The Wizard Priest Read online

  The second was that his master was still alive somewhere in the city.

  Chapter 7

  * * *

  IT WAS NO LONGER SAFE to stay in the warehouse. It was probably no longer safe to stay anywhere in the artisan quarter because the guards would just keep looking for whatever they were looking for, besides magical things, and would pick up more people. They would use any excuse to arrest people, including waving around a metal rod. They were looking for people to scare and intimidate. And they were doing it in the artisan quarter because many of the citizens of Saardam cared little about those who lived there and because they had always been “strange” people and wayfarers. So they couldn’t stay here anymore. Nellie had an idea where they might go, but she needed time to check it out. But first she had to go back to the palace for more leftovers the next morning. Now that Zelda was gone, it would be even harder to feed everyone.

  She got up early so she could be back in the warehouse while it was still dark. The less she showed her face, the better.

  The snow-covered streets were nearly deserted. Here and there city guards patrolled the streets, but the raids from yesterday had left no traces except a lot of footsteps in the snow and the occasional bits of broken glass. All the items the guards had tossed into the street had either been carted away or collected by scavengers.

  The windows in the palace were still dark, especially those on the first floor that faced the courtyard. This was where the Regent, Madame Sabine and their sons and courtiers had their residence. Nellie used to live up there when Johanna was alive. Every morning she had risen early to get the children out of bed. Celine was always fast asleep and was cranky at being woken up, but Bruno was full of beans. He would run out of the room the moment the door was open, and liked screaming in the foyer because of the way his voice echoed in there. He would not sit still and, no matter how many times Nellie or the Queen told him, he would not say thank you or wait his turn. He was a truly boisterous toddler whose hero was his father, who visited from his office in town regularly.

  Those memories seemed impossibly long ago.

  The guards in the guard boxes looked tired and ready to be relieved at the crack of dawn. They were stamping their feet and swinging their arms until Nellie came up to the entrance when they asked where she was going. She again used the excuse that she was delivering spices to the kitchens and had no trouble getting in.

  The kitchen seemed like the only place that was warm and where people were awake in the entire building.

  When Nellie came in, Dora was preparing a couple of ducks for roasting, Corrie sat at the table scraping carrots, and Els and Maartje were both getting breakfast ready to be taken upstairs.

  “Nellie!” Corrie abandoned her carrots and came to the door to give Nellie a hug. “We heard about so much trouble in town. We were afraid you weren’t going to come.”

  “I have to be careful, but it takes a bit more than that to keep me away.” Nellie undid her shawl. It was quite warm in here.

  “You want some tea?”

  “I wouldn’t say no to that.”

  Nellie sat down at the table and received a steaming cup of tea. Her hands were cold, so she wrapped them around the warm porcelain.

  “Roasting ducks again, aren’t you?” she asked Dora.

  “You know how much the Regent loves his ducks.”

  Dora sat at the table opposite her. She studied Nellie with an intense look. It was rather uncomfortable. Nellie felt as if she was being scrutinised. Had anything happened here in the last day?

  “You don’t look good,” Dora finally said to her.

  No, Nellie knew. This morning, she had attempted to straighten her hair, but her comb had been lost somewhere and her hair was too knotty to fashion into a nice bun. She had no mirror either, not even a window where she could look at her own reflection.

  Over the past few days, she had been so cold that now that she came into the warmth, her cheeks were glowing. She guessed the skin looked red and chapped and as blotchy as that of the poor children who came to work in the scullery.

  “We were searched yesterday,” Nellie said, while looking into her tea. “A lot of people were arrested.”

  “I heard something about that,” Dora said. “What was that about?”

  “The Regent put a declaration on the church doors that all people with magic and magical objects would be punished. They raided a lot of shops and took a number of people prisoner. We’re trying to find out what happened to them. A few of our group got taken. One of them is the mother of six children in our group. Her husband is no longer in town, so we are looking after the children, but we need to find a safe place for them.”

  “You can always take the children to the orphanage.”

  “I could.” But Nellie didn’t want to do that. Just like the poorhouse was no place for women, the orphanage was no place for children whose mother had been arrested. “I prefer to look after them until their mother comes back.”

  If she came back.

  “If you come with me to the linen cupboard, we can give you some sheets and some old blankets.”

  “That would be very nice, thank you. But first we have to find a safe place to stay and we have no money.”

  “Can the children work?”

  “I’m sure they can, but the oldest is only ten. He can do little jobs, but there are not many of those around.”

  “Consider a job where he needs to be small. The sawmill might want to employ him to clean out the machines. I think you should come back here, too, if you can.”

  Yes, maybe, when all this calmed down. Although so much had changed that Nellie wasn’t sure she would ever go back to the palace to cook meals for rich noble guests.

  “I don’t know that I can or that they will ever accept me.”

  “It’s about the dragon, isn’t it? You still have it, don’t you?”

  “It’s not mine. It’s a wild creature. It flew off, and no one knows where it is.”

