The Dakota Cipher (14 page)

M
ACKINAC
I
SLAND WAS A GREEN KNOB BETWEEN THE
reflecting blue platters of lake and sky, its American garrison of ninety men guarding the straits that led to Lake Michigan. It represented the edge of the United States. Beyond were only British posts, trappers, and tribes. Our little cutter banged a one-gun salute as we coasted into the island pier, and the fort replied in turn, the bark of its guns flushing great clouds of birds from the forest and then echoing away into emptiness.

The fort was in the shape of a triangle, with three blockhouses and two ramparts for cannon, earth and stone on the water side, and a log stockade facing the land. The high white officers’ quarters, with hipped roof and twin chimneys, was the dominant building. Other cabins and sheds marked out a parade ground. The forest was cut back around the fort to make pasture and cropland, giving the outpost light to breathe.

“We British moved the post here after Pontiac’s Indians overcame the old French fort of Michilimackinac on the mainland shore,” said
Lord Somerset, pointing. “It was a masterful attack, the braves pretending at lacrosse, following the ball through the fort gate and then seizing weapons from their waiting women who had hidden them under their trade blankets. The fort fell in minutes. The new post doesn’t let the Indians land, though in winter you can walk to Mackinac across the ice. With the boundary settled we’ve passed this fort to you Americans, while we build a new one on the Saint Mary’s River, near the rapids that lead to Lake Superior.”

“Ninety Americans to guard all the Northwest Territory?”

“In North America, empire hangs by a thread. That’s why our alliance is so valuable, Ethan. We can prevent misunderstandings.”

Here the commandant was a mere lieutenant named Henry Porter, who met us on the dock to escort us up the dirt causeway to the fort gate. He was impressed by my letter from Jefferson—“I’d heard there’s a new president, and here he is,” he marveled, looking at the signature as if written in the statesman’s blood—and he positively gaped at Aurora in a moony way I found annoying. The lieutenant seemed less plagued than Colonel Stone with dueling and bowling, and in fact his fort felt empty. “Half the garrison is off-post at any one time fishing, hunting, cutting wood, or trading with the Indians,” he said. “We’ve room aplenty in the officer’s quarters while you wait for your freight canoes.”

There might be room aplenty, but not enough for Lady Aurora Somerset. She took one look at the spare military cubicles and announced that while her trunks might fit in a closet, she certainly could not. After brisk inspection of every possibility she declared that the top floor of the eastern blockhouse would just barely serve for her privacy and comfort. With inherited authority, she ordered Porter to shove its two six-pounders out of the way, asked for a squad of American infantry to carry in a cornhusk bed with down comforter, declared the ground floor sufficient for her maid, and said she would
require a certain number of furs to carpet the rough planking of her new abode to make it habitable.

“But what if we come under attack?” the young lieutenant asked, clearly overawed by the imperiousness of the English nobility.

“My dear lieutenant, none would dare attack a Somerset,” Cecil replied.

“And I will take my cousin’s squirrel gun and shoot them between the eyes if they do,” Aurora added. “I am a crack shot—yes, my cousin has taught me. Besides, the blockhouse is the safest place, is it not? You do care, Lieutenant, for the safety of women?”

“I suppose.” He squinted at Jefferson’s letter again, as if it might include instructions on handling this demand.

“I will keep a sharp lookout for red savages—and for any of your garrison that dare intrude on my privacy! This is how we do things in England and it would be well to pay attention. It will be instructive for you.” She sniffed. “This has a
little
of the smartness of a British post.” She touched his cheek and gave a thankful smile. “I
do
appreciate your hospitality, Lieutenant.”

With that Porter was in full retreat, Bunker Hill taken, Yorktown avenged, and Britannia triumphant. If she’d asked for his own washbasin, he would have surrendered it in an instant, and Indiana Territory, too.

I, of course, am more experienced when it comes to women. But, alas, no more sensible than poor raw Porter: I am a man, after all, anxious as an insect, and I immediately set to scheming.

