Ring of Fire III (35 page)

* * *

Three months and a bit more went by. When he had the money in hand Henri LeBlanc went to the offices of Cardinal Richelieu’s intendants. At the first desk inside the door he said, “I need to see Yves Neff.”

“I am sorry, but M. Neff will be out of the office for quite some time, I am afraid. He is on an assignment in the field.”

Henri thought he detected a glint of humor in the voice of the clerk as he explained Yves’ absence. “Then I need to speak to whoever is handling his case load while he is gone.”

“And you are?”

“Henri LeBlanc.”

“Certainly. Please wait one minute, please. Page,” the clerk called. When the boy arrived the clerk said, “Take this man to M. DeMille immediately.”

At the word immediately the lad hesitated. “Immediately?” he asked.

“Yes, you heard me,” the clerk said with a nod. “Immediately.”

After what seemed like a very long walk that was surely out of the way they passed two armed men who seemed to be loafing in the room they were passing through. Upon seeing them the page quit dawdling and finally moved at a brisk pace until he stopped and rapped on a nondescript door which he then opened without waiting. Henri walked through and the page closed it behind him.

The mature gentleman setting behind an overflowing but organized desk looked up and asked “And you are?”

“My name is Henri LeBlanc, I worked for—”

Before he could even began to explain what the circumstances were the door opened again and the two guards entered the room with their rapiers in hand.

DeMille spoke to the guards first. “Take this man to M. Devereux at the research station.” Then he addressed Henri, “Your absence has cost us three months. I had hoped Devereux would have the cracking tower working by now but he has had no success. Now maybe we can get something done.”

“Oh, I am sorry to tell you this, but I’ve never worked on a cracking tower.”

“What? But your reports said you worked every aspect of making fuel from driving the well to selling the finished product.”

“Yes, sir. I did.”

“Now I am confused. Have you or have you not had experience turning black petroleum into usable fuel?”

“Yes. I have done so and offered to do it again, but M. Neff said I was not needed.”

“M. Neff is looking after something in the Caribbean by now because he overstepped his authority. Before you leave please clear up one point for me. You say you have never worked on a cracking tower, how then can you have made fuel?”

“Oh, that is simple. We used an old-fashioned, outdated still and a cooling tower.”

DeMille snarled, “Get this man out of here.” Then he said, “M. LeBlanc. Understand me and understand me well. If there is not a report on my desk within thirty days telling me that enough fuel for the engine research project is no longer a problem, you may count yourself lucky if you are allowed to join M. Neff in Louisiana.”

Les Ailes du Papillon

Walter H. Hunt

1

Walks-In-Deep-Woods looked up through a haze of tobacco smoke to see Strong-Arm standing at the tent flap. Normally Strong-Arm went where he wished; he entered any tent he chose, never asking permission or hesitating—but he hesitated here, at the entrance to Walks-In-Deep-Woods’ tent.

Walks-In-Deep-Woods did not speak. He placed his hands before him, as if warming them at the fire; then he touched them to his temples, his cheeks, and his breast. Strong-Arm watched each hand motion, perhaps attributing meaning to the gestures...but Walks-In-Deep-Woods smiled inwardly to himself, knowing that they were for show, like most of what a shaman did.

Just for show
, he thought to himself, but did not permit a hint of it to appear on his face. Solemnly (
very
solemnly, he reminded himself) he looked up at Strong-Arm, awaiting the chief’s first words.

“You are working some medicine,” Strong-Arm said. “I will come back later.”

“You are welcome in my tent, mighty chief,” Walks-In-Deep-Woods said. “How may I help you?”

He gestured to a seat opposite, upon a blanket that a daughter of a chief had made for him when he was much younger. Strong-Arm seemed to hesitate again, as if unwilling to enter a shaman’s tent, but after a moment he entered, bowing his head to come through the tent-flap, and took the offered seat.

“You are working some medicine,” Strong-Arm repeated.

“Only the beginning,” Walks-In-Deep-Woods answered. He touched his temples and his cheeks again; Strong-Arm followed his gestures, perhaps again attributing some meaning to them. “I am trying to make clear that which is clouded.”

