Cast Off (27 page)

“We move tomorrow night, my brother.”

The ocean lurched and rolled. Me and Jaya had to steady ourselves against the walls of the companionway.

“Already?” I asked.

“You want to wait more? You mad, brother?”

“No, it's just—”

Jaya cut me off. “You know, others, they say to me, Jaya, why do you trust Bram Broen? He is all the time with Albert, and Albert, she listens into doors and speaks when she shouldn't speak. I say to them, no, no, Bram is good boy. He has good good heart like his father and he feel sorry for little girl. Tell me, Bram, am I right? Because if I am not right, then we have big big problem.”

Thunder growled in the distance.

“Aye, you're right,
Om
.” I met his eye. “I feel sorry for her is all.”

“Good,” Jaya said. “You make sure you are ready, yes? Tomorrow night.”

“Aye,” I said.

“All hands hoay! All hands hoay!”

The bosun's call to the deck at this hour of the afternoon was unexpected and irregular. Clockert rose from his desk without bothering to close his books.

The trumpet sounded and the bosun called again.

“All hands hoay!”

“Come, Jochims,” Clockert said.

I hung up the glister syringe I'd been cleaning and followed the doctor to the fo'c'sle. The madness that had been brewing was coming to a head. I could feel it. The air thrummed with the drumbeat of hundreds of feet marching upward from the lower decks toward we knew not what. Not one voice spoke.

Outside, the
Lion
was stalled head to wind. The soldiers were locked below, but all the sailors were assembled. They hung from the rigging and crowded the decks, except for a clearing in the waist where Happy Jan had been butchering a sow. The beast easily weighed three hundred pounds. It lay, headless and gutless, on a table made of six long boards fixed together in a square set loose on top of two trestles. Happy Jan was stowing a large cleaver and several other knives in a sack, his hands shiny with pig blood.

Master Clockert and I found a place in a corner of the fo'c'sle near the bow. I scanned the crowds and found Lobo perched amidships on a rail with an arm around Louis. Bram pushed his way through the crowds to stand beside me, looking as grim as I felt.

“What's happening?” I whispered.

“Over there,” he said, pointing with his chin.

De Ridder and Van Plaes commanded the quarterdeck with Oak behind them. Between the officers was Van Assendorp. In irons. He'd a cuff around his neck and manacles on his wrists and ankles, all connected by a long chain that ran from top to bottom. One of Van Assendorp's eyes was swollen shut, and there was blood spattered on his shirt. Van Plaes held the free end of the chain like a leash, his lipless mouth curled down in disgust.

“Men!” the captain shouted. “I've called you to witness the accusation and imprisonment of Diederick Van Assendorp, commander of soldiers, for the most serious crime on any ship.
Mutiny
.”

A murmur went through the crowd. But not a gasp. By now the plot was secret to no one.

“Mister Van Assendorp has designed to steal cargo from the Dutch East India Company ship
Golden Lion.
He has corrupted and conspired with men under his command to usurp my authority as captain.”

Only then did I see the others in irons near the quarterdeck rail. Jaya, Barometer Piet, Kosnik, Gos, and Goth.

“Bram,” I whispered. “How did the captain—?”

“I told him,” he whispered back. “In his cabin. After he gave me the letter.”

“Did you tell him about Van Plaes?”

“I didn't know about Van Plaes then.”

Van Plaes held Van Assendorp's chain tightly with both hands. I surmised his bruised knuckles had something to do with Van Assendorp's swollen eye and the blood on his shirt.

“You don't think—?” I asked.

“What?”

“Look at Van Plaes's hands,” I whispered. “He's beaten Van Assendorp raw. Could he have been putting on a show and been the captain's man on the inside all along?”

“What about what he did to you in Clockert's cabin?”

“Part of the show, perhaps?”

“That didn't look like a show,” Bram said.

“Then what's he up to now?”

“Shhh,” Clockert warned us.

