by Patty Jansen
His eyes met hers. Johanna felt chilled with the seriousness in his expression. “The envoy from the King came to us for financial help.”
So she’d heard that right. Eavesdropping was really a most useful thing.
“And you named your price for the Brouwer Company’s financial assistance, which was to get me into the palace?” Those words sounded so strange in her mouth.
“No, Johanna.” His eyes met hers; then he looked down. “Or maybe yes. One dance with the prince only. There will be others. It still remains the King’s choice. But there are a number of important things in your favour: Roald needs to marry as soon as possible. There really is no time to waste. Dare I say the king has already wasted too much time? Secondly, the king has expressed displeasure with the way many of the nobility ridicule the Church and the way he’s spent money on it. Most of the nobles are not in his good books.”
Not without reason.
“Thirdly, he’ll want a woman who goes to church. I think you would be perfectly suited. The royal family doesn’t need a pretty princess; they need someone with some common sense in a position where they can make hard decisions. King Nicholaos doesn’t seem capable of making these decisions anymore.”
“No more wasting money on statues and religious buildings, huh? How does this help the company?”
“You will inherit it and it will remain under your control . . . if you were to be chosen. The queen is the only woman who can inherit in her own right.”
“I’ll marry the prince, just like that?” She couldn’t even believe she was saying this. Why would the royal family have any interest in her?
Father looked at her; there was sadness in his eyes. “Daughter, we need to be strong. Our country needs us. You need to be strong and look after the company. But you can’t do it too openly. I wish there was a world where a woman was not bound to her father’s or husband’s wealth, but there isn’t. I can’t change that for you.”
Johanna looked towards her knees, under the hoops of the frills. She was angry, angry as she hadn’t been for a long time. Angry with herself that she’d been so stupid to expect a free life.
She let a long angry silence pass, but, being who she was, couldn’t stay angry for long. There were worse candidates for potential marriage, and even if, as was likely, nothing came of it, she could still say she’d danced with the prince. But the bubble of laughter that rose in her—why on earth would the prince want to dance with her?—quickly evaporated when the coach passed the markets and she remembered Loesie and the demons.
“Did the king say why he wanted to have a bigger army?”
“He wouldn’t divulge what happened and why, but the king seems to have deeply upset a Burovian religious order.”
“The one that owned the boat and the sanatorium where Roald was?”
“I’m not sure. No one has gone into details about it.”
“Does this order belong to the Church of the Triune?”
He held his hands up. “I don’t know. What I’m telling you is what the envoy told me. I’m sure there is a lot more to it, but this is all I know. Although I’m guessing you already know a fair bit of it.” He met her eyes squarely.
Blood rose to Johanna’s cheeks. Outside the cab, the driver yelled at the horse.
“Really, Johanna, if you’re going to snoop in the store room, you need to be a lot more careful. You weigh a lot more than when you were eight, you know.”
She ignored that comment. “The king wants to put together an army?”
“He is afraid. It seems he did something that made the members of this religious order exceedingly angry. That wouldn’t have been such a problem had the order not had strong ties with Baron Uti of Gelre. I understand he is exceedingly angry as well, although he has not publicly expressed his displeasure. Baron Uti is also a guest at the ball. He has probably been invited as a gesture of reconciliation, but the king’s envoy let slip through that they don’t expect much in the way of negotiation.”
“And the king has ignored the army in much of his spending recently,” she added.
Father nodded, gravely. “Since Celine’s death, the king has lost his grip on pretty much anything, including finances. He’s been so consumed by grief that he’s spent vast amounts on churches—as if that’s going to bring her back—and not enough on things that matter—no, and before you say anything, Johanna, churches do not make any money; they sponge off those who are willing to give it. That could be because they have a lot of money, or because they are somehow deluded that giving to the Church will help them. I suspect the Shepherd promised King Nicholaos salvation for his stricken family, and the king was too addled by grief to see that no one can solve his problems except he himself.”
Johanna had often entertained these same thoughts, but hearing them from her father’s mouth gave them so much more weight.
Father continued, “That was all fine up until the floods last year, which affected a large part of the royal farms, and the royal family’s income from those farms. King Nicholaos did not want to know about it. He sacked the adviser who suggested that they cut spending. Then he neglected to deal with the succession problem.”
“Does anyone know why Roald’s younger sister was made heir?”
“Roald was sickly. He was not expected to live.”
But he did live, and Celine had not. Now he was back, but why was there so much secrecy still? “And now the king wants protection with extra troops? Against priests?”
“Yes, I know, I thought he was crazy, but the envoy said that it was necessary to protect our borders, which is fair enough, and something that should have been done long ago. I just didn’t think that it was worth the level of investment that he wanted. I knew there was something that he wasn’t telling me. But something else happened that helps me understand it. I got this today.” He reached into his pocket and gave her a crumpled piece of paper that looked like a page torn from an account book. Which, when Johanna unfolded it, was exactly what it turned out to be.
