No!
He stuck his thin arms through the bars as far as he could, until his shoulder ached from pressing against iron, frantically searching the floor in all directions in hopes of finding it. His heart sank. It was no use.
And then one day, with the seas calm and the ship steady, Bren noticed a light shining next to him, and behind it, the face of the boy he’d been dreaming about. The one who had fed him. His face was round, and vaguely Asian. Bren sat up and took a better look.
He was real. And it was the orphan from Map, the one Duke and his gang had been bullying.
“You? You’re part of the crew?”
The boy nodded and held out a cup of water. Bren thanked him and drank it lustily.
The hatch opened again and the boy snuffed his light and ran off into the darkness as another light came toward Bren. A moment later Mr. van Decken was squatting next to the brig.
“Are you ready to give the admiral the map?” he said.
Bren glanced around the floor, as much as he could see anyway in the lamplight. He didn’t see the paiza anywhere. Would this horrible man even help him look? Or would he be more than happy to throw Bren to the sharks? But he remembered what the admiral had said to him on deck, back at the harbor. I’m not leaving here without that map. It was truly the map he was interested in, not the paiza. As Bren and Mr. Black had discovered later, Admiral Bowman wasn’t lying when he said that thousands of paizas had been issued during Kublai Khan’s reign. It was worthless to him except as the tablet upon which the treasure map was drawn.
Bren looked at the first mate, struggling to meet his cold eyes. “Yes, I’m ready.”
Bren’s legs were stiff and his arms ached, but he managed to haul himself up two sets of ladders to the deck above, out of the shadows and into a glare so strong, it was like those illustrations from Bible stories where God appears before a terrified sinner. He covered his eyes but still the bright white light shone through his hands, and Bren stumbled blindly into a wooden barrier, falling face-first onto the deck. He heard laughter.
“I’ve heard of needing to get your sea legs,” someone said, “but I’ve never heard of sea eyes!”
More laughter. Bren felt a strong hand hook his elbow, and he was back on his feet. When he could finally see again, what he saw took his breath away: glittering blue water stretching to the horizon in all directions. It was as if a jeweled robe had been shrugged off by some king, rumpled but royal. He heard the snap of canvas and looked up in awe at a full set of sails on three masts, inhaling and exhaling.
The crew was storing tackle, cleaning the decks, climbing in and out of the rigging. Others were mending sails, adding tar to the ropes, and repairing part of the gunwale—the raised edge of the ship. It had obviously been a fierce storm. They all looked at Bren—the outsider—but then went back to work.
Admiral Bowman appeared at the quarterdeck rail, looking down at Bren.
“Ah, Master Owen. You’re looking . . . well? Shall we have a chat?”
Bren nodded, and Mr. van Decken grabbed him by the arm and led him up from the ship’s waist to the quarterdeck, past the wheel, and into a large cabin with a gallery of windows that looked out over the sea.
“Mr. van Decken, take over my watch, will you?” said the admiral.
The first mate nodded, giving Bren a not-so-gentle nudge in the back as he left.
“We call this the chart room,” said the admiral, perching on the edge of a large desk. Sitting on a sofa along the wall was Mr. Richter, a glass of whisky in hand. And standing next to a table covered with maps was a one-eyed man.
“You’ve met Mr. Richter, of course.” Bren nodded at the company man, who responded by taking a swig of his drink. “And over there is my exceptional navigator, Mr. Tybert.”
Bren had seen plenty of one-eyed sailors come through Map, but they all wore eye patches. Mr. Tybert wasn’t wearing one, and Bren tried hard not to gawk at his empty socket, nothing more than a fleshy web of tissue.
“Try not to stare,” said the admiral. “He’s incredibly sensitive.”
Bren glanced at Admiral Bowman to see if he was kidding, and when he turned back, Mr. Tybert was right in front of him.
“You only need one good eye to tell where you’re going,” he said. “Or to tell when a jongen is up to no good.”
Bren stood frozen until the cabin door opened again and the small boy came in, carrying a tray of tea.
