Chapter Four: Out to Sea
Port of Bremen, The North Sea
After the train ran out of track Pam enjoyed a variety of uncomfortable conveyances, including horse-drawn carriage, and river barge. She sometimes felt as if she were in a never-ending historical reenactment, sure that she would turn the next corner to find a visitor parking lot full of cars and tired tourists, but the bumpy roads of the seventeenth century just stretched on and on as did the days. She eventually arrived in Bremen on a windy, overcast morning, travel worn and weary. Dore clucked worriedly over her, and sent her directly to a hot bath. The princess' agents had made arrangements for them to stay in a decent inn, not too fancy, but clean and well maintained. Pam slept most of that afternoon away, then joined her friends for a hearty dinner of baked salmon from the North Sea, which Pam declared to be divine manna from the gods. The next day they would meet the colonists. Tonight was for good beer, a round or two of schnapps, and an early bed.
Time flew by like a whirlwind for Pam. She met so many people that their names and purposes became a hopeless blur. She put on her brightest smile, and tried to look heroic, but inside she felt old familiar fears beginning to creep around. That evening she met with the colonists at an outdoor picnic style gathering in a wide meadow on the riverside. Everyone was very polite and deferential to her, the princess' agents had made it clear to the colonists that Pam would be the leader of the venture, and should be treated with all due respect. They were mostly young couples, only a few children or people over forty in the group, which she estimated to be about a hundred souls. Their pleasant demeanor put Pam at ease, and when it was finally time for her to deliver her speech she was feeling pretty confident, aided perhaps by the numerous toasts she had engaged in during the party.
She spoke in her nearing-fluent Thuringian-style German, and kept it short, hoping that her translator (his name had already escaped her), a jovial merchant from Stockholm who had lived in Bremen for many years, and was fluent in several languages and dialects, would at least get close to her desired meaning. She reminded them all that their sponsor, the young and much adored princess, was very concerned for the future of the dodo bird, as well as the many other unusual animals found on the islands, and that it would be everyone's duty to act as stewards of the land, living in harmony with nature while enjoying its bounty. They would be growing many types of crops that would be new to them, and would have to learn new ways of farming. It would be surely difficult at first, but ultimately very profitable.
The Swedes listened with eager expressions on their faces, Pam hoped this was because they were tired of the old ways, and were ready to try something better, something she could definitely deliver. When she finished, she gave them all a polite bow, and everyone cheered, which caused her to blush and almost trip on her way down from the makeshift platform. Gerbald caught her with one strong arm, handing her a tankard of beer with the other.
"You have missed your calling I think," he told her with a grin, "You should be running for Prime Minister!"
"I'd sooner chew my leg off. Leaving on a creaky wooden ship for a long and dangerous journey tomorrow is far preferable to a career in politics." She tipped her tankard back, taking a long draught. There were merry cries of skål! around her, and she stood swaying happily as they all joined in yet another round of toasts.
****
Pam walked slowly down the Bremen docks flanked by Gerbald and Dore, escorted by a retinue of Swedish soldiers. Her head felt twice as large and three times as heavy as it should thanks to their frolics the night before. After crawling out of bed with a moan, she had taken quite a bit more than the recommended dosage of that crumby Gribbleflotz aspirin, which was better than nothing, and probably why she could manage at all. A sharp, salty wind whipped across the harbor, capping the waves in white, and making Pam shiver even under her best wool sweater. A bit of winter was still hanging around Bremen this morning, even this late in the spring. She felt as if she were trooping toward the gallows rather than leaving on the adventure of a lifetime, and longed for her little pink house in Grantville with a surprisingly deep ache. Wrinkling her nose, she pushed such thoughts aside. She had wanted this, she had gotten it, and by God she was going to go through with it.
"There she is, Pam!" she heard Gerbald proclaim, his voice excited.
She looked ahead to see a red-painted sailing ship tied to the dock, with a group of sailors standing by the gang plank. One of them, dressed quite a bit better than the rest, stepped forward to offer his hand to Pam. He was tall, his angular, wind-burned face sporting a broad smile. Long, red-blonde hair with a touch of gray was tied back in a pony tail, blowing about his wide shoulders in the wind. He was pretty much what Pam had expected a Swedish sea captain of the era might look like, but a lot more handsome! She took his hand, and tried not to blink like a smitten school-girl.
"Frau Miller, it is such a pleasure to meet you. I am Torbjörn, your captain for the voyage. Allow me to present your ship, a Dutch fluyt, which has been refurbished to help make you more comfortable. We have renamed her the Redbird, in your honor. We are at your service." he ended his welcome with a charming bow.
