Dawn on a Distant Shore (7 page)

It was a well-deserved
rebuke, and Nathaniel accepted it with an inclined head. "You're right. I
shouldn't pass judgment. But my worry now is for Otter."

"He's a bonnie
lad, and gey canny," Rab said. "But he's young, forbye, and--curious.
It's a guid thing he's wi' yer faither."

"We need to get
him out of here. And us, too."

"Tomorrow, if
possible," Iona agreed.

"Aye," said
Robbie. "Ye'll get nae argument frae me."

"Have you got any
ideas?" Nathaniel asked.

Robbie grinned.
"Have ye got iny money?"

When they had talked
for another hour, Robbie returned to the lodgings in the rue St. Gabriel, so as
to keep Nathaniel's presence a secret for the time being. In two days' time, if
all went well, they would be out of Montréal, and Moncrieff would never know he
had been there. For a moment Nathaniel could almost feel sorry for the man, who
wanted nothing more than to fulfill an obligation to his employer, an old man
with no heir and no hopes. But stronger than that was the need to protect his
own, and Nathaniel would turn his back on Montréal and Moncrieff without a
moment's hesitation.

He slept deeply, and
dreamed of the caves under the falls.

In his life Nathaniel
had spent time in a few cities, but he would never be truly at ease in a crowd.
And still he knew that in Montréal the commotion of the pig market was the best
kind of camouflage to be had, and so he and Robbie headed there at sunrise.
According to Iona, it was where they were most likely to find the sergeant in charge
of the night watch at the garrison gaol, a dragoon called Ronald Jones.

The cold was fierce
enough to turn breath to ice, but still the sun managed to find purchase here
and there, flashing off a tin roof, a cleaver hung on the side of a stall, an
unshuttered window, a young River Indian's silver earbob. A man couldn't walk
without being stepped on, pushed, touched: overweight merchants, half-drunk foot
soldiers, butchers herding sows, maids pulling loaded sledges, beggars, dogs
and oxen and horses and pigs everywhere. Despite the extreme cold the air was
dense with the stink of swine slurry and curing meat, and it swirled with ashes
and cinders from the bonfires that gave the butchers and their customers a
place to warm themselves.

Even in this crowd,
Nathaniel felt eyes fix on him. Perhaps because he stood head and shoulders
over most; perhaps because he was with Robbie, who stood even taller. They saw
him, and forgot him: he was just another backwoodsman wanting liquor or a woman
or a good price on his furs. Nathaniel reminded himself it was only for today,
maybe for tomorrow. If they could find this man Jones; if he could be bought.
He was aware of the weight of the double-sewn leather bags he wore strapped
across his chest, some twenty pounds of near-pure silver.

So focused was he on
the idea of the Welshman that Nathaniel missed the first signs of the scuffle.
From just to the left among the stalls came a guttural scream--
crisse de téte
â faux!
--and a fist swung close enough to make him sidestep. Before
Nathaniel could even be sure what was happening, the crowd rushed in, their
errands and the cold forgotten with the promise of some entertainment.

A butcher and a farmer
sputtered and spat at each other across the carcass of a huge pig. The butcher
had a head like a cannonball: heavy jowled, with a skull as pink and bristled
as the mountainside of unmoving flesh at his feet. The farmer was black haired,
twenty years younger, twenty pounds lighter, angrier. There was a fresh cut on
his cheek. It made Nathaniel aware of the familiar weight of his rifle across
his back, the comforting heft of the tomahawk tucked into his belt to lie flat
next to his spine.

All around the crowd
heaved like a wasp-stung mule. Robbie swore, and swore again. He loved crowds
even less than Nathaniel did.

A man jumped up on a
barrel. "Moe, j'prends pour Pépin,
moe, p'is j'y mets dix shillings,
lâ!
" he shouted, waving a coin over his head.

The farmer grinned at
that and lunged, fists flying briefly. He fell back before the bigger man could
get a lock on him, and new bets were shouted in English, Scots, French, and
other languages Nathaniel didn't recognize.

