1636: Seas of Fortune (11 page)

David looked at his cousin, Heyndrick. “He must be very ingenious to escape detection this long.”

“I suspect it was more that he was very generous to a sailor or two. He is a young American, and many of them are rich.”

David started swearing. “And no doubt he is on board without parental permission, and his parents will be raising bloody hell with my investors. Bring him to my cabin.”

A defiant young American teenager was brought in a moment later.

“What’s your name, and age?”

“Phil Jenkins. I’m sixteen. And a half.”

“Sixteen, huh?”

“And a half,” Phil reminded him.

“That’s young for an American to leave home. Do your parents know that you are here?”

“I mailed them a letter. From Hamburg. Anyway, I’m old enough to join the army, so why can’t I go overseas?”

“So . . . you stowed away because you want to see the world? Or perhaps you have seen one of those romantic American movies about pirates, and fancy yourself with a black eye patch and a parrot on your shoulder?”

“I know a lot about trees, and stuff like that. I thought I could help Maria—”

“Maria, huh? Would you be as keen to look at trees in Suriname if Maria weren’t on board?” Phil colored. “I knew having Maria on board was going to mean trouble,” David muttered. “I don’t suppose you have any nautical skills?”

“Well, Grantville was located about two hundred miles from Chesapeake Bay. But I know how to hunt and fish, and I can handle a small boat . . .” Phil paused. David’s stern expression was unchanged. Phil’s voice trailed off. “On a river or lake.”

David waved toward the porthole window. “Does that look like a lake to you?”

“No, sir.”

David studied Philip, and decided that he was not entirely unpromising material for a colonist, or a mariner. Still . . .

“All right. You’re more trouble to me than you’re worth. I can’t afford to turn around—we waited a long time for a northeast wind—but as soon as we see a friendly ship heading toward Hamburg or Bremen, you’re out of here. If you can’t pay for the passage, you’ll write me a promissory note, and I’ll give you the money.”

“But sir—”

“No buts. This is not your American legislature; there is no debate. Cousin, find a place for him to swing a hammock, and keep him out of my hair.”

* * *

Maria couldn’t believe it. Philip had snuck on board to be with her.

It made her feel like, like . . . reaching into his throat and pulling out his intestines. Not that his
intestines
were the root of the problem, anatomically speaking. Teenage boys,
arggh
!

She admitted to herself that it made her feel good that he was so interested in her. After all, she was ten years older than him.

But did he have any idea what sort of position it put her in? The crew and colonists would have had difficulty enough accepting an
up-time
woman in a position of authority. But the up-timers all acted as if they were nobles. Maria was educated, and of good family, but not of the nobility, nor someone whose past achievements would force them to overlook her gender. The captain had only grudgingly accepted her, after witnessing her kayaking stunt . . . not that the demonstration had the slightest bit to do with her competence as a botanist, a healer, an artist, or a geologist!

And now the captain would be wondering if this trip to the New World was just her excuse for eloping with Philip. Why, everyone else on board would be wondering the same thing.

Well, she was going to have to have a little talk with Philip. Once she had calmed down enough not to throw him overboard and make him
swim
back to Hamburg.

But it was nice to know that he thought she was attractive.

* * *

Carsten Claus sat on a capstan and watched the sailors going about their work. The other colonists had decided that the water was a bit too rough for their taste, and had retired to the
zwischendeck
. Carsten, however, had once been a sailor himself, and he had quickly recovered both his sea legs and his “sailor’s stomach.”

His fellow colonists were mostly Dutch and Germans, displaced by the war. Happy people don’t pack their belongings and make a long and difficult journey to a wilderness reportedly populated by cannibals and savage beasts. Even if rumor also had it that there is gold to be found somewhere in that wilderness. The practical Dutch and Germans just didn’t put much stock in stories of El Dorado. So the colonists were people with problems back home that they needed to escape, or with more than their fair share of wanderlust.

Of course, there was a third possibility. A few could be spies, or agents provocateurs. Carsten was an organizer for the Committees of Correspondence (CoC), the revolutionary organization that, with American encouragement, had spread across much of central Europe.

