Alaska by James A. Michener
But Arkady Voronov, commanding from the hill, was the kind of young man who was not afraid to make instant decisions, and at the moment he saw the gate collapse he knew he must wipe out that threat, so without considering the consequence to his own people or the enemy, he shouted to his cannoneers: 'Fire!' and two iron balls of tremendous power ripped into the mass of people struggling at the gate, killing fifteen attacking Tlingits and seven Creoles five men, two women who had come there to barter with the pacified Tlingits.
When Raven-heart saw some of his best men crushed by the cannonballs, he was first enraged, then sobered by the realization that those nine great cannon on the castle walls were going to be used, and he shouted to his men: 'Take cover!'
For three hours the Tlingits remained inside the walls, wrecking whatever they could reach when outside the range of the cannon and defending themselves by taking positions in houses and doorways.
It was brutal warfare, which could have continued till nightfall had not Voronov decided upon drastic measures. Dodging from one cover to another, he told his men:
'Engage them. Don't let them escape through the gate. But when you hear the bugle, run back like hell, because I'm going to fire those cannon.'
With that, he ran up the hill to the castle walls, where he trained six of his cannon on the heart of the fighting, that spot near the gate where Russians and Tlingits tangled in one indecipherable mass. 'Bugler!' he cried, and in the next instant the Russians fled the spot, all except one young fellow who tripped, tumbling down among the Tlingits. For a split second Voronov considered holding his fire to allow the fallen lad a chance to get away, but then he saw the milling Tlingits: 'Fire!' and six ricocheting balls swept through the confused mass of Tlingits, killing or maiming two out of three.
Raven-heart, alerted by the bugle call, escaped the fusillade, but as he made for the wall, seeking to follow his son with a giant leap, Voronov directed his cannoneers to fire again, and a huge ball struck the Tlingit leader full in the back, crushing his bones and throwing him against the fence that he had been about to climb. Pinned there by his own flesh and bones and tattered clothes, he hung limp for a moment, after which rifle fire from the windows of a nearby house cut him down.
Thus ended the attack of 1836 and with it the last hopes of the Tlingits ... during this generation. Of Raven-heart's four hundred and sixty-seven men, fully a third had been slaughtered inside the compound, and he had died with them. The green hills, spruce-covered and lovely in either snow or sun, would know his breed of Tlingit no more.
Kakeena, a widow now, would take her son to a new refuge on an island more distant than Chichagof, and there he would remember this day and plot the manner in which he would lead his expedition for revenge, because no Tlingit like Kot-le-an or Raven-heart could ever accept defeat ... and Big-ears, brooding on his island, would be such a Tlingit.
SOFIA VORONOVA, THE YOUNG COMMANDER'S MOTHER, watched the battle from the castle, and at first she was proud of the manly way in which her son was conducting himself, but when, with victory assured, the big guns continued firing at houses well outside the walls, 'to give the Tlingits a lesson,' she saw that peaceful Indians who had elected to live side by side with the Russians were being slain.
'Stop it!' she cried, rushing at the gunners. And her cry was so different from what her son and Praskovia were shouting in this moment of victory, that they were astonished.
Turning away from the final salvos of the bombardment, they looked at her in amazement, and saw that she was staring at them as if she had never seen them before. In that moment a wall as high as Denali rose between them.
As soon as the cannons were silent, she turned away from her son, going down the steps to work among the wounded, inside the palisade and without, ministering to those who had lost an arm or a friend or a child, and as she did so she found that she was identifying not with the Russian victors but with the shattered Tlingits, as if she knew that the latter deserved her help while the former did not.
When the Tlingits convinced her that they had been as surprised by Raven-heart's attack as the Russians, she felt a surge of sorrow for these confused people who had surrendered a life of great freedom in order to live in a settled community next door to what her husband had called 'Christian civilization,' only to find themselves trapped in a war not of their own making but in which they suffered most. Recalling her own childhood when similar injustices happened, she concluded that it was the kind of thing that was bound to occur when patterns of life were in collision, and she moved back and forth between Tlingits outside the gate and Russians inside, assuring each that life could proceed as it had in the past and that guilt rested on no one.
She convinced few her son telling her that the Russians might have to expel the Tlingits altogether; the people outside the gate rebuffing her with a threat to leave New Archangel and join up with the rebels in a new assault. Unwilling to accept such disillusionment and remembering how on Kodiak she had been instrumental in bringing Aleuts and Russians together, she persisted in her efforts to bind these two strong-minded groups into one workable whole, and gradually it was her view of the future that prevailed.
'Tell them out there,' her son said one morning, 'that we want them to stay. Tell them that when the gate opens tomorrow they'll be free to bring in their goods as usual.'
'You need them, don't you?' she asked, and he said: 'Yes, and they need us,' and that evening she went to the still apprehensive Tlingits: 'The gate will be opened tomorrow. You must bring your food and fish as before.'
'Can we trust them?' asked a man who had lost a son in the fighting, and she replied:
'You must.'
