Shadowbrook Part 4

Hamish Stewart had left the other eye on Culled Moor in 1746, fighting for the Bonnie Prince, Charles Edward Stuart, risking everything that a Catholic king might again rule Britain. A thousand Jacobites were slaughtered at Culloden. Thousands more were left so horribly maimed they could no longer think of themselves as men. They had been betrayed, as had happened so often before, by fellow Scots willing to sell their souls to the b.l.o.o.d.y Sa.s.senachs, the devil-sp.a.w.ned English, may they choke on their G.o.d-rotting Act of Union. Blessed be the Holy Virgin and all the saints for letting him off that blood-soaked moor with na but the loss of an eye. But if he still had both-he chanced a sideways glance at the Franciscan-G.o.d's truth, he wouldna be able to stare down this mad Friar. Like burning coals in his head, those black eyes were. Were he a heretic Protestant, G.o.d's truth, he wouldna want to look into those eyes.

"The pa.s.s," Pere Antoine said.

Stewart bent over the table and studied the map as if he were looking at it for the first time, his eye squinting into the light of the flickering flame. After a few seconds he straightened. "I saw this place in 1730, mon Pere, when I still had both eyes. Ephraim Hale himself showed me the lay of the land. I dinna make a mistake."

"And tell me again why you were there."

"The clan sent me. Back then there was still a wee bit o' bra.s.s in the Highlands. There was talk o' buying a bit o' land in the New World, moving some o' the young to a place where they'd be free o' the devil Sa.s.senachs."

"But these negotiations, they came to nothing?"

"Less than that, mon Pere. Hale wanted too much and we had too little. And the womenfolk dinna want the young to go."

Pere Antoine bent once more over the map. "Exactly like this?" he repeated.

"Aye, I swear it."

"Save your vows for the promises you make to G.o.d, my son. Here we are talking only of human intelligence."

"But for the good of Holy Church, mon Pere. Is that na the same thing?"

"Perhaps." The black-eyed glance examined the Scot. He was a short, thick man, with straggly shoulder-length hair that was half black and half gray. His breeches and hip-length, belted coat were faded to no color and shabby with wear. "So that is why you have brought me this, Hamish Stewart, for the good of Holy Church?"

"Aye, o' course. Why else would-"

"Because you covet the Hale Patent. So it is to your advantage to break Ephraim Hale. If I send my Indians to burn his fields and he has no harvest ..."

Your Indians, Stewart thought. Aye, that's surely the nub o' the thing. Why should I believe a Franciscan priest can say to a Huron savage "Go" and he goes, and "Come" and he comes? Lantak's a butcher by all reports, as well as a rebel. A merciless wild man his own people have banished, savages though G.o.d knows they be. But that's the way o' it. This friar and Lantak. A pair o' madmen making common cause for as long as it suits 'em. Aye, and G.o.d's truth, I've heard stranger tales. "The buildings as well, mon Pere. It's essential that as many o' the wee out-buildings as possible are burned. The grain already harvested, that's where it'll be."

"But not his house, eh? You wish me to tell Lantak and his braves very specifically that they are not to put the house of Ephraim Hale to the torch."

He could na look into those eyes, however often he tried. d.a.m.n the man. Was it being a Frenchman gave him his superior airs, or his high-born family, or maybe the cloth and his holy vows? But that shouldna be. Supposed to be beggars, own nothing, go about barefoot doing good. Aye, that's what St. Francis said. He'd have wanted no part o' this French devil acting high and mighty and giving orders to a gaggle o' b.l.o.o.d.y savages. "Shadowbrook's a remarkable house, mon Pere. None better in the province." G.o.d's truth, why was he mumbling and staring at the poxed priest's poxed feet. Sandals, not barefoot. So much for St. Francis.

"My footwear interests you, my son? You are perhaps thinking that I should be barefoot as Blessed Francis ordained?"

Sweet Jesus, the poxed man could read his mind. Stewart felt the sweat making rivulets down his back, despite the cold. Colder than the Highlands, poxed Quebec was. There was a fire in the grate, but so wee and poorly fed it cast a scant shadow and less heat. "I'm thinking, mon Pere, that it's past time I started back." Stewart nodded toward a pouch of coins on the table next to the map. "There's six hundred livres there. So I need you to tell me if it will be done."

