Anna, Like Thunder

by Peggy Herring

  For my mother, Irene, and my grandparents,

  Anatolii and Marusya, with gratitude

  for the stories that got me started

  When I told her that her spouse would free the captives only on condition of an exchange for herself, Mrs. Bulygin gave us an answer that struck us like a clap of thunder, an answer we could not believe for several minutes, taking it all for a dream. In horror, distress, and anger, we heard her say firmly that she was satisfied with her condition, did not want to join us, and that she advised us to surrender ourselves to this people.

  —TIMOFEI TARAKANOV1

  You will hear thunder and remember me,

  and think: she wanted storms.

  —ANNA AKHMATOVA2

  CONTENTS

  Preface

  AUTUMN 1808

  WINTER 1808–1809

  SPRING AND SUMMER 1809

  Afterword

  Note from the Author

  Acknowledgements

  Endnotes

  Notes on Language and Glossary

  PREFACE

  In November 1808, the Russian ship St. Nikolai ran aground off the west coast of the Olympic Peninsula near present-day La Push, Washington. According to records, the twenty-two Russians aboard came to shore and were enslaved and traded among coastal First Nations until the survivors were rescued a year and a half later. One of the Russians was eighteen-year-old Anna Petrovna Bulygina, the wife of the navigator.

  There are two written records of this incident. One comes from Russian fur trader Timofei Osipovich Tarakanov, who was the supercargo aboard the ship. After rescue, he related the story of his experiences to Navy Captain V.M. Golovnin, who wrote it down and published it in Russia in 1874. The second is a Quileute oral tradition that was told by elder Ben Hobucket to federal Indian service official Albert Reagan around 1909 and published in 1934. In 1985, the two accounts were published together as The Wreck of the Sv. Nikolai, edited and with an introduction by the late historian Kenneth N. Owens. Despite their origins, there is a remarkable level of concurrence between the two versions.

  Anna is a minor character in both accounts, though she plays a pivotal role. During an attempted rescue, she refused help and instead encouraged her rescuers to surrender. This set off a series of events that today illuminate an important period of history on the coast of the Olympic Peninsula.

  This novel explores Anna’s decision in the weeks before the event and the months that followed. This fictionalized version of what happened and why diverges at times from the written record, as she witnesses events from a vantage point not considered in historical documents. I’ve tried to remain faithful to the history as I understand it; nonetheless, this remains a work of fiction.

  PRESENT-DAY OLYMPIC PENINSULA, WASHINGTON

  AUTUMN 1808

  CHAPTER ONE

  I can scarcely see my beloved Polaris. The wispy clouds are like the sheerest muslin, and they stretch over the whole of the night sky obscuring the stars. But I keep my telescope pointed at her. If I wait, she may emerge: the brilliant beacon around which the heavens revolve. Navigators call her the North Star or the Ship Star. True amateurs like my father would call her Alpha Ursae Minoris: “alpha” because she is the brightest, and “ursae minoris” because she finds her home in the Little Bear constellation.

  She will always be beloved, of course, for her role in guiding explorers and traders for centuries over land and sea. But I adore her for what most don’t know. That she is not one star. Not two. She is three stars. Perhaps more. If not for the renowned astronomers Monsieur William Herschel and Mademoiselle Caroline, his accomplished sister, no one would know that. I aspire to make such discoveries of my own one day.

  The brig groans and tilts as she climbs a wave. I wrench the brass telescope from my eye and fumble with my free hand. The bulwark is almost out of reach, but—here, I have it. I clutch the telescope to my chest. The ship tilts in the opposite direction as she slides down the wave and lands with a thud. I stagger. The frigid seawater splashes my face, and I shiver. With my shawl, I wipe the drops from my telescope, hoping no water has seeped through the seams and damaged it. As for my shawl, it’s warm but not my best—grey wool with a peacock-blue fringe that’s almost too pretty for it. If the salt stains it, I hardly care, and besides, nobody will be able to tell.

  “Anya!”

  My husband strides across the deck. Like the rest of the crew, he is sure on his feet, experienced after so many years working the ships for the Russian-American Company. Roiling seas are no trouble for him, but I’m still learning to live with their caprice.

