Two Hundred Lost Years

by James Philip

  Tsiokwaris clearly thought this was a trick question.

  His brow furrowed minutely.

  Why is it I always get the strong, silent types?

  “I’ll take that as a ‘yes’, Elder Tsiokwaris.”

  It was hard to know but Melody got the feeling the old man was grudgingly impressed that she had worked her way around to his formal tribal title, albeit not in his native Kanien'kéha. She was fairly fluent in French but Spanish was her first love. She was ‘like a native’ – in speaking and writing – Castilian, and better than ‘passable’, she like to think, in Catalan, Aragonese and Asturian, although not so clever in Portuguese (much to her chagrin, that was something she had been meaning to do something about for years) and Galician. Languages had always come naturally to her and one of the reasons she wanted to travel was to speak again, so many of the tongues she had dallied with as a child as she accompanied her musician parents around the capitals of Europe.

  Melody paused, collecting her thoughts.

  “I’ve had access to all the files, including stuff going back many years and what hit me – right between the eyes – fairly early on is that you and Isaac Fielding have eschewed violence all your lives. That is not to say that you didn’t turn over a new leaf last year or the year before. People are strange, they do odd things. However, what I do not see anywhere in the record is either of you suffering, for example, an acquired brain injury that might, conceivably, lead to a complete character reversal. Looking at you now I can see no indication that you are recovering from a blow to the head with a cricket bat, or a war club of some other description. Likewise, for his age and considering his sedentary lifestyle, Isaac is extremely fit and by all accounts his mental acuity remains unimpaired. In fact, I’d hazard a guess that he’s exactly the same opinionated, selfish manipulative old fart he’s been since his earliest college days. Some men are just like that, I’ve met a lot of them. You, I’m giving you a free pass on that one. The benefit of the doubt, as it were. For the time being, leastways. I think you’re more the loyal friend of a brilliant man who has spent most of his adult life trying to keep him on the straight and narrow, and out of jail. Tell me I’m wrong?”

  “You’re right,” the old man said at length. “You do like to talk.”

  Melody laughed.

  “There you go, I knew we’d understand each other.” She sobered a little. “Honestly, rational guys like you and Isaac do not suddenly cast aside the inhibitions of a lifetime and organise orgies of violence. There’s simply no evidence for that sort of thing in the literature. One of my degrees in in Criminal Psychology, by the way. Trust me, if it happens it happens once every blue moon. And as for it happening on such an epic scale as that we witnessed last July: no, I don’t buy that at all. Sure, in a moment of existential despair one of you might lash out but you’d feel like shit afterwards. Ordinary people are like that. So, either something happened to turn you both into homicidal maniacs or, you were two helpless passengers as the express train roared – out of control - on down the line towards the buffers.”

  “You imagine we are foolish old men?”

  “At one level, yes,” Melody agreed. “I know that you two are involved in this thing. Up to your necks. What I don’t see is either of you being the Machiavellian hand behind the mayhem that actually played out last summer.”

  She leaned back, crossed her arms across her breasts and waited. She had made her pitch; waiting was all she could do until she knew if her fish was going to bite or swim on past the bait.

  “It was Rachel’s idea,” the man said softly. “That was many, many years ago. Not hurting people, you understand. But to wait for the bi-centenary of the death of George Washington and to turn the fleet reviews and the parties into something else. Boats out in the bay would carry huge signs – ENGLISH GO HOME – and there would be so many of them that the whole harbour would be blocked up; people would go on board the warships and hand out flowers, they would paint slogans on the side of the big English battleships. All the while airplanes would fly overhead dragging hundred-feet long flags and drop stink bombs on the decks of the visiting ships. On land we would organise strikes, picket the bus and railway depots…” The old man’s breath was ragged with emotion. “It was all in her imagination. Like an idiot Isaac talked to his students about it two or three years ago; only the Hispanics and the tearaways, the students who never studied, or the ones from poor neighbourhoods where the Getrennte Entwicklung sickness had poisoned their minds, who wanted to believe that their poverty and their indolence was always somebody else’s fault were interested…”

  Tsiokwaris shook his head.

  “I had not spoken to my old friend face to face for nearly two years until I came here.” He looked Melody in the eyes with piercing intensity. “I dreamed that I am not long for this life and I could not die without speaking to my brother one last time.”

  Chapter 25

  Thursday 27th July

  Border Control Processing Centre, Fort Oswegatchie

  Henrietta was beyond incandescent. Briefly, she had also been speechless but that had not lasted. Now she was writing down the depot commander’s name, rank, age, service number and seniority date in a notebook. The man had a commission in the Colonial Armed Forces – she might ask somebody who knew about these things how on earth that had occurred later – so basically, his career was in God’s hands.

  Well, specifically, in her father’s hands.

  Her notebook had filled up as she progressed from one useless article to another eventually ascending to the top of what laughably passed for the chain of command at Fort Oswegatchie.

  “You have the nerve to ask ME what my authority is?”

  This she snarled at the overweight, unsoldierly excuse for a human being who had what looked like gravy splashed on the left lapel of his battledress tunic, a garment at least one size too small for him because it looked as if his gut was about to burst out of it at any moment.

