The Bastard Prince Read online

  With any other family, without the whore mother and the drunkard father, she could do well, but she had been doomed at birth.

  Nellie returned to the kitchen and collected a bowl of cream, then walked down the cold and dark corridor to her room. She lit a candle in the moist and stuffy darkness.

  The black and white kitten poked its head out from underneath the bed.

  Funny how quickly those cats learned.

  Nellie picked it up, and it hung in her hand with its paws dangling between her fingers, little more than a bag of loosely connected bones.

  She set both the bowl and the kitten on the floor where it proceeded to lap up the cream.

  Nellie put the candle on the shelf above her bed and picked up the Book of Verses from the table.

  A well-worn bookmark sat at the spot where she had left off reading last night, at the parable of the farmhouse door in the Book of Union.

  It described how a teacher tells his young pupils that when the Father came home, he closed the door. The Ghost, being a soul of no corporeal substance, walked through the wood. While the Father and the Ghost had travelled together, the Father did not appreciate this intrusion. So the Ghost did not argue and agreed to sleep in the barn.

  So the teacher asked his pupils what this story meant. Most of them said they thought the Father didn’t like ghosts in his house.

  But one pupil, a little girl, said, “The story is not about ghosts. It’s about friends. We’re happy to share with friends, but even friends don’t need to know everything. A good friend respects that. So the Father and the Ghost are very good friends who respect each other.”

  The little girl, whose name was Rose, made frequent appearances in this chapter.

  She was what the Shepherd Wilfridus would call a good obedient little girl. She watched and thought before she spoke and never yelled or pleaded.

  Nellie loved the stories of Rose and she wondered what Rose would have to say about what she had seen and heard today.

  Would she say, “The church is the house of the Triune, and the people should respect it,” even if the church kept books that showed such horrible things? Would she see why the Triune, the Holy Union of the God, the Father and the Ghost who occupied the church in soul but not in body, needed to have all this dry and empty space to itself while families slept in the street? Would she understand why families were cast into the street while the Regent held lavish banquets?

  Would she understand the need for the men of the church to take delight in reading these horrid books?

  Nellie sank to her knees, leaning her elbows on the bed and looking up at the candle flame on the shelf above.

  “I pray to your soul, oh wise Rose, to grant me understanding, to divest me of my anger and find acceptance with the decisions of those wiser than me.”

  But she did not find inner peace.

  Nellie tried to sleep, but after tossing and turning, got up, lit her lamp and took the Book back out of its drawer and sat in bed, her legs covered by the blankets, and leafed through the pages.

  She started at the beginning, at the creation of the world, and worked through the books of the prophets, the teachings and all the way to the parables.

  On the small slate that Mistress Johanna had given her when she was learning to read and write, she copied all the references that referred to decency and magic.

  They lay together as man and wife and begot a child. Except the couple in question were not married. It was all about the prophet son. That his parents weren’t wed was immaterial to the story.

  Love is only such when freely given between men and women both. That seemed to suggest that the Triune was fine with two men or two women coming together. Yet both shepherds told the people otherwise whenever an occasion presented itself.

  Thou shalt not touch a girl until she has blossomed into a woman. In a story where a man, who had forced himself on a neighbour’s daughter, had been punished by death.

  The book in the crypt not only suggested that men touched children, but it was normal that a child cried and the tears should be ignored.

  The magic of the Triune can only be experienced through complete faith. That was about the magic of faith, not real magic.

  Once a person’s soul has passed into the afterlife, it must be left in peace. It has happened more than once that in his grief, a husband has placed items on the deceased body of his wife that stopped the soul from making the peaceful journey. Her ghost remained a terror to the neighbourhood forever. Clearly, the church knew that ghosts existed.

  To those who work hard, their craft will become second nature, but only to those who possess the soul of their art comes the true genius. That even suggested that the church knew about artisan magic, which turned a competent tailor into a modiste, which turned a musician into a composer and made the queues grow outside the baker’s shop, because the bread and pastries weren’t just good, they were magical.

  So who had come up with the interpretation that magic didn’t exist and that those who practiced it were—by that reasoning—liars and evildoers?

  The last chapter of the Verses was the Book of Wilhelm. Her father used to like reading from it, but Nellie never touched it.

  It described how, in the old world of peace and justice, an evil originated from the misbehaviour and unbelief of men. Yes, it said men specifically, because women didn’t count. Moreover, Wilhelm stated that women were spawn of the night, born to lead honest men into temptation.

  The book started:

  With the passing of time, life was so good that men became lazy. They ate and drank all they wanted and were too often led astray by the pleasures of sin. There came to be a brand of harlots who would hide in the darkness of alleys at night, who would lure decent fathers from their families with promises of pleasure.

  It detailed the fall of a town’s mayor who spent all his money on whores and whose wife was then granted permission to end the marriage, rendering him homeless, because her family owned the land on which they had built their house.

  It said these types of things “started happening all over”, and that men needed to be taught a lesson.

  The worst of the harlots was a woman named Rasa who “had skin and hair white as the ghosts of her victims, and eyes red as blood.”

