The Golden Cross

by Angela Elwell Hunt

  “Aidan is as good as anyone aboard ship,” Heer Van Dyck suggested, prodding Aidan forward. She felt the back of her neck begin to burn as a dozen pairs of eyes fell upon her. “My ward speaks English, a bit of Dutch, as well as a smattering of Irish Gaelic.”

  “What a clever boy.” Tasman’s tone was dry. “Well then, shall we send you off? I can think of nothing to be gained by waiting, and we need a full day to gather supplies. By the well-fed look of these heathens, I’d say there is fresh food and water aplenty upon yonder shores.”

  “Let us not wait a moment longer,” Heer Van Dyck agreed, moving with stiff dignity toward the rope netting that dangled over the side of the ship. Aidan followed, gathering up Heer Van Dyck’s bag of art supplies and her own slippery courage. She peered over the railing at the barge riding the crystal blue water below. The two oarsmen were already in place—one frowned at the natives, the other grinned like this was the lark of a lifetime.

  Gently rebuffing her helping hand, Heer Van Dyck moved slowly over the rail, clinging to the ropes as he gingerly made his way down. Aidan followed, careful not to step on the elderly man’s fingers, and finally dropped to his side in the front of the boat. Dr. Thorne entered next, then came the ship’s carpenter with the necessary coat of arms, and Francois Visscher. Finally, Jan, the chaplain, stood on deck, recited a prayer for the safety of those involved in the journey, and climbed into the barge as well.

  Abel Tasman lifted his hand in a stiff salute as the oarsmen braced their oars against the Heemskerk’s hull and pushed toward the shore. Gripping the side of the barge with one hand and the bench with the other, Aidan gritted her teeth and prayed that her master had not made the most foolish mistake of his life.

  Like moths to light, the native boats drew near the Dutch barge. Jabbering in a tongue only they could understand, the warriors called to each other in high, excited voices while the Dutch explorers nodded with careful, pleasing smiles on their faces.

  “Just keep calm and keep your expression friendly,” Visscher advised in a low voice as the barge rowed smoothly through the quiet waters of the bay. “Keep your hands on the side of the boat—they must see that we carry no weapons.”

  Aidan was only too happy to obey. Twisting, she placed both hands on the rim of the barge, gripping it so tightly that her knuckles went white. She smiled and nodded and smiled again at the natives in a canoe that raced alongside. The tallest warrior, who was as bald as an egg and about as expressive, pointed at her, then at the Heemskerk in the bay.

  Aidan nodded at him and smiled.

  “Skipper, look over here,” Dr. Thorne called from the other side of the boat, his tone as casual as if he were discussing the weather. “I do believe this fellow intends to ram us.”

  Visscher’s head jerked around, and every occupant in the barge turned to look. One heavily loaded canoe came on with great speed, its sharp prow pointed directly toward the barge’s midsection.

  “Oarsmen, reverse!” Visscher hissed, his round face going pale. “Full reverse, now!”

  The order came too late. The canoe rammed the Dutchmen’s boat, cutting the slower vessel nearly in half. Aidan threw up her hand as the water rose to meet her. Visions of drowning, of cannibals, of bloody heathen sacrifices flashed through her imagination. Then gray water engulfed her, and the world disappeared.

  Sterling Thorne

  It is easier to sail many thousand miles through cold and storm

  and cannibals, in a government ship,

  with five hundred men and boys to assist one,

  than it is to explore the private sea,

  the Atlantic and Pacific Ocean of one’s being alone …

  Henry David Thoreau, Walden

  In an instinctive grasp for stability, Sterling clutched the edges of the barge as the canoe cracked the boards like an eggshell. The chaplain and carpenter, who sat in front of the boat, pitched forward into the surging sea, and several of the natives jumped in after them.

  Aidan, who sat just in front of Sterling, turned slightly, her eyes wide with fear. Just as she opened her mouth to scream, onrushing water filled the broken vessel and tipped the stern into the ocean. Sterling felt himself sliding backward. The last thing he saw before he went into the sea was the terrified look on Aidan O’Connor’s face.

