Maria’s Mission
September 1633 to Early 1634
Grantville, September 1633
“You’ve heard the news, Mevrouw Vorst?” A red-faced David de Vries brandished a folded copy of the Grantville Times as if it were a club.
Maria Vorst turned to face him. “Who hasn’t, Captain? Is it really as bad as the papers say?”
“Probably worse. Over sixty warships destroyed by French and English treachery.” To a Dutch captain, especially one with the fighting reputation of David Pieterszoon de Vries, this was the worst possible news. He had friends aboard that fleet, friends now dead or fled to parts unknown. The Republic had needed him, and he hadn’t been there.
Belatedly, he added, “Haarlem has fallen to a coup de main. And the Voice of America just announced that the northern provinces are said to be in revolt against the prince of Orange.”
“What about Leiden?” That was Maria’s home town.
“Not yet under siege, so far as the Americans know, but it’s only a matter of time. It’s bracketed by Spanish forces at Haarlem to the north and Den Haag to the south.”
“My brother . . . and his wife . . .” Maria’s voice quavered.
“There was no massacre in Haarlem, or Rotterdam, at least. And Leiden is hardly likely to offer resistance. So there is no reason for the Spanish army to adopt . . . stern measures.”
“And the prince, he will want to protect the university, surely.”
“Probably. Although if your family was prudent, they probably fled to the countryside. They certainly had enough warning.”
“I hope for the best.” Maria paused. “And your wife?”
“She is in Hoorn. The Spanish will probably check to make sure that no warships are hiding in its harbor. Otherwise, I don’t think it will be directly affected by the fighting. The Spanish will land more troops at Egmont, and move them south to complete the investment of Amsterdam. Once the siege line is drawn close to Amsterdam, Hoorn will be militarily irrelevant.”
“That sounds promising . . . as much as anything can be promising in these evil times.”
“But, Mevrouw Vorst, you realize that this means that we can’t go to Suriname after all.”
“Why not?”
“It is my duty to fight the invaders. My ship, the Walvis, is in Hamburg, and it is well armed; it was outfitted as a privateer. I can attack the Spanish supply ships; perhaps send small boats into Amsterdam.”
“That is courageous of you.”
David bowed.
“But Captain, is that really the best you can do against the Spanish?”
David bristled. “Surely you don’t expect me to attack the Spanish fleet singlehandedly.”
“No, no, that’s not what I meant at all. From what I hear, the only thing that can prevent the ultimate fall of Amsterdam is if the city is relieved by the Swedes and their American allies. Is that true?”
“Well.” David dropped his eyes, then raised them again. “The city is well stocked against a siege . . .”
“Captain . . .”
“The fortifications are in excellent condition. . . .”
“Really, Captain . . .”
“Well, of course, Amsterdam would fall, eventually. If disease, or a Swedish relief force, or some crisis elsewhere, didn’t force the Spanish to pull back. But it could hold out for many months.”
“It seems to me that your ships could be put to better purpose than sinking a Spanish supply ship here and there. Bringing tar from Trinidad, and rubber from Suriname or Nicaragua, to keep the American APCs running.” The APCs were coal trucks converted into makeshift armored personnel carriers, and they had played a major role in Grantville’s past military operations.
David took a deep breath, expelled it slowly. “I suppose there is something in what you say. I see it is not enough for you to be a science officer, you have aspirations to be a general, too.”
“War is too important to be left to men,” she quipped, smiling. “Logistics is not their forte.”
“Okay, I’ll think about it.”
* * *
David’s original plan had been to simply transfer his rights as a patroon of the Dutch West India Company from Delaware to Suriname. The Dutch defeat at Dunkirk, and the subsequent fall of most of the Republic, had changed all that.
Raising the Dutch flag over a new colony was now more likely to invite attack by English and French opportunists than to deter it. So after extensive negotiations, a “United Equatorial Company” had been formed, under the laws of the New United States. Those laws were based on the U.S. Constitution, and thus banned slavery. The up-time American backers insisted that the corporate charter also ban slavery, since the political fate of the NUS was somewhat uncertain.
There was the practical problem that the NUS flag might not be recognized. Hence, as a additional diplomatic fig leaf, David obtained the right to have his ships, and the colony, fly the Swedish flag, too. Not that David was getting any troops or money from Gustav Adolf. Still, it would be a warning that Sweden might officially take notice of any harm done the colony, and the better Sweden did in the wars, the more others would fear to give it an excuse to retaliate.
* * *
“Thanks, Philip,” said Maria, balancing a stack of books. “This will really be helpful.”
“You’re welcome,” he said with a smile. He blinked a few times. “Do you like Westerns? They’re showing High Noon this Friday.”
“That might be nice. I’ll have to ask Prudentia what her plans are.”
“She can come, sure.”
“I’ll ask Lolly. She’ll appreciate the excuse to get out of the house.” Maria was staying with Lolly, the middle school science teacher. Currently pregnant.
“Uh . . . I was thinking that we could celebrate your completing the sugar report.”
“That would be nice. So we should ask Irma and Edna. They told me so much about sweet sorghum and sugar beet. And Rahel should come, too.”
Philip blinked again. “I suppose.”
“And of course the Bartollis. Lewis and Marina, I mean.” She gave him a wink. “Don’t forget to invite your sister Laurel. Evan, too, perhaps?”
“Yeah . . . I’ll ask them. Well, uh, see you Friday.” He turned toward the door.
“It’s a date!” she called out after him.
* * *
It’s a date, she said, Philip thought. Yahoo!
Philip needed something to cheer him up. It had only recently hit him that in just a few months, his gang, the “Happy Hills Six,” would be split up; most would be going into the military, and who knows where they would be stationed. Or what would happen to them there.
His mother had been driving him nuts about it, too. It had been bad enough when Laurel went into the army—and jeesh, she was in Telephone and Telegraph, not exactly on the front lines—but Philip was the baby of the family and Momma was always bringing it up.
And then there were Grandpa Randolph’s health problems. He was seventy-five years old, but until recently in great condition for his age. Thanks to all that hunting and fishing, Phil figured. But he was bed-ridden now, and Momma fretted over that, too.
Phil wished, really wished, he could just, like, move out. If it hadn’t been for the Ring of Fire, he could have solved the problem by going to college some place far away. Like Cleveland.
* * *
“How’s your report coming along, Maria?”
Maria greeted her friend Prudentia with a kiss on each cheek. “Almost done. It would help if the investors didn’t keep changing their mind as to what they wanted to know.”
Prudentia smiled. “Believe me, painters working on commission have the same problem.”
Maria showed Prudentia the report. “As you see, it covers pretty much everything the colony might grow, for itself or for export. Various kinds of rubber trees, sugarcane, cacao, coffee, cotton, dye plants, rice, pineapples, bananas, manioc, oranges, coconuts—you name it.”
Prudentia gave it a once-over. “Impressive.”
Maria shrugged. “I couldn’t have done it without Philip Jenkins’ help. He knows so much about trees, and of course he’s actually seen, and eaten, pineapples and bananas.”
Prudentia gave Maria a knowing look. “I bet he’s been helpful.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“Don’t pretend to be obtuse. You know what I mean. I think he likes you.”
“Yes, we’re friends.”
“That’s not what I meant. I think he’s courting you.”
“That’s ridiculous. I am in my mid-twenties, and he is what? Fifteen?”
