The Hunt for the North Star: A historical tale of espionage, combat and betrayal

By A.J. MacKenzie

No one is safe. Everyone is a suspect. The thrilling new historical epic from bestsellers A.J. Mackenzie.

Fresh from his success at the Battle of Queenston, war hero John MacLea is thrown straight back into the maelstrom of tactical espionage.

American master spy Polaris has so far evaded capture, and the longer he remains at large the more dangerous he becomes to the allied British and Canadian forces.

John travels to York, capital of Upper Canada, deep into a sinister world of treachery, where secrets and lies are an everyday currency. He must discover the identity of Polaris, for a deadly plot is brewing, one that may signal total defeat for the allied troops. Failure is not an option...

The jaw-dropping sequel to The Ballad of John Maclea, full to the brim with scintillating action, nail-biting suspense and meticulously detailed historical research, perfect for fans of Adrian Goldsworthy, Bernard Cornwell and Conn Iggulden.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Canelo Action
• Release date: Jun 20, 2019
• ISBN: 9781788633055

A.J. MacKenzie

A.J. Mackenzie is the pseudonym of Marilyn Livingstone and Morgen Witzel, an Anglo-Canadian husband-and-wife team of writers and historians. They write non-fiction history and management books under their own names, but ‘become’ A.J. MacKenzie when writing fiction. Morgen has an MA in renaissance diplomacy from the University of Victoria, but since the late 1990s has concentrated on writing books on leadership and management. Several of his books have been international best-sellers. Marilyn has a PhD in medieval economic history from the Queen’s University, Belfast. She is a musician who writes music and also plays in a silver band and sings in an a capella trio. They have written two books of medieval history together, and also several novels, including the Hardcastle & Chaytor mysteries set on Romney Marsh during the French Revolution. Marilyn Livingstone was diagnosed with cancer in 2022 and passed away in September 2023.

Book preview

Copyright

The Hunt for the North Star by A. J. MackenzieCaneloNiagara Frontier

Niagara Frontier

Province of Canada

Province of Canada

Prologue

The night air had teeth. Sharp, jagged particles of snow, blown by a strong north wind, swept through the little town of York, blanketing the streets in sudden white. Magnus Fraser, stepping out of Jordan’s Hotel into the darkness of Ontario Street, felt the snow sting his eyes and cheeks. Cursing, he turned up his collar and stood for a moment, waiting while his vision adjusted to the darkness. Another man came out of the hotel and stopped beside him, rubbing his gloved hands together.

‘It would seem that winter has arrived,’ the second man said.

‘Winter,’ said Fraser in tones of gloom. ‘I still cannot believe that people choose to make their homes in this godforsaken country. Snow and ice and cold every damned day, and months to wait until spring.’

‘Assuming any of us live to see it,’ said the other man. His name was John Beverley Robinson; he was a young man, still in his early twenties, but despite his youth he was attorney general of Upper Canada. He had been appointed just a few weeks earlier, after his predecessor was killed at the Battle of Queenston.

‘I wouldn’t bet a farthing on us lasting until Christmas,’ Robinson continued. ‘The Americans are preparing to attack again, and with Polaris and his agents feeding them information from inside our high councils, there is every chance they will succeed.’

Fraser frowned. ‘Are you certain they’re coming? It’s late in the season. Most armies would be going into winter quarters by now.’

‘Our scouts are quite convinced of it,’ said Robinson. ‘They will attack the Niagara frontier again; exactly where and when, we have no idea.’

‘And what are we doing about it?’ Fraser asked.

Robinson spread his gloved hands. ‘Sitting and waiting. What else can we do? General Sheaffe has written to Sir George Prévost in Montreal, begging for reinforcements. He won’t get them, of course, because there aren’t any. Every man, horse and gun that can be spared has been sent to join Wellington in Spain. And so here we are, with two battalions of regulars and a handful of militia, facing an American army of fifty thousand men. We’re outnumbered twenty to one.’

They walked down Ontario Street towards the waterfront. Snow whipped around them, blurring the outlines of the houses. Here and there, rays of lamplight shone through cracks in the shutters, bright streaks amid the whirling darkness. Someone passed them walking in the opposite direction, whistling despite the weather. Fraser recognised the tune; it was a popular song, ‘The Ballad of John MacLea’, composed in honour of the Canadian hero who had almost single-handedly won the Battle of Queenston last month. Or so people said. Fraser had been around for too long and seen too much to believe in heroes.

