Читать книгу Thaddeus Lewis Mysteries 4-Book Bundle - Janet Kellough - Страница 19

Lewis hesitated as he debated which way to go. It was far too late to go pounding on someone’s door to ask for a bed for the night. In fact, the night was mostly gone; the eastern sky had the faint glow that heralded the coming morn. He’d carry on through to the Blue Church and then turn westward again.

He had an excellent sense of direction, a crucial facility for someone who spent so much time on little-trod paths that snaked through forests and fields, and realized that he could save himself several miles of riding if he headed south, rather than backtracking westward to the road. He found a small path that seemed to be heading in the right direction. If it veered, he could always cut across someone’s land until he reached the river.

He began to regret his decision a half-hour later. There was an icy drizzle falling now, and whenever he brushed against an overhanging branch he loosed a cascade of cold water that unerringly found the gap between his coat and the back of his neck. There was just enough ice on the path to make the footing treacherous and he made poor time as his tired horse picked its way along. After riding for another mile or so, he realized that he could smell smoke — a sure indication that there was a cabin, or at the very least someone with a campfire, nearby — and was sure whoever tended it would be willing to let him bide by the fire for a while to warm up.

The path grew easier to follow, trees and brush were cleared back from the edge and a group of large fields enclosed with snaked wooden fences came into view. In the distance he could see a small crude cabin, though its raw logs had been faced with clapboard and an attempt had been made to whitewash it. Smoke curled from the chimney and as he drew closer he saw that the door stood gaping. He dismounted and stuck his head in the open door with a word of greeting on his lips that faded as soon as he took in the scene.

It was the same here as the others in most respects, but with a difference of degree. The woman in her bed, hands clutched around the little red book, eyes bloodshot and staring without sight at the wall, face mottled, small discs of bruising darkening on her neck. As in the other cases, her skirts were thrown up, but here the major difference lay — neither Rachel nor Sarah had been disturbed, which had made it easy to assume that their clothing had become disarranged while in the thrashings of the fits that supposedly consumed them. This woman’s lap was a pool of blood and feces, the cuts deep, the gore clotting, the bedclothes soaked black. There was no mistaking this death for anything but what it was — a violent, murderous attack.

Lewis noted something else — tiny pinpoints of silver, glinting in the morning sun that poured in through the cabin’s one small window. It was hard to tell because of the mutilated tissue that surrounded them, but as he leaned in to get a closer look, it appeared to him that whoever had done this had highlighted the slash by ramming steel pins along its edges. Driving the point home, he thought. (Or had it been a twisted attempt to repair the damage?) He could only hope that this violation had occurred after death and not before — it was unthinkable that it could have been done while she lived.

He was no stranger to the havoc one human being can inflict on another, but this mayhem brought bile to his throat and he ran outside before he could add to the putrescence in the cabin. He heaved several great breaths and stood with one hand on the fence to steady himself enough that he could go back into the cabin. There were details he needed to see before he rode out to report the death, and he steeled himself to re-enter. He stepped carefully as he went in again, but there appeared to be nothing unusual on the floor — no footprints that he could see, nothing dropped inadvertently, nothing left behind that might give the identity of the murderer away. He knew he must disturb the body as little as possible, for any small thing might be a clue. Gently he peeled one finger away from the book it clutched. Though lifeless, it was not yet dead cold — she had not been gone long. And there it was again, Chapter Five from the Book of Proverbs, and beside it, tucked into the page, another shiny dressmaker’s pin. He carefully moved the pages so that he could see the flyleaf, but there was no writing on this one, no dedication to indicate the woman’s name. He let her finger slide back across the page, and as he did so, he realized that there was no blush of dye on her palms, no red stain that had come away with the sweat of her hands. There had been no sweat on her hands, for she had been dead when the book was placed in them. Nor had she died peacefully reading her scripture: the bluish nails of both hands were ragged, the tears across the ends fresh and hanging. She had fought, and torn her hands in the fighting.

