The Wizard Priest

by Patty Jansen

  Nellie felt ashamed for having judged her father badly because he had seen what was happening. “And I am guessing that one of the things they do is dabble with magic?”

  “I haven’t personally seen this, but I’m sure you’re right.”

  “Then why do they tell the Regent to get rid of everyone who has magic?”

  “It’s simple, really. It is so that they can control the most powerful magicians in this area. This city is like a blank canvas. There has never been much magic here, only a few people who dabble in it, but things are changing. Magic lines are never stable, and they’re moving into this region. And a lot of people want to make sure they get their share of power once magic moves into Saardam.”

  “Is that why the church put the Regent in place?”

  “It’s why they chose him. There were a lot of other contenders for the position, but the church chose the one least likely to pose a threat to their power. Now they are using him as a tool to get rid of anyone who can point out the hypocrisy of preaching against magic while also learning magic.”

  “Didn’t they make the excuse that in order to learn about a thing, you need to study it?”

  “That’s their official excuse, but many people aren’t buying it anymore. Anyone with magic knows it’s a blatant ploy to get rid of all magicians in the city. To what aim, we can speculate, but to keep the city safe is certainly not one of the possibilities.”

  “Which is why it’s so hard to find a wind magician. I need to know which is a safe place to hide after we leave the city. People say there are a lot of problems with bandits upriver.”

  “Not half as much as they make it out to be.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I travelled down the river.”

  “On that beautiful boat?”

  Gisele laughed. “No, that’s only for important people attending the banquet. We came with a coach and horses from the monastery. It’s a good two-day journey.”

  “You didn’t see any bandits?”

  “The only ones I’ve heard of are small groups of youths that are not terribly harmful. They will steal things if they can get away with it, in particular horses, but they’re not interested in occupying land or killing people. The threat is much blown up by people who have an interest in keeping the citizens in the city.”

  “But I still need to tell the women in my group that the river and the riverbanks are safe. I need someone who is a wind magician, and the local magicians have all left town.”

  “Oh, there are still some good ones. Some of the people in the Science Guild are magicians. There’ll be a meeting of that group tonight. Feel welcome to come as long as you can keep silent. The meeting will be of magical and non-magical people, and they mostly talk about science. But there will be someone there who can answer your questions and I’m sure they’ll be happy to see you there as a true child of your father’s.”

  “My father?”

  “He was one of the founding members of the Science Guild. I presumed you knew.”

  No, she didn’t know. Her father never told her or her mother anything. With the book she had received, a universe about his life had opened to her.

  Walking back home, Nellie thought she had finally dug through all the layers of her father’s message. Having thrown himself into church life in his younger years, when the Church of the Triune riled against the display of riches and the cruelty of the magic of the Belaman Church, her father had seen the new church become just as cruel and corrupt as the organisation it sought to replace. The break between the Church of the Triune and the Belaman Church was not as complete as people suggested. They shared many beliefs and customs. People went to Senoza for pilgrimage and study. In fact, they even still shared some of the monasteries. The Guentherite order accepted young men from both churches.

  So her father became disillusioned when the shepherd showed more interest than he thought was wise in old church relics and obscure, forbidden books. The virtue that mattered most to her father was honesty and transparency. None of this secret, hush-hush stuff. He loved numbers because numbers never lied.

  Her father had become a heretic which, finally, made her understand why he had so angrily refused visits from anyone from the church in his final years.

  Chapter 18

  * * *

  GISELE TOLD NELLIE where to go for the Science Guild meeting that night, and Nellie was nervous. It sounded all secret and mysterious.

  Nellie’s apprehension was not made any better when she heard Gisele would not be going. She had monk duties to fulfil. “I already spend so much time doing other things. I need to attend the weekly service for giving thanks. If I’m not at the church, there will be talk.”

  Nellie understood, but it didn’t make her feel any easier about meeting a room full of strangers by herself.

  Gisele told her the names of some of the people who would be there, but Nellie didn’t know any of them personally, and there were even some people whose names she had never heard. They sounded like important businessmen.

  As to what they normally spoke about, Gisele said, “They report on experiments with new knowledge and techniques. The people of all the low countries were very much upset back when the Eastern Traders came into our harbours with their iron ships. But they have to be careful because the Regent forbids magic and science is closely related to magic. The people in the guild are in search of the ultimate truth. The iron ships are not powered by magic. They consist of parts that can be made to work when they are put together in the right way. The Science Guild is about finding this way to make better machines.”

  Nellie knew about the iron ships. She had been there when the ugly square ship with the fat masts that belched smoke came into the harbour. She remembered how everyone wanted to buy those ships, but the eastern traders weren’t selling anything except the produce they carried. So everyone tried to build their own ships, and this led to disasters more often than not.

  “But magicians will come to the meeting?”

  “Not all of them will be magicians, but some will be.”

