The Hunt for the North Star

by The Hunt for the North Star (retail) (epub)

  MacLea held out a hand for the document. It was a simple contract: George Wilson Esq. of Brown’s Bridge agreed to supply Richard Hatt of Ancaster with three thousand board feet of sawn timber for an agreed price.

  ‘Calder said he had done business with Hatt too,’ Murray said.

  MacLea handed back the contract. ‘Hatt owns stores and mills in Ancaster and Dundas. I expect he also does business with Street and Hamilton, and most of the rest of the peninsula. I cannot see anything sinister here, Alec.’

  ‘But we should talk to Hatt and see if he can tell us anything more about Wilson,’ said Murray. ‘What about you? Find anything?’

  ‘More correspondence,’ said MacLea, leafing through a letter book. ‘The same names you mention, plus a few others. Here is a letter to James Boydell, asking about transport prices between York and Kingston. We should talk to James, too… And there are several here to a Mohawk chief called Adonwentishon. Does that ring any bells with you?’

  Murray shook his head. ‘Is there anything useful in the letters?’

  ‘Business dealings, occasionally some information about the weather. Nothing else.’

  Rising to his feet, MacLea walked around the room, pulling books out from the shelves and looking behind the two paintings, tapping the walls in hopes of discovering a secret compartment. He found nothing.

  ‘This is no damned help at all,’ he said, half to himself. ‘We’ll have to think of something else.’

  The rest of the men came drifting back from their searches. They too had found nothing of interest. ‘What now, Captain?’ asked Moses Crabbe.

  ‘We’ll start with Wilson’s friends and acquaintances,’ MacLea said. ‘And his neighbours here in Chippawa.’ He paused for a moment, and suddenly remembered the woman at Brown’s Bridge. A vision of her face came to mind: the long nose, the iron-grey hair, the set mouth and keen, penetrating dark eyes.

  ‘Do you remember the woman who told us where to find Wilson?’ he asked Murray. ‘Rebecca Morningstar?’

  ‘Yes. What about her?’

  ‘She said her husband’s farm used to be next door to Wilson’s. And she also said she had known Wilson for years. Tomorrow morning, we shall pay her a call.’

  * * *

  It snowed during the night, and in the morning there was half an inch of fine powder lying on the ground, squeaking under their boots. The fields and forests around them glowed luminous white in the dim light.

  They led the horses out of the stables and saddled up, then rode west beside the dark, bubbling river. Little patches of ice had begun to form in quiet water along the shore, and these too were dusted with snow. Long before they reached Brown’s Bridge, they could see the tall figure standing dark against the snowy fields, cloaked and hooded as before, watching them. ‘What the hell,’ muttered Murray. ‘Is she waiting for us?’

  ‘Looks like it,’ said MacLea.

  Dismounting at the end of the bridge, he turned towards the woman and bowed. She watched him with dark eyes, her mouth set in the same strong line. ‘You wish to speak to me,’ she said.

  Murray and the other men halted discreetly a little way away. ‘Yes,’ said MacLea. ‘How did you know I would come?’

  ‘Last night I saw lights at George Wilson’s house. I guessed you had returned. Did you find what you were looking for?’

  ‘No,’ said MacLea after a moment.

  ‘You need my help,’ she said.

  MacLea studied her, wondering if she had really seen the lights. Or had someone warned her that they were coming?

  ‘You said you and the Wilsons were once neighbours. How well did you know them?’

  Her eyes flickered, as if she was amused by the question. ‘We were not close friends, if that is what you mean. Squire Wilson was a big landowner, and we had a quarter-section only. But he was always friendly to us. He sometimes gave my husband work, when money was short. It often was.’

  ‘Tell me about your husband,’ said MacLea.

  ‘Hiram Morningstar described himself as the black sheep of the family. His uncles and cousins are settled, God-fearing folk, who work their mills and till the soil, but Hiram decided that was not the life for him. As a young man he left his family and abandoned his faith, and went out to roam in the forests. That is where he met me, and we married. We lived among my people, the Kanien’kehaka, the Mohawks, for a time, but finally Hiram decided he wanted to return to his own folk. He applied for a grant of land here in the valley. We farmed here until he died five years ago.’

