The Vanishing Island (8 page)

Bren picked up the coin, tracing the worn, embossed front with his finger. “If the man
was
a Netherlander, then this coin is obviously from the Far East!”

Mr. Black shook his head. “We don't know anything for certain yet, Bren.”

“Can you figure out what it means?” Mr. Black had more books on the Far East than anyone Bren knew.

“I can try,” said Mr. Black. “May I hold on to this for further study?”

“Can I draw it for you instead?” said Bren. The last thing he wanted to do was to surrender the coin—his newfound treasure.

Mr. Black agreed, and studied the coin while Bren fetched a clean sheet of paper. He freehanded a near-perfect circle, much larger than the actual coin so it would be easier to read. He then duplicated the image from memory.

“Quite remarkable,” said Mr. Black, comparing the drawing to the coin. “You really are skilled with a pen. I can see why both your father and Mr. McNally think you have so much potential.”

“Don't start,” said Bren, who considered Mr. Black a co-conspirator when it came to keeping him in Map. “Not when we've just discovered that I've come into possession of ancient treasure!”

Mr. Black immediately opened his mouth to correct him, but Bren beat him to the punch: “Now don't get carried away!” he said, in his best imitation of Mr. Black's stern voice.

His friend sighed. “At least you're learning.”

B
ren lay on his cot, turning the coin over and over in his hand. Where was it from? How much could it be worth? He needed a safe place he could keep it, but both of his trouser pockets had holes and the ticket pocket in his vest was so small he was afraid the coin would fall out. He didn't carry a coin purse because he didn't have any money. So he opened the lid of his writing desk and saw the black stone necklace lying there, right where he had thrown it. He removed it and threaded the coin onto the lanyard, next to the stone, and pulled it over his head.

“Bren? Is that you up there?”

Rats
, thought Bren. “Sorry to wake you.”

“It's okay,” said his father. “Why don't you come down for a minute.”

He looked up to find Mr. Grey sitting in the window. “Want to trade places with me?” Mr. Grey narrowed his eyes and began grooming himself.

“You've been with Archibald?” said his father when Bren came downstairs.

“I work in the vomitorium. I don't have any friends. Can I at least enjoy something?”

“You brought your position on yourself,” said his father.

“You've told me that before.”

His father nodded, drumming his fingers on the table. Bren watched.

“You go straight to Black's from work, and some nights I'm asleep before you come home.”

“It's not like I'm wandering the streets,” said Bren. “You know that.”

“You still have to walk the streets home,” said his father. “Port towns are
not
safe after dark.”

Bren wasn't sure how to respond, so he pulled the necklace off over his head and laid it on the table.

“Emily's necklace,” his father said, wistfully rubbing his index finger over the black stone.

“She never told me where she got it,” said Bren.

His father continued to run his finger over the smooth black stone. “She was from Cumbria, you know. Up in lake country. She would go there, and take you with her, anytime there were rumors of plague, because port towns were considered unsafe.”

“She didn't go that last time,” said Bren. “Why?”

His father slowly shook his head. “It's a long, hard trip from here. And she always felt bad about leaving me. You know very well I can barely put a meal together. And after so many false alarms, I guess . . . I guess we got careless.”

His father's voice faltered, but he cleared his throat and righted himself. “Anyway, she bought the necklace up there in an old curiosity shop. Was fond of it for no good reason, really. But once she got sick . . . well, I guess she looked at it as something that came from a safe place, and she wanted you to have it for good luck.”

Bren had to look away. He was about to take the necklace back when his father noticed the new addition.

“What do you have there?”

“A coin,” Bren said. “It's very old.”

His father raised an eyebrow. “Where did you get it?”

Bren thought about it for a second. He didn't really want to go into all the grisly details. “Found it.”

His father smiled. “Did Mr. McNally sell you a Map of Local Interest?”

“No. It was actually . . . someone gave it to me in the vomitorium.”

“Like a tip?”

“Something like that.”

His father looked at him skeptically. “Bren, you didn't steal this from one of Mr. McNally's clients, did you?”

“You mean one of his
explorers
?”

