‘Are you certain it’s safe for me to be out of my cell?’ said Sammy, glancing nervously at the crowd of sailors who’d turned out to watch him work.
The sun was sinking behind the horizon and Sammy hadn’t seen it for so long that he’d burst into tears when Arent had brought him outside.
‘If word reaches your husband that I’m ignoring his commands, he’ll toss me back into that cell without any hope of light again,’ concluded Sammy.
‘My husband has locked himself away to brood,’ said Sara. ‘He believes the theft of The Folly was part of some grand campaign Old Tom is waging against him.’ She could not conceal her delight at his discomfort. ‘You have nothing to fear for the next hour, at least. Guard Captain Drecht watches his door, and Vos is inside, listening to him rant. You’ll have to go back into your cell when their meeting ends, but you’re safe for now. As am I.’
Sammy ran his eyes across her peasant clothing. ‘This voyage has changed you a great deal, Sara Wessel,’ he said, lifting Sander’s shoulder to resume his study of the body. After a moment, he let it drop again. ‘This body has nothing more to tell us. His throat was slit approximately two weeks ago, and he was stuffed into a secret compartment.’
‘But why was the body hidden?’ muttered Sara, who had to repeat herself to be heard over the hammering and chiselling of the repairs. In truth, the sound suggested a greater array of activity than could currently be seen. If she had to guess, she’d have said fewer than ten sailors were actually on deck. After their exertions during the storm, the captain was letting most of them sleep.
‘There must be something we’re not supposed to find,’ said Sammy. He got to his feet, dusting his hands off. It was a futile effort. They were coated in grime and slop, the accumulated filth of two weeks in his cell. ‘Did Sander Kers have any enemies?’
‘We think Old Tom lured him to Batavia. I saw the letter myself. Our devil wanted him here, and now he’s dead. It would seem to me that was its intent all along,’ said Sara.
Sammy put an aggravated hand through his hair, dislodging some of the lice that had taken residence there. ‘Try as I might, I’m struggling to make any connections between the facts of this case,’ he said, pacing the deck.
Sara wished Lia was here to see this. Arent described Sammy’s short-legged but energetic walk with great detail in his reports, and when she and Lia play-acted them, they always strode with such vigour they fell about laughing.
‘From the first, my concern has been with the murder of Bosey, a carpenter who accepted an offer of great wealth from a voice in the darkness in return for making this boat ready for his passage. Quite what that entailed we’re unsure, though Isaack Larme described finding Bosey and his acolytes in strange places around the ship, and said he thought they were searching for something. When asked what he was doing, he told them “trap”.’
‘Maybe he was building one,’ mused Sara.
‘Or finding one,’ countered Sammy.
‘Or disarming one,’ added Arent.
Sammy glanced between them, then murmured, ‘Both fine ideas. Either way, he was doing his work at the behest of something calling itself Old Tom, which was the name of a beggar Arent inadvertently caused to be beaten to death when he was a child. After Arent was removed to his grandfather’s estate, this demon apparently swept across the Provinces, possessing the bodies of a number of wealthy merchants and nobles, causing them to commit unspeakable horrors before leaving their lives in ruins. It announced itself with a mark that resembles an eye with a tail, and that same mark was etched into Arent’s wrist after his father disappeared thirty years ago. His father’s rosary was found in the animal pens after the Eighth Lantern appeared to us. Those animals were slaughtered without anybody going near them.’
So fierce was his concentration, it was as if he were walking back through the events, thought Sara.
‘The slaughter of the animals was the first of three unholy miracles, according to our dead predikant here. The second was the disappearance of The Folly from a locked room, which would appear to have been the work of Cornelius Vos, undertaken in a bid to marry Creesjie Jens. And we’re expecting a third, after which anybody who didn’t bargain with Old Tom will be slaughtered. Are there any details I’ve missed?’
‘That Old Tom is possessing one of the passengers,’ ventured Arent.
‘And my husband apparently summoned it all those years ago, but now it wants him dead. It asked me and Creesjie to kill him with a dagger that it would leave in a drawer under his bunk.’
‘Ah, yes,’ said Sammy happily. ‘Have you looked in the drawer?’
‘Guard Captain Drecht does every night, but he swears there’s only clothes.’ She peered at him. ‘Tell me, Mr Pipps –’
‘Sammy, please.’
‘Sammy.’ She curtsied, honoured by the offer of familiarity. ‘Do you believe there’s a devil at work aboard this boat?’
‘Of one kind or another.’ He smiled grimly. ‘The truth is, I find myself facing an opponent beyond any I’ve encountered before, and it would flatter my ego to believe it was supernatural. Your question is, if I may say without insult, irrelevant, though. Whether this is a devil dressed as a man, or a man dressed as a devil, our course of action remains the same. We must investigate each incident, then follow the clues back to the truth.’
Sara could only marvel at the confidence in his voice. Listening to him, she truly believed they would do it. For the first time, she wondered if maybe the accusation of spying levelled against him by Casper van den Berg was part of all this. Had the charge been intended to put Pipps out of the way, so Old Tom could go about its scheme without interference? If so, did that not suggest Arent’s grandfather was somehow bound up in all of this?
‘If Old Tom truly is a devil, what will we do then?’ wondered Sara.
‘I don’t know, that’s beyond my realm. Though, it would explain why the one man versed in banishing devils was killed.’
‘We still have Isabel,’ said Sara. ‘She’s studied the daemonologica and is as zealous as Sander in her duty, if not more so.’
‘Let’s hope she’s enough.’
‘How do we proceed, Sammy?’ asked Arent.
The deference in his tone was strange for Sara to hear. Normally, he was so forthright. Whether he could see the path or not, he charged forward. It was something she admired about him. But speaking to Sammy, it was like he couldn’t think for himself, couldn’t conceive a way forward without his friend.
But why would that be? Everything they knew about Old Tom they’d learned while Pipps was locked away. Her husband respected Arent, and he’d never respected a stupid man in his life. Arent was the heir to his grandfather’s fortune, chosen over five sons.
She examined the slight figure beside him, talking so quickly the words seemed to tumble out of his mouth. It must be hard to stand next to Sammy Pipps and call yourself clever, she thought. Five years they’d worked together. Arent had witnessed one miracle after the next. She could see why you’d start to mistake yourself for stupid.
‘Follow Vos and hope he delivers us the next part of this strange puzzle before the third unholy miracle happens. Our only aim now is to prevent a slaughter.’
56
Under the starlight, sailors carried the last of the bodies on to the waist, laying them in hemp sacks side by side. Mourners were few. The dead were bad luck on an Indiaman. Every sailor on watch had their head turned away. The sailmaker stitched up their sacks with his eyes closed, and even Captain Crauwels and Isaack Larme made sure to peer over the bodies, rather than at them.