  She travelled around the countryside “collecting men’s seed” and murdering them afterwards to turn them into ghosts. Having grown bored with normal men, she turned her attention to rulers, magicians and saints.

  She visited kings with the blood of thousands on their hands, necromancers, the lord of the sea who held in captivity the souls of those perished in the deep, and the church on the mountain where the saint of the sky touched her with a lightning bolt.

  After many months, she had collected so much evil that her womb swelled with it and made her ill. She returned to her cave in the mountains and stoked a fire so hot that the rock melted. She squatted in the pit. The flames burned her skin until it was black. She screamed until her voice was gone, but the inferno was not hot enough for the evil to emerge. So she took her knife and slashed open her swollen belly. Thus, onto the burning coals, a terrible child was born. He was misshapen, had claw-like hands, glowing red eyes and the tongue of a snake. With her dying breath, she fed him the milk of evil from her breast. He drank until the last drop and then ate the body of his own mother. Such was the evil of the Lord of Fire.

  Nellie shuddered.

  The next few pages described how people realised that something terrible had happened, and that they had to defend themselves. Kings announced rules against men taking up with women of ill repute, but it was too late.

  The world had fallen, and only the coming of the Last Prophet would save people from doom.

  Of this prophet, Wilhelm said:

  The Prophet will speak the truth and no sane man will doubt it.

  The Prophet will walk into a town and the bad men will flee.

  The Prophet will walk into a palace and the people will m
ake him king.

  This last section, more than anything, made Nellie dislike Wilhelm. She didn’t believe the world was bad. She didn’t believe most men were bad, and she didn’t believe anyone should ever believe another person without doubt.

  Then again, she had never met a prophet.

  Chapter 11

  * * *

  THE GUARD’S NAME was Henrik.

  Nellie had known him since they were both children. He used to live a couple of houses down from where she lived with her parents back when she was a little skinny girl with a plait on either side of her head.

  He was one of those boys who grew tall without being lanky, which, with his thick blond hair and broad shoulders, made for a strapping appearance. Of course he’d joined the palace guards as soon as he was sixteen. Boys like him seemed to have been born for it. He had looked so dapper when he first came through the street wearing his guard uniform. Nellie and her shy friends would dream about how he would ask them to come for a walk, but being a couple of years older, he probably never noticed she existed.

  Well, wasn’t that a silly time?

  Henrik now knew her as a kitchen maid and said hello to her sometimes because he was a nice and proper polite man. His face had acquired a good number of wrinkles and his hair had gone grey, but his back was still straight, his shoulders still broad, his uniform just as pretty and his buttons just as shiny.

  She still didn’t speak to him because he never came to the kitchen so he never knew of her silly girlish dreams and how she and her friends used to giggle after he’d gone past. Oh, she’d rather die than tell him she had ever done such a thing.

  But here he was in the kitchen. He’d come up behind her while she was running back and forth from the cupboard to the trolley in the hallway because they needed to set the tables. When she turned around she almost bumped into him while carrying a stack of precious gold-rimmed plates and she nearly dropped them.

  What a disaster that would have been.

  Fortunately, she wasn’t prone to uttering bad language, because if he had done this with Dora, she would definitely have said a few bad words, and of course one didn’t swear at palace guards.

  He steadied her with a strong hand. “Now hold on to the palace tableware.”

  Nellie took a deep breath and another one to make sure that yes she still held all the plates and disaster was averted.

  “You frightened me, sneaking up from behind.”

  “My apologies. I announced myself, but it’s very noisy in here.”

  He was not wrong about that.

  As usual on the day of a big event, the kitchen had descended into mayhem.

  Dora was yelling at one of the boys. A man delivering firewood was walking in and out to deposit the wood next to the hearth. Each time the door clanged shut behind him, the pigs in the yard started their oink-oink-oink because someone needed to feed them.

  Two of the young girls were cutting up carrots with big knives going chop-chop-chop on the board while they were chatting and laughing.

  “I asked if you have a moment to spare,” Henrik said.

  “Me?”

  “I don’t see anyone else.” His face creased into a smile and, to her eye, lost forty years of age. He was again the dapper young man, a bit skinny, but broad in the shoulders and straight of back, who returned from his first day working as a palace guard, and was showing off his spiffy uniform to everyone in the street.

  And as she had when she was a young girl, and he deigned to look in her direction, Nellie was sure she was mistaken and he was looking at someone else. But deep in her heart, the little girl inside her sang, He wants to talk to me!

  “All right then.” Her voice sounded high to her own ears. This was stupid and embarrassing. She was far too old to be behaving like a giggling adolescent girl. “You’re making me curious.” And now she was sassy.

  He laughed. “It’s nothing serious. I know everyone is terribly busy down here.”

  “That’s right. Don’t disturb us too much, or there won’t be any food.”

  He brought his hand to his brow. “Yes, ma’am.”

  By the Triune, was he joking with her?

  His smile faded. “Madame Sabine asked for a herb woman.”

  Nellie shook her head. “I’m not a herb woman. You’ll want to ask Graziela.” In fact, she didn’t understand why he hadn’t done so already. Graziela came to the palace often.

