As they climbed the narrow staircase Jean-Philippe tried hard to call to mind the faces of the three de Joncourt girls who had been in the parlour. He could not. But they’d seemed young, and he remarked on that.
“The eldest is near twenty,” Bonneau told him. “Jeanne. A lovely girl, but fonder of a red coat than our white ones, I’m afraid. Her youngest sister, Phila, is but ten, and still a child. And Rachel, in between them, is sixteen. A girl so young, in my experience, is apt to think on love when you are minded to less lasting pleasures, so it’s neither nice nor kind to sport with them.” The captain’s glance was speculative. “How old is your mademoiselle?”
Jean-Philippe, to any other man, might have replied she was not his, but in the face of Bonneau’s easy charm he found himself responding with a shrug instead, defensively. “I’ve never asked.”
They’d reached the upper floor. Along the corridor, towards the end, a door stood open. Inside, in a bed heaped warm with quilts, the sergeant lay alone, his bandaged head against the pillow. He was sleeping.
Bonneau stayed within the doorway. “There’s a chair there you can pull across to sit beside him. I do that some days. He never sleeps for long. The pain,” he said, by way of explanation, “will not let him.”
Frowning, Jean-Philippe asked, “How long has he been like this?”
“Like this? I could not say. They only brought him here two weeks ago. Before that he was in the prison hospital, but Captain Wheelock—you have met him? He sent orders that your man should be moved here instead. He is a good man, Wheelock.”
“He would seem to be.”
“No, you must take my word. I’ve been here for a while, and of the English soldiers I have dealt with he has been the best of them.” Bonneau nodded towards the bed. “Your sergeant is a good man also. I don’t think I’ve yet heard him complain.”
“It’s not his nature to complain.” Taking the plain rush-seated chair that had been set beside the window, Jean-Philippe moved it with quiet care across so he could sit as Bonneau had suggested, at the bedside of the wounded man. “His name is Jacques Le Roy, but he is called La Réjouie.”
It was a long tradition in the army—common soldiers having second names that they were called by, often given to them for some trait of personality. His sergeant’s meant “the cheerful one,” because he always smiled.
“It suits him well,” Bonneau agreed. “Though with more time here he may grow as disagreeable as me.”
Beneath the light tone Jean-Philippe could hear an edge of truthfulness, and glancing up asked, “How long have you been here?”
“I was taken the July before this past one, up at Carillon. The English general gave me leave to go to Montreal to put my few affairs in order first, but naturally I had to come back down here to surrender when I’d finished, and I’ve been here ever since, waiting to be exchanged. If any good comes at all from our loss of Quebec it will be that there are enough officers taken on both sides to force a cartel,” he said. “But it’s a damnable paradox, having to wait for your enemy’s victory so you can get back in the fight.”
A man who felt his own frustration, then.
The sergeant stirred. His eyes were coming open.
“Well,” Bonneau said, “I will leave you two to talk. I’ll see you downstairs after.”
Jean-Philippe took little notice of the other’s leaving. His attention was already on his sergeant, who was struggling to raise himself as though he thought it disrespectful to be lying down when in the presence of an officer.
“No, rest,” said Jean-Philippe. “Lie still.”
“I can do little else, in honesty.” La Réjouie grinned feebly. “I am like a child.” His ribs were obviously hurting him. He shifted to relieve them before going on. “I told him you would come, you know. That other one, the captain here, I told him you would find out where I was and come to see me. ‘It may not be easy,’ that was what he told me, and I said to him, ‘You don’t know my lieutenant. Wait and see.’ And here you are.”
It was a touching thing to know that you had earned a good man’s trust. “I’m sorry that I took so long.”
“No matter. I can barely keep the days and weeks in order.” With a motion to his head, La Réjouie said, “Everything gets jumbled up together. I can’t even tell you what today is.”
“It’s the second of November.”
“Is it? Truly? Well, you see I should be grateful for this injury, because it makes the time of my captivity fly by.” He coughed, and tried to hide his wince.
“You’ve reported to the English how this happened?”
“I have told them, yes.” A smile. “I can’t say whether any of them wrote it down.”
“Tell me.”
“They were marching a detachment of our men towards some place called Hempstead. I was at the back, as is my place, and when we came to where the road bent on ahead and none could see, an English corporal and one of the private soldiers of their escort came behind and one of them—I couldn’t tell you which it was—dealt me so hard a blow across my back with the butt of his firelock that I fell there and could neither move nor call for help. And having me then at their mercy, both of them, still with their firelock butts, began to beat me. I lost count at thirty blows.”
“They meant to murder you?”
“I did not think to ask them their intent,” the sergeant answered with his usual good humour. “But I expect my purse was of more interest to them than my life, because they took that with them, even though it only held a crown, two dollars, and some coppers.”
“And they left you there for dead?”
He shrugged. “One did return, and held his hand above my mouth to see if I still breathed, but being less than trusting by this point I held my breath, and being satisfied that I was dead he gave me one last blow upon my stomach and departed.”
Jean-Philippe could feel an echo of that blow in his own stomach, where deep anger had begun to burn.
As if aware of this, La Réjouie said, “I was found by local people, and they cared for me and saw that I was carried back here to New York, to Dr. Talman, who has treated me most expertly and with great kindness.” As though he were speaking to a child needing reassurance, he remarked, “There are good people here as well, sir.”
“Yes,” said Jean-Philippe. “I know there are. But I will see the ones who did this to you brought to trial and punished. I’ll see you get justice.”
He’d have promised more, but already the sergeant’s eyes were drifting closed again, his bandaged head turning with heaviness against the pillow as the urgent sleep of convalescence claimed him.
Jean-Philippe sat half an hour after in the chair beside the bed, but seeing that La Réjouie was not about to waken he rose quietly and left the room.
Downstairs, he found a newcomer had joined the gathering in the de Joncourts’ parlour.
Captain Wheelock, rising now to greet him, could not possibly have known just how unwelcome Jean-Philippe found the mere sight of that red uniform.
In French, the captain asked him, “You have seen your sergeant?”
“Yes. Have you?”
“No, I’m afraid I only got back yesterday. I have been in the Jerseys.”
“But you are aware what happened to him?”
Wheelock raised a shoulder and admitted, “I’ve heard some of it.”
“Then let me tell you all.” Aware that there were children in the room, he drew the English captain to one side so they’d have privacy to talk, and there repeated what La Réjouie had said to him, concluding with, “I will expect that charges will be laid.”
“Yes.” Captain Wheelock’s frown seemed genuinely troubled. “I should never wish for such a crime to go unpunished. I’ll let General Amherst know of it. You have my word.”