Read Online Winds of Time by Sarah Woodbury - Free Book Online

I wasn’t eighteen anymore.
    Aaron didn’t question me further, however,
because a second later a loud rushing sound came from outside. In
unison, we looked towards the doorway, which I had left open for
propriety’s sake. Rain beat on the deck so hard I could barely see
the wood through the rush of water. The boat had been rolling more
and more as Aaron and I had been talking, but our conversation had
distracted me from the rocky feeling in my stomach. Now my
attention was drawn to it, and the intense queasiness returned. I
must have paled because Aaron hurried to his herbal collection and
began taking down bottles.
    “ I cannot promise the
immediacy of the cure,” he said, stirring one powder and then
another into a glass of wine. “By rights you should have taken this
before we left land, for it to reach full potency by the time we
reached the open sea.”
    “ Anything to help me.” I
gurgled my unhappiness, my head in my hands. Aaron handed me the
wine.
    I gazed at it, not dubiously, but suddenly
wary of medieval medicine I didn’t know anything about. “What’s in
it?”
    “ Ginger, basil, and
peppermint are the best herbs for nausea. Their tastes don’t go
well together, however, and usually I use just one, infused in a
tea. I have no hot water here and thus, I ground the herbs to
powder and mixed them with wine. This particular concoction is
predominantly ginger. I am out of peppermint.”
    Feeling like I had to drink it, if only so
Aaron wouldn’t think I mistrusted him, I sipped the drink. It
didn’t taste too bad—a good thing because that alone could have
made me vomit. I sipped some more and thanked him as he returned to
his chair.
    “ What brings you to this
ship?” I said, trying to distract myself from my stomach. “Captain
Morgan told me that you’d saved his daughter’s life. Why are you
leaving England?”
    “ I may have saved her life,
but I lost my wife and daughter in the same sickness.”
    “ I am so sorry!” I said.
“How terrible for you!”
    “ Fortunately, Samuel, my
son, was not with us and was spared.”
    The silence stretched out and I was about to
prompt him again, when he spoke. “I have worried about the status
of Jewry in England for many years. King Henry took our money and
allowed us a living, such as it was, but his son, Edward, stripped
us of our wealth and standing. He has even closed the synagogues.
Many refuse to see the danger, but I am free to make my way in the
world. If a more hospitable land exists, I will try to find
it.”
    “ And you think that might be
Wales?” I said.
    “ Prince Llywelyn exhibits
few of the excesses of his English cousins. He doesn’t persecute
the Jews, and he himself is under the interdict of excommunication.
He ignores this by worshipping among the Cistercians, who have no
love for the Jews, I admit, but their rule is more tolerant than
that of their English brethren.”
    “ I see,” I said, loving the
formality of his vocabulary, and thinking of all the people who
left Europe for America over the centuries for the freedom to
practice their religion in peace. That was still over three hundred
years in the future. Aaron’s decision to sail to Wales was only a
first step.
    Aaron tilted his head to one side as if
curious. “For some reason, I believe you really do see. How is that
possible?”
    “ It is one of things I can’t
tell you right now, without having to lie,” I said. “And I am tired
of lying.”
    Aaron nodded and then looked more closely at
me. “Your face is turning green. ” He said this if making an
unimportant observation.
    “ I feel
terrible.”
    “ Let us walk a little,”
Aaron said. “Perhaps the captain would allow me on the deck to
escort you to the side of the boat.”
    I nodded and Aaron took my arm. We walked
through the door and then a few paces to the left, trying to stay
in the shelter of the slight overhang that protected us from the
rain. I gripped the rail, but then saw with horror how