“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.
V
Near the end of the fifth day the stalemate at the windmill was broken.
Steamers with heavier ordnance had arrived from Kingston, along with more detachments of both British regulars and militia. The ships had moved within range of the windmill and begun their bombardment late in the afternoon. This had a far better effect than the previous attempts, shaking the tower and setting what was left of the outbuildings on fire once more. Then, as the sky darkened, a force of a thousand British soldiers began their attack.
Lewis had continued his round of cleaning and comforting, his ears alert to the rhythm of the battle — the pounding of the artillery, the volleys of musket fire. The Americans were no doubt desperate, their men exhausted, hungry, and without ammunition. They had never expected to be anything but instantaneously victorious. How could they withstand such an assault?
He had been changing the bandages on the raw stump of a soldier whose left hand had been shattered when the man suddenly shifted his head to one side. “Listen,” he said. “It’s stopped.”
“What does it mean?” Lewis asked. “Is it over?”
“Aye, I would say so. They can’t have held out against all that.”
Lewis and the others braced themselves for more wounded.
Soon they were elbow-deep in blood again as the casualties of both sides were carried into the makeshift hospital. The Americans were separated from the British and Canadians, who received medical attention first. It was bedlam as the doctor shouted instructions and the soldiers screamed. Lewis stayed out of the way as much as he could and tended to the neglected Americans instead, bandaging the bleeding and praying with the dying.
“I don’t know about you,” he said to Morgan Spicer when asked what he was doing, “but I’m not sure I feel any partiality for any of them, British, Canadian, or American. As far as I’m concerned,