He forced himself to look more closely at her wound, wondering if there was any pattern to the way the pins had been placed, but he could see none. They were simply rammed in, sunk into the flesh until only the heads were visible. The slash itself was still oozing a small trickle of blood, a macabre parody of a woman’s normal function.

He turned his attention to the marks at her neck. When he shifted the head, a tip of blackened tongue protruded from a corner of her mouth. Was there a wound here as well? It looked as if the tongue had bled, but he was uncertain what this meant. When he lifted the chestnut hair away from her neck he could see that whoever had strangled her was a large man, or at least a person with large hands, for he could see that marks extended all the way around to the back and overlapped by a considerable amount, the imprint of fingers outlined in the bruises.

There would be no mistake this time, no calling upon the notion of some strange fit, no laying this at God’s door. It was murder, pure and simple.

He took one last look around the cabin, but could see nothing else to take note of.

After stopping at the pump in the front yard to wash the vileness from his mouth and his hands, he mounted his horse. By dead reckoning he figured that he wasn’t too far from Prescott — there must be a constable there, and if not, he would find an officer at Fort Wellington. He would stop at the first house he came to and tell them the news, warning them not to disturb the body, but to protect it until the authorities arrived. And then he would ride for Prescott.

The family was at their morning meal when he burst in through the door. He so startled them that one of the little ones, who reminded him of Martha, spilled a mug of milk in her surprise. The frothy liquid slowly rolled across the table as he related his awful news. The woman’s hands flew to her mouth.

“Aye, I’ll go and guard the door,” the man said. “And I’ll not even go inside. Ride fast, preacher, and bring the constable.”

“But, Jacob,” the woman said. “What if the fiend is still about? What if he comes here and attacks the living while you’re guarding the dead?”

“I doubt you’re in danger,” Lewis assured her. “I have seen this before. He attacks only lone women, and you have two big boys here, as well as all the little ones. He won’t come near. Look after your mother, now, you hear, boys?” and they swelled with pride at the notion that they would protect the family against a mad murderer.

Lewis left and rode toward the river. The path was faster now, and he could feel the bite of the November wind blowing from the water. He pushed his horse as fast as he dared, but in places the going was so icy that the animal’s hooves skittered and chattered. He would have seen them sooner, if he hadn’t been paying such close attention to his footing. When at last he looked up, he was astounded — he was on a rise that gave him a view of both Prescott and the river, the buildings of the town huddled together. But it was the sight beyond that alarmed him. A few miles downstream he could see a collection of vessels, the first of them just reaching the shore in the early-morning light. When he squinted, he thought he could make out the banner the largest ship was flying — the American flag. A ship in trouble, sailing for the shore it could most easily reach? He hoped so, but he had an unsettling conviction that there was a more malevolent reason.

His fears were confirmed when he reached the town and found alarm and confusion. An armed force had attempted to attack Prescott itself first, a surprise nighttime attack, but the garrison had been forewarned, or perhaps merely vigilant. The invaders had been repulsed and two of the American ships had become mired and aground on the mud flats where the mouth of the Oswegatchie River met the St. Lawrence. A third boat had pulled them free, but the river’s current had swept them downstream and toward the Canadian shore. There, a few miles east of Prescott, an army had landed.

The British troops at Fort Wellington were preparing to march out to meet the threat, he was told, and groups of Canadian militia were mustering to march with them. Already the streets of Prescott were clogged with people — militiamen racing for the fort, men frantic for news, families packing their belongings and preparing to leave, farmers desperate to thread their way through the jam and ride home to protect their families — each of them jostling and shoving, calling and shouting, attempting, it seemed, to push their way against a tide of traffic that had no discernible pattern.

Lewis had difficulty finding a constable in the confusion, but after an hour of searching, he eventually located a burly man who was attempting to direct traffic around an overturned wagon.

“There’s been a murder,” he shouted in the man’s ear.

“What, already?” the constable replied. “Those thievin’, murderin’ bastards. Well, there’ll be more I expect before this is over.”

“No, nothing to do with this. A woman in a house back from the river. I found her and I rode to get help.”

