by Patty Jansen
“And, pray, Mistress Johanna, what happened at the farm?”
Johanna had to bite her tongue not to lash out at his pious tone. “That’s what I’m not sure about. The wood tells me . . . there are men on horses coming this way. I don’t know who they are. Estlander bandits on our borders, perhaps. They have magicians. They have demons. Big, hairy, flat-footed creatures with snarling teeth and strong jaws.”
He stiffened, then snorted. “No demons exist. They’re a myth perpetuated by the Lord of Fire in order to strike fear into the congregation. The Church of the Triune seeks to exterminate those folk rumours. These are foolish girlish dreams that you’re seeing.”
And he, of all people, believed this? “Have you ever seen a bear, Master Willems?”
He met her eyes squarely, but said nothing. He hadn’t.
“I have.” She thought of the sad creature she’d seen in an Estlander market, chained up to a tree. A bear in its natural state was just a dangerous creature, but those with bear magic could turn it into a demon. That was what the rumours said at least. “I’d be glad to be proven wrong, Master Willems, but what I saw looked very much like demons. I simply wondered if you had seen something similar, because if you have, other people need to know. We should warn the king, or the guards, or whoever will listen. This has nothing to do with dreams. The wood always speaks true. I suspect the wind always speaks true as well. We see the images; it’s up to us to ascribe meaning. The basket seller Loesie lives in the Bend, which is where she cut the wood. If the Bend has been invaded, the bandits will be in the marshes and may not be spotted until they’re almost in the city. So, I ask again: have you seen anything?”
“No.” The denial came too quickly, too defensive. He was sweating and gripping the book with more force than necessary.
“Master Willems, please. There could be trouble on the way.”
“The wind does not speak, Mistress Johanna. And you would do well not to mention these things anymore.”
“Well then,” she said, rising from the chair. “I leave it up to you. I was worried by what I saw, and if you are concerned as well, you don’t have to tell me, but do tell someone. Write an unsigned letter, if you are too scared.”
“I’m not scared, Mistress Johanna. I will fight this evil magic in all the ways I can.”
She left the office more worried than she’d been coming in. And she still had no proof of any trouble that the mayor would believe.
Chapter 3
* * *
WHEN JOHANNA and Nellie got home, the hallway was filled with the smell of cooking. As they took their coats off in the hall, Koby was just coming up from the kitchen carrying a tray of bowls and terrines.
Johanna followed her into the dining room.
Father already sat at the table. He nodded briefly to her as she sat down.
While Koby ladled soup in their plates, they started their usual talk about business and accounts. Father asked if Pietersen had paid yet, which Johanna informed him he had not, and then he said he’d chase it up. He mentioned that he had heard that Octavio Nieland was interested in buying bigger boats and going into ocean trade. There had been talk of forming a group, because the palace guards were obviously not going to protect the ships, but there would need to be money invested in protection and men and weapons. Anglian ships were in strong competition with the Saarlander ones. They always looked to steal the best trades and more than one skirmish had been fought over trading partners or safe anchorage. Also, there were many strange folk out beyond the Horn. Far Eastern ships with their red, square sails sometimes came all the way to the southern Lurezian coast. They sold silks and spices, but they spoke strange tongues and no one knew much about their rulers or whether they might be hostile.
Father scoffed, tucking his napkin into his collar. “Frankly, I don’t understand why the investors tolerate Octavio Nieland, because he upsets everyone with his improper manners. He’s too much of a pinchpenny to contribute much to the guards so they’re not going to be interested in defending his ships. Have you heard about the time when he accidentally asked a Lurezian duchess to share the bed with him?” He chuckled.
This was Father in his element: ridiculing Octavio Nieland, who was a few years older than Johanna, had recently taken over his ailing father’s company and belonged to the noble class that Father so wanted to join but probably never would.
“He meant to say join him on the couch, of course, not the bed. She was most upset, and he did not end up getting the contract that he went to Lurezia to negotiate.”
Of course Johanna already knew that through the church gossip. It was amazing what those wooden benches told her, and the story might not be quite as Father told it. The gossip told her that the lady had been flirting, as Lurezians were bound to do.
“My point is, dear daughter, that the boy is not suited to negotiating delicate contracts with foreigners. He will make blunder after blunder and will create a bad name for Saarlander merchants. We could easily step in and show those people that we can be serious about business without offending everyone and making enemies in important places.”
Except that Father could not buy any ships outright because, as a non-noble, he couldn’t hire guards. He could only invest his money in other people’s ships, and he was too stubborn for that.
“Sea trade will be more important than river trade. I predict that the Far Eastern traders will come into harbour soon enough. We don’t want to appear weak—”
That reminded her— “Do you know, by the way, whose dark-coloured sloop is in the harbour? Someone coming to the king’s annual ball, I heard.”
“I don’t follow gossip, you know that, daughter. You might be better off asking your people at church, hmm? All they seem to do is gossip.”
Father, please. Koby was still in the room. She went to church. He often said these things just to rile her.
There were voices elsewhere in the house, Nellie letting someone into the front door. A male voice.
