Winds of Time by Sarah Woodbury Page A

voyage.”
    The captain opened his mouth as if to speak,
seemed to think better of it, and then blurted out his thoughts
anyway. “But, Madam! The Archbishop of Canterbury has forbidden
Jewish physicians to practice on English Christians.”
    The light dawned. I had momentarily
forgotten about this odious era of English history.
    “ Then it’s a good thing
we’re not English, isn’t it?” I swept up the gangplank past
him.
    “ It is, indeed, Madam.” The
captain barked a laugh behind me. “It is indeed.”
    I found myself on board a
single-masted, single-ruddered, cargo vessel that was larger than I
had initially thought. Did I want to know what goods he was hauling
illegally to Wales? Probably not. It could be food, since drugs were an unlikely
source of illicit income in the thirteenth century. The hatch on
the main deck was open, revealing a dark space below decks. Two
low-ceilinged cabins sat on the deck at the rear of the boat, one
for me and one for the captain. Where was the physician
staying? Please not in the cargo
hold!
    I turned around, just as one of the sailors
put my satchel on board the ship. Morgan stood at Marc’s stirrup.
He hadn’t actually left yet. Marc nodded at something Morgan said
and then looked at me.
    I raised my hand. “Thank you, Marc.”
    He hesitated, and then returned my
salutation, before grasping the reins of both his horse and mine
and heading back the way we’d come. Meanwhile, a different sailor
picked up my satchel, opened the cabin door, and gestured that I
should follow him inside.
    “ Where should I put this,
Madam?” he said, in Welsh.
    “ In the corner is fine,” I
said.
    He dropped it on the floor and left. I
surveyed the space that would be my living quarters for the next
few days. The furniture included a single chair and table, which
was bolted to the floor, and a cloth sling hanging from the ceiling
in one corner. It was a hammock, though the captain wouldn’t have
used the word and I hadn’t thought they were known in Europe before
the Spanish Conquest. It made me scoff yet again at all historians
didn’t get quite right.
    I exited my cabin to find
the captain just closing the door of the cabin beside mine.
Glancing at me, he pulled it shut, but not before I saw the figure
of a man, sitting at a table in the far corner. The physician. I was relieved not to
have to think the worst of Captain Morgan.
    “ We sail within the hour,
Madam,” the Captain said.
    “ Thank you.” I followed him
up the ladder to the top deck. He indicated that I could sit under
the canopy at the rear of the boat. I did as he suggested and
watched the sun set. It wasn’t clear to me how, exactly, the
captain was going to navigate us to Wales in the dark. The
thirteenth century might not be pre-hammock, but we were definitely
pre-sextant.
    The Isle of Man was some distance south and
west of Silloth, the village at which we were docked. I couldn’t
see the island from where I sat. Hopefully, Captain Morgan had an
astrolabe, and between that and dead reckoning, he could find the
way.
    This proved to be the case, at least for the
initial stage of our journey. It took us all night to sail to the
Isle of Man, and all of the next day to reach Keill Moirrey, a
fishing village on the south end of the island. Because Scotland,
not England, ruled the Isle of Man in this time, the village could
offer us a safe haven.
    Unfortunately, smooth sailing or not, within
an hour of leaving Silloth and entering the Irish Sea, I was
hanging over the side of the boat, praying for the journey to end.
The crew managed to refrain from openly laughing at me, but I could
see laughter in their eyes—when I could open mine, that is. As a
teenager, I had once gone deep sea fishing with my aunt and uncle.
I’d caught a tuna in that first hour of relative peace, and spent
the remaining eight hours on the boat lying on a cushion feeling
ill. I’d avoided small boats—any boat, really—ever since. The
memory