Dubious Allegiance

by Don Gutteridge

  “I don’t think so. But I’m sure it will have enough ice on it to hold you three.”

  “We can’t just go wandering across the St. Lawrence hoping to land somewhere friendly on the far side, even if we don’t drown first.”

  “I’ll check with the proprietor and find out if it’s a feasible plan.” Before Winnifred could object, Marc went out into the foyer. He could hear Jones’s wife in the kitchen scolding the scullery maid, who was lashing back in what sounded like French. He went to the door of the dining-room, eased it open, caught Jones’s eye, and motioned for him to come out.

  “I need to know two things, sir, if you’d oblige me.”

  “Anything for an officer of the Queen, sir.”

  “Is the St. Lawrence frozen over?”

  “Yessir, in a few places, but you got to know exactly where or you’ll be thirty feet under before you can blink twice.”

  “Is there a ferryman to take strangers across in the winter?”

  “Yessir. Mr. Clark Cooper. He’s got a dandy little skiff with a sail and iron runners. Quicker’n a fart, as old Coop says.”

  “The young woman, Mrs. Hatch, is trying to get to New York State to find some missing relatives. But I’ve explained how dangerous coach-travel might be anywhere east of here.”

  Jones nodded sagely.

  “I’d like to arrange passage for her across the river. Tonight.”

  Jones was not as taken aback as Marc had expected. “It’s possible, sir. Coop lives beside the river a quarter mile behind here through a marked trail in the bush. He’s always there. Though you gotta watch him: he may try and charge you double if you interrupt his supper!”

  “I’ll seek him out, then,” Marc said.

  “But there’s nothing on the other side. Just a hamlet without a hotel. She and the babe could be standing alone in the cold in the middle of the night.”

  Marc sighed. He hadn’t thought of that. Nor the possibility that American troops, recently mobilized by President Van Buren, might be patrolling the border on the lookout for Hunters’ Lodge fanatics threatening invasion, or for fugitive Canadians likely to further embarrass the U.S. government.

  “No, sir,” Jones was saying, “Waddington, New York, is one sleepy little burg.”

  * * *

  Marc was grinning from ear to ear when he returned to Winnifred. She searched his face for clues and at last ventured a smile of her own. “What’s happened?”

  “Everything,” Marc said. He had worked out a scheme in the minute or so he had stood watching Jones rejoin his guests in the dining-room. “Listen carefully. I’m going to go upstairs and write a letter of introduction for you and Thomas to a family who live on a farm near Waddington just across the river from here. I saved their brother’s life at St. Denis, so they will help you in any way they can. Just go into the first house you see and ask for directions. My letter will do the rest.”

  “But can we get across?”

  “Yes. But we’ll have to use the regular ferryman, who has a sort of ice-sled with a sail.”

  Winnifred gulped but said nothing.

  “I realize he’ll probably have a sketch of Thomas and others, but we’re going to send Thomas in disguise.”

  “With a beard?”

  “Much better. With a bonnet and a dress. He’ll be your sister.”

  Marc went upstairs while Winnifred waited below with the baby. It was too risky to try to inform Thomas just yet. Marc wrote a compelling note to the Yates family of Waddington, to brothers Eugene and Stephen, and the latter’s wife, Callie. Then he got his uniform out of his trunk and put it on—boots, shako cap, sabre, and all. He figured that Thomas in disguise, plus the sanctioning of the procedure by a uniformed officer, should be enough to deceive or intimidate someone as wily as Clark Cooper. At the very bottom of the trunk holding his gentleman’s finery he found the last item he needed: a periwig. He tucked it under his jacket, pulled on his green greatcoat, and headed for the stairs.

  “Well, Lieutenant, it is wonderful to see you at last in your full splendour.”

  It was Brookner, leading his troupe out of the dining-room.

  “Thank you, sir. I thought I should give it a bit of an airing before Toronto.”

  “You’re going out?”

  “Just for a short walk.”

  “Splendid. Enjoy yourself. You deserve to.”

  Marc watched the others trail after him up the stairs, Adelaide bringing up the rear and whispering something urgent at her brother, who was more than a little tipsy. When they disappeared, Marc went into the lounge.

  “Have you got a suitable dress?” he asked Winnifred, who had baby Mary tucked back into her embrace. “And a winter hat with a veil on it?”

