by Patty Jansen
Through the tall windows, Nellie could see over the fields on the other side. They were full of sheep standing around feed troughs.
Adalbert Verdonck waited by the fire, seated in a broad armchair with a velvet covering.
“Well met and thank you for your hospitality,” Nellie said.
“Sit down.” He made a sweeping gesture at the couch opposite him. He wore a number of gold rings on his fingers. Nellie recognised the Verdonck family seal.
Nellie and Henrik sat, Nellie remaining on the edge of the couch because she was afraid to make it dirty.
He gestured at a tray with bread and tea that stood on a low table. “Help yourself.”
Nellie was quite hungry, but felt too embarrassed to start attacking the food.
Henrik had no such inhibition, and he grabbed a hand full of biscuits. He held one out to her. Nellie took it, feeling self-conscious.
“You may ask why I invited you here,” Adalbert Verdonck began.
“Well . . . ,” Nellie said.
“You did wonder, because if you were in the city you would never be asked to come to the house of the lord of an estate. It’s different here. We need each other to survive. We need each other for news and must look out for each other. I treat my servants and workers well so they will be loyal to me.”
Why was he saying this? Was there a reason he thought that his workers had not been loyal? Did this have to do with Madame Sabine? Was it a warning?
At any rate, it made Nellie uncomfortable, because he was drawing a clear line, telling them, don’t get too comfortable, because I will put you in your place at the first opportunity.
“Now, tell me the reason you’re here,” he continued. “Tell me who you are, and who you are working for.”
He was looking at Nellie while he said this, and Nellie had no idea what was safe to say. And didn’t he already know who they were?
Henrik said, “We have already told you who we are. We are refugees.”
The Lord’s eyebrows flicked up. “That includes you? Last time I saw you, you were working at the palace as a guard, which is a coveted position no sane man would give up. How did you end up here with this stolen ship that, frankly, I’m going to get into a lot of trouble for sheltering?”
Henrik stiffened ever so slightly.
Nellie said, “Why worry about the ship? Your father was no friend of the church, and he would have been delighted to play games with the shepherd or the Regent over returning the ship. You can have it and play the games on his behalf. All we ask is a safe place to stay.”
Henrik gave her a wide-eyed look.
Adalbert Verdonck looked merely amused.
Nellie continued, “We can work, we can clean, we can sew.”
“My rules are simple: I am happy to have you, but that harlot is not staying on my land. She will be taking all her rubbish with her or I’ll burn it.”
“Do you know what it’s for?” Nellie said.
“Witchery,” he snorted. “I don’t know why my father was taken with it. As if people could fly. Can you see us all flapping our hands and taking off into the air? We have enough chaos on land to deal with; we don’t need people flying about the air. I don’t need my neighbours attacking my sheds for it.”
“The things she is doing are known to work. They don’t strap wings onto people’s arms anymore. They use bags filled with hot air.”
“I’ve heard enough of it. It’s all witchery. I want it gone. I want her gone. My father is dead because of her.”
“All right, then lend us a wagon in exchange for the ship and we’ll leave.”
He looked taken aback. “What? All of you?”
“Yes. Either we all stay here or we all leave. We came here together, we all escaped death, and we’re not leaving anyone behind in the middle of winter.”
“You know who she is, do you?”
“We are not leaving her behind. Lend us a wagon and we will leave, with all her things.”
“You won’t find a wagon big enough.”
“Then we will come back as many times as needed.”
He looked at Henrik, then turned back to her, frowning, a perplexed look on his face. Oh, Adalbert Verdonck wasn’t dumb. He would think if Nellie was so keen to hold onto Madame Sabine’s balloon then he might be missing something.
“No,” he said simply.
“What no?”
“I can’t allow you to leave. It’s very dangerous out there.”
“Then Madame Sabine stays as well.”
“I can arrange for her to travel back to her family, if that pleases you.”
“She has no family that she cares about.” In all the discussions with Madame Sabine, she had not mentioned going back to Lurezia even once.
Adalbert Verdonck’s face twitched.
Henrik said, “Is there anything that could make you change your mind about her? Anything she can do?”
“As a guard, did you ever deliver mail or messages?”
What? Nellie frowned at Henrik.
“Sometimes. Why are you asking?”
Adalbert Verdonck got up from his seat. He walked across the room to his desk, picked up a letter and gave it to Henrik. “Does this strike you as real?”
Seated next to Henrik, Nellie looked over his shoulder.
The single-page letter was written in a neatly schooled hand. It bore the Regent’s seal.
It said,
Most exalted of court advisors,
The news will have reached you that our father is dead. After his passing, things happened in the palace that are best left unsaid, except that all the paths laid out for the future of the Regentship were unpalatable to me, namely that all of them would result in the death of me and my brother or our banishing. I have chosen to prevent my own demise at the hands of the same cowards who killed my father and have declared myself Regent of Saardam. The first order of my tenure will be to establish good relationships with neighbouring estates. The custom of the city of Saardam has allowed you to live in a great deal of luxury. In order for this relationship to be mutually beneficial, I shall have an urgent need of a minimum of fifty men, supplied and fitted out for active guard duty, to serve the Regentship for a period of ten years. You will be well rewarded in our return custom of your produce.
