In this strange and devious way, Vasili Voronov received secret notice that if he resumed the black, which he had abandoned thirty-six years before, he would be appointed Bishop of Irkutsk, the town from which his family had come, with every likelihood of further preferment later on. The naval officer who delivered this exciting information added, as he had been directed by the tsar himself: 'But of course this would necessitate a divorce. And if your wife, as a member of a people Russia is endeavoring to win over to Christianity, objected ...' He shrugged his shoulders.
When Father Vasili studied the confidential papers which verified this extraordinary proposal he had two reactions, which he could voice only to himself: I am not worthy, but if the church in its wisdom calls me, how could I refuse? and then immediately:
But what would Sofia's role be in this? And without even discussing the profound problem with his son, he left his cathedral and walked from one corner of the palisaded area to the most distant, back and forth past the warehouses he had helped build, then past the stores that Kyril Zhdanko had helped start, out to where the Tlingits gathered on the other side of the palisade, and back to the church which would never have come into being without his hard work and that of his wife. And when her name or her image came up, he realized the cruel choice that was being offered him.
For three days he was unable to broach the subject with her, and he refrained for a good reason: he felt sure that if she knew of his chances in Irkutsk and later perhaps in the capital, she would encourage him to change robes and accept the opportunity, even though it would mean leaving her behind. And he did not wish in decency to place her in a position in which she must do the choosing. He alone would decide what was right, and he would then place his thinking before her and encourage her to oppose it if she felt she must.
Satisfied that neither of them would act selfishly or in haste, he spent a fourth day largely in prayer, which he uttered with that simplicity which had always characterized him:
'Heavenly Father, from the time I was a child I knew that I wanted to live my life in Thy service. Humbly I have striven to do so, and as a young man I took my vows without even considering any alternative. But inside three years I was altering those vows in order to marry a native girl.
'As Thou knowest, so well, she brought me a new vision of what Thy church and its mission can be. She has been the saint and I the servitor, and I could do nothing to injure her. But now I am called to a higher service in Thy church, but to accept it, I must once again revise my vows and commit a grave wrong against my wife.
'What am I to do?'
That night was the fifth in which he carried this extraordinary problem to his bed, and as before, he tossed fitfully, unable to close his eyes, but toward dawn he fell into a deep, replenishing sleep from which he did not break till nearly ten. His wife, aware that he had been under some kind of pressure brought by the most recent ship from Russia, allowed him to sleep on, and when he woke she stood waiting with a tall glass of tea and the comforting words: 'Vasili, you've been worried about some perplexing problem, but I see in your face that God has solved it during your sleep.'
Accepting the tea gently from her hands, he swung his feet onto the floor, took a long, thoughtful drink, and said: 'Sofia, the tsar and the church want me to move to Irkutsk as bishop, and from there in due course perhaps to head the church from St. Petersburg.' Without hesitation, for he was speaking from a vast reserve of faith, he started to say: 'And this would mean ...' But she ended the sentence for him:
'It would mean that you would have to take the black robes again.'
'It would,' he said, 'and after consulting God, I've decided ...'
'Vasili, you started life in the black robes. Would this be so great a change that you should be sleepless?'
'But it would mean ..."
The two lovers, each of whom had molded his or her life to the other's, crossing bridges that lesser persons might have been afraid even to test, let alone leap upon, looked across the brief space which separated them, she a little Aleut woman less than five feet tall, dark of skin and with a whalebone labret in her lip, he a tall Russian in a nightshirt, white-haired and bearded and troubled. For a painful moment neither knew what to say, but then she took the tea glass from his hands and placed her hands in his, and with the strange and lovely pronunciation of Russian words which her Aleut upbringing and the presence of the labret produced, she said: 'Vasili, with Arkady here to protect me, and perhaps soon with a wife to help, I have no fear, no claim. Do as God directs,' and he said: 'Last night, after the midnight bell from the castle, I knew that I must go to Irkutsk.' He uttered the words softly, then pressed her hands and added: 'And may God forgive me for the wrong I commit against you.'
Once the decision was made, neither of the Voronovs reviewed it, and neither subjected it to harsh reconsideration or recrimination. Before noon that eventful day they asked their son to accompany them to the castle, where they sought a meeting with Zhdanko, and when the four were settled in porch chairs overlooking the bay and the mountains, Father Vasili said unemotionally: 'I have been selected Bishop of Irkutsk.
This means that I must return to the black robes I wore as a young man. And that means that my marriage to Sofia Kuchovskaya must be dissolved.' Allowing time for this dramatic news to take effect, he reached out for the hands of Zhdanko and Arkady, saying as he did so: 'I must leave the care of this wonderful woman to you two men.'
And during the next half-hour he did not speak again.
The others discussed a chain of obvious topics: Who would replace him at the cathedral?
Where would Sofia live? What would be the responsibility of both Zhdanko and Arkady?
