11

DUNCAN SPENT ANOTHER AGONIZING HOUR waiting for Brandt to appear, his heart heavy with the news of Robert Rogers. Patrick Woolford had written to Edentown months earlier with the welcome report that Rogers, hero of the frontier, had won command of the garrison at Michilimackinac, the British fort in the far northwest. Duncan and Woolford had both assumed that Rogers would be there for years, for it was the ideal location for the major to pursue his dream of discovering the elusive Northwest Passage to the Pacific. But now someone in the government had decided that Rogers, like Duncan, should hang. Duncan had only briefly met Rogers in an Albany tavern years earlier. Horatio Beck, who had gone to Ticonderoga to examine records of the St. Francis raid, had surely known of the charges against Rogers. Did Beck think Duncan and Rogers were connected in some conspiracy?

His eyes kept drifting toward Hayes, who had resumed trading with the various strangers who wandered over to his outstretched blanket of goods. He was selling ribbons and writing lead and the odd spoon or fork, and from the snippets of conversation Duncan caught he seemed as interested in learning about conditions in the north as in selling his wares. He heard a solitary tribesman deny any interest in trading, but Hayes called him closer and spoke in low tones with the man, then gave him a slip of paper and a tin mug, which the man accepted with a nod, carefully stowing the note in a pouch at his belt.

When Brandt finally appeared, stiffly marching with a weapon on his shoulder, as if on a parade ground, Duncan was instantly on his feet. Munro put a hand on his arm. “Let him work on his thirst for a while. I gave him a half shilling as a token of our friendship, and he’ll be eager to spend it. After three or four pints our conversation will go a mite easier.”

Thirty minutes later they found the wiry corporal sitting at a table by the hearth, staring at his powder horn, which now lay on the table before him. From above came an unexpected cooing. Duncan recalled that the proprietor’s wife kept pet doves.

“Sorry to hear of yer predicament,” the corporal said as Duncan pulled up a chair.

Duncan cast an uneasy glance at Munro. The Scot, who had cannily worked his way into conversations with the townspeople, had told Duncan that Brandt, who had lost his family early in the last war, had long ago ceased being paid by the government. He had become a self-appointed sentinel at the fort, living on the generosity of the settlers, who would never let a St. Francis ranger starve. Recently, however, he’d been unexpectedly paying off all his old debts. Dismissed by many as a harmless fool, he was fastidious in his care of the modest arsenal, as if always expecting an attack. But what had Munro told Brandt of Duncan?

“I conveyed to the corporal how yer betrothed got dragged away by her unhappy father to his farm in the Champlain country,” Munro explained as Conawago settled beside Duncan. “It’s why ye need to hasten to Ticonderoga and find a boat to the north end of the lake,” he added, and turning from Duncan’s withering glance, he called for the barmaid.

Brandt drained his tankard and ordered another. “Must be a beautiful thing,” he observed with a dip of his head.

The man’s high, scratchy voice and his mannerisms so reminded Duncan of a rooster that he had to clamp his jaw to stifle a grin. “I’m sorry?” Duncan asked.

Brandt lifted his tankard to Duncan. “True love, son, true love.”

Munro was able to turn the laugh that rose in his throat into a polite cough.

“I am eager indeed to reach Ticonderoga,” Duncan said. “How is the trail?”

“Trail, you say? Nay, t’is a military road. Didn’t the good major and I work to finish it, all the way to Crown Point. Good to have our hands busy after the return. Heavy hearts need busy hands, my ma used to say. Bless her soul.” The corporal dabbed at an eye.

“Heavy hearts—after St. Francis, you mean,” Duncan suggested.

“The ’Nakis had scalped and burned and butchered all across the frontier, from Maine to Champlain and down into Massachusetts. We stopped ’em good, didn’t we? Never the same after that October dawn. ‘Take ’em down,’ the major says, ‘take ’em all down. Too many of us have buried children and women. Let ’em choke on their medicine.’ That was the speech he gave when we gathered in the dark. ‘Let ’em feel the fist of good King George,’ the major says. May God rest that royal gentleman,” the corporal added with a dip of his tankard. That king, the second George, had died a year later.

Brandt quieted, and seemed to lose himself in the dancing flames of the hearth. He spoke abruptly, in a distant voice now. “The babies are screaming, but nothing like their mothers when they see them covered in blood. One threw her infant from her breast into the river rather than see it killed in front of her. I wake in the night hearing them screams. But we had to do it, don’t ye see? ‘They have to choke on their own medicine,’ the major says. ‘Have they not slaughtered the babies of settlers for decades?’ ” Brandt made a stabbing motion, as if with an imaginary knife. Conawago and Duncan exchanged a worried glance. Brandt did not seem entirely tethered to reality.

“ ‘Just a little boy, he has a bad foot,’ one cries. A woman holds up a papist cross over her breast. ‘But yer Bible says an eye for an eye,’ my lieutenant shouts to her.”

“What did you find there?” Conawago asked. “In the battle, did you discover something surprising?”

Brandt hesitated. “They was dead, and then not dead.” The corporal still spoke to the fire. “They ran into the Jesuit church for safety, but as the fire spread through the town, the blaze reached it, too. I saw several, a ’Naki grandmother with a gray streak on top of her head like a polecat, with a little girl clutching a cornhusk doll, and a Jesuit priest. But except for the back chamber of stone, the church was all wood. It went up like an inferno. God, the screams.” Brandt went quiet and gulped down more ale. “We never wanted that, not for the church to burn, not for all those Christian women and children to die like that. But an hour later, as we formed up to retreat, there they were, on the slope above us, at the edge of the forest with their town burning below them. Alive again. That grandmother and the little ’Naki girl with her doll, and that priest with a bunch of children, all just watching him.”

Duncan recalled what Chisholm had said when asked about Brandt. Not all who seem crazy are insane. “Him?”

“The major. I told him. Dead and risen again.”

“They must have gone out a window,” Munro pointed out.

“Nary a chance. We had posted men to be sure no one else escaped from the church. Several warriors had run in there at the beginning of the fighting.”

They sipped at their ales. “Did the major acknowledge them?” Duncan asked. “As if he knew them?”

Brandt slowly nodded. “At least the priest. He seemed to be waiting. It was as if they knew each other.” Brandt shrugged. “Know the land before ye attack, the ranger rules say.”

Duncan chewed on a piece of sausage left by the barmaid, gauging the nervous corporal who had survived the St. Francis expedition. “You mean he had a secret informer.”

“Wouldn’t be doing his job if he didn’t.”

“You said the priest and the others waited, as if they had to confirm something?”

The old ranger frowned and sipped at his ale before replying. “When they saw him, they didn’t run. That’s why I remembered. Major Rogers, he was like a demon to most ’Naki. They were superstitious about him, truly scared of him. But not these, not that old woman and the papist. The major held something up above his head. A white doeskin pouch with those flowers that ’Naki women like to embroider with threads and quills. The priest held a hand above his own head and made a motion. Funny, I thought, it was like a ranger sign, made a fist, then spread his fingers as he waved in a spiral motion. For a ranger it would mean disperse and hide in the forest. But how would a priest know that?”

“Had Rogers gone into the church before the raid?” Duncan asked.

“Not that morning. But he made a reconnaissance the night before.”

Duncan remembered the romantic stories that had been published about Rogers’s grand St. Francis adventure. While they varied considerably, they all agreed on one thing, based on Rogers’s own official report—Rogers had gone into St. Francis the night before the raid. He was fluent in Canadian French and passed himself off as a casual traveler. He had done so, he said, to assess the strength of the enemy, but what if he also met an ally inside the town and perhaps told him to ready a parcel for him to retrieve during the raid?

“Did the church burn to the ground?” Munro asked.

Brandt, staring intensely into his ale now, seemed not to hear. “People hide up in their rafters and lofts, thinking they’ll escape notice. They’ll have no chance when the flames engulf them.” His face hardened. “There’s trophy poles everywhere, even in front of the church. At least a score of scalps on every pole. Hundreds of scalps. The ’Nakis even ripped the hair off little girls. There’s a special pole of nothing but scalps of long, straw-colored hair, some still with ribbons in them. God’s blood, but they scream. The air is full of smoke and the stench of blood and burning flesh. A dog runs by me, all on fire. We gotta keep order, dammit, like good English soldiers. Ain’t gonna be coming for us for a day or two, the major says, so we’ll get a good start toward Number Four. Safe Number Four. Blessed Number Four.”

The barmaid brought a plate of fried apples, but no one seemed interested in eating now. From the street came the ragged sound of fife and drums, inexpertly played.

“How would the major know that?” Conawago asked. “How would he know they wouldn’t follow for a day or two?”

Strangely, Brandt suddenly became aware of the powder horn in front of him and, with a nervous glance at his companions, covered it with his hands. “The major, he knows everything.” He looked about the tavern, back in the present now. “He’s ’bout the greatest hero folks in these parts have ever known. I remember that day we finally arrived here. They didn’t come after us right away, but when they came, they was an army of demons. We had to split up and take indirect routes to throw them off. We were more dead than alive, all played out, and near starved to death as we marched through the gate. Little more than a few mushrooms and raw acorns for a week and more. As soon as folks here see us, they begin cheering. ‘Huzzah, huzzah, the saviors from the north!’ they call, and we stood tall and straightened the rags of our uniforms.”

“And you came back here after the war?” Duncan asked.

“It’s the refuge, don’t ye know. Rangers need a refuge to make ready fer the next battle. We ain’t done with the ’Nakis, I know that in my bones. Gotta keep ready, wait for orders.”

Duncan leaned toward Brandt. “So the next battle is to free the hero from his chains.”

Brandt looked up in alarm, glancing nervously at the other tavern patrons. “Keep yer voice down!” he whispered, and slowly nodded. “A misunderstanding is all. He ain’t any more a traitor than you.” Duncan and Conawago exchanged an ironic glance.

One of the resident doves flew through the rafters overhead, shedding a small downy body feather as it flew. Brandt stared at it with the fascination of a small child as it drifted over their table; then he made an unsuccessful attempt to grab it, his action pushing it in another direction.

Duncan gestured to the powder horn that Brandt kept fingering. “I remember rangers who etched their stories on their horns. Is that one about St. Francis?” As he slowly extended his hand, trying to reach the horn, Brandt snatched it away, tucking it under his arm. “Not yer nevermind, nevermind, nevermind,” he echoed. His high voice was getting hoarse.

“I seem to recall,” Conawago observed, “that Major Rogers tended to argue with British officers as energetically as he fought the French king.”

The old corporal gazed at the Nipmuc with half-lidded eyes. He seemed to be sinking into an intoxicated torpor, and then he bent toward Conawago, his eyes burning with sudden energy. “T’ain’t spit and polish what wins a battle, it’s guts and vinegar, it’s moving through the forest as stealthy as a catamount, it’s standing to reload even though the bullets be flying around you and piss be running down yer leg.” Brandt drained his tankard and grew more solemn. “The major won the battles, but the generals who despised him got all the rewards.”

Conawago pushed the plate of apples toward the corporal and signaled for more ale. “It’s enough to make a man bitter,” the Nipmuc observed.

“It’s him what wrote the book of ranging rules that the damned lobster-backs now teach their own soldiers. He should have been made one of those knights or dukes or such.”

Duncan leaned forward and whispered. “Is it the army that now accuses the major?”

“God rot ’em, yes! Because he wants to save this great land from the likes of those pissant generals!” Brandt looked down at the table. The stink of ale was heavy on his breath. “He sent me a letter a few months ago,” the scrawny corporal confided.