“So them damn Yankees have been marauding in the country? They’ve attacked civilians first?”

“No. At least I don’t think so. I don’t think it has anything to do with the Yankees.”

“Well, I can’t sort it out now. I’ve got my hands full. It’ll have to wait.”

Lewis wanted to scream at the man, but he knew it would do no good. And he had to admit that the current crisis trumped a single crime, but unless someone went right away, it would be too late to do much good. He wished now that he had looked closer, taken more note of the details, ransacked the cabin for clues, for, in spite of his instructions to the contrary, he was certain that the woman’s body would be washed and laid out, if not promptly buried, in very short order. Her family would want to get her into the ground before it became too frozen to dig. He wondered if he should try to find someone at Fort Wellington to talk to, but then he realized that he would likely get the same reception there.

He overheard snatches of conversation as he led his tired horse along the main street.

“It’s Mackenzie,” one woman said. “He’s raised an army.”

“No,” said a man running by, “Mackenzie’s in jail. It’s pirates.”

“It’s the Americans,” another said. “They’ve declared war and launched a full-scale invasion. It’s 1812 all over again.”

“No, it’s the Hunters. There are thousands of them.”

“Nay, there’s only a handful. We’ll soon rout ’em out.”

Within a few hours, a marginally coherent version of these rumours distilled into a widely circulated edition that gave a reasonably accurate description of events. It appeared that a group called the Patriot Hunters, the same Americans who had been conducting small raids along the border over the last few months, had somehow managed to commandeer enough ships to bring a force of five hundred of them across the river. They had hoped to surprise the British garrison at Fort Wellington by mounting a foray on Prescott during the night hours. Repulsed, grounded, and then freed from the mudflats that had prevented their return to Ogdensburg, they opted to use the river’s current to take them closer to the Canadian shore. Here, at the tiny village of Newport, they had managed to land some of their troops.

The Hunters had expected, apparently, in that way that all Americans seemed to have, that Canadians would rise up and join them, eager to dispel the yoke of British rule, a plan that was sadly lacking in any understanding of the politics of Upper Canada or the views of its people. Local support failed to materialize; in fact, locals offered nothing but armed opposition, preventing the force from making any progress inland. Pinned to the shore, they took refuge in the solid stone of an old windmill, its rubble walls built on a rise of ground, giving them a commanding view of the countryside around it. The 83rd British Regiment at Fort Wellington, bolstered by several bands of militia, was marching out to the attack.

Beyond this general summation of confirmed events, it was difficult for anyone to know what was happening at any given moment. Rumours took flight, circled and came to ground again with the regularity of a flock of starlings.

Lewis knew that he should set out for Brockville. He had meetings waiting for him there. But he was reluctant to leave until he had at least set into motion an investigation of the murder he had discovered. He also felt that he might make himself more useful by staying in Prescott. A field hospital of sorts had been established in one area of the blockhouse, and he went along to offer his assistance in whatever capacity was needed. It wasn’t long before they found plenty for him to do.

The first attack on the windmill was violent and bloody. There was little cover in the surrounding fields and from their vantage point the Hunters could simply pick their attackers off one by one. The garrison soon filled with wounded — Lewis estimated well over fifty of them in the first rush — and he was put to work bathing wounds and applying bandages, tending the injured, and comforting the dying.

“We’re sitting ducks as long as they’re in that bloody tower,” one militiaman muttered as Lewis cut away the sleeve of his coat. The shot had carried away the fleshy part of the man’s upper arm, mercifully missing the bone, but the wound was bleeding profusely. He packed it with wads of bandaging and told the man to hold it in place until the surgeon could have a look. That could be some time, he figured, for there were far more grievous wounds that would need attention first.

He moved among the casualties, trying to judge which men were in urgent need and which could make do with his inexpert attentions. He tried to direct those who could still walk, or could safely be carried, to one side of the room, away from the screams of those whose mangled limbs were being sawn off and discarded cavalierly into a bucket on the floor, or whose intestines had exited in a stinking mass from gaping wounds in their bodies. The days of warring were over for these men, he knew; indeed, their very lives could well be done, for the prospect of recovery from such assaults to flesh was surely in question, no matter what the surgeon did.

