Arundel (80 page)

“Well,” I said to Cap heavily, “there it is. That’s what we suspected: a connection between Hook and Guerlac: between Eneas and Hook and Guerlac.”

We left Hobomok in the kitchen to watch the three of them, while Cap and Natanis and I began a search of the house. Wherever there was a locked door we broke it open. We examined every drawer, tapped the floor of every room for hiding places; pried beneath the stoves in search of loosened bricks. It was Cap who felt a weakness at the top of a column which supported the mantel in the front room. When he forced it from its position he found it concealed an opening in which lay a long tin box.

“Here,” said Cap, handing it to me, “see if this ain’t what you want.” He went on with his search, thumping the walls and looking behind pictures.

There were maps in the box, and deeds to property, and a roll of gold coin. Last of all, at the bottom, was a bundle of letters. The uppermost letter was addressed to John Woodward, Esqre., Le Chat Qui Péche, Quebec. There it was before me: Guerlac had received the messages written to Woodward. Woodward
was
Guerlac.

When I slipped the band from these letters and flipped them over, I found one addressed to Captain William Gregory in Colonel Arnold’s handwriting. I knew I needed to look no further; for Colonel Arnold had told me that he had asked questions concerning the Kennebec of Captain William Gregory, and that under the seal of Captain Gregory’s reply had been the information that John Woodward was the man who knew these things.

It seemed to me I should be filled with pleasure at discovering the letters in Guerlac’s possession and having Guerlac where I could put my hand on him. Yet I had no such feelings: only a sense of loss and unhappiness. I picked up the roll of gold and hefted it, saying to myself it would buy many a fine article for Phoebe’s cabin on the
Ranger.

So thinking, I dropped it in my pocket. As it left my fingers there dawned on me a sudden understanding of my own utter blindness and stupidity, and of the manner in which Phoebe had grown around me and into me so that my world was no world at all if I couldn’t have her a part of it.

Then I saw that Phoebe had always been first in my thoughts, no matter where I went or what I did; and I, like a surpassing fool, was where I might never see her again. I burst into a sweat at my folly, remembering how I had let her go into the hands of James Dunn, nor even known why I was in such a rage at both of them when they were married. Other foolishnesses popped out of the corners of my mind until I was revolted to think I could have been so witless.

There swept over me such a longing for her and for Arundel, and for the sight and the smell of the sea and the marshes, that I went in search of Cap to tell him my troubles.

He had returned to Mary’s sweet-smelling bedroom; and when I found him he was playing with glittering shoe buckles, oval ones studded with brilliants.

“Were they the papers you wanted?” he asked, stuffing the buckles into his pocket.

“Cap,” I said, “there’s no greater fool in all New England than I!”

“Has somebody found us?” he asked, looking apprehensively over my shoulder.

“Cap, I’ve sent Phoebe home! And look at us—the fix we’re in!”

“Yes, I hope she’s a damned long way nearer home than we are! I take it you’d like to see her again?”

“Yes, I would.”

He scratched his head. “So would I, if she’s anywhere near home. This is a nice house: an awful nice house; and the hell of it is, we’ve got to stay here till after dark, and even then get buried somewhere, near and handy, if we ain’t awful careful—and maybe anyhow, no matter how careful we are!”

What he said was the truth. “Well, what was your plan for getting out?” I asked.

He scratched his head again. “Stevie, it seems to me I’ve been altogether too busy learning how to get in. What was your own plan for getting out?”

“Me? I didn’t have any.”

“Well, we can’t go by the Lower Town. If we try to go down those steps we’ll have more holes in us than your ma’s lace collar!”

“No, not by the Lower Town. God knows I’ve seen enough of those barricades. We’ll decide what to do with Guerlac and then how we’ll get out.”

“You mean how we’ll try to!” Cap said.

If there was any change in Guerlac’s face when I returned to the kitchen and threw the tin box on the table, I couldn’t detect it. It may be his eyes watched me more closely; but certainly his face was no paler, nor his bearing less haughty and unafraid.

I emptied the box on the table and ran through the letters. “Now,” I said, “here’s the proof of certain things. Hook, who was called Tree-worgy in our army, was sent to Quebec by the Tories of Boston to help the British. He was an intelligent man, who knew the Abenakis and the forests; so they made him a paid spy. When he had fooled Colonel Arnold into entrusting him with letters, he brought all of them straight to Guerlac. Here are letters from Carleton to Guerlac about Hook, and from McLean to Guerlac, thanking him for his efforts, and assuring him his services won’t be forgotten. So Guerlac, you see, was a spy also.”

“How much did they pay him?” Cap asked.

“Well, now,” I said, watching Guerlac closely, “I think they didn’t pay him anything. I think his travels among us taught him he could never be happy living among the bigots and hypocrites of America—men so intolerant as to throw him in the mud instead of reverencing his sneers, and to spoil his beauty with a slit ear when he grew too free with women. I think he’d cast in his lot with any king to keep canting peasants like us from his houses and goods.”

