by Patty Jansen
Once the church had been like that. These days, the scent of incense was laced with an uncomfortable smell that reminded her of the poor house, where her father would sometimes visit on church business when she was little, though he didn’t like it that she came.
It smelled of unwashed clothes and sweat. It even smelled of piss, a smell that hit you in the face and wouldn’t let go, a smell reminiscent of suffering, of dirty, muddy refugee camps, of stumbling through the rubble of the destroyed city to find something to eat.
Those were uncomfortable memories.
The smell was in sharp contrast to the mild whiff of incense that the Shepherd still burned at the altar.
That candlelit pool of peace seemed a world away.
Here, in the darkness, where in normal times people would stand because they were too poor to pay for a pew or because they were late to the service, she could hear and feel, rather than see, the presence of people. She could smell the poor people who had come for a service but had stayed because it was cold and they could no longer afford to heat their homes. It was all right if one came to the church to make the children warmer and less hungry, right?
Often those people couldn’t pay the rent at all, and they all came to the church because they had nowhere else to go. More people kept turning up at the church each day, because they heard it was a safe place to sleep, away from the weather and things like foul magic; because magic might be banned but that didn’t mean no one was using it. People did evil things when they were desperate.
When Nellie’s eyes became a little more used to the darkness, she unpacked her hessian bag and set the items she had brought onto the table where the shepherd used to leave the box of candles for patrons to use next to the box for donations, if you took a candle and had a coin to spare.
But there had been no candles for a long time, and the box of money had long ago disappeared into the back room of the shepherd’s house. Even before that, Nellie suspected that it no longer contained money.
“I’ve brought bread and potatoes,” she said into the darkness.
The smell of cold boiled potatoes and cold gravy rose from the bowl once she took the lid off. It was not a nice smell, and it reminded her of the foul rooms where she had to tiptoe in after dinners ended and collect the dirty plates and dishes, the half-eaten chicken legs and spilled sauce, the unfinished potatoes and cold carrots. The place always stank of wine and sweat, though all the guests were gone save those too drunk or too fat to be dragged to their beds. Sometimes they sat in their own piss and slept in their own vomit, and Nellie had to pull the plates from under them, because Dora would kill her if the plates weren’t clean by the next day.
And Nellie always put the scraps in a bowl and the plates on a tray and she carried the bowl downstairs. The bowl would breathe the smell of cold food as she carried it all the way down down into the basement and out the back door, through the yard where the pigs would oink-oink as soon as they heard the door. She had to walk across the yard with its muddy puddles without slipping, and sometimes a potato or two would fall out, and she would pick it up, muddy and all, and put it back into the bowl.
That was the food she was giving to these poor people.
It made her stomach churn.
A few people had come out from the darkness behind her. Now that her eyes were used to the low light, she could see the beds they had made for themselves against the back wall. My, there were so many more people than a few days ago.
“Thank you so much for thinking of us,” the old woman Mina said.
As usual, Mina was impeccably attired in a dark dress, done up to the neck with a modest lace collar which looked only a little bit the worse for wear. She held herself straight, and assumed her position by organising the poor children in line for their share.
Mina was a few years older than Nellie, with no family to support her. Her husband had died several years ago, leaving her nothing but debt. Nellie saw herself in Mina’s face. A comfortable life was such a fragile state that sometimes only a single thing needed to change and suddenly you were living in poverty on the streets.
Not that Mina hadn’t tried to find work. She’d mended clothes and looked after children but, these days, the well-off who paid for such things had tightened their belts as well. And, if there was a choice of seamstresses or nannies, why not get a pretty girl who charged less than an older one with more experience? Why get an old woman who would only ask more money?
Mina took the bowl of potatoes, emptied it into a rusty old pan, and gave the bowl back to Nellie, who put it into her bag, which she set under the table, hiding the incriminating palace emblem from view.
She met the eyes of a man leaning against the back wall. His eyes were sunken and his skin sallow. He had an untidy beard that was knotty and dirty. He looked at her like a predator ready to spring. She didn’t know him. He must be one of the jobless dockworkers. Many of them hung around the city, because they came from the surrounding villages. Nellie had heard some of these people had so much trouble from bands of rogues that travelling back to their homes was not safe, if even their villages still existed.
They had no money. Some would beg for jobs in the marketplace. They were desperate and hungry, and they were becoming a danger in the city. How long would it be before they overpowered the women and children to get food?
She said to Mina in a low voice, “Now remember, this is for the children first.”
“Of course, I’ll make sure of that. No one will lay a finger on this food until the little ones have eaten.”
Not that Nellie didn’t want to help the men, but there were so many of them, and she could not carry that much food from the palace. Not without being noticed. Not without getting into trouble. And to be honest, the men frightened her.
“It looks like you got a lot of new people,” Nellie said, while a sense of unease crept over her.
“Oh yes,” Mina said. “New people join us all the time. The landlords keep putting up the rents and some families can’t afford it anymore. They’re ill or looking after little ones or old people. Many reasons.”
