Red Prophet: The Tales of Alvin Maker, Volume II (30 page)

But it was the city, not the fort, that impressed them. A dozen streets of houses, wooden ones, with shops and stores, and in the center of all, a cathedral so massive that it made a mockery of Reverend Thrower’s church. Black-robed priests went about their business like crows in the streets. The swarthy Frenchmen didn’t show the same hostility toward Reds that Americans often seemed to have. Ta-Kumsaw understood that this was because the French in Detroit weren’t there to settle. They didn’t think of Reds as rivals for possession of the land. The French here were all biding their time till they went back to Europe, or at least back to the White-settled lands of Quebec and Ontario across the river; except the trappers, of course, and for them the Reds were not enemies, either. Trappers held Reds in awe, trying to learn how Reds found game so easily, when the trappers had such a devilish time knowing where to lay their snares. They thought, as White men always do, that it was some kind of trick the Reds performed, and if they only studied Red men long enough, these White trappers would learn how to do it. They would never learn. How could the land accept the kind of man who would kill every beaver in a pond, just for the pelts, leaving the meat to rot, and no beaver left to bear young?
No wonder the bears killed these trappers whenever they could. The land rejected them.

When I have driven the Americans from the land west of the mountains, thought Ta-Kumsaw, then I will drive out the Yankees from New England, and the Cavaliers from the Crown Colonies. And when they’re all gone, I’ll turn to the Spanish of Florida and the French of Canada. Today I’ll make use of you for my own purpose, but tomorrow I’ll drive you out, too. Every White face that stays in this land will stay here because it’s dead. And in that day, beavers will die only when the land tells them it’s the time and place to die.

The French commander in Detroit was officially de Maurepas, but Ta-Kumsaw avoided him whenever he could. It was only the second man, Napoleon Bonaparte, who was worth talking to.

“I heard you were at Lake Mizogan,” said Napoleon. He spoke in French, of course, but Ta-Kumsaw had learned French at the same time he was learning English, and from the same person. “Come, sit down.” Napoleon looked with vague interest at the White boy Alvin, but said nothing to him.

“I was there,” said Ta-Kumsaw. “So was my brother.”

“Ah. But was there an army?”

“The seed of one,” said Ta-Kumsaw. “I gave up arguing with Tenskwa-Tawa. I’ll make an army out of other tribes.”

“When!” demanded Napoleon. “You come here two, three times each year, you tell me you’re going to have an army. Do you know how long I’ve waited? Four years, four miserable years of exile.”

“I know how many years,” said Ta-Kumsaw. “You’ll have your battle.”

“Before my hair turns grey? Tell me that! Do I have to be dying of old age before you’ll call out a general rising of the Reds? You know how helpless I am. La Fayette and de Maurepas won’t let me go more than fifty miles from here, won’t give me any troops at all. There has to be an army first, they say. The Americans have to have some main force that you can fight with. Well, the
only thing that will cause those miserably independent bastards to unite is
you
.”

“I know,” said Ta-Kumsaw.

“You promised me an army of ten thousand Reds, Ta-Kumsaw. Instead I keep hearing about a city of ten thousand
Quakers
!”

“Not Quakers.”

“If they renounce war it amounts to the same thing.” Suddenly Napoleon let his voice become soft, loving, persuasive. “Ta-Kumsaw, I need you, I depend on you, don’t fail me.”

Ta-Kumsaw laughed. Napoleon learned long ago that his tricks worked on White men, but not half so well on Reds, and on Ta-Kumsaw not at all. “You care nothing for me, and I care nothing for you,” said Ta-Kumsaw. “You want one battle and a victory, so you can go home a hero to Paris. I want one battle and a victory, so I can strike terror into White men’s hearts and bring together an even greater army of Reds under my command, to sweep the land south of here and drive the Englishmen back across the mountains. One battle, one victory—that’s why we work together, and when that’s done I’ll never think of you again, and you’ll never think of me.”

Napoleon was angry, but he laughed. “Half true,” he said. “I won’t care about you, but I’ll think of you. I’ve learned from you, Ta-Kumsaw. That love of a commander makes men fight better than love of country, and love of country better than the hope of glory, and the hope of glory better than looting, and looting better than wages. But best of all is to fight for a cause. A great and noble dream. I’ve always had the love of my men. They would die for me. But for a cause, they’d let their wives and children die and think it was worth the price.”

