The surprise had been his. He found Helena, even though he was sure she did not love him, a thoughtful, attentive, and considerate wife. Had he met her twenty-five years before she might have loved him … but then he could not have afforded her!
Their life had been singularly happy, and if she did not love him she did respect and admire him. These last years had been his happiest. He was not sure when he fell in love with his wife; nonetheless, it had happened, and now for the first time he sensed her unrest, and he knew the cause. Jean LaBarge was a handsome man, not in a pretty way as were some of the Czar’s officers who had paid court to her, but in a tough, dangerous way. The Count, considered in his day a superb swordsman, and victor in four duels to the death, admitted to himself he would dislike to face LaBarge with a rapier in his hand. The man had it in him to kill … not from malice, for there did not seem to be cruelty in him, but simply because he was, more than anyone in the Count’s experience, a fighter.
“Helena”—he turned back to her—“have you ever been sorry you married me?”
Scarcely had he uttered the words than he was wishing they had not been said.
Was he a boy to expect such a question to receive more than the obvious answer? She turned to face him. “No, Alexander, I have not been sorry, and I shall never be sorry.”
He welcomed the sincerity in her voice. “I’m afraid I have been a bad husband … too preoccupied.” He waved an irritated hand. “Marriage in our lot is so much a matter of state. We scarcely know each other until it is too late.” “It has never been so with us,” she protested. “You know it hasn’t.” She was right, of course. There had always been a warm, friendly understanding between them, and in the past few years it had become even better. They had, really, been two of the lucky ones.
He remembered the first time he had seen her, when he was a young officer in the Imperial Army, and had come to her home to visit, accompanying her uncle. She had been, a little girl with large, serious eyes who was always in a corner, reading. She had come running from the door to greet her uncle, followed by a huge wolfhound she called Tovarich. Suddenly seeing the strange young man, she had stopped, torn between eagerness and embarrassment. He had seen her fear and had walked to her, bowing deeply. “Princess, I am your servant. And when was a mistress afraid of her servants?” She laughed then. “You! You couldn’t be a servant! With that nose?”
They had laughed together, and from that day on, they had been friends…
The wind puffed through the pines and flurried her skirt. “It is cold,” he said.
“I shall go in.”
“I’ll follow … I want to be alone for a minute.” When the door closed behind him he went to the sideboard and poured a glass of brandy. He tasted it and the warmth went through his veins. Zinnovy now: the man had friends in the high places but more than one road led to St. Petersburg. There was that boy, for instance, the boy Zinnovy had ordered flogged … did he not have an uncle who was a power in the iron industry? The uncle would be a man to be listened to. Yes, that was it, and they had met once in Kiev, a hardheaded man named Zarasky who had fiercely resented his nephew’s flogging. It had nearly killed the boy.
That way it would not involve the Grand Duke or the Czar. There was no way of making someone tired of you faster than endless requests or complaints. It was the value of being a politician, that one knew other ways. It occurred to him abruptly that being the kind of man Zinnovy was, and wanting what he wanted, Zinnovy dared not let him, Rotcheff, return to St. Petersburg. Coolly, he considered the situation. There were ways of escape, of course, but he was no longer a young man, and all shipping out of the harbor could be controlled by Baron Zinnovy. Escape by the usual means would be barred to him, and any other means was closed by the danger to his health. That meant he must prepare a report now, with several copies, and see that at least two copies were smuggled out, for certainly Zinnovy would be checking all communications. Busch … that was the man. Busch detested Zinnovy and was a patriot as well, shrewd enough to realize the danger Zinnovy meant to all legitimate business in Sitka. Moreover, and this was important, Busch had his own corps of tough and loyal promyshleniki. He was not a man to attack with impunity. A long time later, while his pen still scratched, the clock chimed.
Eleven o’clock. It was very late…
20
Shortly after noon the wind fell away to nothing, and the Susquehanna, now barely making steerageway, held in toward the rocky shore. Jean was hoping to pick up vagrant breezes out of the numerous ravines that slashed the mountains. Twice during the afternoon there were brief squalls accompanied by heavy rain, and each time the schooner gained ground.
All hands that could be spared were catching sleep against the long watches ahead, and when they turned to, every one of them was given a jolt of hot rum. It was almost dusk when the wind picked up. Moving at a bare four knots they rounded into Gedney Pass.
Both shores sloped steeply back to three thousand feet, with the shore steep-to.
Creeping along, the schooner made Shrimp Bay and dropped anchor until morning. During the night it rained hard. The man on watch was relieved every hour; Jean wanted to take no chance because of a sleepy watch. All hands slept in their clothing, ready to turn to at a moment’s notice, and LaBarge bedded down under the bottom-up whaleboat.
Tired as he was, he could not sleep. The cold wind made him grateful for his heavy blankets. Once while lying awake he heard something crash far up the mountainside and then a sliding of rocks and timber. There was a faint following rattle of stones, then silence. The schooner was ghostly in the night, but toward morning the air warmed a little and the fog lifted, shrouding her rigging in cobwebs of mist. His cargo was worth at least eighty thousand dollars and depending on how the market stood at the moment, might be worth at least half again that much.
Sometime after that he must have fallen asleep for he was awakened to find the sky turning pale yellow and the watch standing beside him with a steaming cup of black coffee. By the time the sun was halfway up the sky they had rounded Curlew Point and entered the Narrows along Bell Island. Here, for approximately eight miles, the channel varied from three-tenths of a mile in width to more than a mile. By report the water was deep and the shores steep-to, but as the fog held they had no idea if they were pursued or not.
Like a ghost ship on a ghost sea they slid along through the fog. He was coming up from below when Kohl called him. The schooner faced a continuing channel ahead, but to their right lay another opening, a little wider. “What d’ you think, Barney?”
Kohl rubbed his neck. “A man can only guess.” Together they walked to the bow and looked at the water. Just beyond the entrances both passages were blocked off by fog. One might be an escape, the other a trap, but which was which? A decision had to be made, yet Jean delayed, hoping for some indication, some evidence on which to base a choice.
“What’s the book say?” Kohl had noticed the black book LaBarge occasionally referred to.
“It doesn’t say. The man who told me about this channel hadn’t navigated it, he’d only crossed it at the Narrows with some Tlingits after him. He did get a taste of the water and it was salt.”
He stiffened suddenly, lifting a hand. “Listen! I heard something then!
Something dropped on a deck!”
All ears strained into the silence and fog. Kohl grabbed his arm. “Cap’n … look!”
It was a piece of shelf ice such as forms along a shore, and it had drifted from the opening that lay ahead. It was moving upon some strong, unseen current. “Put the helm over, Noble,” Jean said. “We take the other opening.” Suddenly from out of the fog there was a cry, “Sail, ho! Dead ahead!” And the words were in Russian.
As one man the crew sprang into action, getting sail on the schooner. Putting the helm over sent them into thick, blanketing fog, and like a gray ghost the Susquehanna gathered speed, while behind them they heard excited talk in Russian.