Anna's Crossing

by Suzanne Woods Fisher

Tomorrow. Tomorrow!

  Like it or not, the journey would begin. They would travel down the Rhine River to Rotterdam, board the vessel a shipping agent had arranged as passage for them, and then they’d be off to the New World.

  Anna stretched her back and moved out of the shade to feel the afternoon sun on her face. The muscles in her arms and shoulders ached from spearing the shovel into the cold earth, but it was a pleasant ache. She’d always loved working outside, much more than she did the washing and cooking and keeping up of the house, the woman’s work. The drudgery, she thought, and quickly sent an apology to the Lord for her ungrateful heart.

  A furious honking of geese in the sky disrupted her reverie. Heading north for summer, she presumed. Her gaze traveled up the green hillside dotted with ruffs of gray wool. Her woollies, each one known to her by name. Her heart was suddenly too full for words as she let her gaze roam lovingly over the land she knew as home: over the rounded haystacks, the neat lambing sheds, the creek that ran almost the year round. The steep hills that brought an early sunset in summer and broke the wind in winter. It grieved her that she wouldn’t be here this year for spring, as the lambs came and the wool was sheared and the ewes were mated and then the lambs would come again. She gazed at the hills, trying to engrave it in her memory. Where would she be next spring? She wondered what home would look like, feel like, smell like. She glanced down at her basket and gripped the leather handle, hard. At least she had her rose. If it survived, so would she.

  A few hours later, Anna heard the whinny of a horse and came out of the house to see who was driving up the path. She shielded her eyes from the sun and saw Christian Müller on a wagon seat, Felix beside him.

  Why would Felix be riding with their minister?

  She noticed the somber look on Christian’s usually cheerful face, the way Felix’s small head was bowed. She crossed her arms, gripping her elbows. The wind, raw and cold, twisted her skirts around her legs. Something’s wrong.

  There came a stillness as if the whole world were holding its breath.

  Let it be nothing, she entreated silently, let it be another meeting tonight to talk about the journey, or to let her know that Johann stopped to visit a friend. Let it be something silly. With every squeak of the wheels, she felt the lump in her throat grow bigger, the apprehension build.

  A gust of wind swirled up the hill, flapping Anna’s dress like a sheet on a clothesline, whipping the strings of her prayer cap against her neck, and she shivered.

  Christian hauled back on the reins and set the brake on the wagon. Slowly, he climbed down and waited beside the wagon, bearded chin on his chest. Felix jumped off the seat and threw his arms around Anna’s waist, shuddering with sobs.

  Anna’s gaze moved over Christian’s pale face. Behind him, in the back of the wagon, was the shape of a body, covered by a gray wool blanket.

  “Christian, who is it?” An icy feeling started in Anna’s stomach and traveled up her spine. “C-Christian?” she whispered again, her eyes wide, her throat hot and tight. It was then she saw tears running down Christian’s cheeks. The awful reality started to hit her full force and she pressed a fist to her lips. Dear God, she thought. Dear God, how can this be?

  Christian turned away with his chin tucked down, then, almost lovingly, gently folded back the top of the blanket. His eyes lifted to meet hers. “The Lord has seen fit to take our young Johann from us.”

  2

  June 26th, 1737

  Bairn rounded the stern of the square-rigged ship. What a beauty she was! The Charming Nancy was a typical merchant vessel of her day: square-rigged and beak-bowed, with high, castle-like superstructures fore and aft that protected her cargo and crew in the worst weather. Maybe she wasn’t the prettiest ship sailing the seas. No doubt she wasn’t the youngest, and that did spike concern for Bairn. Even the sturdiest sail ship lasted only twenty years and the Charming Nancy was inching close to that age. She was worn and creaky, leaky as a sieve, and beating against the wind would be a painfully inefficient endeavor, but to him, serving as ship’s carpenter, she was magnificent.

  “Bairn!” A familiar voice boomed from the bow of the ship.

