by David Starr
“Coward” the soldier had called me. My shame grows by the day as the weight of that word bears down on me. Libby saved my life and in her greatest moment of need I abandoned her.
The winter crawls slowly along, and as the days pass, both my savings and optimism grow. Another two months, maybe three, and I’ll be able to go home. When I’m not working, finding my sister is all I can think about — until one rainy March morning when I’m called into Henry Mackenzie’s office.
To my great surprise the director of the North West Company is in the office, waiting to speak to me. “Thank you for coming so promptly, Duncan,” says McGillivray. “We’ve been most impressed with your work, and I have a proposition for you. How does a trip to Fort William for the Rendezvous sound?”
Almost two months away on the north shore of Lake Superior, Fort William is the Company’s inland headquarters. Early each summer, the Nor’Westers gather at the fort to make deals, establish policies and procedures and to socialize. I know it’s a privilege to be asked, but going to the Rendezvous is a dismal prospect. Going west means postponing my trip back to England by four months, maybe even five.
“Laird William, I’m honoured, but isn’t there someone more experienced?” I stammer.
McGillivray raises his eyebrow. “I hope you’re not refusing an assignment, lad. There’s a confidential letter I need delivered to Callum Mackay, the chief trader at Fort William. Aye, there are others who could do it, but the letter contains certain information about the security of our possessions in the West, and both the Company and the Crown need it delivered by someone trustworthy.
“I’ve been watching you,” McGillivray continues. “You’re bright, you always complete your tasks, and unlike some of the other lads, you keep your own counsel and avoid the temptations of the taverns. You’re just the person I need for this important mission.”
I can’t believe what I’m hearing. I’m two short months away from returning to England and finding Libby. This “honour” is the last thing I need. “Thank ye, Sir,” I say, “but I’m not sure I’m the right person fer the job.”
McGillivray’s voice is soft, but there’s no mistaking the iron underneath. “If you’re not prepared to undertake this task I fear you’ll need to look for a position somewhere else, my lad. We value loyalty above all else in the North West Company, and your loyalty requires you to go to Fort William.”
McGillivray stands over me. “There’s also the issue of that trouble you found yourself in back in Britain,” he says. “Many ships travel between Canada and England, and they carry gossip as well as supplies. More than a few stories about a young Highlander fleeing the King’s justice on the Liverpool docks have reached these shores, stories about a young lad who looks just like you.”
“I’m not sure I know what yer talking about, Sir,” I say weakly.
McGillivray reaches into a desk drawer and pulls out a familiar poster. “It came a few months after you arrived in Montreal. As far as I know it’s the only copy in Quebec. My agent on the waterfront was quick to bring it to me.”
My knees buckle and I nearly fall over when I stare at the poster. “The artist did a good job I have to say,” McGillivray adds. “The picture’s quite recognizable.”
“Sir, I …” Sweat pools on my face and I bow my head, unable to meet his gaze.
McGillivray carefully folds the poster and puts it back in the drawer. “As far as British justice is concerned, you’re not in Montreal, and your secret’s safe with me. That is of course if you’re willing to go to the Rendezvous. I have a confidential letter from the Colonial Office in London that must get to Fort William, and I need you to deliver it. Can I count on you, Duncan Scott? Can the Company count on you? We’re both from the Highlands after all, and Highlanders stick together. Don’t they?”
Trapped. I don’t have enough money to buy passage home, and if I’m fired from the North West Company, I’d be blacklisted, unlikely to find another job. And if Mr. McGillivray should talk to the commander of the British army garrison at Montreal? I feel an imaginary noose tighten around my neck. I don’t even want to think about what would happen to me then.
I lift my head and address my employer. “Of course, Laird William. Whatever ye need me to do.”
“Splendid!” he says. “You leave for Fort William in a week. Deliver the dispatch safely and I can assure you that anything you may have done in England stays there.”
