Anna's Crossing: An Amish Beginnings Novel (6 page)

Anna’s mind was moving slow from the seasickness . . . but she started to count out the months. If Lizzie was due in late fall, then she shouldn’t be experiencing those tightenings for a while longer.

She started across the deck to go question Lizzie, but the ship lurched and she went flying onto the cannon. Her knees sagged and she felt ill again—twisted stomach, spinning head, a brain that had lost its ability to string two thoughts together.

July 3rd, 1737

Four days at sea and Felix had yet to lay eyes on the captain. He’d heard his voice up above, yelling orders in what Anna said was a thick Scottish burr. Wouldn’t Anna’s grandfather love to hear the way he rolled his
r
’s? He could mimic any accent, her grandfather.

This morning, when Felix was hiding on the upper deck, he finally caught a glimpse of the captain and he wasn’t at all what Felix expected. He was a small man, with enormous muttonchop whiskers, dressed up in fancy clothes. He looked more like the Baron of Ixheim heading off to a party than a sea captain.

But then Felix saw him pick up a speaking trumpet and gaze out over the seamen for a moment, saying nothing, letting his attitude silence them. It reminded Felix of the way his father would begin a Sunday sermon—in silence, until all eyes were focused and minds were quieted. Felix had overheard Josef Gerber say that his father could control the church with one glance. That’s what it seemed as if the captain was doing right now—controlling the entire ship with his glance.

Through the speaking trumpet, the captain barked out orders in a deep baritone voice that was surprising in a man so short, and he used it to good effect, bellowing out commands with absolute authority. He shouted quite a lot, that captain, and sailors quivered at his command. Felix would like to have that kind of respect from others one day.

When he saw the captain head toward the forecastle deck, Felix scurried down to the opposite end of the ship to the Great Cabin and waited until the helmsman was distracted before he slipped inside.

The captain’s quarters was a small bowed room, with a built-in bunk on one side and a table fastened to one wall. It
was the only private space Felix had found on this ship. He peered out through the small windows at the channel. It was a different view from the stern and Felix squinted, the way he’d seen seamen squint against the sun or at the churned-up frothy water left in the ship’s wake, as if it was telling them something. He was thinking that maybe he was becoming as savvy about a seaman’s life as any sailor ever was.

Felix turned from the window and noticed a shelf of books built into the bulkhead and held in place by a wooden bar. One book caught his attention and he opened it to see if there were illustrations. He wondered if the captain would notice if he borrowed a book for Anna now and then. She liked to read, like Johann did, though that got him into trouble in the end. Terrible trouble.

If Felix did borrow a book from the captain, and if Anna asked him where he’d found it, he would have to make his lie short and simple, to keep her from worrying. Johann often pointed out that Felix always got caught in lies when he tried to spin too much straw on them.

Suddenly, the ship’s bell sounded and he realized he’d lost track of time and the Great Cabin was no place to tarry. He hadn’t thought this through. He hadn’t thought at all. Heavy footsteps drew near and he whirled around, desperate for a place to hide in this tiny room. He threw himself onto the captain’s tiny bunk and pulled the curtain, letting out a shaky breath. Pure panic, and not a good place to be. He held no illusions that the captain wouldn’t accept a boy from the lower deck in his private space, or let him borrow a book without asking permission. Just like the Baron of Ixheim.

The door to the Great Cabin opened and footsteps crossed the coaming. Then Felix heard the scrape of a wooden chair
against the floor and a squeak of a hinge. Through a crack in the curtain, he peeked through and let out a shaky breath, relieved to see that the man who was in the Great Cabin wasn’t the captain but that tall officer. He wasn’t dressed sloppy like the other seamen, and he wasn’t barefoot like they were. He wore long, shiny black boots, up to his knees. The officer opened the wooden box that sat on the captain’s table and pulled out some funny-looking tools. He started working with the tools, then, absorbed, he sat down on the chair.

Felix wondered what those tools were used for. His father had all kinds of tools but nothing like those.

Thinking of his father caused his thoughts to drift back to his brother Johann and a sweeping sadness rushed over him. Anna said that Johann was in a better place and they shouldn’t wish him back, but Felix was fairly sure that Johann would rather be here, with them right now, than be taken away from them. He wondered what his father would have to say when he heard about Johann, once they reached Port Philadelphia.