  The meeting was to take place in a house in the artisan quarter that was a block away from the main street, and not too far from where Mistress Julianna lived. In fact, to get there, Nellie had to walk past Mistress Julianna’s house.

  She wondered if people like Mistress Julianna would be members of this group, because she still didn’t quite understand what they did. And her father had been a founding member?

  As she came near the house, she noticed a number of other people walking in the same direction.

  All of them looked like ordinary citizens, and she even recognised some of them. They were shop owners and craftsmen who plied trades. One man she knew was a carpenter, and he was in the company of the very carpenter who had made the beam for the harness.

  He greeted Nellie. “I wasn’t expecting you here tonight.”

  “A friend said that I should come.”

  They went into a narrow alley that led past the back of the houses. In a little alcove at the end of the alley was another sight that Nellie knew well. A horse stood tied to a fence post. But it was not just any horse. This one was a beautiful grey stallion with dappled fur, a long white mane and fetlocks, and blue eyes. She knew this horse. It belonged to madame Sabine.

  “Is the Regent’s consort here?”

  “She is our most influential member. Didn’t you know that?”

  Nellie didn’t. She hadn’t asked, and Gisele hadn’t told her. She hesitated at the top of a flight of stairs that led to the door into a basement room where the stream of people were entering. The carpenter went ahead and she lost sight of him.

  Did she still want to go to this meeting when the only person who knew that she had stolen the dragon box was in attendance? Of course, Madame Sabine could easily have betrayed Nellie. She hadn’t, because it would mean admitting that she or someone working for her had taken the box from the church in the first place. She hadn’t, because it wo
uld shine the light on her own activities that no one knew about, which no doubt included coming here, because there was no way the Regent could know about this. If he did, he would never keep quiet about it.

  Which meant it was probably safe to continue.

  A group of people walked past her, down the stairs into the house. Nellie followed them.

  The room looked like it had been a servants’ kitchen in times past, but it had been a long time since any respectable family lived in this house. The wallpaper was peeling from the walls, and in parts the plaster had come off to reveal the brickwork underneath. Dark stains marked the ceiling, and the tiles felt gritty under her feet.

  But there was a warm fire in the hearth, a wooden table stood in the middle of the room and several people sat around it on a collection of mismatched chairs, hard benches or wine barrels. In the low light, most of them were mere silhouettes, but Nellie recognised none other than madame Sabine, her round-cheeked face gilded by the torchlight. She wore her hair tied up at the back of her head and had again dressed in men’s riding trousers and a man’s shirt.

  When Nellie came in, she looked up, met her eyes and smiled. Nellie wasn’t sure whether it was a friendly or an evil smile.

  There was some banter between the people in the room and the new arrivals, and someone directed Nellie to a place on the bench.

  As soon as she sat down, madame Sabine got up and walked around the table. She came quite close, leaning over Nellie so she could almost feel the warmth of her body and was enveloped in the smell of her perfume.

  “Fancy seeing you here.”

  “I was invited.”

  “Is that so?”

  Nellie straightened her back. “Just in case you don’t know, Cornelius Dreessen, who I’ve learned has started this group, was my father.”

  Madame Sabine’s eyes widened briefly. “So that’s where you get your impertinent nature.”

  “I’m not interested in playing games. I want only the truth.”

  Madame Sabine laughed. “Still so naïve. Where is the dragon?”

  “I let him go.”

  “You—what?”

  “I opened the box and set him free, so that he can go back to the east, where he belongs.”

  “So that its power is lost to all of us? You stupid maid.”

  “The dragon is still around, but he isn’t interested in letting people experiment with him.”

  “You know nothing about it.”

  “I know that he flies well.”

  Madame Sabine grabbed the front of Nellie’s coat. She met Nellie’s eyes, nostrils flaring. “I know you still have it. We have other ways of getting what we want.”

  Nellie coolly yanked her coat out of Madame Sabine’s grip. “You can’t treat me like that. I am no longer your servant.”

  “I will remember that. In my book, servants of the court are afforded protection by the family they work for. I will be happy to acknowledge that does not apply to you.”

  “You could have told your husband some story that ‘proved’ I stole the dragon, but you didn’t. To me, that means you’re hiding activities you don’t want him to know about. Does he know you’re here?”

  “How dare you talk to me like that?”

  “I respect people who are worthy of respect. Like my father. He wasn’t a very nice person, but he never did anything dishonest.”

  Madame Sabine gave her a hard stare but made no reply. She whirled around and went back to her seat.

  The man next to her quickly turned away from her to mask the fact that he had been staring at the interaction between her and Madame Sabine.

  Her heart was still thudding. It was obvious: she had become more than just Nellie the maid. People knew her and watched her. It was a scary and exhilarating thought.

  Nellie looked around.

  She was surprised that she knew a lot more people than she thought she would. She recognised the faces of a baker, and the two carpenters she had seen before, a tailor, the cheese-maker, and many other people who provided trades in the city. Many of them she had not seen for a while because they had stopped coming to the markets.

