by Patty Jansen
Yes, that was another missing face.
“The children,” Mina said.
All six huddled together, the youngest only four. By the Triune, the poor things. How were they going to
survive? Nellie crouched next to them.
“When is mama coming back?” Jette asked.
Nellie couldn’t bring herself to
say what she feared. “We’ll look after you. You won’t have to be alone, and you won’t have to go hungry.” It was all she could say.
“Boots was really angry at those guards. He will get mama.”
Nellie couldn’t bear to tell the children that their dragon was also gone.
From her spot on the upturned bucket, Zelda said, “Go on, be a hero. Just remember why we’re in this trouble in the first place.”
“It is not her fault!” Mina shouted.
Zelda snorted. “She brought the creature in here. And then dared accuse me of being dishonest.”
“We are all in this together. We need each other to survive. If you don’t want to be here, then leave, because—”
Gertie interrupted. “—Stop it, Mina. Bickering won’t get us anywhere.”
Zelda continued, “We were fine until she came, stuck-up bitch from the palace, thinks she’s better than us.”
“Stop it!” Gertie and Hilde shouted at the same time.
Zelda crossed her arms over her chest and glared at Nellie.
Nellie’s ears glowed. Nobody had ever said things like that about her. She had given so much just to help people. How dare this witch suggest that she . . .
But as usual, when she got angry, she lost the capability of making sensible replies. She just froze up.
Mina said into the tense silence, “What has happened has happened. There is not much point in arguing who was at fault or why this happened—”
“It was because the guards were looking for people with magic,” Koby said. “I heard them say so.”
“Leave it, child,” Mina said. “It’s done. We can’t change what happened. We need to all help each other and do what we can to find the others. We’ll need everyone to respect each other. Please don’t fight because it only weakens us. Are you all with us?”
Gertie and Hilde nodded. Nellie nodded, too, and so did Koby, and Emmie’s daughter Lise.
Agatha, seated next to Zelda, did not.
“Mama?” Anneke said. “I want to stay.”
Mina turned to Zelda, who said nothing, but pulled her arms closer about her chest.
“Agatha?” Mina asked. “Can we count on you?”
Agatha glanced at her daughter, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear. She blew out a breath. “Oh, all right. I have the little ones to take care of.”
“Thank you,” Mina said.
Anneke clapped her hands. “Yes! I don’t want to go anywhere else. Thank you mama.”
“Zelda?” Mina asked.
Zelda said nothing, and Mina said nothing either for a while. They glared at each other.
“We appreciate your knowledge and your free spirit, we really do,” Mina said.
Finally, Zelda spoke. “Yeah, because that’s what this is about: I know where to find things you can use and eat. But, no, thank you. I know when I’m not welcome.”
Zelda picked up her bag and walked out of the warehouse. She left behind a tense silence.
“Who will get us the tea and the beans?” Anneke asked.
“Don’t even ask,” Mina said. “It’s bad enough that this had to happen.”
“I only tried to help,” Nellie said.
“It’s not your fault. You did well bringing us the leftovers from the palace.”
“I can keep doing that.” Nellie cringed. She didn’t want to go back to the palace, but she had to, just to help these people.
“Thank you. We appreciate it.”
Gertie sighed. “It is a pity though. Together we stand much stronger than divided. She did know a lot of useful things. With winter coming, surviving until it’s over will be our main problem. We’ll see about all the other stuff, like finding a better place, and maybe going somewhere else in spring.”
The women fell silent. Some of them nodded, and Hilde hugged Agatha.
Then Nellie said, “How about we try to free Jantien and the others?”
Mina snorted. “If you know how we, a group of ragtag widows and children, can do that, I’d be happy to hear about it.”
Nellie didn’t know. It was always Mistress Johanna who had the brilliant ideas. But it wouldn’t hurt to find out where the people had been taken. Then, once she knew that, maybe an idea would come to her—
—An idea that involved a dragon—
—That had probably left the city a long time ago.
She needed to make a plan, but plans were not her strong point.
After making sure that the guards had gone, Nellie ventured into the street. She needed to think, away from the immediate concerns of survival. They still had enough food for a day, two if they stretched it.
The main street through the artisan quarter was a chaos of discarded and broken household items and people trying to recover those items. Groups of men stood in the street, arguing about the raids. The talk was of ruined stock and possessions stolen from houses.
A group of merchants hotly debated who these guards worked for. Nellie stopped to listen.
“They were not in proper uniform,” one man said. “They’re mercenaries paid by the Regent to search the houses of people they suspect of hatching plots against him.”
“Why would he send them in here? All the people who conspire against the Regent are in the palace already. They’re all nobles and their hangers-on, all the fat cats who get invited to the banquets. These men were looking for something.”
“They said they was looking for magic,” said another man. “The Regent put the rules on the church door that there was to be no magic allowed.”
“That’s what they say. You never know what it’s really about.”
