Death of a Patriot

by Don Gutteridge

  The door was opened by a man in full morning dress, the coat and trousers each a size and a half too large. His hair was greased and parted down the middle, and an ill-trimmed moustache did little to distract attention from a broken and indifferently set nose. His brown eyes watered perpetually, causing him to blink like a hound who’s been skunked. Marc almost laughed, for he seemed a parody of the English stage butler.

  “Good mornin’, sir. Who shall I say has come to call?”

  Marc caught the Yankee twang under the British phraseology. “Would you inform Mr. Stanhope that Mr. Edwards has come to keep his appointment with the prisoner.”

  “Major Coltrane?”

  “The same.”

  “You bin approved, then?”

  Marc smiled. “I believe I have.”

  “I’ll inform the colonel. He insists on screenin’ all the major’s callers.”

  And Marc felt himself being thoroughly screened by the colonel’s man, before the latter turned and slow-trotted down a hallway. Marc stepped inside and knocked the snow off his boots. He was glad that Gideon Stanhope was here to greet and preapprove him. He was as curious about Coltrane’s solicitous jailer as he was about his prisoner.

  • • •

  They met in Stanhope’s study, a pleasant if overfurnished room.

  “You’ll have to pardon my butler,” Stanhope began the moment the fellow had left them. “He tries hard to please, but he hasn’t quite got on to our ways.”

  “He’s American?”

  “He is. My wife brought Absalom here several years ago upon the recommendation of her sister in Port Huron.”

  “As you know, sir, I have come to see the notorious Mr. Coltrane.”

  Colonel Stanhope’s regimental moustache twitched. The fellow was in full regalia, including his sabre in its ornamented scabbard. His shako cap and greatcoat lay on a nearby chair—at the ready for what, Marc could not imagine. The overall impression was of a rigid self-discipline. His soldier’s back was as straight and taut as a yeoman’s bow. It was difficult to believe that less than a year ago Stanhope had been a prosperous importer of English goods whose main claim to public attention had been his manor house and his bank account. But Marc knew from personal experience never to underestimate the allure of a uniform and its capacity to alter a man’s priorities.

  “We refer to him here as Major Coltrane, whatever Sir George may think or wish.”

  “So I’ve heard,” Marc said evenly. “But you are aware, are you not, that many of the same citizens who cheered you heartily on Yonge Street in December are not pleased with the way you have been hosting your prisoner?”

  Stanhope essayed a smile but succeeded only in making his moustache quiver and his chin flinch. “I have only to look out my front window every morning to see that, sir. But you of all people ought to understand the absolute necessity of adhering to military protocol.”

  It was Marc’s turn to smile. “As an officer, I don’t recall billeting captured rebels in my home and giving them the unfettered pleasure of a steady stream of visitors.”

  “Well, you must judge these conditions for yourself, sir, when you visit the major. My point, however, is that Coltrane is a fellow officer, and I fully intend to keep treating him as such until his trial has begun and he is taken out of my jurisdiction. And when you’ve had a chance to meet him, I believe you’ll agree that he is not only a true soldier but a remarkable man.”

  “I’m told you and he were face-to-face at Pelee last March?”

  “We were, though we did not know it at the time.”

  “At which battle you won your spurs, so to speak?”

  “You’re referring to this nonsense about my being dubbed the Pelee Island Patriot?”

  “I’ve suffered the embarrassment of similar appellations.”

  “I know. And so you’ll realize that it is one’s actions—in battle and after—that really matter, not the trappings of fame.”

  Like parades down Yonge Street or places of honour at the Twelfth Night Charity Ball, Marc thought. “So you don’t mind that Coltrane has claimed the same appellation for himself?”

  Stanhope’s gaze narrowed and his moustache did a nervous jig. “Major Coltrane is a Yankee, sir. Braggadocio is part of his charm.”

  “But he is still a soldier worthy of special treatment?”