  The salt water stung his eyes, blurring his vision, but still he searched for any sign of movement. It may be hopeless, he thought, but as long as God gives me breath, I will not lose her.

  Silvery bubbles shot out of his doublet and rushed past his face, then his vision cleared. Muffled sounds reached his ears—frenzied shouting, crashing, pounding from the surface above. He cast to the left and right, then caught a glimpse of white. There! Just a few feet away. If he could only get to her—

  His air was almost gone, but Sterling was determined not to give up. At last his hand grabbed onto her shirt and held tight. She resisted in an initial impulse of panic, then he felt her submit. With Aidan in tow, he broke the surface and turned her to face him as she drank in deep gulps of air.

  “Breathe deeply,” he said firmly, holding her securely about the waist. “When I count three, you must take the deepest breath you can. We have to go under the water again.”

  She stubbornly shook her head, and he pressed his forehead to hers, mindful of the sounds of fighting around them. “It is the only way,” he whispered, his voice taut with urgency. “If you want to live, breathe. One, two, three!”

  He gave her no opportunity to argue, but pulled her under, then pushed away from the fighting, toward the shore and a quiet little cove he’d noticed from the ship. If they could escape notice for the next few moments, they could hide in the undergrowth until evening, then swim back out to the Heemskerk.

  He swam until he felt his own lungs tingle, and knew that Aidan needed air. Quickly he brought her up again, grimacing as she yelped in terror when their heads broke the surface.

  “Quiet, I tell you,” he said, shaking the water from his own eyes. He could touch the bottom here, and quickly found his footing. He turned to see how far they stood from the Heemskerk, then jerked back in surprise when Aidan released a blood-curdling scream.

  A dripping savage, bedecked with seaweed, had surfaced not two feet in front of her. The warrior lifted a stout wooden club and shouted something Sterling couldn’t understand. Aidan fainted dead away in the water, collapsing against the native’s bare chest.

  Sterling instinctively reached for her, then pulled back. The warrior was gazing at Aidan with a mixture of reverence and fear. If Sterling attacked, the native would undoubtedly crush his head without a moment’s hesitation, and Aidan might well be drowned in the rescue attempt. But something in the warrior’s eyes told Sterling that if he withdrew, Aidan might not be harmed.

  Torn between responsibility and rationality, Sterling hesitated, then dove underwater and swam in a diagonal line toward the shore. The natives would probably assume he had fled to the ship. If all went well they wouldn’t find him … and they wouldn’t harm Aidan until he could get to her.

  Standing amidships aboard the Zeehaen with Snuggerheid at his side, Witt Dekker saw the attack and leaned forward, his heart pounding in anticipation. What luck! He had not had a chance to question the ketelbinkie about that day in the alley, but he had decided that it didn’t matter anyway. The first chance he got, he intended to get the boy and the old man alone on the island and quietly kill them there. Now it appeared that these natives might effectively do his work for him.

  “Sakerloot!” Gerrit Janszoon muttered, his hand moving swiftly to the sword at his belt. “What can we do, Dekker?”

  “Nothing,” Witt answered. He sidestepped the dog as his eyes searched the churning water. The barge bearing the cartographer, his ketelbinkie, and the doctor had gone down. But when the doctor resurfaced with the ketelbinkie in tow, Witt Dekker saw something else—something he couldn’t believe he had overlooked.

  Heer Van Dyck’s ketelbinkie was no boy. />
  The realization hit him with the force of a physical blow. He punched Janszoon with his elbow. “The cartographer’s assistant—do you know his name?”

  Janszoon stared at him as if he’d gone mad. “What?”

  “The ketelbinkie’s name!” Witt demanded.

  “Something Irish, I think. Erin—no, Aidan. What difference does it make?”

  “No difference,” Dekker muttered. But it did make a difference—all the difference in the world. How could he have missed the truth? The girl he had sought—Aidan O’Connor—had been on board the Heemskerk all along. Practically under his nose, enjoying the protection of the old man and, evidently, the doctor as well.

