At Bradley’s startled reaction, Marc briefly outlined his purpose in Detroit and emphasized the short time they could spend there. “If there is any way your knowledge of the area might help Cobb and me, I’d be grateful. And so would Mrs. Cobb.”
Bradley gave the matter some thought. “Well, sir, Major Coltrane had the loyalty and respect of all the men under him, but he wasn’t liked very much by some of the other regional captains of Michigan Lodge.”
“Political jealousy, perhaps?” Marc said, knowing much about such matters.
“I’m sure he was being put forward for president of the Michigan branch. But then he got captured, didn’t he?”
“Is there any way I might be able to meet some of the executive members of the Lodge?”
“Oh, I can get you to the Hunters easily enough.”
“You can? How?”
“The Michigan Hunters meet for three or four days in the middle of each month at the Wayfarers Inn, a tavern about ten miles south of Detroit on the main road to Toledo. They may have started yesterday or today, but most of ’em should still be in the area another day or two. They’re pretty fussy about who they let near the place, though. The authorities know all about the meetings, but so far as I know, they look the other way.”
“Is there a contact I could make in Detroit?”
“Yeah. Go to the Woodward Tavern and ask fer Phineas Quincy. I’ll draw you a map of Detroit so you won’t get lost. But you better have a good reason for approachin’ him. He’s a cunning, mean bastard.”
Marc smiled. “Don’t worry: Citizen Quincy will be delighted to see me.”
FOURTEEN
It was early afternoon on Tuesday when Marc and Cobb found themselves crossing the icebound Detroit River, heading towards Wing’s Wharf, a spot suggested by Bradley Tompkins as a safe and reasonably inconspicuous point of entry into the United States of America. An icy north wind chilled the sleigh’s occupants and left them breathless, despite their furs, Cossack caps, and swaddling scarves, and caused the vehicle to lurch and yaw in random gambits. While the windswept ice looked from a distance as smooth and polished as silver plate, up close and on top, it was rough, bone-jarring, and unpredictable.
“I think my teeth might be chatterin’,” Cobb shouted, “but I’m shakin’ so hard all over I can’t tell!”
“We’re almost there!” Marc shouted in return, and jerked at the right rein to bring the skidding horses back to the straight and narrow.
Only the anticipation of the possibilities that lay a quarter mile ahead kept both men from being overwhelmed by exhaustion. So far, it had been a physically numbing expedition. After a change of horses and a quick, cold supper in London, they had raced through the snowy dark of the Longwoods road towards Moraviantown. Cobb insisted on driving with his one good hand so that Marc could doze fitfully beside him and, taking turns thus, they reached at ten o’clock the log hut near the hamlet that served as an emergency way station for desperate travellers. The place had been shut up and barred, but Marc pounded on the plank door with his frozen fist until the proprietor finally opened it a crack, just far enough to allow the barrel of his pistol to emerge at eye level. In his plummiest tones and with a flash of silver coin, Lord Briggs ingratiated himself to the point where the door was opened and the weapon lowered.
The inside of the place was even less appetizing than its exterior. “ ‘Least there won’t be no rats,” Cobb had muttered. “They wouldn’t be caught dead in this sty.” There were only two other curtained-off rooms besides the main one, so the lord and his man curled up in the one not occupied by the proprietor and his woman, with only a smoky, fading fire in a wattle fireplace to provide an illusion of warmth and with much concern about that pistol and the distinguished guest’s coin-filled purse. Neither proved an impediment to sleep, however, and with horses rested and fed enough to get them to Chatham the next morning, they were at last on the final leg of their arduous journey. As they were leaving Moraviantown, Marc thought he felt the cold shudder of ghosts, of the Shawnees and their charismatic leader Tecumseh, who had fought and died nearby for their own cause and, incidentally, helped preserve a less than grateful British colony.
“That must be the wharf over there,” Marc said, and directed the horses towards a wooden pier to the left, now entirely encased in ice. It was deserted. On the steep riverbank above it stood several substantial brick buildings, warehouses most likely, with wind-tossed smoke roiling from their chimneys. Out on the river, they had encountered half a dozen sleighs bearing goods and passengers going both ways, as if the border were a negligible detail. No one paid them the slightest attention, even though Marc had decided to leave their own cutter at a livery stable in Windsor and rent a gentleman’s fancy one-horse sleigh with leather seats and polished mahogany trim, locomoted by a charcoal filly with bobbed tail and beribboned mane.
Marc had to walk the filly up a winding path to Griswold Street above the wharf. The street itself was deserted, though the clanking of hammers on iron from the nearest building indicated that productive labour was going on behind its walls. Marc knew that Detroit had been a boomtown for the past five years, notwithstanding the currency crisis and banking disaster of 1837. Property here was selling for more than ten times its counterpart in Windsor; that is, until a few months ago when the economic bubble had burst. The scrambling and chaos that followed had left hundreds of men without employment and others desperate to hang on to what little they had-conditions conducive to easy recruitment by the Hunters. The streets and alleys had also become extremely dangerous, so much so that a group of vigilantes known as Brady’s Hundred had been organized to patrol the town from dusk till dawn. It would not be prudent to move around Detroit and environs without due caution and a plausible excuse for doing so. But Marc felt that he and Cobb were well prepared.
With studied ostentation they drove their fancy rig up Griswold to Jefferson Avenue, where the way was suddenly alive with traffic, human and animal. The boardwalks on either side were crowded with shoppers, sliding in and out of small clots of loiterers, who could have been lounging thieves, lurking spies, or simply the forlorn flotsam of the economic collapse. Whoever they were, they were following the progress of Lord Briggs and his man with sullen, unwelcoming eyes.
“You sure ya want every dog and his fleas knowin’ we’re here?”
“That’s the plan. Remember, the story here is that we’ve just arrived from Cleveland en route to Chicago.”
“Well, then, I figure we better get a move on.”
At Jefferson and Woodward, the main intersection, they drew up in a lane beside the Michigander, the city’s premier hotel. Marc was impressed by the abundance of trees and shrubs along the thoroughfares and around the sturdy brick and stone dwellings. Handsome retail shops vied for attention with smoke-belching factories. Though a third the size of Toronto, Detroit was in the process of catching up and quickly. While Bartlett went looking for the ostler, Lord Briggs checked in, letting his polysyllabic English ripple across the carpeted and discreetly lit lounge. A few minutes later, Bartlett joined his master in the presidential suite, replete with fresh fire, hot food, cold beer, and a bathroom sporting a copper tub.
“You go on down to the tavern, Cobb, and get yourself refreshed. I’m going to have a bath and a nap: I need to have all my wits about me before we set out. Please wake me at three-thirty.”
“If I don’t collapse with my chin on the bar.”
Marc was dressed in the expensive, tailored garments he had brought with him from England three and a half years before and rarely worn since. His suit coat was plum-coloured and velvet-trimmed, with matching trousers and fashionable ankle-length boots. The overcoat was fur-collared and rakishly cut, and the beaver top hat was spanking new. Under it, his lordship boasted a powdered wig, borrowed from the Baldwin collection. The two days’ growth of beard was shaved so close, his cheeks looked as pliant and pink as a sow’s buttocks.