Cast Off (22 page)

October 1663

When an ordinary cove died, his mates tied him up in sailcloth with some round shot for weight and a stitch through his nose to keep him covered, offered up some friendly words, and sent him over the rail, after which the sharks took care of the burial. But when an officer died, or a gentry cove like cotton-faced VOC rep Isaack Van Swalme, the captain called all hands on deck for a proper funeral.

The
Lion
was still anchored in Table Bay, too sick to sail. Every week we got more sun and less rain. The day was warm, the wind all but dead, and the ship reeked of sick. Excepting Petra, Clockert, and Krause, every cove who could stand was there in his best clothes. That is, if he had best clothes.

I was wedged between Jaya and the Gos brothers in the waist, facing the captain and the reverend on the quarterdeck. Van Swalme's body lay on a table next to them covered in fancy linen.

“
Seigneur
Van Swalme's career began in Delft, from which place he exported cheese to Spain and France,” De Ridder began.

What were the chances Van Swalme left some gelt for a funeral feast after the service? Or at least enough for an extra ration of penguin meat.

“He leaves behind his good wife, Bauwina, and his excellent children, Idesbald, Igor, Iks, Beeuwke, Balthildis, and one more who was presumably born this summer and whose name we've not yet learned . . .”

“We are better without him. Him and his fifty percent,” Jaya said under his breath.

I broke free from my daydream about soft bread with new butter and got busy chewing my fingernails.

“And who's going to cover for us? Answer me that,” Gos whispered back.

“Shhhh! Shut your gob,” Goth said, looking around.

“We talk about it with others tonight,” Jaya said.

Add Gos and Goth to the list of mutineers.

“Lord it be thy pleasure to bury this our friend in the bottom of the sea. His life is thine. Save him,” finished the reverend.

“Save him,” we said.

Three men slid Van Swalme into the ocean. His send-off may have been fancier than a common sailor's, but the sharks'd give him equal treatment in his final resting place.

“While he was fighting for his life,
Seigneur
Van Swalme remembered his shipmates. He asked that all Lions take part in a special meal served in his honor this evening,” announced the captain. “Buffalo brought fresh from shore and double rations of gin are the menu tonight. That will be all for now, gentlemen. Return to your watches.”

The crew whooped for joy. Maybe good food would blow off some of the black cloud that'd been pressing on us since the fever struck.

I headed below to tell Petra about Jaya and the Gos brothers but stopped just outside the sick bay. The smell was like a dog in the tropics three weeks dead and gone swampy. And 'twas hot as burnt brick.

Petra held a bowl for a sailor while he puked. Her hair was tied back in a scarf like Clockert's. Her face was paler than chalk with purple smudges under her eyes. The knobby bones in her wrists stuck out.

She looked over at me. “I don't even notice the stench anymore. Can you stand to come in for a bit? I just have to finish this.”

I poked a toe into the cabin. The sword keep lay asleep or blacked out next to Tixfor. By the looks of him, Tix wouldn't outlast his master for long. I didn't like the cove, but I wasn't happy to see him die, either.

“Mister Broen, have you come for a room at the inn?” Clockert asked from his desk in the shadows.

“No, master, I'm here to see Albert on a personal matter.”

“A personal matter, eh? Going for a swim on this lovely spring day? Or perhaps a stroll through town?”

Petra stowed the bowl and smoothed the blanket on the shivering sailor. “Master Clockert, may I have a few minutes' leave?”

Clockert waved her away. “‘Gather ye rosebuds while ye may, Old time is still a-flying, And this same flower that smiles to-day, Tomorrow will be dying.'”

“Did he lose his mind?” I asked when we was out of earshot.

“It's how he amuses himself,” Petra said. “Can we go to our spot on the foremast? I could use some air.”

I thought she could use more than just some air—some gin and buffalo meat came to mind.

On the yard eighty feet up, Petra pulled off her scarf and the wind took her hair. Down below, I could make out De Ridder and Oak steady on the quarterdeck, while scores of other coves went about their work.

Petra was only half listening when I told her about Jaya and the Gos twins.

