Daughters of Northern Shores

by Joanne Bischof

  Tate shouted orders, and at the call of his own task, Haakon rushed for the topgallant halyard. A young deckhand was already there flinging off turns of the rope, fumbling it with inexperience. With the need to hurry, Haakon shouldered the youth aside and threw the turn off the pin so that the yard came down with a run.

  “Secure the buntlines!” he commanded.

  The youth rushed to obey. Together they pulled and hauled lines, then hurried aloft and balanced across footropes to unfurl sails. The wind roared past with the waking growl of a bear.

  Haakon kept an eye on the mainsail as it held the wind that bore in with a will. If it stayed fair, they’d make it in and out of the Caribbean before hurricane season began in May. Then it could be a straight shot to the coast of North America. From there just a train ride home.

  Should a man want to do such a thing.

  Haakon glanced to the horizon. He doubted the rise in wind had anything to do with his prayer, but then again, maybe God was trying to get his attention all the same.

  FIVE

  APRIL 3, 1895

  FINCASTLE, VIRGINIA

  BODY ACHING, THOR TRUDGED AROUND THE back of the wagon and unloaded a crate filled with pint jars. The modest town of Fincastle stood around him, just several hours’ drive from the farm—a journey he often made across the James River by ferry to deliver goods to a mercantile that placed orders by mail.

  Today’s delivery was of twenty-eight pints of Aven’s cider jelly and twice that of the women’s apple butter and pie filling. With the help of the shopkeeper, they unloaded the first of the twenty gallon jugs of cider vinegar.

  The shopkeeper spoke as he carried the jugs inside the mercantile. Following behind, Thor had no idea what was being said, so he cleared his throat. A gesture that was more polite than whistling, Ida had once explained.

  The balding man turned. “My apologies.” His mouth, now in sight, moved slower than need be, but Thor knew it was meant as a courtesy. “I was askin’ if you’ve got any liquor in the works. Folks are often wonderin’.”

  Though fermented brews profited more per acre, Thor shook his head. The same answer he always gave. He admired the shopkeeper’s savvy persistence, but if customers hankered for something stronger, they’d have to look elsewhere. As much as Thor missed the crafting of liquor, he missed the taste even more. Since cravings hit him with little warning, he’d sold off his fermenting equipment to be safe. To his relief, the longings were far apart, but it didn’t make them any less potent. In fact, they came worse at harvest time. Turns out sobering hadn’t done a thing for his memory of how to concoct a mighty fine brew. Because of that, he’d found it best to eliminate even the chance.

  Back at the wagon, Thor hefted out two more jugs of vinegar and slid them onto the stoop of the mercantile, careful to keep them out of the way of passing customers. He turned for more product and winced at the throbbing in his side. A flush warmed his skin, but truth be told, he’d already felt feverish that morning. He should have enlisted help from home but hadn’t wanted to take Jorgan or Peter away. Aven was always eager to come along, but the long, bumpy wagon ride seemed a danger in her late condition.

  Taking a breath, Thor fetched more jugs and passed the vinegar into the waiting grasp of the shopkeeper. They kept at it until the wagon was unloaded of its goods right down to every last jar of apple butter, all of which was heartily fussed over by the shopkeeper’s wife.

  “Oh, these labels just get prettier and prettier,” she said, admiring Aven and Fay’s handiwork where Norgaard Family Orchard was stamped on rounds of neatly trimmed paper.

  Thor gave her a polite smile and would pass on the appreciation. He handed the shopkeeper the invoice, and once the transaction was complete, Thor folded the payment into his pocket. He nodded a thanks to the loyal patrons and crossed the mercantile, aiming toward the shelves nearest the front window.

  Lace ribbons were displayed on wooden spools, and tiny, painted bottles caught the noon glow. Straw bonnets sat on wire stands beside a looking glass. All would be nice for Aven, but last they were here, he’d witnessed her examining something else. Thor found the very item near the floor in an enamel pail. The vessel held umbrellas and the fancier ones that women used on sunny days. He didn’t know what they were called.

