The Great Alone (41 page)

“Very well.” Caleb took the long robe and turned to Raven. “I want you to wear this. Take off that buckskin.”

“It is mine?” Her dark eyes glittered as she stroked the velvet fabric.

“Yes.”

Immediately she grabbed the skirt of her garment and began dragging it up to pull it over her head. Distaste stiffened Dawson’s expression as he turned from the sight of her naked body. “If there is nothing else, sir?”

Caleb nodded a dismissal as he held out the banian so Raven could slip her arms into the sleeves of the kimono-styled garment. Buttons closed the front, fitting the material to her waist and letting the rest flare into a long skirt that brushed the floor. She reveled in the texture of the velvet, feeling it all over with her hands. With the long river of her black hair flowing down her back, she almost looked like a native of India, where the robe style long ago originated. She looked infinitely more civilized, but Caleb wasn’t sure he liked her that way.

“Are you pleased?” He hardly needed to ask. Her hands fondled the gown greedily.

“No man has given me a present like this before. Not even Zachar.” Oblivious of him, she turned to see her reflection in the small mirror fastened to the bulkhead.

“Zachar Tarakanov.”

Her eyes met the reflection of his in the mirror. For an instant she was motionless, betraying the accuracy of his guess. Then she swung around to face him, her expression full of sensual promise.

“I will show Caleb how happy his gift has made me.”

As she moved toward him, he caught hold of her arms and held her away from him. “Do you know he’s alive? He wasn’t killed with the other Russians at the fort.”

“I knew this.”

Her indifference was genuine, he realized, and he suspected her reaction would have been no different if Zachar had been killed in the massacre. As visions of those rotting heads flashed through his mind, he hated her violently. If his own head was among them, she wouldn’t care either, he thought to himself, then threw back his head and laughed. If the positions were reversed, he doubted that he’d feel any remorse himself. He swept her into his arms and carried her to the bunk.

At the end of another week, Caleb deemed it time to move farther south along the coast. When he’d stopped at the last two villages, both had previously traded with another Boston ship in the area and the few furs they’d had left weren’t worth the time spent. He put Raven ashore at a village of her clan, as he had promised.

The brightly striped banian she wore stood out vividly against the shoreline. From the quarterdeck, Caleb watched as the natives mobbed her, the robe creating a considerable sensation. She was soon swallowed by the crowd and he lost sight of her. He felt no regrets. South American, Hawaiian, Oriental, African, now Indian, he’d bedded them all and left them all. It wasn’t likely he’d look back on this one either—or see her again—or recognize her if he did.

The longboat was headed back to the brig. As Caleb turned from the taffrail, he noticed Dawson standing on the waist deck watching him. Women came and went in his life, but Dawson was always there, it seemed. Caleb paused a moment, wondering on that realization. But it would be another two years before he saw Long Wharf again. Two years of few comforts and little recreation. And Dawson knew his tastes … in everything.

Once the longboat was back in its place between the fore and mainmasts, Caleb gave the order to loose the topsails. He watched the men as they scampered up the rigging like so many monkeys. As soon as the sails were freed, one hand remained on each top to overhaul the rigging and light the sails out while the rest of the crew came down to man the sheets, singing out cheerily as they hauled them in.

Within minutes the
Sea Gypsy
was under way, her masts raking, her bowsprit running up. It was down the Northwest coast a few more months, then across the Pacific to Canton, through the dreaded Sunda Strait, and around the Cape of Good Hope across the Atlantic to Boston and home port.

CHAPTER XXIII

Sitka

September 1804

After spending the last two years with his family on Kodiak, Zachar stepped once again onto the beach where the settlement of the Redoubt St. Michael had stood, but he could see no trace of its remains anywhere. There weren’t even markers to identify the graves of the dead, and now hundreds of newly erected little tents were scattered across the clearing. More than three hundred bidarkas lined the beach. The air no longer smelled of death and charred timbers, but of wood smoke and cooking food. Guards were posted all along the beach and hugged nearly every stump that faced the black forest where he had once taken refuge.

A boat lightered more men ashore from the vessels moored in the harbor that had escorted the bidarka fleet to this site. The
Yermack,
the
Alexandre,
the
Rotislav,
and the
Ekatrina,
on which Mikhail had sailed, were all there, lanterns shining from their topgallant mastheads to light the way for stragglers of the bidarka fleet. But all the ships were dominated by the massive 450-ton frigate
Neva
from the Imperial Russian Navy.

Oblivious to the crackling flames, the hammering of tent stakes, and undulating voices, both Russian and Aleut, Zachar thought of Raven and the last time he’d seen her—here on this beach. He wondered if he would ever know whether she had deliberately betrayed him or innocently told her clan of their plans for a feast day. As long as the doubts remained, he couldn’t bring himself to hate her. The guilt for the deaths of his comrades was his; he could not blame her for them.

The crunching of footsteps on the gravel made no impression on him until a hand warmly clasped his shoulder. Startled, he turned. “Zachar.” He recognized the familiar voice and shadowed face of his brother, Mikhail. “I didn’t think it would be so easy to find you.”

During the voyage from Kodiak, they’d had no contact with each other. The last time Zachar had seen him, they’d been at the cabin taking leave of their mother and the lovely stranger who was his fourteen-year-old daughter, Larissa. Then, as now, he’d been conscious of the difference in their stations—Mikhail the navigator, with his seaman’s clothes and smoothly shaven face, and he the hunter, with his kamleika-covered parka and coarse beard.

“How was your journey?” Zachar asked.

“Without incident.” Mikhail looked around him. “This land is just as you described it to me. Even without the charts to guide me, I think I would have found this bay.” He surveyed the crowded camp filled with men who were tending fires, pitching tents, standing guard, hanging wet clothes out to dry. “It may have taken him two years, but Baranov has assembled quite an army.”

