The tavern was as crowded as the George Inn in Penrith on a fair day. If traders were in short supply this year, there were plenty of soldiers to take their place. The best table was taken up by a group of blue-coated officers from the fort. Even the men in civilian dress had muskets propped beside them as they ate. Alan told me these were militiamen, and they'd been in the woods all day at their training, which comforted me not at all. They had some white women with them, who seemed pretty bold in speech and manner to me, but then I'd never met a woman who frequented taverns and such low places, and for all I know they may have been virtuous American wives, perhaps even mothers. Several people hailed Alan when we went in, and two militiamen squeezed up to make room for him. That surprised me; I'd understood from Alan he counted Americans his enemies, but now it seemed this was not so. I listened to their talk: ‘twas about a fellow they knew who'd killed the bear that killed him – that is to say, the two bodies had been found together, the one shot and the other mauled to death. I had nothing to say about that, so I ate my fish pie in silence. There were bursts of song from a rowdy group by the kitchen door. Others joined in. Everyone but my neighbours, still engrossed in their bear stories, was listening:
Come, strike the bold anthems, the war dogs are howling,
Already they eagerly snuff up their prey;
The red cloud of war o'er our forest is scowling,
Soft peace spreads her wings, and flies weeping away . . .
I looked round at the flushed faces. At the end of each verse almost everyone raised their tankards and joined in the last line. At Penrith it would have been ‘Hearts of Oak’, and if my father had been there he would at once have departed from a scene so martial, and led me away with him. But I was alone, and listened to the end:
Your hands, then, dear comrades, round liberty's altar,
United; we swear by the souls of the brave.
Not one from the strong resolution shall falter,
To live independent or sink in the grave.
Then freemen, file up! Lo the blood banners flying:
The high bird of liberty screams in the air,
Beneath her, oppression and liberty dying—
Success to the beaming American Star!
A buzz of talk broke out. I nudged Alan. ‘I'm ready to go home. Thee needn't come with me.’
‘Are you sure, brother Mark? You know the way?’
‘Ay.’
Outside the air was cool and sweet. Beyond the scattered houses the lake lay like a pool of melted silver under the moon. I could hear the faint sound of Indian drums, and in the distance a wild chanting, very unlike the tavern songs, which made my blood run chill. An image came to my mind of the cool wind on the ridges of Blencathra, of the way a mountain range sweeps from peak to peak in lovely curves. Sometimes thee stands on a summit and it's like being in the saddle, looking down at the sweep of a horse's neck, when the ground looks little and far away as thee gallops over it. I thought of other summer evenings, far away, but this was Mackinac. Perhaps in peacetime it was a place for ordinary folk and their trade, but now the people seemed to be here only to bear arms, in order that they might fight with outward weapons any who came to war against them.
1 I walked the Helvellyn ridge from end to end in the snows of First Month, and bivouacked upon Fair Field, just because as far as I knew it had never been done before and everyone said it was impossible. Months later, when I told Alan about that long walk, he was interested, and asked questions, but I realised he didn't understand. I had been involved in no great intrigue, no machinations of war or commerce; I had no comrades and there was no prize. Sometimes, I realised, he found me more foreign to his understanding than I found him.
2 Loic told me the correct story in the winter. It was the muskrat who brought up soil from the depths of the lake, when all the animals were in danger of drowning in the Great Flood. Nanubushu sprinkled the soil on the back of the Great Turtle, that through him all might be saved.
CHAPTER 14
I LIVED IN AMERICAN MACKINAC NINE DAYS. IT WAS a troubled place to be. The great warehouses of the South West Company, besides all the stores of the independent traders, were empty. No goods had been allowed into the United States from Upper Canada for over a year. ‘So Martin Kerners fills his canoes elsewhere?’ I asked Alan.
‘Hush, Mark, you're too sharp for your own good. Perhaps Martin Kerners has an agent who knows of other sources. There's plenty of trade in the woods if you know where to look for it.’
‘So why does Martin Kerners send his . . . agent ... to Mackinac just now, if it's not where the trade is?’
‘Perhaps Monsieur Kerners’ agent – the one who knows where to look for trade in the backwoods – can't afford to leave Mackinac right now.’
‘This agent expects something to happen here quite soon, then?’
‘Hush, brother. Don't even think about it. Now, I'm a free man this evening – no goods, no work. How can I entertain you?’
‘If thy business here is done, thee could tell me when we'll set out.’
‘Ah, but my business here isn't quite done. But I promise, as soon as I've dealt with things here, we'll think about our expedition.’
I had to be content with that. I got ready myself, buying a few necessaries at the South West Company store: a good hunting knife, fish-hooks, a tin mug, a billycan, and a canvas haversack like Alan's. I spent most evenings alone at McGulpin's house. The first evening I hardly noticed Alan's absence, because, true to his word, he produced a map for me, the first I'd seen since I'd been in the North West Company council chamber in Montreal. Without a map it had been like seeing through a glass darkly, and all was now made plain. Alan said the map was; an old one, and there'd been a good deal of surveying done in the last few years, but I was content.
