‘I think I know who Father went to see,’ she said.
Sara and Creesjie clustered around her, as she took the quill from her father’s pot, then underlined the name Viscountess Dalvhain in the passenger manifest and Emily de Haviland in the list of people possessed by Old Tom.
‘You see?’ she said, though nobody did. ‘Dalvhain is Haviland rearranged.’
Without a word, Sara flew out of the cabin as quickly as her dress would allow and on to the quarterdeck. Left flat-footed by her abrupt exit, Drecht, Creesjie and Lia followed her.
Under the star-bright sky, bodies were being hauled up from the crush in the orlop deck, children crying as adults despondently clung to loved ones.
At Dalvhain’s cabin, she rapped insistently. No answer came.
‘Viscountess Dalvhain!’ Still there was no answer.
‘Emily de Haviland?’ she tried instead.
Creesjie, Lia and Drecht arrived at the end of the corridor, but she ignored them and tried the latch, the door creaking open. By the dim light spilling inside, it was immediately evident the cabin was empty. More than empty, it didn’t appear anybody had ever used it. There were no personal possessions she could see; no pictures on the walls, or furs on the bunk. The chamber pot was spotless. The only sign of habitation was the huge red rug covering the floor. She remembered the sailors trying to wedge it through the door that first morning, and it didn’t look any smaller unrolled. Its edges climbed the walls.
She crossed the cabin to the writing desk, searching for a candle.
Something crunched unpleasantly underfoot.
‘Mama?’ asked Lia, from the doorway.
Sara gestured for her to stay back. Drecht gripped his sword, ushering Lia and Creesjie behind him.
Kneeling down, Sara touched something sinuous and curled. She took it into the corridor, where the light could tell her more. It was a single wood shaving. Exactly like the one the carpenter had created when he’d built her a shelf that first morning. Did this have something to do with the sound Dorothea had heard? Was Dalvhain building something in here?
Or Emily de Haviland, as she had been known.
‘Laxagarr is Nornish for trap,’ she muttered.
‘There’s an object on the writing desk,’ said Drecht, squinting into the gloom. He sounded unnerved, and it was clear he had no intention of setting foot inside.
From her own cabin, Sara quickly retrieved a candle on a tray, then returned to Emily de Haviland’s quarters.
The daemonologica waited on her writing desk.
She stopped dead.
Isabel didn’t normally let it out of her sight. Did she have some relationship with Dalvhain she hadn’t mentioned? And, even then, why would it be the only thing in an empty room? The anagram was clever, but Emily de Haviland had clearly meant it to be unravelled, which meant she wanted somebody to come here and discover this book.
Sara approached it cautiously, reaching out a hand to open the cover.
It wasn’t the daemonologica. Not inside.
It had the same cover, the same vellum, even the same style of illustration and writing, but the contents were different. Instead of the reams of Latin script, there were drawings.
Sara turned the first page.
In dark ink, it showed a grand house burning, surrounded by an angry mob who were dragging people outside and slitting their throats. In one corner, the witchfinder Pieter Fletcher watched impassively, while Old Tom giggled in his ear.
She turned the page.
Here was a more detailed drawing of Pieter Fletcher shackled to a wall, screaming. Old Tom was removing the organs from his chest and leaving them in a pile on the ground.
Gagging, Sara turned the page.
This was a picture of them boarding in Batavia. Sara, her husband and Lia were on the quarterdeck, while Samuel Pipps and Arent were being marched through the crowds by Drecht, stalked by Old Tom who was riding a bat-faced wolf.
Her head spinning, she turned another page.
Here was the Saardam at sea, surrounded by the fleet. Away in the distance was the Eighth Lantern, except it wasn’t a ship; it was Old Tom holding a lantern in one hand.
On the fifth page, the leper slaughtered the Saardam’s cattle, while Old Tom danced among the bodies.
On the sixth page, the leper stalked through the fog of the orlop deck, trailed by Old Tom.
‘What is it, dear heart?’ asked Creesjie, coming up behind her.
‘It’s a diary of everything that’s happened,’ said Sara in disgust, turning the page, to reveal a drawing of her husband, dead in his bunk, with a dagger in his chest.
‘Mama!’ gasped Lia, appearing beside her. ‘This is the scene exactly. How could Dalvhain have known what was going to happen?’
Sara’s hand felt like stone, but she had to see what came next.
The Saardam was aflame, passengers clinging to the gigantic body of Old Tom as he carried them to a nearby island. The devil was staring out of the page at Sara, with a knowing smile on its face. It knew she was reading the book.
Opposite, on the final page, the Mark of Old Tom floated on the ocean, the Saardam a tiny speck beneath it.
Something nagged her. The mark was drawn strangely, the familiar lines broken up into rough circles of different sizes, almost like Emily had let the ink simply drip off her quill on to the parchment.
Sara’s breath caught in her throat.
This wasn’t the Mark of Old Tom, she realised with mounting horror. It was a drawing of an island the Saardam was sailing towards.
This was where the symbol had come from.
The three unholy miracles had come to pass, and now Old Tom was taking them home.
69
Arent stared at Isabel and Isabel glared back.
‘Paprika?’ said Captain Crauwels, from behind her.
Sammy laughed weakly. It was the best he could do. For the two days Arent had slept, Sara had asked the musketeer Thyman to attend his exercises. While a surprisingly lively conversationalist, he hadn’t been keen on staying up with him all night, as Arent had been. As a result, he’d spent almost two full days in his cramped, dark cell, leaving him twisted and weak, pale as bones, with a wet, hacking cough. He was now investigating Wyck’s body, his fingers leaping from place to place like startled flies. ‘Imagine how I feel,’ said Sammy. ‘Four years ago, I tried to train him and got nowhere, yet the moment I disappear for a few weeks, he’s working wonders.’
‘The constable caught Isabel sneaking around the ship at night,’ said Arent, ignoring the jest. ‘I’ve smelled paprika on her these last few days, as I noticed it on Wyck when we were fighting. Paprika is only stored in a particular section of the cargo hold, a place neither of them would have reason to go unless they were meeting there.’
‘Is that true?’ demanded Crauwels.
‘I’d wager that’s his babe in your belly,’ said Arent, trying to meet her averted eyes. ‘Did you make a bargain with Old Tom to kill him for putting it there?’
‘Kill him?’ Her eyes flashed with fire. ‘He was my friend and it weren’t his babe, but he had pity for it.’
Crauwels snorted. ‘Pity?’
‘He knew me of old,’ said Isabel, turning her fierce glare on him. ‘He’d been sailing to Batavia since I was a little girl, begging on the docks. He’d give me coin for food, for a bed. He came back this time to find me with a babe on the way and no father to raise it. He said he was done with this life and would take care of us in the Provinces, if I’d risk it with him. I couldn’t afford a berth on the ship, so I said no, but then Sander told me he’d tracked Old Tom to this boat and we had to give chase. I thought God was smiling on me, at last.’