  Bairn shielded his eyes from the sun to see the ship’s new commanding officer, Captain Charles Stedman, scowling down at him from the fo’c’sle deck. The captain tried very hard to look the part of a cultured, confident sea captain, like his much-esteemed older brother John, but never seemed to quite manage it. He was short and slender, with bushy side-whiskers, dressed elegantly with a whiskey-colored velvet vest, a tricornered black hat, and a white silk tie. “Make haste! Supervise the hold and see to it that no one is slacking!” The captain pointed to a stack of cargo that had been on the same spot on the deck since this morning.

  Bairn felt heat rise up his neck, but he smiled amicably enough and tipped his hat in a feigned sign of respect. “Aye, Captain!” He had been supervising the loading of the hold—that’s why he was standing at the hatch next to that very stack of cargo. But he knew the captain liked to sound off to deckhands to show he was in charge.

  Bairn’s gaze shifted to the first mate by the captain’s side, Mr. Pocock. He shared officers’ quarters with the first mate, an Englishman who was long past the prime of his life, with saggy, tired blue eyes, sun-leathered skin, and a belly that hung over the waistband of his black breeches. Mr. Pocock had little to say unless you made the regrettable error of asking him about his gout. On that topic, he had plenty to say.

  A light cross-course breeze blew in from the channel, pushing away the thin, acrid smell of tar and pitch from the docks that hung in the humid air. Bairn scrutinized the cargo that the stevedores were loading into the hold—the lowest part of the ship that stored most of the passengers’ household goods, tools, and supplies, as well as the ship’s supply of food, cordage, canvas, gunpowder. The capstan, a type of winch fitted with holes in which long bars were inserted, was used to hoist the cargo and other heavy loads down into the hold. By pushing on the bars, stevedores hauled in a rope wound around the capstan, moving the load up or down.

  Earlier this morning, Bairn walked through the lower deck of the Charming Nancy. If he closed his eyes in the dark space and breathed deeply, he thought he could still smell the faint scent of wines and woolens of their recent cargo in the moist air, masking the stench of the bilge below.

  Ships were ballasted with a noxious mix of sand and gravel that rattled and swished about the bilge for years, growing increasingly more foul as it absorbed the waste of life on board. The only place where the air was completely free of the smell of the bilge was the windward forecastle deck, the fo’c’sle deck, and this small space was sacred to the captain.

  Bairn pitied the crew for their quarters in the fo’c’sle, below deck. Even more, he pitied the passengers who would be living in the lower deck. The stink of the bilge that pervaded the ship was strongest there. The Charming Nancy had spent most of her life going back and forth across the Atlantic with goods from England to trade in the colonies and vice versa, cargos that didn’t care about stink. No longer.

  The Rotterdam shippers had discovered that there was more money to be made shuttling Germans to the colonies of Georgia, Virginia, and New York. And now their attention had riveted to the surest of all markets, Pennsylvania.

  Over the last few weeks, as the Charming Nancy was anchored in Rotterdam, Bairn’s days were spent making repairs and adjustments to the old ship. He corrected the fitting of the bowsprit so rainwater no longer leaked into the seamen’s living quarters. That should set him in good standing with the crew and make up for the more onerous task Captain Stedman had asked of him: the building of double bedsteads in the lower deck to allow for increased capacity of passengers in the ship. The poor souls would be fitted in like sardines in a tin.

  “I got me a bad feeling about this trip. A real bad feeling.”

  Bairn spun around to face Decker. His eyes narrowed in perplexity as he studied the irritating seaman. Decker bull
ied the crew, caused malice and rancor, but he was a skilled craftsman and the captain had recently promoted him to carpenter’s apprentice—against Bairn’s objection. “Decker, you need to stop worryin’ others with yer odd dreams. You sound fey. You’ve got the crew nervous as a scalded cat.”

  “It’s not just my dreams. I saw Queenie under a tub this mornin’. ’Tis an omen. You know what ’at means.”

  To Decker, it was a portent of magnitudinous proportions: death was imminent. To Bairn, it meant the ship’s black cat, Queenie, never the brightest of felines to start with, had gotten herself trapped under a tub.

  Something shiny caught his eye. Decker was wearing polished black shoes with silver buckles. Bairn tilted his head. “New shoes?”

  Decker clicked his heels together. “Aye. Bought ’em off a shoemaker in Rotterdam. Seein’ as how I’m an officer now, I thought I should look the part.”

