The Great Alone (44 page)

He halted in front of her, his blackened face shining in the half-light of dusk. The red painted circles that ringed his eyes made him appear all the more menacing as he glared at her, angry that she had failed to seek his permission and that she had shown her unfaithfulness to him and shamed him in front of the Russians.

“You go back to the tent,” he ordered in their tongue.

“You go back to the tent.” She could feel the hilt of the knife that was strapped to Zachar’s side and shifted slightly to bring it more easily within her reach.

“You will do as I say.” Infuriated by her defiance, he grabbed for her arm to force her into obedience.

But Raven eluded his grasp and snatched Zachar’s knife from its sheath, then flashed its blade in front of her toad of a husband. “I will stay with Zachar.” This time she spoke in Russian.

After drawing back in surprise, he took a threatening step forward, cursing her roundly. But Zachar intervened, as she had known he would. “Leave her alone.” He pulled his pistol and leveled the barrel at him.

“Zachar. In the name of the Holy Saints, what do you think you’re doing?” The one Zachar had called his brother laid a restraining hand on Zachar’s arm. “They have come in peace to treat with Baranov.”

“I have no more wish to live with you,” Raven declared contemptuously. “It shames me to be called the wife of one who is no more than frog’s water.”

“I have no wish for you to be my wife.”

“Then I am no more your wife and you are no more my husband.” She lowered the knife, satisfied now that she had provoked that admission from him. The gifts exchanged at marriage wouldn’t have to be returned as long as the desire to separate was mutual.

He pressed his lips grimly together, realizing how she had trapped him into it. Then he looked at Zachar with narrowed eyes. “You want this woman?” he asked in Russian.

“Yes.”

“Give two chisels and one blanket. She yours all time.”

“No.” Raven angrily protested. “He agrees the marriage is no more. You have to give him nothing.”

“I will pay what he asks.”

“No.” She turned on her former husband and shouted accusations and insults at him. Soon he was yelling back, calling her a witch and other equally vile things.

Within minutes, their loud voices had attracted the attention of those in the tent. Zachar had mixed feelings when he saw Baranov emerge. Nothing he’d tried had been successful in stopping this argument. Neither had allowed him to get more than two words in.

“What is going on here?” But not even Baranov’s initial demand gained their silence. He took the pistol from Zachar’s hand and fired it into the air. The explosion had the desired effect. “Now what is all this about?”

Zachar told him, then Raven attempted to give her side of it, only to be interrupted by her warrior husband. Baranov held up the gun, once again demanding silence, then looked at Zachar. “You want this woman?”

“I want her. This is my son.” He held the child more closely in his arms, confident Baranov would understand. After all he had two children by the Indian woman he lived with whom he greatly adored. “I am willing to pay the price he asks for her, although Raven claims he isn’t entitled to it.”

Baranov made a slight bow in Raven’s direction. “I compliment the lady for so stridently protecting your interests. However, in the name of peace and good will, the price will be paid.” While the interpreter translated his answer for the benefit of the surrounding Kolosh, Baranov murmured to Zachar, “The items will be charged to your account with the company and the amount deducted from your earnings.”

Not even Raven chose to argue with Nanuk’s decision, and the matter was settled. Frog of the Forest was presented with two chisels and one blanket, and Raven became Zachar’s woman.

Later that week Baranov performed a crude baptismal ceremony, christening Zachar’s son Vasili Zacharevich Tarakanov, but no one ever called the boy by that name. Instead they called him Wolf. An exceedingly clever boy, within a month at New Archangel his vocabulary had become liberally interspersed with Russian words.

In October it began to rain—endlessly, it seemed to Mikhail as he splashed across the sodden compound toward his brother’s hut. Cold weather was rarely a problem in this region of Sitka Sound, but the sluicing rains and thick fogs were a constant source of discomfort.

