Solemn Vows Read online

  “What about the investigation, sir?”

  “Damn the investigation, Lieutenant! I want Farmer’s Friend in this office by noon tomorrow! You can tell me then why you haven’t caught Rumsey.”

  “But, sir, I thought you wanted to speak to the letter- writer before you left for your tour of the hustings, to help you with—”

  “I want those letters stopped, Lieutenant. I do not want anything disrupting what we have accomplished in the past four days. Is that clear? You are to find this traitor and put a stop to his democratic drivel!”

  “Understood, sir.”

  MARC WALKED TOWARDS THE BOARDING HOUSE through the soft darkness with a slow and troubled step. He had never seen Sir Francis so agitated, so lacking in control or perspective. Moreover, what he was contemplating was not legal. Even if Marc were to track down Farmer’s Friend tomorrow—presuming, of course, that Cobb had not been deliberately misleading them—there was no lawful means of stopping the flow of letters or coercing the author to visit Government House. That some kind of intimidation was being planned Marc found both distasteful and profoundly unsettling. And a good part of his unease had its roots in the unhappy exchange he had had with Beth Smallman just five days earlier.

  He was a block away from home when he sensed that he was being followed. He turned quickly, but could see no one. Perhaps his nerves were more frayed than he thought. He had not slept well all week. Every time the duty- corporal or a courier moved through the hallway outside his office, he had jumped with the anticipation of sudden word about Rumsey from Cobb and the call to precipitate action. It had not come.

  Marc felt the breeze of the club descending upon him just in time to duck, so that the savage blow glanced off his padded shoulder and merely grazed his shako cap, knocking it off. But the force of the attack spun him sideways and down. He struck the ground hard, and his bare forehead pitched into the root of a tree. The world swam. With blurred vision he saw a black figure raise the club above him, poised for the kill. He rolled away. The club must have missed him, for he found himself against the tree trunk, with his skull still intact.

  It was several minutes, though, before his head cleared enough for him to struggle to his knees and peer anxiously about.

  “Sorry, Major, I lost the bugger. Are you all right?”

  “Yes, Constable. I think so.”

  “That was no robber,” Cobb said as he knelt down and helped Marc to his feet. When Marc started to wobble, Cobb hung on to his elbow, and Marc could feel the tensile strength in the little man. “He was tryin’ to kill you, and there ain’t no doubt about it.”

  “Then you saved my life, Constable.”

  “Just doin’ my duty, Major.”

  “But this area’s not on your patrol,” Marc said.

  “So it ain’t,” Cobb replied, as his attention was diverted to an object on the ground. “What’s this, then?”

  “It’s a button,” Marc said, “from a military uniform.”

  “You got enemies in the service, Major?”

  Before Marc could respond to this unexpected notion, Cobb attended to the immediate need. “We need to stop jawin’ and get you home so’s the widow can have a good gander at yer skull. I can see a lump comin’ straight out.”

  Marc was happy to let Cobb guide him the remaining few yards to the familiar veranda. “Did you get a good look at him?” he asked.

  “Not really, Major. I was some ways off. I let out a holler and the bugger skedaddled in the dark. I had to stop and make sure you was all right before I set off after him. By then he’d got clean away.”

  “What did you see of him?”

  “Medium build, big overcoat, and a woolly sailor’s cap.”

  “Not likely a soldier, then. Though that button is odd,” Marc said.

  “And the fellow had a great bushy black beard on ’im.”

  MARC SAT HUDDLED IN A CLUMP of lilac a few yards from the house of Abner Clegg, with a thundering headache and a bruised shoulder, staring at the disc of sun just rising over the Don River and thinking about the attempt on his life the previous evening. According to Cobb—who surely must be trusted implicitly from now on—Rumsey had been seen in the Tinker’s Dam with a dark- capped man sporting a bushy beard. Could the person who had paid Rumsey to shoot Moncreiff have come after the man investigating the crime?

