Arundel (75 page)

I think those in Quebec were in a frenzy during the days that followed, knowing or suspecting they would surely be attacked if the weather turned thick. They kept up a steady cannonading on St. Roque during the hours of daylight, and I couldn’t run out to our advance posts in La Friponne, which we still did in spite of the great cold, without a shrinking feeling in my back—a feeling a dog must have when he hastens sideways, his tail tucked tight between his legs, past a man intent on kicking him.

We drew closer and closer to the day when the enlistment of Hanchet’s and Hubbard’s and Goodrich’s men expired. The twenty-eighth and twenty-ninth of December were clear and perishing cold—so cold our necks ached; and at night the moon glared in a pallid sky like an imitation sun of polished ice. On the thirtieth there were wisps of clouds, the merest shreds, all disarranged, as though what wind there was, in that high air, were moving in a dozen directions; and the scar on my forehead throbbed.

On the thirty-first the wisps of cloud lengthened into streamers from the northeast. The day grew grayer as it progressed, and the cannonading of the British waxed more violent; and our lowness of spirit, when darkness fell, drove us to Menut’s and to the little taverns of St. Roque for cider and brandy and warmth.

Menut’s was in a turmoil that night because of a game called “Doctor Liberty,” invented by Cap Huff.

There were many of our men, at this time, especially in Hanchet’s and Goodrich’s and Hubbard’s companies, who didn’t wish to fight, nor would they if they could escape. They assumed illnesses they didn’t have, either moaning they were coming down with smallpox, or placing tobacco under their arms so to become pale and sick. Some scratched their fingers with knife blades dipped in the sores of smallpox sufferers, so they might catch the disease.

To cure these malingerers, Cap Huff, with a few Virginians and three or four from Topham’s and Thayer’s companies and Nathaniel Lord from Goodrich’s, organized the Liberty Apothecaries.

It was the duty of the Liberty Apothecaries to discover men who were feigning illness. Once discovered, halters were placed around their necks and they were dragged before Doctor Liberty, who held his consultations in the corner of Menut’s large downstairs room.

It was a pleasing game to watch, for it resulted, usually, in refreshments for all well-disposed onlookers. When I came to Menut’s on that last night of the year, low in mind from the penetrating cold, and low in pocket because I had given Phoebe most of my money, Cap was officiating as Doctor Liberty, flanked on each side by brother Apothecaries. Two Virginians had just dragged before him the round-faced butcher from York, whose name I disremember.

As Doctor Liberty, Cap donned an apron borrowed from Moshoo Menut, and wore on his head a red fisherman’s toque.

He drank heartily from his mug of cider and brandy; then looked at the red-faced butcher in a lofty manner.

“What is the complaint the patient complains of?” he asked, huge-some and dignified.

“Doctor,” said one of the Virginians, “he complains of having smallpox symptoms complicated with bilious
combusto internalis
and the pip.”

“Has he got ’em? Has he got ’em all?”

“Doctor, in the opinion of the Worshipful Company of Liberty Apothecaries, he ain’t got any!”

“Well, what
has
he got?” the Doctor demanded with professional callousness.

“Doctor, the investigation ain’t been pushed to the limit, but it’s known to the Liberty Apothecaries he’s got two hard dollars, and three shillings over.”

“Is it the opinion of the Company that this patient should be cured of what he’s got?” the Doctor asked, taking a two-foot kitchen knife from the table and passing his thumb across the edge with a rasping sound.

“Yes!” bellowed the Liberty Apothecaries.

“Sir and patient,” the Doctor said, “if you can pay to the Worshipful Company of Liberty Apothecaries the sum of two hard dollars, and three shillings over, the Apothecaries will pronounce you cured and free of what ails you, and you will be at liberty to fight for your home and your fellow men. If you cannot pay us—”

With this the Doctor picked up his mug of cider and brandy, which was by way of being a signal to the Liberty Apothecaries, and they at once bawled “Liberty or Death!”

“Liberty or Death!” Cap said, setting down his mug with a bang. “Will you pay and fight, or will you sicken and die?”

The Apothecaries brought in eleven men that night, and all were hearty in preferring liberty to death. We filled them with brandy and cider until they declared themselves willing to fight the British, or any man in the room for that matter; and out of the money we took from them we bought cider and brandy for all who would drink confusion to the old year and success to the new. Somehow, Cap was able to withhold enough to purchase three mutton pasties for the Apothecaries, of whom I was made a member.

When Moshoo Menut brought the pasties, Cap embraced him and made us a speech about the French, for whom he professed great love. He said that of all the people in all the Americas who wore queues, the French were the most generous and friendly, and their queues without peers. The French, he said, would be perfect companions if only they would learn to get along without garlic, or if we would only learn to eat it. Sometimes, he said, it almost made him cry to think two nations should be kept apart by a mere vegetable, root, fungus, or berry, if garlic were indeed any of these; and he, for one, would be willing to devote the rest of his life to helping the French give up the use of garlic.

All this was pleasing to Moshoo Menut, and he sent cider in to us at his own expense. Cap drank his health, and said, with a knowing leer, “On
Normandee noo boovong doo
see-
druh”
then suddenly fell silent, staring and rubbing his face with his great red hands, as if caught in a drift of spider webs.

When we looked where he was staring we saw a sergeant major from headquarters standing by our table—a sergeant major whose blanket coat, all down the breast and sleeves and on the shoulders, was matted with snow. He straightened his arms with a snap. Wads of snow flew out of the creases in his sleeves, plopping on the table before us and striking coldly against our faces.

