The Golden Cross (32 page)

The bay roiled with choppy waves, and the ship pitched and rolled. Closing her eyes, Aidan willed her arms and legs to carry her weight, then began to reach upward, moving inch by inch, step by step, upon the yielding and insubstantial ladder.

“Sakerloot
, it took you long enough.”

Aidan opened her eyes. She clung to the ropes abreast of the sailor in the rigging, only three feet across from the place where he hung. Gulping, she shrugged the coiled rope from her shoulder, then tossed it to him in a steady, even motion. The toss was poorly aimed, but he plucked it out of the air and immediately threaded the end through a grommet in the canvas and tied an elaborate knot that left her gaping.

Suddenly aware that lingering might only get her into further trouble, Aidan began to shimmy back down. She forced herself to look at the blue sky and the rigging above instead of concentrating on the water below.

Her toes felt the railing and her stomach clenched. She was almost down, but she wasn’t at all sure she could make the necessary maneuver that would bring her back to the deck. She froze and looked down at the sea, her heart beating hard enough to be heard a yard away.
Just move your feet and fall
, she told herself sternly.
You will land upon the deck
. But her feet would not move, and her fingers were so tightly clenched around the rigging that she could no longer feel them.

“Help!” she croaked. Out of nowhere, a strong arm seized hers, pulled her from the rigging, and guided her stubborn feet safely to the deck.

“You’re a wee bit unsteady on the ropes there, ketelbinkie.” The doctor’s voice was courteous but patronizing. He lingered, his
hand tight around her arm, until she found her balance and straightened herself.

“Thank you, but I’m all right.” She boldly met his gaze, then found herself pitching forward as a particularly high crest set the ship to rocking. A thrill of fear shot through her. If that wave had hit while she was in the rigging, she’d have let go in sheer terror. In blind panic she fell hard against the doctor’s chest, then brought her hands up, struggling to push him away as he caught her arms and held her upright.

Aidan stepped back and swallowed hard, her cheeks blazing as if they’d been seared by a torch. Had he noticed anything in that instant when she fell against him?

“It might take a day or two for you to get your sea legs.” His voice was softer now, and surprisingly gentle. She looked up, half-afraid to meet his eye, and saw him studying her face with considerable absorption. “Aidan, isn’t it?”

She coughed and deepened her voice. “Yes.”

“Aidan.” He paused, still looking at her with a speculative gaze. “And you are Van Dyck’s ketelbinkie, yes? You paint with the cartographer?”

“You know I do.” She tossed her braid over her shoulder in a gesture of defiance, then placed her hands on her hips. “If you’ve no need of me, Doctor, I have work to do.”

He lifted both hands in a sign of surrender. “I meant no disrespect. But I am trying to learn the names and positions of over one hundred men—”

“I’ll let you get to your work then.” She turned away, jumped nimbly over a pile of coiled rope, then put out her hand to steady herself as the ship rolled again. She thought she heard the sound of laughter behind her, but when she turned to look, Sterling Thorne had disappeared among the men roaming the deck.

According to Schuyler Van Dyck, not one moment of their adventure could be wasted. As soon as Aidan returned from the deck, he
made her sit by the porthole and placed a flat board in her hands. Slipping a sheet of parchment onto the board, he commanded Aidan to look out the window. “We are under way,” he said, a tone of reverent awe in his voice, “to discover new lands and new places within our souls. So sketch, my student, and let me see what is opening up inside you now.”

“What should I sketch?” Aidan studied the blank page, momentarily stymied. Her mind still reeled with thoughts of her embarrassing encounter with the doctor; sketching and art were the farthest things from her mind.

“You are surrounded by sights and feelings!” Van Dyck walked to the door, threw it open, and gestured to the bustle of activity beyond. “Look at the patterns! Both abstract and real, you are surrounded by them. The rigging-lines shoot in all directions, the sails billow like the bellies of pregnant women, like the pillow you lay your head on at night, like the swell of the sea itself. Look at those men yonder—”

Aidan peered out at the suntanned faces of the seamen she was unsuccessfully trying to emulate.

“Do you see the life in their eyes? The hope of discovery? The desire to master the sea? Live their lives, Aidan. Taste them, devour them, spit them out—and draw them!”

Aidan closed her eyes, trying her best to follow his train of thought. But she didn’t want to taste the life of a sailor; she wanted to savor the life of a respectable lady. Schuyler Van Dyck might never understand. He had quite literally been reared with a silver spoon in his mouth; he had never lived in her fallen world. Upstanding men and women did not scurry to the other side of the street when they saw him coming. Their finely dressed children did not taunt him with children’s moralistic nursery rhymes.

