by James Philip
In point of fact although Alex was aware that his muscles had wasted somewhat, the regime at Crailo had undoubtedly cleaned out his system and allowed his old, and newer wounds and injuries alike to perfectly knit back together.
It was just a pity they were going to hang him by the neck until dead sometime in the next month or two…
He was gazing at Leonora Coolidge.
“I reckon I have a lot to thank you for, Ma’am,” he declared. “I’d say I’d pay you back one day but the way things are shaping that would be another promise I’d made to a lady that I didn’t keep.”
“You don’t owe me anything, Mister Fielding,” she replied huskily.
“If we can get started,” John Murray complained, irritated by the suspicion that his presence in the room was entirely superfluous.
By then the musky presence of Leonora Coolidge was threatening to reduce Alex Fielding to jabbering imbecility. The last thing he wanted to talk about was how he was royally screwed for crimes he had not committed; not when she was so near…
“Your brother, Abraham, has agreed to hand himself in to the authorities in Canada so that he can return to Albany to corroborate your statements to the police, Mister Fielding.”
Alex Fielding blinked.
Did he just say what I thought he said?
The former fighter ace was suddenly stone cold sober, icily composed the way he was in the cockpit when something had just gone wrong or he had a Spanish tri-plane in his gunsight.
John Murray explained: “He has told the Colonial Security Service that you and he discussed flying down to Jamaica Field the week before Empire Day. On the afternoon prior to Empire Day last year he confirms that a Bristol aircraft matching the description of your aircraft – the one in which you and Miss Coolidge crashed into the sea in – ‘beat up’ Leppe Island on the Mohawk River. His recollection is that the two aircraft accompanying you did not participate in this ‘beating up’ exercise. Further to this, Abraham indicates that to the best of his knowledge neither you or your brother, William had had any contact with your father in the six months prior to the Empire Day attacks. He also states that the students from your father’s class at Long Island College who regularly visited and met at your father’s family home in Gravesend, never ‘came around’ when your father expected either you or your brother, William, to visit or to be in the vicinity. At the time, that is in the year leading up to Empire Day, 1976, Abraham, other than occasionally exchanging civilities with his father’s ‘students’, generally made himself scarce when the house was ‘taken over’ by his father’s ‘followers’. Although, Abraham was unaware that anything involving law-breaking, or violence, was being contemplated by your father and his ‘disciples’, he was uncomfortable around the group and this further estranged him from your father. He reports feeling guilty not having confided in you, either in respect of the ‘house meetings’ in Gravesend, or in his plan to marry the Mohawk woman, Tekonwenaharake, whom he has since married under tribal and Ontarian colonial, that is Christian, rites, by whom he has now fathered a son.”
By that juncture Alexander Fielding was a little afraid his lower jaw was resting on the top of the table between him and his visitors. He could have been drooling out of both sides of his mouth and not noticed it right then.
“Helpfully,” the veteran King’s Counsel continued, “your younger brother reports having diarised his life in recent years and to have recorded many of the matters he has subsequently reported timeously, or at least, contemporaneously – as they happened – which will be of great help to the authorities.”
“Abe always was a scribbler,” Alex muttered, feeling a little pole-axed.
“I shall be moving that all charges against you be dismissed! John Murray concluded, oblivious to his client’s bewilderment.
“Kate and Abe tied the knot?” Alex blurted.
“Yes. I thought I made that abundantly clear, Mister Fielding?”
“Yeah, sorry. It’s a lot to take in…” Alex glanced to Leonora whose smile scattered his wits anew. “This is where I ask somebody to stick a needle in me to see if I’m dreaming,” he confessed. “Don’t they still have the whole thing about how I almost crashed into HMS Lion on me?”
“Miss Coolidge’s testimony is unequivocal,” the former Chief Magistrate asserted with appropriately magisterial certitude. “You put your own life, and that of Miss Coolidge, at immense peril in attempting to defend the Fleet and the person of Their Majesties, the King and Queen. That you have been treated so disgracefully is a manifest miscarriage of justice.”
Alex’s head started to clear.
“Hang on, what’s going to happen to Abe?”
“If he accepts a period of indentured service concomitant with his obligations in respect of his many years of medical training at the expense of the twin colony of New York, the slate will be wiped clean.”
“What about Kate?”
John Murray shrugged dismissively, not seeing the problem.
“Mixed marriage is incompatible with a professional career in the Crown Colony of New York as it is elsewhere in the First Thirteen. If your brother elects to continue to live as the common law husband of his little squaw then I doubt, very much, if the authorities will allow him to practice medicine anywhere in the East. In that event his case would be passed to the Office of the Colonial Armed Services and he could expect to be posted,” another shrug, “anywhere, I presume.”
‘Squaw’ had got Alex half out of his chair.
John Murray saw the rage in his eyes.
“Forgive me. I am so accustomed to employing legally specific descriptions that I sometimes give unintended offence, Mister Fielding. I meant nothing by it. I am sure that your brother’s spouse is a most worthy and respectable citizen of our Commonwealth.”
There was an awkward silence.
