The Bastard Prince Page 5

  Nellie was working in the hall when a man said, “Don’t you youngsters think you should save some wine for tomorrow?”

  Nellie recognised the voice, but only remembered who it belonged to when she came back to the foyer: Lord Verdonck.

  The Regent’s advisor was a man who stood tall for his age, even if his face bore wrinkles and his hair was almost white. He dressed more elegantly than many, in muted colours, without the hideous but fashionable ruffles.

  He held a considerable estate outside the city, where he derived his wealth from his fertile farms. In the chaos that often reigned in Saardam, he was a sensible voice. As Regent’s advisor, he made frequent visits to the palace, and was one of the few people who could silence a room full of nobles.

  “No, youngsters, don’t look at me like that. The big banquet is tomorrow and you want to be presentable. You also want to avoid insulting so many people that someone will stick a knife in your back. There will be a lot of knives in the dining room.”

  “Ha, ha, he thinks he’s funny,” Hestia said.

  “I’m deadly serious, young lady, and I think you’re drunk and you had better take off to your rooms and stop insulting our host’s guests. You may think you’re so brave now, but wait until your family hears of all the damage you’re doing to their reputation, and no, young lady, that does not stop with who sits at the table with whom, but who buys stuff from whom, too. If the people you insulted stopped buying your family’s wine and sausages, how would you explain that to your family?”

  Lord Verdonck might be old, but he had a formidable voice that Nellie could still hear while going down the stairs to the kitchen. The next time she came into the foyer, the group with Casper and Frederick and that terrible Baroness Hestia was gone.

  Good.

  She hoped those kids would learn a lesson and have more respect for their elders.

  Chapter 5

  * * *

  THE GUESTS AND the Regent devoted most of the afternoon to business meetings. The kitchen had to serve meals in a few different rooms.

  Regent Bernard had ensconced himself at the head of the table in the official palace dining room with about twenty minor nobles. These dinners were for everyone who wanted to speak with him but was judged insufficiently important to get a private audience.

  The Regent loved his food and piled many things on his plate while most of the guests were much more modest.

  Nellie hadn’t seen it but, on one such occasion, he had chastised a guest for “eating too much” and had told the poor man, “You’ve already gotten your money’s worth out of your visit. Now bugger off.”

  The guests were usually local nobles, although one time when Nellie came in, a man was stuttering in a heavily accented voice.

  The Regent burst out, “My younger son is fourteen. What makes you think we want to marry him off already?”

  The man in question grew red in the face and scurried out of the room. Everybody laughed.

  Nellie, as servant and thus invisible in this gathering, collected plates and poured glasses of water. She listened. She knew more about these men than they knew about each other.

  The noble women had gathered next door. In the conspicuous absence of the Regent’s consort, Hestia’s mother, Baroness Viktoriya, acted as host for the meeting.

  Compared to the men’s gathering, it seemed more civilised.

  Baroness Viktoryia said she was sad that her husband couldn’t come, but he’d been injured fighting a bear.

  That brought gasps from around the table. Women asked how common bears were in Florisheim—very, apparently—and how lucky she must be to have such a strong husband. The Baroness said her husband single-handedly defended his horses against the bear and then rode back to town with a broken leg.

  Having met Baron Uti, Nellie suspected that every word was true, and the only reason he wasn’t here was that he didn’t think the Regent was important enough to build a relationship with. Which was also why, although all the dukes and kings from surrounding countries had been invited, only a few minor nobles had turned up for a look-see.

  King Leopold’s cousin twice removed, from a simple estate in Burovia, just did not command that level of attention. He was only Regent, living on borrowed time until the church figured out who would be king, never mind they’d been deciding that for the last ten years.

  In the next room, several men were discussing business. This meeting, led by the Regent’s advisor Lord Verdonck, was livelier than the other two. The men around the table were merchants and business owners. Master Pieters, who did the ordering for the palace, was also there.

  This room was full of talk about grain and wine and cheese.

  Nellie had to dodge books and contracts being signed on the table.

  When she finished there, it was back to the kitchen to get the soup.

  In the Regent’s room, his grilling of minor nobles continued. The mayor of a nearby village wanted permission to charge tolls to all who passed through their town.

  “Many of them have stopped coming altogether with the rogues about, and those that visit don’t even stay in our town anymore.”

  The Regent laughed so loudly that his belly shook. “Good man, you think if you charge tolls, more will come?”

  “No, but it will fill our coffers.”

  “If you charge tolls, nobody will come. Look at all these men.” He waved a sausage-fingered, beringed hand at the gathering.

  Most of the nobles were well dressed, but some of their jackets were scuffed or missing a button, or the lace had a small tear, or their wigs bore signs of discolouration. None were half as tall and round-waisted as the Regent.

  “None of you like spending money. That’s why you’re here. Free food! Let’s see if we can get the palace to pay for something. It bores me. Has anyone in this room come to ask me something that I’m not expected to pay for?”

