by Patty Jansen
As she had already suspected, there were few people inside.
A man came out behind the bar on the other side, wiping his hands on a cloth. He raised his eyebrows when he saw Nellie.
“Good morning,” he said.
“Good morning.” Nellie’s voice came out high.
“You look nothing like our normal customers,” he said. “Which of the drunkard husbands is yours?” He laughed, showing a mouth with missing teeth.
Nellie looked over her shoulder. A man with grizzled hair and a couple of days’ worth of beard was asleep on the table. She shuddered.
“I’m not married, thank you.”
“Then are you here to buy a drink?” He laughed again.
“I’m here to look for someone who sells gin.”
He smiled vanished. “What do you know about that? We don’t sell any gin and we don’t buy it from strangers either.”
He seemed touchy all of a sudden.
“I said am looking for someone who sells gin. I was told that this person might be in here. I know nothing about gin, but I’m just looking for her, because she did a job at the palace, and we need her to come back.”
“Oh.” He smiled again, this time much more friendly. “I thought you were going to talk about the illegal gin trade for a minute.”
Of which there was evidently a lot. “I know nothing about that. I didn’t say I wanted to buy gin. Do I look like I would do that?”
“Well, could be that the guards are sending around anyone now.”
An old woman was clearly “just anyone”. No one had told him how to be polite to people.
He continued, “With what they’ve been doing in the rest of town, shutting down people’s businesses, nothing surprises me anymore. I don’t want any trouble. It’s hard enough keeping the safe stuff from the magicked stuff.”
“I know nothing about trouble. I’m just looking for this girl. Her name is Els.”
Now he gave a big belly laugh. “Oh, that one. Yes she came in here, but she’s probably in one of the other taverns.” He winked. Nellie hadn’t known how quickly she could leave again. She had to make an effort not to run past the sleeping drunk man. Even when she got outside, she still felt jittery from the experience. What an unpleasant, sleazy man. But she had learned something. Gin could not just be poisoned, but it could also have magic. Maybe she was looking for poison in the wrong place.
She clamped her arms around herself, walking through the rain. The man had said Els might be somewhere around here, but Nellie didn’t feel like going into another one of those disgusting establishments.
Heavens, she might run into a whore. She would just have to go back to the warehouse to find Els later.
Nellie was about to return to the sea cow barn when a tavern door opened, and two young women came out chatting and laughing. It was Els and her sometimes-monk friend Gisele.
Both stopped when they saw Nellie, and an expression came to Els’ face that she sometimes showed in the palace, that expression of looking guilty and having been sprung.
“Good morning,” Nellie said, keeping her voice casual, but failing utterly.
“Good morning to you, Nellie.”
She sounded far too cheerful.
Both girls carried baskets, but the cloth cover lay folded up inside, indicating that they had already delivered the contents.
“Are you out shopping?” Els asked.
“No, I wanted to ask you some questions,” Nellie said.
“I don’t work at the palace any more. I handed in my aprons and my dresses if that’s what you’re after.”
Well, well, that was different from her sister’s story. “I don’t work at the palace any more either.”
Els gave her a strange look. “What? Why not? Does it have something to do with that dragon?”
“It’s long story, and I’ll tell it to you, if you can find somewhere we can talk where it’s dry.”
Els exchanged a look with her monk friend. The girl nodded.
“All right. We know a place.”
They walked silently along the harbour front.
It was kind of uneasy. Nellie had never been easy with Els, cunning as she was. That whole business with the juniper berries “for my mam” was still fresh in Nellie’s mind. She’d wanted the berries because they needed them to start a new batch of gin and no supplies had reached the shops.
Whatever Nellie told Els was likely to be used in unusual ways.
They came to an alley in between two houses that led away from the quay and around the back. It was so narrow they couldn’t walk next to each other.
Els went up the steps to the left and through a doorway.
The wood had once been painted green, but the paint was coming off. An emblem had once been painted in white at eye level. Most of it had flaked off, but the letters BR from “Brouwer Company” were still visible.
This used to be the old office belonging to Mistress Johanna’s father. Even when Nellie came to work for the family, he barely used it, but the company had several employees who worked here, and he would sometimes use it when visitors came.
When Mistress Johanna had been queen and she and her father lived in the palace, they had sold this office to another river trader, who had occupied it until a few years ago when they had left town. Rumours were that the business had gone to Burovia.
The girls had turned the dusty space into a comfortable sitting room. There were four mismatched old chairs, a table with one of its legs missing, propped up by several bricks, and a metal barrel placed on bricks that served as a fire pit. Some half-burned logs still glowed, keeping the room at a higher temperature than outside.
“This is quite a nice place,” Nellie said.
“The owner kind of allows us in here, because if we were not using this building, there would be people ripping up all the wood for fires.”
Yes, that was probably true. Nellie remembered how Zelda and the others were getting their firewood from one of the old warehouses next door.
