Dubious Allegiance

by Don Gutteridge

  “So you returned to your room via the back way?”

  “Yes, though I went straight to Percy’s room. I still had the pistol in my hand. I was in shock. Percy took the thing, climbed up on his dresser, and dropped it down under the eave of the roof. After I had calmed down, we discussed the possibility of an outsider being blamed. But we couldn’t be sure that Miles Scanlon had not already been captured. It was I who eventually proposed the deception which we played out. I did not want to involve Percy, but he insisted that the ruse would work better if he were seen talking to Randolph in the hallway. I could not dissuade him. He felt he was partly to blame because he had not been able to protect me from Randolph’s cruelties.”

  “But there was the problem of the boots and greatcoat.”

  “Percy wanted to hide the coat in his trunk, but if it were found there during any investigation or as a result of something raised during the inquest, he would hang with me for sure. I refused to let him take that chance. I remembered the loose floorboards I had noticed the day before. I had no time to hide the coat when I first came up the fire-stairs, but I slipped back up about noon on the pretext of getting some night-clothes. You and Ainslie were in the lounge. I got the floorboards up far enough to stuff the greatcoat in there. The boots I put in Randolph’s trunk. The hat, as you guessed, was Percy’s.”

  “But when no suspicions were raised later on, why didn’t you or Percy remove the coat and pack it in your trunk?”

  “There was too much coming and going up there by then. I was with the Dingmans, and Percy decided to leave things as they were.”

  “Yes. It was the uniqueness of that coat that could give away the show.”

  Adelaide had turned back to gaze at the snow and at the eons-old landscape it made pristine for a brief season. After a long while, without looking at him, she said in a muted, uncertain voice he had not heard before, “What are you going to do now?”

  “I’m going to carry on to Toronto, where I shall wed my fiancée.”

  * * *

  Percy Sedgewick rejoined them shortly thereafter. A quick but telling look was exchanged between brother and sister. Percy relaxed visibly and began to tell stories of the homesteading Sedgewicks who pioneered Landsdowne Township, where men were men and women their helpmates and companions, working side by side in field and fallow. Much later in the afternoon Percy went back up on top to smoke a pipe with Gander Todd, and Adelaide returned to the subject of their earlier conversation.

  “I will not ask you why, but only thank you for such an unexpected gesture,” she said with feeling. “But are you not worried that by not turning Percy and me in to the magistrates you are perhaps putting Miles Scanlon’s life in danger? I know for a fact that he was not involved with his older brothers in the rebellion. He helped them after the fact, as Percy did their wives and children. He will not hang for that, but he could hang for murder. I would not want his death on my conscience. Nor would I permit it to happen.”

  “Do not be concerned for Miles Scanlon. When I went into Dr. Murchison’s surgery this morning, he told me that word had reached him late last night that Scanlon had been captured and held in custody on a farm many miles north of here, twelve hours before your husband was shot. There is no way that he will be accused of that crime.”

  “I am relieved to hear that.”

  “Apparently, he admitted planting the death-threat in the coach, but swears he never planned to do the captain harm. He just wanted to frighten him. According to the doctor, the poor bugger was bushed.”

  “So then you were certain I had done it?” Adelaide actually smiled.

  Marc smiled back. “It was either you or Gander Todd!”

  * * *

  It was dusk when the coach bearing the living and the dead neared the village of Gananoque. Percy was back on top with Gander.

  “With Miles Scanlon out of the picture,” Marc said suddenly, “the coroner told me that he would have to enter a finding of ‘murder by person or persons unknown.’ He will add a comment in his summary to the effect that the motive appeared to be political and the assassin a vengeance-seeking vigilante from the rebel camp. He feels that Captain Brookner may have been a symbolic target picked at random.”

  “Why did you not give him your theory and your evidence back there? Or had you already decided on a course of action?”

  “I had not made up my mind either way. The greatcoat would still be where you put it and I left it. And I wanted to be sure I was right.” Marc thought it prudent not to mention the acute embarrassment of the scene in Lambert’s room yesterday afternoon and the fragility of theories.

  “And?”

