“Sorry,” he said.
“I’ve been trying to run into you for weeks now,” the guest said, at which point Bren looked up into a pair of clear blue eyes. “Don’t you ever need to relieve yourself at night?”
Bren almost burst into tears, throwing his arms around Lady Barrett and standing there, hugging her, until his feet went numb on the cold wooden floor.
“I thought . . . I just assumed . . .”
“That no one was coming for you?” said Lady Barrett.
Bren again had to fight back tears.
“Your father and Mr. Black had no choice but to separate from you, I can assure you. As for Sean, he was determined to come back, but once again I had to put my foot down and order him around. He’s taking care of them.”
Bren allowed himself a slight smile. “I’d feel better if you were still with them too. Sean needs you.”
Lady Barrett grabbed Bren’s hands in hers. “Darling, whatever do you mean? Right now you need me. To get you out of here, and back home, where you belong.”
Bren didn’t answer right away. Lady Barrett let his hands fall away from hers.
“Bren, what’s going on with you?”
“This may be hard for you to understand,” he began, then broke off, looking around. “I need to get back to my room. They’ll miss me.”
“Bren,” said Lady Barrett firmly, grabbing his hands again. “What’s the matter?”
“It’s just, I think I may need to do this,” he said.
“Do what?”
“Go with Shveta,” he replied. Lady Barrett just looked at him, dumbfounded. He tried to make her understand. “I know what she’s after now, and this is bigger than anything Yaozu wanted, bigger than the Eight Immortals. And anyway, I may not have a choice. This may be my destiny, and part of me, a big part, I suppose, wants to know for sure.”
“You have a choice,” said Lady Barrett. “I’m offering it now.”
Bren pulled away from her completely. “I really have to get back to my bed.” And that was the last he saw of her before it was time to set sail.
When Bren stepped aboard the Dutch Bicycle & Tulip Company ship, Sea Lion, he felt as if he were dreaming. The sort of dream that feels so real, until you notice strange details or jumps in time. The Sea Lion was a company ship, like the Albatross, but it had a completely different build, sturdy and double-hulled in places, the better to break through pack ice. The names said it all—the Albatross had been a soaring bird; the Sea Lion was a plodding beast.
That alone seemed to account for the difference in the men who captained the two ships. Maarten Tromp was a man built to withstand the hardships of winter. He could stomach any sort of food, was impervious to cold, and had not an ounce of sentiment about him. Around his neck he wore a collar of fur made, he said, from his favorite sled dog. Stranded one winter in the White Sea, he had killed his most loyal companion for food and clothing.
And that was another big difference—dogs. The ship carried at least a dozen huskies for when they might need to sled across the ice with hundreds of pounds of supplies. Bren liked dogs, but this group of wolflike hounds seemed savage, perhaps from being under the lash of Captain Tromp. They were walked on leashes about the deck for fresh air, growling and snapping at the men, and the lower-ranking sailors had to clean up after them. The stench from their kennels below was terrible.
To his surprise, Bren wasn’t one of those on dog-poop duty. Unlike Admiral Bowman, Captain Tromp didn’t see a need to give his “guests” positions among the crew of forty or so men, even Shveta’s burly bodyguards. He berthed them in a separate area at the back of the ship, told them to take the air when they wanted and to stay out of his way, except at suppertime, when they were welcome to take mess with him and the other officers.
“I don’t want you, but the crew won’t have you,” was his explanation for that arrangement.
They had been disarmed before boarding, though. Aadesh and Aadarsh had turned over their giant swords and their daggers; Ani had surrendered her daggers, too. Though Bren took note that the Sea Lion’s quartermaster hadn’t made either Ani or Shveta turn over their “bracelets.” Or Ani’s belt.
Bren quickly settled into a routine, which included walking one of the dogs—a husky named Caesar. He had sort of made friends with the dog belowdecks, mainly by feeding it occasionally, and the ordinary seamen seemed impressed that Bren wanted to pitch in. But it didn’t take him long to make his first mistake.
