by Patty Jansen
“If it’s black, people think it’s very powerful,” Zelda said.
Nellie wondered how impressed the merchant wives would be with getting soot all through their clothes.
Fortunately, the work kept Nellie warm, and Gertie, Hilde and Josie were good company. Josie, especially, had an infectious laugh.
Nellie asked them what they thought of the fact that Zelda sold simple dried leaves as a wonder remedy with no proof that it worked.
“Isn’t that the case with all these concoctions?” Josie said.
“Some of them do work,” Nellie said. “But nothing like what she tells these women.”
Hilde shrugged. “I have never known the herb sellers to be any different. They will talk up their potions as if they’re the best thing. It would surprise me if these noble women didn’t understand that. One thing about rich people: they didn’t become rich by being dumb.”
“Then why are they buying this tea?”
“Because the lady from next door, whose family has even more money, bought it and swears by it? Rich people do things for all kinds of strange reasons we will never understand.”
But there was always a reason. Nellie had worked for these families although the Brouwer family had never taken part in displaying wealth. You knew they had it when you walked into their house, in the same way you knew these merchants were trying to appear more important than they were.
It disappointed Nellie that none of the women were worried about Zelda’s sales swindle, but maybe that was what happened when you were desperate: you didn’t care so much about right and wrong.
Nellie hoped that this would never happen to her, but could see it might, and it frightened her.
Doing the right thing had already caused her a lot of trouble. She had only wanted to return the dragon box to the church, and now she was homeless. She was still waiting for the fallout from her escape from the palace.
Nellie expected hordes of guards to come looking for her by now, but if they did, they were looking in the wrong parts of town. In fact, the silence after her escape worried her a lot. She couldn’t believe the guards really wouldn’t have a clue of where to look for her, which meant that those guards were occupied with other things. If they weren’t worried about a dragon loose in their town, what problem occupied them?
But no matter how well Nellie listened to the shards of gossip brought in by the women from the streets or the market place, she didn’t get any indication of what it would be.
Since her escape, the palace had gone eerily quiet. Of course she was no longer living there, but she had the feeling that people would hear from the Regent on a regular basis, especially if there were soothing words to be told about the presence of a dragon in the town.
The Regent was pompous enough to speak to the citizens from the steps of the palace, as he had done on several occasions. He would say everything was under control, that his men would find the beast and kill it, and the people would cheer and the Regent would boast about how he was the best and how he deserved to be king. He loved opportunities like that.
But the steps of the palace remained conspicuously empty.
And as much as Nellie thought the Regent was a ridiculous windbag, she was starting to wonder about the lack of reaction from the palace.
People had seen a dragon in the city. If that wasn’t a good enough reason to bring the Regent to the palace steps, then what was?
It was not as if no one knew about the dragon. Not that anyone had seen him, but after a few days the women who went to the markets reported that a lot of people knew about the dragon in the palace and had an opinion on it—whether it was real, whether it was good or evil, and where it might have come from.
Nellie told the women most of her story: about her father’s book and how it described that the church had been buying dark artefacts and that the dragon box was part of it, that it had been stolen from the church, but that the church didn’t want it back. That the dragon appeared to like her, or at least hadn’t scratched her. She left out that she had the key to the crypt and that she had more or less stolen the box from Lord Verdonck’s chest. She did say the Regent tried to accuse the dragon of killing Lord Verdonck, but if the women didn’t care about Zelda selling quackery to merchant women, they cared even less about the Regent.
Nellie cared, because some of the suspicion fell on her.
The dragon barely showed himself. He slept in the hayloft, surrounded by the children and an increasing number of cats.
Every day, the children collected the orange poop and traded it with Zelda for sweets and sausages.
When and what the dragon ate, no one knew. Nellie suspected that during the day he would assume his magical form to hunt, but cats and children didn’t appear to be on the menu.
For her part, Nellie kept her head down, trying to figure out what she would do when it became necessary for her to leave the group. She no longer had a home to go to. The palace had been her home for the past twenty years. Her parents were dead, the house had never been theirs, her father’s brother was dead, too, and because the two brothers hadn’t liked each other, Nellie had never been close with her cousins on that side. Her mother’s family lived in a village outside the city where they owned a mill. She could go there and would be welcome, but it was a good distance to travel, and the coaches didn’t go when there was snow on the ground. And it would be hard to turn up as an uninvited guest with a dragon in tow.
She helped the women. She helped Jantien look after the children. She helped gather firewood, which the women took from the two neighbouring abandoned warehouses. The group had found an axe which was extremely blunt but good for wedging loose wooden planks and shelving that could be used as firewood. Chopping it to manageable lengths was hard work with the blunt axe, but it kept her warm.
Food was not terribly scarce, because of Zelda, but Nellie grew increasingly uneasy with the woman’s activities.
She happened to be in the workshop when an angry man demanded his money back because the “Dragon magic extract” he bought had caused him a terrible rash.
