6
July 4th, 1737
The ship was surrounded by utter darkness. Bairn couldn’t hear anything at all except for the gentle murmur of the sails as they luffed in the breeze. Standing on the bowsprit in the middle of the night, he was alone in a realm of silence.
It was as if the ship was sailing off to another place, as if a black pathway pulled the ship among the stars. And it was beautiful.
The sea gave Bairn a measure of stability and order that the outside world had seemed to lack. The Charming Nancy was home to him now and he felt like her caretaker. And in a way, he was.
As ship’s carpenter, he considered himself to be the ship’s physician. It was his job to know her weaknesses, her strengths, her history, her injuries, her scars. It was up to him to know how much ill weather she could face, how much her seasoned timbers could bear, what tonnage her belly could comfortably carry, the age and wear of her skins.
He heard the bells ring for a watch change and knew morning would come soon. He should return to his quarters to try to get some sleep, though sleep was eluding him of late. Whenever he closed his eyes, flashes of memory popped before him. Flashes of his father in his red coat. Flashes of his mother pulling bread out of the oven. His father reaching over to spread the red coat over Bairn. And then . . . flashes of sickness and tears and death. He would startle awake, heart pounding, gasping for air. What he had tried for years to forget pursued him like a wild dog, nipping at his heels.
As he walked into the officers’ quarters, Mr. Pocock, the first mate, came hobbling out, favoring his sore gouty foot, yawning. “Onto watch.” It was rare to be alone and uninterrupted, so Bairn lit a lantern, set it on the floor, and crouched down to pull out his sea chest. All that he owned in the world was in this chest. He opened the lid and reached to the bottom to pull out the coat. He sat on the floor, his back against Mr. Pocock’s wooden bunk, and held the coat against his chest. Made of a fine red wool, lovingly woven on his mother’s loom. It was his father’s coat, the only possession he had left from his family. His most treasured item. He breathed in deeply, one more time, then folded the coat and placed it carefully back in his sea chest, covered it up with his clothes, and shoved the chest under his bunk. He lay down on his back in the upper bunk, resting his head in his hands.
He’d felt the dark anguish of old take hold, stirred up by the passengers down below. Watching them, hearing them, observing the happy interaction of the families. Their presence provoked his disquiet, bringing it all back, unearthing the past he’d long buried.
Bairn tried to tell himself that it was only old grief rolling over, that it would soon go to sleep again, but he knew it was more. Knew it by the strange uneasiness he’d felt at unexpected times, knew it by the dreams that kept jabbing at him, knew it by the way he tensed up whenever he caught sight of the Peculiars.
His mind traveled back to the visit yesterday afternoon with the red-haired German boy. As he started toward his carpentry shop, he noticed Felix hiding behind the capstan. He motioned to him to follow along and the laddie responded with gusto, all but bounding behind him.
Afternoon light had poured into the shop from a tiny window at the back wall. The air was thick with the sweet-sharp scent of wood and pitch and oakum. Drifts of sawdust and curls of wood shavings lay on the floor, tools hung neatly on the wall. Bairn loved this little room; his personal space on a crowded vessel. Craftsmanship required thought, and thought required a quiet environment. It was his custom to linger in the shop long after he was done for the day.
Bairn pointed to an upturned nail keg for the boy to sit on. He quickly realized the boy understood more English than he would have expected. Felix was a bright and clever laddie, though his pronunciation of English was truly horrific. Bairn was cautious about correcting him because he didn’t want the laddie to stop trying, but Felix didn’t seem to mind the corrections. Just the opposite, he seemed eager to learn the language. Bairn explained the various tools he used. He showed Felix the wood planes, their handles burnished by years of use, their blades so sharp and precise they could shave off curls of wood as thin as paper. He handed him tools that he’d purchased over the years in different seaports, explaining how each tool served a unique function but all were indispensable. Each one gave him precise control over fine details.
Working with wood resonated with Bairn in an elusive but elemental way—it satisfied him down to his core, and gave him peace. Partly it was the pleasure that he derived from solving problems—working out angles and planes when a project wouldn’t lie cleanly. Partly it was because he felt closest to his father when he was in this shop. He had learned carpentry at his father’s side.
