He did not speak, but she heard the heavy sound of his breathing. She lowered her head, covering her smile with his cloak. He was playing with her, teasing her, and she would let him enjoy his little game. She heard the rustle of fabric, then a soft creaking sound as he dropped to the mat beside her.
Aidan caught her breath as his hand fell upon her head and tentatively stroked her hair. “So beautiful,” he whispered hoarsely, his hand moving between her hair and the skin of her neck. “So lovely.”
Aidan froze. The voice was not Sterling’s, nor was this his touch. This hand was too heavy, the voice too harsh. She choked back a scream. No doubt this was a drunken sailor who had wandered in from outside, and Lili had always said a wise girl could talk a man out of almost anything if she kept cool and did not panic.
“I think,” she began, her voice a tremulous whisper, “that you are in the wrong hut.”
The hand that had been tracing the length of her bare arm suddenly lifted, a grown man’s weight pressed upon her, his power holding her helpless as his lips moved closer to her ear. She crinkled her nose at the overpowering smell of alcohol and the musty odor of wet dog.
“You are mine now, lady,” the stranger whispered. Aidan opened her eyes and looked over her shoulder, her heart accelerating in terror when she recognized Witt Dekker’s slanting black brows and catlike eyes.
Forgetting Lili’s lessons, Aidan opened her mouth and screamed. Almost immediately Dekker’s hand clapped across her mouth, cutting off the sound. He held her face in an iron grip, his fingers bruising her jaw and cheek. His body lay over hers, pinning her beneath his weight as he whispered drunken threats in her ear.
Aidan’s eyes burned with tears of anger and frustration as she struggled to free herself. Had she spent years dodging drunks in Bram’s tavern only to fall victim to a slobbering sot thousands of miles from Batavia? No! And yet there was nothing she could do. She had dropped her guard for one man and another had walked into his place.
Tears slid hot and wet from the corners of her eyes, and her jaw ached from the rough way he gripped her. She lifted one arm to try and push him away, but she could not reach him, and her struggles only seemed to make him tighten his grip.
“I have waited patiently,” he muttered, his breath hot and putrid against the side of her face, “and the time has come for me to sample the favors of the famous Irish Annie. I hope you said a sweet farewell to your husband, for you will not see him again. I will be quick, you see, and when I am done I shall twist your neck just so—” He pulled slightly on her head for effect, and a blinding pain shot from her neck to her toes. “And you will be dead.”
Aidan choked on a deep sob and closed her eyes against the sight of him. Then suddenly, against the blackness, a bright light crossed the backs of her eyelids.
“Release my wife!”
The voice was Sterling’s, and the bitter hatred in it was unmistakable.
She felt Dekker’s weight lift from her, and she silently moved her jaw to make certain it was not broken. She turned to look; Sterling stood tense as a bowstring in the doorway, his dagger drawn and ready, his face dead white and sheened with a cold sweat.
Dekker jumped up, shaking his head. “Sorry, doctor. I was—I was meaning to get my way ashore—”
Gasping for breath, Aidan shook her head in disbelief as the first mate addressed her husband. The officer staggered like a drunken fool, but he hadn’t seemed one-fourth as inebriated when he muttered threats in her ear.
“What are you doing here?” Sterling ground the words out between his teeth. Dekker bobbed his head like a cringing slave and staggered his way toward the doorway.
Aidan swallowed hard, trying to dislodge the knot of despair in her throat. Witt wasn’t as drunk as he pretended. He had meant what he said, and he had recognized her as one of Bram’s tavern maids. If Sterling pushed too hard now, Dekker might reveal her secret.
“What are you doing here?” Sterling repeated, his chest heaving with mounting rage. Killing anger burned in his eyes, and he would not hesitate to use the knife on Dekker unless—
“Let him go, Sterling,” she moaned. Pulling the edges of his cloak around her throat to shield her bruised neck from his sight, she pushed down her fear and despair. “He is drunk; let him go.”
“He was sober enough to find his way here.”
