Anna's Crossing: An Amish Beginnings Novel (23 page)

September 11th, 1737

Anna’s thoughts continued to whir as she climbed into the hammock. For long minutes she laid there, locked in prayer, her petitions a muddle of joy and disbelief. And terrible fear.

She gave thanks for the new life in the lower decks, nestled in Dorothea’s arms tonight. She was grateful for the spark in Dorothea’s eyes and begged God to let the child live, for both their sakes. She was glad, too, that she hadn’t crossed paths with Georg Schultz all day.

But she felt a dread as she thought of the look of horror on Bairn’s face. What was troubling him? What did he know about the Bauer family that gave him such a fright?

Her eyes lifted to the beams above her head. She recognized the sound of Bairn’s footfalls pacing the deck above. She knew his gait, the sound of his boot heels on the wooden planks. Finally, she slipped out of the hammock, grabbed a woolen shawl off the top of her chest, and tiptoed through the lower deck to the companionway.

She found Bairn leaning on the railing, slumped forward with his head on his crossed arms.

“Sometimes it helps to talk about what’s troubling you.”

He startled at the sound of her voice and half turned toward her. “Not this. Not now. I’ve got to sort it all out meself.” His dark eyes looked like two bruises in the paleness of his face, and she wondered what could be the cause of such turmoil within him. He tore his gaze away and stared past her to the vast, black ocean. He had vanished into that endless sea.

She moved her hand a fraction of an inch closer to his, wanting to comfort him as she comforted a child, but awkwardness crept over her and nearly closed her throat. The wind lifted the fringe of her shawl and slapped it across her face, biting at her exposed skin. “I just thought I’d see if you were all right.”

He glanced at her. “Yer shivering.” Suddenly he flung his arm around her shawl-wrapped shoulders, drawing her close to his side. “I cannae get warm. I was beside the galley fire for a full turn of the hourglass. Aye, a full half of an hour, and I couldn’t get warm. ’Tis a chill deep in me bones.”

The temptation to lay her head against his shoulder ran deep, to give him what comfort she could. But she resisted that urge and rubbed her hands together to warm them. “Bairn, isn’t there some way I can help?”

“Tell me everythin’ you know about Jacob Bauer and his family. Leave nothin’ out.”

“But why?”

He slanted an aggrieved look at her. “Please, Anna. Just tell me.”

“Jacob Bauer is the bishop for our church.”

“When did he go t’America?”

“A year ago, last May.”

“What else do you know?”

“He is a fine man, I know that. A bit impulsive and headstrong, perhaps, but a man of convictions. He leads our church well.”

“What about his family? What do you know of them?”

“There’s Felix, of course, and Dorothea.”

“Anyone else?”

“There was Johann, Felix’s brother.”

“Where is he?”

“He died, right before we left for Rotterdam.”

Something cold seemed to shiver across Bairn’s face. She had the notion that he’d just seen something, or thought something, that hurt him terribly. She wanted to touch him, just touch him. Just lay her hand against his cheek. Instead she gripped her elbows tighter and held her breath.

“How—?” His voice cracked and he had to start over. “How did he die?” he rasped, a strange roughness to his voice. “Why did he die?”

“He was . . . trespassing, I guess you could say, onto the Baron of Ixheim’s property.” A sadness welled up inside her, choking off the words. She shut her eyes and pressed her fingers to her lips. She covered her face with her hands, but for just a moment. Then she let them fall to the railing where they made a single, gripping fist. She’d never spoken aloud of the beating, nor had anyone else. The Lord had taken Johann home, they all acknowledged. No one ever spoke of how.

But Bairn was waiting for her to continue. She swallowed and drew in a deep breath. “The baron was so angry with him, he had him beaten. Not just a little, either, but enough to teach him a lesson and to send a message back to Jacob Bauer.”

“Why? What ill will did he have toward Jacob Bauer?”

“A year ago, maybe a little longer now, Jacob witnessed
the baron’s two sons as they brutally murdered a man. They ended up convicted of the crime and were hung.”

“But a Peculiar would nae have testified against them.”

She was always surprised by what he knew of their people, and what he didn’t know. “No, he wouldn’t testify. But he did tell the truth to the authorities. The baron’s sons were quite wicked. They went too far.” She paused. “Yet the baron blamed Jacob for his son’s deaths. That’s why Jacob left for the New World when he did—to escape the wrath of the baron. I don’t think it occurred to him that the baron would seek revenge on his sons. And he certainly didn’t know that Johann had been borrowing books from the baron’s library. To be perfectly fair, I don’t know if the baron intended to kill Johann with those beatings, or to frighten him and send a message to his father. The trouble was, Johann wasn’t . . .”

“Strong.”

“No. He wasn’t strong. He had already lived longer than anyone expected. He had a weak heart.” She tilted her head back, and it seemed she was falling into a big black bowl of a sky dotted with stars. “Yet he had a very big heart.”

“So . . . there were two boys?”

Anna lowered her gaze to a star on the dark sea’s horizon. “There was an older boy. He’s gone.”

“What happened to him?”