  Cobb had explained that Rumsey himself was thin and more than six feet tall, so he could not have been the assailant. But why try to murder the investigator when anything he knew or surmised would have been passed along to his superiors? Murdering him would not stop the investigation. This was as far as Marc got with that conundrum, for the front door of Clegg’s shack swung open and the courier himself emerged. He looked carefully about him in all directions. But Marc, wearing a simple blue shirt with grey trousers, could not be seen. Feeling himself safe, Clegg—an angular, loping man—moved swiftly down Front Street towards the market.

  Marc waited until Clegg was fifty yards ahead before he came out onto the roadside and sidled along, whistling nonchalantly. One advantage he held over Cobb’s effort last week was that the market on a Friday was only a quarter the size of the one on Saturday. It would be hard for Clegg to elude him there. When he saw Clegg nearing the market, Marc ducked between two houses and, as he had anticipated, his quarry took that moment to glance around for anyone following on his trail. Satisfied that he was home free, Clegg strolled in among the stalls.

  Meantime, Marc raced up George Street to the lane that ran behind the row of houses on the north side of Front Street, then wheeled west onto it and reached the market in time to see that Clegg had similar notions—except that he had sprinted past Colborne Street and then deked into the lane that backed the stores on the south side of King Street. Marc followed. But when he turned into the lane, no one was in sight. Stacks of boxes and crates and rotting refuse lay everywhere. A rat waddled from one pile to the next. Then Marc heard the crack of wood breaking, about thirty yards ahead and to his left. Clegg had slipped into an alley and was headed south back towards Colborne. Marc decided to take a narrower alley to the same destination. Stumbling over debris and scattering rats as he went, Marc emerged not on Colborne but farther south on Market Street. As he peered around the building at the end of the alley, he saw Clegg gazing his way, scrutinizing every bump in the road. Again satisfied, the courier began a more leisurely pace west on Market.

  By now Marc knew exactly when Clegg was most likely to turn and stare back behind him. What puzzled him still, though, was the motive behind all this clandestine movement. Despite the governor’s intemperate ranting, there was nothing in any way seditious about the letters. If anything, they were muted and rational in comparison with the regular press on either the left or the right. Why, then, would Farmer’s Friend go to such melodramatic lengths to maintain his anonymity? He felt he was very close to finding that out.

  Marc trailed Clegg west along Market, across Yonge, and then north to the tradesman’s lane that again backed the businesses on the south side of King. The courier suddenly slowed down, and Marc slipped behind a tall packing crate. There was no one else in the lane at this time of day. Few people would be up yet, and no business opened before eight, if then. It was just Marc and Clegg and the empty lane.

  Marc watched with some amusement as the courier flattened himself against the wall of a brick building, then edged along towards a door at the back of one of the businesses. He eased one hand around the jamb and rapped—once. A few seconds later, the door was opened slightly, a beige envelope appeared and was grasped, then a large coin followed suit. Clegg tucked the envelope inside his shirt, scoured the lane both ways for the enemy, then moved past Marc at a brisk trot—heading no doubt for Church Street and the Constitution.

  Marc did not follow. With his heart now thumping more vigorously than his head, he walked up to the door and knocked quietly. When it opened, he merely said, “Hello, Beth.”

  “YOU MUSTN’T BLAME ABNER CLEGG
for leading me here,” Marc said. “He did everything to lose me but turn himself inside out.”

  They were in the small back room again, but this time there was no tea or scones, and they had to keep their voices low because Aunt Catherine was still asleep and unaware of the identity of Farmer’s Friend.

  “My letters must be having more influence than I thought,” Beth said. “The governor’s put his top investigator on the trail.”

  “I didn’t ask for this assignment. And I had no inkling that you could have been the author. I still can’t believe it.”

  “Thanks very much.”

  “No, I didn’t mean to imply that—”

  “—a woman isn’t smart enough to write letters like that?”

  “I don’t know what I thought when I realized Clegg was at your door,” Marc said lamely, as a stab of pain struck him between the eyes.