They sat down and Nellie told a simple version of the information she was willing to share about her flight from the palace. That she didn’t control the dragon—true—that he had abandoned her once they reached freedom—half true—and that the women convicted of being witches were innocent. She also told Els that the Regent suspected her of killing Lord Verdonck.
“You? But that is ridiculous.”
“I know, but they are desperate. Adalbert Verdonck demands that Regent Bernard find the killer. I’m a suspect, Wim is a suspect, the dragon is a suspect.”
“The dragon?” Els laughed.
Her cheeks were turning red with the warmth from the fire that the monk girl had stoked and fed with some pieces of wood.
“So now you know my story. But why did you leave?” Nellie asked.
“There were just too many questions being asked there,” Els said. “I have to protect my sister, because I didn’t want her questioned.”
“Why would you worry about your sister in particular?”
“Because she is too young for this sort of thing. If the guards ask her questions and they get insistent, she may well admit to something she hasn’t done, just to please them. These men are very good putting words in people’s mouths.”
That was true, but Nellie suspected that Els was afraid her sister might give away things about her little illicit gin business here that might lead to her arrest. Which, all things considered, was fair enough.
“They’ve been scraping the barrel trying to find someone to blame for this poisoning. They’re blaming the kitchens, because they haven’t a clue. So we poor women will pay because we can’t defend ourselves. That’s why we left the palace. Not that I don’t appreciate you, Nellie, but that’s just how things are for people like us. If there is a crime that people can’t solve, the poor people are always the first to be blamed. So if you’re like us, and you’re poor, and your mother is a whore and you have nine brothers and sisters from nine differe
nt fathers and there is never enough food on the table, then you learn to recognise the signs, and you get out of there. You get out before they can do anything to you or your family.”
“It’s always the same,” the monk girl said, and it was the first time she’d spoken. Nellie remembered that her name was Gisele. “They blame the ones who can’t defend themselves. They drag us off to the dungeons, they make out that we’re witches, and then they banish us or they kill us or they sell us off to some slave trader or some other thing.”
She had a distinct accent that Nellie couldn’t place. Her hair was short, her face looked boyish—necessary when she was wearing a habit, which she was not today—but in her loose trousers and jacket she looked just as much a boy as she did in the habit. She was very skinny, and quite tall.
Nellie said, “I understand that this gin production is all yours.”
“It is.” She lifted her chin in the air as if daring a challenge.
Nellie wasn’t sure what to think of this girl, unsure whether to trust her. “I’m looking for somebody who might have sold poisoned gin to the palace.”
At the same time Els said, “We have no idea, I already told you that.”
Gisele said, “You don’t really want to know.”
And Els turned to her friend, her expression aghast.
Nellie looked at Gisele. “Do tell me more about this.”
“We only make good gin. If we made foul stuff, then there would be hundreds of sailors who would come after us, and we wouldn’t see tomorrow morning.”
That was true, and Maartje had also said that.
Gisele continued, “But once we sell the gin, there is no guarantee what other people will do with it. It is well known that in other countries, like Burovia, some monasteries poison wine to get rid of people they don’t like, and therefore wine is always suspicious. Wine is dark and holds poison well. Gin, being clear, is trickier, because many poisons have a colour. Magic has no colour or smell and cannot be measured. People put magic in bread and in fabric. Nobody has yet tried it with gin.”
“So is this why the Regent is so keen to get rid of magicians?”
“It’s hard to say for sure. I don’t think he knows much about it and I don’t think he’s received good advice. If he wants to solve this crime, it’s likely he needs a magician. I have no great skill with magic, but I can point to some places where people from the palace have bought things that are suspicious.”
“And those people would be?”
“For one, you would want to have a look at your beloved church.”
“But the church is very much against magic.”
“What they say and what they do is not always the same thing.”
The artefacts in the glass cabinet, the ruby skull, the books filled with dark magic. Nellie nodded, slowly. There was also that occasion where she had felt betrayed when Shepherd Adrianus listened to his superior and had not stood up when the poor people were thrown out of the church. “I guess you know about what goes on in the church.”
“Not in that way. Only the important monks do. Other than that, those churchmen are all the same. Once they know you’re a girl, they are only interested in feeling you out, if you get what I mean. I have to protect myself, meaning I don’t meddle in their business and don’t cross their path.”
“One day I saw you in the church.”
“Well, I am a monk. I have to pretend, don’t I?”
“But do you provide certain services to monks?”
“I try to avoid that, if I can at all, but one has to eat sometimes, doesn’t one?”
“Does being a monk not feed you well enough?”
“I detest begging, but I have no rich family who sends me parcels of goods.”
And begging was what monks often did. Despite the obvious riches of the monasteries, many of the monks were themselves dirt poor, and Nellie had heard stories that monasteries liked to get sons from rich families who would then contribute to the upkeep of the building, while the men themselves would live in poverty, for the sake of living a simple life.
