Anna's Crossing

by Suzanne Woods Fisher

  Then there was the fog—both a blessing and a curse. As long as there was fog, the Charming Nancy wouldn’t be leaving Plymouth. The fog was a curse because they were running through their victuals. But it was also a blessing because it meant Georg Schultz wasn’t on board.

  Anna gave thanks for this night and the smelly, damp, leaky boat and for what lay ahead. And she prayed she hadn’t done any harm to the seamen.

  But she still intended to talk to the captain about returning to Rotterdam the moment he set foot on the ship.

  10

  July 14th, 1737

  Bairn spotted Felix hiding behind the windlass and strode over to him. “I’ve been searchin’ fer you. What are you up to now, laddie?”

  “Nix.” Nothing. Felix gave him a wide-eyed, innocent look that didn’t fool Bairn for a moment. “Vas ist das?”

  “It’s a windlass. It’s a type of winch used to raise the anchor.”

  Felix pointed to another winch. “Net das?”

  “Nay. That’s a capstan. We use it to hoist cargo and other heavy loads. Methinks you ken English better than you let on. The more y’try speakin’ it, the better it’ll go for you in the New World.” He nodded his head toward the fo’c’sle deck, inviting Felix to ascend the ladder. He wanted to move them away from the clump of seamen who were gathered in a circle to mend sailcloth.

  Bairn showed Felix the wheel. “Yer at the helm of the ship.” He put his hands on the spokes of the wheel. “Come, take possession of the wheel.” He made way for him to stand before him at the wheel.

  Felix slipped into place and grabbed the wheel. “How can it . . . verk?”

  Bairn was pleased to hear the boy use his halting English. “The wheel is attached to a rudder, far below us in the hold.”

  “I see it.”

  “What? Have you been prowlin’ down in the hold too?”

  “Yuscht eemol.” Felix bit his lip. Only once.

  “I’ll wager you’ve been down more than once.” He grinned. He couldn’t fault him; he would’ve done the same thing as a laddie. Why, in fact, he had.

  “Do captain stand at vheel all day? All night?”

  “Nay. He gives orders to helmsmen who take turns at watch, day and night.”

  “Night too?”

  “Aye. When we put out to sea, the wheel is difficult to control. It takes constant mindin’. Not unlike some boys I ken.”

  Felix grinned, revealing missing teeth. It pleased Bairn to see the laddie smile so readily. Boys should have reasons to smile.

  “How do you . . . the vheel . . . how do you . . .” He motioned with his hands as if turning a wheel.

  “Guide the ship?”

  Felix nodded. “To America.”

  Bairn pointed to a box behind him. “Do you see that box? ’Tis called a binnacle. It houses the compass. In the Great Cabin—which is where I first found you sleepin’ in the captain’s bed—there’s the chronometer. We use mathematics to determine longitude and latitude. The captain tells us whitherward, and we set the course.” He looked up. “And then there’s the sun and stars, as well. That’s the mariner’s ancient way to set a course.”

  Felix gripped the wheel as solemnly as if he were a helmsman during a severe storm.

  The ship’s bell rang to mark the time of watch. “I must go. And you should get below so your family isn’t worried about you.”

  With a fallen face, Felix reluctantly started toward the ladder.

  “Felix, I noticed Anna has a limp. Is she hurt?”

  “One leg is . . .” He held up his hands at different lengths.

  “Shorter than the other?”

  Felix nodded.

  “Was she born that way?”

  “Nee.” Felix held his fists together and snapped them like a twig. “It breaks and does not . . .” He searched for the right word. “Fix.”

  “Heal. You mean her leg dinnae heal properly.” An idea brewed in Bairn’s mind. “Supposin’ you help me with somethin’. A secret.”

  Felix grinned like he was ready to receive a gift. He hurried back to Bairn’s side, deeply interested. “Vat?”

  “Would you be able to bring me her shoes?”

  “Shoes? You vant Anna’s shoes?”

