Arundel

by Kenneth Roberts

  I heard Natanis say to Guerlac in Abenaki, while he was binding him, that if Guerlac made any sign or sound that led to our capture, he would shear off his face with his hatchet and leave him alive, to fill women and children with terror for the rest of his days.

  When Cap and Natanis took Guerlac into the kitchen to make ready for the start, Mary, lying bound on the bed, pleaded with me to leave Guerlac behind. I could have, she said—and of course Guerlac had told her what to say—a thousand pounds for my own if I would do this; and Guerlac would make sure we got safely from the city. If I would join the British, Guerlac would have me made a major and I would be given five thousand acres when the war was done; and so on and so on, until my stomach turned over in me to know how small and mean I figured in her mind.

  “You’re wasting your breath,” I said shortly.

  She persisted in her pleading, staring at me piteously. “You’d be leaving nothing at all if you left this rabble you’re with! Henri says nothing like it was ever seen before: it’s a disgrace to fight against such folk or with them either! Their officers are nothing but hairdressers and blacksmiths and innkeepers and butchers and farmers, all thinking themselves gentlemen and as good as anyone.”

  I thought of Thayer and Steele and Morgan and Topham and Dearborn and the other officers, giving up their little portions of meat in the meadow at Seven Mile Stream so the soldiers under them might have more; as kind and gentle with their men as any titled Britisher or Frenchman could be. I carried her into the cellar and left her there with no further words.

  Hook, lying in the corner of the kitchen, watched us belting up our coats and drawing the loads from our muskets so to reload for safety’s sake. His eyes were half glazed with the nearness of death, but there still was hatred in them, so stubborn was that man.

  When we were ready to go I told him that if he had a message to send to any person in New England before he died, I’d carry it.

  “You deluded fool!” he said, showing his teeth at me between lips as gray as wood ashes. “You’ll never get out of the city! St. Louis Gate and St. John’s Gate are watched by a hundred men. The Lower Town’s alive with sailors. No matter what road you take, you’ll be full of bullets in half an hour.” He panted a little and grinned horribly. “The forces of Belial have gone down before the armies of the Lord! The truth is mighty and shall prevail! Montgomery is dead, and your army of thieving blasphemers rotting in prison.” His breath dragged in his throat. “You’ll burn in hell this night, blasphemer!”

  “Go ahead!” I said to Cap.

  He shot back the bar on the kitchen door and went out into the snow. Natanis walked behind him; then Guerlac; then Hobomok; and last of all myself, where I could watch Hobomok, in case he weakened from his wound. It was dark, so dark that Cap, at the head of our little file, was only an indistinct bulk to me. The snow was falling steadily; and what with it being New Year’s Day, and the city in no further danger of attack, and the citizens and garrison wearied by their long vigil and the night of terror through which they had just passed, I knew there would be none abroad save those who might be driven by necessity.

  Our plan of escape was simple—too simple, it seemed to me, to fail. Later in the winter, indeed, a score of our men, at one time and another, broke from their cells and escaped in this self-same manner, sometimes by themselves and sometimes accompanied by their gaolers, who deserted.

  Guerlac’s house was near the great building of the Jesuits; and this, in turn, was only five or six blocks from the wall by Palace Gate. Beneath and beyond this section of the wall was the suburb of St. Roque and the ruins of La Friponne; and as a result of the hours I had spent on my belly in La Friponne, popping up at sentries on the walls above me, I remembered certain things of value.

  I remembered that sentries walking on the parapet had been clearly visible through portholes to us below them; and that the portholes were large enough for a man to pass through. Also I remembered that the wall rose a full thirty feet above the bank, which was itself high; but that with each succeeding snowstorm the snow, driven always from the northeast or the northwest, had drifted higher and higher against the foot of the wall. Thus I knew that after the raging storm during which we made our attack this drift must have grown to an enormous size, so that one who leaped from the top of the wall would be no worse off than if he dropped into a pile of feather beds. Consequently our plan required only that we traverse the six blocks between Guerlac’s house and the wall, mount to the parapet, and jump.