  “We heard stories about a dragon flying over the city. The guards were all in a panic and wondering how to catch it.”

  “They can’t,” Nellie said.

  “The Regent seemed pretty determined. He called all the guards in the audience room and gave them a real talking to. Apparently, he said there will be no method or expense spared. Adalbert Verdonck demands answers.”

  “Is Lord Verdonck’s son still at the palace? I thought he left.”

  “He did. He left for his father’s funeral, but came back. I saw him coming into the gates yesterday. People were saying that he requested a formal audience with the Regent, and then spent the next hour tearing into the Regent and the court, and the Regent didn’t get a single word in. Apparently he demands a full investigation into his father’s death. I’m sure the Regent is trying very hard to present the audience with a dragon.”

  Which might also explain the obsession with finding magical people.

  “Can’t the Regent just deny the investigation?” Nellie didn’t want the investigation either. She was sure that in cases like this, involved servants were called to give evidence.

  “He can, but it won’t look good for him and he doesn’t have the final say. He’s not king.”

  “I bet he’s not happy.”

  “Not at all. And now that all the guests are gone, it’s just him and Adalbert Verdonck. They say the most horrible things to each other.”

  “What’s he going to ask in this investigation?”

  “I presume he’s going to bother the Regent until the Regent finds someone who can be forced to take the blame for Lord Verdonck’s death. Remember what happened after the death of the royal family?”

  Nellie shuddered. She remembered all too well. The hearing had gone on for days, as the shepherd who presided over it asked every noble who survived to recount the events in the palace that day.

  Even if the king and queen were both dead, none of the nobles wanted to talk about magic. At first they blamed the deaths of
the people in the music room on bad wine, but the stories about Princess Celine’s exploding magic were just too strong.

  A few sensible people had argued that, if only the palace had magicians qualified to train her, it would not have happened, but those voices had soon been drowned by hysteria and extra church services where people would throw all their “magical” possessions onto a bonfire before coming into the church to be “cleansed”.

  It was awful because everyone was afraid the neighbours would tattle on them for having magical heirlooms, which forced families to give up the only items of value they had.

  A chill still crept over Nellie’s back when she thought of the service Shepherd Wilfridus had given at the end of the hearing, when he spoke—no, yelled—red-faced and wide-eyed, of the evil that had pervaded the city that must be expunged and that henceforth all forms of magic must be banned.

  She said, “These hearings are no good for anyone except the men in power. When two men in power go head to head, it can’t be good for anyone.”

  “You said it. If Adalbert Verdonck knew what was good for him, he would shut up and leave town.”

  “There must be a significant amount of money involved.”

  “Or someone else is behind it all. It’s said Adalbert Verdonck is friendly with King Leopold of Burovia and may be paid by him to spy on the Regent.”

  That was one thing Nellie didn’t miss about being close to the rulers of the city: the constant scheming. She desperately did not want to get anywhere near this hearing, and yet she was sure she would be called in.

  In Nellie’s case, there had been no one in Lord Verdonck’s room except the lord, Madame Sabine and the son. One was dead and the other two could hardly be called unbiased witnesses.

  Enough people knew she had the dragon. The jump from there to being able to communicate with him was not big. Then, if the hearing was swayed by the Regent into believing the dragon had killed him, Nellie was a suspect. Even if the hearing decided Lord Verdonck wasn’t killed by the dragon, Nellie would still be a suspect. Because she’d been there, because she had brought herbs, and because she was only a maid and no one would defend her.

  By the Triune, she should stop coming here.

  When she opened the dragon box, when she went into the crypt to check on her father’s words about the things that were down there, when she asked Shepherd Adrianus questions, when she took off her bonnet, when she fled the palace, something had changed in her.

  Gone was the Nellie who kept her head down. If only she could stop grovelling to these people for their leftovers, she would do it. Let the Regent drown in leftover duck sauce.

  She rose and picked up the hessian bag. “Well, I better go, because they’ll be wondering where I am.”

  “Oh, Nellie, we’re always here to help you,” Dora said. “Just between you and me, make sure you have your name registered as a citizen of Saardam.”

  “I already have that. Why?”

  “You didn’t hear this from me: the Regent is about to open the city stores and hand out emergency food to residents.”

  Nellie had also heard that from Josie. “That seems a silly thing to do this early in winter. What is he going to do when winter hits hard? It seems he’s trying too hard to be popular. That’s going to backfire.”

  “Being popular is no doubt part of it. He wants to be crowned king and he can’t do that without support from a good portion of the citizens. But I’ve also heard this from the guards: they’re doing it also because they want the citizens to empty the stores before the less than savoury people in the city have raided the entire stock.”

  Yes, Josie had also spoken about theft. “Is it that bad?”

  “They tell me that increasing the guard level doesn’t stop the thievery, and they’re not sure how the thieves get in. They’re smart robbers, not the average street urchin. If I were you, I would register your names for the hand-outs, and with a bit of luck, you’ll get enough to last the winter.”

