Shadowbrook (27 page)

The long gun with the maple stock felt right slung over his shoulder. Quent had not realized how naked he was without his weapon until he replaced it. Still, he was glad to have given the other gun to Corm. Crazy to go riding off looking for God knows what kind of enemy without one. Crazier still the way Corm’s own gun had disappeared. Genevieve hadn’t acted as if she had anything to hide. She’d even urged him to stay longer.
Spend another night with us, Quent The children never tire of your stories.
He’d begged off, using his father’s ill health as an excuse,
and left the Lydius house soon after noon. It still wasn’t quite the dinner hour, but he didn’t plan to set off on the trek to Shadowbrook with an empty belly.

The taproom at the Sign of the Nag’s Head was about three-quarters full. It smelled of men and animals and old ale and nearly raw spirits, but above everything was the aroma of some kind of rich stew. Venison, Quent guessed. The notice over the ale barrels by the entrance proved him right. “TODAY ONLY,” it read, “JENZY’S VENISON JAMBALAYA.”

“Who’s Jenzy and what’s jambalaya?” Quent asked.

Old man Groesbeck was preparing to tap a keg. He paused with the mallet in his hand only long enough to identify the questioner. “Oh, it be you. Should have guessed. Don’t be many folks around here not be knowing Jenzy. She be marrying my boy two years past. Found her down near New Orleans, he did. A jambalaya be what we call a stew. Only it be different when she makes it in the way of her people down there in the French country.”

“The same but different, is that it?”

“
Ja,
pretty much. Got some squirrel pie, too, if you’d rather have that. Jenzy make that my old woman’s way. Or oysters fresh this morning. Six wooden pennies for a dozen. Five if you pay with coppers.”

Someone called out that he was perishing with thirst and Groesbeck should stop talking and get on with tapping the keg. “Two dozen of the biggest oysters,” Quent said. “And a glass of your best ale to wash them down. I’ll be over there waiting.” He took a seat on the bench that ran along the taproom’s west wall. It gave him a good vantage point for surveying the scene.

The last time he’d been in here—when he’d brought Nicole because she was desperate for food and drink and a place to sit down out of the sun—it had been later in the day. The taproom had been too crowded for him to identify who was who in the throng. Now he could clearly see a pair of whores drinking at a table at the far end. The trappers with them looked as if they were already too drunk to be able to use the services they were paying for. There were a number of local craftsmen and laborers as well, and four or five tars in their distinctive short jackets and striped shirts and oiled breeches.

“Two dozen oysters,” the barmaid said as she put the plate in front of him. “Opened ’em meself, I did. Seeing as how they were for Uko Nyakwai. Might open something else if you asked me nicely.”

Quent laughed and flipped her a wooden shilling and she caught it expertly before it could fall to the sawdust-covered floor. “That one’s for old man Groesbeck. There’s another meant just for you if you tell me if you’ve seen any strangers around here in the past week or two.”

“Always be strangers in Albany. What with them boats coming and going every day the way they do. Be even more now that it’s almost harvest time.”

“Yes, I know about the tars and the traders. I was thinking more about Indians.”

“Old Groesbeck don’t encourage Indians. They drink too much too fast, then they make trouble. Ain’t too many slop shops or taverns in Albany as welcomes savages. Best if they come into town, do their trades, and get a jug to take with ’em.”

“All right, what about just walking around the town, then. Someone you’ve not seen before. A Huron perhaps.”

“Ain’t never seen no—”

“Stop your jawing, girl!” Groesbeck’s yell cut through the hum of voices in the taproom. “Ye be coming back to work sometime this day, or do I gotta be floggin’ the skin off yer lazy back?”

The girl shot a quick look at the landlord. And thought of the shilling the Red Bear had promised. “Hold yer water, ye poxed old man! I be coming.” Then, to Quent, “Only stranger like what you mean that I be seein’ round here be the Scot what’s living above the gristmill. The Widow Kreiger rented him a room nearly a year past, but he still talks like his tongue’s got a knot in it. Can’t hardly understand him meself. Though there be some as talk to him often as you like. Even giving up the chance of a few coppers out back in order to do it.”

