“I know I shouldn’t giggle, Mr. Edwards, but some of the things poor James comes out with are comical, and even though he don’t understand much most of the time, he loves to see me have a good belly laugh. You see, we’ve shared a lot of ’em in our life together.”
“How is James today, ma’am? Is he likely to recognize Horatio?”
“He’s havin’ one of his better days, thank the Lord. Just an hour ago he was askin’ after Harry.”
“How are you managing the farm on your own?”
“Oh, bless me, sir, but the Lord has been more than kind to us, he has. A week or so after James went down, about the end of last February, a young man shows up at our gate beggin’ fer work.”
“There have been a lot of young men looking for employment since the unrest last year and so many farms being suddenly sold or abandoned.”
“It was bad around here after the Mackenzie business, I can tell you. Anyways, I says to young Bradley, do you know anythin’ about farmin’? ‘No,’ he says, ‘but I c’n learn.’ I told him we had little ready cash, but he said he’d work fer room and board and whatever else we could afford to give him.”
“So he was the chap I saw going into the barn?”
“That would be Bradley. I reckon he spotted you, but he’s terribly shy, he is. Sometimes I have to stop him from workin’ so hard, and I keep tellin’ him he needs to go to town and mix with folks his own age. He keeps promisin’ he will, but so far he sticks to his room in the barn and his Bible.”
“Surely he goes to church?”
“I go every Sunday, but I go alone.”
“Is he from this area?”
“Oh, no. He said he’d run away from home after his papa’d beaten him. He come here with the clothes on his back, that’s all, and a bunch of nasty cuts and bruises on his head. I felt real sorry for him. We come to an agreement right away, and he’s been with us ever since. Oh, Mr. Edwards, we’ve been so blessed, we have. First young Bradley arrives and now our dear, dear Harry. And Delia tells me Dora and her brother and her are plannin’ a trip this way before Easter.” Tears contended with her smile.
Marc suddenly heard a strange voice rise from the nearby bedroom, deep and sonorous.
“Oh, he’s talkin’ to Harry!” Martha cried. “Let’s go and have a listen.”
They edged up to the partly open door. Cobb was sitting on the bed beside his father, holding his hand. James Cobb was a big-boned yeoman of a man, now gaunt and almost fleshless, but the power and energy of that body were still intimated in its final, pitiable configuration. The stroke had taken some of the fire out of the bold, dark eyes and slackened one side of the angular face and the jut of the jaw. But the voice that emerged was only mildly slurred and the words uttered more candid in their skewed clarity.
“Master, young gentleman, I pray you, which way to Master Jew’s?”
Then an answering voice: tender, antiphonal, impish. “Talk you of young Master Launcelot?”
“No master, sir, but a poor man’s son.”
“But I pray you, old man, talk you of young Master Launcelot?”
“Of Launcelot an’t please your mastership.”
“Talk not of Master Launcelot, father, fer the young gentleman is indeed deceased, gone to Heaven.”
“Marry, God forbid, the boy was the very staff of my age, the very prop.”
“Do you not know me, father?”
“Alack, sir, I am sand-blind, I know you not.”
“Well, old man, I will tell you news of yer son. Give me yer blessing. Truth will come to light. Murder cannot be hid long. A man’s son may, but in the end truth will out.”
“I’ll be sworn if thou art Launcelot, thou art my own flesh and blood.”
Martha Cobb tittered behind Marc, and together they withdrew silently to the kitchen. Martha was grinning through her tears. “My word, Mr. Edwards, they were doin’ the Gobbo recognizin’ scene from The Merchant of Venice! James and Harry ain’t done that since Harry was thirteen and decided he was too big to be indulgin’ in such sissy behaviours.”
“I know the scene well,” Marc said, still amazed.
“It’s a miracle, sir, that’s what it is!”
“The mind often retains entire songs and whole swatches of verse even when ordinary speech deserts it,” Marc intoned solemnly.
Martha gave him a surprised look. “Oh, sir, it’s Harry I was talkin’ about.”
When he could, Marc slipped quietly away from the scene of reconciliation and made his way towards the barn. A curl of woodsmoke rose through a stovepipe near the rear of the building. Marc went back there, pushed open an outside door, and stepped into the alleyway between the cattle stalls. To his right a curtain had been crudely hung across an opening. He brushed it aside.
“Pardon me for intruding,” Marc said to the startled young man, “but it is urgent that I speak with you.”
Bradley Tompkins swept the blond forelock out of his eyes and, barely making eye contact, asked Marc, “How did you know?”
“It wasn’t that difficult,” Marc said. “The timing was too coincidental, and Mrs. Cobb’s description of the circumstances of your arrival convinced me that you were a refugee from the Battle of Pelee Island.”
“They hanged ten of us in London.” The young man shuddered.
“I have absolutely no intention of seeing you hanged, Bradley. Cobb is my good friend, and you have been a godsend for his mother. Besides, I’m positive most of the locals already know or suspect and no longer give a damn.”
Bradley looked astonished. “You really think so?”
“I do. Moreover, since you were not a soldier in a legitimate army, you are no deserter.”
“But I daren’t go back to Detroit. You don’t know those men-”
“I’ve got an inkling. But you should be safe enough here. By the spring most of this fuss will have blown itself out. And it’s not as if you were the sole American émigré in the county.”
Bradley appeared considerably cheered by these assessments. Then he looked down and spoke in a sustained whisper. “I ran away from the battle. I realized as we were comin’ across the ice from Sandusky that I’d made a terrible mistake. I’d let my disagreements with my father lead me to be duped by the promises of the Hunters. I thought we would be marchin’ into Canadian villages with the local citizens cheerin’ and clamourin’ to join us. Half the fellas tried to skedaddle before we reached the enemy at the north end of the island. But I wasn’t afraid for my skin. It was when I looked over the ice that morning and saw all them militia uniforms facin’ us that I realized these were ordinary folks in homemade tunics. The people we’d come to liberate were prepared to leave hearth and haven and die resisitin’ us. In the confusion of the first volleys, I took a bullet fragment off the forehead, then I just melted away and went on the run. I must’ve looked a right mess when Mrs. Cobb took me in.”
“Were you perchance in Caleb Coltrane’s brigade?”
Unsure of the intent of the question, Bradley Tompkins hesitated before answering. “I was. And I must admit, sir, that I admired him. He was a true believer and no coward. But I knew I could never be like him.”
“I’m investigating his murder,” Marc said, “and endeavouring to save a man who has been falsely accused of the crime.”