“Yes.” The retaking of Sitka had become an obsession of their leader, the newly appointed governor of Russian America. Zachar didn’t share his thirst for vengeance, partly because of his own sense of guilt. The back-glow of a campfire lit the thin, wizened figure Zachar recognized as Baranov. With him was a man wearing the uniform and gold braid of an officer. “Who is that with Baranov?”

“Captain Lisianski from the
Neva.
The frigate was here when we arrived.” Reports had reached Kodiak that two English-built naval ships had sailed from St. Petersburg the previous year carrying the Russian eagles on a round-the-world ambassadorial mission to Japan. The mission was headed by His High Excellency, Imperial Chamberlain Nikolai Rezanov, who had married Shelekhov’s youngest daughter, written the company’s charter, and obtained from the Tsar a trade monopoly for the Russian American Company. No one, not even Baranov, believed the Navy ships would stop at their colony, and they certainly didn’t expect any assistance from them.

“I was told that when the high chamberlain learned about the massacre here at Mikhailovosk from the Hawaiian King, he ordered the
Neva
to come to Baranov’s aid while he continued to Japan.” The large triple-masted warship in the harbor dwarfed the crudely made vessels moored near it that had been built at the shipyards of the colony’s Yakutat settlement on the Alaskan mainland. “The frigate makes our sloops look like fishing smacks.”

“Yes.” But Zachar could summon little interest in the frigate. Tomorrow the combined forces would confront the Kolosh, and he had ambivalent feelings about that. He didn’t notice his brother’s silence or the way Mikhail studied him.

“I hadn’t realized how painful it would be for you to come back to this place,” Mikhail observed. “So many of your friends were murdered here. It’s a miracle you were spared.”

“Yes.” The Russian priest Father Herman, who ran the school on Kodiak that his daughter, Larissa, attended, claimed it was God’s will that he had survived. But Zachar had often wondered. Had it been God’s hand that protected him—or Raven’s? Had it been mere chance that the Kolosh had attacked the fort when he was away from it, or had they waited, at Raven’s insistence, until he left? Did he owe his life to her—or to God? But he couldn’t tell his brother of any of the questions that plagued him without admitting his betrayal.

“I heard Baranov plans to assault the main village tomorrow, the one along the bluff.”

“He will parley for peace with them first,” Mikhail stated.

“They’ll never accept his terms. He wants all the Kolosh to leave Sitka Island. They won’t leave.” Zachar’s sympathies were not with the Kolosh, yet concern for Raven always clouded his thinking.

Somewhere in the large camp, a bow touched the strings of a guzla and scattered voices began to sing the song Baranov had composed that summer, called “The Spirit of Russian Hunters.” Other voices joined in and Zachar paused to listen to the growing chorus.

“The will of our hunters, the spirit of trade,

On these far shores a new Muscovy made,

In bleakness and hardship finding new wealth

For Fatherland and Tsardom.

Sukharev’s towers old Moscow adorn,

The bells ring at evening, the guns boom at morn;

But far off’s this glory of Ivan the Great—

We have naught but our own bravery.

Our Father Almighty, we pray for Thine aid

That Muscovite arms may here be obeyed,

That we may dwell in amity and peace

Forever in this region.”

As the last note faded, a hush settled over the camp. Exchanging a few quiet words, Mikhail and Zachar parted company. Mikhail was worried. Lately, it seemed his brother preferred to be alone. He’d been like that ever since the British captain had arrived at Kodiak with the survivors of the massacre and forced Baranov to pay a ransom for their return. Zachar had given a full accounting of all that had happened at Sitka, but rarely ever spoke of it again.

In the beginning, Mikhail had been willing to blame his older brother’s moodiness on the dreadful experience. Now he was less sure that was the reason. His brother seemed reluctant to fight. Mikhail was beginning to wonder whether his older brother was a coward.

A long row of native log dwellings lined the shore beyond the tideline. Low openings were cut in their gabled ends, which faced the water. Pillars carved with heraldic symbols that identified the clan house flanked the doorways. Planks hewn from spruce framed the walls, and split logs formed the sloping roofs of the buildings, which averaged thirty feet in width and forty in length. Gravehouses, miniatures of the dwellings, sat atop poles and contained the ashes of the dead.

Raven stood on the planked platform outside the doorway to her clan house, not far from the steps leading to the ground. Word of Nanuk’s return had spread quickly through her village. All day she and her people had watched the strange canoes of the Aleuts tow the tall ship with the big cannons close to the shores of their village. Now her attention was centered on the canoe carrying the village chief, her brother, and her husband, Runs Like a Wolf. The chief had gone to the ship to demand that Nanuk explain his action.

As the canoe pulled away from the ship to return to the village, a cannon boomed, belching a puff of smoke. Raven flinched at the loud sound and saw the splash of water well beyond the canoe’s bow. Several babies in the village started crying, although not a whimper of alarm came from the toddler at her feet as he tried to climb up her leg. Raven quickly reached down and picked up her young son, ready to run for safety, but the ship’s cannon wasn’t fired again.

Satisfied there was no imminent danger, Raven relaxed slightly and looked at her year-and-a-half-old son. She smiled proudly at the absence of any fear in Gray Wolf’s expression as he gazed with wide-eyed curiosity in the direction from which the loud noise had come. His hair was black and straight, its texture soft and silky, his complexion was swarthy and ruddy-cheeked. But his eyes—their dark centers were ringed by a color that was neither gray nor blue, but a combination of both.

Young Gray Wolf pointed toward the shore and jabbered excitedly. The canoe had landed. Raven waited impatiently as her husband made his way to the clan house where they lived. He walked past her without saying a word and ducked to enter the dwelling. Quickly she followed him inside.