Reassured, they clustered about her, and in a friendly manner started to question her. One asked: 'Were you an Aleut before the Russians came to your island?' and she laughed to brighten the evening:
'I still am.'
'But in those days you were not of their church?' and she said that she wasn't.
'But you are with them now, aren't you?' an inquisitive woman asked, and when Sofia said that she had been married to the tall man with the beard who had preached in the cathedral, several wanted to know: 'Is your new religion ...?' They did not know how to finish their question, until a man blurted out: 'Is there a god, like they say?'
She remained with them a long time that night, telling them of the beauty she had found in Christianity, of its gentle message where children were involved, of the benign role played by the Blessed Virgin and of the promise that God made regarding life eternal. She spoke with such simple conviction that for the first time, in their hours of distress, certain of the Tlingits perceived a religion that was gentler and more worthy than the one they had been following. It was a persuasive description of Christianity that she offered, for despite the fact that this religion had treated her poorly at the close of her life, taking her husband from her, it had still been the glory of those middle years which seemed to count more than the others.
But if she helped the confused Tlingits find a balance between old and new, she could not do the same for herself. At night, in the darkness of her room, she experienced a profound longing to be with the people of her childhood. At times her mind wandered, and she believed that she was once more on Lapak Island, or in the kayak with her mother and great-grandmother chasing the whale, and her yearning for the old days became so persistent that one morning she passed through the gate to speak with two Tlingit men she had come to know during the aftermath of the battle.
'Could you take me to the hot baths?' she asked, pointing south toward that congenial spot where she and her husband and Baranov and Zhdanko had so often gone for relaxation and restoration.
'The Russians will take you,' the men protested, afraid that any unusual act on their part might be interpreted as a renewal of hostilities, but she brushed aside their fears: 'No, I want to go with my own people,' and with those words she made the last important decision of her life. She was not Russian; she was not
But to protect these men who would take her south, she instructed several women:
'When we're gone, go to the gate, ask for Voronov, and tell him: "Your mother has gone to the hot springs. She's all right and will be back by nightfall. If not, in the morning."' And off she set for one of the finest parts of the Sitka region.
Picking their way through the myriad islands, keeping the great volcano well to the west, they wove in and out of narrow channels, with the mountains guarding them on the east and the placid Pacific smiling at them from beyond the little islands. It was a voyage as wonderful this day as it had been when she had first gone with her husband and Baranov, and she caught herself thinking: I wish it would never end.
And then the more painful wish: When we get there, I'd like to see Vasili and Baranov and Zhdanko waiting. And with such thoughts she lowered her head, ignoring the rim of mountains that welcomed her to the ancient springs.
When the two Tlingits deposited her on the shore, she told them: 'I'll not stay long,' then she added hopefully: 'I'm very tired, you know, and maybe the springs will help.'
Slowly she climbed the easy hill to where the hot sulfuric waters bubbled from the earth, and when she entered the low wooden structure erected by the tireless Baranov, she threw off her clothes and eagerly immersed herself in the soothing water, which at first she found almost too hot to manage, but as she became accustomed to the heat, she luxuriated in its comfort.
After she had lain thus for some time, the waters reaching up to her chin and bringing their therapeutic smell as close as it could possibly come, she lapsed into a kind of dream world in which she heard a ghostly voice whispering her real name: 'Cidaq!'
Amazed, she opened her eyes and looked about, but there was no one else in the bath, so she dozed again, and once more from the arched ceiling came the shadowy voice:
'Cidaq!'
Now she wakened, splashed her face with water, and chuckled, remembering the day when her husband and Baranov had taken her to the hut beneath the big tree at Three Saints to convince her that the clever shaman Lunasaq had been able, by ventriloquism, to make his mummy talk. 'It was a trick, Sofia,' chubby Baranov had explained. 'I can't do it very well. No practice. But look at my lips,' and he had astonished her by keeping them almost closed while words poured out, seeming to come from a root which he kept tapping with a stick.
How they had laughed that day, the two men careful not to deride her for having believed in spirits, she exulting in the joy she felt in the brotherhood of her new faith.
Now she laughed again at the thought of how she had been deceived. But then, with the hot water reaching almost to her lips, she drifted again, and desirous of communing once more with the old woman of Lapak, she spoke in a kind of hypnotic daze, talking alternately for herself and the mummy: 'Have you heard that they took my husband from me?'
'Young Voronov?'
'He's not so young anymore.' Then proudly she added: 'Metropolitan of All the Russias, that's something.'
'And now he's gone. And Lunasaq is gone. But you had a good life on Kodiak and Sitka, didn't you?' The mummy used the old names for these locations, not the new Russian ones.
'Yes, but at first, when I thought of losing you and Lunasaq, I could not be happy.'
'Does it really matter? Don't you suppose that he and I were mournful too, having lost you for a while?'
'I am not unhappy in my new religion.'
'Who said you were?'
'You just said you were mournful to have lost me.'
