Savage Liberty

by Eliot Pattison

  “I am rabbi and chief carpenter,” Cohen explained congenially. “We will be much better prepared on the Sabbath. But meanwhile, Mr. Hayes, welcome to Shearith Israel congregation.”

  Hayes fumbled for the cap he had stuffed into his belt. “I didn’t . . .” he began as he awkwardly set the cap on his head. “I never thought. It’s been . . .”

  “A long journey,” Cohen offered. “Your companion Conawago has been good enough to explain some of it. Such a propitious day for you to arrive! We have just received our Torah from Portugal, a week after finishing our ark for its home. There are only a score of us, but each has a New World tale of his or her own, each with its own lesson of how Jehovah guides us through tragedy. We are all about new beginnings here, Mr. Hayes.” Cohen gestured proudly toward the ark and the menorah, then singled out the little lamp by the ark. “You can help us with the service to light our tamid, our eternal light. Our little synagogue is the first in Montreal, first in all of Canada.”

  Hayes advanced to the table and stood before the menorah. “The first north of Rhode Island,” he offered in an awed voice. He had no words when he turned back to Duncan and Conawago, but his eyes had come alive, and the deep gratitude in them was all that needed to be spoken.

  “Father!” the girl called from the back, where she stood with Will, and pointed to Hayes. Sadie, ever curious, was crawling up the tinker’s shoulder.

  Cohen laughed. “A capuchin!” he exclaimed, and offered a hand to the monkey. Sadie touched her forehead to it. “We welcome all denominations here!”

  They could not pull Hayes away, and they left him with Cohen, examining the new Torah, speaking excitedly in Hebrew about his congregation in Rhode Island. Before they departed, Rabbi Cohen had been pleased to answer Duncan’s questions about certain French residents of Montreal. He knew only one who was a private book dealer, and Cohen warned, “If you visit his home on Valcours Street, be aware that it contains many cats.”

  WOOLFORD AND DUNCAN WATCHED THE snug cabin that was built near a waterfall for nearly an hour after taking over from the Mohawk rangers who had followed Father Deschamps there and reported that the Jesuit had paused several times to light his pipe and collect wildflowers. The retreat Bougainville had built while serving in Montreal was a comfortable-looking structure in a clearing in the dense forest, surrounded by beds of flowers. Little platforms for bird nests had been fastened to several adjoining trees, and trout leapt in the pool at the base of the waterfall.

  An old Indian woman, no doubt one of the Christian Mohawks, had met Deschamps when he arrived at the cabin, and after he had taken his pack of supplies inside, the two sat at a table under a hemlock to mount the skin of a pine marten on a stretching frame. Deschamps, continuing his work as Bougainville’s assistant, had walked with the woman along the flower gardens, pulling the occasional weed, before heading back down the trail toward Montreal.

  Duncan, after helping Woolford collect a pile of dried leaves and pine boughs upwind from the cabin, went in alone, greeting the woman as a solo traveler following the forest trail to Montreal. The old woman was a matronly Mohawk who wore a silver crucifix around her neck. She insisted that Duncan stay to join her in some good English tea, for which many Iroquois had developed a taste, and after she lit a fire in the hearth of the snug little cabin and swung the kettle over it, she gladly indulged his curiosity about the odd collections scattered over the mismatched tables and on the walls of the sitting room and the adjoining study, which she explained was the favorite room of the great natural philosopher who had entrusted her to maintain it during the monsieur’s long absence. Duncan was shown rows of stuffed mice, voles, and shrews, the feathered skins of warblers and thrushes, butterflies, leaves and flowers pressed in the leaves of books, some of which, she explained apologetically, were disused hymnals. A long chest of drawers, so bulky Duncan wondered why they had taken the trouble to transport it miles into the forest, held a collection of skulls in its top drawer, then large feathers and samples of the clawed feet of birds of prey. The bottom drawer had its knobs removed, and on a bench pushed against it sat two expertly stuffed wolf cubs.

  As the woman poured a second cup of tea, Duncan looked up in alarm and darted to the window. “Do you smell smoke?” he asked. Woolford had lit the mound of dried leaves a stone’s throw from the cabin. Duncan ran outside with the Mohawk woman, into a cloud of thick smoke. The woman cried in alarm, then ran back inside. He followed her straight to the inner room, where she stood, stricken, next to the chest of drawers, staring at the pair of wolves.

