Chapter Preview: The Dane

Ronan sat at a small table near the hearth of the Robin’s Nest, an old tavern not far from the customs building on the opposite side of Water Street. He had his back to the fire, its warmth and light a welcome respite from the cold days that were getting shorter. With the winter solstice less than a month away, the sun had already slipped beneath the horizon well before five o’clock. Massive oak beams loomed over clusters of men, and stumpy tallow lamps glowed and sputtered at each table, their drops of wax occasionally popping from the candles and landing on the worn wood.

The tavern hummed with the low murmur of conversation. Coopers, sawyers, shipwrights, seamen, apprentices, fisherman, and other water men of all kinds were busy gossiping and complaining over tankards of ale and meat pies. It was a tavern for locals that earned a living with their hands.

Suddenly, the front door flew open. An absolute goliath darkened the doorway, silhouetted by the weak and sputtering light of the lantern mounted outside. The room went silent, the men disquieted by the figure and the cold blast of winter coming in around him.

A voice shouted from behind the tap board. “Shut the door big oaf, or I will knock the rest of those teeth out!” This could only mean one thing. The men, almost in perfect unison, raised their tankards and shouted, “The DANE, huzzah!”

Greetings, ye bastards!” the man bellowed. “Miss Robin, why dost thou threaten a man only seeking warmth and fellowship?” His broad face grinning, a perfect black square where a front tooth had been.

“I welcome ye — but shut the door!” Robin replied, bantering in the tongue of the Old World in which this man was prone to speaking.

It was the Dane.

A mountain of a man, Olaf Hansen stood over six and a half feet tall, towering over almost everyone. As if built for the rigors of sailing, he had a barrel chest, forearms like oak trees, and fists the size of kettles. Descended from an unbroken line of Norse seafarers going back over one hundred years, his grandparents Olaf and Ingeborg Hansen had sailed from Denmark to the New World in 1675, settling in New York.

Olaf’s grandparents had two sons and a daughter. One son and the daughter would both die very young, the son taken by the pox, the daughter by the bloody flux. The surviving son Lars married Kari Olavsdatter in 1730, moving from New York and settling in the portion of Newbury, Massachusetts that would become Newburyport some thirty-four years thence. Like the men of his line before him, Lars made his living plying the sea. Kari bore him one son, born shortly thereafter. They named him Olaf.

The man's personality was as large as his frame, and he had a lust for life as well as war. There was one particular tale about him that was recounted around New England hearths for at least one hundred years. During the war, Olaf was pinned down on a wooded hilltop with Ronan and two other men, exchanging fire with a group of French regulars at the bottom. The French had just fired a fresh volley of musket balls, splintering the trees but leaving the provincial soldiers unscathed. Ronan and the other men were nearly out of musket balls. Olaf had just fired the last of his.

Just a heartbeat after the crack of the next volley and before the chunks of wood and earth had even finished raining down, he sprang over the log that had concealed the provincial soldiers. Hurtling down the hill screaming as he closed on his quarry, his wild blonde hair framed a countenance of pure rage. The astonished French regulars that had reloaded their muzzle loaders fired wildly, missing the mark. Others were frozen and dumbstruck. Those that had the presence of mind to prime their muskets did so with trembling hands, unable to complete a task that they had been trained to do in their sleep.

In an instant the wild, monstrous Dane was upon them. He had an axe in one hand, his empty musket affixed with a long bayonet in the other. The sight of a man raging down the slope wielding both the bayonetted musket and axe as if they were but child’s toys was terrifying. Some of the men fell down, shrieking as the Dane’s axe fell upon them. Others were able to run, but three of them were too slow. The Dane killed two of them quickly with one-handed thrusts of his bayonet, like a knife through tallow, such was his strength.

The last man, realizing the race was over, turned to fight. His muzzle loader empty and his bayonet broken, he turned the butt of his musket around and smashed the giant in the face. The blow sent the Dane backward and shattered his front tooth. Seizing the advantage, the regular closed in for a second strike. The Dane had recovered and from his lips came a bellow of bloodlust redolent of his Viking ancestors. The man, now thoroughly terrified, paused just long enough for the Dane to bury his axe in his adversary’s forehead. The surviving French regulars had scattered into the woods.

Olaf scanned the room for Ronan and spotted him sitting next to the fire. He began to make his way through the tavern, which would take an inordinate amount of time. There were many bear hugs, back-slaps, and playful insults hurled in both directions along the way. In delivering their jibes, some of the men adopted the somewhat archaic manner in which Olaf spoke, sprinkling in “Thees and Thous” with their playful invectives. “I will kill thee, but spare thy mothers and daughters for me self!” he howled with laughter in response, the black square at the center of his wide smile. The threats to ravage their women notwithstanding, the men were delighted.

He had the blue of the sea in his eyes, like the fathers of his line. Although his face was not handsome in a classical sense, ladies were drawn to him just the same, as was most everyone. Olaf’s humor was contagious. Few men were his equal in the arts of sailing and seafaring. Other soldiers found him forthright, hardworking and honest, though untroubled if the need arose to bend or even break laws to right an injustice. Two years hence, a blacksmith’s shop had burned to the ground under suspicious circumstances.  When the law could do nothing, Olaf came to the man’s aid.

Prior to the fire, the proprietor, a man by the name of Jack Church, had stopped Alistair Hollingsworth in the street to inquire about payment for eighty mast hoops. The bill, unpaid for over eight months, was a heavy strain on Church’s business. He was exceptionally polite in the asking, explaining that the sum had accrued so long that it was affecting his livelihood.

Alistair glowered at him for a moment, then walked away, silently furious. The shop was burned to the ground within a fortnight under exceedingly suspicious circumstances. Constable Walker recorded the cause of the blaze as accidental. Smithies burned down all the time, he had pointed out to Church. Nothing could be done. Two days after the smithy was burned to ash, Richard Mason, drunk out of his wits, would be overheard boasting about “making payment with flame” on behalf of his master.

Upon Olaf's learning of the blacksmith’s plight, ten hogsheads of Madeira somehow rolled out of the hold of the Freedom’s Way while berthed in the harbor, the watchmen conveniently out of sight. Not only was crossing the Dane unwise, they were, like Church, but working men earning their bread. The local Cooper was happy to transfer the Madeira to fresh casks, burning the staves that bore the mark of the Hollingsworth lion to remove any trace back to the ship.

The Dane sold the Madeira to a contact in Boston, fetching a handsome sum. He gave every shilling to Church so that he may rebuild his shop. Richard Mason was fortunate that the Dane would leave for Boston a few days later, the boatswain aboard the Friendship, a one-hundred-and-fifty-ton merchantman bound for London.

Olaf finally had worked his way to the back of the tavern. The two men heartily embraced. Ronan, despite being of average height, looked somewhat like a child hugging his favorite uncle.

“Aye, the man that makes musket shot disappear,” said Olaf with a gleeful smile, his hands miming a magician’s trick, flashing his palms outward.

“It is great to see you my friend, “ said Ronan warmly. “Between voyages, we have met perhaps only twice since we fought shoulder to shoulder?”

“’Tis said that the greatest friendships need little watering,” replied the Dane with a wink. “Miss Robin, brink us drink before I —”

“You will do nothing, and I may just as well decide to slap your big silly face all the same,” came the retort from the tap board, the words menacing but the voice full of affection.

He sat down across from Ronan, the old friends taking to one another as if no time had passed since their last meeting.