The Idiot King

by Patty Jansen

  “Does she have to have a connection to us? Why can’t she just help us? Why do you always expect the worst of people?”

  Johanna spread her hands. Because people try the worst on me when they think I’m not looking? But that argument was lost on Nellie. One day, someone would betray poor Nellie so badly, it would break her heart, and then would she still find it in her to forgive this person? Yes, she probably would.

  Nellie’s tendency to trust everyone had always infuriated her as much as Johanna’s tendency to distrust people had infuriated Nellie. It really could not be helped. It was engrained in Nellie’s character.

  And there was nothing she could do to refuse the Baroness’ hospitality, even though the thought of having to see that woman again made her skin crawl. She did not want to be ensnared in this web of stickiness masquerading as hospitality. She did not want to see Kylian. But for now, she could see no escape.

  She asked Nellie how much she wanted to be involved in the wedding preparations, which was quite a bit, but she said, “I’ll need a lot of help, mistress.”

  So later that day, Johanna set about getting that help. Mistress Daphne or any of the modistes from Saardam had been below Fleuris LaFontaine’s status to offer them a place on the Prosperity, but some of the noble women knew about fashion, and a lot of them complained bitterly of having too little to do. She went in search of Julianna Nieland, who lived in one of the tents with a distant uncle of hers and whom she hadn’t seen much since coming to the camp.

  Johanna announced herself at the door.

  “Wait, I’ll get her for you,” said the young man who came to see what she wanted.

  He made a small bow, and Johanna could see the loyalty to the royal family written on his face.

  A moment later, another man pushed aside the tent flap. He was older, dressed in a velvet coat and riding pants. Julianna’s uncle was a horseman, she remembered. He gave her a suspicious look before bowing stiffly and turning back inside.

  “Don’t make too much useless women’s gossip,” he said inside the tent.

  “I’m all right, uncle,” Julianna replied. “I won’t bother you.” And she finally came to the entrance.

  Julianna had always had a full figure that Johanna secretly admired, but the young woman in drab clothing who shuffled into view was as thin as a skeleton.

  “I’ve been unwell,” she said in response to Johanna’s shocked look.

  Unwell and unwelcome, if her uncle’s strange behaviour was anything to go by.

  Now she felt sorry for not having checked up on Julianna earlier. “I need some women to come and help me with the wedding. I thought you might like to do that.” She had to do her best not to cringe.

  Julianna put her finger to her lips and pulled Johanna away from the tent. Her grip was both strong and seeking support in holding herself up. Johanna put her arm around Julianna’s shoulder, feeling Julianna’s bones through her clothing.

  “I’ve been really sick. Ate something bad and couldn’t keep anything down for days.”

  “I heard that it was going through the camp.” Several people had been very ill. “I hope your family are all right.”

  “They are. My uncle says I’m blaming my aunt for bad cooking, even though I never said so and I would never say anything as ungrateful as that. He says I was faking illness, but I wouldn’t even know how to fake something like this. Please, let me do something for you, because these people drive me crazy.”

  “Then come to the Lady Sara every day to help Nellie and Loesie sew. A couple of good servings of Nellie’s food will sort you out.”

  So Julianna came to the sitting room in the Lady Sara’s hold. She had trouble with the stairs, and Johanna worried about what “I’ve been unwell” really meant. Clearly a lot more than just a simple illness for a couple of days. Nellie brought cakes and biscuits, but Julianna ate only half a biscuit.

  To Johanna’s plans for an official wedding, she made an effort to show enthusiasm, but the tone of her voice wasn’t convincing. Moreover, she didn’t like Julianna’s coughing, big, heavy wet coughs.

  “Please, Julianna, let me help you. If you want a medic to come, I have the name of a herb woman who is supposed to be really good.”

  “It’s all right. I’m a lot better already.” She illustrated this with a coughing fit.

  If that was “a lot better”, Johanna didn’t want to know about worse parts. “You must come here every day, and I’ll make sure that you eat enough. You have to get well again.”

  Julianna looked down at the thin hands she held clenched in her lap. “What does it matter? All my family are dead anyway.”

  “You don’t know that.”

  “I saw my house burn. No one can survive a fire like that. No one of my parents’ age anyway.”

  “Octavio was at the ball. You were there with him.” She remembered how he’d been condescending to her while begging Father for her hand. Octavio Nieland was good friends with Ignatius Hemeldinck, she remembered.

  Julianna’s face tightened. “It’s Father and Mother I worry about. They’re not young.”

  “I am really sorry. I’m pretty much in the same situation. I don’t know where Father is. I have no idea if he’s still alive.”

  Julianna shook her head. “You’re not in the same situation. You got out during the fire. You weren’t there for what happened after the fire. Octavio . . .” She clamped her hands between her knees and shuddered visibly.

  “What happened to Octavio? I saw him outside the palace that night.”

  “He doesn’t really care about me or about any of us. He only cares about power. I should have realised that long ago. You know I used to think that he was stupid about wanting to marry you, because you weren’t from a noble family?” She looked down. “Well, I’m sorry about that. I was really stupid. I didn’t see that it was all about the Brouwer Company, which he wanted. I just didn’t want to see how important money was for him.”