  “Most certainly. He distinguished himself at Windsor, and as second-in-command was compelled to lead the assault force when his own general, Lucius Bierce, remained a mile or more behind his troops. While gravely wounded, the major kept his head and organized an orderly withdrawal of his men, even as Bierce scrambled aboard his ship and took off for Detroit. The major engineered an ambush against our pursuers—devastating for us, but perfectly understandable from a tactical viewpoint. Then, convinced that he was dying, he gave orders that his troop were to abandon him and escape to the river, which they did, all of them returning safely home.”

  “Which is when Sergeant McNair found him and brought him and his papers to you?”

  Stanhope’s gaze tightened. “Yes. I recognized instantly that we had captured their de facto commander, and in his kit Sergeant McNair had found a set of strategic plans covering the next three months along the western border. They have since proved invaluable in dampening down the raids and even the threat of raids.”

  Marc hesitated a moment, as if absorbing this irrefutable truth, then said, “So you can’t have been too pleased when the same heroic sergeant was found in your garden with a smoking pistol in his hand and your prisoner a mere twenty paces away.”

  Stanhope’s response was unexpectedly mild. “I was not. Billy McNair was a fine NCO, a source of great pride to me as his mentor and commanding officer. I thought he understood the awful necessities of being a soldier. Indeed, throughout the entire month we spent in the western district and during the action at Windsor, he behaved in exemplary fashion. Even after the fiasco and slaughter at the fort, he was disciplined enough to bind up Major Coltrane’s wound, search his person, secure those critical papers, and then bring him straight to me—all the while grieving the loss of his best friend.”

  “Those who know Billy McNair will not be surprised to hear that.”

  “I understand you too lost a friend down at St. Denis.”

  Marc nodded. “Like Billy, I could do nothing to save him.”

  “We all lose friends and acquaintances in battle, don’t we? But we can’t let that turn us into savages, wreaking vengeance on helpless prisoners or innocent civilians.”

  Marc had witnessed the horrific consequences of retaliation in Quebec the year before. “No, we can’t,” he agreed.

  “And that is why I am treating Major Coltrane with all the respect and courtesy due a captured enemy commander, and why I am doing it publicly. If the governor wants to try the major as a common cutthroat, then let that be on his conscience, not mine.”

  “Nonetheless, sir, you are taking a great risk that Coltrane will be sprung loose by his compatriots, whose sympathizers are everywhere amongst us, or that he will be assassinated by one of the many visitors you allow him to entertain.”

  “There you are wrong, sir. As you will see, the chamber downstairs is barred and reinforced, I have my own militiamen at the back gates day and night, the regular army patrols the street at intervals and guards the front door, and Lieutenant Bostwick has been assigned as the major’s full-time jailer. He sleeps in the anteroom next to the prison chamber.”

  “The same gentleman found umpiring the illegal duel?”

  Stanhope sucked in several breaths in an effort to swallow his anger. “That sad business has been taken care of.”

  “Has it? With Billy McNair in prison without bail and Coltrane living like a pasha in your home?”

  “The lad was unforgivably reckless. Had he succeeded in killing the major, he would have deprived the governor of his trial and stained my honour for all time. I have given my word to Sir George: the major will be delivered to
the Court House next week healthy and whole. As far as I’m concerned, Billy McNair is on his own.”

  Marc said nothing to this callous remark. “What puzzles me most about the duel, sir, is how Caleb Coltrane contrived to get Billy, Lieutenant Bostwick, and two loaded pistols into your garden at dawn.”

  Stanhope’s face brightened into a practised congeniality, the kind he must have used to ingratiate himself with his customers in the mercantile life he seemed now to have abandoned as frivolous and unmanly. “Ah, Lieutenant Edwards, that is easy to explain. Major Coltrane is a most beguiling man—as you’re about to learn.”

  He extended his hand to Marc, signalling the end of their conversation, and informed him that the butler would direct him down to the prisoner. But Absalom was not in the hall when Marc reentered it. Having spotted a stairwell near the front door when he had come in, Marc assumed that it led to the lower chambers and headed towards it. One of the hall doors was ajar, and as he passed by, he heard female voices behind it, raised in anger. He stopped to listen.

  “Abe tells me you were down there this morning for more than an hour! What on earth are you thinking of? The man will be dead in three weeks!”

