The Great Alone

by Janet Dailey

  Time was critical, and none was wasted as the schooner was hurriedly readied to sail. Little food could be spared from the settlement’s meager supplies if those remaining at Sitka were to survive until the Juno returned. But the cargo hold was loaded with trade goods—wearing apparel, fine English cloth, leather goods and shoes, tools ranging from axes to gimlets, plus bundles of cloth-of-gold, elaborate muskets, and other items originally intended as gifts for the Japanese Mikado.

  Mikhail avoided the harbor area while the preparations for the voyage were under way, only grudgingly taking part when he had no other choice. The bitter knowledge that tomorrow the Juno would weigh anchor and sail without him, gnawed at him as he entered his private quarters in the company barracks where he had closeted himself much of the time. He walked directly to the cot and pulled a jug of kvass from beneath it, one of two he’d secreted away as protection against scurvy. But it wasn’t for medicinal reasons that he filled a tin mug to the rim with the home-brewed liquor, then drank half of it down. He carried both the cup and the jug to the table and sat down in a crudely finished chair. At Sitka they had only axes and chisels with which to hew the logs into board planks.

  He stared morosely at his cup, resenting the clouds and the cold, and remembering the tales he’d heard about the California sunshine that he was never going to see. He dreaded the day Zachar returned and he’d have to listen to all his stories about the place he should have visited. He downed the rest of the liquor and refilled the tin mug.

  “Mikhail.”

  He stiffened at the sound of his brother’s voice, belatedly realizing that the click he’d heard had been the lifting of the door latch. “Yes, what is it?” he demanded tersely, not looking around.

  “I need to speak to you.”

  “No doubt you’ve come to say good-bye.” He had expected this visit and tried to smother his irritations, aware they were childish.

  Mikhail stood up and turned to face his brother, gathering his pride so Zachar wouldn’t see how much he envied him. Raven and her son, Wolf, stood next to Zachar. Those disturbing black eyes boldly stared at him, and Mikhail immediately felt uncomfortable.

  Ever since she had made that initial overture, he’d done his best to stay clear of her, and for the most part he’d succeeded. Yet, like all women, she had a way of making it clear whenever he saw her that she would welcome his attention. He’d often wondered if his brother noticed.

  “It’s true, I didn’t want to leave without telling you goodbye. But there’s also something I’d like you to do for me while I’m gone.” Zachar laid his hand on top of the boy’s head. Mikhail became tense. “I don’t like the idea of Wolf and Raven staying alone at our cabin.”

  “What do you mean?” He looked at Raven, wondering if she’d put Zachar up to this.

  “I’d like you to stay there and look after them while I’m away.”

  “I can’t.” Mikhail was shocked into the strangled protest.

  “You are my brother. I have no one else to ask.” Zachar appeared hurt and confused by his refusal. “I know how you tried to take my place so I wouldn’t have to leave them.”

  “I don’t think you know what you’re asking,” Mikhail declared tightly.

  Zachar’s frown deepened. “That they receive their share of food, that they have wood for their fire, that they will have someone to protect them if the Kolosh attack—is that too much to ask for my family?”

  “No.” Mikhail couldn’t tell him what he really meant.

  “Then you will stay with them?”

  It seemed the final irony. Zachar was making the voyage Mikhail wanted and was leaving him to care for the woman Mikhail desired, however reluctantly.

  “Yes, I’ll stay with them,” Mikhail agreed.

  The Juno sailed with the tide the next day, and Mikhail moved his things into Zachar’s cabin. With the number of healthy men reduced, he arranged to stand guard on the first shift of the night watch. When he returned to the cabin at the end of his watch, Raven was in the cot asleep. He made himself a bed on the floor in front of the fireplace, but he slept little, spending most of the night staring at the tongues of flame that licked over the red-white logs and listening to the sounds that Raven made as she turned in her sleep.

  The daytime hours when he wasn’t working at jobs around the settlement, he spent with Wolf. Twice during the week, he shot a bald eagle that had foolishly soared over the garrison. Its meat provided a welcome change from their monotonous diet of dried fish and oil.