  “Aye. She goes barefoot most of the time. All you Peculiars do—” He stopped himself, realizing he had just maligned the boy’s people. “Like the sailors.” Most sailors went barefoot aboard the ship, as it was easier to climb in the rigging of the ship without clumsy shoes.

  Felix looked down at his bare toes and wiggled them.

  “Could you do that? Bring me her shoes?”

  “I go. I look.”

  “’Tis our secret!” Bairn reminded him. “If you can get above deck without bein’ seen, leave them in me shop.”

  He watched the flop of curly red hair descend down the companionway to the lower deck. There was something about that boy that touched Bairn, though he couldn’t pinpoint the reason other than Felix reminded him of himself at that age. Curious about everything related to the ship and the sea.

  Later that evening, he found Anna’s shoes on his workbench, courtesy of a sly laddie. They were humble shoes, made of sheepskin, well worn. He hung a lantern from an iron hook; the light cast a broad beam over his workbench. He spent time carving a heel, sanding it, nailing it carefully into the sole, adjusting it, and then he remained in the deserted carpentry shop for near an hour, staring out the empty doorway, a lantern in his hand, considering Anna. Wondering why he bothered to fix her shoe.

  Anna lay on the hammock, trying to distract herself from the loud snores that rose above the hiss of waves breaking against the hull, but the smells of chamber pots that needed to be emptied overpowered her will. The entire vessel seemed to sleep except for the sounds of someone who paced the deck above.

  The longer she lay awake with the heavy dank odors of crowded humanity, the more she felt desperate to get upstairs and fill her lungs with fresh air. Quietly, she slipped out of the hammock and crept to the companionway to climb the steps. She pushed the hatch up and took a bracing breath; the sea air caressed her face, cleansing, refreshing, healing.

  “Who goes there?” A lantern shone in her face.

  “’Tis Anna.”

  Bairn lowered the lantern. “I should have known. Yer above deck lately as much as young Felix. Is somethin’ wrong?”

  “No. I just . . . couldn’t sleep and needed fresh air.”

  “Aye, I can believe that.” He took her hand and led her up the final tread onto the deck.

  She drew her hand free.

  “Hold on to somethin’.” He settled her hand into the crook of his elbow and led her to the railing. She peered over the side. The moon shone on the water’s dark surface. They stood side by side, quietly, for a long moment. “Wait here a minute, Anna. Keep yer hands on the railin’.”

  He strode toward the back of the ship and disappeared for a moment, then reemerged. He held something behind his back. “I noticed you have a limp.”

  Anna flinched and looked away. She could feel her face heat up. She’d grown so accustomed to a limp that she rarely thought about it.

  His tone softened. “I didn’t mean to embarrass you. I adjusted yer shoes to even out yer gait.” He held out her shoes to him. The right shoe had a platform that raised it over an inch. “I can adjust the heel if it dinnae feel quite right. I had to make a guess.”

  She looked at the shoes, not quite understanding.

  “It’s something I’ve done fer other sailors. If you dinnae fix that limp now, you’ll end up with a crooked back when yer old and gray.”

  “I . . . I don’t know what to say.”

  “Naught but a small thank-you for helpin’ the sailors with their ailments.”

  She was grateful for the dark of night because her face was a tempest of emotions. She was touched by his action, and puzzled by it too. “How did you find my shoes?”

  “That red-haired brother of yours.”

 
A smile lifted Anna’s lips. “Felix isn’t my brother.”

  Now it was Bairn’s turn to be surprised. “He’s not your brother? You dote on him. You seem t’make it yer business to keep the boy away from sin and foolishness.”

  “So true. That boy is a full-time job.”

  “Why aren’t his folks dotin’ on him?”

  “His father is waiting for everyone in Port Philadelphia. And his mother . . . They had a death in the family right before we left for Rotterdam and she . . . she’s grieving still. I’m used to keeping watch over Felix. I’ve known him since he was born.”

  “Well, that makes more sense. You dinnae resemble each other at all.” His gaze swept over Anna, making her blush. “My mother has red hair like Felix’s. In a certain light, it looks like fire.”

  “Does she live in Scotland?”

  “Nay. Not Scotland.”

