by Patty Jansen
Father gave a half-smile. “The Brouwer family seems to be going places, after all.” He put his spoon down.
Johanna sensed the importance of his words. “Is this about the visitor you just had? He was from the royal family, wasn’t he?” Just what was Father getting into? There were other ways?
Other ways of what? Was he buying his way into the nobility?
Wait.
The crown prince was back to resume his duties. The prince was twenty-four. His duties would include finding a wife and getting busy with producing an heir.
She and Father looked at each other and she saw in his eyes that he knew what she was thinking.
He nodded, slowly. “King Nicholaos has issued a call for all ladies of good standing to attend the ball for a dance with the prince.”
Johanna opened her mouth—
“No, Johanna. Do your old father a pleasure and for once do as I say. The king has fallen out badly with most of the city’s nobles. Many of those so-called nobles don’t even have half the capital that we do. You are the most eligible lady from the new merchant class.”
“You have got to be kidding! I thought you wanted me to look after the company.”
“I do.”
“How could I do that if I’m choking in ruffles and court ladies?” And she’d just asked Mistress Daphne for that ridiculously frilly dress.
“My guess is: better than if you marry Octavio Nieland.”
“But . . .” Johanna stopped there. “Octavio Nieland?”
“Yes. He’s been in my office several times to ask for your hand in marriage.”
“But why? The Nielands hate us!”
“They only hate what they can’t get. The best way to stifle a competitor who frightens you is by marrying into their family.”
“But . . .” The Nielands were nobles. The very ones who scorned Father. Why did he involve himself with them?
“Johanna. He’s very insistent. You amuse him, he says. He wants a strong woman who is able to look after his affairs when he goes to sea. I’m not going to be able to say no to him indefinitely. Not if there is no other option.”
No other option?
She had assumed that he had been happy enough not to let her marry. Not Octavio Nieland, not anyone. She’d just continue to do the work he’d been doing, without the need for a man. She’d shown him that she could do it.
One thing she hadn’t considered: he saw her marrying to the advantage of the company. Tears of anger sprang to her eyes.
“I thought you loved me,” she said, her voice unsteady.
“I do love you, and that’s why I’m trying to get you the best I can negotiate. The prince desperately needs to marry. At the ball tomorrow night he will be presented with Saardam’s most eligible ladies. I’ve negotiated one dance for you with him. The court adviser who was just here has let me know that the king looks favourably upon you. Take the opportunity to present yourself well and he may want to see you again. It seems fortunate, perhaps, that King Nicholaos has made a lot of enemies amongst the nobles with his insistence on church donations. We are successful, and the royal family wants support from successful traders, and they desperately need an heir from a family that goes to church. We can provide those things.”
He thought of the rest of her life like that? Something to be bartered?
Johanna rose from the table, throwing her spoon down. “I’m not hungry anymore.”
“It upsets you.”
“Of course it upsets me.” She tried very hard to keep the anger out of her voice, but didn’t succeed entirely. “How can you just drop this on me like that?”
“Just one dance, Johanna.”
“And what if he likes me . . . or what if he doesn’t? Would you honestly expect me to marry Octavio Nieland after all the bad things you said about him?”
“I don’t want you to, no. But if you don’t marry and I die, our wealth goes to my useless cousin. I want that even less than I want the company to go to the Nielands.”
“Do I get a say in this?”
“I’ve waited years for you to have a say. You don’t look like making up your mind any time soon.”
“I don’t want to get married. Look at the girls who used to be my friends. Claire got married. I never see her anymore. Does she even leave the house? Augustina got married, and her husband won’t even let her do any shopping. Willemina got married and she’s got so many children that she has no time for anything else. They never go out. They rarely talk to me anymore. Does that look like fun?”
He slammed his flat palm on the table. “This is not about fun!”
The explosion of his voice shocked her into silence.
He took a deep breath, nostrils flaring and went on, “You are behaving like a spoilt child. I’m thinking I’ve waited far too long already. There is a lot more to marriage than two people. It’s about their families and their combined wealth and business.”
“You married for love.” Not only that, her mother’s parents had let their daughter go off with a foreigner.
“I was extremely lucky.”
Johanna, on the other hand, was in danger of becoming an old spinster, and at this point in time, she was just a piece of property to be moved around for maximum gain.
She got that message loud and clear.
“I won’t be around forever, and I worry about what would happen to you if you don’t have a family—no, don’t tell me that you’re happy to run the company by yourself. I know you are, and I know you’re capable, but things don’t work that way in this world, do they? No one will do business with a woman who runs the company by herself. And it’s getting worse because of that stupid Church.”
Johanna looked down, tears pricking in her eyes. She knew, and had always known. The world was changing. It had no room for happily unmarried women.
“Please, Johanna. One dance with him. Chat to him. Try your best. Because I wouldn’t give my company to Octavio Nieland over my dead body.”
After one long stare, Johanna left the room without speaking.