It was during evening mess with the captain, and Bren’s mistake was opening his mouth. Tired of Tromp going on about how Shveta and company had no idea what they were in for, how a pile of jewels wouldn’t buy them courage during an Arctic storm, Bren boasted, “I’ve actually sailed with a Dutch yacht before. A Far Easter.”
Tromp stopped (briefly) in the middle of chewing his salted beef, pointed his beer stein at Bren, and said, “Have ya now, jongen?”
Bren swallowed hard, but it didn’t bring his words back. “I have,” he said cautiously. “Nothing so arduous as a polar journey, of course.”
“Oh, now, let’s not be modest!” said Tromp, slamming his stein down and gesturing with both hands now. “Everyone in the world knows Far Easters are the best of the best. A year at sea, each way, maybe more. Touching two, sometimes three oceans. Planting the Orange flag in lands hither and yonder! Tell me, boy. Which ship were you on?”
Bren tried to swallow again, but no luck. “The Albatross,” he managed to say.
Tromp lowered his arms and a very serious look came over his face. “You were on Reynard Bowman’s ship?”
Bren nodded. He noticed that the handful of other officers at the mess table were suddenly very interested.
“A traitor to his country,” Tromp said. He was no longer shouting. In fact, his voice was little more than a whisper. “Cape Colony is still in chaos. The butchery there . . .” He looked around at his officers. “I heard they found the governor’s head, arms, and legs in different rooms of the house. Same with the other guest. Women, too!” he added, looking at Shveta and Ani. “All Bowman’s doing. Was a member of that dark league, what was the name . . .”
“The Order of the Black Tulip,” said Bren.
Tromp eyed Bren. “You did know him, then. I suppose you heard folks say he was in league with the Devil?”
“Some thought that, yes.”
“Well I knew he was full of crap,” said Tromp. “Trying to scare folks, burnish the myth of the great admiral!” His voice was rising again. “Did he tell you the story about the two-horned narwhal?”
“He did,” said Bren. “When I first met him, in fact.”
“Bet you thought he was quite the dashing hero, didn’t ya? How the beast speared their ship, and the cook to boot, and Bowman saved the day by hacking off both horns single-handedly!”
The other officers laughed. Bren’s stomach went sour with humiliation.
“Well, I was on that ship, boy, and nothing like it happened. We took home a narwhal, all right, on a hunt. Bowman wasn’t even in the whaling boat. Some hero, huh?” said Tromp, leaning back in his chair and folding his arms across his bulging stomach.
“You’re right,” Bren admitted. “I thought he was a hero. That’s why I wanted to join his ship. But I learned otherwise, on my own, a while ago.”
“I hope you pick things up quicker on this ship, boy,” said Tromp. “’Cause you don’t have a clue what you’re in for.”
Bren looked at Tromp, trying to hold his eyes to prove he wasn’t afraid. He would have no trouble keeping his opinion of his new captain in check; he already despised him. But he also had the sinking feeling that the captain was right.
CHAPTER
20
ICE HAVEN
They had left Murmansk on June 1, sailing east along the Seventieth Parallel until an archipelago called Nova Zembla by the Dutch came into view on their port side. This was the last known location of a crew led by Willem Barentsz, a Netherlander who had go
ne looking for a Northeast Passage to Asia. Two expeditions had already tried and failed to find any signs of them, which Bren found puzzling, until he saw what Nova Zembla looked like on a map—a long caterpillar of land more than six hundred miles long stretching deep into the Arctic. Most of the interior was mountainous, which meant that if Barentsz and his men had taken shelter in caves, it might be impossible to find them, or what was left of them.
Tromp, though, had a theory. “First two search parties focused their attention on the southern island,” he said, pointing to the map where Nova Zembla’s two main islands were just barely divided by a narrow strait. “The assumption being, Barentsz would have overwintered in the warmest latitude possible. Logical, yes, but I’m betting he never made it.”
Tromp moved his index finger to the northeast. “His ship was retreating from here, having failed again to find a way across. He would have been coming at the island from the north. And if he was forced to overwinter because of storms and ice packs, he would have landed where he could.”