  “But your accent . . .”

  “Acquired from servin’ the captains fer nigh on eleven years.”

  “You still have family, then?”

  “I . . . ken not.” Even the mere murmur of his voice sounded heavy, burdened, infinitely sad.

  “You still haven’t told me where you call home,” she said, truly curious. She felt a need to put him in some familiar place, though familiar to her would mean the hills and valleys of Germany. But she couldn’t imagine him in Ixheim, plowing a field or tossing hay to a band of ewes.

  He pulled his attention from the sea and looked at her. “I don’t call anywhere home.” His gaze had wandered to the sea beyond; he seemed to have forgotten her. A stillness had come over him.

  “Everyone,” she said softly, “is somebody’s son.”

  The plane of his arresting face softened as he studied her through somber eyes. “Mayhap the sea is my home, my family.”

  “The sea?”

  “Aye. The sea has been good and fair t’me.”

  “But the sea can’t love you back.”

  Before she could ask another question, a bell rang and Bairn stiffened. “The ship’s bell is ringin’ for a watch change. You should go below. Would not be good to give the deckhands any more reason to gossip about the lassie from the lower deck.” He walked her to the top of the companionway and nodded, leaving her there.

  She found Bairn full of contradictions. He was not a plain and humble man. He was a wayward soul. He was not one of them. He claimed not to believe in God and to only believe in himself. He was not many things, but she had discovered he was one thing: he was kind.

  As Bairn eased onto his bunk, he thought of how Cook would tweak him if he knew he had spent time tonight adjusting a heel on a shoe for a Peculiar girl.

  One moment, Bairn found Anna something of an annoyance and the next, a sweet innocent he felt inclined to protect. What was it about her that drew him? She had a loveliness about her, and clearly, a rare strength of character. She certainly wasn’t what one would expect of a Peculiar: timid and trembling. Or a pub girl: bawdy and bold.

  He only knew he was developing some feelings for the girl, which surprised and alarmed him. He was no fool; he knew he mustn’t entertain thoughts of her. He must keep his wits about him. They came from different worlds and would return to different worlds and he wasn’t about to jeopardize his promotion to first mate by toying with a girl from the lower deck, no matter her appeal.

  It was that thought that finally pushed him on toward sleep—thinking about why he ought to stop thinking about Anna. He slept soundly for five long hours, the longest he’d slept in weeks, and woke to feelings of comfort and a cozy warmth that he remembered from years long past.

  July 15th, 1737

  To Felix’s great dismay, Anna decided that it was time to start teaching English. He’d gone to all the school he ever meant to. Even more disappointing was that he and Catrina were the only students.

  Anna had found an old table and set it near the hatch to get some air, then gave Catrina and Felix slates and chalk to copy down words. Then to string the words into sentences. While Felix was laboring over the writing: The dog sits in the sun, Catrina labored over her own sentence. She jabbed Felix in the ribs. He looked at her slate and read: Why doesn’t your mother get out of bed?

  He wrote back to in-everybody’s-business Catrina Müller: Which eye should I look at to answer your question?

  Naturally, Catrina ran off to show her mother what Felix had written.

  The truth was that he didn’t know how to answer her. He had no idea when his mother was going to stop feeling so tired.

  Last night, know-it-all Maria gave his mother a talking to, telling her that overgrieving was a complaint to the Lord. Felix did not like Maria Müller, with her face like a disapproving prune and the extra starched prayer cap on her fuzzy hair. She thought she was so superior, just like Catrina did.

  His mother only lifted her sad eyes and said, “Maria, if you ever bury a child, and I pray you never will, then come and tell me how I should feel.”

  He knew his mother was grieving over Johann, and he understood that all her grieving had doubled back over his oldest brother, Hans, the brother he never knew but was named for—Hans Felix Bauer. But what he didn’t know was when she would be herself again. She’d gotten so skinny and pale, he barely knew her. He worried about her, but he couldn’t stand being near her—her sadness made him feel smothered, as if he couldn’t breathe—and that thought made his insides twist with guilt. It was one of the reasons he tried to go up top as much as he could. It helped him take a break from his mother’s sadness down below.