“Yeah, the Regent wants himself crowned king. He’ll be wanting to shut up any that don’t agree with him.”
“In the artisan quarter, man? Who in this crappy part of town would have the money to stick in his craw that much?”
“The Science Guild, that’s what.”
“The—what?”
“You don’t know about them? They’re the ones who meet at the back of Jacques de Ruyter’s house. They’re no friends of the Regent’s, or the church for that matter.”
The men went into gossip about who did or did not belong to this group that Nellie had never heard about, so she continued walking.
She suspected that this was about finding a dragon. Someone had tipped off the guards she was in this area. It could have been someone who had watched from a darkened window when the dragon had tumbled into the street. It could have been a neighbour. It could have been Zelda, or Agatha.
Further down the street, people gathered around a woman who wailed about the arrest of her daughter.
“She was just fifteen, never done nothing wrong!”
The coldness in Nellie’s heart grew. What sort of guards took a young girl away from her family?
How could the Regent order this?
Signs of destruction were everywhere. The men had bashed in doors and destroyed shops when searching for magical items. They had even ransacked the markets. The contents of a herb seller stall lay on the ground. Several of the man’s jars were broken, the contents spilling in the snow. A lot of the stallholders had already started to pack up, many of them angry, saying they were leaving, never to return.
A group of people stood on the steps to the church, looking at a second piece of paper on the door.
Nellie joined the group and shuffled forward until she could read the text.
It said:
In our efforts to rid the city of the evil practitioners of magic, we will conduct an open court for people who have been charged with performing or being in possession of items of witc
hcraft. The session will be held in the marketplace, and people from the church will preside over the proceedings.
The date was only two days from now, and none of the onlookers knew what would happen to people who were judged to be magicians or how those judgements would be made.
Nellie rushed back to the women in the warehouse and told them about the declaration.
“What does it mean—there will be a process?” Hilde asked.
“I think the Regent and mayor and shepherd will hold court in the marketplace to decide whether the prisoners are guilty.”
Agatha scoffed. “How can they tell that?”
“These men can tell, that’s all I know,” Mina said. Her voice sounded ominous. “They use church relics that can pick out witchcraft. I’ve seen it before. The shepherd has a skull with ruby eyes. He holds it up in front of your face and the eyes glow when they feel witchcraft.”
Nellie felt cold. She had seen this dreadful thing.
Agatha said, “I thought they weighed people. Anyone less than four stone is held up by magic and is a witch.”
“What happens to the people who are witches?” Koby asked.
“Likely they will be thrown into the dungeons,” Mina said.
Agatha said, “They don’t want to feed any more mouths down there. I think they’ll be hanged or burned at the stake.”
Mina hissed, “Shhh, don’t say that in front of the—”
The children all watched, eyes wide. Nellie didn’t think the little ones understood, but the older ones, Jette and Ewout, certainly did.
Nellie had been through this before. Alexandre, the fire magician, also made a point of making an example of anyone who disagreed with him. She remembered Mistress Johanna’s own father being put up on a stake to be burnt and how the intervention of the people had saved him and the other prisoners.
“We have to do something,” she said, hugging herself.
The others nodded.
But saying that was easier than figuring out what to do. It was hard enough to figure out how to survive. If she had any say over the dragon, would she give the dragon up to the Regent to save these people? What would the Regent do with him?
The women gathered all their possessions and brought them all in one spot to determine if there was anything they could sell. Many of the items were worthless mementoes of long-dead family members, or lost homes. In Nellie’s case, she was determined to hang onto her father’s book and the dragon box for as long as possible. She promised to continue to go to the palace for leftovers.
But there was more work to be done and fewer people to do it, and no one knew an easy way to make money like Zelda did.
Once the meagre meal of dry bread and the remainder of the soup had been eaten, Nellie asked the children to bring down their bedding from the hayloft so they were together and kept each other warm. Some of the young ones cried for their “Boots” and Nellie had to explain that the dragon was a free creature.
By the light of the fire, Nellie sat in the hay, surrounded by the children. The kitten had been mewling all day—missing its friend—and it curled up on Nellie’s lap.
“Tell us a story,” Anneke said.
So Nellie told a story about a girl who was headstrong and wanted to be a businesswoman.
“That’s funny, because all girls want to be princesses,” Anneke said.
“Well this girl did not want to be a princess. She wanted to take over her father’s business because that was what she was good at. But her father was a widower, she was his only daughter, and he needed someone to leave their estate to.”
“What is that?” Ewout asked.
“An estate is a house or a piece of land or a business.”
Anneke said, “But she already had the business. It was hers, wasn’t it? Because it was her father’s.”
“It was,” Nellie said. “But unfortunately, that is not how people see these things. There always has to be a man who owns these things because women cannot own it by themselves.”
“What about you? Do you own anything?”
Nellie laughed. “If I did, I would not have been working as a maid for all of my life. Now, do you want to hear the story or not?”
“Of course we do.”
