Anna's Crossing

by Suzanne Woods Fisher

  “’Tis a shark,” Bairn said.

  “Shark stew for dinner,” Cook said, sounding pleased. He handed Johnny Reed the knife to do the honors of butchering the fish.

  Johnny took that knife and opened it up, then screamed like a girl and dropped the knife so that it speared its point into the deck. “Don’t look!” he shrieked, covering his eyes.

  The seamen looked at once, curious, peering inside the fish’s belly, then something terrible overcame them and they staggered backward.

  “What’s inside?” Cook asked. “What is it?”

  “Not a what but a . . .” Bairn bit the end off his sentence and seemed to gulp it down. Then he tried again. “It’s a man. Swallowed whole like Jonah’s whale.”

  Cook stretched the opening of the fish. “You’re right. He still has his boots on.” He looked up at Bairn. “Silver buckles on the boots.”

  “Oh no,” Johnny squealed. “Don’t say it.”

  “Aye. ’Tis Decker,” Cook said, matter of factly.

  Johnny leapt up like he’d sat on an anthill. He bolted to the railing to vomit over the side of the ship. Oh my, he was sick. It went on forever.

  “That sight,” Bairn said, peering into the fish, “’tis beyond anything I’ve ever seen.”

  “It’s a sign!” Johnny Reed said in his high-pitched voice. “There’s a witch aboard. Doncha see? Decker’s tryin’ t’warn us. From the hereafter!”

  The dog jumped up and barked. Felix ducked his head down.

  “The only sign is that even a fish couldn’t stomach Decker,” Bairn said, disgusted.

  “Aye,” Cook said, humor in his voice. “No more vomiting, gentlemen. ’Tis a grave matter.” He cackled in laughter, until Bairn silenced him with a look.

  “Johnny, go get another sailcloth and two rocks.” Bairn put a hand to the back of his neck. “We’ll try to bury Decker again.”

  Felix was curious to see Decker’s body inside the fish, but seamen kept running to the side to throw up over the rail and he was worried that if he moved, he’d be spotted. The bowsprit was the best hiding spot of all. The stupid cat found him, though, and jumped up to the bowsprit to poke around, which made the awful dog start to bark. Fortunately, no one was paying any attention to the cat or the dog or the bowsprit.

  If only Johann were here, Felix thought for the hundred and first time. Anna would squirm and his mother would faint and his father would frown that he took delight in the tale, but Johann would’ve appreciated such a gruesome story about the squinty-eyed sailor swallowed whole like Jonah in the whale. Maybe he’d wait for the right time and use it to shock Catrina silent.

  After Decker’s body splashed into the water and sunk, the other sailors milled about on the upper deck, talking about witches and fishes. Bairn stood alone at the bow of the ship, looking west to the dying sun. The moon was coming up full over the harbor. Felix considered making his presence known, but decided against it after observing the somber look on Bairn’s face. Just as he was about to make a run for the companionway stairs, he thought he heard Bairn quietly say, “Going, gone.”

  July 10th, 1737

  Bairn woke in the morning to a suffocating mist. Fog had settled in. He covered his face with his hands in despair. Temperatures had risen high enough without the added smothering of a blanket of fog, without any hint of wind. No supplies other than casked water had arrived yet from Plymouth harbor, and Bairn had no expectation that the captain would return to the ship until there was a favorable wind.

  He splashed water on his face and pulled at his neckerchief, longing for a vast blue ocean and its briny spray, when his only concern would be which direction the wind was blowing.

  Outside, he pulled off his boots and grasped the ratlines, then began to climb. Within moments, the deck lay underneath him like a gray blanket. So dense had grown the fog that he had to feel for each handhold, each line onto which he set his feet, and carefully test the rope before he shifted his weight to it. He could see naught in any direction.

  He slid down a backstay to the half-deck, wincing as a splinter impaled his palm. Blast it all! He stood there, holding his palm with his other hand, watching the barely drifting fog, frustrated.

  Managing the crew in this kind of standstill weather was a challenge. Boredom was deadly on a ship. The men grew ugly at about the same rate as spoiled fish. Bairn kept hearing murmurs among the deckhands that Anna was a witch. Each time she ventured above deck, the sailors darted away from her as if she had the pox. One sailor was whittling on a stick of wood and sliced his thumb. He held up his piece of wood in Anna’s direction. “She did it! She knew what I was making.”

