Dubious Allegiance

by Don Gutteridge

  A bugle on the parade-square sounded a peremptory blast. He had to go. There were immediate and overriding exigencies. He would find time to grieve his losses later. And for a while at least, he was not unhappy to buckle on his sabre and scabbard.

  The John Bull, weighed down with eight infantry companies, four guns, and assorted baggage, tried to ram its way through the ever-thickening ice of the Richelieu River. Three hours and one mile later, Colonel Gore admitted defeat. So, shortly after noon on this first day of December, Gore’s brigade was once again on the river road. Whereas a week ago it had been wet snow, rain, and a muddy morass that had made the twenty-mile trek to St. Denis a living hell, it was now the frozen ruts (their own, alas) that made their passage no better than travelling over a rock-strewn wasteland. A corduroy road in April would have been heaven.

  Despite the bone-jarring obstacles, they made good progress. The sun shone cold and bright. No skirmishers threatened from the occasional woods they had to pass through. When they marched into St. Ours at dusk, no sniper fired on them from the shuttered houses. Not a soul emerged to greet or spit at them. This time Gore called a halt, and the troops bivouacked for the night—to eat heartily and rest for the battle expected on the morrow.

  The next morning dawned bright and clear. All the omens were good. Colonel Gore addressed the assembled troops. He reminded them of their duty to the Queen, made ambiguous references to the misadventures of the previous week, and concluded by asking them to remember how Captain Weir had been slaughtered, mutilated, and tossed aside like a butchered calf. “Do not be fooled,” he said in a pinched, effeminate drawl, “into thinking that because the rebels have no uniforms they are not soldiers determined to kill you in a blink. A farmer with a pitchfork is as murderous as a fusilier. And it was ordinary-looking ploughmen who stabbed Captain Weir to death and laughed at his sufferings. Show no mercy. Our orders are to defeat these outlaws utterly. Their leaders will be captured and clapped in irons. Any farmer or householder known to have taken part in the revolt is to have his goods confiscated and his buildings put to the torch. I know you will all do your duty. May God be with you.”

  * * *

  They were within a mile of St. Denis when Captain Riddell rode up beside Marc and engaged him in conversation.

  “Major Jenkin was telling me that you’ve been involved in several murder investigations.”

  “That’s true.” Marc smiled, relieved for the chance to talk about something other than war or politics. “I found them more diverting than cards and dice.”

  “Everybody in the mess knew about how you helped catch Councillor Moncreiff’s killer, but I hadn’t known about the other two.”

  “Well, I don’t boast about them, sir, because in my first investigation I managed to discover the killer, but he got away, in part because I wasn’t quick enough to nab him.”

  “But you got him in the end?”

  “With the help of others, yes. And his accomplice as well.”

  “What happened in the third case?”

  “Well, I did manage to solve it, but the killer bolted across the border.”

  Captain Riddell, a jolly, open-faced Englishman, laughed. “Two out of three, eh? That may be a higher success rate than our good colonel will ever achieve!”

  Marc acknowledged the point with a small, rueful smile.

  “You did well out here last week,” Riddell said, suddenly grave. “You’re a natural soldier: no-one would have guessed it was your first engagement.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  “By the way, I’ve written to Ensign Hilliard’s father. We’ll all miss him.”

  Marc nodded, and they rode on in respectful silence.

  They were approaching the creek where they had had so much trouble trying to save their twenty-four-pounder. The makeshift bridge had since been blown to pieces, but the cannon lay as they had left it—snout down in the mud, now frozen solid—like an ancient beast trapped forever in ice. Beyond it, the path to the coulee was littered with tree trunks to impede their progress towards the village and its fortifications. The colonel was about to send his sappers down to test the thickness of the ice when the scouts came riding back to make their report on what lay ahead.