“But they could have walked south,” said his first mate, Mr. Hein.
“Over mountains? Through storms? When they were likely already exhausted?”
Mr. Hein rubbed his chin. “Man’ll do anything to keep warm.”
“Yes,” Tromp agreed, “and you can keep warm by building shelter and starting a fire. By late fall and midwinter, no part of that island would have been warm.”
Bren had to agree with that. The Sea Lion had just started northeast, up the coast of the southern island, and the air was freezing and the wind even worse. And it was the tenth of June. Their entire short voyage had been a slog through slushy waters, and even the never-setting sun barely brought the highest temperatures above freezing.
Another obstacle to rescue also became clear: the fog was dense, replaced occasionally by curtains of sleet and snow.
“Are we going to land and explore on foot?” Bren asked.
Tromp was at the starboard rail of the quarterdeck, taking in the island with a spyglass. “Sounds like a job for a spry young explorer like yourself and your girlfriend.”
“Girlfriend?”
“The one with the freakish green eyes.”
Bren was horrified. “Ani is not my girlfriend.”
“Then you won’t mind if I throw her overboard for good luck?” said Tromp.
“What?”
“She’s spooking the men. The tall one is, too, but she did pay me fair and square.”
“You’re not serious,” said Bren, at which point Tromp closed his spyglass and grabbed Bren by the ear, wrenching it so painfully he was certain he could feel it tearing from his head.
“Everything I say on this ship you should take seriously, jongen. Did Bowman let you backtalk him like that? Whatever bad habits you picked up on that faithless journey, I’ll be the one to break you of them. Starting with this: only officers on the quarterdeck.”
He pulled Bren by the ear to the ladder leading to the ship’s waist and turned him loose at the top step. Bren, unable to keep his balance, stumbled and fell halfway down before catching himself. Tromp laughed and went back to his duties. Bren picked himself up and finished his unplanned journey to the main deck, and as he did so, he caught sight of a crewman eyeing him from the cover of the ratlines. Even more embarrassed now, he hurried belowdecks and went straight to his cabin.
“Here,” said Ani, “this will help.” She held out a soft, greenish-brown blob toward Bren, who was standing in front of a dirty mirror in one of the common areas below. He was examining the damage to his ear, which was miraculously still attached, but bleeding. He looked at Ani’s offering.
“Help with what? Caulking the ship?”
“Your ear, dum-dum.”
“Last time you mixed something up for me, I ended up kidnapped,” said Bren. “No thank you.”
Ani kicked him behind the knee, causing Bren to crumple to the floor. With his head at waist level, Ani grabbed his hair and pressed the poultice against his wounded ear. The warm, squishy feeling reminded Bren of the time Duke Swyers had turned a bowl of porridge upside down on his head.
Ah, Duke. I once thought you were the worst person in the world.
“Feel better?” said Ani.
Bren pushed her away as he stood up again. “Better? You mean besides the new pain in my knee and yanking my hair out?” But then a cool, soothing sensation came over his ear, the pain receding fast. “Actually, yeah, it does feel pretty good.”
“Idiot,” said Ani, stomping off.
“Sorry,” Bren said to no one in particular.
Even as his ear healed, the captain’s attack opened his eyes to just how cruel Tromp was to his men. At least, some of his men. The disposable ones, or the ones who couldn’t fight back. Tromp struck them, gave them the worst jobs and the worst watches, humiliated them in front of their crewmates, and frequently had the purser dock their future pay for vague “insubordination.”
Bren could only imagine how badly Tromp would treat him if he could. If Shveta weren’t paying for Bren’s protection.
Shveta herself, meanwhile, seemed to go into suspended animation. She appeared for supper but spoke little, then retired to the cabin she shared with Ani for the rest of the evening. She could occasionally be seen taking the air at midday (she was impossible to miss with her radiant clothing), but she spoke to no one and the men avoided her. Even when Bren walked Caesar by her, the husky whimpered and shrunk away.