  “Thank you for telling me.”

  Nellie hugged Dora.

  Whatever happened, she would love Dora as a sister. One day, life would be better, and Nellie would invite all her friends to the little house she would buy at the edge of town and they would all laugh about it while sitting around the fire in the kitchen.

  Nellie left the kitchen and walked down the narrow passage between the side of the palace and the garden wall.

  It was still dark here, and very cold. Nellie needed to keep her eye on the ground to avoid frozen puddles or sections of slippery snow.

  She didn’t see the person at the end of the passage until the silhouette detached itself from the palace wall. She didn’t know who it was until she smelled the perfume and felt the softness of fleshy arms and the ample bosom against her back, and the hand that grabbed her shawl and pulled her so she could barely move.

  A soft voice said, “I believe you have something that belongs to me.”

  Madame Sabine.

  Her voice sounded sweet, but Nellie did not miss the threatening undertone.

  “Whatever are you talking about?” Nellie said. She struggled against the consort’s grip, much stronger than she would have expected for such a pampered woman.

  “Don’t be stupid. You removed something from Lord Verdonck’s room. Didn’t your parents tell you that stealing can get you into a lot of trouble? You saw a pretty box and thought ‘Let’s take that?’ ”

  “I don’t steal. The dragon was stolen several times. I have documents that prove that he belongs to the church. He was never yours anyway.”

  “He?”

  “You hadn’t even noticed that it was a little boy?”

  Nellie was trembling so much her lips felt stiff. She wished Madame Sabine would let go of her shawl so she could stand straight.

  “You have no business holding onto this thing.”

  “You’re right. Come get him back if you want. I recall last time that didn’t end so happily.”

  Madame Sabine pulled the shawl tighter. Nellie could feel the long nails right through the fabric.

  “Don’t be smart with me.”

  “Or you will sack me from the palace?”

  Madame Sabine let a long, angry silence lapse. Her breath steamed in the cold air.

  Nellie would love to know what went on in Madame Sabine’s head. She would have loved to know what had happened that had given Madame Sabine and her lover Lord Verdonck those scars.

  Finally, Madame Sabine said, “Fine. You win for the time being. But don’t think that we are finished. I do believe we are on the same side, although I would love to set my husband’s guards on you to stop your impertinent behaviour.”

  “That would be a very bad idea.”

  “What business do you have to threaten me? You’re just a kitchen maid.”

  And Nellie was so sick of hearing this that something inside her flipped. In a deep place inside her soul something said enough to being treated as if she were unimportant.

  She spoke in a low voice. “I am a confidante of our beloved queen who was a woman who always considered the citizens of Saardam before herself. I helped our queen drive out the Fire Wizard. I have no magic except my faith in the goodness of people. I have no power except that of the truth of my word. You are the wife of a ruler imposed on us. Your husband eats himself stupid while the citizens go hungry. Your husband persecutes people for stupid reasons just so he can pretend he’s serious about finding a criminal. You can’t even be faithful to your own husband, let alone this country. You stole the dragon box, which belongs to the queen’s youngest child. You have the scars on your back to prove it. I can tell your husband about those scars. I can tell him about your affair and how you were planning to leave the city. I can tell him how you and your lover planned to use the dragon, except that you never figured out how to do it. I can tell the church you stole their dragon. And they would all believe me because it’s the truth. I may be a maid, but I’m not stupid.”

  M
adame Sabine let a small, tense silence lapse before she finally let go of Nellie’s shawl.

  “No, I see. You’re not.”

  Nellie tucked her shawl back in its rightful place.

  Madame Sabine continued, “But if you’re going into threats, I have a much better one: I can tell that upstart of an Adalbert Verdonck that you poisoned his father.”

  “And he would know it’s untrue, because he was there both times I visited Lord Verdonck’s room and he will know if you change the story, and he’ll tell everyone you did it. Because I haven’t decided if you and I are on the same side, but you and he are definitely not.”

  It was all bluff, but Madame Sabine said nothing. Her position in the palace was tenuous since neither her husband’s men nor the citizens liked her very much. Nellie didn’t quite understand what game she was playing, but it was a dangerous one.

  Nellie walked into the palace forecourt as quickly as she could, her legs trembling.

  Chapter 8

  * * *

  IT WAS STILL DARK when Nellie came back to the warehouse to deliver her haul. There were now not as many of them, and breakfast was a sad affair. The children wanted to find “their” dragon, but Mina told them to stay inside the warehouse.

  “We don’t want to lose all of you, too,” she said.

  “But Nellie is going out,” Anneke protested.

  Nellie said, “I am going to look for a safe place for us all to stay, so that the guards don’t come back again.”

  “Then can we have Boots back?”

  “He is a wild creature. I don’t know where he is or what he’s doing, and I can’t make him come back.”

  “But he can come back if he wants?”

  “Of course he can.”

  “You’re not angry with him?”

  “No, I’m not.”

  “Mama is angry with him.”