Pere Antoine put his hand over the money, but he did not pick it up. "The burning and pillaging of Ephraim Hale's Patent? That's what we're discussing, isn't it?" Because if it is done when you suggest, the priest thought-in August, just as the harvest begins-Hale will be bankrupt. Like most men of property he has land, not cash, and he has mortgaged that land to the last sou. So if I do as you ask, my one-eyed Scot, Ephraim Hale will be ruined. And his creditors will be happy to sell you his land for six of your British pence on the pound.

The Scot was standing with his hands clasped over the bulge of his belly, his single eye looking at the crucifix on the wall. Waiting for the priest's final word, a picture of patient devotion whose only aim was to serve.

You're a villain, Hamish Stewart, and you care as much for Mother Church as I care for that beetle crawling across the hearth. Less. But you will further our holy cause despite yourself. "It will be done, my son. I give you my word on it. And you in turn give me your word that afterward French troops and our Indian allies will have safe pa.s.sage across this bit of portage?" The Franciscan drew one slim finger across the top of the crude map of the Hale land, from the southern tip of one long lake to the beginnings of the narrow waterway that debouched into another. Control the land between those two bodies of water and you had a straight path in any direction. The way west led directly to the French forts of the Ohio Country.

Hamish looked at the section of the land the Mohawk savages called the Great Carrying Place. "Aye, I swear it." Finally Stewart made himself look directly into the priest's G.o.d-awful eyes.

"Then you can return to New York with an easy mind, my son. I will arrange everything." The pouch of coins disappeared into the folds of the priest's habit. "Now, I will give you my blessing for the journey."

Stewart knew what was expected of him and struggled to go down on one knee. Aye, and it werena easy. Eight years since devil-cursed Culloden Moor, since he'd been in fighting trim. More belly to him now, and his thighs grown like fat hams. Time was when he could live for six months on a sack o' oats. Now he supped regularly on the incredible bounty of the New World where only the laziest fool need ever be hungry, and he feared it was making a woman of him. But if he got Shadowbrook, everything would be different. He'd be a laird, by G.o.d. He'd send to home for a young strong Scots wife and fill her belly with sons. Aye, the way a man was supposed to live. Na fighting and killing and losing, so your heart be broken along with your body. He bowed his head and waited for the priest to pray over him.

Pere Antoine made the sign of the cross in the air above Stewart's bent head and murmured a Latin benediction. Possibly, he thought, the Scot's last rites. You are engaged in a perilous trade, Hamish Stewart. There are others who are much better at it, and they will squash you when and how it suits them. When that day comes, may Almighty G.o.d forgive you your greed and your venal schemes. May you be spared the fires of h.e.l.l, but may you suffer in purgatory until the angels announce the Savior has come again in glory to judge the living and the dead. "Safe journey," he murmured as, the benediction finished, the other man lumbered to his feet.

"Thank you, mon Pere. I count on your prayers to make that a certainty."

"In a few hours I shall offer Ma.s.s for that intention."

The pair went together to the door. Stewart was wrapped in a thick woolen cloak, but the priest wore only his shabby brown habit. The night was cloudless and all the colder for it. The wind rose off the river and whipped their ears, and the stars were slivers of blue ice in a black sky. Above them the ma.s.sive fortifications that surrounded the settlement stood out, clear in the silver light of a three-quarter moon.

Since 1608, when Samuel de Champlain resisted the lure of Montreal with its forests and numerous waterways opening to the west and chose instead to make his great military base the natural citadel of Quebec, it had been the Fortress City of New France. Built on a rock rising between two rivers, the mighty St. Lawrence and the lesser St. Charles, Quebec had remained una.s.sailable for nearly a hundred and fifty years, anchoring Canada for the French king.

Champlain had begun his building in what was now the Lower Town, the place where the priest and his visitor stood. A century and a half later it was a clutter of three- and four-story wooden houses built close together on narrow and stony streets by the waterfront, and almost always wet with the spray that came in off Quebec Harbor, the broad St. Lawrence basin that could shelter a hundred ships. Over the years the settlement had climbed the cliffs behind the wharves. Now the Upper Town was surrounded by ma.s.sive walls, its skyline dominated by the steeple of the cathedral. A short distance away, almost as imposing, was the steeple of the church of the mighty Society of Jesus, the Jesuits. Black-clad schemers, priests like Pere Antoine himself, but more clever than St. Francis's simple sons. At least than most of us, the Franciscan thought.