“And I believe you have also met Mouse,” said the admiral, moving so the boy could set the tray down. “My ship’s boy.”
Mouse poured two cups of tea, and the admiral offered one to Bren.
“Thank you, sir.”
“You can thank him by giving him the doohickey,” said Mr. Richter, making the shape of the medallion with his free hand.
“The paiza,” corrected the admiral.
Bren set his tea down. His hands were trembling, and he felt his fingers getting damp against the porcelain cup. He didn’t want to drop it. “There’s nothing to hand over,” he said. “I don’t have the paiza. Not anymore.”
Mr. Richter swore a blue streak, causing Bren’s ears to turn red. He held his breath, waiting for the admiral to respond. Bowman’s blue eyes stayed on Bren for what felt like minutes, but as clear as they were, Bren could see nothing behind them.
“Well?” said Mr. Richter, breaking the trance. “Are you just going to stand there admiring him, or run a dagger through his heart for trying to swindle us?”
The admiral stroked his beard, his eyes never leaving Bren.
“He’s not trying to swindle us, Mr. Richter. He does have the paiza. Or to be more precise, the map.”
Mr. Richter blustered a string of unkind words. “Well, where is it?”
The admiral motioned for Bren to tell him. Bren gently tapped himself on the chest.
“Oh dear Lord,” said Mr. Richter. “He stuck it up inside himself?”
“No, you imbecile,” said the admiral. “It’s in his head. Did you not see him demonstrate his knowledge of the hidden map next to the harbor? I must admit, I didn’t quite appreciate what I was seeing at first, etched roughly in sand. But then I remembered something Rand McNally said, after Bren brought us the letter from the harbor. McNally caught Bren glancing at the table, where our maps and Articles of Alliance were laid out, and quickly got rid of him. Something about his devilish memory. He can reproduce the images from memory, flawlessly. Right, Bren?”
“Yes, sir.”
This time Mr. Tybert joined Mr. Richter in cursing him.
The admiral stood up from his desk and walked over to a cabinet, taking from it a small leather portfolio. He returned to the desk, unfolded a good-size sheet of parchment, and motioned for Bren to sit down. He pushed a pen and inkwell toward him.
“And you’d better be right,” he added. “I’m sure I don’t have to tell you that even small differences in the strokes of Chinese symbols can change meanings entirely.”
“No, sir,” said Bren.
“I said back in the harbor of Map that you needed to know what’s at stake,” the admiral began, as Bren sat down to draw.
“Come now,” said Mr. Richter. “He doesn’t need to know everything.”
“Oh, but I disagree,” said the admiral, now hovering over Bren like a vulture. “We need Master Owen’s memory to be as good as advertised, and I think he’ll be just as determined as we are if he knows where it leads.”
“Treasure,” said Bren eagerly. “That’s what you said—the most extraordinary treasure map I can imagine.”
Admiral Bowman smiled. “Well, you must forgive me. I don’t know the limits of your imagination. But would it interest you still to know that the map leads to the lost treasure of Marco Polo?”
Bren just stared at the admiral, and then looked at the company man, and the navigator, and finally at Mouse, to see if any of them were smiling at what had to be a joke at Bren’s expense. But none were.
“The lost treasure of M
arco Polo?” He thought he’d read or heard everything there was to know about the legendary explorer, but he’d never heard this.
“You know the basic story, I assume?”
“I think so,” said Bren. “He traveled around China for more than twenty years, and when he finally sailed for home, a terrible storm sank most of his ships before they reached Persia. He finally made it back to Venice with barely more than the clothes on his back, but was imprisoned when war broke out. He had to dictate his famous book of travels to a fellow prisoner.”
And what a book it was. One that had launched a thousand ships. He thought again of Christopher Columbus’s personal copy that Rand McNally now proudly owned.
Admiral Bowman nodded. “And each and every one of those lost ships was burdened with jewels, coins, and spices, to believe the stories.”
“And none of it has ever been found?” said Bren. “Not even the wrecked ships?”
