The Dakota Cipher

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

Each night on our canoe voyage, Aurora and Cecil and the other bourgeois pitched a small tent while the voyageurs curled under the canoes. Magnus and I, given our status as middling passengers, each had scraps of canvas and rope that could be rigged as a lean-to shelter. It was a sign of rank, my head on my bundled coat and a wool trade blanket wrapped around me, and once tucked in I lapsed into unconsciousness. But it still seemed midnight when my shelter suddenly fell, half smothering me with dew-wet fabric. What the devil?

‘Get up, American, do you think you can sleep all day?’ It was Pierre, kicking me with his moccasin-clad foot through the canvas.

I thrashed clear. ‘It’s the middle of the night! You’ll wake the camp!’

There were roars of laughter. ‘Everyone but you is awake! We North Men do not tarry in the morning! Even Pork Eaters are up before the likes of you!’

‘Morning?’ I rubbed my eyes. A cloudy ribbon of stars still arced across the sky, while in the east there was the faintest glow of a very distant dawn. The fire was flaring to life again, last night’s leftovers beginning to bubble. Cecil and Aurora were fully dressed, looking bright enough for Piccadilly.

‘Yes, eat, eat, because soon we will be paddling. Eat, American! And then come see my handiwork. I have honoured our guests on the lopstick tree!’

So we wolfed down the remains of dinner and then followed our escort to the landmark. Its base was covered in carvings, we saw, commemorating some of the dignitaries who’d passed this way. They were mostly Scottish and English names like Mackenzie, Duncan, Cox, and Selkirk. The voyageur lit a candle and held it to the bark so we could read. ‘There, see how you are immortalized!’

‘Lord Cecil and Lady Aurora Somerset,’ it read. ‘Plus two donkeys.’

‘Donkeys!’

‘Paddle like men for a few days, and then maybe I will restore your name on another tree. Paddle until your shoulders don’t just ache but burn and you want to cry for your mother! But you don’t, you just paddle more! Then maybe the great Pierre will consider you!’

We stopped a night at Fort Saint Joseph, all of us but Cecil and Aurora camping on the beach because the post was still a half-completed stockade. Huge stacks of peeled logs, chopped and dragged the last winter, lay ready for placement, and the forest was cut back for a mile or more to prevent a surprise attack. Despite the sand fleas I was quickly asleep, given that there was no chance of dalliance with the segregated Aurora. And then in a predawn fog we were roused and pushed off again, the canoes ahead and behind muffled in the mist. We’d not pass another post until Grand Portage.

It was hard paddling against the current as we entered the thirty-mile river connecting Lake Huron and Lake Superior. At the Sault, meaning ‘jump’ or ‘rapids,’ we unloaded the canoes once again and carried the cargo in portage, me taking a ninety-pounder and Pierre and Magnus each shouldering two of the crippling loads. Then back for more. We staged the freight in mile increments, meaning we’d carry for half an hour and then get a relative respite going back for another load. Indians were gathered here to fish with spear and bark net from camps that smelt of shit and flies, so the voyageurs posted guard on our belongings because every white man believed every Indian was a thief, and every Indian believed every white man was rich and unaccountably selfish. Once we had all the freight forwarded, we went back for the canoes. Light they might be, but a wet freight canoe still weighed several hundred pounds. I felt like a pallbearer at an endless funeral. Finally it was done.

‘You’ll see men at Grand Portage who can do three and even four pieces at a time,’ Pierre panted. ‘When they are loaded, they look like a house with legs.’

‘And you will see men in Paris who lift no more than a pair of dice or a quill pen,’ I moaned back.

‘Those are not men, monsieur. To be an urban parasite, doing nothing for yourself, is to not be alive at all.’

Cecil, however, was expected to carry nothing. And Aurora was hoisted high and prim on the shoulders of two voyageurs, gazing ahead like the Queen of Sheba as if this were the most ordinary thing in the world. The little children in the Indian fish camps came running when she passed, laughing with delight. They trailed her until their mothers finally called them back, but she didn’t grant them a flicker of response.

