Shadowbrook (9 page)

Above his head the bells of the cathedral tolled the midnight hour. Père Antoine looked toward the hovel-turned-monastery and, as he expected, saw the tiny lights of five candles flicker past the window. The Poor Clares had interrupted the six hours of sleep they were permitted out of each twenty-four. They were on their way to chant Matins, the first prayer of the new day. After an hour they would return to their straw pallets on wooden planks and rest until four, when they would rise to chant Lauds and begin another day of fasting and prayer and labor.

Thanks be to God, the seeds were planted. They would be watered with martyrs’ blood.

“
Ici—
over here.”

Stewart turned toward the voice. “Glad to see you, laddie. Crossed my mind you might o’ gone.”

“And why would I do that, Hamish Stewart? Did I not tell you I would wait?”

“Aye, you told me.” Stewart squinted at the line looped around the bollard at the edge of the stone dock, holding the wee boat—a dory they called ‘em in these parts—close in and steady so as he could jump aboard. Looked secure enough, though he could never get over his suspicion o’ these Canadians. Or the feeling that in this place, wherever he went at whatever hour, he was always being watched.

Stewart put a booted foot on the dory’s gunnel. The Frenchman, Dandon, watched the maneuver with a smile bordering on a smirk. A wave lapped the little boat and she drifted a bit seaward. Dandon slackened his grip on the line. The gap between Stewart’s legs widened. The Frenchman chuckled. “You must make up your mind,
mon ami,
the sea or the shore.” Stewart struggled to maintain his balance, and finally, at the last second, threw his weight forward and lurched rather than jumped into the dory. Dandon laughed again. “Not so bad, eh? Once you take a decision.”

Bastard. He could o’ held the poxed boat closer in and kept her steady. Never mind. He was aboard now.

Dandon took a lantern from between his legs and held it over the side, passing his hand over the opening in a series of signals to the sloop waiting some half a league away. A light flashed quickly in response. “Alors, they are ready for us. Take up an oar,
mon ami.
You will work off some of the fine supper the priest fed you.”

“Aye, and what supper might that be? Prayers a plenty, but na a crumb to eat.”

“
Eh bien,
that is what you get for treating with the brown friars,
mon ami.
They are committed to what they call Sister Poverty. At the black gowns you get the finest wine in New France, and the best food.”

Stewart pulled on his oar, matching the other man’s strokes and settling into a steady rhythm. “And what would the likes o’ you ken o’ supping with the high-and-mighty black gowns?”

Dandon shrugged. “I have ears, no? Many things I hear.”

Probably true. Why would he na hear everything that mattered, considering that he worked for the almighty Bigot. God’s truth, there was na a job in the whole o’ America better than Bigot’s. The intendant o’ Canada, the civil administrator
o’ New France. Every farthing taken in trade went through his hands, and three out o’ five stuck to his fingers. But the thing about Bigot that made him different, and more successful than most villains, was that he was smart enough to share his profits wi’ his friends.
La grande société,
they called themselves, and high and low belonged. Even Dandon, menial though he be, got his wee bit. That way there was none as could turn on Bigot wi’out implicating himself. A fine plan, simple but effective.

And one of Bigot’s schemes was heaven-sent for the enrichment of Hamish Stewart, if he could get Shadowbrook. Bigot bought Canadian grain at prices fixed by law, five to seven livres per
minot,
milled it at government expense, and sold the flour to the Crown—that is, to himself—at the market rate of twenty or more livres per
minot.
But the way things were in Canada—inflation fueled by paper money, and the farmers hiding their grain from the representatives of the intendant so they could sell it on the black market—it was possible to do some Scots business with French Bigot. Specially for someone wi’out scruples as how he owed some kind o’ loyalty to the heretic British crown. Just you be smart enough to ken the way his mind works, Hamish laddie, and the mind o’ the mad priest as well, and your fortune’s made.

The sloop came into view just ahead of them, her single mast and her rapierlike bowsprit showing a parade of white canvas gleaming in the moonlight. Her sails were luffing now, spilling the freshening wind of the approaching dawn, waiting for the command that would send a dozen men into the rigging to set close haul and send her speeding south.

“Ahoy!” The call was more a whisper than a shout. All seamen knew that voices carried on the water. “Who goes?”

“I’m not goin’, lad. I’m comin’. And you can save your tar talk for them as is impressed wi’ it. I paid for this passage. I dinna have to talk your talk as well.”

The seaman let down the rope ladder. “Come aboard, Mr. Stewart. Tide’s turning. Pilot said we’d sail soon as you were back.”

Until they were through the shoals and reefs of La Traverse, the devilish stretch where the St. Lawrence divided between the southern tip of the long island known as the Ile d’Orléans and the mainland of Québec itself, the grizzled Canadian pilot would be God Almighty, and his words, the Eleventh Commandment. “Canna be soon enough for me, laddie.” Stewart grabbed hold of the ladder and heaved himself out of the dory. “I’ll be happy to see the back o’ this place.”

“Un moment s’il vous plaît, mon ami,”
Dandon whispered anxiously. “My report, what is it to be?”

“Aye, that’s what it’s to be. Aye and aye again. Tell
la grande société
everything will be exactly as I promised.”

The man lying flat on his belly on a rotted bit of old wharf snapped his glass
closed as soon as he saw a pair of seamen haul the Scot off the ladder and into the boat. He had no interest in observing Dandon row back to shore. The Scot and the overzealous Franciscan were another matter. And what about Lantak, the mad savage? His spies in the countryside had reported that Père Antoine was meeting frequently with Lantak. You forget him at your peril, Monsieur Louis Roget, priest of Almighty God and Provincial Superior of the Society of Jesus in New France, reminded himself. And the peril of Holy Mother Church.