  We came out from among the trees that sheltered Guerlac’s house, looking like any squad of men engaged in changing guard or patrolling the streets, except that one of us—Guerlac—was without a musket. No man could have told that Natanis and Hobomok were Indians, for between their pulled-down caps and their turned-up collars there was no part of their faces visible.

  We followed the steep street upward to our left, then turned sharp to our right. Immediately we encountered a lone officer trudging toward us through the snow. His chin was sunk in a cape, and he glanced up sideways at Cap as he came abreast of him, muttering some indistinguishable words cheerfully enough. To this Cap made an equally indistinguishable reply, chewing it in the forepart of his mouth and spitting it into the collar of his blanket coat; yet it seemed to content the Britisher, for he pulled his head back into his cape like a turtle and went trudging past.

  When we reached the street of St. John’s Gate we stopped in the lee of the house on the corner to see what might be seen. It was well we did so; for we had no sooner halted than a sentry paced across the end of the street we were on, not twenty feet from us.

  We couldn’t delay, for there was no telling when others might follow in our footsteps and come across us standing there. Cap went ahead, weaving and pitching in his walk, and we heard the sentry’s challenge. By way of reply there was a violent hiccup from Cap, and a maudlin murmur of “Besh Newyearsh brandy.” There came a silence, followed by a faint rattle and a sound of choking. We knew Cap was throttling him. Hobomok and I seized Guerlac under the arms and dragged him across the street of St. John’s Gate, Natanis ranging ahead like a shadow on the snow.

  Cap caught up with us at once, breathing a little quickly. We pushed rapidly into the narrow streets of the northwestern most corner of the city. We had but three blocks to go before reaching the open space between the houses and that portion of the wall for which we were aiming, and on these steep dark streets we met no one.

  We knew from the map that the last building to be encountered before we ventured into the open space was the barracks; and somehow we gained courage, when we reached its shelter, to find its windows lighted and to hear a discordant singing and bellowing from within.

  “Hell,” Cap whispered contemptuously, “there ain’t a Britisher but what’s drunk to-night. Disgusting! We’ll go over that wall as easy as going upstairs to bed.”

  Natanis and Hobomok went across the field ahead of us, as we had planned. They were invisible against the drifts when they had gone six paces; so we took a firm grip on Guerlac’s arms and followed. The wall loomed out of the snow when we had walked thirty paces—a low wall compared to its appearance from the far side. We saw the steps, and beside them a small guardhouse. Against the steps Natanis and Hobomok crouched, waiting. There was, Natanis whispered, a sentry on the wall: he would pass the head of the steps soon, and we could then go up safely.

  My breast and throat were filled with the thumping of my heart, and I was near choking with the fear we might be found and stopped less than ten steps from safety. We cowered in the snow, waiting, and odd thoughts came into my head: the suspicion that a small taste of garlic might do no harm to my mother’s cucumber relish; the thought of Cap’s distress if he should be obliged to go home without his picture of Philadelphia as Seen from Cooper’s Ferry; the recollection of how, ages ago, I had dreamed of entering Quebec with the Continental Army, marching stoutly between the tall stone houses, while laughing maids and cheering men wel
comed us gladly from roadside and windows.

  There was a sound of crunching from the parapet above us: slow footsteps in the snow. I hung my mouth as wide open as the bunghole of a hogshead, so that my breathing might not reach the sentry’s ears. Little by little the sound of his feet grew fainter.

  Natanis and Hobomok went crouching up the steps. Cap and I pulled Guerlac to his feet and followed. As we mounted, Cap slipped and fell with such a noise as might be made by the toppling of a tall clock on a stair landing. There was a sound of splintering glass and a powerful stench of brandy.

  Off to our left I heard the sentry’s challenge. By the time the second challenge came, we had Guerlac on the parapet. As we hustled him toward the port, Natanis fired past my ear. There was an answering shot from the sentry and a shout from the guardhouse. I saw Natanis dive through the port as Hobomok’s rifle spat a streak of fire downward, and realized I was arousing the town with my bellowing to Cap and Hobomok to jump and get out of my way.

