by Patty Jansen
Chapter 16
THE SLOOP MOVED upriver at a steady pace. The mist rose mid-morning and the sun came out.
It was spring, the time when the river swelled and spread into the surrounding paddocks. The sea cows found it hard going and their movement was slow. Fortunately, also because of the water, no one on the riverbanks could get close enough to the Lady Sara to see who was on board.
A few boats met them coming down the river. Some of them Johanna even recognised, but they couldn’t stop and after a few attempts, she had to give up trying to warn them of the events in Saardam, judging that it was probably better not to draw attention to themselves for Roald’s safety. Women didn’t crew river sloops, and they would be very visible even if only because of that.
Between themselves, they gathered up anything that they could barter with farmers along the river in return for food, more comfortable clothes, sheets, blankets and, at Roald’s insistence, honey.
It was depressing to see how little they had.
They could not possibly give away Roald’s Carmine jacket, although it was more brown than red after its encounter with the brackish harbour water. He did have his pretty ruffled shirt and belt with an elaborate buckle. Johanna had no idea if it had any significance. But the jacket definitely did, and if anything, he needed something less conspicuous.
Johanna had a necklace and a brooch that was her mother’s, but she would rather work hard labour than trade either one.
Nellie had a few coins from their visit to the markets. She also had a small prayer book. “But please, Mistress Johanna, only show it when we couldn’t possibly survive without selling it.” She had tears in her eyes.
“We may need it badly,” Johanna said, although she had no idea how much of a market they would find in Estland for a book of Triune prayers.
Even if Estland hadn’t been hostile to the Church, people in the country usually lived by the rising and setting of the sun, and the seasons, and the cycles of growth and death, helped by magic or not. They didn’t need the Church. And more likely than not, they couldn’t read. A book of prayers wouldn’t be worth much to those people.
Roald had his seal ring and a heavy gold chain, but nothing of value that wouldn’t immediately give away his identity, or raise the suspicion of people likely to think that they had stolen those things.
Tendrils of mist still drifted over the river, restricting their view to the willows on both banks, the reedy riverbanks, and brown churning water disappearing out of view. There were no other people, no houses. Small islands went by, green with buttercups, grazing cows and the occasional rabbit.
There were no villages along the river, but in the afternoon, they found a mooring post in a river bend. There was a little beach surrounded by waving reeds and a path that led up the riverbank. The truncated stems of a couple of willows showed that people lived nearby who cut the trees regularly to make baskets. The mooring post, too, meant that there was a farmhouse or small settlement, probably just on the other side, from which farmers loaded cheeses onto the passing sloops.
“Let’s stay here for the night,” she said. They wouldn’t get to Aroden castle or even Estland today. Johanna wasn’t even sure how to tell that they were in Estland, or how far it was. She wished she’d paid more attention when she came this way with Father.
Loesie steered the sea cow team into the still water. She handed Johanna the rope and Johanna managed to catch the post with the loop on the end, but when the line snapped taut, it almost pushed her into the water. She just managed to hang onto the rope. That was silly, standing where she did, in the way of the rope.
Loesie laughed, an eerie panting sound that made a chill run down Johanna’s back. She stared at her friend. It was almost as if Loesie had done that on purpose.
Johanna ran a second rope to the jetty so the sloop wouldn’t swing too much. They loosened the ropes on the sea cows’ harnesses so they could graze. Most of them swam off towards the reeds.
All this was done without exchanging a single word. Loesie couldn’t speak, of course, but Nellie also said nothing, seated on top of the shutters that covered the hold. She met Johanna’s eyes, looking utterly miserable. Roald was in the cabin, probably asleep.
Then Loesie said, “Ghghghghgh!” She pointed at the riverbank.
Johanna peered. “What’s the matter?” She couldn’t see anything on the bank except grass. No, there was a young willow tree in amongst the reeds.
“Do you want me to look at the wood?”
Loesie nodded, and her expression was anxious. The chill that Johanna had felt earlier came back. Maybe it wasn’t to do with Loesie. Maybe something bad had happened here.
Johanna stepped from the deck onto the jetty. She knelt and placed her palm flat on the planks, but if they had ever told a story, it had dissipated long ago.
She walked towards the shore, where the jetty went through the reeds into the grassy bank. Her footsteps sounded loud on the wood.
A path led from the jetty up the river bank and the flattened grass on both sides showed that someone had come this way perhaps as recently as this morning, but no longer ago than yesterday.
Johanna turned off the path. Wading through the knee-length grass, the bottom of her dress became wet. The willow tree stood in a soggy patch of land. Johanna disturbed a coot, which flew up with a loud shriek that made her heart beat like crazy.
