by Patty Jansen
Johanna was between the stalls when people in the square started cheering. There was also the sound of a ringing bell. She quickly ran to a place where she could see the mayor’s house.
A man had come to the top of the stairs. It was the town crier, Master Polman, who had fulfilled that role for many years. He was a thin little man with a large moustache which he twirled, as he usually did when waiting for attention.
“Listen up,” the town crier said. His voice was unusually loud for a man of his size. Johanna had always thought him an arrogant little man, and that fitted his position, but the fact that he continued to work for the occupiers confirmed that his arrogance was more than a professional requirement. What had Alexandre promised him in return for his support? How easily could these ambitious men be bought? How little respect had they left after they had switched sides?
He unrolled a sheet of paper and held it up in front of him.
More and more people came from between the stalls to listen.
“Listen up, listen up!” He squinted at the paper as if unsure of what was written. “You will have heard that overnight, a group of rabble-rousers broke into the palace. They disturbed the ghosts of the people who died there. Those ghosts are now moving into the city to disturb our good citizens.”
What a liar. But many people in the crowd gasped.
“Men of the guard risked their lives defending the city’s property. One of the thieves was an evil magician. But do not fear. The unrest seekers have been detained. Tomorrow at noon, there will be a public punishing.”
He rang the bell again and turned back into the house.
No. No, Father, Master Willems, no, no. Johanna’s vision blurred. But her tears were not of sorrow. They were tears of anger. Her cheeks were burning with it. She accepted that she might get into trouble. Master Willems, too, but Father?
All around her, a great tumult broke out. People shouted their anger and the sound of so many voices made Johanna want to clamp her hands over her ears. But she didn’t. She said to the man next to her, “If anyone wants to leave town, I have a horse for sale.”
There were guards everywhere.
He frowned and then his eyes widened. “Where might this horse be?”
“It’s in the warehouse next to the sea cow barn.” She chose it because it was big, empty and dry. The man went around his mates and colleagues to tell them about the horse.
Johanna caught a lot of sideways glances in her direction. One or two people muttered, “Where did she get a horse?”
She just hoped that none of the guards noticed.
Johanna, Nellie and Greetje left the marketplace. Greetje was quiet, her face drawn. Nellie looked puzzled. “But mistress Johanna, I don’t understand. Leo Mustermans said he’d take the horse into East Harbour.”
“Shhh. It’s not about the horse. It’s a secret meeting.”
Nellie’s mouth formed a soundless “Oh”. Poor Nellie. She was always so serious and never understood hidden meanings.
The three of them arrived at the warehouse not much later. A couple of people were already waiting, amongst them Master Deim and Johan and Martine Delacoeur.
Master Deim hugged Johanna. “These are grim tidings. How are you keeping up? I understand that your father is in that group as well?”
Johanna nodded. Tears were perilously close to the surface. Father would have spent the night in a cold cell. He was old and quite frail. Maybe they hit or kicked him. And for what? Not wanting to marry Lisbeth LaFontaine?
Martine Delacoeur hugged her as well. Johanna had not expected her to be here or even to support her.
“We want Roald on the throne and we want you as a consort Queen,” Martine said. “There are more of us who feel this way. King Nicholaos did some strange things that a lot of us didn’t like and couldn’t work with, but you are different. Roald is different. Does he even go to that church?”
That was an interesting question. Nominally, Roald went to church, but if he considered any book holy, the scriptures of the Triune were definitely not it. For now, they were united against magic and the occupation, but there was a fight against the Church of the Triune getting too much influence still to be fought.
“How are you and your husband keeping up?” Johanna asked Martine.
“Compared with you, I shouldn’t complain, but Johan and my sister’s husband don’t get on very well. Still, we have our own room, even if it’s a small one, and it’s dry.”
“If cold,” Johan muttered, his hands in his pockets. “At times, I wonder if it’s colder inside than out, in more than one way.”
Martine sighed. “Yes, it’s not doing the relationship between me and my sister any good.”
While other people came into the warehouse asking about “the horse”, Johanna slipped into the nearby sea cow barn, where it was dark and damp, but smelled of cooking. Loesie sat huddled by a small fire. She had caught a fish which she was roasting over the flames.
“I’m not coming,” she said before Johanna could ask anything.
Johanna crouched. “How did you know it was me?”
“The sound of your footsteps. The feel of your magic. It has grown stronger.”
That statement made Johanna uneasy. She had felt it, too. Stronger magic meant that Alexandre could feel her, too. Stronger magic meant that he might want to confront her, and there was no way she could win such a fight.
She sought excuses. “That’s because I banished the ghost like you did on the bank of the river, with a willow stick. It exploded all over me.” But she knew the real reason: because the child she carried was not Roald’s.
“I see that magic, but I also see other changes that are deeper. You should stay away from me. You don’t want my bad magic to be entangled with yours.”
“Loesie, I’m imploring you to help us.” If only she knew. “There will be a public execution tomorrow. Master Willems is one of the people. My father is another.”
“Cowpats. Your father is an old man. What do they want with him?”
