Rose turns to her father. She knows that such lapses into his native accent are a sure sign of stress.
“Perhaps we should return to the Great House — what do they call it, the Octagon? The Indian word for it is Kitzi-waskahikan.”
Lachlan turns to her and smiles. “Ah, lass, you do my heart glad. You have been in the country naught but two days, and already you are learning the Savage’s language. Where did you come by the word?”
“I do not recall, father,” she says quickly, recalling her illicit liaison with Isqe-sis. “I imagine I must have overheard it.”
“Well, I approve,” says Lachlan, nodding. “Judging by that bestial noise out there, these people can only be helped by what we can teach them, and in order to teach we must learn their language and their ways.”
Rose gets up and takes her father by the hand. Though her face is shadowed and invisible, he looks up at her smile.
“You regret coming here?” she asks.
“No, but I am uncertain. The little I have seen so far falls fair short of what I had imagined. But listen! That racket is moving closer. Let us flee to the Octagon, or whatever you call it. What do the Irish say? Better a good run than a poor stand?”
They abandon the cabin for the brightness and safety of the Great House and its peeling walls. Disturbed by the carryings-on outside the fort, most inhabitants have abandoned their beds and several traders carry loaded muskets.
They enter the main hall where they encounter the chief trader, who is bullied by Rose’s father into giving them a tour. They move from one cold room to another, the way announced by a feeble lantern. Rose’s skirts stir a dirt floor thick with rat droppings, bones, and other filth as they pass through the chapel, mess, trading hall, and even a magazine, wherein Lachlan thinks it foolish to locate such capricious stores inside the place where so many people lived: one lucky shot from a devil Frenchman would send the whole place to heaven. They finish the tour in the warehouse.
“These are last winter’s furs, ready for shipment to England,” Spencer says, approaching the massive, iron-clad doors. The lock clacks loudly as he turns the key, the lantern guttering as the great doors are swung open, like the breaching of a tomb. It casts a moving, fitful light onto stacked bales of compressed and dried beaver pelts. The space is close and musty, filled with the stench of hundreds of untanned skins.
“This is a much smaller load than most years,” Spencer says, moving closer to Rose. “It’s been getting that way for some time. Just a few years ago, this room would not have space for a bleeding mouse; she were jammed so tight with beaver.”
“Is it all just one kind of animal?” Lachlan asks, uncomfortable with the clerk’s obvious interest in his daughter. “Do you only trade in beaver?”
“Nay,” Spencer replies, not taking his eyes off Rose. “There is also marten and mink and bear. Caribou, moose, and buffalo. Anything ye can slit a hide off is in there. Hell, the Savages would skin mosquitoes if we paid ’em for it. But ’tis mostly the bloody beaver.”
Lachlan reaches out and fondles the edge of a pelt; it is both crisp and luxuriantly soft at the same time. “Your profanity is unwelcome in the presence of my daughter, Mr. Spencer. However, I find it amazing that the European passion for hats has been responsible for the civilizing of an entire continent.”
“I don’t know about that, sir, begging your Lordship’s pardon,” Spencer says with a grin, showing a black mouth largely devoid of teeth. “Civilized, you say, but just outside these walls heathen are murdering heathen tonight. Not much in the way of civilization in these parts.”
Lachlan looks at him. “I take your point, but that is why we are here. We will take civilization to the Savages.”
Spencer shakes his head, his greasy hair swinging. “Begging your pardon, but you can’t civilize ’em any more than you can civilize a hog. They’re animals, sure enough. A whip and a brace of pistols and a good, strong wall between you and them is all that’s needed to deal with the Savage.”
Spencer hides his contempt for the Orkneyman behind his smile. You don’t know, he thinks. You’re like every other Scottish and English fop that comes here thinking you know the place after a few days, believing you can change things for the good of King, country, and God. Just you wait, Mr. Schoolmaster. Wait ’til you see some of the things I’ve seen in the years I’ve been here. Their whelps cut down with axes, the tortures, the killings. Disease burning through the camps, leaving bloated bodies for the ravens to pick at. Starvation waiting in the next valley empty of deer. You think you know, but your safe home is thousands of leagues away, and when you head off up the river, then you will know the meaning of savagery.
Yes, you will find out, you and your beautiful daughter. More’s the pity. Now there’s a girl of the likes I ain’t set eyes on in many a year. I wonder what she’d feel like under me …
“Spencer!”
“Aye, what?”
A man hurries into the room, out of breath. “Meeting in the square, pronto — oh, begging your pardon, sor, didn’t see thee standing there. Evening, ma’am.” He touches his forelock with his finger. “Everyone is expected in the square. The factor wants to give a little speech.”
Lachlan inserts himself between his daughter and Spencer, leading her out of the room.
When the Indians started their fire, Declan McCormack stood a little way off, watching. The gates had been locked when he returned to the fort, but although unarmed, he felt unafraid of the carryings-on. The occasion seemed to be the recent arrival of the two missing ships of their Orkney convoy — no speeches, no solemnity, just boisterous drinking and singing and drumming. He had seen wilder carousing in his time, but without the guns. Now he stands in the shadows and relaxes against a tree, feeling an admiration for the Indians, the vigour with which they dance and the exultation of their unashamed bodies. Several men and women sit staring into the fire, their faces shining in the heat, chanting in a high chorus. The wind blows off the river and stirs the flames; sparks swirl about the dancers to be lifted and swept away.
The chanting affects him viscerally, and for a moment he is disturbed by the feelings that bubble up inside him, dark and sexual and as if from a great depth. He turns away from the fire and pisses against a tree; suddenly, laughing Indians surround him. Clapping him hard on the shoulders, they haul him toward the fire. As he enters the ring of yellow light there is a great whoop as several young men jump up and charge. The drums fall silent.
He fells the first one with a solid punch to the jaw, but then they are all over him, like a tide rolling over a sandbar. They pin him to the muskeg as someone yanks off his breeches and jacket. He shouts at them to leave him be, but those wiry arms are far too strong and he cannot move. Soon he is stretched out naked, flushing with shame.
A short and very thin Indian wearing only a hide breechclout walks out of the shadows. His entire body is painted in red ochre, and his face is skull-white. Raven feathers sway from his topknot. His face and ears and arms are adorned in silver jewellery that flashes as he dances; in that light, he looks to Declan like a God. With a great smile, the Indian pulls out a knife half as long as a sword as he kneels over the Highlander. It flashes in the firelight. Declan turns his face away, closing his eyes.
Laughter and the drumming starts again; the hands release him. He leaps up and runs from the fire; in the darkness he cannot see the pine and collides with it, knocking himself unconscious.
Chapter Five
At daylight, a rumour begins through the factory: an Indian woman and her two children have been killed in the night, hacked down by their husband and father. The company surgeon leaves with his assistant to attend. None of the victims are brought into the fort.
“Thank