Today was the 25th of November 1812. America and Britain had been at war for five months, at a time when Britain was already involved in a life-and-death struggle with Napoleon Bonaparte and his French empire. Out at sea, British and American warships played cat and mouse amid the Atlantic storms, but the real point of crisis was here in Upper Canada. The Americans had already tried twice to invade and had been repulsed, first at Detroit earlier in the summer and then at Queenston.

‘Polaris is the key to everything,’ Robinson said. ‘He seems to know all our plans, all our intentions, almost before we know them ourselves. We have no idea who he is. He could be a disaffected British officer, or one of those Canadians who believes that Canada’s true destiny is to become part of America, or even an American agent planted before the war. All we know is that he must be found.’

‘I understand,’ said Fraser. ‘Sir George Prévost told me all this back in Montreal. He is well aware of the threat.’

‘Yes,’ said Robinson. He paused. ‘You’ve only been in York for a week. I suppose it is too soon for you to have made any headway.’

They walked on for a few moments. Up ahead, the parliament buildings were dim shapes in the night and snow.

‘As a matter of fact, I have,’ said Fraser, and he could not quite keep the satisfaction from his voice. ‘I was going to wait and make a full report tomorrow, but I may as well tell you now. I have found a man who claims to know who Polaris is. I am meeting him this very evening.’

Robinson halted in surprise. ‘I am impressed,’ he said, but the tone of his voice suggested he was also puzzled. ‘I have been trying for a month to discover some clue as to his identity, and I have found nothing.’

‘That is why you needed my services,’ said Fraser. ‘This is my profession, Mr Robinson. I was a Bow Street Runner for ten years, and a professional enquiry agent for longer than that. Sir George hired me as his chief intelligencer because he knows I am the best.’

‘Yes,’ said Robinson doubtfully. ‘This informant of yours. Who is he?’

Fraser rubbed his forehead, touching the small scar over his left eyebrow. ‘Come, man. You know better than that. We’re playing a game of secrets and lies here. Even if I did ask his name, I doubt he would tell me the truth. All I know is that he is willing to betray his master.’

‘But how does he know who Polaris is?’

‘Polaris doesn’t work alone. He has an organisation – possibly quite a big one. My guess is that this man is one of his junior lieutenants, who for whatever reason has a grudge against his chief and is ready to sell him out.’

‘He wants money?’

‘That’s what he said. I’m to come tonight after dark, alone, with a hundred dollars in gold.’

‘Alone?’ Robinson stared at him. ‘Fraser, you could be walking into a trap. Let me come with you.’

Fraser shook his head. ‘We have to play by his rules. He’ll be watchful, and if he sees someone with me, he’ll suspect betrayal. Then he’ll vanish.’

Robinson said nothing, but his disquiet radiated through the snow.

‘Don’t worry,’ Fraser said. ‘I know how to handle myself.’

Still unhappy, Robinson nodded. ‘All right. But don’t wait until morning. Report to me as soon as the meeting concludes. I will be at home.’

‘Aye,’ said Fraser. ‘Tell your cook to have some coffee on.’ He stamped his booted feet to keep them warm. ‘A drop of rum wouldn’t go amiss, either.’

Robinson said nothing more. Fraser raised his hand in salute, then turned and walked away.

---

On the far side of Lake Ontario, another clandestine rendezvous was taking place. Unlike the one in York, the two people meeting here at Niagara knew a great deal about each other, and the arrangement was familiar and well-practised. They met in a house on the edge of the village, the man entering via the rear door and then being escorted by a maidservant into the drawing room, where he was greeted by a black-haired woman in her late twenties. Their conversation was limited, and its tone was businesslike rather than friendly. At the end of the transaction, the man reached into his pocket and took out a packet of money, which he laid on the table.

‘Our understanding remains the same,’ he said.

The woman nodded. The man retraced his steps to the rear door and slid out into the night.

After he had gone, the woman sat for a few moments staring at the money. She was strikingly beautiful, with high cheekbones and thin eyebrows curving over dark eyes with long, delicate lashes. A tiny web of wrinkles ran out from the corners of her eyes – marks of memory and sorrow.

She sighed and stood up, shaking out the folds of her skirt. Putting on a heavy overcoat, she went upstairs into a tiny dark room. A telescope, a long brass tube mounted on gimbals, gleamed faintly in the light. Quickly she scanned the ground around the house, but saw nothing, no unfamiliar shadows in the darkness. She sighed once more, and then swung the telescope upwards, concentrating on the stars.