  Raven set a dish of it on the table in front of him. Neither the sight nor the smell of the fish and oil was appetizing to him any more, but Mikhail knew he had to eat it. There was nothing else. And his trousers were already loose on him. He got his jug of kvass and set it on the table so he could wash down the meal, but it didn’t help much. Instead he became fascinated by the greedy way the boy devoured his food.

  “You wolf that down like your namesake.” He smiled as he said it, then pushed his dish over to the boy. “You can have the rest of mine, too.”

  “You are not hungry this night,” Raven said.

  He looked at her, something he usually avoided. The yellow light of the oil lamp played across her face, shadowing her deep-set eyes and accenting her high cheekbones. He noticed the new gauntness that indicated her loss of weight. The only thing about her that didn’t look thinner to him was her lips. They remained lusciously full.

  Half angrily, Mikhail grabbed the jug and poured more kvass into his cup. At that moment, Wolf dug into the dish Mikhail had given him. “I guess I’m not hungry for that,” he said.

  “Do you desire something else?”

  The tone of her voice coupled with the phrasing of her question caused him to stiffen. Both implied many things to him, all of them arousing. Mikhail wasn’t sure whether she intended them to or not. Not once had she made any suggestive move toward him since he’d been here. But neither had she had the opportunity.

  “No.” He got up, taking the jug with him, and crossed to the fireplace.

  “Do you walk with the guards tonight?”

  “No.” A rotation of shifts had put him on the day watch.

  “Mikhail must be tired from so many nights. You should sleep in the cot.”

  “No.”

  “I think this is the only word you know.” Her soft laugh mocked him. Mikhail swung around and found he couldn’t meet her taunting look. “I think Mikhail is afraid to say anything else.”

  “I wish my brother were here so he could see what you are really like.” He trembled with the violence of his emotions, hating her and wanting her with equal fury.

  “But Zachar is not here.”

  “I should have told him why I didn’t want to stay here.”

  “It is because you wanted this.”

  “No!”

  Raven responded to his vigorous denial with a shrug of her shoulders and turned back to the table to finish her meal. A burning log popped in the fireplace, its crack sounding loud in the silence. He stared at the glowing embers, gnawed by her accusation, and frustrated by the suspicion it was true. Perhaps he had kept silent because he wanted something to happen. He drank to kill the doubts she had raised.

  Sometime in the night Mikhail dreamed about her. She stood before him, the yellow firelight playing over her naked body, revealing to him the fullness of her breasts, the flatness of her stomach, and the black wool of her pubic hair.

  The golden vision sank to the floor beside him and melted against his body, engulfing him in a wave of heat. He stared at her face, the black eyes closed, the dark head thrashing from side to side, the heavy lips open and emitting soft moans. His hips pumped with seemingly tireless energy, plunging his cock deep into her moist cavity, then drawing it out and plunging it in again while he floated above her. Everything spiraled together, soaring higher and higher into a brilliant burst of glory.

  When Mikhail awoke the next morning, his head throbbed dully. He turned and felt a body besi
de him. Raven lay snuggled under the blanket with him. The dream hadn’t been a dream at all.

  “No!” he cried.

  She opened her eyes slowly and looked at him, faintly flexing her bare shoulders in a stretching motion. Her full lips curved in a satisfied smile. “It is what you wanted,” she murmured.

  He knew it was true. And he also knew he should leave—walk out the door and never return. If he stayed he would only compound the sin of betrayal he’d committed by lying with his brother’s wife. But what if his brother never returned from the voyage? Even if he did, what if all the supplies had run out in the meantime and everyone here died? What if the Kolosh attacked and massacred everyone? Why should he deprive himself of the company that Raven was so willing to give him?

  Mikhail stayed.

  In the ensuing months, new graves were dug in the settlement as the scurvy claimed more victims and weakened the rest. The death toll would have been higher, but a large spring run of herring in the sound gave everyone at New Archangel new life.

  In June, the blockhouse cannon boomed a salute to the returning Juno as it was towed into Sitka Harbor. Her hold was loaded with nearly seven hundred fanegas of wheat, almost one hundred and twenty fanegas of oats, one hundred and forty of peas and beans, as well as flour, salted meat, tallow, and salt.