Yours most kindly,
Casper
Henrik shook his head. “He even signs his first name only, like a reigning king. The hide of him.”
“Is it real, though? Will his mother be able to tell the writing?”
“And if so, will she tell the truth?” Henrik asked.
“Those are all questions I’m wrestling with. In short, this is plea for help. Send soldiers.”
“Only fifty.”
“I suspect he thought asking for more would make me laugh. I don’t have that many men to spare. If it’s not a trap.”
“You can ask Madame Sabine if she recognises her son’s handwriting,” Nellie said.
“And if he wrote it, how do we know whether he wrote it of his own volition or was forced?”
No one replied. It was impossible to know that.
Henrik spread his hands. “Why would anyone force him to write that?”
“To lure me into the city. I’ve asked for the repayment of loans. They try to make me sympathetic to this . . . boy who, when I last saw him, was behaving abominably and getting involved with families we would all rather not see increasing their influence.”
Nellie shuddered and remembered walking in on Casper engaged in a certain activity with Baroness Hestia in the laundry room.
“Do you think he wrote this well-constructed and eloquent letter?” Adalbert asked Henrik.
“Two options. If he did, he has obviously sobered up and realised that if he doesn’t start acting like an adult, he will be dead before the year is out. If he didn’t write it, then who did and why? Do you have news that his claim that he’s taken the Regentship is true?”
Henrik said, “My limited sources say that it is, ye
s.”
“And where is Shepherd Wilfridus?” Nellie asked.
Adalbert Verdonck frowned. “Is the priest important?”
Now it was Nellie’s turn to be surprised. “You do know what happened in Saardam, right?”
“Rest assured, I know. I know that the Regent was hit by an arrow in the chest and died instantly.”
He eyed Henrik while saying this, and frowned.
“It’s all right, I shot the arrow,” Henrik said. “I don’t want that to be a secret.”
“I thought it was you. It’s a . . . surprising action, to say the least.”
“Is it? Would you be happy to stand by and watch while a man drowns his defenceless wife?”
“She is not defenceless, and she is not innocent. This is why I don’t want her in this house. You’re all taken by the fact that she is a woman, but she is a manipulating harlot.”
“That’s still no reason to drown her.”
“He wouldn’t have done that. He would have pardoned her at the last moment.”
“Except he didn’t. She went into the harbour with the others, while their sons were watching.”
“What? Is the man mad?”
“That’s what we asked ourselves, but the question is irrelevant. He won’t do any more mad deeds.”
Adalbert Verdonck eyed Henrik with an expression of renewed respect. Calculating. Nellie could see the thoughts whirl behind his eyes. Was Henrik mad? Did he speak for others? Did he have a lot of support? Did he have leadership ambitions?
Adalbert Verdonck was a very calculating man, much more so than his generous father. That was why Henrik and Nellie had been invited here: before he decided to remove this group from his land, he wanted to make sure removing them was in his best interests.
Although Nellie suspected that the interests of the group of women were somewhat aligned with Adalbert Verdonck’s—they both wanted peace and openness to return to Saardam—she was developing an intense dislike for him. He viewed people as set pieces to be moved to his advantage.
Henrik asked, “You were not present at the punishment?”
“I don’t lower myself to attend disgusting spectacles like that. I remained in my father’s room at the palace. But after the Regent failed to return to the palace, there followed a period of expectant silence, as if one knew that something had happened but was unsure what. The guards returned with the body and the palace went into lockdown. The Guard commander ordered all his men into the hall and ordered them to crush down hard on any signs of unrest. The nobles at the palace argued over who should replace the Regent. They made a number of suggestions but that priest vetoed all of them. He had been attacked himself, he declared, and he wasn’t going to appoint any noble until her knew which of them had ordered the attack on his life.”
Nellie said, “Didn’t anyone tell you what he did at the harbour?”
“What do you mean, what he did? The priest? The guards told me that the dragon made an appearance.”
“It did, but that’s not what I mean. Henrik shot two arrows, one of them destined for the Regent, the other for the shepherd. But before the arrow could hit the shepherd, he threw a ball of fire, which then turned into the same fire dog that has been terrorising the city at night. It fought with the dragon.” Was it possible that the people on the quay hadn’t seen this as clearly as she had?
He gave her a suspicious look. “No, I haven’t heard that. Who told you that?”
“I didn’t hear it, I saw it. Twice. People in the city have been worried about the fire dog and the magician who owns it. The magician is Shepherd Wilfridus. I have seen him conjuring it twice.”
He frowned. “Are you saying that the shepherd is a magician?”
“He is the strongest magician in all the city. I think I understand why he has been chasing magicians, because magicians usually can feel other magicians, and since he is preaching against magic he didn’t want anyone to know that he is a magician himself. He may believe that his magic is good and any other magic is bad, or that you need magic because the church is being attacked by magic, but whatever he says, he’s a very strong magician.”
