On the Head of a Pin

by Janet Kellough

  “Well,” the constable sighed, “I’ll investigate, of course, but trying to sort it all out at this late date is going to be difficult. Are you sure it wasn’t the Patriot Hunters?”

  “Most assuredly not,” and he filled him in on the other deaths, pointing out the similarities in each.

  “It may be you’re right,” the constable said, “but even so, I have no jurisdiction anywhere but here. The other deaths will have to be sorted out by someone else.”

  Lewis knew this, of course, but hoped there was something that could be done. He accompanied the constable back to the house in the clearing. The body was gone and the interior had been cleaned and stripped bare. There was nothing left to see. They backtracked to the man Lewis had sent to guard the body.

  It was as Lewis feared. The neighbour had arrived at the scene of the murder just as the victim’s husband had returned. The man assumed that Americans had attacked his wife, and that the countryside was full of “the murdering thieves.”

  With the help of his neighbour, he had prepared the body and buried it quickly under an oak tree beside the tiny graves of three of their children. He had then packed up his remaining family and headed to Brockville, not wanting to take them anywhere close to the fighting. Whatever evidence might have been gleaned from the site was destroyed. The man was convinced that his wife had been murdered by the invading Hunters and apparently nothing could sway him from this opinion.

  The constable shrugged. “There’s not a lot I can do. There’s no evidence left, and the family is satisfied with the explanation. Dredging it all up again at this point would do more harm than good. And he has a point. How do you know it wasn’t a Hunter, a man who got separated from the rest of them and went murdering on his own? In any event, whoever did it is probably miles away by now.”

  It would have been much easier for Lewis had his conscience subscribed to this theory, but try as he might, it wouldn’t. There were too many similarities to the other deaths, and he had watched as the Hunters landed, well after the woman had drawn her last breath. He supposed they could have landed farther down the river earlier, committed the foul deed, returned to their ships, then headed for Prescott, but it made no sense for them to attack one lone house and move on. He knew there was a murderer somewhere out there — a murderer who killed for no reason, at least none that made sense to a rational person. He appeared to be the only one who understood this, and reflected on how, if he were not a travelling preacher, he would never have realized the connection between the events. It was only because he was in so many places on so many different occasions that he was able to piece together the details that bound the crimes together.

  His thoughts turned again to Francis Renwell. Having murdered once, did he find a peculiar thrill in doing it again? Surely there was no such evil in the world, and yet he knew for a fact that Renwell had been close enough at hand for the first two crimes. But what about this last one? Had he really been in Prescott, huddled against a porch, or was that just who Lewis had wanted to see there? Apparently he had disappeared abruptly from Milford after Lewis had seen him there — packed up his belongings and decamped without a word to anyone, he was told by the carpenter. “Good riddance,” the man had added.

  He was sure there was significance to everything he had seen — the Book of Proverbs, the pins, the way in which the bodies were arranged. He could make no sense of it — no connection could be made to Renwell, or to anyone else for that matter. The only thing he knew was that whoever had committed these murders had developed a taste for it — he would murder again. Lewis wanted to find the notion unthinkable, and yet, with the evidence before him, he could only conclude that something vile had been set loose in the land.

  VI

  News of his labours during the invasion soon spread through the Elizabethtown Circuit, and Lewis was hailed as somewhat of a hero, mostly by the morbidly curious. He was often the subject of inquiries about what had really happened at what was now being called “The Battle of the Windmill.” He protested that he had seen little of the fighting, only the grisly aftermath, and refused to elaborate in any way on the injuries he had encountered.

  Not so Morgan Spicer, who had left Fort Wellington to once more take up his self-appointed mission to preach to anyone who would listen, not only to his convoluted and frequently erroneous version of the gospels, but to vivid descriptions of his role in the battle. It was generally believed that he had risked life and limb to single-handedly drag desperate men from under the deadly fire coming from the windmill, and that he had saved countless lives with his courage and tender care. Lewis was often asked if he had worked with Spicer at the makeshift hospital and he merely confirmed that he had been there and had “done what he could,” not adding that one of the things he had done was to hold Spicer’s head while he vomited at the sight of half-eaten corpses.

