The Great Alone (34 page)

“Help me,” Tasha called.

Baranov waded over to her. Hooking Zachar’s arm around his neck, he half carried and half walked Zachar to the sand, then lowered him to the ground. Tasha was right behind them. Sea water gurgled from his mouth, then Zachar’s stomach muscles contracted sharply, expelling vomit and more water. He started coughing—and breathing. Tasha wiped the slime from the corner of his mouth, then looked at Zachar. He sat on the sand, hunched over, still laboring for air.

“Have you seen Katya?” he asked weakly.

“No.”

Tasha looked toward the boiling sea, but all she could see was Baranov’s shiny pale head against the dark ocean. He was wading in water up to his hips, trying to reach a foundering woman—Katya. Leaving Zachar, Tasha hurried into the bay. She could just make out her daughter-in-law’s cries for help.

As Baranov reached Katya, she shoved her young daughter into his arms. “Take my baby.”

Tasha saw the heavy wooden beam as the wave action lifted one end and spiraled it around. “Katya!” She screamed the warning, but it was no use. She wasn’t there any more. “No.” Tasha refused to believe it and waded deeper into the waves.

Baranov met her and thrust Larissa into her arms, then hurried away to help others. Tasha hugged the crying child to her bosom and stared at the place where she had last seen her son’s wife, mindless of the waves breaking against her legs and the undertow tugging at her feet. She watched for a long time.

Eventually, the shiverings and sobbings of her wet, cold granddaughter as she trembled from shock penetrated Tasha’s grieving vigil. Slowly she looked down at the black-haired little girl and rubbed her cheek against the child’s forehead, closing her eyes tightly. After a moment, she lifted her head and waded back to the sandbar, where Zachar waited.

For what was left of the night, they huddled together, with only the heat generated by their own bodies for warmth.

As dawn came, the full extent of the devastation could be seen. Not a single building was left standing intact. The impact of the wave had toppled them all, smashed them into pieces that were scattered over the landspit. Some goods and supplies were lost or damaged. Most of the bidarka fleet had been broken up or washed out to sea. Miraculously, few lives were lost. And the sloop
Sv Simeon
sat at anchor in the basin, the landspit taking the brunt of the wave and sparing the ship.

In the settlement, the property loss was tremendous for Russian and native alike. The Koniaga Aleuts were convinced the sea gods had been angered, and they moaned over their fate. Tasha made an effort to search their cabin’s rubble, but her heart wasn’t in it.

Larissa came crying to her, wanting her mother. “She drowned in the sea,” Tasha answered plainly.

But death was a concept beyond a two-year-old’s understanding. “Where is she?”

“In the sea.” Where Tasha’s brother, Walks Straight, had died.

“No.” Zachar disputed her answer. “She is in heaven. We should pray for her.” He took his daughter’s hand and made her kneel down next to him. He bowed his head and repeated a series of disjointed phrases he’d heard the priest say, then crossed himself and took his daughter’s hand, making the sign of the cross for her.

A little while later in the morning, Baranov called everyone together and announced the village would not be rebuilt here. He was moving the settlement to the eastern side of Kodiak, where there was timber and high ground. Furthermore, he was detailing a party of men to sail immediately with Ismailov on the
Sv Simeon
to the site he’d chosen and to begin chopping down trees for lumber to build the new town. He sent the Koniaga Aleuts home, instructing them to assemble at the new village in a month’s time to make their hunt. No matter what the setbacks, he was determined to find locations for new outposts as Shelekhov had ordered.

His energy and determination revitalized the camp and transformed the apathy and listlessness of his men into action and purpose. Not even old Ismailov argued with his plan. Instead he immediately set out to make his ship ready to sail. Those not detailed to go with the navigator set to work salvaging everything they could from the scene of destruction.

The new site was surrounded by forest that provided a ready supply of building materials. Its natural harbor was not as large as Three Saints Bay, but it was deeper and better protected. Baranov called his Kodiak site St. Paul and worked alongside his men with an axe. Determined not to lose the summer hunting season, he was content to have the walls in place to be roofed later in the summer after they returned from the hunt. When the Koniaga Aleuts arrived at the appointed time in nearly four hundred and fifty bidarkas, Baranov left behind a small contingent of men at St. Paul and set out with the hunters.

