Vos slapped her hand away, earning an annoyed glance from Arent. ‘Lieutenant Hayes cannot help you any more than I can,’ he said officiously. ‘We’re passengers like you. Harangue the first mate, or the chief merchant.’
‘I want to talk to the captain,’ demanded the irate man, pushing the woman out of the way.
‘And I’m certain he’d like to talk to you,’ said Vos blandly. ‘Perhaps you should try hollering to him.’
Rather than wait for a response, he strode purposefully towards the gunpowder store and rapped on the door with the authority of a man for whom doors were always opened. Steps thudded on the other side, a panel sliding open, revealing suspicious blue eyes under wild white eyebrows.
‘Who’s that?’ rasped an old voice.
‘Chamberlain Vos, representing Governor General Jan Haan. This is Arent Hayes, the companion of Samuel Pipps.’ He gestured for the metal disc Crauwels had given Arent in the great cabin, which Arent handed to him. He held it up to the slot. ‘We’re here with the blessings of your captain.’
Something scraped, the door swinging open, revealing a weathered sailor with only one arm, bent double like an overdrawn bow. He was shirtless, in slops that reached his knees. A twisted lock of blond hair hung from a cord around his neck, his own hair springing off his head like sparks from a grey bonfire.
‘Come in, then,’ he said, gesturing them inside. ‘But bar the door after you, if you please.’
The gunpowder store was a windowless compartment with tin plates nailed to the walls and dozens of small casks of gunpowder laid flat in racks. There was a hammock in the corner and a privy pail beneath it that, thankfully, was empty.
A thick wooden beam scraped back and forth above Arent’s ducked head.
‘Connects the rudder to the whipstaff in the helm,’ said the constable, who’d noticed Arent noticing. ‘You get used to the squeaking after a while.’
At the centre of the room was the huge box containing The Folly. It was being used as a table by the constable, who sat down and swung his feet on top of it, sending a pair of dice skittering to the floor.
He was barefoot, like every other sailor Arent had seen.
Arent stared at the box in bafflement, wondering how something so precious had ended up being treated so carelessly. The Folly was the reason they’d been called to Batavia all those months ago. Only a handful of people knew what it was, and even Sammy wasn’t one of them. It had been quietly built, quietly tested, quietly stolen, then quietly retrieved. They’d spent an hour in its company after recovering it and had examined it from top to bottom.
Even so, they couldn’t make head nor tail of its purpose.
It came in three pieces which locked together. Once assembled, a brass globe lay inside a circle of wood, surrounded by rings of stars, a moon and a sun. Whenever you tilted it, cogs spun and everything shifted, such that trying to keep track of even one piece had given Arent a headache.
Whatever it was, it was important enough for the Gentlemen 17 to send their most valuable agent to find it, knowing full well the journey from Amsterdam might kill him first.
Fortunately, Sammy had not only survived, but succeeded in his errand, uncovering four Portuguese spies. Arent had been tasked with bringing them before the governor general’s wrath, but two had taken their lives before he laid hands on them and two had spotted his approach and escaped.
The failure still embarrassed him.
‘What brings fine sirs like yourselves down to the arse end of the ship?’ asked the constable, putting a dried piece of fish into his mouth. Far as Arent could tell there wasn’t a single tooth waiting for it.
‘Has anybody approached you about putting spark to this room?’ replied Arent, finding no better way to frame the question.
The constable’s old face collapsed in confusion, like an orange that had just had all the juice sucked out of it.
‘Why would anybody want to do that?’ he asked.
‘A threat’s been made against the ship.’
‘By me?’
‘No, by –’ Arent faltered, aware of how ridiculous the answer was. ‘By a leper.’
‘A leper,’ repeated the constable, looking to Vos for confirmation of this foolishness.
The chamberlain bit a chunk out of his lemon, but said nothing.
‘You think a leper’s convinced me to take part in a plot that drowns me along with everybody else?’ The constable munched his fish noisily. ‘Well, let me think on that a minute. I get so many lepers down here, it’s difficult to keep them straight.’
Arent kicked at the floor.
Investigation wasn’t his work, and he wasn’t comfortable doing it. They’d tried once before. Sammy thought he saw the sparkle of some talent in Arent, and a quick way to retire. He’d trained him, then given him a case. It went well enough until they nearly hanged the wrong man on Arent’s good word. Only caught the mistake because Sammy put his bottle down long enough to peer hard at the facts, spotting something Arent had missed.