The good G.o.d had made him a Friar Minor, but his brains had not been removed at ordination. The black robes had the ear of the bishop of New France and of the pope himself-some said of Louis XV, as well. Eh bien, Antoine would count on having the ear of G.o.d. As for this strange Jacobite, he would be made to serve Holy Church's purpose in spite of himself. "Go with G.o.d, my son." Another sign of the cross, sketched hastily in the chill air.

"Goodnight, mon Pere."

Pere Antoine watched Stewart hasten down a narrow alley between two rows of hulking cottages, listening until the ring of his boots on the cobblestones had faded. Then, despite the cold, he remained a moment longer, looking toward the charity hospital known as the Hotel-Dieu, then letting his gaze roam upward to the redoubt outside the town walls, and the high flatland called the Plains of Abraham where a few of the locals, the habitants, struggled to grow crops during the desperately short growing season. Their success was limited, and not just by the endless frozen winters. Corruption riddled the Canadian economy. The few got hugely rich and the many starved, particularly the native population whose way of life had been so disrupted by the coming of the Europeans. In bad years, the priest had been told, the Indians were reduced to gnawing on the leather diapers of their children, though the infants had beshat them a thousand times. Pere Antoine had seen hunger before. He believed the report to be entirely accurate.

There was no starvation for the wealthy Quebecois living within the shelter of the city's mighty fortifications. They ate the best of everything and lived like kings. Europe's taste for the furs of the far north makes them rich, along with their willingness to engage in deception and thievery. They destroyed the old way of life of the Indians and made them virtual slaves, forced to trap and trade in return for the made goods they can't now do without. Cloth and metal goods, but guns mostly. And alcohol, the devil firewater. Antoine was convinced that the Jesuits, Almighty G.o.d have mercy on them, were at the center of this vicious exchange. Under their all-powerful provincial, Louis Roget, they were black spiders in the middle of an endless web. More killing and starvation and disease and death, that's what the savages got from the missionary efforts of Louis Roget.

Dear Jesus, let me show them Your holy and loving face. Let them be saved for You who thirst for souls.

A few Franciscans were with Champlain when he came. G.o.d help them, they had given up. The Jesuits filled the void, becoming the missionaries to the Indians of New France.

Allow us to return to the rich Canadian harvest, Lord. Grant us our chance to be martyrs whose blood will give You glory and insure the future of the order.

Pere Antoine felt warm despite the frozen night. He stared a moment longer at the symbols of eminence in the city above his head, then turned to the hut a few doors from his own here in the Lower Town. It was bigger, but still a hovel. The Jesuits had seen to that. As if putting the Poor Clares in the humblest dwelling in the city did anything but make them more acceptable to the Savior.

The roof of the archbishop's chateau was halfway up the steep cliff, midway between where the priest stood and the steeples of the grand churches at the top of the city. According to the Vatican, the archbishop of Quebec was responsible for the spiritual welfare of all New France, which, if the entire territory it claimed were counted, was considerably larger than Europe. New France stretched from the Atlantic coast to land yet unexplored in the far west. It encompa.s.sed the valley of the Mississippi River and the area known as the Louisiana Territory. Unlike his predecessors, the current archbishop, Henri-Marie du Breuil de Pontbriand, lived mostly in Quebec.

Pere Antoine made yet another sign of the cross, this one in thanksgiving. How wondrous are Your ways, Lord. For if the family de Pontbriand did not have ancient debts to the family de Ruben Montaigne, the Poor Clare Colettines would not be established in a stinking, half-rotted fisherman's cottage at the edge of the fortress city. Saving its soul. And the souls of how many savages, You alone know.

It was because of those old family ties and obligations that Pontbriand had gone against the advice of the Jesuits and allowed the nuns to make their foundation in Quebec, and permitted Pere Antoine to accompany them as chaplain. And it was those five nuns who would see to it that Franciscans, not black gowns, brought the Holy Gospel to the Ohio Country. Who better than the simple sons of Blessed Francis to speak to the primitive hearts and souls of the Indians?

