Duncan paced around the fire. “Amherst knows Cameron was lying.”
Woolford did not disagree. “The day after he received the report, Amherst sent for Cameron to come take over the Highland units. Then he left to confer with the navy.”
“It makes no sense.”
“Intrigue between officers is not uncommon. Cameron provided the army with a convenient way to explain away the loss of the treasure. Amherst proved it was a lie, but such knowledge can be more powerful when kept secret. Favors can be asked by those who have such secrets. Cameron will be bound to Amherst forever.”
“Where is Cameron now?”
“Making final preparations for the advance of ground troops tomorrow. You saw Amherst leave to meet the second wave of transports coming up the river. And four outposts stretched along the southern bank of the river upstream of Montreal have been attacked and destroyed. A patrol from the half-king intercepted some of my Mohawks. The Revelator demands to see the Iroquois elders tomorrow. He will leave them a sign at a fishing camp on the southern shoreline above Montreal. He expects them to deliver the Iroquois League.”
“So by this time tomorrow,” Duncan said, “we will have the children or we will be tied to his torture posts.”
As their modest flotilla of canoes approached the fishing camp just after dawn, they saw three canoes speeding away toward the walled island.
A single man awaited them.
“The poet!” Conawago exclaimed as their canoe ran up on the sand. The man sitting against a boulder did indeed wear the black clothes and wide-brimmed hat of the half-king’s ambassador of death. Woolford quickly deployed his rangers to flank the campsite before joining Conawago and Duncan as they advanced on the man.
At first it seemed he was praying, with his head bowed and hands folded in his lap. When he ignored Woolford’s challenge, Duncan used his rifle barrel to push up the man’s hat.
Rabbit Jack had been hit so hard the white of his skull was exposed. Just to be certain, his killer had slit his belly. Blood still ebbed out of his gut. The stream of blood down each cheek told Duncan that he had not been dead when his eyes had been carved out.
A piece of paper had been placed between his two hands. Death to Murderers, it stated in well-formed letters. A smaller legend at the bottom said, Fortress Island.
“The half-king is making it clear that he does not blame the Council for the death of Black Fish,” Conawago observed as he signaled the elders to approach. “He gives the killer of his nephew to Custaloga.”
“He pays respect in the currency of a butcher, nothing more,” Duncan said. “This man didn’t kill Black Fish. He was killed by the man who killed Black Fish.” He heard a splash behind him, and the hell dog rushed past him. The dog bent over the body with a strangely intense curiosity, sniffing the wounds, sniffing the clothes, sniffing the hat, before turning to look at Hetty. She was staring, transfixed at the morbid sight, and though she had been approaching, the dog’s actions stopped her.
“The poet killed Black Fish, and now Rabbit Jack,” Duncan observed. “He gives up his costume.”
“It is an ending of sorts,” Conawago added. “He considers his work to be done.”
“Death to murderers,” Woolford repeated. “I take no consolation from it.” He whistled for his rangers.
The elders gathered in a half-circle around the dead man. Tushcona murmured a short prayer, though whether it was for the benefit of the dead man or the elders, Duncan could not tell. Custaloga placed the hat back on the man’s head to cover his hideous face, then with a surprised gasp, he pulled the paper from the man’s hands, turned it, and raised it for the others to see.
Tushcona rushed forward to study the writing on the reverse of the paper. The four remaining captive children had all written their names on it. Above them were two more names: Adanahoe and Henry Bedford.
“It is good news,” Duncan said uncertainly as Hetty stepped to his side. “It must mean your son yet lives. His captors have at least reunited him with his students. That will be some comfort to them.”
The Welsh woman’s countenance betrayed no emotion. Her only response was to drop to her knees and embrace the hell dog as it burrowed its head in her shoulder.
The beauty of the cobalt sky and the scarlet foliage reflected in the River That Never Ends gave little hint of the violence that would soon erupt. The British troops were nearly all in place. In another day the artillery would begin their savage duels.
It had been surprisingly easy for Woolford to spirit away one of the smaller work boats to meet Tatamy’s men, and the loading of the kegs onto the boat after Duncan had marked them had been done in sober silence. The Christian Mohawks, like the elders, knew their actions thrust them into the crosshairs of both opposing armies. The game they played now was absolute. They would win or they would die.
All morning they had watched from the shore as canoes of warriors and long boats of Highlanders arrived at Fortress Island. By the time Tatamy’s men had arrived and they had made their final arrangements, their party was inconspicuous. No one seemed to notice the boat they moored to a pine on a tiny island a quarter mile from the beach. As their own canoes finally coasted onto the pebbles of Fortress Island, Duncan looked back at the point of land where Woolford waited with his men and the hell dog, wondering if he or any of his companions would make good on their promise to return to the ranger camp by nightfall. He cast a worried glance at Ishmael, who had leapt into a canoe at the last moment, defying Duncan’s instructions to stay with the rangers. “It is his war too,” Conawago had sighed with a restraining hand on Duncan’s shoulder.
But it wasn’t a war camp that Duncan and his friends walked into, it was a Highland celebration. At least two hundred men in the plaids of the Highland regiments milled about the island campsite, and though the tribal warriors far outnumbered them, the atmosphere was unquestionably Gaelic.
A man wearing the sash of a Fraser piper played a lively tune, and Duncan could not suppress a grin as he watched a handful of Scots lead several confused but laughing northern Mohawks in an impromptu jig. A man in Montgomery plaid had crossed two swords on the ground and was performing a sword dance for a delighted group of Scottish and woodland warriors. Amused exclamations filled the air, in both Gaelic and tribal tongues, and Duncan and Conawago joined in, doing their best to keep attention away from the Iroquois elders behind them, who were furtively searching for the children.
Since reaching the New World, Duncan could not recall such a joyful collection of Highlanders. No, it had been much longer-not since the clan gatherings of the days of his youth. They wandered through the knots of men and women, pausing to help pull a long pole to raise one more army tent. Duncan found himself walking slower and slower. Something deep inside him was struggling, calling out to him. Here before him, it was saying, was the best chance he would ever have of finding a contented life. Here was the chance to live among his own kind, the proof that the Highland ways could be resurrected.
On a flat below the camp, a handful of Highlanders laughed and slapped tribesman on their backs as the Indians tried to teach the Scots how to play lacrosse. Several tribal matrons watched in amusement as a stout trooper in a leather apron sliced pumpkins with a short sword.
It wasn’t contentment, but at least a faint echo of it that he felt at seeing the bighearted Highlanders mix with the tribes. A wayward ball of sewn deerhide landed at his feet. As he tossed it back to the lacrosse players, Conawago pulled on his arm as if to change their course.
A familiar tent lay ahead of them, the ornate stone-painted tent with scalloped flaps. Somber Hurons stood guard as the chieftain in the pot helm, Paxto of the Wolverine clan, and Scar, the vengeful deputy of the half-king, conferred with someone inside the tent. Too late Duncan stepped back. A sentinel spoke, the men at the tent turned, and a moment later the half-king emerged into the sunlight.