The Dakota Cipher

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

We pushed on the next day, hugging the north shore. The lake was cold, the air crisp and flawless, the mountains a glittery granite. I’d thought the French to be tireless paddlers, but the Indians seemed even more so, impatient at our pauses to smoke. But then they, too, would drift alongside to beg twist tobacco to put in their pipes.

‘They’re just in a hurry to get to Grand Portage to drink,’ Pierre scoffed.

‘No, I think they can paddle longer than the great Pierre,’ Magnus teased him.

On and on we stroked across a vast blue universe, my arms and torso turning into twisted steel from this unrelenting labour, day after long summer day. Storms would pen us periodically, all of us dozing in camp as wind and rain lashed our tarps, and then the tempest would pass and we’d go on. At camp each night Namida kept her distance except for an occasional wary, pale-eyed glance, while Aurora was even more aloof now that Red Jacket accompanied our party. It was as if he was a wilderness duke who demanded propriety. She retreated alone to her tent and spoke nothing to the Indian women, nothing to me, and nothing to Red Jacket. Occasionally she sat alongside her cousin to have long, earnest conversations, gesturing towards all of us.

I, meanwhile, wondered if this Namida or her plainer friend, Little Frog, could shed any light on the Norwegian’s mysterious map, given that she came from the tribe and area that interested Jefferson.

My chance came on the fourth day after I first spied her bathing, when I was sitting apart from the others for a moment’s privacy and she came up to shyly offer some corn mixed with molasses. ‘I flavoured it with berries from the forest,’ she said in French.

‘Thank you.’ I ate with my fingers. ‘You come from the west?’

She cast her eyes down.

‘You are Mandan?’ I persisted.

‘Awaxawi, their cousins.’

‘Have you ever heard of Wales?’

She looked confused.

‘Why are your eyes blue?’

She shrugged. ‘They have always been blue.’ Suddenly she leant close to whisper. ‘Please. I can guide you.’

‘Really?’

‘Take me home and my people can help.’

‘You know what we’re looking for?’ Now that would be disconcerting!

‘Your giant’s ancestors left cave pictures of themselves. We have red-hair writing. Old writing on a magic stone. I can help.’

‘A stone?’ I was stunned. That sounded like the inscriptions I’d seen in the Orient! ‘What kind of writing?’

‘We don’t know. It is secret.’

‘Secret? Like a cipher?’

But Red Jacket snapped something at her and she hurriedly retreated.

The fact that she gave her corn mush treat to no other voyageur didn’t escape notice. ‘So now you have a serving wench, my friend,’ Pierre congratulated.

‘She thinks we could help get her back home. She claims her tribe has some kind of old writing. Somehow she surmised we’re going beyond Grand Portage to look for Magnus’s ancestors.’

‘All the camp knows that. Old writing? From where?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘No matter. She’s Red Jacket’s now.’

‘I don’t see him treating her with any respect.’ I kept eating. The sweet-sour berries added some interesting flavour, and there was also a crunch of seeds. ‘She deserves better. I want to rescue her.’

He laughed. ‘Ah, then her spell is already working!’

‘What spell?’

Pierre pointed to my food. ‘Indian women are well-practised in love charms. The Ojibway swear by the seeds of the gromwell to capture the heart. Oh yes, American, she is bewitching you.’

‘She didn’t need seeds to do that.’ I grinned. ‘Have you watched her hips?’

‘Keep your head, or you’ll lose your hair to Red Jacket.’

I glanced over at the Indian, who indeed seemed to be eyeing my scalp. I made a face at him and he darkened and looked away. Aurora frowned too, which gave me even more satisfaction. That girl had her chance, didn’t she?

Maybe she’d come crawling to me at Grand Portage.

Except that now there was Namida.

As we paddled on, I spied a long, low island on the southern horizon.

‘Isle Royale,’ Pierre said. ‘Forty miles end to end, and dotted with curious pits. You can still see chunks of copper ore and discarded tools. There are old copper mines there, so numerous you wonder what civilisation worked them.’

Magnus glanced up at the bowman.

‘The Indians had copper,’ the voyageur went on, ‘but nothing on the scale of those workings. It looks like enough was dug to arm the warriors on both sides of the walls of Troy. But how would this copper have got to Greece, eh?’

‘Perhaps people have been crossing the Atlantic and trading metal far longer than we guess,’ Magnus said. ‘Maybe my Norse were part of a train of explorers going back to ancient times.’

‘But who boated all this way in those days?’

I couldn’t resist joining in, even though I knew it would only fuel the speculation. ‘The astronomer Corli, and his colleague Gisancourt, speculated that Plato’s allegory of Atlantis was actually a real place, an island in the Atlantic. Perhaps the miners came from there. Trojan refugees. Carthaginians. Who knows?’

‘There, you see?’ said Magnus. ‘This lake has been a highway.’

‘Oui, there are mysteries in this wilderness,’ said Pierre. ‘Not just old pits. Sometimes a man comes across a mysterious mound or a tumbled stone wall in the oddest places. Who built them? But all is silence, no answer but the call of birds. You quest for El Dorado, giant, but no conquistador has yet found it.’

‘Not conquistador, but king,’ I said.

‘What?’

‘How about it, Magnus? Somerset called you royalty. What did he mean by that?’

‘Bloodhammer is an ancient name of a Norse monarch,’ my companion said evenly. ‘I’m proud to say I share his bloodline.’

‘You’re Norwegian nobility, cyclops?’ Pierre asked.

‘For what it’s worth. There’s no independent Norway, according to the Danes.’

Here it was then. My companion did not just want independence for his nation. He wanted to reinstitute Norwegian aristocracy in which he might claim a place. He was not so much a revolutionary as a royalist!

‘So you’re a long-lost king, Magnus?’ I clarified.

‘Hardly. And the lineage of my ancestors is nothing compared to what we’re looking for, Ethan.’

‘And explain again just what are we looking for?’

‘I told you, a golden age that was lost. Secrets of the gods. In every culture there’s a fount of wisdom, a tree of life, and not just an Yggdrasil. In Norse stories, Iduna’s golden apples conferred to the gods everlasting life.’

‘Like a tree in Eden.’

‘Aye.’ He stroked again. ‘And the serpent is like the dragon who guards the golden hoard.’

At long last we saw the masts of an anchored sloop in the shoreline ahead and realised we’d come to the end of the lake. The faint wail of bagpipes and fiddles floated across the water, and our Indians began yipping like dogs. We stopped short at a small island to dress ourselves for Rendezvous. The voyageurs donned their brightest clothes, tilted their caps at a jaunty angle, and fixed them with feathers. Lord Somerset cleaned his own boots to a high polish, and Aurora disappeared behind some bushes before emerging in a gown fit for the English court, wrinkled and musty but still stupefying in its sheen. The two Indian women stroked their lustrous hair with wooden combs and painted their lips with juice, and the men were bangled with copper and bone ornaments. Magnus and I trimmed each other’s hair, brushed our greatcoats, and traded worn moccasins for fresh ones. I’d quickly seen the practicality of this footwear: light, silent, and quick-drying.

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 serve 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.’