Willow Witch

by Patty Jansen

  “She is fine. She was very tired when we came back and she is resting now.”

  “I only need to see her briefly. I can feel if she has any residual magic in her.”

  There was no dissuading him from seeing Loesie, and to be honest, she wasn’t quite sure why she didn’t want him to see her, so they went up the stairs. Sylvan again came with them. She met his eyes while walking up the stairs. His eyes were penetrating. Johanna had no idea what he was trying to tell her.

  Upstairs in the corridor, the sunlight came in through the window at the far end.

  Nellie sat by the window sewing the holes in Loesie’s old dress and rose as soon as they came in. “Kylian.” She curtsied for him, with a very strange expression on her face.

  Kylian gave her a cursory glance and sat on the edge of Loesie’s bed. He reached out for Loesie’s cheek.

  As soon as his fingertips touched the skin, Loesie’s eyes flew open. She inhaled a sharp breath and held it. Her eyes widened.

  A chill breeze went through the room.

  Kylian laughed. “You can’t harm me with magic, little sorceress.”

  Loesie fell back into the pillow, looking dazed in a why did you wake me up? kind of way.

  Kylian bent closer. “Do you remember who did this to you?”

  Loesie frowned. There was no lingering magic now.

  “Do you remember someone casting a spell?”

  Her frown deepened.

  For a long time, Loesie said nothing. Johanna only heard the thudding of her heart.

  “Well,” Kylian said eventually. “I’m sure the memory will come back.” He rose. “She’ll be ready to travel within two days. I’ll accompany you to Florisheim.”

  He rose again and left the room. Sylvan ran after him.

  After he had shut the door, Nellie smiled at Johanna. “Isn’t he absolutely handsome?”

  Loesie said, “He be a strong magician. No good fer church girls.”

  “Any better for farm girls?”

  “I weren’t saying that. I were saying that he’d be looking fer a noble girl.”

  “What’s this about?” Johanna looked from one to the other. Nellie, studiously pushing the needle in and out of the fabric of her dress, and Loesie with her arms crossed over her chest.

  “Nothing,” Nellie said.

  Loesie snorted. “Ye want that man fer yesself. That’s why.”

  “I don’t,” Nellie said, a bit too abruptly. “And if you’re going to come with us, can you at least learn to speak properly?”

  “I’ll learn no townsfolk talk.”

  They glared at each other. Nellie stuck her chin in the air.

  “Be nice,” Roald said. “My mother says we all need to be nice to each other.”

  Loesie snorted. “Well, that be tough luck, because life isn’t nice.”

  “Don’t speak like that to the prince.”

  Loesie frowned at Roald. “The prince?”

  “Prince Roald,” Nellie said in a prim voice. “That will be ‘Your Highness’ to you. Same as Mistress Johanna. She’s married to him now. Show some manners and respect.”

  Loesie frowned at Johanna. “You’re kidding, right?”

  Johanna shook her head.

  “Holy cows. I missed the party.”

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  Chapter 15

  * * *

  TALKATIVE AS LOESIE had suddenly become, she did not seem to have any recollection of how she had ended up mute, no matter how Johanna asked.

  Johanna asked her about the demons which the basket had shown her, and Loesie just gave her a blank look. She asked about Loesie’s family but the mention of them didn’t seem to evoke any emotion from Loesie.

  Kylian had declared her fit to travel, but what had really passed between him and Loesie?

  There were more questions than answers.

  The nice weather held for the next couple of days. Roald insisted on spending most of that time in the garden. There were wilted flowers on the roses, he said, and he simply could not tolerate that. Johanna wandered around the gardens and the lake, looking at the swans and the duke’s ducks and peaceful sight of Roald pottering in the rose beds.

  Loesie came outside on the third day. Even in three days, she had gained in health. Her skin was no longer ghostly white and her hollow cheeks were starting to fill out. During each meal, the duke urged her to eat more.

  Johanna still didn’t have a satisfactory answer to the question of whether he was more than a friendly old man who happened to have powerful magic. She spent some time in his library trying to find books about magic, but there weren’t many, and those he had covered things like recipes for potions. Magic books, he said, were extremely rare, since most magic lore was never written down for fear of persecution.

  The only one who still seemed tense was Sylvan. The duke laughed when she mentioned this to him, and said that Sylvan was never at ease when sleeping in a house. His son’s bedroom, the duke said, mostly went unused because Sylvan slept in the stables with his bears. He said Sylvan was greatly disturbed by his bear magic because it could so easily be used for evil.

  Johanna tried very hard to believe that these were good people, but could not dispel her unease completely. They might be perfectly friendly mass murderers.

  She was glad when, on the fourth day, Kylian brought a coach to the front of the house. They packed up their meagre possessions, bolstered by some clothing which the duke insisted they take with them.

  The most welcome bit of news was that Kylian said his men had brought the Lady Sara into Florisheim. The sea cows, he said, were all fine.

