Vital Secrets

by Don Gutteridge

  “Will I ever see you again?”

  “Only if you come to New York.”

  “But you will write?”

  “Yes. But you must promise to send me long and loving letters about the wondrous woman you are going to marry, and tell me everything about each child as it arrives. I must know that you are happy.”

  “I will. I’ll bombard you with paper and ink.”

  “And you must promise me one other thing.”

  “Uncle Jabez?”

  “Yes. He must never know about me, or that I have found you. The dead ought to remain dead.”

  “But not always, surely?”

  “Not always,” she conceded. “I cannot forgive Jabez, but I can’t hate him either now that I see what he’s helped you become. It is better for him and you to go on as you have been. I couldn’t bear to be the cause of any unhappiness between the two of you. I have more than enough on my conscience already, and I’m afraid I’ve severely compromised yours.”

  The steamer blew two peremptory blasts of its brand-new whistle.

  “It’s time,” she said, drawing the sealed envelope out of her reticule.

  Marc waved Cobb over. The constable had been given the bare outline of what was to take place, but in order to spare him any improper involvement in the business, he had been told that the letter contained evidence pertinent to the investigation, and it was only in these specific circumstances that it would be passed along. Cobb took the envelope—sealed and addressed to the chief constable—without a word, but his glance at Marc said: I know there’s something odd going on here, but it’s your affair.

  “I’ll get this to Sarge right away,” Cobb said, and left.

  Marc took his mother’s gloved hand and kissed it.

  “You make me feel like a lady.”

  “You are a lady.”

  MARC HAD ALMOST MISSED THE Michigan’S departure. He had fallen into a fitful sleep at Mrs. Standish’s and had continued to wrestle with the various demons in his nightmares until almost eleven o’clock. When he returned to the Regency’s guest quarters, all the doors were open and the rooms empty. Merriwether’s trunk and clothes were gone. The Bowery Touring Company had departed. A few minutes later, he found Ogden Frank in the tavern, counting the take from last night’s performance.

  “That Spooner fella was here at daybreak with a squad of goons, rippin’ open trunks an’ haulin’ away guns. He was mad keen to find you, but I told him I hadn’t seen hide nor hair of you.”

  Marc thanked him, went to the stable to check on the horse (Spooner had got it also), then sent a stable boy with an urgent message to Cobb at the police station just up the street. Looking dishevelled and very unmilitary, he started to walk west towards John Street at the other end of town, but got less than a block away down Colborne when a familiar female voice hailed him. He turned to find Aunt Catherine running towards him at a most undignified gait. She seemed in worse shape than he was: her coat and bonnet were askew, her hair unpinned, her eyes red with weeping.

  “My God, Auntie, what in the world’s happened?” His only thought was of Beth.

  “It’s George,” she said.

  “He’s gone.”

  “Gone?”

  “When he didn’t come in for breakfast, I went to his room, and he wasn’t there. His bed hadn’t been slept in. He’s packed up all his belongings and vanished in the middle of the night!”

  Marc was not surprised, but could not say so to Aunt Catherine. At least her deep anxiety confirmed for Marc that she herself had not been involved.

  “What’ll I do, Marc? I’m beside myself. I feel responsible for the boy.”

  “First of all, he’s a young man, not a child. And, secondly, I have some reason to believe that he may have been mixed up in some dubious, possibly illegal, political activities.”

  “Oh, no, he couldn’t be!” she protested, but he could see her conviction on this point was not strong.

  “I’m positive he’s safely over the border by now, Auntie. Most likely he’ll write and let you know within the week.”

  “He’s in no danger, then?”

  “None that I know of, at least not imminently. I suspect he’s fled more out of prudence than alarm.”

  “Oh, Marc, I’m so relieved.”

  Not as much as I am, Marc thought.

  “I do hope this doesn’t upset our plans for the wedding.”

  Marc gave her a peck on the cheek. “Nothing can upset those plans.”

