by Patty Jansen
While walking through the city, she felt cold and inadequate. She was just Nellie, a kitchen maid, always a servant to someone else. She had put into motion this ridiculous plan, but did she really have the skill to carry it out? She knew she would have to do it, because many people had pinned their hopes on it. For one, Jantien’s children deserved their mother back.
But inside she felt so small and useless. She was old, she was a woman, not even someone’s mother. She had no family left in the city. She was utterly alone, and all the people who had tried to help her, people like Henrik and Dora, she had rejected.
While she walked, tears welled into eyes, blurring her vision.
She would not cry. She would not give in. She would come back and clear the suspicion that hung over her.
She jammed her hands deeper in her pockets, trying to keep the emotion inside.
The bottom line was, she was no hero. She was just Nellie, who would serve the dinners and clean the rooms and pick up everybody’s laundry and hang it out and take it inside when it rained and feed the pigs and the chickens and whatever else needed to be fed.
That had been her life.
This thing called freedom didn’t sit well with her.
While she walked, she noticed from the corner of her eye that a trail of sparks followed her.
Had the dragon turned back to his magical form?
When she looked at them, the sparks vanished. And then when she kept walking, they reappeared.
She stopped in the entrance of an alley between two houses.
The sparks crept up the wall next to her.
“If you’re going to follow me around, can you at least do something useful?”
The sparks detached from the wall, twirled through the air and settled on her coat. Nellie tried to brush them off.
What was this?
But then the sparks touched the bare skin of her hand and filled her with warmth.
The dragon couldn’t speak. But because she had forgiven him, he wanted to help her. He seemed to want to let her know that he cared and would be there for her.
Fate had brought them together, and he hadn’t forgotten that he had regained freedom because of her.
She had to be strong.
When she came to the market place, a crowd of people stood at the steps to the church door.
Someone had affixed another declaration to the door of the church.
Nellie already knew what it was before she could hear the yelling and shouting. Sixteen people were to be drowned in the harbour in two days’ time for engaging in witchcraft.
“They’re almost all women,” a man shouted. “How dare he drown mothers and daughters and wives?”
“What about giving us the time to prove their innocence?”
“It’s the mayor’s fault.”
“Down with the mayor.”
Nellie wrestled her way through the crowd until she could read the names on the list. They included Jantien, Josie, Emmie, Yolande and Wim.
Behind her, the crowd in the market square was getting more agitated. A couple of guards had come in, and people yelled at them.
“My son was accused of stealing,” a man called out. “He’s done nothing wrong.”
Others agreed and added their grievances.
This was getting nasty. These people would be talking to each other in the taverns and they would organise themselves into angry mobs that the guards would have to deal with unless they could bring in enough men to scare the citizens.
When the sentence was carried out, there was sure to be a large crowd watching. That could be a good thing, or they could get in the way.
In the barn, the women had attracted a few more sea cows to the shallow part of the water so that they could lure them into the harness. This required one person to stand in the water. One of the children was attempting to attach the harness to the creatures while another fed them carrots.
“How is it going?” Nellie asked.
“We’ve got three so far,” Mina said, standing at the quayside with a handful of carrots.
That was better than last time, but still not enough. They had two days to get this part of the plan in order.
With Nellie’s help they managed to catch another two more animals. Nellie also helped pack up some oiled sheets they would use to cover themselves. The shields were all ready, and Floris the fisherman would bring the boat around tonight.
Some of the children had been watching the Guentherite order’s ship, and had found that people visited it during the day to deliver or pick up things, but that there was generally no one on board overnight.
“But one thing you haven’t yet mentioned,” Mina said. “Where are we going to go after we escape?”
“There’s a farm on the other side of the delta,” Nellie said. “I know some people there who have an apple orchard. We can offer to work in return for staying in their barn.”
“But that land floods all the time. I know, I have a cousin who lives there, and they sometimes have to move out and can’t get to the house for weeks. Winter and spring are the worst.”
“If the weather is bad, we might go up the river,” Nellie said. “There is a village where my cousins live.”
Now Hilde said, “Last I heard, that area was unsafe, because of bandits.”
“Yes,” Agatha said. “I don’t want to escape the city just so we run into bandits. They are not nice people.”
Mina said, “You win prizes for stating the obvious.”
“Well, it’s true,” Agatha said. “This adventure is already the most ridiculous thing I have taken part in. I don’t want to make it any more ridiculous by putting ourselves and the children into any more danger than necessary.”
“I will find a way to see which place is safe.” Nellie said. Add that to the long list of things she had to do.
“How are you going to do that?” Agatha said. Her voice sounded suspicious.
“I will ask some people.”
“People with magic.”
“Yes. Do you see another way?”
She snorted. “Magic got us into the trouble we’re in. If there hadn’t been any magic—” She glared at the door to the storeroom where presumably the dragon lay sleeping. “—then none of this would have happened. I’ve tried to shield my children from magic so that they don’t become victims of this witch hunt, and you’re undoing all my efforts.”
