‘The hammer is a story. Red Jacket is real.’
‘No,’ said Magnus, stubbornly shaking his head. ‘I don’t trust the British, and I didn’t come this far to stop now. The women are right. Our path is that way.’
‘But we can’t paddle!’
‘Then learn to walk, little man.’ And Magnus set off after the two Indians as well.
‘Stop calling me little man!’
Well, tarnation. Here was a splendidly sensible idea – take our hair home while we still had it to take – and my Norwegian preferred suicide! Nothing I’d heard about the Dakota made me want them as enemies, and Red Jacket and the Somersets had our map to guess where we’d be going. The forest seemed dank and endless, no doubt full of malevolent beasts and cannibal monsters. But the ladies wanted home, Magnus wanted his hammer, and I? It did seem a pity not to at least take a peek for treasure. I sighed.
‘I’m sorry, Pierre. It appears we’re outvoted, three to two. I think I’d better go on to keep watch on Magnus. We both know he’s a lunatic.’
‘So are you, if you keep marching towards the Dakota!’
‘I’m in your debt for saving us. Take the canoe, go back to Grand Portage, and if we find something worth keeping I’ll share it with you anyway. I promise. Go back to your friends.’
‘But you’re my friends, now!’
‘Well, your friends are going that way.’ I pointed after the others.
‘Mon dieu, you are not donkeys but jackasses! When the Dakota stake us all to the plains, do not blame me!’
‘It will be entirely the women’s fault, but every lady I meet seems to have a definite mind of her own.’ I shouldered my rifle. ‘You’ve done enough.’
He groaned. ‘Merde, you will starve without me. Or drown. Or be drained by mosquitoes. Or trampled by a moose. No, Pierre must look after his donkeys. Very well. Help me sink our canoe to hide it, because the markings make clear it is Red Jacket’s. We’ll pray he doesn’t discover we went this way. And hope we can find another river, and another canoe, and the women’s village, and this stone tablet, and paradise. Somewhere off the edge of the earth!’
By hurrying, we caught the others in a few miles. ‘How far to your medicine man and his stone tablet?’ Pierre asked Namida, who accepted matter-of-factly that we’d followed her.
‘Many days. We have to go to where the trees end.’
‘Well, my friends, there it is.’ Pierre looked gloomy. ‘We’re at the edge of the blank spot on your old map. So I will go on your goose chase and watch you search the prairie for hammers. If you find nothing, it will make a good joke for my voyageur friends, and if you do find something, then you will share with your great friend Pierre. I will be rich and unhappy, like the bourgeois.’
‘Oh, we’ll find it,’ Magnus said.
‘And why do you still carry your map case, when we no longer have a map?’
‘Because it carries more than a map.’
‘But what, my friend? What is so precious?’
He looked at the four of us for a long time. I was curious too, of course. There was something more to his quest he hadn’t shared with me. ‘I’m taking something to Yggdrasil, not just taking something away,’ he said. ‘You might think me crazy.’
‘We already think you crazy!’
‘I prefer not to share it yet, because my hope may be futile. All I can tell you is that if we can find Thor’s hammer, I may find peace – and if not peace, then at least acceptance. I carry the blood of kings, and also their old stories of that time before time, when miracles could still happen.’
‘Miracles now?’ Pierre cried in exasperation.
‘Have faith, Frenchman.’
‘I’d rather have a canoe.’
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
We tramped into the worst country yet, thick woods and meandering swamp. The nights were growing crisper, but the days were still hot and buggy. There was no direct path, so we used the sun to strike west as close as we could.
‘The swamp will discourage pursuit,’ Magnus said.
‘That is good,’ Pierre said, ‘because we make one mile of progress for every three hours of circling, wading, and meandering.’
Indeed, it took us three days and forty miles of marching to make what I guessed was at best twenty miles in our desired direction, following hummocks across wetlands and moose trail through eerily quiet forest. Twice I saw water snakes undulate away and thought again of Apophis, the Egyptian serpent god. We shot and butchered a deer, but our hasty meals never caught up with our persistent hunger. I felt lean as rawhide.
Finally the still water seemed to show a slight current, waterweed bending, and we sensed we were nearing the path of another river. The marsh seemed to be tilting west. A final belt of woods and we reached broad water running south. This new river was too wide to easily swim, and the idea of struggling up its brushy banks was unappealing.
‘I hadn’t dreamt dry land could be so wet,’ I said.
‘A canoe remains the only way to travel in this country,’ said Pierre. ‘If we found a stand of birch and some spruce root we could build one, but even the least excuse for a canoe would take a week or more.’
‘Spring is the time to take the bark, not now,’ Namida said.
‘So we bushwhack? Swim?’
‘We build a fire, have a proper meal, and wait,’ she advised. ‘White men hurry too much. Start doing things the Indian way.’
I was hesitant to advertise our presence, but Namida reasoned that if Red Jacket was pursuing us across the swamps we’d have seen sign by now. So we roasted venison, boiled wild rice, and almost as if expected, an Ojibway hunting party drifted down on us after smelling our smoke and food.
‘See? Wait for help,’ said Namida.
By now I feared red strangers, but by extending the normal hospitality of Indians we got the same in return. These men were as different from Red Jacket’s band as a hotelier from a dungeon keeper: shy, curious visitors who accepted our food matter-of-factly because of the mutual aid expected in the wilderness. It is the poorest who are the most generous. There were four men hunting in two canoes, which left room for game and furs. The women interpreted and they informed us that upstream this new river turned west. So we purchased one of their boats with four of the last silver dollars I’d hidden in my moccasins. Pierre had a steel awl and we drilled holes in the metal so that they could be hung as medallions. The Ojibway were so pleased that they gave us extra food and explained how this river upstream led to a series of lakes, streams, and portages and finally yet another river, that one flowing west.
So we set off again, happy to be paddling now that we’d suffered the alternative. We’d been converted to voyageurs.
‘This may be the beginning of the Mississippi, but I’m not sure,’ Pierre said. ‘This country is a maze of rivers and lakes and I’ve not been here.’
‘Even the maps at Grand Portage were blank in these parts,’ I recalled.
The Frenchman pointed to the western bank. ‘If so, there’s your Louisiana, Ethan. We’re at the edge of Napoleon’s new empire.’ Our course along it led north and west.
Now there were no forts, no maps, no certainties. If a woolly elephant had poked its head from the trees along the riverbank, I wouldn’t have been the least surprised. We did see moose feeding in the shallows, great jaws dripping, and armadas of ducks on pewter-coloured lakes. In truth it did seem like an Eden, with the animals we saw not yet frightened by gunshots.
We passed villages of Indians as peaceful as Red Jacket was warlike, the children running along the bank to point at our white skin and Magnus’s red beard as we glided to a rest. The women streamed down to see us, curious, while the men hung slightly back with their bows, watchful but not unfriendly. Namida and Little Frog would ask, interpret, and then direct us on our way, always coming away with a gift of food. I left a coin at each one until I had no more.