23
September 18th, 1737
At daybreak, after eighty-three days at sea, land was spotted. On the fo’c’sle deck, the corner of Captain Charles Stedman’s mouth twitched reluctantly into something vaguely resembling a smile. Standing next to him, Mr. Pocock clapped his hands together one time. It was the most enthusiasm he could muster, given his gout. Johnny Reed, in anticipation of good times ashore in Philadelphia, threw back his head and howled like a banshee.
Sheets of rain swept across the decks of the Charming Nancy as the ship finally sailed up the narrow Delaware River on a flood tide. Anna and Felix, standing by the larboard rail with other seamen, took no notice of the rain that was soaking them.
It looked so . . . new, so youthful, Anna thought, staring at her first sight of the New World. The harbor was filled with ships and fishing boats, nowhere near as crowded as Plymouth or Rotterdam. And the shoreline looked so unfinished, with random piers jutting into the harbor. Snug brick buildings, shoulder to shoulder, hugged the ground, but a few steeples reached to the sky, competing with iridescent orange-and-yellow-leafed trees. So many trees! No wonder it was called Penn’s Woods.
Before the ship could enter the port, a health officer was sent out by the harbormaster. He gave a rudimentary physical to each passenger and miraculously everyone passed, even toddlers with runny noses. Then the health officer heard a noise that made his head lift in alarm: Georg Schultz’s hacking, choking cough echoed across the lower deck. “Infectious disease!” the health officer pronounced, and ordered the ship to be removed one mile from the city, quarantined.
Felix was beside himself. “But I can see it! I can see Port Philadelphia! I see the ships in the harbor! I see the people on the docks! Papa must be waiting for us.” That night, he sobbed himself to sleep.
“Felix is learning the gift of patience,” Anna said. But they all felt travel-weary and disgusted with Georg Schultz.
It wasn’t all bad for Felix. The captain had ordered provisions of fresh greens and water to be sent to the ship, so the quality and quantity of food improved enormously. And because the ship was anchored on the Delaware River, life on the ship became make-and-mend days for the seamen. Accustomed to Felix, they let him roam freely above deck, Decker’s dog following on his heels wherever he went.
Anna held an opposite view on the quarantine. She treasured it. She reveled in the unaccustomed luxury of being dry on this ship, clean after months of being splattered by ceaseless waves and wearing oily, salt-caked clothes. She cherished every stolen moment with Bairn. Each evening, she would meet him at the bowsprit, and his fingers would wrap around hers, warming her hand, thrilling her heart, and they would talk late into the night, lingering until the pale moon was high overhead. During those shared hours, she told him everything she could remember about Johann, about Felix, about Jacob and Dorothea. She caught him up on eleven years of life in Ixheim and helped him to remember things he’d buried in memories. Sometimes, she had discovered, the heart remembered things better than the head.
And she listened to him. He told her about his life on the ship, learning English, studying mathematics so that he could unlock the mysteries of navigation.
Sometimes, they wouldn’t speak at all. Their arms would circle each other for an embrace, a drawing of strength, of support. She discovered things about him—that in a way, he was more Amish than she. His childhood was his foundation, and even though he might have tried to forget the old ways, they were still a part of him—the very essence of him. It was no wonder he was willing to sacrifice himself for Felix. He was much changed from the boy she once knew, but much the same.
Joy and dread were Anna’s constant companions. As the day drew near for the quarantine to be lifted, her time with Bairn would be over. He reassured her that he would come to Penn’s Woods and reunite with his family, but she knew that was a promise he couldn’t make.
On October 7th, the ship was cleared by the health inspector. Bairn lifted his eyes to Anna’s when Captain Stedman made the pronouncement, and there was pain in the gray depths.
If all went well, tomorrow morning on the high tide, they would reach Port Philadelphia. Tomorrow eve, if all went well, Bairn would sail out on the high tide.
The time had come once more to pack up for a journey. Maria was all aflutter in the way she got, ordering everyone about, accomplishing very little but stirring up a great deal. Anna unhooked the hammock from the hook in the beams, a simple thing, but it triggered a sob from deep within her. She hurried to the bow of the ship to put the hammock in the barrel where she had first found it, and then sunk to the deck behind the barrel and doubled up, pressing her head to her knees, hugging them. A downpour of tears exploded, tears for the moment she would say goodbye to Bairn, knowing she might never see him again. Tears for the years Bairn had lost with his family. Tears for what Jacob and Dorothea, and Felix, too, would be missing by not knowing that their son, Felix’s brother, was alive. By the time her cry had been spent, her eyes were swollen and aching. She wiped the tears off her face with the backs of her hands and slowly rose to her feet.
