Northern Lights Trilogy

by Lisa Tawn Bergren

  She squinted against the stinging spray of rain pelting her face and hesitated as everything in her told her to go back inside. Sailors raced about, no doubt following orders to take in sail. The heavy seas beat against the Eagle’s bow with all the gentleness of a sawyer’s ax, making it sound as if she were about to splinter apart. Above Elsa, topsail halyards had been let go, and the great sails were filling out and backing against the masts with a noise that competed with the storm’s own thunder. Sailors were still climbing aloft to furl more sails before their ship capsized.

  Without another thought, Elsa joined them, never once speaking to Riley at the wheel. He was busy shouting orders into the wind that none of his men could hear. But instinctively, they all knew what must be done. Never had Elsa climbed aloft in such heavy seas. She grunted and clung to the mast as the newest wave sent a shudder through the schooner, and then determinedly moved onward as soon as it passed. Sails at the course and topsail lanyards had been furled, but the upper topgallants and royals remained reefed, still catching enough wind to be dangerous. That was where the others had climbed, awaiting sufficient help to begin the process of hauling in the buntlines, leech lines, and clew lines and gathering the canvas to be lashed securely.

  Her stomach lurched, for the higher she climbed, the more susceptible she was to the rock and roll of the ship. It seemed impossible that the men had made it to the top royals without falling immediately to their deaths. Gritting her teeth, she went higher, just getting her feet in place and a tether around her ankles before they began the process. Over the lanyard she leaned with the others, hauling in sail as fast as she could and securing it, thinking only of returning to the deck far, far below them all. If we aren’t all shaken out of the nest first, she thought grimly. They completed their task in record time.

  The wind had pulled and loosened her hat, sending it careening away on the wind, and now it worked on her hair. If it hadn’t been for the rain that plastered it to her head, Elsa might’ve been blinded by the freed tendrils. Blinking to clear her eyes, she headed toward the main mast, anxious to get down to the relative safety on deck. A young sailor winced when he saw her, quickly gesturing for her to go down first. None of the others had yet noticed that the captain’s wife was among their number.

  Carefully choosing her handholds and footholds, Elsa made her way down as fast as possible. Huge waves had begun to sweep the deck, like no other storm she had seen before. Crazily, the seas rose and burst over the ship from all sides. It reminded her of the times when she had been swept across the planks and nearly overboard, of Karl’s saving presence, of Peder’s near demise when a similar wave had taken him. With the sails furled, she hoped Riley would send the less experienced men down the hatch. But there was no need.

  “Cyclone!” screamed a sailor near her, barely audible over the wind. Elsa looked about. Men scrambled to the fo’c’s’le, the galley, the stern, anywhere there might be refuge. There was nothing to be done on deck now that the sails had been reefed, and every man knew that survival lay behind a protective wall and fervent prayer.

  Elsa decided to seek out Riley. She needed to see his face, know this was yet another storm they would make it through. But it was not Riley at the wheel.

  “The mate! Where’s the first mate?” she screamed over the banshee wind at Finch, their second mate.

  Finch looked at her for a moment in stunned disbelief, then nodded around the corner.

  That was when Elsa noticed the captain’s cabin door, swinging open, back and forth. Kristian.

  “Kristian!” she screamed, suddenly envisioning the toddler awake and wandering these dangerous decks looking for his mother. He would not have a chance. “Kristian!”

  With painstaking slowness, she made her way to the door and pulled herself inside. It was dark, the lamp apparently extinguished. The noise of the storm was substantially lessened in the cabin, but still loud. “Kristian!” she yelled. “Peder, are you awake?”

  No one answered.

  Elsa stumbled as another wave swept past, sending her tumbling over a trunk that had slid from its place, water cascading in around her. Disoriented, she blindly made her way to what she thought was Kristian’s corner and hammock. “Kristian!” she said, quieter this time, more desperation in her voice.

  “Mama?” came a sleepy reply. He started to cry, groggy and sleepy.