Would his father hate the baron as much as Felix hated him? The baron was the reason his father left for the colonies so abruptly last year. The baron was the reason Johann was dead. He remembered the conversations his parents had that night before his father left for the New World, in quiet voices he probably wasn’t supposed to be hearing. His father had said that if he didn’t go now, the baron would find a way to kill him and make it seem legal. He was that evil, his father said, and Felix knew now that he was right. The baron couldn’t catch Jacob Bauer so he had caught Johann. And it was all legal, just like Papa had predicted.

All Felix had to do was think about what the baron did to Johann and the sadness would rise up in his throat to choke
him. He looked through the crack in the curtain again, his eyes suddenly blurring. Anna had told him that grief and sorrow had a way of piling up inside a person until there was nothing but to cry them all back out again. But Anna was a girl, and it was all right for her to cry. Men, like his father—they didn’t cry. Sometimes if he just held his breath and concentrated hard, he could almost see Johann. Almost see him waving to Felix in the hills, beckoning him to join him.

Felix tried to swallow down the wad of tears that was building in his throat. It just hurt so much to think about his brother being gone forever. He squeezed his eyes shut.
Don’t you
cry, Felix Bauer. Don’t you dare cry.

He heard the rustle of paper and looked again through the crack of the curtain, blinking hard against the tears. Felix was so close to the officer that he could smell the scent of his clothes, wood spice and tar and smoke. The unusual smells helped to push thoughts of Johann to the back of his mind and bring Felix back to the present.

He stared at the officer, fascinated, wondering what he was doing. Felix was already learning the proper term for each part of the ship. He could barely hold back from climbing the tangle of ropes like the barefooted sailors did. He imagined himself like a bird, scanning the great vista of water from high above, watching America grow closer and closer over the curve of the earth. From down near the cook’s kitchen, he could hear the ship’s bells strike another afternoon half hour away. He nestled further in the captain’s down-filled mattress and watched the officer turn pages in a book. Felix thought he could stay here for hours, days even, happy as a clam.

And then his stomach rumbled a loud, hungry, echoing growl.

July 3rd, 1737

Bairn wasn’t alone.

The captain had sent him into the Great Cabin to fetch the sextant to make a noontime bearing, and he took a moment to look through the logbook to check coordinates. He found himself reading through the entries of the last few days:

June 29, 1737

Set off from
Rotterdam. Freight: 132 qualifying men, German Palatinates recruited by newlander
Georg Schultz.

Georg Schultz.
How he despised that man.

Bairn sat motionless. For the first time in a very long time, memory threatened to push back, and sweat broke on his forehead. He refused to remember. He would
not
.

Just as he was pondering how much he abhorred Georg Schultz, how that little man always found a way to tweak him, to remind him of what he held over Bairn’s head, an odd sound emerged from the captain’s bunk. He straightened, lifted his head, turned around, and saw something move behind the curtain. Queenie, the ship’s cat, perhaps? He yanked
the curtain open and there . . . was a red-headed German boy from the lower deck.

Bairn laid a hand on the boy’s shoulder and the boy recoiled at his touch, jerked back. He grasped the boy’s shoulder and held tight. “Do y’realize where you are?”

The boy’s face skewed up with fear. He couldn’t understand him.

“You should not be here. You could be flogged.” He made a whipping motion with his hand and the boy understood that. His blue eyes welled in utter terror. Bairn softened; he hadn’t meant to frighten the laddie.

“Was iss dei Naame?”
What
is your name?

“Felix. Mei Naame iss Felix.”
My
name is Felix.

“Kumme.” Bairn pulled the curtain open and took a step toward the door.
Come with me.

When the boy recovered from his shock, he scrambled out of the bunk. “Kannscht du mei Schprooch?”
Do you know
my language?

Bairn shrugged. “Wennich.”
Enough.
Mostly forgotten. “Kannscht du Englisch schwetze?”
Can you speak English?

Felix nodded vigorously. “I learn . . . schteik.”
Fast.

Where was Felix? Anna had looked all through the lower deck and couldn’t find any sign of him. Keeping her voice calmer than she felt, she asked Dorothea if she had seen Felix go by.

They all felt ill. Maria was wretched, Barbara Gerber looked pea-green, Lizzie Mast lay moaning on her bunk, but Dorothea seemed to fare the worst. Ghostly pale, she hadn’t been able to keep anything down for days. Her expression of bleak
dismay intensified to one of alarm, but before she could begin to panic, Anna rushed on. “I’m sure I saw him down near the animals.” She skirted around the narrow path toward the front of the ship.