  “Graziela is unavailable,” he said. “So I asked around for someone else. People mentioned you.”

  “I know a bit about herbs, but not as much as Graziela.”

  “Then come. It may be enough to keep Madame Sabine from bothering us for half a day.”

  Nellie could relate to that.

  Madame Sabine barely came out of her room, but made sure that everyone knew when she did.

  Nellie took off her apron while following him into the hallway. Her young helpers Els and Maartje were coming the other way and raised their eyebrows.

  “Keep putting out the plates,” Nellie said. “I won’t be long.”

  At least she hoped with all her might that she wouldn’t. There was so much still to do.

  She followed Henrik up the stairs, past the stream of servants walking in and out of the hall, past the guards who stood at the main doors, past that group of young nobles with Casper and Frederick and Baroness Hestia in their midst, who sat on the couches in the foyer.

  They were just talking, though, watched with sharp eyes by the guards.

  Lord Verdonck was considered a voice of authority, and he stood at the door, welcoming arriving nobles.

  Another couple of guests were entering the foyer. Two men carried a travel chest up the palace steps and stacked it against the wall. Lord Verdonck informed the chest’s owner that servants would arrive shortly to take the luggage to the guest’s quarters. Did the lord care for a drink?

  He was ushered to one of the smaller dining rooms.

  Henrik led Nellie to the broad marble staircase where a couple of women were polishing the banister.

  Upstairs, others had lowered the large chandelier so they could replace the burned-out candles.

  Nellie felt the questioning eyes of all these servants on her. They knew she worked in the kitchens. They wondered what she was doing here, especially in the company of a guard.

  Nellie did not come to the family’s private quarters often any more. When Mistress Johanna was queen, Nellie used to sleep in one of these rooms, these days occupied by the Regent’s courtiers, stiff and formal people who had accompanied the family from Burovia.

  Nellie remembered the happy, homely air of this floor, where King Roald had a room dedicated to his study of natural creatures and Queen Johanna had an office where she looked after the laws and finances of the country. She remembered the well-respected visitors who used to come up the stairs, the mayor, merchants from the city itself and all the surrounding nations, including the far east.

  She could almost see Prince Bruno at his desk, not doing his homework as he should, but drawing beautiful works of art. She could hear the music coming from princess Celine’s room, where, young as she was, she devoted many hours to violin practice. In hindsight, the haunted melodies she played—music no one had heard before—had been a foreboding of what was to come, but back in those days, life had been happy.

  When Regent Bernard arrived, after two months during which the royal family’s quarters lay abandoned, he cleared out all the family’s beautiful things that had sat as they left them when going to performance where Celine was to play a piece and where, by all accounts, her magic had burst out through the music and killed everyone in the room.

  The Regent sold the furniture, gave away the memorabilia, and burned the books that—as he said—were full of evil magic. He brought in his own things, all in stiff Burovian style with red velvet and elaborate armrests and dark wall coverings with tapestries of hunting scenes.

  Madame Sabine’s room had once been the queen�
�s office and library.

  Henrik knocked on the door, and when a female voice answered, opened it.

  “I’ll wait here,” he said. “Call me if you need something.”

  “Thanks.”

  Nellie entered the room.

  Mistress Johanna’s books and shelves, the big desk and the comfortable chairs were all gone. In their place stood a giant fourposter bed with a thick mattress and frilly bedspread. Next to it, against the wall, was a dressing table with a large mirror and a huge variety of pots and jars. The chair in front of it was so elaborate it looked painful to sit on, although Nellie knew that Madame Sabine often did.

  The inhabitant of this room sat on the couch in front of the hearth where a lusty fire burned. There was a tray of tea and teacups on the table, and the room smelled of sweet cakes. It was a smell that Nellie associated with the consort’s room. Madame Sabine loved her sweet cakes and had the soft, fleshy body to match.

  Nellie bowed.

  “Do sit down,” Madame Sabine said, gesturing a beringed hand at the couch opposite her. She spoke with a Lurezian accent, because that’s where she grew up, and she had the dark curly hair that showed her heritage.

  Nellie’s cheeks glowed. It was hot in here compared to the kitchen.

  Madame Sabine wore a dressing gown with open sleeves, which displayed her fleshy, pale-skinned arms, something the local women would consider scandalous.

  Nellie didn’t want to sit down. She had not been invited to sit in this room since the queen’s death and didn’t know what to make of this reclusive, pampered woman. She didn’t want to look at—but couldn’t look away from—Madame Sabine’s dimpled thighs, visible in the space where the sides of her gown fell apart.

  And she had to sit, because Madame Sabine was the Regent’s wife, and when she ordered something, it had to be done. So Nellie sat at the very edge of the couch.

  The floor was waxed and polished to within an inch of its life. The light from the window reflected in the gleaming surface.

  The windows were meticulously clean, and the collection of porcelain, gold, silver and glass statues against the wall bore not one speck of dust. A poor girl came every day to clean all these, many of them grotesque figurines from the Belaman Church, which Madame Sabine attended.