There were many things Nellie could say. That Anneke was born with magic and it would come out whether Agatha shielded her or not. That she needed a magical person to talk to her about it, not to be shielded from it. But unless Agatha could see that for herself, Nellie would be wasting her breath.
She knew. She had been like Agatha for much of her life.
Chapter 17
* * *
BUT WHO SHOULD Nellie see to ask about safe places?
She didn’t care much where they went after they escaped. She had dealt with bandits before. They usually moved in small groups and were easily distracted. If the plan succeeded, their group would number more than thirty, which made it too big to be an easy target for cheap thieves.
But she understood that Agatha wanted assurance—which could only be given by a magician.
There was a time that Nellie had known a wind magician. He used to work for Mistress Johanna’s father, then he had become a shepherd of the church and last she heard he had left the city to study religion in the holy southern city of Senoza, which was the most holy place of the Belaman Church.
Nellie didn’t want to go back to Mistress Julianna if she could avoid it because the old woman frightened her. She would talk about predictions again and imply that Nellie should hand the dragon over to people who knew what to do with him, and try to make her feel guilty for not giving him up.
Most of the other people who had magic had left town.
So she went to see Gisele because she might know other people with magic that Nellie didn’t know about. She needed to talk to Gisele anyway.
She found Gisele at the table in the middle of the warehouse, busy filling bottles with clear fluid from a metal jug. She looked up when Nellie came in.
“Oh, Nellie. This is a coincidence. I wanted to come and see you. You remember when we last talked about poisoned gin?”
Nellie nodded, although that seemed such a long time ago.
Gisele continued, “I was just handed a bottle that has contained a magical substance.” She set down her jug and picked up an old bottle that sat on the side of the table.
Nellie recognised it. It was the old square bottle she had seen in Lord Verdonck’s room, complete with the goat on the label.
“That’s the one. Who gave it to you?”
“It came from Mr Oliver, who sells to the palace. Every week, he collects empty jars and bottles so he can refill them. He puts the ones that are not from his business in a crate out the side door of his shop. We get a lot of our bottles there.”
Yes, it was definitely the one.
“So, if the goat label doesn’t belong to him, then whose is it?”
“That’s the strange thing, because it does belong to him, I found out. I saw a bottle of wine in one of the taverns, and I asked the owner whose it was, and he said the label belongs to the Guentherite order and they get Mr. Oliver to handle the bottling and labelling for them.”
“Then why was the bottle out in the box?”
Gisele shrugged. “A mistake?”
Or they knew this bottle was trouble and wanted to be rid of it. But then they could as easily have smashed it, or at least taken the label off.
“How do you know there was magic in this bottle?”
“I found a test in an obscure book that says how quicksilver is repelled by magic.”
“And you have quicksilver around?” Nellie thought that was the domain of the alchemists.
“It’s an ingredient in some of the things we use.”
Nellie was tempted to ask what things and whether she was an alchemist, but the time for these sorts of silly games of judgement were over. Her father had been very strong on judging people according to a set of rigid rules, only to find his core belief shaken.
So instead of all the things she could have asked, she said, “How true is this test?”
“Do you want to see it?”
Without waiting for the reply, Gisele brought a shallow porcelain dish that contained a small amount of silver liquid that jiggled and shimmered as she moved. Nellie looked at it with fascination. She had heard of the fabled quicksilver, but had never seen it.
“Don’t look at it like that. It’s not scary, it’s just a metal, but it’s liquid. Like water is hard when it is frozen, and then you make it warmer and it becomes a liquid.”
“Does this quicksilver ever become solid so we can build things out of it?”
“Some of the great alchemists say quicksilver is the base of all metals and that it can be formed into any other metal, but Rinius says their structures are different. He refers to the silver mines of Senoza where people use quicksilver to get the silver out of the stone, and that this may be the basis for the rumour. He says that, like all substances, quicksilver will become a hard material, but it may need to be so cold we couldn’t survive to see it.”
And now it dawned on Nellie. “You’re a student of Rinius.”
“Well, not him, because he’s been dead far too long, but he had some followers, most of all his son, Fabrice, who is maybe even brighter than his father. They have a house south of Lurezia where the greatest students of nature, men and women, live and study to figure out how things work by experimentation. Some people will call this magic, but really it is not, because magic depends on the ability of people, and this does not. They call it science. You might know about it.”
Nellie had heard the word science, but her knowledge went little beyond that. “Aren’t magic and science the same thing?”
“No. Magic is part of science but science is much more than magic.” She walked to the other side of the bench to collect the glass bottle. “Anyway, look at this.”
She set the bottle in the middle of the dish with the quicksilver. And all the silvery liquid crept to the sides.
Nellie frowned. “Why is it doing that?”
“Magic repels quicksilver.”
“How do you know that magic is doing it?”
