The Great Alone (53 page)

How he’d railed against the unfairness of it that night, knowing that it meant he couldn’t be a member of any of the three expeditions Baranov was sending out that fall to locate sites for future settlements—one to Hawaii, one to California, and one to the mouth of the Columbia River in New Albion, the latter despite a report brought back by Rezanov two years earlier that an expedition headed by two men named Lewis and Clark was at the Columbia. His dreams of traveling to faraway shores had died that night, buried forever by the burden of his family—a burden that rested solely on his shoulders.

For ten long years he’d listened to the stories told by people who had been to the places he’d dreamed of seeing, and heard the reports brought back from the settlements that had been established on the island of Kauai in Hawaii and at Fort Ross in northern California. For ten long years he’d resented the responsibility that had chained him to Sitka like an anchor around his neck. And for ten long years he’d lived with the guilt of that resentment.

He loved his mother. He truly loved her, which made him all the more ashamed that he could look at her coming death as a means of setting him free.

Wolf stared at the face of his dying grandmother, then slowly and gently lifted her hand from beneath the covers. It was all bones, skin, and nails with little flesh to soften it. Yet as he held it, he remembered the many times it had stroked him with affection. The love his father had shown him was a dim memory, kept alive by the stories his babushka had told him about Zachar.

In the last few weeks, though, she had talked more and more frequently about the Aleutian island of Attu, where she’d been born, wishing she could go there before she died. As her thoughts turned back to the past and her childhood on that far island, she remembered in detail the baskets Weaver Woman had made, her mother sewing the fine bird-skin parkas, her uncle, Many Whiskers, sitting on the lee side of the barabara watching the sea, the festive dances, the story-telling times. It was as if she could see more clearly into yesterday than the shadows of tomorrow.

He held tightly to her hand, not wanting death to steal her from him as it had taken away his father. But the whiteness of her hand reminded him of the fog that day on the seal island. The blurred image of the wild-eyed, smelly-clothed man with the pistol swam before his mind’s eye, and the voice, that Yankee voice: “He’s dead, son.”

On the heels of that memory came another. He’d been seven or eight when his mother had come for him. Babushka had argued with her, refusing to let him go with her, and Raven had declared, “I never say Zachar his father. Zachar say it.”

In the end, he had gone with his mother, sometimes living in the log houses of her people, sometimes in Sitka, where Babushka’s cabin became a refuge from his confusion. Many times he had asked his mother whether Zachar was his father. Usually he received no answer. Once when she was drunk on the Yankee firewater, she had claimed his father was the Boston man Caleb. In all his life, he’d heard of only one man with that name.

Three years ago, when he was twelve, his mother had contracted syphilis, the white man’s great pox, and no Russian or Yankee would give presents to lie with her any more. Mikhail had treated her with mercury and made her well, but still men shunned her. Mikhail had helped him and arranged for him to learn the smithy trade because he was Zachar’s son.

Zachar’s son was how Babushka thought of him. Raven often lied, but Wolf had never known his babushka to lie. Slowly over the years he had come to think of himself as Zachar’s son, too, and pushed aside the doubts Raven had raised in his mind.

Suddenly the rhythm of Tasha’s breathing changed, slowing from its fast, wheezing pace to a calmer rate. It sounded so peaceful that Wolf turned eagerly toward Mikhail, certain his uncle was wrong, that Babushka was not going to die—not this day.

“She is better.” He spoke quickly and softly, directing his uncle’s attention to his dear babushka. “See how she rests.”

Mikhail hesitated, then walked over to the bed. As he stood beside Wolf’s chair, old Tasha took a deep breath and released it in a long sigh. Then, there was only silence. So calmly, so quietly, she had died.

Wolf stared at her motionless body in disbelief, mentally straining, trying to will her to breathe again. She had left him, as his father had left him. Anger and pain flashed hotly through him as he clenched his jaws together so tightly that his teeth hurt.

Unbidden came the words he’d once heard her say: “They always leave.”

