by Patty Jansen
The most eerie thing was the complete silence. The church bells had stopped ringing. If anyone was still shouting, their voices were inaudible from here. That raised the question: was there anyone left to shout at all?
Over the misty paddocks, she could see palls of smoke still rising from the city, although the flames would not be visible in daylight. From a distance the devastation looked oddly peaceful.
She could see no signs of life.
Loesie sat hunched at the captain’s bench, with an oiled cloth over her shoulders, staring motionless over the riverbank. When Johanna came up to her, she started to sag sideways, then gasped and pulled herself upright. She looked around in a confused way.
Johanna sat down next to her. She had done a good job in detaching the sea cow harness from the stern and loosening their individual harnesses. The cows were grazing on the bottom, stirring up clouds of murky water punctuated with bubbles. Wherever there were sea cows, there were always bubbles.
“Have you seen anyone?”
Loesie shook her head.
“Any other ships?”
She shook her head again. Her face was pale and smudged.
“You go and have a sleep. I’ll take over.”
She rose and only then Johanna noticed a rusted knife in her hands.
“What are you doing with that thing? You said there was no one here.”
Loesie clutched the weapon to her chest. “Ghghghghghghgh!” There was a wild look in her eyes.
“Whoa, calm down. I’m not going to do anything to you.” Johanna held her hands up, heart thudding. For a moment, it was as if Loesie hadn’t recognised her.
“Ghghghghghgh!” Loesie’s voice sounded distressed. There were tears in her eyes.
She backed away slowly until she was a few paces away from Johanna, then turned on her heel and ran.
Nellie was just climbing out of the hold, and Loesie almost crashed into her. Nellie gave a startled shout when Loesie pushed past and disappeared into the hold.
Nellie strode to Johanna’s side, her cheeks red. “That’s what I mean, Mistress Johanna. She doesn’t act like a normal person.”
“There’s nothing I can do about it,” Johanna said. She both agreed with Nellie that there was something disturbingly wrong with Loesie, and wished she’d stop complaining. “Loesie is my friend. I’m not going to abandon her.”
Nellie gave her the I-never-approved-of-this-friend look.
Good grief! If it wasn’t for Loesie, they might all be dead along with a lot of other people in town.
Johanna let herself drop on the wooden shutters that covered the hold. The willow wood sang to her. It showed her smoke drifting through an orange sky. The glow from the fires reflected in the slow-flowing water of the river. There had been a shower overnight and now the banks of the river were cloaked in mist. The road along the river glistened with puddles.
The planks moved when Nellie sat down next to her.
“I’m sorry. I don’t really want to abandon anyone either. I shouldn’t have said that.” She folded her hands in her lap. “But she does scare me. What is wrong with her?”
Johanna sighed. “I wish I knew.”
Whatever had been done to Loesie scared her, too. Whoever had done it, and why. The images from the wood had shown her bears, and the body of a woman. She now wished that she had the basket Loesie had given her, since the magic faded from them after a few weeks, and, knowing what she knew now, she would like to see the images again.
“Have you seen anyone this morning?” Nellie asked. She scanned the horizon where mist cloaked the burning city. “Is anyone still alive?” Her voice sounded small.
“I don’t know.”
But at that moment, there was a faint sound of a whistle behind them. Johanna turned into the light of the early sun. Something moved on the road that led into town. She went into the galley to get the spyglass.
“What is it, Mistress Johanna? Can you see something?”
Johanna put the spyglass to her eye. The eyepiece fogged up but she wiped it with her dress.
“There.” She pointed at the riverbank, where the group of men was coming over a ridge, towards the city. There were at least fifty of them. Many of them rode horses. She could see no bears.
“I see them too. Can you see who they are?”
Johanna studied the people, still too far away to recognise faces. The view field of the spyglass was not very big and it was hard to hold it still for long enough to study individual people. They were also silhouetted against the sun. But several people wore furs or dark clothing. They also had dogs, hence the whistling.
