‘Storm!’ Pierre shouted back to the helmsman.
Jacques nodded, looking over his shoulder at black cloud. The captains of the other canoes were crying out commands of warning too.
‘I told you the lake does not pass us easily,’ Pierre said. ‘Paddle now, my donkeys, paddle with all your might! There’s a bay a league from here and we must reach it before the storm is at its peak, unless we want to try to swim to Grand Portage!’ He splashed some water at us. ‘Feel how cold the witch truly is!’
Lightning flashed behind, and a low, ominous rumble rolled over the water. Light danced in the sky, the wind carrying that electrical scent I recalled from the desert. The water, now steel grey, roughened in the gust. Even Pierre gave up his scouting position and knelt in the bow to help paddle.
‘Stroke, if you don’t want to drown!’
The wind began to rise and the waves steepened, pushing our brigade towards shore. We had to clear a point and avoid being dashed on granite boulders before we got into its lee and could safely land. The freshwater waves had a different pitch than the sea, slapping and choppy, and the water stunned with cold. For the first time we shipped water into the canoes and Pierre pointed at me. ‘American! The most useless one! Take our cooking pot and bail, but do it carefully, for if you strike the bark and hole us, we will all die!’
Well, that was encouraging. I began to bail, trying to decide if I was more afraid of the water slopping over our gunwales or the water that would gush in if I dipped too deep and enthusiastically. More thunder, and then rain overtaking us in a grey curtain, the water boiling at the edge of the squall where the fat drops fell. I could barely see the shore, except for a line of white where breakers dashed. The rumbling sounded like artillery.
‘Thor’s song!’ Magnus cried. ‘This is what we came for, Ethan!’
‘Not me,’ I muttered. Franklin was more than a little barmy going kite flying in a lightning storm, but Bloodhammer was his match. We could easily be struck out here.
‘Tame the lightning, sorcerer!’ Pierre cried.
‘I can’t without tools. We need to get off the water before it reaches us!’ I’d seen what lightning can do.
I glanced at Aurora’s canoe. The parasol was gone and she was bent, hair streaming, paddling with grim determination. Cecil had put away his book and fowling piece and was stroking as well, his dripping top hat rammed low and hard on his head.
In our own vessel Magnus was paddling so strongly, the paddle digging so his hand on its shank hit the waves, that Pierre switched to the opposite side to balance the Norwegian’s power.
‘Maybe we should throw out some of the trade bundles and get more freeboard!’ I suggested over the shriek of the wind.
‘Are you mad? I’d rather lie with the witch of the lake than explain to Simon McTavish that his precious freight was at the bottom of Superior! Bail, sorcerer! Or find a way to calm the waters!’
On we scudded like leaves in a rapid, the shadowy lee shore growing ominously closer as we strove to round the point before being driven aground. In the dimness its line was marked by the white of cruel boulders, wiry trees shaking and thrashing in the pelting rain.
‘Paddle, my friends! Paddle, or we’ll suck the witch’s tit on the bottom!’
My shoulders were on fire, as Pierre had demanded, but rest was not an option. We neared the point, spray exploding on it in great fountains, and through the dimness and streak of rain I spied an eerie sight, white and angular against the wrack of nature.
‘Crosses!’ I cried.
‘Aye!’ Pierre shouted. ‘Not every crew has made it into this shelter, and those mark the voyageurs who failed! Eye them well, and bail some more!’
They looked like pale bones, glowing in the light of the periodic lightning.
Never have I bailed with more desperation, my muscles cracking with the strain, veins throbbing on my neck. I looked across. Now Aurora was bailing too, eyes wide and fearful. The rain came harder, in great, buffeted streaks, and I was gasping against it, feeling I was already drowning. Six inches of water were in the bottom. I grasped the pot again and flung pitchersful like a madman.
I glanced about. One of the other canoes was gone. I pointed.
‘It’s too late for them, they are dead from the cold! Paddle, paddle!’
And then we shot past the gnarled knob of land that marked the bay, the canoe rising and surfing on the long swells, and carefully turned, Jacques steering with fierce concentration so we wouldn’t broach when broadside to the waves. We turned into the storm, rain hammering, and fought our way into the lee of the point, wind screaming over the shuddering foliage at its crest. There was a red gravel beach and we made for that, the bowmen leaping out in waist-deep water, waves surging to their armpits.
‘Don’t let the canoes break on the beach!’
We held them off, the lake numbing, as our waterproof ninety-pound bundles were lifted out and hurled up, gravel rattling as surf sucked in and out. Aurora was half lifted and then half jumped into the shallows, staggering in her skirts and then swaying as she splashed up onto land with her dress dragging like a sail. But then she came back down and dragged a bundle back up with her. The men turned the canoes so the water in the bottom poured out then carried them like caterpillars to where they could be propped against the wind. I looked up at the dark landscape beyond. Here the hills were high and hard, murky in the storm’s dim light. Lightning cracked and struck on the highlands.
I glanced around to our party, everyone’s hair streaming, voyageur moustaches dripping like moss. Even Aurora’s ringlets had half-uncurled in soggy defeat.
‘Aye, we will not get to Grand Portage too soon,’ Pierre said. ‘The lake never lets us. See why we paddle hard when we can, American?’
‘What if we hadn’t been near this bay?’
‘Then we would die, as we all die someday. What if the wind had been on our nose? That has happened too, and driven me a dozen miles back to find proper shelter.’
‘What about those others?’
‘We’ll cross the point to look for them. And if the witch doesn’t give them up, we will fashion more crosses.’
‘That was more than a thousand in freight those fools lost!’ Cecil seethed. ‘They have to answer to the devil, but I have to answer to McTavish!’
We never found their bodies, but some of the trade goods did wash ashore, so tightly wrapped in tarpaulins as to be salvageable. Their contents would be dried in the next day’s sun.
The storm moved on, the sun low when it finally broke clear in the west. I was stiff and shivering with cold and thus happy for the exercise when Pierre beckoned me to follow him into the trees in search of dry wood. Magnus came too, swinging his great axe to break trail like a moose. In moments we were swallowed in a labyrinth of birch and thick moss, the wind and waves audible but our path back swallowed. I soon lost track of our direction.
‘How do you know where we are?’
‘Our blundering leaves signs, and the sound of the waves. But I like the water, not the forest where a man goes blind. I’ve had companions planning to walk a hundred paces to fetch a pail of berries and vanish without a trace. Some say Indians, some say bears, some say Wendigo. I say it is simply the soul of the forest, which sometimes gets hungry and swallows men up.’
I glanced about. The trees shuddered, the shadows were deep, and water pattered everywhere. I could be lost for days.
Pierre, however, seemed to have a calm sense of direction. We found a downed tree in the lee of a rock, its underside punk wood, and chopped until we quickly had armfuls of dry fuel and moss for tinder. We followed his sure route back and the other voyageurs used flint, steel, and gunpowder to catch the kindling. Smoke began puffing up in great grey clouds. Meanwhile Magnus was chopping more sizable wood with his axe, snapping dead driftwood into lengths with a single swing. I carried these to add to our pyramids of flame. Soon we had three bonfires roaring. Clothes steamed as the voyageurs began a makeshift manic dance like red savages, singing bawdy French songs and laughing and weeping at our escape and the death of their comrades, a tragedy they seemed to regard as unremarkable as the storm itself. Death was as common as snow in the north country.