The Devil and the Dark Water

31

Sara flung open her door before Isabel had time to knock, having heard her approaching steps.

‘Dorothea said you wanted to see me,’ said Isabel, her eyes roaming over the opulence of the cabin.

‘Is there anything in the daemonologica that describes how Old Tom is summoned?’ she asked.

Isabel removed the book from her satchel, then found the page quickly.

‘Here,’ she said, tapping a block of ornate words.

Sara read it out loud.

‘To summon Old Tom three things are required: the blood of a loved one spilled on to a blade. The blade used to sacrifice somebody hated, and a dark prayer read aloud in his honour before the body cools.’

Sara blew out a breath, ruffling the corner of the page.

Arent’s father must have been the hated one, she thought. He was the only one who’d died in that forest. Arent had been the loved one. She continued reading.

‘Once summoned and bound, Old Tom is compelled to offer a boon in return for his freedom. He will bargain, wheedle and deceive, but those who see through his tricks can ask for anything. The price is knowing that they are releasing a terrible evil on to this world to wreak havoc as it pleases, something they will pay dearly for come Judgement Day. Once this initial boon is granted, the summoner must pay a tithe for any further favours. The cost is usually high. Old Tom does not like being made to look foolish.’

Sara clutched Isabel’s hand in thanks. ‘You’ve done me a great service. Have you seen Arent Hayes?’

‘He was going down to the orlop deck a few minutes ago.’

Sara darted from her cabin and out into the sunshine, almost colliding with Captain Crauwels who was watching a large sandglass, while Larme let a knotted piece of rope through his hands into the water. It was tied to a log, bobbing behind the ship. The sandglass emptied.

‘We’re making 10.2 knots, Captain.’

‘Let’s hope it’s enough to put us beyond the reach of this storm.’

Manoeuvring around them, she made her way to the orlop deck, finding the stairs rammed with passengers returning reluctantly from their exercise. Pushing through the throng, she saw Arent disappearing into the cargo hold beneath. Ignoring the strange looks she was given, she went to the edge of the staircase he’d descended, a foul stink rising into her nostrils. It stretched much further down than she would have imagined, the steps disappearing beyond sight. He must have already been at the bottom, because she couldn’t see him.

‘Arent,’ she called out in a hushed voice, wary of being overheard.

There was no reply. Straining her ear, she heard the distant sounds of the search, as trunks were tipped over and casks ripped open. The sailors had already been through the aft of the ship and uncovered nothing; now they’d moved into the bow sections.

She put a foot on the first step down, then hesitated, imagining how her husband would react. Even now, she wasn’t sure what had possessed her to sit and drink with Arent and Jacobi Drecht last night. It had been foolish. Drecht wouldn’t say anything, but gossip carried itself straight to her husband’s ear. Everybody wanted to ingratiate themselves with a powerful man.

If he found out … she shuddered to imagine it. Even so, she couldn’t hold on to what she’d heard any longer. She had too many questions.

She gave herself to the darkness of the cargo hold. It was oily on the skin, stinking of bilge water and sawdust, spices and rot. Drops fell from the ceiling, pattering against the crates. It was as if every wretched thought conceived on the decks above was seeping through the ship, collecting here.

She found Arent inspecting a gouge on the bottom step, by the light of a brass lantern. Sara recognised this technique from the reports she’d read. By Pipps’s reckoning, every object could tell you a story if you understood its language. A broken cobweb betrayed somebody’s passing, while the sticky silk on their shoulder told who it was.

‘Arent.’

He squinted at her through the fog pouring out of the lantern. It was burning fish oil. The smell was unmistakable. ‘Sara? What are you doing down here?’

‘My husband summoned Old Tom, I overheard him telling Vos,’ she blurted out. ‘He murdered your father as part of the ritual, and gave you that mark on your wrist.’

It took his thoughts a few seconds to absorb what she’d told him, his expression changing from bafflement to disbelief, then anger.

‘My uncle …’ He couldn’t finish. ‘Why would he do that?’

‘Power, wealth … The person who summons Old Tom can ask for anything, so long as he agrees to release the demon.’

‘Where is my uncle?’

‘In the great cabin.’

Arent put a foot on the stair, only for a growl to sound somewhere deeper in the cargo hold. Arent immediately swung his light towards the labyrinth of stacked crates. They rose up like walls, his light clawing vainly at the wood.

‘What was that?’ asked Sara nervously.

‘Wolf?’ guessed Arent.

‘On an Indiaman?’

‘Did you bring your dagger?’ he asked.

Sara tugged at her gown. ‘My dressmaker hates pockets, remember?’

‘Go back to the orlop deck.’

‘Where are you going?’

‘To see what made that sound.’ He strode off towards the maze of crates that filled the cargo hold. His lantern seemed very tiny amidst all that wood and darkness.

Sara turned her body towards the staircase. She was trained to obey. Her entire life she’d been told what to do, and she’d done it. It was part of her conditioning and yet, for some reason, the thought of him going alone felt wrong.

