In one sense the whirlpool was like memory; like obsession connected to memory, like history that stayed in one spot, moving nowhere and endlessly repeating itself. Above it, stars that appeared stationary traced their path across the sky, actually going somewhere, changing.

Fleda was outside the tent. Behind her it glowed in the night like a mystical pyramid. Around her, the unidentifiable night sounds; two million species of insects competing for pitch, volume, and space. Fleda stirring water in the last embers of the fire, extinguishing it.

Inside the tent, separated from her by only a thin piece of fabric, was her husband who, at this moment, had had just about enough of the Siege of Fort Erie. The armies in his mind had attacked and counter-attacked for three hours now until he could barely remember what they had been fighting for. The vague anger that he had felt towards the American Regiments when he had sat down to write had been replaced by boredom. Often, when he was working on his battle histories he could actually feel the regimental energy flow from his pen, almost as if he, himself, were inventing the plan of attack. Tonight, however, working for the first time in the tent, he was easily distracted, unable to maintain the concentration level necessary to sort through the thousands of details of the event.

He pushed back his chair and turned to look at his wife who, last time he noticed, had been reading in the wicker rocker just in front of the mosquito netting that led to the outdoors. He had wanted her to put down her book, to speak to him, to break his ennui. But where the devil had she got to?

“Fleda-a-a!” he bellowed in a voice he found most effective when shouting orders at a platoon of men marching half a mile away.

She appeared instantly, flung aside the mosquito netting, collapsed in her wicker chair, and picked up her book.

“Fleda,” he began again, his mouth relaxing amiably under the weight of his walrus moustache, “Fleda, I’m bored.”

“Absolutely not,” she replied, “and besides the dress isn’t here.”

“You didn’t bring the dress?”

“No.”

“Why on earth not?”

“Because I left it at the hotel.” She shifted in her chair, turned a page of the book. “Besides, I’m bored with that outfit. If you want to play dress-up with me, why not something a little more glamorous? It doesn’t take long for a muddy calico dress to become boring. Why not silk or velvet? The whole thing makes me decidedly uncomfortable. I hate the way you look at me in that dress.”

“But why, for heaven’s sake, it’s simply research… you know it’s the subject of my next paper.”

“So that explains why every time you want me to dress up as Laura Secord you get that look on and say” – this in a whining voice imitating his own – “‘Fleda, I’m bored.’” She finally looked up from her book. “Did it ever occur to you,” she asked him, “that you married me precisely and only because, in some odd way, I remind you of Laura Secord?”

Major David McDougal laughed good-naturedly. “Don’t be ridiculous,” he said, without a great deal of conviction.

“No, really, it could be absolutely true.” She moved the idea around in her mind for a few moments and then sat bolt upright in her chair.

“That’s really insulting, you know,” she continued, “marrying me for a reason like that. For all I know she may have been hideous, she may have had no front teeth, she may have weighed more than her cow.”

Now, Major David McDougal roared with laughter. His wife was cheering him up, there was no doubt of that. He decided to pursue the subject further.

“How tall would you say she might have been? A giantess perhaps?” McDougal seemed to like this idea. “How about an amazon… perfectly proportioned, but huge. Imagine the breasts! No wonder the Indians didn’t attack her!”

“Maybe she was prematurely old, wrinkled, and grey.” Fleda turned to her husband and continued wickedly. “Or maybe… she was fraternizing with the American officers. Did you ever think of that?”

“Impossible!”

“Why?”

“Far too patriotic.”

“Maybe she did it for patriotic reasons… or,” Fleda smiled innocently at David, “maybe she tried to fraternize with them and failed as a result of her awful appearance. Then her heroic act would be merely the revenge of a woman scorned. Remember, her husband was wounded.”

“Do you want to know what I really think?” David asked, moving over to the bed at the far end of the tent. “I always thought, and I still do, that Laura was loyal, strong, and very beautiful.” He lay back on the bed and rested his head on his hands behind him. Then he looked at his wife teasingly. “I always imagined her arriving at Fitzgibbon’s headquarters, flushed and panting, her hair in a state of lovely disarray.”

“She’s the only woman in the whole story, so you simply romanticize her to death!. Really, David.”

“No more than Patmore romanticizes his precious angel in his precious house. As for the celebrated Mr. Browning… need I even comment?”

“Leave Browning out of this… and as for Patmore… you gave me that book. Besides, it’s poetry.”

“Aha!” McDougal pounced on his wife’s last statement. “So what we are saying is that we may romanticize poetic women but not historical women, is that it… is that what we are saying?”

“Well, it seems the proper thing to do, if you must romanticize your women at all… the Lovely Elaine, the Lady of Shallot.”

“Yes, but supposing those ladies are historical as well as poetic… then the historical would have to come first. Though, I must say, I do have trouble believing that Patmore’s wife ever existed… that she was anything more than a figment of his imagination. Didn’t she conveniently die?”

“Yes, but you can hardly blame Patmore for that.”

“Oh, I don’t know, it must be uphill work being an angel, especially in a poet’s house. Maybe she died of ennui.” Fleda scowled at him. He eyed her closely. “Who would you rather be, if you had a choice, Patmore’s wife or Laura Secord?”

“Since it seems very unlikely that I shall have the opportunity to be either, I find that question impossible to answer. The Americans are quite well-behaved these days, there is absolutely no point reporting their activities to the military hereabouts.”

McDougal interjected at this point. This was a subject on which he had very definite and serious opinions. “Don’t be so sure,” he muttered darkly. “Don’t be so bloody sure.”

“As for Patmore’s wife,” Fleda gestured to the canvas walls around her, “I have no house to be an angel in.”

“You’ll have your house, but you still haven’t told me which you’d rather be, if you had the choice.”

“Patmore’s wife, I suppose, even if she is dead. I would love to have my portrait painted by Rossetti. And the book, imagine having your husband write a book for you.”

“I will write a book on Laura Secord and pattern her character on yours.”

“Really, David, I doubt that she and I would have a single thing in common.” Fleda left her chair and moved over to the bed, willing now to take part to a certain extent in the game. “Supposing she wasn’t like me at all, not a single bit?”

“Well, I imagine her looking exactly like you, but wilder and in greater disarray, of course, after her valorous trek through the woods.” McDougal pulled his wife down beside him on the bed and said, “Then I imagine that Fitzgibbon would be strangely moved by her appearance.”

Major McDougal was beginning to undress.

“David…”

“Then I imagine,” he said, leaving his clothes in an untidy pile on the floor and climbing under the blankets, “that Fitzgibbon would dismiss his colleagues so that he could speak to Laura alone… confidential military information and all that. Then I imagine…” he began to undo the small buttons on the front of her dress. “Then I imagine….”

“David… just a moment.”

“Mmmm?” he said, biting her ear.

“You are overlooking a very important fact.”

“What’s that?” he asked, reaching up under her long skirt and pressing his face against her neck.

“Laura Secord was a married woman.”

“So are you,” he replied, leaning outwards from the bed in order to extinguish the coal-oil lamp.

He made love, for all his kindness, like a man fighting a short, intense battle, a battle that he always won. She lay passively beneath him like a town surprised by an invasion of enemy troops. Afterwards, he fell asleep almost immediately, like a man overcome by battle fatigue.

She crept across the tent, after, to find her long white nightgown with its high neck and lace cuffs. Then she walked outside, barefoot in the cold, wet grass, down the path to the bank. She could see the whirlpool from there and, further away, the rapids in the moonlight. She knew that she had lied. She wouldn’t ever want to be Patmore’s wife, Patmore’s angel. Not now, not ever.