At the largest lake of all we put in again. The water was so clear I could follow the slope of the submerged granite as if it were shimmering in air. The water seemed even a richer and deeper blue than Huron, extending to a watery horizon as we followed the north shore. The land to our right began to rise, shoulders of pink and grey granite clothed in a stone-gripping forest of stunted birch, alder, pines, and spruce.

A warm easterly blew and we raised a makeshift sail on a pole and let it blow us westward, me sprawling gratefully to doze during this welcome recess from gruelling labour. The canoe lulled as it rocked on the waves, lapping water a quiet music.

Then the wind veered to the southeast and strengthened, the sky in that direction darkening. The sail twisted, the canoe leaning, and we quickly took the canvas down.

‘Storm!’ Pierre shouted back to the helmsman.

Jacques nodded, looking over his shoulder at black cloud. The captains of the other canoes were crying out commands of warning too.

‘I told you the lake does not pass us easily,’ Pierre said. ‘Paddle now, my donkeys, paddle with all your might! There’s a bay a league from here and we must reach it before the storm is at its peak, unless we want to try to swim to Grand Portage!’ He splashed some water at us. ‘Feel how cold the witch truly is!’

Lightning flashed behind, and a low, ominous rumble rolled over the water. Light danced in the sky, the wind carrying that electrical scent I recalled from the desert. The water, now steel grey, roughened in the gust. Even Pierre gave up his scouting position and knelt in the bow to help paddle.

‘Stroke, if you don’t want to drown!’

The wind began to rise and the waves steepened, pushing our brigade towards shore. We had to clear a point and avoid being dashed on granite boulders before we got into its lee and could safely land. The freshwater waves had a different pitch than the sea, slapping and choppy, and the water stunned with cold. For the first time we shipped water into the canoes and Pierre pointed at me. ‘American! The most useless one! Take our cooking pot and bail, but do it carefully, for if you strike the bark and hole us, we will all die!’

Well, that was encouraging. I began to bail, trying to decide if I was more afraid of the water slopping over our gunwales or the water that would gush in if I dipped too deep and enthusiastically. More thunder, and then rain overtaking us in a grey curtain, the water boiling at the edge of the squall where the fat drops fell. I could barely see the shore, except for a line of white where breakers dashed. The rumbling sounded like artillery.

‘Thor’s song!’ Magnus cried. ‘This is what we came for, Ethan!’

‘Not me,’ I muttered. Franklin was more than a little barmy going kite flying in a lightning storm, but Bloodhammer was his match. We could easily be struck out here.

‘Tame the lightning, sorcerer!’ Pierre cried.

‘I can’t without tools. We need to get off the water before it reaches us!’ I’d seen what lightning can do.

I glanced at Aurora’s canoe. The parasol was gone and she was bent, hair streaming, paddling with grim determination. Cecil had put away his book and fowling piece and was stroking as well, his dripping top hat rammed low and hard on his head.

In our own vessel Magnus was paddling so strongly, the paddle digging so his hand on its shank hit the waves, that Pierre switched to the opposite side to balance the Norwegian’s power.

‘Maybe we should throw out some of the trade bundles and get more freeboard!’ I suggested over the shriek of the wind.

‘Are you mad? I’d rather lie with the witch of the lake than explain to Simon McTavish that his precious freight was at the bottom of Superior! Bail, sorcerer! Or find a way to calm the waters!’

On we scudded like leaves in a rapid, the shadowy lee shore growing ominously closer as we strove to round the point before being driven aground. In the dimness its line was marked by the white of cruel boulders, wiry trees shaking and thrashing in the pelting rain.

‘Paddle, my friends! Paddle, or we’ll suck the witch’s tit on the bottom!’

My shoulders were on fire, as Pierre had demanded, but rest was not an option. We neared the point, spray exploding on it in great fountains, and through the dimness and streak of rain I spied an eerie sight, white and angular against the wrack of nature.