  TWO HOURS AFTER THE Michigan HAD departed, Magistrate Thorpe and the police had taken note of Mrs. Thedford’s unexpected confession, discussed the case with Marc, and sent Wilkie off to find the candlestick sewn into the mattress where she had said it would be. A writ for the formal release of Ensign Roderick Hilliard was issued, and Marc having declined the privilege, Cobb begged to be the one to serve it on the governor’s staff—hopefully in the presence of Lieutenant Barclay Spooner.

  “I figured you’d be dyin’ to waltz in there an’ strut out with Hilliard on your arm,” Cobb said as he and Marc headed west on King Street towards Government House.

  “I did, too. But suddenly I found it didn’t matter. Don’t mistake me, I’m delighted Rick is being freed. He’s gone through hell. But he also helped put himself there.”

  “That blond thing, ya mean?”

  “Yes. And I suppose you ought to give this billet-doux from Tessa to him, though I considered tossing it in the lake.” He gave Cobb a pink, perfumed envelope.

  Cobb accepted it with two fingers, sniffed it in disgust, and dropped it into the maw of his overcoat. “You gonna walk all the way back to the garrison?”

  “Yes, I am. I’ve got a mountain of thinking to do.” They were nearly at Simcoe Street. “I want to thank you, Cobb. I couldn’t have survived the past three days without you.”

  “I’m awful sorry about the lady. I know you liked her a lot.”

  “You’re very observant.”

  “Maybe so. But I never once thought she could be a murderer.”

  MARC DID HAVE MUCH TO THINK about as he left the city and walked pensively along the road that wound its way towards Fort York. He had a life-history to rewrite in his dreams and in those waking moments when the hours of the days could not be numbed by action. The simple, honest couple, whose deaths he had mourned and whose lives he had honoured as only an orphaned child can, were now something less than father and mother. The yeoman’s blood he had felt sturdying his veins was diluted blue-blood after all: he was an Edwards and a Hargreave with a birth-father he might never set eyes upon, with faceless cousins somewhere sharing his genes but not his life. He was also a bastard, conceived—in society’s pitiless eye—in sin and born irredeemably out of wedlock.

  But he had a mother who had delivered him gladly into her world, fought for his freedom and her own, had been abominably used and declared dead, before resurrecting herself alone in a brave new land. Yet the man she had every reason to hate was the man he himself loved more than any other. True, Uncle Jabez had not abandoned him outright, but until his adoptive parents died unexpectedly, he had been content to watch him grow up as another’s son. Could such behaviour be forgiven? Could it outweigh the happy years he had spent, after the age of five, as the “lord” of the estate, coddled and fussed over and supported through life until he became a man? He did not know.

  And there were other matters pressing in upon and disturbing the conscience of the man he had supposed himself to be. He was still wearing the Queen’s colours and he had not yet heard himself recanting his oath of allegiance. But in the space of a few hours he had contrived to let a killer escape to safety in the United States, had lied to a fellow officer when asked if he could identify any of the would-be insurgents out there in the bush, and had failed to inform his superiors about a young man acting as the messenger between the rebels and the gun-runners. He was also deliberately avoiding the governor’s aide-de-camp and his attempts to debrief the man who knew the most about
the whole sordid business.

  What was most surprising to him, however, given the number of times he had tumbled these quandaries in the cauldron of his mind, was that he seemed to be caring less and less that there were no answers, no pat resolution, no reconciliation of any kind. What he invariably ended up with, regardless of any particular configuration of the problem, was a single-word conclusion: Beth. Of course she did not provide an unambiguous answer to any of these ethical dilemmas: she merely rendered the questions irrelevant.

  By the time he walked through the gates and aimed himself at the officers’ quarters, he could think only that he had survived the past three days. He was alive and Beth was alive. In nine days they would be married. Then, perhaps, like his more famous Roman namesake, he would be able to stand up and shout, “This is my space, kingdoms are clay!”

  Corporal Bregman hailed him. “Welcome back, sir. You’ve come just in time.”

  “In time for what?”

  “I’m not sure, sir, but Colonel Margison has called a meeting of all his officers for three o’clock And he asked me specifically to have you go to him the minute you arrived back.”

