CHAPTER 5
The Elk Horn Tavern in Groton was full of sailors. There were a few of Macedonian’s men on liberty but the majority were from the Tom Bowlin privateer, newly fitted out with fourteen carriage guns, which would try to slip out past the British blockade during the first spell of bad weather, or during the next moonless night— plans at this point were being kept securely within the mind and heart of Captain Shelby Wohl, but it was assumed that the cunning old skipper had planned the escape with his usual ingenuity.
The floorboards of the Elk Horn were slippery as the result of a shortage of spittoons; but the beer and whiskey were cheap, if a little watery, and the worst class of those vultures who preyed on sailors were kept out, so the Elk Horn was a popular place. The fiddler Lazarus, a man reputed to be as mad as old Mocha Dick but filled with demonic talent and energy, had been playing reels, jigs, chanties, hornpipes, forebitters, old fo’c’sle songs, ballads; his bow flashed with dazzling speed on the fast songs, the notes flying with the racketing pace of hail in a November storm but yet as clear and distinct; the slow tunes were played with such clarity and sentiment that half the grizzled old shellbacks in the Elk Horn wept openly.
Vihtori Kuusikoski, able seaman, foretopman of the Tom Bowlin, felt the whiskey warming his insides, the fiddlestrings tugging at his heart. In this lachrymose and sodden company, beneath these smoke-stained low beams, Kuusikoski felt contentment rising in him. It was the first time he had felt so nearly at peace since the day, four years before, he’d fled Finland, refusing to live under the Russian conquerors.
Rolling home, rolling home, rolling home across the sea,
Rolling home to old New England,
Rolling home, dear land, to thee...
That was perhaps the universal sailor’s song, an international melody; Vihtori Kuusikoski had heard it sung in Finnish, Swedish, and Plattdeutsch aboard Baltic merchantmen, the name of the destination changed according to the nationality of the sailors, but always with the same sentiment, sung to the same tune. The droning of the assembled sailors, accompanied by Lazarus on his fiddle, filled the tavern, echoing from the low beams of the ceiling. It sounded as reverent as a hymn. Kuusikoski felt his eyes smart. He would never be rolling home to his own land again. Never to sail among those pine-crowned islands, seeing the little towns marked with their wooden slope-roofed churches...
“Have ye some more bob smith, Koozy,” said the privateers-man next to him, pouring whiskey. “ ’Tis a good old song, this.”
“Derry, you’re a friend,” Kuusikoski said. “I ain’t got nothing but the ship now.” He gestured vaguely at the men seated with him: Wilks, the muscled, white-bearded, scarred old patriarch of the Tom Bowlin’s fo’c’sle, known as “Majesty”; Feld, the grinning, gap-toothed Carolinian in his red knit cap; Derry, the Irish exile, with the scars of the Royal Navy’s cat on his back. “You men is my family now,” Kuusikoski said.
“You’ll get back to, to wherever it is, never fear,” Derry said. “ ’Tis I that cannot return. ’Tis me head in a noose I’ll be putting just by goin’ to sea, what with the British just off Groton Point. But what can a man do? A man must work.” He nodded profoundly. “A man must practice his craft.”
“I’ll protect you, Derry,” Kuusikoski said. He threw an arm around Derry’s shoulders. “I’ll tell ’em you’re from Turku, like me. You just act like you don’t got no English.”
“Aye,” Derry said, cocking his head. He took a swallow of the whiskey, his Adam’s apple bobbing. “It might work,” he considered. “I’ll tell ’em I got my scars in the Suo— in your Navy, whatever it’s called.”
“The Swedish Navy,” Kuusikoski said.
“Derry’s look was puzzled. “Sweden? Is that the same as this Suo— Suomi— whatever— the same place as the one you come from?”
“Nay, but Suomi was a part of Sweden. Had the same Navy.” Kuusikoski blinked. The sailors had fallen silent, but Lazarus was continuing the chorus solo on his fiddle, playing simply without his usual flourishes. A moving melody played by a master.
“A part of Sweden?” Derry said. His brow furrowed as he tried, through the whiskey that slowed him, to concentrate on the mystery. “And you can’t go back because the Russians took it? Like Finland?”
“Finland, Suomi. Same thing. Different lang— different tongues,” Kuusikoski said.
“You mean you’re a Finn!” Derry’s voice was almost a shriek. Lazarus was playing a drawn-out concluding note, wrapped entirely in his own art, and the room had hushed to hear him; Derry’s cry had been heard by everyone nearby.
Vihtori Kuusikoski saw the eyes of his friends turning toward him, solemn, withdrawn, suddenly the eyes of strangers. He felt a touch of fear without understanding why.
“Is that true, Koozy?” asked Wilks, known as Majesty, the tattooed muscles on his arms knotting. “Are you a Finn?”
Applause filled the room as Lazarus stood and bowed, but the table where Kuusikoski sat was silent.
“Joo. I’m a Suomalainen, a Finn,” Kuusikoski said, bewildered. “What’s wrong? I say something?”