  ‘I am sorry to hear it,’ said MacLea.

  She nodded a little, acknowledging his condolences. The expression on her face did not change. ‘Why did you ask about my husband?’ she asked. ‘The Morningstars are immigrants from America. Did you wonder if he too had American sympathies? Was this something he and George Wilson had in common?’

  She had a disconcerting habit of reading his mind. ‘Was it?’ asked MacLea.

  ‘Hiram’s family were Mennonites,’ she said. ‘They left Germany, where they were called Morgenstern, to escape persecution from Lutherans, and settled in Pennsylvania. After the revolution, they fled again, this time to escape persecution by Quakers and Calvinists. Hiram was content with his life in Canada, and he had no intention of returning to America. My husband was a loyal man.’

  ‘Did you know Wilson was a traitor?’ MacLea asked.

  ‘Do you mean did I know he was working with the Americans against your King George?’

  ‘He is your king too,’ MacLea said.

  ‘That is a matter of opinion. No, I did not know, not until the afternoon when I overheard him talking with his men and realised what he was planning. The day before you came and killed him.’

  ‘But after that, you knew he was plotting treason. Did you not think to inform the authorities? Did you not think to tell me?’

  ‘I warned you he was waiting for you, John MacLea. That was all you needed to know. And treason also is a matter of opinion. George Wilson had committed no offence against the Kanien’kehaka. Why should I inform on him?’

  ‘Mohawk warriors are fighting for King George,’ said MacLea. ‘You said you know John Norton.’

  ‘Norton has his own loyalties,’ said Rebecca Morningstar. ‘So do I.’

  They looked at each other for a long moment, she still calm and unmoving. ‘One more thing,’ he said. ‘Does the name Adonwentishon mean anything to you?’

  ‘How do you know this name?’

  ‘I found it in Wilson’s papers. I assume he is one of your chiefs.’

  The corners of her hard mouth lifted in a brief smile. ‘Then you did find what you were looking for,’ she said. ‘He is in fact she. To your people, she is known as Catherine Brant. She is the oiáner, the wise one, the corn mother of the Anowara clan of the Mohawks on the Grand River. She chooses the paramount chiefs of our people. The chiefs are powerful, but Adonwentishon is more powerful still.’

  ‘How well did she know Wilson?’

  ‘Very well. George Wilson often came to trade with our people. He was very friendly with Thayendanegea, her late husband. She still receives Wilson from time to time. Or did, until you killed him.’

  MacLea’s mind was racing. Was the story about an insurrection in the Niagara peninsula a blind, as Josephine thought? What if Wilson’s real purpose was to win over the Mohawks? If they renounced British authority and went across to the Americans, they would form a terrible weapon poised to strike at the heart of Upper Canada. And if George Wilson had formed an alliance with Catherine Brant, not even the influence of loyal chiefs like Norton would prevail. The chiefs are powerful, but Adonwentishon is more powerful still.

  ‘Where can I find Adonwentishon?’ he asked.

  ‘At Brant’s Crossing, on the Grand River. Do you know the way?’

  MacLea shook his head. ‘We will find it.’

  ‘You will find it more quickly if I guide you. Leave the horses; you will not need them. I will see that they are returned s
afely to Chippawa.’

  ‘Why should you want to help us?’ MacLea asked, his suspicions still churning.

  ‘For the same reason I told you that George Wilson was preparing an ambush,’ she said. ‘John Norton says you are a friend, and the Kanien’kehaka are loyal to their friends.’

  ‘Will Adonwentishon see me as a friend?’

  ‘I suspect it will depend on what you have to say. She may decide to help you. Or she may order her warriors to kill you and hang your scalps over the door of her longhouse. I cannot tell which it will be. But if you wish to see her, I will guide you.’

  * * *

  ‘I don’t know what is going on,’ MacLea said to his men a few minutes later. ‘But if there is even a chance that the Mohawks are preparing to turn against us, we need to know about it. I am going up to the Grand River to see Catherine Brant. I think it might be best if I went alone.’