It was as if she were abandoning him.

Instead of departing, she stepped off the staircase, putting her foot straight into the freezing bilge water. It was ankle-deep, already creeping up her skirts, sloshing left and right as the ship listed.

‘Arent,’ she called out. ‘Wait.’

‘Go back,’ he hissed.

‘I’m coming,’ she insisted, her tone putting an end to the argument.

Narrow alleys had been left between the stacks to allow sailors to cross the deck, but their arrangement was dictated by the placement of the crates. There were no straight lines, and no obvious paths. The passages narrowed and widened, leaving orientation to their sense of smell. The hold had been packed according to cargo, such that one minute they were sneezing on pepper and the next they were gagging on thick clouds of paprika.

Following Arent through the passages, Sara stared at his huge back and massive slouched shoulders, the lantern light running down them.

Her nerve momentarily deserted her.

He could do anything he wanted to her and she’d have no way of fighting back. If she was wrong and Sander Kers was right, then she had delivered herself to Old Tom without anybody knowing where she was – and she’d have done it thoughtlessly, recklessly, indulging the very qualities her husband so despaired of in her.

‘Stay close,’ said Arent.

How could she have been so stupid? She didn’t know this man. Not underneath. She’d seen his kindness on the docks and assumed that’s all there was. Now, she’d allowed herself to be led into this precarious position.

She gritted her teeth and put a rod of iron through her thoughts.

This fear wasn’t hers, she realised angrily. It belonged to Sander Kers, but she’d caught it like the plague.

She did know Arent. She knew exactly what was underneath. She’d seen it when he rushed to help the leper, while everybody else stood and gawped. She knew him from his fiddle playing, and the pleasure he took from it. She knew him from the dagger he’d given her after the leper appeared. She knew him from his loyalty to Samuel Pipps, and the fire that burnt behind his eyes when he spoke of him. She knew him from this very search. If Arent Hayes was a demon, then he had disguised himself so completely he had accidentally become a good man.

‘Arent, do you bear the Mark of Old Tom?’

He flinched as if she’d struck him. The lantern shook in his hand as he turned towards her. ‘Aye,’ he said. ‘Got it after my father disappeared, but I couldn’t tell you how. Wish I could.’

‘You’re connected to our enemy,’ she said, her pride wounded. ‘Why would you conceal that fact from me?’

‘I didn’t know how to tell you,’ he admitted, staring at his wrist. ‘My grandfather asked me to keep this secret when I was a boy, and I’ve been doing it for as long as I can remember. It doesn’t come natural to talk about, even to you.’

Another growl rolled through the passages, causing them to freeze. After a tense minute, all was silent again.

‘Lord above, I wish I was your size,’ said Sara, blood beating in her ears.

‘Most places I’ve been, it’s just made me a target.’ He began walking again, swinging his flame left and right, searching for danger. ‘Believe me, you don’t want to be the biggest man on a battlefield. Every archer in the enemy ranks uses you to get their eye in.’

‘Do you ever miss it?’

‘Being used as target practice?’

‘War.’

He shook his head, watching the darkness cautiously. ‘Nobody misses war, Sara. It would be like missing the clap.’

‘What about the glory, the honour? Your deeds at the battle of Breda are –’

‘Mostly lies.’ He sounded almost angry. ‘There’s no glory, except what the minstrels make up so the nobles can feel good about the slaughter they paid for. A soldier’s job is to end up dead far from home, fighting for a king who wouldn’t give them the crumbs from his table.’

‘Then why do it?’

‘I needed a job,’ he said. ‘I left home without stopping to think what would happen next, then there was just one thing after another, until I was in the mud and blood. I tried being a clerk, but my grandfather kept finding me, so I went looking for work with no connection back to him. But what did I know of the world I went into? Until that first winter on my own, I’d never been cold, not really. Never been hungry. Never even had to fetch my own food. I took the first coin somebody would pay me, which was thief-taking work.’

They were deep in the maze now. Sara’s dress had soaked up so much bilge water it was beginning to weary her.

‘What was it like being a thief-taker? You never talked about your life before Sammy in the reports.’

‘I solved petty squabbles for the most part.’ His voice had warmed, filled with fondness. ‘My first job was convincing a cordwainer off his barstool so he could keep his promise to the woman he’d spilled his seed in. I talked to that man for an hour, before I realised I was just supposed to punch him, then drag him unconscious in front of the predikant.’

‘How did you end up serving Pipps?’

‘That’s a long story.’

‘We’re in a long maze.’

He laughed, conceding the point. Considering their situation, Sara was surprised he could manage it. Danger obviously affected them very differently. She was talking to distract herself, knowing that if she stopped, she’d fly back upstairs in fright.

By contrast, Arent’s hand was steady. His tone was firm. Anybody who’d stumbled upon them might assume he was out for a pleasant walk.

