The Golden Cross (47 page)

Content to know the old sailor would sleep peacefully through the night, Sterling lowered himself to the floor and braced his back against the sloping wall. Aidan lay curled up on his bunk, her
legs folded under the shimmering silken skirt, her hands pressed together and tucked beneath her chin. Her hair swirled like a molten river across his pillow, and copper ringlets curled on her forehead and on the exposed flesh of her throat. The soft pink light of sunset shimmered over her delicate face like beams of golden radiance, and soft color lined the sweetly curled lips that had voiced a promise to be his wife.
By heaven, she is beautiful
.

He didn’t know how long he sat there, but the sound of movement outside brought him out of his reverie. A whistle blew, signaling the change of the watch, and Sterling knew if he didn’t get some sleep, he’d be fit for nothing on the morrow.

He stretched out his legs, then bent one knee and rested his arm upon it, his mouth twisting in a wry smile. If Tasman had seen fit to invite this patient to lodge himself in the doctor’s cabin on Sterling’s wedding night, it was a certain bet that a steady stream of patients would find themselves assigned to sick bay in the days to come.

Sterling exhaled heavily, then pushed himself up off the floor. He stepped out of his boots to muffle his steps, then lifted Aidan’s heavy crate from the end of his bunk. It would fit nicely beneath his own bed, once he cleared out a space for it. Tugging gently, so he wouldn’t disturb her, he removed his damp clothes from the bed, then found a dry blanket in his own trunk.

He moved to the head of the bunk, about to drape the blanket over Aidan’s shoulders, but saw her sketch board by her side. He picked it up, then lifted it to the fading beam of sunlight that shot through the porthole.

What he saw astonished him.

She had drawn him and the old sailor. The likeness was apparent enough, but Sterling knew in a heartbeat that he could never be the man she had depicted. He recognized his own body, his frame, his hands. But a radiance glowed about this doctor’s face. The eyes brimmed with compassion, as if the Blessed Lord himself
were offering a cup of water to a sick and enfeebled prisoner. The seaman was clearly recognizable—she had caught his teeth, the crepey age lines around his eyes, and the wispy long braid his vanity would not allow him to cut.

“By heaven above,” he whispered, sinking to the foot of the bed, the picture in his hands. He felt shocked by a sudden elusive thought he could not quite fathom, then awareness hit him like a punch in the stomach. Van Dyck was right. She was extraordinary, more exceptional than Sterling had dreamed.

What had the old gentleman said?
Her life will color the world
. Sterling held the picture in his hand, staring at it until the last trace of light vanished. Then he quietly stood and covered his bride with the blanket, bracing his shoulders to accept the responsibility of the rare treasure God had placed into his care.

Standing at the bow of the
Zeehaen
, Witt Dekker stared at the
Heemskerk
and watched darkness overtake the larger ship. No light shone in either of the forecastle cabins, so the doctor was either asleep, out of his chamber attending to some emergency, or enjoying his first night as a husband.

Witt closed his fist deliberately around the golden cross at his neck. He had tried to get the girl. The captain would have given her to Dekker in a heartbeat, but by some stroke of luck or cunning, Sterling Thorne had won the prize. And in those first few minutes aboard the flagship, Dekker discovered that the dangerous night had worked some magic in the valiant doctor’s soul, for he was obviously smitten with the wench. A man did not give up a captain’s daughter for a tavern maid unless he knew the hussy was rich … or was so infatuated he couldn’t think clearly.

For now, Aidan O’Connor was married to the doctor and safely tucked away aboard the
Heemskerk
. Still, they would cover many miles before returning to Batavia. Van Dyck was dead, which meant the girl was an heiress already—but only if she lived to claim her inheritance.

As officers, Dekker and Janszoon often visited the
Heemskerk
. It would be an easy matter to call upon the doctor one dark night and find that he had been summoned away by one of the other officers. With one careless slip, the lady could find herself overboard while the ships plowed through the sea. It was virtually impossible to find a lost soul in the heavy darkness of black waters.

Dekker smiled. Tasman might even be relieved to find the hussy gone. He’d been mad as a viper ever since he discovered he’d been tricked by that fool Schuyler Van Dyck.

Humming contentedly, Dekker thrust his hands behind his back and watched the full moon rise across an inky sky.

O
n the fourth of January, 1643, Tasman’s expedition reached the extreme tip of the island north of Assassin’s Bay. Tasman called the point Cape Maria Van Diemen, then convened a meeting of his officers. Their exploration of the rocky coastline had been conducted in a hasty and superficial manner, due in part to the hostile reception at Assassin’s Bay and the captain’s urgent need to re-provision his ships with fresh water and fruit. Janszoon and Dekker hoped to send another landing party ashore in search of gold and other riches, but after the unpleasantness of Assassin’s Bay, Tasman was eager to leave that particular land formation behind.

As ship’s doctor, Sterling had been invited to attend the officers’ meeting, and he shared Tasman’s plans with Aidan before venturing down to the hold to tend a man with bloody flux. Thankful that at least
that
sailor had not attempted to move into their cabin, Aidan leaned against the open door and watched her husband move confidently down the companionway.