Zelda did repay him—but Nellie thought only because she and Josie were watching—the two whole florins he had paid for the jar. What an outrageous price. She wondered how many people suffered in silence.
And not much later, while going to buy wax for sealing bottles, she watched Zelda in the street with Ewout and one of his younger twin sisters, both dressed in rags. She instructed the children to approach people, especially, it seemed, well-dressed women.
As she watched, one of the women instructed a maid to give Ewout some coins.
Nellie’s cheeks glowed. Zelda was teaching the children to beg.
“Did you know that?” she raged at Hilde and Josie in the workshop. “It’s disgusting. We’re proud women. We can work. We can sell things. We don’t beg.”
Hilde snorted. “Can’t say I’d want any of my relatives to see me ask for money.”
“Exactly. We can do better than that.” Nellie was glad they finally agreed with her. “We can look after ourselves in an honest way.”
“I can make jams,” Hilde said.
“I can sew,” Josie said.
But there was no fruit in winter, and a list of clients who would pay for mending clothes would take a long to time to collect. And quite a few of the merchants’ businesses weren’t doing well. Those wives probably did their own sewing now.
The problem would be how to get through winter.
“You can keep getting leftovers from the palace,” Hilde said.
Nellie had thought about it. She didn’t want to go back to the palace, because someone would want to arrest her there, but could not see another option. It was go back to the palace or continue to live off Zelda’s activities.
“I also heard that the Regent will start handing out food from the city stores soon,” Josie said.
“Oh? I haven’t heard that,” Gertie said.
“That’s because it’s a rumour. I s
poke to my brother-in-law, and he heard it from people who work at the stores. I think the Regent is afraid that if he doesn’t hand out food, people will steal it. Some is already being stolen.”
“I think it’s because the Regent wants to buy our support to be declared king,” Nellie said. “It’s only the start of winter. Supplies are not that low yet. He’d be stupid to hand it out now.”
“That’s what I heard,” Josie said.
But if it happened, a group of women and children would amongst them have enough rations to build up a supply. Then she would only need to get leftovers from the palace every week. That sounded much more acceptable.
Nellie decided to try it. After all, Henrik and Dora would help her.
Early morning was the best time. The bakers would have left, most of the nobles wouldn’t be up yet, the guards would be at the end of their shift and would expect people to come to the kitchens to deliver things, so they might not pay that much attention to visitors.
What was more, she was curious to know what had been going on in the palace, and she wanted to let Dora know she had found a safe place.
So she got up early while the others were still asleep, stoked the fire and put a pot of water to boil so there would be water for porridge and tea.
Then she wound a scarf around her head in the way Zelda did hers. She should get one of those colourful ones to make the disguise better, but this would have to do. Then she went into the pale blue predawn light.
After the cold and wet weather, the temperature had again fallen below freezing, and a blanket of snow covered the city. That was what winter in Saardam was like: wet and cold, with the occasional few days of snow.
Dawn was a quiet time at the marketplace. Most of the market stallholders had not yet arrived for the day’s business, especially in the cold weather.
Normally, the visiting merchants would linger in the glow of the street lamps, discussing business with colleagues, but it was cold and snowing, so they were all still in the taverns, leaving the snow to settle on the ground, disturbed only by a prowling cat which, by the twitching of its tail, seemed most displeased about the weather.
Oh, for a nice warm bed.
Several times in the past few nights, Nellie had almost picked up her blanket and gone upstairs where the dragon slept in the hayloft. The children always said his body was warm and that he would let them sleep against his warm flanks. It seemed so much more comfortable than sleeping downstairs.
Nellie crossed the marketplace between the empty snow-covered stalls, up to the gates of the palace.
The palace guards stood in their guard boxes. She hoped that one of them would be Henrik because he would let her through without asking too many uncomfortable questions. Or so she hoped.
But neither of the guards was Henrik. It had been silly of her to hope.
Nellie debated waiting until she could see him, but that would only make the men suspicious.
So she pulled the shawl closer over her head and went up to the guard box.
“I have spices to deliver to the kitchen.”
She showed them the basket she had brought to carry the leftovers. No one would know the pots in the basket were empty.
These two men she only knew vaguely. Fortunately, they let her through, and Nellie crossed the snow-covered forecourt.
It looked like all the guests from the banquet for the birthday of the Regent’s son had gone home. The stables were empty. There were no more coaches standing outside and no more horse boys gathering around a fire laughing and talking.
The guards at the palace entrance looked bored, standing by the closed doors by the light of a few lamps. One of them was stamping his feet, the other clapping his hands around himself, making his sword rattle in the scabbard and the metal in his belt jingle as he did so. Neither of them were Henrik either.
Nellie sped past the bottom of the steps, through the familiar lane that ran past the side of the palace and into the back door that let her into the kitchen.
The moment she entered, Dora turned around.
“Didn’t I tell you to shut that—Nellie!”
She had been stirring a pot at the stove, but flung her ladle on the table and ran to the door.
She enveloped Nellie with a warm, strong hug. “You’re still alive. I was so worried.”