Anna frightened the chickens by swinging their cages to peer around them. They clucked and fussed at her, but she found no red-haired boy hiding behind them.

Where was Felix?

She was struck in the face with the pungent smells of chicken and pig, odors that were so much a part of her life that she seldom noticed them in Ixheim but mixed with the pervasive smell of sick people sent her stomach rolling again. As hard as she tried to keep her mind occupied, she couldn’t stop her stomach from rebelling to the constant roll and pitch of the sea.

She almost felt like she was drowning in this dark, fetid air, as if she couldn’t breathe. What an
awful
stench! She had to get upstairs, away from the gloomy lower deck and passengers in utter misery, had to fill her lungs with fresh air, and by now she was fairly confident Felix was up there, prowling around. She could imagine him tumbling overboard when one of those big sails swung around. She had warned him countless times to stay below and out of danger.

But that is not the reasoning a boy follows.

As she made her way to the companionway, the ship twisted itself into the trough of a wave and her stomach twisted in the opposite direction. She groaned. The bow slammed onto the water and her stomach clenched. Another roll of nausea rose up and she ran up the stairs as quickly as she could. She took her first full breath of sea air and it filled her lungs, the sunlight and fresh wind revived her. Ah, relief!

A sailor, washing the decks with a bucket of seawater,
eyed her and tossed the bucket right at Anna so she took in a mouthful of dirty salt water. She coughed, choked, tripped, and as she stumbled, a firm hand gripped her at the elbow.

The scent of sandalwood enveloped her and a low voice spoke into her ear. “Are you all right?”

“Oh heaven help me,” she said. “I think I’m going to be sick.” She took an unsteady step forward, away from the hand that cupped her elbow and rushed to reach the railing. She gripped the railing and leaned over as far as she dared, sea spray slapping her face.

Two large hands gripped Anna’s waist and held her steady.

“Nee. Fattgeh
.
” Her voice sounded like a mewling kitten’s cry.

“Go away?” The deep voice sounded amused. “Go away and let y’tumble on yer head into the sea?”

“Don’t help me.” She kept her eyes closed so she didn’t have to look at that horrible sailor, see contempt or mockery for her weakness.

But the sailor ignored her and his calloused hand held her head as she choked and gasped, heaving dry heaves. There was nothing left in her stomach to toss up, but the gentle hand continued to hold her head until the dry heaves stopped.

“There, lassie, let it pass.”

Her throat burned, but she was done for now. She straightened up, burning with shame, her face scarlet. She could feel it. She wasn’t sure which was worse, heaving over a ship’s railing or having a brute of a sailor try to bring her comfort. With the back of her hand, she wiped her mouth and realized that the sailor’s calloused hand belonged to the ship’s carpenter, not the beast who threw the bucket of salt water at her.

“’Tis nothin’ but a case of the mal de mer, n’more. Come
along with me and the boy while I fetch you some ginger root to help.”

From around the waist of the ship’s carpenter popped a mop of curly red hair. Felix.

The carpenter held up a hand. “Before you start giving him a tongue lashin’, follow me.” He tilted his head toward the front of the ship. “Come along then.”

As she followed him, she saw a sight at the bow of the ship that stopped her in her tracks. She stared at the sight with dropped jaw; so startled, she forgot she was seasick.

The carpenter spun around to see what was keeping her, then grinned at her obvious embarrassment. A sailor stood on an open platform with holes cut in it, lashed to the bow of the ship. He was relieving himself directly into the channel, rinsing off with a bucket of salt water, for all the world to see. “That, m’ lassie, is known as a head.”

The
Charming Nancy
twisted down the side of a wave, and Anna flew forward. The ship’s carpenter caught her shoulders before she struck the railing. Everything around Anna started to spin. Spinning. Spinning, spinning. Then darkening—

“She’s gone all pasty colored,” she heard Felix cry out.

Anna’s knees sagged.
I must
not faint. I must not faint.
She grasped onto the forearms of the ship’s carpenter as her stomach flipped and churned. He put a hand firmly on her shoulder to guide her as they walked forward on the shifting deck.

On any ordinary day, Anna would have been mortified to allow a stranger to help her, to touch her, but this was not an ordinary day. With Felix following closely behind, the carpenter helped her into a small rectangular room not much bigger than a closet. A short bald man was mixing bread dough in
a large bowl and looked up in surprise at his visitors. A clay pipe stuck out of the corner of his mouth. He wore an apron covered with food and charcoal smudges and . . . was that blood? Anna’s stomach clenched again.