“A letter from the hero of St. Francis must have been an occasion for all here at the fort to celebrate,” Conawago suggested. “You probably read it out loud to all the town.”

Brandt flinched at the words, and he craned his head, surveying the tavern’s customers with sudden suspicion. When he looked back, his eyes narrowed. “Once a ranger, always a ranger.” Brandt knuckled his forehead. “Knights of the forest,” he recited. It was one of the slogans ranger officers used for recruiting.

“You make it sound like he gave you a mission, Corporal,” Duncan observed. “Written in purple ink perhaps.” He pushed down the temptation to ask if Brandt had also received a gold coin. He had been paying off his debts.

The grizzled ranger fixed him with a bristling gaze. “Ye’ll get burned poking yer finger in someone else’s fire.”

“Once a ranger, always a ranger,” Duncan repeated. “I was a ranger,” he reminded Brandt. “So were Branscomb, Oliver, and Chisholm.”

Conawago placed a hand on Duncan’s arm as if worried that he was pushing the unsteady corporal too hard, but Duncan pushed anyway. “I supposed a man as cunning as Rogers could find ways to get messages even while he is in prison.”

Brandt’s eyes flared. Duncan had found the line he could not cross. The corporal pressed his arm more tightly around his powder horn. “Damned few he can trust,” Brandt shot back. “Who else but the faithful from ’59? Branscomb, Oliver, and Chisholm were with me in that special hell, sure. The man who stands beside ye when the ’Nakis come screaming down the hillside to eat yer heart, that’s the one ye can rely on.”

Duncan leaned close to the old ranger. “There’s a new call from the north,” he whispered. “Saguenay.”

Brandt’s eyes suddenly burned with a new light, and he began frantically searching the pockets of his much-patched waistcoat, finally extracting a leather-wrapped bullet like the one Daniel Oliver had worn around his neck. He stared at it, all signs of drunkenness gone, then gripped the ranger amulet tightly and stood, staggering only slightly. With a determined glint, he marched out the rear door of the tavern.

“TEN, ELEVEN, TWELVE,” MUNRO COUNTED as the red-coated figures climbed out of the whaleboats on the river below them. “A dozen lobsterbacks plus an officer. Tough-looking bastards. They all have long swords. Dragoons, like Noah said. Dragoons like at Worcester.”

Duncan and his friends had crossed the river in the dim light before daybreak. He pushed back an alder branch to see the soldiers more clearly. “Dragoons need horses,” he observed.

Munro nodded. “Odd for them to arrive at dawn,” he said. “They must have been rowing in shifts through the night.” As he spoke, two more whale-boats appeared out of the river mist, one manned by a bedraggled group of men who wore red bands around their arms—the Massachusetts militia sent by the governor. Duncan puzzled over the black uniforms in the second boat. Then he saw the man sitting on the central thwart, a broad-rimmed hat on his head and a black book in his hand. Wheelock and his Christian soldiers were bringing up the rear of the flotilla from Agawam.

Someone on the fort ramparts gave a sharp whistle. Someone else near the gate began energetically blowing a tin horn. Men and women began appearing—some rising from blankets laid out near slumbering livestock—and watched as the soldiers marched in a column of two toward the fort.

“Wheelock’s not going to have the pomp he was expecting for his arrival,” Conawago observed, his words filled with foreboding. The soldiers had not waited for the reverend, for they had a mission and were not interested in ceremony. They had to be part of the dragoon company Beck had been riding with. Duncan nodded grimly, then pulled on his pack, lifted his rifle, and set out for Lake Champlain.

The rough track they followed could be considered a road only with the same hyperbole that the military used in calling a hill with a trench a fortification. No doubt the army had urgently dispatched troops to clear the path during the war to make it passable for wagons of materiel, but in many places it was now so heavily rutted by intersecting creeks and so crowded with undergrowth that no wheeled vehicle could pass. By midmorning they reached a verdant mountain range that stretched to the north, and they had to climb around a tangle of trees that had tumbled down a steep slope in an avalanche. They passed over enough straight, clear sections, however, that Duncan found himself pining for Goliath, who would have taken joy in stretching his legs over such terrain. The thought made him gaze westward, wondering if he would ever see the horse or even Ishmael again. The task he had given the young Nipmuc had been almost impossible, and more than once he chided himself for pushing the youth to undertake it on a stolen dragoon mount.

“So is he truly touched in the head,” came a voice over his shoulder, “or was the corporal putting on a cunning act for us?”

Duncan paused to let Conawago catch up with him. The old Nipmuc had been lost in worried contemplation ever since they’d left the Connecticut. “I have been weighing our time in the tavern with Brandt,” his friend said. “Is he a lunatic on a mission or a sane man on a lunatic mission?”

They walked a few more paces. A pine grouse flew across their path. “Perhaps both. He is a man alone,” Conawago continued. “His life was defined by his time with the rangers, and the St. Francis raid has tainted his mind. He has lost the scent of battle, lost his commander, lost his brothers. The unsteady mind of the old ranger drifted without those anchors to hold it. But did you see his eyes when he rose from the table last night? You lit a fire in him that burned away his alcohol. Your words triggered something inside him, as if he suddenly had to commence his mission.”

“I think Major Rogers, lying in chains, has finally given him orders, through the one who writes in purple ink.”

Munro, now walking beside them, had been listening. “T’weren’t no rough musket he brought to the tavern last night. It was a ranger’s gun, a lovingly maintained long rifle that he leaned against the wall when he arrived. He was planning to leave, at least the part of him that’s a ranger was planning so,” Munro said, as if he had decided that Brandt, who had lost his family in Indian raids and experienced the horrors of the St. Francis expedition and who knew many other violent encounters, was made of several broken parts.

“And he kept his powder horn hidden,” Duncan said. “He didn’t want me to study it, snatched it away when I tried.”

“But he showed it to me,” Munro explained, “up in the hall when it was just the two of us. I admired the handiwork and told him I had etched my battles on my own, so he showed me. Seemed like the usual images a soldier in the field makes. A bear, a stag. A star-shaped fortress at one end and another box like a fort at the other, connected by a rambling line.”

“Ticonderoga is star shaped,” Conawago observed, “and Number Four is a box.”

“Aye, connected by the line that is this road. And there were images spaced along the line.”

“A map, you mean,” Duncan said. “A map he needs for his mission.”

Munro nodded. “Except surely an old ranger would know how to get to Fort Ti or Number Four.”

“Rogers wants him to do something else, not at the forts. What else was shown on the horn—along the road?” Duncan asked.

Munro shrugged. “Trees. A mitten-shaped lake with little fish in it. Something like a chimney.”

“A chimney? Why a chimney?”

“Don’t know, Captain. Does it matter?”

“Whether Brandt’s mind is cracking or not, somewhere inside it he holds a secret we need, a secret that has something to do with the sinking of the Arcturus, or at least the French who sank her. Rogers found something at St. Francis, something he could use in the war against the French. He came back to Number Four, then returned to Champlain over the road that was being constructed then. He discovered that the war was almost over and he did not need to use his secret, so he kept it for another opportunity. Brandt said the road was completed in 1760, a few months after the raid on St. Francis. By then the war was finished in North America. Odd that a man of Rogers’s rank and his corporal would come to work on the completion of the road. It was a time of victory parades and celebratory balls in Albany and New York, where Rogers would have been feted, but he chose to come back into these mountains and build a road. That doesn’t strike you as strange?”

Conawago grinned. “And tell me, Duncan. What would be your choice, a starched-collar ball in the city or a walk in paradise?” he asked good-naturedly, with a gesture that took in the rolling hills around them.

Duncan knew that Conawago needed no answer to that question.

“ ‘Heavy hearts need busy hands,’ Brandt said,” Munro recalled. “But why would Rogers have a heavy heart? He was a hero, perhaps the most famous man on the continent for months after St. Francis.”

“He had a spy in the French camp, someone who had soured on King Louis,” Duncan suggested. “Rogers had become a son of the New Hampshire wilderness. English walked those mountains, but so did French from the Quebec country. There’s no clear border even now between Quebec and the English-speaking colonies. The outcome of the war was not certain then. His spy told him not to worry about immediate pursuit, but he also gave Rogers something that would help the British cause in the war, I’m convinced of it.”

His companions had no chance to reply, for suddenly Molly ran past them, Will a few steps behind. As they rounded a curve in the road, they could hear men’s voices ahead of them. Duncan and Munro instantly slipped into the shadows and checked their weapons, but Conawago, undaunted, continued and after a few paces began to laugh, bringing his friends out of hiding.

The scene reminded Duncan of an Italian circus he had once seen as a student in Holland, complete with clowns and a performing monkey. Ahead of them, where tall trees bent toward each other to turn the road into something of a tunnel, Ebenezer Brandt was clutching his belly, laughing hysterically. Solomon Hayes was repeatedly running up a fallen log that had lodged five feet up the trunk of a huge maple, then leaping, arm outstretched, up against the trunk as he tried to reach higher and higher. His hat moved up the side of the tree, always just out of his reach, seeming of its own power. Sadie was swinging back and forth on thin branches, squawking in alarm, her efforts to retrieve the hat as futile as Hayes’s.

Munro instantly assessed the situation and raised his gun. “Spiny pig,” he announced. “They’ll go for anything that smells of salt.” He lifted his rifle and fired, hitting the tree just above the hat. The frightened porcupine dropped its prize and scurried to the far side of the trunk.

Hayes darted after his hat and with a quick whistle called Sadie to his shoulder.

“I thought you were going north,” Duncan observed icily.

Hayes hesitated, seeming confused by Duncan’s tone. “Perhaps you hadn’t noticed this is the only road that leads anywhere near north,” the tinker replied. “Northwest to the lake, then north along the trails that follow its shore.”

“The Connecticut goes north.”

Hayes began extracting the short quills embedded in the inside of his tattered hat. “The northern settlements are not upriver, they are up Champlain.”

“French settlements,” Duncan shot back.

“I seem to recall a treaty that made King George their monarch.”

“You know what they say about treaties. Just a means for each side to build strength for the next war.”

“Mere tinkers are hardly engaged in affairs of state, McCallum.”

“Mere tinker, Hayes? I saw you at Number Four. You were sending messages with tribesmen who had come to the fort.”

Conawago produced a canteen and stepped between them, extending it to Hayes. “You know he seeks his wife among the northern tribes, Duncan. Of course he sends messages. To trappers, to Mohawks, to Micmacs, to Hurons and Passamoquoddy. What would you expect?”

Munro extended a twist of tobacco to Brandt, and the two old soldiers spoke in low tones, laughing as Brandt pointed to the splintered bark that marked Munro’s victory over the spiny pig.

“I am not blocking your path, McCallum,” Hayes stated in a brittle voice, gesturing up the road. “By all means, continue. My hat and my monkey are no concern of yours.”

Duncan glanced at the tinker’s shabby hat and pushed down an ungrateful remark about wasting everyone’s time over an old rag. He was tempted to force the tinker to unpack his coded books right there.

“I believe the road passes by that lake in the distance,” Conawago observed, pointing toward the north. “I wager the soldiers who used this road built a campsite there. We’ll have a fire going and a hot meal ready at sundown. We’ll look forward to your company.”

Hayes impassively brushed off his hat and set it on his head. “Your Highland friend doesn’t want me in his camp.”

“But I do,” Conawago cheerfully replied. “There will be room for all of us. And fried trout for all if I can arrive early enough.”