---

Turning his back on the parliament buildings, Fraser walked down Palace Street, following the line of the waterfront. Lake Ontario lay dark to his left. His boots crunched in the slush on the street. The snow, although thick, was melting as soon as it landed; by morning it would likely be gone.

In the distance he could see a beam of light shining dimly through the snow: the lighthouse on Gibraltar Point at the entrance to the harbour. In the big houses along the waterfront, a few unshuttered windows cast yellow rectangles of lamplight into the street. Fraser avoided these, keeping to the shadows and tilting his hat so the brim shaded his face.

Once, passing a house, he heard a baby crying; from another came the sound of a violin playing a Mozart sonata with considerable skill. Otherwise, apart from the crunch of his own footsteps, all was silent around him. The falling snow deadened all but the closest sounds. People moved like silent ghosts in the street, their coats and hats brushed with white. There was a strange sense of detachment from the world, as if he was invisible to the people around him, seeing but unseen.

Suddenly the hair stood up on the back of his neck. No. Not unseen. Someone is watching me.

He turned sharply, but the street behind him was empty. He stood in the shadows for a long time, watching, but still saw nothing. Aye, well, he told himself. Just because you can’t see anything doesn’t mean there’s nothing to be seen. Go carefully now, laddie.

He walked on more slowly, all his senses alert. He had been sanguine when talking to Robinson, but he knew full well there might be an ambush waiting for him. On the other hand, he had survived ambushes before, in the London slums and the streets of Paris and the battlefields of Europe. As he had said to Robinson, he knew how to handle himself in a fight.

He reached King Street in the western part of the town. The houses here were newer and more widely spaced, separated by open pastureland and clumps of trees looming dark through the falling snow. Fraser reached into his coat and pulled out a pistol, thumbing back the hammer and checking the priming. It was not just men who might be waiting in ambush here; there were wolves in the woods around York, and it was always possible that on a snowy night they would come slipping in through the darkness, looking for human prey. This was Upper Canada in the year 1812; the layer of European civilisation along the coasts and rivers was very thin, and the wilderness was never far away.

The house he had been directed to was large, with a carriage house and stables at the rear. Its windows were dark and closely shuttered. He studied the house for a long time, looking for a chink of light that might betray human presence, but none could be seen.

Is he there? Fraser wondered. Did the wee bugger get suspicious of me and pull out of the meeting? If so, that’s my work wasted… Or is he sitting inside the house, waiting?

Waiting to talk to me? Or waiting in ambush?

‘Well,’ he murmured to himself. ‘One way or another, it’s time to find out.’

Holding the pistol in one hand, he walked to the front door and knocked. No one answered. He knocked again, but still there was silence. The house loomed over him, a black wall of shadow in the blowing snow.

He tried the door, and found it unlocked. Stepping silently into the hall, he closed the door behind him and stared around in the blackness. At first, he could see nothing at all, but then something caught the corner of his eye, something so faint as to be just on the edge of vision: a line of light under one of the doors leading off the hall. Somewhere in the room beyond, a lamp or candle was burning.

A mixture of relief and satisfaction washed through Fraser’s mind. So he’s here after all, he thought. Right then. Let’s hear what he has to say.

Still cautious, he walked to the door of the room and stopped. The only sound was the ticking of a clock. Silently he turned the handle and pushed the door open.

Before him was a big room, a salon of some sort, with high windows tight-shuttered against the cold and oil paintings hanging on the walls between them. The gilded frames of the paintings glinted dimly in the light of a single candle sitting on top of a fortepiano at the far end of the room. The only other furniture was a few chairs pushed back against the walls and a long-case clock behind the piano, its pendulum swinging slowly, tick-tock, tick-tock, tick-tock.

There was no one else in the room.

He saw something white on top of the piano next to the candlestick. Frowning a little, he walked towards it and saw that it was a letter, sealed with a blob of red wax. His own name, Magnus Fraser, Esq., was written on the front. Laying the pistol on top of the piano, he picked up the letter and broke the seal. Just as he did so, the music began.

The tune itself was familiar enough – Mozart, like the sonata he had heard earlier – but he did not recognise the instrument on which it was being played. At first, the sound seemed sharp to his ears, strange and a little unpleasant, but then as he listened he realised there was a kind of spectral brilliance to it, with slow cascades of notes that seemed in some strange way to bypass his hearing and reach directly into his unconscious mind.

