“For what purpose?” asked Tom, brow furrowing.
“A friend of mine, Remy Vanille, finished his audit just yesterday. He says they’re nothing harrowing. In fact, he said it was much like an invitation to a club. It’s as though they’re going ’round to each and every one of the gentry and buttering them up in order to get something.”
“What did they want?”
“Mr. Vanille said that the Bureau extended a position to him, should he be ‘interested in helping to protect England and her assets at home and abroad’.”
“So they’re campaigning to rally patriotism and, I assume, to sniff out traitors and troublemakers.” Tom put it plainly.
“As much as you dislike politics, sir, you’re a smashing interpreter of political intent,” Ozias jested. “You ought to take up a chair in Parliament!”
“I don’t think so,” said Tom, grinning.
“Anyhow, I brought this to your attention so you wouldn’t be surprised to learn they came asking about you just last week.”
“What do they want with me? I’m no noble.”
“Seems you have just enough money for them to take notice of you … Mr. Crowe.” Ozias got quiet but kept sweeping away the ashes from the fireplace.
Hearing Ozias call him Crowe instead of Walsh, Tom’s eyebrows shot up, then he grinned and held up his hands in surrender. “I apologize, Ozias, but I couldn’t possibly live in this house if they knew—”
“Save yourself the trouble of explaining, sir. Your business is what it is, but, considering the state of things in England, you ought to tell Charlotte and me everything from now on.” Having swept up all the soot, Ozias rested the end of the broom on the floor, the butt end propped against his shoulder like a musket. Satisfied that he’d gotten his mind cleared with Thomas, he smiled and waited for Tom’s reply.
“What gave it away?” asked Tom, for fun.
“Well, sir, Charlotte and I are not as young as we once were, but I should think you don’t take either of us for senile,” he joked, grinning when Tom laughed. “It was a matter of time and elimination, actually. I quickly decided you weren’t a drunk. A drunk may come home half-dressed and beaten, but he would use the front door, not come acrobatically leaping from rooftop to rooftop.”
“I’ve known a nimble drunk or two,” Tom countered sarcastically.
“I also couldn’t find reason to assume you were a squandering, negligent son or nephew or what-have-you, belonging to some lofty aristocratic family. This is because you never hold your own parties, seldom bring home a harem from the ones you do attend …”
Tom looked over his shoulder, mistaking Charlotte for Molly and experiencing a passing rush of heat to his face.
“… You rarely buy much of anything that could rightly be called an ‘excess’…” Ozias was saying.
“All right, all right,” Tom interrupted, holding up one hand.
“Charlotte put the pieces together for me after Miss Bishop left and you went after her.”
“That was all just a—” Tom began to explain before Charlotte entered and cut him off.
“Judging by Miss Bishop’s glow, I’d wager that a few nights in Paris solved all those troubles,” she sang, patting Tom on the cheek.
“The two of you are getting a fair bit cheeky in your old age, yeah?” Tom jabbed, crossing his arms with a scowl as Ozias and Charlotte shared a laugh.
That evening snow began to fall. Tom, in the library with Molly, stood up tall from what he’d been reading and stared out the window for a moment. Molly noticed and asked what he saw. It was nothing in particular, he explained, except that the crowds had gone home, and he felt it would be a better time than any to go into the garden and search around the tree for anything of interest. Molly had almost forgotten about their mission, and she nodded when Tom told her he’d be back inside later.
Ozias had built a small, personal gardening shed next the house, right up against the brick wall that ran ‘round the garden and separated it from the adjacent residence. Tom asked Ozias for his key, put on a coat and headed outside. Discreetly he strolled about the grounds, taking his time and peeking about every which way, assuring himself that no prying eyes were following him, either from a neighbor’s window or otherwise.
Opening up the gardening shed, Tom found an assortment of empty pots and tools. From the neat arrangement he borrowed a spade and shut the shed closed, returning to the tree without stopping to survey the windows and rooftops again.