“That’s Cook and this is the galley,” the carpenter said. “The ship’s kitchen.”

“Galley,” Felix quietly repeated to himself. “Cook and galley.”

The ship dipped and twisted. Anna took long, deep breaths, and tried to think about the green hills of Ixheim after a spring rain. “I think . . . I think I need to sit down.” Before she sagged in the ship carpenter’s hold or was sick down the front of his expensive shirt. “Please.” The single word nearly choked her.

He helped her to a barrel along the wall. “Here you go.”

Anna sat carefully upon the barrel’s lid and braced herself with both hands on the side. She took some deep breaths, willing her stomach to stop cramping. Slowly, she lifted her head and looked around the room, then her gaze landed on the ship’s carpenter. A black cat appeared and twined around his boots.

“There you be, Queenie,” Cook said. “I haven’t seen you for days.”

Absentmindedly, the carpenter said, “She’s been trapped under a tub, Decker said.”

“Queenie?” Felix asked.

“Aye, that’s her name. She’s the ship’s cat.”

Anna looked up. “I thought cats were afraid of water.”

“They are,” Cook said. “But every ship needs a cat.”

“Why?”

“To catch rats.” One side of his mouth lifted and the clay pipe bobbed as he spoke. “Prodigious rats.”

Anna barely stifled a gag.

The carpenter kept rummaging through cupboards. “Cook, have you ginger root? The lassie needs some t’settle her stomach. She’s as sick as a poisoned pup.”

“Aye,” the cook said. He jutted his chin toward a basket and went back to punching and kneading the dough.

“Judas Iscariot!” Felix shouted, pointing to the bowl of bread dough.

Anna clapped her hand over Felix’s mouth, astounded by his outburst of profanity, then her eyes went wide with shock. The cook was missing a hand. When she saw the reddened scarred stump as he pounded the dough, her stomach twisted and turned again.

The cook waved his stump in the air in the direction of the ship’s carpenter and laughed. “Fine handiwork of Bairn’s.” Then he calmly went back to kneading the dough.

“Had t’be done,” Bairn said, matter-of-factly, still poking through the cupboards. “I only lopped it off because it had gone gangrene on you.”

She slid another glance at the carpenter—Bairn. What kind of name was that for a man who had the courage to cut off a man’s gangrened hand? He was too tall to stand upright in the low-ceilinged cabin. And he appeared strong enough to lift her in one arm and Felix in the other. His face revealed nothing of what he was truly made of, whether good or evil, a man who kept himself closely guarded. And yet those eyes of his . . . there was something compelling to her about them. She couldn’t make herself look away.

Bairn took a small knife from Cook’s work counter and sliced some ginger root. “Chew on this. ’Twill help.”

When he handed her the ginger, their fingers met and then
their eyes. The spicy scent tickled her nose and she caught a look of mirth flit through Bairn’s eyes. Here and then gone. Shyly, she lowered her chin and nibbled on the ginger root.

Bairn reached behind Felix to pull a tin off a shelf. He opened the tin and offered cookies to Felix. “Take two, they’re small. Cook is a stingy man.”

Cook snorted. “I was more generous before you lopped me hand off.”

“If I hadn’t taken yer hand, you would’ve died fer sure.” He turned to Anna. “The ship’s carpenter often doubles as the ship’s surgeon.”

“Same tools!” The cook made a slicing motion with his one hand, like he was chopping wood with an axe.

Anna’s stomach rose and fell.

“Aye, same tools,” Bairn said, “but I take more care with both wood and bones than he’d have you believe.”

Mesmerized, Felix’s head bobbed from one direction to the other, listening to the cook’s sloppy English and then the carpenter’s crisp turn of phrase. Anna wasn’t sure how much Felix could understand of this conversation between the cook and the carpenter—he never seemed to pay attention during her English lessons—but the casual description of a gangrenous hand made her stomach twirl like it was being tightened in a vice.

Chewing the ginger rapidly, Anna tried to get her mind off her nausea and took stock of the compact space of the tiny kitchen. Under the hot furnace rested a platform of bricks, no doubt to keep the heat from burning right through the wooden deck. Every inch of space was claimed, but used in clever ways. Cupboards had been customized to fit the narrow room, including a narrow corner cupboard. Spices were
lined in rows of shelving with a wooden dowel to keep them in place. She doubted Cook would have to take more than a few steps to gather ingredients.