And partly it was the wood itself. He liked the way wood spoke to him as he worked with it, murmuring and squeaking and whispering, almost as if it was alive. When he split apart a piece of pine or cedar or oak, it perfumed the air with its spicy sweet smell.
On this rainy afternoon, the room grew stuffy and warm. Bairn took off his jacket and rolled up his sleeves. Felix’s eyes went wide when he saw the ink drawing pricked on Bairn’s upper arm. “Done with India ink,” he said. “It can never be washed off.”
“It is a girl,” Felix said.
“Aye.” Bairn squeezed his muscles to make it look as if the girl was dancing. “Not one of me prouder moments. But a good reminder of how stupid a man can be when he’s had a wee bit too much from a brown bottle.”
Felix’s eyes went wider still, and it occurred to Bairn that he shouldn’t have shown him the tattoo. No doubt the boy had never seen the likes of such wickedness and debauchery. Then Decker’s voice rang out from the half-deck, calling for Bairn, and Felix had disappeared out the door in a flash.
Bairn yawned, hearing the ship’s bell strike four in the morning. He should try to get some sleep before dawn, so he blew out the lamp and closed his eyes. His wished he could shut down his mind as easily as the lamp’s flame.
He wondered if the boy would tell his sister about his tattoo and hoped he wouldn’t. Then he wondered why he should care what Anna thought of him.
It was easier when the lower deck held only cotton and linens, wine and woolens.
July 5th, 1737
Georg Schultz unnerved Anna. This morning, after she had bathed and changed into a clean dress behind a curtain, she emerged from behind the curtain and there he was, arms folded, leaning against the beam. The morning sun, she discovered, was streaming through the cannon portals to illuminate the gauzy curtain, creating a shadowy outline of her figure. He had been watching her bathe and change clothes.
After supper, Felix needed a haircut, so Anna cut his, and then cut the hair of the three-year-old Gerber twins. She wrapped an old sheet around the boys to catch hair. When she was done, she took the sheet over to the pig’s pen to shake it out. With one snap of the cloth, she was alone, and with the next, Georg Schultz stood beside her. She caught her breath with a sound. He seemed to be everywhere at once.
“Hello, Anna,” he said. “Did I surprise you?”
She frowned at him. “Yes, you did.”
He looked at the scissors in her hands. If he thought she was going to cut into that greasy nest of hair on him, he was going to have to think again. Nevertheless, he kept staring at her. She brushed past him and quickly returned to Dorothea over by the cannon.
Dorothea lifted her dull eyes to Anna’s. “Is that stout man bothering you?”
“He bothers me,” Dorothea said. “There’s something about him that is frightening.”
Anna put the scissors back into her trunk and sat down on the pallet next to Dorothea. “Would you tell me a story?”
Dorothea closed her eyes for such a long time that Anna thought she might have fallen asleep. But then she opened them and began to speak. “Did I tell you how our families came to be in the Palatinate?”
“Tell it again.” Dorothea’s stories alternated between too long or too intimate, and were very repetitive. Anna’s grandfather said that once was all he needed, but Anna always listened anyway. To her, the tales were worth hearing again, and it seemed Dorothea needed to tell them to someone. They were harsh recollections of her childhood in Switzerland, when the Täuffers, the name given to those who believed in adult baptism, were hunted and chased out of their homeland.
When Anna first heard Dorothea’s stories, she had been surprised and astonished, then she had grown a bit inured to their dramatic sequence. Now, after leaving their isolated village, after the long weeks in that horrible tent city, after the pail of seawater thrown into her face by that sailor with the small dog, the stories held new meaning for her.