  The news took everyone by surprise. The rebels had deserted the town. The stone house was unoccupied. Several new ramparts had been constructed but were unmanned. Even the residents of St. Denis had, it seemed, taken to the woods. There would be no return engagement: the rebels had anticipated the result and, after the débâcle at St. Charles a few days before, had more or less abandoned the Richelieu Valley to its fate.

  That fate was soon decided. Colonel Gore met with a delegation from the village, who had appeared as soon as the troops had gained the coulee. One of the elders, clutching a white rag in trembling hands, assured the colonel that Nelson and Papineau had fled to the United States. There would be no organized resistance. As innocent bystanders, they wished to be left in peace.

  “I’ll determine who is innocent,” Gore proclaimed from his lofty perch. “I have orders to destroy the property of anyone who joined the renegades or aided and abetted them.” He turned to his captains. “We’ll start with the distillery.” He looked down at the old man. “You will point out to us Wolfred Nelson’s house and any others, as required. Meanwhile, we shall need billets in the town. I want the officers to secure these, and turn out any occupants who do not fully co-operate. If there is any real resistance, the premises are to be burnt to the ground.”

  “It is starting to get dark, sir,” Captain Riddell said tactfully.

  “Then the fires we shall start will burn more brightly, won’t they?”

  Marc was relieved that his squad was assigned the task of reconnoitring the outskirts of the village and nearby woods to make sure there really were no rebels waiting to ambush or entrap the invaders. However, the only people they scared up in the fast-failing light were townsfolk hiding among the trees, cold and starving. Many refused to return to their homes, awed by the spectacle of flames roaring into the sky from several houses in the distance. But the presence of the government troops soon became known to another group also hiding out in the woods: those few loyalists, most of them English-speaking Tories, who had remained faithful to the Crown and had suffered for it by having their barns razed, their crops and cattle stolen, and their lives threatened. They knew exactly which locals had made their lives miserable since Lord Gosford, the civilian governor, had left them to the mercies of Papineau and the Papists. And they wanted revenge. Now.

  By the time Marc rode back into the village to report to Captain Riddell that the periphery of the town was clear of the enemy, the local Tories were already in the process of leading squads of soldiers along the narrow streets, pointing out the houses of traitors and seditionists. Moments later, these burst into flames.

  “Jesus, we don’t even know whether these wretches are guilty of anything,” the captain said, his face dark with anger. “A single finger pointed that way, and it’s all over. I didn’t join the army to burn out civilians and raze crops. Christ, these people are all starving!”

  “What are my orders, sir?”

  “Take your troop and clear out that log house up there at the end of this street.”

  “And set it on fire?”

  “I’m afraid so, Lieutenant. Colonel Gore insists it was used to hide rebels.”

  Marc sighed, but nodded his assent, numbly. As much as he had tried to suppress such thoughts, all he could think of—here among the wailing of women and children as they fled their flaming homes, the shouts of rage and defiance among the returning Tories, the flare of sudden conflagrations against an indifferent, indigo sky—was that this sort of chaos and self-perpetuating reprisal could very easily happen in Upper Canada. With barn burnings, secret assassinations, and the rule of law frayed by rage.

  Reluctantly, Marc hailed Sergeant Ogletree. Then he and five infantrymen followed Marc up the street towards the house indicated
by Captain Riddell. Two of the men carried pitch-torches. The air was foul with acrid, greasy smoke. The spit and sizzle of flame bedazzled the eye, making the stark silhouettes of the buildings even starker.

  There was a meagre bit of light shining through one window of the log house as they came up to it: someone had been brave or naive enough to remain there.

  “Somebody’s at home,” Marc whispered, and held up his hand. The men halted behind him. “Sergeant, take two men and watch the rear of the place. I’m going in, carefully. We all know what happens when we corner a rat.”

  “We could just fire a volley through the window and order them out,” Ogletree said. “Then set the thing ablaze.”

  “We could do that,” Marc said. “But we could also kill innocent civilians.”

