Arundel (72 page)

Our men had built a five-gun battery in the snow near the suburb of St. John; and the path to headquarters from our turkey-shooting post in the ruins of La Friponne led behind this battery. It was a poor thing, not only because of the small bore of the cannons, but also because the ground was hard as rock, so that the battery walls were made of snow on which water had been thrown. When, therefore, our battery began to play, the British opened on it with every cannon and mortar on the walls. There was a steady whanging and banging from the city, and shells and grape-shot racketing past at all hours, and a hellish and inconvenient bursting of bombs where they were not expected. The walk to headquarters was no pleasure at all, what with diving into the snow every few yards to escape something that could not be escaped, if so be it was bound for you.

I have heard wiseacres in New England say knowingly, when the air is sharp and biting, that it’s too cold to snow; but I have seen snow aplenty fall outside the walls of Quebec when we dared not open our mouths for fear our tongues would freeze.

Along with the increase in cannon balls we had another foot of snow, and then we had a cold snap that made the preceding cold seem like a gentle, harmless spell of weather.

With these things came sicknesses among the men, mostly lung troubles that drove them out of their heads and set them to babbling of their homes and of maids they had known in other days. On top of everything came smallpox, bowling over five men here and three men there and half a dozen in another quarter. We took turns piling them into carioles and driving them out to Sillery and putting them into empty summer houses, to die or get well.

Thus there was much happening; but day after day went by with no sign of Phoebe, until four days before Christmas. On that day, along about noon, which was the hour when the cannonading grew slack and the turkey-shooting, as our men called their popping at British sentries, was lightest, there was a prolonged rolling of drums behind St. John’s Gate—a rolling so noisy that it brought our men running to St. John from every part of the Plains of Abraham, thinking the British must be sallying on us.

From the sound, every drum in the city had been gathered in one spot. There were heads showing above the walls, all facing inward, watching what went on within.

After a deal of drumming the gates swung open and a motley throng of drummers poured out, to form a line on each side of the entranceway. When their drums were rattling and rolling with renewed violence, a small figure came marching out between those massive doors: a lonely figure, like a little boat running on a vast sea before a wall of towering thunderheads. It was Phoebe, walking stiffly erect, even proudly, and looking neither to right nor left.

We could hear the folk on the walls jeering at her; and through it all ran the beating of the drums, rolling and thudding in time to her steps.

It’s no pretty sight to see any person drummed out of a city; and I cursed the British for lousy knaves as I ran down the road to meet this small and lonely figure.

News travels fast in an army, and it must be there was knowledge of who she was and what she’d done; for as she drew nearer, our men came out toward her from the houses of St. John, cheering and waving their hats. Yet we never reached her; for a cariole slid past with a scattering of snow wads from the horse’s hoofs—a cariole with Burr in it. It dashed out to her, whirled around, and picked her up in less time than it takes to shell a pea pod. So back she came in it, riding proud and straight; and the shouting and hat-waving grew violent as they came up to the houses of St. John.

I thought she wouldn’t see me; for Burr was so busy being polite to her that he might have been a puppy snuffling at a wall after a woodchuck. But as she passed me Phoebe leaned back and called, “Come to the nunnery for supper!” With that she was gone.

The general hospital for the city of Quebec, which was also a nunnery, was a long stone building overlooking the winding course of the St. Charles. It was a mile from the city walls, and on the road running past the ruins of La Friponne and through the suburb of St. Roque, where the Virginians lived. I was on my way to it before dark, decently shaved and my head cropped by a proper barber for the first time in three months, so that I felt as slick as a mackerel.

It had a dank and sour smell, that hospital and nunnery; and it was in my mind, as I prowled along the corridor, peering into room after room to find Goodrich’s company, that there was smallpox in the very air, and that I wouldn’t like to have Phoebe broke out with this horrible sickness, which leaves a person scarred forever if he lays a finger to the sores that craze him with their itching.

I found her with Jacataqua and Noah Cluff and others from the company in the big room that lets off from the kitchen. She had gone back into her gray blanket coat with its gay red sash and her blanket breeches stuffed into moccasins. She was in no amiable humor with those about her, though pleasant enough with me, bringing me a dish of meat boiled with potatoes, and a stick of French bread, log-shaped and hard; less fitted for eating purposes than for shooting from a five-inch cannon.

She took me into a corner with Jacataqua, turning her back on the rest of the company. I thought she had become haughty from dining with generals and going about with beautiful aides.

“Well,” she said, “I suppose you’re glad to see me back.”

“Yes.”

“Ah,” she said insolently, “if I’d known you were suffering as much as all that, I’d have come out sooner.”

“If you could have come out sooner and didn’t, with me walking across the plains behind that battery of sparrow-guns of ours every day, so to get to headquarters to see whether you were back—”

“Hindsight’s easier than foresight,” Phoebe said. “It may be I’d have got out sooner if I’d hit ’em harder.”

“Hit who?”

“The men who came to the cell.”

“Cell!” I exclaimed.

“Of course! Did you think I had the royal apartments in the castle?”

