Anna's Crossing Read online

  On this July morning, Anna lay in her hammock, already sweating in the summer heat. She leaned over and reached for the top of her chest to get a handkerchief and a small bottle of lavender water. She sprinkled some onto a piece of thin linen and pressed it over her nose. It helped, she had found, to mask the smell. To her surprise, she might just miss this old wooden Lady, but not enough to pass up a chance to get off the ship in Plymouth and get right back on one that was heading to Rotterdam. She swung the hammock by pushing a foot against the wall. She was actually enjoying a little quiet despite the sweltering humidity of the morning, so hot she felt as if she was slowly melting.

  It was all too peaceful to last.

  Anna yanked the handkerchief off her face. Had they finally reached Plymouth? She barely finished the thought in her mind as an eleven-gun salute from the harbor startled everyone awake. Wonder and worry made her jump from the hammock and run to the portal by the cannon for her first glimpse of Plymouth.

  The captain! She had to speak to him at once.

  Bairn walked along the deck, supervising the seamen who scoured the deck with soft sandstone. Now anchored in Plymouth harbor while the captain secured provisions, the ship would undergo make-and-mend days: torn sails patched, leaks caulked, a mast repaired.

  He heard his name called and turned to see Anna standing at the top of the companionway. He walked toward her to see what she wanted.

  “May I have a word with you?” She turned and hurried down the companionway.

  He followed her down but stopped on the second-to-last step, blinking against the sudden darkness after the bright sunlight. Rank smells assaulted him: stale sweat, vomit-soaked floorboards, chamber pots. He held the neck of his waistcoat to his nose. It was not only the smells that made his heart quake, but the hacking coughs that filled the lower deck. He tried not to gag. Decker had complained bitterly of the stench of the lower deck, but he assumed it was an exaggeration because he despised the Peculiars.

  If this was the result of a few rainy and windy days on the channel, how would the Peculiars survive a trip across the Atlantic? “I’d prefer to talk on the upper deck.” He hurried back up the stairs and took in deep breaths of salty sea air. He remembered Anna and turned to lend a hand to help her over the coaming.

  She had a pleased look on her face, like a cat that swallowed a canary.

  “Is there something y’need?”

  “Yes. I need to speak to the captain.”

  “I beg yer pardon?” Passengers did not ask to speak to the captain. Especially female passengers.

  “There’s a matter I need to speak to him about. Before we leave Plymouth.”

  Only a few feet away, Decker listened to them, his gaze tempered with frank suspicion. Bairn moved Anna away from Decker and close to the railing, over in the sunshine. Her eyes closed as the sun hit her face, as if she was soaking it up. “He’s already left t’go ashore. If you tell me, I’ll relay it to him when he returns.”

  She frowned, disappointed at that news. “No. It’s a private concern.”

  He eyed her with a telling intensity. “I am the ship’s surgeon.” Not that the title meant anything. He really didn’t know much of anything about sickness and illness other than using his tools to lop off gangrened limbs. And it was only that one time, with Cook, out of desperation.

  She hesitated, heat touching her cheeks. “I doubt you’d have experience with this particular concern. It’s a rather delicate nature.”

  “I’ll try to remember t’let him know.” He gave her a brusque nod and gazed out at a seabird as it dove into the water and emerged with a fish in its beak.

  “There’s something else.”

  He turned his eyes to her once again.

  “The people in my church—we need to be allowed up here on this—”

  “Upper deck.”

  “—for a daily walk and fresh air. For sunshine.” She turned her face to the sky, like a flower, and smiled softly, as the sun washed over her skin.

  “Passengers aren’t allowed up on deck. ’Tis too dangerous for them.”

  “It’s dangerous down below too.” Anna stiffened her back. “You saw for yourself what conditions are like down there.”

  Aha. So that was why she wanted to talk to him down below. Clever lassie. “They should have a respite fer a spell while we’re anchored.”

  “People are already sick—” she held up a hand to stop him from interrupting her—“not just the mal de mer. They have coughs and colds.”