  A young man said, “Yes. I want your permission to build a church in New Harbour.”

  Several people gasped. New Harbour was where the very poor lived. Recently settled, with streets made from dirt and houses with tiny gardens where people grew their own food, the area was also the home of some warehouses, the hospice and the poor house.

  Nellie could almost hear the Regent’s next question, Why do you think those people deserve a church? But she had given out all the soup and her trolley was full of plates and leftovers, so she decided it was wise to leave the room.

  The dirty plates went into the scullery, where Els and Maartje were hard at work, and the scraps into a bucket for the pigs.

  Anything that looked still appetising, she collected into a large bowl she stashed away on a shelf in the corner of the pantry.

  Then it was back upstairs with the next load of soup.

  The women had progressed to talking about why Madame Sabine was not there. The suggested reasons included the suggestions that she must be pregnant, that she was ill, that she thought she was too good for them, or that her husband had hit her and she was ashamed to show her face.

  “She has always been strange,” a local noblewoman said. “Coming from Lurezia, one would expect her to dress well and have a flair for style, but no. I’ve even heard that she rides through town after dark wearing men’s trousers.”

  Several women gasped at that statement.

  That was also true. Madame Sabine had a majestic white horse that she loved to ride and she proclaimed to have little time for the ways in which women were supposed to sit.

  “She pretends to be from a rich family, but she has no refinement or taste at all,” a woman said.

  “Her family is very rich,” said another noblewoman.

  “How so? She’s clearly not of noble blood. I don’t think she’s related to the royal family at all.”

  “Oh no, she isn’t. Her father is a military commander.”

  That drew exclamations of disgust.

  Nellie was glad to be out of that room. If she were Madame Sabine, she wouldn’t be happ
y to spend any more time than necessary with these gossiping women either.

  Madame Sabine rarely showed herself in public.

  Nellie went back to the kitchen with more empty plates, more leftovers and some untouched bread rolls , and then on with the next course to the business meeting.

  Lord Verdonck appeared to have finished with the negotiations, and the men were talking and laughing, discussing their various travels and which music performances were worth seeing. The air in the room was thick with pipe smoke.

  Nellie was just about to go back to the kitchen when the door burst open and a man in a dark robe came in. Deacon Fredericus, of the main church. Nellie had spotted him in the hallways with Shepherd Wilfridus, and assumed that both had come to discuss something with the Regent or to bless the food for the upcoming banquet. The two men often visited the palace and often came together.

  She hadn’t known that either of them were still here.

  The men in the room fell quiet.

  The Deacon looked around, as if searching for someone. Not finding this person, he walked to the table.

  “I heard you have cut back on your orders of wine from the monastery,” he said, looking at Master Pieters.

  That gentleman replied, “Well, your grape vines appear to be affected by blight. Some of the ladies complained that the wine was sour, and we received some excellent samples from the estate of Duke Aroden.” His voice sounded prim.

  “Our monastery’s wine is not sour.”

  “No? I will give you a bottle of the latest batch and you can test it for yourself. Good money we paid for it, too. I’m thinking you sold your best drop to others who paid more, and we got the second choice.”

  “None of our wine is sour.”

  “See? There you go. You admitted to giving us second-rate quality. Who got the best batch, which we were promised and paid for? Who was it?”

  Lord Verdonck rose from the table and inserted himself between the two men. “Calm down. I’m sure we can sort this out like gentlemen. The monastery is free to sell its best wine to those who will pay most for it, and the palace is free to order wine anywhere it likes.”

  The Deacon whirled around. “Will you keep out of it, filthy heathen! Of course you would tell the palace to buy from thieves and unbelievers.”

  Lord Verdonck snorted. “I fail to see why the divine has anything to do with the production and quality of wine. For all I know, the Triune disapproves of drunkards; so what? Does the monastery enrich itself over the backs of people who love to do the very thing the divine doesn’t approve of? How ironic.”

  “Shut up. You have no idea what you’re talking about!”

  “Clearly, I do not. Then again, I don’t have the same intimate knowledge of the church as you. Tell me what the church does to help the people who drink too much of your wine?”

  The deacon looked at him, his nostrils flaring. “Filthy heathen. The shepherd will hear of this.”

  “He’s welcome. I’m sure you won’t be telling him anything he doesn’t already know.”

  The deacon whirled around and strode out of the room.

  The closing of the door was followed by an intense silence in which Nellie very quietly set two plates on top of one another, and still the resulting “clink” sounded like a thunderclap.

  Then Master Pieters said, “Ronald, much as I appreciate your support, I’m not sure that taking up a position so vehemently opposed to the church is wise.”

  “The church knows what I think. That has never been a secret. I have an issue with being called a nonbeliever. At my house, the Triune we worship is a kind deity, which has passion for the needy. True, the poor are not poor without reason, but for some, the only reason is bad luck. The Book of Verses says we should look after everyone, including the common people, because that is the cornerstone of our belief. It is what a decent man does. If I’m called a heathen for saying that, then I can only say some people need to read the Book more closely.”