  Oh, thank you, Father, Elsa prayed silently. Thank you, thank you, thank you. “It’s okay, sweetheart. Mama’s here.” She found his form in the dark, and bent over to kiss his forehead. “We have a little storm on our hands. Go back to sleep.”

  “Okay,” Kristian said, obviously falling right back into deep slumber.

  Another wave passed, sending a gushing spurt into the cabin. Elsa was on her way to close the door when a man’s form appeared in the doorway. “Elsa!” It was Riley.

  “Riley. I wanted—”

  “Elsa! The cap’n! ’Ave you seen him?”

  The note of panic in his voice sent an icy shiver down her spine. She turned back toward the bed in confusion. “Peder? Peder is in—”

  “I saw him around the cabin a minute ago! I can’t find him!”

  No. No, it isn’t possible! Peder had not been out of bed for nearly a week. He didn’t have the legs for a storm such as this! “No!” she shouted. She shoved Riley aside, with one thought on her mind: Find Peder.

  “Mama!” came a frightened voice from the corner.

  Elsa paused, looked at Riley, and back over her shoulder. “Get a man in here to stay with him before you leave this doorway,” she ordered.

  “Elsa—”

  “Do it!”

  She could barely discern a nod from the man, but left him there, confident that he would not leave his post, or her son, without doing as she bid. “Peder!” she screamed into the wind, wanting to curse the rain that blinded her. Never had she felt so helpless. “Peder!” Another wave came over the side, crashing into the back of her knees and sending her sliding. She didn’t go far, however, and was soon on her feet again.

  “Peder!” she screamed, so loud she could feel the strain in her throat. “Peder!” She rounded the corner of the cabin, heading astern. A man came by and Elsa reached out to grab his arm. “The captain! Have you seen the captain?”

  “No, ma’am!”

  She did the same with the next, and the next, until she had covered all the men beyond the cabin. Her legs trembled and Elsa shook with cold. She willed herself not to panic. Perhaps he had gone around and then toward the bow. That thought brought little comfort. At the bow, the sea had the fiercest power. It could take a grown man who was well, let alone an ailing man. “Peder!” she cried, sure he was nowhere near her, but wanting to do something, anything.

  Within minutes, she was at the bow, tethering herself to the foremast before the next watery enemy swept over her. “Peder!” she cried, once it passed. Please, Father, let him be all right. Please. It was no use; she could see nothing, and there were no men at this end of the ship to ask about him. Slowly, she moved about the railing, calling his name. If he was here, he’s dead for sure, she thought, emerging from another wave. Without the tether, it would have pulled her overboard too. Please, Father. Dear God in heaven—

  “Elsa!” Riley said, startling her at his sudden proximity. “I said he was back astern!”

  “I know!” she yelled, following him across the deck. At least the rain was lessening. Perhaps they were almost through the worst of it. “I can’t find him! Thought I’d check the bow!”

  “You intent on killin’ yourself?” he yelled.

  “Peder! We must find him!” She ignored Riley’s anger. He was only trying to protect her. But the panic in her breast was getting harder and harder to contain. Where was he? Where was Peder? She refused to even think that he might already be gone. That was when she heard the first hint of a song on the wind. Slowly, she looked up.

  Dimly, she could just make out a figure in a nightshirt on the end of a lany
ard, not twenty feet above them, almost over the edge of the ship. He was singing boisterously, and Elsa was sure it was Peder, delirious from fever, reefing an imaginary sail that had been hauled in hours before. Riley followed her gaze and swore profusely. Elsa was paralyzed with fear, but Riley immediately set into action, climbing the mast toward his captain.

  All Elsa could do was make her mouth form one word, one single word of prayer: Please.

  She blinked, trying to keep track of Riley’s progress, when she saw Peder falter. It was as if the wind had hit him for the first time. He leaned forward, then back, overcompensating.

  No.

  It seemed to take him forever to fall. Elsa watched in stunned disbelief, her eyes opening and closing as the wind sent sheets of rain her way, freezing images of his descent in her mind, blocking out others. He hit the starboard railing, no sound audible over the storm. One of the few sailors present dived for him, obviously hoping to catch an arm, a sleeve, anything.

