Arundel (82 page)

I could feel myself turning slowly in the air. I strove to hunch myself together, so to offer a smaller mark to those on the parapet. My legs sprawled wildly as I turned and turned, listening always for musket shots above me. In the midst of a turn my shoulders struck an unyielding substance. There was a white flash in my brain, like that which had blotted out the world when Guerlac, years before, had driven his hatchet against my head.

God knows how much brandy Cap poured into me before I began to cough it back at him. I rolled over onto my knees to let it drain out, and coughed until my lungs felt as though pounded on my own anvil.

“Thank God for that!” Cap said. “I thought I was wasting my last bottle on a corpse! You had a neck on you as limber as an old stocking.” From the gurgle that followed, it seemed likely that Cap was doctoring himself for his fright.

I could feel that we were surrounded by walls, though I could see nothing for the dense blackness. “What happened?” I asked. From the soreness of my neck, I was none too sure but what it was broke. “What happened, and where’s Natanis and Hobomok?”

The two of them spoke from near at hand.

“What happened,” Cap said, “is that we’re out of Quebec safe and sound, except that I’ll be picking pieces of glass out of myself until I’m a hundred and fifty years old.”

A fog began to move from my brain. “Where’s Guerlac? I think a bullet hit him in the back.”

“No,” Cap said, “an Arundel Nason hit him!”

“That couldn’t be!” I protested. “It was when the sentry fired that he jerked and almost fell.”

“Well,” Cap said, “we felt him all over to see what ailed him. We couldn’t bother with anybody in that drift unless he was worth bothering with. You’d oughter seen that drift! It was big as Mount Agamenticus, and a damned sight solider!

“You came off the wall like a bull pine,” he went on. “I couldn’t see much through being fearful I might get one of your heels in the teeth, but it looked to me as though you landed on Guerlac with your neck and shoulders. Least ways, the muzzle of your rifle hit him in the back of the head. It was stuck there when we pulled you off him. You could have put your whole thumb in the hole.”

“Wasn’t there a bullet hole in him?”

“Nary a scratch!”

“And he was dead?”

“Deader than Job’s turkey!”

I was pleased that Guerlac had died after this fashion, since he had played the fox in pretending to be hit; and God knows he had almost fooled me. I had nearly left him for dead on the parapet. Also I had feared all along that if I got him safely to Arnold he might be exchanged, or somehow escape alive; and it had also been in my mind that Cap or Natanis, impatient at being burdened with him and wishful of being revenged, might incontinently split open his head with a hatchet. I would have blamed them little for so doing; yet I misliked the idea and wouldn’t have wanted it on my conscience.

The sentries on the walls, Cap said, had been unable to see us because of our white blanket coats. While they had shot blindly into the snow, Natanis and Hobomok and Cap had dug downward into the drift, dragging me behind them, and so slipped down into the shelter of the walls of La Friponne.

Cap raised a rumpus when we left La Friponne and set off into the black deserted streets of St. Roque, along which the whole of us had marched through the storm less than fifteen hours before.

There was glass all through him, he complained bitterly, like seeds in a watermelon. We stopped, therefore, at Menut’s Tavern, which only yesterday had been so warm and cheery. When we cautiously opened the door we found the place a heap of wreckage, and Moshoo Menut, together with a few servants, laboring by candle-light to patch holes in the walls and scour dark stains from the floors. They scrambled under tables when we entered; but seeing we meant no harm, they crawled out, moaning and jabbering, while Cap stripped off his brandy-soaked and glass-filled garments.

Leaving my three friends to hear the tale, I hastened to the little house of Mother Biard, backed against the high bank like a baby rabbit backed against a bush. There was no light in it, nor in any of the other houses. The street was filled with litter—boards; pieces of thatch; heaps of chimney bricks; a smashed cariole. I pounded for admittance, and at length heard Mother Biard’s voice behind the door. When she opened it a crack I pushed in and slammed it behind me.

Out of her few mangled words of English I learned that Phoebe and Jacataqua had remained with her until after daylight, watching the passing of the wounded Americans, who had been picked up by carioles and carried out to the hospital, some with feet and hands and faces frozen; some crying out and moaning; and some laughing and cursing, all very terrible. In the middle of the morning, a column of British had come out from Palace Gate and set off toward the hospital. A few Americans had opened on them with artillery and driven them back into the city, while the cannon balls tore through the houses of St. Roque, bursting rooms to bits and overthrowing chimneys.

Then there were no more wounded, for the British had captured all that were left and carried them into the Upper Town. On that Phoebe and Jacataqua rolled their blankets, bade Mother Biard farewell, and trudged off toward the north.

