by Patty Jansen
No one said much while they ate.
Nellie had dumped her bag onto the table and Koby, having eaten with the children, piled up the contents on the table.
Dora had slipped in two loaves of fresh bread and a chunk of ham. And cheese. It was a good haul.
Jantien brought the tin they used as a teapot and the collection of dirty and chipped cups. She poured steaming tea into the cups and the remaining water into the porridge pan where the porridge she could not scrape out had already congealed on the sides.
Nellie wrapped her hands around the warm cup, knowing she would have to upset these women again to tell them about the Regent’s decree. She started in a soft voice. “On the way back from the palace, I saw two men putting a decree from the Regent on the church door.”
Emmie and Zelda gave her sharp looks. Emmie looked worried, but Zelda’s expression was foul. In the past days, she had gone from wanting to use Nellie as a fake herb woman to keeping her out of her workshop.
“What did this paper say?” Mina asked.
“It said that everyone who uses magic and who has artefacts of magic will be arrested.”
Zelda snorted. “No matter what King or Queen or Regent in the palace, they always put up these silly pieces of paper. It is like this: they need us, they don’t want us in their city. They’re afraid. They say we steal. They’re afraid that we teach the citizens superstition. Church doesn’t like superstition.”
Nellie assumed that by us she meant magicians. Magic was strong in the wayfarers and this might even be why they weren’t welcome in so many towns. They weren’t welcome in Saardam either, but their numbers were too great for the guards to expel them without a fuss.
“I don’t know what their reason for putting it up is either, but there are many guards around,” Nellie said. “I saw them waiting on street corners ready to search houses and question people.”
Zelda snorted again. “They do that every couple of years. They make a fuss. They go blah-blah-blah evil magic blah-blah-blah hand in your stuff. Nothing ever comes of it.”
Nellie didn’t believe that. For one, when King Roald had been in the palace, he had never issued a decree for all people with magic to hand themselves in.
But she didn’t want to argue. “Whatever you believe, we can’t afford any more trouble. First, the Regent thinks you have stolen things, and they take all your possessions. Next they come in and drive you out of the safety of the church. And now they want to scare us away.”
“I’m not scared,” Zelda said She crossed her arms over her chest. “We look after ourselves. We always have. We don’t need Regent to say yes or no, we can do this or can’t do that. Regent know nothing about us.”
“I only want to warn you that there are guards around and they might come in here. Is that a bad thing?”
“Not a bad thing,” Agatha said. “But something like that happens a lot around here. Did you see the town crier?”
“I did.”
“He’s out there every morning blathering about stuff the Regent says. People bring their rotten eggs just because he says the same thing every day. It’s all just rubbish from the Regent. Did you hear about the one where he was going to declare himself king?”
Several of the women laughed.
This was not the type of reaction Nellie had expected. Why wouldn’t they understand that this was serious? Maybe when your life was constantly in peril, you grew numb from threats like these.
She tried again. “I still think we need to hide the things we don’t want them to find. If they find magical items, we’ll be put in jail. If they find we have magic, they’ll arrest us.”
Agatha huffed. “We got no magic.”
Right. One didn’t go there with her.
Agatha continued, “Why are you telling us this anyway?”
“I want to warn you,” Nellie said. “Just so that we know who to be most careful about.”
Agatha snorted again. “You come in here, and because you’ve helped us out in the past, you think we should be so grateful that we drop to our knees to worship the ground you walk on?”
“I don’t think that at all!” What was wrong with these women?
Agatha said, “Yes, you do. That’s typical for these people from the palace. You think you can boss us around while you bring danger to our children—”
Jantien interrupted, “Please, stop, Agatha. She’s not bringing danger—”
“Yes, she is. Remember where she comes from: the palace. She has friends there. She is a danger to all of us, with her . . .” She glared up to the hayloft where children’s voices drifted down, mingled with the soft snoring of the dragon. “If there is anyone who’s a danger to us, she is. She has no right to warn us or boss us around.”
She tightened her arms over her chest.
Nellie’s cheeks grew hot. Agatha was right about the dragon. “I’ll have to try again to get him back in his box.”
“Good luck with that.”
Nellie finished her tea in silence. For now, Agatha had won the discussion and Agatha seemed very much into winning things.
What had she expected when she joined this group of women to whom she had been bringing leftovers from the palace? Eternal gratitude? No, but more friendliness than this.
Even the suggestion that she would tell anyone at the palace rankled her. As if the palace would care about this group of ragtag women, some of whom might have a bit of magic. As if she were that type of person. She might not be perfect—nobody was—but to suggest that she would betray the group was an affront to her personality.
She was only trying to help.
In the straw, by the makeshift mattresses and the scratchy horse blankets in the former stable, she found the satchel that she had taken from the palace, with her father’s book and the dragon box inside.
She brushed the dust off, and took it up into the hayloft.
The children had collected all the loose hay into a giant heap and had dragged blankets onto it, to the dismay of Jantien, who complained that the children looked like farm boys covered in straw.