The anger drained from him. He knelt beside the bed, then made the sign of the cross and tried to pray. He heard Mikhail turn away and stagger to the table. There he collapsed on a chair and buried his face in his arms to smother the slobbering sounds of the sobs that racked his body.

CHAPTER XXIX

Sitka

Spring 1836

A young man of twenty-five, dressed in the clothes of a Yankee first mate, walked slowly up the street taking in everything that went on around him with an interest that was more than curiosity. The noise of hammers and saws used by the carpenters building the new three-story mansion on the knoll overlooking the bay, made a steady din in the background. From the smithy came the ring of hammer on iron as plowshares and spades were shaped, bound for the Russian settlement of Fort Ross near Bodega Bay in California.

The Russian Orthodox Church stood on the south side of the street. Twenty years before, Baranov had ordered an old ship hauled on land and remodeled into a church, the first to be built at New Archangel. The seaman paused opposite the square and gazed at the flame-shaped steeple topped by the distinctive Greek cross with its crooked lower bar. Then he continued up the street.

As he passed the shop of a silversmith, his eye was caught by the sign overhead. He stopped and turned back to read it, frowning at the Russian script as if he was having trouble deciphering it. His expression cleared. After hesitating momentarily, he went inside.

Seated at his workbench by the window, Wolf Tarakanov glanced up as the man entered his shop. His coarse black hair and light bronze skin indicated his Indian ancestry, but the gray-blue eyes and Slavic features revealed the mixture of Russian blood. He set aside the silver bracelet and etching tool, then straightened from his stool, absently brushing his hands on the front of his leather apron. A frown flickered across his forehead as he gazed curiously at the seaman. The man’s black hair and blue eyes and his facial features were vaguely familiar.

In bad Russian, the man asked, “I look for Tasha or Mikhail Tarakanov. The shop sign say your name Tarakanov is. Can you tell where find I them?”

Wolf stared at him intently and responded in English, “You are Yankee.”

“Yes.” The man appeared relieved that Wolf could speak his language.

“Mikhail Tarakanov lives in California at our settlement there. Tasha Tarakanova died nearly twenty years ago. She is buried in the cemetery.” Wolf hesitated, still trying to identify the reason the Yankee seaman looked so familiar to him. “I am her grandson, Wolf Tarakanov.”

“I am Matthew Edmund Stone of New Bedford, Massachusetts, the son of her granddaughter, Larissa.”

Wolf blinked in surprise. “I thought you looked familiar to me. Now I see—” He abruptly checked himself. It was almost like looking into a mirror. “You are the son of Caleb Stone.”

“Yes.”

A cold feeling ran through Wolf’s veins. For a moment he stared at the hand thrust at him in greeting. The name conjured up painful memories and a long-ago question in his mind. He forced himself to shake hands with the man roughly eight years his junior.

“I am the son of Zachar Tarakanov,” Wolf asserted. “My mother is the Kolosh woman called Raven. She lives in the Ranche,” he said, referring to the Indian village that had been built in the shadow of the town’s log stockade, but his mother’s name appeared to have no meaning to the man. “I was but a boy when your mother left New Archangel. Unfortunately I have no memory of her, and it has been many years since any communication was received from her. I hope she is well.”

“She died almost fifteen years ago from consumption.”

“I am sorry to hear that.” He wanted to ask about Caleb Stone, but he couldn’t make the words come. “Your vessel is newly arrived in Sitka?”

“Aye. She’s the whaling bark
North Star
.”

Wolf glanced sharply at the seaman. “Hell-ships,” he’d heard them called, commanded by notoriously brutal tyrants and crewed by murderers and thieves. He wondered if that accounted for the steely look in the man’s eyes and the sternness around his mouth.

“You do not follow your father in the merchant trade?”

