Chapter Seven

André hooked his carved pipe between his lips and drew smoke until the end of the pipe glowed. He had taken to smoking more frequently since the incident with the skunk four days ago, in a vain attempt to mask the stench that still billowed from Genevieve. Each pungent puff of the tobacco—and every hellish whiff of her—was a satisfying reminder that he’d succeeded in forcing his men to stay away from his seductive wife.

All men, including himself.

Through half–closed eyes, he leaned back on a stone to watch the end of the portage path. For the first time in the journey, Genevieve was late in finishing. But he wasn't worried. Not really. He told himself he was just enjoying the familiar sight of his men emerging from the forest laden with goods, not waiting for a certain spirited, auburn–haired wench in a stinking, raggedy dress to finally make an appearance.

He half–listened to the conversation going on around him.

“Geese just don't twist their own necks and flop into the cook's canoe.” Anselme Roissier crinkled open his tobacco packet and stuffed his pipe well. “Someone had to have trapped and killed that goose.”

Gaspard, Anselme's brother, shrugged. “Whoever the hunter is, I'd like to raise a glass of brandy to him for giving us fresh meat for dinner.”

“But geese don’t just drop from the sky.” Anselme raised his arms in a dramatic gesture of frustration. “Its neck was broken clean, and that’s a man’s doing.”

André had his own theory about who had planted a freshly killed goose in the cook's canoe that morning. His gaze shifted to where Julien stood, thigh–deep in the river, wearing nothing but a garland of orange winterberries around his neck, while Simeon droned in Latin nearby. From the start of the voyage, that puppy–eyed boy couldn’t stop staring at Genevieve. Though the boy always staggered in exhaustion at the end of each day, he had assumed the responsibility of gathering fir boughs for Genevieve's bed at night. Now that the nights were growing colder, he'd assumed the duty of setting up a makeshift tent for her from the tarpaulins that covered the merchandise on the canoe. Genevieve's complaints about the food and the availability of game had become insistent despite her adventure with the skunk, and it would be just like Julien to hunt to please her.

If he caught the boy there’d be hell to pay. That woman was spoken for, even if the men shook their heads, baffled, when André made a point not to share his wife’s tent. Genevieve was a beautiful woman, and once the tarpaulin went up they all figured he’d be disappearing into it every night, whether she stank like the gaping mouth of hell or not. Well, it was none of their damn business if he wanted to play the celibate—and it certainly didn’t mean he was about to share.

“So who do you think killed the goose, frère?” Gaspard waved his smoking pipe in the air. “If you know who did it, tell us, otherwise, shut up and talk of other things.”

“If we can’t figure out who’s killing the geese,” Anselme said. “How are we going to notice an Iroquois attack? There could be hundreds of them out there and we wouldn't even know it.”

“If they were here,” André said as he knocked his pipe against a rock, “you’d have felt the bite of their machetes by now.”

The young man shrugged. “Maybe they rubbed the bird with nightshade or filled it with poisonous fungus—”

“That is not the Iroquois way.” Wapishka stared down at his fingertips, still scarred from his experience with the warlike tribe. “The Iroquois are warriors. They would attack, not weaken us with poisoned game.”

“You white men.” The Duke shook his head. “You always look for reasons. There are not always reasons. It may be that a manitou is looking over us.”

Wapishka leaned toward him. “Why do you say such a thing?”

“I had a dream. I did not know the meaning until this morning, when we found the goose in the cook's canoe.”

Dreams were considered divine revelations to the tribes of these parts. André had begun to wonder if some Indian fertility god had snaked into his own head and purged all Christian teaching, for the revelations he'd been receiving lately were not in the least holy. They all involved Genevieve in various states of undress and with her long white neck thrown back in ecstasy.

The Duke began, “I dreamed of a bird.”

It didn't help that she grew more beautiful the more raggedy she got. She refused to change her stinking, torn dress, arguing that she would only tear up another if she changed. After a portage, her hair straggled down her back. The sun had darkened the spray of freckles across her nose. With her skirts ripped and sullied, exposing her glistening chest, she looked common, attainable, and so very, very approachable.

Where the hell was she and why she was taking so damn long to finish this portage?

“This bird had plumage the color of blood.” The Duke closed his eyes. “It was hungry and weak, but an experienced hunter. It knew that it would do better to hunt in the night than in the broad light of day, where its enemies could see it and take advantage of its weakness. It saw a snow–white goose, and when the goose saw this red bird, it raised its neck to sacrifice itself. And so the red bird survived by the sacrifice of the goose.”