“By looking in the fire?”

“In part,” Walks-In-Deep-Woods said. “I have seen...the trail of our enemy.”

Strong-Arm was suddenly alert. “Enemy? You mean—”

“The great servant of the Onontio. Yes.”

“He is old now.”

“But still cunning, great chief. And still dangerous. For him to be defeated requires great medicine.”

“Our medicine has never worked against Champlain,” Strong-Arm said, and he picked up a bit of earth from the ground beneath his blanket, tossing it behind him to ward off any curse that might come from speaking the white man’s name. “Not in my father’s time, not in mine. Can you do what no one has done? Can you do what
you
have never done?”

“I can,” Walks-In-Deep-Woods answered, letting his face settle into a thin-lipped smile. “I can.”

Outside, in the dark, a night-bird hooted. Walks-In-Deep-Woods thanked the Great Spirit for His timing.

Strong-Arm rubbed his hands together and then spread them before the fire.

“What do you intend to do, shaman?”

“It is Champlain that opposes us, great chief. It is Champlain who makes common cause with the Hurons and goes to war against us.”

“Yes, yes,” Strong-Arm said. He was clearly uncomfortable that Walks-In-Deep-Woods was repeating the name.

“Then it is clear that he must die.”

“You...can cause his death?”

“Only at the proper time,” Walks-In-Deep-Woods answered.

Strong-Arm looked a bit disappointed.

“But
this
is the proper time,” Walks-In-Deep-Woods added. “With the harvest moon in the sky, and the first trace of chill in the air. I will cause the cold to creep into his old white bones and drive him to his bed.” He slapped his hands on his thighs, making Strong-Arm jump slightly. “And once he lies down he will not rise again.”

“When will you make this medicine?”

“When?” Walks-In-Deep-Woods let himself smile again, but this time he bared his teeth. “When, the great chief asks.
It is already done
. The cold is in his bones already.”

Now it was Strong-Arm’s turn to smile.

2

Champlain felt his age when he awoke in the morning, when he knelt to pray, when he bent over a map that had once been so easy to see, and when he laid his tired bones for sleep—and a hundred other times during the day.

Whenever he returned to France, his friends and the courtiers in Paris would ask:
why go back, Samuel? Why return to Nouvelle France, where the winters are cold and the nights are long?

You are not accorded the dignity of being named Governor. While the king and the cardinal—
and there was only
one
cardinal, whenever the title was spoken—
grant great seigneuries to everyone around them, you are left humble and modest, with no honors heaped upon you.

Why go back?

Why indeed
, he often thought to himself. But the answer was always the same—when he first set foot upon land it reminded him: the pure, clean air, the incredible variety of colors...Nouvelle France was in his blood. It was here that he first realized what he was meant to do.

And it was here, not in some comfortable
salon
in Paris, in the heart of the world, where he would die. He knew it, just as the cardinal had known it two years earlier at an interview when he had learned of the great extent over which New France was to spread.
All of America north of the Spanish possessions belongs to the crown of France
, Richelieu had told him, and then granted him the title of
lieutenant-general
.

In the spring, seven months ago, a confidant in Paris had sent him a scrap of parchment—a sort of engraving, a perfect reproduction of an up-time book, somehow procured from the Americans. It was a page from a great encyclopedia; and it was about
him
.

According to the book of the future, there was a calamity awaiting him—an imminent one. He was to suffer something that the English text termed a “stroke”—his correspondent had translated it as
congestion cérébrale
, an affliction of the head. It was written that the disease lingered for some time, giving him the opportunity to settle his affairs and contemplate, during the time left to him, how he would approach the Lord of Hosts when his spirit passed from the world.

The book had been vague about the exact date of the event, placing it sometime in October though it did state that he was to die on Christmas Day. By his own reckoning, the fate that God had ordained for him should logically take place eighty days earlier: forty days from Ash Wednesday to Eastertide, he thought, and forty days from Easter to Pentecost—eighty days placed the event on October the fifth.