“They said they're meeting tonight. I was thinking I'd follow them,” I said.

“Hmm.”

“And another thing. The VOC trunks in the hold. Do you remember how many there was?”

“No.” She scowled.

“You sure? 'Cause I'd cap downright there's more now than when you was hiding there. But how could they've taken on more trunks? Every man on board would've seen 'em loaded.”

“Everything's been shifted. It looks like there are more because they're stacked differently. Look at that cloud,” she said, pointing. “Does it remind you of a pair of shoes?”

“No, it don't,” I said. “It reminds me of a pair of pistols, which is what the captain's going to be staring at before long. And us too, if we don't take care. I don't think it's the stacking, but I'd be sure of it if you could go down and check.”

“Bram . . .”

“Miss Petra, it's important.”

“Why?” Petra sighed. “What does any of it have to do with us?”

“We got to know who's who and what they got planned so we can know what's best for us. Right now we got two groups. There's the captain and the men that's with him, and there's the men who want the VOC trunks and'll have to mutiny to get 'em.” She still had her eyes on the clouds, when what she needed to see was a ship with a couple hundred men and a few thousand pounds of gunpowder. “Whichever group wins, the other group's as good as dead.”

“Why don't you ask Jaya about it?”

“If I do that, I'll have to tell him I'm in.” I studied Petra's miserable face. Why such a fuss over a quick peek? “It'll only take a minute.”

“I don't
have
a minute. Half the ship's down with fever, in case you haven't noticed. And . . .” Her voice cracked.

“And?”

She jumped up and grabbed the line, readying herself to slide down. “I
hate
those trunks!”

It made no sense. She made no sense. “But you'll do it?”

“Of course I'll do it,” she said, her eyes tearing over. “You asked me, didn't you?”

Since Clockert'd taken over the carpenter's cabin, I was bunking with Jaya and Lobo in the gunroom where all the rifles and handguns was stowed. So 'twas no trouble to keep a watch on Jaya and wait for him to leave for his powwow. Right now, though, he was darning a sock while Lobo carved Poseidon out of a piece of whalebone. I lay in my hammock sketching a hairy orange ape stealing fruit from a Javanese market. I'd painted such apes before—they was common enough on Java—mixed vermilion with a bit of umber to get just the right orange, then brushed it on with a feather tip for fineness. But I didn't care much for color and fineness now.

“Give us a song, Lobo,” Jaya said.

Without looking up, Lobo started in on a shanty about a brave cove who dies and the good funeral his messmates give him. Lobo had the cleanest voice on the ship, no one could argue, and after a few verses I had that soft feeling that sad songs give you.

“Well done, brother,” Jaya said when Lobo finished. He stood up. Jaya was small enough he didn't have to stoop and even had a couple inches to spare between him and the ceiling. “I must go now. I just remember something I promise to do for Van Plaes before morning. Do not wait up for me.”

“We won't,” Lobo said.

Did Lobo mean something extra by that? I couldn't stick around to find out. I shook off the gloom and waited half a minute before telling him I was going to the head.

Instead I took off after Jaya and just spied him going down the hatch to the hold. I lay on my belly and looked down. All clear.

And so was the hold, except for a couple of soldiers De Ridder'd ordered to guard the VOC chests while we was anchored in Table Bay. Which meant the meeting could only be in one place.

The hell.

On a ship the size of the
Lion,
crammed with hundreds of men, there was only two places with any privacy: the top of a mast or the bottom of the hull. The hell was a locker at the bottom of the bow. Spare parts and rope got stored there, and the bosun and his mate sometimes used it for a workshop if they had to. But anyplace was better than the hell. Cramped and airless, it heaved with every wave. Only the hardest stomachs could spend more than a few minutes in there.

I put my ear on the door. Voices.

I couldn't smoke who was talking over the smack of the water, so I rubbed some spit into the hinges and edged the door open a couple inches.

Jaya. Van Assendorp. Barometer Piet Pietersen. The Gos brothers. Plus a few others I couldn't see.