“Bren . . .”

“No! Honestly, a man gave it to me. Mr. Black thinks it could be from an ancient treasure hoard!”

“That doesn't sound like something Archibald Black would have told you.”

“Well, I may have added the treasure hoard part,” Bren admitted. “But he does think it's very old. Ancient, even.”

His father picked up the coin.

“It's badly worn,” said Bren. “But you can make out the Asian writing.”

“Ah yes, all things Oriental, right?” said his father, pushing the coin back across the table. “And all this means what?”

“I don't know,” said Bren. “But what if it is?”

“Is what? Old? From the Far East? Are you suggesting there's more where this came from, and we should commission a ship and go off like in one of your adventure novels?”

Bren felt his face grow hot. “It could be worth a lot.”

“Enough to live on for the rest of your life?”

“Never mind,” said Bren. “You're right—I'm being foolish.”

“Bren, try to understand. I'm not trying to hold you back. I know you feel like you're being punished, but you have the opportunity for a good trade, one other boys would kill for. Would you rather be a tanner, stripping bloody hides from animals all day? Or a stonemason? McNally's offers long-term security, without breaking your back.”

Just your soul
, thought Bren.

“If you can stay out of trouble the rest of the summer,” his father said, “I'm sure I can arrange it with Mr. McNally to let you begin your apprenticeship.”

I knew it
, thought Bren. “Did you and Mr. McNally cook this whole vomitorium thing up together?”

His father shook his head. “Do you really have no idea how much worse things could have been because of that
accident
at the harbor? How much worse they could be? We have a decent life, Bren. More than people like us could rightly ask for.”

Bren wondered if his father had ever bothered to look around when he walked into town. At the nicer houses that had slate roofs instead of thatch. He would love, for once, not to have to catch leaks when it rained, or check his bedroom for rats. He looked at their tiny kitchen and thought of how his father never even tried to do better with things like cooking after Bren's mom died. He had been one of
McNally's best draftsmen for twenty years and this was where it had gotten them.

Bren excused himself and went back to bed. What was the use? He was convinced his father didn't dream, even in his sleep.

Beginning the next day, Bren had the creeping sensation that he was being followed. Walking around Map, amid the constant ruck of people, this might not have seemed so unusual. Pickpockets were common, and even though Bren had nothing to steal, they would sometimes shadow you to make sure.

Or did he in fact have something to steal? He touched the coin under his shirt. Maybe his imagination was running away with him because of it.

After work he decided to try his luck at the Gooey Duck. He hadn't gone there much of late because the vomitorium didn't do wonders for his appetite. But also because Beatrice was still mad at him for trying to run away. She hadn't given him plum cake once since then.

She was there when he walked in. Bren's usual dark corner table was taken, so she nodded to a small table by the window.

And that's when a very strange thing happened.

Even as far south as Map was, the sun set very late there during the summer. The windows of the Gooey Duck
faced west, and light was still pouring through the glass at suppertime. When Bren bent down to move his chair, the necklace fell from his shirt, the bronze coin momentarily dangling there like a pendulum, the face of it twisting first one way, then the other. When the back of it, the blank side, turned into the sun, Bren saw for that brief moment an image reflected against the wall of the Duck.

“What's wrong?” said Beatrice, a bowl of stew in one hand and a plate of bread in the other. “Sit down!”

Bren sat, staring at the food as she put it down.

“Don't tell me you aren't hungry,” she said.

“I do. I mean, I am . . . thank you.”

She smiled and grabbed his ear, gently this time, and left. Bren couldn't remember if he was hungry or not. He lifted the coin, looking at it for something he and Mr. Black had missed. He shifted in his chair to catch light off the blank side again, and there it was, the image on the wall again. Three pairs of symbols, forming the points of an equilateral triangle. What were they exactly?
Where
were they?

He realized he was behaving oddly, and even worse, he was holding up what looked like a gold coin for everyone to see. He stuffed the necklace back into his shirt and glanced around. Two men stood up to leave, but no one seemed to be paying him any mind. He forced himself to eat, and when he had finished, he thanked Beatrice and hurried out, eager to get to Black's.

