The Dragon King

by Patty Jansen

“Of course, we won’t let you go alone,” Mina said. “We’ve come with you all this way, and done all those crazy things with you. Do you think we would give up so easily?”

  “I think you should all stay here, especially people with children,” Nellie protested.

  “And let you go by yourself?” Wim said.

  “I’m in much less danger than you.”

  Gertie said, “You escape the palace with a dragon, and people call you the Dragonspeaker, and you’re in less danger than any of us?”

  “I was never in jail and wasn’t going to be drowned.”

  “It’s dangerous for all of us,” Henrik said. “But it’s more dangerous not to know where Bruno is.”

  “But I’m not missing any of the action,” Agatha said. “I can come. I’ve done nothing wrong. They can’t prove anything against me. I’m just a poor woman. They don’t care about poor women.”

  Nellie did not want Agatha on this trip. “Please. It’s going to be a very quick trip, just to find Bruno. We’ll all go back to Saardam later, when we have a plan.”

  Whatever that plan would be, and if Adalbert Verdonck wasn’t going to take the throne by force with a hired army first, in which case any plan would be irrelevant.

  “You saved all of us,” Wim said. “You risked your life, and you didn’t need to do that. You risked your life for Bruno. And as many of us as possible will go to help you now.”

  “Yes, I haven’t come all this way to let this boy turn me into an exile,” Gisele said.

  Jantien said nothing, but when Nellie met her eyes she said, “I have to think of the children. They are far too young to do anything, but believe me if I didn’t have them I would come with you.”

  “I believe you,” Nellie said she was close to tears with all the support she was getting. She had not expected this at all.

  In fact, the only one who said nothing was the only person Nellie thought would have a very good reason to visit Saardam: Madame Sabine.

  She sat in the corner of the fruit-picker’s kitchen in the barn, cradling a cup of tea. She didn’t look up or show any sign that she heard what was discussed.

  Nellie didn’t understand her. She had to know about the situation her sons were in without their father. Did she really care nothing for two vulnerable boys, no matter how poorly they behaved?

  Henrik assured the women that they’d be careful, and told them that on this trip, more people wouldn’t be a help. The two of them would be safer on their own, but there would be plenty of time for the others to help Nellie later.

  But first she and Henrik needed to find Bruno and bring him back or make sure that he was otherwise in a safe place in Saardam.

  The idea of the dragon being with the prince clamped a cold hand around Nellie’s heart. What would he order it to do? She knew the dragon couldn’t defeat the fire dog by itself. It might need Bruno’s magic to help it, and as far as Nellie knew, magic was worth little when untrained.

  Nellie ate while Henrik told the group that they would leave in the morning the next day and would be back as soon as possible.

  One by one, the women finished eating and left the kitchen. Mina had insisted that they work for their keep, so Lord Verdonck’s housekeeper had brought a large basket with items that needed mending, mostly men’s clothes that needed to be made smaller. Nellie suspected they were the father’s clothes needing to fit the son.

  Only a few people were left in the room when Madame Sabine slipped into the seat opposite Nellie. In the low light, her face looked haunted.

  “Did he say anything about the boys?”

  So she did care. “Nothing more than I’ve already told you. Casper has assumed the position of Regent. He seems to be supported by the church.”

  “That filthy priest.” Her face twisted into a snarl. “He had my husband around his little finger. I don’t suspect my sons have anything to say against him. They’re just as weak as their father.”

  “Wouldn’t you want to help them?”

  She laughed. “As if they would listen to me. Nobody listens to me. I can’t even arrange a ride out of this place. Their father has spoiled those boys rotten. What can I tell them? Study science. Work hard. They’re not interested in any of that. They want easy lives sucking on the teat of the church.”

  Unfortunately, Nellie had to agree with her, but she didn’t want to say anything bad about the boys in front of their mother. If even a mother couldn’t find it in her heart to love her children, then things were very bad indeed.

  She had finished her meal and made to get up from the table when Madame Sabine said, “Sweets.”

  Nellie stopped. “Excuse me?”

  “Sweet. They love sweets.”

  “Sure.” Which person didn’t love sweets?

  “If you need to get into their rooms, offer them sweets. I used to do it all the time, until they figured out that when I gave them sweets, I wanted something in return and it stopped working.”

  All right. “Thank you for letting me know.”

  Nellie had no intention of trying to see Casper or Frederick.

  “I used to worry about their teeth,” Madame Sabine continued.

  Nellie thought, Used to?

  Madame Sabine didn’t follow it up with more information, so Nellie picked up her plate again. When she turned away, she noticed the glitter in Madame Sabine’s eyes.

  Madame Sabine noticed that Nellie had seen it and turned away.

  Nellie gave her plate to Koby who was helping Agatha with the washing up and went to the main part of the barn. It was much colder here and the women who had gone to work on Lord Verdonck’s clothes sat around the fire with blankets over their legs.

