by Patty Jansen
Father.
A chill went through her at the thought of crossing the markets, going to her house to find out the ultimate truth. Which might be joyful, but it could also be really, really terrible. The fact that she was about to find out made her feel ill.
Someone called, “Mistress Johanna!”
Underneath the cover of a stall stood a familiar person: Leo Mustermans, the cheese seller whom she used to visit.
Johanna ran to the stall. “Shh.”
He came out from behind the stall and swept her up in a hug. “We all thought you were dead, with the palace burnt down and the Lady Sara stolen.” He was a lot less chubby than he used to be, and with the fat gone from his cheeks, he looked to have aged ten years. “Oh, look at you!”
“We took the Lady Sara to safety.”
“And you come back disguised as farmers.”
“It’s a very long story, but we’re hoping that there are still people here who support the royal family.”
“You will find plenty. They’re battered and bruised and scared, but there are plenty. You do know that the king and queen were both killed, right?”
“I do. But did anyone ever tell you that the crown prince was dead, too?”
“They did. They said he drowned in the harbour and that was why there is no body.”
“They were lying. The prince is a very good swimmer.”
Leo patted the horse and then met Roald’s eyes. His eyes went wide. “Is that. . . ?”
“Oh, you haven’t met my husband?”
He gasped. His face went red and he held his hand over his mouth to stop shouting his excitement. But a couple of people around him noticed his reaction and looked at Johanna.
A man said, “Why, that’s Miss Brouwer. I’d heard people say that she was dead.”
“No, no,” his wife said. “Look at the young man.”
Roald’s face went pale. He let go of the horse’s rope. Johanna managed to grab it just in time before the horse could create trouble and draw the attention of the guards.
“Look after the horse,” she whispered to him, rather more sharply than she normally would have.
“I don’t want to talk to people.” It sounded like his teeth were chattering.
“You don’t have to. Hold the horse. Let me do the talking.”
“It’s the prince!” someone called.
“The prince is back.”
“The Triune be praised!” said a merchant.
His wife berated him. “Shush and don’t say that. Do you want your house burned like Master Pieters?”
More people ran closer to have a look.
Johanna stepped forward so that Roald stood between her and the horse. There were at least twenty people facing her, mostly merchants. Nellie had come to stand next to her. Johanna’s back touched Roald’s side. He was swaying, the muscles under his sleeves tensing.
“We’re farmers selling our produce, and we want to sell a horse.” She spoke in a loud voice. Her heart was thudding. Any moment now and the guards would notice the gathering, or Roald would go into panic mode and then they would definitely notice him.
Several people nodded and dropped off. They understood.
“If you want to buy a horse, let this man here know about it.” She indicated Leo the cheese seller.
Further nods.
“I’d like to put a bid on that horse,” said a man.
Others made agreeing noises. They assured Leo that he’d be hearing from them and went back to their stalls.
“That was a smart thing to do,” Leo said.
“I’m sorry about drawing you into this—”
“I’d be honoured, lady. I happen to have become a horse seller today. Except that looks like a coach horse. You could be in trouble for trying to sell it.”
“We found it wandering around outside the city walls. I’m not sure what we should do with it. Roald wants to keep it. He likes horses.”
“I’ll find a safe stable for it where no one is going to accuse you of stealing.”
“Thank you.”
“No, thank you. You give us hope.”
Johanna didn’t know what to say to that. From what she had seen, they needed a whole lot more than just hope.
“We’re going to see my house now. Is my father all right?”
“Alive. Don’t know about all right, but he’s alive.”
Johanna breathed out a sigh of relief. “And the house?”
“Still standing.” He hesitated. He eyed Roald again. Roald was scratching the horse’s ears and the horse was nuzzling his clothes. Roald really did have an extraordinary way with animals.
“Your husband, right?”
“We’ve shared the bed since the day we arrived in Aroden for help, but found that Aroden had been burned to the ground.”
His eyes went wide. “Oh, we’d hoped they would help us, if only we could send out someone to tell them.”
“There won’t be any help from Aroden. It’s up to us.”
Then he looked at Johanna and bowed. “Your Majesty. It would be an honour to serve you.”
“Shhh. Nothing is official, and if anyone asks, you didn’t see us here.”
“You’re right. I didn’t see anyone I haven’t met yesterday.”
Chapter 6
* * *
LEO SAID IT WAS no more risky to go to her house than to walk anywhere else. “Which is pretty risky, mind. Those magicians are everywhere, and they know everything. Including about horses. They’ll have seen you come in with this animal and they’ll want to know what you’ve done with it. You be very, very careful.”
“What about you?”
“I have my way of solving these problems, lady.”
They left him to look after the horse and the produce they had brought, and continued to the other side of the markets. The fire had also hit hard here, but had spared pockets of houses. In one such pocket Johanna found her own house. Some of the windows had broken from the heat, and paint had peeled off, but the steps were clean and swept and a glow of light came from within Father’s library.
The door was bolted from inside and when Johanna let the knocker fall, quick footsteps approached.