Before he circled the tree even once, Tom stopped instinctively at a particular spot where the roots spread wide and the grass between them appeared ever so pale compared to that in other places. The moment he saw it, he remembered it from the dream he’d had on the Danube. He had been looking down at the trunk of the tree from the same position. Going only from that hunch, he dropped to one knee and struck the soil with the spade.
The soil did not give so much as it chipped under the force of the blow. Winter had already had weeks to fortify it against any intrusion until the spring. Tom struck again and again, chopping up the patch until he was able to sink the spade into softer dirt. However, only five or so inches below, the roots of the tree itself began to prevent further excavation. Ignoring these defences, Thomas changed hands and chopped at the roots with strength enough to break them up as well.
After twenty or so minutes, his palms red and blistering, Tom had cleared a hole nearly a metre deep in every direction. Turning the spade over in his hand, he scooped away a bladeful of dirt from the bottom, scratching a metallic surface as he did. Setting the spade aside, he brushed the cold soil with his hand and felt the smooth surface. With his fingers he unearthed each of its four corners and pried it out of place, using the spade as a lever. The box that popped out of the dirt was half the size of an ordinary hatbox and made of iron, which had rusted badly.
Molly winced when she came downstairs and saw boot prints striping the floor and disappearing into the dining room. Following them, she found Thomas, just as she expected. Hovering over his newfound treasure box, an iron spike in hand, he was bouncing his weight up and down in an attempt to pop open the lid. Suddenly he lost his grip and the spike fell to the floor, with all the other instruments clanging together in an awful racket.
“You found it?” she asked, biting her tongue on the matter of the dirty floor.
“Right where I was shown,” Tom replied with boyish excitement tightening his face.
“What do you think is inside?”
“Dirt.”
Molly folded her arms and shifted her weight to one leg.
“I haven’t looked yet,” he said, reaching into the box and taking out folded parchment paper and digging for whatever he’d heard rattling around in the bottom on his way inside.
“What’s that?” she asked, suddenly intrigued as Thomas plucked something small and shimmering from a crease in one of the papers. It shone beautifully in the low light and was a familiar blue.
Tom held it between his forefinger and thumb as carefully as a sewing needle, for it was quite pointed and shaped like an icicle. “It’s a compass needle,” he whispered, “made of genamite.”
****
The sheaf of parchments, no matter how they were shuffled and ordered, did not make any more sense to Tom than they did separately. On one of them a map had been drawn. The problem was it appeared to have another laid out over top of it, as if another map had bled onto the first because of moisture or too much contact with ink from another piece of paper. Complicating this further, the handwriting was so small it was decidedly illegible. Not until Molly pointed over his shoulder and recognized the handwritten word, “Helvetii,” did Thomas understand what he was seeing.
Crossing the library and pulling a map of Eastern Europe from the shelves, Thomas hurried back to the table he’d covered with the contents of the iron box. Unfolding the map and laying the smaller map next to it, he was able to match up one of the bled-over maps to a location in Romania. It was
a sketch of the lands surrounding Argeş Sa, where they had been only a day earlier. Once this was distinguishable from the second overlapping map, Tom decided the second sketch, overlapping the first, was of the half of London containing Stepney Hall.
“You see here,” said Thomas, showing Molly his new revelation. “This is actually two maps over top of one another.”
“Did you notice?” she asked, pointing to the bottom corner of the paper, where a signature stood out from the rest of the writing. “It says, ‘Alecandre Love’.”
“Are you sure?” he asked.
“Anything else wouldn’t make sense,” she persisted. “It’s written quite clearly compared to everything else. Why?”
“He must have owned this house before me. Captain Love fought the Royal Navy in the battle at Longshore. His ship, Dreaded Amphitrite, was sunk off of Ragged Island, in the Bahamas. Longshore is the nickname seafaring werewolves gave to the Ragged Island Range. Once you see the end of one island, another begins.” Tom rolled up his sleeves and rubbed his right eye, which itched from the dust and flakes rubbing off the papers.
“Love was a pirate, then?” Molly guessed.