Roget stood, gathered his black cloak around him, and began the long climb up the hill to the great fortress of the Collége des Jésuites in the Upper Town.

Quent and Cormac and Nicole traveled by day and camped by night. The going was slow because part of the time one or the other of the men had to carry the woman. She hated that and struggled hard to keep up, but when she came to the end of her endurance and there were still hours of daylight to be utilized, Quent or Cormac picked her up and they continued.

They ate twice a day: in the morning before sunup, and in the evening after they made camp. Food and drink presented no difficulties. The men killed small game, squirrels and rabbits and the occasional partridge, and the forest was laced with streams and brooks. They lacked potherbs and saladings and it was too early in the season for berries, but once Quent found a stand of fiddlehead ferns poking aboveground. Another time Cormac contributed a couple of fistfuls of mushrooms to the evening meal.

The men took turns standing watch throughout the night. Nicole, utterly exhausted, slept. There was little time for talk. Sometimes, for a few moments before they doused the cooking fire, Quent and Cormac exchanged remembrances of the long days of summer in Singing Snow and the bitter cold of winter experienced from the safe haven of Shadowbrook. Of the present situation, of what Quent faced when he returned or Cormac’s plans, they said nothing.

Nicole spoke hardly at all until the sixth night. Cormac had gone deep into the forest to relieve himself and she and Quent were alone. She was burying the bones of the quail they’d eaten, deep and carefully the way the men had shown her. She finished scuffing the earth above the bones and looked across the embers of the dying fire. “You said they had every reason to want us alive. Why?”

It took a few seconds for Quent to understand what she meant “Tanaghrisson and his braves?”

“The Indians who … The murdering savages. You said they wanted us alive. Why? To torture us? Because they hate all whites?”

“Sounds like you’ve been listening to some stories.”

“It is not true? The savages do not torture white people? Even eat them?”

“Sometimes it’s true. But not just whites. They do the same things to each other. It’s part of their way of life. Their religion, you might call it.”

Nicole crossed herself. “You are speaking blasphemy. That is not religion. It is heathen barbarism.”

Quent shrugged. “Call it what you like. It’s how it is.” He wasn’t surprised by her papist gesture. Cormac had told him she was a Catholic on her way to Québec and that he’d taken charge of her two weeks before. Not by choice, but because he was under an obligation. Nicole had been traveling with her father, Livingston Crane, an Englishman and former army officer. They had been in Alexandria when Cormac arrived looking for Quent. Some American trappers recognized Corm, knew there was a price on his head in a dozen different places in the colonies, and laid an ambush. Livingston Crane chanced on it, warned Cormac, and insisted on fighting beside him. The Englishman took a knife wound to the heart and died in Cormac’s arms. His last words were a plea that Cormac get Nicole safely to Québec. Corm had tagged along with Jumonville’s party because it promised safe passage for at least part of the journey, and a few more of the creature comforts a woman required, even here on the frontier.

“If it was not to torture us or eat us,” Nicole demanded, “why do you say those Iroquois want us to be alive?”

“The Half King wants witnesses.”

“Why should a murderer want witnesses? And how can anyone be half a king?”

“It’s an Iroquois notion. A king speaks for all his people, a half king for some of them. Tanaghrisson speaks for the Iroquois in the Ohio Country.”

“You make them sound almost civilized.”

“Not almost,” Quent said. “Out here that’s an important lesson. Not almost.”

“You called them snakes.”

“I never said they weren’t clever. Tanaghrisson wants witnesses to tell the story of how he slaughtered Onontio. That’s their name for the French governorgeneral. It was originally a Huron word that means ‘father’ now all the Indians use it. You heard what he said before he killed Jumonville:
Tu n’es pas encore mort, mon père.’
You are not yet dead, my father. He meant Onontio, the French presence in the Ohio Country, wasn’t dead.” He would have said that the Half King washed his hands in Jumonville’s brains for the same reason, but she was looking ill again, sickened by her memories.

“I do not understand.”

“The Iroquois are English allies. They want the English to prevail in this part of America,” Quent said patiently.

Cormac returned and squatted beside them. He picked up a handful of moist
earth and let it sift through his fingers onto the last glowing embers of the cooking fire, extinguishing it. “Sounds like you’re giving Mademoiselle Nicole a lesson in politics.”

“Something like that.” Quent looked from Cormac to Nicole. Was there something between them besides obligation? When it was Quent’s turn to carry her through the forest he couldn’t put such thoughts from his mind.

“Quent’s left out some things,” Cormac said. “The Iroquois aren’t really English allies. They simply want dominance. That’s the Iroquois way. They call it the
Kainerekowa,
the Great Peace, but it’s a peace in their favor and they’re willing to get it any way they can. Mostly through great war. Iroquois prey on anyone who’s weaker than they are, hostile or not. From their point of view, it’s only peace if they’re in charge.”

“You do not like tem?”

“I despise them.”

“I thought it was only white people you despised,” she said softly. “That is what people said in Alexandria.”

“They’re wrong. I’m half white. I don’t hate my white blood or anyone else’s. I only hate what the whites are doing to the Indian way of life. If they would leave Canada to the Indians, and down here stay on the other side of those mountains behind us,” he jerked his head in the direction of the Alleghenies to the east, “everything might be fine.”