The captain spoke an understandable, but slightly odd-sounding German, touched by northern dialects, and spiced with the music of the Scandinavian tongues. Even so, he pronounced Redbird in crystal clear English. Pam looked up to see the name painted across the aft in an elegantly curved font, bright crimson with gold trim. She paused then to take the whole thing in. There was some kind of lethal-looking, big gun mounted on her deck, the sight of its polished metal gave her a chill, and she hoped fervently its presence would prove unnecessary. Her gaze continued around the vessel. It was not quite what she had imagined, shorter, stouter, and despite the fresh coat of paint, a bit more used looking than the great old ships of days of yore she had seen in the movies. It didn't quite manage to be ugly, but it was by no means a graceful schooner. Was it really seaworthy? She hid her concerns, and smiled back at the captain.
"Pleased to meet you, Captain Torbjörn, and let me say that I am honored by the renaming and modification of your ship. That was all very thoughtful and no doubt an inconvenience."
This pleased the captain, who obviously saw something beautiful in his vessel that she didn't as he regarded the lumpy looking thing with pride.
"It is our pleasure, Frau Miller, merely a gesture to honor you and our beloved Princess Kristina. We hope to make you and your staff as comfortable as possible during the long voyage. My usual small crew has been augmented by a group of volunteer soldier-sailors from the princess' own guard, you might call them 'marines' in your American English." With a confident smile he switched into heavily accented English. "You will be protected by the very best during our voyage. Now, allow me to welcome you all aboard!"
The captain beckoned them to follow him up the steep gang plank, leading the way with a spry and well practiced step. Pam followed slowly, holding on tightly to the rail ropes, which she was pretty sure were not standard, and looked to have been hastily rigged up for their use. Making a point not to look down at the water below, she stepped onto the decks of the Redbird with a quiet sigh of relief. Mercifully, her hangover was mostly gone, dissipated by the salt air and excitement.
Once assembled in an area of the deck relatively clear of casks, coiled ropes, and sundry other nautical apparatus, the captain asked them to wait for a moment while he made sure their cabins were indeed ready.
As they waited, Dore's face had grown paler than usual, giving her bright red cheeks the appearance of two poppies on a field of snow. Pam smiled, and took her dear friend by the hand, hiding her own grumbling fear as best as she could.
"Don't worry Dore," she said softly to the older woman, "I think I like this captain, and I feel we are in very capable hands."
"Of course, of course!" Dore replied with her usual confident tones, but there was no mistaking the tremble in her well-calloused washerwoman's hands.
Gerbald, for his part, was grinning like a lunatic, looking around the ship as if it were the greatest thing ever to happen to him.
"Ah, the life of a seaman, braving the waves and winds in search of adventure!" he exclaimed, his exuberance bringing a dour scowl from his wife.
"Now he fancies himself a sailor-man, does he?" she said in a quiet tone, so as not to be heard by the busy crew going about their duties around them. "Well, from what I know of the breed, a scoundrel like my brute of a husband here will fit in well, although a pirate's life would suit him better!"
Gerbald merely grinned all the wider, smugly taking Dore's disparaging remarks as compliments. "Do you think so? How fun that would be, the yo-ho-ho and bottles of rum! With luck, I'll have the opportunity!"
"We'll just see about that, you black-hearted fool!" Dore rolled her eyes and blew her usual puff of disgust-filled air his way, while the unrepentant Gerbald continued his happy inspection of their new home for the months to come.
The captain returned soon after, along with a ruddy-looking fellow with a harried-expression on his rather chubby face. "This is my first mate, Herr Janvik. He will escort you to your cabins. We shall be setting sail in an hour's time. I hope you will join us on deck as we bid farewell to Bremen."
"This way, please," the first mate said in rudimentary sounding German. Pam vowed to herself that she would take the opportunity to add Swedish to her growing collection of languages during the long trip. Gerbald was still gawking at the sailors and their sails as they entered the dimness below-decks. Pam gave him a quick whistle.
"Come along, Smee," she called to him in wry tone, "before you get in the way, and they decide to make you walk the plank before we've even left the harbor."
"Ah, another pirate tradition! How grand! It wouldn't do much good though. I am quite unsinkable." Gerbald exclaimed, then chuckled, pleased with himself until Pam heard a dull thud and looked back to see him rubbing his forehead at the spot in which it had bounced off a low beam.
"I wouldn't be so sure, my friend. All those rocks in your head might take you right to the bottom," Pam retorted. She and Dore both had a laugh at Gerbald's expense. He gave them a sheepish smile, and bent low to follow them to the waiting cabins. Pam and Dore exchanged a guilty grin; annoyance or not, Gerbald's boyish antics had served to alleviate the fear they shared. At least they were all together in this mad endeavor.
****
Pam looked down at her bed, which was a rectangular opening in the wall surrounded by storage cabinets, and drawers. It was narrow, and a touch claustrophobic, but the mattress and bedding had been shipped from Grantville, so it would be clean and comfortable. There was a one-foot-tall wooden wall along the outer bedside that must be to keep her from rolling out onto the floor in heavy seas, it had an opening in the middle wide enough for her to allow for exiting and entering. Suddenly tired, she sat down to try it out. She lay her walking stick down between the edge of her heavy, wool blanket, and the thick timbers of the outer hull, a good place to keep it safely out of the way until needed again.