  But Peder was overboard less than a second before he got there.

  “No!” Elsa screamed, her voice finding its way out of her paralyzed body. “Peder!” She ran to the side as best she could against the storm’s fierce waves and peered over the rail. “Peder!” she screamed. “Man overboard! Man overboard!”

  Riley set about the business of trying to slow their progress, to keep them near the same spot. But in the howling wind and waves, it would take little time for man and ship to be separated. Nets were thrown, hoping to catch him before they went too far. Sails were set to counter their progress, yet not catch the ship aback. Still, they moved onward.

  “A lifeboat!” Elsa screamed. “The lifeboat!” Men looked at her helplessly, knowing that a lifeboat would surely capsize before it reached the water. It would be a futile effort only endangering the others involved.

  Elsa turned back to the water, strangled by her helplessness.

  Peder did not reemerge. It was as if he hit the water and sank, so fast did it happen. Elsa made as if to go after him herself, hooking a leg over the railing.

  Men on either side of her gripped her firmly. One bellowed, “You can’t, ma’am! Think o’ your son!”

  Thoughts of Kristian were the only thing that kept her aboard that night, when the one thing she desired was to save her husband, or join him in death.

  Peder was gone.

  Forever.

  Even two days later, Elsa still could not believe that her beloved was dead. That he would not appear around some corner of the ship, out of some hatch, and wonder at her excitement of seeing him. Well, of course I’m here, darling, he would say. Where’d you think I was? How could such a vital person be alive one second and gone to eternity the next? It was beyond her comprehension.

  When Kristian had asked her that next morning where his papa was, all she could mutter was, “Dead. Dead, dead, dead.” She knew the boy was confused, and frightened by her manner, but it seemed to Elsa that she was not herself. That she was unable to control her mouth or mind. Quietly, Cook had spirited the boy away, giving Elsa some time alone. She felt like a bird in the sky, watching the preparations for her husband’s funeral below. A funeral with no body. How could God have done it? How could he? Without even a chance to say good-bye, one more opportunity to say, “I love you”? Other than utter loss and devastation, the one emotion she could find within herself was anger.

  God had failed her. He had failed Peder. He had failed Kristian. What was a boy to do without a father? And the child within her? A child who would never know the pleasure of a father’s embrace or tender word. A child without Peder. Kristian without Peder. Me without Peder.

  It was all too much. For hours she sat on her bed and rocked, ever so slightly, reliving Peder’s fall, over and over. It was like a passage in a book that she kept rereading to try and understand something important missed—to get the action down, to understand the characters’ thoughts, so the entire plot would make sense again.

  What had Peder been thinking? He wasn’t, of course. He was delirious with fever. What had she been thinking? How could she have left her husband and child? They had needed her, and she had failed them!

  It was her fault he was dead. If she had remained inside the cabin, he would be emerging from malaria’s hold about now. How could she have abandoned him?

  But I thought he was unconscious! The men needed my help! she defended herself, feeling torn in two by her own inner argument. He hadn’t moved for days!

  Still, it was not a woman’s place to be out on deck in such a storm, regardless of her experience. Even as the Heroine of the Horn. It was exactly that danger that Peder had feared. Yet she hadn’t been the one to perish. It had been Peder Ramstad. Her husband. Her lover. Her friend. How, how, how on earth could he be gone? Her mind could not marry fact with fact. It was simply inconceivable. Once more, tears slipped down her cheeks as the ache grew in her throat.

  Two weeks later, Elsa donned her black mourning dress once again. It was logical that women dressed in black for at least a year, she thought, since the color matched her mood. How could she wear anything else? The lavender Peder had purchased for her in New York? The pale yellow he had bought for her in England? Any other color was inappropriate, and the memories each one brought to mind were too much to bear. Peder had delighted in her figure, and when he finally had the funds to do so, dressed her in finery that brought a slight blush to her cheeks when she stopped to think of the expense. It was so deliciously intimate, however, that she had never stopped him from indulging in her.

