Don Gutteridge - Dubious Allegiance

Marc nodded in agreement.

“What puzzles Davey and me the most, though, is how he managed to get past us. We were asleep on cots right beside the only door into this area, and Magna Carta herself sleeps standing up like a horse in her little stall by the main door, which she swears was latched.”

“One of the nurse-attendants could have left it unlatched before turning in.”

“Or done so deliberately.”

Marc thought that over. “I think a fly would terrify them,” he said.

“Well, herself is giving them all a tongue-lashing for good measure. They won’t understand a word, but they’ll get the message.”

“What should we do about this? It’s not likely to happen again.”

“True. But I’ve put Davey, on twenty-four-hour alert. And doubled his wages.”

“You mustn’t do things like that, Owen.”

“Your uncle Frederick and I went through the wars together for ten years,” the major said, and left it at that.

Marc’s strength began to return slowly. He ate regular meals, and could sit at the side of the bed and waggle his legs to simulate walking. He, Davey, and Owen Jenkin celebrated Christmas quietly together. Marc managed to slip each of the five habitant girls a half crown without being seen and upbraided by Magna Carta, who refused Marc’s largesse with a cold sniff.

“That wasn’t too wise,” Davey said when he found out, “if you’ll excuse me sayin’ so, sir. If the Frenchies think you got money here, they may tell their friends, if you know what I mean. They don’t know you had Major Jenkin bring the coins down from the barracks.”

Marc thanked him for his concern.

The day before New Year’s Marc reread Beth’s letters and, with the major’s help, wrote her a one-page reply. A third letter arrived from Beth soon after, more detailed and upbeat than the first two. Marc was now grateful that Beth was so frank and unflinching in her assessment of people and circumstances. When she told him that Aunt Catherine had purchased a ladies’ haberdashery in Bedford Valley, and that it would be only a matter of weeks before she returned home, he could believe it without reservation. He only hoped that his own strict account of his progress towards full health (he even mentioned the attack of fever and the possibility of his limping to gain credibility) would be accepted at face value and provide her with the comfort she deserved.

The only dark note in her recent letter was her continuing concern for the well-being of Winnifred and Thomas Goodall, baby Mary, and her brother Aaron, who lived with them on Beth’s farm in Crawford’s Corners. She had heard of Mackenzie’s coup and the ructions following it. She wondered whether the manhunt for fleeing rebels and known sympathizers would turn up the facts of Thomas’s earlier and recanted involvement in the radical movement or, for that matter, Winnifred’s brief fling with Reformist politics a year ago? She had written Dora Cobb in Toronto and Erastus Hatch, Winnifred’s father, in Crawford’s Corners, but had received no reply. Marc was to write her every day as soon as his strength allowed and to let her know what was happening-by which she meant the unembroidered truth.

This time Marc awoke out of a dreamless sleep. The musty, acrid odour of the darkness all about him let him know instantly where he was, and that he had indeed wakened. Someone was moving, stealthily, it seemed, among the cots to his left. While it was unusual for the head nurse or any of the male attendants or female aides to tend to one of the stricken men in the middle of the night, it was not implausible that some wrenching cry for help might have tempted one of the latter out of an exhausted sleep. Too bulky surely to be female, the figure was sliding, hunched over, from cot to cot, pausing ever so briefly at each. Marc braced himself, knowing that whatever was about to unfold, he was helpless to prevent it. When the figure rounded the last of the cots and aimed itself at him, Marc opened his mouth to call for assistance but discovered his throat and lips were too dry to utter anything but a hoarse croak. But it was enough to bring the intruder up short. He halted in midstride, peered haplessly into the shadow above Marc’s bed, and decided to bolt.

He didn’t get far. Up from a straw pallet where he had been stationed rose Davey MacKay, and, with a low growl that would have made his Highland ancestors proud, he set off after the fleeing figure. A clattering tackle was made at the open entranceway, knocking the wind and all resistance out of him. Marc could hear the ensuing commotion of raised voices, male and female-shrill, accusing, abusive in both languages-but could make little sense of any of it.

A few minutes later one of the aides slipped up to Marc’s bed and whispered urgently in his ear, in French. “They have arrested my brother, Gilles. They say he tried to kill you with a knife last week. That is not true. He came in tonight only to steal, to buy food for his babes. But it was not I who left the latch undone. I swear, m’sieur. The big nurse, she’s dismissed me. Now we have nothing.”

Marc reached over the edge of the bed and under the mattress. He drew out three silver coins and dropped them into the girl’s hand. “That’s all I can do. I’m truly sorry.”

The girl thanked him tearfully and vanished, though she had no inkling of what had prompted the English officer to such generosity.

It was the middle of January when Dr. Jonas Wilder deemed Lieutenant Marc Edwards fit enough to travel by coach to Toronto. Winter had set in with a will. Only the most rapid-ridden sections of the St. Lawrence remained unfrozen; every other creek and stream had been sealed tight. Three feet of snow fell and accumulated in the bush. The unreliable autumn roads were now snow-packed, icy smooth, and conducive to swift transport. Complicating matters, however, was the general lawlessness of the rural and less-populated areas of both provinces, as reprisal and counterreprisal continued apace, exacerbated by threats of invasion-from Vermont by land, and across the St. Lawrence and Niagara Rivers. While Wolfred Nelson was now in jail and Louis Joseph Papineau sulked in Albany like Achilles in his tent, Robert Nelson and other rebel leaders like Gagnon and Coté were gathering support on the lower Richelieu.

Then, on December 29, Colonel MacNab, asserting his authority in the face of the still-dithering and about-to-be-recalled Governor Head, had ordered a bold nighttime attack on an American ship, the Caroline, which had been assisting Mackenzie from Navy Island, a small redoubt in the Niagara River. The ship was boarded, taken over, set on fire, and put adrift towards the falls. A U.S. citizen had died during the boarding, and several others had been injured. The resulting furore had brought the jingoists out in full, frothing panoply. The Hunters’ Lodges, American-based groups conspiring to invade Canada, expanded tenfold. Sabres were rattled. And everywhere along the thousand-mile border, fear, tension, and paranoia had begun to replace common sense and past precedent. So it was that the highway that hugged the shoreline of the St. Lawrence and Lake Ontario from Cornwall to Toronto was no longer a sure or safe road to travel.

Just after New Year’s, and about ten days after the thief and would-be murderer had been manacled and imprisoned (habeas corpus having been suspended and martial law declared), Marc had been carried on a litter up to the barracks of the Royal Regiment and installed in the officers’ quarters. Davey MacKay came along and remained. Marc heard from Beth often, though her letters did not always arrive in sequence, and he dutifully kept her informed of his daily progress. (“The limp, my darling, is slight, and the pleasure-the pure joy-of walking again, however unsteadily, is more than I could have hoped for when I first awoke in the noisome darkness of that hospital room.”) Beth had heard back from Dora Cobb, with a brief narrative of her husband’s “military adventure” appended, and while Dora and Mister Cobb had learned joyfully of Marc’s recovery, they had no knowledge of anything or anyone at Crawford’s Corners. Some of the rebels, certainly Samuel Lount and Peter Matthews, were about to be put on trial, charged with treason. And the capital was naturally a tense and divided town. Finally, Dora had suggested that their home would be open to Marc if he needed a quiet place to convalesce.