  Bairn grabbed the wood from him. It was a carving of a naked woman. He tossed it overboard. “Then why dinnae you whittle somethin’ less offensive to a lassie?”

  The sailor let out a howl as his wooden carving disappeared into the sea. “That’s all I know how to make!”

  Another time, Anna had come to peg laundry onto a yard. High above, a seaman on the rigging stopped to watch her and dropped a tool. It landed on Johnny Reed’s head, causing a welt. “It’s her doing!” the seaman shouted.

  “It’s yer own doin’, you fool,” Bairn shouted back. “Instead of watchin’ her walk, hold on to yer tools.”

  As firm as he was about the topic, the men wouldn’t listen to reason. They were sure Anna was a witch and was casting spells on them. This afternoon, she bent down to pick up Queenie, and Johnny Reed screamed like a banshee, then held up his fingers in a cross, as if he was warding her off. Bairn saw the strain in her features, the confused hurt in her eyes . . . but it wasn’t all bad to have the seamen fearful of her. He remembered Decker’s comment that there were others on this ship who were watching Anna.

  But then Bairn would remind himself that it shouldn’t matter to him how the seamen treated her. She was nothing to him. Just a passenger below deck. He would retreat to the Round House to fill his mind with plotting the ship’s chart across the Atlantic, providing a blessed distraction.

  And yet, there was something about her that he couldn’t get out of his mind. Those large blue eyes, perhaps, or her ripe, lush mouth—a mouth that any man would call tempting. He couldn’t blame the sailors for staring at her. He shook his head, trying to clear it, determined to make every effort to avoid her as much as possible.

  Once again, he wished he could have gone ashore to Plymouth. That would have taken care of his longing for female company.

  July 12th, 1737

  For two foggy days, Bairn kept the seamen as busy as possible with mend-and-wear tasks—every hole had been patched, every deck scrubbed. The sleeping shelves of the lower deck had been brought above to scour and wash, sails had been mended, masts repaired, hammocks washed and dried. Tasks were running out. They couldn’t stand much more of this uselessness.

  Added to the friction was the growing kerfuffle over having a witch on board. Johnny Reed came to him in a panic this afternoon, after Anna had brought her basket above deck and unwrapped the bundle. “It’s a flower!” Johnny said, eyes spinning with fear as he burst into Bairn’s carpentry shop. “You know what it means to have flowers on board!”

  Aye, Bairn knew. Flowers were for funerals. To have a flower on board was a portent of death.

  “The girl’s a Jonah, Bairn. You’ve got to get her off this ship.”

  Bairn rolled his eyes.

  Johnny closed the door and lowered his voice. “Bairn, there’s talk among the men of jumping ship before the captain returns.”

  Bairn was afraid of something like this. He’d seen the men clump together in tight circles, murmuring to each other. Yesterday, as a precaution, he had dispatched the two longboats to the shore and told those four seamen to wait for the captain to return. Few of the sailors could actually swim, so he wasn’t too concerned about losing the entire crew. Still, it was no way to start an ocean voyage. “Johnny, do what you can t’keep heads calm. She’s nae a witch.”

  But Johnny�
��s superstitions were unbendable. Illogical, but that never mattered to sailors. Bairn rubbed his forehead. A mariner’s life was rife with superstitions. Superstitions gave seamen some sense that they had control over their circumstances, though a sea voyage was an endeavor based on chance. A great irony, Bairn believed. What the sea wants, the sea will have.

  Bairn went to find Anna and found her wrapping up a sad-looking plant in burlap. “That’s yer flower?”

  “Yes.”

  “It looks half dead.”

  “I know. That’s why I wanted to give it some fresh air.” She looked up at the sky. “It needs sunshine.”

  “Perhaps . . .” He leaned against the railing. “Perhaps you would nae mind tossing it overboard.”

  She froze. “Do what?”

  “The thing is . . . havin’ a flower on board frightens the sailors. They think it portends a funeral.”

  She frowned and continued wrapping the sad-looking plant in the burlap. “This stays with me.”

  “The men want you put off the ship.”

  He expected that piece of information to shock her, to make her hand over that plant. Instead, she lifted her head with a look of delight. The smile on that girl—it melted his perturbation like butter in the hot sun. “So be it.” She jumped up. “I’ll go pack. You’ll need to explain everything to Christian.”

