Don Gutteridge - Dubious Allegiance

Perhaps I was never meant to burn down houses, Marc thought.

“After they put Pierre into the ground, I went up to Sorel. I heard the stories of the hero of St. Denis. I found out who he was.”

“And you came, on your own, to Montreal? To find him and-?”

She looked over at Marc as if to say there was nothing unusual or surprising about what she had set out to do. “It was easy to get a job as an aide at the hospital. They paid us almost nothing, because we were French. At first they didn’t think you would live. Then you woke up. I tried to keep out of your sight until-”

“Until you got your chance. Then one night while I was still helpless, you tried to drive a bayonet through my chest.”

She looked at him again, but there was no hatred in her eyes now, just bewilderment, as if she had been living a nightmare and unexpectedly been awakened from it.

“Yes, but it was dark, and I was very afraid. The knife stuck in the wood. I couldn’t get it out right away. When I did, I dropped it and then just turned and ran. I never came back. I told the big nurse I was sick. After a couple of days she sent me away, without my pay.”

“And you need to tell me all this now.”

“What does it matter? My life is over. What was left after Pierre died is now gone.” She gave him a look that was half pleading and half rueful. “You should’ve left me to freeze.”

“But how did you get all the way to Toronto, all these weeks later? You could not have been the one who shot at me near the river at Cornwall.”

“I went back home. I took my dowry, and I came back to Montreal. My parents begged me not to go. The priest railed against me. Pierre’s mama got down on her knees. But I had no life except to kill the one who killed my lover, then join him.”

“In purgatory?”

“In Hell,” she hissed, and the effort caused her to slump back against the embroidered pillows. Marc held the mug for her, and she drank.

“So you got a pistol?”

“No. I hooked up with a group of patriotes from Lachine. After that awful day up at St. Eustache, that was their only way of fighting back. We knew all about you. When you left the city, we were right behind you.”

“So it was they who set up the barricade, hoping I might wander a few steps too far from safety?”

“And you did, didn’t you? But it was snowing. The men were afraid of that officer in the fancy uniform. When the first shot missed, they ran straight back to the river.”

“But you didn’t.” It wasn’t a question.

“They would not go farther into English territory. I thanked them and went on alone.”

“But you are a woman and French-speaking. How could you survive and keep track of my movements?”

“I had money. And in the back concessions along the big river all the way to Gananoque, there are many French farms and woodlots. We have no difficulty recognizing one another.”

“But how could you explain being there on your own, an unmarried young woman?”

“I gave a story about cousins in Belle Rivière.”

“But you had no idea where I’d be.”

“I kept ahead-walking, hiring rides, keeping away from the main road. I got to Prescott, found a Quebec family about half a mile away from the inn, and waited. When the coach came, I hid in the woods behind and watched for you. I saw you in the room on the end. I borrowed a knife from the people who put me up, and after dark I climbed up there-I used to walk the ridgepole on our barn when I was twelve-and I went in and killed you.”

“And immediately killed yourself.”

She was not certain how she should take this remark. “When I thought you were dead, I did not feel as I expected to.”

“Elated, you mean. Fulfilled. Righteous.”

“No, I felt hollow inside. Sad. Ashamed. I’d spent half my dowry, and I was alone among strangers.”

“You must have seen me alive afterwards?”

“Not really. I went back to the place where I’d been staying. I had to return the knife. They were very poor. One of the boys there delivered meat to the hotel kitchen. He came home that afternoon to tell us a soldier had been shot behind the inn. ‘You mean stabbed,’ I said. ‘No,’ he said, ‘shot with a pistol. An older fellow in the Glengarry militia.’ ‘You mean the army lieutenant,’ I said. ‘Oh, no,” he said, ‘that fellow wasn’t in his tunic, but he was alive and helping the doctor with the body.’”

“But if you felt so badly after you thought you’d killed me, why did you continue to follow me?”

She looked up at him as if he might be the one to answer that bewildering question. “I don’t know. I knew I had no more heart to kill. But I couldn’t go home, could I? And I felt connected to you somehow. But I did promise myself that if I saw you come home here and be happy, with-”

“With my own beloved?”

“Yes,” she whispered. “I thought then the courage to avenge Pierre might come back to me.”

“When did you get here?”

“Yesterday. But I only had a little money left. I suddenly realized I had nowhere to go and nothing to go back to. I was feeling sick, a deep pain in my stomach. I’d forgotten to eat for two days. I took a room for the night in some shanty on the edge of town. But I went out in the cold yesterday afternoon, and I waited by the road to the fort. You didn’t come with the other two soldiers. I walked back into town. I saw you go into this house with the lady who looked after me earlier.”

“Where you are safe.”

She began to weep again, the soft, persistent, purgative weeping of women everywhere.

“You followed me from here this morning?”

“Yes. I saw you looking up at that empty apartment, and I thought ‘Your woman is dead or gone.’ I tried to be glad.”

“Then you must have seen that fellow try to kill me in the alley?”

“I saw him turn in there waving a big club. A policeman was passing by the end of the lane. I went up to him and motioned for him to go into the alley. Then I left, and ran.”

Cobb had not informed Marc of this interesting coincidence.

“You ran all the way out of the city?” he asked.

“Yes. Into the lovely, soft snow. I had nothing left now. Not even my hating.”

“We seem to have saved each other today,” Marc said.

Isabelle LaCroix gathered what little strength she had left, and said, “I heard the landlady tell her maid the reason for the pain in my belly-they didn’t know I understand a little English.”

“You’re with child?”

She looked down, more in resignation than embarrassment.

“Then you must live. You must go home to your own kind. I will give you enough money to travel back to St. Denis, comfortably. You may repay me, if you feel you must, when you get rich someday.”

She did not cry. For the moment she had no more tears. “But why are you doing this for someone who tried to kill you?”

Marc took her hand. “Because I killed your beloved,” he said.

Marc dressed carefully in the solitude of his room, avoiding the mirror. He left money and instructions with Mrs. Standish for the care of Isabelle LaCroix, who was still sleeping in the widow’s premier bedchamber. Then he walked out into the cold Saturday sunshine as if this were just any other winter’s day in the province. Cobb must have been lying in wait for him, for Marc had just passed Simcoe Street, going east along the south side of King, when he heard the familiar and confident stride of the constable coming up behind him.

“I wasn’t sure you’d want to come this mornin’, Major,” he said, without comment on Marc’s attire.

“I wasn’t sure myself.”

“You must’ve seen plenty of these things in London in yer day.”