There was a sweetness to the music, and yet it was also impossibly sad, an innocent sorrow like the mourning of a child for its mother, and it tugged at his heartstrings and wrapped itself around his soul. The sorrow was his sorrow; the mourning was for his own mother, who had died when he was young, and the sweetness was the love and comfort he had yearned for as a boy, but never found. Standing in the candlelight and listening, Fraser forgot about the letter and the pistol and the man he had come to meet. The music surrounded him and swallowed him.

Then the notes began to climb up the scale again, faster now, a keening high falsetto with a deeper droning beneath it, like the wind in the trees outside. Sorrow and sweetness both disappeared, replaced by power and fear and menace all mingled together, the notes rising and rising, promising a resolution that never came. Fraser found he was holding his breath.

Suddenly the bright glissando broke. The shower of shimmering notes disintegrated into a nerve-shredding clamour that hit Fraser like a physical force. Steadily the pitch rose, higher and higher, spiralling out of control. This was no music made by human hands; this was now the screaming of a damned soul in the torment of the flames. On and on it went, the air in the room echoing with pain and anger and madness, until Fraser dropped the letter and clutched his hands to his head. He could not hear his own voice, shouting, pleading with the noise to stop. All he could hear was the sound in his head, iron claws clutching at his brain.

And then, as suddenly as it had begun, the sound ceased.

Fraser stood mesmerised, his hands still pressed to his temples. He was panting and sweating like a man who had run a hard race, and he was aware that there were tears on his face, but he could not move his hands to wipe them away. Even though silence had fallen, the trance remained. He had forgotten everything: Polaris, his mission, the gold in his pocket, even his own name. All he could think was: if the music starts again, my heart will stop. I will die.

But the music remained silent. Instead, from behind him came a whisper of movement, someone coming softly but swiftly into the room. He knew the real danger now. He lowered his hands slowly and then, stumbling like a sleepwalker, turned to face the door.

A figure stood in front of him, robed and hooded in black. Beneath the hood, the light of the candle showed him a face from a nightmare, half black and half chalk white. Lips were bared over a rictus of grinning teeth, and eyes glittered like those of a snake gloating over its prey. Rooted to the spot, unable to run or hide, Fraser screamed in pure terror. The black cloak twitched aside and a wickedly pointed steel blade flashed in the candlelight, stabbing upwards towards his chest. Fraser saw the knife but could not move to avoid it. By the time his body hit the floor, he was already dead.

---

There was no nerve-shredding music to accompany the woman’s second appointment of the evening, only the bubble and rush of water in the Niagara River as it joined the great lake. Out here, away from the village, there was little light other than that provided by a waning moon and the stars. A few pinpricks showed on the far side of the river, watchfires on the ramparts of the American fort; Niagara was on the frontier, and the east bank of the river was enemy territory.

A man stood waiting for her on the river foreshore. She approached, and they stood together speaking quietly for a few minutes. Neither was aware of the watcher standing in the shadows. The dim light had allowed him to approach the pair, not close enough to hear their words, but enough to identify them both, and to gather that their exchange was not entirely friendly.

At the end of the conversation, they parted, the woman returning to the village and the man walking away towards Fort George, the British fort that guarded the mouth of the river. His suspicions confirmed, the watcher melted away into the shadows.

The Greco Gambit

Chapter One

Somewhere outside, a dog was barking, its voice sharp with alarm. Up in the loft of the farmhouse, John MacLea rolled out of his cot and began pulling on his uniform, pausing to shake the figure in the other cot. ‘Wake up, Alec. Something’s wrong.’

Murray sat up, rubbing his eyes. ‘What?’

‘I don’t know, but that damned dog won’t shut up.’ MacLea dragged on his boots and reached for his musket and cartridge pouch. ‘Rouse the others. I’ll meet you outside.’

He ran downstairs and out into the farmyard. It was about seven o’clock in the morning on the 28th of November, half an hour before sunrise; not that they would see much of the sun in this weather. Low grey clouds scudded across the sky, driven by the same biting north wind that had been blowing for several days.

In its kennel near the barn the dog was half hysterical, howling and barking while it danced on its hind legs and scrabbled to get out. Old Joseph Hershey, the owner of the farmhouse where MacLea and his men were billeted, leant out of a window and shouted at the dog in German, and then saw MacLea.

‘Was ist los, Captain?’

‘I don’t know,’ said MacLea. ‘Keep your family indoors and away from the windows.’

‘Ja, ve vill do so.’ The window closed.