“One of the whores, you mean. A Scot comes in here and talks to one of the whores regularly. Is that it?”

“That’s it. What about that shilling then?”

“Which one of the whores?”

“Annie.” The girl turned and craned her neck to see over the heads of the crowd. “Don’t see her just now. Not the Scot neither, but if you come back a bit later, I bet he’ll be—”

“You be heading for a flogging, girl! Ain’t bein’ no doubt about it.”

Quent flipped her the coin. “Here. And tell Groesbeck I kept you. And that if he takes a whip to you, I’ll return the favor.”

The girl caught the coin and opened her mouth wide in a burst of laughter so strong it jiggled her full breasts. Three of her top teeth were black with rot and most of the bottom row were missing. “Don’t ye bother yerself none about that. The old fool’s been promising to flog me since he bought me indenture. Never has and never will. Can’t stand the sight of blood, old Groesbeck. Can’t even stick a pig without weeping. You come back later, Uko Nyakwai. I’ll point ’em both out, the Scot and Annie. And ye can have anything else ye likes while we’re about it.”

“I’ll be looking forward to it.” God protect him from ever being that desperate for a woman.

Quent ate and left the taproom, considering his options. He could look for the
Scot over at the gristmill, or hang about and come back to the Nag’s Head in hopes of finding him there later. But there was no Scot in any part of Corm’s tale, and no reason to think this one—whoever he might be—had any role in the business of the sweat lodge and the Midewiwin priest and the dead Huron. Besides, he was anxious to return to Shadowbrook. His father’s health, of course, as he—d said to Genevieve. But also, or perhaps first, Nicole.

SATURDAY, AUGUST 15, 1754
THE LAKE CHAMPLAIN-HUDSON RIVER CORRIDOR

In the days when the Kahniankehaka, the Keepers of the Eastern Door, truly ruled these lands, a Huron war party would move with more stealth than Lantak and his eight braves practiced now. Before the white stink covered the land and the testides of red men shrank like those of boy children in a cold wind, Lantak would have been a mighty war chief, not an outlaw driven from the Longhouse by chiefs who had the hearts of squaws, and ran from their enemies like chattering squirrels fleeing a hawk.

In the past he would have been at the head of thousands of warriors, coming to engage other
Haudenosaunee,
the braves of the Five Nations who had bound themselves to observe the
Kayanashakowa,
the great law of the union that had set itself against the more ancient Huron Confederacy. Theirs would have been a war of red men against red men, true warriors against a worthy enemy. Instead he moved through a land of all but empty forests and rivers. He saw none of the wooden boats made by the whites, but no birch canoes either. Lantak and his braves were alone on the water they called Oswegatchie and that the French had named Lake Champlain. Their two canoes traveled in the sun-coming direction, in a world of silence broken only by the soft, slapping noises of their perfectly synchronized paddles.

The
Haudenosaunee
had been put on this land by the Great Spirit, but they had allowed the others to come and make them slaves and squaws. Their lands were infested by vermin and they did nothing. They had shriveled like dog turds in the sun, all their life juices dried up and gone. When he thought these things, the burning began inside Lantak, and the fire that would not die roared in his belly and he yearned for release.

The sun was dropping behind them, going into the center of the earth to rest Already the three-parts-round moon could be seen in the sky above the trees to their left Lantak smelled the approaching dark, and the stench of white men. The French were not far off. Fort St. Frédéric, the place the English called Crown Point, was only three days’ journey ahead. The French patrols might easily come
this far. When the sun returned, he decided, the war party must leave the water and travel through the forest, take the long way to their destination to avoid the fort. So be it. A wise war sachem chose his battles; he did not allow them to choose him.

He raised his hand and pointed at a cove with a shallow beach, and both canoes turned effortlessly and headed for land. “We will camp here tonight,” Lantak said when the canoes had been brought on land and carefully hidden. “Tomorrow we journey by foot. If we find horses we will take them. If we do not it does not matter. When the sun comes back no more than this many times,” Lantak held up the ten fingers of his two hands, “we will be on the land of our enemy and there are horses there. We will take them, and many scalps, and some white captives to caress.” Then the fire in his belly would be quieted. The screams would calm it and the blaze would leave him in peace for a time.

