They turned their attention back to activity in the middle of the ship, where the ship’s surgeon was assembling all the bones they had found.
“What’s he doing?” Bren asked.
“The Dutch Bicycle and Tulip Company makes anatomical measurements of all their officers, using the results to estimate the shape and length of their major bones and skull,” Lady Barrett explained. “Helps them identify remains.”
“Oh,” said Bren, who watched with fascination while the surgeon put what was left of these men back together, constantly referring back to a thick leather book of records. When he had finished, there were thirteen skeletons, more or less, and seeing them lined up across the deck like that cast a pall over the other men.
After carefully studying and measuring them all, the surgeon concluded that none of the men was Barentsz. Everyone went back to their duties, and Bren went belowdecks, where he accidentally stumbled within earshot of a conversation between the first mate, Mr. Hein, and Tromp. They were at one end of the gangway leading to the caboose; he was at the other, just out of sight.
“So now what?” said Mr. Hein.
“We go through the books,” said Tromp in a low voice. “If those men were part of Barentsz’s crew, there might be a journal or some other clue where to find him.”
“What about . . . you know,” said Mr. Hein.
Tromp didn’t answer right away, and Bren felt a creeping sense of dread.
“Plan still holds,” said Tromp. “We’ll kill the Indian woman and her bodyguards. She won’t be a problem, for obvious reasons, but I’d suggest getting the two goons drunk.”
“And the children?” said Mr. Hein.
“We’ll maroon them at our next stop. They won’t last the winter. Then we head home with or without Barentsz.”
Bren heard footsteps coming through the gangway, and he fought every impulse to run. All he could do was remain perfectly still, and hopefully invisible, until the men went by. It was only Mr. Hein, and he walked right past where Bren was eavesdropping without noticing. Bren then ran as fast as he could to find Lady Barrett.
CHAPTER
21
MONSTER ISLAND
Bren threw open the door to Shveta’s cabin without knocking. Still trying to catch his breath, he panted, “We’re in dang—”
Shveta was sitting cross-legged on the floor, her arms resting on each knee and the middle finger and thumb on each hand curled into a circle. She was facing her cabin’s one portal, away from Bren, but as soon as the door had flung open she spun her head over her shoulder, and her furious gaze froze Bren in his tracks. For a brief moment, the whites of her eyes were a brilliant green.
“I tried to stop him,” said Lady Barrett, who had obviously been chasing him. “Never enter a lady’s chambers without knocking, I always say.”
“Ani said I could find her in her cabin,” said Bren.
“Don’t blame me,” said Ani, who was right behind them.
Bren looked at Shveta again. Her eyes were normal, but she was still angry, and she was staring at Lady Barrett. It was obvious she could tell it was her, despite her seaman’s trousers and shirt and fake beard.
“Where did you come from?” said Shveta, her voice like an icicle.
“Originally?” said Lady Barrett, half smirking.
Shveta turned to Bren. “Finish your thought.”
“We’re in danger,” he said. “I overheard the captain. They plan to kill you and your men and maroon Ani and me, then head back to Amsterdam. He never had any intention of taking you to the North Pole.”
“And when is he thinking he’ll carry out this ill-advised maneuver?”
“Soon,” said Bren. “They plan to sail north a bit longer, if the journals they found tell them anything. If not, maybe sooner.”
Shveta rose from the floor without using her arms, her folded legs gracefully returning to upright form as if her body were on a spring.
“I may kill Aadesh and Aadarsh myself,” she said, glancing at Lady Barrett. To Bren she said, “You draw maps, right, bub?”
“We should go ahead and kill him,” said Aadesh. “We know he’s planning to kill us.”
“Planning to try,” said Aadarsh. “I’ll cut his fat little body in half.”
“With what?” said Lady Barrett. “He took your weapons. You’re severely outnumbered. And I’m not sure you’re much of a killer, at that.”
Aadarsh growled.
“I don’t think the whole ship’s in on it,” said Bren. “It sounded like something between Captain Tromp and Mr. Hein.”
“Tromp knows the Arctic,” Shveta reminded them.