  Now, what was left? Years of memories and too many dresses to ever wear again. Especially since she intended to wear black forever. It was impossible to believe that she would ever find pleasure in any other color. That she would someday smile, laugh, swim, run, tickle Kristian, anything. All she wanted to do was curl up in the bed she had shared with Peder, inhale the musty scents of the sheets that still held a faint memory of his smell, and sleep until it was all right again.

  Until the nightmare was over and Peder was home.

  She assumed Riley was continuing their course to Seattle. Once there, she could leave this ship—this wretched ship that had cost Peder his life—and safely ensconce herself at home. Perhaps Kaatje would come to her. The idea brought her some measure of comfort, and her tears abated. Kaatje would know what to do, how to proceed. After all, she had ostensibly lost a husband herself. Just having her dear friend near would give Elsa strength. And the girls could look after Kristian, giving her a chance to rest and boosting his morale as well.

  Elsa just needed to sleep. She was exhausted, unable to do more for her son than pull him to her on the bed, cradling his small body in the curve of her own. He would stay there with her for hours, seemingly aware that it was the best she could do, the most she could give him, then be off to bother Riley, Cook, or another of the crew.

  Nights were the worst. After sleeping all day, she was awake come nightfall. And the dark always reminded Elsa of the storm. Back and forth she would pace in the cabin as Kristian snored softly in his hammock. Over and over again, she would peer through the window, sure that the man at the wheel was not Riley or Finch, but Peder. He would turn to her and smile, assuring her that, yes, it all had been a bad dream. But he never turned, never assured her with that brilliant smile of his. Elsa closed her eyes, remembering him in Bergen, at the altar, in Camden, at sea on their first vessel.

  “O dear God,” she whispered. “My dear Savior. How can it be possible that my husband be dead, when he lives inside of me?”

  She heard no answer. Only the ongoing quiet swish of waves passing, the gentle rocking of the Eagle, the constant creak of the boards beneath her feet.

  And Elsa found herself praying that another storm would come and take them all.

  seven

  Finding life intolerable that September in Helena, Tora saw no choice other than to move out. She had been shunned from the community, cut off from the important people around whom she thrived. Andre
w Aston had made it clear that he was immovable and would not let her keep her loan, even when she used her feminine wiles on him. Without a roadhouse to oversee for Trent, she listed about the house, bored and worried. She laughed when she found herself actually quoting her father in a soft whisper, a man for whom she had had little respect: “Sitting around fretting will not resolve anything, Tora. Take a step. Sideways. Forward. Anywhere.”

  Begrudgingly, she admitted to herself that she had always taken Amund Anders’s advice when it came to situations like this, and it had brought her far. It had taken her to America. To Minnesota. To Trent. She grimaced and stared out the window, not truly seeing the carriages and wagons that moved along the road. To be honest, her quest for more had also removed her from Trent’s side. She had taken steps that, ultimately, landed her back where she had come from. But there were ways out. There had to be a way. She just had to find it.

  A knock sounded at the door and Tora winced at the thought of opening it herself. She had let Sasha go a week prior, since she could no longer pay her wages. Sasha had stayed on another week, exchanging her services for a few of Tora’s old dresses, but when it became clear that Tora’s luck had not changed, she packed her bags and said a curt good-bye. Perhaps she hadn’t been as fine a servant as Tora had thought. A truly loyal person would have given her at least another week.

  She feared who the person might be on the other side of the door. Was it Andrew? Another of her creditors? Already the jackals had come and confiscated some of her finest new furniture. One of Sasha’s last tasks had been to help her bring some of the older pieces from the basement to hide the vacant spots. It grated on Tora to look on them. A step back, she thought. Now I need to take a step forward.

  Her visitor proved to be that step. She opened the door and looked over her shoulder, as if a bit bewildered. “Mrs. Hunter!” she exclaimed, fanning her face as the wave of heat from outdoors hit her. “I do not know where my maid is. Please excuse the delay in answering the door. Won’t you come in?”