by Sara Donati
“Did you happen to tell him the story of how Elizabeth broke my father out of Anna’s pantry?”
“Aye,” said Robbie sheepishly. “That I did. It’s too guid a tale tae keep tae masel’, laddie. And in aa the time I’ve spent wi’ Moncrieff and aa the tales tolt, I’ve no’ heard him say a solitary word o’ ships tae Scotland.”
Iona pursed her lips. “Then you were not listening carefully, Robbie MacLachlan. But I suppose that is not a surprise. I recall Isaac Putnam telling you more than once to clean out your ears.”
The beginnings of an old argument flashed across Robbie’s normally agreeable expression. It might be a score of years since he had last been in Montréal, but there was still a spark between him and Iona.
Nathaniel said, “Maybe my father was hoping to get out of gaol without getting me involved, but here I am and I can’t leave him sitting there. If Moncrieff’s got more than setting him free in mind, we’ll find out soon enough.” He paused to peel off a wet winter moccasin. “Once my father is free we’ll be headed home, and the whole of Scotland couldn’t stop us.”
Iona pushed a stray hair away from her cheek, and Nathaniel saw that her white hair had gone very thin. “Don’t underestimate him.”
Robbie put down his bowl with a thump. “Ye’re a distrustfu’ lass, Iona, but it’s served ye well these muny years. Perhaps I’ve been a wee owerfriendly wi’ Moncrieff.”
“Do you know where he is now?” Nathaniel asked.
“Och, aye,” Robbie said, throwing him a sidelong glance. “He’s dinin’ wi’ the bonnie Giselle. As he does muny an evenin’.”
“I take it her father is out of town,” Nathaniel said.
“Somerville is in Québec,” confirmed Robbie. “I dinna ken for how lang.”
They looked at Iona, who inclined her head to one side thoughtfully. “Governor Carleton will keep him there for another week, I should imagine.”
Iona was, for all her simplicity of self and home, the best source of information in Montréal. As a young woman she had moved among the armies of three nations while they battled each other for possession of the land; she had known the men who decided the fate of Canada, and she knew them still. These days they came to sit before her fire and talk, and she welcomed any friend of a friend who did not wear a Roman collar: the Scots who ran the fur trade; the English who commanded the colony; the French who lived in the shadow of the English and controlled the city’s goods and food supply. McTavish, McGill, Guy, Latour, Després, Cruikshank, Gibb, Carleton, Monk: they came singly or together to talk, and she gave them strong ale and good food, and she listened.
“Has Moncrieff met Somerville?”
Robbie let out a soft laugh. “Aye, he has. But our Angus Moncrieff is no’ on verra guid terms wi’ Pink George.”
Nathaniel had to grin at Somerville’s old nickname, but he did not want to be distracted by a discussion of the man, his oddities or his faults, and so he turned the topic to more practical matters. In a few minutes he had extracted from Robbie the whole story of what had happened here, and it was as brief as he had expected: Hawkeye had come to take Otter home, and they had both been arrested. The authorities said they wanted Hawkeye for questioning about the Tory gold, but it was clear to Robbie and Iona both that something else was at the bottom of it all.
“What is it that Somerville wants from them, then?” Nathaniel asked. “Do you have any sense of it? Did he find out about Otter and Giselle, is that it?”
Iona was sitting on a small stool near the hearth with knitting in her lap, and she did not look up. “He may suspect, but he only knows of his daughter what he chooses to see. Which is very little.”
“Then why are my father and Otter still in gaol?”
Robbie spread out his hands. “It’s verra simple. Somerville canna risk Otter leavin’ Montréal. The governor wants the boy here, ye ken. Otter’s the only road they’ve got to Stone-Splitter.”
Nathaniel sat back and rubbed his burning eyes with one hand, trying to make sense of it.
Stone-Splitter was a Kahnyen’kehàka sachem who had never given in to O’seronni ways, and for that reason alone the English feared him above all others: he had a keen understanding of their weaknesses, no need of their gifts, and no taste for their whisky, and thus they had no way to control him. He was a warrior in the ancient tradition, the kind they still told stories about, the kind whose furiosity on the battlefield kept old soldiers jerking and muttering in their uneasy sleep. And the young men of his village were trained in the same manner.