“Simeon,” Gaspard said, “would call that devil's talk.”

“Your black robes tell me that the fish sacrificed themselves in Peter's net to feed the people. Is that not the same as what is happening now?”

Gaspard waved a hand in dismissal. “That was a sacred miracle.”

“You white men flaunt your faith and then have none.” The Duke drew on his pipe. “Perhaps the animals are sacrificing themselves for our sake.”

Tiny emerged from the portage path, his face flushed and shining with sweat above his bushy blond beard. André shot to his feet. Tiny was always one of the last men to finish the portages. André swiftly counted the men on shore and realized only two men had not yet arrived—two men and Genevieve.

“By the beavers of Saint Francis!” The giant caught sight of a naked Julien in the bay. He trudged to where the boy's buckskins lay, discarded on a rock, and kicked them toward the water. “Enough of this baptism! Blossom's going to be here any minute. Have you no respect for a lady?”

Blossom was the name the men had given Genevieve when she'd flounced back into camp after the skunk incident, stinking like burnt hair. There was another name he preferred for her, an Indian name Wapishka had suggested, but few men could get their tongues around it. Taouistaouisse. Little–Bird–Always–In–Motion.

Andre approached Tiny. “Where is she?”

“By Saint Peter's stones.” Tiny shrugged the load off his shoulders. “You'd have her on a leash if you could.”

“If it would keep her out of trouble.”

“I passed her not long ago.” He massaged his arms with meaty hands. “She should be slogging through the trees soon.”

The hair prickled on the back of his neck. Despite the ruggedness of the terrain, despite the brutal pace he always set, she always managed to make it to the end of the portage early. He had become accustomed to finding her perched on a rock, plucking at the laces of her boots, her hair gleaming like raw copper in the sun.

André paced. When the last two voyageurs arrived and told him they hadn't passed her along the trail, he pulled his pistol out of his sash.

“She's probably preening somewhere.” Tiny appeared at his side, his pipe smoking in his hand. “You know women.”

He remembered her as she had been this morning, shooting up from her pallet after being awoken and barraging him with questions with all the vigor of a lawyer in the royal courts as to why they must rise before dawn.

He said grimly, “She's not preening.”

Tiny's bushy blond brows lowered. “You’re pushing her hard, André.”

André checked the priming of his pistol. Yes, she was weakening. She had slept through some of the jerkiest stretches of rapids, so deeply that André had allowed the men to relieve themselves over the sides of the canoe while she reposed. He should feel triumphant. This is what he had waited for, this is what he had planned since she had whirled into his room at the inn at Montreal demanding to join him. Allumette Island was only a few days upstream. If she lasted much longer, he would be forced to take more drastic measures.

But he didn’t feel triumphant, he felt fear. He had spent the last week waiting for the flash of a hatchet or the whir of an arrow. He knew it wasn't the Iroquois way to capture a single woman and not ambush the rest of his men, but a defenseless, copper–haired woman might prove too much to resist, even in a time of peace.

“By all the blazes.” Tiny saw his face and read his mind. “There's a treaty, you know.”

“The Iroquois abide by treaties as well as men abide by marriage vows.”

“They haven't broken it in three years.”

“Let's hope they haven't broken it now.”

He strode toward the trail, his pistol aloft, straining his ears for sound. He heard Tiny's footsteps behind him as the giant followed. His gut twisted. She may have brought this upon herself, but he had given up trying to explain why he felt so protective of this Taouistaouisse. That was all the more reason to leave her safe at a Jesuit mission long before the uncharted Chequamegon Bay.

He wandered down the path, searching for her distinctive footprint. She always hummed the voyageurs' songs when she walked, but he heard none of her music, nothing but the wind in the leaves and the muted rush of the Ottawa River. The forest floor was a morass from so many footsteps, and he couldn't distinguish any single imprint. He couldn't even distinguish the scent of skunk, which had almost worn off in the clean, crisp air.

Then he lifted a hand to capture Tiny's attention. He pointed to a broken fern off to one side of the trail and a few spots of flattened grass beyond. He could tell by the pattern of the footsteps—a small, round toe and a deeper heel—that they were his wife's. There was no sign of struggle. By all signs, she had willingly wandered off the path—something he had expressly forbidden her to do.

As he followed the trail, André heard the trickle of a brook. He followed the noise until he broke through the bushes and saw a stream.

He saw something else, too.

Genevieve stood motionless in the clearing beside an Indian, whose hand was wrapped in her fiery hair.