  Veteran cynic that he had become, Ogletree grunted as if to say that few civilians in a civil conflict could be called innocent. But he obeyed.

  Marc rapped at the stout door and called out in French: “Open up, please. No-one is going to hurt you. We require your house as a temporary billet for some of the troops. You will be paid for any food we consume.” He winced at the lie but told himself it was better than needlessly risking lives.

  There was no response from inside. Marc could hear Ogletree’s group deploying behind the house. The flickering light in the window near the door was definitely that of a candle or lantern. Was it being kept alight to aid an ambush? Surely not. The town was totally in possession of the troops: any armed resistance would be suicidal. Still . . .

  Marc pushed at the door. It was unlatched and swung open.

  “I’m Lieutenant Edwards. I am commandeering these premises as a billet. I have not drawn a weapon.” With that, he stepped into the room, his sabre in its scabbard and his pistol, primed and ready to fire, tucked lightly in his belt.

  The interior was more brightly lit than he had anticipated. To his right several candles were burning, illuminating a kitchen area with a crude deal table and two log chairs, both occupied by women. Mother and daughter, perhaps, each with handsome Gallic features and lustrous, dark hair. But it was the eyes that caught Marc’s attention and held it: black and smouldering, with a malevolence he did not think possible in a woman.

  Marc tried to smile, touched his cap, and said hesitantly in his best French, “Good evening. I must ask you to leave. I noticed a shed out back. You could take some blankets out there for the night, or perhaps you have friends or relatives nearby.”

  The women remained as still as a pair of gargoyles. The room seemed colder than the night outside. It was the younger one, who would in any other circumstances have been thought beautiful in the first blooming of her womanhood, whose eyes moved first. It was a furtive glance only, but it brought Marc’s gaze around to its object. To his left and in among the shadows, there appeared to be a large clothes-cupboard, its thick door half open. Or opening.

  Marc reached for his pistol just as the form of a young man unfolded from the maw of the cupboard.

  “No!” one of the women screamed.

  The young man’s right hand seemed to explode, and Marc felt something strike him in the thigh and spin him sideways. Just as a second pistol was being raised into the light, Marc fired. The gunman grunted, and sank slowly to his knees. Both of his weapons clattered to the floor. His hands lifted themselves up to his throat, where Marc could see a grotesque, dark splotch spreading.

  I’ve killed a man, was his first thought, just before his own pain struck and he reached out in a futile attempt to keep himself from falling. As he lay, numb and bleeding in the sawdust on the floor, the last thing he saw before he lost consciousness was a pair of black, feral eyes wishing him dead.

  Horatio Cobb, charter member of the five-person Toronto constabulary, was a worried man. And what worried him the most, perhaps, was his being worried at all. Cobb, as he was known far and wide across the reaches of the capital city, prided himself on keeping his life simple and uncluttered. But living where, and when, he did was making it nigh impossible to do so.

  True, he continued to rise at seven each morning, except on the Sabbath, and checked to see if Missus Cobb was still beside him. This latter gesture was made less difficult by the fact that Dora, as the neighbours called her, was as round and pink-fleshed as nearly three hundred pounds can accomplish. Her work as midwife to the easternmost half of the city, the “old town,” often took her out at all hours of the day or night, and her absence was palpable. But a hot breakfast never failed to appear on the kitchen table, either at the instigation of his goodly wife or that of his ten-year-old daughter, Delia. After which he invariably waved Delia and her brother Fabian off to school, kissed Missus Cobb or her image, then made his way along King Street into the heart of the city, nodding to familiars, scowling at ragamuffin boys contemplating mischief, and raking every brick and inch of his domain with a policeman’s practiced eye. How much more at home he had felt here among the bustle and hurly-burly of the province’s metropolis than he ever had on his father’s farm. It was his own considered opinion—an opinion he valued highly—that he was a man in his element.