  Happily, Bairn welcomed him above deck. Felix would tag along behind the carpenter, listening, soaking up everything he could about a seaman’s life. He could understand more and more of the crew’s stories. Yarns, Cook called them. The sailors could tell him all sorts of interesting things and sailing trivia, but no one could tell him when his mother would get out of bed.

  He thought he might ask Anna about his mother, though he didn’t know exactly what he would ask her. Something made him believe Anna would know and that she wouldn’t make him feel bad for asking. She certainly wouldn’t have given him Catrina’s one-eyed “Oh, you poor motherless boy” pity look. Or Maria’s snooty “Don’t you know?” Anna would give him the plain, pure, teacherly truth.

  While Catrina and her eye went off to complain to her mother, Felix leaned across the table to Anna. “Is my mother ever going to be well?”

  Anna seemed like she was thinking whether or not she should tell him something. She was looking straight at him, and even though it was hard, he looked right back at her.

  Felix tried to appear intelligent, and he thought it worked because finally Anna said, “Life can be very hard sometimes, and when it’s been hard for your mother, she suffers from something called melancholy. It’s like her heart burst. She has a difficult time coping with sad things, like Johann’s passing.” She waited to make sure he understood her. He nodded.

  “It’s like she has a wound, and it’s taking a long time to heal. But you can’t see this wound. It’s deep inside.”

  He loved it when Anna talked to him like he was grown-up. He didn’t really understand half of what she meant, but it felt good to be talked to like that.

  “Before you were born, when your oldest brother died on that ship, she suffered for a long time. It wasn’t until you were born that she started to feel happy again.”

  “Do you think she won’t be happy again unless she has another baby?”

  “I think seeing your father will help her feel a lot better. In the meantime, we need to be patient and understanding.” Anna smiled. “Soon, the ship will leave Plymouth Sound and sail to America. Soon, Felix.”

  July 16th, 1737

  Bairn yanked off his boots and stretched out on his bunk. At six foot five inches, he was accustomed to having his feet hang off the edge and scrunching around before getting comfortable. The creaking of a ship’s timbers had always been a soothing sound to his ears. Tonight, the sounds alarmed hi
m, causing him to revisit the repairs he had made to her. Was she shipshape? Ready for the ocean crossing?

  He never used to fret over a vessel’s seaworthiness, not when the lower deck was filled with goods. His thoughts drifted to Anna, wondering if she had fallen asleep yet and if she preferred using a hammock. And then he thought about the tiny springing curls that framed her neck beneath her cap. He thought of her lips, softly parted, of how the fog swirled around the two of them and how the moonlight cast a hazy glow about her. As if she were a celestial being, an angel.

  The sea can’t love you back, Anna had said. That was true. The sea has her wanton way with those who love her, but in his mind, she was a safer bet.

  An old familiar ache filled him then and he forced his mind off a certain Peculiar down below and onto other things, anything else to ward off his melancholia. At last, he fell asleep. Next he knew, he heard the ship’s bells signal five o’clock and breathed deeply of the tannic air. His eyes flew open. The air had a different scent. He bolted off his bunk and rushed up the ladder to reach the main deck.

  Outside, a mild breeze ruffled his hair. He turned a practiced eye out to the water. The fog might be lifting, at last. Hallelujah! The overcast wouldn’t linger, nor would the gloomy mood that hung on him.

  By midmorning, seams began to open in the cloud cover. The still waters of the channel slowly shifted from gray to green to blue.

  That afternoon, delivery boats started to arrive with provisions from the captain’s purchases in Plymouth. All was in a flurry as the seamen readied the hold. The capstan was once again squeaking in use as crates and barrels were lowered into the hold in rapid sequence. This was a busy time for Bairn, he was responsible to the captain for the storage and distribution of provisions. The Charming Nancy nearly bulged with excess: barrels of hardtack, salted meat, beer, sacks of flour, oats, malt, gunpowder, and scores of wooden boxes containing amber bottles of liquors.