“No, I’m fine. Life could be better, but I’m fine.”
Then another kitchen worker came in.
“I thought I heard your voice.” Corrie ran up to Nellie and hugged her.
“How is your foot?” Nellie asked. In another time, that seemed lifetimes ago, Corrie had fallen down the stairs and could barely hobble around the kitchen.
“All good again. You’re coming back? What happened? Sit down. Tell us all about it.”
“I’ll have some tea, but I can’t stay long.”
“What? You’re not staying? Your room is still empty.”
“I know. I would like to stay, but I can’t.”
Dora asked, “You want the leftovers?”
“Yes. I’m looking after a group of the children and their mothers who were evicted from the church. We have little food.”
Dora said, “Let me make you a nice bag, then.”
She went into the pantry.
Nellie sat at the table, surprised at how quickly this place felt strange to her. It was so comfortable and not so long ago that she was working here herself.
Corrie said, “We heard rumours a dragon took you from the palace. Is that true?”
“Yes, it is. It was not like I had any choice.”
Corrie gasped. “How big was it? It could eat you.”
“He’s quite big, but he wasn’t interested in eating me.”
“Where is that dragon now? We keep hearing rumours about it, that it flies over the city at night and eats people’s cats and dogs.”
Nellie spread her hands. “I don’t know. He flew off.” Although she would love to put the record straight on cats and dogs. Her dragon did not eat cats and dogs. He got on much better with animals than with people.
Dora said, “Last we heard, the shepherd said the dragon killed Lord Verdonck.”
Nellie snorted “The shepherd said that? Why?” The shepherd had been nowhere near Lord Verdonck or the dragon.
“He said the deacons were preparing his body—”
“Wait. The Regent let deacons prepare the body?”
Corrie frowned. “Yes? Is that unusual? It needs to be done before the burial.”
“Lord Verdonck hated the church. Did his son allow the deacons to prepare the body?”
“Now you say it, people commented that the stuck-up son had some strong words to say about it. But anyway, what I wanted to say was that when the deacons went to wash him, they found scratches on his leg so large that only a dragon could have made them, and that was how they figured it was the dragon that did it.”
That would almost have made sense, if not for the fact that Madame Sabine had scratches, too, and she was still very much alive. But that was a secret known only to Nellie.
She remembered seeing the body being carried out of the palace into a waiting coach. Someone would have had to prepare the body for burial.
Dora said from the pantry, “Lord Verdonck’s son was real angry and has threatened to take the Regent before the Burovian court for neglecting to ensure the safety of all guests in the palace. That’s a big thing with the nobles, apparently. And I’ve heard it from good sources that many people were at the banquet who shouldn’t have been, and all of them had invitations, too.”
“If they were invited, then the Regent had himself to blame,” Nellie said.
“Yes, we all know he’s not the brightest spark,” Dora said. “I don’t know how much of this is true, but it’s said Madame Sabine wanted to do the invitations, but her husband said no, and he passed the task off to the church, because they would have to approve the list anyway.”
Nellie had heard that, too, and from a more reliable s
ource than just rumours: from Madame Sabine herself. Thinking back to that strange visit to the consort’s room, it occurred to her that Madame Sabine had a much better handle on the situation than Nellie had thought.
“Whatever you all think, Lord Verdonck had the scratches,” Corrie said. “The deacon told us. He saw them.”
Dora said, “You don’t die from scratches.”
“If they go bad, you may. I imagine a dragon’s scratches can easily go bad.”
Nellie said, “You served at the tables in the days before the banquet. Lord Verdonck was there. If he was about to die from bad scratches, he would have limped, or seemed unhealthy. Did you see anything unhealthy about him?”
“An unhealthy obsession with Madame Sabine’s bosom, maybe,” Dora said, and they all laughed.
She came back to the table and poured herself some tea.
Corrie said, “So do you don’t think Lord Verdonck’s son will be happy that the Regent holds a dragon responsible for his father’s death?”
Nellie shook her head. “I doubt it. Adalbert Verdonck is many things, but stupid is not one. He hates the Regent with a passion. He demands not just to know whose hand put poison in his father’s food, but who ordered it. He is an angry and powerful young man.”
Corrie asked, “What is the son going to do? If he demands his money back, what will the Regent do?”
Nellie shrugged. “Ask the church to loan it to him?”
Dora said, “The shepherd will tell him that he can have the money, but in return, he has to give up his wish to become king.”
True. “He could raise taxes.”
Corrie snorted. “If he does that, there will be a lot of unhappy people in Saardam.”
“There sure will,” Dora said. “You mess with people’s money at your own peril.”
Corrie said, “If the Regent declares himself king, then he can do whatever he wants.”
Dora nodded, clutching her cup. “That’s the long and short of it. And it may well be the start of another winter of discontent.”
Nellie remembered the last of those winters. She had been with the group of former refugees who had returned to Saardam after fleeing the city when the Fire Wizard and his magicians occupied the city. They had eventually driven him out, but not without a fight and loss of life.