  The trials of the captured Patriot Hunters were proceeding at Kingston. An up-and-coming young lawyer, John Macdonald, was to defend them — an unenviable task, as everyone was sure that they would all be executed anyway. More details of the invasion were coming to light as the prisoners were questioned, and Bill Johnston was the name most often given as the inspiration for the foray. Von Schulz had assumed command only when it became evident that Johnston had wriggled away.

  He had not wriggled far; American authorities had finally zeroed in and arrested him, not for piracy or theft, or for any of his other well-known crimes, but for “Violating the Neutrality Act.” They’d jailed him in Albany, but only for a year.

  “Violating the Neutrality Act? What kind of a charge is that after all he’s done?” many sputtered when they heard the news. “What about all the robberies and raids? What about all the property he’s stolen?”

  Johnston had been careful in this, it appeared. Any of the crimes that might have drawn him a longer sentence had been committed against the British or Canadians on their own soil, and therefore were of no concern to the Americans.

  “Still,” most conceded, “better behind bars for a year than out and free to plunder.”

  In the meantime, the consequences of the previous year’s rebellions continued to be felt in a spate of transportations and vindictiveness. More reprisals were sure to come, everyone said, after Durham’s report was completed and presented to the British Parliament. The man had been sent to explore possible remedies for the troubles in the colony. Lewis had little confidence that he would recommend anything but the continuation of the status quo, with government dominated by Anglicans and well-connected Englishmen and anyone with any ambition forced to emulate them, professing a Britishness that was more British than anything found on the other side of the ocean. Durham was an earl, titled aristocracy; what else could he possibly conclude other than that the American notions of republicanism were a cancer that had spread to Upper Canada, a cancer that must be excised so that British Lords like himself could continue to reap the benefits of their inheritance? Lewis had no hope of anything different, nor had anyone else.

  He would render unto Caesar those things that were Caesar’s, however — as his Bible so aptly advised — and keep his sights fixed firmly on those things that belonged to the Lord. He settled into the pleasant routine of following his circuit’s appointment plan: preaching, christening, marrying, and burying; greeting old friends, and making new ones.

  The people on his circuit seemed to noticeably settle into the routine with him now that the Patriot Hunters had been repulsed and most of their band either dispersed or behind bars. The heart seemed to have gone out of their movement to liberate the Canadas, though they had mounted one last raid, far away to the west along the Detroit River, which had proved disastrous. They had been quickly captured and it was reported that many of the prisoners had been shot. And people felt a little safer, especially those along the front, now that Bill Johnston had been rounded up and penned in a cell.

  They should not have underestimated the pirate, or, more surprisingly, his daughter. A
lthough he had several sons, it was Kate Johnston who was “the apple of the old man’s eye” according to anyone who knew her, and many who didn’t. She had moved to Albany with the stated intention of tending to her father during his incarceration. His jailers cast a tolerant eye on this pretty, demure girl who was proving so loyal and concerned with her poor father’s welfare. After a time they became used to her presence and allowed her easy access to Johnston. It was a fatal error on their part, for one dark night at the end of June, Kate slipped into the jail and liberated Bill from his cell. The apple apparently had not fallen far from the tree.

  She had planned his escape carefully, preparing a hideout in the Thousand Islands at a place they both knew well, but the exact location of which was a closely guarded secret. Kate, they said, slipped in and out of the nearby towns on a regular basis, buying or stealing the supplies they needed, but no one was ever able to catch her or follow her back to the hidden lair.