  “You’ve been hurt,” Beth said with concern.

  “It’s part of being a soldier. But this bump had nothing to do with you or Clegg. Besides, I’ve been told I’ve got a thick skull.” He smiled warily.

  “Tell me more about my letters. Please.”

  “Well, they’ve stirred up quite a lot of admiration and an equal dram of umbrage and condemnation.”

  “I think that’s about right, don’t you?”

  “When the governor got to London, Mackenzie’s people had printed your individual letters as broadsheets and sprinkled them like hailstones all over the political landscape. Sir Francis was not amused.”

  “Well, that is praise enough, is it not?”

  “He was enraged, actually, and ordered me to bring him the name of Farmer’s Friend or the perpetrator himself by noon today.”

  “Have you read them?” Beth said softly.

  “Yes, I have.”

  “And?”

  “And I think they are telling and true and written from the heart.”

  Beth caught her breath, and looked up at Marc for a long moment. “Thank you,” she said. “That means a lot to me.” Then in a different voice, she added, “So what are we to do now? Are you duty bound to turn me in?”

  Marc did not answer right away. The question had been clawing at his heart. “Why not let the world out there know who you are? Let them be astounded to learn that the author is a woman who was also a farmer, who suffered exactly as those in her stories suffered, or whose sufferings she took on, on their behalf? Don’t you see how much more power and authority could be gained?”

  “That isn’t possible …”

  “What is the worst that could happen? You’ve done nothing illegal. The governor can rant and rave, but then he’ll be just like the rest of the politicians he despises.” The words were just flowing out of Marc before he was fully aware of the deep forces propelling them. “It might do him good to feel powerless for a change.”

  “But I can’t, don’t you see?”

  “No, I don’t.”

  “It’s got little to do with me and everything to do with Aunt Catherine.”

  Marc was baffled and, as it showed in his face, he could feel Beth beginning to withdraw, and he suddenly felt cold, very cold, in the pit of his stomach and in the region where his heart stammered and stalled.

  “How many customers do you think we would have left if they found out I was the author of those letters?”

  “Then to hell with them! They can go—stuff themselves!”

  “Be quiet. I won’t have her wakened. And try to think of someone besides yourself for a minute.”

  “Marry me, and I’ll get transferred back to England and—”

  “You must not talk such foolishness. I was the one who encouraged my aunt to sell everything, leave her friends, and come up here to start a new life. I never should’ve written those letters, but my husband, who could’ve written them in blood, isn’t here to do it. So I had to take the chance. And now only Abner and you know who Farmer’s Friend is. And it must stay that way. It must.” She was on the verge of tears, and she fought them back fiercely.

  “But I swore an oath,” Marc said, “to serve my king and obey my superiors. I made a solemn vow.”

  “Then the time’s come for you to choose between love and your duty,” she said in a voice that chilled the air in the cramped room.

  Marc got up and, without looking back, walked out into the alley. A pair of rats eyed him till he was safely out of sight.

  MARC WAS STILL IN A DAZE when he got back to Mrs. Standish’s. He was barely aware of changing into his uniform and making polite conversation with the widow and Maisie over late-breakfast tea in the parlour. In walking out on Beth—forever, unless he could conjure some morally dubious compromise—he had instinctively, reflexively, chosen to do his duty as a soldier, and that meant giving Sir Francis Beth’s name. But when he arrived at Government House, he found he was not prepared to do so and came up with a plan of sorts to delay the inevitable. Unable to equivocate face to face with Sir Francis, Marc wrote him a note explaining that he had tracked the courier to King Street and Bay, where he had temporarily lost him, only to meet him returning with the letter in hand. Hence, the writer was located in that block of King Street between Bay and Yonge. Therefore, all he had to do was place himself there next Friday or Saturday and wait for Clegg to come to him. His fingers shook as he penned the lie and saw it staring back up at him.