  Thor pulled one out and turned it in the light of the window. He rather wanted to test it but checked over both shoulders to make sure no one was watching. He lowered the lacy contraption, loosened its binding, and pressed it open. It was awful pretty. And he could just see Aven and his child sitting beneath it on a hot summer day.

  Thor closed it, and when he couldn’t retie the tiny ribbon meant to hold it snug, a female shopper stepped in to aid him. When she’d finished forming a bow, the elderly woman gave him an understanding smile, and he smiled back.

  Fishing out some of his pay, he went back to the counter and purchased the gift. The shopkeeper wrapped it in brown paper, and Thor was grateful for a way to keep the fragile lace clean until he could tuck the gift into a corner for Aven to discover.

  After pulling out his notebook and small pencil, Thor scrawled a question for the shopkeeper, who then pointed in the direction of the doctor’s residence at the end of the road. Thor offered his gratitude and headed out.

  He drove the team of mares down the road to the two-story clapboard where a sign indicated the physician’s place of residence. After leading the team and wagon around back, he set the brake and left the horses to graze on the spring grass beneath their hooves.

  Thor followed a low, tidy fence around the building to a thick-slabbed door. He knocked, waited, and when nothing happened, tried again. At his third attempt, he gave a good pounding, hoping it was still a reasonable amount of sound. He didn’t mean to go banging anyone’s door down.

  When no one answered, he moved closer to the window. The space, though filled with a desk, chair, and medical equipment, was void of human life.

  Now what? If the doctor was treating a patient in the countryside, it could be hours if not days until his return. Thor could come back in a week or two, but it seemed wise to leave some kind of word. He wrote a note listing his ailments, including one he hadn’t mentioned to Aven, let alone anyone else—that the content of his bladder was dark as rust and as painful to rid. At the top of the page, Thor added his name and noted where he lived before folding the page in half and slipping it under the door. Whether or not the note got lost, it seemed better to try.

  He wrestled with discouragement as he climbed back onto the wagon seat, and he fought the same battle as he drove the team onto the road and toward home.

  The harnesses jostled and the wheels turned. Birds darted about. All making noise, as he knew they did, but everything was hollow of sound. Instead, the world was made up of sight and color and texture. The rhythm of the horse’s hooves as they lifted and lowered. The taste of the air that was earthy and rich in spring and the smell of it . . . even more pungent and fertile.

  He crossed at the ferry, flipping a coin as payment to the operator, and led the team off the flat-bottomed boat and onto the road. As the miles toward home wore on, he shifted on the seat to try and get comfortable. He was hot and then chilled, and his limbs were sore as the dickens. The pain in his side hadn’t worsened, but it caught him by surprise even during the most menial of tasks.

  All he wanted was a warm bed and a long sleep with Aven curled beside him. She had a way of looking after him, and he needed her right now. A few days ago, Thor had tipped her off to the amount of his discomfort. Her concern garnered a visit from Ida’s sister, Cora, who lived on their land, just past the orchards as Peter did. Skilled in herbal remedies, she had brought Thor a tonic, which Aven prepared as a tea for him three times daily. So why was he feeling so poorly?

  Sight of his lower orchards indicated just a half mile to go until the farmyard. Thor drove along and, spying something to his right, slowed the team. Flashes of blue and brown like that of denim and wool rushed throu
gh his trees. He halted the wagon only to blink again and see nothing. Had he imagined that? Maybe it had been blue jays flitting from a running deer. Or maybe he was simply more feverish than he realized.

  Yet when he entered the farmyard, he feared he’d been wrong. In the distance, Jorgan surveyed the cidery with Bjørn on his hip. Was something wrong with the roof? When he angled Thor’s way, his face was the somber reserved for bad news. Gut souring worse, Thor set the brake and climbed down. That’s when he halted altogether.

  Slopped across the cidery were giant brushstrokes of blood-red paint in crudely drawn words.

  Still wet.

  We haven’t forgotten.

  The last letters were scrawled in such haste they were scarcely legible. Thor went cold. A chill that inked through his limbs.