  She was trying very hard not to hit the imbecile.

  “I am the Honourable Henrietta Eleanor Georgiana Sidney, Lady De L’Isle by His Majesty’s grace until such time as I marry. I am the Governor of New England’s Confidential Private Secretary and when my father discovers what you have done in his name you will be lucky if the Army allows you to spend the rest of your miserable career digging latrines as a private soldier down on the Border!”

  While she allowed this to sink in Henrietta dashed off a long-distance telephone number on the next page of her notebook and ripped out the sheet so that she could brandish it in the face of the red-faced, sweating, outraged officer in front of her.

  “You asked me about my authority? Ring that number. I don’t know what my father will do to you here, now, tonight but I will be interested to hear how you defend the barbarity of the troops under your command.” She sniffed, managing to look down her nose at the much taller soldier. That was a little trick she had learned at the Cheltenham Ladies College, one of the few useful things she had learned at that ridiculous place!

  She was getting upset just thinking about it!

  “With whom,” she added sarcastically, “you will shortly be spending a great deal of time with a shovel in your hands digging the aforementioned latrines down on the Border!”

  The brainless nitwits had shackled and separated Abraham Fielding and his wife and taken their baby son off to some kind of Hellish crèche in another part of the compound.

  Realising the base commander was dithering, Henrietta seized the moment.

  “You will make the call immediately or I will!

  She planned to speak with her father about this dreadful place regardless; the dimwit did not need to know that. He already looked like his head was going to explode.

  “I… I…”

  “WELL?”

  The man had puffed himself up; now he deflated like a balloon and Henrietta had visions of the fool whizzing about the room like a demented harpy with a fiery Roman candle up his
bottom!

  “What do you want me to do?” The man pleaded pathetically.

  “Take me, personally to retrieve the Fieldings’ son while your people release Kate and Abraham and bring them to this office.

  Outside, the half-a-dozen well-muscled men of the Governor’s daughter’s personal security detail had been expecting – and Henrietta guessed, looking forward with eager anticipation - for her to invite them to tear the depot commander limb from limb.

  “You chaps are to go with the Colonel’s people to find and release the Fieldings; the Colonel and I are going to find Isaac junior.” Henrietta explained brusquely. The men hesitated. “We’re inside a bloody great big military base, I shall be perfectly safe. Shoo! Shoo!”

  The depot ‘holding’ crèche was a cool, clammy room with four children below the age of two confined to grubby dirty metal cots. Two of the children were lying in puddles of their own urine and one of those was Isaac Fielding. Henrietta got the distinct impression that the ‘nurses’ responsible for the welfare of the youngsters in their care did not appear to see what the problem was.

  So, out came the notebook again.

  Name, date of birth, service number, seniority: “Show me your dog tags please,” she now demanded having quickly learned how sneaky and devious these people up here in the River Country could be!

  “These children are being abused,” she informed the Colonel who commenced shouting at the ‘nurses’ which promptly started the young ones crying in fright.

  “Where are their mothers?” The Governor of New England’s daughter demanded. “Bring them here now. They will care for their own children. I suggest you lock your nurses in the guardhouse over-night to consider their inadequacies and to correct their attitudes!”

  Henrietta had never realised that a career in the military might have its dispensations. Shouting at people, for example and making them ‘jump’ when one commanded it, and so forth.

  Refreshingly, now that the Colonel had worked out who was in charge he had bucked up his ideas and things started to happen with agreeable alacrity.

  If I stayed here a day or two I could make a big difference!

  Kate Fielding was still handcuffed when, distraught, she was escorted into the Colonel’s office.

  Viewing the shackles with wide, alarmed eyes the depot commander clearly thought his time had come. However, like any career officer with visions of his livelihood disappearing down the toilet he acted decisively.

  Consequently, Kate was soon freed and cradling her son to her breast again. The poor little mite was starving; which was hardly to be wondered at given he had not been fed for several hours.

  Somebody, Henrietta decided, was going to pay for the callous shambles she had stumbled upon at Fort Oswegatchie.

  But first things first.

  She was on a timetable here!

  “Colonel, you will submit a report to Government House not later than seven days hence detailing all the improvements you intend to implement at this place by the end of September and the measures you have taken in the intervening days to begin to effect those initiatives. Do you understand?”

  The man was too shell-shocked to put up any kind of fight.

  The final straw was the discovery that ‘as per protocol’, Kate and Abe’s belongings had been thrown into a skip for incineration in the morning. Apparently, this was a ‘public health measure because often ‘indigenous people seeking entrance to the twin colony were lousy’.

  If the couple’s possessions had not been ‘lousy’ before they certainly would be now!

  “I do not believe this!” Henrietta berated the Colonel who, by now, positively cowered when she addressed him. “Mister Fielding brought with him several notebooks and extant records pertinent to ongoing High Court proceedings in Albany. If you don’t find those items NOW there will be big trouble, Colonel! You will be accompanying me down to Albany to explain to the Chief Magistrate of the colony why you have allowed evidence vital to the prosecution in a capital trial to be wantonly destroyed!”