  Bairn rolled his eyes. “Yer naught but an apprentice, Decker.”

  “The shoemaker said the buckles would ward off bad luck.”

  “Why do you nae just admit you do nae want to haul bodies across the sea and stop scarin’ the deckhands. Half the crew went jobbin’ with other ships once you started spoutin’ off with yer crazy dreams and superstitious nonsense.”

  “I don’t deny I’d rather tote silent cargo than tend to complainin’ Germans, but ’at’s only part of the reason. You know as well as I do that havin’ women on board is bad luck. And the captain’s tryin’ to jam more bodies down here than the ship can hold.”

  Decker was a provoking fellow, always firing at people with hammer and tongs, but on this particular topic of overcrowding, Bairn couldn’t fault him. He was helpless to do anything about it, though. “Yer a free agent, Decker. You can always sign on another ship.” He knew Decker would never leave the Charming Nancy. The lure of the promotion was too appealing.

  Decker’s gaze shifted across the harbor to the tall ships that lined the docks. “Problem is, I dunno any captain out there who isn’t doin’ the exact same thing.”

  “Well, then, until you make up yer mind, see that you finish the double bedsteads.”

  Decker shot him a dark frown and stomped away.

  Bairn inflated his cheeks and blew the air out in a gusty sigh. Decker’s foreboding nettled him. While he felt a great loyalty to Captain Stedman, the overcrowding of the ships was a valid worry—not only would it strain the timbers and seams of the Charming Nancy, but the additional provisions needed to keep the passengers fed would add critical weight to the ship. The St. Andrew, the ship under Captain John Stedman’s command, had already left Rotterdam with far more passengers than was safe. Bed shelves were stacked two and three deep. A man’s nose would brush the bottom of the next fellow’s bunk.

  Opportunity drove the overcrowding, both for the passengers and the captain. Whether a man traveled in the Great Cabin or the lower deck, each had an ambition to get to the New World, where milk and honey flowed and all men could become rich.

  The number of German immigrants arriving in Philadelphia had grown sevenfold in the last two years. The journey was a perilous one and many didn’t survive—though that didn’t stop the shipping agents and the captains from collecting their passage. Dead or alive upon arrival, each body owed its fare.

  Bairn knew food and fresh water for such an enormous quantity of people would be jeopardized due to space constraints. And what would they do if they experienced delays? He’d heard macabre tales of passengers starving to death. If a ship took much more than eight weeks to cross the ocean, no doubt they would run out of provisions.

  Weeks ago, when Captain Stedman had ordered the refitting of the lower deck, Bairn had cautiously objected. You had to tread carefully when you questioned the captain. His word, and mostly his ego, ruled the ship. As expected, Bairn’s protest was quickly shot down. “I’ll do the fashin’ for me ship, lad,” the captain said.

  Lad. Boy. Bairn. A Scottish word for “child.” That was the captain’s way of reminding him of his place.

  Everything in life boiled down to money, that truth Bairn had observed in his two-and-twenty years on earth, the last eleven of which were spent at sea. And he couldn’t deny that it was the very thing that drove him, as well. There was nothing more important to Bairn than making money.

  And yet, at least for him, something else hung in the balance with the Charming Nancy. Captain Stedman had strongly hinted that after this voyage he might expect a promotion to first mate, the top boatswain. A few years as first mate, then he would be ready to captain his own ship. Better still, he would have funds saved to become an investor like his benefactors, the Stedman brothers. Captain Charles often boasted that he was an investor of eleven ships. Captain John never boasted, which indicated to Bairn that he was an investor in far more.

  Wouldn’t life be sweet to hold that kind of wealth one day? Bairn had it all worked out: With a bit of luck and fair winds, he would be commanding a ship like the Charming Nancy with her hold filled with freshly sawn timber, saltpeter, iron, sugar, hempen yarn, and more—stamped and bound for England. Come spring, he would fill the ship with Germans from Rotterdam and return to Port Philadelphia. His ambition lured him onward and the cycle would begin again.

  Bairn had a passionate, bone-deep desire to become wealthy. Nay, extraordinarily wealthy. And with the influx of German immigrants pouring out of Rotterdam to the New World, he was riding the top of a wave.

