Don Gutteridge: Unholy Alliance

There was a light in the lone window of theramshackle “inn.” Cobb hauled Harkness up onto the porch, felt aboard give way somewhere under the muffling snow, and pounded onthe door. He could hear someone stirring behind it.

At this point, Harkness opened his eyes andbegan tugging at Cobb’s ankle. Seeing the fellow’s lips moving in adesperate effort at speech, Cobb leaned down and tried to make outthe words.

They came in a sudden, slurred rush. “Theythink they seen the last of me, eh, but I ain’t that easy to getrid of. Not after the way I been treated. Who does he think heis ?”

“Calm yerself, sir. There’s a warm bedwaitin’ fer ya inside.”

Someone was fidgeting with a chain behind thedoor.

“I’m gonna get even with the bugger. And Idon’t give a damn who knows it!”

“I’m sure you are. But it’ll haveta wait tillmornin’, won’t it?”

A door-latch began to squeal out of itssocket.

“I know a lotta things. Lot more’n they thinkI do. And I know who to tell, don’t I?”

Mrs. Sturdy, all two hundred and some poundsof her stuffed into a crimson kimono, stood in the opendoorway.

“I brought ya one of yer inn-mates ,”Cobb said.

“And I’m supposed to thank ya, am I?” shebarked, making her curlers shiver.

Just as Cobb reached down to pull Harknessupright, the fellow vomited — copiously — all over Cobb’sboots.

***

“There’s nothin’ to discuss, luv,” Beth said. “Youmust go. An’ that’s all there is to it.”

“What if your grippe comes back before theconference starts the week after next?” Marc said reasonably. Theywere seated beside the damped-down fire in the living-room of BriarCottage. Maggie, almost a year old, slept peacefully in her cradlenearby. Charlene Huggan, their servant, was still next doorvisiting her fiancé, Jasper Hogg. The wind howled harmlesslyoutside.

“If it does, and I’m not sayin’ it will,what’re you proposin’ to do about it — come up with acure?”

“What if Charlene has to run to fetch thedoctor or Dora? Who’ll watch Maggie if you’re laid low?”

Beth sighed. “First of all, I’m a month an’more before my time. Second, I’ll ask Jasper to sleep over here thethree or four nights you’ll be away. He’s here most of the daylighthours as it is. I’ll make up a bed fer him in the utilityroom.”

“The neighbours will talk, surely.”

Beth laughed out loud. “Are you lookin’ fer an excuse not to go?”

Marc had been out of town on an investigationand had been absent for the birth of Maggie the previous March. Hewas determined not to repeat the folly. “Of course not. But if I’mto be of any real use to Robert and Francis out there, I’ll need tobe free of anxiety about what’s happening back here.”

“Well, then, you can relax. Jasper will playman about the house. Charlene or Etta can fetch Dora if she’sneeded.” Etta was Jasper’s teenaged sister. “Dora will come everyday anyway if we ask her. And if there’s a real emergency, Jaspercan drive our cutter out to Elmgrove. It’s only a mile or so.”

“Unless there’s a blizzard — ”

Beth reached over and took Marc’s hand. “Iwas fightin’ fer this cause long before you, luv. I been involvedin it all my adult life. I’m not about to let a case of the grippeor a baby who’s perfectly content in my belly stop you from goin’out to Elmgrove an’ movin’ the cause forward on my behalf.”

Marc squeezed her hand gently, feeling in hergrip the willpower and courage he had come to love more and moreeach passing day.

“Of course, I’ll go,” he said.

“Good. Now take a deep breath an’ tell me allabout it.”

“You’re looking a mite peaked, my friend,” OliverBracken said to the other occupant of the coach as it slid nicelyover the packed snow of the Kingston Road. “Perhaps a nip of brandymight rekindle the blood?”

It was late on a Tuesday afternoon and,despite the generally smooth passage, they had been travellingsince daybreak from Kingston en route to Toronto. They had been acompany of five at the outset, but three of their fellows had beendropped off at various crossroads along the way. Ever a garrulousman, Bracken had talked ceaselessly with everyone aboard except theprim and pale gentleman now seated across from him, who had merelymumbled during initial introductions and said nothing since. He wasimpeccably dressed but for the fact that he had wrapped severalscarves around his throat and tied another below his chin so thatit swaddled his ears and the top of his head underneath his hat.Despite the cold, which tended to redden the most reluctant cheek,the man had the pasty, disoriented countenance of someone far fromhome and weary of arduous travel.

Bracken held up a silver flask, and wasgratified when his companion, without looking him in the eye,reached out, took it, tipped it daintily up to his lips, anddrank.

“Most kind of you, sir,” he said.

The accent was English, and certainly a longway from central London.

“You’re welcome. Travel can be a most tediousbusiness,” Bracken said, taking the flask back and returning it tohis coat pocket. “And my surmise is that you have been journeyingsome distance beyond Kingston. All the way from the mother country,perhaps?”

His companion nodded, but whether he wasacknowledging the general point of Bracken’s surmise or thespecific one was not clear. But Bracken, an important functionarywith the Hudson’s Bay Company, was not easily put off. “I don’tbelieve we were properly introduced when you joined us atKingston,” he said, “and those who have recently left us, I’mafraid, tended to dominate the conversation. I am Oliver Bracken,from Montreal. I’m in the fur business.”

Either the brandy had done its work or thepale gentleman had realized he had no choice but to enter thedialogue, for he managed a tight smile and said, “I am GravesChilton. And you have guessed correctly. I have come all the wayfrom London.”

“My word! An ocean voyage at this time ofyear! No wonder, sir, that you appear, ah, under the weather. Butlet me assure you that we are only fifteen minutes away from thenext stage-stop, and from there less than half an hour to theCobourg Hotel, where a hot bath, good whiskey, a decent supper anda feather-bed await you.”

“I look forward to all four, then,” Chiltonsaid with just the slightest hint of irony in the remark. HowBracken knew where they were situated was mystifying, as thisso-called highway was a single-track trail that meandered thoughthe densest, snowbound bush imaginable. For mile after mile theyhad been weaving their way through a virtual tunnel of evergreensand black-branched hardwoods — with an equally primitive crossroadhere and there at intervals along their route.

“English gentlemen are received well in thispart of the world,” Bracken said effusively. “My company, theHudson’s Bay, is chartered by the Crown and has its headquarters inthe grand old city of the Empire.”

“I am merely a gentleman’s gentleman,”Chilton said carefully.

“Ah, but a gentleman nonetheless!” Brackenchortled, determined to be impressed.

“A butler and a gentleman’s valet, to beprecise, Mr. Bracken.”

“I see. And what brings you all the way fromLondon to God’s country, if I may be so bold as to inquire?”

What indeed! Three months ago he had been avery important person in a very prosperous household in fashionableBelgrave Square, fawned upon by his master’s lady, feared andrespected by a staff of eighteen. Now he was freezing in the middleof a wilderness even God wouldn’t acknowledge as His, and headingfor what was laughably called a city on this Indian-riddencontinent. If Toronto were anything like New York or Syracuse, thenhe was doomed to a punishment wildly incommensurate with hiscrime.