Freedom! I stuck out my tongue and tasted the snow. It was a pretty night, all right. The sky was mostly clear, so I figured the snow must be blowing in from the sea. Through the clouds I could see the Big Dipper and the North Star. Somewhere a sailor was guiding his voyage by that star.
I walked down to the river and stood on the Bridge of Ghosts. Every so often there would be a flash of lightning. I thought I could see ghosts walking among the gravestones in the cemetery. Ghosts or soldiers. Sometimes it seemed they were one and the same, they were both so intimate with death.
A hand touched my shoulder.
It was a man. His eyes looked hollow and he had the mark of Death upon him. Somehow I knew that he would soon die. He had on a torn black beaver hat and a long threadbare coat. He could not have been warm on such a freezing night. I reckoned he was a Rebel. A Redcoat would not have been caught dead dressed so poorly. His moustache was smeared with frozen snot, his feet were wrapped in rags, and he carried a musket and a flask of propellant powder slung over his shoulder. Brother Nessus said the Evil One himself walked at night. Brother Nessus should know.
The man asked me why the town was so quiet. I pretended I did not understand and pointed to my ears.
“Deaf?”
I nodded.
“You look harmless enough. You a waif? Got no home? All you Canadians must be asleep or too drunk to fight.” He turned and spat. The saliva froze when it hit the snow.
“When we left New York,” he continued, “we was three thousand men. General Arnold was our leader and we loved him. Would have followed him to Hell. But this is worse than Hell!” He wiped his nose. “The same wind blows in New England, but not this cold! Now we number only a few hundred. Some of us have deserted or died of disease or from this infernal cold. The rest of us wait for the war to be over.” His buckshot eyes stared blindly into the distance. “I just want to go home. Drink a bottle of rum. Forget.”
The Rebel blew on his fingers and began to load his musket. The weapon was almost as tall as I was. I reckoned the barrel alone was almost four feet long.
“The British will never surrender. Lexington and Concord, that was one thing.” He shook his head. “The British army made an easy target for our snipers. They marched in straight lines in red uniforms! How could you miss them?” He laughed. “Now we’re fighting a lost cause. How do we expect to invade Canada when we can’t even kick the British off colonial soil?”
He stared at me, and I shivered again. The loaded gun was in his hand. I held my breath waiting to see what he was going to do. Was he crazy enough to shoot me?
“Well, good night, Dumb Boy.” The American slung his musket across his shoulder. I watched the poor fellow trudge off in the snow, still dreaming of home.
I had dropped my fishing rod in the snow during all the excitement. Now I picked it up and marched down the other side of the bridge to the clearing that led to my favourite bank to fish from at night. It was a special spot where the big fish settled after the Sun went down. And, yes, I meant to go fishing. I was not scared away that easily.
The Moon was still in eclipse. Perfect! I might have twenty minutes left if I was lucky. I recalled something Ben Franklin wrote about eclipses in Poor Richard’s Almanack:
Some of these Eclipses foreshow great Grief and many Tears. War we shall have too much of, for all Christians have not yet learn’d to love one another. I Pray Heaven defend these Colonies from every Enemy, and give them Bread enough, Peace enough, Money enough, and plenty of good Cyder.
Hell and damnation!
I spotted three more Rebel soldiers and ducked behind a tree. They were taking long swigs from a bottle. “They don’t know who they’re dealing with, boys.” One of the soldiers wobbled unsteadily on his feet. “I’ll rip ’em limb from limb!” The other two Americans laughed and passed the bottle between them.
I managed to sneak out of there without being seen and get across the bridge again. How do you like that? No question about it. There would surely be no fishing tonight unless I wanted to be used for target practice. And I certainly did not. But I was not tired and I did not want to go back to the orphanage and listen to Brother Nessus snoring like a pig blowing bubbles in the mud — he was so loud I could feel the vibrations. So, in the end, I decided to walk to the smokehouse and do some reading. It was a decision that would change my life.