“I don’t understand why you keep going to that church. That Shepherd is a gibbering idiot. Have you ever heard of such thing as the Triune? A three-headed monster that’s supposed to do good on the earth in the name of God. And then they say that they don’t believe in magic. Three-headed monsters.”
“They are symbols.”
“That’s not how that dressed-up clown explained it to me—”
“Father!”
“He is a dressed-up clown, and a gibbering idiot, and I’ll say so however many times I please in my own house. He was talking real monsters, and believing what he said, too. You know that three-headed monsters can’t work? Each head has a mind of its own, and there is no one head to decide which way the monster is going to go if all three want to go in different directions.”
He snorted.
Johanna managed to bite her tongue.
A discussion about this was pointless, and they’d had so many of these discussions already. It never got them anywhere.
“Everyone goes to church. People stick out when they don’t. People talk about them.”
“Octavio Nieland doesn’t go.”
“He’s one of the few. He sticks out, but he doesn’t care because he’s Octavio Nieland.” Also because he belonged to the nobility. He looked down his nose at something like the Church that was born of the common people. The Shepherd was said to have been a poor man, walking from town to town and helping people where he could, and it seemed King Nicholaos understood the commoners better than the nobles did. Johanna disliked many things about the Church, but this wasn’t one of them.
“Daughter, you lack the most important ingredient of a believer: belief; and one day that’s going to break you up.”
He might be right, or he might not. She’d worry about that when the problem came up.
They ate in silence for a while. The big clock against the back wall went tick-tick-tick.
Why did he infuriate her so much lately?
&nb
sp; Father put his spoon down and looked at her in a self-important way. “Anyway, daughter, about the ball. It seems I have received an invitation after all. You will be going with me—no, don’t look at me like that. It’s time that you started behaving a bit more like a lady.”
“Father, the ball is in two days’ time. I have nothing good enough to wear.” If she was to walk up the palace steps under the eyes of all those in Saardam who cared about fashion, even her best shoes wouldn’t be good enough, because they were serviceable, not fashionable. Father didn’t like to spend a lot of money on clothes, not even hers. She felt the same.
He smiled. “We will have to fix that, then. You’ll soon find that you have a visitor coming here who will help you solve that problem.”
“You’re getting a dress made for me? Now? Don’t you want me to do the accounts?”
“Forget about them for these two days.” He rose from the table, looking at her with that you’re my little girl look that he’d used since she was little. “For once, I want you to look your very best. I have to go now. Business calls. I believe my visitor has already arrived.”
And he was out the door.
Johanna stared after his back. That had to be the first time that he’d told her to take time off from the accounts. Was there something wrong with him?
When she went into the hall, Father’s visitor was already in Father’s study, having left behind a scent of tobacco and spice that lingered in the hallway.
She heard a voice in the room. Not Father. Not Captain Pieters of the Brouwer flagship, the Lady Sara. Not master de Waard, the manager of the warehouse. Not Jan Hendricksen, one of Father’s best customers. Not that annoying Octavio Nieland either, or his elderly father.
An unfamiliar coat hung on the stand. A man’s coat. Black. A very finely-made one with a very small pin on the coat’s collar: the rooster, the symbol of the Carmine House.
What in all of heaven’s name would Father have to say to the royal family?
In the stairwell, on the landing halfway between the ground floor and the second floor, was a little door that led into a low-ceilinged storeroom that had been built between the floors. The servants used this to store items of furniture that they didn’t use anymore, or spare plates or tableware that didn’t fit in the cupboards. This room was directly above Father’s office.
Johanna paused at the stairs, looking carefully if anyone could see her. Then she opened the door quietly, went in and shut it again so that it became dark and stuffy inside. In the little cupboard-like space, she wriggled off her shoes and carried them in her hand while she very slowly climbed up the couple of steps to the room. The steps were odd, at an angle, and uneven. They were made of rough wood that creaked badly unless you were very careful and very slow.
The storeroom was barely tall enough for her to stand in. Father would have to bend his head to avoid hitting it on the ceiling beams. There was a window in the far wall. Half of it vanished below the floor and the bottom part of it was the window in Father’s study below. The light that shone through silvered items of furniture covered with sheets and various boxes and crates. One of them had Estlander writing on it. It had belonged to Johanna’s mother, Lady Sara Aroden, a minor duchess of the Estlander court.
The sound of father’s voice drifted up through the floorboards. Johanna sank to her knees, trying to make not the slightest of sounds, and put her ear to the floor. It was very dusty.
Father was speaking. “. . . We can provide loans, certainly. But I don’t know that we have the capacity to do what you ask.”
Johanna held her breath. Her nose tickled with the smell of wood that hadn’t seen a mop for years.
“I’m not sure I understand your problem. I hear the Brouwer Company is one of the most profitable in all of Saardam.” She didn’t recognise the voice of this man. He was not the royal family’s buyer, who sometimes came to get Estlander cheeses, which was how the Brouwer Company got its royal-approved seal.