Chapter 6
* * *
IN THE SUMMER the nights were long, and after that disastrous evening meal, Johanna slipped down the stairs into the servants’ quarters. The house staff, Koby, Nellie, the gardener, all sat around the kitchen table. The sounds of spoons clinking against plates drifted from the room, as well as talk and laughter. Johanna always felt a bit jealous hearing them chat and laugh. She wished she could join them and laugh with them instead of having to suffer Father’s long silences.
She slipped into the pantry and grabbed a half-cut loaf of bread and a piece of soft cheese, which she put in a basket.
Then she went out the back door into the garden with its pebbles and neatly-clipped bushes. The roses were very prolific this year and the scent of the flowers hung heavy in the summer air.
Johanna walked past the garden house—where her grandparents from Aroden used to stay when they visited, but that was now full of old furniture—and out the back gate into the street.
Passers-by greeted her, but she was too absorbed in her angry thoughts to take much notice of them.
Prince Roald!
What was her father thinking? As if anyone would take her seriously when she came to dance with the prince. All the noble girls would laugh, and the prince would know her for what she was the moment she opened her mouth.
Even if the prince was the most dashing, romantic young man, it would not work. Princes did not marry merchant daughters.
She was more concerned about what Father had said about Octavio Nieland. Octavio was the biggest piece of arrogance in the Saardam gentry. When he set his sights on something, he usually got it, in his unforgiving and blunt way. She did not want to marry Octavio Nieland.
The harbour was quiet at this time of day, with the boats dark and locked up. All the ships’ boys had gone home, the wind had calmed and the only sound that disturbed the silence was the slap of waves again
st ship hulls and the creaking of planks or boards.
The Brouwer Company’s sea cow barn was at the end of the quay, behind a couple of warehouses and behind where the boys had moored the Lady Sara now that the hold was empty.
Johanna walked past the large warehouse doors where her footsteps sounded loud. A cat stalked along the wharf, waving the tip of its tail. A couple of deck hands were still talking somewhere. She could hear their voices although she couldn’t see them, the sound echoing weirdly here.
The dark Burovian sloop that had brought Prince Roald from wherever he had been still lay moored at the quay, giving up none of its secrets. Prince Roald? Really?
Johanna didn’t remember him very well, because even before he left, he rarely came outside. Part of her hoped that he’d come back healthy, as a handsome young man who would fall in love the moment he saw her. Yeah, like that was going to happen. Like she even wanted it to happen.
She opened the door to Father’s barn and stepped into its inky darkness. Something rustled in the corner.
“Loesie?”
“Hmmmm.”
Johanna turned up the wick on the oil lamp that always burned in the corner. By its measly light, a sea cow rose to the surface of the water and cast a baleful look at her. Its eye, brown and mournful, looked surprisingly human. The surface of the water looked oily, with a mess of cabbage leaves floating around. Ripples disturbed the surface where the other cows were. Also, occasionally there would be a trail of bubbles escaping from the animals’ pelts or other places.
On the right-hand wall the harnesses hung on hooks, with thick oiled leather straps that held the pack to the front of the boat on the upriver runs. Underneath the harnesses was a workbench and tools for repair.
Johanna put the basket on the bench.
“I’ve got bread and cheese for you.”
Loesie came out of the darkness. In that horrible black dress and her translucent pale skin and eyes so wide that the whites showed on all sides, she looked like a wraith.
She snatched the bread and held it to her chest like a treasure needing protection. She shuffled aside, like a mangy dog afraid to be hit.
“Loesie?” A chill went over Johanna’s back. She was no longer sure that it had been a good idea to come here alone.
“Ghghghghghg!” Loesie darted forwards and grabbed the basket. She snatched the cheese and bit into it.
While she chewed, she put her hands on the handle of the basket. She closed her eyes and let the magic of the wood flow through her. She opened her mouth and uttered a soft cry. A pale white dribble of half-chewed cheese ran down her chin.
“Loesie, what’s wrong?” The chill that Johanna had felt earlier grew into a blizzard.
What sort of dark craft did it take to put a spell this strong on a person? What else had been affected other than Loesie’s ability to speak? How could she know that Loesie wasn’t leading her into a horrible trap? She’d heard the stories of people turning other people into diseased ghosts. The stories about madmen who devoured blood or human flesh were stories, weren’t they?
Loesie’s eyes opened as slits of pure white. She tilted her head to the ceiling of the barn and swayed from one foot to the other while uttering a low moan.
Johanna backed away.
No, definitely not a good idea to come here.
Loesie came towards her, holding out the basket. “Ghghghghghghgh!”
She tried to push the basket into Johanna’s hands, but Johanna wanted nothing to do with it anymore.
“Keep away from me!” Johanna’s back bumped into the barn door. She lifted the bar, pushed the door open and ran.
Johanna ran down the wharf, past the dark shadows of boats. Her footsteps sounded loud on the cobbled ground. The cat she’d seen earlier gave a surprised meow and skittered out of her way, into the open door of a warehouse.
There was a light within and a few deck hands were inside, moving barrels. The warehouse belonged to an Estlander merchant but long-time citizen of Saardam, Master Deim. Those Estlanders had odd customs, still working after dark. They must have received an important shipment.