The door first opened a crack. An eye peeked out.
“Koby?” At least Johanna thought it was Koby.
A squeal; then the door opened further. Definitely Koby.
“Mistress Johanna! Quick, come in, come in!”
Johanna went up the steps and was enveloped in a gravy-scented hug.
“Come and look at this, master, Johanna is back!”
The door to the library opened and there was Father. Greyer than she remembered him, and leaning on a walking stick. He wore his favourite jacket but had lost so much weight that it hung off his shoulders like a sack. But he was alive.
Johanna extricated herself from Koby’s arms and hugged him tightly. His shoulders were so thin that she could feel the bones through his jacket. His grip was so feeble that she thought her hug would break him.
For a while he could say nothing except, “Oh, oh, oh.” Then he recovered a bit. “We thought you were lost. When I couldn’t find you in the burning palace . . .” Tears rolled over his cheeks.
Then he looked past her to the others who had come into the hall, where Koby had once again bolted the door.
“Nellie has become a good lady, too, I see, and who is the other young lady?”
“That’s Loesie.”
“Your basket-selling friend?”
“Yes.” She was surprised that he remembered her.
“And the young man?”
“That’s a bit of a story. We fled in the Lady Sara. Loesie knew how to handle the sea cows. We went upriver to find help, but all we saw along the river was destruction and death. Aroden castle is completely burnt. There is nothing left, so we thought we were the only Saarlanders left—”
“Wait, you said the Lady Sara?”
“Yes. It’s moored around the river bend just
outside the city gates.”
“The Lady Sara has survived?”
“There might be a small scratch on it somewhere, and we lived in the hold and modified it into a room, but yes—”
“Oh, heavens be praised! I thought I’d lost everything. The Lady Davida was burned in the fire and I thought the Brouwer Company was doomed after all the work I put into it my entire life. Oh, you can’t possibly understand how happy I am that you’re back—” He frowned at Roald. “I think I know who you are, but . . . it can’t be. They said you’d drowned.”
“King Roald of Saarland,” Johanna said.
“Oh,” was the only thing he said before he dropped into a stiff bow.
Roald froze. He never seemed to know what to do in situations like this.
I must teach him, Johanna thought. “Come on, Father, that’s not necessary. We’ve travelled with him for months. We need a safe place to stay. He’s my husband.”
Now Father looked up, his eyes wide. “You . . . Oh, heavens be praised! I thought I’d lost everything. My wife, my daughter, my first and dearest ship.” Tears were streaming down his face. “And on top of that . . . you’re saying that you married the prince.”
“I did. Nellie did the service when we thought that everyone was lost and we couldn’t get help at Aroden. It’s not official, but it’s the most official we could make it.”
“Oh, what a day, what a day. There is hope yet for all of us. You must stay here. We have plenty of room in the house. I’ll see to it that you get the best room, and that it’s clean and that there are fresh sheets and clean clothes. We lost some of our workers. Jan was killed trying to put out the fires.” Jan used to look after the garden and fix things in the house. “Adrian went down with the Lady Davida. She is still in the place where she sank, burned and all, at the bottom of the harbour. We never found Adrian. And the Hendricksen warehouse burned down. The old man died a few weeks later from the burns. His poor widow has been living in poverty ever since. And so many people have left town. Your family, too, Nellie.”
Nellie’s eyes widened. “They’re alive?”
Johanna felt guilty that she hadn’t yet walked past Nellie’s house.
“As far as I know, they are, but the house is lost, so they had nowhere to live. They were involved with the church, too. This filth has been punishing people from the Church of the Triune for something they didn’t do. You know I was never keen on that church, but they didn’t cause the fires. The church did nothing wrong. But far too many people believe what this terrible man says, many of them nobles—”
“Octavio Nieland.”
“Yes, he, and many of the other nobles. Alexandre gives them the influence they always wanted and King Nicholaos was unwilling to give them—” He bowed to Roald. “I’m very sorry about your parents, Your Majesty. We will protect you against these evil men.”
It was disturbing how he had gone from being a confident man to one hoping for miracles. “You have to tell me about everything that happened here.”
“Yes, yes, but first you must hide.”
“We’re already hidden. We’re off the street, the door is shut and—”
Someone dropped the knocker on the wood.
There was a moment of intense silence. Father’s eyes widened as he turned to the door, a horrified expression on his face. He put his finger to his lips.
“You must hide now,” he whispered. “Quick, go upstairs and be very quiet. Don’t speak. They must not see you here. They must not hear you.”
All right. “Come,” Johanna whispered to the others. She led Nellie, Loesie and Roald to the stairs and, on the landing between the two floors, went through the little door that led into the storeroom above Father’s office.
“Be very quiet now,” she said.
Whereas before the storeroom had been full of spare dinner things, now the room contained a lot of Father’s nice dinnerware and the precious treasures brought from other lands during his travels. Why weren’t those things in the cabinets in the sitting room anymore?