“Sixteen. And a half.”
“That’s right. He did say that the first time we met.”
“He has probably been saying it to someone every day since attaining that lofty age.”
“Anyway, he’s not the only lad who helped me. There’s Lewis Bartolli, the chemistry ‘whiz kid,’ who did the write-up on aluminum, bauxite and cryolite. And his sister Marina has done a lot of typing for me.” She paused. “You know, maybe Phil is interested in Marina, and is using his visits as an excuse to see her. She’s pretty, in a dark sort of way, and just a little younger than Philip, so she’s the right age for him. And she is the daughter of the Bartolli of Bartolli’s Surplus and Outdoor Supplies, while Philip is a hunter and fisherman. Since Lewis Bartolli isn’t going into the family business, perhaps Philip sees an opportunity there. That would be sensible.”
“Yes, that would be sensible.” Prudentia didn’t sound convinced.
“By the way, who’s that kid that’s been making googly eyes at you at Dinner and a Movie?” asked Maria.
Prudentia blushed. “His name’s Jabe, and he’s not a kid. And he’s not making googly eyes. In fact, he can hardly look at me.”
* * *
Maria was walking down Buffalo Street, on her way to Hough Park. She stopped suddenly. Wasn’t that Rahel’s friend Greta in front of her? And the guy she was with was, what’s his name, Karl? He was handsome, but Maria had heard bad things about him. Should she join them? No, that probably wouldn’t work. She could follow them, but what could she do if there was trouble? She was no martial arts expert.
Then she saw Philip on a side street. The answer to her prayers. “Philip, come join me.” Philip was brawny—he played American high school football—and knew how to fight.
She linked arms with him. “Walk with me,” she commanded. “And talk.”
“About what?”
“Umm. Coconuts. Pineapples. Tropical stuff.”
“Okay.” She let him drone on while she kept her eyes on Greta and Karl. At last, Greta and Karl parted—not without some squirming on Greta’s part—and Maria breathed a sigh of relief.
“Did you say something?” asked Philip.
“Thank you, this was lovely. Sorry, but I have to run. Bye!”
* * *
If it wasn’t one thing, it was another. The latest problem was a political one. The Company had been chartered under the laws of the New United States, which, at the time, was a sovereign state. But now the NUS was merely a part of the United States of Europe. So was the charter still valid? And if the NUS prohibited slavery on its soil, but the USE had yet to speak on the issue, was slavery forbidden in the colony?
The lawyers whom David consulted gave him an extremely learned, expensive and authoritative “maybe.”
* * *
When David arrived in Hamburg, where his ship was docked, he discovered a letter waiting for him. He opened it. It read, simply, “Bring back bauxite.” The letter was unsigned.
But he recognized the handwriting. It was that of cousin Jan. Who, last David heard, was in the employ of Louis De Geer. Mr. “I-am-sending-ships-to-the-Davis-Strait-to-hunt-whales-and-maybe-mine-a-little-gold-in-Greenland.” Even though he was a metals magnate, with no previous interest in whales. And even though the up-time books said nothing about gold in Greenland.
But they sure said plenty about Greenland being the only source of cryolite. The critical flux for making aluminum from alumina. Which in turn was made from bauxite.
David decided to buy some more shovels and picks. Right away.
North Sea, December 1633
David and his band of sailors and colonists left Hamburg on a blustery, rainy December day. It was an uncomfortable time of year to venture out on the North Sea. But that was an advantage, too; the Spanish war galleons weren’t especially seaworthy and tended to spend the winters in port.
David was once again captain of the Walvis. As its name implied, it was a whaler, but it was also a licensed privateer. And, just as on his last journey, the Walvis was accompanied by the yacht Eikhoorn.
The Company had doubled his force by adding the Koninck David, a two-hundred-tonner with fourteen guns, and a second yacht, the Hoop.
It was the ideal combination of ship types for making the dangerous run south to Africa to pick up the trade winds for the Atlantic crossing. The Barbary corsairs ranged from the English Channel to Cape Verde, always hoping to capture an imprudent European ship. If they did, all aboard, crew and passengers, would be held for ransom, or simply sold as slaves at the marts of Sallee or Algiers.
The yachts could scout ahead, warning the flotilla of danger, and in turn they could shelter under the big guns of the fluyts if they encountered any formidable foe. They would come in handy in the New World, too, being ideal for inshore work.
Some investors in the Company had been more intrigued by David’s descriptions of the profits to be made from privateering than by the more prosaic plans to tap rubber and mine bauxite. They had prevailed on their fellows to beef up the crews, so that David would have additional manpower for working the cannon, adjusting sail, and boarding enemy ships (or repelling boarders). That was good.
Unfortunately, David felt a bit betwixt and between. He had more men than was truly economical for the operation of a fluyt, but not so many as would be on a true privateer on a short range hunting mission. And his ships were larger, and therefore less handy, than the piratical ideal.
David was well aware that this uncomfortable compromise was the natural result of decision-making by committee.
“Captain, we have a stowaway.”
David looked at his cousin, Heyndrick. “He must be very ingenious to escape detection this long.”
“I suspect it was more that he was very generous to a sailor or two. He is a young American, and many of them are rich.”
David started swearing. “And no doubt he is on board without parental permission, and his parents will be raising bloody hell with my investors. Bring him to my cabin.”
A defiant young American teenager was brought in a moment later.
“What’s your name, and age?”
“Phil Jenkins. I’m sixteen. And a half.”
“Sixteen, huh?”
“And a half,” Phil reminded him.
“That’s young for an American to leave home. Do your parents know that you are here?”
“I mailed them a letter. From Hamburg. Anyway, I’m old enough to join the army, so why can’t I go overseas?”
“So . . . you stowed away because you want to see the world? Or perhaps you have seen one of those romantic American movies about pirates, and fancy yourself with a black eye patch and a parrot on your shoulder?”
“I know a lot about trees, and stuff like that. I thought I could help Maria—”
“Maria, huh? Would you be as keen to look at trees in Suriname if Maria weren’t on board?” Phil colored. “I knew having Maria on board was going to mean trouble,” David muttered. “I don’t suppose you have any nautical skills?”
“Well, Grantville was located about two hundred miles from Chesapeake Bay. But I know how to hunt and fish, and I can handle a small boat . . .” Phil paused. David’s stern expression was unchanged. Phil’s voice trailed off. “On a river or lake.”
David waved toward the porthole window. “Does that look like a lake to you?”
“No, sir.”
David studied Philip, and decided that he was not entirely unpromising material for a colonist, or a mariner. Still . . .
“All right. You’re more trouble to me than you’re worth. I can’t afford to turn around—we waited a long time for a northeast wind—but as soon as we see a friendly ship heading toward Hamburg or Bremen, you’re out of here. If you can’t pay for the passage, you’ll write me a promissory note, and I’ll give you the money.”
“But sir—”
“No buts. This is not your American legislature; there is no debate. Cousin, find a place for him to swing a hammock, and keep him out of my hair.”
* * *
Maria couldn’t believe it. Philip had snuck on board to be with her.
It made her feel like, like . . . reaching into his throat and pulling out his intestines. Not that his intestines were the root of the problem, anatomically speaking. Teenage boys, arggh!
She admitted to herself that it made her feel good that he was so interested in her. After all, she was ten years older than him.