Phew. Stupid to get so excited over a simple bird. She was so tense.
The trunk of the tree, a mere sapling, was wet from the mist. Johanna closed her eyes, but all it showed her was greyness. Did that mean no one had come here recently, or that there had been too much mist to see it?
Then she waded back through the grass to the jetty. She wanted to follow the path to see if they could find some people, but she couldn’t go alone.
Who would she take?
Loesie could handle the boat, and could stay here, but Johanna didn’t trust her. She might take off with the boat and then they would be lost. Nellie wouldn’t do anything stupid, but Roald might do something stupid to her. Loesie didn’t care that he was the crown prince and he was oblivious to her, so she and Roald seemed better matched in an odd sort of way. That made Nellie the best to stay on board, not that it sat well with her, either. Nellie could do nothing if someone came.
She heaved the bag with the few things they had to trade onto her shoulder.
“But what if there are bandits?” Nellie looked uncertain, standing at the deck.
“Just don’t show yourself,” Johanna said. “We’ll be back as soon as we can.”
While Johanna led Loesie and Roald up the path, Nellie walked to the back deck, and climbed down the ladder into the hold.
The sun came out, and instantly, the grass turned brighter green. Johanna noticed dandelions and daisies she hadn’t noticed before. A lark did its singing dance high into the sky.
But then Johanna cleared the top of the riverbank.
A blackened, burnt-out shell stood where there had once been a farmhouse. The roof had fallen in and blackened beams pointed at the sky like ribs in a rotting corpse. A smell of fire gone out days ago drifted over the meadow, full of green grass and buttercups. There was a barn, also burnt out, in the middle of a vegetable garden with neat rows of seedlings. Daisies, poppies and cornflowers bloomed in the edges around the garden like a parody on the scene of death.
Loesie made a soft hissing sound, and Roald stared, his expression so empty that it chilled her.
“By the heavens . . .” Johanna raised her hand over her mouth.
A rutted track led past the farmhouse past marshy ground. On the other side stood the burnt-out remains of a mill, with a few more burnt-out houses. A wisp of smoke still trailed from one of them.
A few cows lay peacefully under a tree and a couple of sheep grazed in a paddock, but she could see no other sign of people.
“Come,” she said to Roald and Loesie. “We need to help survivors.”
; A little voice inside her said, What if there are no survivors?
An entire village murdered.
What would they find further upstream? Where did the destruction end?
They walked down the field. At the back of what was left of the farmhouse, sheets and clothes were flapping on the clothesline.
“See if there is anything that fits us,” Johanna said. “Get all of it, including the sheets.”
Loesie went into the garden and Johanna continued past the burnt-out shell of the house, with Roald following her like a little duckling.
She looked in through the opening where the door had been, which now lay in burnt pieces on the ground. The room was a kitchen, with the remains of a table and chairs in the middle. Shelves and a simple cupboard had been reduced to a pile of burnt planks.
Amongst the blackened ruins were some items that had strangely remained untouched. A bowl, half of a broom.
The air smelled strongly of stale wood smoke.
There was a charred lump on the floor, with bits of fabric adhering. Next to it was a smaller lump, with bits of a pink blanket.
Bile rose in her mouth when she realised what she was seeing. A mother and a child, burnt to coal.
With a trembling hand, she reached for a beam of wood. It must have been a roof beam, because she could see the surrounding of the house.
The attackers had come in the morning along the road that led past the mill, a group of men in leather jerkins and furs riding horseback, in the company of three bears. They carried flaming torches. At the mill, they stopped. One went in and threw the flaming torch in to the barn. A man ran out, and was attacked by a bear. His screams rang in her ears.
Johanna jerked her hand back from the wood, breaking the vision. The wood was crying for these people, mindlessly slaughtered by barbarians. They were innocent peasants. Whatever the king had done, nothing justified this mindless slaughter.
She leaned against the wall, her head reeling.
“Do you think they have honey?” Roald stepped over the remains of the door and went into the kitchen. He paid no heed to the bodies on the floor.
On the other side of the kitchen was another door that led into the pantry. Roald went in, ducking his head under a ceiling beam that had fallen cross the door.
There were clanging noises inside, and a moment later he came out carrying a pan filled with a few jars.
He showed the contents to her. “Look, there are peas. I like peas. And apples.”
The contents of the pan consisted of a mix of foodstuffs in jars, most of them looking slightly smoked from the fire. There were dried apples, some potatoes, dried beans, flour and eggs.
“And look, there is honey.”
There was, too. Roald’s cheerful expression was eerily at odds with the horrible situation.
“Please, Your Highness. People have died here. Did you see the bodies on the floor?”
