Original Death (41 page)

Duncan could not hide his pleasure at hearing the names of learned men he too had known and admired. They spoke for several minutes of mutual acquaintances before Graham reached behind his pillow and produced a heavy bottle. He uncorked it with a conspiratorial grin. “The best medicine of all,” he said, pouring some of its golden liquid into two of the bleeding cups and handing one to Duncan. Graham lifted his cup and closed his eyes as he sniffed. “The water of life, lad.”

It had been too long since Duncan had tasted good Highland whiskey, and as he let the first sip linger on his tongue, memories of other old Scots and their whiskey washed over him.

“McPhee would love to have me on his table when I breathe my last,” Graham said in a surprisingly congenial tone. “He would debate with his class for hours over whether it was my lungs, my liver, or the growth in my belly that killed me. I prefer to think of it as just the harvest of a long life well lived.” Graham said nothing when Duncan pressed his fingertips through the thin linen of his shirt, just stood up like a compliant patient. The tight lump beside the man's stomach was prominent. He had a tumor.

“Alice McCallum,” Graham recalled with a whimsical glint as Duncan probed. “The lass had the deepest blue eyes I ever saw. A man could wander for days in those eyes. I was in love with her one summer,” he confessed, holding up his arms as if embracing a dance partner. Suddenly he noticed Hannah and Ishmael standing by the barrels. With surprising grace he glided to the maiden and bowed before her. Hannah laughed, tucked her splinted arm against her body, and took Graham's proffered hand as he began humming a waltz.

As Duncan watched the aged Scot and the Iroquois maiden dance, he recalled how Graham had introduced himself. Clan Graham. It was the address for a clan chief. The Grahams had been one of the most powerful clans in the northern Highlands, and before the uprising their clan chief would have been a great laird, ruling like a king. After the uprising there were huge bounties placed on the heads of the rebel lords.

Ishmael took up the humming, and soon Graham and the young Mohawk girl began laughing so hard they had to stop. The glee on the old man's countenance twisted into a grimace of pain. As he clutched his belly, Duncan helped him back to his cot and poured him another inch of whiskey.

“I remember meeting a company of McCallum men,” Graham said when he recovered. The more he drank, the more pronounced was the Scottish burr in his voice. “At the
kyle
along Skye it was, and the fools were
swimming shaggy cows across the channel from the island to the drovers' camp near Lochlash. Long before you were born, lad.”

Duncan grinned again. “Those were my people, Lord Graham. My uncles used to boast of the days when they swam so many cows they could walk across the channel on their backs.”

Graham's laugh ended in a violent shiver, and he pointed to the monk's robe draped over the nearest barrel. As Duncan helped him into it, the good-natured old man lowered his head and made the sign of the cross, murmuring the prayer in French. “Call me Father Andre, lad. My days as Laird Andrew Graham are long ago memories.”

“I understand why the girl is here, Father,” Duncan said. “But you are not hiding in the vault because you escaped from the half-king.” He was beginning to suspect he was looking at the real reason he had been brought to Montreal.

Graham studied him silently. There was wisdom in his eyes, but also cunning. “The Highland way of life was just that, a way of life. Are we so shallow as to think it had to be lost because our lands were lost?” The old laird grew very sober. “I've seen mountains to the west, by the inland seas, that are covered with heather and pines just like home. There are four thousand brave Highland men converging on this very city. That fool Amherst doesn't realize he has assembled the biggest gathering of Scottish fighters since the uprising in '46.”

He leaned closer to Duncan. When he spoke again there was new strength in his voice. “With the western tribes, the French Indians, and the Iroquois at their side, they will be unstoppable. Neither king will have the stomach to stop them when they choose to establish a new Scottish nation around the inland seas.”

Duncan stared at the man, stunned. His heart raced as he lowered his whiskey. He had been so blind. They had all been so blind. Somehow the half-king had connected to the secret Jacobite network. Regis had found an old Highland laird whom he would present at the final hour to rally the Scots. The Revelator didn't simply mean for the Highlanders to refuse to
fight for the British, he intended that they would take up their own flag and fight against the British alongside the half-king. The French would be assured of their long-sought victory. He looked back at the cot under the stairs, where Hannah had drawn the Jacobite symbol. For the glory of Rome, all those in Rome, Brother Xavier had said. But Duncan did not ask the question that leapt to his tongue. “I had understood those to be tribal lands,” he said instead.

“And the half-king will treat all tribes as equals. We will be their protectors, their way to counter the threat of other Europeans. Surely you want Highlanders to find their true place. You are one of us.”

“Of course,” Duncan quickly replied, then he weighed Graham's words. “But it is dangerous to make assumptions about the tribes.”

“I make no assumptions. I have smoked the pipe with every major chief in the West.”

Duncan studied the old Scot, considering his words. The half-king was not acting out of vengeance against colonists. Vengeance was a cover. He was acting out a carefully planned strategy, a grand and historic vision.

“The McCallum clan can start anew,” Graham said. Though his eyes were sunken, they were sparkling now. “Build a croft by the water. Perhaps tame some bison to be your shaggy cows.”

“The half-king roasts men alive.”

