Marc suddenly recalled Bostwick’s remarks that the man was fond of codes. Could he be orchestrating an invasion from this very chamber? Did those newspaper articles that the obliging editors had so enthusiastically printed actually contained hidden instructions? Was this braggart, self-styled major gleaning information from the very worthies who assumed they were picking his brain?
“But you won’t be here to take part in any such battle,” Marc said quietly.
Coltrane grinned. “We’ll have to wait and see about that, won’t we?” he said, and took another gargantuan snort of snuff. It brought tears to his eyes. “You should try this tonic, Edwards. I never indulge before ten in the morning, but when I do, I wake up to the world like a hibernating bear, hungry for the day!”
“I’m a pipe smoker myself.”
“Dulls the mind, Edwards. Makes a man content and self-satisfied. And that’s the state in which a citizen’s liberty is most likely to be snatched from him.”
“Milton spoke of the confusion of license with liberty, did he not, in his Areopagitica?”
“That petty sod! What about Voltaire and Paine and Rousseau? What about Franklin and Jefferson? You English are stuck with religious zealots like Milton and cynics like Hobbes and Bentham.”
“You’ve found time to read all these gentlemen?”
Coltrane leaned back in his chair to the point where it approached tipping, and roared with laughter. “By the Christ, I like you, Edwards. You keep talking straight from the shoulder like that and we’ll soon make a Yankee out of you!”
“I’ll need to be convinced first.” Marc was now certain that Coltrane was enjoying their conversation and that the moment was nearing when the delicate business of the duel could be broached.
“You presume, of course, that because I am a Yankee and not reluctant to enumerate the permanent advances that America has made in the evolution of the human species, I’m an unlettered boor. Such misconceptions do not bother us in the least. In fact they play directly into our plans for the future of the race.” At this he rose and walked with great dignity over to the bookcase, which sat beside the curtained doorway to what must have been a sleeping chamber. Marc noticed that Coltrane’s left arm swung awkwardly at his side.
“I have read all these books, many of them several times. Not in their original tongues, alas, because, unlike you, I was not born with a silver spoon between my gums. I had to go to work at age thirteen and abandon my formal schooling. But as America grows to become the greatest nation on earth, its language will soon be the lingua franca of the world. Nonetheless, it has already given me Caesar and Hannibal and Alexander and Pericles. That batch of newspapers there just arrived from Buffalo this morning. It includes the Times of London.”
“I am impressed. You must be beholden to your host.”
Coltrane ignored the barb. “And on this shelf, and there on the right side of my desk, you’ll see part of my extensive collection of old-world snuff boxes. I had them shipped up here from Detroit.” He picked one off the shelf with his good hand and fondled it as he might a lover’s breast. “This one is from Bohemia, handcrafted in Prague about 1706. The filigree at the base is a continuous ring of succubi. Beautiful to behold and delightful to the touch.”
He came over and sat down again. “Now, Edwards, it is clear you have not come here merely to gape at the circus grotesque. Tell me what you really want.”
“You are correct in your assumption. I have come to ask a great favour of you. That you are evidently a man of refinement and learning ought to make my task that much easier.”
So, while Coltrane sat and listened without interruption—except for periodic snorts of snuff—Marc explained the consequences of Billy’s involvement in the duel. He stressed the obduracy of Sir George in regard to bail and Billy’s assent to Robert Baldwin’s proposal. Billy would sign a peace bond, pen a guarantee not to issue any false or libelous statements regarding Coltrane’s behaviour at Windsor, and agree to stay in his house until charges were dropped or prosecuted.
“He genuinely regrets what happened,” Marc finished up.
“I’ll bet he does. The fellow is a hothead and a know-nothing. He got himself into this mess, didn’t he? Why should I feel pity for him?”
“True, he did threaten to spread libels about you, but it was you who took umbrage and challenged him to a duel, an event which only you could somehow arrange in here.”
“You know perfectly well I could have shot his brains out.”