While they were talking, a few women, all dressed in many layers of clothes, handed out the food to a group of dirty children. It disturbed Nellie to see how many children lived in this church, and some of them were so young.
“Don’t be impatient, and wait for your turn,” a woman was telling the children while ushering them into a line. “Show me your hands—no, no, you two, you have to wash your hands before you’ll get anything. And all of you, say a prayer to thank the Almighty for this food, and thank Him for sending Nellie, because without her, you’d be hungry.”
The two children who had been told to wash dunked their hands into a bucket of water, and then ran off to join the others on their way to the statue at the front of the church for prayer.
“And don’t run,” the woman called after them.
Her voice was familiar.
The woman put her hands at her side. “Those kids . . . they need to understand that we’re in a church.” She turned around.
Nellie gasped. “Jantien, what are you doing here?”
“Nellie!” The woman gave her a shocked look.
It had been a while since Nellie had seen her. When Nellie’s parents were still alive, Jantien had lived two houses down the street. She was younger than Nellie, but the two families got on well because they were all church people. Last Nellie heard was that Jantien got married.
She felt a stab of horror, as all the people who had taken refuge in the church up till now had been there for reasons she understood. “How did you fetch up here? Where is your husband?”
Jantien looked aside. Hardship had deepened the lines on her face. “He had to leave.”
“Leave, why?” It was a strange thing to say. Good husbands didn’t leave their families in poverty. “Was he unwell? Was his family unwell?”
Jantien’s husband was a tailor, she remembered. He even owned a shop in a good par
t of town because he did quality work.
“He’s well enough, as far as I know,” Jantien said.
“But?”
“He had to leave. I better say no more about it.”
Nellie didn’t give up so easily. “But . . . he had a shop, didn’t he?”
“Yes, he did.”
“Did he get involved with bad people?”
“No, nothing like that. Look, you wouldn’t understand, living in the palace.”
“I understand what it’s like to have no money and I know from experience what it’s like being on the run—”
Jantien opened her mouth.
“—but I understand that it’s hard to talk about. How long have you been here?”
“Only a few days, I hope to find someone who has room for us.”
But clearly she couldn’t entertain too much hope, because if there were better places for homeless families to stay, then all these people would not sleep in the church.
“How many children do you have?”
The group of children now knelt at the altar under the leadership of the Shepherd Adrianus, who must have come in through the back entrance.
“Six. The oldest is twelve.”
Nellie felt sick. Imagine having to live here with these dirty people with six young children. “I’m really sorry. I’ll look around for ways to help.”
But the palace had already taken all the people it could absorb into the servant staff and, as far as Nellie knew, the palace didn’t have an endless supply of money, either. Neither did it have places for children to live.
“It’s all because of the Regent and his evil men,” a rough male voice said. He spoke so loudly that his words echoed in the church.
Mothers hushed their children, and women scurried to the safety of the darkness.
Mina pulled at Nellie’s arm. “Don’t pay attention to him. He’s bad news.”
Yes, Nellie knew of the raving rants Bert would have while standing in the middle of the marketplace with all the people going about their daily business around him, doing their best to ignore him.
Some said he was possessed, but he had correctly predicted some of Saardam’s misfortunes.
A number of weeks prior to the Fire Wizard killing King Nicholaos and Queen Cygna, he had predicted the coming of a firestorm. During that long winter of the Fire Wizard’s harsh rule, he had predicted that the king’s son Prince Roald was still alive and that he would come back, and when that had indeed happened, he had even predicted that a great evil would bring down King Roald and Queen Johanna.
He had to be in his sixties, a weathered, wrinkled, grizzled old man. In his youth he had been a soldier and had lost his right leg, cut off at the thigh. There were many stories about how this happened, all of them involving opponents with giant swords, or wild animals. Nellie suspected the truth to be more mundane, but the fact was he had only one leg and used crutches that went clack-clack-clack on the stone floor of the church as he dragged himself along.
His skin was raw and flaky from living in the cold, his eyes were watery, and he had only two brown chipped teeth.
He shuffled up to Jantien and pointed at her with a crooked finger and a long, dirty fingernail.
“It is because your dear husband had magic,” he said. “That’s why they took him away. The Regent’s men seek the ones they don’t like, and then start the rumours that they have magic and lock them up and those people are never seen again. No, don’t shake your head because you know what’s true. And especially you, Missy from the palace.” He looked at Nellie, shuffled to her and pointed the dirty hand at her. “She knows this. She knows!”
Mina pulled Nellie further to the side. She whispered, “Don’t listen to him, he’s crazy.”