From the Duck to Black's Books, the least crowded way was a system of alleys that secretly joined the seedy Pub District to the respectable Merchant Quarter. Bren's father would not have been pleased to know he traveled this route.

He was halfway down a long alleyway when a man emerged ahead of him. He turned around, and a second man was coming up behind him.

“Dangerous place for a walk, yeah?” said the first, coming closer. He was tall and obviously drunk, rocking slowly side to side, like a cobra. The sleeves of his dark overcoat covered half his hands, but Bren could still see the large knife in one.

The other man was bearlike, big and thick with short black stubble all over his face. It was the two men who had just left the Duck. They must've seen him before he could hide the coin.

“It's not what you think,” said Bren.

“Then whazzis?” said the bear, reaching for Bren's throat. Bren drew back, but the man had his hand on the lanyard
and pulled it from Bren's shirt. He fingered the coin greedily for a moment before clamping his massive hand around the whole necklace, preparing to rip it from Bren's neck.

Suddenly he drew back, yelping in pain and grabbing his hand. “What the . . . ?”

Bren looked at the man, who was rubbing his hand. Neither of them had any idea what had just happened.

“What's wrong?” said the cobra, but the bear just shook his head.

“Nuffin. He ain't got nuffin. Lezz go.”

He started to back away, but the man with the knife moved closer to Bren.

“We both seen he has somethin', in the Duck. Besides, I haven't sharpened my knife in a while.” And as he said this he swept behind Bren, hooking one arm around his chest and putting the knife to his throat. Bren felt the steel edge bite into his neck, and the wetness of fresh blood, and he shut his eyes, praying it would be quick.

And then the pressure was gone, and he heard the knife clatter into the alley. Bren's legs, weak with fear, gave way, and he stumbled against the wall and slid to the ground. He looked up to see the big man running the other way. Frantically he looked around for the man with the knife, but the alley was empty, the knife lying at Bren's feet. He pushed himself up, kicked the knife into the pile of trash, and ran as fast as he could for Black's.

“Y
ou look like you've seen a ghost,” said Mr. Black.

Bren tried to smile, without much success.

“Is something wrong?”

Bren had waited until he made sure he wasn't bleeding before he came in. The cut was minor, but he was afraid Mr. Black would still be able to see it, so he kept looking down to hide his neck.

“Nothing,” said Bren. “It's just . . . the coin . . .” He took it off and laid it on the table. He didn't want Mr. Black looking at him.

“Ah yes, I've been doing my homework on that,” said Mr. Black.

“Look . . .” Bren tried to say, reaching out for the coin, but Mr. Black set a large book on top of it, turning pages until he came to a chapter entitled “The Mongol Post System and Passports.” He ran a long, bony finger up and down the pages until he found “Yuan Dynasty.”

“
Yoo-
an?” said Bren.

“The dynasty established by Kublai Khan,” Mr. Black explained.

“From the Marco Polo stories!”

“You make him sound like he was a fictional character. He was very real. . . . I'm not as sure about Marco Polo's stories.”

“And this coin is from his realm?” said Bren, forgetting all about his near-death experience and reaching under the book.

“That's just it,” said Mr. Black. “I don't think it's a coin.”

“Oh.”

Mr. Black held up the larger drawing Bren had made of the object's face. “Three columns of script—Persian, Mongolian, and Turkic—but they all say the same thing.”

“You translated it?” said Bren.

“Not exactly,” said Mr. Black. “Even with my books it might have taken me quite some time to translate three
languages I am unfamiliar with. I probably would have taken it to a scholar at Jordan College.”

“But?”

“But someone already translated it for me.”

Bren looked at Mr. Black expectantly, but he could tell something was bothering his friend.

“I had a visitor yesterday after you went to work. He was interested in my books and artifacts from the Far East.”

“What did he look like?” said Bren. When Mr. Black described him, he said, “That was Admiral Bowman! The admiral of the
Albatross
! Did he say what he wanted?”

“No,” said Mr. Black, “but of course I had been preoccupied all day with our drawing, which I had left sitting out on my counter. He saw it and was immediately interested.”

