Turncoat (4 page)

When the wind dropped, they got back on the road. It was covered with a foot of fresh snow, and no track or rut was visible, either to the east or the west. The wind had eased off and only decorative little eddies of snow spun intermittently at the horse's hooves. Less than half an hour of light remained. It would be pitch dark before he could reach even the unwelcoming hamlet of Perry's Corners. Port Hope itself, and a hearty fire, was at least twenty miles farther on.

Suddenly, from a bend just ahead of him came the sound of horses pounding and snorting, accompanied by cries of human merriment. Marc drew to the side just in time to avoid collision with a four-horse team and a massive sleigh whistling along behind it. The driver waved a friendly mitt in Marc's direction and clamped a smile around his pipe, but did not slow down. Weller's thrice-weekly mail coach sailed past, leaving its fur-wrapped passengers only a moment to cheer his presence and admire his perseverance. One of them, apparently female, stood up, swung around, and held up a silver flask, as if offering a toast to the ensign. Such was social nicety among the self-professed gentry of the Upper Canadian bush.

Marc felt a pang of disappointment that the coach had not stopped, even though he knew the storm meant that both it and he had to get to their destinations as soon as
possible. Marc had been quick to observe how the Upper Canadians went about preparing themselves for comfort and survival during winter. Snug in his saddle-roll were extra blankets and underclothing, a large square of sailcloth, and three-days' rations, in addition to his army kit and pistol. Colonel Margison, who had arrived in person with the horse for Marc, had persuaded him at the last minute to include his sabre. It lay in its scabbard, which was attached to the saddle, not his belt, where it would have been handy but too conspicuous. His Brown Bess musket, however, stood in its rack in the officers' quarters at Fort York.

A short time later, one of the landmarks that had been mapped out for him came into view. Here the roadway veered so close to the lake that its icy expanse could be glimpsed through a screen of leafless birch and alder trees. He was three miles or so from Perry's Corners, where, if he was lucky, he would find a cold meal and space by the postmaster's fire. A steady canter would put him there in less than half an hour, despite the deep snow, the rapidly descending darkness, and a weary mount. He looked up in time to see the single star in the southern sky swallowed by cloud. The east wind, bringing no good, was cranking up for another blow.

Not a person to repeat his mistakes, Marc cajoled his horse into the woods on the right, knowing that the cliff above the lake would deflect some of the fury of the approaching squall and send it screeching over the trees. He
soon found a suitable spot, tethered the horse, spread the canvas out at the base of a stout pine, covered this with a wool blanket, and sat down to wait out the worst.

I
T WAS AN HOUR LATER WHEN
, with no sign of the storm abating, Marc made the decision to camp somewhere in the shelter of the woods. There, the snow was not yet deep enough for him to have to strap on his Indian snowshoes (if he did, it would be his maiden excursion on them), but he couldn't walk far. His feet were nearly frozen: he needed a fire and some boiling tea—soon. He had noticed earlier, just to the south of him towards the lake, a small rise in the land that had kept the drifts from accumulating on its leeward side. He thought he might erect a makeshift lean-to there.

After giving the horse a shrivelled apple and a reassuring pat, he trudged through the snow towards the ridge. Within a few minutes he had reconnoitred a sort of den formed by the ridge and the exposed roots of a large tree. With the sailcloth for a roof and a ground sheet from his army kit under him, he would be as snug as a hibernating bear, with plenty of brushwood for a smudge fire. He was in the midst of congratulating himself when he saw the smoke.

He stood stock-still, cursing himself silently for having trod so noisily into an unknown area with no thought for his personal safety. He was unarmed: his pistol was in
his saddle-roll, his sabre in its scabbard. He spoke no aboriginal tongue. He was shivering and, to his consternation, found himself nearer exhaustion than he had been willing to admit. But his mind remained alert: he listened for the slightest sound and was certain now that he could hear voices. The smoke itself continued to pour upward in thick whorls not twenty yards to his left, its source hidden by a knoll and several squat cedars. This was no campfire smoke, or if it was, it was of no kind Marc had ever seen.

