by Patty Jansen
“Johanna, how nice of you to join us.” It sounded like what on Earth are you doing here?
He gave a little bow. “We must have a dance later tonight.”
Johanna shivered. This man was beating down Father’s door to ask her hand in marriage?
The people in his group had stopped taking and all looked at her. His sister Julianna was there, in a dress very similar to the pink dress Mistress Daphne had shown Johanna. Except it looked stunning on her. Julianna Nieland, of course, had the figure of a lady, the wide hips and the narrow waist.
Her skin was also naturally pale, not ugly and freckled like Johanna’s, and the red paint on her lips and the blushes on her cheeks had been applied with a subtle and delicate hand, and probably not by the maid. The others in the group were their cousins, the young men in colourful trousers and jackets with high-heeled boots and frilled shirts, the young women all dressed up like sugar cakes and acting as if it came natural to them.
Father led Johanna away from the group, giving a polite bow to Lady Suzanna Nieland, who must be well into her seventies by now. The lady regarded the newcomers over her monocle with an expression of curiosity.
“What a bunch of empty-headed peacocks,” Father muttered, and he didn’t seem to be overly concerned about whether or not the Nielands were within earshot.
Whether they were or not, or whether the surreal sweet strains of music drowned out Father’s words, Johanna could still feel their gazes prick in her back when she and Father reached the other side of the hall. One thing she knew for certain: Octavio Nieland didn’t want to marry her. He wanted to own the Brouwer Company. She would be an unfortunate part of the bargain and would probably be treated as such.
On the other side of the hall, Father found a group of his colleagues, older, grizzled company owners, captains and other men of boats. The men, merchants or minor nobles, were from mixed heritage, as was common amongst merchanting families. Many of the well-off citizens from all the surrounding countries sent their sons to Saardam to work. Johanna had seen most of them before, and knew all their names. The way they stood slightly apart from the nobles and other guests made it clear that they were also not regular guests at occasions like this. The king had really cast his invitations wide this year.
There was the half-Lurezian Captain Murain who traded fabrics up and down the rivers. With him was his Estlander wife, Lora, a short rotund woman who was the opposite of what Johanna imagined her mother to have been like. She laughed a lot but spoke with such a terrible accent that Johanna had trouble understanding her.
There was the Estlander merchant, Master Deim, whose brother lived in Saardam and who owned seagoing ships and was in partnership with a Saarlander noble family to crew and kit out the ships. He was a man of tall tales, and only interrupted his current story, about foreign ships shadowing his brother’s, to greet Johanna and her father exuberantly.
With his soft face and friendly eyes, Master Deim was one of these people hard to dislike, but oh, he was such a chatterbox.
The other men greeted her father with claps on the shoulder, and bows to Johanna, calling her sincere but laugh-worthy names, like fair lady and golden maiden. She guessed it came with their eastern and southern heritage, because those people were always more pompous. But they were also more open and generous with compliments.
Not used to this kind of male attention, Johanna found it a bit embarrassing.
She remained next to her father, listening to their laughter and familiar tales, normally spun in the comfort of her father’s study. Master Deim, already red-faced from the wine, leaned closer to her than necessary. “You know, if your father is going to invest in seafaring ships, he’ll need to buy protection. There are many lands beyond the Horn, but not all of them are friendly.”
She nodded politely. Each year several ships went missing in seas past the Horn. The land route to the silk-country was much more reliable, and shorter. Yet there was much more glamour associated with the high seas. Sailors who left and returned safely were celebrated as heroes. Something lived on the other side of the Horn that did not like other people coming there. There were tales of monstrous creatures, sea serpents and dragons. Ships went missing each year.
A servant came past with a tray of glasses and Master Deim was the first to take one. Johanna took a glass, too.
He lifted his to her and took a good swig. “Might as well enjoy the good life while it lasts.”
“While it lasts?” His words sent her heart into a rapid beat. Had he seen ill omens on the wind? Johanna could usually sense if a person had magic. Master Deim had not struck her as such a person, but then again, sometimes people surprised her.
He laughed. “Last time I went drinking, the wife locked all the doors on me and I sat all night in the street. Cold, it was, too. So this time, I’ve been smart and I’ll sleep in the barn. At least all those cow ladies do is fart in the water.” He laughed again, a rolling belly laugh that, no matter the sad rumours surrounding his marriage, made Johanna laugh as well.
Sea cows farted. A lot. Bubbles in the water. The image of Master Deim sleeping in his finery amongst the harnesses and bags of potatoes next to the bubbly water was priceless.
She should calm down about Loesie’s warning. So far, there was no proof that any of it was true. The willow wood did not usually lie, but Loesie was clearly possessed by something evil, and anything she had touched should be treated with suspicion.
Master Deim’s face turned serious. “You know, between you and me, I worry about my wife’s churchgoing. I think I’ve been a good person all my life. Paid all my dues and never harmed anyone. Gave a whole lot of poor buggers jobs who would’ve starved otherwise. What right does this Shepherd have to say that we are bad people? We are not, and this country has prospered because of us.”