“Not one piece of evidence in the three hundred years since,” said the admiral. “But I believe people have been looking for the wrong thing in the wrong place.”
“You think the hidden map will lead us to the sunken ships?” said Bren.
“I don’t believe there are any sunken ships,” said the admiral. “I believe the whole story was a lie, devised by Marco Polo himself, to hide a very big secret.”
He left Bren hanging, and Bren nearly leaped from his seat in anticipation.
“Yeah? I mean, yes, sir?”
The admiral glanced at Mr. Richter before continuing. “The Dutch Bicycle and Tulip Company, because of our unique dealings in the Far East, long ago became privy to some intelligence—some would call them rumors—about this lost voyage. I . . . we . . . believe Marco Polo stashed his treasure on the journey home, with every intention of returning for it at a safer time. After all, he knew better than anyone the bandits that plagued the Silk Road back then.”
The admiral sat down on the edge of the desk, next to Bren and the blank parchment in front of him, and tapped the paper with his index finger.
“You think Marco Polo himself made our hidden map?” said Bren, his head swimming again, but not from seasickness.
“I do,” said the admiral. “And I believe that once we crack it, it will lead us to an island that long ago vanished from any map.”
CHAPTER
14
ORIENTATION
“A vanishing island,” said Bren, almost to himself.
“I’m sure your culture has a fable about such a place,” said the admiral. “Most do.”
“It’s called Fortune,” said Bren, instinctively touching his stone necklace. Suddenly every childish desire he’d had for Fortune to be real—every wish for his mother to be there, somehow, waiting for him to find her—scratched its way to the surface. It took all the strength he had to push them back down. This was real; he had to think like a grown-up.
“But . . . wouldn’t the Dutch Bicycle and Tulip Company have found this place by now? After exploring the East for a hundred and fifty years?”
Admiral Bowman laughed.
“Consider how vast the oceans are,” he said, waving a hand over the map where Mr. Tybert was charting their course. “Calculate the square miles that occupy the open sea, beyond our shipping lanes. There must be thousands and thousands of islands no man has set eye or foot upon. Erase it from a map and it’s as good as waving a magic wand to make it disappear.”
“I have seen places disappear from maps,” said Bren. “Places that proved to have been invented by explorers seeking fame for discovering a new island or kingdom. But why stop mapping a place that’s real?”
“I can think of any number of reasons,” said the admiral. “You’ve found something too good to share, for instance. We’ve done it ourselves. There are maps in the vaults of Amsterdam filled with secret knowledge. But in this case, the story is quite different.”
Bowman went back to his desk and sat down. Mr. Richter continued to stew himself in whisky.
“Marco Polo had the great good fortune to travel through the Middle East and China when those societies were open to the world. Then the Moslems conquered the Holy Land and Byzantium, effectively sealing off East from West by land. China took even more drastic steps. After Kublai Khan, they completely shut themselves off from the world, from the contamination of other cultures and religions. They destroyed all evidence that there was a world beyond the Forbidden Empire.”
Bren looked from the admiral to the blank sheet of parchment.
“So you see why I am keenly interested in your mapmaking skills?”
Bren nodded, and he took the pen from the inkwell. It took him maybe half an hour to carefully duplicate the hidden image from memory. There were only three pairs of symbols, but each comprised several brush strokes, and the admiral was right—even slight differences could alter meanings greatly. Plus the rocking of the ship didn’t help.
When he was done, Bren handed the parchment to Admiral Bowman, satisfied that he’d gotten it right. At least, he would have been satisfied if he’d been drawing the images for Mr. Black. But as the admiral stood there staring at it for what seemed like forever, a beetle of doubt began to creep up Bren’s arm.
Finally Bowman set the drawing down and pointed to each image in turn: “The plowman, the cloud maiden, and the silver river.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“That’s what these three symbols mean,” said the admiral. “If my translation is correct. But I have been studying the language for many years now.”
“So that’s what they say,” said Bren. “But what do they mean?”
