Timewatch (9 page)

“You will remain here until the invaders leave.”

“But, Father, I must help defend our home.”

“They are too many for us, my son. Hide here with your sister. If I am arrested, take the gold hidden here—enough to provide for you both for a short time—and get you away to London to my sister's home. Here, I have written your aunt Arabella's address.”

As Father spoke, he pressed a bit of paper into my hand. Then he went over to the wall on which hung a crucifix, in front of which stood a table bearing a small altar. He pressed a cunningly wrought design of a flower, which swung open. Thrusting his hand into the crevice, he withdrew a small velvet bag in which one could hear the clink of coins. His face resolute but pale, he put the bag into my hands.

Then he looked at my sister and said, “Take this, Susanna. It was your mother's rosary.” Emotion choked his voice as he added, “She prayed every day for you—for all of us.”

At this juncture, we heard a mighty pounding on the door and the voices of men demanding entrance. Throwing an agonized look at us, Father hurried away. After that, we heard a loud altercation, then the sound of much stomping about and coarse voices being raised.

As my sister bowed her head, her fingers desperately fingering the wooden beads of the rosary, I could hear her whispering, “Hail Mary, full of grace.” It was not until our solitary candle had burned down and all was quiet that we heard a tapping at the door of the priest's hole.

“Master Jeremy,” came a whisper.

I opened the door to find Molly, a terrified look on her face, and her brother Alf beside her.

“Oh, Master Jeremy, they've taken your father and everything they could lay their hands on, including the joint of beef I was going to serve you for dinner,” she wailed, putting her apron to her eyes.

“Did they hurt Father when they laid hands on him?” demanded Susanna.

“They pushed him about somewhat, but he were walking by his self when they took him,” said Alf, his burly frame fairly quivering with outrage. “And I heard the captain of the men—a shifty-looking lot he were—boasting that Cromwell himself had promised him this house.”

“You and Miss Susanna must away from here,” said Molly, wiping the tears from her eyes. “Alf will help you.”

“I give you thanks for your offer, Alf, but we both will ride to London.”

Alf shook his shaggy head. “Cromwell's men, the Roundheads, took the horse, but there be another way to get to London. I make weekly deliveries of vegetables there,” he explained. “You can ride with me in my wagon.”

“Would that not be dangerous, what with highwaymen infesting the roads?” I asked.

Alf laid a finger alongside his nose and said with a sly look, “Ned and me have a bargain.”

At my puzzled look, he said patiently as though to a child, “He be a cousin of mine. I pay him what I can when I go to town. He's never robbed me yet.”

“Alf will see that Miss Susanna comes to no harm,” said Molly hastily. “And she can wear a bodice and skirt of mine—they're clean—just so she's not bothered on her way to London. And you, Master Jeremy, could wear something of Alf's.”

I almost laughed aloud at the thought of my slender sister wearing Molly's overlarge clothing and saw a fleeting smile touch Susanna's lips as she, no doubt, had the selfsame picture occur to her. Then I felt a throb of gratitude for the help offered by these two who had labored so long and faithfully for our family. “Alf, you have hit upon a favorable plan to spirit us away. But now as I think on it, it seems the best plan is for me to find passage on a ship to Amsterdam, where I may bide for a while with Jacob de Ruyter. When he left here, he said that anytime I wished to visit him, he would welcome me as a guest.”

“But that's dangerous! Pirates roam those waters!” protested Susanna.

“Fear not, sister. Now go with these two and leave as soon as you can. Here is the address, which Father gave me, of Aunt Arabella. She will keep you safe.”

“But why will you not come with me?”

“I would not impose upon our aunt. It will be safer for her, also a Catholic, to take only a female into her household, than if she gave me shelter, too. Questions would be asked. No, I will go to the coast, which is not overly far. Many ships carrying cargoes of grain and fish sail from ports round about there.”

Susanna stared searchingly at me and then thrust our mother's rosary at me.

“Susanna, why do you not wish to keep this?”