  “What are you doing out here? Come to bed.” Nikolai Isaakovich slips his arm around my waist, and, because it’s dark and the two men on watch can’t see us, I release the bulwark and lean back. He’s warm, and his body shelters me from the wind. His beard scratches my cheek.

  “I just wanted one more look,” I say.

  He knows about my star log, and that it’s modelled on the published tables my father pores over day and night. In Petersburg I helped my father with his log. Now I have my own, and it will be the first catalogue of the stars ever made along the vast coast that connects Novo-Arkhangelsk to the Spanish colonies in California.

  Much to my dismay, there have been many cloudy nights, and the stars have often hidden themselves. There have been many cloudy days, too. Days when the grey sea and the grey sky merge, and the brig crawls along like a cart with a damaged wheel. I’ve not been able to log the stars as much as I’d hoped. So when tonight’s sky looked promising, I tied my cap tight and pinned my shawl high on my neck to keep the cold out so I could extend my time on deck.

  My husband releases me, and I latch onto the bulwark again. “Khariton Sobachnikov!” he calls.

  “Yes, Commander?” comes the reply from the wheel. He’s the tallest of the promyshlenniki—the sailors, fur traders, and hunters who work for the Russian-American Company—and, because of his height, our main rigger. There’s not a mast or a spar he can’t climb, not a bit of rigging he can’t reach, even when the brig is tilted well over the waves.

  He’s also painfully shy. He can barely bring himself to address me, but when forced to, his face turns a livid red as soon as he opens his mouth. I believe it’s because of his manner that he prefers the watch at night, when the rest of us are asleep and he doesn’t have to speak with anybody. I leave him to his work when I’m out on deck, just as he leaves me to mine.

  “Everything good?”

  “Yes, Commander. The wind’s coming up. But it’s favouring us tonight.”

  “And our apprentice? Are you awake?”

  “Yes, Commander. I’m over here,” calls Filip Kotelnikov from the bow. Heavy, with a body as round as a kettle and limbs like sticks, he’s sharp and ambitious enough that he’s the only one besides Sobachnikov who’ll volunteer for the night watch. Still, he’s impatient and it irritates my husband, so I doubt his actions will lead where he hopes.

  “That’s what I like to hear. Remain alert. Both of you.”

  They give assent, and then Nikolai Isaakovich drops his voice. “As for you, my darling, it’s time to come inside.”

  “In a moment,” I say, raising the telescope again.

  “In a moment. In a moment,” he says and sighs, but there’s humour in his voice. “You think we’re sailing for your amusement? That the chief manager doesn’t have more important work for us?”

  The colony’s chief manager, Alexander Andreyevich Baranov, has given my husband a special commission. Nikolai Isaakovich has been put in command of a crew of twenty and tasked with sailing south to further refine our empire’s knowledge. He’s to explore and chart the coast, and to look for a secure harbour where settlement might be e
stablished to facilitate the company’s trade for sea otter pelts. He’s to fill the hold with furs along the way. The Sviatoi Nikolai, this brig, is under his sole command for a few weeks of the expedition, after which we’ll meet another Russian ship, the Kad’iak, at a predetermined location, to continue the mission together, as though we’re not merely two ships but a great imperial fleet.

  My husband has hung a wooden plaque carved with the Imperial Decree in our quarters. I see it every morning as soon as I wake up, and by now I’ve memorized it. It instructs us “to use and profit by everything which has been or shall be discovered in these localities, on the surface and in the bosom of the earth without any competition by others.” It’s well known in Petersburg that Tsar Alexander is obsessed with Russian America and that, if it weren’t for Napoleon’s aggressions in Europe, he’d sail the coast himself.

  The cloud cover thickens, obscuring my Polaris. She tries valiantly to twinkle through the grey, but it’s no use. I’ll have to wait yet another night. I take her cue and follow my husband to our quarters.

