The Devil and the Dark Water

79

‘This is a very bad plan,’ said Arent as they approached the Saardam in a yawl. The wreck loomed above them, the exposed hull covered in barnacles and seaweed. Fingers of sunlight poked through the cracks in the cargo hold, revealing the seabirds already nesting in her ribs. She was monstrous from this vantage, like some terrible beast laid down to die.

‘Well, you didn’t have time to come up with a merely bad plan,’ responded Sara, who was perched at the bow of the boat, keeping watch for the shallows. ‘Besides, we have to make sure we’re right. And this is the only place to do it.’

The sea was choppy and Arent was having to work hard at the oars to keep from crashing into the jagged rocks. They’d told Drecht they were recovering Sara’s harp, something they couldn’t trust anybody else to do. Having listened to her play the instrument for hours every day in the fort, he’d accepted the excuse unquestioningly.

Arent held the boat steady while Sara leapt out. Tugging the oars inside, he scrambled on to the rocks, then dragged the yawl out of the water. The passengers had disembarked here this morning and the rope ladder still hung down from the waist.

Waves crashed against the rocks, throwing sea spray into the air, soaking them both. Struggling to keep his feet, Arent walked towards the aft, looking up at the spot where his uncle’s cabin bulged out of the hull.

The leper’s handprints were so small, they could easily have been mistaken for dirt, until he was up close. They ran from the waterline to his uncle’s cabin and then past Sara’s cabin to the poop deck.

‘We assumed the leper punched those holes in the hull when it climbed up, but what if they were already there when we boarded?’ said Arent. ‘Everybody embarked on the other side of the ship, so nobody would have noticed them in the harbour.’

‘A ladder, you mean? Do you think Bosey built it?’

‘I do,’ said Arent. ‘He told Sander back in Batavia that he was making the boat ready for his master. I think this is part of what he meant.’

They walked into the cargo hold through a crack in the hull, the sickly sweet smell of rot immediately engulfing them. The spear of rock that had ended the mutiny in Drecht’s favour sheared straight up through the hull. It was stained with spices.

A few jewels sparkled here and there in the bilge water, having been missed by Drecht’s musketeers.

‘Why did my uncle bring the treasure to Batavia?’ wondered Arent, picking up an amethyst and shaking the drops from it.

‘Where could he have left it without risking it being stolen, or questions being asked?’ replied Sara. ‘Aside from the jewels, nearly every piece bore the crest of a great family fallen to ruin.’

‘He could have sold the gems and melted down the rest.’

‘You really didn’t know my husband at the end, did you?’ There was pity in her voice. ‘He probably dipped into his hoard when he needed money for some endeavour, but he wouldn’t have seen any of this as treasure. They were trophies. Mementos of his victories, no different to Vos and I. He liked to collect his victims and put us on display.’

As if it were suddenly hot, Arent tipped his palm, letting the amethyst splash back into the dirty water.

Without another word, they took the staircase up to the orlop deck, which was slippery with blood. Seabirds feasted on the remains of the dead.

Sara had expected them to go straight to the passenger cabins, but Arent pushed open the door to the gunpowder store. Kegs had spilled gunpowder across the floor, but it was damp and harmless. The constable’s charm lay among some wooden fragments, having evidently been torn from his neck in the panic of the mutiny.

‘What are you looking for?’ asked Sara.

‘Nothing on this voyage happened by accident,’ he replied distantly, wiping gunpowder from the charm before pocketing it. He’d return it to the constable later. ‘The ship was a trap, designed to murder my uncle. Everything was planned years in advance.’

‘Including the three unholy miracles,’ said Sara.

‘Only crew members could have rolled the kegs containing The Folly out of here,’ said Arent.

‘Then we’re after three people.’

‘Two,’ he disagreed. ‘Captain Crauwels had to be involved. If Emily de Haviland always intended to bring us to this island, then he was the only one who could have ensured that happened. He was the ship’s navigator.’

