‘What are you saying?’
‘He’s saying it’s time we met Old Tom,’ said Sara.
83
Their yawl bumped against the Leeuwarden’s hull, as Eggert and Thyman pulled in the oars. They hadn’t spoken a word during the crossing, and it was clear both were nervous around Arent. He took up the entire rear bench and had barely moved the entire trip. He was silent, glowering at the ship.
Thyman whistled up to the deck and a seat was immediately lowered from above.
‘Who goes first?’ asked Sara nervously.
‘I’ll go,’ said Creesjie. ‘No harm will come to any of you, I swear. You’re safe here. Everybody is. Old Tom’s work is done. The demon is banished.’
As Creesjie was hoisted into the air, Arent leant closer to Eggert and Thyman.
‘How long have you worked for Creesjie,’ he asked.
They glanced at each other, uncertain whether to answer. ‘You two helped her steal The Folly in Batavia, didn’t you? Were you the Portuguese thieves who slipped away from me?’
Eggert grinned, as if reliving an old jest between friends. ‘Aye, but if she hadn’t told us you were coming –’
Thyman nudged him in the ribs, but Arent seemed satisfied.
‘Did you kill the animals, Eggert?’ he asked. ‘You were guarding the passenger cabins. Would have been easy enough to walk into the captain’s cabin and open the hatch in his ceiling.’
‘He was supposed to, but I had to do it in the end,’ sniffed Thyman. ‘Eggert didn’t have the stomach to kill the poor little pig, so he kept watch from the captain’s porthole for the Leeuwarden instead, then called up to me when they lit their lantern.’
‘Weren’t the way it happened,’ replied Eggert angrily, shoving him. ‘It was only the sow I couldn’t hurt. I’d already killed the chickens a few minutes earlier, and drawn the symbol in the dark. You couldn’t have done that quiet as I did. I did most of the work.’
Sara glanced at Arent. His expression mirrored her own thoughts. Who would trust these two fools with anything?
The seat came down again and this time Sara went up. Lia followed, and finally Arent. It took six men to lift him.
The Leeuwarden was identical to the Saardam in every way, except for the conduct of the crew, who went about their duties quietly and diligently. The captain and his senior officers were talking on the quarter deck, their measured tones a stark contrast to the gruff bickering of Crauwels, Larme and Van Schooten. After the rowdiness of the Saardam, it really did feel like a ghost ship, and Lia pressed against Sara’s side nervously.
Arent stretched up to his full height, the entire crew pausing in their duties to stare. They’d heard the stories. They just hadn’t believed them until now.
‘This is not how I intended us to meet again,’ came Sammy’s familiar voice from behind a lantern.
He lowered the blinding light, bringing a gasp from Lia. Though he was dressed wonderfully in ruffs and ribbons, with a cane and a feathered hat to complement them, his face had been badly injured. Half of it was mangled, an eyepatch covering his lost eye.
‘You don’t like the hat?’ asked Sammy wryly.
‘With your permission, Sara, I’d like Dorothea to take the boys to my cabin,’ said Creesjie. ‘It’s the same one I had on the Saardam. They can bathe and rest, they’ve been through a lot.’
Sara nodded, watching as Creesjie kissed the boys goodnight. They came to Lia, then her, for the usual hugs before bed. As they went skipping up the staircase to the quarterdeck, Dorothea chasing after them, Sara felt dizzy. It would be so easy to believe nothing had changed at all.
Sammy went to Creesjie, taking both of her hands in his own. Concern was written across his face. ‘Are you well? I became worried when you didn’t signal.’
‘They faked a witch hunt. You’d have been proud, brother.’
‘Brother!’ exclaimed Arent.
Sammy bowed extravagantly. ‘Forgive me this long overdue introduction, my friend. I’m Hugo de Haviland, or I was.’ His accent had changed slightly and his expression had become haughtier, as though Hugo had been wearing Sammy the entire time. Then he grinned suddenly, bringing the problematary back to the surface. ‘Using the dwarf was genius, I truly didn’t expect it.’
‘Dwarf?’ asked Creesjie, glancing between Arent and Sammy. ‘What part did Isaack Larme play in this?’
‘Sara and I realised that if the island were the home of Old Tom, it made sense to assume that the Eighth Lantern would be prowling the waters,’ said Arent, whose gaze hadn’t left Sammy. ‘Everybody believed sending a rescue boat was a suicide mission, so we reasoned that if we asked for volunteers they’d likely be those who already knew there was a friendly boat waiting.’ He scratched beneath his eye. ‘I hid Larme in a cask and put him on the rescue boat with the other supplies. I told him to sneak out once he was aboard and find Pipps in the captain’s cabin.’
‘How did you know he’d be there?’ asked Lia.
‘Because I know Sammy.’
Sammy became abashed. ‘I’ve spent three weeks in the stinking darkness, I thought I deserved a little comfort. You can’t imagine my surprise when Larme turned up at my door, bold as brass, and told me Arent knew everything, and I should blow up the Eighth Lantern if our friendship held.’
The problematary beamed at Arent, like a proud parent. ‘I knew you’d work it out.’
‘You did most of it,’ grunted Arent, ashamed of the praise.
‘A few hints, here and there,’ scoffed Sammy, waving them away. ‘It’s only your second case, I wanted you to enjoy it.’
‘People are dead,’ said Sara sharply, annoyed by how flippant he was.
‘That’s how most of our cases start and end,’ said Sammy, baffled by the objection. ‘If it’s any consolation, everybody who died deserved it. Apart from the people who died in the wreck, but that was Crauwels’s fault for ignoring the plan.’ He ran the back of his fingers down his scarred face. ‘And I think you’ll agree, I’ve been punished for my misjudgement.’
A soft wind blew across the deck, the rigging creaking.
‘There’s no point doing this out here,’ said Creesjie, casting a glance at the crew, who were trying hard to make it appear they weren’t listening. ‘Why don’t we go into the great cabin?’
‘Of course, of course,’ said Sammy. ‘Everything is arranged.’
Instinctively, he tried to walk alongside Arent, but the mercenary glared at him and he fell back another step, beside Lia and Sara.
‘Were you the whisper?’ asked Lia, still in awe of her hero, despite everything.
‘At various times all four of us were. Myself, Creesjie, Eggert and Thyman. It was actually one of the simpler things to achieve,’ he said modestly, as they passed into the compartment under the half deck. Without passengers, it was a neat and tidy space used for storing tools. ‘We paid Bosey to drill little holes high up in your walls that we could whisper through. We plugged them with caulking when they weren’t used to keep the sound from travelling between cabins.’
A stronger gust clambered over the railing, plucking at their clothes. In the distance, the bonfires on the shoal seemed momentarily to blink out. It was as if the entire island had disappeared.
‘What about the crew?’ said Lia. ‘How did you whisper to them?’
‘The crates in the cargo hold almost touch the grates in the floor of the orlop deck, and the sailors slept on the other side of those grates. At night, without any light to see by, a whisper’s the easiest thing in the world to make horrifying.’