Turncoat (13 page)

“Only at Christmas. And once at Easter.”

When the thorny issue of whose church to attend must have complicated matters.

“Perhaps if there had been children …” Her voice trailed off.

“But there weren't,” Marc prompted, uncertain now of his ground.

Her smile was indulgent but nonetheless pained. “No miscarriages, no stillborns, no infant deaths,” she whispered. “Nothing.”

“But Joshua came immediately when he was needed,” Marc said with feeling, “and he stayed.”

“Yes.”

“And gave up dry goods to become a farmer.”

Her “yes” was just audible.

Marc was grateful for the sudden arrival of Mary Huggan through the kitchen door.

“Oh,” she said to Beth, “I didn't know anybody was with you.” Mary seemed to have arrived in a state of some turmoil, but when she saw Beth's face, she looked bewildered and began backing away. “I'm sorry, I've come at a bad time.”

“It's all right, Mary. Ensign Edwards and I have some distressing but necessary things to talk over.”

“Of course,” Mary said, then whirled and fled.

Beth called out, “Come over after you've served dinner!” She had drawn a cotton handkerchief from her apron pocket. “I'm ready to go on now.”

“If your father-in-law made an enemy, even one he didn't know he'd made, I need to find that person—or group.”

“As in political party.”

“Or faction. Erastus Hatch and others have given me a
rough sketch of the various parties and factions contending in the county. He also mentioned that—”

“I dragged my Tory father-in-law off to Reform rallies in five different townships when I'd be servin' my monarch better by mindin' the house, lookin' for a husband who could give me babies, and helpin' to raise enough corn to keep the bailiffs out of the barn.”

“Something of that order,” Marc managed to reply.

“I also read newspapers, and I helped Jess write two of his petitions to the Assembly.”

“I've been led to believe that Joshua accompanied you to Reform rallies as a means merely of seeing you properly chaperoned.”

“He was a gentleman.”

“Was he not in danger of being … embarrassed or otherwise discomfited? After all, his Tory leanings, his former business in the capital, the friends he selected here upon his return—these would be well-known.”

“Everything is eventually well-known in Northumberland County.”

“Did he participate in any way when he accompanied you?”

Again the indulgent smile, with just a touch of scorn in it. “I see you haven't attended the hustings or any of our infamous political picnics.”

“As a soldier I have other pressing duties.”

“So I've been told.” This time her smile was warm, accepting.
“But if you had, you'd know that opponents of every stripe show up and pipe up at every opportunity. The give and take of public debate is another way of describin' the shoutin' matches and general mayhem. Sometimes it takes fisticuffs or a donnybrook to settle on a winner.”

“No place for an unescorted lady, then.” For a brief moment he pictured her dependent upon his strong, soldier's arm.

“You want to know, I think, but are too polite to ask, if Father became embroiled in the debates? The answer is no. He was a friendly but reserved man.” She paused. “He was that rare thing among men: a listener.”

Marc got up and walked to the window. He drew out his pipe and, receiving silent permission from his hostess, began stuffing it with tobacco from the pouch on his belt. When he turned back, Beth was beside him, a lit tinder stick in her hand. She watched him closely—with the same kind of marvelling intensity he himself had once used when observing his uncle Jabez shaving—as he got the plug going. With a start he realized she had done this many times.

“My feeling from what Sir John told me of Joshua, and what I've learned here thus far, is that there is more likelihood of his listening to what was being said, of taking it in—”

“Than bein' taken in by it?” she said quickly.

“That too.”

“Well, I can say one thing for sure: he began more and more to understand what it was like—is like—to try and eke out a livin' from the land when so much of the province's
affairs are run from Toronto by gentlemen who've never hoed a row of Indian corn and who think every person with a rightful grievance is an insurrectionist.”

“You said a moment ago that some folks thought you should stay put on the farm to help keep the bailiffs away. Did you mean that literally?”