  “Do not trouble yourself yet,” Duncan said to her. “It may be nothing. Do you have a bucket and perhaps a shovel?” In ten minutes he had the small fire reduced to smoldering leaves and was assuring the woman she had no need to worry.

  “That pipe of his—” She sighed, shaking her head. “It will be the death of us,” she added, as if she were Deschamps’s scolding wife. But she wasn’t his wife, he knew, for her husband lay in the rectory with part of his foot severed. Duncan finished his tea, thanked her profusely, and joined Woolford, who waited under a towering maple on the Montreal trail. The king’s gold slept with wolves, and the one who held the secret would keep it forever in silence because he was a mute. Only one piece of his puzzle remained to be found.

  A FINE MIST HAD SETTLED over the city by the time Duncan and Woolford reached its walls, conveying a scent of damp cedar over the cobblestone passages. Woolford nodded silently to the rangers who waited by the gate, and the Mohawks spread out as if on a forest mission, flanking and scouting ahead. The two men were so lost in conversation that Corporal Longtree had to whistle for them to stop when they reached the quiet inn where Duncan and Conawago, wary of bringing undue troubles to the Jesuits in the rectory, had just that morning taken a room. Agreeing to meet for a late supper, Duncan climbed the stairs to their second-floor room, then distractedly latched the door behind him as he entered.

  “Not a movement, not a sound,” hissed a voice near his ear as the cold steel of a pistol barrel was pressed against his neck.

  Duncan twisted his head enough to see a face with a closely trimmed black beard. “I thought you would be on the way back to Normandy by now, monsieur.”

  “Comtois. My name is Henri Comtois. I think there is no longer any need for playacting.”

  “Good,” Duncan replied in an even voice. “I will need the name for the stone we will mark over your grave. Or should I just bury you under that Celtic cross?”

  The French agent gave an icy smile, then nodded toward the far side of the room. On the floor by his bed, Conawago lay unconscious, blood oozing from his head. Another man sat on the bed, pressing a narrow dagger against the Nipmuc’s neck.

  A blind fury ignited in Duncan. He took a step forward, then froze as the pistol cocked and pressed deeper into his flesh. “The old fool let us in,” Comtois explained, “then tried to convince us to leave when we threatened him. He spoke good French, I admit, but he’s no different from all the other annoying savages begging in the streets. Useless to the modern world.”

  Duncan, to his relief, could see the slow up-and-down movement of Conawago’s chest.

  “But apparently,” Comtois continued, “you seem to value this creature as a servant or retainer or such. So if you do not resist, if we reach our destination and Philippe receives a message from me within thirty minutes, he will not drive that dagger into the old man’s jugular.”

  “Philippe,” Duncan said, “who came from Halifax with you.”

  “Philippe Meunier, oui, who came from Le Havre with me. Faithful servant of Louis Quatorze, as am I.”

  “Comtois and Meunier,” Duncan said. “I want to get the names right. The murderers who sank the Arcturus for the sake of an old ledger book. Who manipulated an innocent boy for the secret and left him behind to die.”

  “Poor Will. But he survived.”

  “Even though you tried to kill him again.”

  Comtois shrugged. “Ther
e is no cost too high in the service of my king. And such a valuable ledger! Worlds can be transformed based on such pages!” He motioned Duncan to the door.

  A full-bearded man with the broad shoulders of a voyageur waited outside, no doubt the man who had tortured Father Andre. He kept a hand clamped tightly around Duncan’s arm as Comtois led the way down a series of alleys to an old brick building on a cul-de-sac under the eastern wall of the city. A guard holding a pistol opened the door for them, and inside, a boy waited by stacks of crates and bundles of pressed furs. Comtois bent to the boy’s ear, dropped a coin in his palm, and the boy shot out the door.

  “Your tame Indian will not die today,” Comtois sneered, then led Duncan and his escort toward an inner door. The chamber he was led into had no windows, though Duncan thought he could hear lapping water, and he assumed they were near one of the long shipping piers that served the depots of the fur trade. The dank air was sour with the smell of unwashed men and their leavings.