“The company. The richest inland trader in Saardam.”
She snorted. “I’ll never understand people with money.”
“I’m not asking you to understand anything. Just help us, Loesie. Please.” Tears were very close to the surface. This was all so horrible.
Loesie said nothing.
Johanna couldn’t repress a wave of anger. “I thought you were my friend.”
“I can’t join you because you’re my friend,” Loesie said. “I thought I explained why.”
“You did, and I understand, but we’re desperate, simple as that. We need you.” Her voice caught.
Loesie continued to stare into the fire.
The murmur of many voices reached into the barn from the hall next door. Johanna really should be going.
“Please, Loesie. I’m not asking much and I’ve done my best to help you despite danger to my life. If you want to repay me, come to the market place tomorrow noon.”
Loesie continued her silence, so Johanna rose, but when she was at the door to the barn, Loesie said, “Wood is stronger than fire.”
“No it’s not. Haven’t you seen the results of the fires?”
Loesie gave her an intense look. Her eyes had misted over again. “Without wood, there cannot be a fire. Remember that.”
Johanna walked the short distance to the warehouse without seeing much. She didn’t know what to do. There were no other magicians she could ask, nothing else she could think of doing to counter Alexandre’s fire magic. Father would be burned. Master Willems would be burned.
In the large warehouse a lot more people had turned up while Johanna had been away. Not only were Church people there, but also a group of market stallholders under the leadership of Leo Mustermans. Those groups were standing in their own parts of the hall eying each other. When she came in, they formed a path to let her through. Greetje came with her, as well as Master Deim.
After the latter had called for silence, Jo
hanna said, “I wish I had answers, but I don’t. I wish I had a power magician who had a chance of defeating Alexandre, but I don’t. I only have myself and the rightful king, and the hope that we will be able to emerge from this dark time. But we will not be able to stop the deaths of our loved ones without your help, and even then it may not be possible.” Her voice caught. “I’m so sorry. I wish I had better news for you, but I don’t.” They couldn’t have stayed in Florisheim, but coming back here had been a bad decision.
“I, for one, am not going stay silent if he goes ahead with the executions,” a man said.
“No, me neither.” This was Leo Mustermans.
Johanna said, “Then you’ll all be burned. He’ll burn your houses and your families.”
“For you and the king, lady, it will be worth dying, because frankly we don’t have much of a life now.”
Johanna had no idea who this man was, but several others agreed with him.
“We’ll be there tomorrow. We’ll pack the market square. We’ll bring anything that can be used as a weapon. We’ll fight.”
A lot of men went yeah, yeah, and clapped each other on the shoulders.
It was terrible. It was lunacy. Johanna met Martine Delacoeur’s eyes with a look of despair. Martine would understand the futility of their promises, but even she looked worn out and ready to fight one last desperate battle.
Johanna went home, feeling tired and sick. Tomorrow was going to be a bloodbath.
Chapter 19
* * *
JOHANNA WENT HOME feeling drained and dejected. Master Deim and Greetje came with her. None of them said anything on the way back. There was no need because they all knew the situation was hopeless.
Yet it was too late to flee Saardam again. Alexandre knew of the survival of one member of the royal family and would hunt them down wherever they went. All the people who supported the royal family were here. But they could do nothing to oust the sorcerer.
It had started snowing, small powdery flakes drifting from the sky.
At home, they found a visitor in the kitchen: Julianna Nieland, seated at the table with her hands wrapped around a steaming mug of tea.
“When did you come here?” Johanna asked.
“Ko came into town and heard about the prisoners and executions. I went to plead with my brother to stop supporting this man and to ask him to reconsider, but he told me that we’re all dumb for not seeing the greatness of magic; and that we can fight, but we’ll all end up trampled in the mud.”
“He said that, really?”
Julianna nodded. Her eyes glittered. “I don’t know what’s wrong with him.”
“Has he forgotten how he came to his fortune, though hard work by his father? Does he care about no one?”
“He wouldn’t care about a priest or your father. He’s wanted the Brouwer Company for a long time.”
That was true, but Johanna had thought, mistakenly, that it was a wish he’d use polite means to get.
“I hate to think that I’d wanted him to marry you so that I’d have a sister.”
“You did?”
Julianna nodded.
Now Johanna felt embarrassed. She’d considered Julianna a rival, with her fancy clothes, frilly dresses and sleek combed hair. She’d thought Julianna was arrogant and thought less of her, but it had been the other way around. She hugged Julianna. There was a lot of hugging going on when there was no hope.
And then, looking over Julianna’s shoulder, she met Roald’s eyes. He’d been sitting by the fire in his usual spot, and she couldn’t bear trying to explain the situation of hopelessness to him. They had to fight. She had no idea how, and it would probably end in her death, but she had to try.
She took a deep breath and asked Koby, “So what is likely to happen tomorrow?”
Koby described as well as she could what had happened the last time. There would be a platform built at the markets overnight, and the prisoners would be tied to posts. There would be piles of wood at their feet.