“All right. One day the king held a great ball and all the girls in all of Saardam were invited. He wanted them to dance with his son. He needed to marry his son, because he had no other children. But the prince was rude and not good in the head. And during the ball, a great magician invaded the city. He could throw balls of fire with his hands, and he burnt all the houses around the palace. The girl fled, as the king and queen were killed. But the prince also fled, and when the magician’s men tried to take him prisoner, he jumped into the harbour. You see, he could swim. And the girl and her friends . . .” Nellie stopped. She had been there. She remembered fishing the man out of the water, weighed down by his heavy cloak. She remembered the horror of realising that the man was Prince Roald. She remembered how scared she had been of him, and of his outbursts where he would bang his head against a wall or a tree, and how upset she had been with his rude and lewd remarks. “So the girl and her friends fished him out of the water, and they escaped together. They could see the entire city in flames and knew everyone was dead. They knew the survival of Saardam depended on them. So the girl ended up marrying the prince anyway, but it was her own choice, because she chose to save the country.”
“You’re talking about Queen Johanna,” Anneke said.
“Yes, I am. That is very smart of you. The queen and the few people who were still alive fled up the river because the evil magician still lived in the palace. The girl and her new husband couldn’t be king and queen until he was gone. She had to save the country from his evil, and she did that by uniting all the people against the evil magician. And when her own father was going to be burned at the stake, she led a crowd of people into the market square and they all created such a fuss that the guards did not know what to do, and most of them weren’t terribly loyal to the fire magician anyway. They only did what he said because they were scared of him. As soon as they saw that the common people might win, they abandoned him and helped the Queen.”
After a small silence, Anneke said, “Is the Regent an evil magician?”
Nellie looked at her, frowning. “No, he isn’t, why do you ask?”
“Because he sits in the palace, and the church won’t make him king. Also, everyone says the prince is still alive, so he should let the prince be king.”
“There are rumours about the prince. No one knows for sure if they’re true.”
“If they’re not, then why won’t the shepherd make the Regent king?”
“Because . . .” Because the shepherd had selected the Regent for incompetence and didn’t want him on the throne. Because . . . well, what if the church knew Prince Bruno was still alive and this was the reason they didn’t want Regent Bernard to become king?
Also, in the days with Mistress Johanna and Prince Roald, the church had been on their side, and most nobles had been against the Fire Magician already. This time, a lot of nobles liked the Regent, at least for as long as they could come to his banquets. Most of the merchants didn’t mind that the Regent was holding banquets as long as they could trade. And the Church . . . she shivered. She was sure that most of the deacons, and shepherd Adrianus and the other shepherds of the smaller churches were with the people, but they had to obey Shepherd Wilfridus, and Nellie wasn’t sure of the good intentions of Shepherd Wilfridus at all.
Anneke said, “What about making a fuss with all the people? Isn’t that the thing we should do?”
“When we get a chance, yes. But first we have to have a plan.” A plan that involved making most of the city angry enough to do something.
“You have a plan?”
“Not yet, but we will think about it, the adults and I.”
By that time, most of the children were already asleep, and Nellie returned to the fire with the other women
.
The mood was grim.
Mina finally voiced the one concern that had bothered Nellie for most of the day. “If it was clear to the guards that Zelda was a herb woman, then why did she not get taken?”
“I reckon it’s because she’s friends with the ones doing the arresting,” Hilde said. “She sells concoctions to the nobles and tells them about the things she hears on the streets. Why would those men have come down our dingy alley? There are so many other old buildings and warehouses. They only went to places where they knew people had magic.”
That was a disturbing thought.
“If that’s true, we can’t stay here,” Nellie said. “We need to find a better hiding place.”
Preferably one in a place where the guards would not come looking. And a place away from the artisan quarter and its colourful characters, away from the gaze of Zelda.
“Do you know a place that’s better than this?” Mina asked.
“I might.”
It was so easy to pretend that this little group of women and children could make any difference. Last time, the enemy had been just one person, who happened to be a foreigner who happened to have invaded the city, a fact that most citizens remembered all too well. As she had said in the story, most of the citizens had been afraid of this man, who burned their houses whenever they said something he did not like.
This time, everything was different. Not only was the Regent not hated, and had not himself performed any evil acts, but he also had the support of the church.
Nellie didn’t want to fight the church because most people related to the church were good people. The problem was that this time, there were no clear lines in the sand. This time, the people who could make a real difference—the people with money—weren’t angry. This time, there was no one man up there shouting I am your enemy. It wasn’t clear who, or what, they were fighting, only that Saardam was slowly dying as citizens left, were accused of having magic or became too poor to survive.
The winter would be long.
It was cold in the warehouse that night, and the fact that they were all sleeping together in the hay made little difference.
And as she lay awake staring into the darkness, Nellie had another worrying thought: she had given the dragon the choice of freedom. He had chosen to hang around. She could think of only two reasons he would do that. The first was food, although he didn’t seem to need people to feed him whatever dragons ate.