  Nailed below the vow was a fold of white cloth. Thor freed the wrinkled muslin. Unfolding what could only be a Klansmen’s mask, his hands moved of their own accord as if in silent acceptance of what was coming upon them. Two slits cut for eyes gaped at him from beneath a peaked hood. Designed to make the wearer appear as a ghostly figure . . .

  Returning from the dead to finish the fight.

  Thor looked to Jorgan, who remained somber, and sparking in his eyes was the willingness to face a fight should it come to that again. No doubt now it would.

  They were short a man, and Thor didn’t even know how well he could raise a rifle and fire. There was something in Jorgan’s expression that declared the worry over Thor’s state mutual.

  Jorgan surveyed the wall again—the words written there—and Thor followed suit. After nearly forty years of feuding with Jed and his sons, this day was destined to come.

  One didn’t drive wolves from their den without some kind of retaliation.

  The rest of Jed’s men would be in tow as well. Likely one of them had done this. Jed never handled this kind of dirty work, but the old general was always the mastermind behind these acts. Recalling the movement out through his orchard, Thor scanned the portion of land but knew that if it had been the men he thought it was, they were vanished again into these wilds.

  Where I-D-A? Thor signed.

  Jorgan pointed to the house.

  C-O-R-A? Thor stroked a thumb against the side of his beard, doing it twice to add Girls? While a comely shade to Thor’s way of thinking, Cora’s skin, and that of her two daughters, posed danger for the brave souls. Danger to be living in these parts where Klansmen had once prowled and now did again.

  “They’re home. Peter agreed to stay close to them for now.”

  Starting back toward the wagon with Jorgan, Thor fingerspelled F-A-Y? A-V-E-N?

  “They’re in the house with Sigurd.”

  While the Klansmen would take no offense with the color of Fay and Aven’s skin, it was a different fear that plagued Thor. Almost as dangerous as being the wrong color to men like the Sorrels was being the right one.

  Reaching the wagon, Thor dropped the white hood in the back, then started on the first mare’s bridle. Jorgan unfastened the other, and at sight of his brother waving for his attention, Thor looked at him.

  I feed horses, Jorgan signed.

  Thor nodded his thanks. Did it truly show how much he needed to lie down just now? After coming around the team, he squeezed his brother’s shoulder, then reached in for the paper-wrapped parcel. With Aven’s gift in hand, he headed for the house that spread before them as vast as the cidery itself. With its three stories of windows and two first-floor doors, not impenetrable. He drew in a slow breath. Even if the house sat locked and guarded, they couldn’t just keep the women and children there for days or even weeks on end. But with the Sorrels getting bolder, something had to be done.

  He stepped inside, his only focusing being the stairs that would lead him to bed. As Thor climbed, never would he forget the way Peter had been stunned senseless upon first seeing Aven. Him standing there in his white cloak and hood that wretched night, watching her as though she’d come out of a dream. Fay embodied what would have the same kind of appeal. Stemming from German blood, Fay possessed a waiflike beauty. While Peter had rallied his senses, becoming friend instead of admirer, there were others of Peter’s kin who wouldn’t be so noble.

  Near the attic, Thor was too exhasuted to tread with any care. An U-N-W-I-E-L-D-Y sound, Ida called it, when he was careless with the weight of his bootfalls. Making it no surprise that Aven rose from her chair near the window, looking alarmed.

  She lowered her sewing to the seat, and his name came from her lips, spoken in question with her pretty eyes wide.

  After giving her a smile of assurance, he leaned the gift against the cradle, hoping she’d understand that it was for the pair of them. Aven smiled softly, and while he expected her to peek inside the paper, she reached instead for his hand. Savoring the feel, Thor led her over to the bed. He touched the top of the coverlet for her to lie down there, then bent to unlace his boots. At his struggle, Aven came around to help but was as cumbersome to reach them as he. What a pair they were these days. A faint chuckle shook his chest, and Aven’s eyes shone with amusement.

  It was easier to focus on that than what he should be explaining to her right now: of the danger that had been painted across the cidery wall.

