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Stamford held a perfumed cloth to his nose against the stench. The heat further soured his mood. He had left the palace fully attired in a black jacket and stiff waistcoat as he was due to attend a dinner later with dignitaries from British Malaya, who had come to survey the damage from Tambora’s eruption.
Captain Haas drew alongside Stamford. The sandy-haired Dutchman was less formally dressed in gray jacket and trousers, but he kept himself neat and carried himself with a measure of practical gravitas.
Haas waved to his ship anchored in the bay. “TheApollonwas sailing from New Guinea, passing through the Java Sea, when we came upon a small boat, foundering and lost. We thought she might’ve broken free and been left adrift.”
Swann nodded. He was a small, older man with a stern demeanor and dark eyes. “Then we spotted what the boat held. I recommended to Captain Haas that we haul it all here.”
“We’ve not touched any of it,” Haas added, raising a silver cross to his lips, then lowering it. “Not that any of us dared to.”
The two men drew Stamford to the end of the pier, where a small tender had been tied up. It was covered by a tarp of sailcloth. Before it stood the man who had sent the letter with the captain. It was Stamford’s aide-de-camp and trusted friend, Thomas Otho Travers. The dark-haired Irishman and former soldier kept a fit build, accented by a snug jacket and crisp trousers. He stood with a Scotsman of the same age, whom Raffles also knew, a physician of distinction, one associated with the Batavian Society, Dr. John Crawfurd.
Both men looked equally grim.
Stamford crossed past Haas to reach the pair. “What is it? What required such urgency?”
Travers turned to the iron-hulled boat, which looked weathered and dented. “This tender is from theTenebrae.”
“What? How can you be so sure?”
Stamford had dispatched the cargo ship, theTenebrae, sixteen days before, but nothing had been heard from her since. All imagined the vessel had been beset by pirates, as the Bugi fleet were prowling the waters in greater numbers following the eruptions, like vultures picking at a carcass.
“We’re certain, sir,” Travers said and turned to the physician. “Perhaps it’s best you show him, Doctor Crawfurd. I’ll help you.”
The young physician was dressed in black with a white collar, making him look priestly. He crossed with Travers to the tender and together they drew back the drape of sailcloth to reveal a ghastly sight.
Stamford wanted to step away, to refuse what was revealed, but Haas and his surgeon crowded behind him.
Two bodies lay across the bottom of the tender, one twice the height of the other. Both were blackened and featureless. Still, there remained an eerie polish to their surfaces, as if both had been carved of dark marble, with a slight prickling over their skin. The smaller of the two, clearly no more than a boy, lay curled under the arm of the other. Even still, the agonized contortion of neck and spine spoke to the pain of the boy’s death. The lad had found no comfort under that arm. Still, the man had tried, even as the same torturous death afflicted him.
Even stranger, the larger of the two had not fully succumbed to the affliction. The quarter of his body farthest from the boy remained blistered and burned at the edges, but mostly untouched past that point. An ear and cheek still shone pale and blue in death. Part of a burned white shirt hid the upper torso, and one whole leg looked untouched, still clothed in a dark pantleg and a calf-high boot.
None of it made any sense.
Raffles raised a foremost question. “Who are they?”
Doctor Crawfurd stepped gingerly into the tender and over to the larger body. He pointed to the arm wrapped around the boy, then down to a blackened hand, which still bore a ring on a finger. “The stone bears the initials BG.”
Stamford clutched his perfumed cloth tighter, knowing who had been aboard theTenebrae. “Johannes Stoepker. The naturalist.”
“We believe so,” Travers acknowledged. “We suspect the lad must be a cabin boy from the ship.”
“What happened to them? No fire does this to a body. It looks like they’ve been turned to stone.”
Crawfurd stood again, rocking the tender enough that Travers had to reach over and steady him. “We don’t know, sir,” the physician admitted. “But I did a brief examination. Whatever afflicted them has indeed petrified their flesh. Turning it hard as a rock. But I cannot fathom how or why. I’ll need the corpses carried to my rooms behind the town’s apothecary, where I can better examine the bodies.”
“But there’s something else you should see first,” Travers warned.
The aide-de-camp joined the physician aboard the tender and knelt next to Stoepker’s other arm, which was held tight to his chest. His stony fingers clutched a small steel box.
“He clearly was protecting more than just the boy,” Travers said. “We didn’t want to disturb anything more until you arrived.”
“Can you free the box?” Stamford asked. “And whatever it holds?”
“I can try.”
Travers wrapped his hand in a handkerchief and grabbed hold of the steel, clearly trying to avoid touching the petrified skin. He attempted to slip the box free, but to no avail. Even in death, Stoepker refused to release the secret he held.
“With more force, Mister Travers,” Stamford demanded.