Jacataqua burst into tears. “They sent my darling George to England in a warship to show to the King!”

“Now here!” I said. “I can’t eat my supper in peace unless I have this story in order. I don’t want a word out of you, Jacataqua, until Phoebe tells me the tale from the beginning.”

“Steven,” Phoebe said, “I could have killed that man Treeworgy!”

“Get back to the beginning quickly,” I ordered.

“Well,” she said, “they took me to Carleton, a quiet, pleasant gentleman. When he asked what I wanted, I took Montgomery’s letter from my dress and handed it to him.

“‘What’s this?’ he asked, and opened it, looking first for the signature. When he saw the name he dropped the letter on the floor and set his foot on it, saying, I hold no communication with traitors or rebels.’ Then he called an orderly and sent for someone. While he waited he never so much as turned his eyes toward me. At length the door opened and Treeworgy came in.

“‘Do you recognize this woman?’ Carleton asked him.

“Treeworgy looked at me as he would at something bad, and said, ‘Yes, she’s a camp-follower: one of the hangers-on after the men in Arnold’s army.’

“If I could have reached him, Steven, I’d have crushed his skull with my little club like breaking an egg; but there were guards beside me and a table between us. Oh, Steven, I could have torn out his throat with my fingers!”

“Yes, I know! That will come in good time! Get on with your tale.”

“He sent Treeworgy away,” she continued, “and called his orderly again, telling him to take me to the Seminary and confine me there. With that he stalked from the room without my having said a word in my own behalf.” She shook her fist at me. “I was in such a rage at Treeworgy I couldn’t think! Damn it, I couldn’t think!”

“For God’s sake!” I said angrily, “do you think I haven’t waked up a score of nights sweating to get at him?”

“Well,” she went on, “they took me to the Seminary: pushed me into a freezing cold room no bigger than a hogshead, with bars in the door and window. When I was able to think again I knew they had no business to put me in a cell. I screamed and wept to be taken back to Carleton. The guards laughed at me. Whenever one of them came near, I hit him with my little club and demanded an officer. I broke the hands of three of them. Two started into my cell to take away my club, but I broke the head of one. He had to be carried away. The other wouldn’t come in.

“An officer came, and I told him they’d have to kill me to keep me quiet. I’d done no wrong and was determined to see Carleton again.

“He was polite, even though he laughed at me. He went away; and when he returned he led me to Carleton.

“As soon as I saw Carleton I went to talking, telling him I’d done nothing, only brought him a message from a man as honorable as he, who was fighting in a better cause—a message that any gentleman should receive as openly as it was sent; and who was he, I asked him, to sit in judgment on his fellow men when he refused, even, to hear what they had to say for themselves—and how would he like to be judged, on Judgment Day, by a Judge who would hold no communication with those he judged?

“He began to glower and blow out his mustaches, ready to tell me to be still, so I whacked his desk a fearful whack with my little club and said Treeworgy was a snake and a liar and a traitor—a disgrace to him and his army: that I was a plain sailor woman from Arundel, master of my own sloop, and married decently and in order to James Dunn of Arundel, who died of exposure in the marshes of Lake Megantic: that if he didn’t let me out so I could go back to you—I mean so I could go back to my own people before Christmas—he would be what every New Englander says every English general is.

“He roared until orderlies popped their heads in at the door. When I was silent he said he’d turn me loose, and glad to be rid of me, but would drum me out of the city so nobody could hear the damnable wagging of my tongue—so I might remember the contempt in which every decent Englishman holds a deluded, traitorous rebel.”

“Whew!” I said, “couldn’t you think of something more to say to him?”

Phoebe laughed shortly. “I thought of plenty to say to him, but I was in a hurry to get away. I didn’t feel comfortable in skirts, not in this weather!”

She turned from me, her hands on her hips, to stare at a score of Goodrich’s men who, having finished their supper, had drawn close to hear Phoebe. I saw Noah Cluff and Nathaniel Lord and Jethro Fish, and the butcher from York, his face red and shiny, and one Butts from Wells, with an Adam’s apple that jumped up and down in his throat almost like a frog; but I saw no sign of Asa Hutchins.

“Where’s Asa?” I asked.

Phoebe stamped her foot. “He deserted, that’s what Asa did! Walked up to the gate last night and joined the British! Asa Hutchins from Arundel! There’s a nice tale to take home! Marched through the snow and the ice with the rest of us, and starved with us, and froze, and left the blood of his bare feet on the roads, and killed Dearborn’s dog, and then went and joined the British, so he could get up high in the world and shoot at us from behind stone walls!”

The men stared at her, motionless and unwinking.

“Now, Phoebe,” Noah Cluff said, “Asa’s young. He don’t—”

“Don’t tell me anything about Asa Hutchins!” she cried. “He’s a deserter! He ran away! What’s more, I hear there’s more of you want to run away! I hear there’s a lot of you came up here to fight for your country, but kind of think you’d better go home without fighting. What’s the matter: don’t you have a country except when it’s warm? Aren’t you interested in Liberty when there’s snow on the ground?”