“He doesn’t know … what he is doing.” Aidan lowered her gaze. She would never be able to look Sterling in the eye and lie. “He—I don’t think he would have hurt me. Let him go in peace.”
Sterling lifted a fist to his hip, still unconvinced. From the corner of her eye Aidan saw Dekker turn toward her, an expression of cunning appreciation upon his face. The instant Sterling transferred his gaze from Aidan to Dekker, however, the sly look vanished, replaced by the slack-mouthed gape of a drunken fool too inebriated to know his own name.
Sterling stepped forward, grabbed the officer by the front of his shirt, then forcibly lifted him from the floor before dragging him toward the entryway. With a strangely detached curiosity Aidan noted that the hut no longer had a door—in his haste to reach her, Sterling had ripped the fragile woven curtain away.
He pushed Dekker out the door with a warning and a shout of frustration, then came to kneel beside her, pulling her into his arms. “I heard you scream,” he said simply. “I’m so sorry, Aidan. I left you unprotected, and I swore I never would. I never will again.”
Surrendering her guard and her will for the moment, Aidan curled into the safety of his embrace and wept like the little girl she could never be again.
Nestled against Sterling’s chest, Aidan slept. As he caressed her hair and the soft places of her skin which were already blue-black from the force of that villain’s grasp, Sterling cursed himself for the hundredth time. Why had he left her alone and exposed? He had assumed that since these natives were friendly, Aidan was safe. But he had forgotten about the vices and sinful inclinations of his own companions. If he had tarried on the boat for the next barge, and if he had not heard that one brief scream …
He shuddered and pressed a protective hand to the top of her head. He had been married for only one month, but even before this romantic interlude he could not imagine life without her. She brought light to his life, gentleness to his medical practice, a sweetness to his days. In her generosity she had insisted that Dekker was drunk and meant her no harm, but what would a sheltered lady know of drunks—or of men, for that matter?
But Sterling knew. He knew that drunks often knew very well what they were doing, and Dekker wasn’t so drunk that he couldn’t find his way into the hut where Aidan lay asleep and unguarded. Sterling also knew that pleasure-deprived men often committed acts they later regretted … or should regret, if they retained their God-given consciences.
Drunk or not, Witt Dekker acted out of clear intention, Sterling believed. He would let Aidan think Dekker’s attack was an accident so she would not spend the remainder of the journey afraid and locked in her cabin. But Sterling would never allow Witt Dekker to be alone with his wife again.
After spending nearly two weeks in the paradise Tasman called “the Friendly Islands,” the Dutch ships loaded fresh stores of water and fruit, then weighed anchor and departed. On the sixth of February the lookouts sighted another uncharted archipelago, but the physical geography of these islands was anything but friendly. The islands lay within a lacework of shallows and dangerous coral reefs, and only careful, skillful sailing prevented them from wrecking in the labyrinth of treacherous shoals.
Tension tightened every sailor’s face as the officers navigated the dangerous waters. Aidan, too, felt the anxiety, but shipwreck was the least of her concerns. Her greatest fear was that Witt Dekker might tell Sterling of her past. She walked a tightrope of sorts—at the moment, perilous sailing kept Dekker occupied aboard the Zeehaen, but if the situation grew desperate enough to warrant a meeting of the officers’ committee, Tasman could send for Dekker and Janszoon.
&nb
sp; So she prayed every night that the situation might remain as it was—risky enough to keep Dekker busy, but not so risky or so carefree that he would be summoned aboard the Heemskerk. She was not certain if God would answer her prayers—she had not offered enough in the years since her father’s death to even deserve his notice. But Sterling, like Heer Van Dyck, prayed every night before bed, before every meal, and immediately upon rising every morning. He seemed to walk with God, to possess a steady and confident peace that she sorely lacked.
And so Aidan began to emulate him. She knew God existed—she had known that since her childhood—but she couldn’t say that she’d ever really talked to him. And so, while Sterling knelt by his bunk and prayed, she did the same, tenting her fingers and politely asking God to keep an ocean’s distance between her beloved husband and Witt Dekker.