Next to him Robbie
grunted as a young boy tried to climb his back for a better view. A ripple and
jostling, muttered complaints, and a redcoat pushed his way to the forefront,
stopping just opposite Nathaniel. Slope shouldered and soft bellied, frizzled
red hair, a mouth full of tiny teeth the color of cheap tobacco. He had the
pinched expression of a little man with less authority than he wanted and more than
was good for him.

"Jesus
wept," muttered Robbie at Nathaniel's ear. "There he is, that's
Jones. Ach, will ye look at him strut, the wee Welsh half-a-cockerl."

"Here, here! What
goes on, what's this?" With his chest pumped up, Jones's bellow was astoundingly
loud, but the men ignored him, locked in a tussle that sent them rolling over
the dead pig to crash into the stall. For a moment they were lost in a landslide
of smoked ham hocks.

Next to Nathaniel, an
old woman in a mangy blanket coat pulled on Jones's sleeve. "Denier has
been fooling with the scales again," she hollered above the noise.
"Young Pépin decided to teach him a lesson. And high time, too."

The two had rolled
apart. The butcher hauled himself up on the ledge of the half-collapsed stall,
his fist closing over a meat cleaver as he began a slow turn.

"
Pépin!
"
shouted the man who still perched on the barrel. "
Faites attention! Il
a un poignard!
"

Nathaniel saw the
first flicker of real rage in the young farmer in the way his shoulders
loosened and his face drained of color, all in a split second. Crouched in the
chaos of the destroyed stall, he grabbed a long boning knife and snapped to his
full height, his arm coming up to meet the butcher as he turned. In one smooth motion
an acre of canvas apron fell open from neck to hipbone, the flap gaping to
expose a hairy fish-white barrel of belly.

Not even Jones could
yell over the shouts of surprise and shocked appreciation.

Barking like an
enraged boar, the butcher dropped the cleaver to grab at his clothing, the huge
head rearing up just in time to catch the knife, in earnest now. An almost
careless flick of the younger man's wrist and the vast pink cheek split open. A
rainbow of blood in a shower, and Nathaniel flinched the warm drops out of his
eyelashes as Denier threw himself forward, only to go sprawling over the pig
and strike his head on the corner of the stall.

The crowd fell silent,
in surprise or horror, Nathaniel could not tell. Young Pépin's rage was
suddenly gone: he shook himself as if he could not quite believe what he saw.

Jones was prodding the
butcher with his toe. When he got a groan in response, he nodded.

"Right," he
bellowed, hooking his thumbs in his wide leather belt. "It's the
magistrate for you both, innit?"

But the young farmer
seemed not to hear him at all, or not to care. A bottle was making the rounds,
and he took a long swallow, staring fixedly at Denier's heaving form.

Jones cleared his
throat loudly and flushed the color of his uniform. A vein began to throb in
his forehead.

"High time to be
away," Nathaniel said, and heard Robbie's grunt of approval. But it was too
late; Jones rounded on them and pointed to Robbie, easily the biggest man in
the crowd, twice his own size. "You haul the carcass to my sledge over
there."

"The pig?"
The old woman grinned, her gums showing dull red. "Or Denier?"

Jones's eyes moved
over the massive back of the dead animal, and Nathaniel could see him calculating.
"Both. The pig comes along as evidence."

"And dinner,
forbye," muttered Robbie.

The young farmer's
attention shifted from the pig to Jones, and his brow creased in understanding
and the first glimmerings of new rebellion.

"What are you
staring at, boyo?" Jones stepped toward him. "It's the magistrate for
all of youse, a pig and two frogs--"

"And a Welsh
horse's ass," added Robbie in French. There was a single loud guffaw
followed by a wave of uneasy laughter.

"What was
that?" Jones roared. "What was that?"

Robbie raised a brow.
"I said, the lad's got nae English."

"Then bloody tell
him in French," snapped Jones. His gaze fixed on Nathaniel. "You there,
Jacques. You look a right enough frog to me. You tell him."

