Northern Lights Trilogy (51 page)

Elsa laughed as Kristian bent down and buried his face in a jasmine bush full of white, fragrant blossoms, sniffing theatrically. “Look, Mama,” he said. “I smell.”

“Yes, you do,” she said with a giggle. Elsa picked up his squirming
body and buried her face in his neck for a kiss. “You smell just like the flowers!”

“Down, Mama! I want down!”

“Kristian, we must hurry. Can you find your papa? He’s right up there, at the corner.” She knelt and pointed, hoping to distract the toddler from the intoxicating Hawaiian flora and fauna. She had just extracted him from a fissure in a rock, trying to get at a gecko lizard, and now he was entranced by the flowers! It would be impossible to get him all the way through town without carrying him, kicking and screaming.

Elsa looked ahead at Peder, hoping he could help with Kristian. Her husband was gazing across the busy dirt road at the mercantile, his expression intent. Did he see someone he knew? As she watched, he took a step back, into the shadow of the porch above the sidewalk.

“Go, Kristian! I’ll race you!” Elsa whispered. Kristian spotted Peder at last and took off in his direction. She smiled at his delighted giggle and followed along at a leisurely pace. Elsa winced as Kristian squeezed between two natives and shoved aside a little girl in his efforts, then smiled again as he reached his father, embracing the tall man’s leg. It was a glorious day to be in port at Honolulu, and she reveled in the chance to smell the fragrant flowers with her child and to gaze up at the green Koolau Mountains to the towering extinct volcano west of Koko Head at the point. What an exotic, idyllic place!

The people in town were native Hawaiians, imported plantation workers from China and Polynesia, and merchants, plus a few trailing whalers. The whalers spent half of their year in the vicinity, harpooning their kill and taking the cargo home to Japan, America, or even Russia. Soon the last of them would be leaving for distant shores, as the migrating whales had done months before. It would be nice to visit the place during the quiet that the natives usually enjoyed. Elsa grinned at the thought of a lazy day on the beach, combing the sand with Kristian for sand dollars and seashells and cuddling with her husband in a hammock for a nap beneath the palms.

Her smile faded as Peder grabbed up the child and looked for her anxiously. She reached him a moment later. “What? What is it?”

Peder took a step in front of her, as if posturing himself as protector, and nodded toward the mercantile. “There, just inside the window. Do you see that man?”

Elsa studied his profile, slightly obscured by the reflection of the glass. He was in uniform, a British uniform, to judge by the color and stripes. He stepped closer to the glass and bent to pick up a jar from the front window display. Elsa gasped. She edged closer to Peder, unable to believe her eyes.

Mason Dutton. The pirate who had threatened her life and nearly burned the Ramstads’ first ship to the waterline.

A pirate, by anyone’s account. The horrible memories filled her mind.

“But,” she mumbled softly, “he is in uniform!”

“Come. I’m getting you out of here.” Peder took her arm firmly and led the way down the rough-hewn sidewalk toward the wharf.

Elsa hazarded one more glance over her shoulder toward the mercantile.

And Mason was staring right back at her.

Mason Dutton let a slow smile crawl up his face as he watched Elsa Ramstad hurry away with her husband. It had been years, but as soon as he saw her, that moment he had first seen her in the West Indies came hurtling back to him. She was more beautiful now than that nymph he remembered, who had been swimming with the sailors of Peder Ramstad’s ship. He could still see her slim legs, kicking in the crystalline waters as her skirts billowed about her. Her full lips as she defiantly looked back at him.

Mason had almost had her husband’s ship, as well as her. They were one of the few crews ever to fend off his forces in his years of piracy, and the knowledge burned within him. He was not one to take defeat easily; if he could have another opportunity to make the fair
Elsa Ramstad his own, he would seize the challenge. There would be no greater satisfaction than seeing Peder Ramstad’s ship burn once and for all.

Had they recognized him? Elsa’s big eyes, perfect for her sculpted face, had held recognition and fear. It pleased him to think he frightened her.
I should
. They would be even more unnerved had they heard of his new reputation in these waters. “Run, mouse, run,” he whispered. “The cat is in the house.” He admired her slim waist and noted the child in Peder’s arms with interest. Mason had kept up with the Heroine of the Horn through the newspaper articles in the years since they had crossed paths, admiring her obvious tenacity and talent.
All that and beautiful too. Yes, Mrs. Ramstad, someday you and I will again exchange words, and perhaps something more
.

Peder pulled her around a corner, ending Mason’s lustful imaginings. Had it not been for Ramstad and his louse of a first mate, Karl Martensen, Mason was sure things would have ended differently. The fact that the two men and their crew had foiled his efforts brought a grudging respect, but also a burning desire to set things to rights, to get even and claim what was his. And what wasn’t his these days? he asked himself with a low chuckle in his throat.

Mason set down the jar with a clunk that made the shopkeeper scowl in his direction, then quickly look away upon seeing the perpetrator. Mason Dutton owned the people in Honolulu and the surrounding waters of the Hawaiian Islands. They were his people, he their king. Or dictator. If he chose to strike, he did so. If he chose to ignore them, they breathed a sigh of relief. Most steered clear of him, paying the required dues to exist under his “protection.” And he liked the sense of power it gave him.

He waved at a man whose stolen British uniform bulged at the seams, and the man immediately lumbered over. “Captain Peder Ramstad is in town,” Mason said quietly. “Find out the name of his ship, their cargo, and when they intend to set sail.”