  “And I saw the murderous bruises on your neck.”

  After a pause, she said, “I suppose his regiment will insist on giving Randolph a funeral with full military honours.”

  Marc gave her a wee, ironic grin. “Why not? He died as a martyr for the people’s cause, did he not?”

  She didn’t smile, perhaps couldn’t, but she did reply: “Like Rob Roy or Bonnie Prince Charlie, you mean?”

  They crossed the long bridge over the Gananoque River and swept down into the village in the snowy darkness of a late January evening. The town boasted two hotels, only one with a livery stable. Outside the larger one, Marc shook hands with Percy Sedgewick. Adelaide Brookner leaned over and kissed him on the cheek.

  “Your fiancée is a lucky woman,” she said, and walked with elaborate dignity into the lamp-lit interior.

  Marc carried on down the street to the one-storey inn and tavern. Gander would deliver his luggage later on. Among the many thoughts rippling through his mind was this one: he was beginning to believe that the notion of justice was just as ethically muddled as that of allegiance.

  * * *

  Marc was so exhausted that he planned to sleep in until noon and then catch the regular coach to Kingston and Fort Henry. A couple of days to rest and rejuvenate among fellow officers of the regiment there, then it would be on to Cobourg and Toronto. And there, with any luck, Beth would be waiting.

  His room was cramped and ill lit but clean and warm enough. He undressed and got ready to sleep, making no preparations to thwart an assassin. He did realize that because Adelaide and Percy had done away with Brookner, there was still one stalker unaccounted for, unless he were to accept the near-absurd proposition that each attempt on his life—the bayonet in the hospital, the shot in the woods, and the stabbing at the Georgian Arms—had been a case of mistaken identity or the result of independent, random opportunities. But he was suddenly beyond caring. He was now more than a hundred miles from Montreal and the Quebec border. The passions surrounding St. Denis would surely be waning with each mile separating him and those grim events.

  Refusing to become a slave to his own fears, he raised his ground-floor window six inches to let in the bracing night-air, then lay down on the bed immediately beneath it. He also removed his tunic and breeches from his trunk and laid them out on the table next to his sabre, pistol, belt, and scabbard. If he were going into Fort Henry tomorrow afternoon, he would march in—stiff leg and all—in proper military attire. He fell asleep almost immediately.

  It was 10:00 the next morning when he woke up. Adelaide and Percy had left long ago. Marc knew that Adelaide’s life would never be the same. She was deeply intelligent and, he surmised, innately moral. She had tolerated the indignities and assaults her husband had meted out with stoic determination, instinctively understanding that he was really the weaker of the two and conscious of her duty and the vows she had taken. She might suffer remorse; she might excoriate herself from time to time; she might lead a constrained, perhaps even a quiet and reclusive, life. But she would live. And she deserved to, like the long-suffering horse who turns on his tormentor with a justifiable kick.

  Marc began to dress. And for the first time since his training days at Sandhurst, he found no joy in donning his officer’s uniform. The jacket did not feel right. He had, of course, lost thirty pound
s and regained but fifteen, and it hung limply upon his shoulders, as if it belonged to someone else. Was he even still worthy of its lustre and long tradition? He put his pistol into its holster and shuddered. Tears burned at the edges of his eyes, unbidden and shaming.

  On his way out, he had to lean against the wall to steady himself. He thought of Beth and carried on.

  Three days later Marc reached Cobourg in the company of two officers of his own regiment returning to Fort York from an assignment at Fort Henry. They had hired a fast cutter, and pulled into Cobourg late in the afternoon of January 24. The weather had been clear and just cold enough to make sled-travel swift and smooth. Marc’s companions decided to stay overnight at the Cobourg Hotel. Marc, of course, was eager to go five miles farther to Crawford’s Corners, where he would stay with his old friend, Erastus Hatch, and his family at the mill. He wanted very much to reassure them of the safe arrival in the United States of Winnifred, Thomas, and baby Mary. He had also considered taking Beth’s brother Aaron along with him to Toronto, though the lad could be sent for a bit later on when he and Beth were settled. At any rate, he waved good-bye to his fellow officers at Cobourg’s main intersection, assured by them that they would pick him up in midmorning in Crawford’s Corners for the final leg of their journey. Meanwhile, Marc would hitch a ride with someone going west along the Kingston Road.