But did he have any idea what sort of position it put her in? The crew and colonists would have had difficulty enough accepting an up-time woman in a position of authority. But the up-timers all acted as if they were nobles. Maria was educated, and of good family, but not of the nobility, nor someone whose past achievements would force them to overlook her gender. The captain had only grudgingly accepted her, after witnessing her kayaking stunt . . . not that the demonstration had the slightest bit to do with her competence as a botanist, a healer, an artist, or a geologist!
And now the captain would be wondering if this trip to the New World was just her excuse for eloping with Philip. Why, everyone else on board would be wondering the same thing.
Well, she was going to have to have a little talk with Philip. Once she had calmed down enough not to throw him overboard and make him swim back to Hamburg.
But it was nice to know that he thought she was attractive.
* * *
Carsten Claus sat on a capstan and watched the sailors going about their work. The other colonists had decided that the water was a bit too rough for their taste, and had retired to the zwischendeck. Carsten, however, had once been a sailor himself, and he had quickly recovered both his sea legs and his “sailor’s stomach.”
His fellow colonists were mostly Dutch and Germans, displaced by the war. Happy people don’t pack their belongings and make a long and difficult journey to a wilderness reportedly populated by cannibals and savage beasts. Even if rumor also had it that there is gold to be found somewhere in that wilderness. The practical Dutch and Germans just didn’t put much stock in stories of El Dorado. So the colonists were people with problems back home that they needed to escape, or with more than their fair share of wanderlust.
Of course, there was a third possibility. A few could be spies, or agents provocateurs. Carsten was an organizer for the Committees of Correspondence (CoC), the revolutionary organization that, with American encouragement, had spread across much of central Europe.
Andy Yost had briefed Carsten on how important it was to have a colony that could export rubber, bauxite and oil to the New United States. Oops, Carsten meant the United States of Europe. Just before the expedition left, the once-sovereign NUS had become a member state of the USE.
In Carsten’s opinion, some of the CoC members greatly exaggerated the ubiquity of Richelieu’s spies. In fact, at a CoC meeting, Carsten had once rapped on a closet door, and yelled, “Cardinal, come out right this minute.” That had a gotten a laugh, albeit a somewhat nervous one.
Carsten had to admit that it was at least conceivable that the colonists had been infiltrated. So one of Carsten’s jobs was to check their bona fides. By now, Carsten was sure that they were all okay. Well, reasonably sure.
He had also made some progress with respect to his long-term business, which was “education.” Gently indoctrinating them in democratic principles, and forming a new CoC cell to make sure that the colony didn’t venture onto dangerous ground. Like slaveholding.
When their ship entered the dangerous waters between Cape Finisterre and the Cape Verde Islands, he had reminded the colonists that these were the haunts of the Barbary Corsairs.
He acknowledged that they couldn’t have a better captain than David de Vries, who was famed for having fought off the Turks when they outnumbered him two-to-one. But he asked them to pray for his fellow sailors who were less fortunate, who had been forced to surrender and whose families could not ransom them from slavery. They did so, and if they added a prayer or two for themselves, he couldn’t blame them.
And then, as they prayed, he asked them to pray for the Africans who had been enslaved in the New World by the wicked Spanish and Portuguese.
When one of the colonists was bold enough to retort that the Africans couldn’t expect better treatment, being pagans, and probably cannibals at that, Philip had hotly complained that putting chains on the blacks wasn’t the best way to teach them about the benefits of Christianity. As an up-timer, Philip’s opinions were accorded respect, despite his youth and inexperience.
So Carsten, at least, was glad that Philip had joined their expedition.
* * *
The ship was running before the wind, which meant that the captain’s cursing was carried down the length of the ship. The crew was practically tiptoeing.
Philip gave Heyndrick an anxious look. “What’s got the captain upset? It isn’t me, again, I hope.”
“No, no, it’s not you. The captain got all these newfangled navigation instruments in Grantville. Most of them work fine. The sextant, it beats a cross-staff any day. Maybe ten times as accurate, and you don’t go blind trying to sight the sun.”
“So what’s the problem?”
“The clock. It’s supposed to keep Nürnberg time, so we can calculate our longitude. It worked just fine . . . on land. And it’s supposed to work at sea. Uses springs, not a pendulum.”
“But . . .”
“But whoever designed it never tested it at sea. Or at least, not on waters this rough. We know where we are, more or less, from soundings and sightings, and either the clock is wrong, or our computations are. And since the captain’s figures and mine agree . . .”
“How bad an error are you talking about?”
“Well, the old pendulum clocks, if you took them to sea, accumulated ten or fifteen minutes error a day. This one, oh, a minute or two. But an error of one minute clock time still throws off the longitude by”—he frowned for a moment—“seven and a half degrees. A few hundred miles. And after a month at sea, the clock won’t even tell you which ocean you’re in.”
“Really. In that case, I have a proposition I want to put before the captain.”
“Pardon me if I wait here. I have no desire to join you on the execution block.”
* * *
“Captain, you don’t want me to leave,” Philip said.
David turned to face him. “Oh? Why the hell not?”
Philip took a deep breath. “Because of this.” He pulled back his sleeve.
David didn’t understand, at first. Then he did. Philip was wearing a self-winding wristwatch. A timepiece which worked at sea would let David accurately determine his longitude each day. If the timepiece kept the correct time for a place of known longitude, like Grantville, then it could be compared with the ship’s local time, inferred from the position of the sun, to find the ship’s longitude.
“How accurate is your watch?”
Philip hesitated. “I’m not sure. I guess it might lose or gain a few minutes a year.”
“A year,” repeated David dumbly.
“Yep,” Phillip affirmed, this time more confidently.
David took a deep breath. “You are offering me your watch in return for the passage, and your maintenance in the colony?”
“Are you kidding? I bet this watch is worth more than your entire ship.”
“Not this ship.” David said. But he couldn’t help thinking, But it is perhaps worth as much as one of the yachts. And it would be worth a lot more if only I could shoot the sun with equivalent accuracy.
Philip clarified his position. “What I meant was that I—and my watch—would be at your disposal for the duration of the voyage.”
“Aren’t you worried that I might just seize it from you? Or perhaps contrive your murder?”
Phil took a step back. “I . . . The things I heard about you . . . I didn’t think you’d do something like that. You could have killed the Indians who wiped out the Zwanandael settlement, and you didn’t. At least, Joe Buckley said you didn’t.”
“You might bear in mind that Joe Buckley got the story from me. But you’re right, I didn’t. And I won’t. But I would advise you to be very cautious about whom you show that watch to.”
* * *
“Philip.” She stared at him, eyes half-slitted, fists on hips.
He either didn’t recognize the warning signs, or chose to ignore them. “Hi, Maria, I’m—”
“Why are you here?”
“Isn’t it obvious? We’ve been seeing each other a while, and I couldn’t stomach your being away for a year, maybe forever.”
“Seeing me? You mean courting me? Dating, as you call it?”
“Well, yeah.”
“But you never wrote to my brother, and asked his permission to court me. Or even asked Lolly, whose roof I live under.”
“Jeesh, guys haven’t done that for, I dunno—”
“Centuries? Almost four centuries? As in, the way it was done back in 1633? Oops, it is 1633, isn’t it?”
“Well, you’ve lived in Grantville for two years, so it didn’t occur to me—”
“Didn’t occur to you to say anything to me, either.”
