8

July 8th, 1737

Felix wormed his way through the knot of sailors on the deck and found a spot on the forecastle where he could hide unobserved. Better still, Bairn had left his spyglass on the forecastle deck while he was talking to Anna, and Felix thought he might not mind if he borrowed it.

It was the first look at an English port that Felix ever had, might ever have, and he was intrigued by simple details—the swarm of ships in the sound, the crumbling old buildings on the shoreline, the scantily dressed women who waved and called out to sailors. He saw men at work on the docks stop to drink from a flask, in no apparent hurry to complete their tasks, and he wondered what made them so thirsty. He thought of how he would have described the sight to Johann and found that it didn’t hurt quite as much to think of his brother as if he were still alive, as if he could still talk to him. As if he wasn’t cut off from him forever.

And maybe he could. Anna said she thought that heaven was like a curtain, not a wall.

Suddenly, someone seized Felix and stuffed him into an empty wooden barrel with holes in the top and sides. His head popped through the hole on the top of the barrel and he found Squinty-Eye laughing at him, his awful, ugly dog by his side. For the evil seaman, it was a great joke. Not to Felix.

“’At’s what you deserve for venturing onto the fo’c’sle deck!”

Felix tried to pretend he wasn’t as thoroughly humiliated as he was, but the wooden barrel was heavy—its whole weight rested on his shoulders and he couldn’t sit or stand. When he became too uncomfortable to stand it any longer, he begged Squinty-Eye to release him, promising to never go onto the forecastle deck again, and the barrel was removed.

Felix took off for the lower deck, mouth and eyes open wide, legs pumping hard, one arm flailing and the other holding down his hat. But even as he flew down the companionway, he knew he would break his promise to Squinty-Eye by the stroke of the next bell.

His father had always taught him that there was a solution to every problem. But he had also told Felix that sometimes the solution wasn’t where people would ordinarily expect it to be, that you might have to look in unexpected places and think in new and creative ways to find the answers you were looking for.

Felix just had to find a better place to hide.

The only time Anna had felt dry in the past week had been in the galley. The passengers did their best to keep the lower deck clean, but they had to use seawater, so everything felt sticky, stiff, grainy, grimy. And always damp.

As soon as the longboats left for shore and the upper deck was quiet again, a deckhand named Johnny Reed came down to the lower deck and told them a fire had been lit on deck for passengers’ laundry. Anna tried to coax Dorothea to go above deck with a few other women who felt well enough to help, to get a little sunshine and fresh air, but she said she was too tired and needed to rest.

Anna filled the cauldron with salt water from a wooden tub and set it to boil. Barbara Gerber, Maria and Catrina Müller, and Esther Wenger and a few other Mennonite women brought up heaps of dirty clothes. With nothing in the way of soap, the clothes would be boiled and the dirt beaten out of them. As soon as the water boiled, the women went back down below to gather more laundry while Anna rolled up her sleeves and set to work for the biggest laundry day they’d had since leaving Rotterdam’s tent city. She added her dresses into the cauldron, one at a time, finding it amusing to see how dresses rose to the surface, waved their empty sleeves, then vanished beneath the steaming water.

An eerie feeling came over her, a sense that she was being watched. She turned to find the sailor named Decker standing close by, staring at her.

“That’s just what it will be like for you Peculiars. Half of you will go under before this journey is over. Down, down, down to a watery grave.” He stirred his finger just like she was stirring the cauldron.

Anna jerked back and whirled around to the cauldron, hot color flooding her cheeks. She hadn’t drawn an easy breath around those sailors, especially this one that Felix called Squinty-Eye. He had a nose like a crow’s beak and a whittled brown face, a long scar dividing a cheek, and his black button eyes were sneering at her as if he expected her to be the first one overboard.

She watched him saunter past Maria, with her arms full of laundry, elbowing her out of his way. Indignant, Maria was about to elbow him back, but Barbara pulled her back and whispered in her ear. Anna didn’t have to hear her to know what she was saying: Love thy enemy.

When Anna saw Felix dash by, she pulled him aside. Somehow it seemed that boy was either just coming or just going. It was hard for him to settle. “He’s nobody to trifle with, that Decker. I’ve seen the sailors tremble around him.” Bairn was the only one who seemed able to manage Decker.

Anna went back to scrubbing clothes, longing for the fresh water of Ixheim. Her skin crawled and itched after days of saltwater cleansings, but at least her dress hung loosely. The men had rashes from their tight breeches, stiff from salt water. She wanted to get the clothes beaten and hung on the deck before the sun reached midday. Before Bairn changed his mind about letting her use the upper deck as a clothesline. The top deck trembled as the women thwacked its timbers with shirts, shifts, sheets, even hammocks. Rivulets of filthy water trickled down the sides. Before long, the rails and rigging of the ship were festooned with drying clothes, and there was still more laundry to wash.

Anna picked up a wooden bucket to get more water to boil and wondered where Felix had disappeared to. She hadn’t seen him in a while, so she headed toward the companionway, thinking he might have gone below deck to check on his mother.

Near the top of the stairs was Bairn, kneeling on the deck with a pot of reeking tar and a brush. In one hand was a tool that looked like a hatchet. He was driving something that looked like untwisted rope in the seam between two planks. Crouched beside him, holding a basket of that fuzzy fiber, was Felix.

“Lookin’ for anyone in particular?” Bairn said as he noticed her, slowly rising to his feet.

He towered above her, his feet planted in a wide stance. Unlike the other times she had seen him, he wore no hat, no coat, no neckerchief adorned the collar of his white linen shirt. Simply a pair of suspenders looped over the shirt’s full, dropped shoulders. He was shockingly handsome in a roguish, careless way, shirtsleeves rolled up to his elbows, tousled hair looking like windblown straw. Why, he almost looked like a farmer.

