“Colonel Stanhope certainly seems to admire your battlefield prowess.”
Coltrane’s dark eyes glittered with contempt. “That pompous martinet! Don’t even mention his name in the same breath as mine!”
Marc was taken aback. Had the prisoner shown his indulgent host this kind of dismissive scorn? Surely not. Still, the colonel’s naiveté seemed bottomless.
“My impression is that he-though a brevet colonel in the militia-is nonetheless a man of military bearing who observes the strict protocol of his profession. Moreover, he has twice been wounded in battle. I thought you would be more sympathetic.”
“What you fail to appreciate, Edwards, is that what you see here about you-a carpeted room with a cozy fire, a capacious desk for my work, a never-empty wine decanter on the sideboard, three shelves of books and mementoes-all this has been accorded me because of who I am, not who the colonel thinks he is. I am the commander of a citizen’s army, ten thousand strong, chosen by Fate to liberate the enslaved peoples of Canada from the chains that bind them.”
“But these same people seem to have chosen slavery, have they not?”
Coltrane chuckled. He reached over and opened an ornate, silver snuff box in front of him, one of two such, sitting beside a leather Bible. Marc was accustomed to seeing gentlemen take a pinch of snuff between thumb and forefinger, place it below a nostril, and decorously sniff it. But Coltrane set a thick wad on the back of his weakened left hand, leaned down to it, and gave a loud snort with a flared nostril. He blinked, sighed, and repeated the procedure with the other nostril. Marc politely declined to join him.
“Bierce was a worse fool than he was a coward. That proclamation he read at Windsor village was rhetorical drivel.”
“The locals certainly thought so. It was, after all, a citizen’s army that defeated you in Baby’s orchard.”
“That was precisely the problem for us. Our best hope of liberating this pathetic backwater is to do what George Washington and William Henry Harrison did: defeat the British regulars, who are the armed agents of the Crown and the prima facie oppressors of the people. Reading proclamations and conducting monthly border raids will not put backbone into the serf who has been so long enslaved he knows no better. What we require, and are preparing to effect, is a showdown battle with the redcoats, like Waterloo or Saratoga.” Here he glanced cryptically at the papers on his desk.
Marc suddenly recalled Bostwick’s remarks that the man was fond of codes. Could he be orchestrating an invasion from this very chamber? Did those newspaper articles that the obliging editors had so enthusiastically printed actually contained hidden instructions? Was this braggart, self-styled major gleaning information from the very worthies who assumed they were picking his brain?
“But you won’t be here to take part in any such battle,” Marc said quietly.
Coltrane grinned. “We’ll have to wait and see about that, won’t we?” he said, and took another gargantuan snort of snuff. It brought tears to his eyes. “You should try this tonic, Edwards. I never indulge before ten in the morning, but when I do, I wake up to the world like a hibernating bear, hungry for the day!”
“I’m a pipe smoker myself.”
“Dulls the mind, Edwards. Makes a man content and self-satisfied. And that’s the state in which a citizen’s liberty is most likely to be snatched from him.”
“Milton spoke of the confusion of license with liberty, did he not, in his Areopagitica?”
“That petty sod! What about Voltaire and Paine and Rousseau? What about Franklin and Jefferson? You English are stuck with religious zealots like Milton and cynics like Hobbes and Bentham.”
“You’ve found time to read all these gentlemen?”
Coltrane leaned back in his chair to the point where it approached tipping, and roared with laughter. “By the Christ, I like you, Edwards. You keep talking straight from the shoulder like that and we’ll soon make a Yankee out of you!”
“I’ll need to be convinced first.” Marc was now certain that Coltrane was enjoying their conversation and that the moment was nearing when the delicate business of the duel could be broached.
“You presume, of course, that because I am a Yankee and not reluctant to enumerate the permanent advances that America has made in the evolution of the human species, I’m an unlettered boor. Such misconceptions do not bother us in the least. In fact they play directly into our plans for the future of the race.” At this he rose and walked with great dignity over to the bookcase, which sat beside the curtained doorway to what must have been a sleeping chamber. Marc noticed that Coltrane’s left arm swung awkwardly at his side.
“I have read all these books, many of them several times. Not in their original tongues, alas, because, unlike you, I was not born with a silver spoon between my gums. I had to go to work at age thirteen and abandon my formal schooling. But as America grows to become the greatest nation on earth, its language will soon be the lingua franca of the world. Nonetheless, it has already given me Caesar and Hannibal and Alexander and Pericles. That batch of newspapers there just arrived from Buffalo this morning. It includes the Times of London.”
“I am impressed. You must be beholden to your host.”
Coltrane ignored the barb. “And on this shelf, and there on the right side of my desk, you’ll see part of my extensive collection of old-world snuff boxes. I had them shipped up here from Detroit.” He picked one off the shelf with his good hand and fondled it as he might a lover’s breast. “This one is from Bohemia, handcrafted in Prague about 1706. The filigree at the base is a continuous ring of succubi. Beautiful to behold and delightful to the touch.”
He came over and sat down again. “Now, Edwards, it is clear you have not come here merely to gape at the circus grotesque. Tell me what you really want.”
“You are correct in your assumption. I have come to ask a great favour of you. That you are evidently a man of refinement and learning ought to make my task that much easier.”
So, while Coltrane sat and listened without interruption-except for periodic snorts of snuff-Marc explained the consequences of Billy’s involvement in the duel. He stressed the obduracy of Sir George in regard to bail and Billy’s assent to Robert Baldwin’s proposal. Billy would sign a peace bond, pen a guarantee not to issue any false or libelous statements regarding Coltrane’s behaviour at Windsor, and agree to stay in his house until charges were dropped or prosecuted.
“He genuinely regrets what happened,” Marc finished up.
“I’ll bet he does. The fellow is a hothead and a know-nothing. He got himself into this mess, didn’t he? Why should I feel pity for him?”
“True, he did threaten to spread libels about you, but it was you who took umbrage and challenged him to a duel, an event which only you could somehow arrange in here.”
“You know perfectly well I could have shot his brains out.”
“I assumed that. Your bullet was dug out yards from its target. Conversely, it is not inconceivable that Billy might have shot you, however feckless he might have been with a pistol.”
Coltrane’s gaze did not waver. “I know that. But I’ve survived two battles already, and I am not destined to die just yet.”
“In a battle we have to think that, don’t we?”
“True. Also, it seemed the only way to prevent the slanders, whatever the risk to my person. They were bound to be believed-here for certain and perhaps even by my enemies at home.”
“Your reputation means that much to you, that you would let Billy take a free shot at you?”
“What else do we have, besides our life and our virginity, that can be lost only once?”