Don Gutteridge - Dubious Allegiance

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 pounds 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.