Daughters of Northern Shores

by Joanne Bischof

  April 29th, 1895

  Mr. Thor Norgaard,

  Your letter came to me by way of the postmaster. As your inquiry was addressed to the Bureau of Research and Resource for the Deaf and Dumb, the powers that be have delivered it to The Alexander Graham Bell Association for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing. It would seem that the two associations would be allies, but unfortunately, and as far as the United States Postal Service and myself are aware, the bureau you sought to contact does not exist.

  I conversed this morning with several professors from the Columbia Institution for the Instruction of the Deaf and the Blind here in Washington, DC, and they, too, expressed a void of familiarity with such a bureau. As far as those knowledgeable within the field, there are none more learned than my fellow colleagues who have assessed your letter. I’m sorry if this news is dismaying, but I offer it as response to your inquiry and the troubling incident you found yourself subject to. In addition, I have never known there to be any links to the Deaf-Mute makeup within the bloodstream itself, but that’s not to say the science behind it is ultimately false. Simply that those who obtained your blood likely have been.

  With other Deaf-Mutes being at risk to such subterfuge, as well as your own family and community, please contact me at this address should I be of further use to you.

  Very Respectfully,

  Alexander Graham Bell

  Thor lowered the letter so quickly it fluttered to the bed. The bureau didn’t exist?

  Rising, he searched for the missive that had summoned him for the interview, only to recall that it was at the house. Tromping through his memory was the doctor’s familiarity with Sign Language, including use of correct terminology and theories. Not to mention the detailed questionnaire and blood draw.

  That was all fraud?

  Why would someone go through that amount of effort to deceive him?

  For the Sorrels to have been present that day shot alarm through his veins so fiery hot he could scarcely think of what to do next. Thor fetched his boots back up, folded the letter, and summoned for Haakon to follow as he started for the stairs. They were going to need to saddle both horses. And quickly.

  TWENTY-SIX

  WITH A TUG ON THE REINS, THOR ANGLED the mare’s head to the right. She lunged up the south hillside at the edge of the farm that rose to the Sorrels’ plantation. Beside him, Jorgan rode at the same pace, pulling ahead just as Thor slowed his mount to sidestep a fallen log. In his saddlebag rested the letter Jorgan had retrieved from the house—Jorgan being at his side now due to Haakon’s insistence.

  Thor might have questioned that, but there hadn’t been time. In truth, if only one man were to be left to guard the farm, he’d prefer it be Haakon. Jorgan was more than capable, but no one was so dangerous when unleashed than Haakon, and they needed that type of defense right now. As for Aven, she was well in the company of Fay and Ida, so Thor decided to lay any worries about her and Haakon to rest for the remainder of the day. This had to be done, and there was a time when he had to fully leave his wife and child in the Lord’s hands and trust. It wasn’t a reckless kind of trust, but going with his gut, and his gut told him to ride up here. He had bigger fish to fry than his little brother.

  Based on the tracks surrounding the cabin the other day—about six or seven of them.

  When they crested the hill, Thor spotted the old white mansion in the distance. Where once elegant trees led up the formal drive, now rutted stumps lined a patchy dirt lane. The War hadn’t been kind to Jed Sorrel’s plantation, but the bones of it were still here even if they were rattled to the core. Strung from the porch to a nearby oak hung a limp clothesline, and rising onto her tiptoes to hang a damp sheet was the younger Mrs. Sorrel—Harlan’s wife. Nearby, her grown daughter, Sibby, bent over and fetched another.

  The fair-haired women turned at the horses’ approach. Thor gave a polite wave. He hadn’t known if he could make it on his own, and few could translate for him so well as Jorgan, so he was more than grateful for his brother’s presence. Jorgan dismounted first, and Thor followed. They left the mares to graze beside the house, then crossed over to greet their neighbors.

  Harlan’s wife didn’t stop in her chore. Thor doubted she had time with many to look after and no husband to help. For Sibby to be here this afternoon—a married woman with her own house to manage—attested to Mrs. Sorrel’s need for aid. The matriarch of this land, Jed’s wife, had passed away the summer before, and now her daughter-in-law was the heiress of this estate and keeper of the remaining family within its corridors. Though Thor had given them free use of his orchards, the apples scarcely put a dent in their suffering.