“I follow my father. He is captain of the
North Star.
He took to whaling shortly after the close of the War of 1812 with England.” But Matthew Stone didn’t explain that the British embargo and blockade had severely damaged Yankee trading in the Pacific or that his father hadn’t possessed the resources to recover from it and had lost virtually everything. “There’s a considerable profit to be made in whaling. Some are saying sperm oil will go back over a dollar a gallon. Working on shares, a man can make himself a tidy sum. That’s part of the reason we put in here at Sitka. Some of our crew jumped ship in Hawaii. We’re short-handed. Your Aleuts are supposed to be good with a harpoon. We thought we might contract with the company for their services—the way ships used to do in the old days hunting sea otter along the California coast.”

“You have had no success,” Wolf guessed, and nodded in understanding when Matthew shook his head. “The Aleuts prefer their old way of hunting whales—to harpoon them, then wait for the dead whale to wash ashore. The company tried whaling a few years ago, but the experiment was not successful.”

“So I was told.” He shoved his hands in the pockets of his monkey jacket.

Wolf nervously cleared his throat, then asked, “Is your father also in town?”

“No, he’s on the bark. He … isn’t well.”

“We have a physician here at New Archangel, as well as an apothecary shop. I would gladly arrange for him to—”

“It isn’t necessary,” Matthew Stone interrupted. “It’s some fever he picked up in the tropics. It will pass in a few days. We won’t be in port long. For my mother’s sake, I felt I should try to find some of her family.”

“Perhaps you could come to my home for dinner tonight and meet my wife, Marya, and our three children.”

“No, I … can’t.” He tempered the quickness of his refusal, but didn’t offer an excuse. “It was a pleasure meeting you … Wolf, but I’m afraid I must be getting back to the
North Star
.”

In truth, Wolf was relieved that his invitation to dinner had been turned down. “I hope your father’s fever passes quickly.”

“Thank you.” He nodded to him, then left the shop.

Wolf walked back to his workbench and picked up the silver bracelet, pretending to examine the detail of the totemic design he was etching onto its surface. He picked up the polishing cloth and began rubbing the shiny metal. It flashed in the sunlight coming through the window. But his mind wasn’t on the work at hand; instead his thoughts drifted into the past.

For so long he’d thought of himself as Zachar’s son that he’d let the doubts about his parentage die. He had thought them dead until today when Caleb Stone’s son had walked into his shop, looking enough like himself to be his brother.

Long after Matthew Stone left his shop, Wolf sat on his stool and rubbed the silver bracelet, wondering and telling himself it didn’t matter. At last he put down the bracelet and removed his apron, then grabbed his hat and coat and left the shop.

The log palisade that separated the town of New Archangel from the adjoining Kolosh camp known as the Ranche was heavily reinforced, and its portcullised gate strongly guarded. No one challenged Wolf as he passed through the gate. The guards were accustomed to the regular visits he paid his mother; their duty was not to keep their people out of the camp but to restrict the number of Kolosh coming into town. Camp dogs ran alongside him, barking and wagging their tails.

Lost in thought, he paid no attention to them and didn’t stop until he was inside the log dwelling of his mother’s family. There he paused to adjust his eyes to the gloom, the smokehole in the roof admitting a spray of light. The stale air smelled of fish oil, body odor, and smoke from the center fire that was never extinguished. Meal preparations were under way, as they always seemed to be; food was eaten several times a day.

No one spoke to him. Greeting was not the custom of the Kolosh. Nor was he entirely welcome, Wolf knew. He had chosen the way of the Russian, a way his mother’s people continued to reject.

When he saw she was not among the women preparing food, he walked around to her sleeping corner. The Kolosh disdained the use of furniture, so there were no chairs or cots. His mother lay on a sleeping mat, covered with a trader’s blanket.

The years had not been kind to her, grizzling her coarse hair with dull gray and jowling her cheeks and eyes. Her slim waist had disappeared under the accumulation of fat and her breasts had become pendulous. As he crouched down, sitting on his heels beside her, Wolf noticed the beads of sweat on her flushed skin.

“Why did you not send word you were ill?”