  Master Pieters shook his head. “You’re playing with fire. One of these days, you’ll run into trouble. You will find that the Regent has banished you, disowned your estate and robbed your family. I know you as a friend and I would hate for that to happen.”

  Nellie had collected all the plates—few leftovers here—and could finally get out of the room.

  She had heard the rumours that the Regent’s advisor didn’t have much good to say about the church, but this was the first time she’d witnessed it.

  His outburst troubled her, because she, too, had never understood why it was all right for the monastery to sell wine while the shepherds condemned those who drank it.

  She had always thought the shepherd meant to condemn those who drank it to excess, but then why did the monastery sell wine to those very people, those in the palace? Monks were poor, she knew that, too; but surely they could produce other things than wine?

  When everyone had been fed, the plates taken away and tea brought upstairs, Nellie had time to go to church.

  The prospect filled her with dread. She had not thought about her father, the book and dragons for most of the day, but she wanted to ask her trusted friend, the Shepherd Adrianus of the church in the commercial district, about it so she would not feel guilty about having done nothing with her father’s information.

  But the fact that her father still controlled her six years after his death made her angry, too.

  She debated whether she would take the book. To be honest, she would love to be rid of it. The book, the pipe, the monocle all reminded her of things she didn’t want to remember. The church could have them, including the key, which probably belonged to the church anyway.

  So she packed the lot into a carry satchel, and then went to the kitchen, where she collected the bowl of leftovers, that she’d saved from going to the pigs, in a hessian bag.

  It was time for her to go.

  Chapter 6

  * * *

  BY THE TIME Nellie pulled the door of the servant corridor shut behind her and stepped into the palace yard, the weather had taken a turn for the worse.

  A biting wind blew the first snowflakes of the year over the city. They whirled against the darkening sky, dark specks that blew through the street in little eddies. It wasn’t cold enough yet for them to settle, and they melted as soon as they hit the ground, but they were a reminder of the season to come.

  Nellie clutched both sides of her coat against the wind with her left hand. The hessian bag she held in her right hand was too big for her coat to fit over the top, but she could hardly carry its contents in plain sight. The guards would ask where she was going with a couple of half-eaten loaves of bread and a bowl of cooked potatoes, some with the congealed gravy still attached. It would be obvious even without the coat of arms of the royal family on the bowl that the food came from the palace kitchens, and they might accuse her of stealing, even though anyone who knew Nellie would know that she wasn’t a person who stole things.

  Not bowls at least, and not food, either, except for leftovers from the ridiculous dinners that the Regent hosted, destined for the pigs while common people in the city went hungry.

  In the gathering darkness, Nellie walked across the marketplace, where most merchants had gone home for the day, into the commercial district, where only the occasional shop showed signs of activity. Some shops had been boarded up, the owners leaving when they could no longer pay the rent or after one of the Regent’s sweeps against magic.

  Nellie stopped at her beloved church, an unassuming building tucked away between two stately merchant houses. The church tower was taller than the houses, but invisible from here because the street was too narrow.

  She looked over her shoulder. Dusk was fast falling, and the street was almost deserted. Feeble light radiated from the windows, but the city guard who came to light the street lamps had not yet come. Lately, it had been far too common that no one lit the lights at all.

  Nellie climbed the steps to the church door, opened it,
and let herself into the darkness within.

  She didn’t like how the door was closed, although she understood why it was necessary. The church should be welcoming to everyone, open all day to people seeking solace and guidance from the holy Triune, people wanting to say a quick prayer after a day of work, or before asking a loved one’s parents for her hand in marriage, or for the health of a sick child. Such people wanted to spend a moment in reflection in the cool and dark space, just themselves with the Triune and the heavy smell of incense.

  Once the church had been like that. These days, the scent of incense was laced with an uncomfortable smell that reminded her of the poor house, where her father would sometimes visit on church business when she was little, though he didn’t like it that she came.

  It smelled of unwashed clothes and sweat. It even smelled of piss, a smell that hit you in the face and wouldn’t let go, a smell reminiscent of suffering, of dirty, muddy refugee camps, of stumbling through the rubble of the destroyed city to find something to eat.

  Those were uncomfortable memories.

  The smell was in sharp contrast to the mild whiff of incense that the Shepherd still burned at the altar.

  That candlelit pool of peace seemed a world away.

  Here, in the darkness, where in normal times people would stand because they were too poor to pay for a pew or because they were late to the service, she could hear and feel, rather than see, the presence of people. She could smell the poor people who had come for a service but had stayed because it was cold and they could no longer afford to heat their homes. It was all right if one came to the church to make the children warmer and less hungry, right?

  Often those people couldn’t pay the rent at all, and they all came to the church because they had nowhere else to go. More people kept turning up at the church each day, because they heard it was a safe place to sleep, away from the weather and things like foul magic; because magic might be banned but that didn’t mean no one was using it. People did evil things when they were desperate.