  Mrs. Sorrel tugged a pair of girl’s stockings from her wicker basket. She straightened and shook them out. “Afternoon.” A lace kerchief covered her hair that was streaked in silver.

  Jorgan greeted her in return. While they’d always been on amiable terms, social calls with the Sorrel women had been with Fay and Aven. Because of that, Thor signaled to his brother to state their business right off so as not to set anyone ill at ease.

  Jorgan spoke, but Thor was more focused on watching their reaction. After a minute, Jorgan tapped Thor on the arm and pointed to the women. Thor handed over the letter that had summoned him for the blood draw as well as the correspondence sent from Washington, DC. As Mrs. Sorrel read, Sibby emptied the basket of laundry.

  “I’m sure Peter’s made you aware of what’s been going on.” Jorgan added further explanation, describing the situation at the train depot and their suspicions surrounding it all.

  Mrs. Sorrel nodded as she skimmed the first page. “He has. The girls and I fixed a fine dinner for the sheriff and his deputies.”

  Thor tried to hide his surprise. He doubted Harlan would have been pleased to know that—and maybe he already did. The Sorrel women had never been ones to shy away from their men. They’d taken a stance once and for all some years back and were sticking to it. Thor commended them for that, but he hoped no trouble would befall them.

  Having finished both letters, Harlan’s wife scrutinized the first again. The one that Thor suspected was Sorrel doing. She squinted against the bright light of afternoon and with her attention still down, spoke to Jorgan. “Can you ask your brother what the doctor looked like?” Faint lines creased her forehead.

  Having already understood, Thor gave a tug at his hair, then indicated to Jorgan that it had been red. Next he stroked his moustache and made the sign for same. Mrs. Sorrel observed his gestures, and Jorgan spoke as Thor tapped the top of his shoulder to show the man’s height. About a few inches shy of six feet, he surmised. While stalky, the man’s handshake had been strong.

  When Mrs. Sorrel heard the last of it, she drew in a slow sigh. “Might you remember the needle? Anything distinctive about it or perhaps the case?”

  Thor’s brow pinched as he thought back to that day. He searched his memory for the way the doctor’s hands had held the case in his view . . . pulling the lid ajar . . . revealing the contents inside. Everything was mottled and blotchy.

  Then it flashed through his mind’s eye as though he were right back on that train.

  Thor drug his index finger across his forehead.

  “He’s saying it was black,” Jorgan said, then to Thor, “What was black?”

  L-I-N-I-N-G. Thor folded his hands together, then opened them like the hinge of the needle’s case.

  Jorgan described that in English, and Mrs. Sorrel’s mouth pinched tight. Her fingers held fast to the letters, clutching the top page beside Alexander Graham Bell’s name.

  She scanned the hills around them, then folded both pages with haste. “Come with me.” She offered Thor the papers and clutched up the front of her checked skirt. Thor and Jorgan followed her lead down the dry pathway to the side of the house where several outbuildings stood. Made of rough-hewn logs much different than the stately plantation home with its summer kitchen and carriage house, he guessed them to be old slave quarters.

  A
t the farthest down the line, Mrs. Sorrel pulled a ring of keys from the waistband of her skirt and pressed a rusted one into the lock. She struggled with the tightness of the knob, and Jorgan stepped in to help, shimmying it until the door creaked ajar. They waited for her to step in first, and when they followed, the inside was as still as a cave.

  Slats of light striped the floor from where chinking had worn thin in the western wall. In place of narrow beds for slaves sat dusty benches around the room as though meetings had taken their place. On that same wall, a width of cloth hung pinned between two heavily curtained windows. The emblem in the cloth’s center was a crudely drawn white cross, squat and square. On the opposite wall hung white hoods that were as dusty as everything else.

