Anna's Crossing

by Suzanne Woods Fisher

  After that it was hard to count how many warnings he got, because with the trouble he ended up in, he must’ve had dozens of them. Step by step he kept easing into trouble until he finally was knee deep in it. He had found a small container of gunpowder in the galley and assumed Cook was tossing it out because it had gone bad with mildew. It hadn’t.

  Then the last warning came when Felix was snooping around the captain’s Great Cabin and found a box of wooden matches. Just as he held up a match to examine it, he heard the captain’s voice heading toward the Great Cabin. In Felix’s haste to hide, the match ended up in his pocket.

  He couldn’t stop thinking about how a cannon worked. That ball might be small, only about the size of a man’s fist, but it was heavy and the gray gunpowder was fine, like ashes from his mother’s kitchen fire. How could such an unlikely substance possibly push an iron ball out of that long muzzle? Even as Felix scraped the match along the muzzle to light it, and held it to the fuse to ignite, he doubted it would ever work. Surely, it was impossible.

  But it did.

  And then pandemonium broke loose.

  The look of disappointment in Bairn’s gray eyes was bad enough. Felix’s legs seemed to turn to cornmeal mush. And then Maria Müller gave him a long lecture, pointing her bony finger at him, holding a stiff broom in the other hand. “You sow the seeds of destruction wherever you go.” She shook her head. “You’ll go too far one of these days, Hans Felix Bauer, and you’ll suffer then, for your proud and willful ways.”

  Felix didn’t think it was such a bad thing to go too far, to go toe-to-toe with the rules, to see how far he could push things. Unfortunately, he might have said so out loud.

  Maria lifted the broom to bop him on the head, but his reflexes were too quick. He jumped up quick and startled her good. The tip of her broom handle hit a tall sack of white flour behind her and knocked it over, pouring out on Squinty-Eye’s awful dog, a dog that was everywhere and underfoot. The dog shook and shook, making a cloud of flour. Maria was having a conniption, and Catrina got into it and pretty soon all of them, including Felix, were white, white everywhere. Clouds of white! They sneezed and coughed and pretty soon Felix couldn’t see his own hands.

  Anna spun around, laughing at them, with them, just laughing. Even his mother was smiling. Then Christian started chuckling and, shock of all shocks, Catrina found the humor in the moment and giggled. Everyone laughed except for Maria, who had lost a sack of flour. She was fussing around and peeved at Felix, who was still shaking flour from his hair. Maria had out some wet washing on a line and he covered it with flour as he shook. Dorothea was chuckling away at the sight of floured laundry, which annoyed Maria to no end and she took it out on Felix, hissing through her teeth, “You and that senseless mother of yours take up more time and effort than the entire rest of the church.”

  That comment brought Felix up short.

  Maria rewashed her clothes while they were all sweeping up flour and putting things to right. The next thing everyone heard was the sound of hollering. Maria’s wet washing line was tied to the tail of Squinty-Eye’s awful dog and he was dragging the line through the floor of the lower deck, picking up mud and coating laundry with unswept flour and dirt and who knew what else.

  Felix made himself scarce.

  August 8th, 1737

  Up above, a bell rang and a scurry of footsteps could be heard on the deck. Down below, Anna was trying, without much success, to teach Catrina how to spell out numerals in English.

  Catrina set down her piece of chalk, exasperated. “Why can’t I just use figures?”

  Anna rubbed her forehead. “I’m trying to teach you what you’re going to have to know in the New World.” No small task, because Catrina thought she knew everything.

  Felix had finished his lesson quickly and left to go tend to the animals, and Catrina was miffed that she was alone at the table. “Have you noticed that Felix is trying to sound just like the ship carpenter you’re sweet on?”

  Provoking girl. “Have you noticed that Felix can carry on complete conversations in English with the sailors?” Anna shot back.

  Catrina rested her chin on her fists. “Why don’t boys ever want to be themselves? Why do they always want to be someone else?” She frowned. “He needs a firm hand, Anna, because he’s headed for trouble. He’s wilder than the wind.”

