Free Shadowbrook by Beverly Swerling Page B

that’s what it’s to be. Aye and aye again. Tell
la grande société
everything will be exactly as I promised.”
    The man lying flat on his belly on a rotted bit of old wharf snapped his glassclosed as soon as he saw a pair of seamen haul the Scot off the ladder and into the boat. He had no interest in observing Dandon row back to shore. The Scot and the overzealous Franciscan were another matter. And what about Lantak, the mad savage? His spies in the countryside had reported that Père Antoine was meeting frequently with Lantak. You forget him at your peril, Monsieur Louis Roget, priest of Almighty God and Provincial Superior of the Society of Jesus in New France, reminded himself. And the peril of Holy Mother Church.
    Roget stood, gathered his black cloak around him, and began the long climb up the hill to the great fortress of the Collége des Jésuites in the Upper Town.

    Quent and Cormac and Nicole traveled by day and camped by night. The going was slow because part of the time one or the other of the men had to carry the woman. She hated that and struggled hard to keep up, but when she came to the end of her endurance and there were still hours of daylight to be utilized, Quent or Cormac picked her up and they continued.
    They ate twice a day: in the morning before sunup, and in the evening after they made camp. Food and drink presented no difficulties. The men killed small game, squirrels and rabbits and the occasional partridge, and the forest was laced with streams and brooks. They lacked potherbs and saladings and it was too early in the season for berries, but once Quent found a stand of fiddlehead ferns poking aboveground. Another time Cormac contributed a couple of fistfuls of mushrooms to the evening meal.
    The men took turns standing watch throughout the night. Nicole, utterly exhausted, slept. There was little time for talk. Sometimes, for a few moments before they doused the cooking fire, Quent and Cormac exchanged remembrances of the long days of summer in Singing Snow and the bitter cold of winter experienced from the safe haven of Shadowbrook. Of the present situation, of what Quent faced when he returned or Cormac’s plans, they said nothing.
    Nicole spoke hardly at all until the sixth night. Cormac had gone deep into the forest to relieve himself and she and Quent were alone. She was burying the bones of the quail they’d eaten, deep and carefully the way the men had shown her. She finished scuffing the earth above the bones and looked across the embers of the dying fire. “You said they had every reason to want us alive. Why?”
    It took a few seconds for Quent to understand what she meant “Tanaghrisson and his braves?”
    “The Indians who … The murdering savages. You said they wanted us alive. Why? To torture us? Because they hate all whites?”
    “Sounds like you’ve been listening to some stories.”
    “It is not true? The savages do not torture white people? Even eat them?”
    “Sometimes it’s true. But not just whites. They do the same things to each other. It’s part of their way of life. Their religion, you might call it.”
    Nicole crossed herself. “You are speaking blasphemy. That is not religion. It is heathen barbarism.”
    Quent shrugged. “Call it what you like. It’s how it is.” He wasn’t surprised by her papist gesture. Cormac had told him she was a Catholic on her way to Québec and that he’d taken charge of her two weeks before. Not by choice, but because he was under an obligation. Nicole had been traveling with her father, Livingston Crane, an Englishman and former army officer. They had been in Alexandria when Cormac arrived looking for Quent. Some American trappers recognized Corm, knew there was a price on his head in a dozen different places in the colonies, and laid an ambush. Livingston Crane chanced on it, warned Cormac, and insisted on fighting beside him. The Englishman took a knife wound to the heart and died in Cormac’s arms. His last words