  Johnston’s escape was met with alarm, as everyone expected a renewed spate of banditry, but as the months went by without incident, it appeared that the old pirate was content, for now, to lie low. There was even a certain grudging admiration for Kate. “The Queen of the Thousand Islands,” the papers began calling her, and in a time when women were being convinced that their duties and destinies lay solely in home and hearth, she was a fine, albeit twisted, example of just what a young woman could do when she put her mind to it.

  PART III

  Old Waterloo Circuit 1839

  I

  The Methodists were on the move again that fall and, after having spent a year at Elizabethtown, Lewis suspected he was due a new posting. When the prospect of the Old Waterloo Circuit was broached, he quickly accepted. It was close enough to the farm in Marysburgh that he could get home frequently, especially in the wintertime when the ice was solid.

  The eastern part of Prince Edward County thrust aggressively into Lake Ontario and stretched close to Adolphustown and the long arm of Amherst Island. It would be a relatively short ride from his new circuit to Marysburgh if he crossed the ice in winter; in summer there was a ferry service that crossed the narrow reach beneath the strange and beautiful Lake on the Mountain — a geological oddity perched mysteriously on a cliff some two hundred feet above the bay.

  Upon his return to the farm, Lewis had hoped to find Betsy and his sons happy and contented, but Nabby’s tractability had proved illusory, and he found his family in a state of war. Will was a promising enough farmer, and the younger boys willing enough to work, but his eldest son was a poor boss and he seemed blind to any of his wife’s faults.

  Nabby, it seemed, had never been expected to do much in the way of household chores, nor had her sisters. Her father worked hard enough but, subscribing to the notion that the measure of a man’s success was his ability to keep his family in a state of idleness, he felt no compunction at hiring whatever help was needed, both in the house and on the farm. Nabby had been taught to do beautiful needlework, to set a gracious dinner table, to sing — not well, but adequately — for the entertainment of guests, and little else.

  “Honestly, Thaddeus, I’ve never seen such a lazy creature,” Betsy said to him. “If it were left to her, the breakfast dishes wouldn’t be done until suppertime, and that’s provided there would be any supper on the table at all. It doesn’t seem to occur to her that she’s supposed to lift a finger.”

  “Have you said anything to her?”

  “I’ve stopped saying anything, Thaddeus. If I open my mouth, all it does is cause tears and hard feelings, and then Will is upset, too.”

  He looked around the kitchen, which was in its usual state of good order, and realized that it had been Betsy who had made it that way. Far from being a respite for her, his arrangements had instead landed her with more work.

  His second-eldest son, Moses, had decamped in disgust. He had found work at a tannery in Picton and showed no sign of wanting to return to the farm.

  “Too many bosses,” he said when asked what the problem had been. “Will tells you to do one thing, Ma tells you another, and then Nabby wants you to drop everything and do something for her. I can do what I’m told, but I can’t do three different things all at the same time.”

  Lewis suggested to Will that they go over the farm accounts while he was there, “just so I can catch up on things,” he told his son, hoping that his conciliatory tone would set Will at his ease. The figures were encouraging, to his eye. There had been a good crop of wheat which had sold at a reasonable rate, and two calves had brought in an excellent sum. What he didn’t see was any reinvestment in seed or stock.

  “Are you waiting for a better price?” he asked. “I’m not sure you want to wait too long. Prices are on the rise.”

  But Will just shrugged.

  “And what about the household? How is that going?” There had been a large flock of chickens that had come with the farm, and there should have been a summer surplus of eggs, a surplus that could be offered for sale in town, but he could see no indication of this sum in Will’s accounts.

  “I don’t know,” he said. “I leave that to Nabby.”

  That was fair enough, he supposed. Chickens were traditionally the responsibility of the housewife, and the proceeds from the sale of eggs kept peddlers like Isaac Simms in business. He went in search of his daughter-in-law. He found her sitting by the kitchen stove adding a lace edge to a finely embroidered piece of linen while Martha played at her feet. The little girl’s hair was bound up in elaborate braids, and tied with a bright yellow ribbon. Lewis wondered where it had come from. Hair ribbons weren’t something that had often found their way into his household.