  “Yes. But he hasn’t shaved for seven days.”

  “I hope he has a razor, then. He’ll love this.” Marc held up the grey barrister’s wig.

  Winnifred giggled. “And you’re back in uniform!”

  Marc explained why. “Can that window be opened?” he asked.

  “Of course. I served the sandwiches through it.”

  “We’re going out that way, then. Jones is busy cleaning up after supper. He’ll assume you’ve gone to your room. I’ve told the others I’m out for a walk.”

  As Marc gently handed the still-sleeping baby through the window to Winnifred, her eyes lit up, as of old. “Are we really doing this?” she asked excitedly.

  There was no time to fill Thomas in on the details of Marc’s plan. But the man’s absolute trust in his wife’s judgement was both sad and wondrous to behold. In the darkened barn, he shook Marc’s hand over and over, unable to stop shuffling and moving his arms about: he seemed a man on the brink. His craggy features and sturdy yeoman’s body were ready to crumple. Still, he scrabbled through his kit for his razor, and Marc helped him use it as best he could with cold water and a dull edge. Thomas made no complaint when they stripped him to his long johns and began pulling a taffeta dress over his head. Its skirt was long enough to cover his work-boots. Winnifred had brought only one overcoat, so they draped “Thomasina” with shawls and scarves, and crowned the effort with the wig and a winter cap that covered most of it and held it in place. A fur muff would camouflage the unmistakably male hands.

  “Now remember, you’re Thomasina. You’ve got a cold and lost your voice. So just nod and shake your head to any questions. Winn and I will do the talking. You’re the Hatch sisters, all right? And the baby belongs to Winnifred.”

  Winnifred had turned away to muffle her giggle when Thomas took a ploughman’s mighty step, caught his toe in the hem of the skirt, and pitched into the hay.

  “We’ll try a little practice first,” Marc suggested.

  Fifteen minutes later they came out of the woods and spotted, in the bright moonlight, Clark Cooper’s log cabin. There was a candle in the window, but before Marc could reach the door, it opened and the ferryman emerged to greet them.

  “Evenin’, folks. You lookin’ fer a sail across the ice?” He had a leprechaun’s body, the head of a wrestler, and a voice like a mallard’s on a windy day. His eyes flicked across the officer, the woman with the baby, and the creature behind her.

  “Yes, we are. This is Winnifred and Thomasina Hatch, acquaintances of mine from Cobourg. They wish to go to Waddington tonight en route to Montreal because the roads east of here have become too dangerous for two women to travel unescorted. I met them by chance at the hotel—I’m on my way back to my regiment in Toronto—and offered to see them safely across to New York.”

  “You comin’, too, are ye?”

  “No, but I’ll stand here and watch till you’re on your way. I doubt you’ll fail to reach the other side if Mr. Jones’s account of your work is true.”

  “I ain’t drownded nobody yet.”

  “How much?”

  “A pound apiece.”

  “But that’s—”

  “And a shillin’ fer the littl’un.”

  He peered warily at Ma
ry. “That babe won’t cry, will it?” he asked Winnifred.

  “Not if you give us a ride worth a pound,” she replied.

  He chuckled throatily. “Yer elderly sister looks a bit frail to be tryin’ such a trip on a night like this. How old are ya, anyway, old gal?”

  Thomasina uttered a hollow rasping sound they had rehearsed.

  “She’s got laryngitis and hasn’t been able to say a word for two days,” Winnifred explained. “And she’s not yet forty.”

  Marc had produced the money to cover the exorbitant charge.

  “Well, I guess I can take ya. Them militia fellas has been pesterin’ me to death about rebels runnin’ this way an’ that. They even threatened to put me in jail if I was to take one of ’em across.”

  “Well, Mr. Cooper, I am more than a militiaman. And I am vouching for these people.”

  “You got a name?”

  Marc realized he had been wise not to underestimate Clark Cooper.

  “Lieutenant Marc Edwards, 24th Light Infantry, Fort York. If there’s any trouble, you just refer the matter to me.”

  Marc helped the Hatch sisters and the baby into the skiff while Cooper fiddled with the ropes holding it to shore.

  Thomas looked up, shook his head, and whispered to Marc, “All I ever wanted to do was be a good farmer an’ tend to my own business.”