“So does his first mate,” said Aadesh.
“And what if he doesn’t want to cooperate, either?” said Shveta.
“On to the next one,” said Aadarsh, slamming his hand onto the table.
Shveta slapped Aadarsh upside the head. “Use your brain! We can’t kill everyone. Unless you dum-dums know how to sail through ice.”
“In my brother’s defense,” said Aadesh, “we wouldn’t have to kill that many before the rest were persuaded.” He subtly leaned out of arm’s reach from Shveta as he finished talking.
“No!” said Bren, who had been sitting quietly with Ani but couldn’t take it anymore. “This will not become a bloodbath!”
The look Shveta gave him halted him midspeech, but somehow he found the nerve to go on. “Mutiny is a terrible thing. I learned that firsthand on the Albatross. It may solve one problem, but it creates many more. The best course is to work with the evil you know.”
He sat back, expecting Shveta to lash out at him, but she didn’t. No one said anything for a minute, until Lady Barrett spoke up.
“Bren’s right. There are enough of us to . . . persuade Captain Tromp to stick to the plan he was paid for.”
Shveta closed her eyes and took a deep breath. “You have seen the daily navigational charts, though, right, Bren?”
“Yes. I can duplicate them,” said Bren. “If you can get me parchment and ink.”
“Ani can,” said Shveta. “Go ahead and map our way forward. We’ll see where Tromp takes us from here. If we have to remove him, we’ll have your forged charts to keep the crew going our way.”
“That will never work,” said Lady Barrett.
“Perhaps it won’t have to,” said Shveta. “I can be very persuasive.”
The six of them left Shveta’s room and went about their business as usual. For Shveta, that actually meant staying put and doing whatever it was she did in private. For Aadesh and Aadarsh, it meant playing chess in the officers’ saloon. Lady Barrett went back to her watch in her guise as an ordinary seaman, and Bren and Ani went to the kennels to fetch their dogs. Just as Bren had taken ownership of Caesar, Ani had struck up a friendship with another husky, named Rotter, and had begun joining Bren on walks around the deck. Most of the men and officers were amused by the sight of the two children walking their dogs, but Nindemann was not one of them. One day he had said to Bren, “You shouldn’t grow too attached to a dog in the Arctic.”
Bren had immediately remembered Tromp’s fur collar and his horrible story about having to kill and eat his favorite husky. Assuming it was even true.
That night at supper, Bren could hardly eat. Here they were—Shveta, Ani and Bren, Aadesh and Aadarsh, sitting with Captain Tromp and his first mate, knowing they planned to kill them. It turned his stomach, but apparently not the twins’, who ate heartily as usual. So did Nindemann, the engineer, and Bren took that as a good sign. He liked Nindemann. He didn’t want to believe he was in on this. Tromp and Mr. Hein sort of stabbed at their food, distracted. Nindemann obviously had nothing on his mind except a good meal after a day’s work.
“Did you learn anything from the journals you found?” Shveta asked innocently.
“Indeed,” said Tromp. “Those bones we found were Barentsz’s men, and one of the journals belonged to Barentsz himself. Apparently they found land, above the Eightie
th Parallel.”
“The Eightieth Parallel?” said Nindemann. “Have you ever seen a map showing land that far north?”
Tromp shook his head. “It gets better. They claim it was inhabited.”
Nindemann stopped chewing. “Who could live there?”
“According to them, monsters.”
If Bren hadn’t already lost his appetite, he would have now. “Monsters?”
Tromp smiled at him. The cruelest smile Bren had ever seen. “What are you afraid of, jongen? You’re already traveling with these two freaks.”
Shveta didn’t react. Ani just narrowed her green eyes at the captain.
“Anyway,” said Tromp, “they found this new land, a group of islands. It’s as far as they could go, so Barentsz and half the crew decided to overwinter; the other half took the ship back toward Nova Zembla. They knew if something happened no one would know they made it that far north. ’Course, we know what happened after that, at least to the men on Nova Zembla.”
“And Barentsz?” said Nindemann.