“I don’t know. It doesn’t look good. Let’s hide in the cabin. I don’t want to be seen when they get here.” Especially not with Prince Roald aboard.
They went into the galley, which had a small window to the side. Pressed against each other so that they could both see, Johanna and Nellie watched the group ride past: rugged men in leather jerkins with long and untidy hair, laughing and talking as if they owned the world. They were bandits.
Johanna only dared speak once they had passed. “They’ve occupied the town.”
“Where are they from?”
“My guess: Burovia.” But gangs of Burovian forest bandits would never come this far out of their usual home. Someone had to have ordered them here. Someone who was holding these bands of rogues together in a way they had never been before. And for some reason—was it just something that King Nicholaos had done?—they decided to invade.
“Do you still think we can go back home?”
Johanna shook her head. “Not now. Not with the prince. If they killed his parents, they’d have no trouble killing him. We need to make sure he’s safe first.”
Nellies eyes grew wide. “Then what are we going to do?”
“We should go the Aroden castle. The duke will help us. The castle will be a safe place for the prince while we find out what is going on in the city.” Not to mention that her uncle lived there. He would surely help her find Father. “Come on, let’s get going.”
She rose and went to the bow where Loesie had tied up the harness and the individual ropes that held each of the cows. A standard team consisted of eight animals. The pull beam that stuck out the front of the boat had a central bar and eight cross-bars, each with a set of slots for the ropes that went from the cow’s harness to the bow.
She untied the ropes and slowly reeled the animals in, one at a time. She asked Nellie to guide the ropes into the slots, and tie them off at the bar on the deck, but her knots were awkward and it was clear she had never done anything like this.
Neither, for that matter, had Johanna. She spent a long time getting cows into their right positions in the team. All she knew was that you started from the front, but the animals must have known that she was inexperienced, because they twisted the ropes and went into the wrong places, tangling up their harnesses. There was, she remembered too late, some sort of hierarchy in the team. The dominant animals were supposed to be at the front, but how could she workout which ones they were? One sea cow looked pretty much like the other.
Nellie stood helplessly to the side. The one time that she tried to help, she almost fell off the boat. Since Johanna didn’t think Nellie could swim, she told Nellie to keep out of the way.
Meanwhile, the sun rose and rose. A couple of horses and carts came past, but most of those Johanna judged to be local farm traffic. They had to get moving.
“Look, can you go and get Loesie to help us?” she asked Nellie.
Nellie left and Johanna continued struggling with the tangling ropes and the cheeky cows.
There was a scream.
Johanna jerked around, letting the rope slip from her fingers.
“Nellie!”
She came running towards Johanna. Her cheeks were red. “Oh, Mistress Johanna, it’s awful. The prince . . .”
Roald. Her heart thumped. Something had happened to Roald. They’d forgotten to give him pills or some
other medicine. “Is he all right?”
She made for the cabin, but Nellie held her back. “Yes, he’s fine but you can’t see him like this.”
“What is wrong, Nellie?”
She burst into tears. “The prince . . . the prince . . .”
What?
“Calm down, Nellie. Tell me. Sit down.” Johanna sat her on the edge of the cover of the cargo hold. She was shaking and shivering. Tears were running over her cheeks.
“The prince,” Johanna prompted. She glanced at the horizon. They should really get out of here soon.
“I went to get the witch, as you said—”
“Loesie. Use her name.”
“Loesie. I walked past the cabin, and the door opened. The prince came out, and he . . .” Her eyes widened. “He was in his underclothes. Scandalous!”
Johanna breathed out a heavy sigh and had to restrain herself from rolling her eyes. He was in his underclothes! Good grief. “Come on, Nellie. There’s no time to worry about indecency. We need to hurry.”
“But Mistress Johanna, I can’t. I don’t know how to say this: he tried to touch me. Indecently.” She hid her face in her hands. “He grabbed me from behind, and he . . .” Her voice dissolved into sobs.
