The Dakota Cipher

revenge.’

‘If he’d let us be, none of this would have happened.’

‘That’s not how he will see things.’

‘And who said anything to you about treasure?’

‘Do you think voyageurs fools? You two are not priests or company men, and you haven’t taken a note of your surroundings since we met you. You made no surveys, no maps, and asked no questions about routes or trails. Explorers gather information, but you hid it. The only explanation is treasure.’

‘Well, you just earned a share.’

He grinned. ‘Is it Indian gold, as in Mexico and Peru?’

‘No, not gold.’

‘Emeralds then, as in the jungles of South America?’

‘No jungles or jewels here.’

‘What then? What are we all risking our lives for?’ He was cheerful as a birthday.

‘A hammer.’

‘A what?’ His paddle stopped.

‘A hammer of the gods with special powers. Right, Magnus?’

‘Aye, and the damned Somersets now know of it too. And there’s more than that, little man. I’m going to take you to the navel of the world.’

‘You mean its centre?’

‘Better than that. The Garden of Eden.’

‘The Garden of Eden? But we’ve been banished, no?’

‘Not the same Garden as in the Bible, necessarily, but a place of holiness or spiritual power. Or maybe exactly the same, since we don’t know where the biblical Garden was.’

‘You think you’ll find paradise in this wilderness? After that village?’

‘I think my Norse ancestors did.’ He patted the now-empty map case, which he stubbornly still carried. ‘And when we come to where they did, then all will be saved. The treasure isn’t jewels, little man. It’s life itself.’

‘But we already have that. Don’t we?’

Magnus smiled grimly and dug in his paddle.

* * *

The Garden of Eden’s neighbourhood, I discovered, seemed to have more than its share of mosquitoes and blackflies, ready to take communion on our cuts and scrapes. We raced down the shore of Lake Superior, and at its southwestern end entered the marshy estuary of a river that Pierre identified as the Saint Louis, hundreds of miles north of the city of the same name. As dusk fell insects drew more blood than a platoon of doctors, but we dared not stop, despite our exhaustion. We paddled well into the evening, stomachs growling, until the river began to narrow and the current strengthened. ‘It’s time to hide,’ Pierre said.

We detoured into a tiny slough, temporarily sank our canoe out of sight by weighting it with stones, and nested in the reeds of a muddy island like ducks. We had no food beyond a few bites of pemmican that Pierre had brought – awful stuff, unless you’re starving – and dared not light a fire. But we were so depleted that the cool, muddy ground seemed like a feather bed. I fell headlong into exhausted sleep, fleeing in my dreams from nameless terrors.

Pierre awakened me in the middle of the night, fog on the river and frogs croaking from the marshes. ‘Now,’ he whispered. ‘They’re coming.’

Cautiously I lifted my head. A flickering light hovered in the mist, gliding towards our hiding place. A torch! I shrank to hug the mud. A canoe was paddling slowly by, an Indian at the bow holding the light and one behind him kneeling with a long, light lance. Occasionally he’d thrust it into the reeds. I recognised the sleeves of Red Jacket, one hanging empty over his wounded arm. The naked, powerful shoulders of other braves gleamed with bear grease as they inserted paddles into the water as precisely as surgeons, the canoe silent in its passage. Heads swivelled, looking for some sign of us.

I eased back farther into the reeds, but as I moved an animal started in response – a mink, perhaps – and with a plop went into the river.

Red Jacket stiffened, and I could see his silhouette twist back to look. It was as if he was sniffing the very air for my presence. The paddling stopped for a moment, the canoe gauzy through the fog, its occupants peering. I shut my eyes lest they somehow reflect light. I could hear the cautionary cock of a musket hammer. Pierre had stopped breathing.

There was a long silence. Finally the chief grunted, turned away, and the stroke began again. The canoe disappeared into the fog, but as it did another came, and another. It seemed an eternity before five of them had passed, manned by thirty warriors. If one of them had spied us, we had no chance – but they didn’t.

I groaned, feeling as far from help as I’d ever felt in my life. Hostile Indians behind, now more Indians ahead, and somewhere beyond them the fearsome Ojibway gave way to the even more fearsome Dakota, called Sioux by the Ojibway, meaning ‘snakes in the grass.’ Like the snake cult of Apophis! I saw little chance of getting back to Grand Portage before Rendezvous ended, and wouldn’t trust the British if I did. Any lie the Somersets told would be believed, and for all I knew the Scot McTavish had authorised my kidnapping. How better to get rid of an American-French interloper? I felt like a fly at a convention of spiders. If only I hadn’t lusted after Pauline Bonaparte! And Aurora. And Namida.

I’d be safer if I was senile.

‘We’re trapped!’ I said to Pierre. ‘Now they’re ahead of us too!’

‘And you think this is bad news? You’d rather we’d invited them to breakfast? Now it will be us following them, instead of the opposite. When they turn about we hide and let them pass again, and with luck Red Jacket will tire of the game and go home.’

‘Luck.’ Bittersweet word for a gambler. ‘This is your plan?’

‘There may be Indians ahead who won’t welcome Red Jacket’s band. He draws renegades and miscreants because the Ojibway think him Dakota, the Dakota think him Ojibway, and he hires out to any side like a whore, only taking his own counsel. All we can do is hope for time and circumstance to eventually lose him in the country west of here, while not losing our scalps in the process. We need something more before we face him – more allies or a terrible weapon.’

‘Magnus thinks he’s going to find that weapon.’

‘Yes, and paradise, too. Let’s hope that your giant is more than simply crazy.’

It would help our spirits to eat. I found an alder sapling, cut a lance, and as the morning lightened spied a lazy sturgeon in the shallows and speared the monster through its scale armour, feeling tension release as I rammed it home. We gulped flesh raw like savages.

It was ambrosia.

We told the others about Red Jacket, and Namida broke in with French.

‘But my people are this way.’ She pointed upriver, west, the way Red Jacket had gone. Somewhere far to the west were her Awaxawi-Mandan cousins.

‘The Ojibway have been driving the Dakota out of this country with their trade muskets, and keeping the Fox and Sac pinned to the south,’ Pierre explained, drawing what he knew in the river sand. ‘All the territories are in turmoil since the beaver trade began and trade muskets sold. The Mandan are somewhere beyond, amid the Dakota, and the Dakota are the most dangerous of all. You may be looking for paradise, but you are pointed towards hell. So why that way?’

‘Magnus had a map he thinks drawn by Norse ancestors who preceded us.’

‘Vikings? In the middle of North America?’

‘Templars.’

‘What are they?’

‘A medieval order of knights interested in religious artefacts.’

‘Hmph.’ The voyageur looked at Magnus. ‘We are a long way from the Bible lands, my friend. Why do you think Eden is out here?’

‘When the first couple walked the earth it was empty, with no Bible lands or anything else,’ Magnus said. ‘Eden could be anywhere. But scripture says it is the source of four great rivers, and according to my map great rivers run from a spot marked with Thor’s hammer. If the Knights Templar found some ancient reference to this