by Patty Jansen
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The Lady Sara continued up the river. Progress was slow because the current was strong and they had to make regular stops to rest the cows. Loesie mostly kept to looking after the cows and the ship. Nellie cleaned and tidied, even things that didn’t need cleaning and tidying. Roald was happy to do most of the cooking, and turned to be decent at it, albeit very messy, which then annoyed Nellie because she had to clean up after him.
This left Johanna with precisely nothing to do except worry about the lack of people. When she had come with Father, they had stopped at a lot of places along the river to buy and sell. Because the river flooded, no one lived near the banks. At some places houses had been built on artificial mounds so that you could see them from the river. The houses were intact, but they saw no people. Once, they spotted a man on a horse, but he was too far away to talk to.
Three days went by like this. At night they stopped in a safe place, ate from their supplies, and slept. They would leave someone on deck as watch—usually Loesie, because she didn’t seem to need any sleep at all. When Johanna came up the deck in the morning, Loesie would shake her head at the question of had she seen anyone.
Then they would harness the sea cows for another day of travel. Johanna was both keen and anxious to get to Aroden castle. Above all, she hoped that her uncle remembered who she was and that they wouldn’t turn the group away once they saw Roald.
It was one thing taking Roald to Aroden. It was another expecting the Estlander royals to forget their problems with the Carmine House. The further upriver they went, the bigger and more unsurmountable they became, until she was quite certain that her uncle would order Roald hanged as soon as they entered the castle. The Estlanders hated the Carmine House. It was not for nothing that they allowed minor princesses, like Johanna’s mother, to marry rich Saarlander commoners, rather than the royal family. Added to that, Estlanders spoke in a thick dialect and Johanna wasn’t sure she could make herself understood.
Why didn’t she think about all this before setting out?
Was there any point in going on? Maybe they should go back to see if Saardam was safe—no, that was stupid, too. The bandits wouldn’t have destroyed the city and left. Saardam was such a strategic place that no one would give it up without a fight.