Oh, no. “Did he . . . hurt you?”
“No. I . . . hit him and I pushed him away. Oh, Johanna, I hit the crown prince.”
“Did he seem upset when you hit him?”
“No. He laughed at me. But I hit the crown prince!”
“Calm down, Nellie. Sit here. I’ll talk to him. But first, we have to get going. Here, hold onto these ropes, then I will get Loesie.”
Johanna wobbled along the narrow walkway, her legs uncertain. It was one thing talking to Nellie like she knew what to do, but another having to deal with the problem. Roald was a man and he was strong even though he didn’t look it. What would she do when he tried to grab her?
The door to the cabin was closed again. Fortunately. She’d deal with this later. There was no time now.
Johanna found Loesie under the oiled cloth in the hold. She lay down, but turned her head when Johanna came down the ladder. Her grey eyes blinked at the light.
“I’m sorry to keep you from your sleep, but I need your help. We need to get going, but I can’t handle the sea cows by myself.”
Loesie pushed herself up, attempting to straighten her dishevelled clothes. Johanna didn’t like the look in her eyes. Far-off, not really there. Not herself at all. What was going on in that mind of hers?
“I want to go to Aroden castle. We’ll be safe there. But I can’t get the cows in the harnesses by myself.” She almost said something about Nellie being useless, but that felt unkind. Nellie had never any experience in things like this, and Johanna couldn’t blame her. But she was a nuisance. Once they got going, Nellie would be able to make herself useful by cooking, but even that meant Johanna had to get the furnace going, because Nellie wouldn’t know how to do that.
There was so much to do. Normally, the Lady Sara had a captain and a minimum of four competent deck hands who knew what they were doing.
Loesie threw off the covers and accompanied Johanna up the ladder, past the door to the cabin—still closed—and to the front of the boat. She hissed and hmmmed and pointed at the rope harnesses. Yes, Johanna had probably gotten it all wrong.
Under Loesie’s direction, they managed to get each animal tied up to their individual bars in the beam. Loesie untied the mooring ropes and hauled them in. Feeling the pressure against their backs, the cows started swimming. Johanna flung the bait into the water to keep them going and the boat slowly started moving. Johanna scanned the riverbanks, but could no longer see any people.
Next, the furnace.
She went into the galley. Next to the furnace lay a stack of peat bricks and a basket of kindling. She put kindling and one fire brick inside the stove, then stuck a stick from the kindling basket into the glowing coals of the firebox. When it burned, she used it to light the kindling. Soon, the fire was going.
Meanwhile, she’d gone through the cupboards in the galley and found a pan, a couple of battered plates and an assortment of cutlery. There was also a bag of oats, so they could make porridge. She was beginning to get very hungry. She left Nellie to this task, because it was high time to look after Roald.
She knocked on the door that connected the galley and the cabin. “Your Highness? Do you need any help?”
A muffled voice came through the wood. “If you’re that crazy woman, then don’t come in.”
Nellie said, “That’s what he’s been saying all along, Mistress Johanna, and he’s talking about me. He—”
Johanna shushed her and opened the door. Roald sat at the edge of his bed, wearing nothing but his underpants.
Nellie shrieked.
Roald laughed.
“Calm down, calm down, Nellie.” But she noticed the skin on his chest, mostly hairless, but with a distinct tan. His arms were thin but with corded muscles. This probably accounted for the strength he had shown climbing up the side of the sloop last night. There was no way any of the women could win a physical argument with him, if he decided to do something stupid and if they needed to stop him.
His eyes, startlingly blue, met hers. He gave a dumb grin.
Johanna’s cheeks grew warm. Had he no shame? “Are you all right, Your Highness?”
“I’m hungry. Where is breakfast?”
“We’re working on it.”
“I want breakfast. They always bring me breakfast at this time. Where are the servants in this place?”