Looking about at her rather a-bit-too-cozy cabin, she saw there was a thick glass porthole letting some of the day's bleak, northern light fall on a fold-away desk. She had requested both, and was glad to see them. She could live without a lot of things, such as a private bath, but a desk she simply had to have, and a bit of natural light was always a good thing. The heavy wooden chair accompanying it was ornately carved in a floral motif, and looked fairly comfortable. She moved over to the desk and sat down. Not too bad! Time to get settled in.
Pam started unpacking her books and writing supplies, which she had insisted on carrying herself in her rucksack along with other precious and irreplaceable items such as her field glasses, and birding scope. After a moment's thought, she stopped. Considering the inherent dangers of the sea voyage to come, she decided to adopt a policy of keeping her most important things in the rucksack at all times, only fishing them out when necessary, and then putting them back as soon as she was done with them. If things went wrong, she could grab that bag and be gone quickly, well worth any inconvenience in the meantime.
During the voyage she intended to work on finishing some of the text for her book, Birds of the USE, and upon arriving in the Mascarenes begin writing about the species she would find there. The thought of this sent a wave of happiness through her. Yes, it was likely to be a hard journey, but the prospect of seeing the unusual birds of far off lands held a current of electric joy. And then there would be the dodo, a creature out of legend, the bird that she was coming to save. The very thought of it made her feel dizzy.
As she put her books and papers back into the rucksack she noticed the stiff corner of a photograph protruding from a dog-eared notebook. She pulled out the up-time style publicity shot the princess had given her on their last meeting, a black and white glossy of a bright eyed Kristina smiling shyly out at her subjects. On a whim, Pam stuck it into the crack between the wall and the low ceiling, a bit of decoration in the otherwise featureless cabin. She found that she liked this strange little ship better now that there was an echo of home in it. Her things were here, she was here, this was her place. She was brought out of her reverie by Dore's knocking, time to go up on deck.
The trip up the Weser River toward the sea was pleasant. They watched Bremen harbor's stolid buildings recede, replaced by farms and villages in vibrant spring colors despite the brooding skies. The rest of their small fleet followed along behind. There were two more fluyts holding the colonists, Annalise and Ide, and their military escort, the modest sized, but well-armed Muskijl brought up the rear. The Muskijl had been a captured imperial warship; it was now close to retirement, and apparently the best the princess could do. When the bosun, a cheerful-looking fellow who had some English told her the name literally meant "muscle," Pam laughed.
"That's good, we might need a little muscle." she grinned at her jest, but only Gerbald, well schooled in up-time English, laughed.
As they came to the end of the bay, the unsmiling first mate came to ask them up to the wheel as the surf would be getting rough, and it would be somewhat drier there. Standing behind the pilot and chatting with the captain, they got their first look at the North Sea, a dark, brooding mass topped with white spray. The wind picked up and was reaching what felt to Pam like gale force as Redbird bounded over the rollers.
"Refreshing, isn't it!" the captain shouted over the wind to his guests, who were beginning to turn alarming shades of green.
"Maybe we should go back to our cabins," Pam managed to shout back. She had never been in high seas before, and felt that her internal organs were jumping into the air, then landing back in new and uncomfortable configurations.
"No, my friends. It is better if you stay here for now, keep your eyes on the horizon and breathe deeply. You will get used to the movement soon enough," he told them, smiling kindly, but with a crinkle of amusement around the corners of his eyes at the landlubber's plight.
"I hadn't expected to be tossed around like a doll in the hands of an angry child," Gerbald muttered, trying to keep his balance as the deck moved beneath his feet. He was struggling mightily to maintain composure, but his face nearly matched the sage-green of his many-pocketed long coat. Pam looked at him and started to laugh, which turned out to be a mistake as her breakfast rushed up to join her chuckles. The captain nodded at a nearby youthful sailor, who gently escorted Pam to the back rail, where she was shortly joined by Dore and then Gerbald in a chorus of retching and spitting.
"Speaking of tossing . . ." Pam said nonchalantly to her friends before another round of vomiting hit her.
The captain, politely declining to observe their suffering, called over his shoulder, "There, you have it out of the way. It happens to us all at least once, and now you shall begin to feel better. Pers, kindly escort our guests below-decks, and get them cleaned up."
The young sailor, who looked to be still in his teens, tugged gently on Pam's coat sleeve, and the three of them meekly followed him down the stairs, nodding at the captain on their way, but too ill and embarrassed to manage eye contact.
"Loving the life at sea now, Greenbeard?" Pam managed to croak at Gerbald.
"Having sacrificed our breakfasts, perhaps the sea gods will be appeased, and provide us with gentler waters."
"May merciful God help us, he has been out here less than an hour and is already becoming a heathen," Dore muttered irritably.