The Idiot King

by Patty Jansen

  “They are very good,” Johanna said.

  “People come from far and wide to listen to the choir. It’s an honour for those boys to be in it. The abbot travels the country to scout for good voices. I was a member of the choir myself, but that was many years ago.”

  “You’ve lived in the monastery ever since?”

  “Yes. I was a teacher and scribe before becoming a librarian and running the printing press.”

  Johanna looked up at the marble face of the young saint. “Who is this woman?”

  “She is the holy saint Magdalena, the mother of all mankind. Women come here to pray for a child, for an easy delivery or to pray for children they have lost. Am I guessing that this is the reason you have come here also?”

  “Um . . .” How did he know this? “I came because I walked outside and I heard the singing. It was so beautiful that I had to come and listen.”

  “While you’re here, do pray to Saint Magdalena. She is the saint of mothers and motherhood. I’m thinking you will be joining that group soon.”

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  Chapter 6

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  JOHANNA ENDED UP making a short prayer to Saint Magdalena. The Brother seemed friendly and she couldn’t see the harm, because they were all part of the same church, right? If Saint Magdalena was fair, she would look kindly upon every woman, not just those who lived in town.

  She left the church again not much later, unsure what to think of it. The singing was beautiful, but while the display of wealth was very pretty, it seemed unfair to her, and she disliked the suggestion that she should convert. Why should these people care? It was all these same church.

  The library belonged to the old monastery next to the castle, which had a water mill feeding off the same creek that ran underneath the castle’s drawbridge. The monks made paper and operated a bookbindery on the ground floor. The back of the building held a huge collection of books, which she’d been told had belonged to a former abbot with a love of the written word who had bequeathed his collection to the order.

  Johanna went in through the huge double doors with the snake-headed door handles. In the foyer, the familiar old monk sat writing at a small table by the light of a flapping candle. A proper wax candle it was, too, one that would not produce as much greasy soot as the tallow candles. He wrote on a large sheet of thick parchment, beautiful letters in intricate strokes. Right now, he was colouring in the margins with lines of blue and red, a true work of beauty.

  He nodded a greeting to Johanna without lifting his head from his work. The light from the candle reflected in the bald skin on top of his head.

  He said, “He’s in the paper press room.”

  The “he” would be Brother Reginald, the monk who looked after the library.

  She went through the room to the left, where the rattling and clanking and creaking sounds of a working mill were loud. A couple of monks worked here, scooping ground-up cloth onto mesh sieves. The resulting layer of fluff in the bottom of the sieve would be press-dried into paper. It was noisy in the room with the constant rattle of the giant wheels and shaking of the sieves. It was stuffy in here, too, even though the door was open.

  She continued through to the main room, where a couple more monks greeted her with nods. Both wore drab grey habits, tied at the waist by a simple rope. The older one was Brother Reginald.

  “The day is blessed, lady,” he said. Johanna had grown used to his thick accent and strange turns of phrase.

  With the wrinkled skin that hung off his face and arms like an ill-fitting suit, Brother Reginald looked older than time itself. But his eyes were sharp, and the expression in them not nearly as old and tired as his body suggested.

  Johanna laughed. “I’ve certainly seen more blessed days than this. The weather is awful. Does it often rain like this?”

  “Not oft-times. The sun will come out again soon and you will beg for the rain to come back.” He placed his hands at the edge of the table and pushed himself up from his desk. “Has your husband finished his books again? He reads a lot, certainly.”

  “He does. He is a wise man.” In case they thought Roald was stupid. “I will return the other books when it has stopped raining.”

  “There is no hurry. What would he like to read now?”

  “Do you have any books on magic and herb lore?”

  That earned her a wary look.

  “He is interested in the plants and their properties.” Last time she’d asked for books on the heavens so this was not too much of a stretch, she hoped. Roald was very interested in how nature worked.

  “Herb lore, I can give you, although you had better ask the herb women in the markets. Magic is the domain of the Magician’s Guild. We are a monastery.” Brother Reginald’s voice was prim.

  “I was told that the Belaman Church allows magic. I’m sorry if I’m wrong. I don’t know much about it. I’m after the magical properties of herbs.”

  “The church allows only certain magics, such as the magic of the holy spirit. That magic is considered sacred and the domain of men of the church. It is not the same as herb lore.”

  “Isn’t herb lore magic?”

  “No, not at all. Herb lore is the domain of herb women.”

  All these different definitions of magic were getting very confusing. “That means that you would have books on it?”

  “We have some on herb lore.”

  “And magic?”

  “Yes, we do have some of those, but we keep them locked away for the sake of safety of our citizens. Magic is a dark, evil subject, and people would do well not to meddle with it.”

  “I only wanted herb books for my husband.”

  He gave her a thoughtful look and stroked his beard. His eyes had an I-don’t-believe-you look in them, but to her surprise, he nodded. “All right. Come with me.”

  He led her up a narrow winding staircase with uneven steps that came out in another large room filled with books. Between the two floors and the downstairs bookbindery, Johanna had never seen so many books in one place. At home, Father owned a few cabinets of books. That was considered a treasure. She hated to think how much all these books were worth. That abbot must have spent all his life collecting them.

