“Billy, this is Mr. Baldwin. He’s an attorney and has agreed to act for you. Please, sit down. There. I’ll pour you a mug of coffee while you tell us what happened and how you think we can best help you.”
Billy nodded glumly but took the mug eagerly in both hands.
Robert smiled at him and began. “We need you, first of all, to tell us precisely how this unfortunate incident came about. We need to understand what provocation may have been proffered and what sort of collusion took place to allow the duel to proceed.”
Billy stared at the lawyer. “What difference does all that make?” he asked. “I aimed a pistol at the bastard and missed. End of story.”
Marc was not displeased to see some fire come into Billy’s eyes. Defiance, even surliness, was better than silence and despair. If they were to argue extenuating circumstances and possible criminal collusion on the part of the organizers of the fiasco, then they would need Billy’s spirited cooperation.
“Humour me, then,” Robert said, unfazed by his outburst. “We’re told that you requested an audience with Major Coltrane and that, apparently, he agreed to it. What was the purpose of your visit?”
Billy finished his coffee and fingered the abrasions on his wrists. “I wanted to look the murderer in the eye and tell him what I thought of him.”
“But you were the one who captured him at Windsor and brought him to your camp some miles away,” Robert said, remembering the newspaper accounts provided by everybody concerned except Billy himself.
Billy’s reply was delivered without emotion, as if the details were self-evident and unimportant to boot. “He was unconscious. He never opened his eyes all the way back. The colonel’s eyes just about popped out of his head when he saw it was Coltrane and I gave him the papers he was carryin’. Then we took him away to the hospital at brigade headquarters in Fort Malden. I waited for a bit while the surgeon worked on his wound, then left. I never saw him again till last Sunday.” He smiled grimly. “And I never got to look the bastard in the face till then, did I?”
“I think I can understand your motive for going to Chepstow,” Robert said, “but you must have known that Coltrane was certain to be condemned by a public criminal proceeding, after which he would hang in the yard outside this very building.”
“I guess I just wanted to tell him that it was me that saved his miserable life,” Billy said evenly, “the one who allowed him to be brought here and strung up like a Christmas goose.”
“You saved his life?” Marc interrupted, incredulous.
“He was bleedin’ to death. He’d just rigged up a trap fer my unit and killed my best friend. And fool that I was, I put a tourniquet on his left arm, an orange silk kerchief of Dolly’s that she give me before I left Toronto.” Tears of anger or regret blurred his vision, and he looked away. “I never did get it back.”
“So, tell us what happened when you got in there to see him on Sunday.”
Billy held out his mug for more coffee, then stared at the sunlight on the carpet as if he might not see its like again. When he spoke, his voice was subdued, almost solemn. “It didn’t go the way I thought it would. He’s a big braggart of a man. He didn’t seem the least afraid of dyin’. When I told him I was the one who captured him, he laughed and said, ‘You wouldn’t’ve got me if I’d had even half an eye open!’ I wanted him to know that a lowly militia sergeant had trailed him through the bush and got the better of him, but I never got to it. Instead, I started yellin’ at him, callin’ him a killer and a connivin’ ambusher, but he just laughed louder and started lecturin’ me on the ‘realities’ of battle, as he called them. Then he boasted how his mates were comin’ to rescue him and how he’d never see the inside of a tyrant’s courtroom.”
“So he doesn’t know you actually saved his life?” Marc asked.
Billy shook his head. “All I could see was Mel’s ruined face and his killer was sittin’ across from me snortin’ snuff and tellin’ me it was all part of war and fightin’ fer a cause you believed in. So I stood up and said I was gonna go to the papers and give ’em the story they’d been tryin’ to get outta me fer a month.”
“Why would that bother him,” Robert wondered, “when nothing else seems to have?”
Billy smiled, and this time there was a glint of satisfaction in it. “I got to him with that, I did. I told him I’d tell the papers that he ran away like a coward from the fight in the orchard, that he wasted his troops’ ammunition, and they had to scuttle away like whipped hounds. Only a lucky find at the old fort allowed any of his men to escape.”
“But isn’t that what happened?”
“No. I was the one that saw the bastard organizin’ a proper orderly retreat, just like our own colonel taught us. He was already wounded, and only left the battle when it was lost and he had to regroup.”
Something occurred to Marc that had been puzzling him ever since reading the varying accounts of the Battle of Windsor in December. “Just how did Major Coltrane find the crates that were left in the redoubt? It’s obvious that the fortification was beside the creek they were using as an escape route, so they could hardly miss that. But I’m told that Colonel Stanhope indicated in his official report that, although overlooked by Captain Muttlebury during the removal detail, the crates were still buried. If not, then even poor Muttlebury would have noticed them.”
“Coltrane told me about that, before we both lost our tempers,” Billy explained. “He said his men wanted to surrender. Four of them’d died at our hands already. They begged their commander to let them hunker down in the old fort when they spotted it. There they could run a white hanky up the flagpole and surrender peacefully.”
“But it didn’t unfold that way.”
“No. Coltrane said he’d heard we had hidden caches of arms all around the county, and he suspected the sod wall there would be a logical place. He claimed our fellows had left two or three spilled cartridges in plain sight nearby.”
“So they dug around and came up with a crate or two of bullets, powder, and some muskets?”
“Yeah. I figure it must’ve been them cartridges the captain left that gave the show away, ’cause we weren’t more’n ten or twelve minutes behind them. Then that bastard, instead of usin’ the fort to fight a proper battle, comes up with the idea of runnin’ up the Yankee flag and hidin’ in the bush to cut us down from the side.”
“Couldn’t you see their tracks leading there?” Marc said, recalling his own winter battleground in Quebec.
“The sun was in our eyes, and they sneaked out the back and circled around.”
“He seems to have counted upon the inexperience of your officers,” Marc commented. He knew all too well the occasional carelessness of officers whose vast experience had not been sufficient to temper their arrogance.
Billy just shook his head.
“Take us back, then, to the point where you threatened Coltrane on Sunday,” Robert said.
“Well, like I said, I finally got to him,” Billy replied, perking up. “He said I didn’t have the guts to lie about somethin’ as sacred as courage in battle, he blustered on about codes of honour and a lot of other horseshit, but I kept the picture of Mel’s smashed face in front of me and told him flat out that I’d say he ran from the fight. It’s true enough that he was a cowardly assassin and I was going to let the whole world know about it. His name’d be so blackened, no one would lift a finger to rescue him.”
In the retelling, Billy’s eyes lit up and Marc could see the grit and self-confidence that had carried the lad through slaughter and its random terrors. War had darkened Billy’s view of humankind, as it had done for Marc, who had also seen his best friend cruelly cut down. But in doing so, it had also made him a man. Which could prove more difficult than helpful in the present situation.