“You want to jeopardize our passage north and infuriate Cecil by going after his cousin?” Magnus hissed while I looked hungrily at the blockhouse, just begging to be assaulted. “This is as irresponsible as your dalliance with Pauline Bonaparte!”

“He’s not her husband or father. And believe me, Magnus, conquering Aurora might prove as useful to our safe passage as Pauline
Bonaparte was in getting us away from Mortefontaine. Women can be resourceful allies when they’re not betraying you.” I am ever the optimist.

“She’s above your station and has two cannon to hold you off.”

“Which means I have to be as wily as Pontiac’s Indians when they took Michilimackinac.”

I didn’t think I could follow a lacrosse ball to her boudoir, but I had a Trojan horse of another sort. I took my most prized possession, my longrifle, and enlisted Aurora’s maid to place it on the bed of my quarry’s blockhouse sleeping quarters, with a note offering it for her protection and amusement and applauding her claim of marksmanship. Meanwhile we dined at the officers’ mess. Everyone was curious about Jefferson, so I told them what I thought.

“The man writes like Moses, but can’t speechify enough to hold a schoolhouse. He keeps a live bird and dead elephant bones in his office and knows more about wine than the Duke of Burgundy. I think he’s a genius, but mad as a hatter, too.”

“Like all leaders not born to the post,” sniffed Cecil. “The American democrats are admittedly quite clever, but there
is
breeding, is there not?”

“At table he’s the most entertaining man I’ve met since my mentor Franklin,” I said. “Insatiably curious. He’s fascinated by the west, you can be sure.”

“I admire your young country’s talent,” Aurora said, “given that the highest-born fled to Canada or back to England during the revolution. I’ve read your Constitution. Who would have thought such genius could be found in common men? It’s a remarkable experiment you’re defending, Lieutenant Porter. Remarkable.” She gave him a smile so dazzling it made me jealous.

He blushed. “Indeed, Miss Somerset. And the bitterest of enemies can become the best of friends, can they not?” Then
he
smiled like a courtier. I swear, the young rascal had recovered his grit!

When she obligingly left for her little fortress so we men could talk over port and pipes—Somerset making a show of lighting a cigar, an innovation out of the Spanish Main—I made an excuse, crept out before Porter or anyone else could maneuver ahead of me, and scampered across the parade ground to her blockhouse. My knock was answered by her maid. I announced I’d loaned out my weapon and wanted to make sure it was handled properly. Smirking, the girl let me in.

“Is this what you’re inquiring about, Mr. Gage?” Aurora’s voice floated down from above. The muzzle of my longrifle appeared in the trapdoor entrance that led to her chamber above, like a probing serpent. “I
was
surprised to find this tool in my bed, though I’m informed by a note that it may be useful.”

“Your comment about shooting savages made me think you might enjoy practicing with a well-made rifle,” I said. “We could study this evening.”

“Forged in Lancaster, I presume,” her disembodied voice said.

“Jerusalem, actually. It’s a long story.”

“Well, if we are to go shooting together,
do
come up and tell the tale. Aim is improved with understanding, don’t you think?”

So up I scrambled, closing the trap and dropping a couple of furs over it to muffle her expected cries of passion. At her invitation I perched myself on a trunk while she smoothed her gown to sit daintily on the edge of her bed, her eyes flashing and her wondrous hair glowing in the candlelight. She was just disheveled enough to look erotic, two buttons carefully undone, escaping strands of hair artfully aglow, her slim boots slipped off her white stockings.

“The gunsmith was a British agent, and the stock was carved by his beautiful sister,” I began.

“Was she really?” Aurora tossed her hair.

“Not as beautiful as you, of course.”

“Of course.” She stretched like a cat, giving a dainty yawn. “But
you’d tell this other woman the same thing, wouldn’t you? Naughty man. I know your type.”

“I’m sincere in the moment.”

“Are you?” The rifle was across her lap. “Well, Mr. Gage. Then do come over and show me how your weapon works.”

And so I did.

