by Patty Jansen
“Long before that time. Lady Verdonck has been dead many years. She was a very generous and devout woman. Ronald Verdonck was a habitual cheater.”
Nellie wondered how well “devout” would have gone down in a household where the men openly declared hatred of the church.
“At the end of her life, Lady Verdonck lived at the farm. You can still see her rooms if you ask the nuns. They maintain the flower garden as well. The rumour goes that Adalbert wants to repossess the land and is offering the nuns good payment. Unfortunately for him, the nuns care little about payment. They grow everything they need and sell the rest to people who take it to the markets.”
Gisele knew such a lot about people’s lives. It was sad that she didn’t appear to have had much of a life of her own.
The cart trundled through another field and up another low hill, and when they got to the top they could see a couple of buildings along the creek. The buildings were surrounded by small plots of land, with empty bean stakes and cabbages still growing, an orchard of leafless trees, barns and fields with horses and cows.
No people were in sight, but trails of smoke drifted from several chimneys in the sprawling complex of buildings. When they came closer, Nellie could see the chapel tower and the entrance of the building with columns around the front.
They were coming to the farm from the back entrance. A lane lined with trees led from the buildings to the main road between Saardam and Burovia, which was visible in the distance, as well as the church tower of a village.
The cart turned into the long driveway through empty paddocks. A bit further along, a horse clopped to the fence, looking curious. When they entered the grounds, someone came onto the porch, a middle-aged woman dressed in a light-brown habit.
Nellie had heard of the nuns but, unlike the monks, they did not usually come into the city.
“That’s Sister Anna,” Gisele said.
She came down the steps and met the cart in the middle of the forecourt.
“Brother Gerard, Fancy seeing you here.”
“Well met, Sister Anna. May the holy Triune be with you.”
“You are welcome at our humble abode. Who are these guests you have brought?”
“These are people from the city. There has been unrest, and as we all know, the poor people are living a very hard life in the city. I’ve come with a number of women and children to Lord Verdonck’s estate, but he doesn’t want to house all of us. We’re looking for a safe place to stay the winter. The women are all good people, no thieves or charlatans.”
The nun looked at Nellie.
Nellie self-consciously flattened her hair.
Sister Anna snorted. “And the Lord Verdonck would rather have all his food spoil before he gives it to the poor people.”
Clearly, there was no love lost between the neighbours.
“Come in. You must warm yourselves by the fire. Our monastery is not as luxurious as a castle, but you will have everything you need.”
Nellie, Koby, Gisele and Wim followed her inside.
It was very dark inside the building. A long corridor stretched into the darkness, lit only by the light from the single torch. The walls and floors were made of plain stone, the floors without any covering. A number of doors opened into the passage. Most of them were open, giving Nellie little glimpses into rooms for cheesemaking, processing wool, preserving jams, and smoking sausages.
The smell made Nellie’s mouth water.
By the broad hips underneath the sister’s habit, Nellie judged that hunger, at least, was not one of the problems in this place. They seemed well provisioned and well organised.
The passage opened into a room where a number of nuns sat at tables, drinking tea. When Sister Anna came in, they all turned to the door.
“We have visitors,” Sister Anna said.
The women got up and came to meet the newcomers. They were young and old, most local but one or two with dark skin. A middle-aged woman greeted them.
“Welcome to our humble place,” she said. “My name is Sister Louisa. I am the abbess of this monastery.”
“Thank you for receiving us,” Nellie said.
Sister Anna explained, “Brother Gerard here told me about a group of women and children who have fled from the city. They’re looking for a place to stay for the winter.”
“We are most all strong and healthy,” Nellie said. “We can work in the fields and many of us have experience in cooking and cleaning and craft.”
The sister looked her up and down. “Are they all your age?”
“No. Most of the women are younger, but some are older. Some have children. Most of us are healthy and everyone is willing to work.”
Another look. “What about you? Where did you come from?”
“I was born in Saardam. I have worked as a servant for many different families.”
Nellie chose not to mention the palace or the Regent or the queen, because she didn’t know what that would make these women think of her.
“Do you have any men with you?”
“Only four. And there is one boy who is fourteen.”
Nellie expected her to say that men weren’t welcome, but she gave Nellie another look. “We do a lot of hard work here. We work in the fields in summer and in winter we produce craft. We have a tannery and we make shoes and leather belts and jerkins. We bring wood to the sawmill and do carpentry. We weave carpets. We dye and spin wool. We make lotions and teas and ointments from plants we grow in the garden.”
“Some of us have experience with that.”
“We can always use hands to help us, if the people are honest.”
“We are.”
“We also require prayer twice a day. Would you come and pray with us?”
“That would be good. My father used to work for the church, and I could recite entire services.”
Sister Louisa gave a small nod. Whether that signified approval or not Nellie didn’t know. “Very well. I will show you to the chapel.”
She preceded Nellie through a maze of corridors that went through high-ceilinged halls, workshops where women in light-brown habits were weaving, past a smoking room where sausages hung on the ceiling, and a quiet room where nuns could study the verses and a library.
