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Who makes the fairest show means most deceit
(Pericles Prince of Tyre I.iv.75)
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THE MCFARLAND FAMILY lived in a small settlement about eight miles north of the town of Halifax, nestled between the shoreline and a gentle hill. The village, if such it was, consisted of a few shops along a dirt road and a smattering of houses which opened up behind to farmland. It was in one of these that the McFarland family dwelt.
Mrs. Bessie McFarland stepped outside of the solid house at the sound of the arriving carriage, and she greeted her children’s old playmate with a hearty welcome. “Well, if it isn’t Amanda Jones,” she crowed. “I haven’t seen you since your wedding. Benjamin, what a surprise to see you. I hope you are treating my Mandy well. She certainly looks fine. Amanda, is he good to you?”
“Mrs. McFarland, what a pleasure it is to see you again. As you see, I am more than well, and very happy. Benjamin is a good man and yes, he treats me in the manner I deserve.” Amanda was clearly happy to visit with her old friend. “How is Fiona?” she now asked. “She was going to Montreal, according to last letter.”
“Yes, yes. I only now have had a letter telling me that she arrived... But I see from your guests you are not here to discuss old family friendships.” The older woman made a rough curtsey and greeted the two strangers. “Bessie McFarland, gentlemen,” she introduced herself.
“Jeremiah Sherrington, at your service,” replied the older man with an equally pleasant and genuine smile, taking the lady’s hand and bestowing upon it a decorous kiss. To Edward’s surprise, the woman giggled and blushed. Not for the first time, Edward was amazed at his friend’s ability to become immediate friends with all he encountered.
Now Edward himself bowed to the lady of the house. “Edward Gardiner, of London,” he offered, hoping to be as friendly as Sherrington. He knew he was relying on Mrs. McFarland’s goodwill for his request to be honoured. Mrs. McFarland led the small gathering into the house and offered them seats at the kitchen table whilst she placed a kettle on the fire for tea. “Now what can I do for you?” she asked.
Amanda began to speak, but faltered, uncertain of how much of the tale to reveal. After a few false starts, Sherrington asked if he might continue, and was quickly accorded the privilege. He outlined the story for Mrs. McFarland, emphasizing the parts he deemed might appeal to her sensibilities and omitting details he reckoned irrelevant. The lady sat stunned as she listened to the strange story laid out before her.
“And so,” she pronounced in her gentle brogue, “you believe this poor maligned boy is hiding in the secret cellar under my barn? Well I’ll be!”
“We cannot be certain, madam, but he may be.”
The lady was flustered. “Well,” she said at last. “Well....”
Sherrington continued. “Have you any notion of some unusual activities here of late?”
“No, not that I can say. But my Alastair did come to visit me just two days past. He usually comes for Sunday, but it is not unusual for him to appear of an evening as well, hoping for some pie or jam to take back to his room in town. He arrived in mid evening and we had a nice gab over a meal as I told him about Fiona’s letters. Her husband is hoping to establish a shop in Montreal, you see, and she was all excited to tell me about the voyage and the people she has met already...” She blushed. “But you’re not here for this. You wish to examine the barn.”
Sherrington nodded politely. “We would be most grateful if you might allow us to investigate.”
“Yes, of course. If this poor boy has been done out of his land and is in danger of his life...” Then she looked up curiously at Sherrington and narrowed her eyes at him. “But how, sir, do I know that you are not the one conspiring, hoping to abet a real criminal in making another daring escape?”
Amanda gasped in dismay and Edward’s face lost all colour, but Sherrington merely chuckled. “Ah, madam, I see you are wise and cautious. I admire these properties in a person, and I am fully prepared to state my claim in hopes that you may come to believe me.” He reached into a pocket and withdrew the letter from the king.