“Almost. If it hadn't been for Mr. Child extendin' us a mortgage, Jess and me might well've lost everything.”

“Philander Child holds your mortgage?”

“He did. And when the second drought brought us to our knees, he kindly offered to buy the farm from us, for a lot more than it was worth.”

“He doesn't look like a farmer to me.”

Beth smiled indulgently. “You can be interested in agricultural land without wantin' to hoe beans or muck out stalls.”

“Point taken. But you were not tempted by his offer.”

“I was. But not Jess. He was not about to admit failure to his father.”

“But then—”

“Then he died. And it was me that vowed never to sell. Then Father arrived and paid off the mortgage.”

“I see.”

“Mr. Child also arranged for Elijah to help Jess and me out that last year.” She caught Marc's wince of disbelief. “Elijah's a miserable old coot till you get to know him, but he worked for his board and what little we could pay him at harvest time. He's got no family.”

“Is he a local?”

“No. Some crony of Mr. Child's in Toronto was lookin' for a safe home for him and he ended up here.”

“But the land around here appears to be extremely fertile,” Marc said. “And you've already cleared most of your acreage by the look of it.”

Beth took hold of his arm. “Let's go for a walk. It's time you learned somethin' about farming in this province.”

As they made their way to the door, Marc caught sight of a brass bedstead behind partly drawn curtains. On either side of the bed, a pair of tall shelves listed under the weight of books. The title of one leapt out at him: Thomas Paine's
Rights of Man
.

Following the direction of his gaze, Beth said, “My own father's bed—his legacy, along with his library. I left the religious tomes back in Cobourg, for the Reverend Hay-don.” When Marc continued to stare, she said, “You enjoy readin'?”

“Very much,” he replied, uncertain of the question's intent. “I spent two years as a law clerk.”

She smiled. “I guess that counts.”

Outside, the sunshine and cold air made walking a pleasant exercise. As they passed the barn to veer southwest towards the farm's fields and pastures, they could hear Elijah mucking out the pigpens and singing vigorously. No recognizable word emerged from his song, though the hogs joined in as they were able.

“Does Elijah have a last name?” Marc said.

“I suppose so,” Beth said. “But he's never said and I've never asked.”

A few yards beyond the barn Beth began to point out to Marc the location of fields, all alike now under two feet of snow, and their pertinent features: this one already bursting with winter wheat though you couldn't yet see its green sprouts; that one to be seeded with maize in April; this one lying fallow; that one an alfalfa field waiting for spring rains. The snow-packed trail they were following appeared to Marc to be shadowing Crawford Creek but at a consistent distance of thirty yards or so.

“Wouldn't this path be more scenic if it were closer to the creek?” he asked when they stopped at a field where tree stumps and random branches jutted brutally through the snow—a familiar sight, even to a newcomer like Marc, in a country whose arable land was still nine-tenths forest.

“It would,” Beth said, her gaze upon the stump-scarred field in front of them, “if we owned the land next to it.”

“Where we've been walking is your property line, then?”

Beth murmured assent. “This was the last of our fields to be cleared. We worked on it all one summer and fall. It was the last thing Jess and I did together.”

Marc offered his arm in a comforting gesture. She did not lean upon it, but he could feel the pressure of her fingers and found it pleasantly disconcerting.

“From what you've just told me and from what I've seen of your livestock, you appear to have a prospering operation here.”

“It must look that way now,” she said, staring ahead. “The land was cheap so long as we cleared our quota and did our bit on the roads. The mortgage was mostly for the new barn, the cows and pigs, and some machinery that needed replacin'. We even had a team of oxen once.”

“Surely two or three good crops would have seen you solvent,” Marc said, as if he actually knew what he was talking about.

“True. But just as we needed them, as I said earlier, the drought struck.”

“But you've got a creek over there twice the size of most rivers in England!”

“I'm not talkin' about the kind of drought you get in a desert or the kind that drove Joseph into Egypt. It only takes three or four weeks of little or no rain in June or July to weaken a crop. The thistles and blight get in, and the kernels shrivel up so you're lucky to get ten bushels to the acre.”

