Don Gutteridge - Turncoat

Marc flinched when he saw Stebbins attack the cork with his jackknife. “There,” he said, “all ready for the back of the throat. Be my guest.”

Marc had no choice but to hoist the vintage red and let it slide its way, bits of cork still abob, over his tongue and down his astonished throat.

Stebbins then did the same, but continued gulping until the dregs arrived, prompting him to spit furiously. “Jesus, but that’s good stuff. A man could do worse’n get pissed on that.”

“I haven’t tasted anything that good, even in the officers’ mess,” Marc said, dabbing his lips with a handkerchief, a move that set Stebbins grinning again.

“It ain’t available to members of the Family Compact.”

“Could an ordinary soldier lay his hands on any of it?”

“You can get almost anythin’ fer a price,” Stebbins said.

“What else have I got to waste my money on?”

“Well now, if I did know where to find such ambrosia, I’d be sure and tell an ordinary officer like yerself.”

“You didn’t buy this, then?” Marc forced himself to look suitably crestfallen.

“’Twas a gift, from a friend of a friend. For services rendered.”

“Ahh … that’s unfortunate.”

“And we don’t tell tales on our friends, do we?” With this caveat Stebbins turned and ambled placidly out of the barn. Perhaps he did not realize how much he had just given away to his interrogator: the confirmation of a direct link to smugglers and a more oblique one to Jesse Smallman and his father.

Buoyed by this thought, Marc was caught off guard when he reached for his horse’s reins and Stebbins said heartily, “Where’n hell do ya think you’re goin’? Don’t ya wanta stay fer supper and meet the missus?”

Marc was most pleased to say yes.

Marc put his horse in an empty stall beside Stebbins’s mare, removed its saddle, gave it a perfunctory rubdown, and threw a blanket over it. “Sorry, old chum, but that’s the best I can do.” He chipped the ice off the water bucket in the stall, noted the hay in the corner, and went off to meet the notorious child bride from Buffalo.

Lydia Stebbins was attired in a woollen housedress that hung loosely on her, laceless boots, and a maid’s bonnet askew on her brow. She stood before several steaming kettles and pots over a balky fire-ladling what appeared to be stew, intermittently stabbing at the fire logs with a twisted poker, and wiping the sooty sweat from her face like the beleaguered heroine in a melodrama. None of this blurred or diminished her beauty. A two-year-old clung shyly to her dress and stared up at Marc; a crib by the fire held her youngest child.

“Good gracious, Azel, you didn’t tell me we was expectin’ company,” she cried, and she swept the back of a hand across her forehead.

“You got enough stew there fer a herd of longhorns,” Stebbins said, shucking his clothes in sundry directions. “Put on a couple of extry dumplin’s and set a plate fer Ensign Edwards. Then hie yer pretty little rump over here and shake his hand, like a proper lady.”

A proper lady she might have made in other circumstances. Her hair was as black and shiny as ebony and fell in generous, wayward curls over her neck and shoulders and partway down her back. Her face was perfectly heart-shaped, her skin the milk-white hue of the Irish along the windy coasts of Kerry or Donegal. Her eyes were deep pools many a homesick sailor would happily have drowned in. The figure complementing them could only be guessed at, but as she gave her husband a warning glance and moved across the room towards Marc, a dancer’s grace and innate control intimated a slim waist and lissome limbs.

“Pleased ta meet ya.” When she smiled, her teeth were even, flawless. “You just call me Lydia like everybody else ’round here.”

“And I’m Marc,” he said, taking her hand and drawing it up towards his lips.

“Jesus!” she yelped. “He’s gonna kiss it!”

“That’s what they do to ladies over in England,” Stebbins said scornfully.

Marc pressed his lips to the back of her hand. Lydia giggled but did not pull away. “You all done?”

“That’s all there is to it, girl.” Her husband laughed. He was over at the fire now and sniffing at the stew.

“Christ, I been kissed better by a pet calf,” she said, her eyes dancing.

The stew was surprisingly tasty and the dumplings even better. Mr. and Mrs. Stebbins were on their best behaviour, though Marc expected that the elaborate politeness of their “Mrs. Stebbins, would you kindly pass the bread?” and “Certainly, Mr. Stebbins, but not before our guest’s been served” was a parody for his amusement or discomfiture-he was not certain which. In light of their performance, and the indignities of yesterday’s encounters, Marc began to doubt the possibility of creating in Upper Canada an alternative society to the rabid and reckless democracy south of it-a New World country where decorum, reverence for the law, and respect for one’s betters would be the accepted norms. It certainly seemed to be a moot question at best.

While Lydia washed the plates and spoons in a kettle at the fire, Stebbins and Marc sat at the deal table and drank several mugs of coffee tempered with dollops of Jamaican rum. Lydia began to sing, occasionally swivelling around to face them and catching Marc’s eye. Her cheeks were scarlet from the heat; tiny pendants of sweat beaded her forehead and trickled down into the hollow of her throat.

“I gotta stay sober tonight,” Stebbins said to Marc. Then he lowered his voice to a whisper, and added, “Gotta big meetin’ to attend.” He laughed out loud, apparently disturbing the baby in the crib. The two-year-old had fallen asleep halfway through his meal and had been tucked into bed in the loft above. Lydia went to the crying infant, clucked over it for a few seconds, then began to rock the cradle with one delicate, booted foot.

“Time for me to vamoose,” Stebbins said, and he seemed to shush himself by holding two fingers to his lips.

Marc rose and said quietly, “I’ll ride as far as the highway with you.”

Stebbins hesitated. “Okay by me. You’ve been damn good company so far.”

Marc bowed to Lydia (he thought he detected an amused exchange of glances between man and wife), and then the two men tiptoed out.

“Not so hard, ya little nipper,” he heard Lydia say as the door closed behind them.

Side by side they saddled their horses in the glow of a single lantern. The sky was clear, but the moon had not yet risen. It was a dark winter’s evening they would be riding into, along the tree-shrouded lanes they dignified here with the name of “road.”

“My God,” Marc said suddenly.

“What is it?”

“The horse has thrown a shoe.”

“It couldn’t have. You rode it in here okay.”

“Of course I did. The shoe has to be somewhere around here.”

The two men made what both knew would be a fruitless search through the straw inside and the drifts outside. No shoe was found.

“Well, you can walk him back to the mill without doin’ any harm,” Stebbins said cheerfully. “Shouldn’t take you an hour.”

Marc was already leading the animal into the stable yard.

“Hey, he’s limpin’ a bit,” Stebbins said.

Marc swore, then bent down to examine the animal’s right front hoof. “He’s picked up a nail or something already. I’ll have to dig it out and then walk him home very slowly.”

Stebbins found a pair of pliers and handed Marc his jackknife. “Worst comes to worst, you could walk him across to McMaster,” he said. “Fancies himself a bit of a horse doctor, he does. Right now I gotta go. Got friends countin’ on me.”

Marc, angry and suspicious, decided on a single, direct gambit. “Where are you off to?”