Duncan shot his friend a petulant glance, then set off at a rapid pace up the road. He grew more suspicious of Hayes each day, angry at Conawago for defending the tinker, always despairing that the more he struggled to grasp the secrets that plagued him, the less he understood.

AS CONAWAGO HAD ANTICIPATED, THERE was indeed a campsite with a pleasant prospect waiting for them when they arrived at the lake hours later. They had made good time, and Duncan agreed to join Will and Munro in a swim while farther down the shore Conawago dropped his horsehair line into the current where a brook emptied into the lake.

Duncan felt an odd sense of urgency as he dove in, feeling a sudden desperation to be cleansed. Here in the depths was at least a world he understood, a world that his totem spirit and the Hebridean boy within him both adored. The tannin-stained water combined with the long rays of the sinking sun to create a vista of golds and browns beneath the surface. Speckled trout watched him, then lazily swam away. A huge pike, as old as the mountains, studied him, as if evaluating him as a possible meal, until four black legs churned the surface above, and with a powerful stroke it disappeared into the murk.

Duncan surfaced beside Molly and followed her as she retrieved a stick for an exuberant Will, who stood knee-deep in the water. The boy threw the stick again, and with a long, skimming dive Duncan raced Molly toward it. Dog and boy jumped up and down with delight when she returned with it clenched in her jaw. Duncan laughed and dove again, embracing the joy he felt in the watery underworld, letting it scrub away his fears and anger. A turtle scurried along the bottom. He glided through a school of sleek minnows and watched from below as a large trout shot upward past him, escaping the water for an instant to capture a midge before splashing back home. What did it think of the world above? He remembered afternoons on his grandfather’s sloop, when whales or great basking sharks would follow the boat, one eye rolled up so they could examine the strange human world. More than once his grandfather had shouted the Gaelic war cry, “Buaidh no bas!”—Victory or death!—and leapt onto the back of a leviathan. The massive creatures seemed to enjoy the frolic, and with a laugh that echoed far over the bays, his grandfather would declare that they were undoubtedly distant relatives.

Duncan surfaced again, wearing a rare smile, to the sound of an excited call.

“There! In the water, Duncan!” the boy shouted, eagerly pointing. “A piece of treasure!” Duncan reached his side and followed his arm toward a tiny point of color on the bottom that sparkled in the long rays of the setting sun. Will grabbed Duncan’s arm and pushed him toward it. With another laugh Duncan took a couple of steps and submerged again.

It did indeed seem to be a piece of treasure that Will had spotted, or at least a finely cut piece of crystal. Duncan studied it for a moment, then carefully pushed aside enough of the mud to see that it was part of a bracelet. It would be good for the boy to have a memento, something to distract him from his sorrow. He lifted the bracelet, then recoiled in horror. A skeleton arm rose up out of the muck with it.

As Duncan flailed in the water, still gripping the bracelet, the skeleton hand disintegrated, the bones disappearing back into the mud. He shot to the surface, his heart thundering, and treaded water as he calmed himself.

He knew not what to say, so he silently extended the bracelet to the boy, who grabbed it with a gleeful whoop and splashed back toward camp. Duncan, his joy withered, stared back at the patch of blackness where the remains of a woman lay.

The day was ending in a blush of purples and pinks over the western mountains when Molly sprang up to greet the last two travelers. Hayes and Brandt looked completely sapped from their long trek, and both collapsed by the fire, eagerly accepting the split wood slabs on which Conawago served his fried trout.

“What ye playing with, boy?” Brandt asked Will after wolfing down his first serving and extending his slab for more.

Will still beamed with excitement as he turned his bauble over and over. “Pirate treasure!”

“In the Hampshire Grants?” Brandt scoffed. “Not likely.” The old ranger rose and stepped to the boy’s side, gesturing for the piece of jewelry. He reached for it, but as he touched it, he seemed to shudder and abruptly pulled away his hand. “A bracelet? From the lake?”

“Mr. Duncan dove for it! He’s like a fish!”

Brandt fixed Duncan with a look of sober inquiry. “How far out?” he asked.

“A stone’s throw,” Duncan answered.

“Give it back, boy.”

Will looked up in alarm. “Back?”

“To the dark waters.”

Conawago stepped to Will’s side. “The boy’s had a vexing time. Go lightly.”

Brandt shrugged, exchanged a glance with Hayes, muttered something about ghosts, then silently finished his meal and carried his bedroll to one of the piles of fresh pine boughs Conawago had collected for bedding. He spoke no more, and Will soon followed his example, leaving the others staring at the bracelet he had left on a rock by the fire.

Munro produced his pipe and was coaxing the tobacco with a smoldering stick when Hayes suddenly spoke.

“Emma Fletcher,” the tinker said.

Munro lowered his pipe. “Pardon?”

“That was her name. Emma Fletcher,” Hayes replied. “Captured with several other women in a late-winter raid during the war. I made it my business to track down every tale of female captives, thinking I may find a thread of my Rebecca’s fate. Before the army cleared this road, much of this route was a path used by Abenaki raiders when they came down from Champlain.” He extracted his own clay pipe and lit it, then stared into the flames.

“And?” Munro asked.

Long moments passed before Hayes spoke. “She died,” he finally said.

No one seemed inclined to push the tinker, knowing the pain it cost him to speak of Indian captives. The weary silence remained unbroken except by the haunting, echoing cry of a loon. Molly sauntered to Will and lay down beside him. Munro rose, completed a night scout around the camp, and returned, joining again in the silent vigil at the fire.

“Scarce out of her teens, they say,” came a voice from the shadows. Brandt, in his blanket now, was still awake. “Fresh married. The raiders slaughtered her husband before her eyes. Took a dozen women up to the St. Lawrence, where the western tribes came to trade for slaves. One of ’em got bought by a Frenchie whose priest made him give her up. She told the story, how this Emma cried and tore at her bindings, even tried to bite open her own veins. They stopped here on their run north.

“There was a winter moon,” Brandt continued, “shining on the snow and ice over the lake. Emma made like she had a call of nature, and her captor led her off with a loop around her neck. When they got to the lake, she jerked it from his hand and ran out on the ice. They could all hear the ice cracking, and the other women called and begged her to come back. But she kept going and finally turned. She stretched her arms out and called her dead husband’s name out to the heavens, then started jumping up and down. After four or five jumps, the ice opened and she was gone.”

Duncan sensed motion behind him. Will darted past them, snatching the bracelet from the rock and running toward the lake as if to pitch it back into the water. But as he passed the tinker, Hayes grabbed his arm.

“It’s all that remains on earth of her, boy,” Hayes stated. His voice was fierce. “She reached out to you today, to keep her memory alive. Only you felt her summons. Don’t deny her this.”

The sudden alarm in Will’s eyes ebbed, and he stared at the bracelet in his hand.

“Say her name,” Hayes told him. “Emma Fletcher.”

The boy took a deep breath, then looked back at Duncan, who knew the boy was acquainted with angels. Will solemnly repeated the name and pushed the bracelet into his waistcoat.

As the boy settled again, Duncan wandered down the shoreline and sat on a ledge that had the shape of a natural chair, its granite still warm from the sun. He gazed out over the long, shimmering blade that was the moon’s reflection on the lake and found himself whispering a prayer for the soul of young Emma Fletcher.

As he watched Conawago and Munro stoke the fire and lay out their blanket rolls, it occurred to him that he was witnessing an age-old ritual. The camp, the trail itself, had been established long before the army arrived, before colonists arrived. At the intersection of the route between the mountains and the fertile lake, it was a perfect resting place, probably once a perfect hunting place. Tribesmen had been coming here for decades, probably centuries. It had clearly seen tragedy and despair but also no doubt great prowess and celebrations. Secrets were soaked into the soil of such places, Conawago would say, and some might rub off on the observant.

Natives had no doubt been exactly where he was, sitting on this granite slab, the likeliest of perches, and fished, watched sunsets, made love, committed mayhem, and witnessed death. Duncan somehow knew that men and women sat in his stone chair long before anyone had heard of Europeans or conceived of their distant lands. It made him feel small yet somehow more alive, the way he felt as a boy when sitting alone by the ancient standing stones of Scotland. Something timeless surged through him, something fierce and free, something shared by the natives of this land and the Highland clans. These were people who would reject the harness of a distant king and laugh at those weak enough to let such kings steal their freedom and honor.

Duncan had felt adrift for too long, uncertain of anything anymore. He could not shake the feeling that he was losing Sarah. He had let himself become a minion of merchant lords whose motives he did not grasp. He had let himself be used and become a fugitive for reasons he did not even understand. But here on this ancient granite, with the moon slicing silver into the dark, remembering waters, he felt an unexpected strength. He was the head of Clan McCallum, and though it may be nearly extinct, he would keep its honor as long as his heart kept beating. He leaned back, feeling, if not contented, at least at peace, and he shut his eyes.

When he woke, the moon had moved more than an hour through the heavens. The loon’s lonely signal still echoed across the lake, joined now by the questioning call of an owl. Duncan stretched, then paused, hearing a strange murmur along the shoreline. He stole toward the sound, which had the cadence of rhythmic speech, though in words he had never heard. They were harsh and guttural, nothing like the Gaelic, Mohawk, English, French, Latin, and rough Spanish he knew. He recalled that the tribes of the north spoke Algonquin, a unique and very different tongue with which he was not familiar.

It was several minutes before he located his quarry. Hayes was sitting on a different granite ledge near the lake, writing on a paper placed between two candles. The tinker wore his wool cap, and a shawl hung on his shoulders, though it was so small and thin Duncan doubted it offered much warmth. He seemed to be speaking to someone in the shadows, Duncan was sure of it, someone who did not want to be seen.

“Barukh ata Adonai,” Hayes intoned, “eloheinu melekh ha-olam.”

All of Duncan’s frustrations surged within him. Here at last was an enemy he could confront. He sprang forward, shoving Hayes off his knees. “Enough!” he shouted. “You will poison us no longer!” His knife in hand now, Duncan reached for a candle and held it high in a futile attempt to see Hayes’s secret contact. Failing that, he aimed the blade at Hayes, cautioning him to lie still, then looked down at the objects of the tinker’s treachery. The paper he had been reading from was so long it was rolled at each end, held in place by two narrow metal bars bearing inscriptions. Above the paper was a morsel of bread and a small mound of salt, and beside them a sheet of paper and a writing lead.

“What treachery is this?” he demanded. “Who do you work for?”

Hayes slowly straightened, keeping his eye on Duncan’s knife. “McCallum, surely you misunderstand.”

“Who is it you communicate with?” Duncan pressed. “Someone from the French court? Or is it an agent of Beck’s?”

“I speak to Him,” came Hayes’s simple reply.

“Who, damn it? Whom do you write to?” Duncan gestured to the paper scroll. “Is this your codebook, then?”

“I suppose in a way,” Hayes said in a level voice. “Deuteronomy is filled with enigma.”

“You will tell me whom it is you sneak away to write to, damn you!”

Hayes sighed. “My wife.”

“So you have lied from the start!” Duncan accused. “She serves your masters in the north?”

Melancholy filled Hayes’s face, and he looked down at the unfinished note beside the bread and salt. “It’s difficult to keep track of the calendar sometimes out here, but I do believe this is Friday night,” he said, as if this explained everything. “If you would just allow me to finish, I will answer your questions back in camp.”

“You are finished now!” Duncan insisted. “I want your papers!”

