one challenged him.”
Johanna felt cold. She was going to say, Don’t you start making excuses for him, too, Nellie, but she wasn’t even sure that Nellie would understand. She had come from a church family after all. Was there anyone except the nobles and Father who did not crawl at the shepherd’s feet?
Sometimes Johanna thought that ousting Alexandre had been the easiest of their problems.
She said, “Greetje will stay here for a while until we sort out what’s going on. Ask the modiste to come and bring us some gowns for a newborn.” She held up a finger. “Not Mistress Dina, please.”
Nellie gave her a wide-eyed look. “Whatever is wrong with Mistress Dina?”
“Find someone a bit younger who can dress both the child and myself in more cheerful clothing.”
“Whatever is wrong with your new dress, Mistress Johanna?”
Johanna spread her arms. “Do I look like a picture of happiness?”
Nellie looked her up and down and frowned. “You look decent to me. Very appropriate.”
“I don’t want to look decent. I want to look happy. If I have to wear this horrible hot dress, I want you to get me a big silk ribbon to tie around my belly.”
Nellie gasped.
“I don’t want to look like I’m at a funeral. Find someone, please, who can make me a dress that’s comfortable and a bit more cheerful.”
Nellie’s expression was still bewildered. “I’ll do my best. You do know that Mistress Daphne is no longer in town?”
“I do.” It was the last thing Johanna had ever expected to be sorry about.
Chapter 10
* * *
THE RAIN CLEARED overnight for a sunny morning. At breakfast, Roald announced that he was going to start on the vegetable garden. The day was clear, the sky hazy blue and the lawn full of daisies and buttercups. Johanna wished that she could go outside with him, but there was so much still to be done.
The maid confirmed that Greetje was awake and had been brought her breakfast.