“Something troubling you, dear?” Dorothea leaned in to whisper as they finished packing up their chests. “You seem far away.”
Anna kept her head down. “There’s a lot on my mind.”
The dear woman gave her shoulder a squeeze of motherly affection. Anna breathed through her mouth to keep from crying again, but a fierce pain was pressing against her chest so hard it seemed her ribs would crack.
She took the rose out of the basket and unwrapped its base, then let it sit in a plate of water to soak up as much as it could. Its leaves were brown at the edges and there was little new growth, but it had survived. A small smile tugged at her lips. It had survived, and so will I.
They would need to make several trips to get their belongings out on the dock after the ship anchored. The more organized they could be, the better. She wrapped up her rose in burlap and set it in the basket. As Anna cleaned up around the lower deck, she found a stack of overlooked pewter spoons from the galley. Felix was nowhere in sight, so she took them up to Cook. She took her rose basket too, just in case it would get swept up with the other belongings that the men were taking from the lower deck and down to the docks. She had come this far with it—she wasn’t about to lose it now.
In the galley was Bairn, saying goodbye to Cook. He straightened when he saw her and her heart started to pound.
“Cook, would ye mind if I had a moment alone with Anna?”
Cook simply clamped him on the shoulder in response. “Godspeed to you both,” he said, before closing the door behind him.
“Mr. Pocock is waitin’ fer me. He found a ship that is sailin’ at high tide tonight. Georg Schultz will be on it as well.” He took a step toward her. “Well . . .” The word hung in the cold air like the sound of the ship’s bell.
“Yes, well . . . ,” she answered, drawing out the words molasses-slow. She spread her palms nervously, then clutched them together. It was too much at once, and she heard Bairn thinking the same.
This would be the last of it, then. She would say goodbye, and he would sail back to Rotterdam to face the baron. And who knew what would happen next? She might never see his face again, a face that had grown beloved to her. The thought was so painful it was like a sliver of glass in the eye. Tears threatened, but she tamped the burning at the back of her throat and whispered, “Bairn, please, let me go with you back to Germany. I don’t want to leave you.”
No longer able to stem the rush of tears, they flowed unchecked down her cheeks. Bairn wiped them away with his thumbs and pulled her into his arms, murmuring into her hair, “Just knowin’ that you want to is all I’ll need t’get me through and bring me back.” The words came soft and unhurried. Then he kissed her, a silent reminder that no matter what the future, he loved her.
As his arms tightened around her, her hand released the rose basket and it dropped to the ground with a clink.
He pulled back, holding her by the arms. “What was that? Did y’hear that sound?” He bent down to grab the basket. “Of course. Of course, of course! This is the way Felix’s sneaky little mind would work. Put it someplace obvious, because no one looks for the obvious.” He pulled the wrapped rose out of the basket and laid it on the table, then carefully unwrapped it.
“The baron’s gold watch? It’s not there. I’ve taken the rose out often to check on it, to give it sun and keep it damp. I would have noticed.”
Bairn was examining the basket. “You would nae notice . . . if there’s a false bottom in the basket.” He reached a hand in and pulled out a wooden oval. There, at the base of the basket, was a wrapped handkerchief. Bairn unfolded it carefully. Inside was the baron’s gold watch, complete with a delicate gold chain. “He’s a cannie laddie, that one.” He started toward the door.
“No . . . let me. I’ll go get him.”
Anna hurried downstairs to find Felix. She brought him back up, grateful that Dorothea was occupied with feeding the baby. She bit her tongue for all the scoldings she wanted to give that boy.
Bairn had laid the watch out on a barrel top in Cook’s galley.
Felix’s eyes went wide, then he tried backing up toward the door, but Anna reached out to stop him by placing a firm hand on his shoulder.
“Am I in trouble?”
“Yes. You lied to me, over and over.” Anna swallowed down a frustrated sigh. “Why did you steal the watch?”