As the ships moved cautiously through the hazardous shallows and shoals and Witt Dekker remained aboard the Zeehaen, she began to relax. Perhaps God had indeed heard and answered her prayers.
With a delicious freedom she had never known, she painted every day. She lacked the cartography skills necessary to finish Heer Van Dyck’s map, and though she still mourned her mentor, his death had released her from her obligation to paint watercolor flowers and insects and trees. She packed away his charts and straight edges, then used his canvases and brushes and oils to create the pictures that bloomed in her imagination.
Up till now, she had painted only the things she could see in the natural world. But Heer Van Dyck had taught her to look inside herself, to examine the personalities and creatures that populated her imagination. She sketched everything that moved aboard ship, using common objects and faces as the basis for her fanciful imaginings, then created colors brighter and images more flamboyant than any she had ever seen in Heer Van Dyck’s art collection.
Instead of her tutor’s reproving eye over her shoulder, she now enjoyed the supportive presence of her husband. Sterling knew little about painting, but he knew enough to praise Aidan’s efforts, even those she wanted to toss into the sea. On days when her brush could not capture the emotions and images in her mind’s eye, he would take it from her hand, kiss her paint-stained fingertips, and remind her that things would look better on the morrow.
Their cabin was no longer the casual drop-in quarters for every man with an ache or pain. Sterling had ordered all but his sickest patients to remain in their hammocks, suspended even in the galley if need be. His bride, he insisted, deserved better than a crowded cabin reeking of sickness and flatulent seamen.
With every day that passed, Aidan felt herself growing into the role of Mistress Thorne. It was easy to believe she could be genteel when Sterling sat at her feet and rested his head in her lap while she painted. His gentility and love had begun to refine her in a way that all Gusta’s lessons and harping could not. He praised her, and she responded by rising to the level of his expectation. He demanded that the seamen respect her, and she walked among them with her chin held high and her gaze uplifted.
Most of all, Sterling loved her, and Aidan’s heart leaped each time he called her name. She was Mistress Thorne—Mejoffer Thorne to the Dutch—and the name lent her a respectability and dignity she could not have earned in a dozen years of painting.
Her gratitude spilled out in an overflowing love for her husband. His voice filled her days, dreams of him filled her nights, and if she awakened in the dark she found comfort, security, and freedom in his arms. Let the officers argue, let the men grumble about all the gold they haven’t found, she told herself one February afternoon as the ship steamed toward the western sea. It matters not. I have Sterling, and he is happy with me. In that lies my respectability.
To Aidan’s dismay, once the two ships cleared the treacherous shoals, Tasman summoned the officers of the Zeehaen to the Heemskerk for a consultation. She sat in the cabin, worried and unable to paint, as Sterling was called away to participate in the meeting. Her fears did not abate until he returned two hours later with nothing more serious than expedition matters on his mind.
“What did you talk about?” she asked, sinking beside him on his narrow bunk. She pressed her hand to his wrist and felt for the steady beat of a calm heart. If Dekker had told him anything, Sterling would not be so composed. He’d be furious with Dekker—or with her, depending upon which one he believed to be a liar. When she could not refute Dekker’s story, he’d abandon her, leaving her without hope or help.
“The captain wanted to gather our opinions about the future,” Sterling answered, giving her a wicked grin. His pulse beat steadily as he pulled off his boot and dropped it. “Should he sail west and south of the known coastline of New Guinea or travel back to Batavia along the route he already knows?”
“And?” Aidan released his wrist and folded her hands demurely, like a schoolgirl. “What did the others say?”
“Well—” Sterling let the other boot fall. “Dekker and Visscher are still eager to find gold. They voted for sailing southwest into the unknown. But Holman always thinks of his family, and he was quick to mention the possibility that we’d be blown against a shore from which it might be difficult to retreat.”
Aidan fidgeted impatiently, eager to hear the entire story. “How did Janszoon vote?”
Sterling shrugged. “He would have sailed east from the Friendly Islands; he’s still bent upon finding a route to Chile. But Tasman has given up on that; he thinks only of returning home. Holman is of like mind.” He chuckled. “So am I.”