“Not possible.”

“I can’t arrest you, but at least I can put an end to your deception. And if I find that you were involved in killing the crew of the Arcturus, I vow that I will—”

“You will let him finish, Duncan,” came a voice from the shadows. Conawago stepped into the circle of light, Sadie asleep in the cradle of one arm. Duncan hesitated. The old Nipmuc had the air of a coconspirator. “As Solomon said,” his friend continued, “it is Friday night.”

Duncan’s head swirled. He could not understand why Conawago would take the side of a traitor. “Look at this!” he said, pointing to the note. “A code! He is writing with secret symbols!”

Conawago sighed. “You are better than this, Duncan.” He lifted the incomplete note. “I am rusty, but once I had a good Jesuit teacher. ‘My dearest Rebecca,’ ” he slowly read. “ ‘My Sabbath begins on the shore of a beautiful lake.’ ” The old man looked up. “Not code, Duncan. Hebrew.” He looked back at Hayes. “Barukh ata Adonai,” he said, repeating the words Hayes recited; then “eloheinu melekh ha-olam. Pardon me, Solomon, if I mangle the translation, but if I am not mistaken, it means, ‘Blessed are you, eternal one our God, our universal . . .’ ”

When Conawago hesitated, Hayes finished the sentence. “Our universal ruling presence.”

Duncan’s confusion was like a paralysis. He gazed in painful silence at Conawago, then at Hayes, then down at the items on the ledge, which suddenly took on the appearance of an altar. Memories flashed in his mind from his youth in Holland, where somber men wearing black shawls hurried down the street on Friday evening. “The Sabbath starts on Friday night,” he said in a hoarse voice. He lifted the unfinished letter. It had been many years since he’d seen the strange language, written from right to left, and he had never expected to see it in America. As he handed the letter back to Hayes, more memories flashed before his eyes, of Hayes often reaching for a cap or hat even when one seemed unnecessary. “Your hat. Your wool cap. You always have something on your head.”

Hayes nodded.

“It’s why you struggled so when the spiny pig stole your hat. The night in the tavern you wouldn’t touch the pork. The shawl. I used to see more elaborate ones in Holland.”

“A tallith.”

“They had fringes at the corners. And some wore something like aprons.”

“I just frayed a few threads on mine,” Hayes explained, and opened his waistcoat to show he was wearing a ragged cloth belt.

Duncan knelt and reverently rearranged the objects of the makeshift altar, then looked up to the tinker. “I have wronged you.”

“I am sorry, Duncan,” the tinker said. “My people have been forced into habits of secrecy, even in America.”

Duncan found that he had difficulty speaking. “I am the only one here who has been shamed,” he finally said. “I offer my apology, sir, though I don’t expect you can ever forgive me.”

“The Sabbath is the perfect time for forgiveness,” Hayes replied, extending his hand.

Duncan accepted the handshake. He had so many questions. “You could have just told us.”

“No, and even now, I must beg for your discretion,” Hayes said with a sad smile. “The Jews were driven out of Massachusetts decades ago. The Puritans came to America to escape intolerance in Europe only to practice it themselves in the New World. It is not safe to advertise my faith outside of Rhode Island. I would only put my traveling companions at risk and assure that I was shunned in my journeys. It was a mistake I made all those years ago when I agreed to come into the Hampshire Grants with my family. We didn’t hide our faith, for we never had to in Rhode Island. We had forgotten that in much of the world, my people are creation’s scapegoats, blamed for every misfortune. Teamsters deserted us. Accidents happened. Sometimes I think we were deliberately put in harm’s way in that Indian raid. No family suffered like ours that day.”

Sadie stirred, and as Conawago handed her down to Hayes, Duncan’s gaze settled on the writing lead and paper. “Will told me you wrote secret letters.”

“Yes, as often as I can.”

Conawago shot Duncan a cautioning glance.

“To do so in the wilderness seems odd,” Duncan said.

“To my wife. My heart says she still lives. That hope is all I live for,” the tinker confessed. He bent and opened the knapsack that lay near his altar, tipping it. Sealed letters spilled out, dozens of letters. “When we reunite, I will share all these years of my search with her. It will . . . help repair things, I think, bridge the gap so we can put these painful years behind us, and when we are old, we will take them out and tell our grandchildren about our grand wilderness adventure.” He looked at Conawago and gestured to the letters. “Many are in English, some in Hebrew. Open one or two, my friend. You will find them filled with boring details of a solitary existence.” He lowered his voice. “Sometimes I write of Sadie,” he admitted, as if in confession, “and, fool that I am, speak of her as my child.”

Strangely, his words seemed to stab Conawago. The old Nipmuc sagged, then slowly dropped to his knees before the mound of letters, each addressed simply Rebecca, with a date. He picked one up, and another, and Duncan saw that they were of many types and sizes of paper, with the message written on one side, then folded and sealed into an envelope. Some were jagged along one side, as if on paper ripped from bound volumes; others looked as if they had been salvaged from newspapers, with the typeset ink painstakingly scraped away so new words could be written.

Hayes wordlessly watched as Conawago emptied the sack. There were scores and scores of letters, the oldest ones, from the bottom, on good linen paper. Many were stained with sweat, with water, food, and sometimes blood. As the old Nipmuc ran his hands through the evidence of Hayes’s solitary, secret existence, his eyes filled with moisture. When he finally looked up, he gave a long sigh that seemed almost a sob. His voice cracked as he spoke. “It doesn’t have to be like this,” the old Nipmuc said.

“Like this?” Hayes asked.

Conawago looked out over the shadowed lake. “Twenty-five years ago I went to Canada because I heard that one of my old Jesuit teachers lay dying. I thought I would comfort him, thank him by sitting vigil at his deathbed because all his other friends had already passed. But all I did was make him angry. He shouted at me so loud that nuns came running from down the hall.”

Duncan could not recall ever seeing Conawago in such despair.

“I was a disgrace, he said. I had slapped away the hand of destiny, of greatness, that had been extended to me so many times. I had the best education a native ever received. I had dined with kings and great scholars. I had my feet well planted in both worlds, tribal and European, better than any man alive, he said. I could have built bridges between our peoples, could have prevented so many tragedies, he said. But I had wasted it, wasted everything on my ridiculous quest, which we all knew was hopeless from the start. It was a grave sin, he said, and he hoped the Lord would forgive me because he could not.”

Duncan’s heart seemed to shrivel. In all their years together, he had never heard this confession.

Hayes did not understand. “You knew kings?” he asked.

Conawago, staring at the letters again, seemed not to hear. “Don’t you understand? This was what I did! For sixty years it was all I did! My people disappeared while I was enjoying the pleasures of Europe. For sixty years I searched for them. Don’t do the same, Solomon, I beg you! Don’t throw your life away. You’re a good man, an educated man. You can still do great things with your life.”

Hayes was silent for a long time. The lonely loon called from across the lake. “In the end,” he said in a near whisper as Duncan helped Conawago to his feet, “a man’s years are all that he has. How I spend them is between me and my God.”

“Then your God is as irresponsible as you!” Conawago snapped. He kicked the pile of letters, sending several into the shadows, then stormed away into the night.

THEY MADE GOOD TIME THE next morning, skirting the north end of the lake on a sandy section of the trail before cresting a series of gently rising ridges. Duncan found himself often slowing, falling behind as he studied the forest on either side of the track. There had been no sign of Conawago since he vanished into the night. Duncan had heaped fuel on the campfire and futilely searched for his friend past midnight before surrendering to his fatigue. When he awakened, Conawago’s bedroll and kit were gone.

“I’m sorry,” Hayes said. The tinker had paused for Duncan at the side of the track. “I never should have argued with him. I didn’t know about his life. It is a tragedy of Shakespearean proportion.”

Duncan accepted a drink from the water gourd Hayes offered. “It’s not that. He took no offence from your words, Solomon, it’s just that they deepened his own pain. For weeks he has been out of sorts. Disjointed from the world. You saw him in Worcester. He is not by nature an angry man, but an anger has been growing inside him unseen for years. He grows bitterly angry at the world and doesn’t know how to get past it. The way he finds his peace is by going deep into the wilderness and consulting the ancient spirits who dwell there.”

“I thought he said he was a Jesuit.”

“No. He learned from the Jesuits. But he is fond of observing that they don’t know everything. He enjoys conversations with the European God, as he says, but his soul belongs to the ancient ones.”

“Still, our conversation gnaws at me. I must apologize to him.”

Duncan shrugged. “He’s disappeared like this many times before. He could be back in a week, or a month. Once, it was six months. The last time, he had to go see the great inland sea called Superior because he had a dream about it.” The words brought a stinging memory of his last conversation with Sarah.

“Indians seem to place a lot of stock in dreams.”

“Dreams are messages from the other side,” Duncan explained as he handed back the gourd. “And he’s been having many bad dreams lately.”

“They must have started in Boston,” the tinker said as he heaved his huge pack onto his shoulder.

Duncan had already taken a step up the road, but he turned. “Why do you say that?”

“Two weeks ago I was out taking the air with Sadie. She likes the harbor. I think the tall masts with ropes remind her of her childhood among tall trees intertwined with vines. I saw him, though I didn’t meet him until that night in Hancock’s warehouse. He was sitting alone on a wharf at sunset and speaking toward the water.” Hayes tightened the strap of his pack and fell in beside Duncan. “I remember because there was such despair on his face. For a moment I thought he was going to throw himself in. I began to quickly walk his way. But then he rose, stretched out his hands to the heavens, and shouted a word in a language I do not know. He threw something into the water. It looked like a necklace, a strand of beads.”

Duncan stumbled as he fought down a wave of emotion. They walked in silence, passing a woodpecker hammering on a birch.

“Jiyathontek. Is that what he shouted?” Duncan finally asked.

“Jiyathontek,” Hayes repeated slowly, then looked at Duncan in surprise. “I can’t be certain, but yes, that was the sound of it. So you know what he was saying?”

“I know whom he was speaking to,” Duncan said. “It’s a summoning, in Mohawk, the tribal language he most often uses. It means hearken or listen to me now. It is used to get the attention of the old gods. He shouts it because he says the old ones are getting hard of hearing.”

Hayes digested Duncan’s words for several steps. “So he called on the gods to watch him dispose of some beads?”

Something squeezed Duncan’s heart as he spoke. He recalled burying old beads by the river at Agawam. “No. He carries strings of wampum beads in an old pouch, some given him by his mother and some from his grandmother in the last century, who remembered seeing the Pilgrims land at Plymouth as a child. He was asking the gods to witness an ending, to accept his sacrifice. His people are all but extinct. He knows he has but a short time left in this world. He has taken on a somber responsibility.”

“I don’t follow.”

“He isn’t saying goodbye for himself, he is saying goodbye for his entire people. Though it rips his heart apart, he knows they are ended. But that isn’t the worst of it. He has known about his tribe for years, but now there is something different, something we saw at Worcester. Now he fears their gods are dying, too.”

It was midafternoon when Munro, on a rise ahead of them, yelled at their short column. Duncan followed his extended arm toward a cloud of dust behind them. “Riders!” the Scot shouted.

They were well hidden behind boulders and trees by the time the horsemen approached. To his surprise Duncan recognized the big bearded man from the Fort at Number Four, singing a bawdy song while leading five other riders. Duncan tried to recall the boisterous man’s name. Allen. He seemed to have a personality as oversized as his frame, which itself made his horse seem too small. His song, extolling the contours of a barmaid named Maggie, faded, and he reined in his horse. He studied the track with the eye of a seasoned woodsman.