“You mean, like saying, ‘Will you be my girlfriend?’ or ‘Would you like to go steady?’ That’s so old fashioned, you know. Kids my age just hang out, and that’s what we were doing.”
“Philip. Listen to me. What do you think my age is?”
“I don’t know. College age? Nineteen? Twenty?”
“I am twenty-six, Philip. I am ten years older than you.”
“Not quite. I am sixteen and a—”
“Yes, I know! Sixteen and a half!” Maria took a deep breath, let it out slowly. “I have been married once, and widowed, already. My husband was lost at sea, in Asian waters.”
“Sorry, I didn’t know. Gee, you look terrific for someone your age.”
“Thanks—I think.” Maria felt herself losing control of the conversation. “Philip, yes, you came to visit me a lot, but I thought that was because we were friends, not boyfriend and girlfriend. And because you were interested in my work. And maybe because Marina was helping me.”
“Marina? She’s never said a word to me in school.” Philip paused. “Do you have a boyfriend already? I mean, someone other than me.”
“No, Philip.” He looked relieved.
Maria decided to seize the bull by the horns. “So what did you hope to accomplish by coming on board?”
“I guess . . . I guess I really wanted to impress you. You know, make a really big romantic gesture.” Philip’s cheeks were as red as apples.
“Well, you impressed me, but not with your maturity. You didn’t try to find out how I felt first, you left your parents worrying—”
“I left them a note.”
“Believe me, that just gives them something new to worry about.” Maria threw up her hands. “Really, Philip. This is like, like stalking me. Go think about it. In private.”
* * *
Philip was not a happy camper. Everything had gone dreadfully wrong. Maria thought he was a stalker, for crying out loud. Philip thought he would die.
He lay in his hammock, listening to the creaking of the hull, and tried not to cry. Eventually, he fell asleep.
When he awoke, he resolved that he would ask the captain to flag the next Hamburg-bound ship, after all. He went up to talk to David.
David didn’t buy it. “We made an agreement, young man, and you need to stick to it. Unless you are willing to give up your watch.”
“Well . . .”
“I thought not. You have skills that are useful to this expedition, and I expect you to apply them. Whether you love or hate Maria is of absolutely no interest to me. The two of you work it out.”
* * *
“Heave-to!” The Walvis turned into the wind, and stalled. A few minutes later, the other ships followed suit. David sent more lookouts aloft, in case Barbary corsairs came sniffing around, and went to the poop deck.
Philip had no particular duties at this moment, and decided to see if David was in the mood to explain what was going on. He found David peering across an odd-looking compass. It had the usual compass needle and card, but mirrors and slotted vanes were mounted on an outer ring. “What’s that?”
“An azimuth compass. One of your up-time ideas, but made in Nürnberg. It’s for measuring the compass bearing of an object. A landmark, or, if you fiddle with the mirror, a heavenly body.”
David turned the ring, and squinted through an opposing pair of slits. “There’s the Pico de Fogo, the ‘Fire Peak’ of Ilha de Fogo.” A plume of steam rose from it. Plainly, it was a volcano. He adjusted the azimuth circle, and took a second reading. “And Pico da Antonia, on Ilha de Santiago.” The two islands lay near the southwestern end of the Cape Verdes island chain.
“With cross-bearings, I can find our exact position on both your up-time map—it has a little inset of the Cape Verdes—and on my old chart.” David looked up at the sky. “It’s getting close to noon, we’ll take a sun-sight, and then see how good your timepiece is.” David waited until the sun seemed to hang in the sky, and then measured its altitude. Philip called out the time. Grantville Standard Time, that is. GST had been proclaimed by the government after Greg Ferrara had determined Grantville’s new longitude.
“Follow me.” David walked across the gently tilting deck to his cabin, Philip following in his wake. Philip watched as David laboriously calculated the latitude and longitude.
“Hmm, pretty good. In fact, so good as to earn you an invitation to the captain’s table for dinner tomorrow.”
By then, Mount Fogo, the highest peak of the Cape Verdes, had disappeared below the horizon, to the north and behind the Walvis and its companions. Its volcanic plume was just a smudge, almost lost in the horizon haze. The great mass of Africa lay only four hundred miles to the east; the wide Atlantic separated them from the Americas to the west.
Over the meal, David explained just how Philip’s wristwatch was going to help them on the next leg. He unrolled a map. “Most ships, if Caribbean-bound, would have turned west from Fogo, run down the fifteen degree line to Dominica.”
Philip nodded politely. He could see the small speck marking the location of Dominica, on the near edge of the West Indies, but he knew nothing about it.
“But that’s not the best sailing for us,” David explained. “We’d have to fight our way southeast, against the current, to then get to Suriname from there.”
“So why not go farther south, and then turn west?”
“Spoken like a true landlubber,” David said, smiling to take out the sting. “If we went south to the latitude of your up-time town of Paramaribo, we would hit the doldrums. Do you understand that term?”
“No wind?”
“Often, nary a breath. Duppy Jonah’s Flytrap. You can be stuck there for weeks, as your provisions spoil and your men’s tempers do the same. The belt of doldrums moves north and south with the sun; that’s one of the reasons we set sail in winter.”
David paused for a bite. “With your fancy wristwatch to help us find our longitude, we can curve gradually south as we head west, hit South America here.” He jabbed his forefinger against the spot marking the up-time town of Cayenne, French Guiana. “We don’t have to sail down a latitude line anymore.”
* * *
“Philip, congratulations. Heyndrick told me that we made a very difficult sailing, thanks to your navigational help.”
“Thanks.” Philip kept his back to her.
Maria waited. “Is that all you’re going to say?”
“Yep.”
“When you’re tired of being a jerk, come and talk to me.” Maria stalked off.
“Wait, Maria,” called Philip, but his voice was lost in the wind, and he didn’t want to follow her and endure the catcalls from the sailors.
The Wild Coast of South America, February 1634
Their first view of Suriname was discouraging. As they cruised northwest along the Surinamese coast from Cayenne, they saw mile after unbroken mile of mangrove swamp. It didn’t look like a place the colonists would want to visit, let alone live.
At last, David led his small flotilla into the mouth of the Suriname River. Here, it was really more than a river, being several miles in breadth. They headed south for what the maps had shown to be the location of the twentieth-century capital of Suriname, Paramaribo, twelve miles upriver. The “Great Encyclopedia” said that it had been settled in the old time line in 1640, and it seemed that the location couldn’t be that bad if it had remained in use for over three centuries. And it added that the site was “on a plateau sixteen feet above low water level, well drained, clean, and in general healthy.” Even here, the river was a mile wide, and eighteen feet deep.
They solemnly raised the flag, and David christened the town “Gustavus.” Gustavus Adolphus was a hero to the Dutch and Germans, and the christening was a cheap price to pay for the Swedish support.
There were signs of a former Indian settlement on the plateau. Whether its abandonment was a heavenly blessing, or a warning, they couldn’t say.
In the days following the landing, they explored the countryside. Despite appearances, the marshes were just a narrow strip on the coast. Behind them lay an area of zwampen en ritsen: swamps and ridges. They weren’t sure just how far that terrain extended, but the up-time encyclopedias had told them that if they went far enough south, they would find savannas and the great rainforests.
They had deliberately arrived at the beginning of what the encyclopedia called the short dry season. That, they knew, would be the best time to clear ground. And, once they found it, to mine bauxite. In March, when the long wet season began, they would plant their crops—tobacco, cotton, and various food crops, by preference.