The priest looked once more at the hovel that had become the Monastery of the Poor Clares of Quebec. Much of the mortar in the stone foundation had rotted and fallen out. The bell tower, hastily erected just before the nuns came, was crooked, and barely large enough to contain a single bell. When the nuns saw it they were delighted. Just like San Damiano, they said, the ruin where Francis put Clare when she became the first nun of the Seraphic Order.

Those five women a.s.sailing heaven on behalf of the Order of Friars Minor would prevail. Nothing was more certain. They were not the first consecrated women in Quebec. There were the Ursulines, who schooled girls of the best families in their large and beautiful convent on the Rue des Jardins, and the Augustines Hospitalieres caring for the sick poor in the Hotel-Dieu, as well as a breakaway group of the same congregation who had built another, grander hospital, the Hopital General, in the Upper Town. But women whose vows bound them to give their lives to constant prayer, fasting, and penance ... in all the vastness of New France there was nothing to compare to his five Poor Clares. Soon to be six. Just yesterday Mere Marie Rose had said that sometime in the near future she expected a postulant to join the order. The first since they'd arrived in Canada the previous spring.

A new postulant was an omen, a sign from G.o.d that the prayers and penances of the Franciscans in Quebec were accepted. Pere Antoine was so sure of this he had already sent word to a house of the order two thousand miles south in Havana. They were to prepare to send him friars to be missionaries-G.o.d willing, perhaps martyrs-among the heathens in the Ohio Country.

Above his head the bells of the cathedral tolled the midnight hour. Pere Antoine looked toward the hovel-turned-monastery and, as he expected, saw the tiny lights of five candles flicker past the window. The Poor Clares had interrupted the six hours of sleep they were permitted out of each twenty-four. They were on their way to chant Matins, the first prayer of the new day. After an hour they would return to their straw pallets on wooden planks and rest until four, when they would rise to chant Lauds and begin another day of fasting and prayer and labor.

Thanks be to G.o.d, the seeds were planted. They would be watered with martyrs' blood.

"Ici-over here."

Stewart turned toward the voice. "Glad to see you, laddie. Crossed my mind you might o' gone."

"And why would I do that, Hamish Stewart? Did I not tell you I would wait?"

"Aye, you told me." Stewart squinted at the line looped around the bollard at the edge of the stone dock, holding the wee boat-a dory they called 'em in these parts-close in and steady so as he could jump aboard. Looked secure enough, though he could never get over his suspicion o' these Canadians. Or the feeling that in this place, wherever he went at whatever hour, he was always being watched.

Stewart put a booted foot on the dory's gunnel. The Frenchman, Dandon, watched the maneuver with a smile bordering on a smirk. A wave lapped the little boat and she drifted a bit seaward. Dandon slackened his grip on the line. The gap between Stewart's legs widened. The Frenchman chuckled. "You must make up your mind, mon ami, the sea or the sh.o.r.e." Stewart struggled to maintain his balance, and finally, at the last second, threw his weight forward and lurched rather than jumped into the dory. Dandon laughed again. "Not so bad, eh? Once you take a decision."

b.a.s.t.a.r.d. He could o' held the poxed boat closer in and kept her steady. Never mind. He was aboard now.

Dandon took a lantern from between his legs and held it over the side, pa.s.sing his hand over the opening in a series of signals to the sloop waiting some half a league away. A light flashed quickly in response. "Alors, they are ready for us. Take up an oar, mon ami. You will work off some of the fine supper the priest fed you."

"Aye, and what supper might that be? Prayers a plenty, but na a crumb to eat."

"Eh bien, that is what you get for treating with the brown friars, mon ami. They are committed to what they call Sister Poverty. At the black gowns you get the finest wine in New France, and the best food."

Stewart pulled on his oar, matching the other man's strokes and settling into a steady rhythm. "And what would the likes o' you ken o' supping with the high-and-mighty black gowns?"

Dandon shrugged. "I have ears, no? Many things I hear."

Probably true. Why would he na hear everything that mattered, considering that he worked for the almighty Bigot. G.o.d's truth, there was na a job in the whole o' America better than Bigot's. The intendant o' Canada, the civil administrator o' New France. Every farthing taken in trade went through his hands, and three out o' five stuck to his fingers. But the thing about Bigot that made him different, and more successful than most villains, was that he was smart enough to share his profits wi' his friends. La grande societe, they called themselves, and high and low belonged. Even Dandon, menial though he be, got his wee bit. That way there was none as could turn on Bigot wi'out implicating himself. A fine plan, simple but effective.

