Solemn Vows (22 page)

“That isn’t possible …”

“What is the worst that could happen? You’ve done nothing illegal. The governor can rant and rave, but then he’ll be just like the rest of the politicians he despises.” The words were just flowing out of Marc before he was fully aware of the deep forces propelling them. “It might do him good to feel powerless for a change.”

“But I can’t, don’t you see?”

“No, I don’t.”

“It’s got little to do with me and everything to do with Aunt Catherine.”

Marc was baffled and, as it showed in his face, he could feel Beth beginning to withdraw, and he suddenly felt cold, very cold, in the pit of his stomach and in the region where his heart stammered and stalled.

“How many customers do you think we would have left if they found out I was the author of those letters?”

“Then to hell with them! They can go—stuff themselves!”

“Be quiet. I won’t have her wakened. And try to think of someone besides yourself for a minute.”

“Marry me, and I’ll get transferred back to England and—”

“You must not talk such foolishness. I was the one who encouraged my aunt to sell everything, leave her friends, and come up here to start a new life. I never should’ve written those letters, but my husband, who could’ve written them in blood, isn’t here to do it. So I had to take the chance. And now only Abner and you know who Farmer’s Friend is. And it must stay that way. It must.” She was on the verge of tears, and she fought them back fiercely.

“But I swore an oath,” Marc said, “to serve my king and obey my superiors. I made a solemn vow.”

“Then the time’s come for you to choose between love and your duty,” she said in a voice that chilled the air in the cramped room.

Marc got up and, without looking back, walked out into the alley. A pair of rats eyed him till he was safely out of sight.

M
ARC WAS STILL IN A DAZE
when he got back to Mrs. Standish’s. He was barely aware of changing into his uniform and making polite conversation with the widow and Maisie over late-breakfast tea in the parlour. In walking out on Beth—forever, unless he could conjure some morally dubious compromise—he had instinctively, reflexively, chosen to do his duty as a soldier, and that meant giving Sir Francis Beth’s name. But when he arrived at Government House, he found he was not prepared to do so and came up with a plan of sorts to delay the inevitable. Unable to equivocate face to face with Sir Francis, Marc wrote him a note explaining that he had tracked the courier to King Street and Bay, where he had temporarily lost him, only to meet him returning with the letter in hand. Hence, the writer was located in that block of King Street between Bay and Yonge. Therefore, all he had to do was place himself there next Friday or Saturday and wait for Clegg to come to him. His fingers shook as he penned the lie and saw it staring back up at him.

With the polling about to begin on Monday and with last- minute rallies to be arranged—as well as the grand gala tomorrow night—Marc was hoping that Sir Francis might have his attention redirected long enough for him to forget about Farmer’s Friend or, in the least, downplay its significance. That was all Marc could think of at the moment. Even so, he was so torn with conflicting and irreconcilable emotions that he had to get out of Government House entirely.

He soon found himself walking in the afternoon sunshine down to Bay Street and the Crooked Anchor. Perhaps Cobb would be there. He desperately needed someone to talk to. To his disappointment, the constable was not in. Marc stood at the bar anyway and sipped on a dark ale. No one spoke to him.

He was just turning to leave when Cobb stumbled through the doorway, out of breath and wide-eyed.

“What is it?”

“Rumsey,” Cobb said. “He’s been spotted near the Tinker’s Dam—headin’ due north. On foot. For Danby’s Crossing.”

At last, Marc thought.

I
’ll get a horse and come with you,” Cobb said.

He and Marc were in the stables of Government House, and a groom had just finished saddling Marc’s chestnut mare.

“Not right now,” Marc said as he swung into the saddle. “I want you to go up to the house and alert Willoughby and the governor. Have him call out as many troops as he thinks necessary. I’ll need some backup at Danby’s, but we’ve got to be prepared to initiate a pursuit and a full search if the bastard gets away on me.”

“If he does, Major, then he’ll head fer the wharf. I’m sure of it.”

“I’ll leave that part to Hilliard or Willoughby. But if Rumsey’s making for his cabin on foot, he’s only got a half- hour head start, so I’m certain I can get up there about the same time as he does.”

“Don’t underestimate shank’s mare,” Cobb said.

But Marc was already on his way.

He rode furiously north up Simcoe Street, shouting and waving aside donkey- carts, drays, vegetable wagons, and cheering youngsters. He swung briefly along Lot Street and then onto College Avenue, where he was suddenly alone with the horse-chestnut trees on either side and the vista of the university park ahead. He urged the mare to her best gallop and, pounding east again, reached Yonge Street in a blaze of speed and sweat.

But the mare soon began to flag, and he was forced to pull her back to a sustainable canter. At the Bloor turnpike, he let her drink a little and had to pull her roughly away before she did herself some damage. A dead horse under him would be an ignominious end to his second investigation. In fact, he thought, it was time to start using more brains than bravado. He couldn’t just blunder into the square at Danby’s Crossing and announce his military presence to all and sundry. He still had no idea how many allies among the locals up there Rumsey might actually have, despite Cobb’s repeated assurances that the fellow was a loner. And Rumsey would be armed with a long-range rifle and a sharpshooter’s eye.