In the neat writing she recognised as belonging to Master Willems, it said,
I have it from sources I can’t disclose that there are hostile actions at the border. There are marauding groups of bandits, affiliation unknown, accompanied by creatures that may or may not be demons. They have reportedly invaded farms at the Bend. Their origin is unknown. They are coming in our direction.
Johanna met her father’s eyes. They both knew what Master Willems meant—he had seen this on the wind—but his insistence at denying his ability amazed her. At least he had done as she told him.
In a few sentences, Johanna told Father of Loesie and her baskets.
Father knew of Loesie, had met her even, and had never told Johanna to stop seeing her, although he no doubt wished she would. Loesie did not meet the “appropriate lady’s companion” standards. The world of willow magic and wind magic was strange to him, but he seemed to understand the need for her to talk to other people with magic, even if those people were a little odd.
Probably Johanna’s mother also had the gift of magic, although her father had never explicitly said so. He would have been used to magic. He might even have married her because of that; many river and ocean traders did.
“This is the thing that worries me. There are lots of rumours about impending attack that seem to have no basis, but when you add up all the stories, the picture becomes quite disturbing. You have seen these demons, and Master Willems has seen them. Your friend has been attacked by them, and had her family killed by them. People like to say that demons don’t exist, but things live in those eastern forests that no one has any knowledge of. I’ve only been into the edges of the forest, but I’ve heard the murmurings and whisperings in the leaves.”
Johanna nodded. She had been with him in that Burovian forest. The thought of that forest still made her shiver, with its gnarled tree trunks and whispering leaves. She still heard the voices, and still felt the fear that they might call her deeper in until she ha
d lost her way.
Father continued, “People from the court say that the king genuinely believed that Celine would rise from the dead. One night, soon after her death, he claimed to have seen her ghost wander the corridors of the palace. He got the Shepherd to do prayer sessions at the spot where he saw her. When that didn’t work, he started giving money to the Church. He built a new church. He bought the statue. He encouraged everyone in Saardam to go to church. More prayer would mean more chance that Celine came back.”
“But that obviously didn’t work either.”
Father shook his head and sighed. “It gets very strange after that. The court envoy told me that the king employed an ever-stranger string of people. He said they danced on her grave and performed rituals.”
“Was that why a Burovian religious order got involved?”
“I honestly don’t know.” But it worried him, she could see that.
A chill crept over her back. In her mind, she heard the words of Shepherd Romulus. You’re asking for someone who can perform an exorcism. The Church does not provide these people. Exorcisms are quackery that most likely make matters worse than they are. Demons are manifestations of the Triune. They are repelled by prayer, not by fake magicians with horseshoes, goat’s blood and other items that wouldn’t look out of place in the Lord of Fire’s dungeons.
Exorcism, necromancy, both aspects of the darkest corners of magic.
She looked out the window, where the roof of the palace protruded from above the houses.
Would King Nicholaos have been so stupid to have engaged the services of a necromancer? Why, if he was as devout a churchgoer as his behaviour suggested? Why, if his Church forbade any of those dark arts performed by people who were said to have sold their souls to the Lord of Fire? Why, if the king had another child? “If I understand correctly, the king wants to quickly put together a bigger army because he fears trouble with Burovian magicians?”
“That pretty much sums up my conclusions. Another reason why you could be a good choice: your unusual abilities.”
Father grabbed her hand and squeezed it, and that was as much a sign of affection as he would ever give her.
Chapter 8
* * *
A QUEUE of coaches lined up to get into the forecourt of the palace, a fenced compound surrounded by gild-topped metal latticework. The driver whistled for the horse to slow down. The horse seemed to dislike one of the other horses in the queue. It made snorting noises and shied sideways. The driver yelled at it, but that had little effect.
Other horses in the queue also snorted. One of them gave a soft neigh. From a bit further off came another shout. “Whoa! Easy, girl, easy.”
Father peered out the window. “What’s spooking the horses?”
From her position in the coach, Johanna could see over the wall to the right of the palace into the garden, an oasis of tranquillity compared to the forecourt. It was where the king grew his roses and where water tinkled in mysterious ponds surrounded by weeping willows. Johanna had been there once, back in the time when Queen Cygna held Children’s Day. Both the prince and his younger sister would have been there, but she only remembered Celine. She had been wearing a yellow dress and her mother had to keep telling her not to crawl on the grass. The princess chattered a lot and spoke like Johanna’s grandmother, very formal and stiff. Johanna remembered finding it funny, and she remembered not wanting to curtsy for a girl younger than her. It all seemed so painful and awkward now that Celine had been dead two years.
The rose garden now held a gazebo in her memory.
The coach reached the bottom of the steps. With a wobble of the floor and a creak of his leather boots, the driver left his position to open the door.
Father went out first and then helped Johanna, because the awkward dress with its hoops made it impossible for her to see the narrow coach steps.
A huge crowd had assembled near the palace entrance, held back by two lines of stiff-faced guards in Carmine livery. The onlookers were common people who came to watch the latest in fashion and catch up on the juiciest gossip: who went with whom, what who was wearing, that sort of thing.