  “It was only half an hour, and I won’t be spied upon by that little toad!”

  “In this house you’ll do as you’re told, and as your father wishes.”

  “And it’s Papa, remember, who’s given me orders to serve Caleb his breakfast and take the tray away when he’s finished.”

  “It doesn’t take an hour to eat sausages and eggs!”

  “So he likes to talk. What’s wrong with that? And is it a crime that a man—a real man—should find me pretty?”

  “Lots of men find you pretty, my darling. You’re going to be a sensation at the ball on Saturday.”

  There was a pause here, and Marc, somewhat embarrassed to be eavesdropping, was about to move on, when the dialogue started up again.

  “What did you say?”

  “I said I’m not going to the ball!”

  “Don’t talk such foolishness. Your father is counting on you.”

  “He just wants another pretty creature in a dress to decorate the podium and show the town what a fine and prosperous gentleman they have in their midst!”

  “Where did you get such an idea?”

  “Caleb says—”

  “Caleb, Caleb, Caleb! Is that all you can talk about from morning till night?”

  “You’re just jealous—”

  “Don’t be stupid, girl. Caleb Coltrane is a cold-blooded killer and a user of women. I don’t want you spending any more time down there than you absolutely have to, do you hear?”

  “Caleb says I’m too beautiful to go to a ball in a hand-me-down dress.”

  “So that’s it, is it? You’re too proud to put on a magnificent gown worn on a single occasion months ago—just because it belongs to me.”

  “It’s the wrong colour. Caleb says it clashes with the delicate tones of my skin.”

  “Well, you can tell Caleb when you take him his breakfast tomorrow morning that you’ve had a second fitting, despite your delicate skin colour. Your father will be driving you to the dressmaker’s this afternoon.”

  At this, a far door slammed. Marc then heard a soft weeping and another door opening.

  “Oh, Abe, what am I going to do?”

  “It’ll be all right, ma’am. You’ll see.”

  At the end of the hall a large, florid face swam into view.

  “You come to see the prisoner?” Lardner Bostwick called out to Marc.

  • • •

  Gideon Stanhope was right about one thing: the rooms designed to contain Coltrane were a substantial and well-fortified prison. Following the burly, uniformed Bostwick down the stairs, Marc came into a spacious, fully furnished anteroom with a good-sized window at one end. This was no cellar. As Chepstow was built into the slope of a hill, this section at the back was really a ground floor, one which had likely been intended as servants’ quarters. A low wooden door near the bottom of the stairs no doubt led to a wine and root cellar. But straight ahead Marc was confronted by an iron-reinforced door, secured by thick hinges and a formidable padlock.

  “We keep his majesty in there,” Bostwick said, and Marc winced at the whiskey breeze that blew past him. “When he wants something, which is quite often, he raps three times.” Bostwick gave out a congested chortle, coughed twice, and reached down for a key from among several chained to his belt. “The silly bugger likes codes.”

  “Is he expecting me?”

  “If he wasn’t, you wouldn’t be here. Now, sir, please sign your name and the time in that big book over there. The colonel wants a strict record kept of everyone goin’ in and outta here.”

  Marc signed in, noting the familiar names of a number of previous visitors. They represented a cross-section of political interests. One was surely meant as a joke: E. Mohican. Something unusual was drawing people who should know better to converse with a character who was, on the face of it, a foreign outlaw. Marc’s curiosity intensified as he watched Bostwick fumble with the key in a vain attempt to control the shakes that gripped him. “I’m comin’ in with yer guest, Coltrane, so I better find ya behind yer desk when I open this here door!”

  Marc smiled at this, suspecting that if it were not for the constant presence of militia sentries and regular-army patrols, the prisoner would easily overpower his inebriated jailer, who would be lucky to find his sword, let alone draw it for deployment. Marc did wonder though whether, as the trial date approached, Coltrane would not attempt to take the colonel’s wife or daughter hostage. The colonel’s naive trust in soldierly conduct could prove to be tragically misguided. As an officer once in charge of security at Government House, Marc concluded that these security arrangements, whatever the structural adaptations of the chamber itself, were seriously flawed. He would speak to Wilfrid Sturges about it soon.