All during the summer, Champlain had made his preparations. Confiding the contents of the scrap of paper to no one, not even his confessor, the Jesuit Father Charles Lalemant, he made a number of revisions to his will, providing a number of additional bequests of cash and property and making provisions for the servants of his habitation, his Montagnais godson Fortuné, and even the old
greffier
of Québec, Jacques de Laville. Lalemant took all of these changes in stride, asking Champlain about his sudden decisions...and, to his shame, Champlain dissembled (even under the seal of the confessional; he told his beads many times for those minor sins).

He would face his death with dignity, with his affairs in order, with his mind clear and his debts and responsibilities discharged. God had vouchsafed him an opportunity to do it before the
congestion cérébrale
struck him down.

By the Feast of Saint Michael all was in readiness. There was by then nothing to do but wait.

3

From his own Oneida longhouse to the Tree of Great Peace at Onondaga, the Council Fire of the Five Nations, was six days’ travel on foot. Strong-Arm expected Walks-In-Deep-Woods to go with him to speak with the other chiefs about war with the servants of the Onontio, but Walks-In-Deep-Woods declined. It was too far a journey for his old bones, with winter’s icy breath following just behind.

“I need your sage advice, shaman,” he said to him, but the older man shook his head.

“It is no place for shamans.”

“What?” Strong-Arm threw his hands in the air. “Onondaga is
full
of shamans. They are constantly asking questions—”

“And never giving answers, wise chief. I do not wish to be asked so many questions by so many shamans. You...you must go to the Great Fire of Peace and speak bravely, and argue your case so that all of the
Haudenosaunee
, the People of the Longhouse, will go to war alongside you.”

“I would have
you
beside me.”

“From the brave keepers of the Western Door, the Senecas, to the fierce Mohawks at the Longhouse’s sunrise entrance—all will harken to your words, mighty chief. You do not need
me
to make you or your speech strong.

“All you need, great Strong-Arm, is the truth.”

So Strong-Arm went alone, following the paths across the lands of the Oneidas until he came to Onondaga, where the great sacred fire of the Five Nations was kept. He carried with him the wampum of the Oneida, so that he might speak on behalf of himself and the other Oneida chiefs. As he traveled he knew that other chiefs, carrying other wampum, were on their way to Onondaga to hear him speak.

* * *

At the Council Fire at the heart of the lands of the
Haudenosaunee
, nothing happened quickly. Every meeting of the Great Council, ten hands of chiefs from all of the Nations—Seneca, Cayuga, Onondaga, Oneida and Mohawk, represented according to their might and numbers—began with tale-telling: of Sky-Mother and Earth-Father, of the Peacemaker Deganawidah, of the great Onondaga chief Hiawatha and the sorcerer Tadadaho whom Hiawatha cured with sacred beads and secret words. Almost an entire day from sunrise to sunset was consumed with the recounting of these great stories.

On the second day, a new sachem from the Seneca was welcomed “at the woods’ edge” to replace an old one who had died. Strong-Arm stood among the “clear-minded,” reciting the sacred words and helping to present the sacred beads to the “bereaved.” It was an aid to Strong-Arm’s patience that there were no debts of blood with the clan who had lost the sachem: there were no graves to cover, no feuds for the Council to resolve before the new sachem could pass through the “requickening” and take his seat. Nonetheless, the chiefs—and the shamans—were not interested in talking seriously until that ceremony was behind them, and thus a second day passed before the Tree of Great Peace.

At last, in the middle of the third day, when the elderly and distinguished chiefs had all had their chance to speak, Strong-Arm rose before the assembly and spread his arms wide. The members of the Grand Council, perhaps sensing that something important was about to be spoken, became hushed and quiet.

“I am Strong-Arm,” he began, “son of Red-Feather, son of Quick-Deer. Sachem I am, chief among the Oneida, neither the least nor the greatest of the
Haudenosaunee
, yet one of all, who stands before you by right and with privilege to speak.” He drew his belt of wampum and hung it on the pole that stretched the length of the great longhouse.