And, of course, it was Cobb with his fabled network of spies who was expected to supply the chief and the governor with a steady stream of reliable data. Such an expectation had brought complexity to Cobb’s life, and consequent worry. Every one of his “agents,” smelling booze-money in the air, was more than happy to retail the latest rumour and spice it up for good measure. Cobb prided himself on knowing exactly how truthful and how useful any information passed to him in a pub actually was-to the penny or the fluid ounce. But no threat of withdrawal or reprisal on his part could stanch the flow of alarming nonsense. He was not averse to passing it along to Sir Francis if the governor was fool enough to give it credence. What he feared most was that some tiny fraction of the malarkey might be true.
Since the troops had left, taking Marc Edwards with them, there had been serious incidents in the streets. Shop windows of those merchants directly associated with the Family Compact had been smashed by radical sympathizers or, in Cobb’s opinion, gangs of toughs out for a lark. On the other side, groups of young Tories, who should have known better, had been encouraged by their elders to deface the property of known radicals-which in their diminutive minds included respectable Reform politicians and most Americans. When not in the mood for wielding a paintbrush, they chose to threaten their victims with anonymous, poison-pen letters. But if there really were malcontents north of the city organizing and arming themselves (after all, he and Marc had exposed a gunrunning operation in October, and news of an insurrection south of Montreal had just made the papers), then his life was about to become seriously complicated.
The problem was, he concluded, that he had too many friends. He was simply too susceptible to friendship, to having his good nature co-opted and taken advantage of. He felt that this must be a character flaw in a man professing to be a policeman. Against his better judgement he had found himself not only working side by side with Lieutenant Edwards on two investigations but coming to like and admire “the major,” as he called him, first derisively and then with affection. Like him, the major was an arm of the law and royal authority, but unlike him, the lieutenant was a Tory, an aristocrat, and a man of learning. Why, at this very moment he might be shooting at aggrieved farmers and ordinary folk like himself or his father or Dora’s kin up in York Township, who had been entangled with Reformers from the beginning. A dozen years ago his own father, still harbouring hopes that his eldest would succeed him on the farm, had pointed proudly to a lush field of wheat and proclaimed, “The soil under that crop has no politics. Remember that, son. An uppity cow ain’t a Tory. Tend to yer own business, an’ the world’ll come out right.” But the world here in Upper Canada had not come out right. Crops failed. Bankers balked. Bureaucracy and cronyism had bled the province dry.
Nevertheless, Cobb had tried to take the essential message to heart: he tended religiously to the business of keeping the peace. Moreover, he did not see himself as an appendage of the ruling Compact and its haughty adherents. He meted out his street justice in an even-handed or (as he liked to remind Missus Cobb) even-fisted way. A menacing drunk was a drunk, whether he be dressed in velvet or homespun. A man beating his wife in public deserved a sharp reprimand on the noggin, whatever his income or lack of same. If the magistrates wished to favour their own with unmerited leniency, that was something he might deplore but could not rectify. The Lord-if He wasn’t one of them-would settle the score later on.
It was through his unpolitic friendship with Marc Edwards that Cobb had met Marc’s fiancée, Beth Smallman, who had dabbled in debates she had no right to as a woman and gotten her toes scalded. However, in the eyes of the ruling class, once a Reformer always a Reformer. And Beth’s partnership in the millinery shop on King Street with Catherine Roberts, her aunt newly arrived from the republic to the south, did nothing to allay such fears. Several of Cobb’s informants had been eager to tell him that it was now widely known that one of the aunt’s relatives was a gunrunner. So what did Cobb go and do? He got to liking the old girl so much that he stopped in to the shop at least once a shift for tea and a chin-wag. Even worse, when the shop had been vandalized last month, Cobb had been assiduous in his efforts to track down the Tory scions responsible and, through one of his agents de taverne, had managed to bring a warrant against two of them. Unfortunately, the lads were both relatives of a rural magistrate and were let off with a reprimand and a promise to make restitution (still unfulfilled). Needless to say, Cobb’s stock with the powers that be had not risen.
So here he was on the bright and wintry Monday morning of December 4, striving to tend to his own sheep, as it were, but acutely aware that others saw a man compromised by having friends in both camps. And which flag would he hoist when the revolution came? That was a question he tried not to ask himself too often.
As Cobb passed Jarvis Street, he nodded to several merchants who were sweeping the snow off the boardwalk in front of their shops. Ezra Michaels, the chemist, gave him a hearty “Good morning,” and Cobb felt obliged to reciprocate. But by and large the city’s most bustling street was empty. Only the energetic puffing of smoke from stoked fires, above the chimney-pots, indicated that the troubled citizenry of the capital had decided to suffer another day to begin. Cobb reached Church Street, where the Court House, set back from the north side of King among shrubs and flowers, now wimpled with snow, gleamed arrogantly at the risen sun. With its bright-red brick and cut-stone pilasters soaring two and a half storeys into the skyline, it announced to the world that here was an edifice of prospering authority. Next to it, and facing Toronto Street, stood its exact replica-with a single exception: its windows were barred.
Cobb walked along the stone path until he came to the rear of the Court House, where, just above the tunnel that connected the two buildings (the accused, found guilty, could be whisked to the cells without getting his toes cold), the quarters of the constabulary were located. Loitering about the entrance were two ragged, red-nosed urchins, hoping to be conscripted to run messages of official significance for a half penny or a maple-sugar sweet.
“Give us a penny, Cobb!”
“Shouldn’t you two be in school?” Cobb asked, pushing open the door.
“They won’t have us.”
“I’m not surprised,” Cobb said, chuckling for the first time this morning. He stepped into the welcome heat of the station’s anteroom.
“Good mornin’, Gussie,” he said to the wee, wizened leprechaun perched on his stool and shuffling papers on the table before him. “Great day to be alive, eh?”
“Not so far it ain’t,” replied Augustus French, who peered out at the world from a pair of rheumy, myopic eyes with a squint of perpetual skepticism.
“Is Sarge in?” This was a rhetorical question at eight in the morning, for Wilfrid Sturges found it uncivil to let anything other than a full sun wake him from his comfortable slumbers. Even so, he was seldom seen these days in the tiny, adjoining closet that served as his office. For Governor Head, having only his aide-de-camp, Barclay Spooner, for immediate protection, thought it prudent to have a uniform of some kind lurking about Government House or popping up arbitrarily from time to time with menacing demeanour. These defenses were supplemented on occasion by the appearance of a brace of elderly militiamen brandishing swords and frightening the ladies of the house.
“Anythin’ I should know about before I set out?” Cobb enquired as he edged closer to the pot-bellied wood-stove that did its best to heat both rooms.
“You didn’t make your report on Saturd’y night,” French said, taking this, it appeared, as a personal affront.