When he had finished his meal in the cozy dining area, Marc sat back like a pampered patrician and lit his pipe. The innkeeper hovered nearby with a flagon of brandy at half-staff, while his wife prodded the logs in the hearth into fresh flame.
“Is there anything more I can get you, milord?”
Marc paused long enough to effect an air of supreme detachment and aristocratic hauteur. “I trust you have a chamber appropriate to my needs and standing?”
“You are welcome to the suite that faces the road just above us,” gushed the innkeeper, a Mr. Tolliver, who waved frantically at his wife. “It will take the chambermaid twenty minutes or so to prepare it, but we are honoured you have chosen to stay with us.” The wife-cum-chambermaid was soon heard scuttling up the back stairs.
Marc was practising his lordship role not solely for the benefit of the feckless Mr. Tolliver. While Marc had been still on the soup course, a stranger had entered the room, signalled his desire for a meal, and sat down at one of the four other tables. He had dipped his chin slightly to acknowledge Marc’s presence, then removed a newspaper from his coat pocket and begun reading. He ordered his supper in a barely audible drone and went straight back to his reading. But the angle of his head suggested that he was straining to hear whatever conversation the room might afford.
“Business is slight this evening,” Marc said to Tolliver, who continued to hover.
“Well, it ain’t quite evenin’ yet, milord. And ’tis the Sabbath, of course, but we’ll get a few lads in fer a belly warmer or two.” Realizing his mistake, he added hastily, “But I’ll see they don’t disturb yer lordship.”
“Don’t worry, I’m a deep sleeper. By the way, I understand the mail coach makes regular stops here.”
“Couldn’t run without us.”
“Were you here when it stopped by on Friday afternoon?”
“I’m always here, sir—milord.”
“Did you happen to notice if it was carrying two large wooden crates?”
Tolliver pretended to think this over, relishing such intimate contact with greatness (and ready coin). “Yessir, there was a pair of big boxes up top. I remember askin’ the driver if he was totin’ pieces of eight—as a joke, you see—and he said they was just a bunch of stuff, books and such, some rich fella in Toronto was shippin’ to Detroit. And I said, ‘He must be mighty flush to waste his money mailin’ readin’ material.’ ”
“I trust you are excluding newspapers from your disdain.” Marc smiled and, while poor Tolliver reddened at his gaffe, glanced at the stranger and his newspaper. Not a twitch. “I’ll take another pipe by the fire, Mr. Tolliver, and while I’m doing that, would you fetch my man and have him take my bags up to the suite and lay out my nightclothes.”
“Right away, milord,” Tolliver said, still red and happy to be off.
A few minutes later, Cobb came in carrying two leather grips in his right hand. “You damn well took your time, Bartlett,” Marc snapped at him across the room.
Bartlett winced, glowered at the rug on which he stood, and mumbled, “Yes, milord.”
“So get on upstairs and tend to your duties.”
“Yes, milord.” Bartlett turned towards the stairs.
“And Bartlett, put your things in the adjoining room, will you? I want you nearby to heat up the bed warmer if it gets too cold in the night.”
Bartlett swallowed a cough or snort of protest, then wheeled and stomped up the stairs. Ten minutes later, as Marc headed for the same stairs and the ascent to his suite (most likely the one customarily occupied by Mr. and Mrs. Tolliver), he could feel the black eyes of the stranger boring into his back.
Camped on his lordship’s bed, Cobb was quietly seething. “You’re exaggeratin’ more’n yer accent, Major,” he complained. “I damn near sprained my other arm.”
“We’ve got to get immersed in these roles, Cobb. When we get onto foreign soil, we can’t afford to let our masks slip an inch. Our lives may depend on it.”
“If you say so.”
“Anyway, I needed to make it clear to anybody watching exactly why I wanted a ruffian like yourself sleeping up here instead of in the stableboys’ cabin out back.”
Cobb managed a smile of gratitude. “I’ll see to yer foot toaster,” he said, “but I ain’t emptyin’ no chamber pot!”