“Are you in such a hurry then?” She pressed her hand to her throat in mock horror. “Am I such a trial that you cannot bear to be cooped up in this wee cabin with me for as long as it takes to explore the wide world?”
“I am in no hurry at all.” He pulled her into his arms, then leaned back and kicked at the bar on the door until it fell into its supports, effectively closing the way to any who would interrupt.
Aidan pressed her hands to his chest and smiled into his startlingly blue eyes. “So, Doctor, what did Captain Tasman decide? Are we to venture into the unknown or take the safe way home?”
“We’re going home, my love,” he whispered. He cupped her face between his hands, and Aidan felt her heart skip a beat as his kiss sang through her veins.
“Wherever you are,” she whispered, “is home enough for me.”
The crews of the Heemskerk and Zeehaen had made up their minds to go home, but for the next two weeks overcast skies and gloomy weather made it impossible for Tasman to determine his position. He needed a clear sight of the stars or the sun to judge his latitude, and the ceiling of oppressive low clouds made navigation difficult. Pytheas of Massalia, an ancient sailor who journeyed upon the seas in 333 B.C., had reported that beyond Britain there was neither earth, air, or sea, but a mixture of all three—something like the element that held the universe together. “It has the consistency of jellyfish,” Tasman recalled Pytheas writing, “and renders navigation impossible.” Modern navigation had proven Pytheas wrong, of course, but Tasman could easily understand why the ancient mariner had felt he sailed in a sluggish and soupy sea.
Afraid they might sail unaware into deadly shallows and break apart upon razor-sharp shoals, Tasman ordered the sails reefed on both ships. The furled sails fluttered wildly in the occasional winds, rattling against the spars with a chattering noise that set the men’s teeth on edge. Oppressed by the gloom, men walked the decks like phantoms, appearing out of the murk with an abruptness that startled one another.
For the remainder of February and most of March they drifted in the thick haze, saying little, watching the food and water rations gradually disappear. But as the days of March ticked off on the captain’s calendar, the wind freshened. On April 1, the rising breeze tore great windows in the fog, and gazing over to port Tasman caught a sudden vision of land crouching on the horizon.
“Meester Visscher,” Tasman called to his pilot, “take us closer. Unless I miss my guess, that is Cape Santa Maria, and we are on our way ho
me.”
The tensions of the past few weeks vanished as the men on deck erupted in cheering, and Tasman stood silently, accepting their thanks and congratulations … for accidentally stumbling upon an already charted passage. This was no great discovery; they would find no gold as they sailed home along this coastline. But after the tension and oppression of the silent sea, Tasman no longer cared.
The coxswain of the Zeehaen turned the ship to follow the Heemskerk’s lead, and Witt Dekker peered through his spyglass at the land mass appearing off the port bow. This was New Guinea, without a doubt; these shores had been charted for years. This, then, was the beginning of the end of their expedition, and Tasman had not accomplished a single one of his goals. He had not found a route to Chile or the fabled Southern continent. More important, he had discovered neither gold nor silver, only mountainous lands, treacherous harbors, and tribes of nearly naked savages, half of whom would kill an intruder before welcoming him.
Time was running out. They had been instructed to sail along the northern coast of New Guinea, searching for a passage south to Cape Keerweer, but if no passage existed, they’d likely reach Batavia before the end of summer. Tasman would have to stand before the officers of the V.O.C and explain his empty hands and empty cargo holds.
Dekker leaned back upon the foremast and scratched at his stiff beard, his eyes roving over the busy decks of the Zeehaen’s sister ship. As first mate, Dekker would not have to cringe before the officers of the V.O.C., but he’d face his own peers—the sailors who loitered at the taverns of the wharf district when not at sea. They would expect him to come back a rich man, and he would have nothing but a few tall tales to account for this journey.
The dog at Dekker’s feet lifted his head with a sudden low woof, his ears pricked to attention.
The Golden Cross Page 34