It was different for the men who were merely bleeding or had suffered clean fractures of the bone or blackened burns from the powder. They would be patched up and given small time to heal before they were sent to fight again. They huddled together in the corner Lewis had cleared for them, muttering about the folly of a frontal assault on an impregnable position. He knew that following orders was a soldier’s duty, no matter what he thought of those orders, but he wondered that any of them could return to battle knowing that a moment’s time was enough to turn them into duplicates of the mutilated bodies that lay across the room. He had seen war himself once, and he had drunk for fifty days to forget what he had seen.

There were civilian casualties, too, here and there among the soldiers — farmers and labourers who had been caught in the invasion, or who had grabbed their guns and rushed heedlessly to stop the invaders.

One old man with a broken foot told Lewis that a woman and her two children had hidden themselves in one of the buildings near the windmill, but had been shot as they attempted to flee the battleground — whether by the Americans or by the British, he didn’t seem to know.

A young boy whose ear had been sheared off from his head claimed that he had watched from a field away as a wounded British soldier was beaten to death and mutilated while he lay helpless on the ground. Lewis dismissed this report when the boy added that the Americans had eaten the body.

There were other wounded, too, who he judged would not usefully claim a medic’s care until others had been attended to; those who were so close to dead already that it was a wonder that they had been carried in at all and not left simply to expire where they lay. Their fates were in the hands of God, for no mortal surgeon’s skill could ever be enough to repair them. One man had part of his skull blown away, and when Lewis removed the blood-soaked bandage, he could see the grey folds of brain underneath, flecked with bits of shot and pieces of grass. The man continued to take deep shuddering breaths, but Lewis knew that these would soon cease. Gently he wrapped the wound in a clean piece of cloth and moved to the next stretcher.

He worked through the night, sponging, cleaning, bringing water, and carrying away urine. The flow of incoming wounded trickled to a halt, and the toll of the first assault counted: thirteen dead, and seventy wounded. The next day was a repeat of the same tasks again and again until the hours floated away from him into a dream of blood and shattered bone.

Then came the hardest time, but a time when he felt most useful. Gangrene would set in for many of the amputees in the following days, he knew, but those with wounds to the body seemed in the most danger of succumbing within a few hours. These men called for him, seeking the comfort of his words as they stood at the gate between life and death.

He was praying with one of these, a young soldier who’s left side appeared to be nothing but swathes of bandage, not realizing that he was praying aloud until he heard a voice behind him join in. He finished the prayer and turned; it was Morgan Spicer.

“Morgan, what are you doing here?”

“The same as you. I’ve come to make myself useful.” He was holding a white basin, the kind used to catch vomit and excrement. “I think under the circumstances, their physical comfort is on a par with their spiritual needs. Otherwise, they seem to go untended.”

“I agree,” Lewis said, “and I’m glad of your assistance. I had no idea you were in this area.”

He shrugged. “I was on my rounds when I heard the news. I thought I might as well come here, for no one will answer a knock at the door anymore. They’re all convinced they’re about to be murdered by Yankees. Either that or they’ve packed up and gone somewhere else.”

Yes, they would have, Lewis thought. Gathered their families and set off to seek the protection of stout walls and stone buildings. He wondered if the Catholic family had done that as soon as they’d laid their boy in the earth.

“I think we can do more good here, anyway. Some of these lads won’t live through the night.”

“There will soon be a lot more,” Spicer said. “The steamers have gathered on the river.”

He had almost forgotten the cause of all this suffering, and had neglected to ask for details of events, grateful only that there had been an end to the arrival of fresh stretcher-loads of bodies that needed cleaning or staunching or cutting.

