The Devil and the Dark Water

Arent wakes up to Eggert and Thyman nudging him. He looks around and sees that he is on a beach, and the Saardam has run aground across the bay. Thyman tells him that Drecht is still alive and has set up a camp. Arent thinks of de Haviland’s drawings and realizes that they are on the island where Old Tom began.

Arent travels down the coast and finds Sammy, injured and missing an eye but alive. He drags him to the camp that Drecht has set up, where he is surprised to find Larme. Drecht informs him that he and Larme swore a truce to save whoever they could from the ship. Arent notes, however, that Drecht’s mercenaries are slaughtering any soldiers they find.

Drecht takes Arent to Sara, who is helping the wounded. Along the way, Arent asked what happened; Drecht explains that the ship ran aground during the mutiny, killing nearly all the sailors. He explains that they only made it three weeks out of Batavia, so he is hopeful they will find a friendly ship. In the meantime, they are organizing a council to make decisions, and Drecht requests that Arent be part of it.

Sara kisses Arent when she sees him. Arent thinks of what he knows of love and realizes that this is the first time he has felt it. Arent learns from her that everyone survived and is doing well.

Larme, Sara, and Arent discuss Drecht. Although he is currently only demanding the injured be killed, Larme fears that it won’t be long before he kills anyone who is of no use to him—just as the mercenaries have taken it upon themselves to kill the sailors.

Drecht informs Arent and Larme that their supplies are very low and that they need the loyalty of the mercenaries. He plans to give the female passengers over to the mercenaries to do with as they please in exchange for their help.

Arent and Larme are openly disgusted by the idea. Arent thinks of how “Old Tom had won,” as they are “dreaming up their own sins, and their own rewards” (426-27). Despite their disagreement, Drecht tells them it is happening anyway, but it would be easier with them at his side. Arent agrees to the plan if Lia and Sara are spared, and if Larme takes Creesjie to protect her. Arent also requests that Sammy be placed on the rescue boat to be spared the island and have hope for survival.

Arent pulls Sara, Lia, Dorothea, and Isabel aside. He tells them Drecht’s plan. He suggests that, after the mercenaries get drunk, they take what passengers they can and flee into the woods. Sara agrees but also tells Arent that there are some passengers who will likely choose to stay – preferring the mercenaries over the unknown.

Arent plots an escape path through the thick woods surrounding the camp. He comes across several log homes and discovers a settlement with beds and supplies to last them for months.

As he searches, he finds a broken sword stuck in the ground and notes that it reminds him of the leper’s dagger: Both are ornate and not true weapons. He realizes that the dagger was never the murder weapon, as the answers to the mystery “arrive in a dizzying rush” (438).

Sara walks on the beach and looks across the bay to the wrecked Saardam. She watches as rowboats return with mounds of treasure, which they dump on the beach. She walks over to the pile and inspects a few, noticing that not only are there more pieces from the Dijksma family, but also the de Haviland, Bos, and van de Ceulens—all names from Haan’s list of people possessed by Old Tom.

As she thinks of the events, she realizes how wealthy Creesjie became from marrying Pieter, while Kers was poor, as was typical of a witchfinder. She realizes that Pieter and Haan were working together to bring down other nobles as Haan built his own wealth and reputation. He would summon Old Tom on them, then bring Pieter to banish it after their reputations were destroyed, taking the wealth and belongings from each family to leave them in ruin.

She also decides that de Havilland must have been seeking revenge, so she sent the letters that brought Kers, Creesjie, Arent, and Haan onto the Saardam. As she makes this realization, Arent returns from the forest, telling her that he knows who is responsible.

Arent and Sara take a boat over to the Saardam’s wreckage. As they explore the ship, they stop in the gunpowder store. Arent tells Sara that de Haviland must have planned these events years in advance. If she planned to bring them to the island, Crauwels must have been involved. He speculates that he helped steal the pieces of the Folly, knowing when the kegs would be brought out and how to discretely get the pieces from them.

In Vos’s cabin, they find the ledger for Dalvhain’s (de Haviland’s) father’s expenses. Then they enter Dalvhain’s cabin, where Arent examines the rug on the ground. It has a long slice in it, which Arent speculates was caused by hiding the murder weapon inside. In Sara’s room, he finds a small hole in the ground which leads to Haan’s room—through which Vos and Dalhvain slid the murder weapon to kill Haan below. The murder weapon was then tossed into the ocean, which was the splash Sara heard while caring for Arent.

The two then go to the captain’s cabin. Arent pushes at the ceiling, revealing an opening up to the animal pen above, which explains how the animals were slaughtered so quickly and quietly.

The rest of the afternoon, Sara and Arent walk together on the beach and make plans. When the rescue boat is ready, he takes Sammy to it and says goodbye, feeling like a “coward” as he does so.

Creesjie watches the rescue boat vanish over the horizon. She sees Isabel and Sara talking, and then Isabel comes up to her and asks if Creesjie thinks de Haviland died on the boat. Confused, Creesjie says she assumed that she did. Isabel talks about how she failed Kers by not stopping Old Tom on the boat. It is likely that it is now possessing someone else, and Isabel vows not to fail to stop it again.

That night, two camps are set up: the mercenaries drinking in one, with the other passengers huddled around a small fire in the other. Some of the passengers did indeed choose to stay with the mercenaries. Creesjie watches as Isabel dances around the mercenaries, noting how much she has changed since their conversation about Old Tom.