  Mrs. Sorrel had brought them here for a purpose. One that had first taken seed between their two families since it was just Jed Sorrel and Jarle Norgaard facing one another at the property line. Thor watched Mrs. Sorrel. Had their mother been alive, she might have been close in age to this woman who knelt to roll back one end of a dingy rug. She worked to loosen a floorboard, and when her grip slipped, Thor flipped open his knife and wedged it into the nearest gap. Together they had the board lifted off and set aside. Mrs. Sorrel reached inside and pulled out a tin. Instead of prying off the top, she clutched it against her skirt and tipped her face to Jorgan.

  “Tell me of your brother’s wife. Has she delivered the baby?” Her compassion-filled eyes found Thor in what appeared more concern than neighborly conversation. Thor glanced to his brother to follow his answer.

  “Just a few days ago,” Jorgan asserted. “A girl. Good and healthy so far as we can tell.”

  Thor gave a sturdy nod, and the tension in Mrs. Sorrel’s face softened. Wondering if she might know something about this matter, he signed a desperate question to his brother.

  “Thor’s asking if there’s a way to know if his wife and daughter are out of danger with the illness.”

  Mrs. Sorrel hesitated, and Thor sensed they were wading into uncomfortable waters. “I’d say that so long as he kept his distance from his wife during the worst of it, they should fare just fine.” Her eyes were grieved as though she’d never known the same courtesy.

  A heat rose under Thor’s collar, but it was with relief that he confirmed that he had. For Mrs. Sorrel to affirm an understanding on the matter deepened his hope. Here she was aiding them with grace. Such kindness from a woman who had known very little of it in her life.

  She set the tin between them on the floor. So warped was the metal box that the lid scarcely stayed closed, but when she slid it off, there inside lay small glass bottles, all with identical labels.

  Morphine.

  “He used this often. As did some of his brothers. Got hooked on morphine during the War, Jed did, and the liking of it trickled through his son’s tastes as well. Needle’s long gone. That went with them.” Her eyes found Thor’s. “Lined in black, that case was. Make no mistake that it was the very one you saw that day, and I suspect that’s the reason behind your ailment, Mr. Norgaard.”

  Just as the doctor had explained.

  “As for this man who deceived you by posing as a doctor come to help, I fear that may be Roald. Harlan’s brother. He ain’t been around here since you were boys. Goes by Red mostly. The law got him a fair time back, and I ain’t seen him since. I thought he might have been dead, but ain’t it just like one of Jed’s sons to live to tell the tale?” Her eyes, the same soft blue as Sibby’s and Peter’s, widened in what could only be a fear at knowing the worst sort of person. “Red’s cunning as they come and worked as a medic for the army some years back. He’d have been the one put up to the task of trickin’ you.”

  Since Bell’s declaration, Thor had searched his memory of that winter’s day at the depot. He realized now that Aven had interpreted all the Sign Language. Thor had fingerspelled N-O-R-W-E-G-I-A-N directly, but Red Sorrel would have known their heritage with or without the answer. No wonder he’d written it down.

  Thor gauged his brother, whose gaze was steely. Looking back to Mrs. Sorrel, Thor tried to catch up to what she was in the midst of saying.

  “. . . somethin’ else I brought you here to show you.” She rose and pulled back one of the curtains to reveal that a window had been shattered. “This building was broken into a few weeks back. Peter noticed it first. Perhaps he mentioned it?”

  He’d spoken of an outbuilding that had been busted into, but they hadn’t known which one. Jorgan examined first the shattered window, then the one beside it that was still unharmed. Thor had a way of reading folks, his brothers in particular, and when Jorgan turned he could tell that he was surveying first the width of the room and then the purpose behind it.

  Focus landing on a far corner, Jorgan stepped that way. “What was in this cabinet?” He touched the door that hung ajar.

  Mrs. Sorrel put the box back, and Thor watched her mouth as he helped her replace the board. “Some of Harlan’s old things, though I don’t know what. I never had a key to that lock.”

  Thor angled back to see what his brother’s response would be.

  “Was it always open like this?” Jorgan asked.

  Mrs. Sorrel shook her head.