  “Why are they sick?”

  “Because this old boat is as leaky as a colander! Water pours through the gaps in the ceiling.”

  Bairn’s chin lifted a notch. “What?”

  “It reminds me of the earthen dikes of Holland.”

  Bairn’s eye grazed the deck. In the wet crossing of the channel, the oakum must have worked itself loose between the planks.

  “And then the hatches.”

  “What about them?”

  “Water pours in the hatches whenever it rains.”

  Bairn should have made sure the hatches were covered with canvas, though that would have meant less circulation of air too. “Perhaps some of your least hardy ones will want to disembark here and return to Rotterdam.”

  She looked as if that was exactly what she would like to do, but couldn’t. “Christian—our minister—would never allow that.”

  “He might when you tell him you’ll be facin’ much more severe weather on the Atlantic.”

  “Christian would say that our lives are in God’s hands.”

  Decker walked up to join them. “We’ll see what he says after we throw the first dead body overboard and watch the sharks feed on it.”

  Bairn jerked his head up. “Decker! Mind yer business and get back to work.”

  Decker fleered at Anna and spun around. The seaman seemed to have stunned her silent. A glimmer of remorse for her sake went through Bairn, though he didn’t know why he should feel any empathy for her. The Peculiars chose to make this trip. “Yer people should’ve just stayed put, back on the Rhine. You’d be safer there.”

  “The bishop believed that God was leading our church to the New World.”

  “So you uproot yer lives because one man thinks he heard a word from the Almighty?”

  “Yes. No. It wasn’t just one man. Others agreed too. We are seeking a way of life, a shared set of values.”

  “And that’s what America means to all of ye?”

  “That, and we can own land. We can’t own land in Germany.”

  Bairn scoffed. “Land.”

  “Land to pass on to children. And to children’s children.” She lifted her chin. “Speaking of children. Are you in agreement that each passenger may take a turn above each day?”

  “’Tis impossible.”

  “Why? We need fresh air.”

  “Perhaps if you cleaned the lower deck, it would help.”

  Her mouth fell open and her back stiffened like a rod, mightily dignified. “We do clean! Every day. There are a great many people down there! And children. They need fresh air, exercise, sunshine, and light. Everything needs light to grow and be healthy. Every living thing. Why, even mushrooms respond to light.”

  Now it was Bairn’s turn to be stunned silent. “Mushrooms?” Mushrooms!

  She met and held his gaze. “Yes.”

  He was astounded by this female’s audacity. She barely reached his chest and yet she spoke to him like she was captain of the vessel and he was naught but a lowly deckhand. Audacious, but he admired her pluck too. “Perhaps while we’re docked in Plymouth, you could take a turn around deck durin’ the day. But not durin’ a watch change.”

  “Thank you.”

  He took a step away, but she called him back.

  “And another thing.” She cleared her throat delicately. “While we’re docked here, we will be washing our clothes down below. I’d prefer to dry our clothes up here, on the boat’s—”

  “Ship. It’s a
ship. A boat fits on a ship.”

  She spread her arm out in a half circle. “—on this top part.”

  “The upper deck,” he said, annoyed. “Have you nae been on a vessel before?”

  “No. Unless you consider a flimsy raft on a sheep’s pond.”

  Something floated through Bairn’s mind, a wispy echo of three children laughing on a hot summer day. For a moment the memory was so sharp it took his breath away. Then he pushed it off to the furthest corner of his mind, as he always did. Such memories disturbed him. “Have y’much to wash?”

  “Yes. And clothes take days to dry below. But they could be dry in a few hours up here on the . . . upper deck.”

  He frowned and turned back to see the captain’s longboat near the shore. “Fine. But mind that you only hang some things on the larboard side where naught can be seen from the waterfront.” She looked at him confused. He pointed to the left side of the ship. “It would not do fer the captain t’see ladies’ unmentionables flappin’ in the wind off his precious ship.”

  Anna’s eyes went wide and a blush pinkened her cheeks. Then a slow smile started at the corners of her lips—lovely lips, he happened to notice—before it spread across her face. “I’ll keep that in mind.”