It was an English-made map, by one John Cary, but it showed the western part of the United States, including a vast green-shaded area which was the Western Territory, which extended east-west from Mackinac to the Mississippi River, and north-south from Lake Superior to Kentucky. Lake Michigan penetrated far into this region; in its waters I found Moneton Is, which I realised must be North and South Manitou Islands. I studied Lake Michigan for a long time before turning to the route of my own journey. There was all of Upper Canada, and there was Canada's northern boundary, the Outaouais River. To my delight every portage was marked, and those on the Mattawa too; the eleven portages on the Mattawa were so close together there was barely room for the script. I examined the approaches to Lake Superior: by St Mary's Falls there was a note: Here great quantities of Fish – particularly Pickerell, Trout and Whitefish of large size. I had a brief vision of Thomas Nolan's loaded dinner table. I looked next for Yonge Street in Upper Canada. It wasn't marked, but Gwilimbury, where David Willson dwelt, was written clearly. From there I traced Rachel's travels through Pennsylvania. I couldn't find Catawissa, but there was the Susquehanna River, and there was Genesee. I found Fort Detroit, and Fort George at Niagara; various snatches of talk I'd heard were beginning to make sense. I also discovered, to the north of the Indian Boundary line of 1795, Fort Wayne, to which Friends had prevented aunt Judith from venturing. Next I began to study the areas of the Indian tribes, but the Ojibwa were nowhere to be seen. Later I asked Alan, and he showed me where it said Chippeway Territory, right across the northern part of the American western territory, and through Upper Canada. Indian boundaries, he remarked, are not the same as ours. Indeed, the border between Upper Canada and the United States was given more emphasis than anything else on the map: a fat red line was drawn across the middle of each lake and their connecting rivers, all but Lake Michigan, which lay bare of any boundary or settlement. Apart from a quantity of rivers which must have been surveyed at some time, all those shores and islands were shown as untouched wilderness.
The fellow whose room I took had left a few books. I had read no secular literature at all until I came to Mackinac. So I began a lifelong adventure in an unpropitious sp
irit of apathy, when I took up an exceedingly battered copy of A History of New York from the Beginning of the World to the End of the Dutch Dynasty by one Diedrich Knickerbocker. When Alan came home that evening I was halfway through the Creation of the World, and feeling altogether confused, and not a little shocked. Alan explained to me that the account was intended to be witty, and took the trouble to read a passage and expound to me the humour in it. Eventually I grasped it, and all of a sudden I began to laugh out loud at the very audacity of such writing. Alan, much encouraged, continued to read, and whether he laughed at my newly-acquired skill of being amused or at the text, I know not, but we concluded with a very merry evening, and I found myself in more charity with him than ever I had felt before.1
Alan told me that the Company agent who used to have my room was an old friend of the author of A History of New York. ‘I miss Brevoort,’ Alan said. ‘He was the American Fur Company agent – Mr Astor's representative – last summer. He's gone back to New York; he wasn't a man for the backwoods. But he was the very best of company. Which reminds me, I should write him a letter, while I still can. I'll tell him you like living's book.’
‘I understood that the Americans were not thy friends?’
‘No, no, that would be most uncivilised. In the South West we're working with Americans all the time. Astor – he owns the American Fur Company – was just as keen to get the embargo lifted as any of us. We thought he'd do it too. He's the richest man in America – in the whole world, some say – only who knows but what the Emperor of China . . . but that by the by. Anyway, Astor knows the President personally. But he couldn't reverse the embargo any more than we could. In business I wouldn't trust him an inch – nor he us – that's why we're all bound together in the South West. A marriage of convenience and complete distrust. But the Americans are some of the best men to work with. Especially Brevoort. I miss him.’
During my days on Mackinac I became even more confused about this worldly notion of allies and enemies. I walked about the island and found everywhere a people similar in every way, so far as I could tell, to those I'd left behind at the Sault. I wandered freely around the outside walls of the fort, and yet for all they knew I could have been any kind of spy. In spite of its impressive situation on the cliff top, when I walked round the back of the fortress I found it quite exposed, where the ground rose behind it towards a little hill. When I mentioned this to Alan he grinned and said, ‘Well observed, brother Mark! I didn't think you learned military strategy in your Religious Society.’
‘It seemed fairly obvious to me. If I wanted to get in, I'd go round the back.’
Alan replied with a ribald jest which I shall not write. Before I met Alan I had never before heard anyone, even my cousin John, speak so – or not in English, anyway, for I'd grown quite used to the voyageurs. I never responded, and I think on the whole Alan desisted from speaking disrespectfully of women when I was present, but sometimes he forgot.
Word of my presence had spread as fast as it would have done in Mungrisdale if an Indian Chief had appeared in our midst in fall war paint and regalia. I was met (and I fear this might not happen if that same Indian Chief appeared on a Lakeland doorstep) with open kindness and a frank curiosity. For my days were not idle. Alan might have deserted me, but I had the direction given to me in aunt Judith's letter. As Alan picked up his hat to leave, the first morning we were at McGulpin's house, I said to him, ‘Wait, friend, I have somewhat to ask thee.’
‘Won't it wait?’