“What happens next, Lord Dunmore?” Leonora asked quietly.
“Abraham Lincoln Fielding’s evidence will have to be read into the court record and he will be subjected to cross-examination by the Crown. Pragmatically speaking, it is too late to establish, er, Alexander’s innocence before the scheduled first hearing on Tuesday next. The wheels of justice move interminably slow, especially as we are on the cusp of another of these infernal public holidays this weekend.”
The World War of 1857-65 had ended on different continents and oceans on a slew of dates throughout the second half of 1865. VE-Day – Victory in Europe Day – celebrated the date the Armistice between Britain and her allies and her enemies had come into effect in France and Germany. After Empire Day, no other date in the calendar had greater meaning for the peoples of the lands where the Union Flag flew.
“What about Bill and my father?” Alex asked.
“William worked on several of the power boats which participated in the attack on the 5th Battle Squadron,” the former Chief Magistrate remarked, turning didactically intent. “He was on board at least one of the vessels which attacked HMS Princess Royal during its ‘proving runs’ less than a fortnight before the attack. The CSS and the Crown Prosecution Service believe that this exercise was nothing short of a practice run for the real thing. Coincidentally, at least two fellow members of his former congregation in Paumanok County died attacking the Princess Royal. Unfortunately for him, your brother has a history of participating in theocratically motivated protests, harassing Colonial legislators – and their family members including children – who oppose the aims of the separate development movement and he appears to have told investigators a litany of lies, presumably to protect others as yet unidentified who may be implicated in this affair. Then, of course, there is the unassailable fact that it was your brother who asked you to take Rufus McIntyre and Paul Hopkins; the former a well-known Getrennte Entwicklung zealot with a long history of petty criminality who at the time of his death was being pursued in at least two colonies on account of his gambling debts, and the latter, a dilletante good for nothing associate of McIntyre’s who ha
d recently been disinherited by his family after it was learned he was on the run from the police in Massachusetts for sexually assaulting a minor, under, as it were, your wing. Neither man is the associate of a law-abiding, respectable citizen.”
John Murray paused before concluding.
“Thus, your younger brother must make the most of his day in court. I shall do what I can but the prognosis is gloomy, as of course, it is for your father.”
Chapter 23
Thursday 27th July
Kempton, Ontario
Abe had gone over to White Bear Lake to say goodbye to the other pilots and to ‘properly sign over’ his papers and flying accreditation to Frank Derbyshire. The two Mounties had turned up in a Land Rover while Kate was packing clothes for the journey.
“You’re early,” Kate explained, going out to meet them in front of the cabin. “My husband has business to attend to. He’ll be back by three o’clock like we agreed.”
The two Royal Canadian Mounted Policemen were big men, one of whom, the older probably had native blood in his veins. He tipped his hat, smiled wanly.
“That’s okay, Ma’am. We ain’t in no hurry.”
The Land Rover’s arrival was already causing a crowd to gather; mostly the other wives and their toddlers, their teenagers were still at school and the elders had determined not to be associated with what they deemed an unwarranted interference in tribal business. Whether Abe and Kate were going willingly or not was beside the issue to them; this was native land and the Mounties were disrespecting the ancestors by trespassing on it.
Last night Abe had gone to the elders and explained that he must return to Albany, that for him it was a matter of family honour.
Kate sized up the Mounties.
They seemed like regular guys.
“I made coffee,” she told them. “Not the real stuff. Roots and berries but it’s wet. We need to drink it all before we leave.”
Soon her visitors were sitting at the cabin’s rickety table.
“This is a snug place,” the older policeman said. “Reminds me of when I was young…”
“That’s a heck of a long time ago, Sam,” his partner, who could not have been any older than Kate chuckled. He frowned uncomfortably. “The way we hear it the people down below the border might not let you come back, Ma’am?”
Kate placed tin mugs on the table, poured from the pot.
“We have lived like real people the last year,” she said phlegmatically, as if this said everything.
Kate had not met many Mounties, policemen, in Ontario but those she had encountered were all as polite as each other. That was a fine thing; why could it not be the same on the other side of the St Lawrence River?
“One day we will be able to live this way again.” She sighed. “I hope.”
“You don’t have to go with Mister Fielding,” Sam, the older man murmured.
“I am spouse. I am my husband’s woman. Why would I not go with him?”
“Beats me,” the Mountie conceded. “But every year that passes it seems to me that it gets to be a whole different country down there.”
Kate was not convinced.
“Not everybody in the country south of the great river thinks separate development is a good idea.”
Isaac junior squalled for attention and Kate went outside to rock him back to sleep. She planned to hold off feeding him until they left Kempton, not because she thought it would quieten him simply because it was always good to have a plan.
Kahntineta approached.
The women hugged.
“The clan loses a new daughter and a new baby,” the older woman murmured. She recognised Sam when the two Mounties ventured out to face the small crowd.
“Tekonwenaharake makes good coffee,” the man grinned. “That must be your influence, sister.”
“I’m not your sister.”
Sam looked to Kate and shrugged.