  Nellie would have joined them, but since she and Henrik were leaving early in the morning, she needed to pack her meagre possessions for the journey. Henrik had said they could stay at the house of one of his daughters and Nellie wanted those people to have a good impression of her. She might be a pauper right now, but that didn’t mean she had to look like one.

  Walking past the door to the kitchen, she heard voices.

  Was Agatha really talking to Madame Sabine?

  * * *

  True to his word, Lord Verdonck sent a stablehand to the barn with two horses and a cart the next morning. Nellie and Henrik had packed up—not that there was much to pack.

  Most of her clothes, she wore, and the rest could fit into a small bag. She debated whether to leave her father’s book behind, but she didn’t know if she would be back here, and they might need it. She even packed her copy of the Book of Verses, although she had debated giving it to one of the children who needed it more than she did.

  Nellie and Henrik sat on the driver’s bench and the tray remained conspicuously empty except for the blanket that Bruno had used when he slept in the barn.

  Nellie and Henrik travelled through the countryside, following the road that Zelda must also take to the city. It was the only road, and it led past the front of Lord Verdonck’s estate. They went down the long lane and then turned right to go to the city. This early in the morning, a few people travelled along the road on their way to market with their produce or crafts. They sat on their carts huddled in their coats and barely acknowledged Henrik and Nellie whose cart—being empty—was much faster.

  The cart trundled along the cobblestones. Henrik asked her if she wanted to ride for a while, but it was a very long time since Nellie had ridden and she remembered how sore her backside had been back then.

  The sun was up and provided only a tiny bit of warmth to their cold bones. The frost was just starting to melt and the low hanging fog did little to increase the temperature.

  Gradually they encountered more houses and more people with carts and horses coming the other way, and people mending fences and doing other farm work.

  The Verdonck estate was not very far from the city, and on the same side of the river, and gradually, little settlements dotted the countryside.

  People greeted Nelli
e and Henrik along the way, and occasionally a bored guard waved them through a checkpoint. They looked like peasants going to the market. But Henrik said that they weren’t bothered because Adalbert Verdonck controlled this land and the Verdonck seal adorned the horses’ headgear.

  “We’re so close to Saardam,” Nellie said. Already, she could see the spire of the church tower poking above the horizon.

  So pretty.

  “I hope we will find it as peaceful as it looks,” Henrik said.

  “I hope nothing bad has happened to Bruno. If he’s been caught and locked up, I’m not sure I could get him out again.”

  “That boy is a danger to himself.”

  “I hope he isn’t a danger to others.”

  And with that they had arrived back at the subject that Nellie dreaded. Having seen how King Roald was unsuited to govern, she wondered if it took a particular type of person to become a good ruler. You couldn’t assume that just because someone was born into a family, he or she was a good match for the job. And if Bruno wasn’t a good match to be king, who would take the position?

  So many people were waiting in line to take over. They could appoint another Regent—they would have to because Bruno was only fourteen—but would the people of the city accept the new Regent knowing what a disaster the previous Regent had been?

  The closer they got to the city the less certain she was that this would all work out. They were rushed into doing things, they would be discovered, they would all be thrown in jail and that would be the end of the royal family.

  “I don’t know what we’ll do any more,” Nellie said. “It seems that, wherever we turn, people try to take advantage of each other and of us. When we came to that nunnery I thought we had found where I would be happy to spend the rest of my days. Then Zelda came in, and it turns out that they’re in with the same plot.”

  “You’ve seen all the things that different families do when they’re in power and when they want to have power. Nothing should surprise you any more.”

  “It doesn’t. But that doesn’t mean it doesn’t disappoint me.”

  And then they talked of all their memories of old king Nicholaos and of the time that they had to flee the city. It turned out that Henrik had been commandeered to work for the Fire Wizard, and had managed to get away with being placed with the city guards.

  “That was a crazy time,” he said. “Of course, I was much younger then, but part of me wonders whether, if the time ever came back, I would be swayed as easily as I was then to do as I did. I was no hero. But Martha and the girls needed me, and I had seen what happened to people who went against the Fire Wizard’s word.”

  “We were all much younger,” Nellie said. “I was very naive back then. I truly thought that only if everyone went to church they would know what was good and bad. It never occurred to me to think that people in the church could be bad. Misguided, yes; but evil, no. Because otherwise the Triune would never accept them, let alone allow them to rise to important positions in the church.”

  “The Triune doesn’t allow people to do things. The church is made up out of people who allow other people to do things, and people are fallible.”

  That was true, too. Her father’s experience had made that clear.

  Henrik snorted. “Here I was, thinking about retirement.”

  “I’ve been wondering about that too.”

  “The winters get colder every year, and it becomes harder to get out of bed. Especially when I’m on duty very early.”

  “I have nowhere else to go.” But that had been her fear when she lived at the palace. She had nowhere else to go when she worked in the palace. Now that she didn’t work there anymore, she was already at the nowhere that she didn’t have to go to. It was strangely liberating. She had nothing left to lose.