The farther north they went along the coast of Nova Zembla, the more frozen the slushy water, and it took the Sea Lion more than a week to reach the top of the archipelago—the “rump” of the caterpillar. Everyone was on the lookout for black flags, the official Dutch distress signal. Bren, for his part, began to regret turning away Lady Barrett. He didn’t regret his decision to go north, not yet anyway, but he wished she had offered to come with him. He could have used an ally.
Finally a man in the crow’s nest spotted something, though it wasn’t a flag.
“A house, Cap’n!” he called out. “What’s left of one!”
In fact, the sun was so bright and the tip of the island so bare, Bren could see the structure with his naked eye. It looked like a raised wooden cabin that had either never been finished or was already coming apart. Once they landed it was clear where Barentsz and his men had gotten their wood.
“They took apart their ship,” said a man named Nindemann, the Sea Lion’s chief engineer. “You can see how they warped the hull boards to make walls. That’s the keel there, cut in two, to make the foundation.”
“So shelter wasn’t an issue,” said Tromp. “Not at first, anyway.” He and the engineer were examining what was left of the structure. “They got the cabin built, looks like. I’d wager that weather has taken it apart in the three years since.”
“Or bears,” said Nindemann.
The wind was so loud Bren could hardly hear, but he heard the word bears. “Polar bears?” he asked, trying not to sound afraid. Black had once had a book at his store called Terrors of the North. It described in lurid detail the dangers of animals such as polar bears, narwhals, killer whales, sharks, and a few ghoulish things Bren was pretty sure were mythological, like something called the Highland Nightmare, a creature with the body of a horse and the head and torso of a Scotsman, said to haunt the Caledonian forests. “Why would polar bears take apart a cabin?”
Tromp scowled at him. “Are you daft? Same reason a man opens a tin of sardines: to eat what’s inside.”
“You think Barentsz and his crew were eaten by bears?” Bren asked Nindemann, not wanted to invite more abuse from the captain.
“He had camped on Nova Zembla before, on an earlier expedition,” the engineer explained. “Talked about bears as if they ran amok here. Two of his men on that occasion were killed by bears. Barentsz hated the things. Was terrified of ’em.”
Bren shivered, telling himself it was just the cold. He couldn’t get the stories from that book out of hi
s head, about how polar bears could smell seals through the ice, and how they’d been known to track prey for dozens of miles if they were hungry. They could swim, climb, and run as fast as a lion but were twice as big.
“Don’t worry, jongen,” said Tromp, patting Bren on the back, which slowly turned into a squeezing of his neck by the captain’s massive, rough hand. “You’ve got a sight more to fear from me than some old bear.”
He laughed as he walked off, preparing to disembark with a landing party, and Nindemann gave Bren a look that said, Be careful. A warning Bren hardly needed. As the landing party gathered to leave, the man that had seen Bren’s embarrassing fall down the ladder sidled over to Bren and said, “Don’t worry, jongen. I’m looking out for you.” And Lady Barrett winked at him.
When the party returned to the ship, Bren tried to get Lady Barrett alone as soon as he could, which proved less difficult than he would have imagined. The crew was in a frenzy, going through all the abandoned supplies the landing party had dumped onto the deck: copper pots and iron pans; a few rifles; a box of books; and sacks of bones, presumably human. In the hubbub, Bren and Lady Barrett slipped off to the far side of the ship.
“You didn’t think I’d let you take off with these lunatics on your own, did you, Bren?”
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m glad you’re here, but I’m sorry you felt obligated to follow me into this foolishness, if that’s what it is.”
She gently elbowed him. “Don’t look so glum, bub. Who do you think you’re talking to? I’m always up for an epic adventure and a chance to claim godlike power.”
Bren laughed. “Why didn’t you tell me before?”
“The fewer people to know a secret, the better, remember?” said Lady Barrett. “I didn’t want you looking for me. Might’ve aroused suspicion. But this compulsion you had to stay with Shveta . . . you need to tell me more. What is she after?”
“She wants to remake the world,” said Bren. “And I’m not sure that’s a bad thing.”
The Sea of the Dead Page 14