‘Crosses!’ I cried.

‘Aye!’ Pierre shouted. ‘Not every crew has made it into this shelter, and those mark the voyageurs who failed! Eye them well, and bail some more!’

They looked like pale bones, glowing in the light of the periodic lightning.

Never have I bailed with more desperation, my muscles cracking with the strain, veins throbbing on my neck. I looked across. Now Aurora was bailing too, eyes wide and fearful. The rain came harder, in great, buffeted streaks, and I was gasping against it, feeling I was already drowning. Six inches of water were in the bottom. I grasped the pot again and flung pitchersful like a madman.

I glanced about. One of the other canoes was gone. I pointed.

‘It’s too late for them, they are dead from the cold! Paddle, paddle!’

And then we shot past the gnarled knob of land that marked the bay, the canoe rising and surfing on the long swells, and carefully turned, Jacques steering with fierce concentration so we wouldn’t broach when broadside to the waves. We turned into the storm, rain hammering, and fought our way into the lee of the point, wind screaming over the shuddering foliage at its crest. There was a red gravel beach and we made for that, the bowmen leaping out in waist-deep water, waves surging to their armpits.

‘Don’t let the canoes break on the beach!’

We held them off, the lake numbing, as our waterproof ninety-pound bundles were lifted out and hurled up, gravel rattling as surf sucked in and out. Aurora was half lifted and then half jumped into the shallows, staggering in her skirts and then swaying as she splashed up onto land with her dress dragging like a sail. But then she came back down and dragged a bundle back up with her. The men turned the canoes so the water in the bottom poured out then carried them like caterpillars to where they could be propped against the wind. I looked up at the dark landscape beyond. Here the hills were high and hard, murky in the storm’s dim light. Lightning cracked and struck on the highlands.

I glanced around to our party, everyone’s hair streaming, voyageur moustaches dripping like moss. Even Aurora’s ringlets had half-uncurled in soggy defeat.

‘Aye, we will not get to Grand Portage too soon,’ Pierre said. ‘The lake never lets us. See why we paddle hard when we can, American?’

‘What if we hadn’t been near this bay?’

‘Then we would die, as we all die someday. What if the wind had been on our nose? That has happened too, and driven me a dozen miles back to find proper shelter.’

‘What about those others?’

‘We’ll cross the point to look for them. And if the witch doesn’t give them up, we will fashion more crosses.’

‘That was more than a thousand in freight those fools lost!’ Cecil seethed. ‘They have to answer to the devil, but I have to answer to McTavish!’

We never found their bodies, but some of the trade goods did wash ashore, so tightly wrapped in tarpaulins as to be salvageable. Their contents would be dried in the next day’s sun.

The storm moved on, the sun low when it finally broke clear in the west. I was stiff and shivering with cold and thus happy for the exercise when Pierre beckoned me to follow him into the trees in search of dry wood. Magnus came too, swinging his great axe to break trail like a moose. In moments we were swallowed in a labyrinth of birch and thick moss, the wind and waves audible but our path back swallowed. I soon lost track of our direction.

‘How do you know where we are?’

‘Our blundering leaves signs, and the sound of the waves. But I like the water, not the forest where a man goes blind. I’ve had companions planning to walk a hundred paces to fetch a pail of berries and vanish without a trace. Some say Indians, some say bears, some say Wendigo. I say it is simply the soul of the forest, which sometimes gets hungry and swallows men up.’

I glanced about. The trees shuddered, the shadows were deep, and water pattered everywhere. I could be lost for days.

Pierre, however, seemed to have a calm sense of direction. We found a downed tree in the lee of a rock, its underside punk wood, and chopped until we quickly had armfuls of dry fuel and moss for tinder. We followed his sure route back and the other voyageurs used flint, steel, and gunpowder to catch the kindling. Smoke began puffing up in great grey clouds. Meanwhile Magnus was chopping more sizable wood with his axe, snapping dead driftwood into lengths with a single swing. I carried these to add to our pyramids of flame. Soon we had three bonfires roaring. Clothes steamed as the voyageurs began a makeshift manic dance like red savages, singing bawdy French songs and laughing and weeping at our escape and the death of their comrades, a tragedy they seemed to regard as unremarkable as the storm itself. Death was as common as snow in the north country.