It was a long busy summer for Tasha. With a child to raise, she didn’t have time to actively grieve. Existence was always a struggle in this land.

When the first of the bidarka fleet was sighted beyond the harbor islands, Tasha collected Larissa and joined the throng of Russian hunters and other women and children who waited at the shore. Zachar rode in the rear hatch of a two-man bidarka, paddled by an Aleut in the front. There were plenty of eager hands to help land the boats. As Zachar’s was pulled ashore, Tasha waited to welcome him, gladness running through her heart at the safe return of her oldest son. Larissa crowded against her legs.

As Zachar passed his musket to Tasha, she noticed the underlying paleness in his face and the vaguely pained look in his blue eyes. Her gaze sharpened with concern. He kept his left arm close to his body and didn’t move it at all as he climbed out of the skin-boat.

“You are hurt,” she said.

He paused in front of her, then reached for the musket she held. “The Kolosh attacked us several nights ago when we were camped ashore. One of their arrows went into my shoulder.” Still favoring it, Zachar crouched down to speak to his daughter.

“Come,” Tasha ordered. “I want to look at the wound.”

Inside their new crude quarters, Tasha examined his shoulder, satisfying herself that the flesh around the arrow hole didn’t look infected. Its location was high, assuring her that only flesh and muscle had been pierced and no damage had been done to his lungs. She packed it with a poultice of herbs and wrapped it in place, then helped Zachar put on his red shirt.

“What happened?”

“They attacked our camp just before dawn when the mist is thickest,” Zachar said. “Our guards had fallen asleep. I heard their war cries and woke up. They came screaming at us out of the dark mists. They wore helmets and strange, ugly masks over their faces. They had vests made of wood and carried war shields of wood. Unless they were very close to us when we fired our muskets, the bullets would not go through the wood.” He paused and shook his head. “The Aleuts were too frightened of the Kolosh to fight. They would have killed us all if someone hadn’t managed to get the small cannon into position.”

“Were many killed?” Tasha realized how very close she had come to losing another of her family. Her brother was dead; Mikhail was gone, maybe never to come back. She had no one left other than Zachar and her granddaughter, Larissa.

“Only two Russians. Nine of the Aleuts.”

A shudder vibrated her shoulders at the thought that Zachar could so easily have been one of them. “The Kolosh are too dangerous. Maybe now Baranov has learned to avoid their lands.”

“The sea otter lives in Kolosh waters, too. The English ships and Boston ships trade with the Kolosh. Baranov will not let this attack by the Kolosh stop him from going there again.”

Tasha sobered at his statement. The Russians had never let anything stand in their way of taking the sea otter—not distance or natives. Her brother had fought them at Unalaska. Many Russians had died, but more had come to take their place. The Kolosh wouldn’t stop them either.

From outside the hut came the shouted cry, “A ship!”

It wasn’t the old and weathered
Sv Simeon
that sailed into the narrow harbor, but a trim schooner-rigged packet bearing the name
Orel,
the Eagle. Again the inhabitants of the village thronged the shoreline, Tasha, Zachar, and Larissa among them. The word raced through the crowd that the packet was a supply ship from Shelekhov. Tobacco, flour, reinforcements, mail, news of home, vodka—they were here at last.

Tasha scanned the faces of the men on deck. Her gaze lingered on a tall, lanky figure, dark of hair and eyes. Hesitantly she touched Zachar’s arm, not taking her eyes from the young man on the ship. She held her breath, an impossible hope rising.

“Mikhail,” she murmured. But was it her son? Could he have changed so much? She didn’t know. She wasn’t certain. Her fingers tightened on Zachar’s arm. It seemed to take so long for the first boat to come ashore. Finally it landed. As she watched the young man bound from it, there was no more doubt in her mind. “Mikhail!”