Now the most astonishingly beautiful being in all nature is a woman, and the best become a gate to heaven. I appreciate a sweet girl. But then there are the hotter, more disturbing, more tempestuous types who are a gate to a place of an entirely different sort. That was the ruby fire of Aurora, her auburn hair tumbling to white shoulders, eyes flashing, mouth hungry, breasts pink-tipped and as taut and aroused as I was, skin flushed, all curve and fine waist and wondrous, mesmerizing shank: there was no mountain as glorious as the rise of her hip when she lay beside me, no glen as lush and mysterious as her particular vale. She was a paradise of fire and brimstone, an angel of desire. I was lost in an instant, except I’d already been lost when she came down the stairs at Detroit. The smell of her, the glow of her skin, the beauty mark on her cheek that demanded obeisance: oh yes, I’d thrown the reins away and would go wherever she stampeded. We writhed like minks and gasped like fugitives, and she coaxed sensation out of me I didn’t know was there, and suggested things I’d never quite imagined. Yet pant as we might, she never seemed to lose her curiosity about the famous Ethan Gage, her sly questions about my rifle giving way to murmured entreaties as we embraced that I share just
what
exactly it
was
that we were looking for beyond Grand Portage.

“Elephants,” I mumbled, and went at her again like a starving man.

My mention of pachyderms only added to my mystery and so when we finally caught our breath I tried to put her off by explaining curious ideas I’d picked up from Napoleon’s savants and the new Ameri
can president. They thought that the world might be older than the Bible, and home to strange creatures now entirely extinct, and that the whole puzzling cornucopia of life, while testimony to the Almighty, also raised questions about just what our Creator was up to, so as a naturalist myself…

“You are toying with me!” She was beginning to stiffen, just as I was not.

“Aurora, I’m on a diplomatic mission for President Jefferson. I can’t share all the pertinent details with every bedmate…”

Then I was rolling from her furious push, landing with a thump on a wolverine pelt on the floor.

“Every bedmate!”

I peeked above the mattress. “That’s not what I meant. We just don’t know each other well yet.”

So she attacked me with a pillow, breasts heaving, and it was such a wondrous sight that if she’d smothered me then and there, I would have died happy. Blazes!

But at length she was spent, flopping on the bed, her rump graceful as a snow drift, her lips ripe and pouted. “I thought you loved me and would share everything.”

“I have shared all I am capable of this evening, believe me.”

“Pah.”

“I am entirely boring, I know. I go where greater men direct me, a simple savant with some slight knowledge of electricity. To find Venus on the edge of the wilderness is a greater discovery than any elephant.”

She rolled onto her back, her gaze lazy, and blessed my compliment with a slight smile. “So you think I’m pretty?”

“I think if you were painted, it would set off such frenzy that there would be a riot. If you were sculpted, it would cause a new religion. I think you are manufactured of moonbeam, and fired by the sun.”

“Fancy words, Yankee Doodle.”

“But so true they should be chiseled into the stone of Westminster.”

She laughed. “What a flatterer you are! But you are a scamp not to trust me. I don’t think you can go in my cousin’s canoes after all.”

This was worrisome, since our only transportation off this island was with the British. “But we will be useful!”

“How?”

I looked at my longrifle, which had found itself onto the plank floor in all our maneuvering. “I can shoot that, too.” I gave my most fetching smile. “We’ll practice together.”

She shook her head. “What an ungrateful rascal you are.”

“Not ungrateful, believe me.”

Now the look was hard. “All right then, you and your hairy Norwegian can come with us to Grand Portage, but in a separate canoe, and when you look at me across the water, when I’m beneath my parasol, I will not deign to return your glance because I am a great lady of England and you are a directionless adventurer who will not share any confidences.”

“I am a victim of your beauty.”

She wriggled back to rest herself more upright against the pillows. “You will be punished for your secrecy, at camp, by my indifference. You must attend to me or I will persuade Cecil to leave you behind for the Indians. They eat their enemies, I’ve heard. But we will have no more intimacy there until you demonstrate your trust by confiding in me. Until you reform, this is the last time you can gaze upon my body.”