Of course this vile man used burnings as his method of execution. He was a fire wizard. He came from a place where witches were regularly burned in the past. She guessed that was why magicians had forced their way into the Belaman Church: to force the people to accept magic and to stop the witch burnings.
Johan and Martine Delacoeur came to the door, stamping snow off their shoes.
Johanna was surprised to see them, and offered them a spot at the table and tea.
Clamping his hands around the steaming mug, Johan said, “There is going to be a bloodbath no matter what. Alexandre will have gotten some stories out of those men, such as where his enemies are. They will be chasing down the Church and other dissenters. They will be chasing down those people who left but came back, like us. There is no option but to fight, and we’ll do it with the weapons we have. That’s why I’m here.”
He drew a slate from his pocket and wrote something on it. Roald looked on with wide eyes. Johan put the slate down. At the top, he had written Advantage.
The pencil hovered over the slate. “Well, what do we have to our advantage?”
Greetje and Julianna gave him strange looks, but Johanna understood what he wanted: an ex-army general would objectively analyse the situation for the best action to take.
She said, “To be honest, we don’t have much at all. He’s got magic, he’s got people with bears . . .”
Johan drew a line across the slate and wrote Disadvantage and underneath that, he wrote magic and bears.
That kind of summed it up, really. There was no hope. Anyone who could help had refused to do so.
The space under Advantage remained empty.
Johan tapped the pencil on the edge of the slate. “Failing military strength, we need numbers.”
“We have the support of most people, even if many will be too frightened to openly support us, and I can’t blame them.”
“Then we need to give them a reason to do so.”
“Any suggestions on how to do that?” She couldn’t help sounding sarcastic. She had tried doing that the last few days, all to no avail. They were out of ideas, and most importantly, out of time.
He pursed his mouth. “You have the king’s regalia?”
“We do.”
“Do you have the Carmine cloak?”
“Yes, but it didn’t like the dip in the harbour.”
“Show them to us.”
Johanna went upstairs where Nellie had hung up all their clothes. The cloak looked rather shabby on its own, more brown than red, but there was a pair of trousers that she had never seen Father wear in almost the same colour. And a gold dress that used to belong to her mother, a few shades lighter than the cloak.
Johanna took all of them downstairs, as well as the sheet with the crown and the staff. Koby and Nellie were surprised to see her come in with all these things, but Johan Delacoeur nodded. “I think she’s got what I mean. Put them on, both of you.”
Johanna took Roald, who was puzzled, to an empty servants’ bedroom next to the kitchen. She slipped out of her comfortable dress and into the dress that hadn’t been worn since she was a little girl. It was a dress with laces on both sides that could be let out to accommodate a woman’s condition. She pulled the knots loose and helped Roald. The trousers were a bit wide, but a belt would fix that, and the velvet cloak shimmered in the light, even if it was no longer red. She gave Roald the staff, and as she touched the wooden handle, it re-played the scenes from inside the palace: the ghost, Alexandre and his fish. For some reason, Loesie’s last words came to her mind. Without wood, there is no fire.
“Like this?” Roald said, putting the crown on his head.
She nodded, wiped some breadcrumbs out of his beard and took his arm.
There were gasps in the kitchen when they returned.
Martine cried, “Oh, he looks so much like his father!”
Nellie said, “Mistress Johanna, you really are with child.”
Johan Delacoeur rose fr
om his seat and bowed to her. “Your Royal Majesties, my humble self and my wife and whatever virtues we have that may be of use to you are at your service.”
Going into a magical battle with nothing other than pomp and show still sounded like lunacy, but strangely, dressing up as king and queen made Johanna feel better.
Roald was still puzzled by the whole affair. He kept asking if he was now a real king, and she said that he was and had been ever since his father died.
They went upstairs and did some really silly things in the bedroom that were most satisfactory, because if one was about to be slaughtered, one was entitled to do really silly things, even if giggling would have annoyed the servants. Things got a bit rough, and they rolled off the side of the bed.
There came a knock on the door and Nellie said, “Are you all right, mistress?”
“Yes, no need to worry,” Johanna said.
They were quiet after that, climbed into bed and went to sleep.
Chapter 20
* * *
JOHANNA WOKE UP before sunrise the next morning. She slipped from the bed and got dressed while Roald still slept.
Koby was in the kitchen and greeted her wordlessly. She passed Johanna a steaming cup of tea and a bowl of porridge.
Nellie came into the back door when she was halfway eating it. “The podium is in the market square and people have begun to gather already.”
Johanna nodded, wondering how Father had spent the night, and cringing at her immature behaviour with Roald last night.
“We must go upstairs and get you ready soon.”
Johanna sighed. She couldn’t have felt any less like getting dressed up, but pomp and ceremony were all they had. She followed Nellie up the stairs, remembering how she used to hate getting ready for festivities. That seemed kind of silly right now. If only getting ready for balls and ceremonies was her only problem.
They went into the dressing room and Johanna let Nellie do her thing. Roald also went down for breakfast, and other people came into the kitchen, probably Martine and Johan Delacoeur.