  Jorgan stepped nearer, reached a hand inside the empty space, and drug his finger along a back corner. He studied his tainted skin—the black powder now darkening it—and Thor didn’t doubt that they were ascertaining the same thing. Gunpowder. Knowing Harlan, this cabinet had once housed a heap of ammo. And worse yet . . . the firearms to go with it.

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  STEPPING FROM THE CABIN, HAAKON BLINKED against a morning that was far too bright. Made worse by the fact that there was only a single, tattered leaf of coca in his possession and not a single woman to court in miles.

  As for a woman, all he’d need to do was venture out a ways, but that would mean one less man to guard the farm. And even an indulgence of female companionship wouldn’t distract him for long to the fact that the pouch around his neck was nearly empty of anything that had the potency he needed. Right now it was the one pitiful leaf, a Bible passage, and the child’s drawing. He didn’t see how that would be enough to get a man through a day, but it was all he had.

  Haakon drew in a slow breath as he left the porch of the cabin. He was just going to have to try and think about other things. Nearly impossible, though, since sleep continued to evade him in the night. If he went to search out any sign of the Sorrel men, he was a wreck of worry for leaving the farm, and if he stayed in the cabin, he remained awake to be the ears Thor lacked. If for any reason dreams claimed him, he awoke to the memory of the young widow’s voice in his head. A sound as tender as the way she’d cared for him and her small children. He needed to lay such a memory to rest with the same determination that had gotten him on that ship.

  Yet as hard to forget as that lovely voice was the way her children used to follow him about, trailing after him like a line of ducklings, giggling their delight in a language he hardly knew. While he grasped only a few of their words, those smiles and the brightness in their eyes had been telling enough as they’d traipsed along the rise above the fjord. The frigid North Sea air gusting against them all.

  With thoughts such as those, Haakon’s chest ached with a throbbing he doubted a man could live long through, and it was getting worse the more determined the sea was in refusing to fold up and bridge the two worlds that had claim to him.

  Whenever he saw Fay or Aven pinning laundry to the line, chatting away as they did, he imagined Widow Jönsson there too. Barefoot and lovely beneath the Virginia sun. And whenever he tried to slumber on his palette, he couldn’t shake the wishing for her to be close against his side. That he knew the way back to her made the longing all the more severe. Made worse that he didn’t know how to forget her son’s words . . . På gjensyn. We meet again.

  But that wasn’t going to happen because when all of this was said and done, he was going to hitch up the wagon and get himself to church where h
e’d find a wife good and close and proper.

  That’s what he was going to do.

  The pull of mind and spirit only intensifying, Haakon ached for coca, but with two ciderkins bounding his way on the path now forged between his cabin and the great house, he didn’t reach for his pouch. With a wooden sword in hand, Sigurd skipped closer, and Bjørn lagged behind with one side of his nightshirt tucked into a loose diaper. A crust of bread was in hand, and he crammed a corner into his mouth as he waddled forward on pudgy legs.

  “Let me guess . . .” Haakon raised his suspenders into place as he crossed the near end of his own yard. “I swept wong again.”

  Waiting for him among the trees, Sigurd hopped up on a low boulder that brought him closer to eye level. His white-blond hair was askew from slumber. Bjørn tried to climb up as well, but his little legs weren’t much help. Haakon reached him and with the toe of his boot gave a gentle nudge. It helped Bjørn reach the top, and he scrambled to a stand beside his brother.

  With Thor mending and with himself showing no signs of the sickness, Haakon had a hunch it was fine to touch them, but it seemed better to be safe for a mite longer.

  Their smiles were so cheery that he smiled back, finding it as bolstering as the leaves he’d been longing for a moment ago. Maybe—if he was willing to admit it—more so.

  Across the way, Jorgan carried an oiled saddle toward the horse barn. Haakon lifted a hand in greeting, and needing to find Peter, he thumbed for the boys to follow him. He borrowed Sigurd’s sword and indulged them in a story as they crossed the yard. In his best Barbadian accent, he described what it was like to split open a coconut with a machete and eat the sweet flesh inside. When he finished, they’d reached the top of the road that wove down into the orchards. Sigurd bounded from one foot to the other, soliciting another tale. Bjørn just begged for a “coco-wut.”