  Winnifred asked only that Marc report their flight to her father and to Beth, then became too overwhelmed to say anything more. She waved farewell as the sail caught the breeze and the ice-sled skittered out onto the black ice, shorn of snow and buffed ebony by the constant wind. It seemed to Marc as if they were sailing off the edge of some soulless moon. He might never see them again, and his heart clenched at the thought. Oddly enough, it never occurred to him that he had just assisted a fugitive to escape the justice he had sworn to uphold. And given his name as guarantor.

  He watched the triangular white sail till he could see it no more.

  * * *

  The foyer was empty and the dining-room dark when he came back in through the front door of the inn. The others had retired to their rooms. The only activity still in progress was the washing up. He could hear the maid singing a song he could not quite place, melodious and youthful. He stopped to listen. It was an old French folk song, one that his own French instructress had sung to him many years before. He found it both sorrowful and soothing.

  The girl, whose tiny figure he could see moving across the opening in the kitchen door, was suddenly joined in midchorus by a male voice. They harmonized beautifully. Marc was unhappy that the duet had to end. When it did, he turned to go upstairs. Male and female were now conversing rapidly in French, but he understood little for it was in the local dialect. However, it was the male’s voice that caught Marc’s attention and drew him out of his reverie. It was Charles Lambert, speaking perfectly inflected joual.

  Marc did not want to think about anything tonight except the Goodalls and the Hatches, and those at Crawford’s Corners who had, he realized with a pleasurable start, become his friends. His adoptive father, Jabez, was dead. The land he had been raised on would soon pass into the hands of cousins he had never met. England seemed an eon away. So he pushed his bed up against the door, removed his uniform, tucked it carefully back into his trunk, and lay down on the bed to let the floodtide of memory have its way.

  It had hardly begun when he heard voices raised next door through the thin wall: the Brookners, having a husband-and-wife dispute by the sound of it. Fortunately, it did not last long, and by the time it had subsided he was asleep.

  Captain Brookner, ever sensitive to the welfare of Lieutenant Edwards, and even more so having observed him in the full glory of his scarlet tunic and tufted shako cap, saw to it that no-one disturbed the good soldier until midmorning. At which time the sunlight flooding his room did the trick, and an hour later the entourage was once again settled in their familiar seats in the carriage. Marc had had one anxious moment before boarding. As he was instructing Jones’s son regarding the placement of his trunks—his uniform tucked inside one of them along with the pumpkin—Jones proper came sidling up to him, looking concerned. Marc immediately assumed that there was some bad news from the ferryman.

  Jones forestalled his question: “Don’t look so worried, sir. Your friend and her little one reached Waddington safely.” He paused and gave Marc a sly glance. In a whisper he said, “Along with the elderly sister.”

  So Clark Cooper had already come visiting and spilled the beans.

  “Was there a problem with that?” Marc asked, using all the authority of his rank and his lawyerly voice to put an end to the dangerous direction of this conversation.

  Jones smiled with a weak attempt at a man-of-the-world demeanour. “Just a wee one, sir. Coop mentioned that you were one pound short of the fee last night, but you promised to pass it along before you left.”

  Marc smiled back, then slipped a one-pound note into the innkeeper’s hand. “You’ll be sure to deliver it,” he said.

  Jones almost winked his assurance.

  * * *

  If the militia captain was disappointed that the lieutenant had not continued to wear his uniform, he was too polite to say so. The relationship between Mr. and Mrs. Brookner had been frosty and uncommunicative from the outset, so it was hard for Marc to tell whether the dispute he had heard last night was the norm or represented an escalation of their apparent dislike for each other. Oddly, Brookner was always as courteous to her as he was to others. Even this morning he had taken her arm to lift her into the coach, and, as before, she had jerked away as if she had been pinched. She continued to sit in one corner and he diagonally opposite. The sun still shone, though cloud was building up in the southwest; the runners slid weightlessly along the packed snow of the roadbed; and for a little while the passengers could imagine they were on a Sunday afternoon outing in a snowy paradise of spruce boughs and plumed drifts.

  Ainslie Pritchard concluded it was safe once again to initiate polite conversation. “Could you tell me, Mr. Lambert, whether that bustling new village of yours has a first-class hotel? One that might be interested in some of the new French wines I intend to introduce into this part of the world?”

