The Hunt for the North Star

by The Hunt for the North Star (retail) (epub)

  The Hunt for the North Star

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Maps

  Prologue

  The Greco Gambit

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Position Play

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Winter Games

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Endgame

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  A War of 1812 Epic

  Copyright

  Niagara Frontier

  Province of Canada

  Prologue

  The night air had teeth. Sharp, jagged particles of snow, blown by a strong north wind, swept through the little town of York, blanketing the streets in sudden white. Magnus Fraser, stepping out of Jordan’s Hotel into the darkness of Ontario Street, felt the snow sting his eyes and cheeks. Cursing, he turned up his collar and stood for a moment, waiting while his vision adjusted to the darkness. Another man came out of the hotel and stopped beside him, rubbing his gloved hands together.

  ‘It would seem that winter has arrived,’ the second man said.

  ‘Winter,’ said Fraser in tones of gloom. ‘I still cannot believe that people choose to make their homes in this godforsaken country. Snow and ice and cold every damned day, and months to wait until spring.’

  ‘Assuming any of us live to see it,’ said the other man. His name was John Beverley Robinson; he was a young man, still in his early twenties, but despite his youth he was attorney general of Upper Canada. He had been appointed just a few weeks earlier, after his predecessor was killed at the Battle of Queenston.

  ‘I wouldn’t bet a farthing on us lasting until Christmas,’ Robinson continued. ‘The Americans are preparing to attack again, and with Polaris and his agents feeding them information from inside our high councils, there is every chance they will succeed.’

  Fraser frowned. ‘Are you certain they’re coming? It’s late in the season. Most armies would be going into winter quarters by now.’

  ‘Our scouts are quite convinced of it,’ said Robinson. ‘They will attack the Niagara frontier again; exactly where and when, we have no idea.’

  ‘And what are we doing about it?’ Fraser asked.

  Robinson spread his gloved hands. ‘Sitting and waiting. What else can we do? General Sheaffe has written to Sir George Prévost in Montreal, begging for reinforcements. He won’t get them, of course, because there aren’t any. Every man, horse and gun that can be spared has been sent to join Wellington in Spain. And so here we are, with two battalions of regulars and a handful of militia, facing an American army of fifty thousand men. We’re outnumbered twenty to one.’

  They walked down Ontario Street towards the waterfront. Snow whipped around them, blurring the outlines of the houses. Here and there, rays of lamplight shone through cracks in the shutters, bright streaks amid the whirling darkness. Someone passed them walking in the opposite direction, whistling despite the weather. Fraser recognised the tune; it was a popular song, ‘The Ballad of John MacLea’, composed in honour of the Canadian hero who had almost single-handedly won the Battle of Queenston last month. Or so people said. Fraser had been around for too long and seen too much to believe in heroes.

  Today was the 25th of November 1812. America and Britain had been at war for five months, at a time when Britain was already involved in a life-and-death struggle with Napoleon Bonaparte and his French empire. Out at sea, British and American warships played cat and mouse amid the Atlantic storms, but the real point of crisis was here in Upper Canada. The Americans had already tried twice to invade and had been repulsed, first at Detroit earlier in the summer and then at Queenston.

  ‘Polaris is the key to everything,’ Robinson said. ‘He seems to know all our plans, all our intentions, almost before we know them ourselves. We have no idea who he is. He could be a disaffected British officer, or one of those Canadians who believes that Canada’s true destiny is to become part of America, or even an American agent planted before the war. All we know is that he must be found.’

  ‘I understand,’ said Fraser. ‘Sir George Prévost told me all this back in Montreal. He is well aware of the threat.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Robinson. He paused. ‘You’ve only been in York for a week. I suppose it is too soon for you to have made any headway.’

  They walked on for a few moments. Up ahead, the parliament buildings were dim shapes in the night and snow.

  ‘As a matter of fact, I have,’ said Fraser, and he could not quite keep the satisfaction from his voice. ‘I was going to wait and make a full report tomorrow, but I may as well tell you now. I have found a man who claims to know who Polaris is. I am meeting him this very evening.’

  Robinson halted in surprise. ‘I am impressed,’ he said, but the tone of his voice suggested he was also puzzled. ‘I have been trying for a month to discover some clue as to his identity, and I have found nothing.’

  ‘That is why you needed my services,’ said Fraser. ‘This is my profession, Mr Robinson. I was a Bow Street Runner for ten years, and a professional enquiry agent for longer than that. Sir George hired me as his chief intelligencer because he knows I am the best.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Robinson doubtfully. ‘This informant of yours. Who is he?’

  Fraser rubbed his forehead, touching the small scar over his left eyebrow. ‘Come, man. You know better than that. We’re playing a game of secrets and lies here. Even if I did ask his name, I doubt he would tell me the truth. All I know is that he is willing to betray his master.’

  ‘But how does he know who Polaris is?’

  ‘Polaris doesn’t work alone. He has an organisation – possibly quite a big one. My guess is that this man is one of his junior lieutenants, who for whatever reason has a grudge against his chief and is ready to sell him out.’

