Arundel (74 page)

“Why, Major,” Cap said, “that feller’s mistaken! I wouldn’t have done
nothing
to interrupt the captain, I was that eager to hear what he was talking about. That mug just slipped out of my hand!”

Bigelow looked from Smith to the table where we stood at attention. “Slipped!” he said doubtfully.

“What was it you wanted to hear?” Captain Thayer asked.

“He
was telling everybody about the attack,” Cap said. “Letting everybody know which way we’d got to go, and how we’d get from the Lower Town to the Upper Town. When he come to telling when it was going to be, I got afeared I’d be the only one in St. Roque that wouldn’t hear about it—maybe the only one in Canada. I put my hand up to my ear to hear better, and the mug slipped out of my fingers and caught him right on the back of the head.”

“Could you hear him?” Bigelow asked quickly.

“Yes, sir,” Cap said. “It hit him half a second after he said ‘Tomorrow night.’”

Bigelow and Topham and Thayer looked at each other, a blank, horrified look. Bigelow scratched his jaw and watched two of Montgomery’s undersized New Yorkers sidle out into the night. “It appears to me,” he said, “that this was an accident.”

“I’ve seen several just like it,” Thayer agreed. “It comes from using those slippery black mugs. They’re apt to fly out of your hand any minute.”

“Dangerous, I call ’em,” Topham said.

“I saw him!” the little weasel-faced man persisted. “He hauled back and slung it.”

Bigelow looked around. His eyes finally rested on Henry, who had been sitting with his back to us when Smith fell.

“You saw this, didn’t you?” Bigelow asked.

“Oh, yes, sir,” Henry said.

“And it seemed to you to be an accident, didn’t it?” Bigelow persisted.

‘Yes,” Henry said earnestly. “It slipped right out of his hand!”

“You see!” Thayer said. “It comes from using those slippery black mugs. What they need is wooden mugs with the bark on.”

In the morning one of Montgomery’s men who had been in the tavern deserted to the British; so the plans of which Smith had spoken were abandoned. Nevertheless, we knew an attack was close at hand. It was high time, Cap Huff said; for he had spent all his pay, and exhausted the coins sewed in the tail of his shirt to boot, so he needed to get into Quebec to replenish his store. There were other reasons besides this one of Cap’s; and these we had on Christmas Day, a clear day so cold we kept an eye on each other, lest our faces freeze.

There was an order that morning for Colonel Arnold’s troops to parade in front of the colonel’s headquarters, and this we did toward sundown. Cap Huff and I fell in at the rear of Captain Goodrich’s company for reasons of our own; and when we had paraded, General Montgomery, tall and thin and pockmarked, came out of the colonel’s quarters and talked to us, a straight, sensible talk.

We could not, he told us, take Quebec by siege, because we could neither make trenches in the frozen ground nor live in them if they were made, nor could we breach the walls with our light cannon. Neither could we invest the town, because our army was not large enough to shut off food and fuel from it. Only one plan remained, and that was to take the city by storm. We could, he told us, select our own place of attack, thus keeping the garrison on the watch both day and night, exhausting them; and the chances of success and glory were good. Yet there was hazard to it; so it seemed right to him that we should have some say in the matter.

He had paraded us, he said, so that we might, company by company, give our opinion as to whether we should attempt to storm the city or whether we should desert our countrymen who were fighting for liberty at Boston and at New York—desert them as Colonel Enos had deserted us on Dead River.

He went to Captain Morgan’s company, saying to them: “Shall we storm?” The shout of “Yes!” that came from those tall riflemen, who had set their hearts on looting the city, must have been heard back at Pointe-aux-Trembles, eight leagues away. Indeed, I think if there had been one among them to shout “No,” Morgan would have dragged him from the ranks and hatcheted him.

There was never a “No” among the two companies of Pennsylvania riflemen; and as for the companies of Topham and Thayer and Dearborn, they would have followed their captains into any sort of mess, as they had shown repeatedly, and so shouted “Yes!” with as much eagerness as the riflemen, albeit more raggedly.

Then the general came to Goodrich’s company, and before he got the words out of his mouth Cap and I began to bellow ‘Yes! Yes!” In a hoarse and penetrating whisper Cap added: “I’ll kill the louse that says ‘No’!”

How many said “Yes” I have no way of knowing. Not all of them, by any means; yet none said “No.” As for the companies of Hanchet and Hubbard, some said “Yes” without much vigor, while some uncertainly said “No”; and then a shouting of “Yes!” and “No!” arose among them, and there was unseemly and unsoldierly fist-fighting, at which Hanchet and Hubbard raged at the men and struck them with their muskets, for all officers had taken to carrying muskets except Montgomery and Arnold.

Montgomery turned his back on all this rioting and said loudly he would give a Christmas present of two shillings to each man of us to drink success to the storming.

We did little drinking that night; for when we went to have our dinner with Phoebe and Jacataqua, and told Phoebe how Goodrich’s company had not voted “No,” she set off at once, the rest of us with her, to have Christmas dinner with Noah Cluff and Nathaniel and Jethro and the rest, so they might know she was no longer shamed of them.

I think we would have stormed the city on the day after Christmas except it was so cold we couldn’t have charged or primed our muskets, once they were fired, because of numb fingers.