The admiral smiled. “You’re a clever boy, aren’t you? Are you very good at puzzles?”
Bren didn’t answer right away, afraid the question was a test of sorts.
“Come with me,” said the admiral. “Mr. Richter, hold down the sofa, will you?”
To Bren’s surprise, the admiral opened a hatch hidden next to his desk and invited Bren to climb down.
“My personal cabin,” he said, closing the hatch after them. “Saves me time going back and forth, and of course I can hear if someone goes into the chart room without my permission.”
The cabin was surprisingly small and bare, and like most of the spaces belowdecks, it glowed with paddy lamps—glass jars of seaweed that gave off light when kept in seawater. The admiral lit a proper lantern and pulled a locked wooden box from beneath his cot, opening it with a key that he kept around his neck. He lifted the lid and motioned for Bren to come closer.
It was filled with books! Strange and old-looking books, the kind that would have made Mr. Black’s eyebrows race each other to the middle of his bald head. The admiral pulled out one beautifully decorated volume, bound in dark green leather with silver inlay that read Shih-Ching.
“My finest acquisition,” said the admiral. “The Book of Songs. The only known record of ancient China, written before the birth of Christ. The text was buried in the tomb of the emperor who commissioned it, so that it survived beneath the earth when the Emperor Chin burned all records of the old dynasties. Go on, I know you want to look.”
Bren took the book and sat down. The book had been translated into Dutch, and though he could speak and understand Dutch better than he could read it, there was still something magical just knowing that what lay in his hands was a glimpse into the world’s most secretive culture. Even for the Dutch, with all their colonies in Southeast Asia, China was little more than a vast, unknowable blank on the map.
“How did a Netherlander end up with this?”
“A lowly clerk at one of our trading stations,” said the admiral, “around the turn of the century, when the company briefly had a post on Hong Kong. He forged a friendship, quite illegally, mind you, with a Chinese woman who smuggled him books. Among them was a lacquer box, filled with strips of bamboo, upon which were written this secret history.”
Bren peered down into the open locker to see what else was in there, but the admiral
slowly closed the lid.
“The book records some of the earliest Chinese folktales, including one called ‘The Cloud Maiden and the Plowman.’”
Bren looked up. He could tell he and the admiral were thinking the same thing: it couldn’t be a coincidence. “You think the tale will help us figure out the map?”
“I hope so,” said the admiral. “And I have a feeling you can help. I like to think I have an eye for talent.”
“I’ll try,” said Bren.
“Good. You can study the book in the chart room. But I can’t make it look as if I’m coddling you. You’ll have to make yourself useful. Mr. Graham will see to that.”
Mr. Graham turned out to be Sean, the bosun, the officer in charge of crew and equipment—and the one who had helped Bren up when he first came out of the brig and fell down on the deck. He was not much older than Bren, maybe twenty or so, with a round face and a swatch of red hair on top of his head.
“You’re not Dutch,” said Bren, somewhat surprised.
“My mother will be glad to know it,” said Sean, his Eirish accent pronounced. “There are a few of us aboard every company ship. Although the Netherlanders make us swear a blood oath.” He whipped out a knife the size of a dagger as he said this, and Bren’s eyes nearly fell out of his head. Sean laughed and used the knife to slice the string around a bundle of clothes. “Hope your favorite color is grey.”
He handed Bren a pair of rough grey wool trousers and a scratchy grey wool shirt. Sean wore the same shirt but black trousers, like the other officers. He also gave Bren a small foot locker, a blanket, a pillow, and a tin cup.
“Let’s find you a bunk.”
The ordinary seamen, called hobs, all slept in the middle of the ship, in hammocks hung between wooden partitions. The officers had private cabins in the caboose, beneath the quarterdeck at the rear of the ship. Skilled crew like the carpenter, the cook, and the navigator all slept in the forecastle, at the front of the ship. The ship’s surgeon, Mr. Leiden, lived alone on the orlop deck, because no one trusted a man with bone saws.
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