“Mister Van Assendorp,” commanded the captain, a mixture of fury and disgust deepening the lines on his face, “have you anything to say on your own behalf?”

All shuffles and whispers ceased. Van Assendorp's red face deepened to wine, his white scar like a scythe on his cheek.

“No,” he said.

“As you say. Your crime is indefensible.” Turning to the crew, De Ridder asked, “Is there any man here who wishes to speak for Mister Van Assendorp before he is imprisoned in the hold with his fellow conspirators, there to remain until they can be tried and sentenced in Batavia?”

A long silence followed, during which no one dared move.

“Mister Van Plaes—”

“Captain!” Van Plaes interrupted. “There is something I wish to say.”

“Please do,” De Ridder said, looking surprised but not alarmed.

“I'm sorry.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“It wasn't intended to end like this.”

Van Plaes pulled a pistol from his jacket and fired. De Ridder slumped to the deck. The crowd erupted. Oak snarled and leaped for Van Plaes's neck.

Bodies struggled—to fight the mutineers, to join them, to flee—but packed together, no one was free to move. From below came the rumble of soldiers shouting and pounding the decks. I was crushed against the rail, knocked by flailing arms and legs until Bram shoved me between Clockert and himself.

On the quarterdeck Van Assendorp and the others had thrown off their chains. Now they were passing around muskets, retrieved from a hiding place under a tarp on the quarterdeck.

A gunshot fired into the air startled the ship into something like quiet. Van Plaes stood in the captain's usual place at the center of the quarterdeck, a smoking pistol in one hand and a bloody handkerchief pressed to his jaw with the other. He could thank Oak for that wound, poor Oak, who was now leashed a few feet away, howling over his dead master's body.

“Lions! Avast ye!” he commanded. The crew eyed him warily. “I have command of this ship now, and all who choose to follow me shall be rewarded for their loyalty. Ask yourselves this: What light purse did you expect to receive for your nine months' hard labor on this ship? Join me now, and I shall double it. Nay, triple it!”

The appeal of Van Plaes's offer was marred somewhat by Oak's whines and the red pool around De Ridder.

“And if we don't?” shouted a voice from the starboard rigging.

“Those of you who are with my men and me shall go about your duties as usual until we make land, whereupon you shall be given your fair share of the VOC payroll, and we shall part as comrades,” Van Plaes answered. “Those opposed shall berth in lock-up in the hold.”

“Why should we believe you'll give us our fair share?” called another voice. “Why should we think you won't kill us like you killed De Ridder?”

Van Plaes pressed the handkerchief harder against his cheek. “No one is more grieved than I by the death of Captain De Ridder. It was brought about by the loose tongue of one of this company. I assure you, gentlemen, that loose tongue will be silenced.”

An oily fear trickled down my spine. Next to me, Bram drew in a sharp breath.

“Now then, if there are no further questions . . .” Van Plaes surveyed the decks. “Who is with me?”

Most hands went up. But not mine, and not Bram's.

Van Plaes's men began rounding up the people who couldn't deny being De Ridder's supporters, like Slippert, whose allegiance to the captain was well-known. Most gave in without a fight. Against the firearms of the mutineers, what hope had they of resistance? It was only a matter of time before they came to Bram and me, and we'd nowhere to hide.

The mutineers pressed ahead to the waist, shackling the few who tried to defy them. But almost everyone claimed to be with Van Plaes. When the mutineers reached Happy Jan, he pulled a machete from his sack and held it out in front of him, swinging it slowly from side to side.

“I belong to no man,” he said.

The mutineers looked to their leader.

“Leave him be,” Van Plaes said.

The mutineers were at the fo'c'sle now, just a few feet away. The soldiers were shouting and pounding again.

“You,” Van Plaes said, raising his voice to be heard over the soldiers and pointing at a crewman I knew only by sight. “You're the son of De Ridder's housemaid.”

“Not on my life, sir—”

“Don't deny it.” Van Plaes adjusted the wadded cloth on his cheek and winced. “I have the ship's log.”

