The Sea Runners - Ivan Doig [14]
Thus: the first time Karlsson arrived back to the gate past curfew, Bilibin blustered a threat to march him double-quick to the sergeant in charge of the sentries.
"He'll knout you red, Viking. My scars ache to think of those he'll stripe on you, oh yes ..."
But did nothing. Boosting out a sergeant because a Swede couldn't finish his rutting on time, well, now...
The next time, having conferred beforehand with Melander, Karlsson staggered later than ever from the Kolosh village to Bili bin's gate, singing. Reedily, but singing.
The fruit of the heart-tree,
do not eat,
for sorrow grows there,
black as peat.
Also, he carried a jug of the native liquor called hoot china. Which without undue difficulty he persuaded Bilibin to swig a reviveful mouth's worth from: "Have fifteen drops, Pavel, it drives the snakes from one's boots, ..."
That his gate performances were credited by Bilibin without more than a first squint of suspicion astounded.
Karlsson. Was the world so bait-hungry as this? Was lie, Karlsson, so deft of deceit? Well, fair must be fair: the fact here was not hunger but thirst, and the hootch deserved at least equal billing with Karlsson. Under the New Archangel allotment of fifty cups of rum per man per year, Bilibin was a man perpetually parched. "The old sirs up there in the Castle," he groused to Karlsson between swigs, "might's well be spooning out dust to us."
By autumn of 1852, Verstovia now in a yellow-orange bodice of deer cabbage, Karlsson was not departing the stockade until nearly dark.
"Come along and dip your ladle in the kettle," the slim Swede would invite.
"No, no, no," Bilibin would splutter back at him, "I'm limber as a goose's neck, no more women for me, you can have mine as Well."
And the gate would wink open.
And wink again, far into the night, when Karlsson returned with a proffer of the hootchina jug.
In early November, Melander announced in his procedural way that the time had arrived for Braaf to acquire the coastal maps by which they would navigate south.
"It'll be the Tebenkov maps we want. One Russian who had something other than cabbage between his ears, Tebenkov was. Made his captains chart all of this coastline when he was governor here, and there's a set aboard each ship. I bad a look at the steamship's while Rosenberg was bathing his bottom at Ozherskoi. Those we'll take, they won't be missed until spring or whenever in hell's time the steamship gets fired up again. Read Russian, can you, Braaf?"
Braaf shook his head.
"No? Well, less matter, we need the ones from latitude 57° as far south as 45°, and you'll see they're marked like this."
NW be per a Amepuku, Melander printed carefully. NW coast of America.
The theft would be tricky, Melander cautioned, because Braaf would need to sort rapidly among all the maps in the steamship's chart room and—Melander stopped short as Braaf wagged his head again.
"Aye?" Melander demanded. "What is it?"
"I can't read anything," Braaf said.
The single event certain to irk Melander was the unforeseen, and this incapacity of Braaf's he had not calculated on at all. Rarest annoyance crossed that elevated face. Then Melander swerved to Karlsson and his disposition righted itself.
"So. It seems to fall to you. This'll at least make a change from galloping a Kolosh maiden, wouldn't you say? Now: the maps are kept—"
Karlsson was shaking his head in reprise of Braaf. "I'm being sent hunting. Perhaps for as long as ten days."
Now Karlsson looked steadily into Melander's eyes and for once, so did Braaf.
Under the pressure of these gazes Melander grimaced. Scowled. Swore. "Jesu Maria. Need to become a common sneak thief next, do I? The pair of you..."
The pair of them met Melander with the same square glances two weeks later.
"I've done, I've done," the tall man affirmed edgily. "But a narrow enough matter