• • •
As arranged with the compliant Mr. Tolliver, Marc and Cobb were wakened at five o’clock and, fortified only with a flask of brandied tea and stale rolls, they hit the highway with fresh horses before six. They hoped to be in Woodstock by ten, where a decent inn awaited and a hot breakfast. Then it would be straight on to London for supper and an evening dash through the Longwoods to a way station Marc knew near Moraviantown. From there they would make the remaining fifty miles to Windsor, arriving sometime past mid-day. That would give them less than a day to complete their business across the river, for if they were to get back to Toronto by Friday afternoon—when the trial was scheduled to begin—they would have to leave Windsor early Wednesday morning. Marc secretly hoped that Cobb’s wrist would be strong enough to manage the reins so that they could take turns driving and resting. At least it now appeared as if the crates they were seeking would be waiting for them at Mrs. Dobbs’s house. Whether they concealed the letter they needed or whether something similar existed among Coltrane’s other effects was very much an open question.
At the Forks of the Grand they stopped at a log shanty for a shot of whiskey and a brief respite beside a pot-bellied stove. A mile or so beyond the hamlet, just after they had rounded a sharp curve in the road where the forest edged to within a few feet of its verges, Marc hauled back on the reins.
“What’re we stoppin’ here for?” Cobb said, coming out of his doze. “I thought ya went back there at the hovel.”
“I want you to trot a little ways into the woods here,” Marc said matter-of-factly, “and open your flies as if you were about to relieve yourself.”
Cobb’s response stalled between skeptical and amused. “What if I don’t haveta go?”
“Just do it, please,” Marc said, turning his head and cocking an ear. “And hurry.”
Cobb did as he was told, seesawing his way through a knee-high drift to a protected spot among some spruce boughs, where he undid his flies, one-handed. Then he glanced over at Marc. “Ya want the whole show, Major?”
Before Marc could reply, the brittle silence was broken by the muffled pad of horse’s hooves near the bend just behind them. Five seconds later, a lone rider cantered into view. His first instinct was to draw up at the sight of a sleigh parked where one would not expect to find one. But a quick look sideways, where Marc was staring, revealed the arched figure of a man going about one of nature’s necessities. As the rider passed Marc, the two men exchanged glances. The rider’s face was locked in an awkward smile, as if acknowledging something of significance. Then he was gone around the next bend. It was the man from the Brantford Arms, the one with a keen interest in newspapers.
“I seen that fella back in the inn,” Cobb said, still fidgeting with his wayward flies. “I don’t like the looks of ’im.”
“Me neither, but somehow I don’t think he’ll be the last chap to be concerned with the progress of Lord Briggs and his faithful servant,” Marc said.
After a full English breakfast and a change of horses at Woodstock, they drove out onto the Governor’s Road and aimed the cutter due west towards London. Behind them a lone church bell pealed, reminding them that even though they seemed to be prisoners of a fathomless forest and the ribbon of rutted snow through it, there were human communities dotted throughout its vastness and, close by them, the hard-won acres of farmers and woodsmen, whose battle against the ancient trees was as steadfast and perpetual as the seasons themselves. A half-hour later, at a crossroads marked by the friendly presence of several cleared farms, Marc stopped the sleigh.
“I think this is it,” Marc said. “Delia drew me a map before I left your house las
t night.”
“What’re you talkin’ about?” Cobb said with an edge to his voice.
“Your father’s farm, of course: the place where you were born and raised. Does this look familiar at all?”
“But we ain’t goin’ there. We just used it as an excuse in case Wilkie or the sarge come snoopin’ about and quizzin’ Dora or the kids.”
“If we go there, just for an hour or so, you won’t have to tell any lies when we get back.”
Cobb was searching for the words he needed. “My dad told me if I struck out on my own and left him and my brother alone to run the farm, I wasn’t ever to come back. That was fifteen years ago. I was only eighteen. But I knew what I didn’t want.”
“Your mother and Dora have been corresponding for years, and now she tells me that Delia has taken up the task. Dora says your girl’s letters are like long stories, and your mother reads them aloud to your father.”
“He can’t understand a word,” Cobb said, almost spitefully. “He’s had a stroke and gone soft in the brain.”
“Dora says he wants to see you before he dies.”
Just then a one-horse cutter emerged from the side road to the north. A scarlet-cheeked farmer drew up beside them. “Mornin’,” he said cheerfully. “You fellas lost?”