Of all the Kahnyen’kehàka sachem, Stone-Splitter was the only one who had refused to take sides in the war for independence and as a result his people had survived where others struggled. If the governor wanted Stone-Splitter’s attention, it had to be because he was arming himself for another war and hoped to have the sachem’s support and his warriors. Stone-Splitter was blood kin to Otter.
Nathaniel turned to Iona, and he saw that she had been watching him, and probably knew exactly what was in his thoughts.
“The smell of war is in the air,” she said. “But perhaps not for a few years yet.”
Another war. Men had talked of it uneasily ever since the last one, for nobody quite believed they had heard the last of the English king. And now here it was, within reach. The urge to be away was stronger than ever.
He said, “Once we get Otter out of gaol, will it be hard to get him out of Montréal?” Nathaniel was slow to meet Robbie’s gaze, but he found no reproach there.
“If ye’re askin’ aboot Giselle, ye’d ken the answer better than I, laddie. Ye walked awa’ frae her once, wi’ your faither pushin’ frae behind.”
Nathaniel wasn’t easily embarrassed, but he didn’t especially like being reminded of the hours he had spent with Giselle Somerville. He had been young, and healthy and ready to learn; she had been just as young, anything but innocent, and she had enjoyed teaching him. It was almost twenty years ago, but Nathaniel recalled certain moments with perfect clarity, when he let himself. Hawkeye had shown up and asked him straight-out if he wanted the girl to wife, and if she would come home with them to Lake in the Clouds.
And that had been the end of it. Enough to wake him up to the truth: he could not live in Montréal, and she would have laughed at the idea of a life on the edge of the wilderness. And so he left Montréal with his father, and ended up spending the hunting season with Stone-Splitter’s people. That was when he had taken note of the oldest granddaughter of the clan mother of the Wolf, Sings-from-Books, who had become his first wife. Out of the pan and into the fire.
He shook his head to clear it of the past. “Giselle will try to hold on to Otter, if she’s given the chance,” Nathaniel said. “She collects men like other women collect jewels.”
Iona’s head was lowered over her knitting, but Nathaniel saw a tightening of her mouth, and then she spoke up: “That’s not very charitable of you, considering what you once were to each other.”
It was a well-deserved rebuke, and Nathaniel accepted it with an inclined head. “You’re right. I shouldn’t pass judgment. But my worry now is for Otter.”
“He’s a bonnie lad, and gey canny,” Rab said. “But he’s young, forbye, and—curious. It’s a guid thing he’s wi’ yer faither.”
“We need to get him out of here. And us, too.”
“Tomorrow, if possible,” Iona agreed.
“Aye,” said Robbie. “Ye’ll get nae argument frae me.”
“Have you got any ideas?” Nathaniel asked.
Robbie grinned. “Have ye got iny money?”
When they had talked for another hour, Robbie returned to the lodgings in the rue St. Gabriel, so as to keep Nathaniel’s presence a secret for the time being. In two days’ time, if all went well, they would be out of Montréal, and Moncrieff would never know he had been there. For a moment Nathaniel could almost feel sorry for the man, who wanted nothing more than to fulfill an obligation to his employer, an old man with no heir and no
hopes. But stronger than that was the need to protect his own, and Nathaniel would turn his back on Montréal and Moncrieff without a moment’s hesitation.
He slept deeply, and dreamed of the caves under the falls.
4
In his life Nathaniel had spent time in a few cities, but he would never be truly at ease in a crowd. And still he knew that in Montréal the commotion of the pig market was the best kind of camouflage to be had, and so he and Robbie headed there at sunrise. According to Iona, it was where they were most likely to find the sergeant in charge of the night watch at the garrison gaol, a dragoon called Ronald Jones.
The cold was fierce enough to turn breath to ice, but still the sun managed to find purchase here and there, flashing off a tin roof, a cleaver hung on the side of a stall, an unshuttered window, a young River Indian’s silver earbob. A man couldn’t walk without being stepped on, pushed, touched: overweight merchants, half-drunk foot soldiers, butchers herding sows, maids pulling loaded sledges, beggars, dogs and oxen and horses and pigs everywhere. Despite the extreme cold the air was dense with the stink of swine slurry and curing meat, and it swirled with ashes and cinders from the bonfires that gave the butchers and their customers a place to warm themselves.