The sun had just set and a soft glow of candlelight flooded from the porch and main foyer, where Johanna caught glimpses of the genteel folk in colourful garb. She’d been worried that her dress was too exuberantly blue but, judging by the line of noble ladies lined up for the entrance, it looked like bright colours were in fashion this year.
A ripple of surprise went through the crowd when Father took her by the arm and guided her up the steps.
Johanna didn’t miss the comments.
“Look, it’s Dirk Brouwer and Johanna.”
“Isn’t that a gorgeous dress that she’s wearing?”
Johanna averted her eyes. At least they didn’t say She looks like a dressed-up cow. But some of them were sure to be thinking that, or worse things like Did she buy her way into the ball?
Johanna felt uneasy. Those people on the other side of the line of guards were the ones she’d have to talk to tomorrow about accounts and deliveries of spices and cheese. She wasn’t any better than any of them and didn’t want to look like she thought she was.
She remembered another visit to the palace, when she was sixteen, the age at which all young women were presented to the King. That had been a most miserable and wet day, in which Carlotta Franzen had slipped and fallen flat on her backside. She now remembered that Prince Roald had been there, and he had rushed forward to help her up. He’d been a gangly youth, and his startling blue eyes had the expression of a frightened rabbit. Blond-haired and still soft-cheeked, the prince had not been unpleasant to look at. Carlotta had been insufferable all afternoon.
On top of the steps a throng of beautifully-primped nobles waited to be allowed into the foyer and hall, the men in rich-coloured suits, the women in frilly dresses, with extravagant hair—some wearing high-heeled shoes on which they could barely walk. Johanna knew most of them. She noticed some daintily raised eyebrows at her and Father’s presence.
The palace stood on a low rise and from the top of the steps, you could see over the entire city. To the left were the royal gardens which sloped to the Saar River. Then the harbour and the merchant district with its gabled houses and red roofs. In the distance were the windmills which kept the island on which the city was built above water, and all around, flat land, intersected by silver ribbons of canals. At the horizon there was a lighter-coloured ribbon of sand dunes, but the ocean on the other side remained out of view.
Johanna met the eyes of a young woman who had been looking at her, Carlise d’Agincourt. She had beautiful golden hair held in place with jewelled pins. Her dress was golden with white lace and fitted her narrow waist perfectly. She stood next to an older woman, her mother, who was from the de Weert family but had attained her noble status through her marriage to a Burovian minor royal.
Of course these women were all there for the same reason. Many of them were like her, from families who would not have been the first choice for the prince’s bride.
She felt very small. Father seemed so certain that King Nicholaos liked her, but seeing all these beautiful people, she doubted that he would even remember who she was.
A dog started growling and barking. It strained at the leash held by one of the palace guards. A woman lower on the steps squealed. In the forecourt, a coach horse neighed, and then another one. More dogs started barking. Men shouted orders.
Someone behind Johanna said, “He shouldn’t have brought the stupid animal. It spooks the horses.”
The woman who had squealed was Gertrude Hendricksen, one of the guests. She was here with her father, and he, of course, had the monkey on his shoulder.
Guess that explained why the horses were so nervous. Johanna shivered, although the evening was quite warm.
Finally they entered the foyer with its chandeliers and stained glass windows and smooth mosaic floor with the Carmine House’s crest—the roos
ter—in stone of various shades of brown. It was noisy in here, with talk echoing back from the ceiling. Chamber music floated in through the open doors which led into what was called the garden room, a big and luscious hall, where all official functions were held.
A courtier came to take Johanna’s overcoat and Father led her into the hall. The dais with the king’s, queen’s and prince’s chairs was at the far end. A long table had been set up here, with a pristine white tablecloth and precious gold-rimmed plates and crystal glasses. A chamber orchestra played at the bottom of the steps to the dais. More groups of dressed-up noble guests stood here and there on the floor.
If the royal family was in some kind of trouble, this hall definitely showed no sign of it.
Long tables with glittering silverware were set around the perimeter of the room, tables groaning with delicate porcelain, crystal glasses, carafes of wine, gold tableware and dainty candle holders with slender white candles. Servants were carrying in trays of exquisite canapés, fancy cheeses and unfamiliar fruit, and covered dishes with huge silver lids that left wonderful smells in their wake.
No one was dancing yet. People stood talking in knots of garishly-coloured costumes, ruffled collars and fluffed-up hair, in a display of the latest Lurezian fashion. Johanna hated to think of how much money in clothing, footwear, hats and jewellery was walking around on the dance floor. That was probably her merchant upbringing talking.
All these women must have spent the entire day in front of the mirror. The scents of heavy perfume and powder threatened to overwhelm her. What was she doing here? This was not how Father had brought her up. This was not the type of life she wanted.
A couple of nobles deep in discussion burst out in laughter as Johanna and her father passed. Amongst them stood Octavio Nieland, a tall imposing figure. He wore his dark hair in a ponytail, sleek and simple. His shirt was quality silk, cream-coloured, with simple ruffles, and his overcoat was dark blue. He held a long-stemmed glass with a be-ringed hand. He met Johanna’s eyes over the rim of his glass. His eyebrows rose.