“What do you know about the books and other things they keep in the church crypt?” Nellie asked.
Gisele raised her eyebrows.
“My father was an account keeper for the church. He knew about all the stuff they buy. He didn’t agree with much of it.”
Gisele shook her head. “Oh, there is some disturbing stuff there. The church says it wants to keep this material so it doesn’t fall into the hands of citizens who are supposedly unable to deal with horrific material.”
She was sassy and probably also very smart, which was not a good thing for a young girl. She reminded Nellie of Mistress Johanna.
“Tell me what you have seen.”
“Why are you so curious? My friend here tells me you’re a church person, that your parents grew up in the church, and that you take the letter of the Book of Verses literally.”
“I have not lived to the age of fifty by believing everything people tell me. I believe there is an essential good in the teachings of the church, but that its interpretations are not always well-intentioned.”
“Well, you can say that again.”
This girl knew a lot more than Nellie had bargained for.
“Did you know the church had a dragon?”
“There were rumours, although I live at the monastery, and I’ve never seen it. It was gone from the spot in the cabinet when I first came there. I asked what the octagonal spot in the dust was and they said it belonged to an important artefact that they were studying—that was the dragon that took you out of the kitchen, right?”
“I think so.”
“The one that lives in a box?”
Nellie nodded. “Do you know why the box was no longer in the cabinet when you saw it?”
“No one ever mentioned it to me. Mind you, it was not as if I could ask these kinds of questions. But there were rumours that Shepherd Wilfridus himself was looking at it.”
“Was it stolen from his study?” Nellie asked.
“From the library, apparently, a few months ago.”
“Then wouldn’t it be easy for the shepherd to track who came to the library?”
“Not every visitor signs the book. Not every monk is free of suspicion.”
Also true. “And you believe it was a monk?”
“Not a monk, I don’t think. But someone from the church.”
“A bad apple,” Nellie said, filling with hope. She didn’t want to believe the church was evil.
Gisele said, “It is more than just one person. I want to take down these tyrants who call themselves the saviours of our souls and show the citizens what evil they sow. It’s all a load of nonsense.”
Nellie protested, “The church isn’t evil.”
“I mean not this church, I mean all churches.”
“But then, are you a heathen?”
“I believe in the good of people. I believe they can be good regardless of their belief. If they feel they need a church to motivate them, that is good, as long as they do good things. But the moment this institution becomes a law onto itself, and frightens people for the sake of its own profit, that is wrong.”
And Nellie could not disagree with that. It also seemed to have been something her father had realised and tried to express in words in his book.
While they drank tea, Gisele told Nellie about some things she had seen while serving as a monk. “In the monastery just across the border in Burovia, every farmer in all the surrounding land is brought in once a year, to deliver one tenth of their produce to the church. They do not get anything in return, except a promise that their souls will be saved. The church doesn’t always even own the land. Sometimes the farmers come in purely out of fear because someone in the service has said the Lord of Fire will descend upon them if they don’t obey. Woe the poor girls who become with child when a monk forgets that he’s supposed to have sworn off the pleasures of female flesh. They are treated like they are the wo
rst sinners, their families have to increase their contributions to the monastery and the girl herself can never marry well. In the crypt of the main church in your city here, the church keeps a collection of truly dreadful things. It is not the black skull with the ruby eyes that is disturbing, although people often talk about it, but it is all the books filled with the most terrible things that people can do to each other. And some of them are books of magic, but most of them are books of insane cruelty. It is also the place where if a monk or some other person in the church falls foul of the leadership, they will lock this poor person up, sometimes for years, sometimes until the end of their lives.”
“You mean the church keeps these prisoners at present?” Nellie had seen no places where prisoners could be locked up. Although there was that large room with all the bottles she had not investigated very much. She only had so much time because it was dark and very dusty in the crypt and that large room looked to be a storage area for wine.
“Yes, that’s right.”
“And they lock people up for years?” Nellie couldn’t imagine the horror of living in the dark for that long.
“There is a rumour of a boy,” Gisele said. “I don’t know how much is true, but they say a young boy lives in one of the cells and has been there for years. I’ve never seen him, but I’ve definitely seen people carrying food into that area.”
Nellie’s heart jumped. “Do you think the boy could be Prince Bruno?”
“Who is that?”
Nellie related the story of the misfortunes of the royal family, of the fact that the king could not have any children, that neither of his two children had been his, and that the younger one, who was the son of an eastern trader, was called Bruno.
“He’s the owner of the dragon box. I used to work for the royal family. The box was given to him by his father, and he kept it on the shelf in his room.”
Gisele frowned. “Did you ever see the dragon? Is that why it hasn’t attacked you, but it has attacked everyone else who tried to open the box?”
“I don’t think so. The dragon wouldn’t know who I am. I never saw him back then. I only saw his father’s dragon. Do you think they kept him in the dungeons because he’s the only one who can use the dragon?”