  Pausing on Cobourg’s main street, Marc was assailed by memories. Voices echoed in his mind: Willy Mackenzie’s booming and erudite rhetoric as he swayed the locals in the town hall just a block away; the banshee imprecations of the Orangemen rioting and purveying mayhem, fuelled by ancient grudges and ingrained prejudice; the voices, too, of the poor and the disenfranchised as they cheered their champion on to . . . to what?

  “You lookin’ fer a ride, sir?”

  It was a gap-toothed farmer, ruddy and smiling, seated on the bench of a small cutter with reins slack in his ploughman’s grip.

  “I’m heading for Crawford’s Corners,” Marc said.

  “Then hop aboard, son. I’m goin’ right by there. I just have to pick up a bag of feed over at the Emporium. You can hang on ta Jasper’s reins fer me.”

  Marc was happy to oblige. While he waited for the farmer to return, Marc spotted a familiar figure strolling eastward along King Street: Charles Lambert. Beside him and holding his hand was a small woman, obviously his wife, Marie. Every few yards Lambert would lean down and brush the top of her fur hat with his lips. They did not see Marc. He watched them until they were out of sight.

  It was growing dark when Marc thanked the farmer and hopped off the cutter at the intersection of the Kingston Road and Miller Sideroad—Crawford’s Corners. A light valise was his only encumbrance. For a full five minutes he stood in the middle of the crossroads and allowed more memories to rise. It was here he had come just two years ago to investigate the mysterious death of Joshua Smallman, and found not only a group of friends—Dr. Charles Barnaby, James and Emma Durfee, Erastus and Winnifred Hatch—but the first woman he had loved more than his own life: Bathsheba McCrae Smallman, his Beth.

  Marc noted the lights in the Durfees’ tavern and their quarters behind it. Two sleighs drawn up outside indicated the presence of some customers inside. He would drop in later or first thing in the morning and pay his respects. And incidentally catch up on the local gossip. Dr. Barnaby had not been keeping a surgery in town, so Marc was surprised and disappointed when he looked across to the house on the southwest corner and saw that it was in darkness. Perhaps Barnaby was out on a call and would return this evening. He hoped so.

  With an unexpected sense of trepidation, Marc now walked northward through the snow up the Miller Sideroad. On his right and occupying many acres lay the estate of the local squire and magistrate, Philander Child. Marc recalled his former encounters with the squire with distaste: he was a man whose allegiance had led him as far astray as any man could wander. Something drew Marc right past the miller’s evergreen-shrouded house and on up to the lane that led to Beth’s place, so recently occupied by Thomas and Winnifred Goodall. The lane was free of footprints.

  Very slowly, Marc approached the cabin. It was dark inside, abandoned. Beth’s brother Aaron, of course, would be next door with Erastus. As he came up beside the house, Marc got a shock: every window had been smashed, and across the front door someone had painted in crude whitewash: TRAITER! With mounting dread, he carried on past the house towards the sheds and barn. Their shadows were still blunt against the horizon. Not burned. Yet.

  Marc decided to take the path that linked Beth’s property with the Hatch’s to the south of it. He and Beth had walked it more than once, deep in the conversation that began as friendly argument and ended in love’s banter. He would go past the mill, starkly visible up ahead in the waxing moonlight, and approach the miller’s house from the rear, as he had done so many times before. It imparted a sense of permanence and stability that he knew to be illusory but nonetheless necessary.

  No lights greeted him. Surely they couldn’t all be abed at six-thirty in the evening? He came up to the door of the summer kitchen. It was open and swinging crookedly on one hinge. Snow had drifted into the big back room. With a pounding heart, he rushed through to the main house. It was cold and dark. He felt his way over to the stove. It had not been used in days. Beside the fireplace no kindling or split-logs were neatly piled, as they had always been. He looked in every room before stumbling out the front door, ignoring the protestations of his gimpy leg, and raced back up the sideroad to Durfees’ tavern. He felt as if a horse had kicked him.

