The Dakota Cipher

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

Feasting began at sunset, and revelry went on into the night. The Scot partners danced and skipped across crossed claymores laid glinting in the grass, while the voyageurs formed folk circles, dragging Indian women in to dance. Drink flowed, the moon climbed high, and lovemaking and fights broke out. The Indian warriors did their own dances as bonfire flames leapt skyward, their chants and cries mingled with drums, fiddles, horns, and fifes in a swirl of heart-thumping music. The braves also gambled like madmen, staking all on games that involved simple tools such as guessing different-length sticks or which in a row of moccasins hid musket balls. They’d bet furs for liquor, or firewater for a woman, or a blanket for a gun. Some gambled away their clothes in heedless recklessness wilder than anything I’d seen in a casino, but luck was how they evened wealth. Their wins and losses were each other’s entertainment.

I brooded, unable to shake my humiliation. Several voyageurs had smirked at me and my impotence against Red Jacket, and the shame burnt. Now trappers and traders staggered by dizzy with dance and drink, sweat on their faces, laughter a shriek. Someone was stabbed and carried past bleeding and groaning. In the shadows I could see the gleam of pumping buttocks as lovers mounted. The drunken Indians fought too, excusing any murders on the grounds that a man possessed by firewater was not responsible for his actions. Come morning, no one would profess to remember anything.

I drank, fantasizing about killing Red Jacket, the liquor dulling my frustration while the fires, ale, and human musk made me randy. Some of the squaws were half-naked, and I half wanted them. Some of the men drifted off with other men. Magnus was well in his cups, roaring Norwegian songs, and Pierre was in a dancing circle, kicking up his heels. I stayed restless and morose, nursing rum, curious about Namida, furious with Red Jacket, and longing for Astiza, who’d left me in France. If this new girl was Mandan, maybe I could buy her from the damn Indian. I had little money left, but enough to start a game or two of my own. I’d acquire the girl, we’d go find Welsh Indians, and while Magnus poked about for old hammers we’d share a cosy lodge …

This reverie was interrupted when I saw Aurora slipping along the edge of the bacchanal, looking aloof and purposeful as she hurried on some mission. Now resentment boiled more. How dare she toy with me! I was tired of being put off, warned away, mocked, and ignored – this by a woman who by rumour had fled scandal! And now where was she going, so important and haughty? I impulsively decided to follow, suddenly determined to regain the intimacy we’d enjoyed at Mackinac.

I’d catch her and I’d grab her and I’d say … well, I didn’t know what I’d say, but maybe I’d just kiss her. We’d fight or make love, and either way bring an end.

Aurora had a slim white dress that made her glow like a fairy nymph, making her easier to track as she skirted the clumps of revellers without pausing. Where the devil was she going? I considered running to catch up, but it seemed undignified to chase her, even though that’s exactly what I was doing. I tried sauntering, rehearsing lines to demand that either our relationship be consummated again or end completely. I didn’t need the Somersets anymore, I was at Grand Portage! But even as I mentally rehearsed witty repartee, Aurora didn’t pause to let me try it.

She came to a cluster of Indian wigwams at the northern extremity of the encampment, the bark-covered domes seeming to erupt naturally from the earth. She stopped, uncertain, and called something softly. A glow appeared at the door of one of the lodges, its light leaking through cracks in the shingled birch. It was a candle or lantern no Indian would have. She made for the wigwam, fell to her knees, and wiggled inside.

By Abigail Adams, an Indian hut for British aristocracy? Was the strumpet meeting that cannibal Red Jacket? Or did she have some other game entirely?

I’m not a Peeping Tom, but she’d slipped from me once again, and into the most improbable place I could imagine for a lady. Was it possible she was compelled to come to this dark village and was in some kind of trouble? Perhaps I could rescue her! I hesitated as I crouched in the gloom, wrestling with good manners, and then I heard first the low murmur of voices and then the coos and cries of accelerating passion. Now I had to spy. Aurora Somerset coupling with an Indian buck? It was the kind of revelation that might give me leverage.

Frustrated and curious, I crept in the dark to the rear of the lodge. I could hear pants within, a delicious moaning from the beauty, and murmurs that seemed English. What the devil? I found a slit to put my eye to and had a vision from the kind of naughty book you can buy in the back aisles of a Parisian bookshop. Aurora was straddling her lover – how typical that she’d insist on being on top – and was riding him with arched back, hips flared, breasts pointing upward, her form lit a rosy hue by the glow of a lantern. Her eyes were closed, lips pouted, face tilted towards the lodge peak, and her hair a glorious shawl cascading down her back. It was a magnificent sight and I was hard in an instant, lusting even as I hated her for her haughtiness, yet ready to tell her anything if it would gain me entry to her guarded gateway! The woman was a sorceress. I leant forward, pressed against the rough bark, near groaning myself.

And then I heard the words of the man under her. ‘Buck my beauty, buck my love! God, I worship your form!’

Could it be? A white man in an Indian lodge? But of course, it was a secret liaison! A perfect hiding place! My view was obscured by the narrow slit so I recklessly put my fingers up to pull bark aside to give a better view, wondering which bourgeois the lucky bastard was. It was dim, so I pressed my face in, looking at his limbs under her as he thrust upward, hands clutching her breasts. Then he turned slightly, the lantern giving better resolution of his features, and I almost yelped with shock. I looked to the pile of clothes beyond, and then back at the gasping couple.

Something was gleaming on the chest of the man, a pendant I’d seen months before tattooed on Renato’s skin in Italy. It was a pyramid entwined with a snake.

Aurora Somerset was riding her own cousin, Cecil.

And Cecil was wearing a symbol of Apophis, the snake cult allied with that London-based Egyptian Rite he’d pretended to disdain! Who had I befriended?

Or rather, who had befriended me?

They turned to look at my fingers caught in the slit of bark, the white of my eye illuminated in the glow. I jerked backward, accidentally yanking a piece of the lodge covering with me, and fell on my back.

I heard a hiss. ‘Gage!’

And then I ran.