He was the son of a wealthy Amsterdam merchant who’d paid a fortune to send him to Leyden University. But the seventeen-year-old Nicolaes Huygens had cared nothing for studies. He drank in taverns with a gang of rowdy comrades. They ravished maidens and brawled in the streets. When Huygens bothered to attend class, he heckled his teachers. The university threatened expulsion; his father raged. Yet Huygens continued his debauchery, until it culminated in the act that had bound him to Jan Spaen.

This had happened during kermis—the Dutch annual rite of celebration. Beneath colorful tents, vendors sold food and trinkets; acrobats and clowns entertained; gypsies told fortunes. A curiosity show boasted two-headed pigs and limbless men; a theater troupe presented plays. Revelers led a flower-wreathed ox to the marketplace to be slaughtered, roasted, and served at an outdoor banquet. Musicians fiddled; men, women, and children danced. Drinkers filled every tavern.

Through the crowds swaggered Huygens and his friends, drunk and boisterous. In search of a rival student gang, they carried pocketsful of flour and crocks of melted wax to smear on the offenders’ faces in proper kermis tradition.

“Come out, Franz Tulp, you coward,” Huygens called to the rival gang’s leader.

His comrades hooted. “We need another drink!”

They piled into a tavern. And there, among the patrons, sat Franz Tulp, a burly blond lout with a scornful grin, his friends clustered round him.

“Get them!” Huygens shouted to his gang.

They assaulted their rivals, hurling flour and wax. The opposition flung the ale from their cups. Then suddenly, somehow, the fun changed to serious combat. Fists flew; sticks flailed. Laughter turned to cries of pain. Huygens, mad with rage, chased Tulp outside, cornering him alone in an alley. Drunken bloodlust swept Huygens’s mind clear of reason. He reached for the short clay pipe he always carried in his pocket. …

Suddenly the Deshima common-room door slammed open. Huygens snapped back to the present. The hawkfaced second watch commander burst into the room, breathless and agitated, directing an order to the guards. To Huygens’s dismay, it sounded like, “The doctor’s services are needed.” Had Investigator Sano learned about his argument with Spaen and returned to question him about the murder again?

When the guards protested, citing the governor’s orders to keep the barbarians locked up together, Nirin ignored them and hustled Huygens from the room. This didn’t surprise him; on Deshima, rules were frequently broken, by both staff and residents. He should know, with his learning of the native language, his clandestine work with the Dutch-Japanese underground, his illicit trips off the island. …