Andy Yost had briefed Carsten on how important it was to have a colony that could export rubber, bauxite and oil to the New United States. Oops, Carsten meant the United States of Europe. Just before the expedition left, the once-sovereign NUS had become a member state of the USE.

In Carsten’s opinion, some of the CoC members greatly exaggerated the ubiquity of Richelieu’s spies. In fact, at a CoC meeting, Carsten had once rapped on a closet door, and yelled, “Cardinal, come out right this minute.” That had a gotten a laugh, albeit a somewhat nervous one.

Carsten had to admit that it was at least conceivable that the colonists had been infiltrated. So one of Carsten’s jobs was to check their bona fides. By now, Carsten was sure that they were all okay. Well, reasonably sure.

He had also made some progress with respect to his long-term business, which was “education.” Gently indoctrinating them in democratic principles, and forming a new CoC cell to make sure that the colony didn’t venture onto dangerous ground. Like slaveholding.

When their ship entered the dangerous waters between Cape Finisterre and the Cape Verde Islands, he had reminded the colonists that these were the haunts of the Barbary Corsairs.

He acknowledged that they couldn’t have a better captain than David de Vries, who was famed for having fought off the Turks when they outnumbered him two-to-one. But he asked them to pray for his fellow sailors who were less fortunate, who had been forced to surrender and whose families could not ransom them from slavery. They did so, and if they added a prayer or two for themselves, he couldn’t blame them.

And then, as they prayed, he asked them to pray for the Africans who had been enslaved in the New World by the wicked Spanish and Portuguese.

When one of the colonists was bold enough to retort that the Africans couldn’t expect better treatment, being pagans, and probably cannibals at that, Philip had hotly complained that putting chains on the blacks wasn’t the best way to teach them about the benefits of Christianity. As an up-timer, Philip’s opinions were accorded respect, despite his youth and inexperience.

So Carsten, at least, was glad that Philip had joined their expedition.

* * *

The ship was running before the wind, which meant that the captain’s cursing was carried down the length of the ship. The crew was practically tiptoeing.

Philip gave Heyndrick an anxious look. “What’s got the captain upset? It isn’t me, again, I hope.”

“No, no, it’s not you. The captain got all these newfangled navigation instruments in Grantville. Most of them work fine. The sextant, it beats a cross-staff any day. Maybe ten times as accurate, and you don’t go blind trying to sight the sun.”

“So what’s the problem?”

“The clock. It’s supposed to keep Nürnberg time, so we can calculate our longitude. It worked just fine . . . on land. And it’s supposed to work at sea. Uses springs, not a pendulum.”

“But . . .”

“But whoever designed it never tested it at sea. Or at least, not on waters this rough. We know where we are, more or less, from soundings and sightings, and either the clock is wrong, or our computations are. And since the captain’s figures and mine agree . . .”

“How bad an error are you talking about?”

“Well, the old pendulum clocks, if you took them to sea, accumulated ten or fifteen minutes error a day. This one, oh, a minute or two. But an error of one minute clock time still throws off the longitude by”—he frowned for a moment—“seven and a half degrees. A few hundred miles. And after a month at sea, the clock won’t even tell you which
ocean
you’re in.”

“Really. In that case, I have a proposition I want to put before the captain.”

“Pardon me if I wait here. I have no desire to join you on the execution block.”

* * *

“Captain, you don’t want me to leave,” Philip said.

David turned to face him. “Oh? Why the hell not?”

Philip took a deep breath. “Because of this.” He pulled back his sleeve.

David didn’t understand, at first. Then he did. Philip was wearing a self-winding wristwatch. A timepiece which worked at sea would let David accurately determine his longitude each day. If the timepiece kept the correct time for a place of known longitude, like Grantville, then it could be compared with the ship’s local time, inferred from the position of the sun, to find the ship’s longitude.

“How accurate is your watch?”

Philip hesitated. “I’m not sure. I guess it might lose or gain a few minutes a year.”

“A year,” repeated David dumbly.

“Yep,” Phillip affirmed, this time more confidently.

David took a deep breath. “You are offering me your watch in return for the passage, and your maintenance in the colony?”