  As Zachar stepped from the schooner’s yawl, his young son ran to greet him on spindly legs. Compared to Wolf’s bone-thin body, Zachar felt exceedingly fat. Tears welled in his eyes as he stared at the boy’s face, made gaunt from lack of food. Swinging the bag off his shoulder, he crouched down and hugged the child tightly, then looked beyond him at his wife.

  Raven made no move to approach him as she stood beside Mikhail. His brother’s arm was curved around her shoulder, silently claiming possession. Zachar knew. In his heart he knew what had transpired between his brother and his wife during his absence. A tightness choked his throat. He bowed his head and blinked rapidly to clear his eyes of the stinging tears.

  Covering the action, he opened the bag and pulled out a present he’d brought for Wolf. The Californians had been eager to trade their foodstuffs and homemade goods for anything foreign-manufactured. His bag was filled with items he’d acquired. After giving Wolf his present, Zachar pulled out a brightly embroidered lace shawl and a fancy tortoise-shell hair comb, gifts for Raven.

  Out of the corner of his eye, he saw her move away from Mikhail and toward him. With sadness, Zachar realized that Raven hadn’t changed. Her loyalty and her company could still be bought. As she moved, Mikhail turned and walked slowly away. Zachar couldn’t find it in his heart to be angry. He felt too much pain—for himself and Mikhail.

  CHAPTER XXV

  Sitka

  Late Spring 1808

  Fire belched from the cannon barrels atop the fortified knoll; their salute to the American ship entering the Russian port thundered over the full-fledged town below. But Zachar wasn’t interested in the new arrival. In the last two years an increasing number of foreign ships had put in to Sitka, making it a port of call second in importance in the Pacific only to the Sandwich Islands.

  Pausing on one of the board sidewalks that lined the streets, Zachar squinted to peer at the blurred figures around him. His eyes were failing him, damaged by too many years of facing the sun’s glare off water and snow. A frightening thing for a hunter. None of the shapes resembled Raven, and he hurried on, passing the bakery and its yeasty aromas. He touched the colorful silk scarf in his pocket, unconsciously reassuring himself of its presence. As long as he gave Raven pretty things, he knew she would stay with him. If he ever stopped, she would leave.

  As he approached the row of cabins brightened by spring flowers growing around them, two figures emerged from the second structure, the cabin belonging to his brother. Both women wore loose-fitting sarafans over their long-sleeved muslin shirts. Only a handful of women in New Archangel affected the Russian style of dress, other than Baranov’s native woman, Anna Grigoryevna, who had recently been given the noble title Princess of Kenai by a special imperial ukase. The birth of Baranov’s half-caste daughter, Irina, along with her brother’s, had been legitimized by the same ukase.

  Zachar hesitated, looking around the other cabins without sighting Raven, then angled reluctantly toward his mother, Tasha, and his daughter, Larissa. They had arrived a month ago from Kodiak. It had been Mikhail’s idea to bring them here to live. Their mother was getting too old to do the heavy work demanded of her in the Banner household. Zachar was forced to agree that it was time she led a less arduous life, but he had quickly pointed out to Mikhail that his small hunter’s cabin could provide neither the comfort nor the privacy that the two were entitled to have. He had carefully avoided mentioning the awkwardness that would result from having Raven and Wolf living there, too. Instead, he had suggested to Mikhail that Larissa and their mother live with him, since, as navigator, his higher status in the company meant his cabin was larger and better furnished. Mikhail had agreed that his place was more suitable, and that his position would give them a better status in the community than that of a mere hunter. But both knew that Raven was the reason behind the living arrangements.

  “Where are you going this fine morning?” Zachar forced a heartiness into his greeting.

  “We’re on our way to the harbor to see the ship that arrived.” Larissa was aglow with excitement.

  Zachar stared at this stranger who was his daughter. At eighteen, she was in the full bloom of womanhood. Finely featured with dark, long-lashed eyes and sleek black hair, she attracted considerable notice from the men at New Archangel, accustomed as they were to the less refined—both in manner and looks—Aleut and Kolosh women. But few Russians made any advances toward her. Her trusting look of virginal innocence gave them pause.