  “Thank you, Corporal,” Marc sighed. It was conceivable that Spooner had sent someone out here looking for him, armed with a list of complaints about his behaviour and deportment as an officer. It was the last thing he wished to talk about, but he had no choice.

  Major Jenkin was standing beside the colonel when Marc entered the office, both looking grave. He steeled himself for a serious dressing-down.

  “I’ll come right to the point, Lieutenant,” Colonel Margison said. “I’ll be informing the other officers in fifteen minutes but, as you have made plans of a personal nature for next week, the major here and I thought it would be kinder to tell you now—as friends as well as fellow officers.”

  “Tell me what, sir?”

  “Governor Head has ordered every regular soldier, officers and men alike, out of the province and into Quebec. Insurrection there is imminent.”

  “But that’s suicidal! We’ve got a countryside full of rebels right here!”

  “It seems that Sir Francis considers himself invulnerable.”

  “Our orders are to leave immediately,” Jenkin said. “This afternoon.”

  “But I have a wedding to—”

  “It’ll have to be postponed, I’m afraid,” the colonel said. “You’ll have time to write Beth before we embark at five o’clock for Kingston,” Jenkin said. “Our company is to be the advance unit. You can drop it off at Cobourg when we stop for supplies.”

  This is it, Marc thought, incredulous. What I have wished for since my first day at Sandhurst: to stride into battle to preserve the honour and integrity of crown and country. And Beth, bless her, had given him leave to do his duty.

  Why, then, was it all ashes in his mouth?

  EPILOGUE

  Saturday, October 21, 1837

  Dearest Marc:

  I received your brief note the day after your ship left Cobourg on October 13. By then we had already heard the disquieting news. I have waited a few days before writing back in order to marshal my thoughts and, in view of what has been happening here, offer you what comfort I can. First of all, you have nothing to apologize to me for. Our wedding, which we had every hope would take place tomorrow, has merely been postponed, not our love. I am twenty-five years old, and I have lived long enough in this world to know that we are not wholly responsible for what happens to us. Nor, I’m beginning to realize, is God. We are responsible only for what we feel and how we act upon what we feel, insofar as we are allowed to in a land simmering with hate and aggrieved hearts. I have come to know many of the ideals you hold and how bravely you try to act upon them. Those are the things I love in you. So, please do not be sorry that the mad governor has sent you off to fight in a war you did not make.

  You may find it strange to hear me speak like this. I am finding it strange myself. But we are living in difficult and treacherous times. Forgive me if I burden you with matters close to home when you are—I shiver at the thought—bracing yourself for battle, but you must know that Thomas and Winnifred are in some serious trouble, possibly even in danger. I was shocked to discover that Thomas has not been off doing his road duty at all, but still attending radical meetings in the township and consorting with people who are talking and acting as if a farmers’ revolt is inevitable. That is, an armed insurrection. I do not know whether Winnifred knew or, if she did, whether she approved: she says little and broods much. But last week, Thomas came home quite shaken, and swearing that he was finished with politics for good. I overheard him telling Winnifred that he had almost shot some American fellow before he came to his senses and he fled. But now the poor man is terrified that one of his cohorts will betray him. Several of them—you remember Azel Stebbins, don’t you?—have been hauled in by the magistrates for questioning about subversive activities, and he fears one of them will rat on him to save his own skin. He and Winn are talking again about going west across the Mississippi to the Iowa Territory. But their grain is unsold, they are too proud to ask me for money, and Erastus would not lend them a farthing to abandon him and their home. Then, three days ago, we heard that a gang of Orangemen ambushed and beat up a dozen young men near Perry’s Corners, claiming they were “drilling”—with hoes and forks for guns! To top it all off, Aunt Catherine writes that her relative, George Revere, has run off to the States without explanation and that, this week, the windows on our shop were smashed by vandals.

  Enough. I will write only happy news from now on. The thought of what you may have to do there, if there is a war, fills me with dread, but am I unforgivably selfish for thinking mainly of your safety, or your coming through such horrors whole and still able to smile at me? Believe this, my darling: I will be waiting for you when you come back. I live for your return. What I ask of you is equally simple: survive. Please.

  All my love,

  Beth