“Well, if you didn’t believe me, look at what happens with this bottle.”
She took the bottle out and put one of the ones that stood on the workbench in. The bottom of the glass dipped into the silvery liquid.
“I guess it would be on my say-so that this is caused by magic, but you would have to agree that the two are different, right? They’re both empty bottles.”
Yes. “They’re both made of glass?”
“Better than that, they were both made by the same glassblower who has a business in town. We can ask him because he is one of the few craftspeople who have not left. He makes bottles, simple objects, and does not use magic for his craft.”
Nellie looked at the first bottle with the goat label, wondering how this would stand up as proof that the poison had been in the gin and that it was magical poison, in a country where magic was forbidden. No one would believe her, an old woman, who didn’t even have any magical ability herself.
“How does one put magic in gin?”
“You can do it in a couple of different ways. You can infuse gin with a magical object, that is, if you have an object that’s powerful enough and small enough to fit inside a container so you can cover it with gin. Or you can distil the gin with magical herbs. Since Mr Oliver’s brother made the gin, he definitely didn’t do the latter, so someone has infused the gin with a magical object after they bought it at Mr Oliver’s store. Before you ask, no I don’t know what kind of object. It can’t be too big, obviously, but it also needs to be powerful. I guess an amulet or relic of some description. Mind you, you might need to ask a magician.”
“You mean you’re not a magician?”
“I guess I’m something close to a magician. I’m an anti-magician. I can feel and see magic, but I don’t have any of it.”
She also had a very good memory.
Nellie had started out distrusting Gisele because she was so strange and unlike any woman she had ever met before. But now she was finding her very useful.
She took a deep breath before starting on the second reason she had come here. “I have to ask you something.”
“Oh?” Gisele’s eyebrows flicked up.
“You said someone lived in the crypts, and I’m pretty sure that it’s Prince Bruno. I want to free him.”
“You? How? First you’d have to—”
“I have to tell you something. I have a secret. I didn’t tell you before because I didn’t know whether you would betray me.”
“That is always a good position to take for people like us.”
“People like us?”
“People interested in unmasking the wrongs of the world, no matter how powerful they are.”
Yes, Nellie thought with trepidation. That was her new situation. And then she realised that there was another word for people like Gisele: heretics. And that filled her with even more trepidation. Especially since these appeared to be the only people who, while the men of the church were fighting for power, appeared to be doing something for the good of all.
So, although it frightened her, she was stuck with these people and the fear the shepherds liked to spread about them. Nellie wasn’t a heretic, because those people had lost their belief. She had lost the belief that the current leaders of the church were good people. That was different from being a heretic, wasn’t it?
“Last time when I saw you, I asked you about the things that the church hides in the crypt.”
“That was because of your father, wasn’t it?”
“Yes, it was, because he worked for the church. But there was one thing I didn’t tell you. When I got my father’s box with his book of notes just recent
ly, there was a key in the bottom. It is in fact the key to the metal door in the grate at the end of the crypt. I went in there. I saw the things they keep down there, so I knew you were speaking the truth about them, about the ruby skull and the octagonal space in the dust.”
Gisele’s eyes widened.
“Well, I’m with a group of women and children who are planning a quite ridiculous operation, when you hear all about it. But we want to leave the city afterwards, and it makes sense that we take as many people as possible. If it’s true that the young Prince Bruno is locked up in the crypt, I would like to take him. Then I can return his dragon to him.”
Gisele started laughing and didn’t stop laughing for nearly a minute.
Nellie felt increasingly embarrassed. She was already sorry that she had mentioned this. “If it is such a ridiculous idea, I will carry it out myself.”
“No, it is one of the most amazing ideas I have ever heard. If you can carry that out, it will be the best thing ever. I would love to see the looks on the faces of the Regent and the shepherd.”
“Does that mean you’ll help me?”
“Of course I will.”
“Then come with me tomorrow night and we’ll go into the crypt.”
Gisele agreed that she would do that, and they made arrangements.
Then Nellie asked, “Since you know about things that happen in the church, do you know what has happened to Shepherd Adrianus?”
“Many people are talking about it.” Gisele’s expression was dark. “I’ve only heard the rumours. He was said to have disagreed with the Shepherd Wilfridus and was punished and sent away from the city. Someone else has taken his church.”
“Yes, I went to see him, but he was no longer there. Where is he?”
“I presume he has been sent to a monastery somewhere outside the city to pay for his sins.”
“But he was only trying to protect people.”
“That is not how these men of power think. Anyone who threatens their position is an enemy, church or not. If anything, it is even worse in the church, because people don’t expect it and don’t look for it. But all these monks and all these priests are constantly at each other’s throats. Mind you, they have nothing else to do. If they don’t see the whores, and a lot of them truly don’t, all they can do is fight with each other and attempt to enrich themselves at the cost of the others. To be a monk can be a hard life. Some of these monasteries are doing very well, and it is not because they’re being nice to anyone.”