“And Bartlett, put your things in the adjoining room, will you? I want you nearby to heat up the bed warmer if it gets too cold in the night.”
Bartlett swallowed a cough or snort of protest, then wheeled and stomped up the stairs. Ten minutes later, as Marc headed for the same stairs and the ascent to his suite (most likely the one customarily occupied by Mr. and Mrs. Tolliver), he could feel the black eyes of the stranger boring into his back.
Camped on his lordship’s bed, Cobb was quietly seething. “You’re exaggeratin’ more’n yer accent, Major,” he complained. “I damn near sprained my other arm.”
“We’ve got to get immersed in these roles, Cobb. When we get onto foreign soil, we can’t afford to let our masks slip an inch. Our lives may depend on it.”
“If you say so.”
“Anyway, I needed to make it clear to anybody watching exactly why I wanted a ruffian like yourself sleeping up here instead of in the stableboys’ cabin out back.”
Cobb managed a smile of gratitude. “I’ll see to yer foot toaster,” he said, “but I ain’t emptyin’ no chamber pot!”
As arranged with the compliant Mr. Tolliver, Marc and Cobb were wakened at five o’clock and, fortified only with a flask of brandied tea and stale rolls, they hit the highway with fresh horses before six. They hoped to be in Woodstock by ten, where a decent inn awaited and a hot breakfast. Then it would be straight on to London for supper and an evening dash through the Longwoods to a way station Marc knew near Moraviantown. From there they would make the remaining fifty miles to Windsor, arriving sometime past mid-day. That would give them less than a day to complete their business across the river, for if they were to get back to Toronto by Friday afternoon-when the trial was scheduled to begin-they would have to leave Windsor early Wednesday morning. Marc secretly hoped that Cobb’s wrist would be strong enough to manage the reins so that they could take turns driving and resting. At least it now appeared as if the crates they were seeking would be waiting for them at Mrs. Dobbs’s house. Whether they concealed the letter they needed or whether something similar existed among Coltrane’s other effects was very much an open question.
At the Forks of the Grand they stopped at a log shanty for a shot of whiskey and a brief respite beside a pot-bellied stove. A mile or so beyond the hamlet, just after they had rounded a sharp curve in the road where the forest edged to within a few feet of its verges, Marc hauled back on the reins.
“What’re we stoppin’ here for?” Cobb said, coming out of his doze. “I thought ya went back there at the hovel.”
“I want you to trot a little ways into the woods here,” Marc said matter-of-factly, “and open your flies as if you were about to relieve yourself.”
Cobb’s response stalled between skeptical and amused. “What if I don’t haveta go?”
“Just do it, please,” Marc said, turning his head and cocking an ear. “And hurry.”
Cobb did as he was told, seesawing his way through a knee-high drift to a protected spot among some spruce boughs, where he undid his flies, one-handed. Then he glanced over at Marc. “Ya want the whole show, Major?”
Before Marc could reply, the brittle silence was broken by the muffled pad of horse’s hooves near the bend just behind them. Five seconds later, a lone rider cantered into view. His first instinct was to draw up at the sight of a sleigh parked where one would not expect to find one. But a quick look sideways, where Marc was staring, revealed the arched figure of a man going about one of nature’s necessities. As the rider passed Marc, the two men exchanged glances. The rider’s face was locked in an awkward smile, as if acknowledging something of significance. Then he was gone around the next bend. It was the man from the Brantford Arms, the one with a keen interest in newspapers.
“I seen that fella back in the inn,” Cobb said, still fidgeting with his wayward flies. “I don’t like the looks of ’im.”
“Me neither, but somehow I don’t think he’ll be the last chap to be concerned with the progress of Lord Briggs and his faithful servant,” Marc said.
After a full English breakfast and a change of horses at Woodstock, they drove out onto the Governor’s Road and aimed the cutter due west towards London. Behind them a lone church bell pealed, reminding them that even though they seemed to be prisoners of a fathomless forest and the ribbon of rutted snow through it, there were human communities dotted throughout its vastness and, close by them, the hard-won acres of farmers and woodsmen, whose battle against the ancient trees was as steadfast and perpetual as the seasons themselves. A half-hour later, at a crossroads marked by the friendly presence of several cleared farms, Marc stopped the sleigh.
“I think this is it,” Marc said. “Delia drew me a map before I left your house last night.”
“What’re you talkin’ about?” Cobb said with an edge to his voice.
“Your father’s farm, of course: the place where you were born and raised. Does this look familiar at all?”
“But we ain’t goin’ there. We just used it as an excuse in case Wilkie or the sarge come snoopin’ about and quizzin’ Dora or the kids.”
“If we go there, just for an hour or so, you won’t have to tell any lies when we get back.”
Cobb was searching for the words he needed. “My dad told me if I struck out on my own and left him and my brother alone to run the farm, I wasn’t ever to come back. That was fifteen years ago. I was only eighteen. But I knew what I didn’t want.”
“Your mother and Dora have been corresponding for years, and now she tells me that Delia has taken up the task. Dora says your girl’s letters are like long stories, and your mother reads them aloud to your father.”
“He can’t understand a word,” Cobb said, almost spitefully. “He’s had a stroke and gone soft in the brain.”
“Dora says he wants to see you before he dies.”
Just then a one-horse cutter emerged from the side road to the north. A scarlet-cheeked farmer drew up beside them. “Mornin’,” he said cheerfully. “You fellas lost?”
“Could you tell us whether the road you’ve just been on runs past the farm of James Cobb?” Marc said.
“That it does, about a half-mile up on your right. Ya can’t miss it.”
“Thank you,” Marc said, and urged his team towards the side road.
As they glided past the farmer, he stared hard at them and called out, “You goin’ ta see yer folks, are ya, Harry?”
Though it was difficult to tell for certain, with snow mantling field and fallow, the Cobb farm looked well tended and prosperous. Behind the neat split-log barn, half a dozen Ayrshire cows were exercising in the bright sunshine. From a distant coop the chatter of chickens reached Marc’s ears. In a high, rolling field above the outbuildings where the wind had whipped the snow aside, the telltale stubble of a successful harvest pushed up towards the sky. Drawing up beside the quarry-stone cottage, Marc noticed a young man with a pail slip into the barn. Apparently he had not seen them. “Was that your brother?” Marc asked.
Cobb, who had resigned himself to what he considered a needless ordeal, said, “No, it wasn’t. Laertes lives ten miles off on his own place.”
“Your father was fond of Shakespeare, I gather.”
“Nobody could stop him,” Cobb said with a touch of quiet pride. “And now my kids’ve caught the affection!”
Marc, who had had more than one fatherly misadventure himself, felt for his friend, but he was convinced that this visit was a necessary one for the disaffected son. They had not touched ground before the front door of the cottage opened wide and an aproned woman with gray hair askew and a broad smile on her face trundled out to greet them.
“Oh, Harry, Harry, you’ve come at last!”
“I have, Mama. That I have.”
Soon after, Marc and Martha Cobb sat at the table in the kitchen, sipping tea and nibbling at biscuits slathered with apple jelly. Cobb’s mother was one of those farm women, so common out here, who in their late fifties put on a layer of plump flesh that in no way diminished their muscular strength and actually rendered them more sensually attractive. Martha Cobb had troubles enough for two, with a stricken husband and a farm to operate on her own, in addition to the estrangement of her firstborn and two miraculous grandchildren she had not yet laid eyes on. But every velvet wrinkle in her face could be traced to excessive laughter-at both the capricious joys of life and its sorrowful follies.