  Cap scrambled through the port, grunting and growling, and Hobomok slid after him as the musket of the sentry at the guardhouse flashed behind us.

  Guerlac jerked upward; then sagged and hung limp in my arms.

  I could hear the shouting of other sentries along the wall. There was no time to pry into the manner in which the Frenchman had been injured; so I picked him up by the sash and stuffed him through the port and into space, scrambling blindly after him.

  I could feel myself turning slowly in the air. I strove to hunch myself together, so to offer a smaller mark to those on the parapet. My legs sprawled wildly as I turned and turned, listening always for musket shots above me. In the midst of a turn my shoulders struck an unyielding substance. There was a white flash in my brain, like that which had blotted out the world when Guerlac, years before, had driven his hatchet against my head.

  God knows how much brandy Cap poured into me before I began to cough it back at him. I rolled over onto my knees to let it drain out, and coughed until my lungs felt as though pounded on my own anvil.

  “Thank God for that!” Cap said. “I thought I was wasting my last bottle on a corpse! You had a neck on you as limber as an old stocking.” From the gurgle that followed, it seemed likely that Cap was doctoring himself for his fright.

  I could feel that we were surrounded by walls, though I could see nothing for the dense blackness. “What happened?” I asked. From the soreness of my neck, I was none too sure but what it was broke. “What happened, and where’s Natanis and Hobomok?”

  The two of them spoke from near at hand.

  “What happened,” Cap said, “is that we’re out of Quebec safe and sound, except that I’ll be picking pieces of glass out of myself until I’m a hundred and fifty years old.”

  A fog began to move from my brain. “Where’s Guerlac? I think a bullet hit him in the back.”

  “No,” Cap said, “an Arundel Nason hit him!”

  “That couldn’t be!” I protested. “It was when the sentry fired that he jerked and almost fell.”

  “Well,” Cap said, “we felt him all over to see what ailed him. We couldn’t bother with anybody in that drift unless he was worth bothering with. You’d oughter seen that drift! It was big as Mount Agamenticus, and a damned sight solider!

  “You came off the wall like a bull pine,” he went on. “I couldn’t see much through being fearful I might get one of your heels in the teeth, but it looked to me as though you landed on Guerlac with your neck and shoulders. Least ways, the muzzle of your rifle hit him in the back of the head. It was stuck there when we pulled you off him. You could have put your whole thumb in the hole.”

  “Wasn’t there a bullet hole in him?”

  “Nary a scratch!”

  “And he was dead?”

  “Deader than Job’s turkey!”

  I was pleased that Guerlac had died after this fashion, since he had played the fox in pretending to be hit; and God knows he had almost fooled me. I had nearly left him for dead on the parapet. Also I had feared all along that if I got him safely to Arnold he might be exchanged, or somehow escape alive; and it had also been in my mind that Cap or Natanis, impatient at being burdened with him and wishful of being revenged, might incontinently split open his head with a hatchet. I would have blamed them little for so doing; yet I misliked the idea and wouldn’t have wanted it on my conscience.

  The sentries on the walls, Cap said, had been unable to see us because of our white blanket coats. While they had shot blindly into the snow, Natanis and Hobomok and Cap had dug downward into the drift, dragging me behind them, and so slipped down into the shelter of the walls of La Friponne.

  Cap raised a rumpus when we left La Friponne and set off into the black deserted streets of St. Roque, along which the whole of us had marched through the storm less than fifteen hours before.

  There was glass all through him, he complained bitterly, like seeds in a watermelon. We stopped, therefore, at Menut’s Tavern, which only yesterday had been so warm and cheery. When we cautiously opened the door we found the place a heap of wreckage, and Moshoo Menut, together with a few servants, laboring by candle-light to patch holes in the walls and scour dark stains from the floors. They scrambled under tables when we entered; but seeing we meant no harm, they crawled out, moaning and jabbering, while Cap stripped off his brandy-soaked and glass-filled garments.