“Hell, boys,” Allen called out. “We ain’t the ones you want to be hiding from.”

Corporal Brandt stepped out from behind a broad hemlock. “We ain’t hiding, Ethan,” he quipped. “We’re just running from the stench of ye.”

Allen gave a whoop and slid off his mount. “Ebenezer, you sneaky piece of gristle! You got a monkey, a dog, and a tinker with you?”

“Why?” Brandt shot back. “Ye grown particular about the company ye keep?”

Allen guffawed and tossed the grizzled corporal a canteen. “Hell, no. Now if you can just round up a drunken bear, we’ll have a real soiree tonight.”

Duncan, Munro, and Hayes ventured warily into the sunlight as the other riders dismounted. Allen muttered an urgent command, and they began quickly unloading their packhorse. The big man scanned their party and stepped toward Duncan, extending a hand. “You must be McCallum. Allen be my name, but you can call me by my Christian name, Ethan. Now mind me sharp and you’ll survive the day. T’ain’t their land to be riding so roughshod over.” His men were straightening out a long chain of metal rods. “Know anything about surveying?”

“I don’t understand,” Duncan confessed.

“Those lobsterbacks, boy! More boats arrived yesterday with their horses. They weren’t for the garrison at Number Four, they were dragoons coming this way with a warrant!” Ethan Allen urgently pointed to the southeast. A second cloud of dust could be seen now, moving rapidly toward them.

“We can hide,” Duncan suggested.

“No. My way’s better. Hide, and they’ll be searching the road for days, doubling back and hounding your tail.”

By the time the soldiers caught up with them, Allen had deployed their party across the landscape, stretching the chain of rods to its full length, then marking its spans with stakes. The big frontiersman had settled on a flat boulder with a ledger he produced from his saddlebag and was busily writing on its pages. He greeted the soldiers with careful disinterest, warning them not to disturb the true line he was measuring. “Tell me, General,” he said to the officer in charge, “do you spell woodpecker with one u or two?”

His question took the young officer off guard. “I am an ensign, sir. And I do not follow.”

“Woodpecker Hollow. That’s what I’ll call this tract when we finish the survey. On account of all the trees have holes in ’em. The great swordsmen of the feathered world. Lord, imagine if the king could train a company of woodpeckers, eh?”

The ensign shook his head as if to dispel his confusion. “I seek a fugitive from the king’s justice,” he sternly intoned. “Charges of treason are levied on his head.”

Duncan glanced up at the riders, careful not to make eye contact with any. He had had only a quick look through the tavern window, but he was certain that the three soldiers riding behind the officer had been in Worcester with Beck.

Allen seemed reluctant to change the conversation. “How would you train ’em, I wonder. Aim to pierce the hands of your enemy or go straight to the eyes?”

“Sir! A man who is an enemy of blessed King George is known to be in these parts.”

The alarm on Allen’s face was worthy of the theater. “God protect us, sir! You should have said so! This traitor got a name?”

“I will have yours first, sir,”

Allen stood up and soberly saluted the officer. “Ethan Allen, sir, of the Hampshire Land Company.” He gestured at his party. “And these be my mountain boys, as folks call ’em. Commissioned by the governor hisself to set out ten thousand acres in this paradise.”

The officer narrowed his eyes. “The governor of New York or the governor of New Hampshire?”

“Why, New Hampshire, of course. He says New York lies over in the Hudson Valley.” Allen turned back to his crew. “Keep it straight, damned yer eyes! The governor must have a straight line!”

Duncan, far up the slope, kept working, sharpening stakes for marking the supposed line.

“God’s fire, boys! A traitor’s on the prowl!” Allen shouted. “Keep a sharp eye to help our heroes on horseback! Looking for a varmint named—” He turned back to the officer.

“McCallum. Duncan McCallum. He left Fort Four two days ago. We believe he was using this road.”

Allen looked back at his work crew and raised a finger, pointing at each in turn as he recited names. “I got Ben, Thomas, Rafe, Silas, Solomon, Asher, Levan, the boy Will, and Learned, though that’s a hoot for such a dull fellow. Nope, no Duncan, though you’re welcome to Rafe, he’s an awful cook and snores like thunder.” Allen wiped the sweat off his brow. “No concern of ours, boys!” Allen shouted up the hill. “Just another damned Scottish troublemaker!”

The dragoon officer rolled his eyes.

The burly frontiersman shrugged. “Only strangers we’ve seen was three we passed a day ago. But they was leaving the road.”

The ensign leaned forward with great interest. “To where?”

“This be the only colonist road, to be sure. But the Injuns, they got paths aplenty. There’s trails intersecting this road what’ll take you all the way to Canada.”

The ensign nodded vigorously. “He is reported to travel with an old savage,” he confirmed.

“Those Scots are cunning bastards, to be sure. Put that McCallum with a savage or two and God knows what they be capable of. Might have walked right around us as we slept. That would be just like such a devil, to put us in mind they are going north, then sneak around us to the valley. That’s where they would get food and supplies, the valley. So that’s where they have to end up.”

The officer studied the road that led west to the safety of the British forts in the Champlain Valley. He was clearly not comfortable with the idea of riding up Indian trails. He drew himself up and with a sharp command led his men at a trot up the westward road. Allen watched until they had crested the next hill, then stuffed his ledger back into his saddlebag, summoned his men, and broke out in laughter. “Lord, don’t it give you comfort to know we got such sheep protecting us wolves?”

When they had repacked the equipment, Allen and all but one of his men remounted. The brawny man motioned Duncan to the riderless horse. “You’re with me,” he said in a voice that would brook no disagreement. He turned to the others. “There’s a river in about ten miles, no deeper than your waist this time o’ year. A couple miles beyond is a good campsite, on a flat by a stream. We’ll be there. You can’t miss it—by the big chimney rock.”

Munro’s head rose, and he met Duncan’s gaze. A chimney had been prominently etched on Brandt’s secret map of the Crown Point road.

“I take it this is not your first encounter with His Majesty’s troops,” Duncan said after they had been riding a few minutes.

“They be right handy when we’re at war,” Allen said, “but otherwise they want to nibble away at a man’s lawful business.”

“The business of land speculation.”

“The business of opening these grand vistas to fruitful labor. Making it possible for honest men to raise new families in this forest paradise.”

Ethan Allen had already shown that he was savvy about surviving on the frontier. He was also fluent in the language of the land huckster.

“A noble calling,” Duncan observed. “I was impressed that you have a commission from the governor. These grants are hotly contested by New York and New Hampshire. So you’ve sided with New Hampshire, then?”

Allen gave another of his crowlike hoots of laugher. He patted his saddle bag. “Depends on who’s asking. Got one from each!”

Duncan raised his brow in surprise. “That’s quite an accomplishment.”

His companion laughed again. “Hell, McCallum, we ain’t so fastidious here on the frontier. They ain’t exactly what a lawyer would call genuine, just close enough. And those soldiers didn’t care. The king tends to dismiss what goes on in the Hampshire Grants as a dispute between two governors. That officer was on London business.” Allen abruptly leaned over and grabbed the bridle of Duncan’s horse. “And it’s time you told me what that business is.”

“Nothing that concerns the Hampshire Grants.”

“I’ll be the judge of that. Why do they call you a traitor?”

“Nothing that reaches into this land. Do not invent new troubles for yourself, Allen.”

“I correspond with men in Boston. Mr. Hancock, Mr. Samuel Adams. You’d be surprised how long the arms of Boston can be.”

“And those of New York,” Duncan added.

Allen looked away for a moment. “Go too far west and you’ll be forced to navigate a Livingston maze,” he muttered. “Now, speak to me, Highlander!”

“You have business with the leaders of the Sons of Liberty?” Duncan asked as Allen’s words sank in. What could this burly frontiersman have in common with the likes of Hancock, Sam Adams, and Livingston?

“Speak, damned you!” Allen insisted.

“There was a Livingston ship named the Arcturus returning from a voyage to England.”

“I know her. I have a friend on her.”

Duncan hesitated. “Then I am truly sorry. It called at Halifax, where two French agents cajoled their way on board. As the Arcturus approached Boston, they stole something that was of great importance to the Sons, a ledger of some kind, then blew up the ship and fled. Thirty-seven men died.”

“Jesus bloody wept!” Allen groaned. “Thirty-seven? Please tell me not my friend Jonathan Pine!”

It was Duncan’s turn to be stunned. “He was chosen for special punishment before the ship was destroyed. It was he who was protecting the ledger, secreting it on his person. They tortured him and left him to die. He saved the life of the boy Will, then died in the explosion.”

“God Almighty,” Allen murmured. “Poor Jonathan. A’fore Reverend Occom sunk in his claws, Jonathan was the best of traveling companions.” They rode on for several minutes in grim silence before he spoke again. “Jonathan was with me when I got my first bear drunk,” Allen recalled, as if beginning a eulogy. “It was he who set the rule we still abide by. No harm must ever come to the bear. Hell, that first night the bear finally crawled onto Pine’s blanket and curled up around him to sleep it off. Damnest thing. Pine didn’t budge, just stroked the bear’s head and sang him some old tribal ditty.” He sighed and looked at Duncan. “None of that explains a warrant on your head.”

“The king had his own agents looking for that ledger. Without understanding the consequences, as a favor to the Sons, I led them to believe I had recovered it from the ship. Now I must find it to prove my innocence and avenge the dead. The spies who took it have killed two more men. Former rangers, both with Rogers on the St. Francis raid.”

Allen looked away, as if trying to hide his reaction. “You encourage your imagination over much, I suspect.”

Allen had not been surprised by Duncan’s mention of St. Francis and had been quick to try to steer him elsewhere. Instead, Duncan explained his suspicions about the connection of the dead men to the famous raid. He watched Allen carefully as he offered his last suspicion. “I am not the only one accused of treason,” he said.

“You be in good company, aye.”

“So you know Rogers?”

“A good man. He did the suffering in the war, and the lace-collared generals got all the glory. By God, what he did at St. Francis was a miracle. It broke the back of the French Indians. No other man on God’s earth could have done it.”

“Command of the post at Michilimackinac seems a just reward.”

“Nonsense! They just wanted him out of the way. It was an exile. Rogers reminded the generals of some unpleasant realities, so they dispatched him to oblivion and now want to tar him with conspiracy.”

“Unpleasant realities?”

“That given the chance, the American colonials can fight as well as British regulars. That their way of discipline in battle may work in Europe, but not always here. That Americans think much of their own personal honor and have this perverse tendency toward independent thinking.”

They were dangerous words. “Thinking about independence, you mean,” Duncan said.

Allen threw up his hands in mock alarm. “I never said that. You be the traitor, McCallum, not me. I’m just talking about the honor of a free man.”

Duncan rode on in silence, digesting Allen’s words. In the British world, treason meant acts on behalf of a foreign king, almost always that of France. But in America there were new possibilities, acts against a king that would have been inconceivable, even impossible, in Europe. The honor of a free man. Surely that was not inconsistent with loyalty to a king.

They hurried up, then down a ridge, across the shallow river Allen had described to their party, then dismounted under a canopy of huge maples by a lazy stream. A hundred yards away, up a strangely barren hillside, stood a formation of huge, squarish stones stacked on one another by the hand of nature. It was, he had no doubt, the formation depicted on Brandt’s powder horn, the image the old corporal kept trying to hide. As Allen led the horses to the water, he tossed Duncan a hand ax. “Firewood,” he commanded, pointing to a circle of fire-blackened rocks.