“I dinnae vant the baron t’have the vatch,” he said in his awful accent. He wasn’t even pretending anymore; the accent had become part of him.
“But why the watch? Of all things, why would you steal a watch?”
Felix’s eyes filled with tears. “The baron used it t’time the beatings his servant gave t’Johann. At the stroke of twelve, every minute, fer fifteen minutes, Johann vas lashed. He never cried. He just vent silent.”
“His heart,” Anna said woodenly. “It wasn’t strong.”
“So I took the vatch so he vouldn’t hurt anyone else.” He looked at Anna, tears running down his cheeks.
“I’m not angry with you, Felix. You meant well.”
“I alvays mean vell. I am misunderstood.”
“That’s a question for another time. You go finish packing up. We should be reaching the harbor soon.”
Felix looked up at Bairn, worry covering his small round face. “Do I have t’give it back t’Georg Schultz?”
“Ich gibt acht auf Georg Schultz,” Bairn said. I’ll take care of Georg Schultz.
Relieved, Felix jumped like a grasshopper into the air and out the door.
Anna tilted her head. “You spoke our language to him. Weeks ago, I realized that you could understand it, but this was the first time I’ve heard you speak it.”
“’Tis rusty. I’d forgotten much of it. I’ve forgotten most everythin’, until you came along.”
She had to touch him. She lifted her hand, at the same time that he reached for it. He kissed her palm, and then her wrist, where her pulse beat. He laid the back of her hand against his cheek. His smile was so tender and fragile, it hurt to look at it. “What I’ve learned of love, of life, I’ve learned from you.” He breathed out a sigh. “And now I need t’give the watch to Schultz.”
“Do you think there’s any chance he will be satisfied with the watch alone?”
“No chance at all,” said a voice at the door. They turned to find Georg Schultz at the doorjamb, standing spread-legged with his thumbs in his breast pockets, smiling to show off teeth that were yellow as corn. He reached out to snatch the watch from Bairn’s open palm and dangled it in front of his face. “But I’m delighted the little thief finally confessed his crime.”
“Schultz, I know yer not a man discouraged by conscience, but are you truly so hardhearted? So greedy fer gold that you’d break me family apart?”
“It’s not personal, Bairn. It’s just money. Quite a bit of money. That reward will set me up for . . . ,” he snapped his fingers, “. . . for life. I won’t have to work another day. No more tiresome ocean voyages.”
“And Anna?”
“What about her?”
“You’ve ne’er thanked her for savin’ yer life, even after you manhandled her like a drunken schoolboy.”
Georg Schultz bowed before her. “Danke sehr.”
“That’s not enough. Would you take so much from a woman who’s shown you only kindness?”
“Why should the fate of a ship’s carpenter make any difference to her?”
“Because we love each other. We plan t’marry.”
Anna’s teeth caught her lower lip and she stared at Bairn in disbelief for several seconds. She felt a lump gathering in her throat. She swallowed, but the emotion could not be gulped away. They had talked long in the night, but it was never about their future, only their past. It seemed too dangerous to assume they would be together again.
Bairn slowly turned to her with a sober expression, a streak of red running up his high cheekbones. “If she’ll have me, that is.”
Startled, she replied with the first words that came to her mind. “She’ll have you.”
“Bah!” Georg Schultz said, dismissing them with a wave. “Your heart belongs to the sea, Bairn. You could never settle down and become a farmer with those Peculiars.”
Bairn looked at Anna and smiled. “The sea can’t love you back.”
The Neulander considered their plight for a long moment, then held a finger in the air. “I’ll make a bargain for you two lovebirds. She can sail back to Rotterdam with you for . . . free! . . . and I’ll watch over her in Ixheim while you are . . . incapacitated.” He gave a lusty grin to Anna and smiled broadly when she shuddered.
“A devil’s bargain,” Bairn growled.
Just then Schultz was clutched by a spell of coughing that doubled him over and he sat down on an upturned nail keg. When the coughing passed, he was winded.
Bairn stared him down. “Schultz, do you mean to tell me that Anna gave you back yer life, after you treated her so badly, and you cannae give her back hers? Are you truly so heartless? So selfish as that? So greedy?”
A poignant silence fell.
“Ja. I am that selfish and that greedy.”