“How did you learn that from me?” said Ta-Kumsaw. “That’s my brother’s talk, not mine.”

“Your brother? I thought he didn’t think anything was worth dying for.”

“No, he’s very free with dying. It’s killing he won’t do.”

Napoleon laughed, and Ta-Kumsaw laughed with him. “You’re right, you know. We’re not friends. But I
do like you. What puzzles me is this—when you’ve won, and all the White men are gone, you really mean to walk away and let all the tribes go back to the way they were before, separate, quarreling, weak.”

“Happy. That’s how we were before. Many tribes, many languages, but one living land.”

“Weak,” said Napoleon again. “If I ever brought all of
my
land under my flag, Ta-Kumsaw, I’d hold them together so long and so tightly that they’d become one great people, great and strong. And if I ever do that, you can count on this. We’ll be back, and take your land away from you, just like every other land on Earth. Count on it.”

“That’s because you are evil, General Bonaparte. You want to bend everything and everybody to your obedience.”

“That isn’t evil, foolish savage. If everybody obeyed me, then they’d be happy and safe, at peace, and, for the first time in all of history, free.”

“Safe, unless they opposed you. Happy, unless they hated you. Free, unless they wanted something contrary to your will.”

“Imagine, a Red man philosophizing. Do those peasant squatters south of here know that you’ve read Newton, Voltaire, Rousseau, and Adam Smith?”

“I don’t think they know I can read their languages.”

Napoleon leaned across his desk. “We’ll destroy them, Ta-Kumsaw, you and I together. But you have to bring me an army.”

“My brother prophesies that we’ll have that army before the year ends.”

“A prophecy?”

“All his prophecies come true.”

“Does he say we’ll win?”

Ta-Kumsaw laughed. “He says you’ll be known as the greatest European general who ever lived. And I will be known as the greatest Red.”

Napoleon ran his fingers through his hair and smiled, almost boyish now; he could pass from menacing to friendly to adorable in moments. “That seems to dodge the question. Dead men can be called great, too.”

“But men who lose battles are never called great, are they? Noble, perhaps, even heroic. But not great.”

“True, Ta-Kumsaw, true. But your brother is being coy. Oracular. Delphic.”

“I don’t know those words.”

“Of course you don’t. You’re a savage.” Napoleon poured wine. “I forget myself. Wine?”

Ta-Kumsaw shook his head.

“I suppose none for the boy,” said Napoleon.

“He’s only ten,” said Ta-Kumsaw.

“In France, that means we water the wine half and half. What are you doing with a White boy, Ta-Kumsaw? Are you capturing children now?”

“This White boy,” said Ta-Kumsaw, “he’s more than he seems.”

“In a loincloth he doesn’t look like much. Does he understand French?”

“Not a word,” said Ta-Kumsaw. “I came to ask you—can you give us guns?”

“No,” said Napoleon.

“We can’t fight bullets with arrows,” said Ta-Kumsaw.

“La Fayette refuses to authorize us to issue you any guns. Paris agrees with him. They don’t trust you. They’re afraid any guns they give you might someday be turned against us.”

“Then what good will it do me to raise an army?”

Napoleon smiled, sipped his wine. “I’ve been speaking to some Irrakwa traders.”

“The Irrakwa are the urine of sick dogs,” said Ta-Kumsaw. “They were cruel, vicious animals before the White man came, and they are worse now.”

“Odd. The English seemed to find them to be kindred spirits. And La Fayette adores them. All that matters now, though, is this: They manufacture guns, in large numbers, cheaply. Not the most
reliable
weapons, but they use exactly the same size ammunition. It means they can make balls that fit the barrel more tightly, with better aim. And yet they sell them for less.”

“You’ll buy them for us?”

“No.
You’ll
buy them.”

“We don’t have money.”

“Pelts,” said Napoleon. “Beaver pelts. Minks. Deer-hides and buffalo leather.”

Ta-Kumsaw shook his head. “We can’t ask these animals to die for the sake of guns.”

“Too bad,” said Napoleon. “You Reds have a knack for hunting, I’ve been told.”

“True Reds do. The Irrakwa don’t. They’ve used White man’s machines so long now that they’re dead to the land, just like White men. Or they’d go and get the pelts they want for themselves.”

“There’s something else they want. Besides pelts,” said Napoleon.

“We don’t have anything they want.”

“Iron,” said Napoleon.

“We don’t have iron.”