Father said again, “That may be as it is, but I still like to invest my money wisely, in a way in which it will see us get returns. I frankly cannot see what this loan is going to do in my favour. And for what, precisely?”
The man from the court coughed, the wet phlegmy cough of a smoker. He said something that Johanna didn’t catch, except that it was about the good of the country and something that needed to be defeated.
Johanna’s heart thudded. Did the royal family know about these demons crossing the river?
“Drink?” Father said.
Johanna heard him open the door of the cabinet that held the pretty glasses. There was the chink of glass on the metal tray and the glug-glug of brandy being poured.
The silence was uneasy. She hardly dared move, even though her nose was starting to get very itchy and her knees were sore from kneeling on the rough wood.
“You live well, Dirk,” the visitor said. “You have all you want—no, don’t say anything. I know you want noble status. I know you want it mainly so that you can provide for your daughter by marrying her off well, and that you’re waiting for this to happen before she marries.”
What?
Father replied, but Johanna didn’t hear it because her heart was thudding so loudly.
The man said in reply, “That can be arranged. I will even see to it personally.”
“It’s starting to sound like blackmail to me. Pay up and you can have what you want.”
“No, no, we need people like yourself. We want you to invest in our country.”
Father snorted. “The kingdom charges enough taxes to pay for its army. What is wrong with the current size of the army? We’re at peace, are we not? Why doesn’t the king invest in it, if he thinks it’s that important?”
“The king has already invested a considerable amount—”
“In an army?”
“The king looks after the spiritual wellbeing of the people.”
“Building churches is investing in the country?”
“The king has made the Church his first priority.”
A silence fell. Johanna could just about see Father sit behind his desk swirling his brandy, giving the man a suspicious look. Father was also too smart to voice any of the colourful thoughts he had about the Church.
He said, “Do you have any of the nobility investing in this new army?”
Oh, that question struck home. It said, Does the nobility still trust the king? Johanna could almost feel the tension in the room.
The man went on, sounding uneasy. “There have been . . . problems. Not everybody is as lucky as you, Dirk. Many of our merchants have been shunned by buyers across our borders. They don’t make anywhere near as much profit as you do.”
“It has nothing to do with luck. Before you say any more about luck, you can have all the luck in the world. I would have my wife still around over any luxury I’ve amassed in my life. I’ve worked hard at this business and even harder not to offend anyone with ideas. That’s why I’ve done well. I don’t play games and I don’t judge. And now if you want to get back to our business—”
There was a small squeak from behind Johanna. A shaft of light fell into the room from the hallway.
She turned around and gasped.
“Mistress Johanna!” Nellie stood at the bottom of the steps, her mouth open in shock. “You’re eavesdropping on your father? That’s terrible!”
“Shhhh!” Johanna rose and tiptoed out the room back into the stairwell and shut the door behind her. On the stairs, she slipped her feet back into her shoes.
“Mistress, aren’t you too old for this sort of behaviour? It’s bad enough for children, but a lady your age should definitely know better—”
“Father’s got a visitor from the court. They’re talking about . . .” But she wasn’t sure if she should tell Nellie what they were talking about. If what she heard was right, and she understood it correctly, the palace was in financial trouble and the nobles didn’t want to support the king, and the king thought
that a threat to the country was strong enough to warrant a bigger army.
She shivered, seeing men on horseback and demons. Did this mean that the king knew about the demons?
Nellie said, “Anyway, I came to look for you because you have a visitor.”
Chapter 4
* * *
NELLIE PRECEDED Johanna into the formal room to the right of the main entrance. The door was opposite Father’s study, whose door was still closed. A smell of smoke seeped into the hall. She also smelled perfume that definitely didn’t come from Father’s visitor.
Johanna went into the formal room and found that her visitor was Mistress Daphne, the Lurezian seamstress. She waited, primly seated on a chair next to the hearth. She was perhaps ten years older than Johanna, tall and elegant, a dark-haired southern beauty. Today she wore a plain working dress in moss green with little edges of lace at the sleeves. She might not look spectacular, but as far as fashion went, she was the best of the best. She knew how to dress to look elegant and not take any attention away from her well-heeled clientele.
“Good afternoon, Mistress Johanna.” She rose and bowed.
Her face was prim and stiff, but Johanna didn’t miss the faint twinge of disapproval and her glance at Johanna’s house shoes and plain dress. Johanna cringed. In the eyes of this woman, she was as a dirty riverboat to the owner of a large seafaring ship. That was her life: plain, serviceable, sensible.
“I am here to arrange your dress,” Mistress Daphne said. “Your father wants me to supply you with a dress that will make you look like a princess, so he said. I heard that he was so lucky as to get a last-moment invite to the ball at the palace tomorrow night.” Mistress Daphne said all this with a prim face, as though she clearly despaired at the prospect of making Johanna presentable. “I told him that it would be impossible to have a gown made, but I always have a couple of sample gowns that I can adapt, so you may yet be in luck.” Mistress Daphne picked up a pile of boxes she had brought. “You have little enough time to choose, so we better get started now.”