He watched, baffled and somehow afraid, as Majesty, his blue eyes solemn, made a commanding gesture, and in obedience the others went into a sudden consultation at the other end of the table. Kuusikoski caught a few words, heard through the haze of drink and the sound of ringing coins as money was flung at the fiddler: “Witch ... not his fault... can’t have a witch aboard... Finnish witch... witch!”
“What are you saying?” Kuusikoski said, trying to hear. He leaned forward and knocked over a cup of whiskey; he tried clumsily to right the cup and mop up the mess.
The conference ended. His friends stood, solemn.
“You should have told us,” Majesty said, frowning. “We’ve got to leave now.”
Not comprehending, Kuusikoski allowed himself to be rushed outside, past the other tables where he saw the same baffling, hostile stares on other faces, even on the faces of strangers, past where the fiddler was bowing and scooping coins into his cap. He was unsteady on his feet but the others held him up as they pushed out through the door, down the street, into an alley.
“What happened?” Kuusikoski pleaded. “What’s happening?” The first blow caught him behind the ear and he staggered against the side of the building. “Hey!” he shouted, but the fists were coming very fast and all he could do was to try to protect himself, covering his face with his arms, curling down to protect his midsection. The blows were drunk and wild and many missed entirely, but trying to escape he fell to the mud in the alley and then kicks were added to the blows. One kick missed and Deny thudded to the ground himself. The Irishman tried to rise but fell again, and groaned as if it were he who had been beaten.
At last they left him alone, Majesty and Feld standing over him, breathing hard, their knuckles bloody. Derry cursed as he tired again to rise, and again failed. “Damned witch,” muttered the Irishman. “ ’Tis me legs he’s cursed!”
“Shut up,” Majesty growled, leaning against the building while he caught his breath. His stern look was fading, replaced by what might have been shame.
“Me legs!” Derry wailed, clutching at his knees. Feld bent to help him to his feet, the two of them groping and cursing in the dark, managing only to drop Feld as well into the mud. Kuusikoski looked up through bruised eyes and saw Majesty looking uncertain.
“I’m sorry, Koozy,” Majesty said. “But you should have told us. We can’t have a witch aboard, bringing bad luck on a voyage as dangerous as this.”
“Me legs is cursed. I’ll never walk again,” came a sobbing voice. Majesty looked at Derry with regal disdain.
“Shut your potato trap, you puisne little hopping Gyles,” he said. He bent over Kuusikoski, rocking unsteadily from drink. There was kindness in his face, but to Kuusikoski it looked only grotesque. “If I was you, Koozy, I’d leave town. You can collect your gear tomorrow, and then you’d better push off, see?”
Majesty helped a weeping Derry to his feet and the three lurched unsteadily into the darkness, Kuusikoski lay in the gutter, pain throbbing through him. He tried to move and then almost screamed as his back went into spasm, the muscles knotting rigidly as they refused to obey his orders. He gave up and lay on the wet earth, the shock of his beating wearing off, replaced by outraged pain. He could hear people leaving the tavern, stepping wide around him, seeing only another drunken sailor on a binge, collapsed into a gutter and bruised with falling.
The footsteps faded away. From a distance came the sound of someone vomiting in some gutter. Then there was a hushed sound near him, a scraping; Kuusikoski wondered dimly if it was a rat. Invisible fingers began plucking at his clothing, heading for his purse.
“Hey!” he shouted, rolling, swinging a fist blindly. There was a thud and a curse, but he felt the purse twitched from its pocket and then he heard the thief running. His back began to spasm again, telling him it was too torn to move, and Kuusikoski lay quietly in the alley, eyes shut, merely suffering.
They had all been his friends, shipmates. Why did they think him a witch? What was wrong with being a Finn in this America?
There was another set of footsteps, a strange jingling noise, and then the footsteps and the jingling stopped. Kuusikoski tried to move an arm and succeeded through his agony; he wiped blood from his eyes and peered at the dark form standing in the street, recognizing something in the silhouette. “Help me,” he croaked, his voice sounding strange, cracked. “I been robbed.”
Lazarus, the mad fiddler, his brow shadowed by a battered leather cap, bent to examine the beaten form. Coins jingled heavily in his pockets as he moved. “I shall help thee,” the fiddler said. His eyes gleamed strangely in the dark. “Canst thou stand?”
Kuusikoski groaned as Lazarus helped him to sit up. His head swam and his vitals seemed to turn inside out, but there were no spasms until suddenly he clutched his midsection and vomited into the street. Lazarus, seemingly ignoring the stench and the vomit that splashed him, held Kuusikoski up until the spasms ended with wrenching dry heaves.
“That’s done,” the fiddler said briskly. “The purge will do thee good, sailor. I have some lodgings near here. Thou canst sleep in my captain’s bed; he won’t be using it tonight.”
The reputed madman helped Kuusikoski to his feet, dabbing at his cuts with a handkerchief. “Lean thou on me,” he said, slinging his fiddle case over his shoulder on its strap. Kuusikoski obeyed, scarcely wondering through his shock and misery where he was being taken. Together, the madman and the reputed witch staggered into the cool evening.