  “Catrina, perhaps you should stop worrying about Felix and finish writing out your numerals.”

  Catrina ignored her. “Felix would risk his silly neck to be above deck and near that carpenter.”

  True.

  “Why, he’s practically turning into a miniature version of him.”

  True, true. Catrina could be most bothersome, but she had a point. Anna should try to keep a closer watch on Felix. He had adopted an awful version of a Scottish accent, dropping off syllables. He shadowed Bairn, talking like the poor man, even matching his stride to his. Just this morning, Anna caught Felix drawing a picture of the ship on his slate, drawn with remarkable detail. There was more to this old ship than she had imagined. He knew far more about the ship’s layout than she did, which probably meant he had explored it from top to bottom. Becoming a sailor was all that was on his mind. She knew what he was thinking. She always knew. No matter how many times she told him not to go to the upper deck without permission, she would see him make for those stairs and peer out the hatch, then ooze away like a barn cat.

  “You would do well to try and speak more English,” Anna said. “You’re the only one in your family who is studying it. They’re going to be dependent on you in the New World.”

  Catrina shook her head. “No. We’ll have you to do the translating for us.”

  “I won’t be around to translate for your family. You, everyone”—she swept her arm around the deck—“should be learning English. At the very least, they should be learning how to count. To buy and sell goods and not be cheated.”

  “Mama says you’ll be able to figure it all out for us. She said you’ll live with our family so that you can trade for us. At least until she finds you a proper husband, she said.”

  Anna froze. She’d accepted that her prospect to return to Rotterdam on the next ship sailing back to England was quite dim, but she hadn’t given any thought to whom she’d be living with in Penn’s Woods. She certainly didn’t want to live with the Müllers and be subject to Maria’s endless haranguing. She decided to speak to Christian at the earliest opportunity and suggest the adults join Felix and Catrina for English lessons.

  “Anna, do you think Felix will ever love me the way I love him?”

  Startled, Anna looked at Catrina. She was gazing at Felix, who was over at the animal pen, feeding the pigs and the goats. “Catrina, you’re only ten years old. What do you know about love? When you’re all grown up, you’ll meet someone else.”

  Catrina looked at her solemnly. “Felix is the only one I’ll ever love. There are some things in life you just know.”

  She was only ten! How could a child know such a thing? Yet that was just like Catrina. She was always so sure.

  Then Anna caught sight of her basket, over by the cannon portal, and she thought of Hans, Felix’s older brother, the one who had brought her the rose.

  15

  August 11th, 1737

  As Bairn settled himself on the floor of the lower deck on Sunday morning, many heads turned in his direction and then just as quickly turned away. One stern woman with a disapproving face gave him a look that could wither a hardened pirate and he wondered if he had made a mistake. He didn’t know why he was in church that morning, why he bothered, although he knew why. It had to do with Anna. Last night, tossing and turning, he decided he would go, if only to keep her from asking again.

  Out of the corner of his eye, he caught Anna’s reflective gaze. Encouraged, he held her gaze. She lowered her lashes; a hint of pink tingeing her pale skin assured him she was not immune to him and the thought pleased him.

  But then there descended a
terrific silence. It was ominous in its abruptness. He sneaked a look around him. Many had their eyes closed. But just as many had theirs open, fixed upon some point in the distance, though there was not much worthy of attention in that lower deck.

  The man next to him fell asleep. He thought about elbowing him, but decided that if he made a cry upon waking, it would be too costly a gesture.

  Those people actually sat around waiting to hear from God. Bairn practically snorted. As if the Almighty weren’t busy enough attending to other matters.

  He glanced across the room to observe Anna. She was looking at the minister. She bent over to smooth her skirt and that was when Bairn saw the woman sitting next to her and recognized her as the blue-deviled one. She was an older woman, eyes closed, face careworn and etched with worry lines, gray hair drooping down her forehead. It surprised him to realize she was much older than he would have expected, considering she was Felix’s mother. Most passengers were young or middle-aged.