“There are none. We’re on a boat on the river. We should be lucky that we’re still alive, but you’re going to have to be a little bit more patient for breakfast.”
“I’m hungry.” His voice was angrier.
“Yes. We’re hungry, too. Breakfast is coming.” It just might not be what you expect. “But first, you must get dressed. You can’t have breakfast like this. Wait, I’ll get your clothes.”
She went back into the galley, where Nellie was scrubbing the inside of the pan with a piece of cloth. Her cheeks were red with the effort.
“What are you doing?”
“This pan is disgusting.”
“I’m sure that doesn’t matter for once.” It was only stained anyway.
“I’m not going to eat breakfast out of anything this dirty.”
“The porridge will be cooked! Come on, Nellie, everyone is hungry! It doesn’t matter.”
“It matters to me. Everyone stop screaming at me! I can’t do this. I’m useless.” She let go of the pan, which fell to the floor with a clang. She hid her face in her hands and started sobbing.
Great. She was stuck on this boat with a prince who wanted to be served, a witch who couldn’t speak and a maid who had fallen to pieces.
Johanna picked up the pan, filled it with water and set it on the stove. Then she turned to Nellie.
“Listen to me, Nellie. You’re going to do this. This is not what I would have chosen to do today either, but this is what we’ve got. I, for one, would love to know where Father is.” She had to pause because her voice threatened to crack. “But we’ve got other responsibilities. You and I are the only sane people on this ship and we’re going to have to keep it together. So you’re going to do your share of work, and stop complaining about things we can’t do anything about, and just stop being prissy or I’ll push you overboard. And I mean it!” Her voice had become louder while she was speaking, and the last sentence rang in the silence.
Nellie started at her. She opened her mouth, licked her lips and closed it again. “You wouldn’t really do that, Mistress Johanna?”
Johanna shrugged. She felt ashamed. It was the first time ever she’d screamed at Nellie. She was losing it as well.
“Look, we’re all tired and hungry. Make the porridge. We’ll stop at a farm to see if we can barter something in return for some eggs or milk. I need Roald’s clothes. Where did you hang them?”
; “They were in front of the stove but I had to move them. They’re not dry.”
She handed Johanna a heavy bundle. The heavy velvet jacket was as wet as it had been last night. The shirt had some dry patches, but it was badly stained. The trousers were also still soaked.
“He can’t wear this. He’ll get sick.”
“We don’t have anything else.”
“Can you hang it closer to the fire so it can dry?”
Nellie looked like she wanted to protest again, but she thought the better of it and took the coat and trousers from Johanna.
She took the shirt into the cabin. They really needed to get different clothes because, for his safety, Roald couldn’t be seen in the Carmine jacket, but she didn’t know that any of them had money, and the nearest river towns were not until they reached Estland. If they got that far.
“I’m sorry, Your Highness, the rest of your clothes are still very wet.”
He took the shirt from her without a word. Made no attempt to put it on. His naked skin was covered in goose bumps, but it didn’t seem to bother him.
“If you want breakfast, you’re going to have to put the shirt on.”
He simply spread his arms.
So, she had to do that for him as well, huh? She shook out the shirt in order to hide that it wasn’t completely dry. In fact, damp was probably a better word for it. Yet he didn’t flinch or shiver when she put his arms in and pulled the shirt over his shoulders.
While she did up the buttons, he glanced at the door. “Where is the crazy woman?”
“You mean Nellie?” Seriously, he was getting under her skin. Didn’t anyone teach him manners? “She’s not crazy. She’s very upset that you touched her. You shouldn’t do that anymore.”
A small frown crossed his face. “I can’t touch a girl? My father said that the whole country would be mine, with all the girls in it.”
Well, your father was wrong, then. Good grief. “It is not appropriate to go around touching women, even if they are the women of your country. The women may be married to someone else, and the other person won’t be happy.”
“Oh.” His frown deepened. “My father says I should get married. Are you married?”
