Cast Off (24 page)

Which was no box at all but a trunk.

A trunk wrapped in iron.

I'd found one of the treasure chests of the Dutch East India Company.

“You wanted to see me, Master Clockert?”

Doc Clock sat at his desk and scrutinized me. The cabin looked like last night's gale winds had blasted through a porthole.

“I did. I'd like to speak to you about your particular friend, Albert.”

“Is he all right, sir?” I looked over my shoulder, but the curtain was drawn.

“I treated him all night. To be honest”—Clockert cleaned under his fingernails with a scalpel—“I doubted seriously whether he'd live to see the sun rise. The fever was so high, you see. I purged him. I bled him a full eight ounces. I used the
speculum linguae
to administer oil of vitriol. And, finally, when those gentle measures had no effect on the poor boy, I determined I'd nothing to lose by administering an extreme treatment. Something I prescribe only in the most dire cases, as the cure can be as dangerous as the illness itself.”

“What treatment was that, sir?”
Extreme treatment
had to mean the worst kind of torture. How could Petra survive it, wasted away as she was?

Clockert glared down at me. “I bathed him.”

“In water?”

Medical coves all thought bathing in water was deadly, which was why no one ever took a bath and everybody stank. On Java we knew different. Still, Clockert must've thought Petra was at death's door if he put her in water.

And if he put her in water, he must've taken off her clothes . . .

“I did indeed. And it seems to have worked. The fever broke early this morning.” Clockert waited for what he was telling me to sink in. Believe me, it'd sunk. “Now. Is there anything you would care to tell me about your friend—
Albert
?”

For two weeks I knew only heat and cold. One minute flames seared my vital organs, and the next ice laced my joints, crushed bone against bone. At times I was back in the hold, tearing my fingernails on the rough walls, fleeing the rats. Often I found myself in the front room in Amsterdam, the poker's orange tip bearing down on me.

Clockert drifted in and out of this madness like a mercurial ghost. He held me while I coughed and wiped phlegm from my chin. He caught the soup that I vomited in a basin. What my body failed to produce on its own, he wrested from it with lancets and enemas in an effort to balance the humors that had gone so badly awry.

After the fire and ice gave way, I slept. When I awoke, Clockert was at his desk, his pen scratching in a journal.

“You moved me,” I croaked.

“It was more comfortable for me to witness your demise here from my desk than from that chair you are so fond of in the sick bay.”

“I'm sorry to have disappointed you by surviving.”

“You do not disappoint me, Jochims. You do, however, disoblige me.”

“Master?”

“Surely I don't strike you as blind or stupid?” Clockert put down his pen. “I suspected you were female from the moment I met you—nay, even before that, for never has there been a human male with a knack for housekeeping such as yours. But a medical man notices things—a fineness of bone, a generosity of hip, a wish to keep clothes on after being keelhauled—and as a medical man, I can say, without excessive pride, that I am more skilled than most. Without
proof
of my suspicions, however, I could look the other way without fear of moral compromise. But now . . .”

Snippets of various medical treatments over the course of my illness flashed through my head. “Now you have proof,” I finished for him.

“I do. And, since I attended you during your illness, if the captain were to discover your sex, he'd know that I'd been aware of your deception. I'm sorry, Jochims, but I'm only willing to risk so much of my personal and professional reputation protecting you.”

“Does anyone else know?” I asked in a small voice.

“No one who hasn't known all along. Your friend Mister Broen was quite eager to confess all once I confronted him, but I assured him I had no interest in the details of your sordid tale. In any case, it takes no stretch of imagination to figure why a girl in any circumstance should choose to cast aside femininity in favor of manhood.”

“And now?” I wished I could sit up instead of lie on my back like a beached codfish, but I was too weak.

“What happens next is not for me to decide. As soon as you're able, you must go and see the captain. I've already spoken to him.”

It was over, then. My fate was in the captain's hands. “As you wish,” I whispered.

“As I wish.”
Clockert sighed. “I assure you that precious little in this life is as I wish.”

I found out there was good parts and bad parts to being alone.

