“My man left his post only to come to my assistance,” MacLachlan snapped. “And we did get the bitch! By God, Child, we got the old harlot in chains after all these years!”
“I say it’s time we cleared out the whole rotten mess of them!” Child cried, and he banged on the desk with a fist as heavy as a mace. Mackenzie’s teacup bounced.
A dozen heads swivelled and froze. The magistrate’s countenance, governed usually by civility and the courtesy of office, was now swollen with a wrath as venomous as Jehovah’s before the sins of Jeroboam. His voice was hollow, sepulchral. “I will take away the remnant of that house as a man taketh away dung.”
“Mad Annie’s, ya mean,” the sheriff said helpfully.
Child cast his eyes over the motley crowd in the room. “Yes,” he said more calmly, but with no lessening of purpose. “I am hereby authorizing a raid on that squatter’s pigsty tonight. We’ll go in there with guns and torches and purge every last one of that bastard brood!”
Within minutes, the magistrate’s enthusiasm (and legal warrant) had galvanized those in the room and in the courtyard beyond. A tactical plan of action rapidly evolved. A score of stalwarts from the town would be deputized as supernumerary constables. Four sleighs and teams would be officially commandeered. They would leave town at ten o’clock, proceed along the frozen ribbon of Cobourg Creek to the point where it intersected with Crawford Creek in the thick cedar-and-birch bush immediately north of Mad Annie’s squattery. From there they would march on snowshoes through the woods to unleash a lightning assault on its unprotected (and unbooby-trapped) rear. With Madame Tarantula in leg irons, the broodlings would panic and scatter. A discreet torch touched here and there, and Mad Annie’s seraglio would no longer offend the public eye, ear, or sensibility-or the liquor laws.
“I’ve got to go with MacLachlan,” Hatch said wearily to Marc. “I’ll do my best to see that no one gets hurt out there. Folks are mightily stirred up tonight.”
“I’m going back with James,” Marc said. “I’m exhausted, and I’ve got some hard thinking to do.” Pieces of the puzzle were now flinging themselves up faster than he could catch and examine them.
“Good,” Hatch said. “The women’ll need an escort. We didn’t nab a single one of Ogle’s loonies, so the woods and back roads could be full of ’em. Thomas is gonna drive the Huggan girls and a couple who live farther west along the highway. You could follow them, if you wouldn’t mind.”
“What about Winnifred?”
“She’s helping Dr. Barnaby with the injured. They’re setting up in the Common School. He’ll bring her home, tonight or in the morning.”
Emma Durfee was yoo-hooing them from the driver’s bench of the cutter. A light snow was beginning to fall.
“By the by,” Hatch said, “I do have some happier news.”
“Oh?”
“One of the speakers at the rally told me they’d stopped for refreshment at Perry’s Corners on the way down, and the constable there had an Irishman in manacles.” Hatch laughed. “And one unhappy donkey.”
“So how did you persuade uncle Jabez to let you quit lawyerin’ and head off to military school?” Beth asked.
“I didn’t. I persuaded Uncle Frederick and he persuaded Uncle Jabez.”
Beth laughed as if she were now part of that happy conspiracy. A snowflake chose the tip of her nose on which to alight, glisten in filigree, and turn invisible. Emma and James Durfee, wrapped together in a single buffalo robe on the driver’s seat, were humming an ancient air suited to the occasion and their feelings and letting the Belgians lead them home.
Although still windless, the evening had grown much colder, and the soft, drifting snow gave only an illusion of coziness. Beth drew the buffalo robe off her shoulders and then did likewise with Marc’s. She lifted the separate furs that were shielding their thighs and legs and looped them over one another. Then she leaned in against Marc-shoulder to shoulder, hip to hip-and arranged the upper robes to form a continuous, cozy canopy.
“It’s called bundlin’,” she explained. “You’re allowed,” she said, “even if your intentions aren’t honourable.” She placed her fur-capped head on his shoulder. He could feel her breathing.
“You’d still need money to buy a commission, wouldn’t you?” she murmured.
“Uncle Frederick helped. He also wrote to Sir John Colborne on my behalf, and paid my passage to Montreal.”
“It must be nice to have friends in high places.”
“I’ve been lucky all my life,” Marc said, sliding his right arm around her shoulder and drawing her closer. There was no resistance.
“I haven’t told you everythin’ about Father,” she said after a while, moving only her lips. “I did accept from the very first that you were in earnest and that you could probably be trusted to keep anythin’ I told you to yourself. Still, I couldn’t tell you all of it, not then. But when I saw what you did back there at the hall, the last of my doubts vanished.”
Marc wanted to speak, but he kept very quiet, and very still.
“So much of what you needed to know was painful to me. I save my weepin’ for the dead of night, but it still comes and it still hurts. But so does the not knowing. It’s so much like the grief I felt for Jess: not knowing why-really, really why-he went out there and hanged himself for me to find him. Why didn’t he give me a chance to talk him out of it? I felt alone and betrayed. My love was not enough. And because I didn’t really know, I couldn’t grieve the way other widows do-and there’re plenty of them around here. What was worse, my grieving didn’t seem to have any end to it. Every reminder of Jess brought all that pain back instantly. If Joshua hadn’t come, if Mr. Child hadn’t given us a mortgage, if Elijah hadn’t taken on so much of the daily burden, and if dear, sweet Aaron didn’t need me to survive, I’d never have made it through the summer.”
“You don’t have to tell me all this,” Marc whispered, brushing her hair below her hat with his lips.
“Then Father was killed. And again I had the not knowing. No one at the inquest believed there ever was a mysterious note calling him away. But, of course, I knew things I couldn’t say to them, that I will tell you now. Joshua was obsessed with Jess’s death. Every ounce of energy left over from helpin’ us save the farm was given over to quizzin’ me-oh, ever so gently, for he was a kind, kind man-about Jess’s last days. He rummaged through every note and letter Jess ever wrote and searched the house and barn for more. After a while I could tell he’d finally quit blaming me. After that we became truly fond of each other, and then we both needed to know why. So he went along to the Reform rallies with me to hear and see for himself what his son had seen and heard the year before. He knew first hand from the drought last July what the Clergy Reserves fight was all about, what’d made his son mad and drove him to choose death over disloyalty. Then, by the end of October, a strange thing had happened.”
Marc withdrew his lips.
“Father began to understand and feel the way his son had, and then he began to believe in the cause itself. Tory though he was, through and through, he came slowly to see that the injustices were unthinkingly or callously caused-and by the very people he so looked up to and revered as the pillars and mainstays of the province. And that they could be cured without the collapse of the state and the ruination of the worthies in the capital.”
“He must have felt the conflict terribly.”
“He did. He started neglecting his friends. Then he started skipping Wednesdays at the Georgian Club. The day before Christmas he walked over and told Mr. Child he couldn’t come anymore.”
She had finished. Marc drew her face up to his. She pulled away, reluctantly-or so it seemed to him.
Durfee was about to point the horses north onto the Miller Sideroad when instead he drew them to a sudden halt. “Christ,” he said, “the door to the inn’s wide open!”