  His element included his regular patrol, an area bounded by King Street on the north and the lakeshore on the south and stretching from Parliament Street on the east to Bay on the west. Within that precinct he was the law or its visible representative. His helmet, blue tunic, and belted truncheon, in combination with his stealthy swagger, were enough to keep the hooligans, roustabouts, and inebriates in suitable awe of his authority. And when that failed to impress, there were his powerful arms and hands with the tenacity of manacles, and as a last resort a persuasive fist or two. Each morning, after checking in with Sarge, the chief constable, at the police quarters in the Court House on King between Church and Toronto Streets, he would be released for the day to do as he saw fit in maintaining the Queen’s peace. As luck would have it, there were a dozen taverns and grog-shops situated within his patrol, and, believing in that proverbial ounce of prevention, Cobb made his presence felt in such trouble-spots as often as his thirst and capacities would permit. It was here, too, that he picked up—by subtle threat, beery bribe, or appeal to good citizenship—those tidbits of information that aided him and his colleagues in their ceaseless quest for law and order in Victoria’s peaceable kingdom. His network of snitches had become legendary.

  That was now the problem, and the source of his uncharacteristic anxiousness. For despite the leisurely and self-regulated pace of most of his days—a lingering luncheon in the Blue Ox or the Crooked Anchor, a pleasant supper with Missus Cobb and the children, and the stimulation of an evening spent clearing the streets of belligerent drunks or assisting the bailiffs in serving warrants on sundry miscreants—he found himself, at the end of a twelve-hour day, dyspeptic and out of sorts. And politics was the efficient cause, first and last. The antics of William Lyon Mackenzie and his fellow radicals over the summer had put the whole province on edge. Rumours of an armed uprising were as frequent, and about as reliable, as the number of bent elbows over a bar on Saturday night. Such matters ought to be the business of the governor and his agents, not the local constabulary. But then not many governors other than Sir Francis Bond Head would have shipped every last redcoat in Upper Canada off to Quebec to fight the Frenchies, leaving Fort York deserted and Government House unprotected. And with the nearest militia across the lake in Hamilton, only five policemen and Sheriff William Jarvis of York County stood between the Queen’s surrogate and a bullet from a radical’s musket.

  As if this were not trouble enough, Governor Head had ordered the chief constable to instruct his subordinates to act as his “eyes and ears” in the city. The least scrap of information that might be inflated to suggest potential seditious activity or the mere thought of seditious activity was to be reported as fact as soon as it was discovered. Each constable was to check in at headquarters at noon, at five o’clock, and at the end of the evening shift—to relay the whiff of rumour or tavern scuttlebutt.


  And, of course, it was Cobb with his fabled network of spies who was expected to supply the chief and the governor with a steady stream of reliable data. Such an expectation had brought complexity to Cobb’s life, and consequent worry. Every one of his “agents,” smelling booze-money in the air, was more than happy to retail the latest rumour and spice it up for good measure. Cobb prided himself on knowing exactly how truthful and how useful any information passed to him in a pub actually was—to the penny or the fluid ounce. But no threat of withdrawal or reprisal on his part could stanch the flow of alarming nonsense. He was not averse to passing it along to Sir Francis if the governor was fool enough to give it credence. What he feared most was that some tiny fraction of the malarkey might be true.

  Since the troops had left, taking Marc Edwards with them, there had been serious incidents in the streets. Shop windows of those merchants directly associated with the Family Compact had been smashed by radical sympathizers or, in Cobb’s opinion, gangs of toughs out for a lark. On the other side, groups of young Tories, who should have known better, had been encouraged by their elders to deface the property of known radicals—which in their diminutive minds included respectable Reform politicians and most Americans. When not in the mood for wielding a paintbrush, they chose to threaten their victims with anonymous, poison-pen letters. But if there really were malcontents north of the city organizing and arming themselves (after all, he and Marc had exposed a gunrunning operation in October, and news of an insurrection south of Montreal had just made the papers), then his life was about to become seriously complicated.