TUESDAY, AUGUST 25, 1754
SHADOWBROOK

“Look, Ephraim.” Lorene spun the chair that Solomon the Barrel Maker had fashioned for his master when Ephraim first took ill. Where its rear legs should have been were big, barrel-stave wheels. If you tilted the chair slightly backward, it made moving Ephraim a thing of ease. She was adept at using the chair and she was able to quickly adjust his position so he was facing the window. “Quent. And the girl, Mademoiselle Crane. See how he lifts her into the wagon? I told you. He’s smitten with her.”

“Because he assists her up onto something too high for her to reach by herself? What does that mean?”

Dear God, but men were obtuse. And blind. “It’s the way he does it, Ephraim. And look how he waits before driving off. Asking her if she’s comfortable, I’m sure.”

“So it’s Quent’s good manners I’m supposed to be impressed by. I don’t think—”

“That’s it exactly. You don’t think. You’re being a stubborn fool, Ephraim. And you’re putting the Patent in harm’s way.”

He was mostly too ill to laugh. Not enough breath for it, and the belly pain that was always with him was worsened by laughter. This time he allowed himself a small chuckle. “How easy it is to tease you, Lorene. And after all these years you still blush at my words.” It had been remarkable the way he’d burned for her the first time he’d seen her. Just a girl of sixteen, younger even than this little French half-breed that had turned his household around. Lorene had brought some sunshine
to the place too, back then. And some hope. He’d made the decision he had to make and never let on how it pained him, but it had been a black and bitter thing to think of John taking over Shadowbrook. “Look,” he repeated with another small laugh, “the flush is on you even now.”

Lorene glanced down at the pink suffusing her breasts where the corset pushed them above her bodice, and felt the heat of it on her neck and cheeks. “We’re not talking about me, Ephraim. I’m trying to tell you that—”

“Quent is the man to take on the Patent. I know.”

“Yes, and that this Mademoiselle Nicole Crane will make a perfect wife for him. She’s good for the place, Ephraim. Even Sally Robin looked at her with approval.”

“Sally Robin, eh?” The slaves said Sally had the gift of sight. He’d never been sure about that, but these days massage with one of her creams gave him what little ease he could find. He’d be grateful for that right now. His joints were aching something fierce. He was too tired to go on talking. “I need to go to bed, Lorene. Send Runsabout to help me. She gives my poor legs more comfort than any of the men. Better hands for it.”

“I will, Ephraim. In a moment. But if you’d just consider how much better Quent would—”

“Lorene.” He was gentle with her, his voice steady and soft. The time for teasing was past, probably forever. “I told you. I know.”

“But I thought you meant to …”

He nodded toward the small wooden chest with the inclined top that he used to facilitate writing when he was in bed. The cover lifted and there was a place to store those few papers that these days he considered important. Not many now. Life, he’d learned, was stripped to bare essentials at its end. “In there. I wrote it all out. My instructions for after I’m gone. Quent is to have Shadowbrook.”

“Oh, Ephraim! Thank heaven! I can’t tell you—”

He held up a forestalling hand. “It’s Quent who shouldn’t be told. Not just yet.” He had to stop for a moment because a surge of pain took his breath away. “Lorene, I truly need to—”

“Go to bed. Yes, my dear.” Lorene half stood. “I could help you, Ephraim, if you’d permit me.” He weighed so little these days. She could easily put him to bed herself.

Ephraim’s face got hard and he shook his head. He would never allow her to do for him as if he were a child. Not Lorene. Not after all the times she’d been soft and pliant beneath him and he’d been the master of her body as well as of all else. “Send Runsabout.” He had never expected the slaves to spread their legs for him. Damn fool thing to do, he’d always thought. Gave them entirely too much of a hold over their master, to have gazed up at a face contorted with passion. As for
the children that might come from such trifling … A damn fool thing. No telling John that, though. No telling his oldest boy anything. He’d even considered naming Cormac, back when he thought Quent beyond his reach. But that would have been a hundred times worse. “Lorene, I perish with fatigue.”