As the day wore on, they could hear the muffled rhythm of shell hitting stone as the British fired at the old windmill, hoping that, at best, they could do enough damage to force the Americans to surrender, at worst that they could drive them into the open so that they could be picked off by waiting guns. The ordnance was too light, however, and the solid old stone walls withstood the attack. Several of the outbuildings caught fire, though, and burned unattended, sending clouds of choking smoke into the air.

“Surely it can’t go on much longer,” Lewis said as they worked to a low murmur of moans from the wounded men. “I doubt the Americans expected a siege. They’ve got to be running low on ammunition.”

The question on everyone’s mind was whether or not reinforcements would arrive from Ogdensburg across the river — that like-minded Americans, hearing that the invaders were holed up and desperate, would come rushing to their aid.

“They say that it was Bill Johnston who pulled the ships off the sandbar,” Spicer reported. “Now he’s in Ogdensburg raising another army.”

It was no surprise to anyone that the pirate was involved, or that he had managed to insert himself into yet another attack on British soil. If he was successful in recruiting more soldiers, the advantage would be with the Americans. There were not enough British and militia troops to hold an army at the river while the first American force used the strategic location of the windmill to pepper their flanks. Others were sure that any reinforcements would be used for another attack on Prescott, while the British were occupied at the mill. If they took Fort Wellington, they would control the river.

And then, on the third day, three hundred fresh troops arrived from Kingston to bolster the British ranks. Lewis steeled himself for the sight of more stretchers, but the garrison doctor chased him away, “At least for a few hours,” he said. “Find some food and get some sleep. We can manage here tonight, but I’d surely like to see you again tomorrow. I doubt anything will happen until then, as the new troops are still moving into position.”

Lewis went looking for Spicer, intending to share whatever accommodation he could scare up, but found the boy fast asleep under a table in the cookhouse. He considered crawling under the table to join him, but discarded the notion. He was too old and too weary to sleep on the hard stone floor, and he desperately wanted a breath of air that wasn’t laden with the smell of blood.

He could scarcely walk as he left the building, he was so tired, and he would have to do some walking yet to find someone willing to give him a bed. He was jostled as he made his way down the muddy street — the taverns were doing a roaring business with those too old or too useless to have joined the militia, and drunks staggered into the streets when their money was gone. He narrowly avoided a roistering group of men who had brought their own whiskey in earthenware jugs, and when he turned, he came face to face with Isaac Simms.

“Isaac, I thought you would be gone long since.”

“There’s no point in leaving. No ships can get to the wharf. I’ll have to wait until this nonsense is finished.”

There was no traffic on the river now, the flow of goods held up by the battle. “And what about you?” Simms asked. “I thought you’d have gone home.”

“I’m just trying to make myself useful with the wounded, but I’m that tired that I can hardly see. I’ve had only a few snatches of sleep and if I’m going to be of any more use, I need a night’s rest.”

He could see Simms hesitating, and then he remembered their last parting. It seemed to Lewis that their disagreement over the dying Catholic boy had taken place months ago, although when he stopped and counted up, he realized that it had been only a few days. He wondered if he could prevail upon the man to share whatever arrangements he had in his peddler’s wagon, but when the offer was not forthcoming, he decided to let the moment pass. He’d find somewhere else.

“You don’t happen to know any of the local Methodist families?” he asked.

Simms shook his head. “Not my line of business, to ask the convictions of those I sell to, I’m afraid.”

“Is there a tavern nearby, do you know, that sells something besides beer and whiskey?” He was becoming aware that it had been a long time since he’d eaten anything hot, and he had a sudden craving for a bowl of stew, beef maybe, or even lamb, although it was his least favourite meat. Or a pot pie with potatoes and onions, redolent with gravy and covered with a golden pastry. He avoided taverns as a rule because of the rowdy nature of their patrons, but he was willing to make an exception for one that served reasonable fare.

“You won’t find much at the taverns. They’re doing too brisk a business with liquor. There is an inn down the way, though. You might do better there.”

Simms seemed willing, at least, to walk along with him.