Duncan chopped three armfuls of dead limbs, then headed up the slope to the chimney formation. The huge stacked stones reached nearly four times his height. Nothing grew within a hundred-foot radius except low shrubs and small flowering plants. It had the air of the stone circles Duncan had visited as a boy. The tribes, he knew, would show such a place special reverence, and as he neared it, he was not surprised to see strands of beads, animal skulls, crude carvings, and a few brilliantly colored bird wings laid on the protruding lip of the lowest stone. The bottom two stones bore patches of green and gold lichen, but the higher rock faces showed the work of humans. There were diamond and circle designs in rust-colored ochre, drawings of deer, birds, moose, wolves, and fish, even a small grouping of dancing stick-figure humans. Scattered around the stone faces were dozens of handprints, the hands of humans that had been covered with pigment and pressed to the rock, probably across a span of centuries.

“They call it the torch of the gods,” came Allen’s voice behind him, “because long ago there was a night when it burned bright at the top.” He shrugged as he stepped to Duncan’s side. “Lightning strike on some dried brush up there probably, though don’t ever suggest that to a tribesman. It was, they say, the night after old Samuel de Champlain was first sighted on his great lake. The Christian Indians say it was a beacon of celebration. The others say it was a warning.”

The bearded man stepped past Duncan and touched a hand against the rock, a sign of homage. Frontiersmen learned not to mock tribal traditions. Duncan approached the makeshift altars and studied the offerings. He pointed to a belt woven of white and purple beads. “That’s Iroquois,” he said in surprise. He counted the purple beads in the pattern along the bottom. “Mohawk,” he declared then, wishing again for Conawago, struggling to understand the painted images. He pointed to the dancing stick figures, some of whom led captives by neck ropes. “That’s about a victory in battle, though whose victory and whose defeat is lost to time.” He lingered over the offerings, then turned to Allen. “Why would a Mohawk belt be here on a shrine so far from their lands?”

A small, melancholy smile rose on Allen’s face. “His woman was a Mohawk. Formidable. She liked this place. When he was with her, he was always different, a softer, kinder man. But she took a fever and died before the war was over.”

Duncan was about to ask whom he meant when it came to him that Allen was speaking of Robert Rogers. He paced around the rock, examining the other offerings on the narrow ledge around the chimney, then paused over a small rectangular wooden box stuffed into a horizontal crack in the granite. With a finger he pried it out into the sunlight.

“Abenaki, Mahican, Pennacock, Pocomtuc,” Allen recited. “They all come here. Best not meddle with tribal offerings.”

Duncan nodded, and pushed the box back into the narrow shadow. It was indeed tribal, but from the tribe of Israel. He knew such boxes from the Jewish ghetto he had lived near as a student. It was a mezuzah, one of the prayer boxes that was affixed to doorways of Jewish homes. There was only one person who could possibly have left it. In his quest to find his wife, the lonely Hebrew tinker tried to appeal to every god who might listen.

There were more offerings on the last side of the square. Little bone flutes, images of deer and bears skillfully woven into patches of soft doeskin, even two sashes with embroidered flowers and leaves, which Duncan now knew were worn by Abenaki women.

The talkative Allen had sunk into a contemplative silence. Duncan saw the mixture of wonder and discomfort on his countenance, a look that often settled over colonists who encountered tribal shrines. Their European upbringing taught them to be dismissive, even contemptuous of such altars, but those who had experienced the deep forest knew there was a power at such places that their own religion could not account for.

A tanager’s lilting melody wafted through the woods behind them. Duncan walked about the rock again, then studied the landscape. The shrine sat in the middle of a long, open swath that ran all the way to the top of the mountain, widening as it descended. Spars of long-dead trees reached up from the undergrowth. It had been the site of another long-ago avalanche.

A little slice of blue appeared on the ground before him, a jay feather, and he bent to retrieve it, then dropped it on the stone ledge near the still-meditative Allen.

“My father was a devout follower of the faith,” Allen said suddenly. “He made me study the Bible as a boy, and I was supposed to attend divinity school at the Yale College. But then I came here, to the mountains. The wildness cured me of those notions. How arrogant, to think we can be better men of God by becoming scholars. When you see what the hand of God has wrought here, you know that the affairs of mankind must be but a minor distraction to him.”

Duncan had no reply.

“What always has puzzled me, McCallum, is how tribesmen like Occom and Noah take to the Scriptures. I asked Occom about it once. He said the Mysterious One wears many coats, and it is a great blessing to meet him wearing different ones.” Allen reached out and touched the feather. “And I asked old Noah once why the Bible didn’t prepare me for all this. He said Christianity is for crowds, for men dealing with other men. Then he pointed to the forest and said but walk into that wilderness and you are the first human who ever lived. They make me feel so damned small, talking like that. Just like this place makes me feel tiny. It’s all backward, ain’t it? I mean Occom and Noah’s supposed to be the pagans and we’re supposed to be the enlightened ones.”

Duncan gestured at the handprints on the stone face. “At places like this I always feel that the people who left their mark are like old friends I should have met, forever lost to me.”

Allen slowly nodded. “Like part of us is somehow in these stones, too,” he said in a near whisper.

“Give me that expensive linen handkerchief I saw in your pocket,” Duncan said.

Allen’s brow knitted in confusion, but he complied.

Duncan flattened the linen cloth on the stone, laid the feather in the middle of it, folded the handkerchief around it, and stuffed it into a crack in the granite. He saw a patch of mud nearby, bent his hand into it, then pushed his hand onto the stone, leaving a muddy print. Allen solemnly did the same before they both turned away.

“You used the word conspiracy when you spoke of Rogers,” Duncan said as they walked toward camp. “Why?”

“Stands to reason, don’t it? Don’t suppose treason is committed by just one man. It’s what the major’s enemies would suggest.”

“The eagle, the squirrel, and the mouse,” Duncan stated.

“Sorry?”

Duncan gestured to the nearest tree. “It’s what Conawago says when we confront puzzles—about seeing things with different perspectives. The eagle, the squirrel, and the mouse might all look at the same tree, but none of them would see it the same way.”

“You lost me,” Allen confessed.

“Say Major Rogers had a second objective when he went to St. Francis. Not just to punish the Abenaki but also to take something, something that would guarantee that he would win the next battle, even the war.”

Allen considered his words for several long breaths. “Can’t imagine what that might be.”

“Suppose it was a list of leaders of the French irregulars, the farmers and tradesmen of Quebec who formed the core of the French Army. By the time of the raid their morale was terrible. They hadn’t received their promised pay, not to mention their promised supplies. King Louis was reluctant to send regular troops to America because he was fighting the British elsewhere. And he had no friends among the Quebec Jesuits by then.”

“No need to bring the papists into it,” Allen muttered.

“They have to be part of this. I understand that the Jesuit mission in St. Francis dominated the town. Jesuits had been accompanying the raiders for years, sometimes even leading them. The French king had begun suppressing the Jesuits in France. He dissolved the order back home. Even King George banned the immigration of new Jesuit priests to America. The Jesuits and their followers in Quebec were angry at the world. Still are, I imagine. What if Rogers thought he could turn them to his cause in 1759?”

“The war was all but over,” Allen observed.

“Rogers didn’t know that. It’s all about perspectives. The eagle, the squirrel, and the mouse. Perspectives have shifted. What if Rogers has a new cause? That list becomes as explosive as a keg of powder. And the French haven’t given up on America. They control some of the western lands still, where they could mass troops, then a rebel force in Canada could pound the English like a hammer on that anvil. If Rogers helped them achieve that, he would become a general at last, probably even a French count with his own chateau.”

Allen produced a plug of tobacco and bit off the end. “Intrigue,” he said with contempt in his voice. “Secret conspiracy. Those are things for kings and royal courts.”

Duncan glanced at Allen, realizing the man wasn’t exactly disagreeing with him. “And for those who oppose them. The French Jesuits of Quebec loathe King Louis. The French colonials have no love for King Louis or King George. Rogers has no love of King George. Maybe they instead seek a paradise without a king. This land”—Duncan swept his hand toward the horizon—“is wide-open. No settlers to speak of, no flag planted firmly in its soil.”

Allen spat tobacco juice. “Lake George wasn’t its original name.”

“No,” Duncan said. “Once, it belonged to Jesuit colonials. Lac du Saint Sacrement, they called it.”

Allen bit off more tobacco, then pointed toward the camp, where the rest of the party was arriving. “The first name given to these mountains was Vert Monts. The inland sea is still called Champlain.”

Duncan paused, watching Allen as the big man continued down the trail. His words sounded almost like an effort of persuasion. Allen had no love for the colonial governments, yet he kept surveying the mountains as if for the purpose of some government. Had Duncan just been speaking with one of the conspirators?

“Saguenay!” Duncan called to his back.

Although Duncan still did not know if the word signified a person, a place, or an object, it clearly meant something to Allen. The frontiersman halted so fast he almost stumbled, but he did not turn to face Duncan. After a moment, without replying, he continued down the mountain.

ETHAN ALLEN AND HIS MOUNTAIN boys, as he called them, were jovial campmates. They readily shared their ample food supply, and Will was soon being taught the fine art of flipping johnnycakes in a skillet as Corporal Brandt kept watch over a pot of molasses and beans. When they finished eating, Munro declared that he was not comfortable sleeping without a sentinel, and he volunteered to take the first watch.

“Thought the ’Naki that worried you was disabled,” Allen observed.

“T’ain’t the red-skinned savages I worry about,” the sturdy Scot replied, “ ’tis the red-coated ones.”

Allen puffed on his pipe, then slowly nodded and motioned with its long stem toward two of his men. “Silas and Thomas, two hours each after Mr. Munro’s shift. Then rouse me for the dawn watch.” He turned to the youngest of his men. “Ben,” he said to the youth in his late teens, “early breakfast for ye. I want ye on the road, scouting ahead at dawn.”

Duncan, exhausted from the long day, welcomed the moss pillow Will had collected for him, but sleep eluded him. More than ever he felt like a puppet, with invisible faces at the end of the long strings manipulating him. There was indeed a conspiracy by the French that somehow involved the Sons of Liberty, but he was also convinced that there was another in the north, involving the famous Major Rogers, these unclaimed lands, and the enigmatic Saguenay. It seemed impossible that the two conspiracies could be linked, but they had become so through French coins, dead rangers, and now Duncan himself. An owl hooted, mocking him. Who, it asked, who, who wanted him dead?

“MIND YER FLIPPERS, LAD!” THE grizzled old Scot called out to young Duncan, pointing to the pinnace that was gliding to a halt along the starboard rail where Duncan sat. Duncan swung his legs up just as the smaller boat nudged the hull of his grandfather’s red-sailed sloop.

“Lively now, ye seahounds!” his grandfather yelled, and the two small crews quickly went to work, lashing the two boats together and forming a line to hand up the casks from the smaller boat to stow in the sloop’s hold. The gray-haired captain lit his pipe and with a twinkle in his eyes raised it to salute the solitary old seal that often watched them; then he accepted the bottle presented by the kilted owner of the smaller vessel and pried out the cork. He sniffed the contents, took a drink, and swished the contents in his mouth before a deep swallow. “It’ll do, McDuff,” he told the whiskey maker, high praise indeed from the gruff Highlander, and called for Duncan to fetch the basket of horn cups they kept in the galley.