With a start Marc realized that he might be riding into true danger for the first time. This was not the case of a panicked man in pathetic flight, as Crazy Dan had been. Rumsey was a cold- blooded killer. He had hidden himself successfully for ten days, living off his wits, no doubt. He knew every stick and stone in the woods around Danby’s. As a celebrated deer hunter, he would have stealth and patience on his side, should he need to call on them. You didn’t fell a twenty- point stag by letting him see you first.

Marc did not slow down at the Eglinton tollgate, and was in full gallop as he passed the startled onlookers outside Montgomery’s Tavern. He decided to approach the hamlet from the north, where he would be least expected to arrive. So he rode on past the crossroad to Danby’s. A quarter- mile farther on he veered east into the woods. It wasn’t thick or swampy here, so he made good headway and soon came to the rugged trail that he had ridden in pursuit of Crazy Dan. Only this time he followed it south until he could see smoke rising from the chimneys of the hamlet just ahead. He eased the exhausted mare a few yards off the trail into the brush, dismounted, and tethered her. He took down his Brown Bess musket, bit the paper off a bullet, and loaded it. For good luck he touched the haft of the sabre that Uncle Frederick had given him upon his graduation from Sandhurst (a weapon Frederick himself had used at Waterloo). Then he picked his way through the trees towards what he hoped was the vicinity of the Rumsey cabin.

Marc was soon soaked with sweat, which he attributed entirely to the heat of the overhead sun. Surely Rumsey would not stump boldly into his cabin, even if he felt there had been as yet no general alarm raised against him: his instincts would lead him to scout the near environs first, and only then would he slip safely home. At this very moment Rumsey could be on the prowl nearby—quiet as a cat, deadly as a rattler. Every four or five steps now, Marc stopped, stood still, and listened intently, while making certain there was always a thick tree trunk between him and what he took to be the path to the cabin. His progress was much slower and more erratic than he had intended, and for a moment he was certain he was lost. While he had been inching his way southwards, he might well have passed by the cabin to the left or the right. He stopped walking and leaned against a birch tree. He was dizzy. He couldn’t keep the sweat from stinging his eyes and blurring his vision. His bladder throbbed with the residue of the ale he had drunk at the Crooked Anchor. There was no sound anywhere except his own laboured breathing.

Then he saw it: a mere thread of smoke curling up into the humid haze and lolling there just above the treeline to his right. The cabin could be no more than thirty yards away. He was still trying to decide whether to sneak up on it or simply march through the front door and trust that the sight of a uniform and a primed musket would do the rest when he heard a shout and then a cry. Running low and
as swiftly as he could, Marc made directly for the source of those very human sounds. One had been uttered in rage, the other in distress. And they were now being repeated, louder and more terrible.

The cabin came up so quickly before him that Marc almost ran right into it. He found himself at the windowless wall opposite the entrance on the west side. He sped along the north wall and swung around into the clearing in front of the cabin. Rumsey was already in full flight towards an opening in the woods to the south—the path he no doubt used to get him to the Tinker’s Dam. Marc raised his gun, caught the blue blur of Rumsey’s overalls in his sight, and fired. Rumsey stumbled at the abrupt blast of sound, twisted briefly in Marc’s direction, started to raise his own gun, then whirled and fled.

Marc cursed and began reloading. He knew it was hopeless to pursue Rumsey on his own terrain, a tactic more likely to prove fatal to the hunter than the hunted. But then he realized that Rumsey could have stood there at the edge of the woods and dropped the meddling soldier like a fawn frozen in fear. Rumsey must have assumed that the soldier was not alone, for they rarely were (few being as foolhardy as this one, Marc thought). So, he was more likely to flee than to counterattack. All Marc had to do, then, was follow after him as noisily and clumsily as he could—calling out as if to comrades and perhaps even firing off a shot or two for dramatic effect. If Rumsey continued south, Willoughby or
Hilliard would be able to intercept him at the Tinker’s Dam or at the city docks, his most probable destination, where Cobb was sure to be waiting with a squad of deputized constables.

Marc never got to put his plan into action.

“My God, somebody help me! Please!”

It was Margaret Rumsey, calling out from inside the cabin. Marc put his gun down and rushed in.

M
ARGARET RUMSEY LAY
where she had fallen under her husband’s savage blows—on the dirt floor next to a rickety bedstead. One side of her face was already beginning to swell, and her lower lip was split open and bleeding profusely. Her right arm hung limply at her side, bruised or broken. She had apparently used it to ward off Rumsey’s fists. Her pathetic grey shift was torn down the front, and when Marc came up to her in the smoky light, she clutched its shreds together to cover her breasts.

“It’s all right, Mrs. Rumsey. I’m Lieutenant Edwards. I was here last week. I’m here to help you. Don’t be alarmed.”

The terror in Margaret Rumsey’s eyes began to fade, though the tears—now able to flow—made it difficult to determine what other emotions might lay there. She was trying to speak through blooded spittle: “Elmer … Elmer.”

“Your boy?”

She nodded, then groaned and closed her eyes.

Marc looked around for the children. Up in the loft at the east end of the big room, he saw the whites of a pair of eyes. “It’s all right, Elmer. You can come down now.”

Slowly, a boy of ten or eleven descended the ladder and stood, unmoving—traumatized either by the violence he had witnessed or his mother’s sobbing. Marc went over to him. “You must try to be brave, Elmer. Run quickly to Mr. Kimble’s shop and bring Mr. and Mrs. Kimble back here right away.”

The boy simply stood and trembled.

“Your father has gone off into the woods. He won’t come back.”