The Vanishing Island (7 page)

B
ren couldn't stop thinking about what it might mean for Britannia and the Netherlands to form an alliance. At least, he couldn't stop thinking about what it might mean
for him
. Hundreds of British ships leaving year round for new ports in the East? But that didn't mean he was any less determined to get aboard the
Albatross
. It could take years for an alliance to amount to anything, and Bren wasn't getting any younger.

By now he was used to stragglers in the vomitorium, and today there was a man in what he called Amen
Corner, because it was the darkest, most out-of-the-way nook, the kind where a monk in need of a lot of forgiveness might go. But there was something different about this particular drunk. It wasn't just that he didn't budge. In fact, he seemed unable to move. Bren looked at his clothes, tattered and colorless. He could have been a sailor, but he looked more like the common sailors at the Gooey Duck than the sort of men Bren was used to seeing here. He wondered how the man had even gotten in. He was on his side, facing the wall, and when Bren knelt down to touch him, he half rolled over, exposing a swollen white scar across his throat that curled up at the ends like a gruesome smile.

Bren drew back at the sight of the scar. He had never seen marks like that on anyone but rogues and villains.

“I should get help,” said Bren, but the man grabbed his arm with a hand that looked like a withered apple, licked his lips once, and said, “Map.” He could barely speak.

“Yes, you're in Map,” said Bren. “Really, I should . . . I'll go fetch Dr. Hendrick. . . .”

The man shook his head and kept his hand on Bren's arm. Bren had no idea what to do for him.

“Water?” said Bren. “Can I get you some water?”

The man nodded and Bren trickled some water into his mouth, but it did little to revive him. He finally let go of Bren's sleeve and lay back, and was soon asleep.

Bren covered him with blankets and finished his chores, then came back to check on him. He would fetch the doctor this time, or at least Mr. Black, no matter what.

The man was alive, but barely. Bren gently held his wrist to check the strength of his pulse, and as he pulled the arm toward him and turned it over, he noticed a tattoo on the inside of his forearm, near the elbow. It was a black tulip in the mouth of the letter
V
, with a
Z
crossing one arm of the
V
and a
T
crossing the other.

As Bren stared at the tulip, the man suddenly coughed, causing Bren to jump. When the stranger noticed Bren, he was frightened too, jerking his body toward the wall.

“It's okay,” said Bren. “It's just me. Can I get you some more water?”

The stranger worked his way up onto one elbow,
twisting his lower body until he could throw first one leg and then the other on the floor and sit up.

“I think it's best to lie still,” said Bren. “Try to rest . . . oh . . .”

Bren recognized the man's distress and quickly searched for an empty bucket. He held it out toward him, low, while averting his eyes, as Rupert had taught him. But he peeked just a little, enough to see the man trembling, his whole body shuddering with violent spasms, and then his mouth forming a gasping O, drooling saliva . . .

Bren shut his eyes as the man dry-heaved twice, and then a third time, before one final volcanic heave. Bren felt it hit his arms and heard it splash on the floor, and then he heard something far more curious—a
thunk
, in the bottom of the bucket. He opened his eyes to see if the poor man had thrown up an organ.

The stranger was still sitting upright, barely, and managed to take the bucket from Bren and set it on the floor between them. He stuck his arm in, fishing around until he found what he was looking for. A moment later Bren felt his wrist in the man's grasp, and something warm and wet being pressed into his palm.

Bren almost threw up himself. But he took a deep breath and looked at the object, which appeared to be a coin, about the size of a gold sovereign.

“Oh no,” said Bren. “You don't owe me anything. Save
it for the doctor if you must.” He tried to give the coin back, but the man shook his head and pushed it away. “At least lie back down. I'll get help.”

He squatted next to the man again to straighten his blankets, and when he did the man grabbed Bren by the shoulders and hugged him close, and Bren felt his hot breath next to his ear, and smelled the foul odor of his illness. Then he realized the man was whispering something.

“What?” said Bren. “Say it again.”

But the man had spoken his last words. He was wracked by a violent fit of coughing, which ended only when the poor soul pitched forward from the cot onto his face, as if in prayer, and breathed no more.

Bren could feel himself shaking. He'd never seen a dead man so close . . . never had a man die right in front of him. Mr. Black put a hand on his shoulder; Dr. Hendrick made a quick examination of the body to confirm the grim truth.

Mr. Black had brought one of the flat carts he used for transporting books, and they used it to carry the body to the doctor's office to prepare it for burial. Both of the older men urged Bren to go home, but he wanted to come with them. He wasn't sure why.

Hendrick's Apothecary & Physicks occupied a run-down, two-story clapboard house just off the Pub District.
It didn't look much like a place you would go to get better, and in fact, most people didn't. Dr. Hendrick served as the town undertaker as much as anything else.

The doctor lived on the first floor and practiced on the second, so they took the body upstairs and laid it on a table in the middle of the room. To his horror, Bren noticed that four other tables were already occupied, stained white sheets concealing the bodies.

“It's par for the course this time of year,” said the doctor. “The crimpers always start trouble.”

“So are these the wolves or the prey?” said Mr. Black.

