Dawn on a Distant Shore
Page 12

He slept deeply, and dreamed of the caves under the falls.
4
In his life Nathaniel had spent time in a few cities, but he would never be truly at ease in a crowd. And still he knew that in Montréal the commotion of the pig market was the best kind of camouflage to be had, and so he and Robbie headed there at sunrise. According to Iona, it was where they were most likely to find the sergeant in charge of the night watch at the garrison gaol, a dragoon called Ronald Jones.
The cold was fierce enough to turn breath to ice, but still the sun managed to find purchase here and there, flashing off a tin roof, a cleaver hung on the side of a stall, an unshuttered window, a young River Indian's silver earbob. A man couldn't walk without being stepped on, pushed, touched: overweight merchants, half-drunk foot soldiers, butchers herding sows, maids pulling loaded sledges, beggars, dogs and oxen and horses and pigs everywhere. Despite the extreme cold the air was dense with the stink of swine slurry and curing meat, and it swirled with ashes and cinders from the bonfires that gave the butchers and their customers a place to warm themselves.
Even in this crowd, Nathaniel felt eyes fix on him. Perhaps because he stood head and shoulders over most; perhaps because he was with Robbie, who stood even taller. They saw him, and forgot him: he was just another backwoodsman wanting liquor or a woman or a good price on his furs. Nathaniel reminded himself it was only for today, maybe for tomorrow. If they could find this man Jones; if he could be bought. He was aware of the weight of the double-sewn leather bags he wore strapped across his chest, some twenty pounds of near-pure silver.
So focused was he on the idea of the Welshman that Nathaniel missed the first signs of the scuffle. From just to the left among the stalls came a guttural scream--crisse de téte â faux!--and a fist swung close enough to make him sidestep. Before Nathaniel could even be sure what was happening, the crowd rushed in, their errands and the cold forgotten with the promise of some entertainment.
A butcher and a farmer sputtered and spat at each other across the carcass of a huge pig. The butcher had a head like a cannonball: heavy jowled, with a skull as pink and bristled as the mountainside of unmoving flesh at his feet. The farmer was black haired, twenty years younger, twenty pounds lighter, angrier. There was a fresh cut on his cheek. It made Nathaniel aware of the familiar weight of his rifle across his back, the comforting heft of the tomahawk tucked into his belt to lie flat next to his spine.
All around the crowd heaved like a wasp-stung mule. Robbie swore, and swore again. He loved crowds even less than Nathaniel did.
A man jumped up on a barrel. "Moe, j'prends pour Pépin, moe, p'is j'y mets dix shillings, lâ!" he shouted, waving a coin over his head.
The farmer grinned at that and lunged, fists flying briefly. He fell back before the bigger man could get a lock on him, and new bets were shouted in English, Scots, French, and other languages Nathaniel didn't recognize.
Next to him Robbie grunted as a young boy tried to climb his back for a better view. A ripple and jostling, muttered complaints, and a redcoat pushed his way to the forefront, stopping just opposite Nathaniel. Slope shouldered and soft bellied, frizzled red hair, a mouth full of tiny teeth the color of cheap tobacco. He had the pinched expression of a little man with less authority than he wanted and more than was good for him.
"Jesus wept," muttered Robbie at Nathaniel's ear. "There he is, that's Jones. Ach, will ye look at him strut, the wee Welsh half-a-cockerl."
"Here, here! What goes on, what's this?" With his chest pumped up, Jones's bellow was astoundingly loud, but the men ignored him, locked in a tussle that sent them rolling over the dead pig to crash into the stall. For a moment they were lost in a landslide of smoked ham hocks.
Next to Nathaniel, an old woman in a mangy blanket coat pulled on Jones's sleeve. "Denier has been fooling with the scales again," she hollered above the noise. "Young Pépin decided to teach him a lesson. And high time, too."
The two had rolled apart. The butcher hauled himself up on the ledge of the half-collapsed stall, his fist closing over a meat cleaver as he began a slow turn.
"Pépin!" shouted the man who still perched on the barrel. "Faites attention! Il a un poignard!"
Nathaniel saw the first flicker of real rage in the young farmer in the way his shoulders loosened and his face drained of color, all in a split second. Crouched in the chaos of the destroyed stall, he grabbed a long boning knife and snapped to his full height, his arm coming up to meet the butcher as he turned. In one smooth motion an acre of canvas apron fell open from neck to hipbone, the flap gaping to expose a hairy fish-white barrel of belly.
Not even Jones could yell over the shouts of surprise and shocked appreciation.
Barking like an enraged boar, the butcher dropped the cleaver to grab at his clothing, the huge head rearing up just in time to catch the knife, in earnest now. An almost careless flick of the younger man's wrist and the vast pink cheek split open. A rainbow of blood in a shower, and Nathaniel flinched the warm drops out of his eyelashes as Denier threw himself forward, only to go sprawling over the pig and strike his head on the corner of the stall.
The crowd fell silent, in surprise or horror, Nathaniel could not tell. Young Pépin's rage was suddenly gone: he shook himself as if he could not quite believe what he saw.
Jones was prodding the butcher with his toe. When he got a groan in response, he nodded.
"Right," he bellowed, hooking his thumbs in his wide leather belt. "It's the magistrate for you both, innit?"