And yet he delayed. The conversation veered from owning his own ships to the business of selling timber to shipyards. Duquet insisted he wanted English customers.
Dred-Peacock shrugged and connected him to an English shipbuilder and a new but promising yard on the river Clyde in Scotland, now joined to England by the Act of Union in ’07.
“Regard the map, sir,” he said, impatient with Duquet’s hesitation. “It’s the closest point to the colonies — the briefest sailing time. There are signs of success on the Clyde but they need good timbers. They will pay for them. It is an opportunity that cannot be neglected.”
Duquet took the plunge and Dred-Peacock took a goodly share of the profits, which increased year by year. There were good precedents in New France for trading with the enemy — Brûlé, Radisson, des Groseilliers had set the pattern — but arrangements with the English and Scots were at first secret, complex, expensive, even dangerous. It took fifty acres of oak to build one seventy-four-gun warship and in the hardwood stands along the rivers of New France the forests began to fall to Duquet’s ambitions. But he felt hampered by Kébec’s distance from the money pots of the world.
Never did Dred-Peacock present his ill-formed face to Duquet in Kébec; always Duquet made the trip to Boston. As they sat over their papers and receipts in the Sign of the Red Bottle near the wharves, the inn they favored, Dred-Peacock had some advice.
“Duquet, it is past time for you to consider shifting your business operations to Boston, to the colonies.” He signaled to the waiter for another plate of oysters.
“Oh, I think on it,” said Duquet, swirling the ale in his tankard until it slopped over the rim as if that settled the question. “I think on it often. I am half of a mind to do so, sir.” He had observed more hardwoods grew in the south, that great meadows and clearings made both settlement and transportation easier. Massachusetts Bay bustled with shipping. It was the better place for a man of business. And yet.
Dred-Peacock looked at the spilled ale with distaste. Duquet was an ill-bred boor, quite unable to even discern the picturesque, much less appreciate it. It was only his fantastic ability to make money that interested Dred-Peacock. “Damme, sir, it is quite time you acted. Finish with thinking and act. Every day poxy whoresons of millmen push into the forests and gain control over the land. In Maine there are countless white pine mast trees. You know there is a damned great market for these if you can get them on a ship bound for Scotland, England, or even Spain or Portugal.” The dish came, three great succulent oysters gleaming wetly, each as large as a man’s hand.
Duquet nodded but his face was sour. Dred-Peacock went on, his voice vibrating. “Where there is a market and money, the businessman must act. And all this will be immeasurably easier if you operate from Boston rather than bloody Kweebeck. And with my help these affairs can be managed.” He took up the first oyster.
Still Duquet hesitated. He had valuable connections in New France and a lifetime dislike of the English language. Dred-Peacock babbled on.
“And in any case I understand there are many in New France who are starting to believe that the English will one day prevail, even as a hare senses its pursuer’s increasing pace. Nor is it outside the realm of possibility that the colonies will unite, drive out the English and seize New France. Stranger events have occurred. And let me point out that so hungry are the whoreson Scots shipbuilders for the excellent timbers of America that some have removed to the colonies to be close to the supply.”
Now he was in partnership with the two Dutchmen, and several ships belonging to Roos, Verdwijnen and Duquet, but flying British flags, ran the seas between Portsmouth and Boston harbors and the ever more numerous Clyde shipyards. It was, they often told one another, like walking on a web of tightropes, but they swam in money as in a school of sardines. They had only to catch it in their nets. And share it with Dred-Peacock.
• • •
Over the next year, as his sons grew, fired by the detailed and advice-packed business letters Duquet wrote to each of them every Sunday, with Dred-Peacock’s help he began to acquire tracts of woodland in Maine. Dred-Peacock’s genius in the legal procedure of acquiring remote “townships” could not be measured, and his old acquaintance from voyageur days, the surveyor, Jacques Forgeron, scouted out the best timberland, Duquet learning the woods looker’s judgmental process from him. To outsiders Forgeron was a dour man who overcherished his plagued measuring chains. He could use a chain as a weapon, swinging it around and around until it gained velocity and the free end leapt forward to maim. Duquet knew well that long ago he had used that chain in the Old World and then fled to New France to start anew. Duquet thought there were probably many like Forgeron but he only shrugged. The old days counted for very little. Moreover, he was now a partner in Duquet et Fils, perhaps even a friend if a business tie between two friendless men could be so described.
• • •
Duquet and Forgeron landed their canoe one October afternoon on a sandy Maine river shore fronting one of their new white pine properties, twenty thousand acres at a cost of twelve cents an acre. There was a narrow hem of ice along the shaded shoreline. The rich autumn light touched the deciduous trees with xanthene orange and yellow. Their swart shadows fell on the ground like fallen statues. Without speaking the men began to gather firewood. Forgeron held up his hand.
“Listen,” he said quietly. They heard the sounds of chopping not far off and began to move cautiously toward the source.
With an acid jolt of fury Duquet saw unknown men in pitch-blackened trousers cutting his pines, others limbing the fallen trees and yet another scoring them. Two men worked with broadaxes to square the logs. Duquet was sure they had a pit sawmill set up nearby. By their bulging pale eyes and doughy faces he knew them to be English colonists. Although Duquet et Fils had no hesitation in cutting big trees wherever they grew, it was intolerable to be the victims of that practice.
“Holà!” Duquet shouted, then, in his clumsy English, “Who say you come my land, cut my tree?” He was so furious his voice strangled in his throat. Forgeron advanced beside him lightly revolving his chain.
The startled woodsmen stared, then, still gripping their tools, they ran on an oblique course toward the river, where they likely had bateaux. But one with a dirty bandage on his right thigh lagged behind.
Duquet did not pause. He drew his tomahawk from his belt and hurled it, striking the runner’s left calf. The man fell, crying to his comrades for help in a high childish voice. One of the escaping men turned around and stared at Duquet, called something to the fallen one. The confrontation lasted for only a few seconds but left an unfading impression of a man swelling with hatred. Duquet did not forget the man’s mottled slab of face encircled by ginger hair and beard, the yellow animal eyes fixed on him, the sudden turning away and violent run for the river.
“They come from the settlements along the coast,” said Forgeron as they ran forward.
They bound their wounded prisoner, a boy not older than fourteen, and dragged him to a pine, tied him against it in a hollow between projecting tree roots.
“You boy, garçon, talk up or I cut first your fingers. Then your balls. Who you are? What men you with? How you come here?”
The boy folded his lips in a tight crease, in either pain or defiance. Duquet wrenched the boy’s arm and spread his left hand against one of the great humped roots. With a quick slash of his ax he took off a little finger and part of the next.