On the second day after Christmas there was a thick snowstorm, which had been hoped for, since the garrison couldn’t see us if we approached in a heavy fall of snow. We weren’t surprised when word came to all the barracks, taverns and drinking places for the men to assemble at midnight in the streets of St. Roque, each man with a sprig of spruce or hemlock in his cap, so we might be distinguished from the British, whose clothing and ours were similar.

When I had this word I went to see Phoebe, and we sat in Mother Biard’s kitchen—Mother Biard and Phoebe and Jacataqua and Mother Biard’s white-and-yellow cat with a smudged face that made her look as though she had been rubbing against the bottom of a fry-pan, and the dog Anatarso, who sat at my feet and stared with moon eyes at the cat on my knees as though in love with it.

“Well,” I said, when Mother Biard had heated a poker red hot in the stove and thrust it into a mug of cider to mull it for me, “we’ll be away from here before long, and there’s matters to be discussed, whether or no.” I took a long drink of cider and scratched the cat’s chin and wished myself elsewhere; for I had no desire to raise unhappy thoughts in Phoebe’s head.

We sat in silence for a long time. Finally Phoebe looked up at me with a one-sided smile. “Did you say something?”

“I’m fishing about in my mind,” I said. “I don’t choose to have you refuse what I ask.”

“Why, Steven,” Phoebe said, her voice flat and low, “I won’t refuse it.”

“How can you be sure, when you don’t know what I’ll ask?”

“I always know what you’re going to ask; but even if I didn’t, I’d agree.”

“Well,” I said, when I’d taken another drink of cider, “I want you to go home. You and Jacataqua must go home. Now that the snow is deep you can go easily on snowshoes. I want you to get away from here and go back to Arundel.”

“When do you want us to go?” she asked meekly, which was a surprise. I had looked for her to be contentious.

“When? Why, as soon as something happens. If we don’t come out at once from the city, go immediately. I’ve saved some money for you. Jacataqua can find an Abenaki somewhere and hire him to help you across the Height of Land and the Chain of Ponds.

“I don’t want any argument about this,” I said, when she made no reply. “I want someone to look after my mother—”

“I’m not arguing.”

“Here’s another thing,” I said, “I’ve written this out on paper so you can take it with you. My mother must have the garrison house for her own, because of my sisters and my brother; but the money in the keg under the kitchen is enough to buy a ship: a small ship, but a good ship. It’s my wish a ship be built, one half of it to belong to you and one half to my mother. I’ve said in the paper that you should oversee the building of it; and in cases where you and my mother hold different opinions, she should remember you’ve had more sailing and trading experience than she. Also you’re to have a home in the garrison house as long as you desire it, and I’ve made provision for Jacataqua because she’s been my friend—for Jacataqua and for anything that might happen because of Burr. It’s all in the paper.”

“I need nothing,” Jacataqua said.

“You can’t tell. You might.”

Phoebe took the paper. “What are you doing this for?”

“Just to be on the safe side. There won’t be any need of it; but it’s a good thing to have, so to know where everything stands.”

“No, I mean
why
are you doing it? Why are you giving me half the ship?”

“Why? Why? Why, because you know how to sail a ship! That’s the reason. I’ll feel safer, knowing you’re going to be around my mother, making money for her and looking after things.”

She nodded and was silent, creasing the paper in her fingers, first along one fold and then along the other. At length, not looking up, she coughed a dry cough. “If you find Mary, I’ll tear this up.”

“You let it alone! I wrote it, and if there’s any tearing up to be done I’ll do it myself. We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.”

Mother Biard hobbled about, fixing her next day’s dinner in the covered kettle, after the manner of all French people. She put me in mind of Malary; and Malary put me in mind of the curlew pasties she was accustomed to make, piling curlews around a cup in a bowl and building the crust over the cup. I thought of Ranger, and how he would go through waves with his eyes shut to pick up curlews when I shot them: I thought of Eunice and the long gray crescent of beach; the white sand on the floor of the gathering-room in Arundel, and the fire roaring in the fireplace. From the fire my mind went to the sawmill, and to the new wharf I wished to build below the mill-dam in the creek. I thought of the creek and the river and the pollocks and the eels and the gulls, and of the skiff and how it needed calking. We spoke of all these things, and I had an overpowering desire to leave this land of long-queued Frenchmen and the crashing of bombs, and snow and ice and winds that froze the face, and get back to my own piece of land and my own people.

We might have talked all night but for a rattling at the door. “That’s Natanis,” I said. It had been agreed that Natanis and Hobomok would go forward with Cap and me, and that Natanis should bring word when all was in readiness. “It’s Natanis, and I must go.” I picked up my musket and went to the door, and it was Natanis.

“The snow has stopped,” he said in Abenaki. “There is a moon. Word has come from the great chief there will be no attack this night.”

The shadow of the cliff lay like a blotch of ink against the silver of the snow-filled street. Those on the walls could have picked us off like tethered turkeys if we had come out from the shelter of the buildings. I heard Jacataqua translating his words to Phoebe; but when I went to say good-night to her she was wrapped in her blankets in a corner, and didn’t answer me when I spoke; so I went softly out and joined Natanis, thinking to myself that I must talk less if, when I spoke, I sent a person to sleep as quickly as all that.