  The wind and sea are muffled down here, yet the thud of the waves that strike the hull and the answering grind of the timbers are still disquieting. The ship’s dog, Zhuchka, whines and cowers on a mat next to the bed. She’s on board to work—she’s our sentinel when we go ashore, alerting us to danger, assisting the promyshlenniki in the hunt for game. But even when the seas are only a little rough, she’s a coward, and she’s become the source of much mockery among the crew if she happens to be on deck at such times.

  “Don’t worry, Zhuchka—it’s just a little wind.” I sit on the bed and pull her head onto my lap. She buries her nose into the damp folds of my shawl. Her russet-coloured tail, tipped in white like a paintbrush, thumps the floor. It has the most endearing curl, like the hair at the nape of a baby’s neck.

  “Would you leave that dog alone? You treat it like it’s your child,” my husband says.

  “Are you becoming jealous?” I say lightly and kiss the dog’s forehead with a big smack.

  “Stop!” my husband cries. He leaps across the room and pries the dog from my embrace, pushing her out the door and slamming it behind her. The walls shake. He throws himself on the bed beside me and makes a big show of wiping my lips clean with his fingers. “Watch who you’re giving your kisses to,” he murmurs, and then he presses his lips to mine.

  I pout and push against his chest. “I’m eighteen years old and can choose whoever I want to kiss.” I lie back to get away.

  But that’s just part of our game. Nikolai Isaakovich flings himself down beside me and kisses me again. He slides his lips to my throat. I arch my neck to accept him.

  He strokes my hair, my cheek. His slips one hand underneath my shawl and onto my bosom. He whispers, “Annichka.” With his other hand, he clutches my wrist and pulls my hand to his chest.

  For a short time and a long time, we continue, my arm around his back, his leg bent around mine, my mouth open to his shoulder, his mouth closed on my fingers. Something bony presses against my thigh. For an instant, I think it’s my telescope. But no. I set that on the table. I suppress a smile.

  He opens his trousers and pulls up my skirt.

  He pushes himself inside me. His eyes close, and his face transforms. He thrusts and pants.

  When I pull his hips to mine and thrust back, I feel his touch deep inside. It’s a place I can’t name. I think it’s near where dreams take shape. It’s a place created by romantic thoughts, and nurtured into bloom by the glances and brief meeting of fingers I’ve seen my parents exchange, seen men and women in Petersburg share while dancing.

  Finally, sounds form deep inside him, as though some great beast is coming to life. He grunts and grunts and calls out: to me, to God, and to his mother. Then, he collapses atop me, sweaty and gasping, a lock of his hair between my lips.

  After he rolls off, and his liquids dribble out, I can think of nothing except facing the old Aleut, Maria, in the morning. Thankfully, our quarters are far from the smelly forecastle where the promyshlenniki hang their hammocks. But we share a thin wall with Maria. She prepares the meals and washes clothing for me and Nikolai Isaakovich, and, since it would be impossible to house her with the men, she occupies a berth next to our cabin. The light from her lamp shines some evenings through the knots and cracks in the planks that separate us. If one were disrespectfully inclined, one could peer through these holes into the next room. I confess that I know how easy this coarse act would be because I did it. Maria wasn’t there at the time. I could see clearly her bunk, a padlocked trunk, and a length of rope that ran from one corner of the room to another, though nothing was hanging from it.

  Does Maria have such ill manners? It’s possible, but it makes no difference, for what she can’t see, she most certainly can hear. She could keep her own log book to mark the exact dimension and frequency of our passion, though why she’d care, I don’t know.

  When I wake in the morning, it’s to near silence. I’m alone. The wind has died. In our dim quarters, I mull that over—how we say the wind has died as though it’s a living creature. If it were a living creature, what would it look like? What would it say?

  The peasants believe in such things. The spirits dwell everywhere in their world and guide them through their lives. The domovoi lurks beneath the kitchen hearth. The leshii, disguised as a mushroom, tickles careless woodsmen to death in the forest. The long-haired rusalki lure young men to their watery graves in murky ponds. And the vodyanoy, who lives deep in the whirlpools of the sea, kicks up storms and sinks little boats and big ships alike.

