Читать книгу Sophie's Treason - Beverley Boissery - Страница 6

In December 1838, Montreal was a sullen city. Most residents scurried about their business with grim efficiency. The joie de vivre for which the city was famous seemed a thing of the distant past. Every jail was full to overflowing. People looked at each other carefully, worrying that strangers might be informants. Smiles seemed yet another casualty of the recent rebellion.

Sophie Mallory was as sullen as the city as she traipsed along Notre-Dame Street with her friend Luc. Sullen, and scared. She couldn’t begin to imagine what trouble she’d be in if her guardian, Lady Theodosia Thornleigh — her father’s fiancée and one of the richest women in England — ever found out. Lady Theo had told her several times that morning that she was not to leave the house. And she had emphasized that Sophie was not to go with Luc.

But, what choice did she have? Two months earlier, she hadn’t known Luc existed. In the short time she’d known him, he’d become her best friend. She could not possibly have let him face this morning’s ordeal alone.

She’d met him and his brother Marc at her home in Malloryville, Vermont. For a while, he had been a mystery. She’d see him only in the distance. When her brothers’ children tried to beat her up, Luc stormed to her defence. Her next meeting with him was equally dramatic. She’d come to Lower Canada to visit Edward and Jane Ellice, Lady Theo’s friends from London. They’d had no premonition that a rebellion would break out, much less that they would become the rebels’ prisoners. When Sophie became separated from Lady Theo, Luc rescued her and just before the rebellion ended, he risked capture by coming to tell them the unbelievable news that her papa had been taken prisoner as well. Surprisingly, the British army had captured him, and that made no sense. Her papa was no rebel.

To help prove this, Lady Theo leased a house in the Montreal suburb of St. Lawrence and, in Sophie’s opinion, began spending almost all her time in lawyers’ offices. Sophie quite liked the house. Not as much as she liked her home in Malloryville, of course, or even the London mansion she’d lived in until six months ago. That had been really grand.

This Montreal house was relatively new. Ivy had only tangled its branches halfway up the grey stone walls. The house was big, with eight bedrooms. Sophie had chosen one that looked out across snow-covered fields to Mount Royal, the mountain after which Montreal was named. The view helped her feel less homesick. Some mornings, while waiting for hot water to be brought up to her, she lay in bed imagining that she was back in Vermont and looking out on her beloved Mount Donne.

There was one huge disadvantage to the house, which Sophie realized only gradually. It was isolated, a long twenty-minute walk from the city. She was so grateful that Lady Theo had invited Luc, who was an orphan, to live with them. Without his company, she would not have known what to do with herself. She sometimes wondered if that was the main reason that Lady Theo had taken him under her wing and protected him against arrest for his own part in the rebellion.

She hated that word: rebellion. Sometimes she wondered if even the idea of it turned men mad. It had been a disease in her own family since the infamous Boston Tea Party of 1770, and it seemed to be in Luc’s as well. That was why she was bundled up and unhappily trudging along a muddy street so early in the morning. At ten o’clock, Marc Moriset, Luc’s brother, would be one of the first rebels to stand trial for treason. If the mood of passersby was any indication, he’d probably be sentenced to death by hanging.

When they reached the courthouse door, Luc used his shoulders to push through the crowd of people and soldiers, pulling Sophie inside with him. Only when they were in the back entrance of the courtroom did he stop. It was packed to the rafters.

Sophie took quick, hurried glances around the room. “There,” she whispered finally. “On your right, near the wall towards the front. By the fat man in the blue jacket. I think there’s just enough room for us.”

“For two sheets of paper, maybe,” Luc muttered.

Sophie re-examined the room, looking for an alternative. It was built like a theatre, with the seats at the back higher than those in front. Braziers provided warmth for those fortunate enough to sit close to them. The front row of seats was empty, but roped off. She looked at Luc in exasperation and pointed to the small space again. “Can you see anywhere else?”

Luc also looked around the room before shaking his head. “Come on then,” he muttered eventually, taking her elbow and leading her down towards the front of the room. “You’d better do the talking.”

Sophie understood. It was the French-English thing. Luc obviously thought the fat man was English. The relatively small English minority in the city had been outraged by the rebellion. If the fat man was English and typical, he’d want to vent his displeasure on the closest French-speaking person, and that would be Luc.

Some spectators in the courtroom huddled together in groups, for warmth as well as protection. Most wore distinctive homespun cloaks with colourful sashes around the waist, indicating that they were farmers from the countryside surrounding the city. For a moment, Sophie thought about suggesting that she and Luc try to cram themselves in with them, because she felt a sudden sense of kinship. Like them, she was an alien.

Instead, she walked down the aisle towards the front as grandly as she could, reminding herself that she was not only Miss Sophie Mallory of Malloryville, Vermont, but also Miss Sophie Mallory, ward of Lady Theodosia Thornleigh.