“I tell you we don't need him!” Jaya had his hand braced against a wall and was leaning over the twins, who was sitting on crates. “We will melt it and make new coins. No one will know it came from VOC and no one will look to us.”

“He's right,” Gos said. “Van Swalme just wanted his fifty percent. We don't need him.”

“And uth to do all the work,” his brother added, scratching at a raw saltwater boil on his arm.

“And risk our necks,” said some cove I didn't know.

“It don't matter either way,” Barometer Piet said. “Whether we need Van Swalme or not, we don't got him. So what do you say we talk about something else, hey?”

“We're gonna need a forge,” Gos said.

“Kosnik can build one,” Van Assendorp said, cracking his knuckles.

“The smith will be lucky to live to see another Sunday,” said Jaya.

“How 'bout the gun maker?” asked a voice.

“Working on him,” said another voice.

“What's the problem?” Van Assendorp asked.

“The sword keep.”

So the Polish trio was split.

“Don't worry about the forge now,” Van Assendorp said, ending the fight. “That much we can figure out when we get to the Indies.”

“And the rest?” Barometer Piet asked.

“As planned,” Van Assendorp said.

The men straightened their backs and made to leave. I eased the door shut and snuck back to the cabin.

Krause was snoring like a hog and even Clockert had collapsed over his desk. I longed to join them right there on the small, hard chair. Instead I hauled myself up and unlocked Clockert's storage closet—he'd long since allowed me, but not Krause, the key—and prepared to go count the payroll chests of the Dutch East India Company.

But when I opened the hatch, I heard voices directly below. It seemed that when the men had rebalanced
the cargo,
they moved the treasure chests directly
under the
sick bay, and there were soldiers on guard. I'd have to use the hatch near the galley.

I climbed down the ladder into the main hold unseen and slid around towers of cargo to the wall between the main hold and my old hiding place. I found the knothole and peered through.

There, stacked neatly against a wall, were the objects of every man's dreams. But I'd no need of such fantasies. I knew. Knew what it was like to avert my eyes from the glint of gold bricks stacked floor to ceiling. How it felt to run my fingertips over their sleek sides. The tickle of cool metal when I plunged my arms into a sack of coins, all the way up to my shoulders.

I knew because every coin and bar in those trunks came from the Amsterdam Bank of Exchange, the bank Father once directed, and there had been days, when I was much younger and Albertina was ill, that Father had taken me to work with him.

“Be quiet and stay out of the way,” he would say. “I do not wish to see you until dinnertime.”

And I had obeyed.

I doubted there was a soul alive who knew about the spaces inside the walls of the bank. Only a small child would hide under a table in a rarely used office, and in doing so would lean against a loose panel. Only a small child, with a child's curiosity, would push the panel aside and crawl into the darkness behind it, carefully replacing the board so that no one would notice it had been moved, but leaving it just a hair askew so that she could find her way out again.

The tunnels threaded behind every room in the bank. Including the vault, which was legendary throughout Europe for being absolutely impenetrable. Except by me.

Just the sight of the trunks made me sick.

I'd no need to count them. It was obvious there were more than before, all identical, guarded by two soldiers. I'd no idea how or why they'd multiplied, nor did I care. Bram had asked me to find out if there were more. I had, and there were.

I took far less care leaving the hold than I had entering it, so it took me a moment to figure out why a group of men would be coming out of the hell, and why they would fly into a rage when they saw me.

Gos grabbed my arm and slammed me against a wall. “What are you doing down here?”

“Lithening in at doorth, are you?” Goth said, leering at me.

“What? No! I was just coming from the hold.” Gos's fingers dug into my flesh. “I needed—”

“What exactly did you need, eh?” Gos shook me hard.

The men inched closer, baring their teeth.

“Blankets!” I shrieked. “We need more blankets. Master Clockert sent me to look for some.”

“He thent you, not Krauthe?” said Goth. “Don't thound likely—”

“Take a round turn, mates!” Barometer Piet pried his way through the mob. “The boy says he came down for blankets and I'll stand for him that he did. Any of you that's got a problem with Albert can take it up with me.”