Chapter 13
We prepare to depart from the North West Company warehouse at the village of Lachine, on the western edge of Montreal. A furious set of rapids between Montreal and Lachine makes river travel from the main headquarters far too risky. For generations, the village has been used as staging ground for voyageurs and explorers heading west.
On the riverfront, bales of cloth as well as tools and other metal products are stacked to the gunwales of ten large canoes. Nearly forty feet long, the Montreal canoe, or canot du maître as it is called by the voyageurs, carries a crew of sixteen men and is absolutely vital to the Company.
The man in charge of transporting the priceless cargo to Fort William is Luc Lapointe, a wiry, leather-faced voyageur with a legendary reputation in the Company. In the final moments before departure, the heavily bearded Frenchman is paying close attention to every detail.
“Remarkable craft, mon ami,” Lapointe says to me in a thick French accent, gently stroking the side of a canoe, his trained eye looking for tears in the birchbark. “Très fragile — nothing more than birch skin wrapped around cedar thwarts. A sharp rock would split her in half and a heavy boot would hole her, but this canoe can carry more than six thousand pounds and take a dozen men across the continent then back again if she’s treated with respect, n’est-ce pas?”
“Ye talk as if it were a person,” I say, only half-listening.
“Mon ami! Show me a man who can carry one hundred bales on his back for eighteen hours a day! Look after the canoes and they’ll see us through to Fort William.”
Lapointe reaches into a leather bag and pulls out a small amount of a thick, sticky substance. It’s dark brown and bitter-smelling. I can’t possibly imagine why the voyageur has such a thing.
“Spruce gum. The bark’s sewn together by watape, spruce tree roots, and where the bark pieces meet, the seams leak. Without the resin plugging the holes, the canoes would take on water and sink ten minutes after pushing off. No gum? No canoes. No canoes? No fur trade. It’s that simple.”
Lapointe rubs a handful of the sticky material into a small gap between two pieces of bark. “Regardez-moi, Duncan. If you want to survive in the wild, you have a great deal to learn.”
But I have no desire to spend more time in the wild than absolutely necessary. I’m no voyageur — just a reluctant messenger — and the way I’m feeling now it hardly matters if my canoe floats or sinks to the bottom of the river. My mood doesn’t improve when William McGillivray himself comes down to the dock.
“Give this to Callum Mackay when you reach Fort William,” McGillivray instructs me quietly, giving me a small waterproof oilskin bag. As he does, I notice that the director’s hand trembles slightly. “The sealed letter inside contains information vital to Crown and Company so whatever happens, do not lose it. Lapointe alone knows you carry an important message, but even he doesn’t know what it says. No one is to read it but Mackay. Do you understand? Nobody, including you.”
“Aye, I’ll keep it safe, Sir,” I promise. Reluctant messenger or not, I realize the importance of the job I’ve been given.
“I know you will, lad,” says McGillivray as Lapointe orders the men to the canoes. “Have a safe journey.”
“How will I know who Mr. Mackay is?” I ask, climbing into the canoe.
McGillivray laughs. “Don’t worry about that! Mackay’s unmistakable.”
The voyageurs propel the canots du maître expertly away from the docks. Lapointe begins to sing and soon the others join in, their voices echoing across the black water. “W
e’re not travelling far today,” says Lapointe when the song ends, “just to the village of Sainte Anne de Bellevue.”
“But that’s only a few hours up the river,” I say. “I’ve studied the Company maps for months. Why are we stopping so soon?”
“We have important business to conduct there,” Lapointe explains. “Besides, I wouldn’t be in too great a rush if I were you. Sainte Anne’s the last taste of civilization many fur traders ever get to enjoy.”
Chapter 14
After only a few hours on the water, I’m exhausted. A winter keeping ledgers and organizing a warehouse is hardly demanding physical labour, and paddling a loaded canoe is something else entirely. My shoulders and arms ache, and my palms are soon covered in weeping blisters from the butt of the paddle, but my body isn’t the only thing that hurts.