As Creesjie watches, the soldiers begin to collapse, one by one. The passengers run up to Isabel, who informs them that she put the sleeping draught in their wine. Creesjie is excited that Isabel has saved them, but then she notices that the passengers begin to fall, too, and her own vision blurs. Isabel tells them that she does not know who Old Tom has possessed, but she plans to “cleanse” them all.

Creesjie awakens, bound to the wreckage. She looks around and sees that everyone else is bound as well, and Isabel walks among them with a torch. She apologizes to everyone but insists that she must burn them to get rid of Old Tom. She approaches Lia, and Creesjie cries out for her to stop. She tells Isabel that Old Tom does not exist and that she invented everything to kill Haan.

To Creesjie’s surprise, Sara and Lia stand up and the ropes fall from them. Sara tells her that it was all a ruse to get Creesjie to confess and confirm her guilt.

Out at sea, the Eighth Lantern lights, then immediately explodes. Several more lanterns light, revealing an East India Company ship. Someone recognizes it as the Leeuwarden, the only ship to remain with the Saardam through the storm. Arent explains that the Eighth Lantern was the Leeuwarden all along, using a rowboat to make it appear like another ship when needed.

Creesjie then confesses to what she did. She first tells them that she had no intention of wrecking the ship. She planned everything meticulously with Crauwels. He was to bring the passengers to the island and have them leave to search for Emily de Haviland, then sail away, with the Leeuwarden coming to save them shortly thereafter. However, Crauwels turned on her, wanting the treasure for himself and starting the mutiny that caused the wreck.

She then explains that her real name is Emily de Haviland. She sought revenge on Pieter and Haan, so she married Pieter, killed him, then planned the expedition to kill Haan. She killed Kers because of his involvement with the witchfinders and the terror they caused. She used Bosey to create fear around Old Tom only because Crauwels insisted that he deserved it.

She tells Arent that Pieter was the one hired to kill his father. Arent fought back, and the scar was caused by their struggle. When Arent started putting it on village doors and Pieter saw the chaos it caused, he recruited Arent’s grandfather and Haan to use the symbol as a means to gain wealth.

Creesjie then asks Sara how she suspected her. Sara explains that Creesjie had insisted that Haan wanted her on the voyage and paid for it, but the receipt for the payment of her cabin was not among the others kept by Vos. Arent tells her that he realized she must have been the one who planted the dagger on Haan’s body because she was the first to find him dead.

As they finish talking, a rowboat from the Leeuwarden makes its way to shore. Sara tells them it is time to find out who was helping Creesjie.

Sara, Lia, Creesjie, her boys, Dorothea, and Arent ride in the rowboat with Thyman and Eggert to the Leeuwarden. Arent asks Thyman and Eggert how long they have been working with Creesjie, and they admit that they were the ones who stole the Folly in Batavia.

As they board the ship, they are greeted by Sammy. Creesjie greets him as “brother,” shocking everyone, and Sammy admits that his real name is Hugo de Haviland. Although Sara and Arent had figured out he was involved, they did not know his real relationship with Creesjie.

Sammy praises Arent for his work on the case, proud that he was able to solve it. However, Sara interjects, annoyed at how “flippant” Sammy is when talking about death. Sammy insists that everyone who died either deserved it or died because of Crauwels’s actions.

The group goes to the great cabin. As they walk, Lia asks about the whispers. Sammy explains that he, Creesjie, Eggert, and Thyman all worked together to create the whispers of “Old Tom,” which they could do because Bosey had drilled small holes into the cabins from above. When Sara asks why they went through all the trouble when Creesjie could have just killed Haan, Creesjie explains that they wanted him to feel truly afraid after everything he had done. They also wanted Haan to know they were responsible. For this reason, Creesjie used an anagram of de Haviland as an alias, and Sammy was waiting for Haan in Dalvhain’s cabin.

Sammy admits to Arent that he recruited him initially for his relationship with Haan and his grandfather. But, after working with him, he realized that Arent was “actually an honorable man. Probably the only one [he’d] ever met” (476).

When they arrive in the great cabin, dinner is waiting for them. Angry, Sara tells them that they need to help the people on the island, not sit down to eat. Creesjie appeases her by ordering boats to take food to those on the island, but she insists they have things to discuss.

When Arent asks how they were able to afford all this, Sammy recalls the one case that Arent worked alone. Arent caught a man he thought was stealing diamonds, but Sammy convinced everyone that Arent had the wrong man. In reality, Sammy was given the diamonds in exchange for freeing him. Arent realizes that Sammy is not the great and kind man he thought he was, but rather just like all the other powerful men he knows, who “believed slaughtering innocents was a fair price to kill a powerful man” (477).

Sammy admits to dressing in Bosey’s rags and impersonating him. He chose to be in the cell so that he would not be expected to solve the mystery, knowing that Arent would see through his false failures at doing so. He spent most of his time in Dalvhain’s cabin.

As Arent barely holds back his anger, Sammy admits that he has been committing murders for years against nobles as revenge for what happened to his family. He claims he did so to survive before realizing his experience also made him good at solving murders.

At the end of their explanation, Sammy and Creesjie offer a deal to Sara and Arent. They suggest either taking a portion of the recovered treasure and going to France as they originally planned or staying on the island where Sara can have her freedom. Sara can tell by looking at Arent that he is angry and will not approve of them letting Sammy and Creesjie go, and she herself is not sure if she can allow it. She instead suggests a third option: the five of them continue the work of Old Tom by keeping the demon story alive and using it to punish other evil men in the world. Although Sammy and Creesjie hesitate, Arent plays to the excitement Sammy would get from the challenge of figuring out how to make it work. The five of them “tentatively” smile at each other as they agree to work together.