Unholy Alliance (4 page)

“I am merely a gentleman’s gentleman,”
Chilton said carefully.

“Ah, but a gentleman nonetheless!” Bracken
chortled, determined to be impressed.

“A butler and a gentleman’s valet, to be
precise, Mr. Bracken.”

“I see. And what brings you all the way from
London to God’s country, if I may be so bold as to inquire?”

What indeed! Three months ago he had been a
very important person in a very prosperous household in fashionable
Belgrave Square, fawned upon by his master’s lady, feared and
respected by a staff of eighteen. Now he was freezing in the middle
of a wilderness even God wouldn’t acknowledge as His, and heading
for what was laughably called a city on this Indian-ridden
continent. If Toronto were anything like New York or Syracuse, then
he was doomed to a punishment wildly incommensurate with his
crime.

And what manner of peccadillo had brought
upon him such instant and unforeseen calamity? A weakness for
whiskey, yes. But he had sworn off that devil’s brew, and had kept
his vow for over five years. Surely a single tumble off the
water-wagon deserved clemency, if not outright absolution. But,
alas, that tumble had led him recklessly into milady’s boudoir, and
thence into the bed of her handsome new upstairs maid. How was he
to know that the girl was the daughter of milady’s destitute
half-sister, and a virgin to boot? It had all been a sordid
mistake. His affairs and liaisons and quick encounters with the
kitchen help had heretofore gone unremarked upstairs and
downstairs, for he was by common consent a superior butler:
intelligent, deferential and authoritative. Moreover, he possessed
exquisite manners and a gracefulness of movement that might have
been envied by a ballerina or a mortician. But milady, who had
discovered him and the deflowered niece aglow, so to speak, had
been in no mood for understanding or compromise. He was dismissed,
summarily and without reference. And only the threat of scandal
prevented her from having him charged with corrupting a minor.

His master, however, had taken him aside and
suggested that if he were willing to go abroad immediately,
references could be supplied and a position arranged somewhere in
the colonies. His master knew several prominent gentlemen in
Toronto, Upper Canada, for instance, and was willing to write there
on his behalf. What choice did he have? While he waited anxiously
in a cold-water flat, wasting his precious savings on life’s
necessities, inquiries were made and answers received. By the end
of the first week in January, he was aboard a steamship bound for
New York.

“I’m on my way to become the butler in the
household of a Mr. Garnet Macaulay of Toronto,” Chilton said in
response to Bracken’s question.

“Ah . . . I’ve heard of the gentleman. Lives
in Elmgrove. Fine manor house and old money: you’ll fit right
in.”

To Chilton’s mind that hardly seemed
possible, given what he’d seen so far of the manners and habits of
North Americans. After a two-week sea voyage in which he had rarely
raised his head above a chamber-pot, he had spent eight days in a
New York hotel shivering from a fever and exhaustion. And when he
was finally fit to travel, he found himself repelled by people
professing to be ladies and gentlemen – on the street, in
dining-rooms, or crushed closely in coaches and sleighs. They were
loud, boastful, coarse-mannered, ignorant, and blithely unaware of
their monstrous shortcomings.

However, Chilton had been bred to politeness,
so he said to Bracken, “What line of business did you say you were
in, sir?”

Bracken’s face lit up. “Furs!” he beamed.
“Furs! The only business for a man of means and ambition to
undertake in the Queen’s colonies. Let me tell you why, sir!” There
followed a flood of information about the glories and virtues of
the mighty Hudson’s Bay Company, most of which succeeded in
enthralling only the speaker himself. However, as consolation to
the listener, he brought out the flask and passed it freely back
and forth between them. Chilton had sworn off liquor ten seconds
after being surprised by milady in her boudoir, and had managed to
drink nothing but water and tea since. But that first medicinal sip
of Bracken’s brandy had proved fatal. He drank greedily. What did
it matter now anyway? He wouldn’t be arriving at Elmgrove until
tomorrow afternoon. He had a whole night in which to sober up and
reconfirm his vow.

“Right now, believe it or not, sir,” Bracken
was saying, “I am on route to Toronto to discuss some very
important property transactions. Despite what you may have heard
down in the States, this colony is about to go places. We’re on the
move. Any gentleman with a nose for business and a little political
pull can make his fortune.” He chuckled and added, “Even butlers’ve
been known to get rich!”