I gave her a piece of Guerlac’s gold and hastened back for Cap and Natanis and Hobomok. From Menut they had learned more: how our men had remained between the two barricades in the Lower Town for four hours, waiting for reinforcements; and how they were then caught front and rear by constantly growing forces and so had surrendered.

“Does he know how many were captured?”

“He says all those not wounded or killed were captured, all of them. Virginians and all. He says there’s God knows how many men dead under the snow—men that won’t be found until the spring thaw.” Cap cursed in a way to make me think Guerlac had been fortunate to die so easily.

“Where’s Phoebe?” he asked, when he had cursed away a part of his rage.

“Gone.”

Cap rubbed his round red face with his vast hands and tightened his coat around him. We left Moshoo Menut and his tavern and set off on the road to the General Hospital.

There was a light in every window of this sprawling building, and a powerful unpleasant odor of sickness inside, with nuns going back and forth carrying basins and bandages. There was a sentry in the hall, his face pitted beyond recognition, so we knew he had recently recovered from the smallpox. When we told him our business he went to the door of the main hospital room, and shortly thereafter the young surgeon of the army, Dr. Senter, came hurrying out, a blood-spattered sheet around his middle and blood halfway up his arms, looking ready to drop with weariness.

“What’s this about Colonel Arnold?” he demanded irascibly. “Colonel Arnold’s badly hurt. He’s writing dispatches: can’t be seen unless the matter’s important.”

“Well, God knows whether it is or not,” I said. “We escaped from the city an hour ago. He might like to see us.”

Senter gawped at us. “You came out of Quebec!”

We heard Arnold’s rasping voice, that never failed to excite me, calling loudly for Senter. Senter scurried away and returned immediately.

“He wants you at once! Get out of those coats.” He rubbed his forehead with the back of his wrist, seeming to be in a temper. “Damn him! He’s a devil! I wanted him carried out beyond St. Foy’s, where he’d be safe from capture in case of a sally; but all he did was have his sword brought to him and call for a loaded musket to be put at each man’s bed. He’ll fight ’em sick and lying down as quick as on his feet!” He herded us toward the door of the main room. “Christ!” he said. “What a piece of luck! Arnold and Montgomery, both of them, the first shot out of the box!”

There was a double row of beds stretching down this long, dim, whitewashed room. Nuns moved among them. At the head of each bed a musket leaned against the wall. Somewhere, near at hand, a man babbled rapid, meaningless words. Another coughed slowly and painfully, with a horrid wet sucking noise between each cough.

Arnold lay next to the door, cut off from the others by sheets hung on poles. He was propped up in bed, his field desk on a stool beside him. His coarse linen shirt, open at the throat, gave him a mild, pale look; but his eyes were hard and bright. They popped out at us until they seemed large as eggs.

He snapped his fingers impatiently when we saluted. “Out with it! Where’ve you been since the attack?”

“Sir,” I said, “we were in the Upper Town.” His eyes leaped from one to the other of us. I fumbled in my shirt, drew out Guerlac’s papers, and handed them over. “We caught the three of them: Guerlac and Hook and Eneas.”

He ran through the papers quickly. His face lengthened with his familiar reckless smile. “Good enough! Why didn’t you bring Guerlac himself, along with the papers?”

“Sir,” I said, “we tried. We tried hard; but we slipped going up the wall. The sentries opened on us. When we jumped, Guerlac was killed.”

Arnold nodded. His face was expressionless. I wondered whether he doubted what I told him. Seemingly the same thought came into Cap’s head, for he took a sword from behind his back and said, “This is his. I brought it along, thinking you could use it.” He laid it on the bed. Arnold picked it up and loosened it in its sheath.

“What became of his sister?” he asked, peering at the blade.

“We found her,” I said. “She was—she was different than I expected.”

Cap bellowed angrily. “Different! I guess she
was
different! Do you know what she was?”

I took him by the elbow. He looked at me: then fell to humming, an absent-minded, unmelodious humming.

Arnold eyed me gravely. “I could have told you all that years ago, but you wouldn’t have believed me.”

“No.”

“Well,” Arnold said impatiently, “let’s hear the rest! How in God’s name did you get into the Upper Town?”

“Sir,” I said, “there was no one at the second barrier when we reached it. We went through as Morgan had done.”

“What do you mean? Did Morgan pass the second barrier? How do you know?”

“Captain Thayer told us. Thayer said Morgan went ahead to spy out the land, leaving the others to guard the prisoners from turning against us.”

“Did you see Morgan beyond the second barrier?”

“No, sir. We saw no one, only women and children fleeing to the Upper Town.”

Arnold gnawed his fingernails. His face darkened and grew lumpy. “If that’s true, twenty men could have set fire to the whole Lower Town in an hour; and the Upper Town would have fallen to us in less than a month without the loss of a man!”