There had been much debate back in Grantville as to how to solve the perennial labor problem of tropical America without resort to slavery. It had to be solved, because the tropics had products that Grantville desperately wanted, like rubber. Part of the proposed solution was to use up-time medical knowledge so that Europeans wouldn’t die off so readily.
The botanical garden at Leiden, which Maria knew so well, was primarily a garden of medicinal plants for the education of the student physicians. So she knew her herbs. In Grantville, she had learned more about disease, and how to avoid it. On the ship, she had insisted that the sailors and colonists eat sauerkraut, to ward off scurvy. On shore, she lectured the settlers on mosquito control. And sanitation. Several of the colonists had gotten some medical training, too, since Maria wasn’t planning a permanent stay.
* * *
Carsten Claus and Johann Mueller walked along the wooded ridge line, grateful for the shade that the scrub forest provided. Even though they were miles from the sea, there were shells and shell fragments everywhere.
Carsten bent to pick up a particularly interesting one. It was egg-shaped, and mottled red in color, and it shone as though it was made of the finest Chinese porcelain. It was a cowry, a snail shell. Like the cowries of Africa, which Carsten had seen in a nobleman’s collection, it had a ribbed slit opening. In Africa, that made it a fertility symbol.
Frau Vorst was right, Carsten thought, this must be an ancient sand dune. Carsten decided to save the shell for her; she loved to collect curiosities. He also decided not to say anything about its symbolic significance.
Johann Mueller, a glassmaker, was more interested in the sand. Every so often he would pick up a handful and bring it so close to his eyes that Carsten wondered whether Johann was nearsighted.
It wasn’t common for fledgling colonies to have glassmakers, although Carsten had heard that there was one in Jamestown, Virginia. But it was the second part of the master plan to make a tropical colony viable without resort to slavery.
The up-timers knew they had to find a way to get the local Indians to work, day in, day out, without coercion. And Captain de Vries, who had been to both North America and the Caribbean, told them that there was only so much one could accomplish with the standard trade goods. An Indian might work to acquire one steel knife, but he didn’t need a dozen. Strong liquor was a possible lure, but it had its own disadvantages.
Knowing that glass beads were a good article of trade, the Company had decided to coax a glassmaker to join the colony. That way, they could sell or barter a variety of glass articles, not just beads, and not just to the Indians, but also to Europeans in Guiana and the islands.
On the long voyage over, Carsten had delicately drawn out the details of Johann’s background. Johann was a Thuringer from Lauscha, a journeyman with many years experience, who had failed to make master. Solely for economic reasons, he assured Carsten. He hadn’t botched his masterwork or been caught seducing his mentor’s daughter.
Carsten was inclined to believe him. You could only become a master in a guild if you found a town whose guild chapter had a vacancy. Because of the war, the demand for glassware had declined, and masters who were scrounging for work weren’t likely to welcome a newcomer.
“In this Suriname,” Johann said, “I don’t have to marry an ugly old widow just to get her husband’s shop. And I don’t have to worry about competition.”
Just about pirates, Indians, jungle beasts and tropical diseases, thought Carsten, but he kept the thought to himself.
“Oh, look at this,” Johann chortled. “This sand, it’s almost a pure white. And look at the size of the grains. They are so even, it’s beautiful.”
Carsten was reminded of the adage, Beauty is in the eyes of the beholder. But that, too, he kept to himself.
* * *
“Captain, the plan won’t work. It’s hopeless. You should just take me back to Hamburg.” The speaker was Denys Zager, the master sawyer hired by the Company. They knew that Suriname had plenty of wood, so why not sell wood articles to the Indians? Things they couldn’t make with their primitive tools. And Zager’s planks would also be used for constructing buildings and furniture for the colonists. Zager would cut the wood and the colonist’s carpenter would do the fine crafting.
Unfortunately, the person who hired Zager, on the Company’s behalf, wasn’t the one who had to work with Zager. That is, poor David. Zager was the sort of person who, if he found a pot of gold at one end of the rainbow, would complain that there wasn’t another pot at the other end.
David sighed. “What’s the problem?”
“The Company wants me to build a wind-powered sawmill. Like the one Cornelis Corneliszoon had invented in 1593. A wonderful idea.”
“And the Grantville-made saw blades are satisfactory, I suppose.” They were, of course, better than anything he had seen before, of course, but Zager would never admit it. They had been provided on the theory that it was better to use steel to make saw blades and use them locally to manufacture wood articles, than to make steel trade goods that would have to be produced at home.
“Only . . . where’s the wind? All we get here is a light breeze.”
“What about using a water wheel?”
“Well . . . the most efficient water wheel is an overshot. Water comes down from above, onto buckets. But you need a decent drop, and where’s the drop?” Zager waved his arm toward the placidly flowing Suriname River. “Not there, I assure you.”
David shrugged. “Come with us upriver, perhaps we can find you a waterfall there. We know from the up-time maps that there are mountains to the south.”
“You want me to live alone in the wilderness, tending my mill by this yet-to-be-located watermill of yours? You will keep me supplied with food and lumber, come instantly to my aid if the Indians attack?”
David started to answer, then thought better of it.
Zager looked triumphant. “I thought not.”
David rubbed his chin. “You said, the ‘most efficient’ wheel. So what are the alternatives?”
Zager said nothing.
“Well?”
Zager sighed. “I suppose we could make do with an undershot wheel. If we must. It just needs flowing water, to strike the floats.” He spat. “But this river is rather slow-flowing. We won’t get a lot of power out of it.”
“Then we will find you a livelier river. Or we will have to bring you oxen, or donkeys. And, until then, if you don’t want to hassle with an undershot wheel, you can saw the old-fashioned way, in a pit with a platform over it.”
“Hmmph. At least as the senior man, I’d be at the top of the pit, where I can breathe. But all right, we’ll try the undershot wheel. Once I figure out where the current is strongest . . . probably by falling in and drowning.”
* * *
Heinrich Bender, formerly of Heidelberg, was clutching a piece of sketch paper in one hand, and a rock in the other. “Frau Vorst, Frau Vorst, we found it!”
Maria looked up. “Bauxite, you mean?” The sailors and colonists were searching creek beds and other rock exposures in the vicinity of old-time-line Paranam, some miles south of Gustavus, because the up-time encyclopedias had said that bauxite was mined there. Maria had divided them into groups, and given each a “wanted” sketch showing what bauxite looked like. Maria, who was an experienced artist, had made the drawings back in Grantville, basing them on photographs in various up-time field guides owned by the school libraries.
Heinrich nodded.
“Let’s see.” He handed her the paper and the rock. Maria compared her sketch with the specimen. The sketch was deliberately done in charcoal, to avoid misleading the searchers—bauxite could be white, yellow, red, or brown. This specimen was red.
For bauxite, the telltale sign was its “raisin pie” texture. Okay, the up-timers called it “pisolitic.” Yep, the pisolites—little pea-sized concretions—were present in Heinrich’s find.
Heinrich was fidgeting with excitement. Maria wasn’t surprised; David had promised a bounty to the first person to find bauxite. “Well, is it bauxite? Is it?”