  The duke and Sylvan insisted on coming with them on the ride to Florisheim which, Johanna gathered, was much closer than she had thought.

  They rode out over the estate’s main lane. Johanna sat next to Roald near the window. The duke had insisted that they dress well and take those visible positions in the coach, because there might be some fuss. Refugees from Saarland had learned that their prince had survived.

  The duke had also lent Johanna some of his wife’s jewellery, because you simply cannot face your citizens wearing a farm dress. That had really hit home to her that from now on, nothing in her life would be either a secret or the same.

  Before getting on the coach, Johanna had stood in front of the mirror in the bedroom saying to her reflection, “You’re a princess now.”

  She agreed she didn’t look like one. So, she needed jewellery. Heavy gold pieces with glittering stones. She had insisted that she would return them to the duke as soon as she could, but he just waved his hand and said something about rather seeing the pieces being worn than stowed away in some wardrobe.

  So here she was, dressed up like a slightly old-fashioned noble woman, facing Nellie, who was dressed up like a slightly less noble woman and sitting next to Roald, who looked distinctly uncomfortable in his stiff nobleman’s clothes. The duke sat next to Nellie, explaining about all the places they passed. The estate’s farms and what he grew there, the wineries, the creeks, the water mill, the estate’s boundary and the village.

  Sylvan sat on Johanna’s other side, dressed in black and staring out the window with a brooding expression on his face. Loesie sat opposite him, making faces at him, to which he reacted by looking angrier.

  They hadn’t been travelling for long when the coach rounded a bend in the road and Florisheim spread before them. The town lay on a slight slope, a mass of terracotta roofs and stone that covered the undulating land on the left bank of the Rede River, whose mirror-like surface reflected the town.

  The castle stood at the highest point, a grey stone building with two forbidding round towers and a high wall, overlooking the town li
ke a protective mother duck.

  The curved line of the quay hosted a good number of barges. Low, flat, Saarlander barges, many flying the flag of Saardam.

  Johanna’s heart beat faster.

  Father.

  What she wanted more than anything was to check on the Lady Sara because surely if Father was here, that’s where he would stay.

  The duke told her that the baron had allowed the refugees to camp in a piece of land close to the river, a bright green meadow on which stood a collection of mismatched tents. A couple of boys in typical Saarlander trousers played sword-fights with sticks between the tents. A couple of women stood talking to each other, their long and wide skirts achingly familiar. Johanna even spotted a couple wearing clogs.

  As the coach entered the grounds, people stopped their activities to watch. They called other people, who came to the tent entrances.

  The coach came to a halt in the middle of the camp. By now, a veritable crowd of refugees had gathered. The wobbling of the coach signalled the driver getting down and coming to open the door.

  “Look, look! It’s prince Roald!” someone shouted.

  Johanna’s heart beat faster. Roald sat with his hands clamped between his knees.

  “Let me go first,” she whispered to him.

  He didn’t react, but she put her hand on his. His skin felt clammy with sweat. He swayed from side to side ever so slightly.

  “Shhh, calm down. You don’t have to speak. I can do that.” She fished the chain with the ring from under her dress, undid the clasp and slipped the ring on her finger. Her hands, too, were trembling. What would people say about this?

  The door opened. The driver reached in. “Your Highness.”

  Roald went first.

  A great cheer went up outside. Holding onto Roald’s arm, Johanna could feel him tense up.

  “Prince Roald is alive!”

  “Three cheers for the new king.”

  He had frozen completely, still on the coach steps.

  She whispered to him, “Roald, take one step down, then I can come out, too. I will talk to them.” Please don’t start swaying or banging your head into something.

  The muscles in his arms were so tense that she could feel their hardness through his jacket.

  “Roald, please?”

  She pushed him gently, and he took a stiff step to the ground.

  People cheered and clapped.

  “Three cheers for the new king!”

  “We are saved!”

  But Roald stood there frozen, his face a mask of terror. Any moment now and he would start screaming, or rolling on the ground, or laughing like an idiot.

  She pushed past him, waving her hands. “Give him some room! Please, people.”

  Then their attention turned to her.

  “Why, it’s Johanna Brouwer.”

  And then a woman said, “Is that the Carmine crest she’s wearing?”

  A voice behind them called out, “Make way for their royal highnesses, the prince and princess of Saarland.” It was Kylian, standing on the driver’s seat of the coach.

  The people retreated and formed a path. Johanna held onto Roald’s arm.

  “Just keep walking,” she whispered to him, while guiding him. “Stay calm. Keep walking.”

  In the crowd, she met the eyes of Julianna Nieland, in simple, dirty clothing, with hollow cheeks. She came forward and dipped a curtsy to Roald. And another to Johanna.

  “Please, Julianna.”

  Julianna looked up with tear-filled eyes. “Is my brother with you?”

  “No. Have you seen my father?”

  A look of mutual pain went between them.

  Then another familiar face met her in the mayhem. “Master Deim!”

  The merchant wrestled through the crowd. He gave her a big hug. “Oh, child, I didn’t think I would see your happy face again!”

