Arent felt around gently, wincing in sympathy at his discomfort.
‘I think we can save it,’ he said earnestly. ‘You’ll need to be strong for a minute. Can you do that?’
The boy nodded, his brother leaning closer to better see the gruesome work.
Very carefully, Arent squeezed the splinter between his thick fingers, forcing it up through the skin. The hardest part was tempering his strength, so as not to hurt him. The splinter came loose in a few seconds and Arent handed it to Marcus as a trophy.
‘I thought there’d be blood,’ complained Osbert grumpily.
‘If I remove a splinter from your hand, I’ll make sure there is,’ warned Arent, standing with a groan. There was a lot of him to lift and most of it ached.
‘Are those yours?’ he said, nodding to the toy dancers, still whirling back and forth across the floor. ‘They’re clever little things.’
‘Yes, Lia made –’ Marcus was cut off by his brother nudging him in the ribs. ‘We’re not allowed to say,’ he finished.
‘Why?’
‘It’s a secret.’
‘Then keep it under your tongue,’ responded Arent, who had enough questions to answer without adding unnecessary ones to the pile. ‘Reckon you boys best be off now. I’m about to do something foolish, and it might get sharp quicker than I can control it.’
The boys’ faces immediately lit up with the thought of a grand adventure, but the grim, scarred expression of Arent Hayes was enough to change their minds.
Hunching under the low roof, Arent went to the folding wooden screen dividing the deck in two and pushed it aside, entering the crew’s side of the ship. It had been partitioned down the middle by a piece of sailcloth strung on rope, with musketeers on one side and sailors on the other. Mats had been slid beneath hammocks to provide additional berths for everybody, their possessions kept in sacks that hung from the ceiling like spider nests.
The half of the deck belonging to the musketeers was empty. They were training on the waist with Drecht, slashing at the air and firing rounds at the horizon. There weren’t many sailors to be seen, as they were scattered between the weather decks and workshops. What few men remained were playing dice or talking with their mates. Others snored on their mats. The air was thick with the stench of their unwashed bodies. Somebody was trying to wring a tune from a fiddle with only three strings.
They stopped everything as Arent approached, narrowing their eyes.
Arent raised his coin purse and his voice. ‘Anybody know Bosey?’ he asked. ‘There’s a chance he, or somebody he knew, is running around this ship dressed like a leper. Apparently, he struck a bargain with somebody called Old Tom in Batavia to do a few favours.’ Arent jangled his coin purse. ‘Anybody hear him say anything about that? Anybody mates with him?’
The sailors stared, their lips clamped shut.
The galley fire crackled and popped; steps thudded back and forth across the deck above them, dust falling from the ceiling.
Somewhere distant a drumbeat kept time.
‘Does anybody know where he was from, or what brought him aboard the Saardam?’ pressed Arent, looking from stony face to stony face. ‘I’ll pay well for gossip.’
One of the sailors stood up. ‘We’ll have no words with a pig-groping soldier like you,’ he spat.
The others muttered their agreement.
From the portside, somebody hurled a jug, forcing Arent to duck. A second narrowly missed him, shattering against the wall.
Strong fingers clamped themselves around his arm. Arent spun to hit whoever had grabbed him, but it was the one-armed constable from the gunpowder store. As yesterday, he was bent almost double, his legs bowed, like God had brought a cannon to life.
He raised his stump in supplication.
‘Come away now, before there’s blood on the floor,’ he said, trying to tug Arent out of the compartment.
Sailors advanced on him with their fists clenched.
Seeing the futility of staying, he allowed himself to be led back beyond the wooden divide, which shook as the sailors beat their hands against it, hurling insults after him.
‘You’re a silly bastard and no mistake,’ said the constable, somehow making it sound like a compliment. Without another word, he crossed the deck to the gunpowder store, which he unlocked with a key kept around his neck.
Dozens of kegs of gunpowder were stacked on the floor, leaving almost no room to walk. The old constable snorted at them in disgust. ‘Hundred men carried them out of here when the captain called battle stations last night, and now they expect me to put them back by myself.’ He gestured to the empty racks on the walls with the stump of his arm. ‘Isn’t a damn sensible thought anywhere on this boat.’
He waited, then sighed meaningfully when Arent didn’t catch the hint. ‘Lot of work for an old man with one arm,’ he said slyly.
Arent picked up two kegs effortlessly, slinging them into their racks. ‘Is this why you dragged me out of there?’
‘Partly,’ said the constable, dropping heavily on to his stool. ‘But I saw something last night I thought you’d want to hear about, being as how the ship’s in danger. Not a leper or nothing, so don’t go thinking –’
‘Just tell me,’ said Arent, heaving another two kegs into their racks.
‘Well, it was after the two bells, before Captain sounded battle stations. I went down to the cargo hold for my piss. Always do it down there, near the bottom of the staircase, you know, where there’s still some light. Don’t like going –’
‘Constable!’ said Arent. ‘What did you see?’
‘All right, all right, I was just trying to offer a little extra colour,’ he protested. ‘A woman came creeping down. Broad-shouldered and curly-haired. Mistook me for somebody else in the shadows, because she dashed down, saying she’d almost got them caught.’ The constable chewed the inside of his lip thoughtfully. ‘Gave me a bit of a fright, so I popped my carrot back in the sack and stepped into the light. That was that. She took off like a rabbit seen a fox.’
Broad-shouldered and curly-haired sounded like the predikant’s ward, Isabel. She must have come down to the cargo hold after Larme spied her eavesdropping on their conversation last night. Evidently, she had a knack for showing up where she wasn’t supposed to.
‘I’ll ask around,’ said Arent, as he pushed a few kegs across the rack to make space. ‘Thank you, Constable.’
The constable nodded, clearly happy to have made this somebody else’s problem.
Feeling a twinge in his back, Arent wrapped his arms around another keg. It came off the ground effortlessly.
‘This is empty,’ he said.
‘Toss it over there,’ said the constable, waving towards the corner where three others had been discarded. ‘Likely, one of the boys panicked and packed his cannon before the order came to make ready.’ He chortled. ‘Would have been up at first light, trying to tip the gunpowder into the sea before anybody realised. Worth a flogging, if he’s caught.’
Arent threw the keg away, as the constable swung his bare feet on to the box containing The Folly, causing two dice to jump into the air.
’Know what it is?’ asked the constable. ‘Didn’t feel as I could ask yesterday with that Vos in the room. Makes me think of something dead and dug up, he does.’
Arent eyed it, then nodded knowledgeably.
‘It’s a box,’ he concluded.
‘A box that Chamberlain Vos has made excuses to visit twice,’ said the constable shrewdly. ‘Reckon whatever’s inside must be important.’ His eyes twinkled. ‘And valuable.’
‘You telling me you haven’t tried to open it,’ said Arent, the ship tilting ever so slightly as they changed course.
‘It’s locked, and my lock-picking days are long behind me,’ said the constable, scratching his stump.