  Two wooden armchairs were chained to ringbolts in the wall. One held a bound, unconscious man whose head, covered with a sack, was slumped against his chest. As Comtois’s voyageur tied Duncan to the empty chair, the French agent lifted away the sack and ladled water over the other prisoner, making clucking noises, as if to coax him awake. The second prisoner stirred, shaking his head violently and spitting a curse as he saw Comtois. It was Horatio Beck.

  “At last, the convenience of having both my antagonists together at last!” Comtois said in a mocking tone.

  Beck looked at Duncan with a dull, confused expression; then his eyes lit with recognition and he uttered a hoarse laugh. The effort caused blood to flow from a long, jagged cut down his temple. He had been pistol-whipped.

  “The hounds are never ready when the clever fox turns on them,” Comtois gloated.

  Beck spat out blood. “Do not insult me with such an obvious ploy. McCallum is more fond of your pack than of mine.”

  Comtois replied by slapping Duncan so hard his lip split.

  “Bien sûr,” Beck hissed. “Please do torment the bastard. I could care less if he dies here or at the end of an executioner’s rope.”

  Comtois hit Duncan again.

  “Ask him why he came to Montreal,” Duncan gasped as Comtois raised his hand a third time. “His mission was to track you, to recover the ledger, but he questioned me at Ticonderoga, not about French spies but only about King Louis’s gold. He is following the gold now. He wants it for himself. He may have been tracking spies when he left London, but now he is little better than a highwayman with a uniform.”

  The words silenced Comtois. He paced in front of his prisoners as the voyageur lit a fire in a small brazier and began heaping in coal. “As you say, McCallum,” he said at last. “The gold belongs to my king.”

  “Does it? Odd that the treaty signed in Paris never mentioned it,” Duncan rejoined. “Your government meant to smuggle it back to France, but it slipped away somehow. How embarrassing for you to misplace such a fortune.”

  “I was an officer in Quebec at the time,” Comtois stated. “They were chaotic days. I would be a colonel now but for that embarrassment. But here we are. It is my destiny to recover it, you might say.”

  Beck struggled against his ropes. “McCallum conspired with Rogers!” he spat. “Rogers must have the gold, for his new land of Champlain!”

  Comtois threw up his hands in mock exasperation. “Conspiracy this, conspiracy that. My world is very simple, Monsieur Beck. There are the friends of my king and the enemies of my king. You both work counter to the interests of my king. Therefore you are my enemies. Your lives are worth nothing to me, except to help me achieve my goals.

  “I don’t think McCallum was part of the Saguenay conspiracy,” the French agent continued. “No one ever heard of him until you accused him of treason. My sources say he was a stranger to St. Francis until he appeared there with his most peculiar companions. He was your leverage, your stalking horse, though I still can’t understand how you knew he was coming north in pursuit of us. He has proven most elusive.”

  “He had a spy with us,” Duncan growled. “Masquerading as a deserter.”

  Comtois smiled and gestured toward the shadows along the wall. “Regis,” he said. The voyageur stepped to what Duncan had taken to be a pile of rags and kicked it. The rags came to life as a man on the floor flailed out, earning another kick, then quieted as he recognized Duncan.

  “McCallum!” the man spat.

  “Sergeant Mallory,” Duncan acknowledged with a chill, remembering that the last time they had been together, Mallory and his trained beast Wolf had been intending to blind and mutilate him. “And I had so hoped that you drowned that night on the lake. But you survived to maim an innocent Iroquois gravekeeper.”

  Mallory grinned. “Gawd, how he howled.”

  “And then an attempt on a corporal of the Black Watch.”

  “He should have died for helping you escape!” Mallory spat blood on the stone flags. “Another slab of Highland beef to be served up to the king. Too dense to know when he was bettered.”

  The voyageur Regis opened a tool chest, arranging several instruments along the edge of the brazier, then lifted a long set of pliers, and without warning slammed them into Mallory’s jaw. “You talk too much, English!” he said, shoving Mallory, who was clutching his bloody mouth now, against the wall.