But Nellie suspected it was quite warm, especially so because the dragon lay in the middle of the heap, with his legs bent at the knees, and tail and neck curled around his body. He opened an eye when Nellie came to the loft, but then closed it again.
The children sat on the wooden floor, playing a game with pebbles that involved rolling them across the floorboards. Anneke and her brother Bas were there as well as Koby and Ewout and all the other children.
“Come and play with us, Nellie,” Bas said. He shuffled aside to make room for her.
“No, I’m sad to say I can’t. I would like your friend to help me. He needs to hide.”
“Boots?”
Nellie laughed. “Is that what you call the dragon?”
Anneke said, “Yes, it’s like he’s wearing boots, because his feet are darker than the rest of him.”
“Well then, I’m going to have to ask Boots to go back into his box.”
“No! He keeps us warm.”
“It may not be necessary for a long time, but there are guards looking for magical things. I want him to hide.”
Watched by the children with wide eyes, she produced the box from the satchel.
The dragon jerked his head up. His eyes were suddenly bright and round, the irises vicious orange.
“I don’t think he likes it,” Bas said.
No, the dragon didn’t like it at all. To be honest, she wouldn’t like it either, having been locked up inside the box for the best part of twenty years.
“You have to help us,” Nellie said to the dragon. “I’m sorry, I need you to go back inside so we can all be safe.”
She opened the box.
The dragon’s head shot up further. A puff of smoke blew out of its nostrils.
“There are guards looking for you. They will kill you and kill us if they find you here. You don’t want to go back into the church crypt, do you?”
&nb
sp; She had no idea whether the dragon understood what she said. So she took a step forward.
Now the dragon jumped to his feet. His tail waved around, narrowly missing the heads of some of the children.
“Whoa, be careful, children. You best go down while I do this.”
“You’re scaring him with that box,” a little girl, Jette, said. She was only seven, still with soft blond curls dancing around her head.
The dragon turned to her. He let out a brief growl.
Jette walked to the top of the ladder. “You be good, Boots. You behave yourself. If Nellie says you should go in the box, you better go in the box.”
Several of the other children were packing away their game.
“Come on, children, go down. It’s only for a little while. You can come back and play soon.”
“But we’ll forget where we were,” Bas said. He was marking the floorboards with a piece of chalk to indicate where each of the pebbles were.
Nellie told him, “There is no need to do that. Just hurry.”
While she was talking, the dragon reached out with a forepaw and hit the box out of Nellie’s hands. It bounced over the floorboards. The kitten scooted out from under the straw and inspected the inside of the box.
“Whoa! Be careful.”
Anneke said, “I don’t understand why he needs to go into that box. If someone comes, Boots can just fly away.”
Agatha called from downstairs, “Children, if Nellie says go downstairs, you go downstairs. Now come down that ladder or I’ll spank your bottom.”
Wide-eyed, Anneke and Bas scrambled down, leaving Nellie alone with the now agitated dragon. His ears were twitching, his tail was twitching and his head was waving from side to side. He glanced to the box and then to Nellie.
Smoke trailed from its nostrils.
The box lay on the hay-covered floor between them. When Nellie took a step towards it, the dragon shied back, pushing his rear end into the wall.
“You really don’t want to go back into that box, don’t you?”
She spoke in a soft voice.
The dragon didn’t react. Smoke drifted from its nostrils and its ears continued to twitch.
“I helped you, didn’t I?” Nellie said. “Now I need you to help me.”
Again, no reaction.
“You’re causing a lot of trouble,” she continued. “Do you think it’s going to be worth it? Do you think Prince Bruno is still alive and waiting for you?”
The dragon turned his head to her.
Did he recognise Prince Bruno’s name?
In her memory, Nellie saw the chubby little prince as she had last seen him: a toddler with a soft face and big brown eyes. His hair was dark and very straight, and in summer, his skin would have a lovely bronzed tint.
She used to read stories to him, and he would listen, sucking his thumb. He always chose stories about animals, unless his sister made Nellie read stories about fairy princesses and witch queens.
The dragon made a soft whining sound.
Nellie felt sorry for the poor creature. “You miss him, right?”
A dragon without a master should roam free in the forests or mountains or whatever the dragon’s eastern home looked like. He should be able to soar through the sky, not be tied to a silly little box.
Why was the dragon still tied to the box?
Nellie held out her hand, palm up.
The dragon bent its neck forward, brushing her fingertips with its snout.
She took a step forward. The dragon leaned its head into her hand. She patted the warm scaly skin and scratched behind the ears and under the bearded chin. The dragon half-closed its eyes.
“You like that, huh?”
If she reached out with her right foot, she could just push the box back into her reach. But as soon as she bent to pick it up, the dragon’s head shot up and its eyes widened again. He let out a low growl.
“Whoa, calm down.”
She went back to scratching the dragon’s head.
“All right then, stay up here, but don’t move and don’t make a noise. If you want to see your master again, you’ll have to help us and keep very quiet.”