Her voice was fierce as she looked at me with perfect calmness and said in measured tones, “Have her prayers changed ought of our circumstances? Take it. Perhaps you may find some use for it!”

I was horrified. Susanna had never been overly religious, but she had always dutifully followed the tenets of our religion. Had she now lost her faith? From the bottom of my heart I pitied her, but I found nothing of comfort to give her.

Taking her hand for the last time, we walked around the house where we had been born. Benches and chairs were overturned, my laboratory turned into rubble, and Susanna's Bible box—left to her by our mother—missing. The day being far spent, we retired to bed. The next morning after packing the few possessions that remained to us, we bid each other a mournful farewell. My last glimpse of my sister was of her sitting proudly beside Alf in the wagon in front of a great heap of turnips.

After an uneventful journey by ship, I came to the place where Jacob lived in Amsterdam. His house fronted on a canal, one of many, which are to the Dutch as roads are to the English. The high gabled house, very tall and somewhat narrow, was built (as is common here because of the spongy soil) on pilings made of long stout beams and of brick, with five casement windows opening onto the narrow street. De Ruyter was inscribed, together with the family coat of arms, on the pediment above the front door.

I was received with much goodwill by Jacob, who expressed to me that I had arrived at a most convenient moment, for he was that afternoon about to pay a visit to an alchemist who had just come lately into the country. “A countryman of yours, Gordon McCorrister, who appears to have made some marvelous discoveries.”

That he was no countryman of mine but a Scot I did not deem worthwhile to point out to Jacob since it would have been of no avail to explain the niceties of the situation to one who was not an Englishman.

We hurried on foot through very narrow cobblestone streets, which wound around canals on which floated boats carrying, I was told, foodstuffs and painted in an array of colors: green, black, red, and blue. If it had not been for my guide, I should have been lost very quickly. I felt certain to be deafened by the clanging of so many bells from church towers and by the clattering of carriages driving at breakneck speed. We had to constantly make shift to dodge these conveyances.

After some time of walking in this fashion, we halted in front of an imposing residence, which Jacob informed me was the property of a certain wealthy merchant who owned a sugarcane refinery, the raw sugar being brought from a faraway place called the West Indies.

The merchant himself, a certain Nicholas Coolhaas, a rotund gentleman, greeted us at the door and embraced us after the fashion of the Dutch. He bade us enter and introduced us to the Scotsman, a man lean to the point of emaciation and dressed in breeches and coat, which had seen much wear.

Bowing deeply to us, McCorrister muttered a few words of greeting made virtually incomprehensible by his thick Scots dialect. He set to work immediately with his experiment. Pouring what I recognized to be quicksilver into a crucible with sulphur and other ingredients—the names of which he refused to tell us—he began stirring them together. Coolhaas, fairly quivering with eagerness, bent close to the alchemist, who then began heating the mixture. Jacob, too, stared fixedly at the bubbling crucible.

And I? Something about the entire matter made me uneasy. If McCorrister had ready access to such quantities of gold as he might wish to make, why were his boots worn and his clothes of an indifferent cut and cloth?

“Look, 'tis gold,” whispered Coolhaas, pointing in awe at a yellow lump congealing in the crucible.

His weathered face breaking into a grin revealing a missing front tooth, the Scotsman boasted, “Did I not promise to make you a fortune?”

“I would like to examine your equipment,” I said boldly.

Fixing me with a malevolent look, McCorrister said, “You doubt that gold lies there in front of you?”

“Not at all,” I replied, “but I have some doubts as to how it got there.”

“Then I'll be off. There be others who will be overjoyed to partake of my secrets.”

“Not so fast,” said Jacob. “Tell us your suspicions, Jeremy.”

“I would like to examine this,” I said, seizing the stirring rod.

The Scotsman yelled and lunged at me. Moving surprisingly fast for a man of such heft, Coolhaas stepped between the man and me. “In my house, mynheer, you will behave like a gentleman or be thrown out.”

