‘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 civilised 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 axe and my maps.’
‘Axe? It looks big enough to sled on. Axe? We could hold it up for a sail, or use it as a roof in camp, or lower it as an anchor. Axe? 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 honour 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 honour?’
I bowed. ‘We seek only the chance to prove ourselves.’
‘You will have that. Now. You will sit carefully on the trade bundles 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 knelt 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.
My canoe is of bark, light as a feather
That is stripped from silvery birch;
And the seams with roots sewn together,
The paddles white made of birch.
I take my canoe, send it chasing
All the rapids and billows acrost;
There so swiftly, see it go racing,
And it never the current has lost …
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 laboured, 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 of tobacco, a rope-like 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 learnt, 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 towards shore. We each in turn sprang stiffly out.