“You go first,” she told Luc, once they reached the front. She let go of his arm and followed as he carefully stepped over people’s feet, finding his way to the space near the wall. Squirming and wriggling into it, they sat in silence, ignoring the muttered complaints of the man sitting next to them.

Eventually Sophie turned to look at their neighbour. His ears were huge and his ruddy cheeks bulged as he methodically chewed something. Probably tobacco, she thought, after catching a glimpse of his brown teeth. His clothes looked as though they might have been fashionable five years earlier but smelt like they hadn’t been washed since the summer. There was an expression on his face that Sophie couldn’t figure out. In her experience, fat people were happy. She remembered the cook in her father’s London house. Not only had she always had a supply of treats ready for Sophie, but she’d made her feel welcome.

This man seemed a different story. When he turned his head and caught her studying him, Sophie blushed and stared at her feet instead. She hadn’t quite envisioned this discomfort when she’d agreed to accompany Luc. For several self-pitying moments, she wished she had sheltered behind Lady Theo’s orders and refused to come to the courthouse. Then the man stood up, almost squashing her toes when he stepped on them.

Oblivious, he faced the back of the room, calling out to some friends sitting in the back rows. “Glad to see you lot got in. Hope it’s worth the effort.”

“Of course it will be,” one of the men shouted back.

“What do you think, Alf? Think the judge will sort this lot out?” another asked.

“Shouldn’t need a judge,” Alf, the fat man, grumbled loudly. He waved his hand in emphasis, almost knocking Sophie’s bonnet off her head. Ignoring her cry of protest, he raised his voice, “Should have saved ourselves a lot of money. Should have strung the whole lot of them up on the lampposts. Every man jack of ’em. A reb on every post. That would make ’em think about rebelling again.”

“Wouldn’t be able to think then, Alf,” one of his friends told him. “They’d be….” He broke off and made screeching noises as he tried to imitate the sound of someone suffocating.

Alf roared with laughter, only to stop in surprise when an elderly gentleman tapped him on the shoulder from behind. “Listen, Alf,” the stranger told him. “The young lady next to you is an old friend. Now, my seat’s back with your friends. I think we should change, don’t you? It would make sense. You’ll be able to chat more easily and I think you’ll have more room.”

Sophie watched in astonishment as Alf allowed himself to be gently pushed towards his raucous friends, slightly awed by the elderly stranger’s air of authority. She turned as Luc nudged her and whispered, “Do you know him?”

Sophie shook her head slightly. “Don’t think I’ve ever seen him.”

“What do you think he wants?”

It was a good question. After their new neighbour settled himself, he pulled a slim writing tablet and a silver propelling pencil from the inside pocket of a grey frock coat and seemed content to sit quietly. Luc nudged Sophie again, and again Sophie shook her head, positive that she’d never met him. Finally, when her curiosity seemed about to burst, the stranger turned and smiled.

“Miss Mallory? It is Miss Sophie Mallory, isn’t it?”

Sophie scented danger and glanced at Luc. He, too, looked wary, poised to run, if he had to. Stilling him with her hand, Sophie turned back to the stranger and inclined her head graciously as she’d seen Lady Theo do more times than she could remember. An “I know you are in the same room as I am, but I do not know if you deserve to be” kind of look.

Instead of being intimidated, the stranger smiled reassuringly. “No, you don’t know me. Nor should you. But a few weeks ago I admired your throwing accuracy in a certain incident outside my hotel, then I found out who you were. I’m Robert Christie from the city of Quebec. Retired barrister. At your service.”

Sophie blushed. That “certain incident” Mr. Christie mentioned was something she had hoped no one would remember. Her much older brothers — Albert (known as Bert), Bartholomew (or Bart), and Clarence (whom everyone called Clart) — had sent Mrs. Bates, their housekeeper, into Montreal with two thugs to kidnap her and take her back to Vermont. She’d managed to escape by making balls from the fresh and slightly frozen manure on the street. While Luc held off the thugs with well-aimed snowballs, she threw her manure-balls at the housekeeper. She’d known the fight had attracted a crowd, and had prayed she’d never meet anyone from it. She glanced at Luc, but he simply grinned and looked away.

“Of course, you had help then,” Mr. Christie smiled as he continued. “A peasant woman. The same height as your young friend, I believe.”

That also was true. Luc, wanted by the British for his part in the rebellion and in danger of being recognized, had dressed up as a woman to try to find her. That Mr. Christie should have put two and two together was unnerving, and Sophie saw from Luc’s compressed lips that he was suddenly scared, and maybe wondering if the friendly retired lawyer could be a government spy.

They took safety in silence, once again staring at the floor. In the background, Alf and his friends competed for the honour of being the most obnoxious people in Montreal, or perhaps on God’s Earth. They shouted out to all and sundry their particular brand of political wisdom — how they’d govern the province if they had a chance, and what they’d do with its French residents. Hanging seemed to be their consensus.

When a door at the front opened, even they became silent.