It’s been nearly a year since I last saw Libby, and my whole soul aches to be sailing across the Atlantic, back to Liverpool. Instead, here I am, travelling farther and farther away from my sister. I paddle in silence, alone in my thoughts, and don’t notice the approaching village until the canoes glide to shore on the outskirts of Sainte Anne de Bellevue, shaking me out of my dark mood.
“What about the rum, Luc?” asks a voyageur, referring to a duty the men have been anxiously waiting for Lapointe to complete. Rum, nearly a gallon per man, is traditionally distributed at the start of every trip to celebrate the voyage and to boost morale.
“Ce soir — tonight, but first we have spiritual matters to attend to.” Leaving one of the paddlers behind to guard the canoes, we walk along a little path to the village. The track widens and turns into a street that leads to a small grey-stone church. I’m surprised at the reverence that sweeps through the men of the brigade as we enter the chapel through the heavy wooden doors.
Although Catholic from birth, the voyageurs hardly ever act in a manner a priest would approve of, but now they’ve turned into different men altogether. At the front door, Lapointe removes his cloth hat respectfully. “We pray to Sainte Anne and ask her to keep us safe. Do you have any money, mon ami?”
I’m not sure why I would need money in the wilderness. “Nae. I left all my money with Henry Mackenzie.”
Lapointe hands me a small copper coin. “Place it in the alms box when we go in. It’s bad luck not to.”
I do as I’m told and line up with the others to receive a blessing from the priest, a gaunt old man with thinning white hair. When each man has received his blessing, we leave the church and return to the canoes. “Are you Catholic, Duncan?” Lapointe asks as we walk back along the path.
“Aye,” I say, “though my family only went to the kirk fer St. Andrew’s Day and Christmas.”
“The only time I step foot in a church myself is here in Sainte Anne,” confides Lapointe.
“So why do ye go at all?”
Lapointe smiles cryptically. “You’ve never travelled in the wilderness, mon ami. I know what can happen in the wilds, and believe me, there’s nothing wrong with asking for a little intervention divine. Out here, a man can use all the help he can get.”
Chapter 15
When Lapointe distributes the rum I have difficulty believing my riotous companions are the same group of pious worshippers I saw in the church just a few hours before. I receive my own share, but the fiery liquid burns my throat and I spit it out immediately, much to the amusement of the men.
“There’s plenty of water in the river if you prefer!” says Pierre Fournier, a likeable voyageur with a thick blonde beard and the best sense of humour in the brigade. I manage a weak smile and give my bottle away, much to the delight of the men who toast my generosity long into the night.
We depart the next morning well before dawn. “We have a long way to go, and rum or not we always start before the sun rises,” says Lapointe as the canoes slip out into the black water. “We’ll be leaving the St. Lawrence for the Ottawa River around the next bend, and the little farmhouse you’ll see on the shore is the last sign of civilization you’ll encounter for a long time.”
The farm and the mouth of the Ottawa River appear, and on Lapointe’s command, we make a hard turn to starboard. The Ottawa’s current is strong and I strain to push my paddle through the water. “Does the river get faster than this?” I ask, sweat forming on my forehead.
Lapointe laughs. “This is nothing. Ahead we’ll paddle on rivers so fast they make the Ottawa feel like a pond. And that’s on a good day. On the bad ones we’ll spend our time portaging waterfalls and rapids with nearly two hundred pounds of gear on our backs — and with a canoe high above our heads as well. Enjoy your time on the river; you’ll be walking soon enough.”
Two days’ travel upstream, the gurgling of the Ottawa River grows into a low rumble, a sound that increases to a thunderous roar as we round a turn in the river and see the waterfall. Lapointe shouts above the noise as he directs the brigade to shore. “La Grande Chaudière! The Big Boiler it’s called in English,” he says. “A remarkable sight, mais non?”
I can only nod in amazement as I watch the river tumble violently thirty feet down a series of rocky outcrops, shooting foam high up into the air. “You won’t find the waterfall as remarkable as Lapointe says it is in a moment or so,” says Fournier, reluctantly stepping out of the canoe onto the riverbank. “We’ll soon find out what kind of a voyageur you really are when you start walking.”