“No. But they know where it is. In the upper reaches of the Mizzipy, and along the Mizota. Up near the west end of High Water Lake. All they want is your promise that you won’t harm their boats bringing iron ore back to Irrakwa, or their miners as they dig it out of the earth.”

“Peace for the future, in exchange for guns now?”

“Yes,” said Napoleon.

“Aren’t they afraid that I’ll turn the guns against
them
?”

“They ask you to promise that you won’t.”

Ta-Kumsaw considered this. “Tell them this. I promise that if they give us guns, not one of the guns will ever be used against any Irrakwa. All my men will take this oath. And we will never attack any of their boats on the water, or their miners as they dig in the earth.”

“You mean that?” asked Napoleon.

“If I said it, I meant it,” said Ta-Kumsaw.

“As much as you hate them?”

“I hate them because the land hates them. When the White man is gone, and the land is strong again, not sick, then earthquakes can swallow up miners, and storms can sink boats, and the Irrakwa will become true Red men again or they will die. Once the White man is gone, the land will be stern with its children who remain.”

The meeting was soon finished after that. Ta-Kumsaw
got up and shook hands with the general. Alvin surprised them both by also stepping forward and offering his hand.

Napoleon shook hands with him, amused. “Tell the boy he keeps dangerous company,” he said.

Ta-Kumsaw translated. Alvin looked at him with wide eyes. “Does he mean
you
?” he asked.

“I think so,” said Ta-Kumsaw.

“But
he’s
the most dangerous man in the world,” said Alvin.

Napoleon laughed when Ta-Kumsaw translated the boy’s words. “How can I be dangerous? A little man stuck away out here in the middle of the wilderness, when the center of the world is Europe, great wars are fought there and I have no part in them!”

Ta-Kumsaw didn’t need to translate—the boy understood from Napoleon’s tone and expression. “He’s so dangerous because he makes people love him without deserving it.”

Ta-Kumsaw felt the truth in the boy’s words. That was what Napoleon did to White men, and it
was
dangerous, dangerous and evil and dark. Is this the man I rely on to help me? To be my ally? Yes, he is, because I have no choice. Ta-Kumsaw didn’t translate what the boy said, even though Napoleon insisted. So far the French general had not attempted to cast his spell on the boy. If he knew the boy’s words, he might try, and it just might capture Alvin. Ta-Kumsaw was coming to appreciate what the boy was. Perhaps the boy was too strong for Napoleon to charm him. Or perhaps the boy would become an adoring slave like de Maurepas. Better not to find out. Better to take the boy away.

Alvin insisted on seeing the cathedral. One priest looked horrified to see men in loincloths come into the place, but another rebuked him and welcomed them inside. Ta-Kumsaw was always amused by the statues of the saints. Whenever possible, the statues were shown being tortured in the most gruesome ways. White could talk all day about how barbaric it was, the Red practice of torturing captives so they could show courage. Yet whose statues did they kneel at to pray? People who showed courage under torture. There was no making sense of White men.

He and Alvin talked about this on their way out of the city, not hurrying at all now. He also explained to the boy something of how they were able to run so far, so quickly. And how remarkable it was for a White boy to keep up with them.

Alvin seemed to understand how Red men lived within the land; at least he tried. “I think I felt that. While I was running. It’s like I’m not in myself. My thoughts are wandering all over. Like dreaming. And while I’m gone, something else is telling my body what to do. Feeding it, using it, taking it wherever it wants to go. Is that what you feel?”

That wasn’t at all what Ta-Kumsaw felt. When the land came into
him
, it was like he was more alive than ever; not absent from his body, but more strongly present in it than at any other time. But he didn’t explain this to the boy. Instead he turned the question back to Alvin. “You say it’s like dreaming. What did you dream last night?”

“I dreamed again about a lot of the visions I saw when I was in the crystal tower with the Shining—with the Prophet.”

“The Shining Man. I know you call him that—he told me why.”

“I dreamed those things again. Only it was different. I could see some things more clearly now, and other things I forgot.”

“Did you dream anything you
hadn’t
seen before?”

“
This
place. The statues in the cathedral. And that man we visited, the general. And something even stranger. A big hill, almost round—no, with eight sides. I remember that, it was real clear. A hill with eight straight sides to it, sloping down. Inside it there was a whole city, lots of little rooms, like in anthills, only people-sized. Or anyway bigger than ants. And I was on top of it, wandering around in all these strange trees—they had silver leaves, not green—and I was looking for my brother. For Measure.”