“I don’t believe anyone is without conscience, Georg Schultz,” Anna said. “You’re a man driven by your appetites, but I don’t think you would have rescued Bairn from Otto Splettshoesser if you were entirely without mercy. I believe that, given the opportunity, you will choose good over evil.”
“My dear, you can’t teach a devil to be an angel.”
“Schultz!”
Their heads snapped at the sight of Captain Stedman at the door, looking peeved. Felix was right behind him. Georg Schultz jumped to his feet.
“Schultz, I have a German passenger, a Christian Müller, who is waiting in my Great Cabin, greatly distressed. He said you had sold off most of their goods in Rotterdam to purchase new goods in lots of dozens.”
Bairn looked at Anna with a question in his eyes. It’s true, Anna mouthed.
Schultz licked his lips, stalling for time. “I only did it to help you, Captain. The new goods would be packaged tightly and require less space in the hold. More room for you to bring goods from England.”
“At the time did you inform him that those new goods would be confiscated and sold by the Philadelphia port authorities? Because there is a customs officer in the hold right now, requisitioning all the Rotterdam purchases. Importing new manufactured goods, other than from England itself, is forbidden by English law.”
You could have heard a pin drop. Georg Schultz’s mouth moved and moved before a sound came out. “I’m sure I told him all that. Christian Müller does not speak German. Or English.”
“Anna translated fer ye,” Felix offered up in his dreadful accent.
Georg Schultz’s face colored, but he smiled amicably. “Who can remember every detail? It was months ago.” He batted his hand in the air at Felix like shooing a pesky fly.
Captain Stedman narrowed his eyes. “Apparently the captain of the ship is to be heavily fined for breaking the law.”
Purple-faced, strangling for words, Georg Schultz backed up a step. “Just a simple misunderstanding.”
The captain lifted his chin. “Schultz, come with me to the Great Cabin and explain yourself to the passenger. Bring your purse.”
Schultz’s smile was gone, and a crease appeared between his thin eyebrows. “My purse?”
“If you ever want to work on the ships again, you will make a full reimbursement to Christian Müller.”
“A full reimbursement?” His voice rose to a squeak.
“And you can explain yourself to Otto Splettshoesser.”
“Otto Splettshoesser?” Bairn asked, his face suddenly blanching.
“Aye,” the captain said. “The customs officer.”
“Otto Splettshoesser is not dead?” Bairn thundered. He turned toward Georg Schultz, his fists bunching as he took one menacing step forward. “All these years, you had me thinkin’ he was kilt?” Bairn advanced on the retreating Georg, whose mouth was pursed tightly while his eyes blinked rapidly in fright.
The little galley seemed to crackle in the silence before a storm, when the very air seemed to disappear, until the little man practically wilted.
Georg Schultz gave Bairn and Anna a weary, defeated, bleary-eyed look. “I suppose the watch will suffice for the baron.”
October 8th, 1737
It was an ever-widening world for Anna König. The day was flawlessly clear, and seagulls scolded from an azure sky as the German passengers filed off the ship. On a day like today, with the sun bright overhead and the weather cool and crisp, the water still and calm, it was hard to imagine how perilous the crossing of the Atlantic had been.
Anna’s thoughts spun backward to her old life, on the far side of the sea to the little sheep farm in Germany. She remembered the day of Johann’s death, of saying goodbye to her grandparents for what she suspected—and they knew—would be the last time she’d see them. Her head rattled with the events of the Charming Nancy, to the wild beauty of the endless sea, to the seaman Decker, to the storm that cracked the beam, to the slave ship and those thirsty and tragic souls, to poor Lizzie, to nearly losing Felix and Bairn to Georg Schultz. Her thoughts turned to meeting Bairn, to finding him in the most unlikely of places.
The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh, and she would never understand the mysteries of why.
Anna almost didn’t feel the touch of a hand on her shoulder, so light it was, so tentative. Afraid even to breathe, she turned her head and looked into Bairn’s face.
“You look cold. There’s some winter in this wind.” He took her free hand and chafed it between his, his gaze soft on her face, a sweetheart’s caress with his eyes. “I was lookin’ for you. What were you doin’ up here on the bowsprit all alone?”
“Praying.” She gazed into his eyes and smiled. “For you. For me. For all of us.”