  Johanna’s heart jumped. “Was? Did something happen to him?”

  A tear glistened in Julianna’s eye. “Something happened all right. He joined Alexandre Trebuchet. Apparently, they knew each other from when Octavio lodged with Mother’s cousin in Lurezia and they were friends there.”

  “You met that man? What is he like?”

  Julianna shrugged. “Just another young man. He’s got a sharp face and dark brown hair, which he wears in a ponytail, not unlike my brother. He keeps saying how he saved Saardam and how good he is.”

  “Saved? What from?”

  “Isn’t it obvious? That church that got all of the king’s money. I guess it’s all irrelevant now, but they were not bad people. They didn’t deserve to be killed in the street, to have their houses burnt and possessions stolen.”

  “Just the church people?” Johanna thought of several church families she knew—Nellie’s family and Master Willems—and wondered if any of them had been victims. “When you saw Alexandre, did you see any evidence of magic?”

  Julianna gave her a what-do-you-take-me-for look. “He has bands of rogues helping him silence people who disagreed with him. There were men with bears and other animals. One of them had a big cat with spots. They went around all the houses and dragged everyone out. If they didn’t like you, they burned your house.”

  Johanna had heard a bit about those days. Apparently the survivors had been taken to the town hall, which had survived the fire, as had many stone buildings surrounding the market place. In the town hall, Alexandre had addressed them in a long and rambling speech mostly incomprehensible for people unfamiliar with Burovian.

  Several people in the camp had spoken of Alexandre’s orders to hand over any remaining church supporters or face death. The Saarlanders had been asked to betray their fellow kinsfolk, the people they had grown up with, their neighbours. Some people in the camp, especially the women, had spoken of how appalled they were. They were glad, they said, that the young Shepherd Carolus had made it onto the ship, even tho
ugh no one was sure how he had managed that, presumably because he was mostly still known in town under his given name of Dirk Goedthart and he had been well-known in town as a well-off merchant’s son until he joined the church and went to the seminary.

  “If only Father had been there. He would have told Octavio exactly what he thought.” Julianna’s eyes brimmed with tears. Johanna didn’t know what it was like to have a brother, but she imagined not having a brother was better than having a brother who betrayed his town like this.

  Julianna launched into another coughing fit.

  Poor Julianna. Johanna told her to be careful and get plenty of fresh air. After making Julianna promise that she’d be back the next day, Johanna watched her climb up the stairs with all the mobility of a woman of eighty.

  Johanna had to go up and close the hold door, because Julianna wasn’t strong enough to do it. Rain still fell, so she went back down into the sitting room.

  It was a sign of Roald’s condition that he had continued to sit and read through all this, and had completely ignored any mention of his name.

  Johanna dropped onto the bed and lay staring at the rough and dusty undersides of the hold covers for a while, but staring wasn’t going to get anything done.

  She pushed herself up and went to Roald.

  “I am going to need your help.” She put an arm over his shoulder.

  He continued reading.

  “Roald?”

  He glanced at her. “This book is interesting. It says that if you keep sailing a boat around the Horn, you will find a whole other world like ours. I wonder if people live there.”

  “They do. That’s where the eastern traders are from.”

  “Yes, everyone talks about them, but has anyone seen these people?”

  “Some have.” She believed Father and Master Deim had, or at least some of the seafaring captains.

  “Then why do books like these contain no diagrams of what they look like?” He held up the book. The front cover said, On the Travels of the Known Lands.

  “I’m not sure.”

  “Are they dangerous?”

  “I don’t know.” Father talked about the eastern traders a lot, because they brought the spices that he sold. He told her that they were smart people who sailed on big square-looking ships with red sails. The ships were big enough for the men to take their entire families. Many of them lived at sea and didn’t go home after each voyage. They were nimble and independent, unlike the seafaring captains of Saardam, who returned with their wares to sell, to pay their investors and to rustle the next lot of investors to outfit their next trip.

  Some people suggested that the eastern traders could become dangerous if given too much freedom to sail along the coast, but she didn’t want to go into that discussion now. She put her hand over the book. “Roald, look at me. I need your help.”

  “Oh?” His expression was startled.

  “We need to hold an official wedding as soon as possible.”

  “But we’re already married.”

  “I know that, but the people in the camp won’t accept it until we hold the ceremony before their eyes.” She now understood how much stress ceremonies placed on him and it pained her to ask him to be present at another one. “We also need to hold an official coronation ceremony.”

  “Oh.” He gave her a blank look. “Do I have to do anything for that?”

  You’re the king, for crying out loud! “I want you to write a proclamation. We’ll set a date and make a formal announcement.”

  “Oh.” He looked confused. “Can’t you do those things for me?”

  “They won’t listen to me unless we’re officially married in their eyes.”

  “Oh.”

  “That’s why I need you to write a proclamation that we will hold a wedding. They can all see that it’s official.”

  “All right.” And after a brief silence, he added, “She suffers from bad air.”

  “What on Earth are you talking about?”