  Brother Reginald began pulling books off the shelves. He spread all of them out on a large table in the middle of the room. Johanna opened some of them and turned a few pages.

  There were books about the different herbs and where they grew. There were books with intricate coloured-in drawings of plants. One book contained maps of places where these plants grew. Roald would love this.

  She wondered where the magic books were hidden. She could see another winding staircase through a door across the room from where they’d entered.

  A man’s voice called downstairs.

  Brother Reginald put another couple of books down. “If you will pardon me, I have to talk to a customer about his paper that we’re making.” He winked. “We wouldn’t let the mayor wait, now, would we?”

  He went back down the stairs and the sound of jovial voices drifted up.

  How are you today?

  Never better.

  That sort of thing.

  Johanna waited, leafing through the books on the table. Brother Reginald and his customer appeared to have moved into the papermaking room.

  It was amazing how many books were here. The shelves covered every bit of wall in the room. Leather-bound books with gold-embossed titles; thinner volumes with paper covers; large, heavy books; small, fat books. Books in numbered series, books in languages she couldn’t read and some in languages she didn’t even recognise.

  While she stood there, she noticed movement in the corner of her eye at the top of the staircase. Someone was coming up the stairs and she had been so absorbed in all these books that she hadn’t even heard footsteps.

  But the slender figure that came out of the stairwell wasn’t Brother Reginald. It was a woman in a heavy cloak with the hood pulled over her hair, her face hidden
within the shadow of the fabric.

  Johanna was about to say something, but the words died on her tongue at sight of the woman’s sickly pale hand. She had heard that there was a disease in this region that disfigured people’s faces. Would this woman be suffering from it?

  The woman didn’t look up or seem to notice Johanna at all. She crossed the room, gliding around the table in the middle as if she barely touched the ground. Her footsteps made no sound even though the floor was made of wood. For a moment, Johanna thought she was a ghost, but she looked far too solid.

  Yet the tingle of magic wafted in her wake.

  The woman went to the entrance to the second staircase and disappeared up the steps and out of sight. A glow of light flickered into being on the floor above, casting a golden triangle of light on the wall in the staircase.

  Were the magic books up there?

  Brother Reginald was still talking to his customer. Their voices echoed from one of the rooms downstairs, mingled with the rattling and clanking of the mill wheels.

  As silently as she could, Johanna crept up the stairs.

  The light from the flapping candle flame cast long shadows over the wall. The stone was pitted and the wall was curved, so the shadows were rough and distorted, making it hard to see where the woman was and what she was doing up there.

  Johanna crept up a step, and another one, until the room came into view. As she had expected, this was yet another room full of books, except this one was much messier than the one downstairs, with books stacked on top of each other and on the floor.

  The woman stood looking at the shelves. She held both her hands on the back of a chair. The skin was very pale, but unaffected by disease. She looked quite young.

  Johanna wasn’t sure what to do. She could talk to the woman, but she might not understand her. If she was important, Brother Reginald would have introduced her. If she wanted to speak to Johanna, the woman would have introduced herself.

  Maybe—and she felt cold—this woman was the abbot’s personal plaything. That was an embarrassing thought, but something she’d sadly come across more times than she cared to remember. She never knew who she felt more sorry for: the poor girl or the man who couldn’t get a girl in any way other than to “buy” a poor wrench and feed and clothe her in return for certain services.

  Anyway, she’d better go down before the Brother came back.

  But as Johanna retreated a step down the stairs, the woman turned around so that the light fell on the side of her face. The straw-blond curly hair that poked out from under the hood was familiar. The freckles were familiar, too, and so were the dark blue eyes.

  It was Princess Celine.

  Johanna had never forgotten Celine’s face. There was a painting in the church hall that was an exact likeness of the princess as she had been just before her death. This woman matched the likeness down to the little mole on her cheekbone, down to her pale yellow dress with the tiny buttons and the lace frills.

  She raised her hand to her mouth to stifle a gasp. That was impossible. The princess had been dead for a number of years.

  “Ah, little princess,” the woman said in a voice that sounded like the rasping of millstones.

  Johanna wanted to run, but she couldn’t. She stood petrified on the stairs, and might even have fallen had there not been the wall at her back.

  “You have a problem, right, little princess?” The apparition laughed, a breezy sound.

  Johanna retreated. Whatever this thing was, princess Celine, it was not.

  “Come on, answer me.”

  Ghosts never talked to anyone. Sometimes they imitated a voice, but they never recognised people, they just went about their ghostly business without regard for who watched them.

  “Tell me, what is your problem? Why have you come to the library?”

  An ice-cold draught made the candles flap. It was so dark up here that if the flame blew out, Johanna wouldn’t be able to see her way back down.