He had two choices: he could return to the horse and risk being heard (one nicker from the animal would ring like a rifle shot through the silence of these woods) or get close enough to the murmuring voices to discern if it would be safe to approach whomever it was and ask for a warm place by their fire. He chose the latter strategy.

Taking one slow, muffled step at a time, he edged towards the knoll and the coils of woodsmoke. When he was within a few yards, he eased himself up the slope of the ridge. Then he crawled along its height until he was at last able to look into the wintry glade below him. What he saw was a log hut, no more than ten by ten, windowless (on the two sides he could see), but sporting a lime-and-straw chimney—in active service. A trapper's cabin.

“Well, sir, don't just sit up there like a frozen cod, come on down and join us.” A face poked out from behind the chimney. “You look like you could do with a wee drop of the craychur.”

“N
INIAN T. CONNORS AT YOUR SERVICE,”
said the big Irishman with the Yankee-accented brogue and the ready smile. He handed Marc a cup of whisky and urged him to move his feet (unbooted, with much effort and more pain) closer to the fire. “My associate, Mr. Ferris O'Hurley, and I are always pleased to oblige a gentleman of the officers' fraternity, whether his coat be blue or scarlet.”

“And I'm the fella to second that,” added the other one, as dark and wiry and toughened as his partner was florid and generously fleshed. When he drank his grog, he gulped the cupful entire, squeezed his eyes shut as his whiskered cheeks bulged, and then blinked the rotgut down his gullet like a toad with a stubborn fly.

“I am most grateful for your kindness,” Marc said, sipping at his drink and wishing it were hot tea. His horse stood at ease outside the cabin, keeping a donkey company and sharing its feed. When Marc had offered to pay, Connors had taken exaggerated umbrage: “The laws of hospitality in this savage land are as strict as the ones in ancient Greece, and necessarily so. It is we, sir, who are obliged to you for honouring us with your unexpected but worthy presence.”

“You headin' for Cobourg?” O'Hurley asked between gulps.

“In that direction,” Marc said, taking the slice of bread and cheese held out to him by Connors.

“What my associate means,” Connors said, with an impish twinkle in his blue eyes, “is that we seldom see an officer of His Majesty's regiments travelling alone on the Kingston Road.”

“You know it well, then?”

“Indeed we do, though you have no doubt surmised that we are citizens of a neighbouring state.”

“We're up from Buffalo,” O'Hurley said.

“Peddling your wares,” Marc said evenly.

“We don't do nothin' illegal,” O'Hurley said, then he glanced at Connors as quick as a cat.

“What my confederate means is that we are not mere Yankee peddlers, as noble as that profession might be. Mr. O'Hurley here, whose father was as Irish as mine, is a bona fidee tinker, a tinsmith and artiste of the first rank. You, good sir, are drinking from a recent product of his craft.”

The tin cup held by Marc looked as if the donkey had tried to bathe in it, but he refrained from comment. His toes had thawed out, the crude meal and whisky were sitting comfortably on his stomach, and the mere thought of curling up in his own bedroll next to a fire was beginning to warm him all over.

“Mr. O'Hurley here travels these parts—highway and back road alike—several times a year. He not only sells a grateful citizenry household items unattainable in the British half of America, though commonplace in the great Republic to the south, but he repairs anything constructed of metal, and where repair will not suffice, he fashions original
works with the touch of a true master—an impresario, you might say, of tin and copper.”

“You have an established itinerary, then?” Marc lit his pipe with a tinder stick and puffed peaceably.

“Well, not what you'd really call regular-like,” O'Hurley said.