  The smile on this bonnie lassie—it bloomed like a rose, simple and elegant. The effect rendered him speechless.

  She took a step or two, then turned back to him. “Have you lived your entire life on a ship?”

  He hesitated, giving him pause with regard to his choice of words. “Nay. Not me entire life. But most of it.” He was no more than a boy, a scrawny waif on the run, when the Captains John and Charles Stedman took him under their wing. He went back and forth between their vessels depending on who needed an extra hand. First as a cabin boy, then a deckhand, working his way up to ship’s carpenter. The Stedman brothers saw that Bairn was determined to better himself, and that he had an ability to comprehend even the complicated mathematics of navigation. He advanced quickly, thanks to their tutelage.

  “A ship makes for an odd childhood.”

  “The sea has been good and fair t’me.” Better than most people.

  Her gaze shifted to the harbor. “So that is Plymouth?”

  Bairn walked to the railing and she followed him over. “Aye, started as naught but a pokelogan.” Her eyes lit with amusement and he found himself studying them—wide blue eyes so deep and dark and guileless, a man could lose himself in their depths.

  “A what?”

  “Two rivers flowed together t’make Plymouth Sound. This is where the pilgrims first sailed to the New World. That’s the Mount Edgecumbe estate.”

  “Where?”

  He pointed to a large chateau. “See the battery of guns along the fringe of the estate? They’re pointed seaward toward France.”

  “Why are they pointed at France?”

  “Because the English hate the French. And vice versa.” He pointed to the distant hills. “’Tis where Sir John Hawkins lived. He started the Atlantic Slave Trade.”

  Anna gave him a sharp look. “And one day he will have to answer to God for that.”

  Bairn stifled a grin. “Aye, and he’ll be dressed with golden buckles on his boots.”

  She looked shocked. “The love of money is the root of all evil.”

  “And the root of all happiness.”

  “God measures a man’s life by more than his accumulation of wealth.” She tilted her head curiously. “Don’t you believe in a just God?”

  “If there is a God, I believe He is an angry tyrant.”

  “If I believed that, then I would try to avoid Him at all costs.”

  He met her gaze. “Indeed,” he said, letting a broad smile escape.

  She tilted her head thoughtfully, and her face softened. “Somehow, I don’t believe you.”

  “You think it’s impossible for a man to not believe in God?”

  “I think everybody believes in something.”

  “I do. I believe that a man’s destiny is up t’him. And I believe a man must grab whatever happiness he can in life, because it isn’t goin’ to last.”

  “But that is an entirely profane and secular view of life.”

  He grinned, amused and impressed. He wasn’t accustomed to women with a bright noggin on their shoulders. She wasn’t amused and seemed quite serious about the topic, which only made him all the more amused. Nonetheless, he made himself meet her steady gaze.

  “What if you’re wrong? What if there is something more? Something beyond us. God’s Word says He sees all things, knows all things. Nothing we do is hidden from His eyes.” A soft pity filled the woman’s eyes, stinging Bairn’s pride.

  His collar started to feel hot, tight. What had started as a droll conversation had quickly turned into an uncomfortable one.

  “Perhaps you should join us for church on Sunday . . .”

  He held up a hand to stop her. “Do y’realize that you’ve now given me more orders in one turn of the glass than the captain does in a full day?”

  She tilted her head to one side, as if she was trying to think back to what she had said to him to make him possibly think she ordered him about.

  He had never seen such extraordinary eyes. They sparkled with pinpoints of darker blue behind a fringe of dark lashes. He found himself going soft like a candle left too close to a fire. It was a strange feeling for him.

  “Anna?”

  They both turned their heads to see Christian Müller standing at the top of the companionway, watching them with a curious look on his face. Anna walked over to him and he spoke to her in a low voice in their peasant dialect. She turned to Bairn. “He wants to know how long we will be anchored in Plymouth.”