  “I am sure your tales are most entertaining,” Comtois said, “but sadly, I don’t have time to listen to you ramble on to each other. Let’s just acknowledge that we are at a confluence, a point where important knowledge has intersected. I will have all that knowledge, or I will have your lives. I am leaving this forsaken continent in less than two days. With the application of Regis’s special talents, I will have my king’s gold before I leave.” The French agent examined the tools, then reached into the chest and handed the voyageur a wooden mallet.

  Regis instantly spun about and slammed the mallet into Duncan’s knee, then pounded it into Beck’s shoulder. He stepped back and laughed as both men gasped. Beck muttered a curse, earning a second blow, harder than the first.

  Comtois offered the voyageur a thin smile and continued. “Do we have your attention? The king is willing to pay a finder’s fee, say five percent, to the man who takes me to the gold. And shall we say slow death to the one who does not. Slow death is rather a specialty of Regis’s.”

  Duncan clenched his jaw against the pain that shot up his leg. “So we’ve established that you will pay for secrets,” he said. “How far will you go?”

  The French spy nodded to Regis, who began using a bellows to intensify the heat of the brazier. “I’m listening,” Comtois said.

  “The gold in exchange for the ledger,” said Duncan.

  “McCallum!” Beck shouted, and was silenced by another violent blow with the mallet.

  “A steep price,” Comtois replied, then smiled again as Regis lifted a pair of pincers that glowed red-hot at their end.

  “A steeper price was paid by all those men in Boston. So which is worth more now? The ledger or a chest of gold louis?”

  Comtois leaned against a table and extracted an enameled snuffbox, fastidiously inserting a pinch of powder into a nostril before replying. “A lost opportunity, Mr. McCallum. That particular package has embarked. It might have been an intriguing possibility. Perhaps we could have sold one page at a time.” He produced a silk handkerchief that was scented with lavender and sneezed into it. “A pound of gold for each page of condemning evidence, eh?”

  Beck twisted furiously against his bindings. “I can get you safe passage back to France, Comtois!” he shouted. “Do what you will to McCallum!”

  Comtois pointed. The voyageur slammed the mallet into Beck’s ear. As the officer’s head sagged, Regis tied a gag around his mouth.

  “You give me hope, McCallum. If you do indeed know where the gold is, we will have it out of you in an hour or two. It would be so much less messy if you could just—” Comtoi
s paused.

  A slow, rhythmic thumping was coming through the back wall. Duncan listened for a moment and grinned. It had the pace of an Iroquois war drum.

  “Qu’est-ce que c’est?” Comtois asked his assistant. The voyageur opened the door, only to stumble backward as the unconscious body of the outside guard was hurled at him. Corporal Longtree leapt at Regis with a high-pitched war shriek. Two more rangers entered the fray before the voyageur was knocked unconscious.

  “Comtois!” Duncan shouted as Woolford entered, the kilted and bandaged Corporal Buchanan behind him, his sword bayonet in his hand. In the confusion, Comtois had darted into the shadowed corner beyond his two prisoners. But when Duncan turned, there was nothing in the corner but an open trapdoor.

  Duncan’s heart sank, but then he quickly restrained Buchanan from untying Beck’s gag. “The lieutenant has suffered grievous injury,” he declared. “We need a ranger to escort him posthaste to the army infirmary.”

  Woolford grinned. “You mean you need him to be anywhere but with us—”

  “Not so fast,” an icy voice interrupted. Mallory had pulled himself up, leaning against the wall. “McCallum is mine.”

  Duncan ignored the sergeant for a moment too long, watching as Beck, still dazed, was led away. Mallory seized Duncan and pushed the red-hot pincers toward his face.

  Longtree deftly knocked the pincers from Mallory’s hand, then looked at Duncan, who gestured him away. “No, Sergeant. You are finished here.” He considered the treacherous soldier a moment. “Is your man Wolf with you?”

  “No,” Mallory snarled. “Arrested by Hazlitt at Ticoderoga the night you escaped. By dawn he was gone too, leaving his long needle in a jailer’s arm. He’ll bolt into one of his caves in the wilds and disappear. Damn you, it’ll take me months to find him now.”

  Duncan was weary of all the killing and somehow could not bring himself to do harm to a man whose life he had saved. “Then go, Sergeant.” He extracted one of the gold coins from his pocket and extended it to Mallory. “Do what you will, just leave Montreal, and if you ever show your face in Edentown, we will not be so merciful.”