The dragon let out a low rumble. Smoke curled from his nostrils.
Nellie climbed down the ladder, taking the empty box with her.
Mina looked at her, hopeful, but Nellie shook her head. “He won’t go into the box. I told him to stay quiet.”
“How is it going to stay quiet? You said it doesn’t listen to you,” Agatha said.
“No, he doesn’t!” Nellie whirled at her. “It’s not like I asked him to come or to bring me here. And I don’t know why you think I can solve all your problems because I can’t. I’m doing my best, right? I have no magic and don’t know how to tell a dragon what to do. You go up there and try!”
Agatha stepped back. “You don’t have to get so angry.”
“Yes, I do. All you can do is snipe at me. I’m doing my best.” Nellie’s eyes pricked. She could do nothing right for these women.
Agatha snorted. “It’s all useless quackery anyway, with this box and all that.”
Anneke said from behind her mother, “Don’t be angry at Nellie. I like Nellie. I like Boots. And she did try to get him into the box. I saw it.”
“Don’t talk your nonsense,” Agatha said.
“I saw it,” Anneke said.
“You were down here. Now keep quiet.”
Agatha was right, Anneke had been down here. There was only one way she could have seen what had happened in the hayloft: if she had wood magic and had been touching the ladder, because it protruded above the floor level of the hayloft.
Chapter 5
* * *
NELLIE THEN TOLD the dragon to stay up in the hayloft and told the children to cover him with anything they could find.
But she was very unhappy about it, and so were the other women. If the dragon had gone back into the box, she could easily have hidden it. Now she had to hide a full-size dragon and the incriminating box that had been stolen from the church.
Nellie wondered whether, if Prince Bruno were here and he was still alive, he could control this creature. How did one tell a dragon what to do in absence of its master?
Some of the women, led by Jantien, were hiding all their meagre possessions in the straw and various other places in the warehouse.
There must have been some earlier disagreement because Jantien kept looking sideways at Zelda. “I don’t care what she says, I don’t want to lose everything I have once again. I had some bronze candleholders that belonged to my husband’s family I was going to sell so I could afford to travel to see him. Those supposed guards stole them, and I don’t know whether I’ll ever see him again.”
Her eyes glittered.
Nellie said, “That’s all right. I’ll help you.” She had lost all her possessions several times, and she knew how important those little mementoes became when you had nothing else to remind you of the good life.
Jantien did not have much left in the way of possessions, except some spare clothes for the children, and a little box with hairpins.
“It used to belong to my mother. I would die before I sell it.” She wiped a tear from her cheek.
Gertie and Hilde had lifted a couple of cobbles and dug a hole underneath. The women put all their valuables in there.
Nellie felt so miserable she thought she could cry. She thought of the little table in her room in the palace that she had been unable to take and that would probably now go into the dusty storage room from which she had rescued it in the first place. Maybe the Regent would even sell it, and she would have no money to buy it.
Koby brought her own treasure: a little brooch with three tiny gemstones. “It’s my grandma’s. I don’t want to lose it.”
Poor Koby.
Zelda was watching all these activities with an expression of scorn on her face. She had made it clear that she had wanted the women to make ointment.
She stomped around
the warehouse. “I need to do work. I will lose customers.”
But when Jantien suggested that she help hide the valuable items, she snorted and left.
“What is up with Zelda?” Nellie asked Jantien when the two of them went to collect wood in the adjacent warehouse.
“I don’t know. But many people don’t trust her.”
“Why is she with the group, then?”
“Because Agatha was friendly with her, and she said Zelda wanted some women and children to come work for her.”
“Have you been to see her ‘customers’, too?”
“I have. We visited a family with a sick old grandma. She was thin as a skeleton and had all these horrible lumps all over her skin, some of them burst open. Zelda insisted that the family put ointment on them even if it hurt the poor old dear so much that she was crying. But it was all right because she couldn’t speak anymore, anyway. The poor dear died a week later. I said to Zelda I wouldn’t come anymore, with what she charges for those ointments and tea that’s nothing more than chamomile and other herbs from the meadows.”
Nellie said, “She says she gets it from Mr Oliver.”
“Maybe she does, but there is nothing special about the tea. To be honest, she could just pick the leaves herself. She wouldn’t need to buy them from Mr Oliver’s expensive store.”
Yeah, that part might be a lie. Nellie couldn’t see why Zelda would buy leaves from Mr Oliver either.
“I would like to go somewhere else,” Nellie said. “I don’t like selling quackery to people who believe they’re buying a medicine that works.”
“No, me neither, but Zelda has money and gives us food.”
“We can get our own.”
“I’m so ashamed of all this,” Jantien said, and her eyes welled with tears. “I’m ashamed that the children see me do this work for this woman I wouldn’t even say hello to in the street. Ewout and Jette are old enough to understand. I hope when they get older, they’ll understand that I had no choice. I hope that my husband will understand when he comes back.”
Nellie put her hand on Jantien’s shoulder. “It’s all right. Look after the children. That’s the most important thing.”