“Looks promising, bear with me.” Maria tried scratching the rock with her fingernail. She brushed away the white powder to make sure that it was the rock, not her fingernail, which had succumbed. Yes, there was the scratch. That meant that on the Mohs’ scale of hardness, the rock was less than 2.5. Bauxite had a hardness ranging from 1, like talc, to 3, like calcite. A bit harder than most clays.
What else? Right, specific gravity. She hefted it; it seemed to have about the right density, two or two-and-a-half times that of water. She could measure it when she went back on board the yacht, but clearly it was in the ballpark.
“Good work, Heinrich,” Maria said. “Show me where you found it.”
“It was over here . . . no, over there.”
Maria saw a second rock, much like the first. She called over some more of the colonists, and set them to work digging test holes near the find, so she would know how deep the formation was. And then she wrote a note to David, and sent Heinrich off with it to claim his reward.
* * *
The formation turned out to be enormous in extent; miles wide, and usually just a few feet below the surface. In places, powdered bauxite, or so Maria presumed it to be, actually turned the soil to a dark purple-red, as if someone had soaked it in beet juice.
Out came the shovels, the pickaxes, and the wheelbarrows. For now, all they did was collect the bauxite. If the market for bauxite took off—meaning, someone succeeded in duplicating the Hall-Heroult process of making aluminum—then they would see about converting bauxite to alumina right in Suriname. Four tons of bauxite made two of alumina. That would reduce transportation costs—if the necessary reagents could be produced by the colony.
The Company even hoped that one day it could harvest the power of the cataracts of the Suriname river to produce electricity. If so, then they might actually be able to produce aluminum locally. Two tons of alumina, with great gobs of electricity and a dash of cryolite to reduce the melting point of the alumina, would make one ton of aluminum.
For that matter, she had been told that alumina made a great refractory. So even without cryolite, the bauxite might come in handy.
It would be nice, Maria thought, if she could carry out a proper chemical test, but she didn’t happen to have any cobalt nitrate handy. Hah, she might as well wish Gustavus had an atomic absorption spectrophotometer, while she was at it. At least, wonder of wonders, the high school in Grantville actually had one . . . an unlikely gift from a large construction material manufacturer. So when they got the ore home, the chemists could definitively determine that it contained aluminum.
Of course, David and Maria would feel rather stupid if they carted twenty tons of bog iron home, when they were looking for bauxite.
* * *
Finally. Maria could get on with her real work. Documenting and collecting the extraordinary plants of Suriname, for the greater glory of the Leiden Botanical Gardens. Which she thought of as the family firm. Not without reason; her father Aelius had taken it over in 1599, and then her brother Adolph in 1624.
She would start close to town, on the coastal plain, and ultimately head upriver, to explore the rainforest.
For documentation, she had her pencils, chalks and paints, and her leaf press. But live specimens would be better yet. She collected both seeds and seedlings. The seeds were mixed in with charcoal, or sawdust or sand, and placed in bags. Those, in turn, went into what she hoped were insect-proof boxes. Seedlings could go into cases with glass sides and tops, so they could be kept moist and given the benefit of the sun during the long trip home.
Nor would she ignore the fauna. She drew pictures of some, and they had both live and dead specimens to ship to the savants and curiosity collectors back home. Philip had brought her, no doubt as a peace offering, a curious fish he had caught. It had four eyes. Well, not quite. It had two eyes, but each was divided into upper and lower halves. Philip told her that it swam on the surface, with the upper halves above the water.
Maria never tired of painting the wildlife. The birds, in particular, were beautiful. And even many of the insects.
Other insects, she could definitely do without.
* * *
David studied the mark in the sand bar. It was, quite clearly, the imprint of a European boot. He tapped the shoulder of one sailor, whispered to him, and sent him to collect the others.
Soon, they were back on the deck of the Eikhoorn. David, an explorer at heart, had taken command of the yacht, leaving its usual skipper to supervise the loading of bauxite ore onto the Walvis.
“We’re not alone.”
“Indians?” asked a crewman. He looked around nervously.
“No, Europeans. We don’t know their nationality. If we’re lucky, they’re Dutch.” While the colony was under the protection of Sweden and the United States of Europe, it also had a license from the West India Company. Since David was a patroon of the West India Company, it hadn’t been difficult to obtain. Especially since Sweden and the USE were the only Dutch allies remaining.
“Listen up. If they’re English or French, they won’t know about the Battle of Dunkirk. Well, probably not. And while I am palavering with them, I don’t want you to give away the information that they have any reason to fear us.” David’s crew was almost entirely Dutch. “So, no insults, no glares, no nattering among yourselves as to how treacherous the English and French are. Have your weapons ready, but don’t point them until I give you leave. Understood?”
He turned to Maria. “So much for the up-time encyclopedias. First settled by the French in 1640, my eye!”
* * *
The Eikhoorn continued a mile or two upriver, but its crew didn’t spot any signs of habitation, European or otherwise. They retraced their route, and this time went up a creek, rowing with muffled oars. It wasn’t long before they heard voices. English voices.
David signaled a halt, and called out. “Hello, be you English?” There was an excited clamor, and several roughly dressed Europeans stepped out of the trees. They looked at him goggle-eyed.
“We are. We are Captain Marshall’s men. Who are you?”
“I am Captain David de Vries, a patroon of the Dutch West India Company, currently in the service of His Majesty the King of Sweden and the emperor of the United States of Europe.” That sounded impressive enough, he hoped.
They murmured among themselves. One ventured, “I am sure Captain Marshall will want to entertain you. To hear news, if nothing else.”
“When did you last have news?” David asked.
“A ship comes once each summer to collect our dried tobacco.”
“Really? Do you have any left for sale? How much do you sell each year?” Their answer gave David some clue as to how many acres were planted, and thus, of how many settlers were engaged in tobacco cultivation. It was clear that the crew of the yacht was outnumbered. But not the colonists he had left downriver.
“My friends don’t speak English,” David said. “Excuse me while I explain to them that I am going to pay a call on Captain Marshall.” He then added, softly, in rapid Dutch. “Be on guard. Let none of the English on board in my absence. If I don’t return by tomorrow morning, make haste to the settlement and warn them. From the extent of the tobacco crop, there must be several dozen English here, at least.”
“Why are you visiting them? Wouldn’t it be better to just come back in force?” asked Maria.
“It’s a calculated risk. I need to see just how many of them there are, how well fed and armed, whether they have a fort, and more. And much more. Are the local Indians friendly or hostile? Are the English of the royalist or parliamentary factions? Are they Church of England, or Puritans, or even Catholics?”
* * *
David was gone the rest of the day. A lone Englishman came back to the creek and informed them that David had been invited to dine with Captain Marshall and spend the night.
Maria and the others could only hope that the messenger was telling the truth. Two men remained on watch at all times.
The next morning, while mist still shrouded the creek, David emerged, together with two of the English. They were better dressed than any of the men seen the day before. David said something to them, and they waited at the forest edge as he came up to the yacht. “Captain Marshall and one of his colleagues, a Mr. Francis Scott, will be enjoying our hospitality. Remember what I said about keeping your lips buttoned. I am fairly sure that Scott is being brought because he speaks Dutch—whether he says so or not.”
“How many of them are there?”
“Sixty, all men. They have been here since 1630, and they cultivate tobacco. Perhaps half a mile up the creek they have a fort, with a wood palisade. But I need to get back to them, lest they grow suspicious. Fortunately, the custom in the Guianas has been for the few English, Dutch and French in the country to live in harmony, so they aren’t expecting trouble.”