“Could you tell us whether the road you’ve just been on runs past the farm of James Cobb?” Marc said.
“That it does, about a half-mile up on your right. Ya can’t miss it.”
“Thank you,” Marc said, and urged his team towards the side road.
As they glided past the farmer, he stared hard at them and called out, “You goin’ ta see yer folks, are ya, Harry?”
• • •
Though it was difficult to tell for certain, with snow mantling field and fallow, the Cobb farm looked well tended and prosperous. Behind the neat split-log barn, half a dozen Ayrshire cows were exercising in the bright sunshine. From a distant coop the chatter of chickens reached Marc’s ears. In a high, rolling field above the outbuildings where the wind had whipped the snow aside, the telltale stubble of a successful harvest pushed up towards the sky. Drawing up beside the quarry-stone cottage, Marc noticed a young man with a pail slip into the barn. Apparently he had not seen them. “Was that your brother?” Marc asked.
Cobb, who had resigned himself to what he considered a needless ordeal, said, “No, it wasn’t. Laertes lives ten miles off on his own place.”
“Your father was fond of Shakespeare, I gather.”
“Nobody could stop him,” Cobb said with a touch of quiet pride. “And now my kids’ve caught the affection!”
Marc, who had had more than one fatherly misadventure himself, felt for his friend, but he was convinced that this visit was a necessary one for the disaffected son. They had not touched ground before the front door of the cottage opened wide and an aproned woman with gray hair askew and a broad smile on her face trundled out to greet them.
“Oh, Harry, Harry, you’ve come at last!”
“I have, Mama. That I have.”
Soon after, Marc and Martha Cobb sat at the table in the kitchen, sipping tea and nibbling at biscuits slathered with apple jelly. Cobb’s mother was one of those farm women, so common out here, who in their late fifties put on a layer of plump flesh that in no way diminished their muscular strength and actually rendered them more sensually attractive. Martha Cobb had troubles enough for two, with a stricken husband and a farm to operate on her own, in addition to the estrangement of her firstborn and two miraculous grandchildren she had not yet laid eyes on. But every velvet wrinkle in her face could be traced to excessive laughter—at both the capricious joys of life and its sorrowful follies.
“I know I shouldn’t giggle, Mr. Edwards, but some of the things poor James comes out with are comical, and even though he don’t understand much most of the time, he loves to see me have a good belly laugh. You see, we’ve shared a lot of ’em in our life together.”
“How is James today, ma’am? Is he likely to recognize Horatio?”
“He’s havin’ one of his better days, thank the Lord. Just an hour ago he was askin’ after Harry.”
“How are you managing the farm on your own?”
“Oh, bless me, sir, but the Lord has been more than kind to us, he has. A week or so after James went down, about the end of last February, a young man shows up at our gate beggin’ fer work.”
“There have been a lot of young men looking for employment since the unrest last year and so many farms being suddenly sold or abandoned.”
“It was bad around here after the Mackenzie business, I can tell you. Anyways, I says to young Bradley, do you know anythin’ about farmin’? ‘No,’ he says, ‘but I c’n learn.’ I told him we had little ready cash, but he said he’d work fer room and board and whatever else we could afford to give him.”
“So he was the chap I saw going into the barn?”
“That would be Bradley. I reckon he spotted you, but he’s terribly shy, he is. Sometimes I have to stop him from workin’ so hard, and I keep tellin’ him he needs to go to town and mix with folks his own age. He keeps promisin’ he will, but so far he sticks to his room in the barn and his Bible.”
“Surely he goes to church?”
“I go every Sunday, but I go alone.”
“Is he from this area?”
“Oh, no. He said he’d run away from home after his papa’d beaten him. He come here with the clothes on his back, that’s all, and a bunch of nasty cuts and bruises on his head. I felt real sorry for him. We come to an agreement right away, and he’s been with us ever since. Oh, Mr. Edwards, we’ve been so blessed, we have. First young Bradley arrives and now our dear, dear Harry. And Delia tells me Dora and her brother and her are plannin’ a trip this way before Easter.” Tears contended with her smile.
Marc suddenly heard a strange voice rise from the nearby bedroom, deep and sonorous.
