Friendship's Bond (26 page)

Maija’s body had tensed, her breathing suddenly quick and shallow. At the rim of the lamp’s yellow spill the priest, taking his leave, turned at the sound then, with Maija’s sons at his heels, came to stand beside her. Telling Alec there was no cause to be afraid he nodded to the eldest son who gently lowered his mother to her chair.

‘
Restlessness breathes over the land . . . death waits in the shadows . . . its hand moves . . .
’

The woman’s unblinking eyes shone like polished stone as they stared at a scene no one else could see. Her voice, at first a trembling whisper, became almost a cry as she jerked forward and reached out her hands as if to hold something.

‘
. . . the eagle . . .
’

Words the priest had murmured sounded afresh in Ann’s mind.

‘
. . . the eagle is pushed from its nest, its wings are broken . . .
’

What had it meant? Once more fully in the present, Ann asked herself the question she had put to the priest but he had supplied no answer, nor could she. Twice before she had seen the woman caught as by some unseen hand, twice watched as she seemed to look upon some other world, yet each time she had spoken of it to the priest the man had appeared reluctant to discuss the matter.

Did his religion forbid him to accept what her own grandmother had often referred to as ‘the second sight’? Did he think perhaps Maija’s senses were beginning to wander?

She took the folded linen to the chest of drawers, still dwelling on the events following rapidly on that evening, events which had her smuggled from the village of Ruotsinpyhtää in the hours before dawn.

The priest had called at Maija’s home a little after breakfast the morning following the woman’s strange behaviour. There were men, strangers to the village, one of whom Maija’s sons recognised as the man they had beaten. They might want only to buy fish and beer to take back to their own vessel but Maija’s sons had sent word of their suspicions to the priest.

‘
You should come no more to the church
,’ he had told her after a hushed conversation with Maija. ‘
You do not go beyond the walls of this house, nor will the boy
.’

Did he think those men had come to take revenge for what had befallen a comrade, to help him gain what had been denied?

‘
There is great unrest in Finland, family disagrees with family, friend opposes friend, dissension spreads town to town ever more widely.
’

But why insist she and Alec remain indoors? They had disagreed with no one.

He had fingered the heavy gold cross seeming to search for the right answer and when it came his voice was heavy with sadness.

‘
A spark in a hayloft can burn down the barn, the barn can spread fire to the house, from a house through a town. Should those men be what we call “Red” cadres, men intent on overthrowing this country’s government, they will use any means of fomenting trouble. I would not have you be the spark that sets Ruotsinpyhtää ablaze.
’

She had of course agreed to his request and though she would miss those moments in the pretty little church, the walks along the river bank, their confinement would ensure Alec continued to rest.

Ann glanced from the window at a sky suddenly darkened with threatening rain clouds but her eyes seemed to see only the lamplit gloom of a small room, a boy lying on a truckle bed to the side of a black iron stove obediently swallowing medicine from a spoon held to his lips by an elderly grey-haired woman, a woman who smiled at a young man entering the room. But the smile was quickly gone. She reached for her bright knitted shawl, answering the young man with brief hurried words, and left the house.

Ann watched herself ask if anything was wrong while the young man, not understanding her words yet obviously reading correctly the anxiety in her eyes, answered by bending his knees, placing his hands together with his eyes closed before straightening and making the sign of the cross to head and chest.

‘
She is gone to church
,’ Alec laughed, delighted at guessing the object of the performance, ‘
Lars is saying his mother is gone to church
.’

But why so hastily?

It had remained unsaid. While she took hot water from the stove to wash utensils used in the preparation of poultice and medicine, the young man Lars amused Alec with shadow pictures, animals and birds his hands and fingers created in the glow of the lamp.

Then Lars was no longer in the room, Maija was taking garments from a deep chest, putting some to one side while depositing others on the cleared table, as Alec lay asleep. A peaceful scene yet Ann felt the tension of it throb again in her veins.

The priest, half hidden by the well of shadows, spoke softly to Maija then beckoned to the younger woman at Alec’s bedside. He began to speak rapidly, only realising he was doing so in Finnish when Ann shook her head.

‘
Forgive . . . forgive
.’ He shook his own head briefly before he went on. ‘
Lars comes to warn the strangers in the village are not come for the buying of fish and beer nor are they Finn. The one with the bruised face is Russian but his companions Lars tells are German. They are like to be part of the force supplied by that country to assist our government suppress the revolutionists. This I fear poses danger for us all
.’

‘
Danger . . . I don’t understand!
’

‘
Germany and England are at war, should you and the boy be discovered here you could both be taken prisoner and Maija and her family – maybe the whole village – punished for sheltering you.
’

‘
But Alec might not be English, we can’t be certain.
’

The priest turned momentarily to the sleeping boy and in the dimness it seemed his lips moved in silent prayer.

‘
We can be certain he is not Finn. But that I fear might have little relevance; the fact of his being with you, an English woman, will arouse suspicion and seeing what I have of those men leads to the belief interrogation would be far from gentle; the boy . . .
’ he glanced again towards the truckle bed, ‘
the boy would suffer greatly
.’

Ann saw her own reaction, saw herself reach to wake the sleeping Alec, saw the black-robed figure catch her by the arm.

‘
Not yet, let him sleep.
’

‘
But we wouldn’t want Maija or anyone to suffer because of us. We have to leave now, before it is too late
.’

‘
No, the risk of being seen is too great. In the hour before dawn Aarno and Berndt will come for you. You and the boy will go with them to the fishing. They will try to get you to England, but the journey will not be easy for there are enemy ships in both the Baltic and the North Sea.
’

Maija’s sons came as promised.

