by Tom Holt
“Sorry,” he said, “how clumsy of me.”
“That’s all right,” said the girl slowly. She was looking at him again, and as soon as her eyes met his, Vanderdecker realised how he would have reacted if on that cold morning in the 1540s the jailer had gone on to wink and say, “Sorry, son, I was just kidding.”
The logical thing to do, said a part of Vanderdecker’s mind that was still functioning, is to get out of here quickly. Vanderdecker noted this advice but took no steps to act on it. He was looking at the girl’s face. A nice face, if you like them slightly on the round side. Some words bubbled up into his mouth, like nitrogen into the brain of a diver with the bends.
“Is this Jeanes’ Boatyard?” he asked.
“I hope so,” said the girl. “I’ve been looking for it all morning.”
She had noticed the doublet. Perhaps, suggested the voice of optimism, she’s thinking what an idiot I look. Perhaps not.
Had Vanderdecker been able to get inside Jane’s mind, he would have seen a brief replay of her sixth-form History of Art classes, and heard the words “I’ve seen that shirt somewhere before.” Jane didn’t know it, but she had, in a painting by Tiepolo. A hint to people who are contemplating living for ever; never have your portrait painted, even if it only costs a couple of soldini, because there is always the risk that centuries later the scruffy-looking artist who did the painting will have turned into an Old Master and be studied in good schools.
Come to that, said Jane to herself, I’ve seen that face before; but where? Meanwhile, her voice started to work, out of pure reflex.
“They gave me a map at the tourist information place, but it can’t be very accurate. Or maybe it’s just that I’m hopeless with maps.”
“Me too,” Vanderdecker lied. “Let’s see.”
Jane fished the folded glorious Dorset leaflet out of her bag, and the two of them examined Mrs Price’s cartography with exaggerated diligence.
“If that’s the Post Office over there,” Jane started to say, then something fell neatly into the right place in her mind. The clothes he’s wearing, she said to herself, come from different periods. He looks like a tramp who’s robbed a theatrical costumier. Jeanes’ Boatyard. Different periods of history. Surely not…
“Well,” the man was saying, “if that’s the Red Lion, then that over there must be north. Try turning the map the other way up and then we’ll see.”
Jane thought for a moment. It was worth a try.
“So that’s the Red Lion,” she said. “I wonder what was there before.”
“A butcher’s shop,” Vanderdecker replied. Then he lifted his head and stared at her.
“And when would that have been?” Jane said. Her voice was quiet, slightly triumphant, and more than a little bit frightened. The Red Lion had been built, according to the smugly-worded inn sign, in 1778.
“Before your time,” Vanderdecker replied.
“But not yours.”
“No”, said the Flying Dutchman. “Not a lot is. Have you been looking for me?”
“Yes,” Jane replied sheepishly.
“Then,” Vanderdecker said through a weak smile, “you’ve made a pretty lousy job of it. This is the third time we’ve met. Small world, isn’t it?”
Jane seemed to shrink back from even this tiny display of aggression, and Vanderdecker suddenly felt a great compacted mass of fear sliding away from him. It was like having your ears syringed; you could perceive so much more without it. Jane said nothing for a long time, and then looked at him.
“I imagine,” she said carefully, “that someone in your position would think so.” She felt that she ought to add “Mr Vanderdecker” at the end of the sentence, but that would be too much like a detective story. She waited for a reply.
“Too right,” he replied, and the smile began to solidify, like wax dropped on a polished table. “Small and extremely boring.” He paused and took a deep breath. “Just to make sure we’re not talking at cross purposes, do you know who I am?”
“I think so,” she said. “I think you’re Julius Vanderdecker.”
For some reason, he had expected her to say “The Flying Dutchman.” It was a nickname he had always hated—Dutchman yes, perfectly true, but why “Flying”, for pity’s sake?—and the fact that she used his proper name was somehow rather touching.
“And you’ve been looking for me?” he asked.
“That’s right.”
“I see.” His face seemed to relax, as he said. “Will you just bear with me while I go and see about my ship? Then we can go and have a drink and talk about it.”
“Fine,” Jane said. Very matter-of-fact. Very civilised. Noel Coward saying it’s a fair cop, but do let’s be adult about it. “Mind if I come too?”
“Be my guest,” Vanderdecker said. “You can watch a master liar at work, if you don’t mind being an accomplice.”
“Doesn’t worry me,” Jane replied. “I’m an accountant.”
♦
Very slowly and cautiously, Danny Bennett peeled back the blanket from over his head and looked about him. He was not one of those shallow people who judge by first impressions; he needed more data before he could responsibly start to scream.
A man in a threadbare woollen doublet, patched hose and a baseball cap walked past him and gave him a friendly smile, which Danny did his best to return. The curiously-dressed one started to climb the rigging of the ship. After a long climb he reached the unrailed wooden platform (was that the crow’s nest, or was that the little thing like a bran-tub at the very top? Briefly, Danny regretted not reading the Hornblower book his grandmother had given him when he was twelve); then he waved, took a deep breath, and jumped.