“No, the strange thing is that he was a commanding officer, awaiting promotion to admiral in the Royal Navy.”
Molly recoiled and cocked her head with a puzzled expression.
“Captain Love was responsible for managing a moderate naval presence around Nassau around 1782. After the English were thwarted at Yorktown, in the American colonies, a Spanish fleet showed its face near Nassau, and Captain Love was the first to respond to it.”
“And what happened?”
“Not a blow was struck,” answered Tom. “According to rumor, Love threatened the fleet by displaying a magical weapon, and they surrendered. Shortly after, the Royal Navy—saying Love had gone mad—chased him as far as Longshore, where he was cornered and sunk.” Tom finished the tale and shrugged. “There’s one detail that disturbs me.”
Molly looked up curiously from the maps. “What?”
Tom dropped a finger on the signature again and slid it away. “The Dreaded Amphitrite was sunk in 1782. This map is dated 1783. It had to have been brought back from the wreck.”
“Maybe it was a mistake. I don’t think Love swam it back from the grave,” Molly commented, not finding it all that exciting.
“Perhaps, but then what is this a map of, and why is it dated 1785?” asked Tom, producing another piece of paper, on which was sketched a large tract of land on one side and on the other what appeared to be poems or verses filling the page.
The map of the unfamiliar location was particularly puzzling. Whoever had drawn it called it “Nok dol Ghon,” and referred to himself as “The Alchemist.” Thomas reasoned that whoever’s work he had stumbled upon in the iron box knew Scriptic to some extent. In addition, “Nok dol Ghon” was an Atlantean phrase meaning, “The bottom of Heaven.”
What was most important and easiest to decipher was the depiction near the peak of a mountain to the southwest of a genamite stone circled heavily in ink. The location of the strange land, denoted right on the front side of the parchment, was impossible to plot by any system Tom knew, but after several minutes of frustration an idea dawned on him.
“Molly, can you go to the shelf over there and bring to me the large compass? The one with no lid, please.” Tom leaned over the back of his chair and strained to point right at the one he wanted. Molly fetched it and brought it over.
Tom patted his shirt and trouser pockets, not finding what he sought. He shuffled through the stacks of parchment covering the desk until the genamite needle fell to the table. Snatching it up, he quickly disassembled the compass Molly had brought and replaced its needle with the one from the iron box. It didn’t fit perfectly at first, but in a moment the glassy blue needle snapped itself into place and spun around wildly. Tom held the compass steadily until the needle slowed and swaggered around its pivot point dizzily. Once it rested, he grinned and handed it to Molly.
“Oh, that’s brilliant!” she exclaimed with glee. The needle, not made of a magnetic mineral, pointed in the same direction no matter which way she turned the instrument. “I have an idea where Captain Love was going,” she declared.
“I have an idea we’ll beat him there, too,” said Tom, clearing off his desk.
“We’re leaving again soon,” Molly said, rather than asked. A tinge of disappointment flavored her words, but she did not frown.
“Yes, the sooner the better. As I said, we will be quick and silent, and no one will be the wiser,” Tom declared, swinging a fistful of maps and twirling Molly about in the other arm.
“By no one you mean—”
“Everyone.”
Molly laughed, then a thought crossed her mind and she looked up at Thomas with concern. “On that matter, did you notice the man outside earlier?” she asked.
“What man?”
“Don’t alarm yourself,” she said quickly, not wanting him to regress into a sour mood. “He lingered across the street for a brief time. I saw him from the sitting room window. Easy to pick out in the uncommon white outfit he had on. He looked like a holy man, with his high collar and such, even if his expression was a tad worn. Otherwise, he was clean and inconspicuous. Long brown hair. Tied back. Perhaps a youthful forty or fifty years of age. I just had a feeling about him.” Molly trailed off.
“Why does he sound familiar?” Tom thought aloud.
“I didn’t expect he would, considering the only thing really pronounced about him was that odd outfit.”