“Aurora, I believe we are already the deepest of friends.”

“So prove it. Again.” She parted her thighs. “And again. And then maybe someday I will take pity on you—if it suits me, and if you have earned it.”

I gulped and nodded, summoning new enthusiasm.

It’s a challenge being a diplomat.

A N
ORTH
W
EST
C
OMPANY FREIGHT BRIGADE OF SIX CANOES
fetched us from Mackinac Island on its way to Lake Superior. Each vessel, improbably made of nothing but birch bark, wood strips, and roots used for twine, was thirty-five feet long, carried sixty 90-pound packs of trade goods, and had a guide at the bow, a steersman at the stern, and eight paddlers as driven as galley slaves. In the segregation of labor that had followed the British conquest of Canada, all the laborers were French Canadian, while four of the canoes each carried either a Scot, an Englishman, or a German Jew as
bourgeois
, or gentleman fur partner or clerk, who rode amidships like a little sultan. The other two would carry the Somersets, Magnus, and me. We could hear the paddlers’ song in French as the flotilla neared the island, the lilting melody floating over the blue water in time to the dip of the paddles:

The verses set the time for the stroke. We would journey on a tide of French folk song.

Our course would first pass the new British post of Fort Saint Joseph being constructed at the north end of Lake Huron, and then through the thirty-mile-long Sault Ste. Marie, or the “Saint Mary Jump” of rapids that led to Lake Superior. Then we would hug the northern shore of that inland sea until we reached Grand Portage at its western end.

As promised, Aurora and her cousin took a canoe different from that of Magnus and me, the woman seating herself primly on one of her trunks and holding a parasol as shade. The year had warmed now and the forests had erupted in full leaf and flower, but no public warmth emanated from Aurora, who looked steadfastly away. I tolerated this coolness because the inevitable end would be so sweet, and because it saved me from having to pay court to her whims or explain our tryst to others. I could pretend nothing had happened! I knew she’d reheat quickly enough once she missed my prowess.

Like most men, I have an optimistic appraisal of my own charm.

Cecil, after greeting the other bourgeois, took up position in a second canoe, natty as ever in fawn-colored coat, high marching boots, and beaver-skin top hat. He carried a fowling piece on his lap
to plunk at birds, and a petty novel in his pocket to pass the time. He seemed so at home in this wild country that I suspected his fine manners coated a core of experienced steel.

The voyageurs wore buckskin leggings, loose white shirts, bright caps, and, if needed, blanket coats called
capots
. Physically they tended to be short-legged and broad-shouldered, almost like muscular dwarves bred to the canoe. Here was our transport west! The canoe we would ride glided in and the bowman who commanded—wiry, tanned, with impish dark eyes and a jaunty red cap—bounded onto the island’s dock to block us before we could board. While the Somersets had been catered to, this captain put hands to his hips and dubiously eyed us like specimens of flotsam.

“
Mon dieu
, an ox and a donkey! And I am supposed to paddle your weight to Grand Portage, I suppose?”

Magnus squinted. “No little man needs to paddle me.”

“Little man?” He stood up on his toes, thrusting his nose in my companion’s face. “
Little man
? I am Pierre Radisson, a North Man with three winters at the posts and the guide of this master canoe! The Scots pay me a full nineteen English pounds a year! I can stroke twenty hours in a single day without complaining and travel a hundred miles before sleeping! Little man? None know the rapids like the great Pierre! None can portage faster than I, or drink more, or dance more splendidly, or jump higher, or run faster, or more quickly win an Indian bride! Little man?” He crowded into Magnus, the crown of his head at the Norwegian’s collarbone. “I can swim, shoot, trap, chop, and fuck better than the likes of a clumsy oaf like you, eat my own weight, and find my way from Montreal to Athabasca with my eyes closed, cyclops giant!”

Bloodhammer was finally forced to take a step back. “I just meant a Norwegian pulls his own oar.”