Even in this crowd, Nathaniel felt eyes fix on him. Perhaps because he stood head and shoulders over most; perhaps because he was with Robbie, who stood even taller. They saw him, and forgot him: he was just another backwoodsman wanting liquor or a woman or a good price on his furs. Nathaniel reminded himself it was only for today, maybe for tomorrow. If they could find this man Jones; if he could be bought. He was aware of the weight of the double-sewn leather bags he wore strapped across his chest, some twenty pounds of near-pure silver.
So focused was he on the idea of the Welshman that Nathaniel missed the first signs of the scuffle. From just to the left among the stalls came a guttural scream—crisse de tête à faux!—and a fist swung close enough to make him sidestep. Before Nathaniel could even be sure what was happening, the crowd rushed in, their errands and the cold forgotten with the promise of some entertainment.
A butcher and a farmer sputtered and spat at each other across the carcass of a huge pig. The butcher had a head like a cannonball: heavy jowled, with a skull as pink and bristled as the mountainside of unmoving flesh at his feet. The farmer was black haired, twenty years younger, twenty pounds lighter, angrier. There was a fresh cut on his cheek. It made Nathaniel aware of the familiar weight of his rifle across his back, the comforting heft of the tomahawk tucked into his belt to lie flat next to his spine.
All around the crowd heaved like a wasp-stung mule. Robbie swore, and swore again. He loved crowds even less than Nathaniel did.
A man jumped up on a barrel. “Moe, j’prends pour Pépin, moe, p’is j’y mets dix shillings, là!” he shouted, waving a coin over his head.
The farmer grinned at that and lunged, fists flying briefly. He fell back before the bigger man could get a lock on him, and new bets were shouted in English, Scots, French, and other languages Nathaniel didn’t recognize.
Next to him Robbie grunted as a young boy tried to climb his back for a better view. A ripple and jostling, muttered complaints, and a redcoat pushed his way to the forefront, stopping just opposite Nathaniel. Slope shouldered and soft bellied, frizzled red hair, a mouth full of tiny teeth the color of cheap tobacco. He had the pinched expression of a little man with less authority than he wanted and more than was good for him.
“Jesus wept,” muttered Robbie at Nathaniel’s ear. “There he is, that’s Jones. Ach, will ye look at him strut, the wee Welsh half-a-cockerl.”
“Here, here! What goes on, what’s this?” With his chest pumped up, Jones’s bellow was astoundingly loud, but the men ignored him, locked in a tussle that sent them rolling over the dead pig to crash into the stall. For a moment they were lost in a landslide of smoked ham hocks.
Next to Nathaniel, an old woman in a mangy blanket coat pulled on Jones’s sleeve. “Denier has been fooling with the scales again,” she hollered above the noise. “Young Pépin decided to teach him a lesson. And high time, too.”
The two had rolled apart. The butcher hauled himself up on the ledge of the half-collapsed stall, his fist closing over a meat cleaver as he began a slow turn.
“Pépin!” shouted the man who still perched on the barrel. “Faites attention! Il a un poignard!”
Nathaniel saw the first flicker of real rage in the young farmer in the way his shoulders loosened and his face drained of color, all in a split second. Crouched in the chaos of the destroyed stall, he grabbed a long boning knife and snapped to his full height, his arm coming up to meet the butcher as he turned. In one smooth motion an acre of canvas apron fell open from neck to hipbone, the flap gaping to expose a hairy fish-white barrel of belly.
Not even Jones could yell over the shouts of surprise and shocked appreciation.
Barking like an enraged boar, the butcher dropped the cleaver to grab at his clothing, the huge head rearing up just in time to catch the knife, in earnest now. An almost careless flick of the younger man’s wrist and the vast pink cheek split open. A rainbow of blood in a shower, and Nathaniel flinched the warm drops out of his eyelashes as Denier threw himself forward, only to go sprawling over the pig and strike his head on the corner of the stall.
The crowd fell silent, in surprise or horror, Nathaniel could not tell. Young Pépin’s rage was suddenly gone: he shook himself as if he could not quite believe what he saw.