‘Maybe The Folly was his payment,’ said Sara. ‘It was valuable enough. It almost bought Lia and I an entirely new life. Crauwels was obsessed with restoring his family’s name. If he sold The Folly, he could have done that.’

‘He knew when the Eighth Lantern would appear, so he knew when he’d be calling battle stations. He just needed a couple of trusted hands ready to take the kegs containing The Folly down to the cargo hold, and hide them in the smuggling compartments Bosey had built. If we’re right about Emily’s identity, she could have easily stolen the key to The Folly’s box.’

They stared at each other, feeling the sting of the revelation.

‘Do you think Isaack Larme would have been involved?’ he asked Sara abruptly.

‘Why?’

‘Because I’ve got a plan he could help me with, but he was close to Crauwels. They may have worked together.’

‘I don’t think so,’ said Sara. ‘He admitted to finding a piece of The Folly hidden in one of his smuggling compartments, but he said he couldn’t find the rest. Remember how disappointed he sounded. If he was working with Crauwels, why would he have confessed any of that?’

The steps upstairs were broken, forcing them to tread cautiously. The compartment under the half deck sloped towards the helm, and the dead were piled up against its wall. Aside from the bodies, the signs of battle were everywhere, from the gouges in the wood, to the swords still stuck in planks.

The rock had torn through the ship’s waist, obliterating everything upon it, including the mainmast, which was now in the sea, connected to the ship only by the rigging.

‘Reminds me of a severed arm,’ said Sara in disgust.

Arent was silent. Here was the battlefield he thought he’d escaped.

‘Should we start in the passenger cabins?’ said Sara, sounding sick. ‘If we’re right …’

‘I know,’ he said sympathetically. ‘I feel the same.’

They went silently, almost unwillingly, up the stairs into the passenger cabins. The fighting hadn’t reached this part of the ship. Guard Captain Drecht had made sure to station men at the door. Honour had compelled him to protect Sara and Lia, even as a lack of honour had compelled him to start the mutiny that had endangered them.

Arent couldn’t imagine being able to think like that. His mind must have been twisted like old rope.

They went into Vos’s cabin first, but Arent remained at the threshold. Arms crossed, he watched as Sara searched through the receipts of passage on the writing desk, then picked an expenses ledger off the ground. She flipped through a few pages, then ran her hand down the columns.

Finally, she thumped it shut angrily. The glance she flashed him confirmed everything they’d suspected.

Arent’s heart fell like a rock.

Crossing the corridor, they entered Viscountess Dalvhain’s cabin, Sara’s foot catching on the huge rug covering the ground.

Arent immediately knelt down, touching the weave with his fingers and murmuring. ‘So this is how they got it onboard.’

‘The wooden stick?’

He blinked at her. ‘What?’

‘I was in the corridor when they tried to wedge this rug into the cabin. They broke a long, thin wooden stick that was inside.’

‘No.’ His brow furrowed. ‘That wasn’t what I meant. Look.’

He ran his hand across the carpet. Squinting, she realised what he’d found. It was sliced, like somebody had dragged a blade across it.

‘The damage runs the length of the rug,’ he said.

‘What caused it?’

‘The murder weapon,’ he said, struggling to balance the satisfaction of being right with the revulsion it caused in him.

‘That’s a big blade,’ she said, with understatement.

‘It had to be,’ he said. ‘My uncle was a long way away.’

The ship wailed, wood shrieking as the ground shifted beneath their feet. ‘She’s tearing apart,’ said Sara, bracing herself.

Without speaking they hurried into Sara’s cabin, where Arent lifted the mattress off her bunk. Something about his presence near her bed caused her to turn slightly red, despite the circumstances.

‘The leper’s dagger used to kill my uncle made no sense,’ he said, searching the base beneath the mattress with his fingertips. ‘It was too thin, which meant it was too brittle to be a good weapon. But clever murder weapons are nearly always bad weapons, Sammy showed me that. Nobody going into battle would trust the venom from a snake, or a sharp piece of pottery. Murderers make their own weapons, according to their needs.’