  The heavy door swung open on well-oiled hinges.

  The man who seemed to have mesmerized an entire community sat waiting for him in a padded chair behind an impressive oaken desk. He was taking snuff.

  • • •

  “You seem to forget, my good fellow, that it was a citizen army under the command of amateur generals who, inspired only by the power of an ideal, managed to defeat the most potent military force in the world. That same spirit, the democratic ethos, is sending thousands upon thousands of young men who love liberty to our recruiting centres. The United States Army conveniently leaves its armouries unguarded, so that we are even now building up a formidable ordnance and massing troops along your borders.”

  Caleb Coltrane, accoutered in his major’s getup, sans pistol and sabre, was talking—something he liked to do almost as much as soldiering. Marc was quite content to have him do so, for his plan was to get Coltrane comfortable with him before presenting his proposal concerning Billy. That did not prove difficult. The major was accustomed to conquering his visitors with the force of his personality and his skill with words. Certainly his physical presence was imposing. While of medium build, he gave the impression of size with his ruffed hair, hawk’s nose, menacing chin, and penetrating glance. While his irregular tunic was meant to impress, it was nevertheless worn carelessly, as if the man inside it were too important and preoccupied to be bothered with neatness or decorum.

  “I’m quite familiar with the campaigns of Burgoyne and Washington, Mr. Coltrane. I trained at Sandhurst,” Marc said.

  “You don’t have to have gone to West Point or Sandhurst to be an effective officer. My superiors at Pelee had been to military school, and none of them could organize a poke in a whorehouse. I was the only one who didn’t lose his head in that fiasco. My men fought like tigers, like the minutemen at Concord, but they were betrayed by inept leadership. I vowed that would not happen the next time.”

  “Colonel Stanhope certainly seems to admire your battlefield prowess.”

  Coltrane’s dark eyes glittered with contempt. “T
hat pompous martinet! Don’t even mention his name in the same breath as mine!”

  Marc was taken aback. Had the prisoner shown his indulgent host this kind of dismissive scorn? Surely not. Still, the colonel’s naiveté seemed bottomless.

  “My impression is that he—though a brevet colonel in the militia—is nonetheless a man of military bearing who observes the strict protocol of his profession. Moreover, he has twice been wounded in battle. I thought you would be more sympathetic.”

  “What you fail to appreciate, Edwards, is that what you see here about you—a carpeted room with a cozy fire, a capacious desk for my work, a never-empty wine decanter on the sideboard, three shelves of books and mementoes—all this has been accorded me because of who I am, not who the colonel thinks he is. I am the commander of a citizen’s army, ten thousand strong, chosen by Fate to liberate the enslaved peoples of Canada from the chains that bind them.”

  “But these same people seem to have chosen slavery, have they not?”

  Coltrane chuckled. He reached over and opened an ornate, silver snuff box in front of him, one of two such, sitting beside a leather Bible. Marc was accustomed to seeing gentlemen take a pinch of snuff between thumb and forefinger, place it below a nostril, and decorously sniff it. But Coltrane set a thick wad on the back of his weakened left hand, leaned down to it, and gave a loud snort with a flared nostril. He blinked, sighed, and repeated the procedure with the other nostril. Marc politely declined to join him.

  “Bierce was a worse fool than he was a coward. That proclamation he read at Windsor village was rhetorical drivel.”

  “The locals certainly thought so. It was, after all, a citizen’s army that defeated you in Baby’s orchard.”

  “That was precisely the problem for us. Our best hope of liberating this pathetic backwater is to do what George Washington and William Henry Harrison did: defeat the British regulars, who are the armed agents of the Crown and the prima facie oppressors of the people. Reading proclamations and conducting monthly border raids will not put backbone into the serf who has been so long enslaved he knows no better. What we require, and are preparing to effect, is a showdown battle with the redcoats, like Waterloo or Saratoga.” Here he glanced cryptically at the papers on his desk.