  Lambert looked up. “We have a hotel, but what class it may be, I don’t know.”

  Marc was not surprised that Lambert had decided to answer the question. He had slowly been coming out of whatever shell he had been hiding under. What did surprise him was that he could detect no trace of a French accent in Lambert’s English. Perhaps it had not been Lambert speaking joual in Jones’s kitchen last night after all.

  “Would you mind giving me the name of it? I could write the owner from Toronto,” Pritchard said, then flashed Lambert a jowly grin: “Better still, I could stop over there, and you could show me the sights.”

  Marc thought he saw Lambert pale.

  “It’s the Lakeside, is it not?” Marc said to Lambert.

  Lambert betrayed an instant’s doubt, like the barrister whose witness has just given him an unrehearsed answer, then said with conviction, “Yes, it is.”

  “You’ve visited the place, then?” Pritchard asked, turning to Marc.

  “I stayed in nearby Crawford’s Corners for several weeks two years ago, and visited again last winter.”

  This neatly deflected the conversation from hotels in Cobourg. Pritchard was not satisfied until he had gleaned as much information as possible about Marc’s fiancée and wedding plans, many of them fabricated to keep Pritchard happy. During this exchange, Marc kept a sharp eye on the brothers-in-law seated side by side across from him. Whatever the source and depth of their drunken disagreement two nights ago, they seemed to have settled into a sort of reluctant truce, for the sake of their fellow passengers, most likely.

  Without warning the coach began to slow, and once again their driver’s desperate “Whoa’s!” were alarming.

  “Can we trust this chap?” Pritchard asked Brookner with a frightened look.<
br />
  “Todd?” Brookner said as he pulled back the glass of his window and strained to see ahead. “With my life. His grandfather was an Empire Loyalist and his father fought at Crysler’s Farm in 1813. They don’t come any more faithful than Gander.”

  “I hear hoofbeats!” Pritchard said.

  “What is it, Todd?” Brookner called up, as the others sat up, fully alert.

  “Trouble ahead, sir. On horseback.”

  Brookner pushed his way over to the door, yanked off his garish green greatcoat to expose his weaponry, and leapt into a drift. Marc suddenly wished he hadn’t repacked his pistol. But he felt compelled to follow, excusing himself as he bumped against Adelaide.

  “Don’t try to stop the old fool,” she whispered fiercely. “He’ll get us all killed yet.”

  The old fool was already stomping past the horses in the direction of the half a dozen mounted men riding easily towards them down the road. They wore no uniform or insignia to telegraph their allegiance.

  Just as Brookner was about to draw his pistol, the lead horseman hollered, “Hold on! We’re friends!”

  Brookner kept his fingers closed on the pistol in his belt. “Prove it!” he said.

  The leader of the group dismounted and walked towards Brookner with both hands well away from his body. His cohort stood at ease, watching but not looking particularly worried. Marc relaxed.

  Brookner and the men exchanged a few words that Marc could not quite catch. Then Brookner took several pieces of paper from the stranger and began walking back to the coach. The latter remounted and led his troop past the carriage, each man tipping his hat to Adelaide, who peered out at them from behind her mourning veil.

  “They’re local men,” Brookner said to Marc, but loud enough for all to hear. “They’ve been deputized to track down several desperadoes from Mackenzie’s revolt. They’ve got pictures of them on these posters. That fellow there is Miles Scanlon.”

  Marc made a pretense of studying the posters. One of them contained a sure likeness of Thomas-cum-Thomasina Goodall.

  The encounter seemed to have got Brookner’s adrenaline flowing. Ever since the death-threat yesterday he had begun to cast himself in what could only be called a romantic light. His strut had become more animated and his speech more formal and consciously laboured, as if he were a character out of Ivanhoe or The Bride of Lammermoor. Without instigation from Pritchard, though richly responded to by that well-read gentleman, Brookner launched into a more vivid description of his capture of the three Scanlon brothers, and then capped off the entertainment with a narrative of the encounter south of Montgomery’s tavern and the subsequent counterattack by the Queen’s forces under the superlative command of Colonel Allan MacNab—with flags flying and bands tootling and drummers thumping—as if he himself had been present and the detail had been adduced first-hand instead of third or fourth.