Bert laughed. “You’re afraid of me, you dumb woman?” He flapped his hand at Mina. “Get out of her way and let her go. She’s not as dumb as you are. She knows I speak the truth, because she has seen what I’m talking about. I am telling you this Regent is evil. He and his henchmen are destroying us. They are destroying all we built. They drove the eastern traders out of the harbour; they drove the river peddlers away. So they did, and now we have no trade, huh? You go to the markets and what do you see? Some crappy cheeses and worm-eaten apples. There are no more beautiful sausages from Florisheim, no more fabrics from Lurezia, no more spices from faraway lands. The harbour is empty. There are no more iron ships; they’ve all gone to Anglia. There are no more riverboats, because the traders don’t come anymore. The Regent and his henchmen have chased them all away. We should get rid of this fat, selfish man. We need the royal family to come back.”
“Stop talking nonsense,” Mina said. “They’re all dead, so don’t go talking about raising the ghosts, because you know where that leads.”
Bert laughed. “You’re afraid woman. You’re afraid of me.”
“I am not. I’m protecting the children.”
He repeated in a faux female voice, “We’re protecting the children!” He laughed again, long and loud. “The children don’t need protecting. Or: the only thing the children need to be protected from is your own little minds. Let the children run. They will be fine. They will see that this pig of a Regent is only here to stuff his own face, and to assume the royal mantle that belongs to the last surviving member of the royal family.”
By now, several of the women shouted at Bert to shut up.
“No, you are just afraid. We could have the power to change our fortunes because we did it before. When Queen Johanna ruled us, she did everything right. She brought in the rich traders, invited the kings from Burovia, Lurezia, Anglia. She brought in the money. She had plans to teach all children how to deal with magic, good or evil. She was going to teach the young kids with magic how to control it. And she never got to do any of that, and it killed her. You know why? Because of these idiot men in their idiot robes and their idiot three-headed god, because somehow they got it into their little heads that their god prohibits magic, and I’ve been through the vile Book of Verses more than ten times, and do you think I can find it? So do not talk about children. The children can see what you cannot—”
A woman yelled, “You are in our church! You can accept its teachings or leave!”
“You fools! It is only from within that you can change. I cannot change you. You must change yourself. When you step out of your little minds, I can help you find the only member of the royal family who is still alive. We could bring him back and have a royal family again if all of you were not so afraid. You’re cowards, that’s what you are!”
Mina yelled back at him. “I don’t want to hear any of your stories about Prince Bruno either. Don’t go putting nonsense into people’s heads.”
“But he is alive, I know it.”
Then a clear voice said, “Wise and compassionate people don’t shout at each other in the house of the Triune.”
Shepherd Adrianus.
Everyone turned around to him
With his intelligent grey eyes and dark beard, the shepherd painted an authoritative figure. He was in his late twenties, a popular up-and-coming figure in the church.
He stepped between the squabbling parties, putting a hand on Bert’s shoulder. “The Triune will appreciate if you were to keep those opinions quiet, and not to accuse other people.”
Mina said, “Once he gets going, he picks out one person and then tries to frighten them.”
“The Triune does not want His authority to be used to frighten people. He wants us to accept one another as we are. Bert, good man, why don’t you come over to the house for a talk?”
Bert sniffed and harrumphed. “All your weaselly words will not make any difference. The prince is alive. Everyone knows it. The guards know it too, but they are too afraid of a handful of fat men in dresses and their henchmen, never mind that they have a lot of money. They can hire armies and pay for their bodies, but they could never pay for their hearts. Prince Bruno is alive, and the city would come up in arms if they knew about i
t. We don’t want priests, we don’t want this stinking Regent.”
“Calm down, good man. No one here will harm you. Will you promise to come for tea later?”
Bert sniffed again. “Only because it’s you, mind. I have nothing with priests, but you’re a nice man.”
“Thank you, Bert.”
Bert limped back to his corner past the table where he stuffed a cooked potato into his mouth. Mina breathed in deeply, put her hands at her sides . . . and then let out her breath.
Bert was Bert and there was no arguing with him.
In the scramble, one child had dropped a filthy rag doll. The shepherd picked it up and held it in the air. “Who owns this lady?”
“That’s not a lady, it’s Koos,” said a little girl.
“Here then, look after Koos.”
The girl was reunited with her doll.
With a few sentences, the shepherd had defused a potentially nasty situation. It was no wonder that the church had promoted him from deacon to shepherd and given him his own congregation.
“Oh, hello, Nellie. I see you’ve brought food from the palace.”
“Not much today. There will be a lot more later this week.” For occasions such as important banquets, the kitchens always cooked far too much food.
“I will send a few choir boys to help you carry whatever you can get.”
“Thank you.”
Nellie had come for prayer, so while the shepherd talked to the children, she knelt before the statue of the Triune.
Three entities made up the Divine: the Father, who represented wisdom in the present life, the Ghost, for those who lived their lives in dubious pasts, and the Holy God, who ruled in the afterlife.
The statue had the body of an ox, or sometimes a dog, and three heads, one for each of the parts that made up the holy Triune. This statue was a work of art, chiselled from knotted and veined wood, imbued with golden lacquer and adorned with gemstones and gold paint.
The light from the flapping flames of the oil lamps made it look ethereal, warm and friendly.