  “Not so fast. I’m hopin’ the men will come ’round to reason before it comes to that.”

  Her smile faded. “I’d rather be put off the ship than part with this rose.”

  He remembered how stubbornly she clung to that basket when she’d first come on board. “Why is it so important to you?”

  Gently, she placed the burlap bundle into the basket. “It was given to me by someone special.” As she walked toward the companionway, the sailors scattered. Like a female Moses parting the Red Sea, Bairn thought.

  A rose. A hazy memory tickled the edges of Bairn’s mind. He once knew a girl who loved roses; he hadn’t thought of her in years. The girl, with other memories, had long ago been shoved to the recesses of his mind. Too painful.

  A scuffle between Cook and a sailor snapped Bairn’s attention to the present. Added to the friction on the ship was Cook’s terrible cooking. At best, he was an indifferent cook. The last few days, the food was inedible.

  Earlier this morning, after he’d been unable to identify the food on his plate, Bairn couldn’t take it any longer. He had marched to the galley with a plate of mushy, salty beige slop. “I’ve endured plenty of meals of sour beer and the bitter taste of weevils in a ship’s biscuit. But this? This isn’t fit fer swine! It’s so sour it makes me teeth rattle in their sockets.”

  Cook scowled at him. “Get me fresh supplies.”

  “They’ll be here soon enough.”

  “When? We should’ve sailed days ago! We’re going to head straight into hurricane season.”

  “Do you think I dinnae ken that? But what can I do in this gloom? The captain is waiting fer fair wind.” He stopped himself. This was no way to talk to Cook, his friend. “What’s the matter with you? You seem blue-deviled today. Is it the fog or somethin’ more?”

  Cook rubbed his jaw.

  “Is yer tooth acting up again?” No wonder they’d been eating slop! Whenever Cook’s bad tooth flared up, his cooking—never stellar to begin with—faltered. They all suffered when Cook suffered. “I’ll pull it fer you.”

  “Stay away from me! You’ll leave me toothless like you left me without a hand.”

  “Cook, you ken you would’ve died had I not taken yer hand.”

  “Anna can fix.”

  Bairn and Cook spun around to find Felix at the doorway of the galley.

  Cook’s sparse eyebrows lifted. “Does it require yanking?” He made a jerking motion with his one hand.

  Felix smiled a toothy smile. “No.”

  “Go get her, laddie,” Bairn said. “Anything to keep Cook from killin’ us with his cookin’.”

  Anna returned with Felix, listened to Cook’s complaint, and made a remedy of garlic paste to apply to Cook’s sore tooth, along with a hot compress.

  By midday, Cook’s pain had lessened dramatically and Anna was immediately elevated in his eyes. Even more surprising, Cook welcomed Anna and Felix into his galley. No one was ever allowed into Cook’s galley except the officers.

  July 13th, 1737

  The crew had been spooked by the rose incident yesterday, but after observing Cook’s changed countenance and greatly improved cooking that evening, the seamen decided Anna might—just might—not be a witch after all, but a healer.

  This afternoon, one or two off-duty sailors gathered around her, tentatively, asking questions about their complaints. Then a few more. One of them found a wooden crate for her to sit on and they sat on the deck at her feet, pummeling her with questions. Stiff joints? Rheumatism, she diagnosed. Try hot compresses, she suggested. Boils? Cut a thick slice of onion and place it over the boil. Wrap the area with a cloth. Change the poultice every three to four hours until the boil comes to a head and drains.

  Bairn watched the doctoring session from the railing, amused, impressed, but also wanting to make sure the seamen treated Anna well. She had no idea how tempting she was, especially to a crew starved for female companionship. The male attention she was garnering was not a thing to trifle with, not to an innocent like her.

  “Show her your hand, Bairn,” Cook said.

  Bairn still hadn’t been able to get the splinter out of his palm. The flesh around the wound was raw and puckered at the edges, fresh blood seeped through. “I’m sufferin’ enough.”

  Anna walked up to him. “I try to bring suffering to no one, least of all the helpless and the sick.”

  “I’m neither,” he said.

  “Let me decide that.”

  He held out his hand to her. She ripped off a piece of clean bandage and dabbed at the seeping wound.