And one of Bigot's schemes was heaven-sent for the enrichment of Hamish Stewart, if he could get Shadowbrook. Bigot bought Canadian grain at prices fixed by law, five to seven livres per minot, milled it at government expense, and sold the flour to the Crown-that is, to himself-at the market rate of twenty or more livres per minot. But the way things were in Canada-inflation fueled by paper money, and the farmers hiding their grain from the representatives of the intendant so they could sell it on the black market-it was possible to do some Scots business with French Bigot. Specially for someone wi'out scruples as how he owed some kind o' loyalty to the heretic British crown. Just you be smart enough to ken the way his mind works, Hamish laddie, and the mind o' the mad priest as well, and your fortune's made.

The sloop came into view just ahead of them, her single mast and her rapierlike bowsprit showing a parade of white canvas gleaming in the moonlight. Her sails were luffing now, spilling the freshening wind of the approaching dawn, waiting for the command that would send a dozen men into the rigging to set close haul and send her speeding south.

"Ahoy!" The call was more a whisper than a shout. All seamen knew that voices carried on the water. "Who goes?"

"I'm not goin', lad. I'm comin'. And you can save your tar talk for them as is impressed wi' it. I paid for this pa.s.sage. I dinna have to talk your talk as well."

The seaman let down the rope ladder. "Come aboard, Mr. Stewart. Tide's turning. Pilot said we'd sail soon as you were back."

Until they were through the shoals and reefs of La Traverse, the devilish stretch where the St. Lawrence divided between the southern tip of the long island known as the Ile d'Orleans and the mainland of Quebec itself, the grizzled Canadian pilot would be G.o.d Almighty, and his words, the Eleventh Commandment. "Canna be soon enough for me, laddie." Stewart grabbed hold of the ladder and heaved himself out of the dory. "I'll be happy to see the back o' this place."

"Un moment s'il vous plait, mon ami," Dandon whispered anxiously. "My report, what is it to be?"

"Aye, that's what it's to be. Aye and aye again. Tell la grande societe everything will be exactly as I promised."

The man lying flat on his belly on a rotted bit of old wharf snapped his gla.s.s closed as soon as he saw a pair of seamen haul the Scot off the ladder and into the boat. He had no interest in observing Dandon row back to sh.o.r.e. The Scot and the overzealous Franciscan were another matter. And what about Lantak, the mad savage? His spies in the countryside had reported that Pere Antoine was meeting frequently with Lantak. You forget him at your peril, Monsieur Louis Roget, priest of Almighty G.o.d and Provincial Superior of the Society of Jesus in New France, reminded himself. And the peril of Holy Mother Church.

Roget stood, gathered his black cloak around him, and began the long climb up the hill to the great fortress of the College des Jesuites in the Upper Town.

Quent and Cormac and Nicole traveled by day and camped by night. The going was slow because part of the time one or the other of the men had to carry the woman. She hated that and struggled hard to keep up, but when she came to the end of her endurance and there were still hours of daylight to be utilized, Quent or Cormac picked her up and they continued.

They ate twice a day: in the morning before sunup, and in the evening after they made camp. Food and drink presented no difficulties. The men killed small game, squirrels and rabbits and the occasional partridge, and the forest was laced with streams and brooks. They lacked potherbs and saladings and it was too early in the season for berries, but once Quent found a stand of fiddlehead ferns poking aboveground. Another time Cormac contributed a couple of fistfuls of mushrooms to the evening meal.

The men took turns standing watch throughout the night. Nicole, utterly exhausted, slept. There was little time for talk. Sometimes, for a few moments before they doused the cooking fire, Quent and Cormac exchanged remembrances of the long days of summer in Singing Snow and the bitter cold of winter experienced from the safe haven of Shadowbrook. Of the present situation, of what Quent faced when he returned or Cormac's plans, they said nothing.

Nicole spoke hardly at all until the sixth night. Cormac had gone deep into the forest to relieve himself and she and Quent were alone. She was burying the bones of the quail they'd eaten, deep and carefully the way the men had shown her. She finished scuffing the earth above the bones and looked across the embers of the dying fire. "You said they had every reason to want us alive. Why?"