“We have this fight every time. There’s a lot of white folk in our family. That’s a good way to go,” he decided, looking to the baby in the young woman’s arms.
Abe jumped down from the cab of Frank Derbyshire’s truck a few minutes later. The Mounties stood back while the couple made their farewells. Presently, Abe approached Sam and held out his wrists to be cuffed.
The older man scowled.
“Heck, we’re not doing that! You’ll get enough of that once you’re the other side of the big river. I don’t know what the world’s coming to some days!”
Abe and Kate’s belongings, a couple of small sacks of clothes and a few rudimentary toiletries, along with Abe’s diaries were placed in the back of the Land Rover. Then they were on the road.
Inevitably, Isaac soon began to act up.
“We’re all family men here,” Sam assured Kate from the front passenger seat. “You just do what you got to do, Ma’am.”
His partner behind the wheel, Tom, was in no hurry, carefully avoiding the potholes as they travelled south through a wilderness of forests and bogs and lakes as the afternoon drew on.
Their destination was Prescott, a small trading town and ferry crossing point on the north bank of the St Lawrence. Opposite it was Fort Oswegatchie, a much bigger, sprawling city of some forty thousand people.
Several uniformed officers of the New York Constabulary stepped off the ferry and escorted the Mounties’ prisoners on board. Immediately the vessel moved away from the northern bank Abe’s wrists were roughly cuffed behind his back and – he hardly believed he was watching it – Isaac junior was wrestled, bawling plaintively from Kate’s arms so that she could be cuffed likewise. He was led away in one direction and his wife in another with his son’s cries ringing in his ears like accusations.
Welcome to New England!
Chapter 24
Thursday 27th July
Fort Crailo Prison, Albany
“My name is Melody Danson. I am a police officer…”
The Mohawk sat bolt upright in his chair on the other side of the interview room table, impassive, resigned and yet immensely dignified in his defiance. From the scars on his leathery skin, the rheumy eyes, the still trim hardness of the man Melody guessed he had had a hard life; and no doubt a plethora of riveting adventures with which to regale his grandchildren at his knee around the camp fire at night. Although his long once jet black hair might now be streaked with grey and there was the nascent suggestion of a stoop to his shoulders he was clearly a man not yet reconciled to his decline.
“I know who you are,” Tsiokwaris – Black Raven – said quietly, his voice deep with gravitas. His English was slow without being laboured, precise. “I am honoured to meet you. Young women of my clan have spoken of you to me.”
“Oh,” Melody murmured, making herself comfortable as she dug out her notebook, a big, battered tome with printed numbered pages, the latest volume of many accumulated in her decade with the constabulary of the twin colony. “Should I be flattered?”
“That is up to you, Detective Inspector.”
She let this pass.
“In your file it notes that you are an elder of the Valley clan of the Mohawk nation? How should I address you, sir?”
This prompted a brief raised eyebrow.
“Tsiokwaris is my name.”
Melody sat back and studied the Mohawk.
Sending Henrietta De L’Isle up to Fort Oswegatchie to make sure there was none of the usual ‘border cop malarkey’ with the returning ‘fugitives’ had probably been a wise move. Border cops and customs men were traditionally drawn from stratums of white society lacking in education and careless of the social niceties most middle-class colonists took for granted, who were never going to hold their own in normal life. In short, they were the kind of recruits who needed very little encouragement to be heavy-handed and easily self-acclimatised – in the academic jargon of social behaviourists - to being unpopular outside their own little circle of ‘comrades’.
Melody had contacted the Chief Constable of New York to reque
st ‘kid glove treatment’ for the Fieldings; the man had promised to ‘look into it’. The lazy prick had probably just said that to get rid of her. Anyway, asking Henrietta to ‘babysit’ Abe and Kate Fielding had seemed like a sensible precaution and the wisest use of their limited personnel resources.
There were, after all, only the two of them!
“Your daughter and son-in-law are presently on their way to Albany,” she told the old man.
His face was unmoving, his eyes troubled.
“You must know Isaac Fielding as well as any man alive?”
“Does one ever really know another human being?”
“Okay, tell me about the Hunter, Tsiokwaris?”
“He comes and goes, travelling through tribal lands. Or that is what they say...”
“Last year he took a pot shot at the King; two days ago, he blew away most of a young woman’s head. A woman standing in the window of an office she and I have shared in recent days?”
This drew a complete blank.
Henrietta De L’Isle had tacitly assumed that Sarah must have been the target for the assassination; Melody had not done anything to disabuse her of the notion. Personally, she had an open mind on the subject. She would have been scared stiff if it would have helped, or remotely changed a single thing. Besides, Henrietta was still new to all this and she felt more than a little protective of the younger woman…
“Who else is on the Hunter’s list?” She inquired coolly.
“I could not say?”
“You, perhaps? Isaac? Anybody else who knows or has guessed what really happened last year?”
“I’m just a simple Indian.”
Okay, and I’m Pocahontas!
“Sometimes it can be good to talk,” she suggested wryly. “I like talking. You, on the other hand, can obviously take it or leave it. So, I’ll talk. You listen. Do we have a deal?”