by Patty Jansen
Chapter 19
THE NEXT MORNING she clambered from the bed sore and feeling dirty.
Roald was still asleep and she intended to leave him that way. What if he wanted to do it again? She didn’t think she could face that.
She wrestled herself into her other clothes and went on deck.
Nellie stood there, her hands crossed over her chest, while Loesie threw carrots at the sea cows.
Oh holy Triune. Not another fight.
“She wanted to disturb you.” Nellie glared at Loesie, who poked out her tongue.
“She could have knocked. I was awake.” Johanna found it hard to keep discomfort out of her voice. She couldn’t meet Nellie’s eyes. There were just too many questions hovering within. She would have heard Roald’s grunts last night.
“I wouldn’t let her disturb anyone on the morning after their wedding. The union between man and woman is holy—”
Johanna waved her to silence. Don’t talk nonsense, Nellie.
Tears threatened in her eyes.
Everything hurt, every step she took. In her mind, she still heard Roald give that horrible grunt when he spilled himself. That must have echoed all over the ship.
“Mistress Johanna? Are you all right? Do you want to sit down?”
Johanna glared at Nellie, her wide eyes, her pale face.
What did she think? That the future of the kingdom grew inside her? That she needed mollycoddling because of that? It couldn’t even be so, and what was worse, she would have to endure Roald’s attentions until it did. What did she know?
She wanted to laugh, and cry and slap her in the face.
“Don’t say that to me again.”
“Mistress Johanna?”
She whirled at her. “Stop calling me that. Call me Johanna, or call me nothing at all, instead of treating me like a. . . .” Her voice cracked.
Nellie shrank back, her chest heaving, and said nothing for a long time. Johanna stared out over the water, wiping stubborn tears from her cheeks.
“But Mi . . . er . . . Johanna, you are the queen now and I will treat you like that.” She dipped a curtsey and Johanna had an even greater desire to punch her in the face.
“Please, Nellie.”
Roald’s ring felt like a millstone on her hand. Like this, it was so visible, and it was too big for her. She took off her necklace, slid the ring off and threaded the necklace through. When she did it back up again, the ring hung between her breasts.
“It’s too big. I’m afraid I might lose it.”
Nellie nodded.
“Let’s just go and see what Loesie wants. If she wanted to disturb me, that means she has something to say.”
She went to the bow, but Loesie was no longer there. She stood on the riverbank, her hand on the trunk of a willow tree. People in these parts didn’t cut willows, and its branches trailed in the water. Soft green misted the pale wood. Spring came.
“Loesie?” Johanna called.
She looked up and gestured come.
The current had brought the boat right into shore. There was an old jetty here and they didn’t need the dinghy to clamber out, but the section where it joined up to the shore had collapsed. Johanna took off her shoes and waded through the water to the small sandy beach.
She joined Loesie at the tree trunk. Soft branches brushed over her head, and bees buzzed amongst the little furry balls that were the willow’s flowers.
“Anything here?” she asked.
Loesie took her hand and pulled it to the rough wood of the tree trunk.
The green riverbank faded. It was dusk, and a long procession of men on large horses followed the river downstream. Horses and spears and fur jerkins.
“Who are they?” she asked Loesie.
She shook her head. Ghghghgh. She pointed up the bank.
They left the shelter of the branches of the tree. Nellie had just come ashore and was wrestling her shoes back onto her feet.
“What’s going on?” she asked. Her cheeks were red and flustered. Brilliant sunlight brought out the greens and yellows of the meadow. The top of the riverbank led into an orchard, the trees full of white flowers.
Large daisies bloomed in the grass between the trees, and purple and pink flowers, so different from what Johanna had ever seen.
Nellie was the first one in the meadow. “Isn’t this pretty?” She already had a handful of flowers. “We can make you a more cheerful wedding bouquet.”
Johanna cringed. “Let’s be careful.” An orchard usually meant that there was a farmhouse nearby.
“I’m not doing any harm.” Nellie continued picking. “If I don’t pick flowers, they’re going to get eaten by those cows over there.”
