‘Ledgers before liquor, Simon,’ one mouthed promptly as a puppet on a string. ‘Discussion before dance. The men have to complete the portage, too.’
‘But after that …’ McTavish grinned a wolfish challenge. ‘I will out-dance all of you! Except Red Jacket, perhaps.’
‘Have you brought my presents?’ the Indian asked the Scot in English, startling me. Apparently he understood more than he let on.
‘And more. King George desires peace and partnership with all the Indians: the Ojibway and Fox and Sac and Winnebago and Menominee and even your own relatives, Red Jacket, the famed Sioux.’
‘That is our enemies’ word. I am Dakota. I kill King George’s enemies for you. I take their hair. I eat their courage. I steal their women.’
McTavish’s smile didn’t waver. ‘His majesty has uses for all his children.’
We went inside. The walls of the high, whitewashed dining hall were decorated with maps of the Canadian interior, antlers, crossed snowshoes, and Scottish broadswords. Long tables set with blue and white china were set for fifty men. Here the company bourgeois discussed business, while outside the voyageurs completed their portage. Drinking would commence this evening.
I explained our intent to explore Louisiana southwest of Lake Superior. ‘With the territory moving from Spanish to French control, and a new American president, Paris and Washington are simply seeking information,’ I explained. ‘I’m hoping to serve as a go-between, as I did at Mortefontaine, to facilitate understanding.’
‘From warrior to diplomat,’ Cecil said approvingly.
‘And Magnus here is a historian.’
‘How altruistic of you,’ McTavish said. ‘Just ambling about as tourists, are you? And I understand you were mixed up with Smith in Syria and Napoleon in Egypt, and now you’re halfway around the world?’
‘Duty takes me to odd places.’
‘How convenient to be everyone’s ally!’
‘It’s often a bother, actually.’
‘Where does the American wish to go?’ Red Jacket suddenly asked.
‘Well, we don’t know exactly,’ I replied, even though we vaguely planned to head in the direction of Thor’s hammer on the old Norse map, an area entirely uncharted. ‘I hope we can accompany the North West Company’s men as far as Rainy Lake and then strike south from there. Do you have a suggestion?’
‘Back home.’
The partners and clerks laughed.
‘The French do not stay,’ Red Jacket went on. ‘The British stay lightly. But the Americans’ – the chief pointed to me – ‘stay and wound the earth wherever they go. I have heard this from the great Shawnee Tecumseh and seen it with my own eyes, too. They drain the earth’s heart and blind the earth’s eyes.’ He turned to McTavish. ‘It is dangerous having these men here. Do not be fooled by them.’
‘How about it, Gage? Are you dangerous?’
‘No man is more persistently friendly than I. I’m your guest, and would not embarrass your hospitality.’
McTavish turned to the Indian. ‘So while I appreciate your bluntness Red Jacket, I trust the Somersets to answer for our American guest.’
‘What is bluntness?’
‘Truth,’ a company partner told the Indian.
‘The truth is that when this fort is abandoned, the forest will return. I, Red Jacket, vow it.’
‘And the truth, Red Jacket,’ McTavish said, ‘is that no matter how little the Sac and the Fox and the Ojibway and the Menominee and the Winnebago and the Dakota like white men here, all depend on these forts for the guns, powder, kettles, and blankets that keep you from starving or freezing. Don’t you? Just as we depend on you to hunt fur.’
The chief scowled, but said nothing.
‘We are a partnership. And now, gentlemen, to the maps.’
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Inside, the stockade was meetings, ledgers, fur presses, and warehouses. Outside, the voyageurs who’d lugged their loads across the portage began what was the greatest revelry of the year, a two-week bacchanal of feasting, drinking, dancing, and tupping whichever Indian maidens they could woo, buy, or marry. I left the partners to their serious business and wandered back out through the gates, Magnus in tow, to find Pierre and experience the fun of Rendezvous.
The French voyageur had made a temporary castle under his overturned canoe, stretching a tarpaulin from one rim. He was smoking a clay pipe, sleeves rolled and shirt unbuttoned, pleased as a prince. There was a fine summer breeze to keep the mosquitoes down, and a dazzling high-summer sun to give everything a polish. Within a fortnight he would be on his way into the wilderness for the long winter, but for now he could focus on eating, boasting, drinking, and song.
‘Lord Pierre!’ I greeted. ‘You look more at ease than the bourgeois in the Great Hall, with all their china and servants and dogs.’
‘That’s because they have too much.’ He pointed at the fort with the stem of his pipe. ‘The more that’s acquired, the more you want. The more you have, the more care you must take of it. The more you possess, the more you can lose. That is the secret of life, my friend! A sensible man like me is rich with nothing.’ He waggled his pipe at us. ‘Do not chase treasure. It will only bring you grief.’
‘McTavish said even the Indians need guns and blankets now.’
‘Oui! A generation ago, they answered to no man. Now they’ve forgotten, most of them, how to hunt with the bow and arrow. They live for trade, not for life. Instead of us learning all the right lessons from them, they are learning all the wrong ones from us.’
‘Yet surely we are superior if we are the conquerors.’
‘Who at this Rendezvous is slave, and who is free? The bourgeois in their stuffy meeting room, or me with my pipe?’
We sat to debate the point, I saying it was the company partners who gave the orders and would go home to snug houses in the winter, and Magnus opining that they spent so much time worrying about profit that they were blind to the glory around them.
Pierre compared ambition to rum. ‘A swallow warms you up, and a pint makes you happy. But a keg will kill you. Men like McTavish are never content.’
I wondered what restless Napoleon would say to that. ‘Red Jacket is with the partners,’ I said to change the subject. ‘He watches in one corner, arms folded.’
‘He and his renegades enforce their will,’ Pierre said. ‘He’s estranged from both the Ojibway and Dakota, a man of two nations who belongs fully to neither and who obeys no law or custom. Let Indian kill Indian, the traders say. It’s been frontier policy for three hundred years.’
‘It makes him a grumpy-looking bastard.’
‘Simon McTavish keeps his friends close and his enemies closer. Red Jacket’s lodge flies the blond hair of the man whose coat he wears, and rumour has it that he dined on the man’s flesh. Yet the Somersets count him an ally.’
‘British aristocrats are friends with a red cannibal?’
‘Those two aren’t the dandies they seem, my friend. Both have been in this country before, and know more of it than they let on. There was some kind of trouble in England, some money disappeared, and a scandal that involved them both.’
‘What scandal?’
He shrugged. ‘One hears stories, and I only believe what I see. Cecil is a dangerous man with a sword – I hear he killed an officer in a duel – and Aurora, as you know, is a crack shot. So stay away from Namida. It isn’t good to be mixed up with anything to do with Red Jacket or any woman at all if the English lady has an eye on you. Find an ugly squaw so Aurora won’t care. They’re all the same down where it counts, and the homely ones are far more appreciative.’
Crude and sensible advice that I hadn’t the slightest intention of following. ‘If that girl is really Mandan, she deserves to be back with her people.’