  The apparition laughed again. “I’m going to have so much fun with this. Go on, try to take all the herbs and other quackery. Raspberry leaves, stinging nettles. Make the tea and drink it every night. That’s why you’re here, right? To see what you are doing wrong? To see why the idiot prince cannot get you with child. Keep trying. Go and stand upside down after he has fucked you. It will not help, but it will be good to see your despair. The reason is: because you’re cursed by the deepest, darkest magic there is. You can never take the place that is rightfully mine. They will never accept you as their queen, because I am the queen!” She laughed, a horrible rasping sound.

  “Get away from me! You’re not real,” Johanna yelled.

  “I’m not real? Do you want to feel the cold of my curse?” She floated towards the top of the stairs, threatening to come down into the stairwell.

  Johanna did her best not to scream. She launched herself down the stairs as quickly as she could, but the steps were narrow and uneven. She tripped, fell against the curved wall and tumbled a fair way.

  The apparition whooshed past her with a rush of freezing air, leaving the sound of evil laughter in its wake. Johanna sat with her arms covering her head until she was sure that it was gone.

  Her heart thudded like crazy.

  Ouch, her wrist.

  When she stumbled back into the other room, Brother Reginald just came running to the top of the stairs and stood there panting. He was not young, and many of his age would have given up climbing stairs long ago.

  “What was all that noise?” His gaze rested on Johanna’s arm.

  Johanna looked. She was bleeding.

  Oh. “I . . . fell down the stairs.” She glanced at the entrance to the stairwell, but there was no sign of the apparition.

  “Not much point being curious, young lady.” He panted for breath. “There is nothing up there but spiders.”

  “That’s not true. I saw—”

  “That’s just Liesel. She is always harassing people. She is harmless.”

  “Liesel?”

  “Liesel the house ghost comes out sometimes when she is curious. She was the daughter of the original owner of this house, who gave it to the Order. She threw herself out of the tower window because of a spurned love affair. Don’t those women all go funny when they think a man loves them?” He chuckled.

  “But this was not a ghost. She was touching the chair. She was talking to me. She was looking at the books.”

  “There are no books up there. No chair either. You must have taken a spell.”

  Johanna looked from his bony frame to the entrance to the stairwell. She had not imagined this.

  “I see you have doubts. Go upstairs. You’ll see.”

  Johanna did.

  The stairs came out into a dusty attic where cobwebbed items of furniture stood spread out in a haphazard way. There were no shelves with books, no desk with a chair, no piles of books on the floor, no candle, no table and no young woman.

  That was the strangest thing ever. The library room had felt real. It had smelled real.

  When she came down, Brother Reginald was nodding at her shocked expression. “It is a strange thing, and if I’d known that she was in this part of the building, I wouldn’t have left you alone. Ah, Liesel, why do you make our lives so difficult?”

  “Does she ever speak to everyone?”

  He shook his head. “She doesn’t speak at all. Not that anyone has ever heard.”

  “But she spoke to me . . . I don’t think I saw the same ghost.”

  He gave her a brief dumb woman look, and she decided to leave the subject. The back of her neck pricked as if the ghost were still hanging around in the shadows.

  From the table, Johanna chose a few books with pictures and lots of diagrams. Roald spent a long time figuring out text, but he loved illustrations and he was very good at deciphering their meaning, too.

  She thanked Brother Reginald and left the library again, without books on magic, and without any potions to solve her problem.
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  Chapter 7

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  EVEN WHEN SHE was in the street, Johanna felt the eyes of Celine’s ghost on her. She heard that raspy voice You will never take the place that is rightfully mine, which chilled her to the core of her bones. Why had Brother Reginald thought this was the ghost of a common girl? That did not look like a common girl to her at all. Her hands were clean and unblemished and unscarred from manual work. Her clothes were rich, with little pearl shell buttons and embroidery that common people couldn’t afford.

  She didn’t look like a ghost, she didn’t behave like a ghost. Yet she was not Celine, but someone’s magical minion.

  Johanna clutched the basket and made her way down the streets.

  She didn’t dare go back to the camp. The camp was full of Saarlanders who were unused to open displays of magic.

  Some of the rich and influential people were said to believe that Celine was still alive and had been hidden away from the people to keep her pure. Those people said that the grave was empty and that the king’s grief was a farce.

  She checked over her shoulders many times and saw nothing except the wet street. But the trouble with a ghost was that if you didn’t see it, that didn’t mean it wasn’t there.

  It would be watching her and following her wherever she went and whatever she did. Watching and waiting for revenge. The nobles might even blame Johanna for bringing magic back to the camp.

  Master Deim’s family’s house was in one of the higher streets of the town, close enough to the castle for the walls to loom menacingly over the roof.

  When Johanna knocked, an adolescent girl opened the door and said something that Johanna didn’t understand.

  “I’m here to see Hieronymus Deim,” she said.

  The girl frowned and then repeated Master Deim’s first name with such a different pronunciation that Johanna would never have picked it up if she’d heard it in a conversation on the street. The girl beckoned for her to come inside. She preceded Johanna through the dark corridor and into a warm living room where a number of people sat by the fire: a grey-haired woman with embroidery work sitting next to an oil lamp, two young boys playing on the floor, a man in his middle age—Master Deim’s cousin?—and a woman of the same age. His wife or Master Deim’s wife?