“My family was living in Bern, Switzerland, on a beautiful mountain.” Dorothea’s voice started out fragile, brittle, and much attenuated, as if rusty from lack of use. “We farmed land that no one else could farm, and we were very happy there. But a new mayor was elected to the Canton, a Catholic, Mayor Willading. He hated the Täuffers and wanted to rid Canton Bern of them. First, he forbade the Täuffers to meet to worship. Then they started to arrest the church leaders. My father was one of them. Families went up the mountain to hide in the Alphüt, where the hay was stored. The mayor demanded that all hay storage huts were to be searched for any hidden Täuffers. If a farmer turned them in, he would be given a reward of 30 Kreuzer. My father was betrayed by a poor man whom he had once fed. Early one morning, eight officers arrived at the door. Father had told us to hide under a stack of hay while he went off with the officers, but an officer started to thrust his sword into the stack and my father stopped him. We were discovered and sent off to prison.”
“How awful to think they even arrested children.”
She nodded. “First they planned to execute the Täuffers, but the Council chose instead to deport us to America. They confiscated our home, our belongings, everything . . . and just sent us off on large rafts down the Rhine. Just like that. We lost everything.” She gazed at the wooden floor planks as if she could visualize the Rhine journey. “My father would say: Man soll sick nicht zum land binden.” One is not to become attached to the land.
Anna noticed that Dorothea’s voice had grown stronger in the telling of the story. “What happened then?”
“We were told to never return to our beloved Switzerland. If we did, we would face death. We were sent up the Rhine to Amsterdam, and then to America.”
“To Philadelphia?”
“No. To North Carolina. But my father planned an escape before the ship left Amsterdam. He didn’t want to leave Europe, so we fled in the night, on foot, until we reached Ixheim and found some refugees who helped us. We relied on the goodness of strangers along the way, sought refuge at farms and other places. And then we came to—”
“Yes.” A corner of Dorothea’s mouth lifted. The first near-smile she’d offered up in weeks. “They helped us get assigned land by their noble person. Their landlord.”
“The baron.”
“Yes. The good baron, the old one. Not his son.”
“God was watching over you.”
Dorothea gave a slight nod. “Had we gone to America, we might have faced a terrible fate. A year later, over one hundred of the colonists were killed in a vicious Indian attack in New Bern. Our friends in America were killed.”
Anna covered Dorothea’s hands with hers. “And somehow, the church continued to grow.”
“Yes. It flourished as a rose among thorns.”
Keep talking, Dorothea. Don’t stop. “So you met Jacob in Ixheim?” Anna urged. She didn’t want Dorothea to slip back into her melancholia.
Dorothea looked up at Anna, eyes as clear as day. A gentle smile suddenly broke through her malaise, lighting a soft glow in her eyes. “Yes. We met each other that very first week and fell in love soon after.”
Today, Anna listened to Dorothea in a way she hadn’t before. As she spoke of Jacob, her husband, Anna noticed that her face relaxed and her eyes grew clear. It was the first time that Anna realized how much Dorothea loved Jacob and how safe she felt when he was near.
“And a year later, we had our beautiful baby boy, Hans. You remember him, Anna.”
“I remember.” She would never forget Hans Bauer.
“We were happy in Ixheim. We wished for more children, but we knew not to question God. After many years, Johann was born to us. And not much longer after that, Jacob felt God calling him to lead the church to the New World.”
Anna could recite the rest of the story, word for word. Jacob Bauer had come across a real estate tract written by a man named William Penn, a Quaker. The king had given Penn a large land holding in America—45,000 square miles—to satisfy a debt to his father. Penn was selling off land to those who sought to worship in peace. This, Jacob felt, was the answer needed for the little Amish church of Ixheim. He was eager to take advantage of Penn’s offer before the land became settled. He left for the New World in 1726 with the church’s blessing, their money to purchase land, and his eleven-year-old son, Hans. The plan was for many in the church to follow the next year. But a severe epidemic of smallpox went through the ship and both Hans and Jacob succumbed. When Jacob recovered from delirium, he discovered his son had died and all his money had been stolen. Brokenhearted, Jacob booked passage on the next returning ship. He arrived in Ixheim in late November, without land, without money, without his son.
“There were those who criticized Jacob for returning. Some felt he should have stayed, for the church’s sake. To get started in the New World.” Dorothea’s hands twisted and turned the edges of her apron, as if she could still feel the pain from that time. “He did it for me, out of love. He knew he couldn’t tell me about my boy’s death in a letter. Just like I must tell him about Johann in person. Some things are not meant for letters.”