  He saw Decker’s black cat sashay over to him and curl around his boot leg, tail swishing, so he bent down to scoop her up. “Omen, me eye,” he told her. “Yer naught but a curious cat.”

  June 27th, 1737

  This Rotterdam was a poor place, and Anna longed to go home.

  Weeks and weeks had passed since she had left Ixheim. Her heart still ached and her eyes filled with tears when she least expected it. In their haste to depart, there wasn’t time to properly grieve Johann Bauer’s unexpected passing. In Christian’s eyes, it was a clear sign of more cruelty to come—aimed at the Bauer family—and confirmed that departure could not and should not be delayed.

  Johann was buried the morning after his death, and the families left, in a somber mood, to meet the boat on the Rhine by high noon. Dorothea, his mother, was still in shock, barely spoke, hardly ate. She was just going through the motions of living. She stayed close to Anna, but her mind was elsewhere. Felix hadn’t smiled or laughed since that pivotal afternoon in the rose garden.

  The Amish group had traveled down the Rhine from Heilbronn to Rotterdam by ship, docking at each custom house so agents could board and examine their goods for taxation. Valuable time was lost—the entire month of May and part of June.

  Maria Müller, Christian’s wife, was outraged by the endless delays. “Twenty-six custom houses down the Rhine,” she said at every meal, as if they all hadn’t been there. “Twenty-six! What should have taken one week took six. Nothing but thievery, those tax collectors.” Maria sniffed. “Highway robbery.”

  Christian tried to ward off his wife’s tirade. “Remember, dear, we were helpless to do anything about it.”

  He knew, as they all did, that this initial complaint was Maria’s prelude that led straight into the next grievance. “And as soon as we do arrive in Rotterdam, they shoo us off to stay . . . here!” She lifted a palm in the air and waved it in a circle, then heaved a loud sigh of disgust. “In squalor and filth.”

  Maria could be taxing, but she said things that everyone else was thinking. It was a disgusting place, Anna heartily agreed. An overcrowded makeshift tent city. Government officials of Rotterdam had sent them off to a holding area in the vicinity of the ruins of St. Elbrecht’s chapel below Kralingen because emigrants weren’t permitted to remain in the city.

  “And they said we might bring disease.” Maria rambled on. “Dirt and filth. Hmmph. As if we would bring anything but cleanliness and godliness.”

  And patience.

  They were waiting until passage to America cou
ld be arranged between a Neulander—a recruiter—and a shipping agent. More precious time slipping through their hands. Worse, their funds were slipping away too.

  Last night brought good news. The Neulander found them in the tent city to tell them he had been able to secure their passage on the vessel Charming Nancy. His name was Georg Schultz and he certainly didn’t look the part of a man of influence. He was the fattest man Anna had ever seen, doughy and white as a dumpling, a three-hundred-pound dumpling. He was almost perfectly round. Just over five feet tall, with an oddly shaped head that seemed too small for his body and a gray beard elegantly trimmed to a point. But as soon as he spoke of the bounty of land that waited for them in America, Anna realized why Georg Schultz had a reputation for a surprisingly compelling gift of persuasion. “Land as far as the eye can see,” he said, describing the scene as if it were right in front of them. “Rich, dark soil, babbling brooks with fresh clean water, virgin timber that tickles the sky, waiting for you to claim it and tame it.”

  Anna served as interpreter for Georg Schultz, who spoke a crisp and polished high German, and refused to lower himself to speak the peasant farmers’ dialects, like that of her people. In between translations, she stirred a large kettle of stew. Georg sidled over to the kettle and took a whiff of the stew. He stood uncomfortably close to Anna, giving her a slow once-over. Her eyes narrowed and she moved a few steps away.

  “In Penn’s Woods,” Georg said, “one might travel about a whole year without spending a penny. It’s customary when one comes with his horse to a house, the traveler is asked if he wishes to have something to eat. If one wishes to stay overnight to the morrow, he and his horse are harbored free of charge.” He moved closer to Anna. “He is invited to take his seat at the table and take his luck at the pot.”

  The breath of that man! It could peel the varnish off a table. Anna set the wooden spoon in the kettle and stepped back yet again from Georg. “I think perhaps you are hinting for an invitation to a meal.”