Turncoat

by Don Gutteridge

  “Upsetting, but not evidence of a threat against him personally,” Marc ventured.

  Sir John replied, with some of the steeliness that had earned him such respect on the Spanish Peninsula and later at Waterloo: “Joshua Smallman would not have left his home in the midst of a New Year’s celebration and ventured out into a blizzard upon a fool’s errand. He was born and raised along that portion of the lake, he knew every brook and ravine. His horse was found tethered, not roaming frantically on its own. He was going somewhere in particular and in earnest. And even though the surgeon testifies that he died in the manner suggested by the circumstances in which he was found, neither he nor the constables knew that Joshua was my agent, and friend. Nor will they.” He held Marc’s eye long enough to settle that point, then said, “They have no reason to suspect that he may have had some clandestine and possibly life-threatening motive for being out alone on the last day of one of the saddest years of his life.”

  “But we do,” Marc said.

  “Precisely.” Sir John shuffled several papers on his desk, then looked up. “Please send your report directly to me in Quebec.”

  Marc nodded. “When do you want me to leave for Crawford’s Corners?”

  “In half an hour.” Sir John kept his appraising gaze on the nephew of Frederick Edwards.

  Marc gave him the answer he was looking for: “Yes, sir.”

  There had been little more to say, then, except to sort out in their brusque, soldierly way the mundane details of Marc’s departure and, as it were, his marching orders. Sir John went over the contents of the special governor’s warrant that would allow him to interview witnesses and otherwise invoke the governor’s authority to investigate the suspicious death of Joshua Smallman. Marc was given a bundle of notes and papers that might be pertinent to his efforts and told to read them over before he reached his destination. Colonel Margison, his commanding officer, had provided a swift horse and was to concoct a suitable story to account for Marc’s absence from Fort York.

  So it was just before three in the afternoon that Ensign Edwards set off down King Street on a secret and possibly dangerous mission into the troubled countryside of Upper Canada. He still had no idea why he had been chosen.

  AS MARC TROTTED ALONG THE MAIN thoroughfare of the province’s capital—past its self-important little strip of shops, offices, and taverns—he was pleased that the sun was shining. It highlighted the scarlet and grey of his regimental uniform, most of it dazzlingly visible through his unbuttoned and wind-buffeted greatcoat. But his initial sense of excitement soon gave way to consideration of what faced him seventy miles east on the Kingston Road. Even if murder had actually occurred—and there was no guarantee that Smallman’s death had not been a bizarre accident—his chances of resolving the matter were slim. He knew no one who might be involved in the affair or was in a position to provide useful information. Perhaps a studied disingenuousness, combined with the secret information supplied by Sir John and his own observation skills, would be his best hope.

  Someone waved a mittened hand at him from the doorway of Miss Adeline’s dress shop, and a feminine cry sallied up. Marc kept his eyes front so that his quick smile went unappreciated. The brisk winter breeze chilled and stirred him. He felt physically alive, acute, like some exotic woodland creature that was both hunter and hunted.

  Only one discordant note threatened to disturb the pleasure he was feeling, and he fought hard to suppress it. By the time he got back to Toronto—even if he were to be spectacularly successful in Crawford’s Corners—his role model and benefactor would be in Quebec. Sir John’s replacement as lieutenant-governor was already on his way from England: Sir Francis Bond Head, a man with not a single battle under his belt or laurel to his name, a scribbler of travel books and sonnets for the titillation of ladies-in-waiting among the petty gentry of Toronto and York County.

  As he crossed Simcoe Street, Marc’s eye was drawn to the red-brick silhouette of the two-storeyed parliament buildings a block to the south. Their glittering glass windows and cut-stone pilasters gave them an air of permanence and pertinence. Like their counterparts along the Thames in London, these legislative halls were in his mind mere houses of words, monuments to bombast and hyperbole. He had seen the originals at Westminster, at first in awe as a child at the side of Uncle Jabez (as he called his adoptive father, Jabez Edwards), and later as a law student at the Inns of Court when he was old enough to judge for himself. Even now, even here, a thousand leagues from all that mattered in the world, men slung epithets as if they were weapons: to sting, incite, confuse, and corrupt. But in the end it was the soldier who had to set things right, risking body and soul.