Even Anna remembered the stir that was caused when he had returned to Ixheim, empty-handed. He was a man who was always in forward motion. She remembered her grandparents’ disapproval that he had not stayed in Penn’s Woods and sent for Dorothea and little Johann. Instead, he returned to grieve with his wife. In time, they were blessed with another son, whom Dorothea named Hans—as was the custom—to honor the son who died on the voyage, but he was called by his middle name, Felix.
Anna, only nine at the time, felt the impact of Hans’s death. Living next door to the Bauers, she had seen Hans daily, though he generally ignored her. At the time, the two years between them made him effectively an eon older than her. She was too young for him to pay much notice to.
On long summer nights, Anna and Johann would help Hans round up the sheep to put in the pen. But on the day Hans left with his father, she was stuck at home, as she had broken her leg after a fall and was confined to bed while it healed. Hans had left a dug-up rose under her window, a goodbye gift. She planted the rose in her grandparents’ garden and it thrived, growing strong and sturdy, giving off delicate pink flowers each spring. She glanced over at her basket with the leather handle. That rose.
“You know the rest of this story.”
“Tell me anyway.”
“It wasn’t long before Jacob’s restless nature stirred again. He wanted to set out for the New World, but I wouldn’t let him leave. A new minister had settled in Ixheim, Christian Müller, and he was also eager to move to the New World. He intervened and persuaded me to let Jacob go. I finally relented, but only on the condition that Johann did not leave with Jacob.” She covered her face with her hands. “The Lord giveth, and the Lord taketh away.”
Anna rubbed circles on Dorothea’s back, and softly said, “Blessed be the name of the Lord.”
Suddenly Maria stood in front of them, arms folded over her ample chest, intruding on this thoughtful moment. “Anna, I’ve been giving some thought to your situation.”
“My situation?” They were all in the same situation!
“What are you now, two and twenty?”
“Nineteen.”
“Exactly. You’re not getting any younger. See those crow’s-feet around your eyes?”
Anna’s hand automatically went to her eyes.
“Oh honestly, Maria,” Dorothea said, rolling her eyes to the ceiling.
Maria ignored her. “It’s time for you to marry.”
Anna’s gaze swept the lower deck. “But there’s no one I want to marry.”
Maria’s face filled with pity. “I know, I know. You’ve met so few men in your little life.” She raised a finger in the air. “By this time next year, we will have found your intended. I can feel it in my bones. I know these things.” She leaned forward. “It wouldn’t hurt to brush your hair now and then. You must start to think ahead, Anna, as I do.” She started up the aisle of the lower deck toward the stern, looking over the few eligible Mennonite bachelors as if she were shopping for ripe fruit. Ironic, Anna thought, because she often complained that these Mennonites were far too worldly for her liking.
Anna shook her head, hoping the thought would quickly leave Maria’s mind as so many other thoughts did. Dorothea said she was thirsty—the food Cook provided was liberally dosed with salt and everyone was always thirsty—so Anna rose from the pallet to fill up a cup and glimpsed her reflection on the water’s surface of the open barrel. Was that really her? She saw a face that was too harsh, too careworn for a woman not even twenty, with all those worry lines and her hair drooping off her face. She looked nothing like the young girl her grandfather once called pretty as a posy.
Later that night, near midnight, Anna awoke with a start. A chill moved through her. Someone was standing near the end of her hammock.
Suddenly in a burst of noise that made Anna let out her breath with relief, a small dog emerged from the seamen’s quarters and started to bark and snarl. Now they were all awake. Felix called the dog off, and whoever was at the edge of Anna’s hammock moved quickly away into the shadows. In just a few minutes, everyone was snoring again. Not Anna, though.
“Doggie,” she whispered. “Come here, old boy.”
The dog slipped near her hammock and looked up at her. Then his tail began to wag. She tapped her lap, and the dog jumped up on her hammock. It was the dog that belonged to that mocking sailor. She petted and scratched behind his ears and the dog curled up, lay down, and went to sleep.
Anna tried not to think about who was at the edge of her hammock, but it was like trying not to think about a cricket chirping. The more you don’t think about it, the louder it gets.