The Dakota Cipher

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Detroit was one hundred years old when I arrived, but had been under the American flag for only the past five. What had first been a French post and then a British one – finally surrendered under the terms that ended the American Revolution almost two decades before – now sat atop a twenty-foot-high bluff along the short, broad Detroit River connecting Lakes Erie and Saint Clair. The establishment consisted of approximately a thousand people and three hundred houses behind a twelve-foot log stockade. Canada was on the opposite shore, the Union Jack flapping there as a reminder of former rule.

Despite the political division, trade across the river was ample. Detroit’s economy was governed by furs and farming, with Norman-style French farmsteads spread up and down the American and Canadian sides for twenty miles.

‘It’s a mongrel town,’ described Jack Woodcock, our schooner’s skipper. ‘You’ve got the Frenchies, who have been there nearly as long as the Indians and do all the real work. The Scots, who run the fur trade. The American garrison, made up mostly of frontier misfits who can’t find a job anywhere else. Then there’s the Christian Indians, the tribes who come to trade, the black servants and freemen, and across the river the British waiting to take it all back again.’

‘Surely there’s new pride in being a part of the United States.’

‘The French like us even less than the British. They’re hiving for Saint Louis. Town’s lost half its population.’

The land and waterscape was flat, the sky vast, and the April sun bright. The most curious sight was the scattering of windmills, their arms turning lazily against the scudding white clouds of spring.

‘The land’s such a pancake there ain’t no rapids for water power,’ our captain explained. ‘We’s like a bunch of damn Dutchmen.’

Near the walls were clusters of domed bark wigwams and crude lean-tos used by the deposed Indians who clung near the post. Our craft tied to a long wooden dock at the base of the bluff, gulls wheeling and crows hopping in hunt of spilt corn or grain. Sloops, canoes, flatboats, and barges were tied along the pier’s length, and the boards rang and rumbled from stomping boots and rolling kegs. The language was a babble of English, French, and Algonquin.

‘We’re not even halfway to the symbol of the hammer,’ Magnus said with wonder, consulting the charts he’d bought in New York City.

‘If we can continue by water it will be faster and easier,’ I said. ‘We’ll show Jefferson’s letter of support to the commander here and ask for military transport to Grand Portage. We have, after all, the backing of the American government.’

There was a dirt ramp leading from the dock to the stockade gate, split logs bridging puddles. A steady stream of inhabitants moved up and down like a train of ants, not just transporting goods to and from ships and canoes but dipping water. The wells had been spoilt by the town’s privies, said Woodcock.

Three-quarters of the inhabitants looked to be either French or Indian. The former had long dark hair and skin burnt almost as brown as the tribes. They wore shirts, sashes, and buckskin leggings, with scarves at their neck, and they were crowned with headbands or bright caps of scarlet. Clad in moccasins, they had a jaunty gaiety that reminded me, however remotely, of Paris. The Indians, in contrast, stood or sat wrapped in blankets and watched the frantic industry of the whites with passive, resigned curiosity. They were refugees in their own country.

‘The drunk and diseased fetch up here,’ the captain said. ‘Be careful of the squaw pox.’

‘Not much of a temptation,’ I said, eying the squat and squalid ones.

‘Wait till you been out here for six months.’

Inside the stockade was crowded with whitewashed log houses and dominated at its centre by a large stone catholic church. ‘Headquarters is that way,’ Woodcock said, pointing. ‘Me, I’m stoppin’ at the tavern.’ He disappeared into a cabin rather more populated than the others.

The western headquarters of the United States Army, governing three hundred unruly soldiers, was a sturdy command building of squared logs and multipaned windows of wavy glass, its official purpose marked by a flagstaff with stars and stripes. There was no guard, so we walked unannounced into a small anteroom, where a grizzled sergeant sat hunched over a ledger book. We inquired about Samuel Stone, the man Lewis had told us was the commanding officer.

‘The colonel’s out at the graveyard again,’ said the sergeant, mumbling through a bristle of grey whisker while he held a quill pen like a dart, as if uncertain where to point it. He had none of Meriwether Lewis’s military bearing and squinted at a ledger sheet as if looking at the alphabet for the first time. Finally he scratched through a name.

‘Has there been an illness?’

‘Nah, another shootin’. The garrison don’t have nobody to fight so they fights each other. The colonel, he banned duelling, but every time he tries to punish someone for it, half of them is already dead, and the other half usually cut up or wounded. Besides, he’s a fighter too. Keeps the blood up, he says.’

‘Good God. How many have died this way?’

