‘Has there been an illness?’
‘Nah, another shootin’. The garrison don’t have nobody to fight so they fights each other. The colonel, he banned duelling, but every time he tries to punish someone for it, half of them is already dead, and the other half usually cut up or wounded. Besides, he’s a fighter too. Keeps the blood up, he says.’
‘Good God. How many have died this way?’
‘Half a dozen. Hell, we lose lots more to drownin’, ague, consumption, Injuns, squaw pox, and bad water. Better to die for honour than the bloody flux, eh?’
‘We’re on a mission from President Jefferson,’ I said, adopting a tone I hoped expressed gravity and my own importance. ‘Will the colonel return soon?’
‘I suppose. Unless he don’t.’
‘What does that mean?’
‘The colonel, he keeps his own schedule.’
‘We have a letter from the president requesting we be granted military transportation. Has no advance correspondence reached you?’
‘You mean letters? About you?’ He shook his head. ‘Where you goin’?’
‘To the head of the Great Lakes.’
‘Head of the lakes? Grand Portage?’
‘Yes.’
‘That’s redcoat country, man.’ He looked at Magnus. ‘Your friend here looks to be a Scot. Ask him. They’re the ones who run the North West Company. You a redcoat? They run all the freight canoes, too.’
‘Magnus is Norwegian, and we want passage on an American ship. Surely there are brigs that go to Michilimackinac.’
‘Canoes, mostly. No American ships.’ He looked at us as if we were daft. ‘Ain’t you seen the river? Ain’t no navy. Besides, we’s army.’
This was getting us nowhere. ‘I suppose we’d better speak to the colonel.’
He shrugged. ‘Won’t change things.’ He looked around, seemingly surprised there was no colonel, and no chairs, either. ‘You can wait on the porch if you like if he ever comes to wait for. Or, try again tomorrow.’ He shifted in his seat, raised a thigh, and broke wind with a pop like a signal gun. ‘Sorry. Reveille.’
We stepped back outside, surveying the bowed logs, mossy roofs, and muddy lanes that were Detroit. ‘If that’s what’s defending us, I don’t blame our boat captain for making for the tavern,’ Magnus said. ‘Let’s join him and try again in an hour or two, when the grave’s filled. This Stone may move like one.’
So off we strode, Magnus pointing out the magnificence and stink of drying fur pelts and I commenting on the paucity of white women. There were a few pretty Indian ones, but they had the mix of native and European clothing that marked them as brides of the French. Younger ones looked to be Métis, or half-breed.
We’d almost reached the tavern when a voice cried, ‘Look out!’
A man bulled us against the logs of a candle shop while a black cannon ball, a four-pounder by the look of it, shot from the intersecting lane and went hurtling where we’d been standing a moment before. It disappeared between houses and there was a crash and the sound of toppled wood.
‘Sorry for my rudeness,’ our saviour said, ‘but you were about to walk into a bowl-lane without looking. Broken ankles are chronic in Detroit, and the town is at odds about it. There’s talk of an ordinance.’
‘I didn’t hear a cannon.’
‘The ball wasn’t fired, it was rolled. Bowls are a mania, and the debate to ban them has exercised more gums and produced less result than your American Congress. The young men throw whenever the streets are halfway dry or frozen. Keeps them occupied, Colonel Stone says.’
‘The players give no warning?’ Magnus asked.
‘We learn to watch and hop soon enough.’ He looked at me with new interest. ‘Say! Aren’t you the hero of Acre?’
I blinked, puzzled to be recognised. ‘Hardly a hero …’
‘Yes, Ethan Gage! What splendid coincidence! My employers were just speaking of you! Rumour had it that you were headed this way and tongues are wagging, as you might imagine. Who can guess what your next mission might be! And now here you are! No, don’t deny it, I was told to look for a pretty longrifle and a hulking companion!’
‘This is Magnus Bloodhammer, son of Norway. And who are you?’
‘Ah! I forgot my manners in all the excitement!’ A cheer went up and another cannon ball went bouncing by. ‘Nicholas Fitch, aide to Lord Cecil Somerset, a partner in the North West Company. He’s staying at the Duff House in Sandwich across the river, with his cousin Aurora. He’s most anxious to meet you. Damn curious about the scrape at Acre. Something of a student of ancient fortification, he is. He’s an acquaintance of Sidney Smith, who you served with.’
‘We’re trying to meet with Colonel Stone about transport up the lakes.’
‘Oh, I don’t think you’ll see Stone again today. Tends to go hunting after a burial. Says it clears the mind to kill something else. And the traffic north is all British anyway. Please, be our guests – we’re having a party. Quite the gathering for these parts: traders, farmers, chiefs! And Lord Somerset is going north. Perhaps we could help each other!’ He smiled.
Well, one of my missions was to sniff out British intentions in the west. There’s no better place than a social gathering, where tongues are loosened by drink. ‘If you don’t mind men rough from a little travelling, then certainly.’
‘We have a bath, too!’ He winked. ‘You’ll want to be clean for Aurora!’
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Alexander Duff’s house on the Canadian shore was a three-story, whitewashed trading house that transplanted British propriety to the wilderness in order to impress French voyageurs, visiting Indians chiefs, and Scottish investors. There were grand windows and a pediment porch, and inside ostentation was achieved with massive mahogany tables, brocaded chairs, silk curtains, pewter candelabra, fine china, lead crystal, and heavy silver with ivory handles. The bric-a-brac was a claim to imperialism much more effective than planting a flag.
Magnus and I were welcomed by Alexander Duff himself, told that our fortuitous arrival indeed coincided with a gathering of notables that evening, and were shown to an adjacent bathhouse to make ourselves presentable. By dusk we were as scoured, mended, and straightened as possible. I clipped my hair to republican fashion, while Magnus trimmed the wilder boundaries of his beard to mere prophet dimensions. Our boots were so worn by our travels that Duff gave us freshly beaded moccasins that were wonderfully soft and quiet. ‘The only things for canoes,’ he said.
Then we were primed with scotch, lubricated with brandy, and had our appetite whetted with port. This was just as well, given the shock of the guests who arrived. I’d no hash with the English and Scottish fur captains, German Jews, and French canoe captains who first crowded in, leaving their native brides on the back porch as custom demanded. They were dressed to the frontier nines, showing up in calf-high beaded moccasins, embroidered sashes, silk vests, feathered caps, and that jaunty self-confidence earned by wresting money from the frontier.
Rather, it was the trio who arrived when the main room was already hot and close with pressed bodies and raised laughter. There was a draft as the door opened, merriment faltered, and men backed to make a space as if these new dignitaries were either renowned or contagious. In this case – by my lights as an American – they were both.
One was a lean, hawk-nosed, long-haired white man of sixty dressed in Indian buckskin leggings tied below the knee, savage breechclout, and a long French jacket of faded blue cloth. He wore a bright officer’s gorget at his chest, like a silver crescent moon, and a hunting knife in a beaded sheath at his waist. He was a good three days unshaven, his gaze made fiercer by a sliver of bone in his nose and silver earrings the shape of arrowheads. His yellowy eyes, small under heavy brows, had a raptor’s stare.