by Ann Birch
Cheers, then a shout from a deep voice at the back of the crowd. Everyone grew quiet. An old chieftain with eagle plumes, his cheeks painted vermilion and pea green, stood up and faced Fitzgibbon. “Yankee general miserable squaw,” he said. More laughter. “Him fat dog, acted proud, but dropped tail between legs when he heard Caughnawaga war whoops.”
Fitzgibbon laughed with them. “I had my own name for that Yankee dog. I called him General Jackass.”
Sam could hear a pause in Blackbird’s translation. Probably there was no Indian equivalent for the word “jackass”. The Indians waited while Blackbird struggled to come up with a word they would understand. There was a spate of Indian lingo, then came the phrase—in English—“General Pisspot”. This the Indians found so funny that it was a couple of moments before the assembly came to order.
Sam rose and called the crowd to come forward to the table behind which he stood. He shook hands with each of them and gave out a medal with an inscription: “Brave Hearts: The Great Father Thanks You”. The Colonel stood beside him, offering congratulations and embraces.
The Indians had brought gifts—pouches, baskets, rifle slings, moccasins—and they lay in a pile at the base of the monument. They would find a ready acceptance among the folk in Archdeacon Strachan’s congregation at St. James.
“I am glad that I spoke,” Fitzgibbon said to him when the ceremony was over. “I meant it when I said I would ever be grateful to those men.”
“And I am grateful to you, my friend. You saved the day. I’m afraid I will never be a public speaker.” Sam wondered if he had looked a fool in front of Anna. She now stood talking to the old chieftain. There was much gesturing, but they seemed to be communicating on some level.
“Didn’t you enjoy Blackbird’s translation of ‘jackass’? Those men from the deep dark forest soon found out all about pisspots from their white comrades.”
“We shall not mention that particular moment to Sir Francis. He takes a dim view of the ‘savages’, as he calls them, and anything he construes as lack of respect on their part for the white man. And if he decided to discharge Blackbird from his duties, I don’t know what I’d do on Manitoulin.” Sam looked at his pocket watch. “And now what? Shall we take Mrs. Jameson to a respectable hotel in town, then go to Fort George and knock back a few rounds?”
“You will not be rid of me with ease, gentlemen,” the lady said. She had come up behind them. “And before you try, I must tell you, Colonel, that your speech was compelling.”
“Thank you, ma’am. And since you have paid me a pleasant compliment, I have a suggestion I think you’ll like. Instead of abandoning you while Jarvis and I knock back those drinks, why don’t we visit my old friend, Mrs. Secord? She will give us tea and excellent scones.” Fitzgibbon thought a minute, then added, “But while that might be a compliment to the ladies we know in Toronto society, it doesn’t do justice to our friend’s real accomplishments. It would be like saying that General Brock knew how to put a good shine on his boots.”
“I don’t know anything at all about Mrs. Secord,” Anna said as they walked down the hill towards Queenston.
“She overheard important news about the American plans for attack and walked for a whole night to tell it to me when I was in charge at Beaver Dams. Because of her, the scoundrels did not take us by surprise.”
“Amazing.”
“And there’s more, much more to tell about her. Jarvis knew her once. Right, my friend?”
“Yes, I first met her after the slaughter at Queenston Heights.” Sam said no more. He felt down in the dumps. So far, with the exception of a few laughs on the steamer, it had been Fitz’s day. And now, for Anna’s ears, Mrs. Secord would surely relate the story of her famous walk to Beaver Dams, and the Colonel would be front and centre once more.
TWENTY-TWO
Mrs. Secord lived in a plain little house set on a pretty lawn covered in tiny blue spring flowers. “Goodness me,” she said as she opened the front door. “Lieutenant Jarvis and Colonel Fitzgibbon. I heard you were coming today, and I made scones— just in case you wanted to see an old woman. And here you are.” She had the strong nose and strong jaw Sam remembered, and her deep-set eyes took in every detail of her guests. “And this lady is your wife, Lieutenant?”
