by Patty Jansen
Chapter 15
JOHANNA AWOKE to a ray of light on her face, feeling cold and sore all over. She stared at the bottom of the doors of the empty hold, where normally grain was stored.
She sat up, pushing the oiled cloth aside, letting biting cold air touch her skin. A thin shard of light came into the hold from where the cover had been left ajar. There was no sound except the slapping of water.
Nellie was still asleep next to her, wearing her clothes and resting her head on a pile of empty grain sacks. Loesie was gone.
Johanna rose. Her clothes were damp from the cloying humidity. She draped the cloth—normally used to cover the cargo in the hold—back over Nellie, who stirred. Her face, pale and smudged, scrunched briefly, but relaxed again as she rolled onto her back.
Poor Nellie.
Johanna clambered up the rickety ladder to the deck. The countryside around the boat was delicate green under a thick layer of mist. The mooring ropes were tied to a couple of mooring posts that were normally used by barges to wait until they could come into harbour. Last night there had been two other boats, but they had gone.
There was a small beach and reeds to the sides. A couple of ducks paddled along the edge of the reed bed.
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?”
“No, I am not, but—” Had he already forgotten that his father was dead? Did he understand what dead meant?
“If I marry you I can touch you, right?”
“Yes, but—”
“Then we should get married. I want to touch a woman.”
“Maybe you should discuss that with your court advisors. A crown prince doesn’t just marry the first girl he comes across.”
“Oh, you mean the Reverend Romulus?”
Since when was he a court advisor? “Yes, if you want.”
“Is he married?”
“No. He’s a priest.”
“Then how can he tell me what I should do?”
Johanna couldn’t restrain a snort of laughter. “You best never let him hear that.”
He giggled. “You think it’s funny I said that?”
“It’s not appropriate.”
“When something is funny, it’s never appropriate.”
Johanna laughed aloud; she couldn’t help it.
He gave a squeal. “You think I’m funny!” He slapped his thigh. “A woman thinks I’m funny. The other ones just sneak into my room and bow.” He put on a high voice. “Your majesty, do you want tea? Do you want me to do up your shoelaces? Ha ha ha ha!”
He did such a convincing imitation of a courtier that Johanna laughed again.
“Shh, Your Highness, sit still so I can do up the buttons.”
Laughing felt good. How nice it would be to be able to forget the horrific scenes from last night and the hopeless situation they found themselves in. Roald didn’t really care. He was incapable of caring or had a short memory. Who knew what went on in his head? Because clearly, something went on in there and while he was certainly odd and childish, stupid was not how she’d describe him.
She did up the buttons on his shirt.
“I’m sorry, but your trousers are still really wet. I’ve asked Nellie to hang them close to the furnace.”
He rose. “That doesn’t matter. I don’t like wearing them anyway.”
“But you can’t go outside like this. And you’ll be cold.” She looked around the cabin and her gaze rested on an empty grain sack that was tucked under the desk. “I can make you a skirt out of this, so at least you can go into the fresh air.” Some of the Burovian warriors wore short skirts.
She crawled under the desk to retrieve the sack, aware of his keen gaze on her backside.
Did people in the palace really dress him every day? Did his mother do that for him? Surely he didn’t treat all female courtiers like this. Did he? And they put up with that behaviour?
His waist was very slender and the sack fitted around him like a skirt. With great embarrassment, she noticed how his underwear strained in his crotch. Heavens.
She took his belt and looped it around his waist. “There.” She stepped back looking at her handiwork.
“See? I didn’t touch you.”
Thank heavens.
“But I want to touch you.”
“No, you can’t.”
“Why not?”
“Because I’m not a cheap woman.”
“I have money. Lots of it. That’s what sailors do, right?”
She cringed. “No, Your Highness, because you are not a sailor. You are a prince.”
He let himself fall back on the bed in a theatrical gesture. “Being a prince is boring.” He sighed. “If I’m nice, will you let me touch you?”
“Your Highness, you shouldn’t speak of touching women all the time. That’s not—” She’d almost said appropriate again, but she realised he probably had no idea of what it meant. That was his problem. He did not understand appropriate. “Touching women is very special. You don’t talk about it with other people.”
“Oh, like a secret?”
“Yes.” Fine, if that got him to shut up.
“Oh, I like secrets. Can it be our secret? You and me?”
“Um—I suppose.” She was desperate to get out of here.
At that moment, there was a squeal from the galley.
What now?
Johanna opened the door. Nellie stood at the stove staring at smoke rising from the pan. “Oh look, Mistress Johanna. This is much too hot!”
Johanna bent over the pan. Blackened porridge coated the bottom of it. This was probably why the pan had been dirty in the first place: it was too thin for cooking on hot fires.
Nellie cried, “What can I do now? What are we going to eat? I have to start all over again!” She wiped her cheeks.
“Calm down, Nellie.”
�
��But you all think I’m stupid. I don’t know what I’m doing today. I’m not a cook, but—”
Roald came into the galley. He picked up the smoking pan and poked at the bottom with a spatula that hung above the stove. He scraped some of the blackened porridge away.
Johanna retreated, pushing Nellie out the side door onto the deck, still sniffing.
Roald scraped all the burnt bits into a heap and tossed them on the sideboard of the stove. Then he took a chipped cup from the back shelf and filled it with water. He tipped this into the pan. He measured out oats from the sack and tipped this into the water.
“You can’t put too much oats in,” he said, and his voice sounded definitive.
Nellie turned to Johanna, frowning. “He knows how to cook?”
Johanna put her finger to her lips.
That the prince wasn’t entirely normal also didn’t mean that he couldn’t listen. In fact, she suspected that he could do just that very well.
Somewhere in that Burovian sanatorium, he had clearly learned to cook camp meals. Johanna suspected that sanatorium was probably not the right word for where he had been. He seemed to have spent a lot of time outdoors.
Not much later, all four of them sat on the covers of the hold, eating bland and watery but steaming hot porridge. Until then, Johanna had not realised how hungry she was and how much it affected her mood. They ate until there was nothing left in the pan. When she finished, Johanna lay back on the sloping surface of the cover, watching the clouds track through the sky.
Nellie sat with her knees pulled up against her chest, looking miserable. Loesie had stayed a bit away from the group, while Roald was using his fingers to scrape every last bit of porridge from the plate.
“It was good. Thank you,” she said, but he continued licking the bowl and didn’t react.
“It wasn’t good. It needs honey.” He still didn’t look at anyone.
“We don’t have honey.”
“I want honey. Tell the kitchen staff to order honey.”