Arundel (81 page)

Cap, bulging with brandy bottles and other knickknacks, saw that what had happened in this strange meeting with Mary had weighed heavily on me; and he strove to hearten me against a merciful inclination, of which I had muttered something to him.

“Stevie,” he said, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, “I’ve learned a heap about women these last few years. They’re all alike about one thing, so far as I can see. It never bothers ’em when they lose a man. Somehow they all bear up, Stevie! It appears to me Mary ain’t different from the rest of ’em. She’ll have another man in a week, Stevie, if Guerlac doesn’t come back to her; and she’ll never know the difference! There ain’t been a woman in Kittery or Portsmouth either, for that matter, to die because of the loss of a man; and the widows, whether seventeen or seventy, get other husbands and act smugger than ever!”

He poured me a drink of brandy. I took it and put a little more zest into our preparations.

It must have been five o’clock when Cap went into the cellar and readjusted the bindings of one of the serving maids—the one who had sat mending her stocking when we entered the house. He trussed her to a chair with a rope knotted in a hundred places, and fastened her to the wall so she must free herself to reach the others. On her hands he put no rope at all. Thus, in an hour or more, she might unknot her bonds and loose her fellow captives.

When it came to tying Guerlac so we could carry him with us, Natanis said here was one prisoner who would have no opportunity of escaping. He and Cap labored long and diligently over the Frenchman’s bonds. Both his arms were lashed tight to a rope that passed around his waist, so they hung straight at his sides and appeared to be unbound. His legs were joined below the knee by a slender rope that permitted him to walk, though not to run; and to this rope was attached a longer rope to be held by one of us. His gag was left in his mouth and his jaws held together by a cloth running under his chin and knotted at the top of his head. When we pulled down his cap over his ears and pinned the collar of his blanket coat so it was turned up around his mouth, there was little to show, even in broad daylight, that he was tied in any way.

I heard Natanis say to Guerlac in Abenaki, while he was binding him, that if Guerlac made any sign or sound that led to our capture, he would shear off his face with his hatchet and leave him alive, to fill women and children with terror for the rest of his days.

When Cap and Natanis took Guerlac into the kitchen to make ready for the start, Mary, lying bound on the bed, pleaded with me to leave Guerlac behind. I could have, she said—and of course Guerlac had told her what to say—a thousand pounds for my own if I would do this; and Guerlac would make sure we got safely from the city. If I would join the British, Guerlac would have me made a major and I would be given five thousand acres when the war was done; and so on and so on, until my stomach turned over in me to know how small and mean I figured in her mind.

“You’re wasting your breath,” I said shortly.

She persisted in her pleading, staring at me piteously. “You’d be leaving nothing at all if you left this rabble you’re with! Henri says nothing like it was ever seen before: it’s a disgrace to fight against such folk or with them either! Their officers are nothing but hairdressers and blacksmiths and innkeepers and butchers and farmers, all thinking themselves gentlemen and as good as anyone.”

I thought of Thayer and Steele and Morgan and Topham and Dearborn and the other officers, giving up their little portions of meat in the meadow at Seven Mile Stream so the soldiers under them might have more; as kind and gentle with their men as any titled Britisher or Frenchman could be. I carried her into the cellar and left her there with no further words.

Hook, lying in the corner of the kitchen, watched us belting up our coats and drawing the loads from our muskets so to reload for safety’s sake. His eyes were half glazed with the nearness of death, but there still was hatred in them, so stubborn was that man.

When we were ready to go I told him that if he had a message to send to any person in New England before he died, I’d carry it.

“You deluded fool!” he said, showing his teeth at me between lips as gray as wood ashes. “You’ll never get out of the city! St. Louis Gate and St. John’s Gate are watched by a hundred men. The Lower Town’s alive with sailors. No matter what road you take, you’ll be full of bullets in half an hour.” He panted a little and grinned horribly. “The forces of Belial have gone down before the armies of the Lord! The truth is mighty and shall prevail! Montgomery is dead, and your army of thieving blasphemers rotting in prison.” His breath dragged in his throat. “You’ll burn in hell this night, blasphemer!”

“Go ahead!” I said to Cap.

He shot back the bar on the kitchen door and went out into the snow. Natanis walked behind him; then Guerlac; then Hobomok; and last of all myself, where I could watch Hobomok, in case he weakened from his wound. It was dark, so dark that Cap, at the head of our little file, was only an indistinct bulk to me. The snow was falling steadily; and what with it being New Year’s Day, and the city in no further danger of attack, and the citizens and garrison wearied by their long vigil and the night of terror through which they had just passed, I knew there would be none abroad save those who might be driven by necessity.

Our plan of escape was simple—too simple, it seemed to me, to fail. Later in the winter, indeed, a score of our men, at one time and another, broke from their cells and escaped in this self-same manner, sometimes by themselves and sometimes accompanied by their gaolers, who deserted.

Guerlac’s house was near the great building of the Jesuits; and this, in turn, was only five or six blocks from the wall by Palace Gate. Beneath and beyond this section of the wall was the suburb of St. Roque and the ruins of La Friponne; and as a result of the hours I had spent on my belly in La Friponne, popping up at sentries on the walls above me, I remembered certain things of value.