  And then she opened her eyes and a forgotten image flashed into Bairn’s mind. This woman looked nothing like the picture in his mind, and yet, something seized him. He could feel his heart start to pound. Deep down in his gut, something surged—grief, anger, disappointment, resentment, he wasn’t sure what, but it was old and familiar and painful.

  Then a large woman shifted in front of the gray-haired woman and Bairn realized how foolish, of late, was the road his thoughts were on. His head felt full of strange thoughts and feelings that flickered and were gone like moths darting at a lamp.

  He blamed Anna. She was an exasperating woman. They both knew he didn’t belong here.

  He bolted off the floor and rushed toward the companionway to get fresh air.

  Anna found her heart beat faster whenever she caught glimpse of Bairn. It distressed her, it shamed her to admit it, but she couldn’t help it. She knew that as soon as the journey came to an end, she would never see him again.

  She wasn’t entirely sure what had prompted her to invite him to church, once, twice, three times, and then for him to accept her invitation. She hadn’t thought through that there would be consequences to face over what she had chosen to do. It was one thing to speak to the ship’s officers on behalf of the passengers, but it was another thing entirely to invite him into their world.

  “He shouldn’t be here,” someone whispered angrily in her ear.

  Maria. How annoying. “It’s not forbidden,” Anna said.

  “He’ll not understand a word he’s hearing,” Maria said.

  Lizzie, seated on the other side of Maria, leaned forward to add, “He’ll be bored to tears.” She looked quite bored herself.

  “You’re treading in dangerous waters,” Maria whispered.

  That, Anna felt, was a comment of staggering irony coming from a passenger on a ship. She could barely stifle a smile.

  “Don’t think I haven’t noticed how often you go above deck when there’s no need,” Maria said. “Christian has noticed too.”

  A blush scalded Anna’s cheeks. Christian wouldn’t send the carpenter away from church. He wouldn’t. But when she turned her eyes to Christian, concern shadowed his face as he watched Bairn find a spot to sit down among the men.

  Then Anna wondered about herself, what her own thoughts and hopes were on this day. She had wanted Bairn to see this because it was so much a part of them, the backbone of their life. And yet she had known that even seeing it, he would never really understand. It could never matter to him anyway. She unconsciously smoothed her apron again.

  When Bairn bolted up from the floor and rushed to the companionway, Maria wasn’t done. She turned to give Anna a smug “I told you so” look.

  Anna felt a nervous quiver in her belly when Bairn rushed away from church. She wondered what he had been thinking that would make him dash away like that, as if he couldn’t tolerate another moment. But then, she could never tell what he was thinking. Not during all his teasing talk and cautious smiles that drew her to him—she never knew what he was really thinking or feeling.

  Lizzie was right. He was probably bored.

  Ten minutes in Bairn’s bunk told him sleep would not visit him this night. He went outside, gulping huge drafts of the frigid air, watching the white-capped water turn into a soft blur of colors as tears filled his eyes.

  He turned his face to the water, fiddling with the cleats on the railing so the others on watch would not see. He didn’t know where the tears had come from, what they were all about. But something inside him had shifted. Something inside him had woken up from a long sleep, if only for a few moments.

  The temperatures had fallen, and it felt even colder out on the deck. Bairn hardly noticed. He climbed the rigging, the noise of the ship fell away, and he entered into a world completely silent except for the rhythmic barking of the sailors in the stern.

  Dark clouds fringed with silver moonlight scudded by overhead, carried briskly along by the winds. He stared at the water, pondering what Anna had tried to impart to him earlier this evening, running her words over in his mind.

  She had slipped into his carpenter’s shop to ask him why he had left church so abruptly.

  “I have no need for it.” He looked straight at her. “Nor of yer wrathful, mercurial God.” Nor of nosy, pushy women.

  “But that’s not true, Bairn. Each one of us has a need to know God. Everybody needs people. It’s the way God made us. We need to depend on each other to see us through.”

