Connors squinted-part frown and part smile-then grinned and said, “Yes, but many of your countrymen persist in believing that any resident of this province who hails from the United States of America-however long ago and however naturalized since-is a primee fashia blackguard and potential seditionist. A Yankee spy under every rock, to use the vernacular.”
“So you move about … judiciously,” Marc offered.
“How well put. You seem uncommonly schooled for a soldier, sir.”
Marc acknowledged the compliment with a nod. “And are you a smithy as well?”
O’Hurley coughed and spluttered into his cup.
“I, sir,” Connors declaimed, “am a smithy of words and subordinate clauses, of tracts and contracts-monetary, fiduciary, and commercial. I draw up bills of sale and bills of lading, deeds of property and dunnings of debt. I drum and I stake and I capitalize; I minister and mollify.”
“A solicitor, then.”
Connors reeled back as if struck by a blow as cowardly as it was mortal. “You jest, sir. If I am to be vilified by that name, it can only be in the generic sense. I do what lawyers in my country do, but without the handicap of education or licence. In brief, young sir, I am what the Republic hails as its quintessential citizen: an entrepreneur.” He leaned back, laid his gloved hands across his mustard waistcoat, and smiled without a trace of guile.
“He does the thinkin’,” O’Hurley said, “and I do the craftin’.”
“The perfect partnership, you might say,” Connors added.
“And you travel together, then? Both of you on a single donkey?”
“Not literally, of course, like Yankee Doodle or our Good Lord on Palm Sunday. I come up by myself to scout out new territory and solicit orders, and once in a blue moon I get the urge to hit the open road for a spell. Then Ferris and I set out in tandem.”
Assuming he had been tossed a cue, Ferris blinked sleepily and said, “Ninian’s got a sister up here he likes to visit.”
“And where does she live?”
“Now you’ve gone and done it, Ferris old friend,” Connors sighed. “You’ve flat out embarrassed me.” He turned to Marc and slowly raised his downcast, abashed eyes. “The visits to my dear sister are, sir, acts of kindness towards that poor impoverished soul and her wretched children, and Ferris knows full well I do not wish to have broadcast those acts of Christian charity that should be executed privily for their own sake and not for the public aggrandizement of the perpetrator.”
“I think it’s time for me to turn in,” Marc said.
“You’ll not have one more drink, then?”
Marc yawned and shook his head.
“Surely one toast to His Majesty.”
“Just two fingers, then,” Marc said.
“Why don’t you give him a swig from the canteen?” O’Hurley suggested.
Connors shot him a look that was part reproving, part resignation, then managed to attach his smile to it in time to say, “Splendid thought! We keep a modest dram of superior spirits to mix up a syllabub now and then.” He drew what appeared to be a regulation army canteen from under his jacket and poured each of them a toddy.
“To King William the Fourth!”
They drank to the fount and guardian of the British Empire.
“Your toast, good sir.”
“To honest men everywhere!” Marc said.
The liquor slid silkily down Marc’s throat: overproof Jamaican rum.
As soon as horse and donkey had been made as comfortable as possible, the three men set about arranging their bedrolls around the last glow of the fire. When Marc went back out to relieve himself, he slipped his sabre from its scabbard and tiptoed back inside. All was dark and quiet.
For a long while, Marc lay awake, despite the demands of his body for sleep, waiting for the telltale snoring of the peddlers, who, graciously enough, had given him pride of place next to the fire. While checking his horse earlier, Marc had given the donkey and its packs a searching look and decided that these men carried no weapons of any size. Nor did he see anything that resembled contraband goods among the pots and pans of their tradesmen’s gear.
Some time later he opened his eyes wide. How long he had slept he did not know, but he soon knew what had wakened him. Connors and O’Hurley were both upright, huddled against the door and fumbling for the latch.
“Jasus, it’s cold. We shoulda stayed in Buffalo.”
“Well, I gotta take a piss and I’m not fouling my own nest.”
“Me too, dammit.” O’Hurley was jerking at the latch in the dark.
Then Connors whispered, “Sorry to wake you, Ensign. Ferris and I have got to answer a pre-emptive call of nature.”
The door opened, colder air drifted in from outside, and the peddlers vanished. Seconds later the air hissed with their exertions, but they did not return. Marc reached over and felt for the saddlebags, his own and his hosts’. Both were still there. Once again he fought against sleep-thinking hard.
O’Hurley had his ear against the door. “I don’t hear no snorin’.”
“Let me have a gander, before my balls freeze solid and drop off.” Connors eased the door open a crack. The unexpected onset of moonlight allowed him a partial but clear view of the ensign wrapped in his bedroll, his fur cap pulled down over his face against the biting cold of a midwinter night.
“Edwards,” Connors said in a low, amiable voice. “You awake?” No reply. “We’re just gonna move the animals to the other side of the cabin.”
“He’s out for the night,” O’Hurley said nervously.
“The rum did the trick.”
“We gonna go through with this?”
“Of course we are. We can’t take any chances.”
“He seemed like an okay fella to me.”
“You wouldn’t last a week on your own,” Connors said without rancour.
The decision had been made after they had relieved themselves in the brush at the foot of the knoll, though not without several minutes of furiously whispered argument.
“I bet that horse’s worth fifty bucks,” O’Hurley said, warming to the task at hand.
“It may be too risky to take,” Connors said.
“If only the bugger’d not asked so many questions.”
“Here,” Connors said, and he held out a stout log frozen as hard as an iron bar. “Get on with it.”
“Why me?”
“Your turn, old boy,” Connors said, smiling. “Besides, it was you that blabbed about the rum and my sister.”
With the weapon shaking in his grasp, O’Hurley inched the door farther open, shuddering at every creak it made. But exhaustion seemed to have claimed the redcoat utterly. He would never see the blow that killed him. Perhaps there would even be no pain: he would simply not wake up.
O’Hurley stood over the silent, unsuspecting sleeper, his eyes riveted on the ornate haft of the officer’s sabre just peeping above the army blanket. He could sense Connors watching in the open doorway behind him. He raised the log, hesitated, shut his eyes, and brought it down upon the fur cap. He opened his eyes just in time to see the entire bedroll spasm and grow still. There wasn’t even a moan. Thank God.
“Jasus Christ and a saint’s arse!” Connors yelled. “You can’t kill a man with a fly-swat like that!” He ripped the club from O’Hurley’s grasp and slammed it down on the rumpled cloth. “And may you rot in Hell like every other English bastard!”
“Go ahead and hit him again, if it makes you feel better.”
The assassins wheeled about in confusion, then dismay. Ensign Edwards stood in the doorway-bareheaded, coatless, unshod-with a loaded and primed pistol in his right hand. “I can only shoot the liver out of one of you, but I assure you I will kill the other with my bare hands.”
Even the smithy of words could find none suited to the occasion.
“I followed you out when you went to take a leak,” Marc said by way of helpful explanation, “and heard everything. You’ve gone and made a mess of my hat.”