“You’ll be on your way as soon as shipments arrive again, then?” Lewis asked as they walked, more to make conversation than anything else — an attempt to dispel the awkwardness that lay between them.

“Yes, my brother-in-law arranged to have a bale of cotton goods sent down from Montreal. But for the battle, I’d have picked it up and left long since. I hope this nonsense is over soon.”

They had reached a large house that had been converted into a combination hotel and tavern.

“I think you’ll find something here,” Simms said, “and at not too bad a price. Take care, Lewis.” And with that, the peddler tipped his hat and strode away.

“Stew? My goodness me, no. We ain’t seen anything as fancy as stew in many a day. All I’ve got is pork and pritters.”

Salt pork and mealy potatoes — but at least it was served up piping hot along with the landlady’s apologies.

“It’s just that hard to get anything to cook just now,” she said. “If I could get it, I could sell it, though. There are so many who have come into town in case the Americans break out of the windmill and go tearing through the countryside.”

He nodded, only half listening to her as she prattled on.

“They say Bill Johnston organized the whole thing, but now I’ve heard that he’s given it up as a bad cause and skedaddled back across the river. Mark my words, they’ll never take that one in, he’s too canny.”

Lewis gulped down his poor meal, and knew that he must will his weary body to get up off the chair and walk some more. He had still to find a bed for the night, either that or go back to the garrison and crawl under the table with Spicer. The landlady noticed his distress.

“Have you a place for the night, Preacher?” she asked, and when he indicated that he didn’t, she furrowed her brow. “Well, now, I’m pretty full, but I do have one pallet in a corner of one of the rooms. You’d have to share, but I won’t charge you for it, seeing as how you’re a man of the cloth and you’ve been helping the wounded and all. What do you say?”

He gratefully accepted her offer. The room turned out to be over the tavern part of the building, and there was a ferocious noise from the drunks down below, but it was reasonably clean, and there was a layer of blankets piled in the corner. It was better than Lewis had had for many days and he sank gratefully into them and slept.

Lewis was awakened by heavy-booted men who reeled drunkenly into the room and collapsed three across into the two feather beds that were crammed into the small space. There were two other pallets as well, and their occupants joined the snoring and moaning of the others. His hips and knees were stiff and sore, the result of his long days of tending the wounded and long years of riding a horse in all weathers. He knew he needed to get up and shift around in order to get them loosened again. Gingerly he raised himself, not bothering to smother the moan that came with movement. There was no need; the other sleepers were insensible and would never hear. Several of them had not bothered to remove their boots before they collapsed into bed. He wondered how on earth the landlady managed to keep her rooms so clean.

He hobbled to the window and looked out on the moonlit street below. Even at this hour there were still many people about: drinkers who had not yet left off drinking; vagrants who had no place to go; cutpurses, he had no doubt, who would take advantage of a drinker’s befuddlement to relieve him of whatever monies he hadn’t poured away.

Across the street there was a figure huddled into the lee of a porch, asleep. Poor soul, he thought to himself. That’s a sad place to spend a night. But whether he was destitute because he had no money in the first place, or whether he had no money because he had drunk it all, there was no way of knowing. Perhaps he was just too drunk to realize where he had ended up. The figure shifted, uneasy in the cold, and Lewis looked closer. From so far away it was hard to make out the features, but something about the man reminded him of another moonlit night when he had watched a figure scuttle around the side of a building. Could it be Francis Renwell shivering in the street? Drat the failing eyesight of old age. As a younger man his eyesight had been keen, and he would have been able to tell. Even as he squinted, he doubted himself.

What would Francis Renwell be doing in Prescott? And then the horror of murder came rushing back at him; the marks on the neck, the obscene slashes, the pins. Sarah, Rachel, the woman in the clearing not far from here.

He stumbled back to his pallet, looking for his boots, wishing he had followed the odious custom of his roommates and left them on. He eased his feet into the stiff leather and crept down the stairs. His room had been at the back of the inn and it took him a moment to orient himself, to discover where, in relation to the window, the figure was sleeping. But by the time he got there, Renwell was gone.