And for that matter: What was Zhdanko going to do when his provisional term as chief administrator ended? And even: Is the palisade strong enough to withstand an attack by the Tlingits, an ever-constant threat? By these practical steps, which reminded everyone that life in New Archangel must go on, even if the spiritual head of the community was moved to-a higher obligation, the three participants chose among the various options available to them, and they did so in highly sensible ways, as if acknowledging that Father Vasili was no longer a part of their lives. But when they were finished, with the course of Sofia's future life determined within reason, Father Vasili broke down, covered his face with his hands, and wept. He was leaving a paradise which he had helped create and whose spiritual values he had both defined and protected.
He had helped build a world, and was now surrendering it.
He was a white-haired old man, somewhat stooped, somewhat slowed in his movements.
He spoke with greater caution and was prone to reflect on his defeats rather than his triumphs. He had seen much of the world's folly, and although he had been forgiving, he did wish that he'd had more time to combat those aspects of life which were wrong.
He was, to put it simply, closer to God than he had ever been before, and he believed that he was prepared because he had learned to do God's work in whatever position he finally found himself.
The ship which had brought the news of his elevation to bishop required eleven days to finish its duties in Sitka Sound, and during the latter stages of the stay Father Vasili completed all details relevant to his departure.
But on the last day, when everyone knew that the ship would be sailing at eight the next morning, he had to face the fact that within a few hours he must say farewell to his wife forever, and this became increasingly painful as the sun set and the long hours of night loomed. Sitting with Sofia in the main room of the modest house next to the cathedral, he began by saying: 'I can't remember when I first saw you.
I know it was at Three Saints and I know it involved the old shaman in some way.'
He hesitated, then chuckled as he recalled his long duel with that frenzied man:
'All that really mattered between us, I can see now, was that my parents had introduced me to God and Jesus and his had not had an opportunity to do so.' She nod
ded: 'He was an obstinate one. I hope I can defend my beliefs as valiantly as he did his.'
They spoke of the tragic manner in which so many Aleuts had perished during the Russian occupation, and he said truthfully: 'Months go by, Sofia, without my ever thinking of you as an Aleut,' and she said quickly: 'I think of it every day. I mourn the world we lost, and sometimes at night I see the forsaken women on Lapak, too old and weak to venture out for their last whale. My heart breaks.'
Then they spoke of the good days they had known, the birth of Arkady and the dedication of the cathedral, and this set Vasili to laughing: 'It seems I'm to have a real cathedral, maybe even a scintillating one, but whatever form it takes, it can never be a more dedicated House of God than the one you and I built here in New Archangel.'
At the mention of this place, they thought of Baranov and of how it was his will power which had built the thriving little town. 'He thought of it as the Paris of the East,' Vasili said, and the darkened room grew silent. A saintly man was deserting his even more saintly wife, leaving her for the rest of their lives for no reason with which she was associated, and there was no more to say.
WHEN PRASKOVIA KOSTILEVSKAYA, DAUGHTER OF THE notable Kostilevsky family in Moscow, arrived in New Archangel, men working along the waterfront stopped to stare at her, for a young woman of her striking elegance and beauty was rarely seen in this frontier town. She was much taller than either the Aleut women or the average Creole, and her skin was markedly whiter, for she was one of those Russians with a strong admixture of German blood, in her case Saxon, which accounted for her blue eyes and lovely flaxen hair. She had a warm smile but also an unmistakable patrician manner, as if she knew how to be congenial toward superiors and haughty toward inferiors, but the general impression she created was one of competence and self-assurance.
When it became known that she was the young woman who had come this great distance to marry Arkady Voronov, cynics said: 'He's a Creole and he'll never be able to hold a woman like that.'
To give her time to comply with religious law, her marriage to Arkady had to be delayed for three weeks, and during that time she began to have doubts about New Archangel, for the weather was typical of this part of Alaska. The warm Japanese current which swept clear across the North Pacific came so close to shore that it produced heavy moist clouds which clung to the mountains, completely obscuring them for days at a time. After the nineteenth rainy day in a row Praskovia lost patience, and wrote to her family, using, as cultivated Russian women did, a host of French words to describe her emotions:
Cheres Maman et Soeur, I have now been on this rain-soaked island for nineteen days and have seen nothing but mist, fog, low clouds and the most gloomy aspect of nature a human being has ever witnessed. Everyone here assures me that when the sun reappears I shall be seeing a glorious congregation of mountains encircling us, with a beautiful volcano off to the west.
Now, I am willing to believe that not all the people here are prevaricators, so I suppose the mountains do exist, but I find that one must take that on faith, for the visitor rarely sees them. One dear lady, hoping to raise my flagging spirits, assured me yesterday: 'Rarely does an entire month go by without the clouds lifting for at least a day,' and with that hope I shall go to bed tonight, praying that tomorrow may be that one day in thirty.
Arkady is even more delightful to be with than we thought in Moscow, and I am divinely happy. We have purchased a small wooden house near the castle, and with imagination and ingenuity we shall transform it into our hidden palace, because on the outside it will not be much.
I'm not sure whether the exciting news about Arkady's father has circulated in Moscow, but he has been ordained as Bishop of Irkutsk, with every likelihood of becoming, before the year is out, Metropolitan of All the Russias. So you shall be seeing the father in your city while I entertain the son out here in mine.