Danny’s eyes instinctively closed; the tiny muscles of his eyelids were perfectly capable to taking that sort of decision without referring back to the central authority between his ears. As soon as his conscious mind had reasserted its authority he looked for a broken mush of flesh and bone-splinters. Instead, he saw the badly-dressed man picking himself up off the deck, apparently unharmed, and shouting to someone else. Someone else was also dressed like one of those comic relief characters in The Merchant of Venice whose names Danny could never remember, except that he had a Dire Straits tee-shirt instead of a doublet, and a baselard and dusack hung from his broad leather belt. A production of The Merchant of Venice at the Barbican, he decided.
“Hey!” shouted the sky-diver, “I want a word with you.”
The heavily-armed man turned his head. “You talking to me?” he said.
“Too right I’m talking to you.” The sky-diver pointed to one of the many tears in his doublet. “Look at that.”
“I’m looking,” replied the other man. “What about it?”
“That’s your fault,” said the sky-diver angrily.
“Really?” The other man didn’t seem impressed. “How do you make that out?”
“Look,” said the sky-diver, “you’re meant to be the carpenter on this ship, it’s down to you to make sure there’s no nails sticking up where people can tear their clothes on them every time they take a jump.”
The other man laughed scornfully. “Listen,” he said, “if you didn’t keep on jumping, I wouldn’t have to keep on fixing the damned planking, so there wouldn’t be any nails. Would there?” And he thrust his head at the sky-diver, until their noses were almost touching. For some reason Danny was reminded of the Sistine Chapel, except that that had been fingers, not noses.
“Don’t give me any of that crap,” said the sky-diver. “I’ve had it up to here with your shoddy workmanship, and…”
“Are you,” said the armed man quietly and furiously, “calling me a bad carpenter?”
“Yes.”
With a movement of the arm so swift that Danny only saw the arc it described in the air, the carpenter whipped out his dusack and brought it down with sickening force on the skydiver’s head. This time, Danny’s eyelids stayed where they were. So, incredibly, did the sky-diver
’s brains. Just then, another of these peculiar people came hurrying up. He too was dressed in a thought-provoking manner, but Danny didn’t even bother to analyse it.
“Cut it out, you two,” said the third party. “Can’t you see we’ve got visitors?”
The two combatants turned round and smiled sheepishly at Danny, who reciprocated. “It’s all right,” the third party called out, “they’re just kidding about, same as usual.”
It was the “as usual” that really worried Danny. He could feel his mouth open and his chin melt into his neck; always a bad sign.
“That’s fine,” he said. “Don’t mind me.”
The three of them looked at him for a moment. Then they walked over to him. He tried to shrink back, but he was already tight up against a large coil of rope and there was no scope for further withdrawals.
“I’m Danny Bennett,” he said, “I’m with BBC sports.” This remark had slightly less effect than an air rifle in an artillery duel, and Danny wished he hadn’t said anything. The three peculiar people looked at each other. Then one of them extended a large hairy-backed hand, which Danny took. The skin on its palm felt like coarse-grain sandpaper.
“Pleased to meet you,” said the third party, the one who had broken up the fight. “I’m Antonius, this”—indicating the sky-diver—“is Sebastian, and this”—the homicidal maniac with the big sword—“is Jan.”
Danny smiled, a sort of railway-buffet-tea smile. He felt he would be able to remember the names.
“So,” said Antonius. He was leaning forward, with his hands on his knees. “Sorry about your little boat.”
“My boat?” Danny asked.
“Your little boat,” said Antonius. “We sank it, remember?”
“Oh,” said Danny, “that boat. Yes. No hard feelings.” Antonius smiled warmly. He was obviously a man who gave due credit for magnanimity when it came to sunk boats. “Television,” he said.
Danny nodded, and then said, “What?”
“You’re with television,” Antonius said, “aren’t you?”
Danny nodded again, deeply relieved. For a while he had thought he was among pagans.
“Television,” Antonius went on, “is a wonderful invention. We all watch it when we’re on shore leave. “Coronation Street”.”
“I beg your pardon?” Danny said.
“‘Coronation Street’,” repeated Antonius. “That’s television. We like that.”
“Really?” Danny narrowed his eyes, as if trying to see a single cell without bothering with a microscope. He felt that the conversation was drifting away from him again.
“Of course,” Antonius went on, “we find it hard following the plot.”
“I know what you mean,” Danny started to say, but Antonius carried on over him, like a steamroller over a shrivelled apple. “You see, we only get to see it once every seven years, and a lot changes.”
“Oh I don’t know,” Danny said. “Why every seven years?”
“We spend a lot of time at sea,” said Sebastian, “don’t we, Antonius?”
“That’s right,” Antonius confirmed, “because of the smell.”
Danny saw Sebastian kick Antonius on the shin, and for a moment he expected swords to start flying. But instead Antonius looked sheepish and said, “Of the sea. We love the smell of the sea, we Dutch. It’s in our blood.”
Whatever’s in your blood at this precise moment, Danny thought, it’s sure as hell not seawater. However, he kept this comment to himself.
“No,” said Antonius, “I dunno what we used to do before there was television. We played the flute a lot more than we do now, of course, and danced galliards and went to bear-baiting, but you can get sick of that sort of thing, can’t you?”