He poured each man a dram and had Duncan hold an extra to fill. “To the prince across the water,” he proposed, and every man solemnly joined in the Jacobite toast. When they were done, he took the cup from Duncan and threw its contents out in a long arc across the water. “Stay long and far away,” he called after the spilled whiskey, and young Duncan finally gave voice to the question that rose to his tongue every time he witnessed the ritual.

“Why do you ask the bonny prince to stay far away?” he asked his grandfather.

The sailors and the captain laughed together, their amusement echoing across the bay, causing the old seal to raise its damp black eyes again. “The toast is for our bonny Stewart prince, lad,” his grandfather said. “The whiskey in the water is a charm against the English king, to keep his long German nose out of our affairs. The whiskey in these casks is the fame and honor of the McDuffs, who have been making it for the clans since time began. For that distant king to pretend it is now a crime to do so does a dishonor to the McDuffs and all of us who rely on them. But the real dishonor, and the real sin, be on the king.”

An hour later his grandfather tensed when a little cutter flying a Union Jack appeared around the point of one of the craggy islands in the Minch, the turbulent water off Skye. After several worried minutes in which he yelled at his crew to stand by the sails, he laughed once more, for the cutter had becalmed herself by sailing too close to the lee of the island.

“There ye go, Duncan lad,” the wise old man had explained. “May the hand of the king ever fumble when he tries to smear yer honor.”

DUNCAN STIRRED OUT OF HIS deep sleep, smiling at the half-remembered scent of peat and heather that always clung to his grandfather’s clothes. Then he awoke with the sense that something was amiss. The fire was burning low, and in its flickering light he saw Allen hovering beside him. The bearded man, on his dawn watch, nudged Duncan and gestured in the direction of the tribal shrine. A slight, shadowed figure was moving toward it.

The man had a head start, but he was proceeding so cautiously, so slowly, that Duncan had to pause frequently, hiding behind trees so as not to be spotted. The spidery, nervous aspect of the figure told him it must be Corporal Brandt, which he confirmed as the man emerged in the gray predawn light of the open swath around the sacred rocks.

Brandt placed something on the base stone of the chimney and bowed his head for a few words before continuing up the slope. Duncan paused only long enough to see that the old ranger had deposited a little strand of braided leather with feathers in its folds; then he followed. They climbed steadily for nearly half an hour before he spotted what he knew must be Brandt’s destination, high up on a flat ledge near the top of the treeless avalanche run. Duncan slipped deeper into the woods, where he could make better time, so as to be close when Brandt arrived.

The forest of what Allen called his Vert Monts seemed somehow older than the woodlands Duncan knew on the west side of the Hudson. Every forest had its own character, and this patchwork of granite, maple, birch, spruce, and hemlock draped with hanging moss seemed unusually calm, as if patiently bracing for what were no doubt harsh winters ahead. Daylight was filtering through the heavy foliage, kindling birdsong that flowed over the slope. Ground squirrels appeared, scampering in search of breakfast. Above him in an aged spruce a porcupine took note of Duncan and shifted to the other side of the broad trunk. For an instant he saw a dog-size creature with rich brown fur as it leapt from one tree to another, a sleek fisher cat hunting the heights.

Brandt seemed shaken when he finally reached the ledge, nearly at the crest of the mountain, and stood motionless, staring at the six-foot-high platform that had been erected there years earlier. Duncan approached the old ranger, then halted as he noticed the sweeping vista opening before him. The view was one of the most remarkable he had ever seen. Ranks of long, green ridges, set apart by banks of low morning mist, rolled toward the eastern horizon. In the distant east he could see the lake where they had camped two nights before, flickering with the colors of dawn. His gaze settled on the northeast, where in the far distance he made out huge snowcapped mountains. Images from his youth leapt unbidden to his mind’s eye. Working on fishing weirs with the snowcapped Cuillin behind them. Taking cattle to high pastures where he and his cousins would race from the nightly campsite to fill leather bags with snow for the whiskey and sugar treats their old Aunt Peg would concoct for the drovers.

Duncan stirred from his spell. As he reached the corporal, Brandt shrank back, then thrust a bony finger into Duncan’s chest as if to confirm he was no ghost. He did not speak until he faced the platform again. “This was her favorite place, the major always said. Where they camped and first lay together as man and woman.”

“It is one of the most beautiful places I have ever seen,” Duncan acknowledged.

“Oh, the things I seen the major do, the things I seen him endure. The wounds, the hardships, not just battling against impossible odds, but also getting other men to do the same, which I reckon is even harder. I never saw him flinch, never saw him cower. But that night she died, he was all done in. I found him on his knees under the moon, weeping like a wee babe.” Duncan, to his surprise, was glimpsing something noble under the surface of the unvarnished woodsman.

Brandt bravely looked up toward the top of the platform. Strands of tattered feathers fluttered from the corner posts. The weathered skull of a deer capped each post.

“He wouldn’t let anyone come here with him,” Brandt continued, “excepting one of his Mohawk sergeants, who knew the old ways of her tribe. They stayed up here all day and all night. They made a huge fire, like they was signaling the gods to come greet her eternal soul.”

The platform itself was covered with a bearskin. At the near end, a braid of long black hair, tied with a faded red ribbon, dangled in the wind.

“Where is it, Corporal?” Duncan asked. “Where is what you are retrieving for Major Rogers?”

“Don’t know, exactly,” Brandt replied. “The place where no one would dare look,” It meant, Duncan surmised, that Brandt did indeed know. He was uneasily watching the braid of hair.

“What was her name?” Duncan asked.

“Hahnowa.”

“Turtle?”

Brandt nodded. “He called her Hannah.”

“Do you have a flint and striker?” Duncan asked. When Brandt nodded, Duncan instructed him to light a fire and gather some cedar boughs. “There are words to be said,” Duncan told him.

When the boughs were smoldering, Duncan lifted one and held it under each of the corner posts of Hahnowa’s burial platform, then swept the fragrant smoke over the bearskin shroud. “Jiyathontek,” he intoned toward the sky. “Here is the gentle Hahnowa of the Mohawk people, keepers of the eastern gate of the Haudenosaunee,” he declared, referring to the role of the Mohawk in guarding the eastern border of the Iroquois League. He set the bough back on the small fire and raised the single strand of white wampum beads Conawago had given him in Boston, the signal for truth. He wiped the beads over his eyes to symbolically brush away his mourning tears, then at his throat to confirm he would speak truly and freely from his heart. Finally, he lifted the wampum and held it over the dead woman’s skeletal remains. “Enghsitskodake,” he said at last. Thou shall be resting. He repeated the prayer three times, then turned expectantly to Brandt.

The corporal held his hands in front of his chest, as if to push Duncan away. “Not me,” Brandt protested. “Yer the one who discourses with Iroquois spirits.”

Duncan steeled himself, then hesitated. “Saguenay,” he said.

“Saguenay,” Brandt repeated with a solemn nod.

“It’s a place,” Duncan suggested, lifting the beads toward the corporal.

Brandt clenched his jaw as he saw the beads, swallowing hard. “Ye talk about such things around campfires in the wilds. It was an old Oneida scout who first spoke to us of it. A beautiful place where all live in peace and harmony. No war, no famine, no disease. The major said you must mean heaven, and the Oneida said no, Saguenay is a real place in the north country that their ancestors often spoke of. A paradise where crops never fail and children are always laughing, he said, and everyone has thick fur robes for the long snow nights. A real place, he said, that no one has found yet.”

“Saguenay,” Duncan said again, feeling a sense a power in the word now. “Saguenay,” he spoke toward the dead woman, as if to reassure her, then climbed onto the lower support of the platform. He clenched his jaw and pulled away the upper edge of the bearskin. It was far from the first time he had seen a dead Iroquois—he had once helped an entire village move all its dead when its elders had decided to relocate—but Hahnowa’s desiccated face was somehow different. Another would have been repulsed by the shriveled, long-dead woman, but Duncan saw the vestiges of a strong, handsome countenance and felt an odd bond with the dead beauty, sensing the pain Robert Rogers must have felt over her loss.

She had died of a fever. In the tribes, that usually meant she had been killed by a disease brought by the Europeans, for which their bodies had no defenses. She had once been young and vibrant and in love. She had, he suspected, been the embodiment of the wild, joyful, and wise people of the tribes but had been cut down before bearing offspring, before aging, before knowing the fullness of life.

“Bidh ainghlean da m’chaithris m’in cadal na huaigh,” he whispered, not realizing he had spoken the Gaelic prayer until the words had left his tongue. Angels shall guard ye in the sleep of the grave. “Forgive me, Hahnowa,” he added, and lifted her head. Her pillow was a rolled linen shirt, and in its center was a quillwork pouch the size of his open hand. He tossed the pouch down to Brandt, then rerolled the shirt and placed it under the woman’s head, rearranging the black braids over the doeskin dress that adorned her skin and bones.

He whispered again in Mohawk, close to her ear. “Kayanerenh.” Peace. Then he covered the woman again with the weathered bearskin.

Corporal Brandt stood frozen, gazing at the pouch, when Duncan climbed down. As Duncan reached for it, however, the old ranger jerked it away. “It’s the major’s,” he growled, backing away.

“You mean the pouch is what he wants in his cell in Montreal,” Duncan said. The old Indian fighter nodded defiantly and pressed the pouch to his chest.

“First I need to see it.”

“Not likely,” Brandt said, stubbornly wrapping both arms around the pouch.

“If you refuse, it may do him no good at all.” Duncan glanced at the embers beside them. “If you refuse,” he added, “then I shall stack more cedar on this fire so all the Iroquois gods take notice of you. They know I have done this with the best of intentions, and she would have wished it. But if you hoard it, you may have defeated its purpose as surely as if that British patrol had taken it. I will tell the gods that Ebenezer Brandt has stolen a treasure from the spirit of this Iroquois princess.”

Brandt stared wide-eyed at the top of Hahnowa’s head, barely visible from under the bearskin shroud, then tossed the pouch to Duncan.

DUNCAN URGED HIS BORROWED HORSE forward, toward the long mountain that dominated the western horizon—the last mountain, Allen promised, before the inland sea. The first half of the morning had been spent listening to Hayes and Allen debate the messages of Old Testament prophets, their talk often interrupted by the worried voice in Duncan’s own head warning him that with every mile, he was getting closer to calamity. There was still too much he did not understand, but he felt compelled to run headlong toward the mysteries.

A two-toned whistle sounded from behind him. Allen was growing worried about Ben, the young scout he had sent ahead, and every few minutes he interrupted his debate with Hayes to signal for the teenage boy, to no avail. Duncan had begun ascending the final slope when his horse slowed, skewing its ears forward. He raised a hand to warn the others; then his horse gave a long, whickering cry as a riderless mount appeared, galloping toward them.

The frightened horse sped past him, then slowed enough for Allen to grab its reins. He flung them to one of his men and launched his own horse up the mountain at a full gallop. Duncan’s mount, less sure-footed than Allen’s nimble mountain horse, could not keep up, and Allen had disappeared from sight by the time Duncan reached the narrow pass over the crest of the mountain. He pushed his heels into the horse to urge him on, then just as urgently reined him in as the western lands opened before him.

Less than ten miles away, the shimmering blue mass of Champlain stretched toward the northern horizon. Low, compact ridges unrolled toward the west, pointing toward the slice of glassy blue in the southwest that had been christened Lac du Saint Sacrement by the early French explorers. Duncan’s heart thrilled at the sight of the fertile, untamed landscape, unscarred by the hand of man.