  From her tone and general demeanour, the man must have drawn the logical conclusion that she was going to have him hung, drawn and quartered.

  At any rate, after a short delay the notebooks were found and by midnight Henrietta’s heavily armed convoy was on the road heading south to the colony’s capital, some two hundred miles by twisting country highways to the south.

  “You were magnificent, Ma’am,” the commander of Henrietta’s security detail remarked approvingly. “I’m sure that the Governor would have been as proud as punch if he’d been there!”

  Chapter 26

  Friday 28th July

  Fort Crailo Prison, Albany

  For the sake of form, it had been necessary to ‘park’ Abraham Fielding in a holding cell at Clinton Avenue Police Station on his arrival in Albany at around five o’clock that morning. There he had resided – watched over by two of Henrietta’s largest and most intimidating ‘minders’ – pending processing by a Police Court later that morning. Only then could he be transferred to Fort Crailo and be ‘properly’ interviewed.

  Somewhat bleary-eyed, not having slept, Henrietta De L’Isle had briefly, and a little breathlessly, recounted her overnight adventures and her ‘little’ contretemps at Fort Oswegatchie to Melody Danson over breakfast in the guest house annexe of the Governor’s Mansion outside Albany.

  ‘The worst thing about the success of the Getrennte Entwicklung movement has been that it has given a lot of people who really ought to know better a perfect excuse to behave badly,’ Melody had observed.

  The younger woman had been a little shocked that nothing she had told the detective had come as news to her.

  ‘That’s why you sent me up there, of course,’ Henrietta murmured, a little sheepishly.

  ‘You and I,’ Melody had reminded the Governor of New England’s daughter, ‘are among a privileged, university-educated minority. You’ve lived abroad, when I was growing up I lived in London and Paris and for several years in Spain. My parents were – and still are although they rarely tour these days - very accomplished orchestral musicians, so I spent most of my childhood and my teens in Europe. But anyway, the point is that we, as a class, tend to have a less parochial view of ethnicity, racial mores and the like. We, as a group tend to be inherently liberal in our outlook. In that respect we are unlike many of the people in the First Thirteen whose life horizons and attitudes often begin and end at their own colony’s boundaries.’

  This had rather vexed Henrietta and the women had parted on oddly tight-lipped terms; Melody to take a car to Fort Crailo and Henrietta back into Albany to ‘supervise’ Abraham Fielding’s passage through ‘the system’.

  Meanwhile, she had ensured that Kate Fielding and her baby son were safely in the care of the mansion’s formidably matronly, and combatively stout housekeeper in the servants’ quarters.

  The colony’s Governor – trying desperately not to seem overly unhappy that he had interlopers, potential vipers, nesting in the very bosom of his bailiwick – had only made an appearance as the women were about to leave that morning.

  Melody tried not to judge Henrietta De L’Isle’s naivety too harshly. In theory, the borders of the lands of the Canadian dominions and New England ought to be open other than in respect of those restrictions and controls incumbent on local ‘trade and customs’ practices. However, the ‘one Empire’ freedom of movement and trade policy ubiquitous around the globe had been gradually eroded in North America as the two commonwealths, of Greater Canada and New England had spread across the continent and each had developed distinctive cultural, ethnic and political internal ‘accommodations’.

  It was inconceivable that a majority of Canadians could ever embrace the separate development philosophy spreading so perniciously through the First Thirteen; consequently, these days there were many people in New York who regarded all Canadians as feckless libertarians with no regard for their race or the maintenance of what they consider
ed to be ‘Christian standards’. Thus, in recent years the Getrennte Entwicklung faction in the colony’s Legislative Council had actively promoted a ‘hostile border control environment’ in respect of its shared river boundary with Ontario; this, despite the fact that everywhere else the colony’s notional, almost entirely unmarked borders with its neighbours were completely porous.

  Melody was surprised to be confronted by Lord Dunmore when she entered the interview room at Fort Crailo. The former Chief Magistrate was at his most imperiously crusty as he rose to his feet.

  His client, William Lincoln Fielding, remained slumped morosely, disinterestedly, pale, and a little gaunt, unmoving in his chair viewing Melody with coldly suspicious eyes.

  “To be summoned here at such short notice is intolerable!” John Murray complained testily. “We are not at your beck and call, Detective Inspector!”

  “Good morning, My Lord,” Melody smiled wryly, holding out her right hand which the peer shook perfunctorily, with only the tiniest fraction of the wind spilling from his sails of manufactured outrage. “It is a great pleasure and honour, in fact, to meet such an eminent practitioner of jurisprudence at long last. I studied several of your most famous cases when I was preparing to take my articles for the Bar.”

  “Did you, indeed?”

  “Yes, My Lord,” she replied, hoping she was not overplaying her hand. “We are very lucky to have you out here in the colonies.”

  “Yes, well, as you know, I am a son of the First Thirteen…”

  The veteran barrister and the detective belatedly remembered that there was a third person in the room.

  “Lady De L’Isle had planned to attend this interview,” Melody explained, curious as to whether the notoriously pedantic former Chief Magistrate would find fault with her use of Henrietta’s rarely employed, virtually defunct honorific.

  The man thought about it; decided to hold his peace.