  Marc was so deep in thought that he didn’t notice crossing Yonge Street or seeing the Court House or St. James’ Church farther east. Before he realized it, he was easing Colonel Margison’s second-best horse back to a walk as they began a slow descent to the Don River. The few sporadic clearings on either side of the road indicated that the industry and mercantile zest of the capital city was reaching well beyond its civic borders. He breathed in the yeast-sweet odour of Enoch Turner’s brewery before he spotted its outbuildings and brewing stacks. Just below it lay Scaddings Bridge, as it was still called by the locals, even though Scaddings and the original structure were long gone to grass. Ignoring the bridge, Marc tugged the horse down the slope and onto the frozen surface of the river itself. The recent snowfall allowed him to spur his steed into a lusty gallop, and together they charged across the wind-swept, treeless expanse as if it were the perilous space separating the armies of Wellington and the Corsican usurper. As he plunged through knee-deep drifts up the far bank, a fur-capped trapper stood up to take notice, then waved enthusiastic approval. Marc tipped his plumed shako hat with elaborate politeness.

  At the top of the rise he paused to rest the horse and check that he had not overheated it. The trapper held up one of his trophies as if to say, “Both of us are having a good day, eh?” It looked to Marc as if the drowned creature (missing one leg) was what the locals called ermine, which in truth was merely a fancy word for stoat or common weasel, a canny predator who could, like a turncoat, adjust the hue of his skin with the fickle swing of the seasons. Even the hares in this alien landscape went white with the snows.

  And it was alien territory that Ensign Edwards—late of the shire of Kent and the Royal Military School—was heading into. He had no reason to believe that affairs in Crawford’s Corners or the nearby town of Cobourg would be much different from the querulous, mongrel politics he had done his best to ignore here in Toronto: with its raving and moderate Tories, rabid Reformers, and ordinary Grits, annexationists like John Rolph and William Lyon Mackenzie, out-and-out Yankee republicans recently arrived from Detroit or Lewiston, and Loco Foco Democrats insinuated from Buffalo or Oswego. His own brief dalliance with the study of law had taught him to be logical and analytic, though he hadn’t persevered there long enough to learn the trick of deviousness. His subsequent career as a soldier, so much more to his liking and talent, had taught him to be direct and ever poised for precipitate action.

  Marc emerged from the woods and once again headed east along the Kingston Road. The sun was well past the high point of its daily arc but still shone bravely in a cloudless sky. The weather appeared promising. He would take his time, he would savour the liberal air and pleasing sensation of his body moving with the rhythm of the horse’s stride.

  When Sir John had suggested that he go directly to Crawford’s Corners, where he felt the answers, if any, to the puzzle of Smallman’s death lay, he had assured Marc that he would find ready allies there to assist him, should he have need: in particular Magistrate Philander Child; Major Charles Barnaby, an ex-army surgeon; and James Durfee, local postmaster and innkeeper—sensible gentlemen and true Tories all. Moreover, the supernumerary township constable, Erastus Hatch, was also the miller for the region and a man whose honesty and bluff friendliness should prove invaluable. It seemed he always ha
d a spare room for allies in the cause and a not-unhandsome daughter inexplicably unattached. And, most conveniently, Hatch’s hostel was situated right next to the Smallman farm.

  Marc’s plan was to arrive unannounced at the miller’s place sometime the following afternoon (after a satisfying supper and a feather bed at the Port Hope Hotel), discreetly explore the site of the “murder” with Constable Hatch’s assistance, and then interview the members of the victim’s household before his presence in the area became generally known and speculated upon. He would then pronounce himself satisfied that everything connected with the death was just as it had been reported. From that point he would fabricate some plausible excuse for remaining in Crawford’s Corners (the handsome, unengaged daughter of miller Hatch?) and then, using leads generated by Magistrate Child or other loyalists, he would keep his ears pricked for the undertones of sedition he was certain would provide him with the motive and, if God were a monarchist, deliver up the treacherous assassins themselves.