“I assumed that. Your bullet was dug out yards from its target. Conversely, it is not inconceivable that Billy might have shot you, however feckless he might have been with a pistol.”
Coltrane’s gaze did not waver. “I know that. But I’ve survived two battles already, and I am not destined to die just yet.”
“In a battle we have to think that, don’t we?”
“True. Also, it seemed the only way to prevent the slanders, whatever the risk to my person. They were bound to be believed—here for certain and perhaps even by my enemies at home.”
“Your reputation means that much to you, that you would let Billy take a free shot at you?”
“What else do we have, besides our life and our virginity, that can be lost only once?”
“And since you are now approaching your trial and possible—”
“Do I look like a man worried about the gallows?”
Marc had to agree that Coltrane showed no such signs. Perhaps as the day drew closer, though, that might change.
“Surely Sergeant McNair’s promise to refrain from any slanders is exactly what you wanted out of this situation in the first place?”
“What good is his word, eh? I’ll need more compelling reasons than that flimsy hope.”
Marc played his first trump card. “Robert Baldwin has agreed to be Billy’s defense counsel. As an earnest of his good faith, he has arranged for you to be represented next week by a renowned New York lawyer here in Toronto, a chap named Richard Dougherty.”
Coltrane sneezed extravagantly, sending snuff across the papers on his desk. “Doubtful Dick!” He laughed.
“The same.”
“Well, tell Mr. Baldwin thank you, but should I actually end up in court, an eventuality quite remote, then I intend to defend myself. And thoroughly enjoy doing so.”
Bravura or bravado? It was impossible to say.
Marc had one card remaining. “I believe you ought to inform Sir George that you consider Billy McNair no threat to your safety and that the duel was merely a pro forma affair to salvage your honour. And I believe you should do so because it was Sergeant McNair who saved your life back there at the fort.”
Coltrane was surprised at this assertion. He took several seconds to let its import register. For a moment a flicker of doubt, obviously a rare occurrence, showed itself. Then he grinned. “That’s absurd. I collapsed in the woods after ordering my men safely away. I woke up in an army hospital, a captive. I was told that McNair dumped me on a travois and hauled me back to his master’s tent like a trophy.”
“Then how did the tourniquet that prevented your bleeding to death get onto that ruined arm of yours? Did you put it on yourself?”
“I assumed one of their medics did that.”
“They had no surgeon out in the field. It was McNair who did it, minutes after your ambuscade took his best friend’s life.”
Coltrane sat back. Unconsciously he reached over and touched the upper portion of his crippled left arm. “How do I know it was he? He’s already threatened to spread lies about me. Besides, it could have been any one of a dozen men there that day.”
“He used a silk kerchief that his fiancée had given him as a good-luck token.”
Coltrane took this in slowly, perhaps thinking back to what he could recall of that fateful morning near Windsor. Then the smile reappeared, and this time it was edged with the kind of cunning confidence he had shown throughout the interview. “Well, he’ll be pleased to know I’ve
hung on to it. I figured it had helped me survive, so I put it away among my souvenirs. It’s in one of those kit bags over there.”
“Then you’ll know Billy’s telling the truth.”
“Why don’t you describe it for me.”
Marc flinched but managed to say, “He told me it was silk, orange with some figures or pattern on it.”
“I’ve seen a lot of ladies’ kerchiefs like that.”
“I’ll get a detailed description of it for you,” Marc said quickly, upbraiding himself for not doing so earlier.
“Better still, why don’t you bring the boy back here tomorrow, so I can look him in the eye and he can tell me all about his girlfriend’s tourniquet? Can you arrange that?”
“I’m sure I can,” Marc said, not at all sure, considering Sir George’s intransigence. “First thing in the morning.”
“Make it the afternoon, say, one o’clock.”
“All right. Then what?”
“Then, if I’m satisfied, I’ll do what I can to help the little weasel out of his predicament. If I give Sir George a further case of the jitters, then that’ll be a bonus, won’t it?” He laughed, then added, “And tell Doubtful Dick that I’ll think about letting him join my legal team—as a junior.”