Mikhail turned a weather eye to the west. Heavy clouds completely hid Mount Edgecumbe’s island and blurred the others in the bay. The frigate
Neva
no longer loomed in the harbor. A fortnight after the high chamberlain arrived, she had sailed, carrying a cargo of furs valued at 450,000 rubles to Canton, and the
Elizaveta,
one of the small company ships, had been sent to Kodiak for supplies.

The heavy rain had halted work on the keel of a new ship that High Chamberlain Rezanov had ordered to be built and called the
Avoss
, the
“Perhaps.”
Insulted by the Mikado’s treatment of him during his ambassadorial mission to Japan, Rezanov intended to send a naval force there and punish the island nation. The
Avoss
would be part of that flotilla. He had also ordered Baranov to prepare living quarters on the island in the harbor for the “compulsory immigrants,” as he called them, that would be brought back from Japan at the conclusion of his military expedition. Now everyone referred to the island as Japonski.

Mikhail didn’t share the high chamberlain’s enthusiasm for the plan; no one did. The Russian American Company didn’t have enough ships to keep its settlements provisioned with supplies, patrol its territories to prevent foreign ships from trading in their waters, and escort hunting expeditions for sea otter. That they should attempt to mount an offensive was ludicrous. Yet, no matter how reasonable Rezanov was on other issues, such as the establishment of medical care, native schools, and a pension fund for the old and disabled, he wouldn’t be swayed from his planned Japanese campaign. However they might disagree, the word of the forty-two-year-old plenipotentiary was obeyed.

Arriving at his brother’s log hut, Mikhail paused outside the door and knocked. Once he would have simply walked in, but Raven’s presence had changed that. Twice he had walked in unannounced and intruded on an intimate scene. Now he knocked first.

No sound came from inside. All he could hear was the hammering of the rain on the roof. He waited, hunching his shoulders against the downpour, then knocked again. But there was no response. Turning, he scanned the other buildings of the settlement, not relishing the idea of tramping through the rain and mud to find Zachar. Rezanov, who had taken over the active command, had called another council of the navigators and chief hunters as well as Baranov and his second, Ivan Kuskov. He and Zachar were to be at Rezanov’s cabin within an hour. More than likely he’d find Zachar at the commissary buying more trinkets for Raven.

He heard the splat of footsteps coming around the cabin and turned as Raven walked around the corner carrying an armload of firewood. A blanket was draped over her, hooding her head. Although she walked swiftly, the picture was not one of a woman scurrying through the rain. She carried herself with too much dignity for that. More than once Mikhail had been struck by her pride, which occasionally bordered on insolence.

There was the smallest hesitation in her stride when she noticed him waiting by the door. “You are wet,” she observed and managed to make him feel foolish for standing outside in the rain when he could have been inside where it was dry.

“I was looking for Zachar.”

“He will return soon.” She walked past him and pushed open the cabin door.

Belatedly he noticed how awkwardly she managed it, hampered by the armload of wood. He followed her inside and shut the door for her, then turned around. The blanket had fallen from her head, revealing the shiny black hair that framed her face. He purposely avoided looking at her.

“Let me take that firewood.”

As he reached to take it from her, his arm grazed her breast. He jerked away, nearly dropping the split logs, as if the contact had burned him. She wore an amused smile on her lips. It was the sultry fullness of her lips that altered the whole effect of the strong bone structure of her face and created an image of compelling beauty—that and the unfathomable blackness of her eyes. He felt the tightening in his loins and abruptly turned away to carry the logs to the woodbox by the fireplace.

“It is long since you were with a woman.” The nearness of her voice told Mikhail that she followed him.

All his senses seemed to clamor for his attention at once, making him aware of the smell of wood smoke permeating the musty air, the plop of water dripping from a leak in the roof, and the cot sitting in the corner of the single-roomed cabin.

“There is a shortage of women here.” Mikhail was more than willing to blame his reaction on his recent forced celibacy, at the same time recognizing that she had the kind of looks that turned a man’s thoughts to sex. He dropped the logs into the box, letting their thumping clatter fill the silence, then moved to stand in front of the fireplace flames. “You said you expect Zachar back soon?”