‘Half a dozen. Hell, we lose lots more to drownin’, ague, consumption, Injuns, squaw pox, and bad water. Better to die for honour than the bloody flux, eh?’

‘We’re on a mission from President Jefferson,’ I said, adopting a tone I hoped expressed gravity and my own importance. ‘Will the colonel return soon?’

‘I suppose. Unless he don’t.’

‘What does that mean?’

‘The colonel, he keeps his own schedule.’

‘We have a letter from the president requesting we be granted military transportation. Has no advance correspondence reached you?’

‘You mean letters? About you?’ He shook his head. ‘Where you goin’?’

‘To the head of the Great Lakes.’

‘Head of the lakes? Grand Portage?’

‘Yes.’

‘That’s redcoat country, man.’ He looked at Magnus. ‘Your friend here looks to be a Scot. Ask him. They’re the ones who run the North West Company. You a redcoat? They run all the freight canoes, too.’

‘Magnus is Norwegian, and we want passage on an American ship. Surely there are brigs that go to Michilimackinac.’

‘Canoes, mostly. No American ships.’ He looked at us as if we were daft. ‘Ain’t you seen the river? Ain’t no navy. Besides, we’s army.’

This was getting us nowhere. ‘I suppose we’d better speak to the colonel.’

He shrugged. ‘Won’t change things.’ He looked around, seemingly surprised there was no colonel, and no chairs, either. ‘You can wait on the porch if you like if he ever comes to wait for. Or, try again tomorrow.’ He shifted in his seat, raised a thigh, and broke wind with a pop like a signal gun. ‘Sorry. Reveille.’

We stepped back outside, surveying the bowed logs, mossy roofs, and muddy lanes that were Detroit. ‘If that’s what’s defending us, I don’t blame our boat captain for making for the tavern,’ Magnus said. ‘Let’s join him and try again in an hour or two, when the grave’s filled. This Stone may move like one.’

So off we strode, Magnus pointing out the magnificence and stink of drying fur pelts and I commenting on the paucity of white women. There were a few pretty Indian ones, but they had the mix of native and European clothing that marked them as brides of the French. Younger ones looked to be Métis, or half-breed.

We’d almost reached the tavern when a voice cried, ‘Look out!’

A man bulled us against the logs of a candle shop while a black cannon ball, a four-pounder by the look of it, shot from the intersecting lane and went hurtling where we’d been standing a moment before. It disappeared between houses and there was a crash and the sound of toppled wood.

‘Sorry for my rudeness,’ our saviour said, ‘but you were about to walk into a bowl-lane without looking. Broken ankles are chronic in Detroit, and the town is at odds about it. There’s talk of an ordinance.’

‘I didn’t hear a cannon.’

‘The ball wasn’t fired, it was rolled. Bowls are a mania, and the debate to ban them has exercised more gums and produced less result than your American Congress. The young men throw whenever the streets are halfway dry or frozen. Keeps them occupied, Colonel Stone says.’

‘The players give no warning?’ Magnus asked.

‘We learn to watch and hop soon enough.’ He looked at me with new interest. ‘Say! Aren’t you the hero of Acre?’

I blinked, puzzled to be recognised. ‘Hardly a hero …’

‘Yes, Ethan Gage! What splendid coincidence! My employers were just speaking of you! Rumour had it that you were headed this way and tongues are wagging, as you might imagine. Who can guess what your next mission might be! And now here you are! No, don’t deny it, I was told to look for a pretty longrifle and a hulking companion!’

‘This is Magnus Bloodhammer, son of Norway. And who are you?’

‘Ah! I forgot my manners in all the excitement!’ A cheer went up and another cannon ball went bouncing by. ‘Nicholas Fitch, aide to Lord Cecil Somerset, a partner in the North West Company. He’s staying at the Duff House in Sandwich across the river, with his cousin Aurora. He’s most anxious to meet you. Damn curious about the scrape at Acre. Something of a student of ancient fortification, he is. He’s an acquaintance of Sidney Smith, who you served with.’

‘We’re trying to meet with Colonel Stone about transport up the lakes.’

‘Oh, I don’t think you’ll see Stone again today. Tends to go hunting after a burial. Says it clears the mind to kill something else. And the traffic north is all British anyway. Please, be our guests – we’re having a party. Quite the gathering for these parts: traders, farmers, chiefs! And Lord Somerset is going north. Perhaps we could help each other!’ He smiled.

Well, one of my missions was to sniff out British intentions in the west. There’s no better place than a social gathering, where tongues are loosened by drink. ‘If you don’t mind men rough from a little travelling, then certainly.’

‘We have a bath, too!’ He winked. ‘You’ll want to be clean for Aurora!’