Fournier lifts a bale onto my back and my legs buckle under the weight. “This will make it a bit easier,” he says, wrapping one of the brightly coloured sashes favoured by the voyageurs behind the wooden frame backpack and around my forehead.
“It’s called a ceinture fléchée, a tumpline,” he explains. “It spreads the load evenly across the whole body and lets a man carry more than he weighs — if he uses it well. Look to Lapointe and you’ll see what I mean.”
I watch as Lapointe walks confidently along the path with three bales on his back, more than two hundred and fifty pounds of gear, secured by his own bright crimson sash.
“We measure portages by how many steps we walk,” Fournier says, “and Chaudière has six hundred and forty-three of them. Luc wants the portages to be over as soon as possible so he carries half of the goods on his own to speed things up!”
We walk slowly, carefully placing one foot in front of the other. “Watch your step,” Fournier warns. “More than a few men have fallen into the river here. If you slip, throw the gear off your body as quickly as you can before you reach the water; it’s better to feel Lapointe’s wrath for losing the cargo than flounder at the bottom of the river with the fish!”
We make three trips on the portage. I carry three bales to Lapointe’s nine, and when we’re finally finished I look at the leader of the brigade with a respect that borders on awe.
Lapointe loads the last bale, looking no more tired than if he’d just returned from a leisurely stroll. “Allez! No time to dawdle.”
The days soon settle into a steady rhythm. We carry trade goods that the North West Company urgently needs for the upcoming trading season, and we’re driven by the knowledge that Fort William, and the Company itself, waits impatiently for our arrival.
Despite my constant yearning to return to England and find Libby, I marvel at the beauty of the land around me. I also discover that I’m quite adept at paddling. “Bon! You’re doing well,” says Lapointe. “We’ll make a voyageur out of you yet.” I flush with the praise, but when I see the massive body of water that waits for us at the mouth of the French River, all my new-found confidence quickly disappears.
“We need a ship to travel on this! Not canoes,” I say, staring at an endless expanse of water.
“Duncan, this is Georgian Bay, only an inlet of Lake Huron,” says Lapointe. “Just wait until you see Lake Superior; it makes this place look like a duck pond.”
Before we continue, Lapointe and the others ship their paddles and toss coins, buttons and tobacco into the rough water of the lake. “What’s that about?” I ask.
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br /> “Old Lady Wind, La Vieille, will sink us in a heartbeat if we anger her, so we give gifts to keep her happy and as far away from the canoes as possible.”
“I thought Sainte Anne protected us,” I say.
Lapointe drops another handful of tobacco into the slate-grey water. “I don’t think Old Lady Wind knows Sainte Anne. Besides, we’re now a very long way away from her church. We’re in La Vieille’s country now, and I have no problems praying to whoever will help me stay alive.”
As we push farther along Lake Huron, I learn the names and uses of all the trees and plants that grow along the lakeshore. Lapointe and the others teach me how to use a flintlock rifle and pistol, and despite my initial doubts at Lachine, I even master the art of waterproofing canoes. But there are also many long hours of silent paddling, and at those times my mind drifts to my family.
I miss my parents terribly, and I’m constantly plagued by the guilt of staying home on the day they died, then abandoning my sister. It’s torture to think that if things had gone according to my plans I would have been on a ship by now, eastbound on the Atlantic, instead of travelling west on a lake to the middle of nowhere.
But there is nothing I can do except try to put these thoughts aside and paddle. And paddle we do, day after day, week after week, until just before sunset, six weeks after leaving Montreal, we reach Fort William, a large collection of warehouses, residences and workshops nestled behind enormous wooden palisades on the shores of Lake Superior, a massive lake that more than lives up to its name.
Dozens of canoes, small sailboats and other vessels sit tied up to the long wharf, while even more lie overturned on the shore. Over it all, our flag — a large British ensign on a red background with the Company’s initials prominently displayed in white — flutters proudly in the evening wind.