Graham winced, as if the remark jabbed him personally. “He can be impetuous, yes,” he said, and then continued to describe his vision. “We will organize companies of men to build barns and cabins. We will want a shipyard. The McCallums once built boats, I recall. Or a school, if that's what you want. That's it, lad! You'll have the first medical school for the tribes! We will build you a—” Graham's words choked away as he doubled up with pain. With a shuddering groan he clutched his belly, then suddenly Brother Xavier and Tatamy stepped out of the shadows. Xavier motioned Duncan away, as Tatamy placed a slat of wood between Graham's clenched teeth. Through his agony the old Scot nodded his thanks to the Christian Mohawk, and Duncan realized they must be old friends. He backed away,
staring in confusion. With his last words the old Scot had sounded as though the rebellion was his, not the half-king's.

Xavier murmured prayers. Tatamy wiped his brow and spoke low comforting words in his native tongue. Duncan retreated to the cot under the stairs, where Hannah sat, looking uneasily in the direction of Graham. Duncan helped her settle for sleep as Ishmael curled up in a blanket by the foot of the cot. Tatamy appeared and bent over the girl to look at the stitches in her cheek.

“A Huron did that to the child,” the chieftain declared.

“Have the northern Mohawks grown particular about whom they maim?” Duncan shot back. A cruel, poorly timed jab, but he was tired of being a pawn and not understanding, weary of the casual cruelty that injured so many.

Tatamy sat beside him on the second stool. “It was a French colonel who spoke first to us about the half-king who called himself the Revelator. We have been allied with the French for nearly two hundred years, and Andrew explained that alliances between France and Scotland go back even further.” He shrugged. “We fight wars to win them.”

Duncan was confused by the regret in the man's voice. “Those were your men at Bethel Church,” he said.

Tatamy nodded grimly. “Four of them were. My best warriors, who had made raids in the South before and knew the land along the lakes. We were told it was to be a daring raid on supply lines, deep into enemy territory, that much glory would come of it. They said the Indians who lived in the town had raided our own villages. But one of my men came to me when they returned. He had been having bad dreams. He said those who died had not fought, but had sung. They were not warriors, they were peacemakers. He showed me a cross he had taken from one of the dead.”

Tatamy looked up to Duncan with apology in his eyes. “The Revelator's men made sure my men gave no trouble. Our Caughnawags held their tongues until they returned home and could speak to my face. All are having bad dreams. They know now there was no honor in what
they did, that the dreams are telling them they must put things back in harmony, they must rectify things somehow. It is wrong to build a new world on the suffering of good people.”

Suddenly Duncan felt a glimmer of understanding. Xavier was a key lieutenant in the conspiracy, but only a lieutenant. “Father Xavier didn't know it was also being built with stolen silver,” he suggested.

“The tale of the Revelator has built great hope among our people. He promises great things.” The chief stared at Duncan pointedly. “We do things for him others cannot.”

Duncan considered the words as he gazed at the sleeping girl. “The people of Bethel Church died, and the children were betrayed because of that treasure. Just some shiny metal.”

“The Revelator thinks he must have it for his cause to succeed.” The chieftain frowned. “Just some shiny metal, yes. He means to turn the world upside down with it. If something happened to it, the half-king would give much to get it back.”

Duncan hesitated, first wondering if he heard invitation in Tatamy's voice then grasping the full weight of the chieftain's words. “You mean he does not have the payroll in his hands yet.” He spoke slowly, responding to the mischievous gleam in the chieftain's eyes. “You mean he would trade the children to someone who did have it. But the French surely must have the coins by now. They would not tolerate him interfering with their plans.”

“
Their
plans?” Tatamy asked. “Have you not listened today? The French have helped him, the French embraced the opportunity to wreak havoc in the British lines. But the plans were laid in that very chamber,” he said, gesturing toward Xavier's vault, “not in some war room.”

Duncan's mind raced as he gazed into the shadows where Graham laid. There had never been French generals behind the half-king's scheme. It had been a broken Scottish laird and a Jesuit monk who had unleashed the Revelator and his poet of death. But like most wild animals, they had proven difficult to control. He looked back at the Mohawk chieftain. “You suggest someone else might obtain the treasure and buy back the children.”

“It is the greatest of his secrets. My men were with the raiders on the lake, were there when their bateau met another loaded with gunpowder kegs. Now the half-king calls for twenty of my men to be ready before dawn the day after tomorrow, at a cove on the far side of the river, to go to a field with rows of earthen mounds. We are to remove our crosses, be ready for a hard day's march. He wants us to look like Mohawks from the South, arrived to carry loads for the army.”

“But if you don't have the coins and he doesn't have the coins . . .” Duncan said slowly, and then a grin lit his face as he finally understood. The Revelator had indeed made a fool of King George. He had made the British army transport its own stolen payroll.

Chapter Fourteen

T
atamy's men escorted them to the canoes an hour before dawn, stealing through a thick fog past work parties who hauled cannonballs onto the ramparts. Graham's words echoed in Duncan's mind. The greatest gathering of Highland military might since the uprising was approaching Montreal, and Highlanders had a long memory. There would be a new Scotland. Duncan would have a croft, a boat, a medical practice among his own people, Highland and tribal. He drifted into visions of that new world, of raising his own family, of Conawago at last finding fulfillment as he taught gleeful red-haired and black-haired children. Four thousand Highland soldiers would be liberated.

Duncan cocked his head at Conawago as the others boarded the canoes. The old Nipmuc had the wampum belt out and was staring at it. He felt Duncan's gaze and looked at him, then turned the belt toward Duncan, as if he needed reminding. They had seen the price being extracted by the half-king for that world. The elders had understood when they had woven the belt. Tatamy had glimpsed it and decided he no longer wanted to be part of the bargain.