“I understand,” Johanna said, but she felt uneasy. Did us mean merchants or people who had magic? Magic that was more common in people from the east, like him, and like her mother?
Many of the Brouwer company deck hands, too, were refugees or ex-mercenaries from eternal petty conflicts on the eastern Estland border. People there starved to death, so the lucky ones came to prosperous Saardam where they hauled sacks of potatoes or cheeses all day, and could afford to feed their families.
She looked away, and noticed Octavio Nieland observing her from the other side of the hall. His intense expression sent a chill down her back. Dark and brooding, Nellie called it. Others called him handsome, but all those descriptions were just different words for bully to her. There was no way she would ever agree to marry him.
She turned away from him, back to Master Deim and his uncomfortable conversation, but could still fell Octavio’s gaze pricking at the back of her head.
Father was talking to another merchant on Johanna’s other side. He gave the appearance of being relaxed but she could see that he was nervous, with his thumbs jammed in his belt. He wasn’t drinking. “Gerald, have you met my daughter, Johanna?”
“No, I have not.” The fellow was grey-haired, with a short, neatly-clipped beard. He wore a long, elegant coat and a simple white shirt. No lace. He took Johanna’s hand. “My pleasure, madame.”
“You’re Burovian?” She recognised his accent.
“Yes, indeed, I am. How did you guess?” He laughed.
“He’s the captain of the ship that brought Roald back,” Father said, his voice full of meaning.
Whoa, did he belong to the religious order that the king was said to have offended?
The man laughed. “Not sure if you’ll thank me for it, but it’s true, lady.”
“And how are things in Burovia?” Johanna studied his clothes, but could see no sign that this man was a monk.
“As good as can be.” There was meaning in those words, too, but Johanna had no idea what he was trying to say.
He smiled as if she knew what he was talking about.
Johanna turned to her father, but he was talking to the merchant next to hi
m. So she chatted to the Burovian merchant, but became none the wiser about his mysterious remarks.
Looking around the circle of her father’s acquaintances, all well-to-do merchants and boat people in their fineries, it struck her that there was a reason Father had joined these men: they were all from outside the city and they would either have magic or employ someone who did. None of them belonged to the Church of the Triune.
As potential bride to the prince, she was their spearhead: religious enough on the surface to be attractive to the royal family, but ultimately loyal to them. If the choice was Church or magic, Johanna would have no choice but to choose magic. Magic went with merchants and people who owned boats. She was their pawn, their puppet, their spearhead into destroying the influence of the Church in Saardam so that they could conduct their business freely along the rivers regardless of borders. Why hadn’t she seen this coming earlier?
Her head reeled.
At that moment, a fanfare of trumpets blasted into the crowd. Conversations dissolved, groups split up and people lined up on both sides of the hall.
Chapter 9
* * *
DAZED AS SHE WAS, Johanna ended up a couple of rows back in the crowd.
Two rows of King’s Heralds lined up on both sides of the aisle.
First to come into the hall was the king’s speaker, carrying the staff. Then followed King Nicholaos, wearing his Carmine cloak. The circlet on his head crowned his severe, bearded face. She hadn’t seen him close up for a while, and thought that grief over his daughter’s death had aged him terribly. His hair used to be ashen blond, but it had gone grey. His skin had never been good, but now it resembled the colour of dirty linen. His cheeks looked hollow.
Queen Cygna walked behind him. Not even the occasion of the ball had convinced her to change out of the black dress and veil she had worn since Celine’s death. She looked down as a prisoner being led to the gallows, with her face mostly hidden in the shadow of the black lace.
Behind them followed a tall and thin young man with short-cropped blond hair and a short blond beard. The way Prince Roald walked—stiff and staring at his father’s back—made him look ill at ease and awkward. Since Johanna had last seen him, he had changed so much that she didn’t think she would have recognised him if she’d met him in the street dressed in civilian clothes.
Two ladies in the crowd behind Johanna whispered that he looked well, and he did, but he did not wave, raise his head or talk to anyone the entire way through the hall. He looked petrified of all this attention he was getting.
What if he was painfully shy and was looking forward to dancing with primped-up, hopeful girls just as little as some girls were?
Behind the royal family followed a procession of minor royals and guests. Of course there was Princess Josafina of Estland, in the dark red of the Aroden house. She wore her hair piled on top of her head like a giant dome, and Johanna wondered how much of it was real. She was a cousin to the king who, failing a husband or a country to rule, had made Saardam her permanent home.
The couple of boys trailing her were presumably some of the Estlander baron’s six sons who had been sent to their aunt for education.
Behind them walked a bearded man dressed in black leather. He was at least a head taller than Princess Josafina, and his beard, huge and bushy, covered the top of his chest above his considerable belly. He wore his hair, brown and curly and greying at the temples, in a loose ponytail. His arms, mostly bare save for the jerkin’s very short sleeves, rippled with muscles and bore more scars than those of the average sea cow handler.
Johanna had never seen Baron Uti of Gelre before, but this man fitted the descriptions that went around of him. He was said to have been a fierce warrior in his younger days and still looked the part. His expression was curious rather than angry, but he would no doubt be a force to be reckoned with if he was upset. With him were Master Lanston, ambassador from Estland, and two men in long Burovian capes she had never seen before. People from this religious order?