“Which is to say, we improvise,” Connors said, leaning over to allow Marc to light his clay calumet with a fresh tinder, “as occasion dictates.” He sucked his tobacco into life and continued. “As a man of the world, I'm sure you know there are people in this distant dominion of King William who, notwithstanding the intent and principle of His Majesty's law so recently and justly amended—”

“You are referring to the repeal of the Alien Act? Naturalized citizens from the United States can now keep their property and participate fully in political life,” Marc asserted confidently.

Connors squinted—part frown and part smile—then grinned and said, “Yes, but many of your countrymen persist in believing that any resident of this province who hails from the United States of America—however long ago and however naturalized since—is a primee fashia blackguard and potential seditionist. A Yankee spy under every rock, to use the vernacular.”

“So you move about … judiciously,” Marc offered.

“How well put. You seem uncommonly schooled for a soldier, sir.”

Marc acknowledged the compliment with a nod. “And are you a smithy as well?”

O'Hurley coughed and spluttered into his cup.

“I, sir,” Connors declaimed, “am a smithy of words and subordinate clauses, of tracts and contracts—monetary, fiduciary, and commercial. I draw up bills of sale and bills of lading, deeds of property and dunnings of debt. I drum and I stake and I capitalize; I minister and mollify.”

“A solicitor, then.”

Connors reeled back as if struck by a blow as cowardly as it was mortal. “You jest, sir. If I am to be vilified by that name, it can only be in the generic sense. I do what lawyers in my country do, but without the handicap of education or licence. In brief, young sir, I am what the Republic hails as its quintessential citizen: an entrepreneur.” He leaned back, laid his gloved hands across his mustard waistcoat, and smiled without a trace of guile.

“He does the thinkin',” O'Hurley said, “and I do the craftin'.”

“The perfect partnership, you might say,” Connors added.

“And you travel together, then? Both of you on a single donkey?”

“Not literally, of course, like Yankee Doodle or our Good Lord on Palm Sunday. I come up by myself to scout out new territory and solicit orders, and once in a blue moon I get the urge to hit the open road for a spell. Then Ferris and I set out in tandem.”

Assuming he had been tossed a cue, Ferris blinked sleepily and said, “Ninian's got a sister up here he likes to visit.”

“And where does she live?”

“Now you've gone and done it, Ferris old friend,” Connors sighed. “You've flat out embarrassed me.” He turned to Marc and slowly raised his downcast, abashed eyes. “The visits to my dear sister are, sir, acts of kindness towards that poor impoverished soul and her wretched children, and Ferris knows full well I do not wish to have broadcast those acts of Christian charity that should be executed privily for their own sake and not for the public aggrandizement of the perpetrator.”

“I think it's time for me to turn in,” Marc said.

“You'll not have one more drink, then?”

Marc yawned and shook his head.

“Surely one toast to His Majesty.”

“Just two fingers, then,” Marc said.

“Why don't you give him a swig from the canteen?” O'Hurley suggested.

Connors shot him a look that was part reproving, part resignation, then managed to attach his smile to it in time to say, “Splendid thought! We keep a modest dram of superior spirits to mix up a syllabub now and then.” He drew what appeared to be a regulation army canteen from under his jacket and poured each of them a toddy.

“To King William the Fourth!”

They drank to the fount and guardian of the British Empire.

“Your toast, good sir.”

“To honest men everywhere!” Marc said.

The liquor slid silkily down Marc's throat: overproof Jamaican rum.

A
S SOON AS HORSE AND DONKEY
had been made as comfortable as possible, the three men set about arranging their bedrolls around the last glow of the fire. When Marc went back out to relieve himself, he slipped his sabre from its scabbard and tiptoed back inside. All was dark and quiet.

For a long while, Marc lay awake, despite the demands of his body for sleep, waiting for the telltale snoring of the peddlers, who, graciously enough, had given him pride of place next to the fire. While checking his horse earlier, Marc had given the donkey and its packs a searching look and decided that these men carried no weapons of any size. Nor did he see anything that resembled contraband goods among the pots and pans of their tradesmen's gear.