With Pa gone and Petra sick, I could go a whole day with nary a word from anyone. But being alone also meant no one bothered to hide anything from me. I was privy to private parleys and secret habits. I knew the sailor Joost Van Den Dool had a sweetheart waiting for him in Java—and a wife waiting for him in Lelystad. I knew Lobo was a Jew. I didn't know anything about Clockert, one of the only truly private men on board, but I knew, almost to a one, who was aiming to pinch the VOC payroll and how they was going to do it.

Trunks filled up with gold and silver was too heavy to move fast, so they'd have to be pre-loaded in the getaway boats. But if you pre-load the trunks, you need to leave something that looks like 'em in the hold so no one knows they're missing. That's why Jaya'd made doubles of the VOC trunks using wood from my stores and iron from Kosnik. When the dummy trunks was finished and loaded with clay bricks, Van Assendorp arranged for the Gos brothers to stand guard while other mutineers swapped out the real trunks for the fake ones. Now six trunks—with three million florins of gold, silver,
and copper—
was stowed in two of the small boats. When the
Lion
got to the East Indies, the mutineers would escape in the boats along with their booty.

But they couldn't sneak off without anyone seeing. Getting two boats over the side of a ship and down twenty or so feet to the water was a big affair. They'd have to fight their way off.

Jaya caught me the morning after my parley with Clockert when we was tying up our hammocks.

“One minute, my brother. I wish to talk to you,” he said, looking over his shoulder. “It is almost time. You are with us?”

Was I? I still hadn't made up my mind, but here was Jaya needing an answer. I nodded.

“Smart boy. Your father would be proud of you.” Jaya filled me in on the details of the plan, most of which I'd already smoked for myself.

“But how will we get away? Won't the captain come after us?” I asked.

“Do not worry about Captain De Ridder. He will not be able to stop us after we flood guns with seawater and tangle rigging. We leave at nighttime and bar door to his cabin. His officers', also. No one will be hurt. I will let you know when it is the time—soon soon. All right?”

My pa wouldn't be proud. And 'twasn't likely no one was getting hurt. But I nodded.

“Aye,
Om
. All right.”

Later that night Lobo and me played Sheep and Wolf in the waist on a board he made himself. He'd done a fair job of it too, with a six-point star in each corner. For once, his sheep was losing to my wolves. I had a pile of white pegs on my side, and Lobo didn't have either of my red ones.

I won the last sheep and Lobo grunted. The cove hated to lose. We switched sides and started another round.

“How's Albert?” Lobo asked.

“His fever's gone. Clockert says he should be up in a week or so.” Petra'd have to see the captain as soon as she was fit, but for now she was safe in the sick bay.

He jerked his head for me to move closer and whispered in Portuguese, “Some of the men are aiming to steal the VOC payroll.”

“I know,” I answered in the same tongue. Like most Java folk, I could speak Portuguese and Dutch—and Malay, of course—at least well enough to get by, plus bits and pieces of what I heard on the ship. Picking up new lingo was never much trouble for me.

“You know?”

“I know who's in on it.”

“Word is spreading, then,” Lobo said.

“Who else knows?” I asked.

“The thieves themselves, of course. And I think only a few others. But more will learn of it soon, now that it's started.”

We played a few more turns, me giving up a few more sheep but taking a wolf, before I said, “Tell me, Lobo. Why aren't you in on it?”

“Well, for one thing, no one asked me.” Lobo flashed his white teeth. “And for another, I've no fight with the captain. He's been fair to me, never asking why the son of a Jewish gem trader would want to go to sea. He cares more about my aim with a gun than my religion. What of you, Bram? Are you in?”

That treasure was my best chance at a future, but mutiny didn't sit right with me. And then there was Petra. No one had asked her, either, but she'd never sign on if they did.

“Look, Braminho,” Lobo said, “every man must decide for himself what he's going to do here. We don't know what these coves have planned, but I promise you this: It
will
come down to a fight. And when it does, you come to me.”

“Aye, Lobo,” I said. “I will.”