  “Where is Father?”

  “He was upset that the Lady Sara was gone. He took the Lady Davida and that was the last I’ve seen of him.”

  “He’s not here?” A black hole opened inside her. Father, dead?

  Master Deim shook his head. “So many people are gone. The king and queen, the mayor, Reverend Romulus—”

  “The reverend? Was he killed?” The thought made her sick. Who would kill a priest? “Is it true that Saardam is in the hands of a religious brother called Alexandre?”

  “We’ve heard people say that, yes. We don’t know how much of it is true.”

  A nobleman on Johanna’s other side was speaking to Roald. “Your Highness, you must come with us. We must decide our next steps.” He met Johanna’s eyes. “Um, Lady, I’m unsure what the baron’s son meant when he said . . . are you . . .”

  “Married before the eyes of the Triune,” Nellie said, behind Johanna. Dear old Nellie and her appropriateness.

  The man swallowed. “Well. We, um, must . . . make it official.”

  He didn’t like it, not at all.

  The procession came to the edge of the field, separated from the riverbank by a road. At the jetty on the other side a welcome sight greeted Johanna. The Lady Sara lay amongst a couple of barges, most of them Saarlander, but one was a local ship with a large cabin, similar in build to the Burovian ship that had brought Roald to Saardam.

  The duke said, “The baron provides you with one of his ships to use as accommodation. I guess this is where we say goodbye.”

  “Thank you so much for helping us,” Johanna said.

  The duke took her hand in a weak, paper-skinned grip. “It is nothing, child. One day, when you’re settled back into your home town, think of us and do my son a favour.”

  Johanna met Sylvan’s eyes. The look in his eyes alone was enough to stab someone through the heart.

  The driver was already helping the duke back to the coach, but Sylvan stayed behind.

  He leaned close, giving Johanna a much closer view of his tattoos and that horrible scar, far closer than she had ever desired. His expression was just as humourless and morose as before. “Look, I need to tell you something. I know you don’t trust us. Given all that has happened, I can’t blame you. It’s probably a good thing. You are going to need all the wits you have to get through this and survive.”

  Kylian sat in the driver’s seat of the coach, looking directly at the pair of them.

  “My father and I survive in the same way. We keep standing in the face of daily betrayal, evil and worse. I’m not telling you to trust us, but I hope that our actions will speak for us instead. I hope that you at least trust us enough to believe what I’m going to tell you now. It’s about my cousin, Kylian. Don’t ever trust anything he says. As heir to the throne, he takes betrayal and reigning by terror to a new level. Once he has you in his sights, he does all he can to get whatever he wants. For the men, that is usually money or power. He will find something that you have done wrong in the past, and threaten to make it public. Then he’ll come to you at all hours and act like he’s at home. He’ll demand favours—”

  “Like an ice cellar full of dead bodies?” Johanna had said it before she could stop herself.

  Sylvan gave her a blank look. “Like—what?”

  “Discover something his victim has done wrong in the past, like an ice cellar full of dead bodies.”

  The look of total puzzlement on his face was very convincing. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  Johanna was by now shaking so much that she had trouble speaking. “On your father’s land, not very far from where you recaptured me after we ran from the village in the sand, there is an ice cellar.”

  “Yes?” He frowned. “I think there mi
ght be. It used to be used by my uncle who owned that land before it turned into a useless desert.”

  “Go there, and have a look inside. Remind yourself what’s in there.”

  “Whoa, why do you think we—”

  “You’re right. We don’t trust you.” She pulled off the heavy brooch and golden chain she wore around her neck and dumped them in Sylvan’s hands. “Here. I’d take off the dress, too, if I had anything else to wear.”

  “But hang on. You turn against us after we’ve helped your friend get rid of—”

  “Your father did that for his own aim. We were brought to you as prisoners. Somehow along the way, you found out who we were and became all friendly. We don’t need you, Sylvan.”

  She started to turn around to catch up with Roald and the others who had proceeded onto the jetty, but he grabbed her arm. “Listen to me. All right, distrust us. Believe whatever you want, but listen to this one bit of advice: please seek out the magician’s guild before Kylian can take you there. We need to stay strong against him. There is one thing, one very important magical thing you should know about him.” He fixed her with his grey eyes.

  “And that is?”

  “He’s the most powerful dark magician you are likely to come across in your life. He’s a necromancer.”

  Then he let go of her arm, climbed into the coach and was gone, leaving Johanna to stand reeling amongst the adoring citizens. The breeze that touched her skin seemed colder than the coldest of mid-winter.

  If you enjoyed this book . . .

  THE NEXT volume in the For Queen And Country series is called The Idiot King. In this book, Johanna assumes her duty as Queen amongst the refugees at Florisheim, while seeking out the guild of magicians, and learning about the true reason for the invasion of Saardam.

  Learn here where to get The Idiot King.

  Or if you want to be notified when new books come out, put your name on my new release mailing list.

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