Chapter 7
* * *
THEY SAT DOWN on the floor, while in the hallway downstairs, Koby pulled back the bolts that held the door shut.
“No, no,” she was saying. “I was just talking to the master. He’s in the library waiting for you.”
Someone replied, the voice too soft to recognise or make out words.
“What are we doing here?” Roald asked in a too-loud voice. “Hiding? I like playing hide and seek.”
“Shh. It’s a game. Be very, very quiet now.”
He nodded. “I like playing hide and seek. You know I used to play it with—”
“Shhh!”
He giggled, but covered his mouth with his hand so he didn’t make any noise.
Like this, he looked like an overgrown child, his eyes bright, innocent to the terrible things people did to each other. She loved him for that simple, unconditional attention that he gave her. Nellie had her lips pursed. Johanna knew that she disapproved of listening to conversations. Loesie lay on her stomach in front of the window, looking into the garden.
Downstairs, the door to Father’s library opened and the person, or persons, came inside the hall with the clack-clacking of high-heeled boots on the marble floor, and then the more muffled sound as the visitor walked onto the carpet.
“Good morning, Dirk.” It was a dry, male voice that Johanna didn’t recognise. One of the proper nobility, judging by the cultured sound of his speech. “It’s a very good morning, don’t you think?”
“Never since the light of my life was taken from me has there been a good morning.”
Whoa, since when did Father speak like that?
There was the sound of a chair being dragged across the mat. “Suit yourself, Dirk. I’ve brought the contract for signing.”
A period of silence. Johanna pictured a man putting a piece of paper on Father’s desk.
“What, Dirk, are you not going to sign it?”
And pictured Father pushing the paper back across the desk.
“I would like some time to think about it.” She pictured Father giving the man his famous critical look. A glimmer of hope sparked in her that his famous sense of business had not been damaged too much.
“Even more time than you’ve already had? You’re not getting any younger. You might drop dead tomorrow, and then who is going to inherit your wealth? Who is going to run your business?” The arrogant tone of the voice was starting to annoy her. Who was this upstart?
The arrogant voice continued, “Are you going to ruin the life of my sister as well as the lives of your wife and daughter?”
“You vile snake!”
The man laughed. “You can call me whatever you want. The fact is my sister is the only one who has volunteered to share an old man’s bed to beget him another heir. And getting heirs was never your strong point, Dirk.”
“Shut. Up! Before I wring your skinny neck.”
Again that dry laugh. “You’re welcome to try. But you’re an old man, Dirk, and you know that. This is your last chance. All right, then. I’m reasonable. Have your few days to think about it. I’m patient. Lisbeth is patient. You will die long before she. I’ll leave you with this document. Just have your secretary bring it up to my office when you’ve changed your mind.” The chair was dragged over the carpet. “Oh, I forgot. Your secretary has been missing.”
One more chuckle and he left the room.
The door creaked. High-heeled boots hit the floor in the hall. Koby said something, but her voice was too soft for them to hear what. The man replied, “No, that’s not necessary.” The front door opened and shut.
Koby dragged the bolt across.
That was when Johanna first dared move.
Lisbeth? Lisbeth LaFontaine? A young woman a few years older than Johanna, a cousin of Fleuris LaFontaine. Hadn’t she been married last year? Hadn’t her husband died soon after?
And by the missing secretary, did he mean Master W
illems?
She met Nellie’s eyes, and Nellie, having heard everything, stared back, a puzzled look on her face. “What in the Triune’s name is happening in this town?”
Loesie turned to them. “It’s the hand of evil.”
Johanna swore that there was a haze of white in her eyes when she said that. She shuddered.
She left the storeroom, followed by Roald, Nellie and Loesie. Nellie and Loesie were short enough to be able to walk under the beams, but Roald hit his head twice.
Johanna shielded his head from the last beam, and when she touched the wood, saw some men carrying boxes full of Father’s pretty treasures from the sitting room through the little doorway and up the stairs. Johanna recognised the men. They were porters who used to work in the warehouse.
One of the men said, “If they search the house, they’ll find all these things.”
“The trick is not to let anyone know that this is here, so they won’t search for it.”
This had to have happened a few days after the fire. Maybe Alexandre’s bandits were looting the town. Maybe the council had asked for citizens to hand in their wealth.
In the downstairs hall, the door to the library was open. Father sat slumped in his chair and did not look up, even though he must have heard them come down the stairs.
“Look, why don’t we go and help in the kitchen?” Nellie said in a low voice to Loesie.
Loesie and Roald trundled after her. Poor Koby.
Johanna went into the room. Father looked up and sighed. “You heard.”
“They’re forcing you to get married?” It was hard to believe.
He sighed and nodded. “I need an heir. That much is true.”
“No you don’t. Not anymore. You have your heir.” And hopefully, there would be a new generation at some point.
“But he doesn’t know that, and he can’t be allowed to find out.”
Also true. “That was Auguste LaFontaine?” She remembered him as a small man with a thin, sharp face who never had much good to say about other people.
