The Dakota Cipher

by William Dietrich

  ‘I was offering a bite of bread, for God’s sake.’

  ‘Do you want to lose your hair over slaves you don’t own? Even if you win, and you won’t, his companions will kill you.’

  I was seething, but had no weapon. Red Jacket waited, hoping I’d come for him. Finally I shook off the hands holding me and spat myself. ‘Take your women.’

  Red Jacket gave a thin smile of contempt. ‘Do not make me take another coat.’ Then he stalked off.

  I was shaking with rage and frustration.

  Never have I seen a man so quick to seek out trouble,’ Pierre whispered. ‘Come. Have a drink of shrub.’

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  Feasting began at sunset, and revelry went on into the night. The Scot partners danced and skipped across crossed claymores laid glinting in the grass, while the voyageurs formed folk circles, dragging Indian women in to dance. Drink flowed, the moon climbed high, and lovemaking and fights broke out. The Indian warriors did their own dances as bonfire flames leapt skyward, their chants and cries mingled with drums, fiddles, horns, and fifes in a swirl of heart-thumping music. The braves also gambled like madmen, staking all on games that involved simple tools such as guessing different-length sticks or which in a row of moccasins hid musket balls. They’d bet furs for liquor, or firewater for a woman, or a blanket for a gun. Some gambled away their clothes in heedless recklessness wilder than anything I’d seen in a casino, but luck was how they evened wealth. Their wins and losses were each other’s entertainment.

  I brooded, unable to shake my humiliation. Several voyageurs had smirked at me and my impotence against Red Jacket, and the shame burnt. Now trappers and traders staggered by dizzy with dance and drink, sweat on their faces, laughter a shriek. Someone was stabbed and carried past bleeding and groaning. In the shadows I could see the gleam of pumping buttocks as lovers mounted. The drunken Indians fought too, excusing any murders on the grounds that a man possessed by firewater was not responsible for his actions. Come morning, no one would profess to remember anything.

  I drank, fantasizing about killing Red Jacket, the liquor dulling my frustration while the fires, ale, and human musk made me randy. Some of the squaws were half-naked, and I half wanted them. Some of the men drifted off with other men. Magnus was well in his cups, roaring Norwegian songs, and Pierre was in a dancing circle, kicking up his heels. I stayed restless and morose, nursing rum, curious about Namida, furious with Red Jacket, and longing for Astiza, who’d left me in France. If this new girl was Mandan, maybe I could buy her from the damn Indian. I had little money left, but enough to start a game or two of my own. I’d acquire the girl, we’d go find Welsh Indians, and while Magnus poked about for old hammers we’d share a cosy lodge …

  This reverie was interrupted when I saw Aurora slipping along the edge of the bacchanal, looking aloof and purposeful as she hurried on some mission. Now resentment boiled more. How dare she toy with me! I was tired of being put off, warned away, mocked, and ignored – this by a woman who by rumour had fled scandal! And now where was she going, so important and haughty? I impulsively decided to follow, suddenly determined to regain the intimacy we’d enjoyed at Mackinac.

  I’d catch her and I’d grab her and I’d say … well, I didn’t know what I’d say, but maybe I’d just kiss her. We’d fight or make love, and either way bring an end.

  Aurora had a slim white dress that made her glow like a fairy nymph, making her easier to track as she skirted the clumps of revellers without pausing. Where the devil was she going? I considered running to catch up, but it seemed undignified to chase her, even though that’s exactly what I was doing. I tried sauntering, rehearsing lines to demand that either our relationship be consummated again or end completely. I didn’t need the Somersets anymore, I was at Grand Portage! But even as I mentally rehearsed witty repartee, Aurora didn’t pause to let me try it.

  She came to a cluster of Indian wigwams at the northern extremity of the encampment, the bark-covered domes seeming to erupt naturally from the earth. She stopped, uncertain, and called something softly. A glow appeared at the door of one of the lodges, its light leaking through cracks in the shingled birch. It was a candle or lantern no Indian would have. She made for the wigwam, fell to her knees, and wiggled inside.

  By Abigail Adams, an Indian hut for British aristocracy? Was the strumpet meeting that cannibal Red Jacket? Or did she have some other game entirely?