  That reticence was not fully shared by the nearly twenty Yankees who worked for the company in the shipbuilding yard at Sitka. Although she rarely ventured onto the streets without her grandmother, the Americans took advantage of any opportunity to speak to her, delighting in her accented English and her beautiful smile.

  “Do you know what country she is from? Is it an English ship?”

  “Yankee, I believe,” Zachar replied.

  “I know you are used to ships coming here, Papa,” Larissa said, “but I find it all very exciting.”

  “I know you do.” His attention started to stray to the other cabins, with Raven still uppermost in his mind, when a coughing spasm shook his mother’s frail body.

  He didn’t like the sound of it, nor the flecks of blood in the spittle that she quickly wiped away. She hadn’t looked well when she arrived, but she had blamed her weakness on the seasickness she’d suffered during the voyage from Kodiak. Since Sitka was still without a company physician, Zachar couldn’t dispute her claim. A month of good food and rest had brought some color back to her cheeks, but she was still very thin.

  “How are you feeling?” He felt guilty that he hadn’t spent more time with her since she’d come to Sitka, especially in the light of his recent decision, but he was no longer comfortable in his brother’s cabin, knowing what he did about Mikhail’s past association with Raven.

  “Much better. The sun feels good today, doesn’t it?” But its light didn’t give any luster to her dull and coarse gray hair. She no longer stood tall and straight; her shoulders were bowed from constant coughing. The strength was gone from her face, replaced by an aura of fragility.

  “Are you busy, Papa? It would be wonderful if you could walk to the harbor with us,” Larissa suggested hopefully.

  Zachar hesitated and glanced anxiously down the row of cabins. “She isn’t there,” Tasha told him quietly. He was immediately uncomfortable at the way she had instinctively known who was on his mind, wondering what else she knew or guessed about his relationship with Raven. “I saw her walk by a little while ago.”

  She tilted her head to indicate the direction Raven had taken toward the main buildings along the harborfront. He sho
uld have seen her unless she had ducked out of sight to avoid him, a possibility that further unsettled him.

  Rather than comment on her observation, Zachar turned to the side. “Shall we go?”

  Together they walked toward the harbor. Zachar strained his eyes for a glimpse of Raven, but he didn’t see her on any of the streets or sidewalks. As they passed the shipbuilding yard, there were breaks in the rhythmic rasp of a whipsaw cutting logs into boards and the clank of hammers striking anvils. More than one man paused in his labors to stare appreciatively at Larissa.

  When they reached the shoreline, Zachar first scanned the small crowd that had drifted to the harbor, then gazed dispiritedly at the brig limping into the bay with a broken foremast. The knowledge that his brother, Mikhail, had been assigned to pilot incoming ships into the harbor that day gave him little consolation. It only meant Raven could be with anyone.

  “Her name is the Sea Gypsy, Babushka,” Larissa said to her grandmother.

  The ship’s name struck a familiar chord in Zachar’s memory, but he didn’t try to recall why, dismissing it as just another ship that had previously visited Sitka. He was too preoccupied with his own personal problems. He absently stared at the brig, his poor eyesight making its lines indistinct. Soon he’d be sailing away on a vessel not much different from this one. He didn’t see that he had any other choice.

  “The vessel interests you,” Tasha remarked.

  “No, I—” Zachar halted his ready denial, deciding he could no longer postpone telling her his plans. Soon she would have to know anyway. “I have been assigned to another post. I will be leaving within the month.”

  She looked away and blinked at the tears that sprang into her eyes. “I had hoped to have my children around me when I grew old. But it is in God’s hands,” she declared, adopting the Russian philosophy. “Where will you go?”

  He dreaded telling her. “My eyes are failing me, but all I know is hunting and furs.” After being a hunter all his life, the prospect of being reduced to doing menial chores such as working in the ropewalk or picking oakum was a wound to his pride. Worse, it would mean he wouldn’t earn enough to keep Raven content. “There is one place where a hunter doesn’t need keen eyes.” He glanced at Larissa, but she was absorbed with the sailing vessel in the protected bay. When he looked back at his mother, the beginning of dismay had already formed in her expression, indicating that she had already guessed where he was going.