Don Gutteridge - Dubious Allegiance

Once, he was almost certain, one of them paused at his calling out, turned to say something back in her own tongue, then shuddered under the head nurse’s bellow and skittered away.

“Pay no attention to the old troll, sir. Her first name’s Magda, but everybody ’round here calls her Magna Carta-behind her back, that is!” The soap and razor felt wonderful on Marc’s chin. And even as he dreamt and lolled hazily through the day-nights, he continued to eat. His hands and arms began to move where he wished them to. The throbbing in his thigh was ebbing. He remembered to say thank you to Davey.

“You’ll want to know what’s been going on in the wars,” the major was saying one afternoon.

“Yes. Tell me everything.”

“Well, your brigade finished off the rebels in the Richelieu Valley. Most of them fled into Vermont to re-group. Then, a couple of days before you woke up, General Colborne organized and led an attack on their stronghold north of here at St. Eustache, with three thousand troops. It was a slaughterhouse. More than fifty rebels died. The church was levelled, then burned. The village was looted and razed. They moved on to St. Benoit, which surrendered without a fight. The ringleaders’ houses were destroyed. But when the regulars left, the militia and English locals burned down the church and sacked the entire village. Reprisals are still going on all over the province, despite the general’s decree that they be stopped. It’s not a pretty sight out there in the countryside. I’ve been having nightmares about Spain again for the first time in years.”

Marc pictured barns in flames, haystacks ablaze, families huddled in the cold woods. He saw the houses of St. Denis with smoke pouring out of smashed windows. He saw the young habitant in that shadowy room, his throat blown out and his hands lifting to it as if to pray.

“And I don’t wish to alarm you, but you’d best hear the news from me. There’s been an uprising in Upper Canada as well. A few days after you got shot, Mackenzie and about seven hundred credulous farmers, led by one Samuel Lount, made a run at the capital.”

Here the major amazed Marc by chuckling. “I know it isn’t funny, Marc, but it really was a curious contretemps. Our friend, Sir Francis, had emptied the province of regulars, as you know, and stationed the principal militia group at Hamilton to ward off any Yankees raging across the frontier at Niagara. The city was defended by a gaggle of volunteers and citizen conscripts-about twenty in total-who bumped into Mackenzie’s army on Yonge Street. In the dark! The loyalists fired first, I’m told, then dropped their rifles and ran for their lives, due south. Lount had ordered his front rank to kneel and fire a volley, which they did, to no effect except to spook those behind them, who thought they had all fallen dead. At which, the rebel regiment turned and ran as well, not stopping till they reached Montgomery’s tavern. A day and a half later, Colonel MacNab led the militia and a marching band up Yonge Street and scattered the rabble for good. Mackenzie’s already in Buffalo, they say, trying to rouse the Americans to mount an invasion.”

“Were there casualties?”

“A few on both sides. But the devil of it is that reprisals and barn burnings have started up, as they did here. No roads outside the towns are safe, as fleeing rebels and vengeful loyalists take pot-shots at one another. The jails in both provinces are filling up, and there’s talk of treason trials and hangings.”

“Maybe Beth is safer where she is.”

“I believe so, lad. And so are you in here. We’ve crushed Papineau and Nelson, but the border threats down in Vermont are real, and no Englishman dares walk the streets or byways alone or unarmed. You can taste hatred in the air.”

“What’s going to happen now?”

The major shook his grey head. “I wish I knew. It’s going to be a damn sight harder to put the pieces back together than it was to scatter them by force.” He puffed on his pipe, and offered it to Marc, who declined with a shake of his head. “I saw the letter from your uncle Frederick,” the major said slowly. “I recognized my old friend’s handwriting right away, and, not knowing if you’d ever regain consciousness, I opened it.”

Marc smiled to let him know it was all right.

“I am deeply sorry about the death of Jabez; he was, in every practical way, your father. I wrote immediately to Frederick to offer my sympathy and to let him know why you yourself had not written back. Some military and official mail is getting out through Halifax or New York, but its arrival time, as usual, is uncertain. Nevertheless, I’ve already dispatched a further brief note informing him of your miraculous recovery.”

Marc had a suitable reply on his lips, but sleep once more supervened.

Beth was coming to him, her sinuous shape darkly sensual in a silken chemise, her copper-blond hair haloed around her head. He seemed unable to lift himself towards her, but his arms stretched out in invitation, his loins stirred deliciously. There was something in her right hand, a love token perhaps. No, it was long and sharp, and it was rising. .

He woke, awash in his own sweat. The room, as usual, was cold, damp, and dark, the smoky heat from the fireplace at one end being more cosmetic than real. His teeth were chattering.

“Davey!” His voice was a hollow croak, despite its desperation.

Owen Jenkin arrived with Davey MacKay in tow and a scowling head nurse. The major was unable to hide the concern in his face. “You’ve been thrashing about with a fever, lad. You’ve had us all worried sick.”

Davey began sponging the sweat from Marc’s face with a damp towel. “But the fever’s broken now, I’m happy to say.”

“All this fuss in the middle of the night. You’ll be expecting the doctor to show up next,” Magda Cartwright grumbled, then hustled off, her capacious bosom intimidating the air before it like the prow of a galleon.

“It’s actually dawn,” Davey said. “We been snoozin’ in the next room, waitin’ fer you to rally.” He went off to fetch warm water and more towels.

“We’ve got to get you out of here soon,” the major said. “Three men died of the fever yesterday. But Doc Wilder thinks you’re still too weak.” He helped Marc sit up and watched him drink half a cup of cold water before pulling it away.

A little while later Marc was able to say, “I had the strangest dream, Owen. Beth was coming to me, and I was reaching out to her, when suddenly there was a sharp and menacing object in her right hand. I thought she was going to strike me, but-”

“You woke up, thankful it was a nightmare.”

“It seemed so real.”

“Yes, but you were hallucinating with the fever.”

Davey MacKay came up on the other side of the crude bed, a mere pallet on wooden slats. As he set the basin of water on the floor, he let out a startled cry. “What the hell is this?”

He held up into the dim light a long, sharp-pointed instrument.

“A bayonet,” the major whispered, as Marc turned to look at it. “Old and rusted, but recently honed. How did it get here?”

Davey was examining the wooden edge of Marc’s bed. “This board’s been splintered. Bits of it are still here on the floor. Fresh.”

The major came around to see for himself. “And whatever did it sliced through Marc’s blanket first.”

There was a stunned silence.

“It looks as if somebody’s tried to murder you,” the major said.

When Marc had been bathed, shaved, fed, and provided with a clean nightshirt, Owen Jenkin returned and sat down on his familiar stool. He waited for one of the French aides to move away towards the moaning forms across the room, then said, “We figure it was a thief hoping to get something valuable from an officer’s kit. The Frenchies’ll steal anything. Many of them are starving, or their families are. When he couldn’t find anything worthwhile, he probably got enraged and stabbed at you in the dark. Or you may have been muttering in your delirium, and he took it as a threat and just lashed out.”