  It seemed like a sound strategy. However, his wide reading in military history had left him with the disconcerting conclusion that most generals were astonished to discover their impeccable schemes for battle starting to unravel at the opening volley. With such thoughts still contending in his head, Marc sighed with relief when, late in the afternoon, he spotted in the near distance the square-log building he knew would be the popular wayside hostelry of Polonius Mitchum.

  As he rode up to the primitive log structure, he found himself whistling.

  TWO

  We don’t get too many of your kind this far out.” The tavern-keeper chuckled as he dipped a tin cup into the barrel under the counter and poured the contents into a mug that had seen happier and kinder days. “Least not in the daylight.” His whiskers quivered to underline the wit of the remark.

  Marc dropped a threepenny piece on the unvarnished pine board and stared straight ahead. “I’m on the King’s service,” he said. “I’d be grateful if you’d have your lad see to my horse. It’ll be getting dark in an hour or so, and we’ve got a ways to go yet.”

  “Indeed, sir, it’s always a pleasure for Polonius Mitchum to serve a servant of His Majesty. Even though I ain’t had the honour of shakin’ his hand, I’m told the King’s a decent sort of German gentleman.”

  Marc lifted his mug and took a man-sized swallow of the liquor.

  Mitchum swivelled his heavy body to the right and yelled towards the curtained alcove behind him: “Caleb! Drag your lazy arse outside and see to this gentleman’s horse. Now! Before I tan the hide off ya!”

  A lazy scrabbling sound was heard from the murky recesses, and a moment later a door opened somewhere and the winter wind whipped gaily through the premises. “Jesus Murphy,” Mitchum roared. He seemed about to bend his entire bulk around, then changed his mind and, instead, swept the coin off the counter and fetched up a fearsome grin. “That ain’t my lad, thank Christ, though he calls my wife ‘Mother.’”

  “And this isn’t whisky,” Marc said, peering up and fixing Mitchum with a quizzical eye.

  “Thought you’d never notice,” Mitchum said. “I don’t serve Gooderham’s rotgut to gentlemen of quality, and I can see plainly you are that, sir, if nothin’ else.” He reached across and laid the grubby stub of a finger on the sleeve of Marc’s tunic. “Now that’s real quality, sir, even if it do make you look as temptin’ as a guinea hen in a coopful of foxes.”

  “This tastes very much like rum from the garrison stores,” Marc said quietly.

  “Upon my word, young sir, you wouldn’t be accusin’ Polonius Mitchum, Esquire, of breakin’ the law or encouragin’ others less fortunate to do so?” Mitchum’s eyes bristled with friendly menace.

  “I merely remarked upon a suspicious coincidence,” Marc said.

  “As indeed have many of your fellow officers who are wont to frequent this establishment to quench their thirst—and other appetites.”

  The rambling outhouses behind the tavern itself were reputed to be places where a libidinous bachelor with an instinct for gambling could indulge both vices with a minimum of inconvenience. Marc’s repeated refusal to join his comrades-in-arms on their nighttime excursions, out here or closer to home, was a source of wonder to them and, for a few, a cause for resentment. Marc himself could scarcely find reasons for his reserve in such matters, though the scars of a youthful romance cruelly broken up had not perhaps healed as fully as he had hoped.

  “Even so,” Marc said to Mitchum after finishing off his draught, “the importation of Jamaican rum into the province, directly or surreptitiously through the United States, without paying the excise on it, constitutes a crime under the statutes, as does the purveying of bootlegged army rations.”

  “Smugglin’?” Mitchum said, as if the very utterance of the word was horror enough for any respectable citizen.

  “Aye.”

  Mitchum refilled Marc’s mug. “On the house,” he said.

  Marc dropped a shilling on the counter. “That’ll cover the drinks and the ostling,” he said.

  “I ain’t had truck with any smugglers,” Mitchum said. “But there’s plenty of ’em about for them that’s inclined to be unlawful. Most of them Yankee peddlers up from Buffalo or across the ice from Oswego are rum-runners, or worse.”

