Don Gutteridge - Vital Secrets

“He’s gone.”

“Gone?”

“When he didn’t come in for breakfast, I went to his room, and he wasn’t there. His bed hadn’t been slept in. He’s packed up all his belongings and vanished in the middle of the night!”

Marc was not surprised, but could not say so to Aunt Catherine. At least her deep anxiety confirmed for Marc that she herself had not been involved.

“What’ll I do, Marc? I’m beside myself. I feel responsible for the boy.”

“First of all, he’s a young man, not a child. And, secondly, I have some reason to believe that he may have been mixed up in some dubious, possibly illegal, political activities.”

“Oh, no, he couldn’t be!” she protested, but he could see her conviction on this point was not strong.

“I’m positive he’s safely over the border by now, Auntie. Most likely he’ll write and let you know within the week.”

“He’s in no danger, then?”

“None that I know of, at least not imminently. I suspect he’s fled more out of prudence than alarm.”

“Oh, Marc, I’m so relieved.”

Not as much as I am, Marc thought.

“I do hope this doesn’t upset our plans for the wedding.”

Marc gave her a peck on the cheek. “Nothing can upset those plans.”

Two hours after the Michigan had departed, Magistrate Thorpe and the police had taken note of Mrs. Thedford’s unexpected confession, discussed the case with Marc, and sent Wilkie off to find the candlestick sewn into the mattress where she had said it would be. A writ for the formal release of Ensign Roderick Hilliard was issued, and Marc having declined the privilege, Cobb begged to be the one to serve it on the governor’s staff-hopefully in the presence of Lieutenant Barclay Spooner.

“I figured you’d be dyin’ to waltz in there an’ strut out with Hilliard on your arm,” Cobb said as he and Marc headed west on King Street towards Government House.

“I did, too. But suddenly I found it didn’t matter. Don’t mistake me, I’m delighted Rick is being freed. He’s gone through hell. But he also helped put himself there.”

“That blond thing, ya mean?”

“Yes. And I suppose you ought to give this billet-doux from Tessa to him, though I considered tossing it in the lake.” He gave Cobb a pink, perfumed envelope.

Cobb accepted it with two fingers, sniffed it in disgust, and dropped it into the maw of his overcoat. “You gonna walk all the way back to the garrison?”

“Yes, I am. I’ve got a mountain of thinking to do.” They were nearly at Simcoe Street. “I want to thank you, Cobb. I couldn’t have survived the past three days without you.”

“I’m awful sorry about the lady. I know you liked her a lot.”

“You’re very observant.”

“Maybe so. But I never once thought she could be a murderer.”

Marc did have much to think about as he left the city and walked pensively along the road that wound its way towards Fort York. He had a life-history to rewrite in his dreams and in those waking moments when the hours of the days could not be numbed by action. The simple, honest couple, whose deaths he had mourned and whose lives he had honoured as only an orphaned child can, were now something less than father and mother. The yeoman’s blood he had felt sturdying his veins was diluted blue-blood after all: he was an Edwards and a Hargreave with a birth-father he might never set eyes upon, with faceless cousins somewhere sharing his genes but not his life. He was also a bastard, conceived-in society’s pitiless eye-in sin and born irredeemably out of wedlock.

But he had a mother who had delivered him gladly into her world, fought for his freedom and her own, had been abominably used and declared dead, before resurrecting herself alone in a brave new land. Yet the man she had every reason to hate was the man he himself loved more than any other. True, Uncle Jabez had not abandoned him outright, but until his adoptive parents died unexpectedly, he had been content to watch him grow up as another’s son. Could such behaviour be forgiven? Could it outweigh the happy years he had spent, after the age of five, as the “lord” of the estate, coddled and fussed over and supported through life until he became a man? He did not know.

And there were other matters pressing in upon and disturbing the conscience of the man he had supposed himself to be. He was still wearing the Queen’s colours and he had not yet heard himself recanting his oath of allegiance. But in the space of a few hours he had contrived to let a killer escape to safety in the United States, had lied to a fellow officer when asked if he could identify any of the would-be insurgents out there in the bush, and had failed to inform his superiors about a young man acting as the messenger between the rebels and the gun-runners. He was also deliberately avoiding the governor’s aide-de-camp and his attempts to debrief the man who knew the most about the whole sordid business.

What was most surprising to him, however, given the number of times he had tumbled these quandaries in the cauldron of his mind, was that he seemed to be caring less and less that there were no answers, no pat resolution, no reconciliation of any kind. What he invariably ended up with, regardless of any particular configuration of the problem, was a single-word conclusion: Beth. Of course she did not provide an unambiguous answer to any of these ethical dilemmas: she merely rendered the questions irrelevant.

By the time he walked through the gates and aimed himself at the officers’ quarters, he could think only that he had survived the past three days. He was alive and Beth was alive. In nine days they would be married. Then, perhaps, like his more famous Roman namesake, he would be able to stand up and shout, “This is my space, kingdoms are clay!”

Corporal Bregman hailed him. “Welcome back, sir. You’ve come just in time.”

“In time for what?”

“I’m not sure, sir, but Colonel Margison has called a meeting of all his officers for three o’clock And he asked me specifically to have you go to him the minute you arrived back.”

“Thank you, Corporal,” Marc sighed. It was conceivable that Spooner had sent someone out here looking for him, armed with a list of complaints about his behaviour and deportment as an officer. It was the last thing he wished to talk about, but he had no choice.

Major Jenkin was standing beside the colonel when Marc entered the office, both looking grave. He steeled himself for a serious dressing-down.

“I’ll come right to the point, Lieutenant,” Colonel Margison said. “I’ll be informing the other officers in fifteen minutes but, as you have made plans of a personal nature for next week, the major here and I thought it would be kinder to tell you now-as friends as well as fellow officers.”

“Tell me what, sir?”

“Governor Head has ordered every regular soldier, officers and men alike, out of the province and into Quebec. Insurrection there is imminent.”

“But that’s suicidal! We’ve got a countryside full of rebels right here!”

“It seems that Sir Francis considers himself invulnerable.”

“Our orders are to leave immediately,” Jenkin said. “This afternoon.”

“But I have a wedding to-”

“It’ll have to be postponed, I’m afraid,” the colonel said. “You’ll have time to write Beth before we embark at five o’clock for Kingston,” Jenkin said. “Our company is to be the advance unit. You can drop it off at Cobourg when we stop for supplies.”

This is it, Marc thought, incredulous. What I have wished for since my first day at Sandhurst: to stride into battle to preserve the honour and integrity of crown and country. And Beth, bless her, had given him leave to do his duty.