  Murray shook his head. ‘Last time you went to an Indian village on your own, you picked a fight with the chief and nearly ended up paying the ferryman. This time, we’re coming with you.’

  ‘Captain,’ said McTeer in tones of reproach. ‘Do you really think we’re going to let you wander around in the cold, dark forest without us? And with a strange woman to boot? What would your mother say?’

  MacLea looked at the others. They all nodded. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘On your own heads be it. Let’s go.’

  They left the horses as Rebecca Morningstar had instructed, taking necessities from their saddlebags and setting off through the forest. Fine powdery snow continued to fall, dusting the branches of the trees and crunching under their boots. Only the woman, her feet clad in heavy moccasins and leggings under her cloak, walked silent as a ghost in the snow.

  The wilderness that surrounded them was featureless and formless, trees crowding close on every side. ‘How does she know where she is going?’ whispered Appleby.

  ‘See the blazes on the trees?’ asked Miller. He pointed to a tree where someone had slashed away a small strip of bark with an axe, exposing the wood beneath. There was a similar blaze on another tree further on. ‘That’s how she knows. She’s following an Indian trail.’

  They walked on in silence, MacLea’s eyes fixed on Rebecca Morningstar’s back. He wondered again whether she had really seen the lights at the Wilson house, and why she had assumed it must be him. Whose side was she really on, and why had she offered so readily to take him to Catherine Brant? He remembered what Colonel Bisshopp had said. Unwittingly, you will be doing his work for him. Was this journey also part of Polaris’s plan? Was MacLea, like Wilson, just a piece in the game?

  At midday, they halted to rest, sitting down on fallen logs beside a little half-frozen stream and eating cold army biscuit. MacLea offered a piece to the woman, sitting a little way away from the rest, but she shook her head in refusal. ‘How far do we go today?’ he asked.

  ‘Tonight we reach the banks of the Grand River,’ she said. ‘We will stay the night with friends of mine. The river is not yet frozen. My friends will lend us canoes, and tomorrow we will go upriver to Brant’s Crossing.’

  ‘Who are these friends?’

  ‘They are of the Onondowaga people,’ she said. ‘You probably know them as the Senecas. Like the Kanien’kehaka, they fought for the British during the revolution. Like us also, they fled north at the end of the war, fearing American reprisals. The British government gave them land on the Grand River as a reward for their services, and also as a bribe, so that they, like ourselves, would remain loyal and continue to serve in future wars.’

  A grey jay flitted down through the trees and alighted on a branch, looking at the men’s biscuits with beady grey eyes. Schmidt broke off a piece and tossed it up, and the bird took wing and caught it in mid-air, returning to its branch, where it sat working the hard biscuit with its beak and trying to swallow. ‘Poor old whiskey jack,’ said McTeer. ‘Why are you giving it ammunition bread, Schmitty? Are you trying to poison it?’

  ‘I am feeding it,’ protested Schmidt. ‘Look, it is winter, ja? There is no food for the birds. They must eat somehow.’

  Listening to them, Rebecca Morningstar smiled a little. ‘You are fortunate,’ she said to MacLea. ‘Your men are very loyal to you. And you also to them, I think.’

  ‘We keep each other alive,’ said MacLea. He regarded the woman for a moment. ‘And you? You said you have your own loyalties. To whom or what are they given?’

  She did not answer.

  ‘Our lives are in your hands,’ he said steadily. ‘I have a right to know.’

  ‘You think I may be leading you into a trap,’ she said.

  ‘The thought has crossed my mind.’

  She smiled again. ‘If I wanted to trap you, John MacLea, I would have done so when we first met. It would have been easy to steer you into the ambush Wilson had planned for you. I will answer your question. Like Adonwentishon, my loyalty is to my people, the Kanien’kehaka, the Mohawks. I will do what I can to help them survive.’

  ‘I respect that,’ MacLea said quietly. ‘And is that the real reason why you are helping me?’

  ‘I told you the real reason. John Norton says you are a friend, and you have given me no reason to believe otherwise. And we need our friends; we shall require them all if we are to survive as a people. Otherwise we will disappear into the forests of memory, like so many other tribes have done before us.’ In the white light reflecting off the snow, her face was sombre. ‘Already, war and disease have sadly diminished our numbers,’ she said. ‘We are ghosts of the people we once were. We stand on the edge of a knife, John MacLea. We feel the breath of extinction on our faces.’