Sam set her straight, and they all sat down to enjoy her generous tea of cheese, ham, and scones with whipped butter and maple syrup. She served it in her kitchen and made no apologies for the heat of the hearth and the homely smell of onions and cabbage that wafted from one of the boiling cauldrons.
“We had medals for the Indian braves, and we should have had a gold one for you,” the Colonel said. “No one deserves it more.”
“Indeed, sir, I did what I had to. I have always done my duty. Yet the British government and the colonials have done little over the years to help my man or me. In spite of your letters and petitions, sir. But now, at last, we make some headway.”
“Ah, yes, ma’am. I heard that your husband is a customs collector? And does that go well?”
Mrs. Secord laughed. It was a guffaw that came from her belly and shook her body. “My man came in last night and said, ‘Laura, tonight I intend to arrest three smugglers who will try to get some arms across the water under cover of dark.’
“‘James,’ says I, ‘don’t do it. It will be dangerous, and you have a crick leg.’
“‘Never you mind that,’ he says, ‘I have my deputy.’
“‘Two against how many?’ I ask. ‘Three, six?’
“So off he goes, determined to be a fool in spite of what I say. I think about things, then I put on James’s breeches, boots, and long overcoat, smudge my face with ashes, pull a cap over my ears and set off for the river. I also take a mean-looking rifle with me, unloaded, of course, and I show up in the dark, alongside James and the deputy. And when those scoundrels, there were four of them, get out of their boat, I say in my deepest growl, ‘Your weapons or your life.’ And they handed over everything. Even stood quiet while my husband put the cuffs on them.”
Sam laughed. “You haven’t changed a bit, ma’am.”
“‘Till death do us part’, that’s what I vowed all those years ago. And if it hadn’t been for you, Lieutenant, my man would not be here today for me to take care of. And all these years would have been a wasteland that doesn’t bear thinking of.”
“Please tell me what Mr. Jarvis did, ma’am,” Anna said. “I have not heard the story.”
“It was the day of that terrible slaughter at Queenston Heights. James was part of the militia. He always came home for his evening meal, said he liked the peace and quiet of this place with his wife and kiddies. Especially after the noise of the cannon and muskets, even though it was just practice most days. Well, Mrs. Jameson, it got on for five or six o’clock, and he still wasn’t home, and I’d been hearing the artillery all the day long, so I knew something awful had happened.
“So I set out to find him. I took a tablecloth with me. You see, at the back of my mind, I had the thought, ‘If he’s dead, this will serve as his shroud.’
“So I went to the Heights where the battle had been. Oh ma’am, the horror of that sight. Hundreds of dying and dead stretched out before me as far as I could see. And the moans, the stench...” She broke off for a moment. “Well, Mrs. Jameson, I started my search. I turned over a dozen bodies, and then... Well then, I had to stop, I had no more stomach for it. But Lieutenant Jarvis saw me from afar and came up to me. That man you see before you in his fine suit—he was but little more than a lad then—went with me across the battlefield, turning over those bodies one by one. And after ever so long, we found James. Almost dead he was, but the Lieutenant took two flag poles and my tablecloth, fashioned a pallet, hoisted my poor man up on it and helped me carry him home. So there it is, ma’am. Because of him I have a husband today to love and to cherish.”
Suddenly—with no warning—Sam felt his eyes water. Anna squeezed his arm. “What a wonderful story, Mrs. Secord,
but I fear it has brought back too many memories for Mr. Jarvis.”
“Memories, memories—if only one could drown the bad ones.” Sam shook his head sadly. “But the Battle of Queenston Heights still haunts me. That charge up the Niagara escarpment, General Brock just ahead of us... I can hear the pop of bullets that showered the sky, smell the stench of blood and gunpowder. I see Brock’s tall figure in red coat and white breeches fall to the ground without a word, without even a moan. I feel the thud of the Yankee cannonball slicing one of the soldiers in half. And then, the final horror of the bloodied corpse falling on top of the General’s body. Oh, Mrs. Jameson, I pray nightly that my own sons will never know war.”
