"But I'm supposed to be entering the medical program next year," Linda protested.
"I'll be renting my place and moving in here to look after you, Linda. It'll be just us two girls together," Dorothy Sullivan said.
John knew his daughter well enough to read the horror she was busy concealing. "Or, of course, you could come to Spain with us."
Linda visibly shuddered at that suggestion. "No. Staying with Grandma will be okay."
"Which just leaves Jacob, who will be going to Spain with your mother and me."
"Leave Grantville?" Jacob asked. "But I don't want to. Why can't I stay here with Grandma too, Dad?"
"Because I said so," John said. "Besides, you never know. You might enjoy it."
"But all my friends are in Grantville," Jacob protested.
"You never had trouble making friends when we visited your mom's family in Puerto Rico, so you shouldn't have any trouble making new friends in Spain," John told him. He and Annamarie had already decided that Jacob was coming with them, come hell or high water. There was no way they were leaving him behind, given the group of undesirables he'd been mixing with lately.
May, near Puerto Real, Andalusia
"The bones look to have set properly," Sebastian Ferrer said as he gently ran his hands over Juan's leg.
Juan glared at the man in the brown habit and white belt of a Franciscan lay brother. "And what would you do if they weren't properly set? Break them and try again?" Juan thought he was being sarcastic, but the gentle nod from the heavyset man was anything but reassuring.
"You don't really expect me to believe you'd break my bones if they weren't healing properly?" he demanded.
"I wouldn't enjoy doing it," Sebastian said.
Juan raised his brows. The mauling he'd suffered at the bonesetter's hands when his leg was set gave the lie to that. He was positive the man had smiled all through the procedure.
"The alternative would be that you are left crippled for life because the bones don't heal properly."
Juan looked at his left leg, finally free of its splints. He reached down to scratch the itch that had suddenly started. He had to concede that point. Nobody wanted to be crippled for life. However, it was purely academic, as the man seemed happy with his handiwork. "How long before I can walk again?"
"You could get up right now, with a little help." Sebastian lifted Juan's legs off the bed and carefully set his feet on the floor. "Give me your arms."
Juan reached out, and suddenly he was pulled to his feet.
"We'll just walk to the door and back this time. If someone will take your other side?"
With a servant standing to his left and the bonesetter to his right, Juan slowly shuffled to the door and back. He fell onto his bed and lay down, exhausted after walking a massive twenty feet. "How long before I'm fit?"
"If you don't force the pace and hurt yourself again, maybe six or seven weeks."
Juan winced. "Another six or seven weeks?"
"Maybe eight," Sebastian said.
Mid-May 1635
Annamarie Sullivan leaned on the starboard gunwale of the De Fortuijree and stared at the city in the distance. She'd always wanted to visit Cadiz, and there the city was, just across the bay from where their ship was anchored.
"Is that where we're going?" Jacob asked, tugging on her jacket and pointing across the ship.
Annamarie turned her back on Cadiz and looked across the ship toward Puerto Real. "Yes, that's Puerto Real. The de Aguilera's live somewhere past the city."
Jacob kicked out at one of the strategically placed sand-filled fire-buckets on the deck. "Dad said we were going to be traveling through pirate-infested waters."
"Dad was right. The English Channel is pirate infested.
"But we didn't even see another ship."
She reached out and laid a hand on his shoulder. "Poor thing, nothing exciting ever happens to you, does it?"
Jacob shook off the hand, and glared at her. She grinned at his offended look and offered him the crook of her arm. "Come on. It looks like your father might have all our stuff on the lighter."
"Are you going to use the ladder again, Mom?" The hint of a grin started to displace the scowl on Jacob's face.
Annamarie looked across the deck to the other passengers preparing to disembark using a bosun's chair. "They do look ready to be outraged again, don't they?"
Jacob produced a full-blown smile as he nodded.
"Well then, who are we to disappoint them? I'll follow you and your father down the ladder, just like I did when we stopped over at Amsterdam."
****
Alfonso, the de Aguilera major-domo, stood on the dock watching people disembark from the De Fortuijree, a Dutch armed-merchant of eighty lasts. He was looking for the Americans Alfredo de Aguilera had recruited. He almost missed the female, until he saw her ignore the bosun's chair and climb down the ladder to the lighter below. She looked Spanish, which was why he hadn't thought her to be one of the Americans. However, no Spanish lady would ever climb down a ladder, especially not with sailors waiting below.
Once he'd identified the woman, the rest of the Sullivan family were easy to find. The husband was darker-skinned than his wife, suggesting a life spent working in the sun. Alfonso shuddered at so little care taken of one's complexion. Why, people might mistake him for a peasant. He lowered his telescope and snapped his fingers hopefully.
When nothing happened he looked over his shoulder, and released a sigh. The quality of help was deplorable. "Get up, you lazy clots. The up-timers will soon be here."
Alfonso knew his people, so he didn't rely on just words to get the two peasants moving. He managed to give each of them a solid kick in the rump before they could avoid him. "Hurry up; I want the horses here before they reach the dock." While Sancho and Pedro hurried off Alfonso prepared to greet his employer's newest employees.
"Allow me," he said as he offered the senora a helping hand off the lighter. A surprisingly strong hand gripped his hand and the woman jumped onto the dock.
"Thank you," Annamarie said. "I'm Doctor Sullivan. You wouldn't happen to be here to meet us, would you?"
"Your husband is also Doctor Sullivan?" Alfonso asked, hoping that maybe the up-timers allowed the wives of doctors to use the honorific.
"No, just me."
Alfonso hoped he was able to conceal his horror. A female doctor? How was this blasphemy possible? More importantly, how would the local Franciscan order, which was waiting hopefully for someone to teach them the up-time medicine, going to cope with being instructed by a female?
****
While Jacob got to know the spirited pony he was allocated, John and Annamarie examined the two horses provided for them. One was a stallion, the other a mare. "I think you should take the stallion," John suggested.
"You thinking about your hip?"
It was nearly seventeen years since he'd been invalided out of the US Army after breaking his hip in a parachuting accident, He'd mostly recovered, but . . . "Nah. It's doing the thinking for me. The mare looks nice and quiet."
John helped Annamarie up onto the nearly sixteen-hand stallion before mounting the smaller mare. He was adjusting his stirrup leathers when there was a clatter of hooves and squeals from Jacob's pony. He looked across to see the animal rearing. A glance at the ironmongery in the pony's mouth suggested the source of the problem. Obviously Jacob had forgotten that he wasn't on his old pony, using his normal mouthpiece, and he'd done something to upset the animal. Then Annamarie's stallion decided anything the pony could do, he could do better. Annamarie was caught with her feet out of her stirrups-probably because they had been too long and she was shortening them. But she had her legs clamped tightly around the animal's chest and a hand gripping the saddle just under the pommel, while she used her free hand to bring the animal under control. The whole family had just about been born in the saddle, so he had absolute confidence in both Jacob's and Annamarie's ability to control their mounts, but he didn't want his mount joining in on the fun.