“I think we know where to find him,” said Tromp, eyeing Shveta and Ani as he said it.
“Can I read his journal?” said Bren. The question drew a scowl from Tromp, so Bren added, “I’m a journalist myself.”
“Are you, jongen? A regular scribe? Good for you. And no. That is company property.”
That night, before Bren snuffed the candle in their tiny room, Ani stopped him. “Don’t you want to read before bed?” She was holding up a weather-beaten leather journal.
“Where did you get that?” said Bren, eagerly taking it and opening to the first pages.
“Don’t ask so many questions,” said Ani. “But tonight is the only night we have with it. So scoot over.”
Bren made room for her on his cot, and by their one light they read the harrowing account of Barentsz and his crew pushing farther into the Arctic than any European had before.
Their plan had been to cross the northern coast of Russia and Siberia, in search of a major river that would take them into China. But the seas had proven more frozen than expected during summer, and the weather and storms far more unpredictable. Instead of returning home directly, they sailed north, based on little, it seemed, other than the unproven theory that the Arctic was actually warmer the farther north you went in summer because of the unending daylight and the convergence of two warm ocean currents. It was the same theory that had once led Rand McNally to offer a reward to anyone who could map the way to the supposed island paradise at the top of the world.
Tromp had told them what happened next—the discovery of an unknown land; the decision to send half the crew back home. This part of the journal, once the crew was forced to overwinter, was crushingly sad. Barentsz described in poetic detail the loneliness, how the permanent darkness infected his soul and mind, the inescapable cold, his debilitating fear of bears, and the eerie sounds of nature: ice moving and cracking, howling winds, and icebergs flipping or crashing into the sea.
Then he talked about the monsters.
It was never clear to Bren what the doomed navigator was describing. People that lived like animals? Animals that behaved like people? Some horrifying hybrid of man and beast? Or perhaps it was all just hallucination, brought on by privation and fear.
The last part of the journal had been written by one of the crewmen sent home, after these men had been forced to disembark at Nova Zembla. They had been preyed upon by a bear. Four men had been lost already. So the rest went south and into the mountains, hoping for a miracle. When none had come, the man writing the journal had decided, according to his last entry, dated January 1598, to return to the makeshift house to die, so that Barentsz’s journal could be found.
When they finished reading, Ani snuck out of their room to return the journal, and Bren lay back in his cot. The pages haunted him all night, and for nights after. They were enduring the same bitter cold, hearing the same ill winds, and the same ice moaning and cracking. There were constant reminders of how close and violent death could be. It was hard for Bren not to think of the Barentsz journal as some forbidding omen, almost as if he had traveled in time to read the journal he himself had written of their own doomed voyage.
CHAPTER
22
ICEBREAKERS
Barentsz’s journal described the unknown lands as approximately two hundred miles due north of Nova Zembla. Even with its reinforced hull, the Sea Lion was barely able to make a knot of speed through the slushy sea, which meant it might be July before they found what Bren had started calling Monster Island.
When they crossed the Eightieth Parallel, the men let out a great whoop. Before the Barentsz journal proved otherwise, it was believed that no one had penetrated this far into the Arctic. Now this crew, while not first, had the chance to return home as the only living explorers to go here. But their elation was quickly tempered by caution. None of them knew what to expect, except hardship. Tromp had not told the crew at large all of what Barentsz wrote.
They spotted land soon enough—a cluster of islands small and large, dozens of them, that reminded Bren of the Dragon Islands in the East Netherlands. Except these islands seemed wholly deserted, barren of any settlement, if not life. The southernmost lands were snow-capped but covered by moss, lichen, and nesting birds, and they passed congregations of seals and walruses covering entire shorelines. With no clear idea how to navigate the islands, Tromp and his navigator plotted their course by the ice, choosing places where the floes were more broken, allowing for movement, if you could call it that. The ship crawled north with less speed than anyone on board could’ve walked.
Bren, the boy who had never wanted to draw maps, eagerly stood shivering by the navigator as he sat atop the deckhouse at the rear of the ship, trying to map their path with frozen hands. This was, after all, what Bren had once dreamt of—experiencing the thrill of discovering new lands and sending men like his father back to his drawing table to revise the collective image of the known world.