“Oh, he’s talkin’ to Harry!” Martha cried. “Let’s go and have a listen.”
They edged up to the partly open door. Cobb was sitting on the bed beside his father, holding his hand. James Cobb was a big-boned yeoman of a man, now gaunt and almost fleshless, but the power and energy of that body were still intimated in its final, pitiable configuration. The stroke had taken some of the fire out of the bold, dark eyes and slackened one side of the angular face and the jut of the jaw. But the voice that emerged was only mildly slurred and the words uttered more candid in their skewed clarity.
“Master, young gentleman, I pray you, which way to Master Jew’s?”
Then an answering voice: tender, antiphonal, impish. “Talk you of young Master Launcelot?”
“No master, sir, but a poor man’s son.”
“But I pray you, old man, talk you of young Master Launcelot?”
“Of Launcelot an’t please your mastership.”
“Talk not of Master Launcelot, father, fer the young gentleman is indeed deceased, gone to Heaven.”
“Marry, God forbid, the boy was the very staff of my age, the very prop.”
“Do you not know me, father?”
“Alack, sir, I am sand-blind, I know you not.”
“Well, old man, I will tell you news of yer son. Give me yer blessing. Truth will come to light. Murder cannot be hid long. A man’s son may, but in the end truth will out.”
“I’ll be sworn if thou art Launcelot, thou art my own flesh and blood.”
Martha Cobb tittered behind Marc, and together they withdrew silently to the kitchen. Martha was grinning through her tears. “My word, Mr. Edwards, they were doin’ the Gobbo recognizin’ scene from The Merchant of Venice! James and Harry ain’t done that since Harry was thirteen and decided he was too big to be indulgin’ in such sissy behaviours.”
“I know the scene well,” Marc said, still amazed.
“It’s a miracle, sir, that’s what it is!”
“The mind often retains entire songs and whole swatches of verse even when ordinary speech desert
s it,” Marc intoned solemnly.
Martha gave him a surprised look. “Oh, sir, it’s Harry I was talkin’ about.”
When he could, Marc slipped quietly away from the scene of reconciliation and made his way towards the barn. A curl of woodsmoke rose through a stovepipe near the rear of the building. Marc went back there, pushed open an outside door, and stepped into the alleyway between the cattle stalls. To his right a curtain had been crudely hung across an opening. He brushed it aside.
“Pardon me for intruding,” Marc said to the startled young man, “but it is urgent that I speak with you.”
• • •
Bradley Tompkins swept the blond forelock out of his eyes and, barely making eye contact, asked Marc, “How did you know?”
“It wasn’t that difficult,” Marc said. “The timing was too coincidental, and Mrs. Cobb’s description of the circumstances of your arrival convinced me that you were a refugee from the Battle of Pelee Island.”
“They hanged ten of us in London.” The young man shuddered.
“I have absolutely no intention of seeing you hanged, Bradley. Cobb is my good friend, and you have been a godsend for his mother. Besides, I’m positive most of the locals already know or suspect and no longer give a damn.”
Bradley looked astonished. “You really think so?”
“I do. Moreover, since you were not a soldier in a legitimate army, you are no deserter.”
“But I daren’t go back to Detroit. You don’t know those men—”
“I’ve got an inkling. But you should be safe enough here. By the spring most of this fuss will have blown itself out. And it’s not as if you were the sole American émigré in the county.”
Bradley appeared considerably cheered by these assessments. Then he looked down and spoke in a sustained whisper. “I ran away from the battle. I realized as we were comin’ across the ice from Sandusky that I’d made a terrible mistake. I’d let my disagreements with my father lead me to be duped by the promises of the Hunters. I thought we would be marchin’ into Canadian villages with the local citizens cheerin’ and clamourin’ to join us. Half the fellas tried to skedaddle before we reached the enemy at the north end of the island. But I wasn’t afraid for my skin. It was when I looked over the ice that morning and saw all them militia uniforms facin’ us that I realized these were ordinary folks in homemade tunics. The people we’d come to liberate were prepared to leave hearth and haven and die resisitin’ us. In the confusion of the first volleys, I took a bullet fragment off the forehead, then I just melted away and went on the run. I must’ve looked a right mess when Mrs. Cobb took me in.”
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