“This is amazing,” Nellie said.
“I told you this place is nice,” Gisele said in a low voice.
Sister Louisa turned to Nellie. “Life is hard in the city these days, is it?”
“Have you heard that the Regent is dead?”
“No, I haven’t. The Triune’s judgement is final. I’m sure he will be replaced. We choose to live away from the madness of the city. The rich men jostle for power and corrupt each other’s thoughts with greed and gluttony. It’s of no importance to us.”
“But you sell your produce to the city?”
“A few merchants come to collect food and bring it to the city. With the money, we pay the sawmill and buy items for the farm. We have built a church in town. We support poor families who have met with misfortune. We don’t care for games of power. Money is of no importance to us. We can survive very well without it. It is nice to be able to buy new tablecloths of the finest fabric, but we can survive without them as we have for hundreds of years. We can weave our own fabric, we can make our own sausages, we grow our own food. We have nothing that we want from the city. It is a place of sinners and wasteful excess.”
She pushed open an intricately carved door, letting them into the chapel.
The circular space beyond was full of light and warm colours, from the wood of the pews that stood in a circle around a basin with a statue in the middle of the chapel to the bright colours of the paintings on the walls. Wooden beams with intricately carved panels supported the roof.
The walls were painted red, golden-yellow drapes graced the sides of the windows, and each pew contained a neat row of embroidered cushions.
Nellie said, “Wow.” This room was the product of years and years of loving craftsmanship.
“We built this room for the Triune all by ourselves.”
“But certainly you had people from the city come in to make all of these things, like the furniture and the buildings?”
Sister Louisa lifted her chin. “Nobody from the city ever touched this building. We made it all with our hands and our tools.”
Nellie was amazed. She felt like she had stepped into a dream. This was where she wanted to spend the rest of her days. She wanted to learn to make all these things with her hands. What a way to live away from the city and all its crazy nobles.
“There is no altar,” she said.
“No, we believe that all are equal. We will sometimes hold readings, but we take turns delivering them. No priests tell us what to do or how to interpret the verses. Now, let us pray.”
She led the small group into one of the pews and kneeled. Nellie kneeled next to her, then Gisele and Wim, and Koby at the end. It was clear that Koby didn’t know what she was supposed to be doing. She looked around nervously. Good grief, had that girl never been inside a church?
Nellie prayed to the Triune that all the refugees would be safe, that they would not be punished for taking the ship, and that no one would find them here until the end of winter.
Sister Louisa sprinkled some water from the basin into Nellie’s face.
She gasped with the icy cold.
“You’re lucky it isn’t frozen.”
Then the sister showed them the guest dormitory rooms where they could stay.
“Normally we would have girls here from the city whose parents send them to us to make them into obedient girls, but we don’t get many girls these days.”
“I know a monastery where they do that with noble boys,” Nellie said.
“It’s not always an easy task, but we do it to give back to the community.”
It seemed generally that the community didn’t really appreciate this beautiful place.
Sister Louisa agreed that the group could come, and walked with Nellie and the others back through the maze of hallways and workshops to the main entrance. It was windy and cold outside, and Nellie rugged up in the cart as it went through the fields back to the forest.
First, they came through the garden of little plots. Having seen the rooms where lotions and ointments were made, Nellie now recognised the herb garden. “They’re growing a lot of different types of plants.”
“Yes, this garden is full of wild plants in summer. It’s very pretty and smells really nice. Most of the herbs that you will see in the city are grown here. The most famous product from the herb garden is a healing tea.”
“Did you sense any magic being used in the preparation rooms?” Nellie asked Gisele.
“No. Why? They’re nuns. They wouldn’t use magic.”
“A lot of herb sellers use it.”
But as the cart trundled in the direction of the forest, another cart turned from the main road into the lane that led to the farm. A donkey, not a horse, pulled the cart. Nellie knew only one person who had a donkey: Zelda.
Chapter 8
“DID YOU SEE? That was Zelda,” Nellie said to Gisele as the cart made its way through the fields.
“Who is Zelda?” Gisele asked.
Nellie explained to her how, when the dragon had taken her from the palace, she had found a group of old friends and other outcasts living in a warehouse in the artisan quarter, and how Zelda was using the women to help her sell her magic tea to merchant wives with more money than sense.
“It’s plain quackery,” Nellie said. “There is nothing special in the tea, and the fact that she says she gets it from Mr Oliver doesn’t make it any more special. It’s just chamomile and a number of herbs from the meadows around here. I’ve seen what she puts in it. I’ve seen how she makes ointments and then charges ridiculous prices for them. I’ve seen how she sets the children to beg. I don’t want her to know that we are anywhere in this area. She’ll betray us like she betrayed us before. She will sell the knowledge of where we are to the guards, because she’s only interested in money.”
“Yes, you can’t trust that one,” Wim said.
“Do you know her?” Nellie asked.
“I caught her trying to sneak into the palace stores once. When I asked her what she was doing, she gave me a story about her poor children and having no money.”
“She has no children,” Nellie said.