• • •
Marc duly signed out while Lardner Bostwick, half a bottle of sherry further into inebriation, lurched and grunted to get the cell door closed and secured. Whatever punishment the colonel had doled out for his jailer’s earlier transgressions, it had not included outright dismissal. Marc found his hat and coat on the hall tree by the front door, put them on, and stepped out into the cold sunshine. As he was pulling the door closed, he caught a glimpse of a slim female figure darting down the stairs leading to the prison chamber. Uh-oh.
He nodded to the sentries and, whistling with satisfaction, headed east on Hospital Street. On a whim, he decided to have a look at the garden and Coltrane’s apartment from the rear, thinking he would be able to talk his way past any guard posted there. He cut through the woodlot, as Cobb had done, and was about to step into the clearing behind the house when he saw a movement in the bush nearby. He called out “Stop!” but this only sent the figure fleeing.
It darted in and out of the sparse scrub bush, making itself momentarily visible, then vanishing. Marc had no doubt that he—the figure was definitely male—had been spying on the rear entrance to Chepstow, for he had been positioned directly opposite the gate and the sentries. Moreover, he was not likely one of the protesters: they did their dance in full view of the public on the street. But a minute later, he could no longer hear the crash of footfalls, and he was compelled to slow down and try to track the fugitive across the crusted snow. Eventually the tracks led him back up onto Hospital Street. He had lost the chase.
However, he had seen enough to assemble a mental picture of a man of medium height and build with flowing yellow locks who ran—like himself—with a limp.
EIGHT
The rest of the day was consumed with negotiations aimed at winning Governor Arthur’s consent for Billy to visit Caleb Coltrane at Chepstow the following afternoon. Shoppers along fashionable King Street, many of them carrying out last-minute expeditions to the tailor or jeweller in preparation for the Twelfth Night Charity Ball, were startled to see the same sleigh hurtling westward from the Court House towards Government House and then, minutes later, pounding eastward for home—only to have the procedure repeated several more times before the supper hour. Magistrate Thorpe, convinced of the wisdom of settling the unfortunate “McNair affair” quickly, had agreed to act as go-between in the official negotiations. When exchanged notes failed (Sir George: “I don’t want that young hothead anywhere near Coltrane—he damn near killed him the last time!”), Thorpe himself was driven up to Government House and then back to the police station to report his lack of progress to the lawyers and a not-uninterested chief constable.
At Robert’s suggestion, Thorpe finally played up the incidents of civil unrest caused by Billy’s incarceration, which, combined with the protests outside Chepstow over the coddling of Coltrane, were beginning to pose a threat to public order. What if these mounting protests turned violent, with the governor compelled to call out troops to fire upon citizens whose principal sin was loyalty to the province and the Crown? And further, was this the atmosphere in which Sir George wished to stage Coltrane’s trial next week, a trial designed to demonstrate the cohesion, probity, and determination of a beleaguered colony? The clincher was Marc’s offer not only to post bail and a peace bond for McNair, but also to personally supervise the accused during his “house arrest.”
Ultimately, the governor caved in, but not all the way. He told Thorpe (shouted it actually) that if Coltrane signed an affidavit exonerating McNair, then the charges would be dropped, though a peace bond and confinement to residence would remain in effect until Coltrane swung from a rope in the Court House square. Moreover, Arthur had had enough of Stanhope’s mollycoddling an enemy of the Crown. He’d give the colonel his evening of glory at the ball on Saturday, but on Sunday morning a platoon of regulars would descend upon Chepstow, clap Coltrane in irons, and haul him off to a dungeon in Fort York where he would be kept “on ice” until his trial.
There remained the question of the protesters, who were now alternating their attention between Government House and the jail. If Billy were to be driven up King Street or any other thoroughfare tomorrow, was there not the risk of a rescue attempt or some unseemly demonstration? To avoid this, Marc suggested that Billy be smuggled out of the rear doors of the Court House after being brought there through the connecting tunnel, and put in disguise for the trip to Chepstow. Robert offered his third-best wool coat, an unfashionable top hat, and a pair of his brother-in-law’s suede boots. Calfskin gloves and a silk scarf would complete the ensemble. Meanwhile, Magistrate Thorpe himself would go up to Chepstow to apprise Colonel Stanhope of these arrangements, with no mention of the Sunday-morning prisoner transfer.