  A few more people came in after Nellie did, and more chairs were being carried in from somewhere deeper within the house.

  The man at the head of the table was Master Beck, a tall grey-haired man who kept counting the people in the room. He was the head teacher at the city’s College of Knowledge, a place where nobles and rich merchants sent their sons to be taught to write beautifully and without mistakes, to manage a company’s accounts, the basics of the Burovian language and other things that noble sons needed to know.

  Eventually, Master Beck was happy that everyone was present, and he began.

  “Welcome to our meeting tonight. As you see, we have a visitor here today, invited by our friend Gerard who unfortunately couldn’t make it tonight. Why don’t you introduce yourself?” He looked at Nellie.

  Nellie gulped. This didn’t fall under keeping quiet. Had Gisele known this would happen? Did these people even know that their Gerard was a woman?

  She steeled herself.

  “My name is Nellie. I lived and worked with Queen Johanna since she was a little girl. You will be familiar with my father, Cornelius Dreessen.”

  There were several gasps around the room. A few people looked at her with an interest they hadn’t shown before.

  Madame Sabine gave her a foul look.

  “It is an honour to have you here,” a man across the table said. His hair was white and his eyebrows were fashioned into horns.

  Nellie thought he was an account keeper with one of the major importing companies.

  “Your father was a dear friend,” another man said. Nellie remembered him vaguely from a time he and she had been much younger.

  Several people who hadn’t noticed Nellie before turned to her and nodded or greeted her.

  Madame Sabine said in a prim voice, “Nellie has made a bit of a name for herself, because she left the palace in the company of our elusive dragon.”

  Several people nodded. The gossip about her had obviously spread.

  Had the dragon been part of this group’s experiments? Had Lord Verdonck been a member, too?

  “You didn’t bring the creature?” Master Beck asked, meeting Nellie’s eyes.

  “He’s not mine. He doesn’t obey me.”

  “It’s dangerous.”

  “Not if you don’t try to harm him, or the things he cares about.”

  A man laughed. “Whatever does a dragon care about?”

  “He likes children and animals. He will protect those.”

  “That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve heard.” The speaker was an old man with a big bushy beard.

  “Who should he listen to, then?” Nellie asked him.

  He missed the cynical tone of her voice. “It will obey a proper magician. A dragon is a strong magical creature. You will need magical artefacts to control it.”

  “You speak as if you know everything about dragons. Do you have experience?” She thought of the scratches on Madame Sabine’s back.

  “I have studied dragons in the literature.”

  “With a real dragon?”

  He gave her a what-do-you-think look. “They’re dangerous creatures.”

  “They are dangerous only if you try to harm them or the things that are dear to them.”

  The man snorted.

  Nellie said, “As I have already said, the dragon doesn’t listen to anyone. He does as he pleases. I believe he may only obey the rightful owner, but none of us.”

  Now the man turned to her, his expression somewhat annoyed. “Do you have any magic of any kind?”

  “Of course I don’t.” Nellie’s cheeks grew warm.

  He spread his hands. “Well, there you have it. That’s why the dragon won’t listen to you. If you were to pass it to us, we could make it obey.”

  “The dragon chose to stay with me. He hasn’t tried to attack me or the children or an
y of the animals that we have with us. I can give him to you, but it is up to the dragon to accept a master.”

  It was Prince Bruno’s dragon, and of course he would never listen to just anyone who said they owned him by paying money for the box.

  Master Beck said, “I would strongly urge you to let us try to gain control of it. If you showed us where it is, one of us could accompany you to entice the dragon to come with us. We, the entire city, are in dire need of it, now that the fire dog prowls the streets at night. We can cope with the guards and their raids to obtain every little magical trinket in this town, things that were never much use to us anyway. But now we have bigger concerns, and we should use everything in our power. We need this dragon to fight evil.”

  There were and a lot of nods around the room.

  A feeling of frustration came over Nellie. No matter how many times she said that the dragon didn’t listen, they still believed that they could control him. Well, look at what had happened to Madame Sabine when she tried.

  She was sick of these people. Science Guild or Church, they were all the same: only after fame and riches for themselves, over the head of a dumb kitchen maid. But, if they didn’t want to believe her, maybe they should learn their own lesson. This kitchen maid was not going to take this without getting her own fair share of the bargain.

  She said, “Much as you will be surprised to hear this, I have no use for a dragon. I am happy just to take my friends to safety. If you can help me leave the city, I am happy to hand the dragon on to you, providing that you will look after him and that he will be treated properly.”

  Madame Sabine’s eyes widened. Oh no, she didn’t buy it.

  Master Beck asked, “So what do you want in return?”

  “I live with a number of women who have lost their husbands, and children who have lost their parents. We have very little, especially for the children. We could use food and winter clothing and blankets. I also want the advice of a wind magician.”