Turning, he saw her. A smile lighted his face, and he broke into a trot, heading directly to her. Tasha started crying with happiness as she moved forward to embrace the son who had left her as a boy and had come back a man of sixteen. Her fingers trembled as she touched the short dark whiskers that outlined his jaw. His face swam in her tearblurred vision, distorting the image just enough to let her see traces of boyhood softness in his features.

“You have come back.” She could hardly believe it. She had almost despaired of ever seeing him again. “I thought there would be too many new places and things for you to see and you would stay.”

Mikhail laughed at her fears, and the laugh had the deep-throated sound of a man. “I have much to tell you about all that I’ve seen.” His glance included Zachar. “And there are many more places I will see. I have been to navigator’s school and learned how to sail ships.” His arm remained about Tasha’s shoulders as he shifted to greet his older brother. Then he noticed the little girl standing beside Zachar and crouched down to her level. “Who are you?” He smiled at Larissa, who quickly hid behind Tasha’s skirts.

“My daughter,” Zachar answered for her. “Her name is Larissa.” He studied Mikhail carefully.

Briefly Tasha related the story of her daughter-in-law’s drowning. Mikhail sobered, but it didn’t last for long. This occasion was too full of joy for all of them to let death cast its shadow over it.

Now there was too much to tell, many gaps to fill in, many incidents to relate. So much had happened to each of them during the years they were apart. They spent most of the day filling in those missing years.

That night, Mikhail and Zachar attended the praznik Baranov gave to celebrate the arrival of the long-awaited supply ship. Fresh meat was roasted over fires that were built at the village’s new square, The huge vat of fermenting kvass was filled with buckets of vodka from the ship’s cargo. Everyone had a mug of it and a packet of tobacco uncut with willow bark.

Again and again, toasts were drunk to the party’s guest of honor, the skipper of the
Orel.
Yakov Egoryevich Shiltz, they called the burly Englishman whose red hair and multitude of tattoos marked him as different from them. James Shields, a shipbuilder by trade and a lieutenant in the Russian Imperial Navy, always answered their salutes with his own—fracturing the Russian language in the process, much to the promyshleniki’s amusement.

The tidal wave at Three Saints Bay had destroyed the few musical instruments the settlement had had, but two of the newly arrived reinforcements had brought their guzlas with them and the praznik rang with music. The promyshleniki raided the Aleut dwellings and hauled the girls to their celebration. They ladled the vodka-laced kvass into cups for their girls and whirled them about, cavorting in high-stepping abandon. They danced and sang the mournful Siberian ballads of their homeland.

Mikhail was among the first to leave the party, staggering off to the bunkhouse with his arm around an Aleut girl; and Zachar wasn’t long to follow him. But it was dawn before the last man staggered into his bed.

Meanwhile Baranov read his mail and the long letter of instruction from Shelekhov. It reiterated the need to establish new colonies, especially on the southeast coast. To that end, Shelekhov had sent Shields to him. Baranov was to begin building ships to accomplish these goals.

PART TWO

Southeast Alaska

CHAPTER XX

Sitka Sound

Late Spring 1802

The distinctive truncated cone of Mount Edgecumbe marked the entrance to Sitka Sound, its snow-capped peak blending with the heavy clouds. The shores of the main island were forested with towering stands of cedar, spruce, and fir, a nearly impenetrable mass of ferns and bushes growing in their shade. More islands dotted its coastal waters, adding to the maze of bays, fiords, and estuaries. Bald-headed eagles spiraled slowly in the sky that they shared with flocks of seabirds.

The copper-bottomed brig the
Sea Gypsy,
out of Salem, Massachusetts, nosed her way into the sound. A year’s exposure to the elements had faded her bright yellow waist to the dark green of her topsides, but the gingerbread trim on her stern and the quickwork on her bow were undamaged by the beating the brig had taken sailing around the Horn. She was small and well built, handy and fast, her size and maneuverability making her ideally suited for the intricacies of the Northwest coast. Some in the sea trade considered brigs like the
Sea Gypsy
the pirate’s own vessel.