“Yes,” Danny said. It was a good, non-committal thing to say, in the circumstances.
“The skipper, of course,” Antonius went on, “he’s got his alchemy. Apple?”
“I’m sorry?”
“Would you like an apple?”
“No thanks.”
“Please yourself. The skipper, he’s never happier than when he’s got his nose in some alchemy book or other. Can’t see what he sees in it. Tried to read one myself once. No pictures. Just funny little line drawings. But he seems to like it, and I suppose it’s better than ships in bottles. You ever tried that?”
“No,” Danny confessed.
“Don’t bother,” said Antonius sagely, “Waste of time. At least there’s something at the end of the day with alchemy, so they reckon.”
“Is there?” Danny said.
“Course there is,” Antonius replied. “But it wouldn’t suit me, not all that reading and stuff you’ve got to do. It’s all right when you’re stuck in the middle of the sea, maybe, but the skipper doesn’t stop there. He even does it on shore leave. I remember one time in New Amsterdam…”
“New York,” Sebastian interrupted him. “They call it New York now.”
“Do they?” Antonius looked surprised. “What a daft name. New York, then. Miserable place, that. You ever been there?”
“Yes,” Danny said.
“Do they still have that law where you can’t get a drink anywhere?”
“How do you mean?” Danny asked.
“You can’t get a drink in New Amsterdam,” Antonius explained, “It’s against the law. Same in the whole of America, come to think of it.”
“Hang on,” said Danny. “When was this?”
“Year or so back,” Antonius said, “when we were last there. Didn’t they have that law there when you went?”
“No,” Danny said. “No, they didn’t.”
“Anyway,” Antonius went on, “there we all were, shore leave coming up, everyone as dry as the bottom of a parrot’s cage, and where does the Skip take us in to? New bloody Amsterdam, just so’s he could go and look something up about alchemy in a library there. We were not pleased, I can tell you. I mean, what would you have thought?”
Danny shuddered very slightly. If he tried very hard, perhaps he could nudge what he had just heard into some dark, damp corner of his mind where his subconscious could hide it and build a protective layer of mother-of-pearl over it until it wasn’t quite so uncomfortable any more. “I’d have been livid,” he said.
“We were,” Antonius went on. “Sick as parrots, the lot of us. And then there was that other time, when we all had to go to Easter Island to see Halley’s Comet. That was all to do with alchemy, he said. Something about magnetism. There is nothing, absolutely nothing, to drink on Easter Island except water. Mind you, the skipper’s completely nuts on Halley’s Comet. Never misses it.”
That word “never” was a problem, Danny thought. Do what we may, we will not get the mother-of-pearl to stick on that one.
“Really?”
“Obsessive, I call it,” said Antonius, disgustedly, “I mean, comets are all right, but once you’ve seen one, you’ve seen them all, and Halley’s Comet’s just another comet, right? But to hear the skipper talk, you’d think it was free beer and Christmas all rolled into one. Every time it pops up, there’s no talking to him for weeks. Not unless you want your head bitten off, I mean. God knows I don’t mind a man having a hobby, but there’s such a thing as taking it too far.”
Danny glanced at Sebastian out of the corner of his eye, just in case there was a clue to be gleaned there. After all, it was possible that Antonius was the sole loony on this ship and that everyone else was reasonably sane. But Sebastian only looked bored.
“What was all that you were saying about alchemy?” Danny asked Antonius. “About your captain, and it being a hobby of his?”
“Oh, he’s serious enough about it,” Antonius replied. “You interested in that sort of thing, then?”
“Yes,” Danny said. “Not that I’m an expert or anything, but…”
“Pity you missed the captain, then,” said Antonius. “Tell you what, though, you could have a word with old Cornelius. He’s not alchemy mad like the skipper, but he helps h
im a lot with the actual cooking of the stuff. He could show you the crucible and all that, if you like.”
Cornelius, it turned out, was only too happy to show the visitor the crucible, perhaps because the alternative was playing chess with Antonius. He led the way down to the rear gun-deck. There were no guns on the rear gun-deck; instead, there was a large stone basin with a sort of stove arrangement under it backing onto a bulkhead, with five or six shelves behind it. Half of these shelves had small, dark jars with handwritten Latin labels, while the other half contained books. Some of the books looked very old, but most of them were shiny new paperbacks, and when Danny glanced at the spines he saw that they were scientific textbooks. Because he had spent his science lessons daydreaming of scooping the big Board of Governors corruption scandal for the school magazine, Danny couldn’t tell whether they were really as high-powered as their titles suggested, but he was prepared to bet that “Elements of Quantum Mechanics” wasn’t in his local library, and neither were “Properties of Fissile Materials” or “Sub-Atomic Particle Dynamics”. Unless Fissile was rotten proof-reading for fossil, that was something nuclear, while Atomic spoke for itself. Nuclear! Suddenly, very far off, Danny began to see a chink of light.
“So you do a bit of this yourself, then, do you?” Cornelius’ voice broke in on his reverie. It was a loud voice, rather jolly, filtered through a lot of facial hair.