Nathaniel considered.
He could do what this little man was commanding him to do, or he could do what
he wanted to do, and show him his back and his contempt. There was no chance
now that Jones would be of any use to them in getting Hawkeye and Otter out of
gaol; the question was, how badly could he get in their way.

"Permit me,"
said a familiar voice. Nathaniel sighed inwardly, not especially surprised to
see Angus Moncrieff pushing through the crowd. Well dressed, straight of back,
he nodded to Jones and in swift, Scots-accented French he explained to the
farmer what he needed to know. When he was finished, he turned to Nathaniel and
Robbie.

"Moncrieff,"
said Nathaniel.

A brief smile in
response. "Nathaniel. I'm pleased to see ye here at last."

Moncrieff suggested a
place near the docks that would be close to empty early on a workday morning.
Because it was cold and there was no way to avoid the conversation, Nathaniel
and Robbie went with him to the small tavern in the shadows of Notre Dame de
Bonsecours.

It was a clean tavern,
warm, and the smells of fresh bread and mutton roasting over a slow fire were
inviting. There were only two other customers: a middle-aged man crouched over
his ale, and a young sailor with a heavily bandaged leg. The first seemed to
have no interest in anything but what he found at the bottom of his tankard;
the second snored loudly, his tar-stained hands crossed over his chest and his
head thrown back against the wall.

The serving woman
greeted Moncrieff by name, and showed them to the best place near the hearth.

Before they were
settled, Moncrieff said, "So tell me, man. Have ye guid tidings from Paradise?"

A broad smile broke
out on his face when he had heard Nathaniel's news. He was all curiosity and
good wishes, asking for details that would interest few men.

"We must drink to
your guid fortune, and your lady's health," he announced finally.

The serving woman
brought them tankards, kicking up her skirts to flaunt her ankles as she crossed
the room. Moncrieff watched her go, tucking his pipe into the corner of his mouth
with a thoughtful expression.

"A friend of
yours?" Nathaniel asked.

Moncrieff lifted one
shoulder in a gesture that spoke more of France than Scotland. But there was no
mistaking him for anything but a Lowland Scot: he had the face, long and lean,
large eared and strong of nose and chin. Nathaniel had seen faces much like his
in his mother's drawings of the family she had left behind: uncles and cousins he
had never met, would never know except by the set of their eyes and the angle
of jaw. Moncrieff must be in his mid-fifties at least; there were deep wrinkles
around his eyes and the beginning of dewlaps at his jawline. But he still had a
full head of lank dark hair tied in a neat queue, and an energy that many
younger men lacked. The truth was, Nathaniel was inclined to like the man,
wanted to believe him, but there was something just below the surface that he
could not be sure of. Trust was a luxury he could not afford, not right now.

"That's
Adele," said Robbie, one corner of his mouth twitching upward as they
watched the woman move about the room, hips swinging. "A widow woman, is
she no'? One o' Angus's muny special friends."

Moncrieff smiled over
the edge of his tankard. "Aye, I've a few friends in Montréal. Until today
I counted Jones among the useful if less pleasant o' them."

Nathaniel said,
"We weren't there to start a fight with the man."

"That I can weel
believe. But it's uncommon easy to quarrel wi' Jones. "Big heid and wee
wit, never gaed tegither yet." Or so it's said."

Robbie snorted in appreciation.

Moncrieff chewed on
the stem of his pipe and stared at Nathaniel for a moment. "You were
planning to pay Jones to slip Hawkeye and Otter out o' the garrison gaol."

Nathaniel shifted,
trying to find a more comfortable spot on the settle. "And if we
were?"

Another Gallic shrug.
"It isna an especially guid plan to put faith or your money on a man like
Jones. He'd sell his mither to the de'il, and were there profit in it." Moncrieff
met Nathaniel's eye. "And o' course, he's heard tell o' this Tory gold. He'd
be thinking you've got it wi' ye, and wondering how to get his hands on
it."

Carefully, Nathaniel
put down his tankard as he looked Moncrieff in the eye. "He ain't the
first, nor the last, I imagine. But I've got no gold on me, since you seem to
be wondering."