He frowned and looked over his shoulder. And said nothing for a while. Johanna didn’t want to look at the mother and child again. She still felt queasy from the memory.
“Oh,” he said eventually, although he didn’t sound convinced.
“That’s all? People died for you, or for what your father did. It was none of their fault. Can you show some respect?”
He turned to her. He had a smear of soot on his face. “But . . .” He frowned. “You said to get food. Aren’t you happy?”
Hadn’t he heard what she said? She breathed in to say something angry, but let her breath out again. It would be a waste of time. His mind seemed unable to deal with the feelings of others. Either he didn’t understand them, or didn’t notice them, or he had to act like this to cope with what had happened to him. Who knew how he had been treated for most of his life?
“Yes, I’m happy that you got food.”
He flashed a childish, innocent smile that made her choke up. Imagine the bliss of not being able to comprehend the horror of this invasion.
Loesie had taken all the washing off the line. There were sheets, trousers and shirts.
Next to the burnt-out barn they found a wheelbarrow that was still useable. They piled the sheets and clothes in, together with the pan and its contents, and went to the other houses.
In the forecourt of the village lord’s house, they disturbed a group of crows picking at a corpse. Neither of them felt inclined to look closer. The sweet scent of decay told the story louder than anything else could.
The house next to the mill was unaffected by fire, yet still uninhabited. Inside they found sacks of grain and some flour, but also some cheeses and a smoked ham, as well as plates, cups and tableware.
They found a metal bucket and went to milk the cows. There were also a blankets and sheets neatly folded on shelves in the wardrobe.
The miller had to be a newly-married man, for everything in the house was fresh and there was not enough of it for an entire family.
Johanna felt terrible going through another person’s house and stealing their possessions, but the little voice in her head said that the people themselves were unlikely to be able to use it.
But what if anyone has survived?
This happened days ago, they would already have come back if they were alive.
It was true, and the thought that all these people had just been killed was too big to comprehend.
Why would anyone do that?
They piled everything into the wheelbarrow and pushed it back through the waving grass. The sun was at its highest and when they came over the rise, the Lady Sara looked peaceful, as if they were simply underway to Lurezia and nothing had happened.
Nellie sat on deck, peering anxiously at the riverbank.
“We have food and clothes,” Johanna shouted up to her.
They clambered up the ladder. They fashioned one of the horse blankets into a sack so they could haul the supplies up. The sack was heavy, but Roald took the rope from her and seemed to have little trouble with its weight. He lifted the sack to the deck. When he unwrapped the blanket, his eyes glittered like a child’s.
“Look, we have cheese, I like cheese.” He held the cheese out to Nellie, who almost dropped it. “You like ham? We have ham, too. And eggs. You have to be careful with them, or they’ll break.”
Loesie stood a little back, as if she was hesitant. Throughout the expedition she hadn’t once tried to communicate. The look in her eyes chilled Johanna. Empty, vacant, as if her mind was being consumed from within.
“Did you see anyone while we were away?” Johanna asked Nellie.
She shook her head.
Johanna told Nellie about the burnt-out farmhouse.
“And what happened to the people who live here?”
“They’re all dead. And if they’re not, they’re somewhere else. It was horrible, Nellie.” Her voice wavered. She was tired, she wanted to know where Father was, and wanted to see at least one town that was unscathed.
They cut the cheese with one of the knives they had brought from the farmhouse, and ate from the plates that they’d found in the miller’s house. Nellie put a sheet on the bed in the cabin and kept one for the two of them. They climbed down and got some hay to fashion into a bed in the hold.
When it grew dark, they snuggled under the new blankets.
“They’re much warmer,” Nellie said.
Johanna lay down, staring at the small gap of moonlight that peeped in between the covers.
She could still see the burnt corpses. A woman with a baby on the floor, white skulls in black ash, a piece of pink blanket. “What sort of monsters would do a thing like this? What sort of monsters would burn an entire city? Why?”
“I don’t know, Mistress Johanna, but I’m scared.” She breathed out heavily. “Your friend scares me. I think the prince is also possessed by evil.”
“The prince is ill. He has always been like this.” As for Loesie, yes Johanna could agree with her.
“You know how the Church says . . . the Shepherd says there isn’t any
magic? You have never believed that, haven’t you?”
“You cannot deny what you know to exist. The Church may not like it, but magic exists.”
She wondered what had brought this change in Nellie. “People who work on the land know it. Many have the magic. Many see the magic. It helps them grow their crops and look after their animals. If the Shepherds left their churches and got their noses out of their holy books, they would see that magic is all around.”
“I never saw it.”
“Then you also never looked, or didn’t want to see it. This terrible disaster started with magic, it’s wrought by magic and it’s about magic. Turning away from magic does no one any good.”