  Bairn shrugged. “Hard to say. The captain needs to provision the ship and that can take a few days, at the very least.” Probably longer, but he didn’t want to discourage them. They had no idea what they would be facing in the next few months, none at all. He wasn’t even sure he knew. He thought back with longing for the past ocean crossings when a ship held nothing but cargo in the lower deck.

  He watched Anna as she descended the ladder down into the lower deck. She was quite a lovely girl, lovely cheeks, lovely lips. Quick of mind too. Especially for a Peculiar. Unusually so for a Peculiar.

  Decker came up behind him. “You’re not the only one on this ship who wants some o’ that.”

  “Decker, have you no sense of decency?”

  “Not when it comes to Peculiars.”

  “Why must you be such an arrogant fellow? Why do you despise them so? They’ve done naught to you.”

  “Pious prigs. Uppity. They think they’re better than me.”

  “They are.”

  Decker’s head snapped up at that, and his thin lips pulled into a tight line. For a moment Bairn wondered if he should keep Decker at tasks far removed from the passengers. Poor devils. It wasn’t bad enough they had to be confined to the lower deck, they had to endure ill treatment above deck.

  But then the ship called to Bairn, dismissing all thoughts of a bonnie lassie below deck, stirring his senses with a blend of oakum and pitch, scents from the vessel that awaited his attention.

  He spotted the top of redheaded Felix scooting behind the sailors as they were holystoning the deck and decided not to stop him from exploring. How much trouble could he get into when the ship was anchored and the captain was ashore? After all, a boy is only a boy once.

  8

  July 8th, 1737

  Felix wormed his way through the knot of sailors on the deck and found a spot on the forecastle where he could hide unobserved. Better still, Bairn had left his spyglass on the forecastle deck while he was talking to Anna, and Felix thought he might not mind if he borrowed it.

  It was the first look at an English port that Felix ever had, might ever have, and he was intrigued by simple details—the swarm of ships in the sound, the crumbling old buildings on the shoreline, the scantily dressed women who waved and called out to sailo
rs. He saw men at work on the docks stop to drink from a flask, in no apparent hurry to complete their tasks, and he wondered what made them so thirsty. He thought of how he would have described the sight to Johann and found that it didn’t hurt quite as much to think of his brother as if he were still alive, as if he could still talk to him. As if he wasn’t cut off from him forever.

  And maybe he could. Anna said she thought that heaven was like a curtain, not a wall.

  Suddenly, someone seized Felix and stuffed him into an empty wooden barrel with holes in the top and sides. His head popped through the hole on the top of the barrel and he found Squinty-Eye laughing at him, his awful, ugly dog by his side. For the evil seaman, it was a great joke. Not to Felix.

  “’At’s what you deserve for venturing onto the fo’c’sle deck!”

  Felix tried to pretend he wasn’t as thoroughly humiliated as he was, but the wooden barrel was heavy—its whole weight rested on his shoulders and he couldn’t sit or stand. When he became too uncomfortable to stand it any longer, he begged Squinty-Eye to release him, promising to never go onto the forecastle deck again, and the barrel was removed.

  Felix took off for the lower deck, mouth and eyes open wide, legs pumping hard, one arm flailing and the other holding down his hat. But even as he flew down the companionway, he knew he would break his promise to Squinty-Eye by the stroke of the next bell.

  His father had always taught him that there was a solution to every problem. But he had also told Felix that sometimes the solution wasn’t where people would ordinarily expect it to be, that you might have to look in unexpected places and think in new and creative ways to find the answers you were looking for.

  Felix just had to find a better place to hide.

  The only time Anna had felt dry in the past week had been in the galley. The passengers did their best to keep the lower deck clean, but they had to use seawater, so everything felt sticky, stiff, grainy, grimy. And always damp.

  As soon as the longboats left for shore and the upper deck was quiet again, a deckhand named Johnny Reed came down to the lower deck and told them a fire had been lit on deck for passengers’ laundry. Anna tried to coax Dorothea to go above deck with a few other women who felt well enough to help, to get a little sunshine and fresh air, but she said she was too tired and needed to rest.