  “The Enlightenment hasn’t reached them yet,” my father says. “The Tsar is right when he says as long as they can’t understand science, they’ll continue to lead deprived lives.” Sometimes when he blusters against superstition, my mother leaves the room.

  “What did I say wrong?” my father calls.

  It’s easy for him. He has his tables and logs. Three telescopes set up in a turret. He’s invited to address the Imperial Academy of Sciences several times a year. When he was a boy, he went to the home of the celebrated astronomer Monsieur Mikhail Lomonosov just after his great discovery of the gases that swirl around Venus. “Everything in the world is rational, Anya,” he tells me. “And if you think it’s not rational, it only means you haven’t thought hard and long enough about it yet.”

  I’m enlightened, too. I know that science governs the earth, the planets, the stars—everything. But does he never wonder? Has nothing ever happened to shake his faith in science? How is he so certain that everything can be measured and logged? I wish I were as steadfast, but it’s too late. The doubts seeded themselves long ago, and after that, nothing he said or did could have stopped them from taking root and showing themselves at the least opportune moments.

  I push myself out of bed and shudder when my feet touch the cold planks. I reach for my shoes.

  As I emerge on deck, Zhuchka charges over. I stroke her head and look around. Just as I might have predicted from below, the sky is grey and seamless. The sea is smooth and glassy, though not at rest. A gentle swell rocks the brig. The sails sag, and the crew is idle.

  I rub the soft place on Zhuchka’s forehead, and when she seems satisfied, she runs back to where the American, John Williams, and the straggly-haired Kozma Ovchinnikov are teasing her with a dried fish head. They toss it to one another, letting her come close enough to smell it, but not to sink her teeth into it.

  The American is pale and has carrot-coloured hair and freckles such as I’ve never seen before. He is the only man beside the Aleuts with no beard and his cheeks are so smooth, I don’t think he could even grow one. His Russian is good, but his accent is flat, and he drawls out every word.

  Ovchinnikov is a brooding beast of a man. His hair hangs to his shoulders and, unlike John Williams, almost his entire face is hidden behind a beard, which he keeps long and untrimmed. Only his small, dark eyes are exposed and it’s unnerving the way he watches
everyone and everything, keeping most of his thoughts to himself. I think he’s best avoided; though he seems no different from the other promyshlenniki, there’s something rough in his manner, and I think he could be a cruel man if provoked.

  He’s latched himself onto our prikashchik—the supercargo who oversees the company goods we trade and purchase—who seems pleased to order him around night and day.

  Ovchinnikov throws the fish head underhand so it sails high up toward the top of the mast and then plummets down to the waiting hands of the American.

  Zhuchka barks and leaps. She has much hope. Her white-tipped tail steadily wags, and her claws clatter as she runs and lunges at John Williams. She’s drawing her own maps on the deck, lines stretching from man to man.

  Encouraging her torment is Timofei Osipovich Tarakanov, the prikashchik who controls the dark Ovchinnikov. Timofei Osipovich is the most experienced man on the crew. He seems to know everything and doesn’t hesitate to tell us that he does. His coat, trousers, and boots are all so new I wonder if he’s helping himself to the cargo he’s in charge of. And it’s not just Ovchinnikov he’s put under his spell. The Aleuts also attend to him and perform his bidding. I think my husband should pay more heed to these allegiances, but he’s already told me he has it under control.

  Timofei Osipovich cackles as Ovchinnikov pretends to throw the fish head overboard. He taunts, “Go swim for your supper, little Tsarina!” Zhuchka charges after the fish head. At the last moment, she catches sight of it still in Ovchinnikov’s hand and reins herself in. They all laugh as she skids and hits the bulwark.

  “Good morning, Madame Bulygina! Did you sleep well?” Timofei Osipovich says, leaving the dog alone.

  When I know she’s all right, I force my attention away from poor Zhuchka. “I did, thank you.” Timofei Osipovich is jovial—as he always is before he makes an inappropriate comment or a joke at my expense. “And you?” I’m annoyed about the part he’s played teasing poor Zhuchka, and don’t care how he slept, but I can’t bring myself to behave rudely.