At this point the coach began to slow
down.

“Are we in Cobourg?” Chilton asked, seeing
only snow and trees on either side.

“No, no. As I said, we stop to change horses
at The Pine Knot, a wayside inn where we can get a cup of tea and a
biscuit, and where the best coach-horses in the province are kept.
We’ll only be there about half an hour, but I guarantee you’ll not
forget Mrs. Jiggins once you’ve met her!”

“Mrs. Jiggins?”

“She runs the inn, does the cooking, and
coddles her customers. And does most of the talking.” Bracken’s
cheeks blushed a deeper scarlet as he added, “A remarkable woman.
Bessie’s got more tales than
The
Arabian Nights
, and
most of ‘em are twice as naughty!”

Chilton was ready to believe almost anything
about this outpost of civilization. “Surely she doesn’t see to the
horses as well?”

“Not that she couldn’t, mind you, but she has
Brutus to do that. Big fellow. Can’t say an ungarbled word in
English, but just give him a horse to talk to!”

Chilton shuddered, and glanced at the flask
in Bracken’s hand. But he himself had drained it not five minutes
before.

The coach slowed further, lurched to the
left, and stopped. Without bothering to tuck in his silk scarf, the
Hudson’s Bay gentleman opened the coach door and stepped eagerly
onto the snow-packed clearing before a ramshackle, two-storey,
half-log building that, to the English butler’s eye, might had
doubled as a hog-barn. But it was not The Pine Knot that held his
attention. Trundelling towards the coach at an alarming speed came
a woman of generous girth and flamboyant attire, whose zeal to
welcome weary travellers threatened to overtake her tiny pistoning
legs. A tatty raccoon coat, unencumbered by buttons, flapped out
behind her like a vulture’s wings, and left her tightly swaddled
bosom to fend for itself against the winter chill. And no bonnet,
by the look of it, had ever deigned to tame the wild spray of stiff
orange curls that haloed the round, pink, unpowdered face.

“My dear Bracken,” she boomed just as she
succeeded in decelerating and came to a nimble halt a foot in front
of him. “How delightful to see you once again,” she added with a
dainty leer. “The coffee’s hot and my scones, as you know, are
always warm.”

“Good to see you, too, Missus,” Bracken said
with a blush, and before he could blush again he found himself
wrapped in Bessie’s arms – smothered in fur and squeezed perilously
bosom to bosom. Thus pinioned, he was rewarded with a long,
luscious kiss – lip to lip.

By this time Graves Chilton had stepped,
hesitantly, out of the coach, but had moved no step closer to the
inn or the clenched couple. Out of the corner of his eye he noticed
a shambling giant of a man come across the clearing to join the
driver beside the lead horse, who was stamping and fretting at the
harness. The big fellow was distinguished only by a burn-scar that
disfigured the entire right side of his face. The driver smiled and
shook his hand, then stood back as the fellow leaned his cheek
against that of the horse and began murmuring to it, his wordless
mumbo-jumbo instantly calming the beast.

When Chilton looked back towards the inn, he
saw – too late – that Bessie Jiggins had released Bracken and was
starting to move towards him.

“And who’s
this
handsome devil?” she
said, her blue eyes prancing in their pretty sockets.

“Mr. Graves Chilton, Bess – a gentleman’s
gentleman, from England.”

As she launched herself in the butler’s
direction, she noted the scarf holding up his chin, and cried, “Got
yourself a toothache, have you? Well, Aunt Bessie’s got just the
cure for that particular ailment!”

Just before the moment of impact, Chilton had
time for one brief thought: perhaps he had made the right decision
after all.