“Are you kidding? I bet this watch is worth more than your entire ship.”

“Not this ship.” David said. But he couldn’t help thinking,
But it is perhaps worth as much as one of the yachts. And it would be worth a lot more if only I could shoot the sun with equivalent accuracy.

Philip clarified his position. “What I meant was that I—and my watch—would be at your disposal for the duration of the voyage.”

“Aren’t you worried that I might just seize it from you? Or perhaps contrive your murder?”

Phil took a step back. “I . . . The things I heard about you . . . I didn’t think you’d do something like that. You could have killed the Indians who wiped out the Zwanandael settlement, and you didn’t. At least, Joe Buckley said you didn’t.”

“You might bear in mind that Joe Buckley got the story from me. But you’re right, I didn’t. And I won’t. But I would advise you to be very cautious about whom you show that watch to.”

* * *

“Philip.” She stared at him, eyes half-slitted, fists on hips.

He either didn’t recognize the warning signs, or chose to ignore them. “Hi, Maria, I’m—”

“Why are you here?”

“Isn’t it obvious? We’ve been seeing each other a while, and I couldn’t stomach your being away for a year, maybe forever.”

“Seeing me? You mean courting me? Dating, as you call it?”

“Well, yeah.”

“But you never wrote to my brother, and asked his permission to court me. Or even asked Lolly, whose roof I live under.”

“Jeesh, guys haven’t done that for, I dunno—”

“Centuries? Almost four centuries? As in, the way it was done back in 1633? Oops, it
is
1633, isn’t it?”

“Well, you’ve lived in Grantville for two years, so it didn’t occur to me—”

“Didn’t occur to you to say anything to me, either.”

“You mean, like saying, ‘Will you be my girlfriend?’ or ‘Would you like to go steady?’ That’s so old fashioned, you know. Kids my age just hang out, and that’s what we were doing.”

“Philip. Listen to me. What do you think
my
age is?”

“I don’t know. College age? Nineteen? Twenty?”

“I am twenty-six, Philip. I am ten years older than you.”

“Not quite. I am sixteen and a—”

“Yes, I know! Sixteen and a half!” Maria took a deep breath, let it out slowly. “I have been married once, and widowed, already. My husband was lost at sea, in Asian waters.”

“Sorry, I didn’t know. Gee, you look terrific for someone your age.”

“Thanks—I think.” Maria felt herself losing control of the conversation. “Philip, yes, you came to visit me a lot, but I thought that was because we were friends, not boyfriend and girlfriend. And because you were interested in my work. And maybe because Marina was helping me.”

“Marina? She’s never said a word to me in school.” Philip paused. “Do you have a boyfriend already? I mean, someone other than me.”

“No, Philip.” He looked relieved.

Maria decided to seize the bull by the horns. “So what did you hope to accomplish by coming on board?”

“I guess . . . I guess I really wanted to impress you. You know, make a really big romantic gesture.” Philip’s cheeks were as red as apples.

“Well, you impressed me, but not with your maturity. You didn’t try to find out how I felt first, you left your parents worrying—”

“I left them a note.”

“Believe me, that just gives them something new to worry about.” Maria threw up her hands. “Really, Philip. This is like, like
stalking
me. Go think about it. In private.”

* * *

Philip was not a happy camper. Everything had gone dreadfully wrong. Maria thought he was a
stalker
, for crying out loud. Philip thought he would
die
.

He lay in his hammock, listening to the creaking of the hull, and tried not to cry. Eventually, he fell asleep.

When he awoke, he resolved that he would ask the captain to flag the next Hamburg-bound ship, after all. He went up to talk to David.

David didn’t buy it. “We made an agreement, young man, and you need to stick to it. Unless you are willing to give up your watch.”

“Well . . .”

“I thought not. You have skills that are useful to this expedition, and I expect you to apply them. Whether you love or hate Maria is of absolutely no interest to me. The two of you work it out.”

* * *

“Heave-to!” The
Walvis
turned into the wind, and stalled. A few minutes later, the other ships followed suit. David sent more lookouts aloft, in case Barbary corsairs came sniffing around, and went to the poop deck.