“This, to begin, may establish my credentials.” He smiled quietly as Bessie McFarland gaped at the signature affixed to the bottom of the letter. “As well,” he continued, “Sir John Wentworth, who governs the colony, has issued a retraction of the directive to arrest young Grant. You may send a messenger into town to confirm this claim, at my expense of course. Sir John knows some of the individuals involved and has complete faith in my story. Shall I send for a boy to run the errand for you? Whom do you trust to complete the task quickly? He may take my horse.”
Mrs. McFarland blinked and shook her head. “No, no, that will not be necessary. Your complete confidence in the outcome of such an errand is proof enough for me, even should I suspect that letter.” Then, in a quieter voice, “Have you really met the king?”
“We play cards on occasion, madam.” Sherrington’s face was a mask of modesty as he made this alarming statement.
“Well,” Mrs. McFarland breathed at last. “Well. Then let us proceed to the barn, gentlemen. And Amanda.” She led the way through the field to the building that lay beyond the house.
At first glance, the structure was a barn like any other, with piles of hay and fodder piled up against one wall and a collection of farming equipment taking up much of the central space. She led them past the ploughs and ladders and pruning shears, beyond the sacks of fodder, to where a doorway opened up to lead to the field at the back of the building. Just before the doorway, she reached towards the wall beside it and pulled at a small wooden beam, which moved in her hand. As it did so, the company turned at the sound of creaking wood behind them.
A trap door was opening up in the floor, its irregular shape blending in completely with the wooden planks around it. “This was built by my husband and his men when we thought we might have to fight for king and country on these shores,” she explained. “Amanda, come and have more tea with me and I shall tell you of Fiona’s letter. Gentlemen, I leave you to your investigations.” She led the younger woman out of the barn.
Edward was the first to descend the ladder in the dark space below. It was inhabited, he could sense immediately. The air was musty, but held the scent of a recently extinguished candle, and the faint whiff of food reached him through the stale air. He called out, alerting the denizens of the cave to his identity.
“Do not be alarmed. It is I, Edward Gardiner, friend to Lynnie Grant. I am here only to help. Please may I enter?”
As he crept further down the ladder, he began to hear sounds. First, they were only the noises of quiet breathing, the sounds of a man trying to avoid making any sound at all. Then, a voice whispered, “We are found.”
The sound of a flint being struck reached his ears, and a bright but small light flared some distance off. The light moved to kindle a candle, and then another, and Edward waited for his eyes to become accustomed to the gloom as Benjamin and Sherrington followed him into the cellar, bringing with them a lantern that allowed them to observe the space in which they found themselves.
The room was quite large - almost the entire size of the barn above - with alcoves for storage and with crude cots. There was no fireplace, but glimmers of light from the roof betrayed the existence of vents to keep the air somewhat fresh. In the far corner, up against a wall, there was a large table and several chairs, upon which a dark figure sat. Edward moved toward it, and as he came close enough and his eyes adjusted, he gasped at what he saw.
Facing him, looking tired and haggard, sat a young man about his own age. His eyes were pale and scared, but it was not the eyes alone that struck Edward. Rather, the man looked, for all the world, like an older version of Matthew, although with hair that appeared reddish rather than straw in colour. The face was a man’s face, not a boy’s, with harder lines and several days growth of beard, but the likeness to Matthew was alarming.
Is Matthew an illegitimate son, then? Edward wondered. If so, the two brothers must favour their common parent uncommonly, for the similarity between the two was remarkable. Edward stared at the man, and the man stared back.
Before he could think further, though, another sound caused Edward to turn to seek its source. In one of the alcoves, obscured from the table, but visible to the central width of the room in which Edward stood, was a tub, not quite large enough for an adult to sit within. A figure stood by the tub, clearly having been caught in the midst of washing. The person was nearly bare from the waist up, and faced away from the central space, but as it turned to see the newcomer, Edward could just, by the light from the lantern, make out the face. It was Matthew’s face.
As the figure turned, Edward was aware of something more. The figure had been wrapping something around its torso, and in the dim light, Edward saw the curve of a woman’s breast above the last round of cloth. The remaining wrappings fell loose and the figure turned fully to face him, shocked for a moment before grabbing the pile of wrappings and clinging them to the exposed body.