“His name was Hans. Years ago, when Jacob had first gone to America to seek land, he had taken Hans with him, but they both became very ill on the ship. Hans died. When Jacob recovered and learned that his son had died, he was heartbroken. He returned to Ixheim on the next ship.” She told him more, about how Dorothea had slipped into melancholy, and it wasn’t until Felix was born that she began to recover.

Anna grew quiet, although she didn’t raise her head. Her gaze fell to her lap. She put a pleat in her apron with her fingers, then smoothed it out with her palm. “Nearly everyone died on the ship, Jacob said. Even the captain. The carpenter sailed the ship into harbor.”

Bairn was shuddering and she suddenly realized it was not from the weather. With a sudden horror that almost made her heart stop, it occurred to her that he must have been on that ship. He had told her he was once a cabin boy.

“You knew them? Jacob and Hans?”

His harsh breathing made his words come out as a gasp. “Aye.”

“It must have been horrific, watching so many people die.”

“Aye.”

She picked up his free hand and wrapped her own hands around it as if she cradled a wounded bird. He tried to pull free, but she tightened her grip. “Is that why you don’t sleep well? Why you’re always pacing in the night?”

He pulled his hand away from her. “My dreams won’t leave me be.”

She put an arm around his waist. She had to touch him, to comfort him. “God can heal memories, Bairn. You can do that with God’s help.”

“God left me long ago!” he flung back. “And I kinnae blame Him fer that. I’ve done things . . . I’m not a man God should pay any mind to.” His shudders continued beneath her arm.

“I don’t believe that, Bairn. I believe that nothing is outside of God’s ultimate purpose.”

He raised his head, and ran his hands over his face in a weary gesture that broke her heart. With a shaky sigh he stepped back from the railing to face her, and she along with
him. “You’d best go below. The ship’s bell will ring soon. It would nae do for you to be seen up here with the likes of me.”

She started to turn toward the companionway, but his voice stopped her.

“Felix said that you pray for me.” Wonder warmed his voice. “That must take some effort.”

She gave him a gentle smile. “I ask God to bless you and keep you.”

“Save me, you mean.” Then he looked at her again, with that same odd sadness welling in his eyes.

She watched him walk down the deck, head hung low, until he disappeared from view, and dismay filled her.

Despite her best intentions, despite all her precautions to the contrary, one thing had become clear to her. Somewhere along this sea journey, perhaps when he adjusted the heel of her shoe or thrust his flask in her hands to make her drink or burst into the galley to protect her from Georg Schultz, or just now, when he’d revealed some vulnerable part of himself to her . . . she’d fallen in love with Bairn.

September 12th, 1737

As soon as Anna dismissed Catrina and Felix from English lessons for lunch, Maria sat down across from her and rubbed her big red hands together. “Anna, you have inherited your grandfather’s ability to teach.”

Anna shifted uncomfortably on her seat—an upturned nail keg that Bairn had given her to use as a stool. It wasn’t like Maria to flatter. Anna much preferred her plain speaking, even her criticism.

“I believe I have found an ideal solution to Peter’s dilemma.”
Maria rested her eyes on Anna. “Peter needs a wife, to care for him and the babe. You need a husband.”

Anna’s hands curled into a tight ball in her lap. “Peter is but a child still.” Unfinished and rough-hewn, a man still waiting to happen.

Maria’s brows seemed in danger of disappearing into her prayer cap. “He’s quite fond of you.” She lowered her voice and added, “Dorothea, tell her.”

Dorothea was passing by them as she walked the baby around the lower deck to rock him to sleep. “I think our Anna knows her own mind.”

“Peter wants to wed again, for his child’s sake.” And it should be to you, Maria’s tone seemed to say.

“But I don’t love Peter.”

“Love?” she replied, a pinched expression about her mouth. “You’ve lost that luxury after dallying with the carpenter.”

What good would it do to defend herself? Anna said nothing, only got stiffly to her feet. She pushed past Maria, but the woman grabbed her arm to pin her in place.

Maria leaned close to her ear. “The purity of a soul can be corroded by exposure to the world, the same way a shovel grows rusty if it’s left out in the rain.”

Anna stopped and turned to face her straight on. “I will not marry Peter, even for the sake of the baby.”

She left Maria stuttering disapproval in her wake.

The last time Felix had gotten caught in a lie, his mother had cried over his sin. He had hated that most of all. He would almost rather she’d have given him a whipping, but she wasn’t the type to pick up a switch. Which was why he had decided
to avoid Georg Schultz like the pox and hope he’d give up trying to find the thief with the gold watch.

Felix wondered if the baron would have dared to hurt Johann if his father were still around. It was his father the baron was riled up with. He remembered his father and his mother talking together one night, in quiet voices he probably wasn’t supposed to be hearing, and his father said that he needed to get his family away from Ixheim before it was too late.

And then it was too late.

He tried to swallow down the wad of tears that were building in his throat. He hoped Johann could pull back the curtain of heaven now and then and see that they were all right. That Mem was finally better, laughing and smiling and cooing over that little baby, and soon they would be with Papa in the New World.