She breathed deep and felt a stab of memory, a broken remnant from her past life, a shard sharp as glass. When Aidan was sixteen, Lili had scrimped and saved to buy her a new white skirt and cornflower-blue bodice. Aidan had proudly worn her new clothes
to work in the tavern, hoping against hope that Lili’s dream might come true and some fine man might look upon her with favor. But not even an hour had passed before a drunken sailor spilled wine over the spotless white skirt, and Aidan fled to the safety of the street where she could cry away from her mother’s prying eyes. A rich man’s coach had slowly wheeled past, the horses holding a stately walking gait, and the mother inside had pointed to Aidan as if she were an exhibit in the zoo.

“Look there, daughter.” The woman’s nasal voice cut through the noises of the street. “Look and you will see the truth of the rhyme I taught you.” Then, as Aidan listened in disbelief, the woman ordered her coachman to stop. She drew her daughter closer to the window so that the child might see Aidan more clearly.

The memory still made Aidan’s neck burn with humiliation. She picked up the pencil on her master’s table and began to sketch the sea, restless and moving. Life simmered beneath the waves, but above, a host of faraway stars looked down at the sea and smiled smugly, grateful for the unattainable distance between them.

Sterling rubbed at the stubble on his chin as he made his way back to his cabin. He’d embarrassed the ketelbinkie quite thoroughly even before that disastrous wave cast the ship’s boy into his arms, but how much of that embarrassment was due to the fear that Sterling might discover Aidan’s secret? For Sterling did not need to draw upon his medical expertise to be quite certain—Aidan the ketelbinkie was no boy.

He closed the door to his cabin and took a seat behind his desk, pulling his journal toward him.
The fourteenth of August, in the year of our Lord 1642
, he wrote, pausing to dip his pen into the inkwell.
We are under way and thus far my crew is well—one hundred ten men and—

He paused and turned his eyes toward the sea. Why had the girl come aboard? The obvious answer was not the correct one, of that he was quite certain. Schuyler Van Dyck did not impress him as being either lecherous or deliberately rebellious. The gentleman was as honorable as any fellow Sterling had ever met. So if the girl was not his lover, who was she? Not his daughter, certainly. Van Dyck was as Dutch as a windmill, and the girl apparently English, even though an Irish brogue colored her speech now and then. Perhaps she was a long-lost relative, a niece or some other gentle lady forced to hide—or, like Sterling, forced to flee an unsuitable and thickheaded suitor.

He chuckled as something clicked in his brain. Of course! Aidan was the wench who had been slugging it out with the old man in the garden! They had been preparing for this little charade even then, and Van Dyck had been trying to teach the girl some manner of self-defense. Sterling’s mouth quirked with humor. She would need those self-defense lessons if anyone ever discovered the truth. The ketelbinkie Aidan made a rather spindly-looking boy, but that pale skin, slender form, and those wide green eyes would combine to make a most strikingly beautiful young woman. No wonder the old man had been so keen to know if Sterling had taken a good look at the girl in the garden.

He stretched his legs beneath his desk and stared at his journal. Now that he knew her secret, what was he to do? He couldn’t expose her without subjecting her to ridicule, punishment, and certain abandonment once they reached Mauritius. As a physician, he ought to confront her and invite her to take him into her confidence, for women had unique medical problems and he could help if she needed him. On the other hand, perhaps he should play dumb and continue as a silent partner in her masquerade. She undoubtedly had her reasons for joining this expedition, and Heer Van Dyck did not seem the sort to do anything truly foolish.

He tapped the quill of his pen against the page, then abruptly dropped it to the desk. Whatever he decided, he could not write about her in his journal, for all ship’s records were the property of the captain and, ultimately, the V.O.C. Tasman could read the log anytime he chose to, and anything Sterling wrote could one day be published throughout the United Provinces.

His eyes drifted to the porthole, through which he could see the gray-blue sea like an enormous sheet of dull-shining metal shading off into a blurred and fragile horizon. Perhaps he should do nothing at present. But if the girl appeared to be in any kind of trouble, he could move quickly to preserve her honor.

He drummed his fingers briefly on the table, relieved to know that she slept next door with Visscher and the old gentleman, and not in a hammock with the scores of crude seamen below. Visscher wouldn’t give her a second glance; ketelbinkies were nearly as low as rats on his ladder of significance. And the old man could be trusted, Sterling was certain.

He picked up his pen and dipped it in the inkwell.
One hundred ten men, including one ketelbinkie on each ship
, he finished.
The weather is fine, the winds are strong, and spirits are high. May God have mercy and grant us favor on this journey
.

Three weeks into the journey, Heer Van Dyck explained to Aidan that Mauritius, their first port of call, was an island colony older
than Batavia. “It may prove a welcome break for us,” he said as he stood at the taffrail. His eyes were intent upon the lacy lines of the ship’s wake as the narrow waves purled out across the sea. Behind the
Heemskerk
, off the port rail, the smaller
Zeehaen
followed with a most impressive show of canvas, brilliant in the sun, a white flume at her bow giving an impression of great speed.