  I’m not a Peeping Tom, but she’d slipped from me once again, and into the most improbable place I could imagine for a lady. Was it possible she was compelled to come to this dark village and was in some kind of trouble? Perhaps I could rescue her! I hesitated as I crouched in the gloom, wrestling with good manners, and then I heard first the low murmur of voices and then the coos and cries of accelerating passion. Now I had to spy. Aurora Somerset coupling with an Indian buck? It was the kind of revelation that might give me leverage.

  Frustrated and curious, I crept in the dark to the rear of the lodge. I could hear pants within, a delicious moaning from the beauty, and murmurs that seemed English. What the devil? I found a slit to put my eye to and had a vision from the kind of naughty book you can buy in the back aisles of a Parisian bookshop. Aurora was straddling her lover – how typical that she’d insist on being on top – and was riding him with arched back, hips flared, breasts pointing upward, her form lit a rosy hue by the glow of a lantern. Her eyes were closed, lips pouted, face tilted towards the lodge peak, and her hair a glorious shawl cascading down her back. It was a magnificent sight and I was hard in an instant, lusting even as I hated her for her haughtiness, yet ready to tell her anything if it would gain me entry to her guarded gateway! The woman was a sorceress. I leant forward, pressed against the rough bark, near groaning myself.

  And then I heard the words of the man under her. ‘Buck my beauty, buck my love! God, I worship your form!’

  Could it be? A white man in an Indian lodge? But of course, it was a secret liaison! A perfect hiding place! My view was obscured by the narrow slit so I recklessly put my fingers up to pull bark aside to give a better view, wondering which bourgeois the lucky bastard was. It was dim, so I pressed my face in, looking at his limbs under her as he thrust upward, hands clutching her breasts. Then he turned slightly, the lantern giving better resolution of his features, and I almost yelped with shock. I looked to the pile of clothes beyond, and then back at the gasping couple.

  Something was gleaming on the chest of the man, a pendant I’d seen months before tattooed on Renato’s skin in Italy. It was a pyramid entwined with a snake.

  Aurora Somerset was riding her own cousin, Cecil.

  And Cecil was wearing a symbol of Apophis, the snake cult allied with that London-based Egyptian Rite he’d pretended to disdain! Who had I befriended?

  Or rather, who had befriended me?

  They turned to look at my fingers caught in the slit of bark, the white of my eye illuminated in the glow. I jerked backward, accidentally yanking a piece of the lodge covering with me, and fell on my back.

  I heard a hiss. ‘Gage!’

  And then I ran.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  My mind was in tumult as I sprinted away in the dark. Aurora and Cecil as lovers? How had I missed that? Was this part of the scandal that had driven them from England to work in Canada? Did Simon McTavish, who looked the stern Puritan type, know of this incest? Or were Aurora and Cecil really cousins at all? Perhaps a phrase I’d taken literally was meant merely as endearment, like calling a close friend a brother.

  And what relationship did they have to the occult theorists, the seekers of the secrets of the ancient past, whom I’d duelled in Egypt and the Holy Land? Why had they disdained the Egyptian Rite if Cecil wore its symbol?

  What was certain was that I’d been recognised, and sharing a cosy canoe with the Somersets on the way to Rainy Lake suddenly was impossible. Our partnership had abruptly ended with my own spying, and my lust for Aurora had withered in an insta
nt. She was playing games I had no understanding of, and the best thing to do was run. I stopped in the night, panting, and considered what to do next. Nothing else had changed; fires along the shore illuminated the dancing celebrants. But it was time to strike out alone. To hell with these lunatics! Magnus and I could go southwest from Grand Portage on foot. It looked no more than two or three hundred miles to the place marked on his medieval map. We’d need supplies and a guide, yes, but the night’s revelry seemed an ideal time to steal the former and fetch the latter – the lovely Mandan Namida, and her friend, Little Frog.

  My rescue of them would pay back Red Jacket, too.

  With this plan impulsively decided, I searched and found Magnus, wanting to be well away by morning. My companion, alas, had collapsed in a stupor and was as easy to accelerate as a recalcitrant mule.

  ‘Magnus! Get up! It’s time to go look for Thor’s hammer!’

  ‘What?’ He blinked blearily. ‘It’s the middle of the night.’