  ‘He wants money?’

  ‘That’s what he said. I’m to come tonight after dark, alone, with a hundred dollars in gold.’

  ‘Alone?’ Robinson stared at him. ‘Fraser, you could be walking into a trap. Let me come with you.’

  Fraser shook his head. ‘We have to play by his rules. He’ll be watchful, and if he sees someone with me, he’ll suspect betrayal. Then he’ll vanish.’

  Robinson said nothing, but his disquiet radiated through the snow.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ Fraser said. ‘I know how to handle myself.’

  Still unhappy, Robinson nodded. ‘All right. But don’t wait until morning. Report to me as soon as the meeting concludes. I will be at home.’

  ‘Aye,’ said Fraser. ‘Tell your cook to have some coffee on.’ He stamped his booted feet to keep them warm. ‘A drop of rum wouldn’t go amiss, either.’

  Robinson said nothing more. Fraser raised his hand in salute, then turned and walked away.

  * * *

  On the far side of Lake Ontario, another clandestine rendezvous was taking place. Unlike the one in York, the two people meeting here at Niagara knew a great deal about each other, and the arrangement was familiar and well-practised. They met in a house on the edge of th
e village, the man entering via the rear door and then being escorted by a maidservant into the drawing room, where he was greeted by a black-haired woman in her late twenties. Their conversation was limited, and its tone was businesslike rather than friendly. At the end of the transaction, the man reached into his pocket and took out a packet of money, which he laid on the table.

  ‘Our understanding remains the same,’ he said.

  The woman nodded. The man retraced his steps to the rear door and slid out into the night.

  After he had gone, the woman sat for a few moments staring at the money. She was strikingly beautiful, with high cheekbones and thin eyebrows curving over dark eyes with long, delicate lashes. A tiny web of wrinkles ran out from the corners of her eyes – marks of memory and sorrow.

  She sighed and stood up, shaking out the folds of her skirt. Putting on a heavy overcoat, she went upstairs into a tiny dark room. A telescope, a long brass tube mounted on gimbals, gleamed faintly in the light. Quickly she scanned the ground around the house, but saw nothing, no unfamiliar shadows in the darkness. She sighed once more, and then swung the telescope upwards, concentrating on the stars.

  * * *

  Turning his back on the parliament buildings, Fraser walked down Palace Street, following the line of the waterfront. Lake Ontario lay dark to his left. His boots crunched in the slush on the street. The snow, although thick, was melting as soon as it landed; by morning it would likely be gone.

  In the distance he could see a beam of light shining dimly through the snow: the lighthouse on Gibraltar Point at the entrance to the harbour. In the big houses along the waterfront, a few unshuttered windows cast yellow rectangles of lamplight into the street. Fraser avoided these, keeping to the shadows and tilting his hat so the brim shaded his face.

  Once, passing a house, he heard a baby crying; from another came the sound of a violin playing a Mozart sonata with considerable skill. Otherwise, apart from the crunch of his own footsteps, all was silent around him. The falling snow deadened all but the closest sounds. People moved like silent ghosts in the street, their coats and hats brushed with white. There was a strange sense of detachment from the world, as if he was invisible to the people around him, seeing but unseen.

  Suddenly the hair stood up on the back of his neck. No. Not unseen. Someone is watching me.

  He turned sharply, but the street behind him was empty. He stood in the shadows for a long time, watching, but still saw nothing. Aye, well, he told himself. Just because you can’t see anything doesn’t mean there’s nothing to be seen. Go carefully now, laddie.

  He walked on more slowly, all his senses alert. He had been sanguine when talking to Robinson, but he knew full well there might be an ambush waiting for him. On the other hand, he had survived ambushes before, in the London slums and the streets of Paris and the battlefields of Europe. As he had said to Robinson, he knew how to handle himself in a fight.

  He reached King Street in the western part of the town. The houses here were newer and more widely spaced, separated by open pastureland and clumps of trees looming dark through the falling snow. Fraser reached into his coat and pulled out a pistol, thumbing back the hammer and checking the priming. It was not just men who might be waiting in ambush here; there were wolves in the woods around York, and it was always possible that on a snowy night they would come slipping in through the darkness, looking for human prey. This was Upper Canada in the year 1812; the layer of European civilisation along the coasts and rivers was very thin, and the wilderness was never far away.

  The house he had been directed to was large, with a carriage house and stables at the rear. Its windows were dark and closely shuttered. He studied the house for a long time, looking for a chink of light that might betray human presence, but none could be seen.

  Is he there? Fraser wondered. Did the wee bugger get suspicious of me and pull out of the meeting? If so, that’s my work wasted… Or is he sitting inside the house, waiting?

  Waiting to talk to me? Or waiting in ambush?

  ‘Well,’ he murmured to himself. ‘One way or another, it’s time to find out.’

  Holding the pistol in one hand, he walked to the front door and knocked. No one answered. He knocked again, but still there was silence. The house loomed over him, a black wall of shadow in the blowing snow.