“Ha! Do you see any
oars
on my canoe? You think me master of
a dinghy? I think perhaps that a
Norwegian
is an
imbecile
!” He eyed Magnus up and down like a tree he was considering chopping. “But you are big, so perhaps I will let you try my paddle—if you promise not to break it or use it to pick your big horse teeth, or lose it in that thicket of moss that is your face. Do you know any songs?”

“Not French ones.”

“Yes, and it sounds from the gravel of your throat that you will sing like a grindstone.
Mon dieu!
It is hopeless.” He turned to me. “And you, even skinnier and more useless than him! What do you have to say?”

“That the girls of Rochelle are pretty,” I replied in French.

He brightened. “Ah, you speak the civilized tongue? Are you French?”

“American, but I lived in Paris. I worked as an aide to Bonaparte.”

“Bonaparte! A brave one, eh? Maybe he will take back Canada. And what do you do now?”

“I’m an electrician.”

“A what?”

“He’s a sorcerer,” Magnus explained, using French as well.

Now Pierre looked intrigued. “Really? What kind of sorcerer?”

“A scientist,” I clarified.

“A scientist? What is that?”

“A savant. One who knows the secrets of nature, from study.”

“Nature? Bah! All men know savants are as useless as priests. But sorcery—now
that
is a skill not altogether useless in the wilderness. The Indians have sorcerers, because the woods are filled with spirits. Oh yes, the Indians can see the world behind this one, and call the animals, and talk to the trees. Just you wait, sorcerer. You will see the cliffs wink and storm clouds form into a ram’s horn. Wind in the cottonwoods will whisper to you, and birds and squirrels will give you advice. And when night falls, perhaps you feel the cold breath of the Wendigo.”

“The what?”

“An Indian monster who lives in the forest and devours his victims more thoroughly than the werewolves the gypsies speak of in France.” He nodded. “Every Ojibway will tell you they are real. A sorcerer—that is what we truly need.” He looked at me with new respect, even though he clearly had never heard of electricity. “And can you paddle?”

“I’m probably better at singing.”

“I don’t doubt it. Though I bet you can’t sing very well, either.”

“I’m good at cards.”

“Then you’re both lucky you have the mighty Pierre Radisson to look after you! You won’t need cards where we are going. But what is that you are carrying?” he asked Magnus, staring at what was strapped to his back.

“My ax and my maps.”

“Ax? It looks big enough to sled on. Ax? We could hold it up for a sail, or use it as a roof in camp, or lower it as an anchor. Ax? We could recast it as artillery or start a blacksmith shop. So you might be useful after all, if you don’t let it drop through the bottom of my canoe. And you with your longrifle…that’s a pretty gun. Can you hit anything with it?”

“I have impressed the ladies of Mortefontaine.”

He blinked. “Well. Paddle hard enough and I, Pierre will baptize you voyageurs if you satisfy me. That is the greatest honor a man could have, yes? To win recognition from a North Man? This means, if you are so blessed, that you must buy the rest of us a round of shrub from the company kegs. Two full gallons from each of you.”

“What’s shrub?” Magnus asked.

“You might as well ask what is bread! Rum, sugar, and lemon juice, my donkey friend. Are you ready for such honor?”

I bowed. “We seek only the chance to prove ourselves.”

“You will have that. Now. You will sit carefully on the trade bun
dles and will enter and leave my canoe with the utmost care. You must not tip her. Your foot must be on a rib or strake because you can step through her birch bark and I do not care to drown in Lake Superior. You will stroke to the time of the song, and you will never let my canoe touch a rock or the shore. When we camp we will jump out when she is still floating, unload the bales, and gently lift her ashore. Yes?”

“We will be careful.”

“This is for your own safety. These canoes are light for their size, fast, and can be repaired in an hour or two, but they bruise like a woman.” He pointed to Aurora. “Treat them like her.” Actually, the girl might already have a couple bruises, the way she writhed and wrestled, but I didn’t say that. Certain memories you keep to yourself.

And so with a cry and a saluting gun from the American fort, we were off.