The cows were grey-brown, very unlike the black and white ones that were common with farmers in Saarland. There was a group of four or five of them in the shade of a tree.
A rutted track led out of the orchard. It disappeared along a bend behind a mass of dark trees.
A pine forest.
A chill crept over Johanna’s back. She heard the voices in the wind whistling through the boughs. She felt the tingle of magic that tugged at her senses but showed her nothing because she didn’t have wind magic. “Maybe we should return to the Lady Sara.” Roald was there alone.
“In a moment. When I’ve got all the flowers I need.”
It was the first time that she had seen Nellie being her old self, so Johanna calmed her nerves and sat down in the grass. The scent of crushed herbs rose up to her. The sunlight was warm and comfortable, the meadow a kaleidoscope of cheerful colours. She was just making herself scared by thinking about magic. Likely there was nothing to be afraid of once you got used to the sounds of the forest.
She glanced at Loesie, but she had also sat down and stared into the distance with a dreamy look.
Guess a little rest was all right.
She lay back in the grass.
The next thing she knew, she woke up with the sound of a cow chomping on leaves.
What?
“Nellie, what . . .” She sat up with a jerk. Nellie lay behind her, her head resting on her elbow. Her eyes were closed and her chest moved in regular breaths. A bunch of wilted flowers lay next to her.
“Loesie?”
The field was empty. Loesie was nowhere to be seen.
Nellie opened her eyes. “Oh, pardon me, Mistress Johanna. I think I fell asleep.”
“We all fell asleep. The past few days have been tiring for all of us. I guess we earned the rest.”
“Look at my poor flowers! I must get some new ones.”
“We need to go back. I don’t know what Loesie and Roald have been up to, but they must be wondering where we are.”
Nellie looked disappointed, but didn’t protest.
They walked back over the hill, between the blooming apple trees. Then down the bank to the Lady Sara which lay bobbing peacefully, with the roaming lines of the sea cows attached. The animals were grazing on the bottom. Loesie was nowhere to be seen.
Johanna and Nellie waded through the water to the half-rotten and wobbly jetty.
When Johanna was halfway up the ladder to the deck, a dark silhouette appeared at the top. Someone that was not Roald, but a much bigger man with a ponytail.
She gasped but she had nowhere to go. Nellie was behind her and couldn’t go down quickly enough. Not only that, two more bandits waded towards them from the shore.
Nellie screamed.
The thug on the deck grabbed Johanna’s arm and yanked her up onto the deck. There were not one but three thugs on the deck—all of them bearded and with long-furred jerkins. Two wore ponytails; the third and biggest thug was bald. They laughed when their mate dumped Johanna onto the deck. Behind her, Nellie was struggling against the grip of one of the men who had come up behind them, screaming and kicking.
“Let us go. We’re free citizens of Saarland.” Johanna straightened herself and tried to sound impressive, as if . . . Roald. Where was Roald?<
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The men laughed and exchanged comments in a strange and harsh-sounding language. One of the men was tying Nellie’s hands up with a dirty rag. Nellie was still kicking at the man, and in response, he grabbed the front of her dress and thrust a hand down.
Nellie screamed.
“Stop it, Nellie. The more you protest, the more they like it. Keep still.” And you might just come out of here alive. Although maybe not unscathed.
A sixth man now clambered up from the hold, with Loesie over his shoulder. She was pulling his hair, but he set her down as if she didn’t exist. Great bundles of hair hung from her hands.
Johanna still couldn’t see Roald anywhere. What if they . . . The ring under her shirt felt heavy. If Roald was dead, then . . .
Panic rose in her. If that was true, then the whole future of free Saarland was in her hands.
Then, she heard splashing and growling and yet another thug came up the ladder, pulling Roald with him. Water dripped from his clothes, his hair standing on end on one side of his head.
The men laughed.
Roald’s eyes were as wide as Johanna had seen them that day when they fished him out of the harbour. Any moment now and he’d start banging his head on something.
