The Dakota Cipher Page 19

  Then, properly attired, we shoved off again and all six canoes began a race around Hat Point to sprint for the grey-weathered stockade. All of us sang the now-familiar French paddling songs at the top of our lungs, paddles dipping in synchronized rhythm. As we came into view a horn sounded ashore and cannon went off, and as we neared the pebbled beach a tide of trappers, Indians, and bourgeois managers poured down to meet us, cheering, insulting, and firing guns in the air. Great cottony puffs of white smoke blossomed, reports echoing merrily across the bay. Indian braves whooped with cries that raised the hairs on my neck, shaking tomahawks like rattles. Women waved blankets and clashed iron kettles. Cecil, Pierre, and I fired in turn, and Aurora waved her parasol, her green eyes bright with excitement.

  Then the bowmen leapt lightly into the shallows and we were ashore, strangers pounding our backs and offering swigs of shrub.

  Tents, wigwams, and overturned canoes used as lean-tos were spread on either side of the fort, hazy wood smoke hanging over the encampment like a roof. Music drifted, drums thumped, and the pop-pop of shooting competitions filled the air. I could smell roasting meat, spice, and molasses.

  Grand Portage itself was a modest stockade a few acres in extent that contained a dozen sawn-log buildings, gardens of corn, herbs, and vegetables, and sheds for furs and trade goods. Amid the stumps outside where the forest had been logged, a dozen assembled Indian tribes camped with hundreds of visiting voyageurs. A muddy trail wound from the fort up through the slash and into the forest for the eight-mile portage that led to the navigable part of the Pigeon River above its falls. From there, canoeists could paddle upstream to waterways that led west to the fabled Rocky Mountains or north to the Arctic. We were at the continent’s crossroads, the edge of empire between British, American, French, and Indians.

  ‘We’re drawing closer to where my people came,’ Magnus murmured. ‘I feel it. Somewhere beyond the trees is the navel of the world.’

  ‘Somewhere beyond the trees are blackflies, Red Indians, and plain stream water,’ Pierre advised. ‘Feast while you can.’

  Our party split. Magnus and I, as ambassadors of a sort, accompanied the Somersets and Red Jacket through the gates of the fort to the Great Hall. Pierre, his voyageur companions, and the other women fanned into the encampments outside, crying greetings, boasts, insults, and endearments to people they hadn’t seen in a year.

  The fort’s interior parade ground grass was trampled flat by the traffic. Bundles of trade goods piled high, and fur presses squeezed lush pelts for shipping to New York and London. Armed guards escorted us past this treasury to the long porch of the Great Hall, a log building whose sash was painted Spanish brown. There a cluster of partners waited, at their centre a tall, stern-faced, white-haired Scot in a black coat and knee-high moccasins.

  ‘Lord and Lady Somerset!’ he greeted with booming voice. ‘We’ve been awaiting your company!’

  Cecil gave the slightest of bows. ‘Simon McTavish! It is an honour, sir.’

  ‘The honour is ours. And this is your lovely cousin?’

  ‘May I present Aurora?’

  ‘Most presentable! Lady, your light outshines the morning.’

  She smiled and gave a slight curtsy. It was all a little precious for me, given that things were rustic as Mary’s manger. McTavish was leering like an old goat.

  ‘Red Jacket you know, I believe,’ Cecil said.

  McTavish raised a hand. ‘All men know the fame of the warrior chief, friend of both the Ojibway and Dakota.’

  ‘And these two gentlemen have accompanied us as well,’ Cecil went on. ‘Ethan Gage is an American with a reputation as adventurer and electrician. He has connections to the French government.’

  ‘The French!’

  ‘Who are reacquiring Louisiana,’ Cecil announced blandly. ‘Gage is an emissary of Napoleon, out to tell them what they have. He’s dined with Jefferson as well.’

  ‘Are you a herald of war, Mr Gage?’

  I bowed myself. ‘On the contrary, sir, I helped forge peace between my own nation and the French at Mortefontaine. I am an American who has worked with both the British and the French. Bonaparte and Jefferson sent me as a symbol of peace.’ I smiled brightly as a barmaid.