“A few days later she was trying to butter up the guards by giving them biscuits. They seemed happy about it, too. Just an old woman, they said.”
“Did they eat the biscuits?”
“What else would you do with biscuits?”
“You didn’t test them first?”
“No. I would only test what the Regent ate.” He frowned at her. “Do you think there was a problem? None of the guards complained about the biscuits. They were only biscuits.”
“They may have been part of a larger plan. I know why the nobles of the city have been so placid about the Regent’s excesses and have allowed themselves to be insulted by him. Shepherd Wilfridus is a magician. For many years, since the Regent came to power, the shepherd has controlled the citizens through the food they ate, using the Regent as a front. At first he only needed to control the nobles, because the nobles own the businesses and they have the influence. But because of the winter and because not much produce is coming into the city, the citizens are becoming unhappy, so he told the Regent to open up the stores; and he’s been distributing food laced with magic to all the citizens of the city so that they would do whatever the Regent told them.”
Both Gisele and Wim frowned at her.
Wim said, “I never got sick from any of the food. I tested all of it.” He looked distinctly uncomfortable.
“This wasn’t magic to make you sick, but magic that made people numb and more likely to believe what the shepherd and the Regent said. Haven’t you noticed that you’ve asked a lot more questions since leaving the palace?”
“Being convicted of a crime I didn’t commit has that effect.”
“Not just you, everyone who has left the palace. I don’t know how and where the magic entered the palace and what he used to spread it. I do know that Zelda sells magical concoctions to merchants. I know they all think she’s wonderful. I know she is an informant for the palace.”
Wim’s eyes met hers. “But I never saw any foul play in the kitchens.”
“That’s why I think the magic went into the food before it reached the kitchen, and that Zelda may have had something to do with the spreading of it. And Zelda comes to the nunnery to buy her supplies. I’m not sure I want to come here anymore.”
Gisele gave her sideways look. “I don’t understand. There are remedies against magic. They will involve dandelion, anise or blackberry. I don’t know the recipe, but I’m sure someone will know how to use these ingredients, especially if the magic isn’t strong.”
“The problem is, you have to believe it enough to realise that a potion will help you. If you don’t see the problem, you won’t see the need for taking a remedy.”
So much magic had been used on everyone, and none of the other nobles saw the problem either. Except Adalbert Verdonck, who would never eat in the palace. But his father had. He must have been taking a potion against magic.
The weather had turned windy. Gisele sat at the reins hidden in the cowl of her habit. Wim and Koby were huddled up inside Wim’s cloak. Nellie had pulled a shawl over her head to protect herself from the biting wind that howled through the barren branches.
Probably because of the bad weather, they didn’t hear the thunder of the approaching horse’s hooves until the horse ran past. It galloped past them through the forest, followed by a number of other horses all in different colours, manes and tails flying. At the front was Madame Sabine’s white stallion; it was followed by a black horse, a brown horse and a dappled horse, as well, as a bit later, a cow, a couple of goats and a most peculiar squat pony that was white- and black-striped.
&nb
sp; “Whatever by the Triune is that?” Wim called out.
All of a sudden everyone was alert. Gisele sat up and ordered the cart horse to stop.
The troupe of animals disappeared into the forest. The thundering of hooves and cracking of branches faded in the distance.
“They’re going to the old water mill over there,” Koby said.
It was true. And now Nellie heard the loud whistle like a shepherd calling his flock.
From the barren trees came an ear-splitting screech, a sound that brought Nellie back to her youth.
She’d been fourteen or fifteen when the man named Mustafa opened his animal park in the artisan quarter of the city. He owned a couple of squat black- and white-striped ponies called zebra horses. They were cranky things and you couldn’t ride them. He also owned two red-and-blue birds with enormous curved beaks. They would screech so loudly that you could hear them even in the street outside the park.
She had wondered where Mustafa and his animals had gone. They had just discovered the place, but what was he doing all the way out here? People wouldn’t come all this way to look at his animals. “Let’s go and have a look.”
Gisele turned the cart into a narrow, bumpy track that went in the direction of the water mill.
It was a most idyllic place with a small lake upstream from the mill and weeping willows standing by the side. The house overlooked a meadow, now brown but which would be green and filled with flowers in summer.
When the cart came down the driveway, a man came out of the house. He was quite short and stocky, smoked a pipe and wore a beret.
He had aged a lot, and his face was not as dark as it had seemed back when he was the first dark-skinned person she had seen, but Nellie recognised the owner of the animals, Mustafa.
“Why, I seem to have visitors.”
Nellie said, “I just noticed your zebra horse running through the forest. I hope it didn’t escape.”
“Naw, it’s fine. I feed the animals here so they always come back.”
“What are you doing here with this menagerie? Last time I saw you, you had a park in the city.”
“Those were the good days, when all I had to worry about was the ladies getting upset about the parrot’s language. I’ve been minding my own business lately,” he said. “It’s no longer safe in the city, so I’ve moved my troupe here where I can wait until there are better places to go. It’s a nice place, isn’t it?”