  But such trepidation could wait for just a little while longer. He begged it from on high. After managing to work free of his boots, he claimed his own side of the bed and, once settled, relished the way she tucked herself near, so close that he scarcely needed to move to rest the backs of his fingers against her round, firm stomach. His other hand came around her own, holding it safe. Thor closed his eyes and savored the sensation. A moment made all the more right as their prayers for a child all their own lay granted between them.

  Aven tipped her chin up, claiming a kiss before he could open his eyes. Thor savored it—sweet and soft as it was—and even as he delighted in the tenderness, he cupped the top of her head to tuck it safely beneath his beard. Aven started to protest, so Thor made his sign for sleep. Hopefully she would think him already drifting. She nestled in again, even closer. He didn’t mean to discourage her affections, but if she knew the longing inside him, and how he was fighting it . . .

  But until he could be seen by a doctor, something about this ailment made him uneasy for her. Something that wasn’t right with him. He didn’t know what it was, but he wouldn’t allow himself any nearer to her until a doctor assured him it was fine. That she would be fine.

  Aven lay unmoving save her fingertips, which slowly brushed back and forth against his own. A gentle lulling that was sending him into the throes of peace and sleep.

  But just before he succumbed to it, he saw the warning in his mind’s eye.

  We haven’t forgotten.

  The last time the Norgaards had faced off to the Sorrels, bullets had ripped up the hillside, all aimed at Haakon, who raced toward his own disappearance. Not only had Haakon blown up the Sorrel barn to avenge the thievery, he’d done it to eliminate the choice from Thor as to whether or not to sell the last of his stock.

  A freedom from the burden of the liquor that Thor still wrestled with.

  Whether bravery or foolheadedness, Haakon had scarcely escaped over the ridgeline with his life. It was the last time Thor had seen his brother, but even as those memories trod around this sacred place, unwelcome, a stronger taunt rose up to join them. Jed and Harlan were returned to Blackbird Mountain. Twice now to this very farmyard.

  Aven touched Thor’s arm where the needle had pressed into his vein just as it had done to Harlan’s.

  Thor sighed, relieved when sleep began to claim him. A way to liberate his mind, even briefly, from the fact that so clever were the Klansmen, so full of vengeance, that they wouldn’t show themselves until they were sure of victory. Now he could only pray that he would be well enough to stand against them.

  SIX

  APRIL 9, 1895

  NORTH ATLANTIC OCEAN

  DREAMS PUMMELED FROM EVERY WHICH WAY. Rolling ov
er him as a current that couldn’t be stemmed. Exhaustion and regret blurred his focus . . . making the memories bend on themselves. Cramming thoughts together and confusing him.

  Hammocks creaked, weighted with sleeping sailors, Haakon’s included. But louder than any shifting of canvas and rope were the screams of the little girl. Screams that were seared into his memory with as torrid a force as the explosion itself.

  Just moments before the barn had burst apart, Haakon had raced down the hillside to where Jed Sorrel’s granddaughter was tugging on the barn door to go inside. Reaching the child, Haakon had ripped her away from the rigged structure where inside burned a fuse that he’d already lit. His one thought had been to keep her alive but she hadn’t known that. All she knew was the force with which he rushed her across the farmyard toward safety.

  Her screams had pierced the air, driving fear and regret through his very core.

  That’s when the earth shook—a ball of fire scalding his back. The closest he’d come to hell thus far. The fireball singed his skin even through his clothes. Sweat had covered him, nearly causing him to lose his grip on the child. And that was just the first explosion. Because when his second homemade bomb went off, it took hundreds of quarts of liquor with it, shuddering the ground like a giant rising from slumber. Accompanying it was a shattering so loud, Thor might as well have heard.

  Haakon had gotten the girl to safety when guns were drawn, Jed’s pistol being the first. All Haakon remembered was racing back toward his hiding spot on the top of the nearest hill as gunfire pelted around him, more menacing than the falling debris of boards and sharded glass.

  How he survived, he didn’t know. It was the nearest brush he’d had with death. That was until the night he’d fallen from the ship into a dark North Sea. Striking the side of the vessel on the way down, Haakon hit the water nearly unconscious. He learned only later that the boatswain, Tate, jumped in after him, and with the help of a rope and the strength of a dozen sailors Haakon lived to see another sunrise.