‘No.’ I nearly said I'd not come nine hundred miles from Montreal in order to wait, but a show of temper would not aid me. ‘Judith Scott says in her letter that Rachel's direction here was the house of Madame La Framboise. Rachel and thee didn't live in this house then?’
‘No, I couldn't have brought her here. The place was full of traders – that was back when we had something to trade. You're not seeing Mackinac the way it usually is, brother Mark.’
‘So she and thee lived – where?’
‘As you say. We rented the little cabin next door to this house. It belongs to our neighbour, Madame La Framboise.’
‘Thee means the house with the hollyhocks? The one who was midwife to Rachel? Is she a friend of thine?’
‘I told you – she christened my son.’ Suddenly his face lightened. He grinned at me. ‘A rival, more like. A serious threat to the South West Company – and she a woman, and an Indian at that! Don't look so mystified. Madeleine La Framboise is an independent trader – took over her husband's business after he was shot in front of her eyes down at Grand River a few years back. She was making a mint, too – I don't know how the embargo's hit her. I think her stocking's full enough. When you say a friend – yes, Rachel found a friend in her. After . . . when my son died, she was a true friend. I've not seen her lately. To be honest, she's not pleased with me.’
‘Why not?’
‘Same reason as you're not, brother.’ He was being flippant again, and I knew I could do nothing with him. ‘But a man can only wear the willow so long. A shame perhaps, but that's the fact of the matter. À bientôt!‘ And he was gone.
I'd noticed the garden next to McGulpin's every time we'd passed it. Like ours, it was enclosed by a cedar picket fence to keep out straying animals, but there the resemblance ended. The garden of Madame La Framboise looked at first sight wholly English, with hollyhocks and mignonette, marigolds and pansies. Now I opened the gate and went in. The plants were arranged the way my mother – and now my wife – have them, with herbs and salads in among the flowers. The herbs were mostly unfamiliar to me, but I recognised one or two plants I'd seen wild in Upper Canada. Bees buzzed among the lavender. It brought home so close I felt my eyelids prickle, but I wasn't here to shed tears. The cabin was no larger than McGulpin's house, and it too had square glass windows with painted frames, and a proper chimney. I could see curtains trimly looped inside the window. I knocked briskly.
To my surprise a black maid in a print gown opened the door. I gave my name, and asked if Madeleine La Framboise was at home, and she ushered me into a parlour. The table and chairs, and the sofa against the wall, were European. The woven blankets and hangings, and the bearskin hearthrug, were entirely Indian. The floor was not earth, but boarded, and by the sofa there was a carpet. I had hardly expected such luxury. There was not only money here, but an indefinable quality distilled out of two cultures; I had not thought they could be married so harmoniously. A print of Montreal Island hung over the mantelshelf. I was looking at it when, a voice behind me said, ‘Mr Green?’
A tall dark-skinned woman was standing there. I hadn't heard her come in. She was dressed the Indian way, in a quill-embroidered deerskin dress, leggings and moccasins, with no concessions to European fashion whatsoever. Her black hair hung down in two long braids. I was surprised to see grey in it; she held herself like a young woman. In fact everything here surprised me. The maidservant, the comfortable room . . . none of this had led me to expect anyone so uncompromisingly Indian.
‘Madeleine La Framboise?’ She inclined her head. ‘My name is Mark Greenhow. Thee knew my sister Rachel, when she was married to Alan Mackenzie.’
She looked me over dispassionately. ‘Yes, I knew Rachel. You'd better sit down, Mr Greenhow.’ Her English was perfect, though she had an accent which could have been French or Indian; I didn't know. ‘I've been waiting for you to come to me. I was surprised, though, when they told me you were in Mackinac. Rachel said her family had quite cast her off?’
‘Perhaps thee misunderstood her. She was disowned by the Religious Society to which we belong, and that must have been a grievous burden. But I – I'm her brother – naught can change that, however much I think her judgement wanting.’
‘You've come all the way from England?’
‘Ay.’ I leaned forward. ‘She gave thy name as her direction. I've come to seek her. If there's anything thee can tell me, I beg thee to do so. I've so little to go on, and I don't know the country.’
> ‘You'll never know the country.’ She was studying me closely. I met her eyes. ‘So Mackenzie brought you here. He has told you his story, n'est-ce pas?‘
‘Ay.’
‘You know she was lost a long way south of here? On an island in Lake Michigan. I guess you've no way of getting there.’
‘I know all that. Alan told me.’
‘He told you that he gave up the search and left, and has never gone back again?’
‘Ay.’ There was a pause. ‘He said she'd never have survived a winter, if she'd still been on South Manitou. He was certain she was not. He searched the island, and then he searched the shores of the lake all round.’
‘I know that area far better than Mackenzie ever will.’
‘Thee does? And does thee think she's still there? Is it possible?’
‘Anything is possible, Mr Greenhow.’ She made a restless movement. ‘I was born on Grand River. My grandfather was Kewinaquot – Returning Cloud – a chief of the Ottawa people. I winter every year at the rapids on Grand River, among my own people. If Rachel were among the southern Ottawa I would know it.’
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