‘You were young.’ There was a shine to his face, an old fear taking hold again. ‘It wasn’t your burden to carry. We assumed one of the mark’s foul servants had come upon you in the woods, killed your father and branded you in some perverse ritual, but you showed no ill effects. Then we heard a witchfinder had chased the mark over from England, where his order had been battling it for years. He claimed it was a devil’s work and set to scouring the land of its followers, slaughtering the lepers and burning the witches who’d appeared in its wake.’
‘The pyres burnt across Frisia for months, until it was finally banished,’ continued his uncle. ‘Your grandfather was worried the witchfinder would mistake you for one of its servants, so he hid you away.’ A dark shadow passed across his face, the wine trembling in his hand. ‘That was a terrible time. The devil twisted itself tight around the great and powerful, leading them into perversity. A few of the old families couldn’t be saved. They were already too enthralled by its evil.’
Lost in thought, the governor general’s fingernails rapped the side of his mug. They were buffed to points, a style long out of fashion and somehow unsettling. They looked like talons, thought Arent. As if his uncle were slowly transforming into the bird of prey he’d always resembled.
‘Arent, there’s something else you should know. According to the witchfinder, the devil called itself Old Tom.’
Arent’s legs felt weak beneath him, and he had to steady himself against the desk.
‘Old Tom was a beggar,’ he protested. ‘The villagers murdered him.’
‘Or maybe they found the right creature by accident. If you throw enough stones, occasionally you hit somebody deserving.’ The governor general shook his head. ‘Whatever the truth, those events were almost thirty years ago, why would the mark appear again now? Half a world away?’ He turned his dark eyes upon Arent. ‘Do you know my mistress, Creesjie Jens?’
Arent shook his head, confused at this new line of questioning.
‘Her last husband was the witchfinder who saved the Provinces. The man we hid you from. It’s through him I came to know Creesjie. If he confided in her about his work, she may know more about Old Tom, why it threatens this ship and what that mark on your wrist represents.’
‘If you believe there’s some threat, wouldn’t it be wisest to return to Batavia?’
‘Retreat, you mean?’ The governor general snorted his contempt for the idea. ‘There are almost three thousand souls in Batavia and fewer than three hundred aboard this ship. If Old Tom is here, it will be trapped. Do this for me, Arent. Any resource’ – he spotted Arent’s objection – ‘aside from Pipps shall be yours.’
‘I can’t do what he does.’
‘You stormed a stronghold to save me from the Spanish army,’ balked the governor general.
‘I didn’t go there expecting to succeed; I went there knowing I would die.’
‘Then why go at all?’
‘Because I couldn’t have lived with the guilt of not having tried.’
Overcome by the weight of love he bore his nephew, the governor general turned away to disguise it. ‘I never should have taught you about Charlemagne when you were a boy,’ he said. ‘It’s rotted your mind.’
Uncomfortable around any feeling that didn’t end in profit, he went to his table and sifted through some papers. ‘You’ve served Pipps for five years,’ he said, once his documents were thoroughly reordered. ‘Surely, you’ve observed his method.’
‘Aye, and I’ve observed squirrels running up trees, but I can’t do that either. If you want to save this ship, you need to free Sammy.’
‘I know I’m not your uncle by blood, but I feel our kinship keenly. I’ve watched you grow up, and I know your capabilities. You were your grandfather’s heir, chosen above his own five sons and seven grandsons. He did not offer you that honour because you were stupid.’
‘Sammy Pipps isn’t simply clever,’ argued Arent. ‘He can lift up the edges of the world and peek beneath. He has a gift I’ll never understand. Believe me, I’ve tried.’
The face of poor Edward Coil flitted through his thoughts, followed by the usual shame.
‘I can’t free him, Arent.’ There was a strange expression on the governor general’s face. ‘I
14
Arent stared at his uncle, feeling queasy. He’d not truly reckoned with the idea that this task would fall to him – alone. He’d been convinced that his uncle’s affection for him would sway the matter, but it was the same affection that now doomed them.
Jan Haan’s faith in him was absolute and it always had been. As a boy, he’d taught him swordplay by pitting him against full-grown men. First one, then two, then three and four, until servants would stop in their duties to watch him practise.