Johanna didn’t want the men to see her, because they’d ask what she was doing here. They’d see that she was upset. They would discover Loesie and the state she was in. They might even tell the mayor, or the king’s guard, and instead of going to the ball, Johanna would be spending tomorrow night locked up in a cell. No one still did witch burnings anymore, did they?
She ran past the entrance when the men’s backs were turned. She ran past the other warehouses and the forbidding walls of the King’s guard armoury, where the single guard on duty followed her with his eyes.
She stopped in front of her father’s office, catching her breath. The windows were dark. Of course Master Willems had gone home long ago. He was the only one she could talk to about magic, and even he avoided the subject. She couldn’t go and see him at home, because his father would be there, and he was with the Church. Visiting him at home would be inappropriate.
Then what?
Panting, she looked back over the wharf, past the warehouses, the ammunition depot and the barn and the Lady Sara. There was no movement on the wharf.
Johanna wiped her face, seeing Loesie’s wild expression when she closed her eyes, that dribble of half-chewed cheese down her chin.
Had she been wrong to shelter someone who was clearly possessed by evil? And was Loesie now trying to make her a victim as well? Was Master Willems right in saying that nothing had happened upriver? Could Loesie possibly have imbued the wood with the images for the evil purpose of seducing Johanna into the influence of evil?
She shivered.
Loesie, as Johanna remembered her, was a kind young woman. Yes, she was a bit odd, and loved scaring people with her strange tales of creatures that came out of the river next to her grandpa’s farm, most of which were stories she made up.
Loesie loved playing pranks. She’d tell an outrageous story and see how far in she could get before her audience understood that she was telling them fibs.
But this . . .
Looks like reality caught up with the prankster.
White eyes, a dribble of milk-like fluid from her mouth—that was how scholars identified people who were possessed by demons.
Her little voice of sanity said, It was only half-eaten cheese.
But what about Loesie’s eyes? They had definitely turned all-white, without irises.
Johanna wanted to run home and forget that all this had happened. She wanted to burn the basket that Loesie had given her and that sat on the chair by the window in her room.
Then again, Loesie was always a bit strange, but kind-hearted. Loesie would never harm anyone.
A little voice inside her said, If Loesie had turned into a demon, then the evil would have taken complete possession of her and would not have taken only her voice, right?
Coming from a farm, Loesie wouldn’t read or write. Her voice was the only way in which she could warn people.
The question remained: how much of the real Loesie was still in there?
What to do, what to do?
Whatever happened, she couldn’t abandon a friend, because no one else would help her, but she couldn’t handle this alone either.
Johanna had started walking again. She came past the harbour-side bars where the sound of yelling male voices spilled out. Through the windows, she could see patrons sitting around tables served by the young man who was the son of the owner. A single dark-haired woman sat on one of the tables. Johanna knew her, too.
Helena had come to Saardam as First Mate’s pet aboard one of the southern sea’s vessels. After two months at sea, her belly started swelling. She drank a concoction that was supposed to rid her of the child, but it had made her so ill that the First Mate ditched her as soon as they came into port. Helena managed the rooms upstairs, where a never-ending line of sailors were keen to part with their hard-earned money to spend some time with any of the young women H
elena had plucked off the streets in towns along the Saar River. She also knew which men were out of work and was a good contact for hiring deck hands.
Johanna crossed the markets where the trestle tables had been packed away until the next market day. On the far side, the belltower of the church reached for the heavens, like a dark shadow against the sky. A light was on in the porch, flickering with the breeze. Hadn’t the Shepherd Romulus said that the church doors were always open?
Johanna hesitated, looking around. Apart from the church, the other main building at the markets was the market house. During the day, its front and side doors were open, and merchants would bring in their wares to be officially weighed by market officials. At night, the doors were closed. Few private houses surrounded the markets, and in those that did, the curtains were closed over the windows. Something rustled in the shadows that might be a mouse or a rat, or one of the cats employed to catch those pests. There were no people in sight.
Quietly, Johanna walked up the church steps into the darkness of the porch, into the glow of the flapping flame of the storm light that hung on the back wall of the porch, and pushed the door open. It creaked.
It was not completely dark in the church either. Oil lamps set in sconces on pillars that supported the roof spread an orange glow just strong enough for her to see the aisle. Candles burned at the altar.
Her footsteps sounded hollow in the large space and for once she was glad that she wasn’t wearing her clogs.
The church was a reflective space, with simple glass windows, plain pillars and plain wooden pews. The only thing that had any prominence inside the building was a large statue at the front. The three-headed demon stood on its hind legs, with its front legs slightly in the air. It had the body of a strong dog, with muscular legs and shoulders. The three heads were those of an emaciated ghost, a dog and a man. Father was right: it was a hideous thing, but it was meant to be: it symbolised the ugliness of human emotions the Church sought to change.
There were footsteps at the back of the church and a man in a simple robe dissolved from the shadows. Shepherd Romulus.