“I too will never forget our General’s death,” the Colonel chimed in. “He was the best of men. I had little education when I came to this country. It was General Brock who taught me how to write a letter. In spite of his many and great responsibilities, he took time to help an ignorant Irishman.” He wiped his eyes on his sleeve. “I fear, dear ladies, we are a couple of sentimental fools.”
Anna turned to face him. “And what is wrong with sentiment, Colonel? I grow angry when I think of the way men define ‘manliness’. I believe that the best men in this world are those who have tender hearts, who have sensibility as well as courage, who will speak freely to a woman of the thoughts that lie within them.”
“Hear, hear!” Mrs. Secord banged the palms of her hands on the tabletop.
“And how are the doubloons, ma’am?” Fitz asked.
Mrs. Secord laughed heartily and pointed to the cauldron filled with the boiling onions and cabbage. “I do still keep the cauldron, sir, but the doubloons are long gone. They made good soup once, they did, but they also educated my children and paid the landlord.”
“Now, ma’am,” Anna interjected, “either my hearing is faulty, or my wits have turned. You say that doubloons make good soup?”
“Better tell her the whole story, if you please,” Sam said.
Mrs. Secord’s mouth was filled with scone. They waited while she chewed and swallowed. “Well, Mrs. Jameson, I had a collection of Spanish doubloons. Given to me by my dear father, who fought the Yankees in the Revolutionary War. When he came north with the Loyalists, he brought the coins with him, and on his deathbed, he says to me, ‘Laura, my girl, this is your legacy. Guard it well.’ And he hands over the doubloons.
“Well, I kept them safe against a rainy day. The years passed, and there they were, still safe and sound, in that jar there.” Mrs. Secord pointed to a pretty blue piece of crockery on the mantel. “Then one day, it was June of 1813, and I heard the Yankee louts come up my path. A foul noise they were making, too, as if they’d been long in the tavern. I just had time to grab up that jar and throw the doubloons into a pot of potatoes and carrots and lamb shank I had boiling on the hearth.
“They burst through that door, and they say to me, ‘Oh, missus, we hear in the tavern you’ve got doubloons.’ And they go straight to that blue jar and look inside. Then they get nasty, real nasty. Their language should not have been heard by anyone decent, least of all my kiddies who were in the kitchen with me.”
Sam shook his head. “Dirty scoundrels. I wish I’d been there.”
“And I’m that worried about my little ones—and my husband upstairs in bed with his crick leg—so I say, ‘Sit you down, and have some of my good soup. I long ago spent my doubloons, it takes money to feed my kiddies, sirs, but I can offer you the hospitality of this house.’ Oh, I almost choked on that last little bit, I did.”
“Dear Mrs. Secord, I am impressed,” Anna said. “In spite of attempted robbery and verbal abuse, you offered them the best you had. Have you ever heard of such stellar generosity, Mr. Jarvis?”
They all laughed.
“Well, it softened them up, it did. So they sit down. I put my ladle into the pot, careful I am not to scrape up the bottom, and I give each of them, five there were, the potatoes, the carrots and the lamb shank.
“‘Best soup we ever ate,’ they say. ‘And one of them, the corporal, he says, ‘Write down the recipe for my missus.’ So I go into the pantry,” she pointed to a small room off the kitchen, “to find my recipe book, it’s really a collection of my dear mother’s favourites—”
“And you added, no doubt, ‘one heaping ladle of the finest Spanish doubloons’ to her recipe?” Sam smiled.
“And while I’m there, they’re talking, see, talk talk talk about their plans to surprise the Colonel on the morrow. The brass of those louts. They know I’m in the pantry, but to them I’m less important than the trivet or the clock jack. So I sit down on the stool, and I listen to every word and I write it in my memory. And that’s my story of how I got the information to pass on to the Colonel.” She pushed the pitcher of maple syrup towards Sam. “Now have some more syrup on that scone, please do, Lieutenant.”
“Mrs. Secord is too modest to mention the details of the walk she took to warn me. How she set off at dawn, talked her way past the Yankee patrols, walked a day and a night through swamp and bush, past wolves and rattlesnakes...” Fitzgibbon stretched one of his long arms across the corner of the table and clasped Mrs. Secord’s hand. “I will not forget your part in the Beaver Dams Victory, ma’am.”