Sighing, Aidan closed the door behind her, then sat on the bunk. Tasman’s plan to move ahead suited her, for nothing in her training or her dreams had prepared her for the strange life she now led. Wearing women’s garb—either the green silk, the brown silk, or a combination of both—she tried to be a dutiful doctor’s wife, though she had no idea how to play that particular role. She was kind to the patients who regularly appeared in their cabin, and she stayed out of Sterling’s way as he applied various treatments. But mainly she painted. Watching the sea through the
porthole, she painted waves and stars and celestial beings riding the winds and swells so high they looked like rolling hills.

Occasionally she painted the sunburned faces of the seamen who came to the cabin requesting Sterling’s attention. Most of these “illnesses” were innocent enough—a stomachache that disappeared after a few soft words from Aidan, or a splinter which she promptly pulled out with a sewing needle. She suspected that the long weeks at sea had made even the most independent sailors hungry for the sight of a woman.

She handled the seamen easily, for they were not unlike the thirsty, attention-starved men who loitered at Bram’s tavern on hot, humid afternoons. She had been terrified that one of them might note her resemblance to Irish Annie from the Broad Street Tavern, but if any did, no man dared mention it. None dared behave improperly in her presence, for Sterling had earned a reputation for strength and courage at Assassin’s Bay.

Yes, she could handle the seamen. But she had no idea how to handle the man with whom she now shared her life. They had been married for over two weeks, and Sterling had not once reached out to touch her. He spoke cordially to her, treated her with respect and deference, and slept either in the second bunk or, if a patient slept in the cabin with them, on the floor. But he did not look at her with the same intensity that had marked his face back at Assassin’s Bay.

Aidan smiled ruefully. Perhaps it was her fault, after all. If she had not been insistent upon a marriage in name only, and if Tasman did not send a steady stream of sick sailors for the doctor’s personal attention, then perhaps he would seek her softness just as the other seamen did.

No
.

She deliberately closed the door on those fantasies, forcing herself to remember her plans. Her future, if she wanted to paint, depended upon a clean escape from this sham of a marriage. She was almost surprised to realize that painting was a part of her now;
she could no more leave it behind than she could decide not to breathe. In the days after Van Dyck’s death she had little to do but paint and think, and she had discovered that her paintbrush expressed her thoughts far more eloquently than her tongue. She painted the vast loneliness of the sea, the misty-eyed yearning of a seaman for his sweet wife at home, the ponderous wonder of a whale brushing the boards of a ship as he idly scratched his back on his jaunt through the deep.

She pushed aside the usual artistic conventions Van Dyck had explained—how great Dutch artists represented time with a clock, diligence with a distaff, the brevity of life with a candlesnuffer or skull—and she painted what her heart dictated, not caring what anyone else might think. No one would see these practice paintings, in any case.

Yes, she told herself, she would paint. She would become the artist Van Dyck had wanted her to be. She had lost her mentor, but surely she would discover another, and then she would find respectability among the clean and tidy houses west of Batavia’s Market Street. Later, after she had established herself and published her first book of engravings, she would marry a respectable gentleman and rear a half-dozen respectable children. She only wished it could be as Mejoffer Thorne.

But Sterling Thorne did not want an artist-wife; he wanted the sea captain’s daughter. This marriage would have to be annulled—a process easily enough accomplished as long as the relationship had not been consummated. A host of seamen aboard the
Heemskerk
could testify that the doctor had never treated her as a true wife.

Why should he? He loved Lina Tasman, and as soon as they returned to Batavia, he would fly away to resume his courtship of the captain’s virtuous daughter. Without disgrace or shame, he would swear to a magistrate that he had married Aidan O’Connor only to preserve her honor, and the good people of Batavia would applaud his nobility and courage.

“He may be courageous and noble,” Aidan murmured to herself, “but the man is also a slob, even worse than Lili.” She picked up a discarded stocking he had casually tossed on the floor and, without thinking, fingered the soft wool. Then she came to her senses, tossed it into his trunk, and slammed the lid.

She had no intention of permitting herself to fall under the spell of a handsome man, and she could not afford to be distracted from her dreams by silly romantic notions. She was meant to be an artist, not a doctor’s wife. As long as he did not reach for her—or she for him—her future was safe and secure.

Two weeks after the expedition left Cape Van Diemen without further exploration, the lookout sighted land like “a woman’s two breasts” in the distance. The
Heemskerk
and the
Zeehaen
cautiously approached the shoreline, the memory of Assassin’s Bay haunting every sailor. The natives who spilled from the forests behind these shores, however, wore broad smiles of goodwill and joviality. Before agreeing to send a landing party ashore, Tasman ordered his ships to wait at anchor for two days to make certain the natives held no hostile intentions. By the second day he could scarcely restrain his men from jumping overboard and attempting to swim ashore. Tempted by the aromas of roasting meat and the sight of smiling women, his men lined the railing and stared at the shore with eyes wide with longing.