Stanhope was furious enough at the notion of another visit by McNair. He had apparently been told of Coltrane’s desire to meet Billy on the morrow and had not objected because he assumed Sir George would put the kibosh on it. But when Thorpe explained patiently that Sir George now wished the visit to take place “in the best interests of the province,” the colonel had no choice but to agree. But he did not do so gracefully. Instead, he fired off a note to Sir George in which he asserted that he would take no personal responsibility for anything that might happen as a result of “this unwarranted interference in my sworn duty to protect the prisoner and deliver him holus-bolus to the court.” The consequences, he declaimed, would be on the governor’s head.
Next morning, Beth and Marc rode in their cutter to Smallman’s, just two blocks above Baldwin House. The weather remained clear and cold. To Marc’s annoyance, Beth insisted that she drive (“I’m pullin’ on the reins, not the baby!”) while he gave an account (slightly censored) of the day’s hopes for Billy McNair. Just as they reached Yonge and swung south to enter the service lane behind the shops on King Street, Beth remarked, “That’s a coincidence, then.”
“In what way?”
“Almeda Stanhope and her daughter Patricia came into the shop Monday afternoon and again yesterday.”
“To have a dress refitted, I presume.”
“Now how did you know about that?”
Marc laughed, pleased to have their daily disagreement about Beth’s working forgotten for the moment. “I heard the two women discussing it at Chepstow yesterday.”
“I don’t think they get on all that well.”
“That was my impression. The daughter didn’t want to wear Momma’s hand-me-down.”
Beth whistled, either at Marc’s comment or at Dobbin, who had decided not to stop outside the rear entrance to Smallman’s. “Some hand-me-down! They brought in a fifty-dollar gown that Almeda wore to Lord Durham’s gala last June.”
“I think their disagreement was more
likely about Miss Stanhope not wishing to be trotted out as a trophy in her papa’s collection.”
Beth smiled, then—to Marc’s horror—hopped to the ground. She gave the bulge in her coat a proprietorial pat, waved good-bye, and skipped up the steps to her place of business.
• • •
Marc spent the morning at Baldwin and Sullivan, trying to be useful in order to keep his mind off what was to come. He realized that he had been adamant in his assurance to all concerned that Billy McNair would behave and carry out every one of the necessary commitments. He did know Billy, had watched as he and Mel Curry worked at Smallman’s, had admired his respectful courting of Dolly Putnam, and had been impressed with his efforts during the training period with the colonel’s regiment last summer. However, combat and its inevitable calamities could, and usually did, change a man.
Just before noon, Dr. Baldwin came into chambers to inform them that the chief justice had agreed to let Doubtful Dick Dougherty serve as Coltrane’s counsel. Smiling broadly, he waved an official-looking paper at them. It was a letter from Justice Robinson authorizing Dougherty to practise as a barrister in Upper Canada on a temporary license until such time as the benchers of the Law Society could convene to review his application and grant him permanent status. Dr. Baldwin then went off to deliver the license and the good news in person.
“Do you think Dick will invite him to lunch?” Robert grinned at the thought.
Billy, of course, had been informed of their success with the magistrate and the governor on the previous evening, along with the gist of Marc’s encounter with Coltrane. He seemed, Robert told Marc, genuinely contrite and eager to resolve the situation as soon as possible. When the jailer brought him through to the police quarters at twelve-thirty to meet his escort, Marc quickly learned why: Dolly had visited late Wednesday afternoon. Jailer Strangway, who sympathized with the marchers out front, had been extremely indulgent and the lovers’ tryst had lasted more than an hour. During those intimate minutes, the couple had not only reconciled but had agreed to a date for their wedding.
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