And now the best news of all. Arkady has been appointed second-in-command to supervise the transfer of power from the temporary chief administrator to the permanent one, and when that's been done, to continue as second-in-command until such time as he becomes chief. For the time being, his mother lives with us, a wonderful Aleut woman under five feet tall and with a kind of ivory earring fixed in a hole at the edge of her lower lip. She smiles like an angel and will allow me to do no work, for she tells me in good Russian: 'When you're young enjoy your husband, for the years pass too quickly.' In a later letter I'll tell you what happened to her marriage, but maybe you can figure it out for yourselves.
When the tantamount widow Sofia Voronova heard her prospective daughter-in-law complaining about Sitka's weather she preferred the Tlingit name for her town she feared that the high-born young woman might prove an unsuitable wife for her son, and she watched carefully as Praskovia made her way about the colony. She knows what she's doing, Sofia said to herself, and when she saw Praskovia go outside the gate to talk with Tlingit market women, she thought: And she's not afraid. But intuitively this elderly Aleut who had witnessed so many dramatic turns in human life feared that any young woman as pretty as Praskovia, and from a city, must lead her husband a difficult life, and she awaited the forthcoming wedding with trepidation.
But then, as if this bright child from the social circles of Moscow had anticipated Sofia's fears, she came to visit her two days before the wedding to say: 'Mother Voronova, I know I must seem strange to you, and I'm not going to try to change your mind. But I also know this. Arkady could not be the fine man he is unless someone had taken charge of him and' taught him manners and how to treat a wife. I'm sure it was you, .and I thank you.'
Then, to Sofia's astonishment, for Russian women in Sitka had never been so bold, Praskovia asked: 'What do you call that thing you wear in your lip?' Sofia, appreciating this openness, replied: 'A labret,' and her visitor said pertly: 'All right, now you must tell me what a labret is.'
Sofia did, but Praskovia was still not satisfied: 'I suspect that one must be very special. Could you ...?' She let her question hang, and for a very long moment Sofia looked at her, wondering: If I told her, would she understand? And in the end she concluded that it did not matter whether this young stranger understood or not; she was going to be Arkady's wife, and the more she knew of his heritage the better.
So in a quiet voice she began to tell of life on Lapak Island, and of the death sentence on her people, and of how she and her mother and her great-grandmother had killed the whale: 'A woman in the village made this from the bone of the whale we killed, and gave it to me as I left the island.' Seeing that Praskovia was transfixed by the story, she added: 'Of all the women on Lapak, I was the only one who escaped, and I shall wear this labret till I die out of my love for my people!'
Praskovia sat silently for a long time, kept her hands over her face, and finally rose and left without uttering a word, but on the following day she came back, laughing in a bright youthful manner, to tell Sofia: 'In Russia the bride wears something her mother wore at her wedding. I wish I could wear that labret of yours for just one day,' and the two women embraced, each assured that there would never be trouble between them.
NOW WHEN THE CITIZENS OF NEW ARCHANGEL USED THE phrase the Voronovs they meant the young administrator and his attractive wife, and the older possessors of that name were largely forgotten. Nor was Baranov mentioned very often, and when Kyril Zhdanko was replaced by a permanent chief administrator from Russia, a man with a minor title, he too faded from conversation. A new generation had come in to run what amounted to a new town, and when the American shipbuilder Tom Kane died, the last of the old breed was gone, the arrival of a steam-propelled ship from San Francisco signaling the new day at sea.
Arkady Voronov had been in his position as general manager of Company affairs for only a brief period when his capacity for leadership was tested, because from the islands to the north the Tlingits under a new toion decided that the time was ripe for a renewed attempt to retake Castle Hill, throw down the palisade, and return the settlement to
its original Indian owners. With careful planning, the accumulation of many weapons and the stealth for which they were famous, they began infiltrating southward at such a steady rate that soon they had a sizable army in the valleys east of the settlement.
With the heroic Kot-le-an dead, they were led by the tested old warrior Raven-heart, who was ardently supported by his implacable wife, Kakeena, and their twenty-year-old son who, because of the spectacular way they had developed, was known as Big-ears.
Together the three would form a powerful fighting unit, with Kakeena urging her men forward and providing food and hiding places when they were either recuperating from wounds or plotting their next assaults.
Raven-heart decided to position his best men near the palisade gate through which the Tlingit women would enter with their goods for market. At the exact moment, he, Bigears and six others would force their way through the gate and break it off its hinges, allowing a hundred or so warriors to flood the palisade. What happened after that would depend upon the degree of success attained by the first wave, but all were prepared to accept large losses at first in order to subdue the Russians.
At six in the morning the men hiding among the spruce trees north of Castle Hill heard the sound of the morning bugles, and at eight they watched as two Russian soldiers directed a half-dozen Aleut workmen to throw open the wicker gate. One Tlingit woman entered bearing clams. Another came with seaweed. And as the third moved forward with her fish, Raven-heart, his son and their bold companions dashed into the compound, killing one Russian soldier and forcing the other to flee. Within minutes the battle for New Archangel had begun, with the Tlingits enjoying what appeared initially to be a victory.