The sun neared the horizon, giving the wet beach and forest behind it a golden glow as if lacquered. The canvas tents of our nobility went up, steaming, and Cecil broke out a keg of rum and gave us each a tot, even Aurora gulping the fiery liquid down like a sailor.

We began to grin stupidly, the way people do when they escape. Nothing makes you feel more alive than a brush with death.

Then the fires burnt down to manageable coals and we began to cook our peas and pork and hominy, stomachs growling. The men stirred fat into the corn porridge.

We ate as if famished, shaking with weariness. Pierre, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand and licking it, addressed Cecil. ‘Lord Somerset, we’ve had loss but also gain this day. I watched the donkeys perform well – maybe because they wanted to keep their canoe in pace with that of your pretty cousin, no?’

‘If Ethan and Magnus are as weary as I am, then we all did yeoman work.’

‘They are not yet North Men but they are, perhaps, worthy of the company of the Pork Eaters of Montreal, eh, my porcine-loving friends?’

‘A Pork Eater is worth a hundred North Men!’ his Montreal companions cried. ‘Yes, let the donkeys be baptized into our company!’

Pierre addressed us, arms folded like a potentate. ‘Ethan and Magnus, you have had a taste of the real lake and, much to my surprise, not only lived but have not completely embarrassed yourself. With my own eyes, I saw you drive and bail our canoe past Dead Man’s Point with the terrible will this country requires. As voyageurs die, new ones vie for their place. I think it is time you truly joined our company, if you dare to receive such high honour.’

‘My muscles are twitching, I’m so tired,’ I confessed.

‘A few weeks more and you will not be such women. So we will baptize you now.’ He picked up a spruce branch snapped by the wind and walked down to the breaking waves on our ruddy beach, the surf on fire in the setting sun. He dipped the branch, carried it back, and shook its droplets over our head. ‘By the power vested in me as a North Man of the North West Company, I initiate you into our fellowship! From now on you are no longer donkeys but have names, which at dawn I will carve into a tree!’

‘It’s an honour,’ Magnus said. ‘If we have satisfied you, you’ve impressed me with your endurance, little man. You have the strength of a giant.’

Pierre nodded. ‘Of course I have impressed you. A French voyageur is worth a hundred Norwegians.’ He looked at me. ‘And now you must thank the assembly for this honour by taking your silver dollars and buying from Lord Somerset two kegs of shrub, as custom demands.’

‘How do you know I have silver dollars?’

‘Fool American! Of course we have been through your things a dozen times while you slept. All must be shared! Nothing is private among the voyageurs! And we know you can afford to treat us at Grand Portage as well!’

I resolved to hide a few coins for myself in the sole of my moccasins.

So a drunk began, earned by the day’s dramatic storm, the rum a needed fire in our throats. As night fell the fires were built up again, sparks swirling up into a sky now brushed clean and full of stars, and Aurora’s tent glowed with a pale translucence from a candle within. Pierre had said we’d rest the next day, and it occurred to me that I might have more energy for evening recreation if I knew I could sleep in the next morning. I wanted a taste of life after the day’s death. As inebriation mounted I backed into the shadows and crept to her tent flap, the others singing behind me. Surely she was ready for some warmth by now!

‘Aurora!’ I whispered. ‘It’s Ethan! I’m here to attend as you suggested. The night is cold, and we can bring each other comfort.’

There was silence.

‘Aurora?’

‘What cheek, Mr Gage. I gave no invitation. I am a woman of propriety, after all. We must be discreet.’

‘Discretion is my specialty. Let’s wager that I can be quieter than you can.’

‘You are presumptuous, Yankee Doodle!’