  With the polling about to begin on Monday and with last- minute rallies to be arranged—as well as the grand gala tomorrow night—Marc was hoping that Sir Francis might have his attention redirected long enough for him to forget about Farmer’s Friend or, in the least, downplay its significance. That was all Marc could think of at the moment. Even so, he was so torn with conflicting and irreconcilable emotions that he had to get out of Government House entirely.

  He soon found himself walking in the afternoon sunshine down to Bay Street and the Crooked Anchor. Perhaps Cobb would be there. He desperately needed someone to talk to. To his disappointment, the constable was not in. Marc stood at the bar anyway and sipped on a dark ale. No one spoke to him.

  He was just turning to leave when Cobb stumbled through the doorway, out of breath and wide-eyed.

  “What is it?”

  “Rumsey,” Cobb said. “He’s been spotted near the Tinker’s Dam—headin’ due north. On foot. For Danby’s Crossing.”

  At last, Marc thought.

  ELEVEN

  I’ll get a horse and come with you,” Cobb said.

  He and Marc were in the stables of Government House, and a groom had just finished saddling Marc’s chestnut mare.

  “Not right now,” Marc said as he swung into the saddle. “I want you to go up to the house and alert Willoughby and the governor. Have him call out as many troops as he thinks necessary. I’ll need some backup at Danby’s, but we’ve got to be prepared to initiate a pursuit and a full search if the bastard gets away on me.”

  “If he does, Major, then he’ll head fer the wharf. I’m sure of it.”

  “I’ll leave that part to Hilliard or Willoughby. But if Rumsey’s making for his cabin on foot, he’s only got a half- hour head start, so I’m certain I can get up there about the same time as he does.”

  “Don’t underestimate shank’s mare,” Cobb said.

  But Marc was already on his way.

  He rode furiously north up Simcoe Street, shouting and waving aside donkey- carts, drays, vegetable wagons, and cheering youngsters. He swung briefly along Lot Street and then onto College Avenue, where he was suddenly alone with the horse-chestnut trees on either side and the vista of the university park ahead. He urged the mare to her best gallop and, pounding east again, reached Yonge Street in a blaze of speed and sweat.

  But the mare soon began to flag, and he was forced to pull her back to a sustainable canter. At the Bloor turnpike, he let her drink a little and had to pull her roughly away before she did herself some damage. A dead horse under him would be an ignominious end to his second investigation. In fact, he thought, it w
as time to start using more brains than bravado. He couldn’t just blunder into the square at Danby’s Crossing and announce his military presence to all and sundry. He still had no idea how many allies among the locals up there Rumsey might actually have, despite Cobb’s repeated assurances that the fellow was a loner. And Rumsey would be armed with a long-range rifle and a sharpshooter’s eye.

  With a start Marc realized that he might be riding into true danger for the first time. This was not the case of a panicked man in pathetic flight, as Crazy Dan had been. Rumsey was a cold- blooded killer. He had hidden himself successfully for ten days, living off his wits, no doubt. He knew every stick and stone in the woods around Danby’s. As a celebrated deer hunter, he would have stealth and patience on his side, should he need to call on them. You didn’t fell a twenty- point stag by letting him see you first.

  Marc did not slow down at the Eglinton tollgate, and was in full gallop as he passed the startled onlookers outside Montgomery’s Tavern. He decided to approach the hamlet from the north, where he would be least expected to arrive. So he rode on past the crossroad to Danby’s. A quarter- mile farther on he veered east into the woods. It wasn’t thick or swampy here, so he made good headway and soon came to the rugged trail that he had ridden in pursuit of Crazy Dan. Only this time he followed it south until he could see smoke rising from the chimneys of the hamlet just ahead. He eased the exhausted mare a few yards off the trail into the brush, dismounted, and tethered her. He took down his Brown Bess musket, bit the paper off a bullet, and loaded it. For good luck he touched the haft of the sabre that Uncle Frederick had given him upon his graduation from Sandhurst (a weapon Frederick himself had used at Waterloo). Then he picked his way through the trees towards what he hoped was the vicinity of the Rumsey cabin.