The Dakota Cipher

CHAPTER TWENTY

I sent Colonel Stone a note announcing we would accompany the Somersets on my mission for Jefferson, just in case someone back in Washington wondered what the devil had become of us. I didn’t go to the officer in person because I didn’t want to risk him offering alternative transportation, costing me the chance to escort the lovely and enticingly risky Aurora. I persuaded the dubious Magnus that this was the fastest way to get to the supposed hiding place of Thor’s hammer, and that it never hurt to have countries like Britain on your side if you were trying to liberate your country from the Danes. ‘This way, no matter who prevails in the struggle between England and France, you’ll be allied with the winner!’

‘And an object of revenge for the loser,’ he grumbled with annoying logic.

We boarded a cutter, Swallow, for a trip up Lake Huron to the American post at Mackinac Island. From there, we’d join the freight canoes taking trade goods to Grand Portage. Then a jaunt into the interior, a quick glance around for blue-eyed Indians, woolly elephants, and electric hammers, and back to civilisation with treasure at best, burnished reputation at the least.

It’s good to have new friends.

I did have a moment of disquiet when I saw, as I waited for the last trunks and servants to be loaded, that Lord Somerset was holding an intense conversation with Girty, Brant, and Tecumseh on the lawn of Alexander Duff’s house and that glances were cast my way. I feared for a moment that the trio meant to join us, but no, they looked hard in our direction and then gestured goodbye to Cecil, as if some decision had been made. I had, after all, the protection of my new president and the first consul of France. With that, the aristocrat strode aboard, nodded as if to reassure me, and we cast off for the north, firing a salute to Detroit on the opposite shore. No canoe full of American officers came out, begging me to come back and become their responsibility.

We passed wooded Ile Aux Cochons, or Hog Island, where feral pigs were still hunted, and anchored that night on Saint Clair, which would be a giant lake in any other country but hardly a puddle in this one. The next morning we rose after sunrise, breakfasted pleasantly on tea, biscuits, and cold cuts left from Duff’s party, and were on our way again in a building breeze. This was the way to travel! I stretched out on deck to take in the view as we made our way up the Saint Clair River to Lake Huron, while Magnus studied his maps of vast blank spaces and Somerset bent to fur trade bookkeeping. Even aristocrats have to work, it seemed.

Aurora and I got on famously. She found my stories about Napoleon’s Egyptian campaign and his unsuccessful siege of Acre the height of entertainment, never failing to laugh gaily at my little jokes with that flattery that goes with flirtation. She was, I presumed, understandably smitten by my charm, inflated reputation, and agreeable good looks. I related bright little stories about Sir Sidney Smith and Bonaparte, Franklin and Berthollet, old Jerusalem and ancient Egypt … and now I had descriptions of mercantile New York, rustic Washington, and the curious new president to offer as well! The Somersets in turn told me how threatening Bonaparte seemed to England and how they hoped his acquisition of Louisiana would not set off a new North American war. ‘You and I must work to keep the peace, Ethan,’ Aurora said.

‘I prefer affection to fighting.’

‘Someday, England and America will be reconciled.’

‘Reunion can start with us!’

Aurora and I had both met Nelson, I on a warship and she in London, and the lady was brimming with gossip about his rumoured infatuation with Emma Hamilton, a one-time adventuress who had married well and was sleeping her way even higher. ‘She’s a beauty with her portraits all over London, and he’s the greatest hero of the age,’ Aurora sighed. ‘It’s magnificent scandal!’ There was envy in her voice.

‘You’ll eclipse her, I’m sure.’

Cecil educated us on fur politics in Canada. The Hudson’s Bay Company operated from its huge namesake in the north and had the advantage of being able to transport its trade goods to the shore of the bay in cargo ships, meaning shorter river distances to trading posts in the Canadian interior. Magnus nodded at this, since his theory was that his Norsemen had used the same route. The Bay Company’s disadvantage was short summers and long winters. The rival North West Company, dominated by Scots who employed French voyageurs in long-distance canoes, operated out of Montreal on an epic, five-thousand-mile water route across the Great Lakes and connecting rivers. Their season was longer, but they were limited to canoes, requiring an immense workforce of two thousand men. And then there was Astor, who had organised trappers on the American side of the border and monopolised the fur trade going to New York via the Mohawk and Hudson rivers.

‘Each route has its advantages and problems, and the sensible thing would be to form an alliance,’ Somerset said. ‘Cooperation always achieves more than competition, don’t you think?’

‘Like us on this boat. You sail me to Mackinac, and I’ll use my letter of introduction from Jefferson to smooth the way with the American garrison. We have a little league of nations here, with you representing England, Magnus Norway, and me America with ties to France.’ I looked at Aurora. ‘Partnership has its pleasures.’

I wished the boat had been bigger so the girl and I could get off by ourselves, but each night she commandeered the captain’s private cabin like a pampered princess while we dozen men slept on deck between the trunks, bags, satchels, and shipments that made up the Somerset luggage. There were Fitch, a cook, a butler, a French Canadian maid who slept in Aurora’s cabin, and a master-of-arms who looked after the assortment of sporting weaponry and swords that Cecil had brought with him. The English lord greeted each dawn with fencing exercises at which he thrust and slashed while balanced on the bowsprit, the captain keeping a wary eye lest the nobleman cut an important line.

Meanwhile, civilisation slipped steadily away.

As we sailed north on the vast freshwater sea that is Lake Huron, the sky seemed to inflate, stretching to ever-emptier horizons. The shoreline, when we could see it, was a flat, unbroken expanse of forest. Not a white village, nor a farm, nor even a lonely cabin broke its endless green face. We once passed an Indian encampment, bark wigwams set on a sandy shore, but spotted only a couple of figures, a wisp of smoke, and a single beached canoe. Another time I saw wolves loping on a sand beach and my throat caught at their easy wildness. Eagles soared overhead, otters splashed in the shallows, but the world seemed emptied of people. The planet had turned back to something infinite, pristine, and yet oddly intimidating. Here, Earth didn’t care. The custodial God of Europe had been displaced by the lonely wind and the spirits of the Indians. So much space, such yawning possibility, everything unrealised! Even in bright sunlight, the great northern forest seemed cold as the stars. Nothing and no one out here had ever heard of the famed Ethan Gage, hero of the pyramids and Acre. I had shrunk to insignificance.

While the crew of the ship regarded this unbroken forest as so expected and monotonous to be beyond comment, Magnus was transfixed by the ceaseless rank of trees. ‘This was the world of the gods who were the first men,’ he said to me as we cruised. ‘This is what it all was once like, Ethan. Great heroes wandered without leaving a mark.’

‘It’s the world of the Potawatomi and the Ottawa,’ I replied. ‘And whatever they are, it’s not gods. You’ve seen a few: poor, diseased, and drunk.’

‘But they remember more than we do,’ he insisted. ‘They’re closer to the source. And we’ve just seen the ones corrupted by our world. Wait until we get to theirs.’