  He snapped at her then. “And I have no more patience for talk of true faith. You asked me to go to yer kirk and so I went.”

  Anna stared at him for what seemed like forever. “Oh Bairn, who hurt you so?”

  “Lassie, yer not listenin’ to me.” He intended the words to come out with anger. Instead, his throat closed and the lantern light blurred.

  “Yes, I am,” she said softly. “I’m listening to what you’re not telling me.”

  She was infuriating! Why couldn’t she just leave him be? He paced up and down the small carpentry shop, then finally stopped. His shoulders dropped a fraction as if something settled in him. He turned quietly to face her. “You have lived loved. You and Felix and Christian and all those others down there. They have lived loved. That God of yours has His favorites. And I’m nae one of them.”

  “But you are loved by God, Bairn.”

  He shook his head vigorously. “Nay. Not me. I dinnae ken what I’ve done to earn the wrath of God the way I did, but I am not loved by Him.”

  She stared at him a moment in that intense way of hers. Then, to his shock, she moved toward him, to where he stood, moved her hand to his face, stroked his cheek so the rasp of his whiskers sounded like dry leaves. “Bairn, when you start to trust, when you go through that door, you will feel a peace within you that is far beyond anything you’ve ever imagined.”

  No one had touched him in comfort since he was a boy. His chest tightened. His throat thickened. It took everything in him to resist the urge to hold her close, bury his face in her hair, and weep. He could barely suppress the shudders that ran through him from her gentle, maternal touch. Instead he put his hands on her shoulders and pushed her away. “Go back. Back to yer people, Anna. Don’t think twice about me.” His tone held an edge.

  Suddenly self-conscious, he struggled into his frock coat. Jerking his gaze away, he stepped around her, not waiting for her to respond, and strode off to the officers’ quarters. Jaw taut, he jerked the door open and exhaled a weighty sigh, grateful Mr. Pocock was on watch. He slammed the door behind with a grunt.

  He knelt down and pulled out his trunk, took out his father’s red coat, and held it to his face, breathing in deeply. He thought he could still smell his father’s scent of pipe tobacco. But maybe he was just imagining it.

  Oh Papa, Bairn thought, the bitter sorrow pinching his gut as it always did when he thought of his father’s grim fate. His last memory of his father was when he woke with a fever and chill, and his father had placed this coat over him
to keep him warm.

  For Bairn, who had spent the last eleven years doggedly making his own way in the world, who had forged his identity on stoic self-reliance, nothing was more frightening than allowing himself to depend on others. People let you down. People left you behind. Depending on people, trusting them—it’s what got you hurt. But trust seemed to be at the heart of what Anna felt he was lacking.

  Trust was something that was once second nature to him. His father would stop work to point out migrating geese as they flew in a crisp, perfect V, instinctively working together to maximize energy for the long journey ahead. He had marveled at his father’s team of horses, pulling a heavy wagonload effortlessly, like one creature.

  A shout from down below jolted him back to the present moment. Bairn descended from the ratlines and landed on the wooden deck with a soft thump. He crossed to the fo’c’sle deck and took the wheel to give Miles Carter a rest at the helm. If he wasn’t going to sleep, he might as well let someone else do so. The night winds howled and the wrath of a bitter Atlantic beat against the Charming Nancy. And a great loneliness overwhelmed Bairn.

  His relief helmsman arrived at midnight, and he retreated to his bunk. He slept long and deep until he began to dream of being hauled away, grasping the red coat that his father had placed over him when he had first taken ill. He was being sent from the ship to be auctioned off, to redeem his passage. Panic filled him and brought him jerking upright, his head foggy from sleep, fear and dread going bone-deep. That was the first time he knew he was entirely alone in the world.

  August 13th, 1737

  A day, then two, slipped by. Beneath the shadow of an overcast sky, the sea had turned a dark olive gray. A shout rang overhead. “Sail ho!” Heads turned on the Charming Nancy and all those sailors not on watch raced to the larboard side. They had sighted their first vessel since leaving Plymouth.