The smokehouse was a little stone shed near the main building of the orphanage. Like our barn, the smokehouse had a painting of an open window with false ivy growing around the frame. I liked going there to read and be alone. There was always enough light from the one real window or, if it was dark, from the coals. It was warm, and I liked the way it smelled. On a sunny day, the warped glass window made the trees and hills seem as if they were underwater. I settled down against the back wall of the smokehouse, and by the light of the coals I began to read from my tattered copy of The Pilgrim’s Progress:
When they entered upon this valley, they thought that they heard a groaning as of dead men; a very great groaning. They thought also, that they did hear words of lamentation, spoken as of some in extreme torment. These things made the boys quake; the women also looked pale and wan. But their guide bid them be of further comfort.
So they went on a little farther, and they thought that they felt the ground begin to shake under them, as if some hollow place was there. They heard also a kind of hissing, as of serpents; but nothing as yet appeared. Then said the boys, “Are we not yet at the end of this doleful place?”
Now, remember when I said I was not afraid of anything? Well, it was true. Most of the time. But there, in the smokehouse, as I read about the lamentation of the dead, I felt something close to fear. I remembered what Cook had said about witches, and I prayed that if there was a Hag around she was still counting the pins.
I read through my book trying to find a cheerful passage. When I caught myself yawning, I knew it was time to get to bed before anyone at the orphanage woke up and missed me. I returned my book to the inside pocket of my coat and stood to leave.
That was when it happened.
The glass window of the shed exploded, and I was knocked to the floor. My chest felt as if someone had struck my heart with a hammer. I could not breathe. My mind raced. A witch has flown into the smokehouse! I am dying! This is it! I am going to die!
Then I realized that I had been shot.
I opened my jacket to check for blood. Instead of a wound, however, I found a musket ball lodged in my copy of The Pilgrim’s Progress — in the letter g of Pilgrim, as a matter of fact. I plucked out the lead, and I am not ashamed to say, kissed the book in gratitude for saving my life.
When I stepped outside, I saw British soldiers on the hill firing at a group of Rebels who had penetrated the city. The regiment had been waiting for the Americans on high ground in the falling snow.
The man leading the Rebels raised his sword and fell in a barrage of British fire. The Redcoats tumbled forward in the snow stopping only to measure powder and shot for their muskets. For a moment, all I could see were flashes of steel, bursts of musket flame, and clouds of rolling smoke. A red tide of British soldiers swept down the hill. Behind them, more soldiers shot arrows tipped with blazing rosin and brimstone at the Americans. The arrows trailed fire across the sky and landed on the Rebel wagons, igniting them in an instant.
I ran for my life across the snow and freezing mud and stumbled over the legs of a dead Rebel, not much older than I, wearing a paper pennant with the word Freedom emblazoned across it. Then I saw him. The man I had met on the Bridge of Ghosts. He had been skewered through with a sword, and snow blew into the cavern of his open, toothless mouth. I figured he had died in the middle of another speech.
As fast as I could, I hid behind a smouldering freight wagon. All around me soldiers were running, shooting, swinging their sabres. Someone grabbed me so hard I thought my arm would break. A British soldier with epaulets and braid beneath his greatcoat shook me and shouted. I pointed to my ears and signed, “Spare me, I am Deaf,” but he struck me across the face with his pistol stock. I fell to my knees and prayed for my life the way Brother Jean had taught me.
Our. Right hand swept across chest.
Father. Hands placed just above stomach.
In Heaven. Hands raised skywards.
The soldier cocked his pistol and aimed it between my eyes as I prayed. You noticed the strangest things when you were about to die: gold leaf on the barrel of the pistol, silver inlay on the stock, satyrs and fawns.
Hallowed be thy Name ...
The pistol exploded in a flash of light. I reckoned the gunpowder must have frozen or the barrel had filled with ice, because he tossed aside the shattered weapon and pulled his sabre from its scabbard to finish me off. The sword had blood on it. He held it above me with both hands. Then something remarkable happened. He looked up.
I looked up, too. My eyes swam from the gunpowder flash, but I was sure I saw his lips form one word — “Comet!”
But it was not a comet. It was a basket attached to a balloon flying above the trees in the falling snow. Glowing glass containers were strung around the basket on a chain. It looked like a star as it blinked and floated over the city. The lighted containers were growing dim, and the ship seemed to be losing altitude in a shower of sparks. I saw a man inside, a laughing man wearing spectacles.