Guerlac smiled his lofty, contemptuous smile, and said nothing.

“Well,” I said, “here’s Arnold’s letter to John Woodward, whose name was given to Colonel Arnold in Captain Gregory’s letter. Here’s Arnold’s letter to Captain Gregory. Hook brought the letter to Guerlac instead of to Gregory, and Guerlac forged the reply. It’s plain from these letters that Guerlac himself was John Woodward. In return for whatever it was that the English government gave them, money or security or honor, he and Hook undertook to do what they could to defeat Colonel Arnold’s expedition.”

“If they’d worked harder,” said Cap, draining a bottle of Mersault, “they might have kept us from getting onto this side of the river.”

“They did enough! It was John Woodward who recommended the use of bateaux. It was John Woodward who sent Arnold the forged proof that Natanis was a spy. Thus if all the bateaux were not destroyed, which they were almost certain to be, they made sure Natanis would either be killed or shunned, and the army robbed of the one guide who knew every trail and by-path between Dead River and Quebec. That meant the army would probably starve in the wilderness.

“It was John Woodward who instructed Hook to spread discontent and fear among the poorest soldiers of the expedition, so they would turn back, as you can see by this letter from Hook to Guerlac. It was Eneas, at Hook’s orders, who betrayed Arnold by delivering his private letters into Guerlac’s hands. Thus the Lieutenant Governor of Quebec was warned of our coming. It was Hook who ran to McLean in Sorel and blabbed to him of Arnold’s approach, so he was able to hurry down the St. Lawrence with a few defenders on the very same day we came marching up to Point Levis.”

“Can you prove all that?” Cap asked.

“It’s all here.”

We sat silent. Natanis spoke to me in Abenaki, asking whether Guerlac was the man who had done all the evil to us. When I said he was, he asked how I would kill him. At this Guerlac spoke up, smiling a cold, level smile, and I saw he had not forgotten the Abenaki tongue.

“I warn you,” he said, “not to touch me. Your turn-coat general, Montgomery, was killed at the barrier under Cape Diamond last night, and the rest of his beggarly rabble ran like whipped dogs without even attempting to pick him up. All of Arnold’s men were either captured or killed in the Sault-au-Matelot, all of them. You’re alone in the city, and you’re sure to be caught. Do you think you’ll have a better chance to escape hanging if I come to any harm at your hands?”

We stared at him, sickened by what he told us. It seemed to be the truth.

“Well,” I said at length, “I know we’ll never leave the town alive if you get free; so we’d be showing only simple caution if we killed you.”

Mary, it seemed to me, had not sensed the meaning of our words until just now. She had sat with a distant look on her face and her head poised a little to one side, as though absorbed in secret contemplation of her own perfection, and sure all those in the room were casting admiring looks at her pale beauty, which we were not, God knows.

At my last words, however, she looked quickly at me. The languidness went from her eyes. “What are you talking about? What’s this talk of killing?”

“Haven’t you understood? I think you have!”

“You’re trying to blame Henri for something that happened. It’s not true!”

“Yes, it’s all true! Because of what he and Hook did, there are dead men rotting in the forest beside the path we traveled.”

She laughed lightly. “Well, why shouldn’t there be?”

“We’re done with Hook,” I told her then. “His back’s broke. He’ll never leave this room alive. But we aren’t done with Guerlac.”

“You’ll not touch him.” She laughed again. “You’ll not touch him.”

“Why hasn’t he ever married you?”

“Pouf!” she said. “What a boor you are! I never cared whether he did or not, and he has a wife in France.”

At that I turned away, for I could no longer look at her. So this was Mary Mallinson!

XXXV

I
HAD
found a map of Quebec among Guerlac’s papers, and I laid it on the kitchen table, studying it.

We had seen no good maps of Quebec, only the rough ones deserters had made for us; and this of Guerlac’s was good, the streets marked out neatly, the houses inked in by hand, and the ports in the ramparts indicated, together with the guardhouses and the steps to the parapets. I found the long stairway from the Lower Town, and traced our route to Guerlac’s house. I found the sites of the old palace and of La Friponne, where we had lain on our bellies in the snow to pop at the sentries on the walls above.

No sooner had the tip of my finger touched them than I shouted for Cap. It had come to me how we could go safe from the city and take Guerlac with us as a present to Arnold—if Arnold was still alive!

Darkness fell by mid-afternoon—a thick, snow-sprinkled darkness; for the wind hung in the northeast and seemed to be of two minds about inflicting another storm on this snow-covered world. We ate once more, and studied the map, rehearsing the parts we must play. We had put Mary and Guerlac in the bedroom, making sure they couldn’t escape from their ropes.