  The old Scot looked sceptical. ‘Did they now?’ Though well past fifty, this empire builder looked hard as iron and quick as an abacus.

  ‘His companion Magnus Bloodhammer is a Norwegian patriot and descendant of royalty who thinks his ancestors may have preceded us all to this hard country,’ Somerset went on. ‘While the fur trade is one of fierce competition, we here – Red, English, American, and so forth – have joined forces as a symbol of peace and unity. Bonaparte is taking back Louisiana, McTavish, whether we like it or not, and we must have Ethan’s help in persuading us all to stay in our sphere of influence.’

  ‘We get the north, where the best furs are.’

  ‘Exactly,’ Cecil said.

  ‘A satisfactory sentiment if you share it, Mr Gage. If you represent France, we will extend to you the courtesy of emissaries under a flag of truce. If you represent the United States, you can almost stake claim to our little post already.’

  ‘Stake claim?’

  ‘We’re a few miles south of the settled boundary of your native nation. A new post is being built in Canada and this one will be abandoned in a year or two. You are here for the twilight of the gods, the last of Valhalla.’

  ‘You know the Nordic legends of Ragnarok, Mr McTavish?’ Magnus asked with interest.

  ‘Casually, as a student of the classics. The occasional verbal flourish is a vanity my lieutenants tolerate.’ He gave a thin smile. ‘I don’t really anticipate the end of the world. But perhaps I should, in the presence of the wayfarer Odin himself.’

  Now Magnus bowed.

  ‘Odin?’ Cecil asked.

  ‘Has your friend not shared the resemblance, Lord Somerset? In Norse myth, the one-eyed god, who gave an orb to drink from the fountain of wisdom, wanders the world of men in broad slouch hat and concealing cloak. I daresay that we’re either in the presence of the divine, or Mr Bloodhammer emulates the chief of Asgard and Valhalla.’

  ‘My eye was taken, not given up,’ Magnus said. ‘The Danes don’t want Norwegians learning the truth.’

  ‘And now you dress like the legend! No, don’t deny, we Scots will don kilts, the voyageurs their sashes, the braves their paint. All of us in costume! I suspect our revelry this year will be especially memorable given it may be our last here. Not that my partners are not businessmen first!’

  ‘Ledgers before liquor, Simon,’ one mouthed promptly as a puppet on a string. ‘Discussion before dance. The men have to complete the portage, too.’

  ‘But after that …’ McTavish grinned a wolfish challenge. ‘I will out-dance all of you! Except Red Jacket, perhaps.’

  ‘Have you brought my presents?’ the Indian asked the Scot in English, startling me. Apparently he understood more than he let on.

  ‘And more. King George desires peace and partnership with all the Indians: the Ojibway and Fox and Sac and Winnebago and Menominee and even your own relatives, Red Jacket, the famed Sioux.’

  ‘That is our enemies’ word. I am Dakota. I kill King George’s enemies for you. I take their hair. I eat their courage. I steal their women.’

  McTavish’s smile didn’t waver. ‘His majesty has uses for all his children.’

  We went inside. The walls of the high, whitewashed dining hall were decorated with maps of the Canadian interior, antlers, crossed snowshoes, and Scottish broadswords. Long tables set with blue and white china were set for fifty men. Here the company bourgeois discussed business, while outside the voyageurs completed their portage. Drinking would commence this evening.

  I explained our intent to explore Louisiana southwest of Lake Superior. ‘With the territory moving from Spanish to French control, and a new American president, Paris and Washington are simply seeking information,’ I explained. ‘I’m hoping to serv
e as a go-between, as I did at Mortefontaine, to facilitate understanding.’

  ‘From warrior to diplomat,’ Cecil said approvingly.

  ‘And Magnus here is a historian.’

  ‘How altruistic of you,’ McTavish said. ‘Just ambling about as tourists, are you? And I understand you were mixed up with Smith in Syria and Napoleon in Egypt, and now you’re halfway around the world?’

  ‘Duty takes me to odd places.’

  ‘How convenient to be everyone’s ally!’

  ‘It’s often a bother, actually.’

  ‘Where does the American wish to go?’ Red Jacket suddenly asked.

