Abruptly, Billy’s terror was transmuted into a consuming rage. They had been taken for suckers! Those Yankee pickets had been deliberately left behind to sacrifice themselves for their fellows and to perpetrate the ruse that the fugitives were without ammunition. That officer with the dangling arm was both brave and diabolical! And he was about to escape scot-free. Billy found himself galloping towards the ambushers with his coattails flying and his Brown Bess clutched carelessly in one hand, with no thought but to run down this mad adversary who had crossed the border to inflict unjustified mayhem upon his peaceful neighbours. Breathless and spent, Billy staggered into the bush and prepared to fight to the death.
But there was no one to take up the challenge. Paper cartridges littered the ground, grim evidence of the murderous volley just unleashed, but not one of the enemy had remained to deliver a final, fatal blow or pick off the wounded as they struggled to their feet in the clearing. Nor had any of Billy’s troop followed him on his foolish, suicidal sprint. He was alone, and his rage was soon deflated.
Just as he turned to face the horrors that he knew must lie on that bloodied meadow, he heard a low sigh. And spied a boot sticking out from behind a rotting stump a few feet away. Cautiously he eased over to it, gave it a gentle kick, assured himself that the body attached to it was unconscious or dead, and stepped around the stump, bayonet poised.
It was the officer he had first seen in the orchard. Of what rank he could not tell because the blue and yellow tunic, though ostentatiously draped with insignia of several kinds, was homemade. His old-fashioned tricornered hat had fallen off his head and lay beside him where he had apparently attempted to rest against the stump and then tipped sideways into a thick tussock of desiccated grass. The head seemed too large for the body, though the shaggy mane of yellow hair, a high forehead, rugged goatee, and aquiline features may have given the illusion of size and grandeur. With his dirt-spattered uniform and wind-blown hair, his sharply hooked nose and thin, near-invisible lips, he resembled nothing so much as an American eagle shot out of the sky in the fullness of flight.
A tiny cough tremored through the thin lips. The man was alive. Billy could now see that the left arm was indeed useless: it hung at an eccentric angle and a dark stain oozed out at the elbow. The fellow had organized the retreat of his men and effected their escape with one arm and a suppurating wound. And from the evidence here, it appeared that his last command had been an order for them to leave him to his fate. Without thinking, Billy pulled out the kerchief that Dolly had given him as a good-luck talisman, knelt beside the enemy, and after slitting open the sleeve of his tunic with a jackknife, fashioned a tourniquet above the wound. The fellow moaned weakly but did not open his eyes.
It was at this moment that Billy realized the significance of capturing such an officer and, in all probability, having saved him from bleeding to death. Taken back to Colonel Stanhope, he could be interrogated and vital information elicited. If he were in fact a major or a colonel, he might even be carrying sensitive papers. Billy leant down, opened the fellow’s leather kit, and drew out four sheets of heavy rag paper.
On the first sheet he saw what were obviously military orders, from Brigadier-General Lucius V. Bierce to Major Caleb Coltrane. Billy was unable to decipher much of the tactical lingo, but he was certain that the colonel would have no trouble doing so. The second sheet contained a sketch of some sort, composed of arrows, lines, and strategic X’s-a plan of attack, no doubt, and probably linked to the orders on the previous page. The third sheet was a printed “Proclamation to be read aloud to the enslaved peoples of British Canada”-likely the one already declaimed by Bierce in the village square at Windsor. The fourth was quite another matter. It was written in a hand entirely different from the others, on a fine vellum paper. Billy skimmed through its contents:
November 1, 1838
My dearest C:
Come soon or I’ll be driven to find my own route
to your heart, with all the risks and fretful dangers to
our secret. And when you do, tucked in your strong arms
and safe in your embrace, I promise faithfully to supply
you with enough kisses to keep you forever attached
to me and our mutual goal. And should our reward
be in Heaven only, I’ll treasure those blessings received
already. But I must go-he’s had me watched since Saturday!
Ever yours,
D
A love letter from the fellow’s mistress. Well, whatever assignation they had hoped for would not happen. “Major” Coltrane was destined for jail and a rope necklace. Billy put the other three items safely into his own pouch, but something compelled him to fold the billet-doux, unfasten the top buttons of Coltrane’s tunic, and slip the letter under his blouse, next to his heart.
The first thing Billy saw when he stepped out of the woods was a lone soldier running across the killing ground towards him. There were no bodies prone and lifeless on the icy turf and no moaning from the wounded and maimed. For a moment he thought he must be in the middle of a cruel and improbable dream. But the soldier’s voice and the look of shock and horror on his unlined face were all too real. It was Lévesque, a farm boy from Belle River.
“Where is everyone?” Billy said.
“We’re all in the fort, sir. We’ve moved the injured men inside.”
“That’s good. The Yankees have skedaddled, but we’ve got their ringleader.”
“Sir, you must come and see what we’ve found in the fort. Right away.” Lévesque’s eyes were as round as the buttons on his overcoat.
“What do you mean?”
“We know where they got the powder and bullets from.”
“From the fort? But-”
“We found two crates busted open and looted. They must’ve dug ’em outta the wall somewheres.”
“That can’t be,” Billy said, as they raced back towards the crumbling redoubt. “Captain Muttlebury removed them all last month.”
“He must’ve missed out two boxes.”
Bill stopped. “Jesus, Lévesque, they’ll court-martial him!”
“I don’t think so, sir. The captain’s dead.”
They had propped Muttlebury up against one of the walls, where he had died. Someone had had the courtesy to close his eyes. Sitting there with his hands folded in his lap and his chin resting peacefully on his chest, the captain looked as if he were taking an afternoon snooze at the back of his shop-with a blood-red carnation in the left lapel of his suit coat. And next to him, similarly propped, was another soldier: an avenging bullet had ripped the perpetual grin from his boy’s face.
Billy’s knees gave way. He sank to the ground. His stomach heaved. He put both hands flat upon the earth to stop it from spinning. But it didn’t.
THREE
Marc Edwards, Esquire, closed the cow gate and stared back fondly over the spacious grounds of Osgoode Hall, still pastoral despite the wind-chiselled drifts of snow covering them and the leaf-shorn maples standing sentry here and there around them. A mere two months ago, the lads from up-country had been kicking a pig’s bladder across the greensward and in their animal exuberance, uttering very unbarrister-like whoops of joy. As the training centre for the province’s attorneys, Osgoode could not have been more removed from the urban hurly-burly of London’s Inns of Court had it been bivouacked on the moon. Summer or winter, the handsome three-storey brick edifice, not yet nine years old, was lapped in silence, save for birdsong in one season and the whine of arctic wind around its cornices in another. The grand colonnaded library on the second floor was as quiet and serious as the thousand tomes that sat in mute expectancy on its shelves.