  MacLea watched her. ‘You feel strongly about your people,’ he said. ‘Why then do you not go to live with them? Why continue to make your home at Brown’s Bridge, among the settlers?’

  ‘My home no longer exists,’ she said quietly. ‘My home was the town of Canajoharie, in what is now the state of New York. When the revolutionary war began, the American militia came to our town. They said we were supporters of the British and must be punished, and they set Canajoharie in flames. We fled, because to remain in that place was to die. In Canada we are refugees, nothing more. We came here to escape our past.’

  ‘We all did,’ said MacLea. ‘Whites and Indians alike. This is a country built by people trying to get away from something. When we reach Brant’s Crossing, will you tell Adonwentishon that I am a friend?’

  ‘I will tell her,’ said Rebecca Morningstar. ‘I cannot promise that she will listen.’

  * * *

  In the fading light of late afternoon they came out of the forest into a belt of open fields. Hummocks of earth showed dark through the thin white layer of snow. In the distance, another river could be seen, with a wooden stockade next to it. The roofs of longhouses were visible behind the stockade. Smoke curled thin and blue into the twilight air.

  ‘There is the Grand River,’ said Rebecca Morningstar, pointing. ‘And this is our destination.’

  They reached the stockade just as the gates were closing for the night. Warriors wearing bearskin robes to keep out the cold and with muskets strapped across their backs made them courteously welcome and escorted them into a longhouse with thick wooden walls and a high open ceiling, its beams blackened by smoke. Fires burned on open hearths down the length of the house. They were taken to one of these and seated on blankets on the ground, and women in deerskins came and served them food, bowls of smoky rabbit stew with beans and mushrooms, and thin cornmeal flatbreads to scoop out the stew.

  Another woman, older and with lines of beads sewn into her leather tunic, came to Rebecca Morningstar, holding up one hand in salute. ‘Se’kon honeah, Kanahstatsi,’ she said quietly.

  ‘Tasat weya’t, Dehewamis.’ The two of them spoke at length in what MacLea presumed was a mixture of Mohawk and Seneca languages, and then the other woman saluted again and departed. Rebecca turned back to MacLea.

  ‘In the morning they wil
l provide us with two canoes, and men to paddle them. They will wait for us at Brant’s Crossing, and bring us back here if we desire it. They ask only that we make the journey swiftly, for soon the river will begin to freeze.’

  MacLea nodded. ‘What is this place?’ he asked.

  ‘This is Nundawao,’ said Rebecca Morningstar. ‘The Onondowaga named it after the first village of their people. It is gone now, burnt and destroyed.’

  She watched MacLea for a moment. ‘You said that you too came to escape from your past. What was it that you wished to leave behind?’

  Murray and the other men were talking among themselves. ‘The army,’ said MacLea. ‘I had seen too many battlefields, too much barbarity. I came to Canada hoping to find peace.’

  She studied him still. ‘I think there is more than that. You are running not just from something, but from someone. A woman?’

  The silence that followed her question lasted for some time. ‘Yes,’ said MacLea finally.

  The hard mouth twisted into another smile. ‘I will not press you for details. Just remember that you can never escape the past, John MacLea. You came here hoping to find peace, but now you are back in uniform. Our people fled to Canada in search of sanctuary, and now we are menaced once more. Peace and sanctuary are illusions.’

  ‘No,’ said MacLea. ‘They exist. But sometimes it is necessary to fight to protect them.’

  * * *

  The canoes the Senecas provided were big – not so large as the freight canoes of the voyageurs who brought cargoes of furs down to the Great Lakes, but sizeable enough to accommodate six people in each, along with two boatmen. All that day they paddled up the winding course of the Grand River under a sky dark with cloud, while snowflakes drifted gently on the breeze. Deer came down through the white-shrouded forest to drink at the water’s edge, where ice crystals floated pellucid in the slack water. It was the twelfth day of December, and winter was tightening its grip on the land.