While she spoke it was as if a light went on in Adalbert Verdonck’s head. “That makes so much sense. Everything makes sense to me now. My father has always hated that priest. My father has always wanted him to back off from the Regent. Of course he appointed the Regent, but he should not have any influence over the Regent governing the country. But he meddles with everything. He tells the Regent exactly what to do.”
“All of which is now irrelevant, because there is no more Regent,” Nellie said.
As she said those words they all realised the horror of the situation.
Henrik said, “Who is in charge of the city now?”
“By all indications, it is that very shepherd,” Adalbert Verdonck said. “Who may pretend that this sixteen-year-old boy has taken the position of his father, and has written to me to lure me into this trap.”
“That was his intention all along,” Nellie said. “He chose Regent Bernard because he knew the man was weak and had few friends. Your father was one of the very few influential friends he had, and this was the reason the shepherd didn’t like him. The shepherd was trying to hide his magic that he uses to make the people believe him and agree with him through the food he gives out from the stores. I have evidence that the shepherd killed your father.”
The young Lord frowned at her. “A man of the cloth killed my father?”
“Not with his hand, but with poisoned gin. I know how he did it, because I have seen the evidence.”
The young Lord put his fist on the table. “The sooner we’re rid of this disease, this horrible church that poisons people’s minds, the better. I never understood why my father pandered to them. Show me this evidence, and I’ll make sure that the proper processes are put in place. My esteemed colleagues will see that it’s a folly to continue to support this church. Most of them are heathens anyway.”
Except he was talking about the nobles of Saardam who went to the banquets and had their minds poisoned by magic. And getting the evidence would mean going back to the city and unmasking Gisele’s illegal gin business, and that would mean trouble to a lot more people.
But ultimately, she didn’t want to tell him these things. Because who said that he would use them for the good of everyone? He’d said he looked after his servants, but he almost spoke as if he did this just to show what a good man he was, and expected praise for it, rather than because he believed it was the best thing to do.
He insisted that Nellie provide proof that the shepherd had killed his father, but he resisted all suggestions that he invite Madame Sabine to look at this letter to see if her son could have written it. He kept calling her “harlot” and wouldn’t use her name.
“She never deserved to have two sons, for all the lack of care she has given them. Those two boys have never had a proper mother.”
Nellie agreed with him on that front, but didn’t understand why he said this to them. This was a very dangerous young man, angry with all the world. He continued to call magic “trickery” and called the members of the Science Guild “quacks” whose opinions his father had courted, but whom he would never have taken seriously.
Henrik asked what he thought the dragon was if not magic, and he declared that “there is likely a rational solution, if one looks properly.” As to where he thought his father had obtained the scars on his leg, he said it was a hunting injury, inflicted by a bear.
He wanted to pay the women to visit the city on his behalf to check out what was happening, but Nellie managed to convince him that the women were much too scared to go back to the city. She was tempted to ask why these people should be asked to risk their lives in order to prove a crime that had no relationship to their lives, but that was not true. If it could be proven to the citizens that Shepherd Wilfridus was a magician and that he had killed Lord Verdonck, the citizens would . . . what, exactly? There was no higher a
uthority in Saardam than the Church of the Triune. And the shepherd ruled the church.
The situation was bad. Too bad, perhaps, ever to return to the city.
She told Adalbert Verdonck that they wouldn’t make use of his hospitality for long, that they would find another place, but that while the women were at the Verdonck estate, they would work. And that Madame Sabine wouldn’t be going anywhere.
“She is not to come anywhere near the house.”
Nellie had to agree with that condition.
With that, the meeting was over and Henrik and Nellie walked back to the barn. For the first part of the way, they were silent. Nellie felt uneasy saying less than flattering things about their host while they might still be within earshot.
Eventually, Henrik said, “What did you make of that?”
“He give the appearance of being strong and confident, but he’s crazy. I wouldn’t trust him at all.”
“He is a noble. What do you expect?”
“I don’t like how determined he is for us to get rid of Madame Sabine. Does he really hate her that much? I don’t like it that he refuses to talk about magic. We’ve tried pretending magic didn’t exist before, and it didn’t work.”
“What do you think he wants, then?”
“He might want the Regentship.”
Henrik laughed. “When he has all this?” The land lay beyond the gesture of his hand in the dark, though they couldn’t see it at the moment.
Nellie felt heat rush to her cheeks. “Well, if you know so well, why don’t you tell me what you think he wants?”
Henrik laughed again. “I’m just teasing you.”
“I’m not in the mood for teasing. This man disturbs me.”
“I’m sorry. I honestly don’t know what he wants,” Henrik said. “I’ve been with these nobles long enough that I know they’re propelled by money or power, but I can’t see how he can get either out of this. He had few relations with the Saardam nobles, and I doubt they’d support him as Regent. Saarland is not big enough for him to risk his life. Certainly he appears to have been scornful of his father and his involvement with Madame Sabine. He doesn’t like the Regent, he doesn’t like the church, he doesn’t like magic, he doesn’t like the Science Guild. There is not much left for him to like.”