Speaking fast, for I sensed that the Scotsman would not long be still, I explained, “I have read of some charlatans who stuff gold into hollow rods. When they stir their mixtures, the gold falls into the crucible, making the unwary think that a miracle has been performed.”

“And this rod?” inquired Coolhaas, looking very grim.

“Is hollow, sir.”

“That proves nothing!” yelled McCorrister, cursing me roundly.

Jacob glanced significantly at Coolhaas. Abruptly, the two of them laid hands upon the rogue, who, possessed of surprising strength for so small a man, kicked and yelled as he was dragged from the house and thrown out into the street.

Upon returning, Coolhaas shook my hand solemnly and declared, “I am in your debt, mynheer, for saving me from the loss of a goodly amount of guilders. The rascal was trying to get me to buy some rare ingredients, which he said were necessary to make gold. It was a scheme that would have filled only his pockets.” Looking at me earnestly, he added, “It would be my great pleasure if ever I could be of service to you.”

It was a matter of the space of only a few weeks before I had occasion to benefit from the Dutchman's good offices. In the meantime, we became fast friends. Over dinners spent with him and Jacob, the merchant took me into his confidence, telling me of his extensive business interests: his ships that carried sugarcane from the Indies to Amsterdam and his sugar works that rendered the cane into sugar.

His colorful stories of a virgin wilderness where a man might make his mark stirred my imagination to fever pitch, so that one evening over our brandies I exclaimed that I must see for myself what manner of place this New World might be.

The world I had known had been abruptly ripped from me, my father—probably dead now—and my sister lost to me because of the hated Cromwell. Many a time I thought of writing to Susanna, but in the end I did not. She would be better off forgetting about a brother who, without money or even a home, could not provide for her. Aunt Arabella would see to Susanna's needs and marry her off to some suitable young man. For these reasons, I believed myself free to make my fortune in the New World, which must prove more hospitable than the old one.

Coolhaas was not so sanguine about my prospects. He tried to stifle my enthusiasm by saying that the New World was a place only for the stout of heart and body. Dangers abounded from aborigines, wild animals, and even the bitter winters that some said could freeze a man's blood within a very short time if he should go unprotected.

At last, seeing it was impossible to dissuade me from my course, he said, “I have a ship lately come into harbor, on which you may, if it please you, take passage to the West Indies. My agent there has a son whom he wishes to be tutored. If you are interested, I will recommend you for the position to him.”

I was agreeable, and so it came to pass that shortly thereafter I set sail in one of the merchant's ships bound for the New World.

Of that long and bitter journey I will say little, except to say that I had never seen more at one time of human suffering. The passengers suffered miseries from brackish water and maggoty food, which was hardly fit for pigs, never mind human beings, and from being crowded together—the sick with the well—with no privacy for weeks on end. By the end of seven weeks, some of the youngest children had died. To see their poor little bodies thrown overboard was enough to set the strongest man to weeping.

I admit to spending most of my time in the only cabin besides the captain's in a kind of semi-stupor from drinking the rum and wine and partaking of the provisions, which Coolhaas had thoughtfully provided for my comfort.

When I sought to allay the pangs of my conscience by sharing some of my food with a child and his mother (a young woman whose bearing and features reminded me of Susanna), the captain called me a bloody fool for not saving what I would need later. As Providence would have it, both the woman and her son died.

My health, although taxed by the voyage, remained good. With thanks to God, I landed in the West Indies, where I speedily sought out the gentleman to whom Nicholas Coolhaas had given me a letter of introduction. My plan was to earn some money by tutoring the agent's son and, after I had learned somewhat of the country, seek out other possibilities for earning a livelihood. Little did I know then what difficulties awaited one so naive as I was.

The writing stopped. Geraldine took off her reading glasses and drew a slow breath. She had hoped that Jeremy's memoir might give her some clue as why, according to Caleb, Jeremy had insisted that the Morgans meet together or else face the extinction of their timeline. That sounded so far-fetched. The one good thing, though, was the opportunity to visit San Francisco.