The Golden Cross

by Angela Elwell Hunt

  “Aye, it is,” the boy answered, carefully settling the wounded thumb back into its protected position. “But Witt Dekker brought me over this afternoon, and the doctor stopped the bleeding. I was covered in blood; my shirt was as red as a harlot’s lips.”

  Aidan blinked, uncertain how to answer, but the boy didn’t seem to notice her discomfort. “My name’s Tiy.” He thrust his uninjured hand toward her. “It’s nice to meet another ketelbinkie. I figure we ought to stick together. If we’re stranded and the food runs out, they always eat the young ones first.”

  A wave of apprehension swept through her as Aidan extended her hand. This boy was joking—wasn’t he?

  “I’ll swim over and see you sometime when we’re at anchor,” he offered, stepping away as the men of the Zeehaen began to move toward the dock to return to their own ship. “Or you can come see me.”

  “I—I don’t swim,” Aidan managed to call.

  “That’s good.” The boy’s round face split into a wide grin. “If you can’t swim, you won’t prolong your drowning when the ship goes down.” One of the older men clapped a hand on Tiy’s shoulder and shoved him forward.

  A sudden chill raced down Aidan’s spine. Tiy was only a mischievous scamp, trying to impress her with his bravado. There wasn’t any real danger out on the sea. Hadn’t Henrick said that a ship was the safest place for her now?

  But try as she might to clear her brain, a host of irritating, niggling shadows of fear remained.

  The two ships set sail shortly after sunrise on August 14, 1642. As a flurry of orders flowed through the first mate’s speaking trumpet, the hatches were battened, the lines coiled, and the dock workers cast off the mooring hawsers, ropes as thick as Aidan’s wrist. She stepped out of the cabin to find a cloud of white canvas sails set and drawing wind over her head. The rope that had held the anchor slithered up, streaming water, and on the soles of her feet Aidan felt the vibration that ran through the keel as the vessel took the wind. The smaller Zeehaen had already moved out into the bay, her upper deck crowned by a forest of rigging and sail, through which tiny dark figures hopped and crawled like fleas on a bedsheet.

  The bosun of the Heemskerk strode back and forth across the deck, barking orders as the lines tightened and sails snapped overhead. The ship moved out into the rising sun, coming to life with a groan as the sails were sheeted home. The Heemskerk plunged her bow deep while the lighter Zeehaen cut through the water ahead of her, trailing a lacy white wake.

  Caught up in the excitement of departure, Aidan leaned on the railing amidships, careful not to place herself in the way of the seamen who scuttled about, each responding immediately to the calls that rang out from the forecastle. To Aidan, it seemed magical, musical: Lines and hawsers sang in the wind, a chorus of timbers creaked with each rise and fall of the sea, faint thumps and murmurs from below decks provided a rhythmic background to the men’s work.

  She’d seen enough of the ship to have a feel for where things lay. The three-masted Heemskerk had three levels—the top deck was pierced by the mainmast in the center of the ship, the foremast at the fore, and the mizzenmast aft. The forecastle contained two small cabins, one of which housed Aidan, the first mate, and Heer Van Dyck; the next-door cabin served as a sick bay and quarters for the doctor. The captain’s spacious cabin was situated at the rear of the ship, beneath the quarterdeck.

  The holds on the second deck served as storerooms and galley, and in the lowest deck, the orlop, stores of water, food, and gunpowder served as ballast for the ship. A great many large stones rode there as well, Heer Van Dyck told her, to hold the ship aright in case the stores ran empty. This ship, a vessel for exploration, carried only six cannons, all located near portholes on the second deck. Captain Tasman hoped he would have no occasion to use them. Few pirates traveled in these waters, and he hoped to impress any unfamiliar natives with his friendliness, not his firepower.

  “You there! Boy!”

  Aidan looked up, startled from her reverie, and shaded her eyes. A sailor hung from the rigging a dozen feet above her, one muscled arm wrapped around a yardarm, the other extended to her. “Bring up that rope at your feet and be quick about it!”

  Aidan looked down, picked up the coiled rope, and slipped it over her shoulder, praying that Van Dyck’s God would give her strength and calm the uneven beating of her heart. She’d never climbed anything higher than a chair in her life, and her arms were as thin as noodles, not at all suited for swinging from rigging like a monkey.

  “Are you going to take all day?”

  Aidan moved to the railing and clamped her fingers around the netted rigging. Above her men swarmed through the ropes like spiders. She could do this. She could. But when she swung her weight out over the railing, the dark water loomed under her,and she held to the rigging for dear life. The seaman yelled again, cursing her slowness. Aidan knew if she didn’t hurry she’d draw the attention of others. She had managed to lay low during the preparations, but now there was a fresh wind to catch. “Boy!” the sailor shouted. “Now!”

  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 disresp
ect. 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.

  “How I’ve splashed and soiled my gown,” the woman recited,

  “with this gadding through the town.

  How bedraggled is my skirt

  Traipsing through the by-streets’ dirt.

  Come girls here, come all I know,

  Playmates mine, advise me, show.

  How shall I remove the stain

  And restore my gown again?

  For wherever I may go

  People will look at me so

  And think, perhaps, such dirt to see

  I’m not what I ought to be.”

  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 t
he 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.

  Aidan lifted her eyes to her mentor’s face. Heer Van Dyck was already as tanned as one of the sailors, and when he slept, Aidan could see weblike white markings at the corners of his eyes, the creases of laugh lines the sun never reached. Van Dyck was having the time of his life. Aidan, who as a ketelbinkie had been ordered about, slapped on the back, and “accidentally” tripped twice, was enjoying herself far less than her master.

  “There is a funny bird on Mauritius—they call it the dodo.” Heer Van Dyck smiled at her. “It doesn’t fly, and more’s the pity, because the islanders are rapidly killing the beasts off. They say the bird tastes like turkey and is prized on many a dinner table. I hope you shall have an opportunity to sketch one of the birds before we leave. A dodo would be a nice addition to our map.”

  “I heard Visscher tell one of the men that Captain Tasman plans to completely reoutfit the ships while we are there,” Aidan offered. “So we may have time enough to traverse the entire island.”

  “Goed, very good.” Van Dyck smiled. “Though I wish Mauritius had more natives. I’m afraid the only people we’ll find there are the same sort of folk we knew in Batavia.”

  Aidan looked away to the southwestern horizon, where Mauritius should appear. She didn’t want to meet people like those she had known in Batavia. There were but two classes there, upper and lower, and she didn’t feel she belonged to either one.

  “Have you completed the oil painting you began the other day?” Van Dyck asked, a hint of rebuke in his voice.

  “Almost.” Aidan pulled herself away from the railing. “It is nearly done.”

  “Since the captain has been gracious enough to relieve you of many duties, perhaps you should present the finished canvas to him,” Van Dyck suggested as he led the way back to their cabin. “Or perhaps you’d rather give it to the doctor. He has been quite solicitous about your health. The other day he specifically asked whether or not you had experienced any bouts of seasickness.”