by Patty Jansen
“Yeah.” He chuckled. “He was like: if you want my daughter, you better be worth it.”
“And you didn’t think you were?”
“I think he just didn’t want to lose you.”
And he reached up to her and pulled her onto his knees.
“Nellie, I think you are the craziest woman I have ever met. I never thought that in my grumpy old age I would ever find someone like you.”
“You’re making me all embarrassed now.”
“Listen to me, Nellie. When all of this is over. I want to share what’s left of my life with you.”
Nellie giggled. “Henrik, are you really asking me to marry you?”
“I guess I am. Once we’re safely through this time. Will you?”
“Do you think you’re going to get away with such a lame effort? I want to be asked on your knees.”
“All right.” Henrik rose, took off his coat. Then he knelt on one knee and took her hand.
At that moment, the kitchen door opened and a group of people came in. Someone said, “I’m hungry.”
Someone else said, “Whoa.”
They were Master Thiele’s men, and they stopped at the door and fell silent.
Henrik said, “With these good folk as our witnesses, will you answer the question: will you marry me?” He looked up at her with his clear grey eyes, utterly sincere.
Nellie said, “I will.” Her mouth felt dry and her hands clammy.
Was this really what it felt like to decide about the rest of her life? Yet she wanted to do this, because she was sick of being alone.
The people at the door cheered.
Master Thiele came in, wondering what was going on.
“We’ll celebrate!” Adrian said.
“Not until everything is ready and packed. There are many spies in the city and we need to be out of here by tomorrow morning.” That was Master Thiele, focused on the job. He had never been married, Nellie heard when he had left the kitchen, and probably cared less about these things than everyone else.
So they packed up the clothes and hats when they arrived. Someone had gone into Yolande’s old shop and had retrieved some of the equipment from the back: two big blackened cooking pots and jars and trays and utensils for making sweets. The man who had promised the sugar had brought it, big heavy bags stashed away under oiled cloth. All those things were loaded on the cart and the cart went into the shed. The men brought a second cart and loaded an array of weapons and packs onto it.
When it got dark, it was time for the promised celebration, and Nellie was ashamed to say that she drank a bit too much gin and almost fell asleep at the table.
Henrik helped her up the stairs, because they had decided to stay in the former guesthouse corridor upstairs rather than endangering Henrik’s daughter any further.
They were not the only people staying overnight, as the small band of ex-guards who would travel to the Lord Verdonck’s estate were there, too. All the others were men, so Nellie had a small and very dark room in the upstairs corridor to herself. It was cold and smelled musty, and the mattress had seen better days.
On top of that, Nellie found it hard to sleep. The house was full of strange noises, and the gin churned in her stomach. Also, she worried about not having gotten the herbs. There were so many people involved in this plan, and it was up to her to get the most vital ingredients. What if she couldn’t get them at the nunnery either?
Somewhere in the middle of the night, she must have fallen asleep because a sharp sound woke her.
She thought everyone in the house was upstairs, but it seemed as if the sound had come from the kitchen. Was it time to leave already?
She lay still, listening. Somewhere in one of the other rooms a man was snoring loudly.
The sound came again, as if someone was walking around and tripped over a chair in the kitchen. That meant either they hadn’t lit a light or were unfamiliar with the room.
That couldn’t be any good, could it?
Nellie pushed herself up, found her shoes by the side of the mattress, pulled on her coat over her underclothes and slowly opened the door to her room. The floor in the hallway creaked something terrible, and she had to walk at a snail’s pace to keep it from making too much noise.
Very slowly, she crept down the stairs.
It was completely dark downstairs. She could hear someone breathing.
“Master Thiele?” she called out.
There was a huff of breath as the man got a fright. He knocked over or threw down a bottle that shattered on the floor and at the same time burst into flames. By the light, she could see a young man, not part of their group.
Nellie froze for a moment, deciding whether to run after the man or to start putting out the flames, and then decided in favour of the second, and then decided that maybe she should go and warn the others first so that the could come down and help her.