“Really? And he knew what it said?”

Mr. Black nodded. “He said the rough translation was, ‘Beware evil-doers! By order of the Emperor!'”

Bren's jaw dropped.
It still works.

“Beg your pardon?”

“Nothing,” said Bren. “What else?”

“Well, I remarked that it was a funny sort of inscription for a coin, which is when this admiral of yours explained that it wasn't a coin. It's a
paiza
.”

“
Pie
—za?”

“Here,” said Mr. Black, pointing to the book again.
“The Mongols created these medallions as official symbols of authority, so that their ambassadors or guests could travel the empire safely, on official business. A passport.”

“And the admiral was sure it was from the empire of Kublai Khan?”

“He seemed sure,” said Mr. Black, looking over at his chessboard. “He also suggested a rather brilliant move in my chess game. Pointed out a mate in six moves. Unfortunately, it was for my opponent.”

“How did he know?” said Bren.

“I suppose he's good at chess,” said Mr. Black.

“No!” said Bren, practically leaping from his chair. “How did he know the coin, or whatever it is, goes back to Kublai Khan?”

“For one thing, he rather astutely pointed out that only during Kublai Khan's reign would peoples speaking all three of these languages have been unified,” said Mr. Black. “But I was unable to learn more; he kept pressing me about where I had gotten the drawing, and whether I had the original.”

“Did you tell him?”

“No, I merely told him a professor friend of mine had copied it from a book and brought it to me for more information. He was cagey; I didn't trust him.”

“Why not?”

Mr. Black shook his head. “I don't know precisely. I
asked him if he was a collector, and offered to try and find out more about this paiza, but suddenly he became quite dismissive. Said even if it was from the empire of Kublai Khan, there were thousands of paizas issued during his reign, and that it was nothing more than a bauble.”

Bren was barely listening. Here was an artifact from the Far East, and not just the Far East—China! And not just China, but from the greatest empire in history! And what about his close call in the alley? His mind was racing ahead of him . . . there was no way the sailor in McNally's vomitorium would have been clinging to a mere bauble in his dying moments. Whatever a “bauble” was.

“Mr. Black, did he say anything
else
about the paiza?”

“Like what?”

Bren turned it over to the blank side. Or at least, the side he had thought was blank until an hour ago. “Can we get out your magic lantern again?”

They went to the back, and Bren had Mr. Black hold the candle inside the lantern, while Bren held the blank side of the paiza up to the projected beam of light.

“Look,” said Bren, pointing to the white wall behind them, where the hidden symbols Bren had seen before were faintly reflected. Unlike the image on the front of the paiza, they appeared to have been hand-drawn, or etched, into the back. Except Bren could see no scratches on the back.

“Where on earth did that come from?” said Mr. Black, whose normally rigid jaw had gone slack.

“I don't know,” said Bren. “I saw it by accident at the Duck, when sunlight reflected off it.”

“A magic mirror!” said Mr. Black, growing excited. He pulled Bren by the arm to his Oriental room, where he dug through a small box of coins, pins, and other objects he had collected. He found what he was looking for—a brass disk perhaps twice the size of Bren's coin, but blank on both sides. They went back to the lantern, and when Mr. Black held it up, the image of a cross was reflected on the wall.

“An ancient technique,” said Mr. Black, “used by secret societies to conceal their identity or pass messages. See, the disk, or the coin, has a false back. . . .”

Mr. Black used some of his small jeweler's tools to pry the metal disk apart. There was the cross, engraved on the actual back of the disk. “And then this false back is applied, hiding the image,” he explained. “But there was a technique of polishing the back so that it became transparent in direct light, reflecting the hidden image.”

Secret societies, ancient treasure, Marco Polo . . . Bren began to feel dizzy.

“Yours looks much cruder, though,” said Mr. Black, picking up the paiza and rubbing both sides with his thumb. “Ah yes, see? There's a seam here around the edge. . . .”

He pried off the false back, and sure enough, on the actual back someone had scratched the three symbols they had seen projected on the wall.