  ‘Something’s happened and we need to get away! We need to steal some provender and light out for the woods. Say, have you seen Namida?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘The Indian girl! The pretty one.’

  His head fell back. ‘By Loki’s mischief …’

  ‘Never mind, we can look for her together.’

  It required a pitcher of lake water hurled at his head, but at length I got him up, sputtering, grumpy, and lumbering – he with his eye patch and slouch hat and battered map case and axe, me with my rifle and tomahawk.

  ‘What, by the wolf Fenrir, happened?’

  ‘I caught Cecil and Aurora rutting like rabbits and they spotted me. I don’t think they’ll want me around to gossip, or to share their canoe, either.’

  ‘Cecil and Aurora? They’re cousins! Aren’t they?’

  ‘I don’t know what the devil they are, but our Lord Somerset was wearing a heathen sign I attribute to old enemies from England’s Egyptian Rite. I’m not about to clarify the point. They got us this far, and we can do the last on our own. You were right about Aurora, Magnus. I should never have gone near the trollop.’

  We easily filched food and powder, given that half the company was unconscious and the rest inebriated past the point of caring, and I tried not to think too much about plunging into the dark woods alone.

  ‘How are we going to find the spot that has Thor’s symbol without a guide?’ Magnus asked, as he became more awake.

  ‘That’s why we need to find Namida and Little Frog. We’ll steal a canoe, slip down the lake, and have them help us find a way inland. Once we get close, it’s up to you to tell us which way Vikings would go.’

  ‘Not Vikings – Norsemen and Templars.’

  ‘And Welsh, woolly elephants, the lost tribes of Israel, copper miners from Atlantis, and Spaniards looking for El Dorado. It should be so crowded we’ll see their lights for miles.’

  He smiled despite himself. ‘And of course, having been played a fool by one woman, you can’t wait to link us to another.’

  ‘I’m a little desperate, Magnus. Besides, she asked me to save her and told me her tribe has a stone tablet with mysterious writing. It could be a clue.’

  ‘Stone tablet? You didn’t tell me of this.’

  ‘You’re too excitable.’

  ‘Whereas you are proceeding with deliberate decorum.’

  ‘She’s a damsel in distress with a critical cipher. We kidnap her, escape, go home to her tablet, and finish your crazed quest.’

  ‘What if we run into Aurora and Cecil?’

  ‘They were at the north end of the Rendezvous and Red Jacket’s camp is at the south. All we have to do is hurry. I’ve thought it all through, I assure you.’

  ‘Thought it through? An hour ago, all you cared about was Aurora Somerset!’

  He was, as I said, annoyingly corrective. ‘I’ve reformed.’

  We stole a small canoe and paddled a few yards offshore to where I estimated Red Jacket’s band was camped. Here, presumably, is where Namida would be held. Hopefully most of the braves were off carousing. If we could stealthily pry the women away we should be able to keep ahead of any chase. In the last few weeks both Magnus and I had become quite the master paddlers, thanks to Pierre.

  I’d miss the French voyageur, but it wasn’t fair to embroil him in my troubles. There was no time for goodbye, either, but when we had the hammer and ruled the world, or were rich as Croesus, or whatever, I’d send him a letter.

  Song still echoed across the water as we glided into Red Jacket’s camp and crept ashore, I with my rifle, Magnus with his axe. ‘Put a hole in their canoe when we leave,’ I whispered. We crept like assassins.

  Much to my relief there were just two Indian sentries curled in their blankets by a fire, apparently asleep. This lack of vigilance was explained by the fact that two smaller figures, upright and hooded with blankets, who sat with their backs against a tree a dozen paces further, were tethered to the trunk by a leather rope around their necks. The slaves had been tied up. I crawled near.

  ‘Namida!’ I whispered in French. ‘I’ve come to save you!’

  She straightened at her name.

  I sawed through the tether, pulled back the blanket, and leant in to kiss her.

  Instead, I found myself staring into the muzzle of a pistol pointed at my nose.

  ‘You’re even stupider than I thought,’ said Aurora coolly, auburn ringlets cascading to her shoulders as the blanket fell away. ‘It’s boring to be so predictable.’