  Leaving my three friends to hear the tale, I hastened to the little house of Mother Biard, backed against the high bank like a baby rabbit backed against a bush. There was no light in it, nor in any of the other houses. The street was filled with litter—boards; pieces of thatch; heaps of chimney bricks; a smashed cariole. I pounded for admittance, and at length heard Mother Biard’s voice behind the door. When she opened it a crack I pushed in and slammed it behind me.

  Out of her few mangled words of English I learned that Phoebe and Jacataqua had remained with her until after daylight, watching the passing of the wounded Americans, who had been picked up by carioles and carried out to the hospital, some with feet and hands and faces frozen; some crying out and moaning; and some laughing and cursing, all very terrible. In the middle of the morning, a column of British had come out from Palace Gate and set off toward the hospital. A few Americans had opened on them with artillery and driven them back into the city, while the cannon balls tore through the houses of St. Roque, bursting rooms to bits and overthrowing chimneys.

  Then there were no more wounded, for the British had captured all that were left and carried them into the Upper Town. On that Phoebe and Jacataqua rolled their blankets, bade Mother Biard farewell, and trudged off toward the north.

  I gave her a piece of Guerlac’s gold and hastened back for Cap and Natanis and Hobomok. From Menut they had learned more: how our men had remained between the two barricades in the Lower Town for four hours, waiting for reinforcements; and how they were then caught front and rear by constantly growing forces and so had surrendered.

  “Does he know how many were captured?”

  “He says all those not wounded or killed were captured, all of them. Virginians and all. He says there’s God knows how many men dead under the snow—men that won’t be found until the spring thaw.” Cap cursed in a way to make me think Guerlac had been fortunate to die so easily.

  “Where’s Phoebe?” he asked, when he had cursed away a part of his rage.

  “Gone.”

  Cap rubbed his round red face with his vast hands and tightened his coat around him. We left Moshoo Menut and his tavern and set off on the road to the General Hospital.

  There was a light in every window of this sprawling building, and a powerful unpleasant odor of sickness inside, with nuns going back and forth carrying basins and bandages. There was a sentry in the hall, his face pitted beyond recognition, so we knew he had recently recovered from the smallpox. When we told him our business he went to the door of the main hospital room, and shortly thereafter the young surgeon of the army, Dr. Senter, came hurrying out, a bloo
d-spattered sheet around his middle and blood halfway up his arms, looking ready to drop with weariness.

  “What’s this about Colonel Arnold?” he demanded irascibly. “Colonel Arnold’s badly hurt. He’s writing dispatches: can’t be seen unless the matter’s important.”

  “Well, God knows whether it is or not,” I said. “We escaped from the city an hour ago. He might like to see us.”

  Senter gawped at us. “You came out of Quebec!”

  We heard Arnold’s rasping voice, that never failed to excite me, calling loudly for Senter. Senter scurried away and returned immediately.

  “He wants you at once! Get out of those coats.” He rubbed his forehead with the back of his wrist, seeming to be in a temper. “Damn him! He’s a devil! I wanted him carried out beyond St. Foy’s, where he’d be safe from capture in case of a sally; but all he did was have his sword brought to him and call for a loaded musket to be put at each man’s bed. He’ll fight ’em sick and lying down as quick as on his feet!” He herded us toward the door of the main room. “Christ!” he said. “What a piece of luck! Arnold and Montgomery, both of them, the first shot out of the box!”

  There was a double row of beds stretching down this long, dim, whitewashed room. Nuns moved among them. At the head of each bed a musket leaned against the wall. Somewhere, near at hand, a man babbled rapid, meaningless words. Another coughed slowly and painfully, with a horrid wet sucking noise between each cough.

  Arnold lay next to the door, cut off from the others by sheets hung on poles. He was propped up in bed, his field desk on a stool beside him. His coarse linen shirt, open at the throat, gave him a mild, pale look; but his eyes were hard and bright. They popped out at us until they seemed large as eggs.

  He snapped his fingers impatiently when we saluted. “Out with it! Where’ve you been since the attack?”