Snake was not the only vessel plying the lake’s white-tipped waters. There were several sails in view; some near, some mere dots in the distance so that it was impossible to judge the size of the craft they were affixed to. There were no large spreads of canvas to suggest any were naval vessels, however, which made Hawkwood wonder what sort of ships might be employed to patrol against smugglers or to stymie encroachments by British ships tempted to raid across the border from Canada. Though it was doubtful the Americans had anything larger than a schooner, even a schooner could carry up to a dozen guns.

He looked to the shore, formed on both sides by small wooded coves and stony beaches. Signs of settlement were few and far between, though occasionally a log-built farmhouse would come into view with a thin wisp of smoke spiralling above its shingle roof. Whenever that occurred, Hawkwood, waylaid by memories, found it almost impossible not to turn away.

There were abandoned homesteads as well, many destroyed by fire; the charred beams and broken walls sad memorials to those who’d tried to eke a living out of what could be a harsh and unforgiving land. Sometimes there would be an overgrown plot of ground close by in which rough wooden crosses jutted from tangles of briar and weed.

Snake sailed on.

It was some three hours later when they came to a place where the opposite shores appeared to be converging. On the Vermont side of the channel Hawkwood could make out the remains of a settlement. A handful of buildings still stood, including a mill and what might have been a tavern, but all that was left of the rest were a few blackened chimneys.

It was the same on the New York side, where clusters of fire-ravaged houses were set back from the shore. Hawkwood looked beyond them, up to where the remnants of another huge abandoned military installation occupied the crown of yet another barren hilltop.

His eye moved on, to a line of hills strung out behind the tops of the ruined blockhouses. A shiver ran down his back. As the Snake nudged her way through the narrows, Hawkwood kept his eyes to port, knowing what he was about to see – and recognize.

What had appeared to be a fortified headland was in fact the tip of a peninsula. As Snake emerged into the section of the lake that lay beyond it, the bay that had been hidden on the other side of the headland gradually came into view.

“Matthew?” Lawrence said.

He sensed Lawrence was studying him with an expression of bemusement etched with concern; the same look that had been there on the Fort Ann road. Even so, Hawkwood did not answer. He was too busy remembering.

A stretch of driftwood-covered beach, the bark of guns, the roar of a cannon, the screams of men as they fell and died.

And a place called Bulwagga.

8