“Mevrouw Vorst—”
“Please, Captain, by now I think you can call me Maria.”
“Maria, ply Marshall and Scott with questions about the Indians, the animals, the plants, the weather, and the like. Philip, you can tell them about the wonders of Grantville. Stay off the topic of politics! All right, I better go fetch them now.”
* * *
“Ahoy, the Walvis! Captain de Vries and party, with two English guests,” bellowed the the first mate of the Eikhoorn.
The men on the deck of the Walvis stopped what they were doing, and stared.
“They don’t seem happy to see Englishmen,” Captain Marshall commented.
“The Dutch-English relationship has sometimes been a troubled one,” David replied. “But you are my guests.”
* * *
Heyndrick and Philip were both on the deck of the Walvis. Heyndrick finished cleaning his fowling piece. Heyndrick looked up, and saw Philip sitting on the railing, a fishing rod in hand. He studied Philip for a moment, and decided he might as well just ask the question he had been thinking about lately. “How are things between you and Maria these days?”
Philip turned. “I dunno. Okay, I guess. I’ve recovered from my case of hormonal insanity, if that’s what you mean.”
“Good. If that means what I think it does. So it wouldn’t bother you, if . . . if I wanted to be better friends with Maria?”
“I guess not. It’s hardly poaching, after the way she told me off. It was nice of you to ask, though.”
“Excellent. Come to my cabin, share a glass of brandy with me.”
* * *
Meanwhile, Marshall and Scott had come down, together with Maria, to David’s cabin. “Our colony is a new one, I can offer you better hospitality here,” David explained.
At dinner, David came to the point. “I understand your last news of England was from this past summer.”
Marshall gave Scott a meaningful look.
“I regret to tell you that King Charles has made alliance with the Catholic powers, with France and Spain.”
Scott cursed. “I knew it was a mistake for him to marry that Frenchwoman.”
“Worse,” David continued, “rather than declare war on the Dutch Republic openly, he and the French betrayed us. The French and English squadrons that sailed with Von Tromp’s Sea Beggars, to meet the Spanish fleet at Dunkirk, pounced on him from behind.”
“So England and the Dutch Republic are at war,” said Marshall. “Are we prisoners? Hostages?”
“Formally speaking, I am right now in the service of Sweden and the USE,” drawled David. “And there has been no attack by England upon either. So while there is no doubt that this alliance is aimed, ultimately, at Sweden, and the USE, I am not required to take hostile action against any English ships or settlers I may encounter.”
Marshall raised his eyebrows, but said nothing.
“Still, your colony is something of a dagger at the back of mine. As the English fleet was to the Dutch at the Battle of Ostend. And my colonists, many of whom are Dutch, will not be happy to have English neighbors.
“That said, the governor of Virginia, Sir John Harvey, is a friend of mine. He came to my aid in the days when we were both in the East Indies. So, I would do you a good turn, if I could. If you surrender, and give me your parole, I will transport your people to Tobago, or Saint Kitts, or Providence Island, all of which have English colonies, and land you there under flag of truce.” David waited for them to respond.
Scott and Marshall exchanged looks; Marshall gave Scott a slight nod. “You certainly have control of the mouth of the Suriname River,” said Scott. “I saw that you have emplaced cannon at your town, and of course you have ships of war, too. You can keep reinforcements and supplies from reaching us, and prevent us from selling our tobacco. And you are too strong for us to conquer.
“On the other hand, you wouldn’t find it easy to scour us out. Your colony isn’t too much larger than ours. We know the terrain better than you do. Your fluyts can’t go up our creek, and your yachts don’t throw enough weight of metal to successfully assault our fort. We don’t need supplies from the outside; we are self-sufficient. The Indians are friendly to us and would come to our aid if you attacked. So it looks like a stalemate to me,” Scott concluded.
“Only in the short-term,” said David. “Given time, we could bring in troops, land them and march up the creek. And if you huddled in the fort, we could burn your crops. That would be the end of your self-sufficiency. And I wouldn’t be too sure of your Indian alliance. The Indians will switch sides if they think you’re likely to lose anyway.”
Marshall took a sip of wine. “Have you been to Saint Kitts, Captain de Vries?” That was one of the Lesser Antilles, a crescent-shaped chain of the small Caribbean islands, stretching from Puerto Rico to Trinidad.
“Yes, I put in for water there on my last trip.”
“Are you familiar with the peculiar relationship there?”
“Indeed.” The island was settled by the English in 1623. But a few years later, they had allowed the French, under the command of the ex-privateer captain Pierre d’Esnambuc, to claim the ends of the island, while the English remained in control of the middle. They held the salt pans in the south in common, and they had agreed that they would not fight each other even if England and France were at war.
“Perhaps . . . perhaps we can do the same? Agree to neutrality between our colonies, regardless of what is happening in Europe?”
“It might not be in my power to conclude an absolute neutrality,” David warned. “We didn’t know you were here, so we don’t have specific instructions from the emperor of the USE.”
“But we could at least agree to remain neutral in the absence of a direct order from our sovereign, and, in the event of such an order, give notice of intent to dissolve our pact.”
David looked thoughtful. “It wouldn’t be easy for you to receive such an order, considering that we control your line of communication.”
“No, it wouldn’t. So the agreement will be more to your benefit than ours, but at least would save our honor.”
“I will think on it. While it is a tempting prospect—trade, and exchange of information, would be mutually beneficial, I think—the feelings of the Dutch of the colony run high. And we won’t always have warships in the river; there would be a fear that you would try to take advantage if they were absent.”
Maria moved her chair. The screech drew all eyes to her. “But gentlemen, there is another factor to consider. As a Dutch woman, I was of course appalled by the treacherous attack on our fleet. But I understand that the English in turn are still fired by the incident at Amboyna.”
“The massacre—” began Scott, but he desisted when Marshall gripped his shoulder.
“Still, in the long-term, they have a common enemy: the Spanish. The French, too. I think that upon more mature reflection, you will realize that your long-term interests lie with us. Us, meaning the USE and its allies.”
Marshall steepled his fingers. “How so?”
“I doubt very much that your king cares what happens to you. Because he has already given up North America to the French.”
“The French!”
“Yes, by the Treaty of Ostend, which we learned about shortly after the Battle of Dunkirk. Charles discovered that in the Grantville history books, some of the American colonies revolted successfully, and so he was willing to let them be Richelieu’s problem.”
“You have proof of this?”
“Sorry, no, but you may question the crew or the colonists,” David said.
“You can do better than that,” Maria interjected. “Didn’t you save the newspapers? You said you would save them until the Spanish had been defeated!”
David swore. “You’re right, of course.” He dug them out and handed them to Marshall and Scott.
When they finished reading, he added, “Charles also found out that, according to those history books, he gets into a fight with Parliament, which ends with his head on the chopping block. So he’s brought in mercenaries to control London, and he’s been arresting anyone who the up-timers’ books identified as a Parliamentarian. Indeed, anyone he thinks likely to have such sympathies.”
Marshall winced. “Do you know anything of the Earl of Warwick?” Maria shook her head.
“Warwick, Warwick,” mused David. “Oh, Robert Rich. Well, what I know about him is that he is a big investor in New World colonies. Bermuda, and Providence Island, off the coast of Nicaragua. And, yes, Richneck Plantation, on the James, is his. I spent a few weeks in Virginia in March of ’33. Why do you ask?”