‘And our murderer needed a weapon which could be used without anybody entering or leaving the cabin,’ said Sara.

‘Exactly. My uncle died in his bunk, so I started thinking about weapons that could reach him while he slept.’

He moved away, gesturing to the spot he’d been inspecting. ‘Here.’

Barely noticeable in the dark wood was a narrow slit about the size of her little finger.

‘Sammy found splinters on my uncle’s chest,’ said Arent. ‘He reckoned they were from the wooden handle of the leper’s dagger, but they weren’t. They were from this hole. My uncle’s cabin is directly beneath us, and I bet this hole appears above his bunk. It had to be thin or he would have noticed it. Even if he spotted this, he would have mistaken it for a crack in the wood. Emily de Haviland had a long, thin blade built to fit through it. She hid it in the rug because that was the only way to get something that unusual onboard without anybody commenting on it. She took the blade out of the rug, pulled the drawers out from underneath the bunk, then drove it down through this slot, killing my uncle. When she was done, she pulled the blade back up, put the drawers back, and threw it out of the porthole.’

‘I think I heard it,’ said Sara. ‘The night my husband –’ she reconsidered ‘– Jan died. I was tending you, and heard a splash outside.’

‘She must have been glad you weren’t in your cabin,’ replied Arent. ‘This was originally supposed to be her room, but Reynier van Schooten swapped you around because he thought this place cursed.’

‘If all of the passengers were in the great cabin having dinner when Jan was murdered and the doorway to the passenger cabins was guarded by Eggert, how did our murderer even get in here?’

Crauwels’s cabin was at the end of the passage and they went there now. His fine clothes were strewn across the floor, floating in the water that had splashed through his porthole during the wreck. Arent kicked through some ribbons, then pushed on the ceiling, which opened into the animal pens above, straw falling onto his shoulders.

‘This is how the Eighth Lantern slaughtered the animals, and this is where the leper disappeared when I chased him after he appeared at your porthole,’ he said. ‘The night of my uncle’s murder, the leper climbed out of the water and straight up the side of the ship to the poop deck. He used this hatch to drop in here. He dried off and changed clothes, so he wouldn’t leave any trace, then collected the sword and went to your cabin.’

Their final stop was the great cabin, where the huge table had tipped on to its sides. The windows were smashed, the raging sea slate-grey beyond.

The governor general’s cabin appeared as comfortable as it ever had, though his scrolls were now scattered across the room. His quill pot was upended, the wall and desk stained with ink.

Sara poked the narrow slit in the wood above her husband’s bunk. ‘But the handle of the dagger wouldn’t fit through here,’ she grumbled.

‘I know,’ he said. ‘That’s the clever part. That’s why the candle’s flame had to be snuffed, but I’m still not sure how that was done. There was no way to do it without entering the room, and it couldn’t be done from the porthole because the desk was too far away.’

‘I do,’ said Sara, smiling. ‘I saw it. Then I heard it being built.’

‘I don’t –’

‘When were you last in church, Arent?’

‘It’s been a while,’ he admitted.

‘Have you ever seen those long-poled snuffers they use to put out the candles on the chandeliers?’

Realisation washed across his face.

‘That pole I saw fall out of Viscountess Dalvhain’s rug was a candle snuffer.’ She went to the porthole, looking up at the three widely spaced hooks above it that Sammy had spotted after her husband died. ‘The leper was probably supposed to collect it from Viscountess Dalvhain’s room, then lay it on these hooks for when it was needed, but he didn’t know our cabins had been swapped. That’s why he was there that night.’

‘But you said it got broken. Did they repair it?’

‘No, they stole one of the handles from the capstan wheel in the cargo hold. I heard Johannes Wyck raging about it during the first sermon. Then they used a carpenter’s plane to make it into a manageable size. Dorothea heard the noise when she was passing Dalvhain’s cabin, but she couldn’t place it. It was probably the only thing they could easily steal that was long enough.’

‘To think,’ said Arent, glumly. ‘If they hadn’t got their hands on that damn handle, there’s a chance none of this would have happened.’