His horse whinnied, and Duncan absently stroked its neck as he gazed toward the southwest at a shadow on the horizon that might have been the Catskills, where Sarah would be settling back into Edentown. He watched a great bird, probably an eagle, climbing into the sky and realized it was studying something below. He stared down the slope and in quick succession saw a stag standing on a ledge, a family of grazing hares, and Ethan Allen desperately bracing the legs of a hanged man.

“His arms, McCallum!” Allen shouted as Duncan galloped up to him. “Cut him down! By all that’s holy, cut the rope!”

The young scout Ben had been hanged not by the neck, but by his arms, from a rope looped over an overhanging limb. His sleeves were soaked in blood from the open chafing at his wrists. A paper had been pinned to his shirt. Ben was moaning in agony, probably from the unnatural angle of his right shoulder. The youth gazed with a dull, unseeing expression as Duncan stood in his saddle to slice through the rope; then he fell into Duncan’s arms, unconscious. As he fell, the paper blew away, snagging on a nearby blueberry bush.

Allen laid the youth on the ground, stroking his head as he knelt beside him. “Too young, too young for the perils of these trails. I told Ben’s mother, but she insisted he ride with us, for she feared otherwise he would run away to the sea and she would never look on him again.”

“He was beaten,” Duncan explained as he examined the youth. “But he took no blade or ball in his body.”

“But his arm,” Allen groaned. “Look at the boy’s arm!”

“The shoulder is dislocated,” Duncan declared as he pulled away the boy’s shirt.

As if to confirm, Allen pushed against the shoulder. The youth screamed in pain.

“Roll up the shirt and put it tight into his armpit,” Duncan instructed Allen, who was watching their companions race down the slope now. “Now!” Duncan demanded. “The longer we leave it, the greater the pain.”

Allen clumsily complied, then Duncan removed his own shoe, braced the bared foot against the youth’s rib cage, and slowly, forcefully, pulled the arm. The youth’s shout of pain abruptly stopped as with a loud pop the head of the humerus slid back into place. The scout gasped, more in surprise than pain now, then nodded his thanks to Duncan.

“Best keep it in a sling for a few days,” Duncan advised, then opened his drinking gourd and began washing the scout’s raw, bleeding wrists. “I need a fire,” Duncan said to Allen. “I can make a brew to ease the discomfort.”

Allen’s alarm was quickly turning to anger as he studied the boy. “No need,” he said, and retrieved a canteen draped over his saddle. Even from an arm’s length Duncan could smell the potent liquor when he uncorked it. “Mountain tonic. We mix in a bit of maple sugar to give it the flavor of the hills,” the frontiersman explained, then gently tipped the scout’s head back to help him drink.

The youth gasped as the raw liquor hit his tongue, and his glazed eyes seemed to focus at last, acknowledging the worried faces that surrounded him. He grabbed the canteen and took a deep swallow. “Those dragoons,” the youth spat as he recovered. “They rode on me out of the woods, surrounded me, and asked if I rode with the mountain militia. They pulled me off my horse and started kicking me. They were angry, as if they had decided we had deceived them, and they said if we brought any old rangers north, we’d all get the same treatment. Then they pinned the broadside to me and rode off toward the lake.”

“The soldiers from yesterday?” Duncan asked as Allen retrieved the paper. “How would they have known to ask about old rangers?”

“The same, but with several others, newly arrived from one of the Champlain forts,” Ben said, then sipped again at the canteen.

DUNCAN TURNED AS ALLEN CURSED under his breath. Duncan assumed that the broadside was about him, but then Allen held it up for him to see. Robert Rogers, it said at the top, under a row of skulls, to be tried as a traitor before a Montreal court-martial. Traitor to the good people of New York and New Hampshire. Turn not your back on our blessed King George, father of our people. Conspirators be warned away from this foul path, or be dead.

“Cowards hiding behind lies to intimidate free people!” Allen snarled, and crumpled the paper between his big hands. “Good for striking a fire,” he growled, “no more.”

The leader of the mountain boys left one of his men to tend the injured scout and escort him home, then urged their party on. In another two hours they had reached the flats along Lake Champlain, an hour later the little community at the landing place across the narrow strait from the fort at Crown Point, fifteen miles above Ticonderoga.

“Pointe à la Chevelure,” Brandt declared as he reached Duncan’s side. The corporal had lost much of his absentmindedness during their journey, as if he were slowly becoming a ranger again, though there were still moments when he drifted away to one of his past battles. “First time I come here, there was a couple dozen houses here, old French style, some even with thatched roofs. French families had been living here for thirty, forty years.”

Duncan studied the settlement more closely, seeing now that some of the houses were indeed old and weathered. Brandt had a powder horn with the chimney rock etched on it. Chisholm had one with an outline of Lake Champlain on it, with only one location marked. Duncan had wondered why it would not show the forts at Crown Point or Ticonderoga, why it had shown only an X and the letters Chev. “You mean this was a French settlement?” he asked. The full name, Pointe à la Chevelure, meant Scalping Point, indicating that the early settlers had likely been visited by the Abenaki.

“Aye, farms built to support the old French Fort St. Frédéric, with its big stone castle tower.” Brandt pointed across the strait to where a large stone ruin was clearly visible on the shoreline below the walls of the new British fort. “The major and I was here in ’56, doing a secret scout. The war was on, and folks here had fled to Canada.” He gave one of his dry, cackling laughs. “One of those terrible lake storms hit. We stayed snug and warm all night in an abandoned French barn while the boys across the water struggled to keep their tents from blowing away.”

Half a dozen boats, some little dories, others wide shallops big enough for horses or even a cannon, were tied to the timber pier that jutted out into the lake. A drowsy man sitting on a keg near the dock stretched his arms lazily and stood. “Crown Point ferry,” he invited.

Allen scanned the men working around the waterfront, then grabbed Duncan’s arm. “No need to sail straight into that swarm of redcoats,” he said, gesturing toward the opposite shore. “Best we sail down the lake direct to Fort Ti. Give me a minute.”

Before Duncan could protest that he needed no further escort, Allen beckoned to one of his men and they disappeared into a squat log structure built into the side of the hill adjoining the water. They reappeared a moment later carrying an inert body by the arms and legs. Just as the man summoned his senses enough to protest, they swung him into the lake.

The man yelped as he hit the water, and he sank like a rock. Duncan had taken several worried steps toward the circle of ripples where he disappeared before the stranger emerged, spitting out water as he splashed to shore. He stopped while knee-deep in the lake to push his long brown hair up over his crown, and he shook his head with a stern expression. “Should’ve smelled ye from miles away, Ethan, considering how ye be the biggest turd ever dropped out of the ass end of a weasel.” He broke into a loud laugh and splashed to shore, embracing Allen in an energetic bear hug. When Allen released him, he wrung water from his shirt and made a beeline for a jug by the cabin door. He shook it, cursed, then held it upside down in bitter confirmation that it was empty. “Bring any of yer maple brandy?” he asked hopefully, rubbing the bristle on his chin.

“Looks like ye need some honest work, Rufus Powell,” Allen suggested.

“Ferry’s over there,” the man replied, pointing to the pier.

“T’ain’t Crown Point we seek, Rufe, it’s Fort Ti.”

The news seemed to surprise the boatman. Suddenly all business, he examined the low waves on the lake, the angle at which the breeze bent the nearby rushes, and the clouds overhead. “Can’t make it back today. Ye got to pay my overnight expenses,” he declared, holding up the empty jug.

“Two jugs and a shilling a head,” Duncan put in, “provided we leave within the hour.”

Allen muttered under his breath, casting a frustrated glance at Duncan. Rufus’s eyes grew wide. He abruptly straightened and whistled at a gangly teenage boy who was talking to a girl with freckles and long blond hair. “Save yer French lesson for tomorrow, lad.” The boy winced but gave a noble bow to the girl and darted toward one of the shallops tied to the dock.

As the boat was readied, most of their company reclined on the grassy sunlit bank. Will began tossing sticks into the water, each being retrieved by Molly to the cheerful hoots of onlookers. Duncan studied the little village, then left his rifle and pack with Munro and slipped between two buildings, reaching a large vegetable garden where the freckled girl was now attacking weeds with a hoe.

“Bonjour,” he offered, and plucked a weed himself.

She glanced behind him, returned the greeting with a shy smile, and wiped her hands on her apron.

“Your garden looks fertile,” he said, continuing in French as he motioned to the verdant rows of maize, beans, squash, and cabbage.

“The season is short, but the soil is rich.”

“I hadn’t realized any had stayed on from the old Chevelure,” Duncan ventured.

“Not stay, came back. A handful after the war, half a dozen more families this past spring.”

Duncan had marked a surprising number of oxen, new plows, and wagons. “Such a prosperous community.”

“I lived here when I was very young. Now it is better. Now we will have our high windmill!” she said, and inclined her head toward the tallest hill behind the settlement, where a surprisingly tall, sturdy stone tower was being built. On the ground beside it men were assembling the frames for wind vanes.

Duncan indicated the rows of plants. “You are excellent farmers.”

The girl smiled. “We worked just as hard in Quebec, but things are better here. We were able to get good seed, good teams, good tools. My papa says we owe our prosperous benefactors in the north. We pray for them at our evening meals.”

“Thanks to the saint in the north, you mean,” Duncan said. “Merci a Saint François.”

The girl gave a cryptic smile. “Grace au saint de Saint François, grace au saint de Montréal,” she replied, and turned back to her cabbages.

UNABLE TO PUT WORDS TO the question that was nagging him, Duncan gazed at the little farming community as they sailed away. There was something about it that seemed off, but he could not name it. Why had Josiah Chisholm, the murdered ranger, received a powder horn marked with the town’s location? Brandt’s horn had shown chimney rock, which had been his mission. Had Chisholm been given a mission at Chevelure? Glancing about to assure that no one watched, he opened the stained pouch he had taken from the Mohawk woman’s grave. He had already confirmed that it contained only a necklace of red and white beads with a quillwork pendant depicting a man and woman holding hands, and half of a dozen slips of paper. Not for the first time since leaving the burial platform he found himself saying a Mohawk prayer for Hahnowa, asking for forgiveness, then he extracted one of the papers.

All the other pages had been lists, all in the same elegant hand—lists of names, of supplies, of river mouths along the eastern shore of Lake Champlain—and, like the letters to the rangers, all in the same odd purple ink, even though the pages from Rogers’s hidden pouch would have been written years earlier, in the months just after the St. Francis raid. This page held a drawing, a sketch he had recognized when approaching the boat landing that afternoon. The nine-year-old sketch was of Chevelure, with only a few differences from the village he was now looking at, including the huge windmill.

He hesitated, wondering for a moment if Brandt had played a ruse on him. Now we will have our high windmill, the comely French maiden had boasted. He examined the paper more closely. The drawing hidden by Rogers and now sought by the imprisoned major had a windmill. But no windmill existed nine years earlier. He folded the paper back into Rogers’s pouch and watched Chevelure until it was out of sight. It wasn’t a drawing of the town that Rogers had hidden, it was a drawing of a plan, and underneath was a large, stylized S. It wasn’t a signature, it was a symbol. The paper was part of the dream of Saguenay that Rogers shared with others. But it was no longer just a dream. Saguenay was being implemented, and its conspirators were in at least two towns in the north. When he suggested that the girl must give thanks to Saint Francis, she had corrected him, saying that they gave thanks to the saint of St. Francis, and to the saint of Montreal. They were giving thanks to specific men.