“Is that a sheet of notes I spy before you,Mr. Dutton?” Sir Peregrine said helpfully.
Andrew Dutton, a retired attorney, glanced upwarily from under his flared brows, gave his trimmed goatee severalnervous strokes, cleared his throat and said, “Not on the topic perse, Sir Peregrine – just a list of key personages. The memory,which used to be as sharp as a tack, has begun to lose its edge -or is it point?”
When, despite an indulgent smile ofencouragement from the chairman, Dutton offered no furtherelucidating comment, Sir Peregrine said with a failed attempt atlight-heartedness, “Surely such a topic, so ably and dramaticallyrepresented by the play, should be of interest to a colony thatitself has experienced some sort of minor coup d’état?”
“I think that very fact may have occasionedour unusual reticence,” said Cyrus Crenshaw from his seat at thefar end of the table, facing the chairman. “You see, the woundsfrom our recent farmers’ revolt have not had time to heal.”
“Ah, just so,” Sir Peregrine replied – not,in his almost total ignorance of things colonial, really seeing thepoint.
“But perhaps I may move the discussionforward by saying that in my considered opinion the nub of theissue concerning tyrannicide is whether the purported tyrant is,first of all, a tyrant in fact, and then whether or not he is thelegitimate head of state.”
As Brodie had noted in earlier meetings,Cyrus Crenshaw spoke in a deliberate and overly formal manner, asif his vocabulary and sentence rhythms had been acquired late inlife and meticulously overlaid. He was the owner of a prosperingcandle-factory up on Lot Street and the occupant of a fine housenearby. A previous lieutenant-governor, Sir John Colborne, had madehim a permanent member of the Legislative Council, the colony’sso-called Upper House.
“I agree whole-heartedly,” said HoraceFullarton, sitting beside Brodie. “We must consider the fact thatCaesar crossed the Rubicon and made himself ruler of Rome, using,of course, the usual excuse of bringing order out of chaos andpreventing civil war.”
Brodie was pleased to see his mentor – atall, handsome, nattily dressed man of forty years – join thediscussion with obvious relish. While a natural banker – in hisrectitude, his impeccable manners, and his instinct for makingmoney – he seemed to have paid a heavy price for his success andhis public standing. Away from the bank and in casual settings,Brodie found him to have a sense of humour and a personality thatcraved company and social interaction. But a lifetime of “mindinghis Ps and Qs” had apparently made it difficult for him to “letgo.” His day-to-day existence was further constrained by the factthat his wife Bernice had been an invalid for ten years and had notbeen able to bless him with children. That he treated Brodie like ason was both understandable, and welcomed.
“And just because he placed a crown on hisown head does not make him a tyrant,” Phineas Burke, the hawk-nosedstationer said. “We’re given only the conspirators’ opinion ofCaesar. And their motives, Brutus excluded, are suspect, aren’tthey?”
“Very good points,” enthused SirPeregrine.
“I wasn’t particularly fond of that MartellusTimber,” Dutton said.
“And how can we forget that our own rebels,just two years ago, used the same false reasoning to justify theiractions,” Crenshaw said. “They claimed that Governor Head hadusurped the election of 1836 and had acted arbitrarily against theexpress wishes of the Colonial Secretary in London. And theysuggested that the province was drifting into chaos and certainruin.”
“But Francis Head was the King’s surrogatehere, was he not?” said Dr. Samuel Pogue, physician and unsolicitedadvisor to successive lieutenant-governors. “To threaten him was tothreaten the Crown itself.”
“I shudder to think on it,” Sir Peregrineadded.
“But is the state not something larger thanthe monarchy?” Dutton chipped in, his lawyer’s mettle having beenwhetted. “Is not Britain bigger than any single king or queen?”
“Surely the monarch is the state,” SirPeregrine said hastily, alarmed that the discussion was plummetingfrom the lofty altar of Bardic idolatry.
“Tell that to King Charles,” said EzraMichaels, King Street chemist and staunch supporter of the OrangeLodge and its obsession with all things monarchical.
“Gentlemen, gentlemen. Could we not bring thedebate back to Mr. Shakespeare’s glorious play?”
But the ferret was out of its box.
“Surely we are right to see Cassius as a kindof Willie Mackenzie, organizing the overthrow of the legitimategovernment for his own selfish ends,” Dutton said with somepassion, “and in the process deceiving both ordinary, naïvecitizens and his own associates, like Bidwell and Rolph – and poor,pathetic Matthews and Lount, whom we hanged for their sins.”
“And who, then, would our Brutus be?”Fullarton said, giving Brodie a gentle nudge, “Robert Baldwin?”
This drew a laugh that puzzled Shuttleworthbut was well understood by the assembled Tory gentlemen.
Brodie, no Tory, knew that the others aroundthe table saw Robert as a reluctant rebel who had not exercised hisconscience so much as his sense of self-preservation in not joiningMackenzie’s revolt. He felt it was time to make his maidencontribution to the discussion. “Are there, then, no circumstancesin which an oppressed people can legitimately seek to relieve theirgrievances by some kind of insurrection?” he said.
Those around the table turned as one to thenineteen-year-old upstart – more expectant than hostile. How wouldthe Yankee youngster and prospective banker answer his ownquestion, given his upbringing in the breakaway republic to thesouth?
“You are alluding to the soi-disantrevolutionary war, I presume?” Sir Peregrine said, lifting bothchins and staring down the table with a watery, blue-eyed gaze.
“If the grievances of the American settlershad been addressed, perhaps Queen Victoria would still have herThirteen Colonies,” Brodie said.
“I take great exception to that remark,”Cyrus Crenshaw said. “My father, God rest his soul, died a hero’sdeath on the bloody battlefield of Moraviantown in a gloriouseffort to halt the advance of General Harrison’s Yankeefreebooters, who burned and pillaged as they drove into the heartof our land.”
The direct relevance of this outburst to thedebate was not readily discernible, but its passionate deliveryoverwhelmed any logical inconsistencies. It was not, of course, thefirst time that Crenshaw had insinuated his father’s martyrdom intothe club’s deliberations. It was a subject upon which thecandle-maker and legislative councillor was fixated.