“He is our chief benefactor,” Marshall admitted. “And a Puritan, as are we.”
Scott didn’t look happy. “He is on the outs with the Court. Opposed the forced loan of 1626. And Laud’s repression of the Puritans.”
“So what you can expect,” said David, “is that either your colony, too, will be turned over to the French, or it will be given as a reward to one of Laud’s or Wentworth’s cronies.”
* * *
Heinrich coughed. “Begging your pardon, Madam Vorst, but the captain wants to see you.”
Maria looked wistfully at the scarlet ibis that stood rock-still in the pond some yards away, watching for an unwary frog. She had just set up her easel, and had been looking forward to painting the beautiful bird. But she doubted it would hang around waiting for her to finish the captain’s business, whatever it was. Answering a gardening question for colonists, perhaps. She knew that she wouldn’t have had the opportunity to study the natural world of Suriname if it weren’t for the colony, but sometimes her role of “science officer” was irksome.
She rose to her feet, and the sudden movement startled the bird, causing it to take flight. “Help me gather up my things, will you?”
* * *
The captain didn’t beat around the bush. “Scott’s staying in Gustavus, as the representative of the Marshall’s Creek colonists.”
Maria raised an eyebrow. “As a hostage, too, I imagine.”
David nodded. “Marshall’s going back upriver on the Eikhoorn, to explain the situation to them and see if they wanted to throw in with us.”
“Really. Then perhaps I should go upriver with him. Their fort is on the fringe of the rainforest. I might be able to find rubber trees with their help. Or at least the help of their Indian allies.”
“Are you sure? We don’t know how they’ll react to the news. The crew of the Eikhoorn will be outnumbered.”
“Captain Marshall seems a man of honor; I will make sure that I am traveling under his protection. And even the Spaniards, when they attack a foreign colony, will usually spare the women.”
“You’ll be the only woman there.”
“I am sure there were Indian women around, they just stayed out of sight on your last visit. And as I said, I will be with Captain Marshall.”
David hesitated.
“It’s not just that the USE needs the rubber. If I find them a new product to sell to us, that will help reconcile them to the ‘Swedish’ presence downriver. Or whatever you want to call it.”
“Okay. You’ve convinced me.”
* * *
“This is so slow,” said David.
“Slow but sure,” Maria replied.
They were watching latex slowly drip from the gash in the tree, into a waiting cup. With the aid of Maria’s sketches, themselves based on illustrations in the Grantville encyclopedias, the Indians had been able to locate several different trees of interest. One, the Hevea guianensis, produced true rubber. Another was what the encyclopedias called Manilkara bidentata. Its latex hardened to form balata. Balata wasn’t elastic, but it was a natural plastic, which could be used for electrical insulation.
“Why don’t we just chop the tree down and take all its latex at once?”
“Several reasons,” said Maria. “They aren’t that common, just a few trees an acre, so we would have to go farther and farther out to find more. If we tap them, each tree will produce rubber for twenty years or more. And finally, it just won’t work. The latex is stored in little pockets. It’s not like there’s a big cavern inside you can chop your way to. If you want a quick return, you need to find a Castilla elastica, it has nice long tubes.”
“Well, this is too slow for me. It’s as exciting as watching paint dry,” David declared. “I think it’s time for me to head out.”
“Back to Gustavus?”
“No, on to Trinidad and Nicaragua. And pick up a Spanish prize or two along the way, if we’re lucky.”
“If we must,” said Maria with a sigh. “But I have such a horrible backlog of plants to study. Lolly told me the rainforest was diverse, and I thought I knew what she meant, but the reality is inconceivable if you don’t see it with your own eyes.”
“Who said you had to leave?”
“You need me to find the Castilla in Nicaragua.”
“No, I don’t. I have Philip.”
Maria opened her mouth, then shut it without saying anything.
“And he has to come with me because he has to go home at the earliest opportunity. Even if he is dreading the parental punishments that await him.”
* * *
“Philip.”
“Yes, Maria?” He eased the rucksack he was carrying down to the ground. “As you can see, I am packed and ready to go back to sea.”
“I am sorry it didn’t work out. Couldn’t work out. You and me, that is.”
Philip didn’t quite meet her eyes. “I know. I made an idiot out of myself.”
“Don’t feel bad. You’re a teenage male. Teenage males, by definition, are idiots. Whatever century they were born in.”
“Thanks. I think.”
“Anyway, I have a present for you.” She brought forward the object she had been hiding behind her back. It was one of the blank journal books she used for drawing.
“You can use this to keep track of what you see and do. Perhaps it will make you famous. And . . . and I will enjoy reading it one day.”
He took the journal, brushing her fingers as he did so. “Thank you. I mean it. And good luck.”
He paused. “Heyndrick seems like an okay guy.”
“I think so, too.”
* * *
David studied his cousin. “You’re determined to stay here in Suriname?”
“Yes. I think there is a lot of opportunity here,” said Heyndrick, straight-faced.
“You’re blushing.”
“I am not,” said Heyndrick, coloring still more deeply.
“I am naming you as acting governor, but—you intend to escort Maria on her explorations?”
Heyndrick nodded.
“I thought so. We need someone to keep a steady hand here in your absence. I think I will appoint Carsten Claus as your deputy.”
“The ex-sailor? Ran away from the farm as a kid, and later thought better of it?”
“That’s right. He is CoC. An organizer of some kind. He is chummy with Andy Yost.” Andy was the owner of the Grantville Freedom Arches, the first headquarters of the CoC.
“And you let him come on board?”
“There’s CoC money invested in this colony. And the up-timers are counting on the CoC to make sure we don’t make any, uh, imprudent investments.”
“Buying slaves, you mean?”
“That’s right. I will leave you one of the yachts. You and Maria can use it for exploring. You’ll have to keep the captain, of course, I don’t have good reason to deprive any of them of command. Which one do you want?”
“The Eikhoorn.”
“I am not surprised.” Heyndrick blushed again. The Eikhoorn was commanded by Captain Adrienszoon, a man thirty years older than Heyndrick, while the Hoop had a young, unmarried skipper.
Heyndrick pulled a map out of its case, and flattened it out. “Are you sure you shouldn’t stay until July or August? See the colony through the end of the first wet season?”
“No. If I wait, I will be in the Caribbean in the hurricane season. Not a wise idea.”
Heyndrick found Trinidad on the map, grunted, and rolled the map up again. “That’s true . . . However . . . David, I have sailed with you for a long time. And there is something I think needs saying, although I doubt you’d like to hear it.”
“Out with it, Cuz.”
“You want to be a patroon. But we know how often colonies with absentee owners have come to grief. Someone like Jan Bicker can afford a loss, but you can’t. You’re terrific at managing sailors and settlers and Indians, but you need to manage yourself. After a few months, you go crazy and want to sail off. And next you know it, your colony, your investment, will be gone.”
“So what do you suggest?”
“I know you have to, what’s the American phrase, ‘get the ball rolling’ in Trinidad and Nicaragua. And then you want to get the rubber and tar to the Americans as quickly as possible. But after that, please plan on coming back here, and staying as governor. At least for a few years.”
“I’ll think about it. But it is a waste of my skills as a shiphandler.”
“Then perhaps you need to forget about being a patroon, and stick to what you do best.”