She ran into the hall, almost tripping over one of the chairs, and yelled, “Fire, fire, please help!”
There were some stumblings and a door opened upstairs. Someone said, “What’s going on?”
“There’s a fire down here,” Nellie said. “Get the others.”
The glow from the kitchen was getting stronger.
She ran back into the kitchen, and found somebody’s cloak and tried to throw it over the burning flames. But the fire was too big now, eating into the floorboards, and the fluid from the bottle was spreading over the floor.
Someone came into the room after her, coughing with the smoke. “Get out,” he said.
It was Master Thiele. He carried a big square box made from dark wood.
“But your shop will burn down,” Nellie protested.
“Go outside to the cart. We’re leaving.” He gently pushed Nellie into the hallway with the box. “Outside. Save yourself.”
A few other people were coming down the stairs, and Nellie ran after them out the back door to where the cart stood.
Master Thiele came a moment later, with a thick fur cloak draped over his box. He set the box on the cart and pulled the cloak over his shoulders.
Nellie wondered what was in the box. It looked very heavy.
“I’ll get the horses,” Henrik said. He went to the stable and came back with the horses, both of them quite nervous. The fire had spread through the kitchen and was coming into the hall.
Master Thiele’s people were all in the yard, some carrying items out the back gate.
“Don’t we need to help put it out?” Nellie asked Henrik when he came with the horses. Her teeth chattered.
Henrik said, “The guild can’t afford the attention they’ll get. Yesterday’s activity must have given the guild’s locality away.”
He strapped one horse in the harness and held the other by the reins. Then he climbed into the driver’s seat of the cart.
“Come.” He held out his hand.
Nellie grabbed it and pulled herself next to him.
He flicked the reins and the horse walked out of the yard.
Master Thiele stood at the gate, holding up a hand as the cart went past.
“Isn’t he coming?” Nellie asked.
“He’ll organise his people for when we come back. They’ll take the other cart to another location.”
Nellie wondered again what was in the heavy wooden box. Weapons, she guessed. She wondered if Master Thiele realised he had accidentally put it on the wrong cart.
And so the cart and two horses traversed the streets in pitch darkness, leaving behind the burning building.
Most guild members had fled the scene, but other people were arriving to have a look. Shouts of “Fire!” rang through the streets.
Henrik said, “There are elements in the city and palace guards who really don’t like Master Thiele. He rarely goes out during the day, and even at night he usually goes with others. If his enemies can’t challenge him directly, they pay street urchins to sneak in and cause damage.”
“But what if I hadn’t woken up in time?”
/> “Believe me, that has happened before. Master Thiele has badly scarred skin on his arm from a fire. He was the only one who made it out of the house alive. The guild lost all their records in that fire. Ever since, he makes sure that everyone only brings into the guild headquarters what they can carry.”
“Do you know who orders these fires?”
“It could be anyone, from corrupt officials to a man wanting to hide a dark past in order to purchase a business licence, all the way up to major officials who know that secret guild members have information they don’t want revealed.”
“It’s amazing what some people will do to hide the truth.”
“That’s because the truth shows them in a bad light. The uglier the truth, the more desperate the measures to hide it.”
Chapter 20
THE MORNING WAS MISTY, and it didn’t get properly light until after the cart had left the city.
They travelled through the dreary countryside, avoiding the muddy puddles in the road. A few farmers headed into the city, but otherwise it was quiet.
The horse plodded along, droplets of moisture lacing its back.
Neither of them spoke very much, and Henrik kept checking over his shoulder. What for, he didn’t say. Not until they were well out of the city, and had passed the levee bank of the river, did he begin to relax.
They were riding through fields of orchards with bare branches. “Most of this land is Adalbert Verdonck’s,” Henrik said. “It’s the main food supply of the city, because this side of the river is higher than the other and there is no contamination by salt water. It’s important land that Saardam needs to control or the people will starve.”
“We won’t get anywhere without his support.”