'As a friend. What do I care how you pray? What really counts, in the very old days and in all the days to come ...' The dome became filled with the ancient one's voice: 'To live on this earth as a bride lives with her husband. To know the whales as brothers. To find joy in the frolics of a mother sea otter and her babe. To find refuge from the storm and a place to enjoy the sunshine. And to treat children with respect and love, for with the passing years they become us.'
'I've tried to do those things,' Cidaq said, and the old woman agreed: 'You did try, little girl, the way I tried and your great-grandmother. And now you're very tired from so much trying, aren't you?'
'I am,' Cidaq confessed, and the old one asked gently: 'Does it really matter?' and she was gone.
In the silence that followed, Cidaq lay back, allowing the water to grow increasingly hot and sulfurous, and as she stared upward, she thought: Her religion is of the earth, the sea, the storms, and it's necessary to a good life. Voronov's religion was of the heavens and the stars and the northern lights, and it's necessary too.
Images from her two lives filled the walls of the bath: the great tsunami knocking down Vasili's church but allowing the shaman's lone spruce to stand; shadows on Vasili's crucifix at dusk; that first whale that terrified the women sliding past, enormous even now; the cluster of children she had cared for after the tsunami; Baranov with his wig drifting to one side; the joy with which Praskovia Kostilevskaya from a noble family in Moscow stepped ashore to marry Arkady in distant New Archangel; and dominating everything else, the stately white volcano lifting its perfect cone into the sunset.
She knew she had been blessed to have been privileged to share these two worlds equally, and although she had lost both, for she had rejected the Russian way, she did retain the best of each, and for that she was grateful. The heat increased; the images became a kaleidoscope of the years from 1775 to 1837; and the voice sounded no more, for her final question had summarized it all: Does it really matter?
It does matter! Cidaq concluded. It matters enormously. But you mustn't take it too seriously.
After waiting on the beach for more than two hours, one of the Tlingit boatmen said:
'I wonder if something's happened to the old woman?' and he insisted that his partner accompany him up the hill so that an honest story could be told if things had gone wrong. When they reached the bath they found Sofia floating free upon the surface of the water, facedown, and the cautious one began to wail: 'I knew we'd get into trouble.' They wrapped her in her clothes, carried her down the hill and perched her in the center of the canoe, then started paddling home.
When they neared the landing at the foot of the castle they began waving their paddles, and people on the shore saw only the two men fore and aft and their priest's former wife sitting upright in the middle seat, but as the canoe neared the shore they realized that she was dead, and men began running toward the castle, shouting: 'Voronov!'
IN THE YEARS FOLLOWING THE DEATH OF SOFIA Voronova, the thriving town of New Archangel discovered, as had so many settlements in the past, that its destiny was being decided by events which occurred in locations far distant and over which it had no control. In 1848 gold was discovered in California; in 1853 war broke out in the Crimea between Turkey, France and England on one side, Russia on the other; and in 1861 a much bigger civil war erupted in the United States between North and South.
Gold in California excited people in all parts of the world, sent a jumble of them crowding- into San Francisco, and altered alliances throughout the eastern Pacific.
A totally unexpected development occurred in New Archangel, where the chief administrator sent his assistant on a scouting trip to Hawaii and California to ascertain what the influx of Americans to the west might mean to Russia's interests.
Placing their children in the care of two Aleut nurses, Arkady invited his wife to accompany him, and under palm trees in the familiar town of Honolulu they heard for the first time a rumor which astonished them. An English sea captain, fresh from a trip to Singapore, Australia and Tahiti, asked casually, as if all Russians knew of the matter: 'I say, what will men like you elect to do if the deal goes thro
'What deal?' Voronov asked, his interest piqued by any suggestion that trade involving Great Britain and Russia might eventuate.
'I mean, if Russia goes ahead and sells your Alaska to the Yankees?'
Arkady gasped, leaned back, and looked with consternation at his wife: 'But we have heard nothing about such a sale.'
'We heard talk of it more than once when we put into port,' the Englishman said, and Voronov asked pertinently: 'By English interests?' and the captain said: 'Nothing substantial, you understand, but those discussing it were from various nations.'
'But were there any Russians?' Voronov persisted, and the man replied without equivocation:
'Indeed there were. Usually they were the ones who broached the subject.'
Voronov leaned back and said quietly: 'I don't intend to boast, but for some years I've been second-in-command in New Archangel. My father was a leading force in the islands before he was promoted, and I can assure you from all of us that we have no intention of disposing of what is becoming a jewel in the Russian crown.'
'I'm told it's a splendid place, Sitka Sound,' the Englishman said quickly.
In Honolulu no more was said about the possible sale of Russia's American holdings, and after arranging for the continued shipment of Hawaiian fruit and beef to New Archangel, the Voronovs moved on to San Francisco, where on the third night at anchor in that glorious bay behind the headlands, a Russian ship captain had his men row him over to Arkady's ship, and within minutes of their greeting he was asking for details about the possible sale of Alaska to the United States.