Jones was prodding the butcher with his toe. When he got a groan in response, he nodded.
“Right,” he bellowed, hooking his thumbs in his wide leather belt. “It’s the magistrate for you both, innit?”
But the young farmer seemed not to hear him at all, or not to care. A bottle was making the rounds, and he took a long swallow, staring fixedly at Denier’s heaving form.
Jones cleared his throat loudly and flushed the color of his uniform. A vein began to throb in his forehead.
“High time to be away,” Nathaniel said, and heard Robbie’s grunt of approval. But it was too late; Jones rounded on them and pointed to Robbie, easily the biggest man in the crowd, twice his own size. “You haul the carcass to my sledge over there.”
“The pig?” The old woman grinned, her gums showing dull red. “Or Denier?”
Jones’s eyes moved over the massive back of the dead animal, and Nathaniel could see him calculating. “Both. The pig comes along as evidence.”
“And dinner, forbye,” muttered Robbie.
The young farmer’s attention shifted from the pig to Jones, and his brow creased in understanding and the first glimmerings of new rebellion.
“What are you staring at, boyo?” Jones stepped toward him. “It’s the magistrate for all of youse, a pig and two frogs—”
“And a Welsh horse’s ass,” added Robbie in French. There was a single loud guffaw followed by a wave of uneasy laughter.
“What was that?” Jones roared. “What was that?”
Robbie raised a brow. “I said, the lad’s got nae English.”
“Then bloody tell him in French,” snapped Jones. His gaze fixed on Nathaniel. “You there, Jacques. You look a right enough frog to me. You tell him.”
Nathaniel considered. He could do what this little man was commanding him to do, or he could do what he wanted to do, and show him his back and his contempt. There was no chance now that Jones would be of any use to them in getting Hawkeye and Otter out of gaol; the question was, how badly could he get in their way.
“Permit me,” said a familiar voice. Nathaniel sighed inwardly, not especially surprised to see Angus Moncrieff pushing through the crowd. Well dressed, straight of back, he nodded to Jones and in swift, Scots-accented French he explained to the farmer what he needed to know. When he was finished, he turned to Nathaniel and Robbie.
“Moncrieff,” said Nathaniel.
A brief smile in response. “Nathaniel. I’m pleased to see ye here at las
t.”
Moncrieff suggested a place near the docks that would be close to empty early on a workday morning. Because it was cold and there was no way to avoid the conversation, Nathaniel and Robbie went with him to the small tavern in the shadows of Notre Dame de Bonsecours.
It was a clean tavern, warm, and the smells of fresh bread and mutton roasting over a slow fire were inviting. There were only two other customers: a middle-aged man crouched over his ale, and a young sailor with a heavily bandaged leg. The first seemed to have no interest in anything but what he found at the bottom of his tankard; the second snored loudly, his tar-stained hands crossed over his chest and his head thrown back against the wall.
The serving woman greeted Moncrieff by name, and showed them to the best place near the hearth.
Before they were settled, Moncrieff said, “So tell me, man. Have ye guid tidings from Paradise?”
A broad smile broke out on his face when he had heard Nathaniel’s news. He was all curiosity and good wishes, asking for details that would interest few men.
“We must drink to your guid fortune, and your lady’s health,” he announced finally.
The serving woman brought them tankards, kicking up her skirts to flaunt her ankles as she crossed the room. Moncrieff watched her go, tucking his pipe into the corner of his mouth with a thoughtful expression.
“A friend of yours?” Nathaniel asked.
Moncrieff lifted one shoulder in a gesture that spoke more of France than Scotland. But there was no mistaking him for anything but a Lowland Scot: he had the face, long and lean, large eared and strong of nose and chin. Nathaniel had seen faces much like his in his mother’s drawings of the family she had left behind: uncles and cousins he had never met, would never know except by the set of their eyes and the angle of jaw. Moncrieff must be in his mid-fifties at least; there were deep wrinkles around his eyes and the beginning of dewlaps at his jawline. But he still had a full head of lank dark hair tied in a neat queue, and an energy that many younger men lacked. The truth was, Nathaniel was inclined to like the man, wanted to believe him, but there was something just below the surface that he could not be sure of. Trust was a luxury he could not afford, not right now.