A bark canoe might seem like a fragile craft to tackle an inland sea, but these were ingenious products of the surrounding forest, fleet and dry. Pitch and bark could repair damage in an afternoon, and they could be portaged on shoulders for miles. Pierre kneeled in the bow, watching for rocks or logs and leading us in song as the paddles dipped in rhythmic cadence, up to forty strokes a minute. At the stern a steersman, Jacques by name, kept us on unerring course. The paddles flashed yellow in the sun, drops flying like diamonds to chase away the ambitious and persistent insects that buzzed out from land to escort us. The air off the lake was cool and fresh, the sun bright and hot on our crowns.

Always we stroked to song, some French, some English.

The voyageurs might be smaller than Magnus and me, but the tough little Frenchmen had the inexhaustibility of waterwheels. Within half an hour my breathing was labored, and soon after I began to sweat despite the chill of the lake. On and on we stroked, moving at what I guessed was six miles an hour—double the speed of the fleet Napoleon had taken to Egypt!—and just as I felt I could paddle no longer, Pierre would give a cry and our brigade would finally drift, the men breaking out pipes to smoke. It was the chief pleasure of their day, occurring once every two hours, and it reminded me of the measured pauses of Napoleon’s Alpine army. The men would break off a twist tobacco, a ropelike strand preserved in molasses and rum, crumble it in the bowl of the pipe, strike flint to tinder, and then lean back and puff, eyes closed against the sun. The quick drug made them content as babies. Our little fleet floated like dots on this vast water, the liquid so clean and cold that if thirsty we could dip our palms for a sip.

Then another cry and our pipes were tapped clean, embers hissing on the water, paddles were taken up, and with a shout and a chorus we were on again, driving hard to make maximum use of the lengthening days. Aurora stayed prim and regal under her parasol while Cecil read his little books, of which he had a full satchel, flinging each he finished into the water with the unspoken assumption that none of his rough companions were likely to be literate. Occasionally he would spy a duck or other waterfowl, put down his current volume, and blaze away, the bark of his gun echoing against the shore. He never missed, but we never paused to retrieve the game, either. It was only for sport. As the bird floated away he’d reload, rest his piece on his lap, and go back to reading.

We camped at sunset at a cove marked by a tall “lopstick,” a pine tree denuded of its lower branches but left with a tuft at the top as a landmark. These, we learned, were pruned on all the canoe routes to mark camping places. We drifted into a pretty point with a pebble beach and high grass under a stand of birch, Pierre jumping from our canoe into knee-deep water to halt its advance and then drawing it gently toward shore. We each in turn sprang stiffly out.

“It’s cold!” Magnus complained.

“Ah, you are a scientist too?” Pierre responded. “What an observer you are! Here is the trick: it makes us work all the faster to build our fires.”

As the canoe lightened it was drawn closer, never touching the smooth pebbles of the shore, all of us lifting out the freight bales and arranging them in a makeshift barricade covered with an oilcloth. The empty canoes were finally heaved up with a great cry, flipped with a spray of water, hoisted overhead, marched up the strand, and then propped up on one side by paddles to make an instant lean-to. Fires were lit, guns primed, water fetched, and pipes smoked as peas, pork, and biscuit were cooked and served. It was dull fare that I ate like a starving man.

“Yes, eat, eat, sorcerer!” Pierre encouraged. “You, too, giant! Eat to lighten Radisson’s canoe, and because you will lose weight on this trip no matter how much you gobble! Yes, the work burns your body! Eat because there is no pork past Grand Portage, which is why the Montreal men are called the Pork Eaters and only those of us who have wintered over are true North Men.”

“What do you eat past Grand Portage?” Magnus asked as he chewed.

“Pemmican. Dried game, berries, and sometimes a mush of rice or corn. Any city man would spit it out, but it’s nectar to a working man after a day at the paddles. A pound of pemmican is worth eight pounds of bread! Of course, a few months of that and you long for
a squaw. Not just for her quim between her legs, mind you, but her ability to find good things to eat in the woods.”

“Why are we going so fast?” I asked, sipping water. “I’m so sore that I feel like I’ve been stretched on the rack.”