Seeing the faces around her, Creesjie lifted her chin haughtily, as if they were servants to be stared down. ‘I needed somebody to introduce our demon, so I asked Crauwels to recommend the worst man he could. He gave me Bosey. Believe me, murder was the least of his sins. I didn’t enjoy what I did to him, but he was drugged insensible. There was mercy in it.’
‘I looked into his eyes as he died,’ argued Sara, offended by her dismissive tone. ‘He was in agony. There was no mercy there.’
‘How did you do it?’ interrupted Lia, her eagerness betraying her fascination for the mechanics behind the crime. ‘Nobody went near him. How did you make him catch flame the way you did?’
‘The stack of crates he was standing on had been hollowed out, and a ladder built inside. A confederate of mine was inside. He was responsible for the voice you heard. When the time came, my confederate simply opened a small hatch and lit Bosey’s robes from the inside.’
The crowd muttered angrily. Many of them had been on the docks when Bosey caught fire and such suffering wasn’t easily forgotten.
‘Why did you hide Sander’s body?’ pressed Lia.
There was something terrible in her eagerness for answers, thought Sara. It was as if this was just another of Sammy Pipps’s cases, empty of consequence, existing only for her amusement.
‘Sander Kers was the last of his witchfinding order,’ said Creesjie, whose expression suggested she felt the same unease as Sara. ‘They tortured and butchered without care, and I thought the world best rid of them. By careful planning, I’d managed to slaughter the others, but I wanted to take Sander’s life personally. He taught Pieter every vile trick he knew, so I lured him to Batavia. I’d intended to kill him the same night as Jan Haan, but when he heard Reynier van Schooten’s confession, he went down to investigate the treasure in the cargo hold. By terrible coincidence, he overheard me talking with …’ She faltered, almost tripping over a name, ‘… an accomplice. I managed to get behind him and slit his throat, but it was clumsy. In the darkness, I couldn’t be certain I hadn’t left something incriminating behind, so we dragged the body into one of Bosey’s smuggling compartments until we knew what to do with it.’
From beyond the circle of spectators came a muffled howl of pain. Arent darted towards it, Sara’s eyes following him.
Drecht was bleeding from a gash on the head made by a rock now sitting innocuously beside him. Somebody had thrown it at him.
Arent’s eyes passed across the crowd slowly, causing them to shy back.
‘You’ve got the right to be angry at him,’ said Arent. ‘After what he did. You’ve got the right to be angry at her, as well.’ He jerked his thumb towards Creesjie. ‘But enough blood’s been spilt already. There’s wrongs need righting and we’ll come to that soon enough, but it won’t be done from anger. That’s how Old Tom got loose in the first place, and real or not, look at the damage was done.’ He let the words settle, then crossed the space towards Creesjie. He was grim-faced and huge, and she shrank away from him.
‘Do you have my father’s rosary?’ he demanded.
‘I threw it away,’ she said, sounding genuinely remorseful. ‘It was among Pieter’s possessions. Your uncle hired Pieter to kill your father, and your grandfather asked for the rosary as proof he’d completed his contract. Once he’d seen it, Casper ordered Pieter to destroy it, but he kept it for some reason. A trophy, perhaps. It wasn’t left in the animal pens to hurt you, Arent.’ There was a throb in her throat. ‘I wanted Jan Haan to know why this was happening to him. The assassination of your father is what started everything. When Pieter stabbed him, you leapt at Pieter with an arrow, and he had to half drown you in a stream to keep you from killing him. Pieter was so badly injured it was all he could do to drag himself away. He was afraid of you, that’s why he left you in the woods alone. A jagged rock made that scar on your wrist as you thrashed in the water. It shouldn’t have led to anything, but you drew it on some doors in a village, and when Jan saw the chaos it caused, he realised he had a way to make himself a fortune. He brought the scheme to Casper van den Berg and Pieter. Casper provided the necessary funds and Pieter spun a tale of possession and rituals out of it, using his fellow witchfinders to terrorise the lands of those Jan sent him after. Together, they drove their competitors out of business, including my family.’
‘Your family?’ queried Drecht, still tied to his rock.
‘Creesjie Jens was born Emily de Haviland,’ said Sara, examining every twitch of Creesjie’s face, trying to find the woman within. For the past two years, she had looked on these features with love, thinking she knew every thought that lay behind them. Now, she realised how foolish she’d been. She’d been used and betrayed.
She felt like she’d lost Creesjie, not her husband.