Bairn saw the wooden bucket in her arms and reached for it. A warmth from working in the hot sun rose from his clothes. A spicy scent of sandalwood and pitch and . . . something familiar that tickled her nose with its pungency. The smell of horse.

Anna wrinkled her nose and looked at the fuzzy fiber in the basket near Felix. Lumps of hairy fluff. “What is that?”

“’Tis oakum. It swells up when it gets wet.”

“Is it made of horse hair?”

Those stern lips suddenly lifted in a slight smile. “Very good. Aye, horse hair, among other things.” He lifted the wooden bucket. “Do y’need it refilled?”

“Yes. I was going to find Felix to fill it.”

“Decker,” Bairn called over her head.

She turned to see the squinty-eyed sailor leaning against the railing as he repaired a tear on a sail.

“Fill the bucket with seawater.”

Anna saw disdain flicker across Decker’s eyes. She looked back at Bairn. “I don’t mind doing it.”

“Decker doesn’t mind, either. Do you, Decker?”

Decker did mind. He wasn’t about to object to the ship’s carpenter, though. Decker went to the side and grabbed a rope attached to a pulley. Hand over hand, he lowered the bucket and scooped up water.

Anna turned back to Bairn. “What are you doing?”

“I’m teachin’ the laddie how t’wield an adze.”

“A what?”

“An adze. A . . . mallet. I use this mallet to drive oakum down between the seams. Like . . . caulkin’.”

“Is Felix getting in your way?”

“Nay, not on a make-and-mend day.” He leaned toward Anna. “’Tis best t’keep boys busy.”

Felix shrugged, but his eyes were shining. He looked like he’d just been handed the moon. He was thoroughly happy to be scooped up alongside Bairn. Too happy, if you asked Anna.

Decker slapped the wooden tub by Anna’s feet before returning back to caulking the deck.

“Felix—take it to Maria by the cauldron. She’s waiting for it. And then go downstairs to bring up another basket of clothes. And bring my rose basket too.” The rose could get some needed sunshine today.

As the boy opened his mouth to object, she cut him off. “You can go back to work with Bairn after you have helped me.”

Suddenly, they heard Bairn shout out, “Decker!”

Anna turned to see her freshly washed shirts and dresses and pants floating on top of the sea. Far from the railing, Decker was patching a sail, pulling a needle and long thread through the cloth, an innocent look on his face.

Bairn marched over to the railing, a thunderstorm brewing on his face. “Decker, get the boat hook, fetch all the clothin’ back up, and then you will rewash everythin’ and set it t’dry. Go down to the hold and fetch fresh water to wash.”

Decker narrowed his eyes, causing that one eye to look even squintier. “The captain won’t like it if you use fresh water.”

“The captain isn’t here, is he?”

Decker stared back at him, a showdown, and finally stomped off to get the boat hook to snatch up the clothes. He snared all the clothing with one sweep of the boat hook and dropped the sopping wet clothes on Anna’s feet.

Bairn was there in an instant. “For that, Decker, you will clean the slime from the scuppers and scrub the deck from prow to stern.”

“No, please.” Anna felt her face flush red. “We fight fire with water, not with more fire.”

Bairn’s gaze at Decker held firm. “Indeed. You’ll end up gettin’ another bucket of salt water tossed in yer face.”

“I’m sure it won’t happen again.”

Decker shook the stringy hair from his eyes and muttered “Witch!” under his breath.

Bairn’s expression darkened. “Decker, before you get to the scuppers and the scrubbin’ of the deck, you will slush down the mast.”

Decker glared at Bairn and stalked past him to the galley.

“What does that mean—to slush down the mast?”

“’Tis an utterly foul duty.” Bairn pointed to the main mast. “He’ll use a pot of drippings from the galley and climb to the masthead. Then he’ll work his way down the masthead rubbin’ the fat into the wood with his hands.”

“To discipline him?”

“Nay. ’Tis a necessary chore. It preserves the wood and helps the tackle run up and down the mast more easily. It’s like greasing a pole. And ’tis a particularly useful task to hand out to a smart-mouthed seaman like Decker.”

Decker returned from the galley with the pot of stinking grease. He climbed up the riggings and made his way over to the masthead. On the deck, far below Decker, Anna and Felix gathered the wet clothes into a basket.

A loud sound like a cracked chicken bone came from above, then a scream. High above on the jumble of ropes, Decker had lost his footing and fell, ripping an awning from its moorings and knocking a spar loose. Bairn flung up his arms to protect Anna and Felix and push them out of the way as Decker hit the deck. The spar crashed down, slamming down on Decker’s head. For a moment, there was only silence and the call of the seagulls.

“Are you all right?” Bairn said to Anna.

Anna looked at Felix, whose eyes were round with shock. “Yes, we’re fine.”

Bairn bolted over to pull the spar off Decker. Blood was streaming from an ear.

Anna recognized the stillness of death in the sailor’s prone form. “Is he . . . ?”

Bairn put his head to Decker’s chest to hear his heartbeat and looked up, eyes wide, face drained of color. “Aye,” he said, in a voice barely loud enough to be heard. “Aye. He’s gone.”

Johnny Reed pointed a finger at Anna. “She did it. She said he wouldn’t mock her again. Decker was right. He said she was a witch. She’s fey.”

Cook pushed his way to the forefront. He looked at Decker, then at Anna, then back to Decker. “Nay, she’s not fey. The breath of God came down and smote him.”

But the seamen all stepped away from Anna.