The thug pushed Roald forward to the railing as if he wanted to throw him off the boat. Roald squealed.
“Keep your hands off him,” Johanna yelled.
The men laughed again. One pushed Roald harder into the railing. But then the bald one shouted something, and they let Roald go. He fell heavily on his backside. “They’ll kill us. They’ll kill us!” His squeal chilled Johanna deeply. “They’ll kill us. They’ll kill us!”
“Shhh, calm down.”
Roald met her eyes, and some of the madness seeped out of his face.
The bald-headed bandit leader jerked his head towards the riverbank.
There, on the high bank, approached three more men with a whole team of huge horses black as night. They had long flowing manes and huge hooves. With them were two bears on chains and a pack of dogs.
The bald leader yelled something, and a voice responded from the bank. The group descended to the water, the horses snorting and blowing, tossing their great heads. Some of them waded a bit into the water. The bears appeared nervous, pulling on their chains.
The bandits forced Johanna, Nellie and Roald to clamber down the ladder, and wade through the water.
Johanna sat down to take off her shoes, but a thug pulled her up. Nellie cried when they pushed her down the jetty. “Do you know how much those shoes cost my father?”
The only thing she got in response was more rough handling.
On the riverbank, the bandits hauled each of them in front of another rider on a horse.
Johanna’s horse was smelly and the man at her back stank of sweat and chewing tobacco. He snaked an arm around her waist, but she pushed him away. She would not let herself be humiliated.
“I can ride myself. You don’t have to hold me.”
She glanced at Roald, gave him her best behave like a king glare, and said, “Sit up.”
He did. His face was so pale that she was afraid that he might faint. Hopefully he would remain quiet about who he was.
The bald leader whistled and the column of horses set off, away from the riverbank, into the forest. Johanna cast a look over her shoulder to where the Lady Sara lay. She had to remember this place. One day, she would come back.
IF YOU ENJOYED THIS STORY . . .
In the next in the series, Willow Witch, we learn about the spell cast over Loesie and how she can, or cannot, be trusted.
Learn where to get Willow Witch. Or if you want to be notified when new books come out, put your name on my new release mailing list.
About the Author
PATTY JANSEN lives in Sydney, Australia, where she spends most of her time writing Science Fiction and Fantasy. Her story This Peaceful State of War placed first in the second quarter of the Writers of the Future contest and was published in their 27th anthology. She has also sold fiction to genre magazines such as Analog Science Fiction and Fact, Redstone SF and Aurealis.
Her novels (available at ebook venues) include Shifting Reality (hard SF), The Far Horizon (middle grade SF), Charlotte’s Army (military SF) and Fire & Ice, Dust & Rain and Blood & Tears (Icefire Trilogy) (dark fantasy).
Patty is a member of SFWA, and the cooperative that makes up Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine, and she has also written non-fiction.
Patty is on Twitter (@pattyjansen), Facebook, LinkedIn, goodreads, LibraryThing, google+ and blogs at: https://pattyjansen.com/.
More by This Author
In the Earth-Gamra space opera universe
RETURN OF THE AGHYRIANS
1. Watcher’s Web
2. Trader’s Honour
3. Soldier’s Duty
AMBASSADOR
1. Seeing Red
2. Raising Hell
The Far Horizon (For younger readers)
The Shattered World Within (novella)
In the ISF-Allion universe
Charlotte’s Army (novella)
The rebelliousness of Trassi Udang (short story)
His Name in Lights (Novella)
Shifting Reality (novel)
Epic, Post-apocalyptic Fantasy
ICEFIRE TRILOGY
I. Fire & Ice
II. Dust & Rain
III. Blood & Tears
Short story collection
Out Of Here
Shorter works
Looking For Daddy (absurd horror novella)
This Peaceful State of War (Writers of the Future winning novella)
Seven Days To Save the World and Other Homework Projects (children's silly fairytale novel)
Visit the author’s website at https://pattyjansen.com and register for a newsletter to keep up-to-date with new releases.