  Tarnation. She was wearing her Indian blanket over a thin white chemise, and looked as voluptuous as ever. If it wasn’t for the pistol, the look of cold contempt, and her coupling with her cousin, I’d have been confused all over again. ‘Well, I can’t say that about you, can I?’

  The other tied figure proved to simply be more blankets, stuffed and propped, that fell apart when Magnus reached out to free Little Frog.

  There was a cock of hammers as Indians came up behind. A musket bore pushed into the joint between my skull and neck. Magnus was pinned to the ground with a buck’s knee on his backbone and a tomahawk poised above his temple. Cecil Somerset stepped into view, too: coatless, sleeves tied back for fencing, his unsheathed rapier glowing in the moonlight. He looked lean and dashing.

  ‘I actually prefer that you’re predictable, Mr Gage. We assumed that if you weren’t playing the dunce for Aurora, you’d be after that pretty squaw.’

  Slowly I began to rise, but Red Jacket snapped an order and two warriors grasped my arms to keep me pinned, a third yanking away my rifle and a fourth trussing my hands behind my back. Unfortunately, I didn’t have any chocolates this time.

  ‘You seem to have forgotten I’m on a mission of diplomacy.’

  ‘And you seem to have forgotten there’s a difference between being a diplomat and being a spy and a Peeping Tom.’

  ‘It’s just that you and your cousin seemed so occupied that I thought I should hire a different guide. Namida has less peculiar tastes.’

  ‘Aurora is not my cousin, Mr Gage.’

  ‘Ah. So is anything about the pair of you true at all? Are you even aristocrats?’

  ‘She’s my sister.’

  I heard Magnus gasp and then grunt as someone kicked him.

  ‘That’s disgusting!’

  ‘So they said in England, but then ordinary mortals know nothing of the power of true love. Half-sister, actually. Is it so strange that we’d share tastes and an attraction? Our dissolute father had strange perversions of his own, and we allied against the monster even as we were seduced by him. We think he may have poisoned both our mothers and rutted indiscriminately with all manner of creatures when he wasn’t gambling away our inheritance. Inevitably, our sibling alliance against him was empowered by real affection. Society condemns us for it, but Cagliostro’s Egyptian Rite understood and encouraged it. Here, in the wild, we can indulge it. You’ll understand that we don’t announce it casually on first acquaintance.’

>   ‘It’s incestuous! Illegal! Contemptible!’

  ‘It’s holy, by the pagan rites of ancient pharaohs, kings, and druids. Holy because we alone know our love is true, and because we’ve had to risk everything, including this exile, to live it. You have no idea what depth of feeling is. Yes, I heard how you let the Egyptian woman go, idiot. Now you’ll suffer alone.’

  ‘Even the wilderness has morals, Cecil. You’ll regret telling us this.’

  ‘Not if you’re dead.’ His sword tip danced a little in the cool air.

  ‘You host us, bring us here, and then kill us?’

  ‘As you killed Alessandro Silano, mindless dilettante. Did you really think we’d forget? I thought the payback would be in Italy, or in Mortefontaine with the Danes we financed, or in New York. You have curious endurance, but gamblers know that even the luckiest streak must eventually end.’

  ‘The only reason we ever befriended you,’ Aurora added, ‘was to learn what your mission really is. Since you won’t confide – after I gave you every chance and promise of ample reward – it comes to this.’

  ‘You’ll die the slowest and most horrible death imaginable, courtesy of Red Jacket and his Indians,’ Cecil forecast. ‘You’ll tell us everything you know anyway, and then things you hope we might want to know, and then nonsense no one will even begin to believe, and in the end none of it will do you any good. First you’ll talk, and then you’ll beg, and then you’ll scream until your throat is raw, and finally get to the point where you can barely make any sound at all. You’ll feel the torment of the damned, I’ve seen it. Girty taught me well. And the remarkable thing is that even then, after you’ve told us everything through agony that you could simply have shared in Aurora’s bed, your torture will have only begun. The Indians are remarkable scientists. They can make the torture extend for days. They’ll revive you from unconsciousness a hundred times.’

  ‘It’s their dread and their sport,’ Aurora said. ‘The need to escape torture gives them courage. Preparation for its possibility gives them stoic invulnerability to pain.’