Anna's Crossing: An Amish Beginnings Novel Read Online Free PDF

it against the rocks. The women, with their sleeves rolled up to reveal strong, red arms, skirts pulled high, feet bare to spare their shoes, were gossiping, cackling, singing as they washed. Anna felt a sweeping sense of loss, missing all that was familiar. Simple everyday tasks—washing clothes in the kettle with her grandmother, hanging them on a wooden clothesline, bringing the sheep down the hillside, gardening beside her grandfather—they seemed so precious to her. When would life feel familiar again? Would it ever?
    “Anna? Are you all right?” Felix stood in front of her, alarm sparking in his blue eyes. “Is your leg hurting?”
    She walked with a slight limp, a remnant from a childhood accident, but that wasn’t the reason she had slowed to a stop without realizing it and had fallen behind. “I’m thinking too much is all.” Gently she brushed the hair out of his eyes. She hardly had to reach down to do so anymore, he was getting that big. He would be nine years old come winter. “Where is your hat?”
    Felix’s hands flew up to his bare head. “Oh no! It must have blown off!”
    “So, boy, you finally noticed,” Maria Müller said, holding out Felix’s black hat. A woman of considerable girth,she consistently lagged behind the others and brought up the rear of the group. Fitting, Anna thought, because she knew—why, everyone knew—that Maria was unhappy about leaving home. Anna took the hat from Maria and plopped it on Felix’s head. She gave him a look. “You must not lose it. Your mother has no extra money to replace it.”
    All the Amish had barely enough money left to book their passage on a merchant ship—one thousand guilders per person.
    At least Felix knew better than to fuss right then, with Maria looming, for he had a contrite look on his face without his usual commotion.
    As they neared the wharves, the streets grew more congested, packed with people buying and selling, begging and thieving. Church bells clamored from every street corner, vendors bargained, dogs barked, cats slithered, shoppers stomped about on thick clogs, holding their hems up from mud puddles. Anna’s nose filled with the smells of coils of sausage ropes, bins of produce, bags of spices, beeswax candles, fine perfumes, sides of raw meat. Peddlers called out their wares: turnips, spring carrots only slightly withered, salted cod, salt-cured pork, salted beef, salt! “Vissen, Vissen!” a rosy-cheeked gray-haired woman shouted with a tray of silvery dried fish, laid out like knives, hanging from her neck.
    Carrying their belongings in the stifling, humid heat, the Amish walked on the market fringe toward the docks, staring up at the great hulls of ships. Soon the air brought a new scent Anna didn’t recognize: a salty, briny, tangy smell. The sea. How curious!
    When they reached the docks, they found a port busy with afternoon activity. Orders were shouted, drums rolled, pulleyssqueaked, timbers creaked, waves lapped against the pilings. Even Anna, who knew nothing about ships and sailors and sea journeys, could sense excitement in the air.
    It took a number of tries with Dutch stevedores to find out where the Charming Nancy was docked, but the Amish eventually made their way toward the ship through a jumble of barrels, shipping crates, stacked cargo, impatient seamen.
    And then they got their first glimpse of the ship that was to sail with them to America. There, at the far end of a dock, rocking gently on the waves of the harbor, was the Charming Nancy .

    Light rain had been spattering on the deck on and off since morning, but the clouds were beginning to burn off. There was an urgency to get the voyage under way as Captain Stedman intended to sail on today’s outgoing tide. Sweaty stevedores filled the hold with trunks and crates and barrels as Bairn leaned over the open hatch. It was critical that the hold be well packed, highly organized, and expertly balanced to keep the keel settled deep in the water.