The Rede River separated Gelre and Burovia. Both were thickly-forested countries and one of Gelre’s main towns, Florisheim, lay opposite the Burovian town of Velsdam. Apparently, the river was small enough to cross by barge at that point so there was a lot of contact between the two towns.
On the other side of the Estlander ambassador walked a man with rust-red curls down to his shoulders. He wore brown woollen trousers and a white, long-sleeved shirt and a leather jerkin embossed with some kind of sigil. He looked exotic and foreign, not proper at all, with that long hair and his strange clothing.
He was talking to the ambassador, and as he walked past, his eyes met Johanna’s in the crowd. His eyes were brown, his chin strong and smoothly shaven. The corner of his mouth went up a fraction.
A shiver crawled over Johanna’s back. Magic, as strong as she’d ever felt it. It radiated from him.
The procession went up to the dais, where Queen Cygna and Prince Roald took their positions on either side of the King’s chair and all the other royals and guests found their places on the table behind and to the sides of the royal family. The red-haired man ended up at the back where Johanna couldn’t see him anymore, although the touch of magic still made her skin prick.
She clamped her arms around herself. If people from the east had magic as strong as that, what hope would there be for Saarland to defend itself in case of a conflict? Especially if the Church started banishing people with magic?
A serious-looking man in a Carmine coat had taken up a position behind the prince’s chair. Johanna wondered who he was—apart from a member of the royal family’s courtiers—and what he was doing there, because no one else had a personal minder.
Another trumpet fanfare signalled that the royal family was seated.
All the guests now filed past the dais, where each one bowed or curtsied to the king. Johanna and her father lined up with Master Deim and the other merchants.
Slowly the line shuffled forwards.
When Johanna and her father’s turn came, the king looked at Father and gave a barely perceptible nod that made Johanna’s heart race. What had these men been negotiating behind her back? Prince Roald sat in a stiff position, staring into the back of the hall. He didn’t look at anyone or talk to anyone. His foot jiggled.
On the other side of the dais, the queue dissolved and guests broke off into pairs or little groups which scattered across the floor. Johanna and her father stopped to look back at the dais, where guests still filed past.
“What do you think?” Father said in a low voice.
She glanced at Prince Roald, who was still jiggling his foot. “He seems frightened.”
“Frightened? I would have thought he was bored.”
“Wouldn’t you be frightened if you were told to pick a girl out of all these dressed-up dolls, and you knew none of them?”
“He should be used to being the centre of attention.”
Should was an easy word, but nothing was as it should. Roald looked healthy enough. Why had the king shielded him so? “Did the king tell you what’s wrong with him and why he had to be sent away?”
“He has a very fragile personality.”
Did that justify the special treatment? Then something else occurred to her. “Does he have magic?”
Father’s eyes met hers squarely. “They say magic might have had something to do with it.”
“But magic would make him more suited to the job. Think of all the things I know because of the magic in the wood.” And magic didn’t give a person a fragile personality, whatever that might mean. When it came to the prince, people spoke in impenetrable metaphors.
“What would the Shepherd have to say about a prince with magic?”
True. And religious as King Nicholaos was, that could be a problem. She glanced at the prince again. When meeting someone for the first time, she usually had at least a suspicion if someone had magic. Like Master Diem. She felt that with Master Willems, too
, and Loesie. She had felt nothing when Roald passed her, but he might have been overshadowed by the red-haired man behind him, and Johanna tried very hard not to think of that chilling look in those brown eyes.
It was a mystery.
By now, the line to greet the king had dissolved.
A bell rang. The king rose from his seat and motioned for silence. The music stopped, and chatter and laughter died.
Roald remained in his chair, looking at the ground. His mother leaned across the empty chair between them and said something. He jerked his head up.
“Thank you all for being here with us today,” the king said. “Today, our annual ball, is a great occasion. As you will have seen, Prince Roald has joined us in this occasion. He has recently returned to Saardam and will be taking up his duties as crown prince shortly. No doubt that’s why we see such a wonderful presence from all the young ladies today. There will be a few words from my son later on, but for now I trust that you will amuse yourselves without my interfering. Enjoy the sounds of the orchestra and the wonderful dishes from our trusted cook. Feast and be merry.”
The orchestra struck up a waltz that went with a dance called the dandelion. It was a light and frivolous tune, designed for a circle of friends, but Johanna danced it with Father. He wasn’t a bad dancer, but he trod on her toes several times. It was crowded, and he was no doubt thinking about other matters. Then the herald called out for a change of partner, and she lost him in the crowd. She danced with a merchant’s son, then a nobleman with bad breath and then decided to get something to eat at the tables around the perimeter of the room, where she found Master Deim in a heated discussion with a group of merchants.
“He’s asked Dirk Brouwer,” one of the men was saying.
“He came to me, too,” another man said. “Asked me to contribute for the good of the country. He was not at all clear about what had happened that warrants such an expansion of the army. King’s orders, he said, but you know what? I think the King is seeing things that aren’t there.”