Barometer Piet held out a rope. “Over here, mate. No use fighting it. You'll be safe enough in the hold.”

The young man twisted through the crowd and allowed Piet to tie his hands. Van Plaes repeated this process with two other sailors until, finally, his eye landed on
Bram and
me. My stomach turned to ice. I found Bram's hand
and gripped
it hard.

“Ah! Mister Broen and Miss De Winter. The source of all our trouble today. Were it not for the bad luck Miss De Winter brought upon us and Mister Broen's whispers in the captain's ear, we should have avoided this bloodshed altogether.”

Looking around, I saw a great deal of nodding and narrowing of eyes, even among the men who were tied up. Bram and I had few friends on the ship. We'd find no help here.

“Were it not for you two,” Van Plaes continued, “Captain De Ridder would still be among us, Mister Van Assendorp would have been spared humiliation, and I would still have my left cheek!”

Van Plaes dropped the handkerchief with a flourish and a chorus of cries went around at the sight of the terrible wound Oak had given him. Every word he spoke must have been excruciating.

Van Plaes wanted blood for blood. And the blood he wanted was ours.

The soldiers thundered louder. I could feel their pounding through the deck.

“Broen! De Winter! Come here!”

Perhaps a dozen crew separated us from our fate. I locked eyes with Bram. He knew as well as I what would happen if we crossed that space: Death. Quick or slow, but certain all the same.

Clockert put his hands on our shoulders. “Leave them, Van Plaes. They're children,” he said.

“They're grown enough to lie, steal, and spy, Master Clockert!” Van Plaes's voice rose and he was sweating. I'd seen this side of him in Clockert's cabin when he nearly strangled me. “If they're grown enough to be keelhauled, they're grown enough for what I have in mind for them. Come to think of it, Mister Broen will fetch a good price in the Batavia slave market. Perhaps I shan't be too rough with him after all.”

Bram squeezed my hand hard enough to break bone.

“Come, my brother,” Jaya called, holding out a rope. “It is better if you do not fight.”

“As for Miss De Winter, shall I ransom her to her father or sell her to the highest bidder along with her friend here?”

Better death than that.

We were at the far end of the fo'c'sle with no way out except toward Van Plaes and his men. Clockert had tried to help us, but what could he do against so many? I looked for a friendly face. Louis was weeping with his face buried in Lobo's shirt. Lobo himself was staring at Bram and me but not with hatred. I glanced down at Happy Jan in the waist, and his eyes spoke a message, though I couldn't say what.

I turned to Bram. Was slavery our fate? Had I traded my father in Amsterdam for Van Plaes here at sea?

The sea.

It surrounded us, sunlight crackling the green waves. Without question there was death in those waters. Death by drowning, death by sharks. But also freedom and the peace of a death by choice. And, just perhaps, a slim hope of survival.

I cocked my head at Bram.
Yes?
The corners of his mouth turned up.
Yes.

I looked down at Happy Jan again, this time with understanding. He nodded and gripped the edge of the table.

“Fare thee well, master,” I whispered to Clockert.

As one, Bram and I jumped the rail and leaped
into the
ocean, just as Happy Jan flipped the great sow onto
the deck
and hurled the tabletop after us.

Cold water stole my breath but only for a moment. I climbed onto Bram's back and he swam for the tabletop, now a makeshift raft that was our only chance of survival.

Shouts of anger rained down on us, but over them rang a few cries of triumph.

“Clap on, Miss Petra,” Bram said when we reached the raft.

I slithered on and pulled Bram up after me, then turned for one last glimpse of the
Lion
in time to see Van Plaes's infuriated face and Lobo's and Louis's joyful ones. Barometer Piet turned his back, and Clockert tipped his hat at us with a rare smile. Jaya spat red betel juice into the sea, and Happy Jan pressed his palms together and raised them over his head. We paddled madly away. A few gunshots followed, but at this distance they went wild. Before long, we'd lost sight of the ship.