‘But companionable. I hope your memory is as fond as mine.’ I don’t know why, but women require a measure of persistence and palaver before agreeing to the obvious. Fortunately, I am a fountain of charm. As Franklin said, ‘Neither a fortress nor a maidenhead will hold out long after they begin to parley.’

‘But what has changed, Ethan Gage?’ she said. ‘There’s no true intimacy when a man won’t share his purpose. No affection without a demonstration of trust. How can we unite our purposes if I don’t know what your purpose is?’

Women do take patience, don’t they? ‘I’m just an explorer! I’m never quite sure of my purpose, actually. I just wander about, hoping for the best.’

‘I don’t believe that. And I’m not sure of my own affections until you are sure of our partnership. Imagine if we all joined your quest.’

‘Aurora, I told you – we’re looking for elephants.’

A sharp intake of breath. ‘I have shared everything with you, Ethan. Everything! You give me nonsense in return!’

‘I’m in a giving mood right now.’

‘Good night, sir.’

‘But Aurora!’

‘Please don’t make me call my cousin for help.’

‘I must have reason to hope!’

Silence.

‘Some small measure of pity!’ I hate grovelling, but it occasionally works, and the more I thought about her, the hornier I became. Yes, I know I was addled as a loon.

Finally she answered. ‘Very well. If you teach me to truly use that remarkable firearm you’re so proud of, perhaps I will relent. I am quite fascinated with shooting.’

‘You want to fire my gun?’

‘We can hunt together in the morning. Sport gets my blood up.’

I considered. Did the girl simply want more privacy? A roll on the forest moss away from the others? I could impress her with my accuracy, bag some game, massage her delicate feet near a clear forest stream, try to remember a sonnet or two … So off I crept, thwarted but not yet ready to surrender.

I came back into the firelight and a circle of drunken men.

‘You look frustrated, my friend!’ Pierre cried, taking another swig of rum. ‘Having been baptized, are you impatient to be immortalized in the bark of a tree?’

‘I was seeking distaff company.’

‘Ah. Women wound.’ Heads around the fire nodded with sympathy.

‘Ethan, haven’t you realised that your worldly success is in inverse proportion to your romantic success?’ Magnus said. ‘We’ve got better things to discover than Aurora Somerset!’

‘But she’s here. Discovery is out there.’

‘Forget about the fancy lady,’ Pierre agreed. ‘That one is like trying to carry berries in your cheek and not lose any juice. More care than it’s worth.’

‘She’s so beautiful.’ My plaintive tone embarrassed even me.

‘So are half the dusky wenches at Grand Portage, and they are a hundred times more appreciative. Forget the fancy one and pick yourself a squaw.’

‘I don’t want a squaw.’

‘How do you know when you haven’t met her yet?’

But I was tired of the jocular insults and advice, so I moved away to restlessly wait for the morrow’s hunt beneath a canoe, knowing Aurora was making a fool of me but not particularly caring. The best way to regain my equilibrium was her conquest. Perhaps it would be easier away from camp. I wouldn’t even mind babbling about Norse hammers, but she’d just think us lunatics and leave us on the beach.

I lay sleepless as the voyageurs exhausted the rum and collapsed, and then there was a crunch of gravel by my makeshift garret and I saw a boot. Sir Cecil bent down to look at me under the rim of the boat.

‘Lord Somerset.’ I was afraid he was going to warn me off.

‘Mr Gage.’ He cleared his throat. ‘We’re a small group, and I heard of your disappointment. My cousin is moody, like all women. She breaks hearts like crockery and thinks little of it. Don’t be too sensitive.’

‘We’re going shooting tomorrow, while the party rests.’

‘You’ll find her a crack shot. And tameable, if you meet her halfway.’

‘Then you’re not opposed to our friendship?’

‘I’m not opposed to our partnership.’

The gravel crunched as he walked away and I realised he’d included himself in any union. As I drifted off to sleep, I wondered why Cecil Somerset cared at all about his cousin’s romance with a wastrel like me.