  “Yer bringin’ sufferin’ to me now, the way you’re proddin’ me like I was a sheep in a bog.”

  She ignored him and dabbed at the wound, dabbed and dabbed and the splinter eased out. When it was completely out, she showed Bairn the sliver of wood that had been impaled in his hand. Her eyes lifted to his, and she smiled. A small smile that quivered as it curved across her face. A small smile that stirred his heart.

  Anna was feeling kindly about the Charming Nancy tonight, despite the heat, the troublesome delays, the worries about supplies not arriving, the petty bickering between the Amish and the Mennonites. Maria Müller and Esther Wenger’s friendship, tenuous at best, had cooled after Esther remarked that Jacob Amman was a hardheaded radical. Such a comment about the founder of the Amish church, Maria felt, was unforgiveable.

  Everyone was suffering in the fog, above and below deck. The heat was intense, the air was stifling, heavy, the humidity intolerable. Late this afternoon, Maria pulled out her leather trunk from under her sleeping shelf and let out a bloodcurdling scream. “What’s happening?!” she cried.

  Felix, most curious and quickest, was first by her side. “It’s just dusty.” The trunk was covered with a film of white.

  “Not dust, Felix. It’s mold,” Christian said, trying to calm his frantic wife as she scrubbed the trunk with a rag. “It’s the dampness.”

  Felix dug in his pocket and pulled out his pocketknife. “So that’s why my pocketknife keeps getting rusty.”

  Tonight, as Anna and Dorothea and Felix shared a meal of moldy zwieback and salted meat, a rat the size of a barn cat had run up and grabbed Felix’s hat. Felix took off after that rat while everyone near them watched with amusement. The rat ran up and down the aisle of the lower deck, Felix ran up and down, the rat ran back and forth, Felix ran back and forth. Finally the rat dropped the hat at one end of the deck. While Felix bent down to get it, the rat doubled back, picked up the hunk of toast by Felix’s hammock, and ran the other way.

  Dorothea laughed so hard her face turned red. “Why, that rat knew just what he wa
nted and figured out how to get it.”

  It felt wonderful to hear Dorothea’s laugh. Anna found herself admiring the rat, until it occurred to her that things had to be pretty dull for a person to admire a rat.

  “Enough talk of problems,” Christian had reminded everyone during evening devotions. “We shall focus on God’s goodness. Nothing good or bad happens to us but what first passes through the Father’s hand.”

  As Anna lay in her hammock that night, she thought of the blessings of the day. Felix and the cunning rat. Dorothea’s laughter. A respite from seasickness. The lower deck, though dank and musty and damp and moldy, smelled infinitely better than it had a week ago.

  Her cheerfulness had to do with helping ease Cook’s toothache, she supposed. For the first time since leaving home she felt as if she were here for a reason. The sailors no longer thought Anna to be a witch who had conjured up Decker’s death. Now they believed her to be a healer, and while she didn’t feel qualified for such a label, she longed to be useful. As she had sat on the wooden crate this afternoon, she treated sailors’ cuts and boils and blisters and mouth sores and eye infections, trying to remember remedies her grandmother had used back in Ixheim. The seamen became less hostile and afraid; they began to laugh as she treated them, and they thanked her when she had finished. They didn’t need to, though, for their gratitude was plain. For the rest of the afternoon and evening, they showed kindness to the passengers—tolerating their presence above deck, filling tubs of water for them, nodding and smiling as they tried to understand each other. It was a relief for the witch rumors to abate, although she had held a thin hope that she might be put off the ship because of them. And it wouldn’t be her fault! Surely Christian would understand. Alas, that hope had dissipated with the rumors.

  What did Bairn think of her healing? After all, he was the ship’s surgeon, but he didn’t seem to take offense that the crew sought her out. He stood by the railing as she treated the sailors, watching and listening, but not with malice in those gray eyes. Those eyes—she had to force herself to look away from them. Why? She found him full of contradictions and was never quite sure what he was thinking, though she wished she knew. A hundred questions about him sprang to her mind, longing for answers. There was something mysterious and distant about Bairn and he fascinated her, though she knew it was wrong to think about a stranger, a worldly man. And he was all that. He admitted as much. Yet the more time she spent in his presence, the more baffling he grew and the more drawn she felt to him.