  Witt suppressed a smile and turned back to view the carnage. The natives swam like fish, and two of them had already stumbled from the waves to the shore, dragging a bewildered captive onto the sand. With merciless efficiency they lifted their clubs, beating the man senseless, while their comrades pulled another stunned Dutchman from the surf.

  Dekker looked to the Heemskerk—Tasman stood on the deck, his hands on the railing, his mouth closed. The man was either in shock or quite willing to let his men perish.

  “This might be a good time to take action, Tasman,” Witt drawled under his breath. “None of your men will survive unless you do something.”

  Almost as if Tasman had heard Witt’s mocking suggestion, a cannon unexpectedly thundered from the other ship. The Zeehaen resonated like a sounding-box to the crash of the Heemskerk’s sixteen-pounders, and the mountains echoed the sound—a curious dead thump, as low as thunder but surely more menacing to the natives’ ears. Tasman had undoubtedly hoped to frighten the natives away, but the struggles in the water grew more frenzied and agitated as the fearful savages attacked the invaders.

  Witt leaned forward, bending to tweak Snuggerheid’s ear as yet another Dutchman was fished from the sea and pulled onto the beach. He resisted the urge to cheer. A sure bounty awaited him in Batavia—a rich reward for the deaths of the girl and the old man. And he hadn’t had to lift a finger.

  One particularly burly savage dragged a fourth man onto the beach. Witt squinted through his spyglass and smiled to himself when he recognized the tall, bearded figure of Schuyler Van Dyck. That noble forehead was already cracked, his elegant beard and face marked with trails of blood. Now, where was the girl? He couldn’t see her on the beach. Maybe she had already drowned by the time the doctor got to her.

  “Look there!” He felt a tug at his sleeve, and lowered his spyglass.

  “Where?”

  “A survivor.” Janszoon pointed to the water near the Heemskerk. A dark head bobbed through the gentle waves, and a dozen hands reached out from the railing.

  Irritation raked up Dekker’s spine, and he jerked the spyglass up to his eye. “Can you tell who it is?”

  Water streamed off the portly figure that struggled up the netting. The survivor had lost his hat, but wore an officer’s dark coat. “Visscher.” Dekker sighed and lowered the glass in relief. “How fortunate that the Heemskerk will not lose her pilot and first mate.”

  “But what of the others?” Janszoon’s eyes swept the troubled waters. Nothing much remained of the barge—only a few broken pieces of wood floating forlornly over the breakers. A hat bobbed gently upon the tide, tossed from wave to wave as it steadily approached the shore.

  “Time will tell if any survived,” Witt answered, glancing across to the Heemskerk. “But I do not think Tasman will want to remain in this inhospitable place for very long.”

  Four hours after the attack, Sterling crawled steadily through the undergrowth toward Van Dyck’s body. The old gentleman had not stirred since the natives brought him ashore, but Sterling felt a physician’s obligation to make certain nothing could be done for his patient.

  He’d been playing cat and mouse all afternoon. After the massacre in the water, the natives had returned to shore. The majority had left the beach, probably to return to their village, but a half-dozen lookouts remained, and Sterling doubted they would relax their vigilance until the two Dutch ships had departed from the harbor. And so he had crept through the brush all afternoon, trying to examine the bodies of men for whom he felt an acute responsibility, but for whom nothing could be done. The natives patrolled the beach in a random pattern, and Sterling had to wait until they had moved on before he could advance and inspect his fallen comrades.

  Cautiously, lest any sound or movement attract the natives’ attention, Sterling furtively crept through the thinning brush,then darted forward to the beach. When he ripped open Van Dyck’s doublet and pressed his cheek to the man’s cold, wet chest, his ear confirmed what his eye had already told him: the gentleman was undoubtedly dead, apparently killed by one crushing blow to the head. One arm lay at an unnatural angle, doubtless ripped from its socket in the frenzy of destruction, and one of the artist’s hands was missing—Sterling didn’t even want to suppose why.

  Van Dyck, then, was the fourth murdered man. Also dead were the rowers, the carpenter, and the chaplain, each of whom Sterling had found, examined, and quietly moved to a less exposed location. Still missing were Van Dyck’s ward and Visscher, the first mate, though Sterling hoped the seaman had the good sense to swim back to the ship. The officer would most certainly be among the dead if the natives had found him. They had not hesitated to kill the men … he could only hope they would be less brutal with Aidan, who in a wet shirt and breeches was obviously female.