“How the devil are we to find where Barentsz might’ve landed?” Tromp wondered aloud. “There could be a thousand islands here.”
The navigator eagerly offered, “We circle the islands, try every channel, until we see a black flag or anything resembling a camp.”
Bren knew he just wanted the chance to map their new discovery whole, but Tromp shook his head.
“We don’t have the time or the resources to sail in circles,” he said.
In the end, it wouldn’t matter. They were forced to anchor the ship at the cape of a large island around the Eighty-First Parallel. The ice would give no more.
“We’ll rest. Then send the icebreakers out,” ordered Tromp.
When Bren was growing up in Map, his father used to remind him that there were worse jobs than being a mapmaker. Stonemasons were a favorite example of David Owen’s, those broad-backed men who broke and shaped rock. If you visited their guildhall, you were sure to see men with mangled feet and hands, warped spines, crushed arms and legs. They took immense pride in their work, but it crippled their bodies.
The icebreakers made Bren remember those proud but damaged tradesmen. There was no wind strong enough to propel a sailing ship through solid ice. So ships like the Sea Lion designated parts of the crew to go out on the ice with picks and sledgehammers and axes and chisel the ship free. They were in the latitudes where the ice was permanent, fifteen feet thick in places. Their task was nothing short of Herculean.
Common perils included falling through the ice, accidentally striking another man’s hands or feet, or worst of all, getting crushed by the ship lurching forward into a gap they had just made.
The engineer, Nindemann, led the icebreakers and worked on the gang himself. From the prow of the ship, Bren watched him. Despite the cold he had taken off his furs and rolled up his sleeves in the bright sunshine. His arms had the same ropy muscles as Bren’s old nemesis, Otto Bruun, and he had the same dark hair and dark, determined look in his eyes at all tim
es. Yet he was kind to Bren, and he wondered if Otto had once been like this . . . friendly, hopeful, until driven mad by the cruelty of a ship’s captain or simply the cruelty of a life spent at sea. Was there some way of predicting who would break? Would Nindemann change?
They made only halting progress through the thicker ice, while scouts used the midnight sun to search day and night from the crow’s nest for signs of Barentsz’s camp or black flags. After several days, they had spotted none, and so Tromp made the fateful decision to anchor the Sea Lion and organize a search party that would go ashore, starting with one of the larger islands where they had seen plenty of animals that could have sustained a stranded party.
Tromp left Mr. Hein, his first mate, in charge of the ship. He chose Nindemann and eight others to go with him. And then he surprised everyone by calling on Bren and Ani to go along as well.
“We’re taking the dogs, and the jongens have made pets of two of ’em,” said Tromp. “Will keep ’em calm.”
Bren and Ani knew the real reason—this was where Tromp planned to finally maroon them. Nindemann also suggested taking Aadesh and Aadarsh, but Tromp dismissed that, too. His excuse was that the men would be useless exposed to weather like this, having lived their lives in much warmer climates, but again, Bren knew the real reason: the brothers’ presence would make it more difficult for Tromp to leave Ani behind. Bren’s spirits lifted, though, when he noticed that Lady Barrett had somehow gotten herself on the landing party.
They hitched six of the dogs, including Caesar and Rotter, to a pair of sleds holding supplies and weapons, but the search party walked. When they got farther from the ship, where the snow and ice began to pile up, they all shod their feet with what looked like lawn tennis racquets to Bren. But these snowshoes did keep his feet from sinking into the wet snow and slush, keeping his already freezing feet from hurting any worse.
They found nothing the first day, camped, and tried again. They kept following false leads, or mirages. It was a funny thing about Arctic light—it was so bright and clear in summer, and brought everything into such sharp relief, and yet so often it showed you nothing but distortion or trickery. After three days, Bren and Ani were exhausted, afraid to sleep because of Tromp. Finally, as they neared the shore again, they found something . . . feces filled with fish bones, along with what looked to be the remains of a fire.
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