I remembered that sentries walking on the parapet had been clearly visible through portholes to us below them; and that the portholes were large enough for a man to pass through. Also I remembered that the wall rose a full thirty feet above the bank, which was itself high; but that with each succeeding snowstorm the snow, driven always from the northeast or the northwest, had drifted higher and higher against the foot of the wall. Thus I knew that after the raging storm during which we made our attack this drift must have grown to an enormous size, so that one who leaped from the top of the wall would be no worse off than if he dropped into a pile of feather beds. Consequently our plan required only that we traverse the six blocks between Guerlac’s house and the wall, mount to the parapet, and jump.

We came out from among the trees that sheltered Guerlac’s house, looking like any squad of men engaged in changing guard or patrolling the streets, except that one of us—Guerlac—was without a musket. No man could have told that Natanis and Hobomok were Indians, for between their pulled-down caps and their turned-up collars there was no part of their faces visible.

We followed the steep street upward to our left, then turned sharp to our right. Immediately we encountered a lone officer trudging toward us through the snow. His chin was sunk in a cape, and he glanced up sideways at Cap as he came abreast of him, muttering some indistinguishable words cheerfully enough. To this Cap made an equally indistinguishable reply, chewing it in the forepart of his mouth and spitting it into the collar of his blanket coat; yet it seemed to content the Britisher, for he pulled his head back into his cape like a turtle and went trudging past.

When we reached the street of St. John’s Gate we stopped in the lee of the house on the corner to see what might be seen. It was well we did so; for we had no sooner halted than a sentry paced across the end of the street we were on, not twenty feet from us.

We couldn’t delay, for there was no telling when others might follow in our footsteps and come across us standing there. Cap went ahead, weaving and pitching in his walk, and we heard the sentry’s challenge. By way of reply there was a violent hiccup from Cap, and a maudlin murmur of “Besh Newyearsh brandy.” There came a silence, followed by a faint rattle and a sound of choking. We knew Cap was throttling him. Hobomok and I seized Guerlac under the arms and dragged him across the street of St. John’s Gate, Natanis ranging ahead like a shadow on the snow.

Cap caught up with us at once, breathing a little quickly. We pushed rapidly into the narrow streets of the northwestern most corner of the city. We had but three blocks to go before reaching the open space between the houses and that portion of the wall for which we were aiming, and on these steep dark streets we met no one.

We knew from the map that the last building to be encountered before we ventured into the open space was the barracks; and somehow we gained courage, when we reached its shelter, to find its windows lighted and to hear a discordant singing and bellowing from within.

“Hell,” Cap whispered contemptuously, “there ain’t a Britisher but what’s drunk to-night. Disgusting! We’ll go over that wall as easy as going upstairs to bed.”

Natanis and Hobomok went across the field ahead of us, as we had planned. They were invisible against the drifts when they had gone six paces; so we took a firm grip on Guerlac’s arms and followed. The wall loomed out of the snow when we had walked thirty paces—a low wall compared to its appearance from the far side. We saw the steps, and beside them a small guardhouse. Against the steps Natanis and Hobomok crouched, waiting. There was, Natanis whispered, a sentry on the wall: he would pass the head of the steps soon, and we could then go up safely.

My breast and throat were filled with the thumping of my heart, and I was near choking with the fear we might be found and stopped less than ten steps from safety. We cowered in the snow, waiting, and odd thoughts came into my head: the suspicion that a small taste of garlic might do no harm to my mother’s cucumber relish; the thought of Cap’s distress if he should be obliged to go home without his picture of Philadelphia as Seen from Cooper’s Ferry; the recollection of how, ages ago, I had dreamed of entering Quebec with the Continental Army, marching stoutly between the tall stone houses, while laughing maids and cheering men welcomed us gladly from roadside and windows.

There was a sound of crunching from the parapet above us: slow footsteps in the snow. I hung my mouth as wide open as the bunghole of a hogshead, so that my breathing might not reach the sentry’s ears. Little by little the sound of his feet grew fainter.

Natanis and Hobomok went crouching up the steps. Cap and I pulled Guerlac to his feet and followed. As we mounted, Cap slipped and fell with such a noise as might be made by the toppling of a tall clock on a stair landing. There was a sound of splintering glass and a powerful stench of brandy.

Off to our left I heard the sentry’s challenge. By the time the second challenge came, we had Guerlac on the parapet. As we hustled him toward the port, Natanis fired past my ear. There was an answering shot from the sentry and a shout from the guardhouse. I saw Natanis dive through the port as Hobomok’s rifle spat a streak of fire downward, and realized I was arousing the town with my bellowing to Cap and Hobomok to jump and get out of my way.

Cap scrambled through the port, grunting and growling, and Hobomok slid after him as the musket of the sentry at the guardhouse flashed behind us.

Guerlac jerked upward; then sagged and hung limp in my arms.

I could hear the shouting of other sentries along the wall. There was no time to pry into the manner in which the Frenchman had been injured; so I picked him up by the sash and stuffed him through the port and into space, scrambling blindly after him.