“No.” Henrik shook his head. “Fortunately, he doesn’t think much of the Regent and his family, or the shepherd.”
“Is that why he’ll never be king?”
“There are other reasons. I’ll show you when we get a bit further.”
“Now you’ve made me curious.”
When they came to the rolling meadows—now all brown—surrounding the Verdonck house, Henrik turned into a side road leading to a little grove surrounded by pine trees. Because pine trees remained green in winter, the row made a shelter against the wind.
Henrik let the horses rest for a bit and led Nellie into the grove.
The meadow surrounded by the trees was well-tended, with neatly-clipped bushes and clean paths surrounding a stone basin containing water and a statue of an angel looking at the sky. In the grass stood a number of moss-covered gravestones.
Henrik led her along a gravel path.
The first grave was new, the stone as yet untouched by the weather. The inscription said, Ronald Adalbert Verdonck. He hoped when there was no hope and fell when he spoke the truth.
Nellie stopped briefly, pushing her shawl down, and said a brief prayer, unsure if that was appropriate for someone who had found so much fault with the church.
But, she reminded herself, Lord Verdonck had been a fair person, and had no beef with the divine, just with the power-hungry shepherd.
Henrik waited a bit further down the path.
Nellie joined him at a spot where eight older gravestones stood, all quite close together and all with small headstones.
The inscriptions on the stone were simple, and all were for children, ranging in age from one day to six months, who had died over a period of about ten years, the latest three years ago.
She met Henrik’s eyes and frowned.
“The Verdonck curse,” he said, his voice low. “This is why the family is unsuited to the throne. Adalbert is the last child in the family to have been born healthy. They needed an heir to the estate, so they married him at seventeen. His first wife gave him a son who lived five days, before dying of illness herself not much later. His second wife gave him two children; neither lived to their first year. She then had a third child but it was clear the child wasn’t his, so she fled. His third wife gave him five children who all died soon after birth, before she threw herself off the tower. He loved her and he was heartbroken. When you come to the house today, you’ll see there is no tower. That’s because Adalbert had it torn down.”
“What a sad story.” She remembered that Madame Sabine had just told her that Adalbert’s wife couldn’t give him children so he was looking for a new one. She also remembered thinking that she was glad she wasn’t a noble because of the anguish caused by the issue of having a suitable heir. Did Madame Sabine know about this? On second thoughts, had Madame Sabine tried to worm herself into the Verdonck family tree by offering to give Ronald Verdonck another child, seeing as the family line looked like it would stop with Adalbert? All of a sudden she saw Adalbert Verdonck’s dislike of her in another light.
Henrik nodded.
“What is Adalbert going to do?”
Henrik shrugged. “All I know is that the family was considered for the throne. This is why they were not suitable, and since that time, they’ve distanced themselves from the church and have missed their opportunity.”
“Unless Adalbert takes it by force.”
“Well, that’s always a possibility.”
And if that happened, many of the city’s nobles would object, and there would be struggles; and when the city was divided, Burovia or Aroden or Gelre would make a move.
Nellie clamped her arms around herself. “It frightens me. Sometimes I don’t even know what’s good or bad anymore.”
“That comes with being older,” he said, taking her hand. “You see that good can be bad and bad can be good, and sometimes good can be so good that it becomes bad, and bad can be so bad that it becomes good.”
Nellie chuckled. “Now you’re making no sense.”
“It makes sense,” he said. “You’ll see when you’re a few years older.”
“Don’t be silly.”
“Then let’s go and prepare for our highly sensible circus parade so that we can put a fourteen-year-old boy on the throne, or at least stop him from getting himself killed or using his dragon to kill others.”
They both laughed, but the sound fell flat.
They would enter the city disguised as a circus. They would hand out sweets that they hoped would counter the effects of the shepherd’s magic so that the people would, somehow, see how the church forced people to leave and was taking over the city. And they would magically have the courage to stand up against their fellow citizens, with magic being forced out of the city, and would put a boy with foreign blood on the throne.
Yeah, it was a strange plan.