“Yes.” She removed the blanket and laid it across the woodbox to dry. “You want a woman to lay with. Why do you not ask me?” She stood at his side, facing him, almost taunting him. “Or do you think me ugly?”

“No.” The truth came quickly. “You belong to Zachar.”

“But you are his brother. It is acceptable to my people for a woman to have two husbands if they are brothers.”

Mikhail laughed harshly. “Russians don’t find such heathen practices acceptable.”

“Why? A woman needs sons. Zachar is too old. More often now his organ is limp in my hands. You are yet strong. You could give me many sons, I think.”

Her remarks generated a heat that filled him. He stared at the yellow flames of the fire, inwardly cursing her for doing this to him. “Zachar isn’t too old,” he asserted. “Baranov is sixteen or seventeen years older than my brother and he has a three-year-old child.”

“He is Nanuk,” she said, as if that explained it all. “Would you not like to lay with me?”

Mikhail swung angrily around, but he didn’t have a chance to speak as the door burst open and Zachar came charging in, the sound of his laughter mixing with the high-pitched giggle of his son. Suddenly Mikhail wasn’t sure how he would have answered Raven’s question. Troubled by the guilt that followed his uncertainty, he felt uncomfortable facing his brother.

“I didn’t know you were here, Mikhail.” Zachar smiled as he lowered his son, Wolf, to the floor. The boy vigorously shook his wet head, shaking himself like a dog and scattering a spray of droplets in every direction.

“I just got here.” The need to establish that he hadn’t been alone with Raven for long merely increased his sense of guilt. He hadn’t betrayed his brother, but he had wanted to. “Rezanov has called another meeting.”

Self-consciously, Mikhail moved away from the fireplace—and Raven—to head for the door. “Wait,” Zachar said. “I’ll walk with you.”

“I go.” The boy darted to Zachar’s side as soon as he realized he was going to leave.

“No.” Zachar gave him a little shove toward Raven. “You stay here and look after your mother. I’ll be back later.” There was a pleased smile on his face as he followed Mikhail out the door, then paused to turn his collar up against the rain. “He’s a good boy,” he remarked to Mikhail. “I think he’s becoming fond of me.”

“Yes.” Mikhail couldn’t remember ever seeing his brother so happy, practically bursting with pride over his newly found family. They were all too new and shiny for Zachar to see any flaw in them, Mikhail realized.

With heads bent against the pouring rain, they started across the settlement grounds toward the stairs that led to the bastion atop the broad, flat knoll. “What is this meeting about? Were you told?” Zachar asked.

“No.”

They walked several paces in silence, then Zachar spoke. “I like this Rezanov. He is a wise man. I know that many of the promyshleniki on the seal islands—the Pribilofs—were unhappy with his order to slaughter no more seals this year, but it must be stopped or there will be no more left where once there were millions swarming over the rocks like bees in a honeycomb.”

“You have been there?” Mikhail frowned.

“Once, long ago,” Zachar admitted as he started up the steps. “I have heard the raids of the Boston ships killed more than a million seals this year alone.”

“We lose a lot of furs to them, and the Kolosh obtain many guns from them. Sometimes I think the Kolosh are better armed than we are. At least Rezanov agrees with Baranov, though, that we must trade with the English and the Boston men for supplies. We cannot depend on the company ships sailing from Okhotsk. Look at our situation now. Our flour ration is down to one pound a month per man, and winter is coming.”

As they mounted the last step, Zachar nodded a confirmation of their straitened circumstance. “The
Elizaveta
should return from Kodiak soon with supplies.”

* * *

Nikolai Petrovich Rezanov was a tall, handsome man of forty-two. Clean-shaven and dressed in one of his less ornate military uniforms, he carried himself erectly, naturally commanding the attention of the men who had crowded into his small cabin. His thin lips were drawn together as his pale blue eyes surveyed them, his manner one of grimness.