“That’s exactly what I seem to remember from somewhere,” Tom concluded. For a moment he tossed the description around in his head and then dismissed it. “In any case, we ought to collect ourselves and make preparations for tomorrow.”
“What will we be doing tomorrow?” Molly stuck close to Tom as he snuffed out the candles in the library and put things away.
“Tomorrow we’ll be hiring a new crew.”
“You’re taking this very seriously, I see.”
“Do you remember what you said to me at the dining table before we left for Paris?” asked Tom. “I’m not entirely sure what the ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ thing to do is, or ever was, but you were right about me.”
Molly did not interrupt but rather waited to see where he was going.
“After I was bitten, I was always angry,” he said. “I cursed my father on many occasions because he wouldn’t allow me to go looking for my mother or Harlan. I told him it was his fault if they were dead. I never once thanked him for knowing well enough to keep me and for being thankful that at least one of his sons was alive.” Tom mumbled toward his feet as he spoke. “I hated things for reasons I now understand. I hated Harlan because I assumed he led the Black Coats to us and had our father killed. I hated Christopher Barnes because he took my brother’s side. I hated Leon …” He shook his head. “Because he was a Black Coat, and all Black Coats were Harlans and Christophers.”
“Thomas, it isn’t your fault that you were bitten.”
“No, but everything I did while I still believed the world owed me an explanation or compensation was, and still is, my responsibility. Not long ago I still believed that if I were to kill someone, all the trouble they caused me would vanish with them, like smoke.” Tom looked up at one of the candles on the library walls, the blue in his eyes sedated and unmoving. “Let me tell you, Molly. Darkness only darkens when you put out a fire.”
****
Jacob Hutch oversaw Hutch’s Wharf, a busy checkpoint for vessels bringing in exotic goods from a number of England’s foreign assets, as far away as India. The ships that Jacob Hutch’s crossed eyes saw day in and day out were of the battle-scarred and rarely-careened variety, having lugged their treasures all the way from Kingston, Jamaica, or around the contested port of Cape Town, South Africa.
The morning Thomas Crowe, Molly Bishop and crew came to Hutch’s Wharf, a vessel was unloading its cargo of sugar under the supervisi
on of Jacob Hutch. It was The Centennial, built after 1765, marking the first one hundred years of English rule in Jamaica. Shouting and waving his arms about, Hutch harangued the crew with such a poetic and inclusive barrage of oaths that, as far as Molly—thoroughly offended—was concerned, he’d rightfully earned his local nickname, Jakespeare.
“Watch your mouths, you heathens! There’s women about!” Jake shouted over one shoulder as he left them to their business and met Tom and crew where the Thames met the dry end of the wharf. “Charlie!” said Jake, happy to see Tom.
“Charlie?” Molly whispered to Tom.
“Yeah he’s the only one who calls me that. Uncomfortable, isn’t it?”
“Oh, no it’s lovely, Charlie,” she replied, jabbing him in the ribs with a finger.
“Stop that.” He recoiled and sneered. Molly smirked.
“Morning, Jake. How’s business?” asked Tom, shaking hands with the clownish man.
“Steady,” answered Jake.
“Best way to be,” said Tom with a nod.
Something told Molly that Jake was more than just an acquaintance and that Tom was most likely the owner-behind-the-owner of Hutch’s Wharf. Until then she hadn’t wondered where his money came from when he wasn’t pillaging it from the bellies of rivals’ ships or digging it up out of a secret hiding spot somewhere in the Caribbean. The last thing she expected of Thomas was an honest enterprise.
“Looks to me you’re a few crew short of an excursion, Charlie,” remarked Jake, surveying Tom’s friends.
“That’s precisely why I’m here. Would you happen to know if anyone who’s run out their contract would be interested in filling their pockets on a one-way run to the Bahamas?” Tom pointed to the throng of idle hands haunting the wharf, unattached and unemployed.
“Oh, I can’t hire ’em off fast enough, Charlie. They grow on the undersides of the dock if I take my eye away for an hour!” Jake joked, stomping a foot against the dock.
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