“A little of both,” said the doctor. “They often gang up on drunk men, and fights break out.” He looked at the man they had just brought in. “You said you thought he was a sailor?”

“He's not a wolf,” said Bren. “I think he's a Netherlander, and the Dutch wouldn't be crimping sailors from Map.”

“A Netherlander?” said Mr. Black. “What makes you so sure?”

Bren walked over to the corpse and forced himself to grasp the man's rigid arm and his cold wrist, to show the doctor and Mr. Black the tattoo of the black tulip. “Who else would have a tattoo like this?”

“Search me,” said the doctor.

Mr. Black studied it a bit longer. “VZT?”

“Maybe I'll know more after an autopsy,” said the doctor.

“An autopsy?” said Bren.

“The doctor will cut the body open to investigate the cause of death,” Mr. Black explained.

Bren still didn't get it. To him the man was dead from being practically dead to begin with. “Does it matter? I mean, there's no family to report to or anything.”

Mr. Black and the doctor exchanged a look. “Bren, Dr. Hendrick is grateful for any opportunity to have a body he can learn from. Medical investigation of corpses is valuable to a doctor's knowledge, but most people don't allow it for their loved ones.”

“Oh,” said Bren. For the first time he noticed that the walls were lined with shelves, filled with specimen jars. Hearts, hands, brains . . . other things he couldn't make out. He wondered if all these organs had come from people who died mysteriously in Map, anonymous and alone.

“Don't look so pale, young man,” said the doctor. “A dead man still has a lot to give.”

Bren suddenly remembered the coin, and he dug it out of his ticket pocket and offered it to the doctor. For the first time he noticed the oddly embossed front, and the small hole at the top. “The man tried to give this to me before he died. I thought you should have it for your troubles.”

The doctor took it, and both he and Mr. Black fumbled
in their pockets for half-spectacles. The doctor then held the object up to his eye like a monocle and looked at Bren through the hole.

“I don't reckon the Gooey Duck will take a brass medallion for payment,” he said, handing it back to Bren.

“Maybe it was the man's lucky charm. Like a rabbit's foot,” said Mr. Black.

“Didn't do him much good, did it?” said Dr. Hendrick.

“So can I keep it?”

“By all means,” said Mr. Black, putting his hand on Bren's shoulder to let him know it was time to go.

Back at Black's shop, the bookseller made lunch for them both.

“You do know there's food in front of you?”

Bren pulled the coin or medallion or whatever it was out of his pocket and looked at it again. “Why would a dying stranger give me this?”

“A fair question,” said Mr. Black. “Just a second.” He dug around behind his counter until he found a loupe—a small magnifying glass—and brought it over to the table. “Let's have another look.”

Bren gave it to him and Mr. Black looked closely at both sides. “Well, it's interesting. It certainly looks and feel like a coin. Bronze, I believe.”

“Except it has a hole at the top,” said Bren.

“Actually,” said Mr. Black, “some ancient coins did have holes in them. I have some examples in my collection. They could be strung on lines or thin rods, and it made them easier to carry and count.”

All Bren heard was
ancient coins
. “And they made coins from bronze in ancient times, right? Like the Roman ones Judge Clower goes looking for every Sunday?”

“They did,” said Mr. Black. “But before you get carried away—”

“And why would the man have swallowed it unless it was valuable?” said Bren, practically jumping to his feet.

Mr. Black put the coin back down. “He regurgitated this?”

“If that means puked it up, then yes.”

Mr. Black pulled a square of linen from his breast pocket and gave the coin a good rubdown before setting it back on the table. Both he and Bren bent down at the same time to look at it, and butted heads.

“Ow! Your head is so hard!” said Bren.

“That's because I'm a fossil,” said Mr. Black. “I've got a better idea. Come.”

Bren followed him to the rear of the store. The bookseller looked around as if he had forgotten what he came for, then walked over to a shelf, stood up on his tiptoes, and began blindly rummaging through boxes stored on top of the shelves. Finally he pulled down a wooden box, causing a
minor avalanche of books in the process. “Look out below!”

He set the box down and opened it, removing a strange metal contraption that looked sort of like a cannon with a chimney.

“Behold, my magic lantern!” he said theatrically.

He laid the coin on the table, covered it with a scrap of parchment, and began to rub a stick of graphite back and forth across the surface. The design came into sharper relief as black lines against the parchment's ivory surface. Mr. Black then slid the scrap of paper into a slot where the chimney met the cannon, took off the chimney cap, and lit a candle. Carefully turning the lit candle upside down, he stuck it down the chimney, projecting a larger image of the tracing against a bare wall.

The small hole at the top was at the mouth of a lion's head. The rest of the coin's face was embossed with a square frame, within which were three columns of what appeared to be three different inscriptions.

“It's Chinese writing!” said Bren.

The image began to curl away and disappear—the parchment had caught fire. Mr. Black jerked the candle from the lantern, snuffed it, and beat the small flames from the paper with his hands.

“Minor design flaw,” he said. “But those didn't look like Chinese characters to me. I do admit, however, that the scripts looked Asian.”