  Henrik said, “I’m still thinking I might join another army, but I may be too old. Otherwise, one of my daughters may have to put up with me.”

  And then they both laughed, because being sad about not having anywhere to go in old age was just a strange thing.

  He continued, “I have some savings. I was thinking I might be able to work for a landowner family or something like that.”

  Nellie said, “I would really like a small house somewhere where I can grow my own food and have some chickens and then maybe sell some eggs and some vegetables or pickles or embroidery.”

  By now, they had come to the outskirts of the city. Saardam was not a fortress city, and while a past king had built a wall with a gate, it had since become obsolete because people had built outside the old city walls, and no one patrolled the gate any more. In short, people were leaving the city and no one cared very much about who came into the city. The Regent had never had enough guards to patrol the gates very closely.

  They took the cart and the horses to a stable where they paid for some hay. Then they went into the city.

  Nellie was surprised how perfectly normal the streets were. There was no sign of any disturbance. She listened for gossip on the street, but the talk was all about normal daily things. In fact, it was disturbing how normal everything looked. When she had come back while the Fire Wizard was ruling the city, the signs of fear and destruction had been everywhere. She had expected the city to be somewhat like that, but nothing could be further from the truth.

  In the marketplace, there were even more sellers than there had been when Nellie was still in the city. It seemed as if some people had deemed it safe to come out. Maybe they were desperate for money. “They probably just come because of the better weather,” Henrik said.

  That could be true, too. The weather had been dry, even if sometimes misty, but the snow was gone.

  In winter, people did pick the best times to make the journey to the city.

  They walked across the market square, looked at the produce and listened to the gossip, but what they heard was all about trivial things: annoyances, weddings, deaths, that sort of thing.

  Then Nellie came across a cheese seller who was talking to someone at a neighbouring stand.

  “And then, according to my friend, he said bring all the staff into the audience room. And when they came, he made them all kneel on the floor and bow their heads to him as he walked between them telling them how useless they were.”

  “I have heard that he does this all the time.”

  “It’s a disgrace and an embarrassment. They should send in some adults to sort them out.”

  A customer came to the stand and the conversation turned to cheese.

  Nellie and Henrik continued, and Henrik said to Nellie. “Casper is making himself very popular, I hear.”

  But there was no word of where Bruno might be.

  In between the market stalls they could see the palace gates, and although it was the middle of the day, the gates were closed. A few guards stood there, and Henrik knew them, so he didn’t want to go too close.

  A man went up to the guards and proceeded to argue with them, with much waving of hands. Nellie went closer to listen, but Henrik didn’t like it.

  “Those men are trained to know everyone who walks through the palace gates. They will know and recognise you.”

  So Nellie had to stay in between the market stalls, and caught only shards of the conversation, which appeared to be about some prearranged business the man had in the palace that he was now prevented from entering.

  “Why?” He wanted to know. “I’ve known the young lord since he was a little mite and have made trousers for him since he was a little boy. What is happening behind those gates that can’t see the light of day?”

  To which the reply was that the guards had detected the activity of traitors, and that the housekeeper had ordered the gates closed so that they could conduct a search of the palace.

  That was nonsense. Nellie knew that the housekeeper was just a servant and had nowhere near that level of authority.

  So. Casper had ordered the gates closed? No, because the guards would have said so.

  The she
pherd had ordered the gates closed?

  Regardless of the influence of magic, Nellie liked to think that the citizens of Saardam would have a problem with the shepherd ordering anything.

  The question remained: what had happened that had made someone—possibly the shepherd—order the gates closed and all visits cancelled?

  No mention of Bruno anywhere, of course. And they weren’t here to investigate the palace’s problems.

  “If you had to make a guess, where would you expect him to go?” Henrik asked.

  “The shepherd’s house, the church, maybe the houses at the back where the monks are staying.”

  “Well then, why don’t we go to the church?”

  Chapter 14

  * * *

  NELLIE HAD FEARED they would end up having to go to the church.

  By now, little was left of the institution she had loved. She feared meeting the shepherd, and she had never considered the main church to be welcoming in the first place. With the things in the crypts, with the scenes she had witnessed under its vaulted ceiling, the church had become a daunting place to visit. It felt wrong.

  A steady trickle of people were going in and out through the open church doors. Mothers with children, a group of young men, two older women.

  To be honest, Nellie had never seen many people visit the church during daytime. Yes, the doors were always open, but the only people who came in regularly were older women coming to light a candle for sick relatives.

  Especially unusual were the young men who now walked down the steps and turned into the street that ran past the side of the church.

  Nellie felt the wrongness the moment she and Henrik stepped into the dark vestibule. First was the smell of burnt wood. Then, so many people were here who normally would never come. They all either walked down the centre aisle to or from the altar, or they stood in front of a line of wooden chairs with a rope strung between them that closed off an area around the altar. They were looking at something. They knelt to pray.

  “What’s going on?” Nellie whispered to Henrik.

  But Henrik, being only a casual church visitor by virtue of his job, had no idea.