But it was not the body he expected to see. The face was Matthew’s face, soft, round and smooth, but instead of the hard bare chest of a beardless youth, Edward saw the full soft bosom of a grown woman. He gasped and turned away in embarrassment as the figure cried softly, “Edward!”
Edward did not know what to think. Stunned, shocked beyond belief, he stumbled back to the light from the trapdoor and scrambled up the ladder as quickly as he was able. His legs were shaking and he felt ill. What had he seen? Matthew was a woman? Could it be true? Had he been deceived all this time? And that face, that looked so much like her brother, that voice that he knew so well...
The realization struck then like a thunderbolt—Matthew was, in reality, his beloved Lynnie. Lynnie was Matthew.
Edward’s world shattered at that moment, splintering into million shards. He felt the ground beneath his feet sway and the solid walls swam around him in his shock.
Everything he had hoped for now lay in ruins. He was horrified, mortified even, and very angry. He had been betrayed by the people he thought he loved, and for whom he had risked so much in this ill-starred journey to rescue them. Him. Her. He did not know how to think. Matthew, his trusted assistant, the boy he had carried from the river bed that cold day by Derby, was a girl. A woman.
He had done so much for the boy. He had saved him from grave injury, maybe death. He had given him a home, an occupation, a living. He had fed and clothed him, given him companionship and friendship, a new start, a new life. Edward suddenly recollected those moments in Derby and beyond, sharing the rooms in the inns in which they had stayed, where he had wondered about the boy’s master and his reluctance to disrobe in Edward’s presence. That had been the beginning of the lies. And—now Edward remembered with a leaden weight in his belly—he himself had changed clothing in the boy’s presence. But not a boy at all. Edward, an adult man, had been alone in a room, unclothed, in the presence of a woman not his wife. He felt ill.
And what of that woman?
Lynnie, the woman he loved, had misled him from the start. He had given her his heart, and she had given him lies and subterfuge. He had offered love and she had offered excuses and obfuscation. She had accepted his kisses but had not tendered to him the one thing he needed: her faithfulness. She had deceived him. They had both deceived him, for they were the same person.
He felt a stabbing in his heart as surely as if a solid knife had been plunged into his body. Every dream he had entertained of life with Lynnie had crumbled to dust. Just minutes before, he had been unable to contemplate life without her. Now, he could not run away quickly enough. How could he love someone who could toy so effortlessly with his affections? How could he live with one who would think nothing of manipulating others for her own gain? His trust had been abused and he felt he would never again be able to open his heart.
His great distress, coupled with his unsteady stomach from the previous night’s overindulgence, caused his body to react, and he scrambled up the ladder and ran from the barn into the field beyond where he submitted to natural forces and expelled what little he had eaten for breakfast. He stood, half bent over, hands on his knees to help support his weight as his stomach emptied itself over the freshly turned earth. Unable to breathe, unable to think, he remained there for some moments, heaving onto the dark soil. The world around him seemed to blacken as his vision clouded over and he heard nothing but the blood rushing in his ears and the rough gasping of his breath. He knew not how he remained upright, but some small vestige of strength supported his bones. After some moments, he stood slightly straighter, heaving, trying to regain his breath, still scarcely able to stand, unable to comprehend what he had seen.
Gradually as his laboured inhalations settled into more regular breaths, he became aware of somebody behind him. Sherrington, he assumed. “Leave me,” he growled, not turning to face the intruder.
The intruder did not leave.
“I said LEAVE ME!”
Footsteps approached, then a hand softly touched his shoulder.
“I said...” he began as he spun around, rage in his eyes.
He came face to face with the murderess of his hopes and dreams.
“Edward,” she whispered. “I am sorry. Will you let me explain? Will you listen to me?”
He closed his eyes and tried to breathe. All he could manage was a cold, rough “No,” before walking away, tears in his eyes, heart lying broken on the ground by the false one’s feet.