***

During the week before the secret conference was to
begin, Marc Edwards, Robert Baldwin and Francis Hincks kept
themselves busy in ways that would not raise the suspicions of
their political opponents. They knew that the Tories and the
Governor’s people were watching their actions closely, for even
though the act uniting the two provinces was not expected to pass
the British Parliament until June or July, its adoption was now
certain. Some time in the autumn of this year or early in 1841 a
new order was going to be declared. What then? Whose political
might would prevail? Rebellion and its contentious aftermath in
both provinces had left all the traditional alliances shaky and
vulnerable. Would the French
Bleus
stick to their own
conservative kind or throw their lot in with the radical French
Rouges
to forestall domination by
les anglais
? In
Upper Canada, there were now conservatives who were uncomfortable
at being labelled “High Tory,” and the rump group of these latter
reactionaries was increasingly wary of being yoked to the Orange
Order, whose propensity for violence and extreme measures in
defense of the British monarchy were alien to true gentlemen.

And the Reformers, too, were hardly of one
mind. Most of their radical members had participated in the failed
uprising of 1837 with disastrous consequences. William Lyon
Mackenzie, their political leader, had barely made his escape to
the United States, along with his cohorts, John Rolph, Marshall
Spring Bidwell and other stalwarts. The military leaders, Matthews
and Lount, had been tried for treason and hanged, as had a dozen
others east and west of Toronto. Then, just as the furore and
recriminations were easing, the exiled insurrectionists, from both
provinces, had attempted a number of armed incursions from the
United States, aided by libertarian enthusiasts from that liberated
nation. These so-called “patriots” had met an even grimmer fate:
their military expeditions were met by fierce resistance, and
quickly disabled. Dozens of “patriots,” Canadian and American
alike, were captured, tried, and either hanged or shipped off to
Van Dieman’s Land. All that remained of the Reform movement was a
handful of moderates still sitting in the Tory-dominated Assembly,
and men like the Baldwins and Francis Hincks, who had held aloof
from the actual revolt while sympathizing with its aims. And while
Robert Baldwin’s commitment to responsible government had never
been questioned, some Reform supporters still saw him as a coward
who had betrayed the cause in ‘thirty-seven, while the Tories
continued to view him as a disciple of Radical Jack (as they had
dubbed Lord Durham).

These were the circumstances, then, in which
Hincks carried on with his editor’s work at the
Examiner
and, along with Robert, composed letters to LaFontaine in Montreal,
knowing full well that the latter would not be there to receive
them and that the Tory “eyes” in the George Street post office
would take note of their passage. Robert continued his
correspondence with Reformers in other parts of the province,
visited his father out at Spadina as he did every Thursday, and
even ventured out the next day to Elmgrove (a calculated risk) as
he had often done throughout the winter. Meanwhile, Marc went to
Baldwin House each day and assisted Clement Peachey, the firm’s
solicitor, with the everyday (and fee-generating) activities of
Baldwin and Sullivan. There was no need to hold a pre-conference
meeting to plot strategy: all the arguments were known – on both
sides. Marc had read the correspondence between LaFontaine and
Hincks several times. They were ready.

Though no fresh snow fell that week, the
weather remained clear and cold, assuring travellers along the
Kingston Road a smooth and speedy journey. On Tuesday morning of
the following week, a message arrived at Briar Cottage from Robert
informing Marc that LaFontaine and an associate had safely reached
Elmgrove under cover of darkness, in disguise and undetected. While
greatly relieved, Marc found his excitement diminished by Beth’s
precarious health. As with her first child, Beth was again
suffering from severe leg-cramps that kept her from sleeping
properly, which in turn had left her defenceless against a
miserable cold. Dora Cobb arrived each day with copious advice and
vials of “horse liniment,” which Marc was instructed to rub on
Beth’s knotted calves.

“Don’t fuss so,” Beth said more than once.
“The babe’ll come whether my legs are cramped or not. An’ when he
does, I’m not likely to notice them, am I?”

But Marc enjoyed stroking Beth’s smooth legs,
so much so that Beth remarked on his enthusiasm. “I figure it’s not
the oil that helps, but the rubbin’,” she smiled.

“And the rub-
ber
,” Marc said.

“I think I feel another little knot farther
up,” Beth said sleepily.

It was at this moment, after supper on the
same Tuesday evening, that the second messenger

from Robert chose to rap on the front door,
startling Charlene into action and waking up Maggie.

Coming back from the vestibule, Marc said to
Beth, “The other two delegates arrive tonight. Robert will pick me
up in the cutter at ten tomorrow morning.”