Kaatje blinked, her eyes stinging from the salty sweat of her brow, and eased her horse to a stop. With the back of her hand, she wiped her forehead and looked around for Christina and Jessie. They were near the house, making mud pies as they had been doing for over an hour. She smiled.
The industry of small children
. If only she could sell their wares for money! On the stone wall that bordered the well were pie after pie, testimony of the girls’ busy morning.

All in all, life was good here in the Skagit Valley of the Washington Territory. The soil was more dense than in Dakota, and thus heavier to clear and plow, but richer for growing. Here, they didn’t have the problem of drought that the dryland farmers of Dakota battled; instead, they contended with rot. Still, it was easier to bring in a crop here, and Kaatje was glad for her move. In the four years since their arrival, she had managed—with the help of her dear Bergenser friends—to build some semblance of a home for her daughters in the one-room shanty and bring in enough of a crop to sustain them through each year. With God’s help, they would do it again in 1886.

If only it could be a bit easier
, she thought to herself. Her neighbors had expanded their farms and their homes since arriving, whereas Kaatje found herself barely able to sustain what she and her friends had begun. She closed her eyes.
Forgive me, Lord. I am thankful for what we have been given. I’m just so tired. Ease my weariness
. Slowly, she unhooked the harness of the plow from her waist and chest and then released her horse. Her shoulders and back ached from the work, and she winced as the fabric of her dress moved over her back, made raw from the leather straps. She paused and gave in to her exhaustion for a moment, hand on neck, eyes closed, sweaty cheek to the slight breeze from the west.

“Mama! Mama!” yelled her girls in unison, glad Kaatje was taking a break for lunch. They hauled a tin bucket of water, and Nels, the
draft horse, whinnied and took a step forward as if they were bringing refreshment to him instead.

“Poor Nels,” Kaatje soothed, stroking his giant sweaty neck. He was of good stock and had served them well here in the Skagit Valley. Certainly without Nels’s help Kaatje would have accomplished little on this land.

When the girls reached her, Kaatje smiled broadly, invigorated simply by being near them as they chatted about business as if mud pies were a booming industry. “Give me a cup, child,” she said to Jessie, who offered up the tin scoop. Kaatje drank deeply, dipped for another, and then nodded at Nels. “Give the rest to him, please. He must be very thirsty on such a day as this.”

“Yes, Mama,” Jessie said, happy to treat her big friend she had named after a fellow Bergenser. Jessie had a natural way with animals. Someday, Jessie had announced the other evening, she wanted to be a shepherd like Jesus, caring for her sheep on the hills that surrounded the Skagit Valley. She often begged to accompany Birger Nelson when he herded his flock to new pastures high in the hills. On the other hand, Kaatje’s older child, Christina, seemed to fear the horse and preferred chores that did not entail caring for Nels or their hog and sheep.

If they were different in their personalities, they were even more dissimilar in their outward appearance. Christina was short for her age, with dark blond hair that waved a bit, and she had Kaatje’s gray eyes. In comparison, Jessie was fast approaching her older sibling’s height, and her dark hair held the same tight coil that Soren’s once had, making it wild and unruly but, at the same time, wonderful. Her eyes were a remarkable summer-sky blue, reminding Kaatje daily of her husband long absent, and of his indiscretions.

It pained her a bit, when she thought of it, that there was nothing that resembled Kaatje in the girl—which only made sense because she was not her biological mother—but Kaatje often felt her heart did not make sense when it came to Jessie. She loved the girl so much that somehow Kaatje felt God should imprint her own image on the child,
much as he had on Christina. She longed to erase any hint of Tora Anders in Jessie. She wanted to erase all the ugliness of the past, all the memories of Soren’s affairs with Tora and the others, and only view the hope of their future.

Kaatje walked to the shanty, eager to enter the shade and protection of their small home and rest a bit before returning to the field. She wanted to sit in her rocker and close her eyes, but instead pulled bread from the basket on the sideboard and directed Christina to get last night’s leftover beef from the tiny icebox. As she placed forks and knives on the table with napkins and plates, the weariness overcame her. A blinding pain shot through her head, making her wince, and she stumbled toward her bed.

“Mama?” Jessie said, rushing over to her. “What is it? Are you ill?”

“No, child,” Kaatje struggled to convince her. “Just very tired. Eat your lunch with Christina, and let your mother rest. I will be fine in a moment.”

She awakened an hour later to both girls, settled by her bed, studying her intently.

“Mama! Are you all right?” Christina said, clearly frightened.

“Do you need Doc Warner?” Jessie asked, sounding like a small adult.

“No, children. I am fine.” Pressing away the pain that racked her body from head to toe, Kaatje sat up. “I’m simply tired. It is not normal for women to do such work in the field.”

“Because Papa is gone,” Jessie said forlornly.

“If only he would come back!” Christina wished aloud.

“If he could find us,” Jessie added.

If he’s alive
, Kaatje thought to herself. After hearing nothing about him in the last four years, she assumed the worst. Soon, she would find the gumption to discover the truth. But not yet. Right now, she still held the tiniest hope that Soren was alive. That he would return to them and make things right after all these years. That Kaatje would have the chance to rant and rave and let him know how difficult life
had been without him, and watch as he groveled for her forgiveness. That was all she wanted. A chance to let out all the fury that boiled beneath the surface. A moment of vindication. The day when all the things that were wrong in her life became right.

“All in God’s time,” she told her daughters. “Someday it will all be made right. In God’s time.” She closed her eyes, willing her body to rise. For her children, who gazed at her in such distress. For herself. The world would not beat Kaatje Janssen. She had too much to live for.