  “Nabby, I wondered if I might talk to you about the arrangements here.”

  She looked up at him and smiled, but quickly went back to her busy work.

  “I’ve just been over the farm accounts with Will, and now I’m trying to discover how you’re getting on with managing the household.”

  “Oh, I leave all that to Will,” she said.

  “No, I don’t mean the farm. That seems to be proceeding satisfactorily. I’m talking about the household expenses, the egg money and so forth. Is it enough to cover the extras?”

  “Why, I don’t really know,” she said. “Mother Lewis takes care of all that, doesn’t she?” She shrugged. “There always seems to be enough of everything, and if there isn’t, I just order it from the store, or get it from the peddler.”

  “So, you give the money to Mrs. Lewis, and let her manage it. Is that what you’re saying?”

  She stopped her sewing and looked at him with astonishment. “What money? I fear I don’t know what you’re talking about, sir. I don’t have any money.”

  Lewis stifled an urge to rip the fancy embroidered linen out of her hands. “The hens. They should have been producing more eggs than you could possibly use, and you should have been selling those in town. The money from that goes to the household.”

  She went back to plunging her needle into the fabric. “Oh, I don’t like chickens — nasty, smelly creatures.”

  “So you haven’t been selling any eggs?”

  “I have no intention of going anywhere near the chickens, and even if I did I don’t see why I should have to walk all the way into town with a mess of eggs.”

  “You know Mrs. Lewis can’t. And you know Mrs. Lewis can’t look after the chickens either. She’s not well enough.”

  The girl didn’t reply, and Lewis realized that there was no egg money.

  “What have you been doing with all the eggs? Did you at least put them down for the winter?”

  Still no reply.

  There weren’t many, obviously, because no one tended to the flock nor likely even bothered to collect eggs over and above what was needed for the table. He didn’t waste his time asking her about the kitchen garden, because he was reasonably certain that this girl wasn’t aware that there was one, and even if she were, she would have had no hand in the process of drying
or pickling or putting in the root cellar. Poor Betsy had once again been saddled with it all.

  “Well.” He was at a bit of a loss as to how to proceed. Nabby seemed unrepentant. No, not even that — unconcerned. “Well, things are going to have to change.”

  He looked over at his son sitting at the table. A fine flush was creeping up his neck and spilling onto his cheeks. “You know it can’t go on like this, Will.” He knew now why there had been no purchases of seed or stock entered in the accounts. Nabby had spent all the money.

  “So, are you going stop riding up and down the countryside and be the one to walk into town with the eggs?” Lewis looked into his son’s defiant face and realized that he planned to side with his wife, no matter what.

  “I’m sorry, Will, but the plan was that the farm would support the family and there’s no reason that it shouldn’t. As far as I can see you’ve made a success of your part of it, and now the rest of the family has to pitch in. From what I hear, your mother has been doing more than her share. I don’t see why Nabby can’t at least tend the chickens and make the butter. It’s not as if she has anything else to do.”

  “Nabby can’t. She’s not strong enough. And she’s even more delicate now. She can’t go flaunting herself around town with a babe on the way. I won’t allow it.” Will’s face reddened a little at this — the news that they were expecting a child.

  “An expectant mother should retire until after the blessed event,” Nabby added. “It’s not seemly to go out in company in this state.”

  This was such utter nonsense that Lewis again was at a loss for words, but it also reflected something he was beginning to encounter on his long rounds — this idea that the natural processes that women went through were somehow shameful and should be kept from public view, as though no one wanted to admit where children came from in spite of the fact that they all arrived the same way. It went hand in hand with the notion of keeping women at home by the hearth, as though they were not partners in a marriage, but possessions, admired for their ability to produce children — but only after the fact, when the babes were safely delivered, never during or, strike even the thought of it, at the beginning of the process.