Fireball (18 page)

Curtius held up a frayed end of rope. It could have frayed against a sharp edge of rock . . . especially with a pair of hands working on it. He said: “You have told us much about these people, Bradus. You have told us they are not thieves but honest dealers. Yet I think someone has taken our pots.”

“Wait!”

That was Bos. He scrambled over the rocks and prised something out of a crevice: a broken lobster pot.

Brad stared at it. “No, they aren't thieves. They wouldn't take something that didn't belong to them. But they just might break it up if they decided it was being used to take things
from
them.”

“From them?” Curtius was incredulous. “If we steal from anyone, we steal from Neptune!”

Brad said slowly: “They have strange beliefs. I remember something Red Hawk said, at the beginning. He said he had spoken with the gods of land and sea, and we were permitted to enjoy their fruits for the present. The permission to hunt and fish could have been temporary. Maybe he now regards it as withdrawn.”

Bos spoke as a Roman Christian: “There is only one God.”

Ignoring that, Curtius said: “We Romans have been paying our dues to Neptune for thousands of years. I do not think he will pay any heed to savages.”

Brad spoke in English to Simon: “It's not really
gods,
but that was the nearest I could get to it in Latin. They believe in a kind of spiritual essence—
manitou
in Algonquian—a supernatural power that exists not just in people but in things. Things like the sun, moon, thunder, land, and sea. Especially land and sea. In our world, long after the white men had come, some Indians refused to use iron ploughs, in case they bruised mother earth.”

The others looked restless, and he went back to
Latin: “What matters is that
they
believe in their gods. And if they think the gods don't want us to get lobsters from the sea, they're likely to do what they can to prevent it.”

Bos said: “I have seen more Indians than I used to when we have been hunting lately. Maybe they are trying to prevent our getting food from the land, too.”

Simon asked: “How?”

“I suppose they could throw a cordon round us,” Brad said, “to scare off game before we got within striking distance. Like beaters, only in reverse.”

His tone was speculative, but Simon found the thought more chilling than the sub-zero temperature around them. He had already had to get used to the fact that the Algonquians, whom he had envisaged as allies against the North American winter, were taking advantage of it to exploit them. If they were going to be actively hostile, it put a very different complexion on the months ahead.

Curtius said, after a silence: “This is not a good land you have brought us to, Bradus. Things are not as you promised. You spoke of a land of peace and riches, not of cold and hunger and treacherous enemies.”

“The land I spoke of is not this one,” Brad said. “It lies a long way west of here, on the shore of another ocean. And there, I promise you, we will find all the good things I told you of.”

Brad's description of America as an earthly paradise had sustained the two Romans during their voyage towards what they suspected might be the edge of the world. It was probably, Simon thought, not a bad idea to switch the dream to California as an antidote to the grim reality that surrounded them.

“Once we get there, everything will be all right,” Brad said. “Believe me.”

He was doing it well; he spoke as though he believed it himself. Curtius's look remained sceptical, but Bos said simply: “When do we go there, Bradus?”

“We must wait till the snows have gone.”

“If we live so long,” Curtius said.

“Things aren't all that bad,” Brad said. “At least it's clear they're not going to attack us. They could have done that at any time. We'll just have to outwit them.”

“How?” Curtius asked.

“Well, we laid those pots openly. We won't make
that mistake again. We'll be more cunning; and in hunting, too.”

Simon wondered again how deep his seeming optimism went. For himself he felt cold, and trapped, and more than a bit frightened.

•  •  •

It was soon apparent that outwitting the Algonquians was not going to be easy. They made new lobster pots and set them in a different place at first light, concealing the lines with stones and seaweed. Next day the lines were broken and empty. They took to hunting early and late, as well, and in areas they had not previously visited, but without success. Bos guessed the hut was being kept under surveillance, and the following day, as though in ironic comment, the surveillance became an open one. A brave took up a position on the ridge and stayed there, motionless. When he did go, another took his place, and so it continued from dawn to dusk. Red Hawk had decided they should know they were being watched.

Curtius was more maddened by this than any of them. His instinct, as a trained and experienced Roman soldier, was to attack; he wanted to go up and
drive the watcher away, killing him if necessary. The fact that this could only mean a full-scale assault from the rest of the Algonquian braves did not seem to bother him, and Brad and Simon had trouble talking him out of the project. It was a relief that another snowstorm started while they were arguing; even if the Indian remained at his post they could not see him. But they could not go out to hunt, either, with landmarks obliterated by the driving snow.

The storm lasted all day and most of the night. Next morning there was another three feet of snow outside the door. Bos set to work shovelling a path round the hut. Brad was standing by the open door, and Simon joined him.

“No sign of our watcher.”

Brad shook his head. “He'll be back.”

While they were staring up at the ridge, they heard Bos shout with an urgency that got them running. They rounded the corner of the hut to see him standing in front of the animal pen. He turned towards them, his face showing a mixture of anger and misery.

A section of the pen had been crudely broken, and tracks led away from it across the snow.

Bos said: “I heard sounds in the night, but thought it could have been the wind battering.”

“What have we lost?” Brad asked.

“The nanny goat.”

“Indians?” Simon asked.

Bos shook his head. “There were paw marks and a trail of blood. A bear.”

They stood in silence, taking in this totally unexpected disaster. The nanny, with a kid growing in her belly, had represented a hope for the future. And they had all been fond of her, Bos especially. The big man looked as though he might be going to cry. Possibly in a bid to prevent that, Brad said harshly: “It's a nasty blow. But we couldn't have kept them, once we headed west. The same with the hens. I've known for some time we had to think of them as meat.”

Bos surveyed him with heavy eyes. “So we might as well kill the billy now, before the bear comes back, and butcher him for our larder?”