  Marc sipped the rum, grateful for the warmth it imparted.

  “Why, I seen a pair of ’em earlier today, headin’, they claimed, for the bright lights of Cobourg. And if they was tinkers, I’m the Pope’s bum-boy.”

  “You tell that news to the sheriff of York,” Marc said, reaching over and grasping the bib of Mitchum’s apron. “I’m on serious business, and the governor’s warrant.”

  Mitchum mustered an ingratiating grin. “No need to do that, now, is there, sir? Gentleman soldiers need their little bit of fun and relaxation, don’t they?”

  Marc released his hold. “How far is it to the next hamlet?”

  “That’d be Perry’s Corners: eight miles, give or take a furlong. You can make it before dark, if the weather holds.” Mitchum dropped his grin. “’Course, there ain’t an inn with a decent bed between here and Port Hope.”

  Marc pulled his greatcoat back on. “Tell your wife’s boy to bring my horse around to the road.”

  “I’ll do that, sir. And I’ll remember you to your mates this evenin’, shall I?”

  THE WEATHER DIDN’T HOLD. MARC HADN’T gone half a mile when the prevailing northwesterly abruptly died, replaced seconds later by a southeasterly pouring in from the cold expanse of Lake Ontario. Huge nimbus clouds gathered in the wake of the wind. Marc took off his stiff-brimmed shako with its green officer’s tuft, pushed it into his saddle-roll next to his French pistol, and pulled on—with more urgency than ceremony—the beaver cap so prized by Canadian voyageurs and woodsmen. He wound his scarf several times around his throat and collar and leaned forward as far as he could over the horse’s withers.

  He had not long to wait. The wind-driven snow struck horse and rider like a loose flail. The road vanished, and the treeline, no more than twenty feet away on either side, fluttered and swam. Marc felt the horse’s panic and heard with alarm the stunted wheeze of its breathing. In a minute it would rear and bolt—somewhere. Marc leapt off into the packed snow of the road without releasing his grip on the reins. The startled horse shied and then spat the bit. But Marc, whose own fear was rising, wrenched the frenzied animal sideways, then hauled it, step by stubborn step, into the sheltering pines on the lake side of the Kingston Road. They halted under a tall jack pine, itself shielded by a hedge-like ring of cedars. Marc laid his cheek against the beast’s shoulder and stroked its neck. After a while they both stopped shivering.

  When the wind dropped, they got back on the road. It was covered with a foot of fresh snow, and no track or rut was visible, either to the east or the west. The wind had eased off and only decorative little eddies of snow spun intermittently at the horse’s hooves. Less than half an hour of light remained. It would be pitch
dark before he could reach even the unwelcoming hamlet of Perry’s Corners. Port Hope itself, and a hearty fire, was at least twenty miles farther on.

  Suddenly, from a bend just ahead of him came the sound of horses pounding and snorting, accompanied by cries of human merriment. Marc drew to the side just in time to avoid collision with a four-horse team and a massive sleigh whistling along behind it. The driver waved a friendly mitt in Marc’s direction and clamped a smile around his pipe, but did not slow down. Weller’s thrice-weekly mail coach sailed past, leaving its fur-wrapped passengers only a moment to cheer his presence and admire his perseverance. One of them, apparently female, stood up, swung around, and held up a silver flask, as if offering a toast to the ensign. Such was social nicety among the self-professed gentry of the Upper Canadian bush.

  Marc felt a pang of disappointment that the coach had not stopped, even though he knew the storm meant that both it and he had to get to their destinations as soon as possible. Marc had been quick to observe how the Upper Canadians went about preparing themselves for comfort and survival during winter. Snug in his saddle-roll were extra blankets and underclothing, a large square of sailcloth, and three-days’ rations, in addition to his army kit and pistol. Colonel Margison, who had arrived in person with the horse for Marc, had persuaded him at the last minute to include his sabre. It lay in its scabbard, which was attached to the saddle, not his belt, where it would have been handy but too conspicuous. His Brown Bess musket, however, stood in its rack in the officers’ quarters at Fort York.