Don Gutteridge - Turncoat

Marc dropped the leather pouch he had taken from the Yankees’ saddlebag onto Durfee’s rolltop desk. Then he gave the innkeeper the same abbreviated and carefully edited version of his encounter with Connors and O’Hurley he had given Hatch.

“I’m surprised to hear that,” Durfee said, letting his breath whistle through the pair of wooden teeth on the left side of his jaw to emphasize his point. “Them two’ve been sidlin’ about the province for several years now, and they’re like most Yankee peddlers we get here-quick with the lip and about as trustworthy as a bull in a field of heifers. But they’ve never been known to do violence to anyone: all bluster and no delivery.”

“I kept their saddlebag as security,” Marc said. “As an agent of the Crown, I’d like you to witness my opening it, and then keep it in your safe until I can deliver it personally to Government House or the sheriff of York. I’m going to write up a description of the two renegades and have you send it off to Toronto tomorrow.”

“I’ll put it on the special courier comin’ out of Cobourg at noon,” Durfee said, and he stood beside Marc while he unbuckled the pouch and shook its contents onto the desktop. A wad of papers secured by a lady’s pink garter fell out.

“A souvenir of the peddlin’ wars,” Durfee said dryly, giving the garter a playful snap. “But this ain’t the profits from tinkerin’,” he added.

“It’s money of some sort,” Marc said.

“American banknotes,” Durfee said, riffling the two-inch wad.

“They look brand-new.”

“They are new. Hundred dollar notes of the Second Bank of the United States.”

Marc nodded to Durfee to place the confiscated money and the pouch in the safe.

“Guns or grog, I’d say,” Durfee said as he gave the dial a spin.

“I’ll let the sheriff know about it,” Marc said. “I’ve done all I can for now.”

“That you have,” Durfee said, but his watchful eye suggested otherwise. “Now you best be trottin’ across to the miller’s. The handsome Miss Hatch don’t like to be kept waitin’.”

As Winnifred Hatch poured her guest his second cup of tea, she watched the hot liquid flow into the china cup as if it might, unfettered from her strict supervision, dash off towards some other cup. The tea settled obediently where it was directed. Miss Hatch had, of course, asked the table if it would prefer another round-“You’ll have another cup, then?”-but it was only nominally a question.

Thomas Goodall-the angular young man who, Marc learned, assisted in the milling during the season and managed the modest farm as a sharecropper-swallowed his second cup in two gulps and said, “Well, I’ll be off, then. Got three cows to milk.”

The chatelaine of the house stopped the progress of her own teacup several inches below her thin, unrouged lip.

“If you please, ma’am.” Thomas dropped his eyes and slid noisily off his chair.

“For God’s sake, man, go to your cows.” Hatch laughed. “They’ll be popping their udders.”

Mary Huggan, the Irish serving girl who had, in the strange custom of the country, joined them after her initial duties, giggled into her apron, then sneezed to compound her embarrassment.

“As you can see, Ensign Edwards, we don’t often have ladies or gentlemen in to dine,” Winnifred said.

“One lady in the house is more than enough,” Hatch said with a grin.

“That was as fine a meal as I’ve had since I arrived in York,” Marc said.

Winnifred Hatch accepted the compliment with a curt but not ungracious nod. Either she had not bothered to change her clothes following her return from the quilting bee near Port Hope, or she always dressed in a manner designed to display her widely acknowledged handsomeness. Her magenta blouse, of silk or some such frilly fluff, hugged her tall, Tudor neck almost to the chin, flaring downward around long and elegant arms and outward to suggest subtly the curving of a robust bosom. Her purple, fluted skirt was pleasingly cinched at the waist by a lavender sash that might have seemed overly bold, tartish even, were it not for her regal bearing.

“And just how long have you been with us?” she said in a voice that a Milanese contralto might have envied.

“About eight months,” Marc said. “I arrived at Fort York last May.”

“And you have been discovering some of our quainter customs, I trust?”

The miller’s eyes were dancing delightedly at this turn in the conversation. His daughter, meantime, let her considerable gaze linger on their guest, expecting, it appeared, something more than a polite reply but giving no intimation on which side of the question she herself was situated.

Marc smiled in what he took to be his most winning manner (the one that had such a volcanic effect on the female gentry of Toronto) and said, “I am a soldier, ma’am. A man of action. We have little time to concern ourselves overly much with the manners and deportment of His Majesty’s subjects, scattered as they be over the whole of the globe.”

Hatch chortled, but he was brought up short by a glance from his daughter. The quickened anger in her reproof, followed immediately by a softening look that bespoke daughterly indulgence and forbearance, roused in Marc another sort of quickening. An image of the handsome Winnifred-her burnished mahogany hair loosed from its coiled bun, her Spode-white flesh gleaming in the moonlight-popped lasciviously into his head and made him feel foolish and abashed.

“We are doubtless a source of constant chagrin-and some sport, I suspect-for those raised within calling distance of the Throne.”

“I was raised in the countryside,” Marc said, as evenly as he could manage.

“Is that a boast or a whinge?” The onset of a smile trembled on her upper lip, and stilled.

“I have found much to delight me in Canada and little that has been discomfiting.”

“Well said, lad.” Hatch laughed. “Now let’s go in to the fire and have a wee toddy so Mary can clean up the mess we’ve made.”

Marc was only moderately surprised when, several minutes later, Winnifred joined them in the parlour, taking her place in one of the leather chairs arrayed around the blazing hearth. And he tried not to look too “discomfited” when she drew a clay pipe from under her shawl and clamped it like a sailor between her flawless white teeth. He recovered sufficiently to realize that she was waiting, ladylike, for him to reach across with his lit tinder and assist her in igniting the plug she had just tamped down. The look she gave him as he did so was inscrutable, though mockery, raillery, and mischievous glee all came to mind.

As Marc removed the warming pan from under the quilts on his bed and slipped on his nightshirt, he tried to stave off exhaustion long enough to reflect on what had been accomplished in the thirty hours or so since his departure from Government House and Toronto. While congratulating himself on having so expeditiously and discreetly confirmed the existence of a crime only suspected by Sir John, and having set in train at Durfee’s the means of dealing with the peddlers, he tried not to think of Commander-in-Chief Colborne preparing for what would surely be an armed insurrection in Quebec before the year was out, leaving behind his favoured ensign. However, a speedy and successful resolution of the matter at hand would, if the world were just, guarantee his promotion and, more important, a place somewhere in the thick of the coming battle. This cheering thought was interrupted by the more mundane recollection that he had brought with him only two changes of linen and one additional blouse. A speedy resolution might well be a necessity.

More happily, the mattress was a feather tick and the quilts thick and soft. Erastus Hatch, who seemed to have enjoyed every aspect of Marc’s company, had given him the best bedroom, the one he himself had used when his wife was still alive. The miller now slept in a smaller room at the front of the house next to the dining area. Some time earlier, Marc had heard the two women, mistress of the manor and scullery maid, enter the room across the hallway from his, chatting in low but amiable voices. He found this amusing to recall, but before he could summon a smile, he was asleep.