  ‘Well, we don’t know exactly,’ I replied, even though we vaguely planned to head in the direction of Thor’s hammer on the old Norse map, an area entirely uncharted. ‘I hope we can accompany the North West Company’s men as far as Rainy Lake and then strike south from there. Do you have a suggestion?’

  ‘Back home.’

  The partners and clerks laughed.

  ‘The French do not stay,’ Red Jacket went on. ‘The British stay lightly. But the Americans’ – the chief pointed to me – ‘stay and wound the earth wherever they go. I have heard this from the great Shawnee Tecumseh and seen it with my own eyes, too. They drain the earth’s heart and blind the earth’s eyes.’ He turned to McTavish. ‘It is dangerous having these men here. Do not be fooled by them.’

  ‘How about it, Gage? Are you dangerous?’

  ‘No man is more persistently friendly than I. I’m your guest, and would not embarrass your hospitality.’

  McTavish turned to the Indian. ‘So while I appreciate your bluntness Red Jacket, I trust the Somersets to answer for our American guest.’

  ‘What is bluntness?’

  ‘Truth,’ a company partner told the Indian.

  ‘The truth is that when this fort is abandoned, the forest will return. I, Red Jacket, vow it.’

  ‘And the truth, Red Jacket,’ McTavish said, ‘is that no matter how little the Sac and the Fox and the Ojibway and the Menominee and the Winnebago and the Dakota like white men here, all depend on these forts for the guns, powder, kettles, and blankets that keep you from starving or freezing. Don’t you? Just as we depend on you to hunt fur.’

  The chief scowled, but said nothing.

  ‘We are a partnership. And now, gentlemen, to the maps.’

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  Inside, the stockade was meetings, ledgers, fur presses, and warehouses. Outside, the voyageurs who’d lugged their loads across the portage began what was the greatest revelry of the year, a two-week bacchanal of feasting, drinking, dancing, and tupping whichever Indian maidens they could woo, buy, or marry. I left the partners to their serious business and wandered back out through the gates, Magnus in tow, to find Pierre and experience the fun of Rendezvous.

  The French voyageur had made a temporary castle under his overturned canoe, stretching a tarpaulin from one rim. He was smoking a clay pipe, sleeves rolled and shirt unbuttoned, pleased as a prince. There was a fine summer breeze to keep the mosquitoes down, and a dazzling high-summer sun to give everything a polish. Within a fortnight he would be on his way into the wilderness for the long winter, but for now he could focus on eating, boasting, drinking, and song.

  ‘Lord Pierre!’ I greeted. ‘You look more at ease than the bourgeois in the Great Hall, with all their china and servants and dogs.’

  ‘That’s because they have too much.’ He pointed at the fort with the stem of his pipe. ‘The more that’s acquired, the more you want. The more you have, the more care you must take of it. The more you possess, the more you can lose. That is the secret of life, my friend! A sensible man like me is rich with nothing.’ He waggled his pipe at us. ‘Do not chase treasure. It will only bring you grief.’

  ‘McTavish said even the Indians need guns and blankets now.’

  ‘Oui! A generation ago, they answered to no man. Now they’ve forgotten, most of them, how to hunt with the bow and arrow. They live for trade, not for life. Instead of us learning all the right lessons from them, they are learning all the wrong ones from us.’

  ‘Yet surely we are superior if we are the conquerors.’

  ‘Who at this Rendezvous is slave, and who is free? The bourgeois in their stuffy meeting room, or me with my pipe?’

  We sat to debate the point, I saying it was the company partners who gave the orders and would go home to snug houses in the winter, and Magnus opining that they spent so much time worrying about profit that they were blind to the glory around them.

  Pierre compared ambition to rum. ‘A swallow warms you up, and a pint makes you happy. But a keg will kill you. Men like McTavish are never content.’

  I wondered what restless Napoleon would say to that. ‘Red Jacket is with the partners,’ I said to change the subject. ‘He watches in one corner, arms folded.’

  ‘He and his renegades enforce their will,’ Pierre said. ‘He’s estranged from both the Ojibway and Dakota, a man of two nations who belongs fully to neither and who obeys no law or custom. Let Indian kill Indian, the traders say. It’s been frontier policy for three hundred years.’