Brad nodded.

“I think I will leave that task to you, Bradus.”

Brad did not answer.

Bos fixed his gaze on him for a long moment,
then said: “Don't worry. I know what is man's work. I will see to it. You are better skilled at talking. But watch your tongue, boy.”

•  •  •

The winter dragged slowly on. The billy goat and chickens provided a temporary addition to their food supplies; while they lasted, they did not need to buy meat from the Indians and could conserve the diminishing supply of wampum. There was still a watcher on the ridge, though, and the snares they set stayed empty. Red Hawk had suspended his visits, but uncannily, as though he knew the exact contents of their larder, he returned when they were down to the last chicken and the last haunch of goat meat. His rates had gone up again, and a lot more winter lay ahead. There was a brief period of milder weather, but it was followed by a series of bitter storms which kept them inside the cabin, in unhappy and hungry confinement.

The next clear spell saw Red Hawk back with his braves. They brought two rabbits and some withered roots. He wanted twelve strings of beads for each of the rabbits. For the roots—he gestured magnanimously—three only.

They were stunned into silence. Red Hawk's face was expressionless as usual; then, astonishingly, it cracked into a smile. He pointed at Bos, and spoke to Brad. Simon picked up the occasional word:
hair . . . knife . . . wampum . . .
Brad was asking, offering, finally appealing. The smile went from Red Hawk's face, and there was no mirth in Brad's. At the end, he said to the others: “Get them the wampum. Twenty-seven strings.”

“We are on the last sack,” Bos said.

“I know.” Brad shrugged. “We have no choice.”

The weather had cleared to a frozen calm, and they had the shutters open. They watched the Indians travel easily up the slope and over the ridge. Turning away, Brad said: “Well, that's that.”

Simon said: “Tell us the worst.”

“I was going to.” He paused. “The first bit was joke time, Algonquian style. He said we needn't pay wampum for the roots. They would take Bos's beard in exchange.”

To the Indians, who plucked out what little facial hair they had, Bos's curly and luxuriant beard had been a source of interest from the beginning; they had grown used to the women and children giggling
over it when they visited the village. Bos uttered a Roman curse. Brad said: “I refused the offer politely, and Red Hawk said they would not hurt him by hacking it off with their poor stone knives; they would buy our strange sharp ones and use them. For two knives they would bring us a turkey. I said no, we would not sell the knives, and he said it didn't matter anyway.”

Brad took a deep breath. “That was when I offered him the cabin.”

They stared at him. Simon said: “You did what?”

“I explained that we would be moving on, as soon as the snows melted. I said that if they would give us food until the spring we would give them the cabin then, and some knives, and an axe, and other valuable things. Things which were our possessions, which belonged to us.”

Simon said: “I suppose . . .”

Brad went on: “He said it was true these objects were ours, but only as long as the Great Spirit continued to breathe life into our mouths. Dead men, he said, had no possessions. Before the winter ended, we would be dead. Then any man might take things which no longer had an owner.”

After a pause, Bos said: “As you told us, they are not thieves. They only starve men to death, then take their goods.”

Curtius said: “I have had enough of this. Let us attack them, while the strength is in us. I would rather die as a soldier than as a famished rat!”

Bos growled approval.

Brad said: “I agree about doing something while we still have the strength. But something better than committing suicide, which is what that would amount to. One possibility would be to abandon the cabin now and head south.”

Simon said: “That gets my vote. This place has become a death trap. And providing we don't freeze to death, heading south means heading for the sun. It's the best chance we have.”

“Except for one thing,” Brad said.

“What?”

“Red Hawk thought we might think of that. He said if we left, he would send braves to follow us. They would keep us in sight as long as we were in Algonquian lands, and when we left those lands, they would return to report our deaths. Because the next lands to the south are inhabited by the Iroquois,
who kill strangers. They do this slowly, but he can be certain that within a week we will be dead. Knowing that, they will feel entitled to take possession of the cabin, and everything in it.”

Bos said: “I will take that chance, sooner than starve here.”

“I, too,” said Curtius. “And I think we will kill a few of the Iroquois before they kill us.”

“I might agree,” Brad said, “if there were no alternative.”

Simon said: “Starving to death, freezing to death, getting killed in an attack on the Algonquians, being tortured to death by Iroquois . . . not just alternatives: we have a multiple choice.”

Brad ignored him. “North and west, Algonquians, for hundreds of miles. South, more Algonquians, followed by Iroquois who seem to be rather worse. There's still east.”

“Sure,” Simon said, “the ocean. Three thousand miles of it. Quite a swim.”

An early storm had brought seas sweeping high up the beach to batter a hole in the side of the ship which had brought them from England, and later storms had completed her destruction. Curtius in
particular had been depressed by the loss of this solitary link with his homeland, remaining gloomy for days.

Brad said: “You know how cold the water's been here, even in summer? It's caused by a strong current from the north that skirts this coast. The
Stella
's finished, but we could make a raft out of her timbers. The current will take it south. We might be able to miss Iroquois territory altogether. At least we'll be heading towards a better climate.”

He looked around at their faces.

“What do you think?”

“I think,” Bos said, “that we will start right away.”

•  •  •

It wasn't easy; it was murderously difficult, in fact. They had to break the
Stella
up to get at the deck timbers. Although it didn't snow, the wind remained easterly, howling over the grey breakers and peppering them with freezing darts of spray.

When the raft was half-built, the disheartening realization came that it was not only well above the tide mark but would be too heavy to drag down once
completed: they were obliged to break it up and begin again at the water's edge, with bitterly cold waves breaking over their legs. They took turns in going back to the hut to thaw themselves out. Then they had to drive in heavy stakes to anchor it against being carried away by the incoming tide.