‘I’d been thief-taking for a year, when I was sent to collect a debt owed by an Englishman named Patrick Hayes,’ said Arent. ‘He ambushed me, and I killed him. I didn’t mean to, but’ – He examined his huge scarred hands – ‘my strength gets away from me when my temper’s up.’

‘Is that why your temper’s never up?’

‘You’ve never seen me try to play The Ballad of Samuel Pipps on my fiddle. Whichever bard came up with that must have had nineteen fingers.’

‘Why did you take his name?’

‘The bard?’

‘Hayes,’ she sighed. ‘The man you killed.’

‘Shame.’ He glanced at her over his shoulder. ‘I wanted something to remind me how it felt to kill a man.’

‘Did it work?’

‘Still think of him now.’ Oily water fell from the distant ceiling and plinked against the lantern. ‘I thought that would be enough. I thought all I had to do was feel guilty and promise never to take another life, and that would be it. Only thing is Hayes had brothers, so they came for revenge. They had friends, and the friends had brothers. Nobody ever tells you that if you take a single life, you have to murder the mob who’ll follow after.’

The quantity of his regret made her feel foolish for suspecting him.

‘Thing about grief is that every death makes the pile lighter,’ he said, peering around a corner. ‘One death is heavier than ten and a hundred are weightless. By the time I’d killed everybody who’d tried to kill me, mercenary work seemed an obvious way to make coin. After I rescued my uncle at Breda, he bought my commission, so I didn’t have to fight in the melee any more. Then Sammy came calling.’ He smiled. ‘Truth about Sammy is that once the web’s unpicked, he couldn’t care less where the spider scurries off to. Unfortunately for him, his clients rarely felt the same way. He hired me to do the chasing and fighting he didn’t want to do.’

Sara almost stopped dead. In Arent’s reports, Sammy was forever leaping out of windows on to horses to chase down the guilty. He was courageous and brave, striking down the unjust like a bolt out of heaven. More than once, she’d imagined herself alongside the bear and the sparrow, dashing off on a new adventure. To find out Pipps was something entirely different made her feel slightly sad, and a little foolish.

‘Then why do you do it?’ she asked.

‘Because it’s righteous work,’ he replied, baffled by the question. ‘Sammy puts right wrongs others wouldn’t bother with, or wouldn’t see. Doesn’t matter if you’re a pauper who lost two coins, or a noble whose children disappeared from their beds. If the case is interesting, Sammy will investigate. Imagine if there were more people like that? Imagine if everybody had somebody to help them when the bad things happened?’

He sounded wistful, conjuring an entire world through the yearning in his voice.

‘My grandfather saw most people as disposable, there to be used and tossed away in pursuit of ever more wealth and ever more power. Nobody ever stood up for them, or protected them. If you weren’t rich and you weren’t strong, he believed you had to take whatever unjustness life saw fit to mete out. I hated that about him. And I truly hated that he was right.’

The growl came again, close enough to prickle the hairs on Sara’s neck. The lantern jumped in Arent’s hand, briefly illuminating something scratched into the wood. Sara took hold of his forearm, drawing the flame towards the nearest crate. As the light fell upon it, she felt a chill settle in the pit of her stomach.

Scarring the crate was the eye with the tail.

‘The Mark of Old Tom,’ said Arent in disgust.

He took an involuntary step back, but his light washed towards another one a little further ahead. Creeping closer to it revealed another, then another, and another.

A growl came from the end of the passage.

Spinning towards it, they saw the leper waiting for them, a small candle held in its hands.

It was watching them.

It gave them time to see it, then walked unhurriedly away. Sara grabbed hold of Arent’s arm and was relieved to see he finally looked uncertain.

‘It wants us to follow,’ she said.

‘Probably into a trap.’

‘Then why not just attack us from behind? Why go through all of this?’

Pressed tight together, they followed the passage to the last spot where they’d seen the leper. Turning a corner, they found it waiting for them again. Closer this time. Its head was bowed, reverentially, over its small candle.

‘What do you want?’ called out Arent.

It turned and walked away. This time they didn’t hesitate, quickening their pace in pursuit. The smell of spices tickled Sara’s nose. Rats darted away from the splashing water.

The marks covered every crate this deep into the maze, the lines seeming to shift and crawl, like thousands of spiders scurrying up the walls.

Sara gritted her teeth. She was deathly afraid, but she was deathly afraid most days of her life. At least, she could see an end to this. At least this fear led somewhere.

A light flared, as if the cover had been taken off a candle.

Arent tensed, then went cautiously towards it, with Sara following a little behind.

Expecting an assault, he put his arms up to protect his face, then stepped quickly around the corner. Eight candles were burning on a makeshift altar, the Mark of Old Tom drawn upon it. Hundreds more covered the surrounding walls.

‘It’s a church,’ said Sara, horrified. ‘Old Tom’s made himself a church.’

‘Which means he likely already has followers among the crew,’ said Arent.