  Sterling lifted Van Dyck’s arms and crossed them in a dignified posture of rest. He did not have time to bury any of the bodies, but since their souls had long since flown to their eternal resting places, proper burial was certainly not a priority at the moment. Only Aidan mattered now—and her speedy return to the Heemskerk. Sterling wasn’t certain how long Tasman would remain in these waters, or what he might do in reprisal for the attack. Indeed, Sterling would not be surprised if the cannons began to fire again to avenge the lost Dutchmen. The warning shot Tasman discharged during the attack had only agitated the incensed savages. What might they do to Aidan if Tasman began to bombard this beach with cannon fire?

  Crouching low in shadows, Sterling turned from the water and studied the winding wisps of smoke that rose from a stand of trees beyond the beach. If Aidan was alive, she must be there. He closed his eyes and prayed for darkness to descend.

  He never intended to sleep, but anxiety and exhaustion had drained his strength, and he fell into a shallow doze. When he abruptly awoke, the sunset had spread itself like a peacock’s tail, luminous and brilliant, across the western horizon. In a flurry of panic he looked toward the sea—the two ships still rode the tide like silent sentinels, their sails reefed and anchors set, waiting for—what? He fervently hoped they were waiting for him and Aidan.

  Sterling licked his lips, tasting dried salt, sand, and the coppery tang of blood. Thirst burned his throat, but he could not take precious time to search for fresh water. If God was merciful, he could locate Van Dyck’s heiress and escort her back to the ship within an hour or two, then they could eat and drink their fill.

  He stepped out from behind the leafy screen that had sheltered him and took his bearings. The ships filled the horizon at his left hand, the distant sound of drums came from the forest at his right. The native lookouts had moved closer together in a show of solidarity, and now sat as motionless as statues in the center of the beach, their eyes intent upon the dark blue bay.

  Sterling moved carefully behind them, prowling like an alley cat, watching his shadow lengthen and finally disappear. He smiled in quiet relief when the rising moonlight revealed a worn footpath through the brush. Moving with the same silent tread he had used to evade his siblings in their games of hide-and-seek, Sterling followed the trail, fretting lest a single footfall snap a twig or rustle a leaf and expose his presence.

  He wasn’t certain how long he walked—the interval felt like an eternity—but at length he reached a village of thatched huts. A series of black st
one boulders had been set up as some sort of totem or monument, and Sterling moved silently up the rock formation and flattened himself against the rock at the top, studying the village from this elevated vantage point. A dozen large huts encircled a roaring fire, and over two hundred people danced, sang, and chanted around the huge fire pit. Sterling could see no sign of Aidan in the surging crowd.

  He climbed down from the rocks and raced in a low crouch to a dark and quiet spot between two of the huts. Some sort of cage, probably an animal trap, had been stashed there, and Sterling coiled into the flickering shadows behind it and peered out between the bamboo bars.

  In the center of the village, a nearly naked warrior threw a bough on the fire, sending an eruption of sparks into the velvet sky. Huge tongues of flame leaped into the air, followed by a boiling cloud of dust and ash. Then Sterling saw Aidan, her pale complexion stark against the fire-tinted darkness.

  Still clad in her white shirt and breeches, the heiress sat in a bamboo chair, her bare feet tied together at the ankles, her wrists bound in her lap. Her long braid had been loosened, and waves of red hair spilled over her shoulders in a coppery tide, fluttering in the heat and motion of the dancers. A wreath of spotless white flowers hung about her neck; others spilled from her lap onto the hard-packed earth at her feet. Her complexion had gone pale under her tan—pale as the flower petals that brushed her throat. But beneath that copper crown, her green eyes blazed like emeralds.

  Sterling felt a reluctant grin tug at the corners of his mouth. These were fiercely savage people, but they still had sense enough to recognize a beautiful woman when they saw one. And, thank God, apparently they had not harmed her.