“And that happened three summers ago?”

“And the summer before last, too. If you look back towards the barn from this high point where we're standin', you can see that the main section of growing land is very low. In the spring, it's actually swampy, and difficult to plough and seed. We had two wet springs in a row.”

She said this as if rain and drought were the whims of a fate determined to tease and madden, the kind that brought plagues to the pharaoh and mindless ordeals to Job.

“The squire next to us back home had swamp ground like that, and he drained it with tile,” Marc said.

“But we don't own the land next to the creek,” Beth said.

“But the creek is right there,” Marc persisted. “There's nothing but bush on either side of it, no one is using it. It's the same creek that drives Hatch's mill and feeds half the wells of the township.” He was trying to keep the note of impatience out of his voice, any sense that he was instructing the naive or the unreasonably discouraged. “Nobody'd give a tinker's dam if you drained your swamp into it or drew water out of it for irrigation. Hatch says a quarter of the farmers here are still squatters, and no one pays the slightest bit of attention.”

“That's exactly how Jess used to talk,” Beth said. She turned and trod through the snow towards Crawford Creek. Marc floundered behind her. When he caught up, she gestured towards the frozen ribbon of water and the hardwood forest fringing its banks.

“Under those trees is prime farmland, rich soil, good drainage, a sugar maple woodlot, shade to protect the cattle …”

“You couldn't afford to buy it? Not even the part of it that includes the creek on this side?” Marc's eyes followed what he could now see would be the unalterable survey line that made every farm a rectangle, or set of contiguous rectangles, regardless of topographical caprice or nuance of Nature. The bow in Crawford Creek took it away from the
straight boundary line that marked the western limit of the Smallman farm, when the curve of the creek itself cried out to be the natural border between the adjacent properties, assuring each a precious share of the creek's water.

“We couldn't buy it,” Beth said, “even if we had the money.”

Before he asked why, Marc had to suppress the unsettling thought that Joshua Smallman had been a wealthy man by provincial standards, having established his lucrative business on “fashionable” King Street and paid off his son's mortgage, and that his daughter-in-law, so recently restored to his affection, would surely inherit whatever remained.

“What you see over there,” Beth said, “and all along this side of the creek, is a lot owned by the Crown. If and when the government ever decides to sell it, the proceeds will go to the clergy.”

Light dawned. Inwardly Marc winced at his own obtuseness, his failure to see how Beth Smallman had been leading him patiently towards this conclusion. The Clergy Reserves had topped every list of grievances headlined in Mackenzie's
Colonial Advocate
. This was a phrase flung like a goad against the worthies of the province and the governor's appointed Legislative Council.

“Ah. . . yes. Every seventh lot to be reserved for the use and maintenance of the Anglican clergy,” Marc said, the legalese slipping easily off the tongue. “But surely the assignment of such lots is not random and self-defeating. Surely
both parties, the Church of England and the farmers, stand to gain by the rational allotment and sale of such reserve lands.”

“The surveyors laid out these lots ten years ago and applied the grid plan they'd been given by the Executive Council. It's the same for every township in the province. The disposition of lots is decided in advance. What's actually on them or not on them is irrelevant.”

“That's preposterous!”

“Mr. Mackenzie himself used that very word.”

“Even so, can no one buy that lot over there?”

“Clergy Reserve lots are bought and sold all the time. Archdeacon Strachan and his cronies in the Council trade them—like marbles. But only when the value's been raised or it appears convenient or necessary to their interests. That one over there will be sold when all the property 'round it is cleared and improved and a concession road cut out to the north of it. It'll be worth ten times what it is now—to someone. Our farm and it would make a natural and very profitable pair.”

“But couldn't you and your husband have run your tile down to the creek and set up some irrigation pipes in the interim? You could've put a squatter's shack on that piece by the bank, for God's sake!”