“You see?” said Black. “There's adventure enough for us in Map, if we keep our eyes open!” He turned the paiza over again. “I know you don't want to part with this, but if you could let me hold on to it, I can investigate more tomorrow.”

“Okay,” said Bren, who was actually a bit relieved to hand the mysterious object off, at least for a little while. He didn't understand what had happened in the alleyway, and it made him fearful. “I just wish the dead sailor could have told us more.”

“Perhaps he can,” said Mr. Black. “Remember the autopsy? I think we should see if Dr. Hendrick has learned something that might shed more light on our mystery.”

When they reached the top of the stairs to the doctor's office, someone was blocking the door . . . a thickset man with a grey-flecked bristle of hair, wearing a tweed overcoat. It was the constable, and when he heard the visitors he turned around.

“Archibald,” he said. “You heard?”

“Heard what?” said Mr. Black, pushing past the constable. Bren followed him. Dr. Hendrick was slumped against the far wall, lifeless in a chair, his sleeves rolled up
to his elbows and his hands and forearms covered in blood. Sticking out of his chest was a dagger handle, and his shirt was soaked with blood. One of the constable's assistants was kneeling next to him. On the examining table was a naked corpse, its chest split open from the top of his breastbone to the navel. Liters of blood had pooled beneath the table, now dried into irregular, blackened circles. Ropes of intestines hung out of the body, dangling to the floor.

Bren's head swam. It wasn't just the gore; a few days ago he'd never seen a dead body, and now he was surrounded by them, including poor Dr. Hendrick. And then he noticed the crescent-shaped scar across the neck of the disemboweled corpse—it was the dead sailor.

“What on earth . . . ,” said Mr. Black, who started to walk over to the dead doctor before the constable stopped him.

“Stay where you are, Archibald. Unless you want blood on your shoes.”

The constable walked over to the examining table, carefully stepping over the blood on the floor. “Used to have a problem with grave robbers,” he said. “Then the rogues figured out they could save themselves the trouble of digging by robbing the morgues. My guess is, Doc surprised one or more rufflers and got himself stabbed trying to stop 'em.”

“Why aren't any of the other bodies disturbed?” said Mr. Black.

The constable shrugged. “Doc came upon the thieves before they'd had time to work the whole room? And then a man's not going to stick around after he's killed another man.”

Bren barely heard him. He was staring around the room, thinking about his attack and escape. The cut on his neck began to tingle.

“Who reported this?” said Mr. Black.

“One of the, er, women of easy virtue, who came regularly to the doc for medicine—she was the one who found him.” He took a closer look at the gutted corpse of the sailor on the table. “What in heaven's name was the doc up to in here, anyway?”

“An autopsy.”

“Doesn't look very scientific to me,” the constable huffed, but glancing around at the crude instruments in the office—saws and chisels and hammers—he seemed to conclude that the corpse's mutilated state was no surprise. “I am sorry, Archibald. I know you two were friends.”

“I'll arrange for the burial,” said Mr. Black. “Bill didn't have any family.”

The constable nodded. “Now, not to be rude, but we've work to do. Off you go.”

Bren tried to collect himself as he walked with Mr. Black to the bookstore. He knew he should be thinking about the murdered doctor, but he couldn't stop picturing
the gutted corpse of his dead sailor, seeing the gruesome scar on his neck and thinking of his own close call.

“Mr. Black, do you buy the constable's explanation that it was just robbers?”

“I don't know, Bren. It's possible, but I don't know many grave robbers who go looking for valuables
inside
the bodies.”

“It was like the thief knew what he was looking for, and which one of those dead men might have it.”

Mr. Black grunted. “Did you notice something else?”

“What?”

“When the constable told me not to get blood on my shoes, I looked down of course. All that blood everywhere, and yet there wasn't a single footprint leading out of the room.”

Bren felt a centipede crawl up his spine. He thought back to the dying man's last words in the vomitorium, the ones Bren hadn't understood. But of course, the man's native tongue would have been Dutch. And then Bren heard them, clear as day: “
Pas op de nacht demon
.”

“Beware the Night Demon.”