Beyond the window sounds drifted on the warm afternoon, clucking hens scratching in the yard, grunts of Betsy and her piglets snuffling at the trough, an occasional moo of cows grazing in the meadow, but Ann stood in a world of blackness, a sharp wind biting at her face.

Maija had sorted clothing for her from the chest: trousers, a thick wool jersey topped by a thicker jacket, a bright knitted cap which completely covered her hair and forehead. She held on tightly to Alec with one hand, her own clothes bundled in a cloth bag gripped in the other. Above them cloud heavy and black scudded across the sky; shafts of pale intermittent moonlight played over streets so quiet it seemed the very earth slept.

‘
Hei!
’

Ann seemed to watch a group of figures, their shapes dark silhouettes exposed in the open space stretching between houses and river bank.

‘
Hei!
’

With this second ‘hello’ a man shuffled from a doorway, a flash of moonlight revealing something held in his hand. Was the man holding a gun? Her memory of the episode aboard the ferry made her gasp but Aarno swiftly shushed her as he pushed her behind him. A flash of steel blade glinted in the same brief break in the cloud; he murmured softly to his brother who, catching hold of Alec’s free hand, urged them towards the river.

Stumbling after Berndt, dreading every step on that unfamiliar ground would have her fall headlong, a further shout made her nerves scream with fear in case the man’s noise woke the village, and brought on to the street the very people they were attempting to avoid. Then, from the well of shadow cast by a building, another figure emerged, weaving drunkenly towards the one now lifting chest-high the object he held.

‘
Olut
.’ A man’s voice laughed, errant moonbeams glistening on the bottle waving above his head. ‘
Olut ei . . . koskenkova kyllä
.’

‘
He say no
olut,
no beer
, koskenkova –
vodka – is better, no trouble more
.’

Berndt’s laboured explanation as the drunken pair turned back in the direction of the houses left a sob of relief in Ann’s throat as Aarno rejoined them, a murmur from him bringing a grin to his brother’s face, a grin echoed when moments later Lars appeared at their side with an empty bottle in his hand.

Fish! Ann’s nose wrinkled at the pungent recollection. They had joined the larger fishing vessel anchored off the mouth of the river, Aarno and Berndt helping herself and Alec on to the deck, Lars carrying her bundle of clothes. Alec had settled immediately, helping with the gutting of fish when preparing meals, working alongside Lars at the nets, comforting her when her stomach rebelled at the sight of food. How many days had it taken for the promised ‘sea legs’? She had not counted but at last she had been able to go on deck. As on her journey to Russia to join her parents the very vastness of the sea, the sheer boundless expanse of water marked by nothing but the vessel on which they sailed, held her speechless. Aarno and his brothers had smiled, trying with their limited knowledge of English to tell her this was the way they preferred, that they hoped to meet no ship that was not a fishing boat.

But their hopes had been dashed. Fresh pictures sprang to Ann’s mind, pictures of a grey overcast sky, of waves chopping fractiously at the sides of the boat, of Lars rushing Alec below deck, Berndt directing her to sit on a coil of rope beside which was a bucket of freshly caught fish, sharp movements of one hand down chest and stomach indicating she begin to gut them.

What followed had been a nightmare of fear.

A boat grey as the waves it sailed upon, a gun mounted on its deck, had drawn alongside; two men in dark blue clothing and round caps were coming aboard, the rifles in their hands jerking accompaniment to staccato demands. But it was the flag stretched taut in the breeze, a flag portraying a large black cruciform shape whose narrowed inner edges were overlain with a white circle and at whose heart stood a crowned eagle with wings outstretched that had held her gaze: the imperial war flag of the German Kaiser.

‘
. . . the eagle is pushed from its nest
 . . .’

Maija’s muttered words echoed. Was it this flag she had stared at with that strange vacant look? Was this the eagle she had spoken of?

‘
. . . its wings are broken . . .
’

The wings of the eagle of that flag were not broken, they were spread powerfully, arrogantly wide, every contour seeming to express challenge.

At the loud insistent bark of an order shouted over the screech of wind Ann’s mental vision switched to where Berndt stood beside open and empty fish boxes, the shrug of his shoulders and a nod of the head towards nets still in the water signifying a lack of catch.

Irritation lending force the sailor kicked viciously at the nearest box then strode up to the bucket.

‘
Ja
?’ he snorted eyeing the fat silver-scaled contents. Then again, ‘
Ja
?’ but in a different tone. Ann shivered with the memory. There was no irritation, only a breathy almost hissed approval followed by a strong hand fastening about her wrist and jerking her roughly to her feet.

‘
Nein
,’ his companion called, glancing towards their own vessel.

The laughed reply held no meaning but the grip on her wrist as he dragged her towards the hatch had screamed its reason in her brain.

Berndt’s cry of protest and his move to help her, were halted by a rifle jabbed to his middle. Her captor had flicked a thumb to his nose adding insult to another coarse laugh, then letting his own rifle fall to the deck had flung her face down across the closed hatch, his hands throwing her heavy jacket up over her shoulders before snatching at the waistband of her trousers.

The buttons snapping off, the slide of cloth!

Ann felt again the sting of her forehead, the pressure of a hand heavy on the back of her head forcing it against the wooden hatch cover, the touch of rough fingers on her waist.

Lars waved a bottle raised in each fist in an attempt to distract the attacker. But welcome as was the proffered vodka the drinking of it was to wait.