  * * *

  James Durfee, tavern-keeper, postmaster, redoubtable Scot, sat back in his favourite chair in his favourite room, sipped at his brandy, and cast a concerned and avuncular eye upon the young lieutenant seated across from him. Emma, it turned out, had gone out with Doc Barnaby to an ailing woman five miles away on the far concession of the township, and neither was expected back before noon the next day. But Emma had left a pot of stew and fresh bread, which Durfee was happy to share with Marc. Over supper, Marc gave him an account of his adventures in Lower Canada. Later, the two men returned to the den. It was Durfee’s turn to provide explanations.

  “I’m sorry you had to go over there and find the place like that, without any warnin’. I was hopin’ you’d come in here first,” Durfee began.

  “But I still can’t believe Erastus would just pull up stakes and leave like that. It’s completely out of character. Why, he’s been miller here for a generation. He’s respected by every honest man in the district, Tory or otherwise. He always managed to keep his head above the fray, he had no enemies—”

  “All that’s true, lad. But for the last year or more, as you know, it hasn’t been a question of makin’ enemies. Suddenly, you just become one.”

  “The windows are all broken in Beth’s house, and there’s that ugly word plastered on the door.”

  “Thomas Goddall became a wanted man. He lived in that house, owner or not. He had no place to hide. When Winnifred and him and the bairn packed up and took off for parts unknown, it damn near destroyed her father. Erastus was distraught. He’d put up with some of the farmers, men he’d helped and carried with credit over many a rough spot, when they threatened to take their business all the way to Port Hope just to spite him. He was philosophical about that, figurin’ time would heal those wounds. But when the warrant was issued for Thomas, it nearly broke him. His grown daughter and grandchild just fleeing, with an hour to say their good-byes. And bound for Iowa.”

  “So you think he’s gone after them?”

  “I do. The gathering point for the Iowa expedition is Pittsburgh. From what you’ve told me, Thomas has made it into New York State and will head straight there.”

  “How do you know all this?”

  “You been away for more’n two months, haven’t you? Well, two weeks ago a group of well-off Reform supporters—not rebels, mind you, but people like young Francis Hincks and Peter Perry—started
up the Mississippi Emigration Society to help folks get out of this place.”

  “My God. Matters are worse than I’d imagined.”

  “They’re sayin’ up to ten thousand farmers might leave, sellin’ out at ruinous prices and headin’ west.”

  “But why did Erastus take Beth’s brother? She’ll be devastated.”

  “Emma and me offered to take Aaron in till we heard from Beth down in the States; we knew she’d be there a while. But the boy’s seventeen or more, a grown-up lad. The only life he knows is farming. He begged to be taken along, and in the end, Erastus agreed. They couldn’t keep young Susie Huggan from goin’ along either. ‘I’m Baby Eustace’s aunt!’ she said, and that was that.”

  “And what of the other Huggan sister, Charlene? She wasn’t with Winnifred and Thomas.”

  “Of course, there’s no house to keep over there any more, so Barnaby’s taken her on till we can find somethin’ permanent for her.”

  Marc stared into his brandy glass. “Does Beth know all of this?”

  “Yes,” Durfee assured him. “The mail is irregular, but we’ve written to give her any news.”

  Marc looked up at his friend. “Why am I wearing this uniform, James? Can you tell me that? I was sent into Quebec to put down a revolt against the Crown. And I helped to do so. I acquitted myself as a soldier ought to. We were sent also to bring about order. And we did. But we did not re-establish the law. We walked away as soon as the smoke of battle had cleared and left thousands of innocent citizens to the ministrations of vigilantes and vengeance-seekers. We brought order but no real peace. And certainly no justice. Sir John issued decrees against looting and reprisals but refused to send troops to enforce them. The Queen’s writ is gall in the mouths of the people. And that is all they have to feed on. When a farmer burns out his neighbour, you know how deep the poison has penetrated.”

  James reached over and placed a hand over one of Marc’s. “I don’t believe you would’ve actually set a torch to that house in St. Denis.”