It was the only plan they had.
They continued on their way. The mist had grown thinner, but now it started snowing, even if the snowflakes melted as soon as they hit the ground.
Henrik remarked that the only good thing about the snow was that fewer people would take notice of them.
They turned into the estate’s main drive. Someone was at home in the main house. Smoke curled from the chimneys and the smell of burning wood hung over the fields.
When they passed the house, the sound of an axe hitting wood echoed over the empty fields. Wim was outside the barn, chopping wood. Two children were gathering the pieces and taking them inside.
“There they are!” Mina yelled.
Nellie slid from the cart and hugged her friend.
“Did you find Bruno?”
“We know where he is. We have to go back to get him. I’ll tell you all about it when we’re with the others.”
“We were so worried about you.”
“We weren’t gone that long.”
“No, but yesterday afternoon those men turned up.” She glanced at a spot over Nellie’s shoulder.
Nellie turned around. The far part of the horse paddock outside the barn had changed into a camp of at least ten tents. A couple of horses nosed around in a pile of hay. Smoke rose from a fire in the middle of the camp.
“They’re mercenaries,” Wim said, joining them wit
h the axe on his shoulder. “Those are retired war horses. We think Adalbert Verdonck has hired them to take the city.”
“Have you seen him around at all?” Henrik asked.
“Only at a distance,” Wim said.
“Is Madame Sabine still here?” Nellie asked.
“As far as I know, yes,” Mina said. “She moved to the other shed, because I suggested that she might want to help us do the cooking. Agatha seems to like her, though.”
It was warm and comfortable inside the barn. In the camp kitchen, Agatha was stirring a pot from which wonderful smells spread through the air. “You’re just in time for soup,” she said, without commenting on Nellie’s return or asking how she was.
When everyone squished together, the fruit-pickers’ kitchen was just big enough to hold the entire group.
“Where is Boots?” a little voice next to her asked.
Anneke had wriggled herself in between Nellie and Mina.
“He’s still with Bruno,” Nellie said.
“I don’t understand why Bruno didn’t come back with you.”
“We couldn’t take him. We need to rescue him.”
“Can I help, please?”
“We’ll see.” But Nellie had no intention of taking children on the parade. That would be too dangerous.
When everyone finished eating and the bowls were collected, Nellie and Henrik got to tell their story. Nellie had to explain her plan.
In case some people didn’t quite understand what was going on, she explained from the beginning: The citizens of Saardam were controlled through the food they ate; the Shepherd controlled the food supply and was a good magician; and remedies could be taken against magic. They were going to give those remedies to the people in the city, so they would see the misdeeds against the crown prince, and would not believe the lies of the shepherd when he denied wrongdoing.
Also, because Casper and Bruno were both in the palace and the shepherd had closed the gates, they needed to be creative to get in.
Agatha’s reaction was disbelieving. “So then what are we going to do? Rock up to the palace and simply invite ourselves to dinner?”
“We are going to do exactly that. We are going to invite ourselves to a grand welcome in the palace, and we’re going to bring our own food. The shepherd won’t be able to do anything without outing himself as being just as bad as the Fire Wizard, and risking the anger of the surrounding countries. Lord Verdonck has told me that Burovia and Estland are concerned about what is happening, but because no one gets out across the borders, they have no news, and so they mind their own problems. Everything the shepherd has done so far is to disguise his grab for power—putting the Regent in the palace, and letting the Regent make the declarations that magic is not allowed. But they are all the shepherd’s decisions. Casper, for all his foolishness, does not want to listen to the shepherd. I think the shepherd allowed Casper to behave as he wants because he hopes that one of the nobles will get so frustrated with the boy that he’ll kill him. And when that happens, then the shepherd has a reason to step up and seize control of the city, and all the citizens will be happy that the shepherd saved them from this horrible mess, and then the shepherd will have total control of Saardam, like the Fire Wizard did. That is what we don’t want to happen. But we need support from the people in the city, and we can’t get that as long as they are still influenced by the food they eat.”