It took a few seconds for Quent to understand what she meant "Tanaghrisson and his braves?"

"The Indians who ... The murdering savages. You said they wanted us alive. Why? To torture us? Because they hate all whites?"

"Sounds like you've been listening to some stories."

"It is not true? The savages do not torture white people? Even eat them?"

"Sometimes it's true. But not just whites. They do the same things to each other. It's part of their way of life. Their religion, you might call it."

Nicole crossed herself. "You are speaking blasphemy. That is not religion. It is heathen barbarism."

Quent shrugged. "Call it what you like. It's how it is." He wasn't surprised by her papist gesture. Cormac had told him she was a Catholic on her way to Quebec and that he'd taken charge of her two weeks before. Not by choice, but because he was under an obligation. Nicole had been traveling with her father, Livingston Crane, an Englishman and former army officer. They had been in Alexandria when Cormac arrived looking for Quent. Some American trappers recognized Corm, knew there was a price on his head in a dozen different places in the colonies, and laid an ambush. Livingston Crane chanced on it, warned Cormac, and insisted on fighting beside him. The Englishman took a knife wound to the heart and died in Cormac's arms. His last words were a plea that Cormac get Nicole safely to Quebec. Corm had tagged along with Jumonville's party because it promised safe pa.s.sage for at least part of the journey, and a few more of the creature comforts a woman required, even here on the frontier.

"If it was not to torture us or eat us," Nicole demanded, "why do you say those Iroquois want us to be alive?"

"The Half King wants witnesses."

"Why should a murderer want witnesses? And how can anyone be half a king?"

"It's an Iroquois notion. A king speaks for all his people, a half king for some of them. Tanaghrisson speaks for the Iroquois in the Ohio Country."

"You make them sound almost civilized."

"Not almost," Quent said. "Out here that's an important lesson. Not almost."

"You called them snakes."

"I never said they weren't clever. Tanaghrisson wants witnesses to tell the story of how he slaughtered Onontio. That's their name for the French governorgeneral. It was originally a Huron word that means 'father' now all the Indians use it. You heard what he said before he killed Jumonville: Tu n'es pas encore mort, mon pere.' You are not yet dead, my father. He meant Onontio, the French presence in the Ohio Country, wasn't dead." He would have said that the Half King washed his hands in Jumonville's brains for the same reason, but she was looking ill again, sickened by her memories.

"I do not understand."

"The Iroquois are English allies. They want the English to prevail in this part of America," Quent said patiently.

Cormac returned and squatted beside them. He picked up a handful of moist earth and let it sift through his fingers onto the last glowing embers of the cooking fire, extinguishing it. "Sounds like you're giving Mademoiselle Nicole a lesson in politics."

"Something like that." Quent looked from Cormac to Nicole. Was there something between them besides obligation? When it was Quent's turn to carry her through the forest he couldn't put such thoughts from his mind.

"Quent's left out some things," Cormac said. "The Iroquois aren't really English allies. They simply want dominance. That's the Iroquois way. They call it the Kainerekowa, the Great Peace, but it's a peace in their favor and they're willing to get it any way they can. Mostly through great war. Iroquois prey on anyone who's weaker than they are, hostile or not. From their point of view, it's only peace if they're in charge."

"You do not like tem?"

"I despise them."

"I thought it was only white people you despised," she said softly. "That is what people said in Alexandria."

"They're wrong. I'm half white. I don't hate my white blood or anyone else's. I only hate what the whites are doing to the Indian way of life. If they would leave Canada to the Indians, and down here stay on the other side of those mountains behind us," he jerked his head in the direction of the Alleghenies to the east, "everything might be fine."

"Might be," Quent said. "There's no guarantee."

Cormac smiled, an odd grimace because one side of his face was frozen by the scar. "An old argument," he said for Nicole's benefit. To Quent he said, "Might be, I agree. But the way it is now's deadly for the Anishinabeg." He turned to Nicole. "Anishinabeg means 'Real People.' It' what the folks the whites call Indians call themselves. But doesn't matter what name you use-pretty soon the Real People will be wiped out. So something else has to be tried. The whites have to get out of Canada."

Nicole persisted. "Back there in the glen, when the Iroquois murdered the wounded. Is that why the American colonel allowed them to do it? Because the Iroquois are English allies?"