“She’s cornel” Cap whispered hoarsely.

“You bet she has,” the sergeant major said. “A northeaster: thicker than gurry and getting thicker every minute.”

He looked around the room and our gaze followed his. Men were going out of the door, two and three at a time. Others were struggling into their blanket coats.

“Orders are to go to your barracks, put yourself in readiness, and get what sleep you can,” he said. “They’ll tell you the rest of it at barracks.”

He turned away and went to the next table. We knotted the sashes of our coats and drew our caps over our ears. One of the Virginians stopped in front of McLean’s proclamation offering land to recruits in any part of the American colonies. “They won’t get no part of my land!” he said. He threw a cider mug at the proclamation. It smashed full against the paper. We went out into the snow.

When we reached Mother Biard’s, the thought came to me that if I wished to speak to Phoebe once more I must do it now. The Virginians went on and left us before the house.

“What you want to talk to her about?” Cap asked.

I knew there was something, but for the life of me I couldn’t remember what.

“To hell with it!” Cap said. “She’ll know you’re gone soon enough! Let her sleep.”

That was the sensible thing to do, though I would have liked her opinion on the new ship and Ranger and the garrison house and the building of a bridge across the creek and a new dress for my mother. I went closer to the door and saw the snow had drifted high against it.

Cap pulled me by the sleeve. “Come on! It’s too cold to stand here all night.”

We went on. The snow muttered and hissed in my ear. I was wrapped in gloom, instead of filled with joy that at last the time had come to go in search of Mary Mallinson.

XXXIII

I
T WAS
four in the morning when we were awakened by the bellowing of Daniel Morgan. We were belted into our blanket coats and out into the storm before, almost, we had dug the sleep from our eyes. Scaling ladders and pikes were pushed into our hands as we went out—a ladder for every twenty men, and a pike for every four; and I made up my mind, when I felt the weight of the pike that was shoved at me, that I would give it to Cap as soon as I could and depend on my musket butt for killing Britishers.

I thanked God, when I got out into the snow, that Morgan’s men had been billeted so close to the walls; for we had slept until the last minute, while the others had been marched in from the hospital, with the snow driving hard into their faces.

The street was full of men, drawn up in double ranks. We filed silently between them. Hendricks’s riflemen, dimly seen, were hunkered down in the rear, their backs to the storm and their scaling ladders leaning against them, already coated with snow. Beyond them we passed Goodrich’s company. Later I heard Hanchet and Goodrich and Hubbard had been shamed into going when they saw parts of their companies would have gone without them. The weak companies had been placed between strong ones. Ahead of Goodrich’s company was Captain Ward’s, then Captain Thayer’s and Captain Topham’s, after which Hubbard’s and Hanchet’s were led by Smith’s Pennsylvania riflemen. Smith, still suffering from Cap Huff’s mug-throwing, had been replaced by Lieutenant Steele.

Beyond Steele there were no men, only a snow-filled street; and we formed in a double line, heading the column. I wondered what had become of Paul Higgins and his Indians; and even as I thought it, Natanis and Hobomok came running up through the snow. I drew them in behind me. Paul, Natanis said, was following slowly with his men. Eneas, he told me, had gone into Quebec the day before, and Sabatis too. “I think,” Natanis said, “that Eneas is against us, but that Sabatis goes with Eneas only because he is his friend.”

In our rear we heard a confused gabbling. Captain Oswald with thirty advance pickets plodded through the snow between us, all with their heads down and free of scaling ladders. A little behind them came Colonel Arnold, talking to the men in that rasping voice of his that set anyone who heard it to breathing more quickly.

“Now, boys,” he was saying, “we’ll all have a shot at it! Nobody can stop us if you fight the way you can! Don’t stop! Never give up! Stick to me, boys! The general depends on us, boys!”

So he went past us, broad-shouldered and laughing, and moving as lightly and easily through the drifts as he had moved across our yard at Arundel years before, doing his feats of skill. On his right was the hulking figure of Daniel Morgan, and on his left young Matthias Ogden; and the three of them continued on into the snow after Oswald and his advance pickets. We fell in and moved ahead.

We could hear nothing because of the doleful yowling and moaning of the northeast wind and the hiss of snowflakes pouring into our faces and against our garments.

I have been out on dark nights and on cold nights; but I have never been out on a worse night than this, with the snow cutting into our eyes, and the icy wind sucking the breath out of our lungs so that we hung our heads almost to our waists to shield our mouths. The snow dragged at my feet, so once again I moved to the rhythm of my mother’s spinning wheel. We couldn’t move faster than a crawl. The wall towered above us, a black bulk beyond the whirling flakes, and I knew we couldn’t go on much farther without discovery. This was what troubled me; I expected each moment that the bombs and grape-shot of the British would rip into us, and the suspense was like a nest of mice in my vitals—as bad, almost, as the snow.

If I speak over-often of the snow, it is because we struggled in a smothering, strangling universe of snow—a whirling world of snow: snow that froze to our guns: snow that clogged our eyes: snow that slipped up our sleeves and down our collars and under our caps: that bit our lips and stung our throats and numbed our cheeks and chins: that made our eyebrows and eyelashes into ice-cakes and our hands into vast and painful iron knobs. However we turned or screened ourselves, the flakes hissed and spat against us as if in scoffing derision at our puny shivering efforts.

We passed the ruins of La Friponne and the palace, which lie near the beginning of the walls; then entered a narrow way between the St. Charles River and the cliff on which the walls were built. This was the beginning of the Lower Town, and we had never come in so far as this, any of us.