They left the Secord homestead in the late afternoon for their short ride to Niagara. “My ideal woman, that one,” Anna said, as she waved goodbye from the carriage. “She has courage, resourcefulness and a tender, constant heart.”
“It is remarkable, is it not, how wrong we can be when we call woman ‘the weaker sex’?” the Colonel said.
“And it is remarkable, is it not, Fitz, that Mrs. Jameson believes the ideal man and the ideal woman have the same qualities? I think of my wife as courageous. She has surmounted the tragedy of two dead children. She has buried her sorrow deep inside her and gone on. But somehow, I do not believe she would find Mrs. Secord her ideal woman. She would say that dressing as a man and carrying a rifle is singularly unfeminine.”
“But what do you yourself think of the lady?” Anna asked.
“I find her singularly praiseworthy.”
The minute he said it, he felt himself blush. Was his comment disloyal to Mary?
“It has been a good day,” Anna said as they reached the town. “I have gained information for my book. And I have learned new and commendable things about two of my best friends.”
“There are a number of respectable hotels,” the Colonel said. “May I suggest one?”
“I believe I shall spend the night with the Almas, if they agree. My husband and I stayed with them when we made our trip here in January. They have a pleasant dwelling.”
So they dropped the lady at the Almas’ house just off the main street. Then they made their way back to Fort George. There, in the officers’ mess, they settled into comfortable chairs, and a corporal, earning extra money for the night, brought them glasses of whiskey.
“A strange day of ups and downs,” Sam said. “At first I could think only of my failure as a speaker, but after Mrs. Secord’s kind reminiscences, I feel better.”
“I wonder if Mrs. Jameson’s praise has affected you as well, friend. I noticed how the lady squeezed your arm right in front of Mrs. Secord and me. Watch out. If she decided to engage in amorous combat with you, I wager she’d be more difficult to defeat than the Yankees.”
“I think you’ve taken too much whiskey, Fitz. You not only insult the lady, but you impart a poor opinion of me as well.”
“I just mean to warn you, that’s all. She’s a damned attractive woman, but you’ve got enough on your plate without that one for dessert.”
It was late when they made their way into the clear night air. Around a corner and down toward the river was the small dwelling for officers, where they had taken a room for the night. Later, as Sam listened to his friend’s snores, he thought about Anna. If she had been in a hotel, he might have been able to find some pretext for a visit in the early evening. As it was, he could only think
about what might have been. Which was, perhaps, just as well. If Fitz had noticed Anna’s response to him, he’d better guard his flank.
TWENTY-THREE
It was early afternoon when the steamer returned to the wharf at Toronto. Freeland’s Soap Factory, just to the east of the pier, emitted its usual stink of tallow, and Fitzgibbon bade Anna and Sam a hasty goodbye, pinching his nostrils with his left hand while he hailed a carriage with his right.
John was waiting with the coach and horses. “Let me give you a ride home,” Sam said to Anna.
She pointed to a figure coming along the street at the end of the wharf. “Mrs. Hawkins is here. She will carry my portmanteau, I’ll carry the guitar, and we shall have a pleasant walk along the waterfront in the opposite direction from that stink.”
“Do you remember that it was here we first met?”
“Yes, Sam, it was on this very wharf. I was so alone, so lonely, and you came to my rescue. And now I have something to give you as a token of our friendship. You mentioned it on the day we went to the sugarbush, and now...” Sam watched her set her portmanteau on the boards of the wharf and kneel to undo the buckles. From the top, she took a small, square package, which she handed to him.
He took off the paper wrapping. It was a drawing of a small boy in a buckskin suit. For a moment, he wondered... Then it came to him. It was surely the long-ago picture of himself that his mother talked about. “Oh my god, dear dear Anna, where...who...?”
“I saw it first in Mrs. Alma’s bedchamber in the winter when we visited. She likes it, but she parted with it.”
“What a wonderful gift. My mother will be so glad to see it back among the family possessions. But how can I pay you for it? Please, please, let me pay.”