“Good. Prayers seem t’make a difference, though I cannae pretend t’understand why.” Bairn passed a hand over his whiskers. For a wisp of a second he looked like the boy she remembered. Focused. Intense. Now, strikingly handsome. Never in her wildest imaginings would she believe that he was here, standing in front of her, loving her. And yet, another part of her, deep in her soul, had felt an inexplicable bond with him from the moment she met him.
Felix waved furiously to them from the crowded upper deck of the ship, now a marketplace. He cupped a hand to his mouth and shouted, straining to be heard. Buyers had come on board to haggle and bargain with redemptioners, mostly Mennonites, over how many years of labor they owed in exchange for their passage debt. Only after accounts had been paid could the passengers go ashore.
“Look! Look!” Felix laughed gaily. “There is Papa!” He pointed to the crowded, chaotic dock, filling with cargo, casks, longshoremen, and pods of ponderous Germans who had come to meet their friends and relatives. He ran to grab Dorothea’s hand and hurry her down the gangplank. Decker’s dog barked and trotted on Felix’s heels.
“There! There is your father, Bairn.” She pointed to a tall man who towered above the others.
“My father,” Bairn said, his voice breaking a little over the words. She saw his knuckles go white as his hands gripped the rail.
Jacob Bauer bolted to the base of the gangplank to meet his wife and son, arms opened wide to scoop Felix up.
Beside her, Anna heard Bairn inhale a deep breath, and it was plain that he was as eager as Felix. “Does your father look the same to you?”
“His hair and beard are mixed more with gray than brown now.” Bairn swallowed, breathed. “But he holds himself tall and straight, just the way I remember.”
“Tall and straight like you.”
Anna watched the surprised look on Jacob’s face as Dorothea showed him the infant in her arms. Then she realized she was telling him about Johann, because she saw Jacob still, and wrap his arms around Dorothea for a long, long time.
Felix ran halfway up the gangplank, skirting around passengers, and waved to tell them to come down.
“Let’s wait,” Bairn said, putting a hand on Anna’s shoulder. “Let’s give them this moment to grieve Johann.”
“Are you ready?” she asked. “Ready to be reunited?”
His eyes met hers and they were no longer cold, no longer hard. Eyes, eyes, she thought. There is no forgetting eyes. These were the clear gray eyes of the boy she once knew.
“Aye. Nay.” He shook his head. “How do you tell a mother and father that their son is nae dead but alive? That a boy has a brother, after all?”
“By letting them see that you are changed, but the same.”
Anna looked back over her shoulder with a strange feeling of parting, a tenderness for this old wooden tub. The ship had taken care of them and brought them safely across the ocean. She would actually miss the Charming Nancy. It was an odd feeling to care about the ship, one she didn’t expect, similar to the sad feeling she got when she closed the cover on a book. She had finished with that part of her life and would begin a new book.
A chilly cross-course breeze circled around her, lifting her capstrings, pushing away the now familiar stale smells that hung about the ship. She thought of how often sea wind had refreshed and renewed her. She would never miss the stench of the lower deck, but she would miss the cleansing bite of tangy sea air. And she looked forward to the familiar and pleasurable scents that awaited her in Penn’s Woods: earthy scents of soil and trees and horses.
Bairn turned to give her a hand to climb down the forecastle ladder and said, “Why such a solemn look? Dinnae you feel happy t’leave?”
“I am,” she said. “I’m happy to leave. And a little sad. But more happy than sad.”
Her gaze traveled lovingly over him and stopped when she saw his father’s red mutza in his other hand. It was a quietly miraculous moment, Anna felt, one she’d never forget as long as she lived. She had thought, twice, they would be forever parted and now they had it all again, their lives, their love.
Bairn draped his father’s red coat over his arm and bent down to pick up the rose basket. “Did you ever know where I found this rose?”
“I thought it was wild. I assumed you dug it up on a hillside.”
“Nay. It came from the old baron’s garden. He was quite a fancier of roses. I dinnae think he would miss one. Mayhap me brothers and me are not so very different. Always helpin’ ourselves to the baron’s treasures.” He grinned, eyes sparkling in a way that reminded her of Felix and Johann, both. With the other hand, he gripped Anna’s hand tightly and they walked the deck of the Charming Nancy for the last time, down the gangplank to join their family.