  ‘It makes him a grumpy-looking bastard.’

  ‘Simon McTavish keeps his friends close and his enemies closer. Red Jacket’s lodge flies the blond hair of the man whose coat he wears, and rumour has it that he dined on the man’s flesh. Yet the Somersets count him an ally.’

  ‘British aristocrats are friends with a red cannibal?’

  ‘Those two aren’t the dandies they seem, my friend. Both have been in this country before, and know more of it than they let on. There was some kind of trouble in England, some money disappeared, and a scandal that involved them both.’

  ‘What scandal?’

  He shrugged. ‘One hears stories, and I only believe what I see. Cecil is a dangerous man with a sword – I hear he killed an officer in a duel – and Aurora, as you know, is a crack shot. So stay away from Namida. It isn’t good to be mixed up with anything to do with Red Jacket or any woman at all if the English lady has an eye on you. Find an ugly squaw so Aurora won’t care. They’re all the same down where it counts, and the homely ones are far more appreciative.’

  Crude and sensible advice that I hadn’t the slightest intention of following. ‘If that girl is really Mandan, she deserves to be back with her people.’

  ‘I know your kind, Ethan Gage. You are not ambitious, but you want to save everyone. Don’t. You’ll only bring trouble on yourself.’

  ‘And I know your kind, Pierre. Man of the moment, going nowhere, with a thousand rationalisations of why to do nothing. You’ll die penniless.’

  ‘Living for today is not nothing, my friend.’

  ‘But Magnus and I have more than the day: we have a quest.’ It was odd to hear myself defending our odd mission and my odder comrade, so much more fanatical and driven than me. ‘If it succeeds, we’re beholden to no one.’

  ‘And if it doesn’t, you risk death for nothing.’

  I strolled the camp. There were lots of women, many pretty, but Namida still stood out; her heritage made her exotic. She and Little Frog were taking smoked meat and fresh corn from the main supply tents to Red Jacket’s camp at the far southern end of Rendezvous. My tactic to talk to her would be a loaf of bread. I scooped one up, trotted ahead out of sight, and then intercepted them.

  ‘Have you developed a taste for the baguette?’

  They stopped shyly, Little Frog looking uncertain but Namida eyeing me with sly hope. Yes, she was looking for an alternative to her gruff cannibal of a captor, and I was just the man to provide it.

  ‘What is that?’ she said, looking at the loaf.

  ‘Bread, baked from flour. You haven’t tried white man’s food? Some bites of this, and shavings from a sugar loaf, and you’ll want to go with me to Paris.’

  ‘What is Paris?’

  I laughed. ‘The direction we should be going. But you live where the trees end?’

  �
��Our families are there. Where the rock with words is.’ She nodded encouragement.

  ‘Did you see anything else peculiar in your travels?’

  ‘I do not know that word.’

  ‘Strange?’

  She shrugged. ‘Earth and sky.’

  Which might or might not include hammers. ‘Here, try a bite of this. Go ahead, put your bundles down.’ I broke off a piece of the baguette. ‘Best bread in the world when it’s fresh, and the voyageurs appear to have taught even the Scots how to make it. Yes, try the white part …’

  Suddenly something hit my backside and I bucked forward, sprawling on the muddy ground with my broken baguette under me. The women gave a little squeak of alarm and snatched their load back up, hopping over my body and hurrying on their way. I rolled over to peals of laughter from voyageurs who were watching.

  Red Jacket loomed over me, his torso muscled into beaten bronze, his black eyes like pistol bores. He sneered. ‘You talk to slaves?’

  I bounded up, surprised and shaken, my clothes muddy. ‘Damned right I do.’

  He kicked again without warning, square in my stomach so I doubled over, and then shoved so I sat abruptly, windless and shocked. His violence was almost casual but quick as a snake and powerful as a mule. I wanted to get up but couldn’t breathe.

  His finger stabbed like a spear. ‘Red Jacket women.’ He spat.

  I struggled up again, hunched, flushed with rage, but ready for a fight with this bastard even if he was two sizes too big. It was his arrogance that maddened me. Then hands clamped my arms. It was Pierre.

  ‘Careful, donkey, you have no right in this matter. They are not your women.’