  “The woman who was just here. She suffers from bad air. Many people in the camp have it. It’s from the cold and damp and having many people sleeping cramped together in tents.”

  There wasn’t much that Johanna could do about that other than try to get out of this camp as soon as possible. This was summer. Conditions would get much worse in winter. People said that, in these parts, snow fell almost every year.

  There was no way they could stay here for winter. She decided for herself that she would take the Lady Sara with whomever it could carry back to Saardam after the wedding, at the very latest.

  How she would do it, she didn’t know, but the people would not spend winter in this cold and damp field.

  More importantly, she would not stay here where Roald had little support and where either of them might get sick at any time.

  Most importantly of all, she would not stay because her bleeding was late.

  * * *

  Johanna helped Roald write a declaration. He took a long time, but his handwriting was beautiful and he signed it with a loopy signature. Master Deim put the parchment up on the wall of the boat shed that was fast becoming the equivalent of the mayor’s house. The wedding ceremony would be held on the first of the month of October. Johanna hoped that she would show the signs of being with child by then.

  She went to see the Shepherd Carolus, who announced that he’d be “most delighted” to conduct the ceremony and then looked at her with misty eyes. He had a youthful face, with freckles on his cheeks and playful blond curls of hair that, no matter how much he smoothed them down, always found a way to stand up.

  “Shepherd Romulus would have loved to do this,” he said in a voice filled with emotion.

  Johanna nodded, silently.

  “They killed him. They burned the church. They stole all the clothes and food we kept stored for winter to give to people in need. Why? I don’t understand.”

  Johanna put a hand on his shoulder. “We will go back. We will rebuild. They can try to wipe us out, but they can’t kill us.”

  A few days later, the Baroness Viktoriya heard about the wedding date, and announced that the grand hall would be at their disposal. Johanna reluctantly agreed to hold the ceremony there, much to the approval of the nobles.

  Julianna came faithfully every day. She sat at the table in the hold and ate whatever Nellie brought. At first, Johanna had to force her, but after two days, her appetite started returning with her chattiness, which made Johanna remember why she had never liked Julianna much. Rather than get annoyed at it—a major achievement—Johanna asked Julianna to casually chat to people in the camp and listen to what they said. Julianna took to her task with enthusiasm and reported back every day.

  “Everyone wants to go back to their houses,” she said.

  “Why do they think we’re not returning?”

  “Because the council says it’s too dangerous. Alexandre is a strong magician. They are afraid because they have never dealt much with magic before. Some are happy to wait, but some are saying that magic or no, we should go back and drive him out. Some of the young men are prepared to fight.”

  Julianna mentioned a list of names, most of whom were merchants or nobles who weren’t involved with the ones who made decisions in the council.

  Then she worried about the two scouts she had sent. They should have been back by now, although it might be taking them longer because of the high water.

  Unfortunately, Julianna said that she had been unable to dig up further information about what kind of deal with the Baron was keeping the nobles in Florisheim. But Johanna had heard some rumours while listening to the older children tag behind Roald in his frog-hunting.

  A boy had said, “My father says that we can’t go back until the whole of Saardam has been cleaned up, and he says Alexandre just wants to do a good job.”

  To which a younger boy had said, “Well, my father says that your father is crazy.”

  After which they started an is-not—is-so—is-not word
fight, which only stopped when someone in the reeds shouted for them to be quiet. “You’re scaring the frogs!”

  And with the wet weather frogs were, unfortunately, everywhere.

  But that little snatch of conversation got Johanna’s thoughts off to an uncomfortable tangent. Because what if the nobles had asked Alexandre to drive out the church, and now Alexandre, and his friend the Baron, would no longer speak to the men?

  Johanna and Julianna stood on the deck of the Lady Sara, overlooking the camp. The rain had eased somewhat and the water level had dropped a little bit.

  “There are lots of young men in the camp who want to return and fight,” Julianna said.

  “There is little point in fighting magic with arms,” Johanna said. “We need to fight magic with magic.”

  “But we don’t have magic.”

  “That’s why we must find a court magician.”

  And that meant making deals with possibly unpleasant people. Out of all the magicians she knew, Duke Lothar and Sylvan were the ones she trusted most, but she doubted they’d help her. By association, she should have more trust in Kylian than she did, but as yet she didn’t understand all the different sides to the assassination attempt by the Duke of his half-brother Baron Uti. The strange thing was that many of the locals seemed to consider this attempt a great source of hilarity. Johanna struggled to make sense of the relationships of the Baron and his family. If Kylian was welcome at Duke Lothar’s castle, did that mean that he supported the attempt to kill his father?

  She had considered asking the duke to help her, but he and his son were pretty much unreachable from here. She’d asked couriers to take a letter to him, but they all refused to go into the forest.

  Probably because people go missing in those woods. And ended up in that ice cellar.

  Johanna desperately didn’t want to get involved in the case of the ice cellar. But she needed a magician.

  “We also need ships,” Johanna said, pushing away uncomfortable thoughts about magic and having to rely on people she didn’t trust. “I’ve got the Lady Sara, but that’s not enough for everyone.”