  He tried the door, and found it unlocked. Stepping silently into the hall, he closed the door behind him and stared around in the blackness. At first, he could see nothing at all, but then something caught the corner of his eye, something so faint as to be just on the edge of vision: a line of light under one of the doors leading off the hall. Somewhere in the room beyond, a lamp or candle was burning.

  A mixture of relief and satisfaction washed through Fraser’s mind. So he’s here after all, he thought. Right then. Let’s hear what he has to say.

  Still cautious, he walked to the door of the room and stopped. The only sound was the ticking of a clock. Silently he turned the handle and pushed the door open.

  Before him was a big room, a salon of some sort, with high windows tight-shuttered against the cold and oil paintings hanging on the walls between them. The gilded frames of the paintings glinted dimly in the light of a single candle sitting on top of a fortepiano at the far end of the room. The only other furniture was a few chairs pushed back against the walls and a long-case clock behind the piano, its pendulum swinging slowly, tick-tock, tick-tock, tick-tock.

  There was no one else in the room.

  He saw something white on top of the piano next to the candlestick. Frowning a little, he walked towards it and saw that it was a letter, sealed with a blob of red wax. His own name, Magnus Fraser, Esq., was written on the front. Laying the pistol on top of the piano, he picked up the letter and broke the seal. Just as he did so, the music began.

  The tune itself was familiar enough – Mozart, like the sonata he had heard earlier – but he did not recognise the instrument on which it was being played. At first, the sound seemed sharp to his ears, strange and a little unpleasant, but then as he listened he realised there was a kind of spectral brilliance to it, with slow cascades of notes that seemed in some strange way to bypass his hearing and reach directly into his unconscious mind.

  There was a sweetness to the music, and yet it was also impossibly sad, an innocent sorrow like the mourning of a child for its mother, and it tugged at his heartstrings and wrapped itself around his soul. The sorrow was his sorrow; the mourning was for his own mother, who had died when he was young, and the sweetness was the love and comfort he had yearned for as a boy, but never found. Standing in the candlelight and listening, Fraser forgot about the letter and the pistol and the man he had come to meet. The music surrounded him and swallowed him.

  Then the notes began to climb up the scale again, faster now, a keening high falsetto with a deeper droning beneath it, like the wind in the trees outside. Sorrow and sweetness both disappeared, replaced by power and fear and menace all mingled together, the notes rising and rising, promising a resolution that never came. Fraser found he was holding his breath.

  Suddenly the bright glissando broke. The shower of shimmering notes disintegrated into a nerve-shredding clamour that hit Fraser like a physical force. Steadily the pitch rose, higher and higher, spiralling out of control. This was no music made by human hands; this was now the screaming of a damned soul in the torment of the flames. On and on it went, the air in the room echoing with pain and anger and madness, until Fraser dropped the letter and clutched his hands to his head. He could not hear his own voice, shouting, pleading with the noise to stop. All he could hear was the sound in his head, iron claws clutching at his brain.

  And then, as suddenly as it had begun, the sound ceased.

  Fraser stood mesmerised, his hands still pressed to his temples. He was panting and sweating like a man who had run a hard race, and he was aware that there were tears on his face, but he could not move his hands to wipe them away. Even though silence had fallen, the trance
remained. He had forgotten everything: Polaris, his mission, the gold in his pocket, even his own name. All he could think was: if the music starts again, my heart will stop. I will die.

  But the music remained silent. Instead, from behind him came a whisper of movement, someone coming softly but swiftly into the room. He knew the real danger now. He lowered his hands slowly and then, stumbling like a sleepwalker, turned to face the door.

  A figure stood in front of him, robed and hooded in black. Beneath the hood, the light of the candle showed him a face from a nightmare, half black and half chalk white. Lips were bared over a rictus of grinning teeth, and eyes glittered like those of a snake gloating over its prey. Rooted to the spot, unable to run or hide, Fraser screamed in pure terror. The black cloak twitched aside and a wickedly pointed steel blade flashed in the candlelight, stabbing upwards towards his chest. Fraser saw the knife but could not move to avoid it. By the time his body hit the floor, he was already dead.

  * * *

  There was no nerve-shredding music to accompany the woman’s second appointment of the evening, only the bubble and rush of water in the Niagara River as it joined the great lake. Out here, away from the village, there was little light other than that provided by a waning moon and the stars. A few pinpricks showed on the far side of the river, watchfires on the ramparts of the American fort; Niagara was on the frontier, and the east bank of the river was enemy territory.

  A man stood waiting for her on the river foreshore. She approached, and they stood together speaking quietly for a few minutes. Neither was aware of the watcher standing in the shadows. The dim light had allowed him to approach the pair, not close enough to hear their words, but enough to identify them both, and to gather that their exchange was not entirely friendly.

  At the end of the conversation, they parted, the woman returning to the village and the man walking away towards Fort George, the British fort that guarded the mouth of the river. His suspicions confirmed, the watcher melted away into the shadows.