Cautiously, musket cradled in his arms, MacLea walked out onto the road that ran past the farmhouse. On the other side of the road were the dark waters of the Niagara River, rushing between broad banks. On the far side of the river, a few hundred yards away, were the dark forests of the hostile American shore.

Hill and Moses Crabbe were standing in the road, listening to the pop-pop-pop of faraway gunfire on the wind. ‘Where is it coming from?’ MacLea asked.

‘South, sir,’ said Crabbe. ‘Sounds like it might be coming from Frenchman’s Creek.’

Faint but unmistakable came the sound of more musket shots in the distance. Frenchman’s Creek was about two miles away to the south. A small detachment of British regulars was posted there, guarding the bridge over the creek where it ran down to join the Niagara.

MacLea turned as the rest of his men hurried out of the farmyard to join him. Murray, like himself, wore a rifle-green uniform; the rest were in civilian clothes, with only a white armband on their coats to mark them as Canadian militia. They had heard the musketry too, and were alert; Alec Murray sniffed the air as if he could already smell the powder smoke. Murray liked fighting.

‘Yankees?’ he asked.

‘Sounds like they’re trying to take the bridge at Frenchman’s Creek,’ MacLea said.

Murray nodded. He was a big man, square-shouldered and sandy-haired, a reassuring presence whenever danger threatened. ‘We’d better get down there, then.’

‘Carson,’ MacLea said. ‘Run to Chippawa, as fast as you can. Tell Colonel Bisshopp the Americans have landed. We’re going up to see what is happening.’

They set off down the road, slipping and stumbling from time to time in the half-frozen mud, the icy wind whipping around them. Up ahead, the crackle of gunfire grew louder.

‘May I ask a question, Captain?’ said McTeer, panting.

‘Go on,’ MacLea replied.

‘There’s only ten of us now Carson has gone. What happens when we get to the bridge and find a couple of hundred Yankees swarming over it?’

‘We’ll think of something,’ MacLea said.

A month earlier he had led fifty men into battle at Queenston. But his company had been disbanded after the battle, and only a handful of men remained behind. Murray, his sergeant and also his closest friend. The two scouts, Croghan and Miller. Abel Thomas and Moses Crabbe, both runaway slaves who had escaped from America. McTeer the clerk from Burlington, Appleby the butcher’s boy from York, Carson the wheelwright, Schmidt the restless wanderer, Hill… well, who knew where Hill had come from, or what went on in his mind. The men had never said why they decided to stay with him, and MacLea had never asked.

They passed another isolated farm. Cattle were lowing inside the barns. Beyond lay empty fields, and then the forest closed in, a thick belt of leafless trees overhanging the road, branches stark black against the clouds. Suddenly Miller, who was in the lead, slid to a stop and flung out one arm, pointing.

‘Movement in the woods, Cap’n!’

The others halted without need of orders and knelt in the mud, raising their muskets and checking their priming. MacLea crouched down beside Miller, following his outstretched finger. Dark figures were gliding through the trees, but in the faint dawn light he could not make out who they were. ‘Halt!’ he shouted. ‘Who goes there?’

‘Friend!’ came the response. ‘Captain MacLea, is that you?’

MacLea felt a sudden rush of relief. ‘Captain Givins!’ he called. ‘I’m glad to hear your voice, sir.’

‘Likewise,’ said James Givins, stepping out of the woods onto the road. He was a stocky man in his fifties, wearing the red coat of a British officer. ‘What are you doing here?’

‘The same as you, I expect,’ said MacLea. ‘Marching to the sound of the guns. How many men do you have?’

‘Twenty,’ said Givins. He turned his head and called something in a language MacLea recognised as Ojibwemowin, the Ojibwe tongue, and a moment later more men came gliding silently out of the trees, dressed in buckskins, faces painted red and black and white, carrying battered, well-used muskets. They looked alert and ready for a fight, and the sight of them gladdened MacLea’s heart. He knew from past experience how even a few Indian warriors could strike fear into American hearts.

‘These are Mississaugas,’ Givins said. ‘This is Sekahos, their leader. He’s an old friend of mine.’

Sekahos was a big man, his face painted dull red and black. He wore a tomahawk and two knives at his belt and a rosary around his neck. ‘Bonjour,’ he said. ‘I think you must be John MacLea. Chief Norton told me about you.’ He nodded. ‘It is a good day for fighting, non?’

‘It will be better once we know what we’re up against,’ said MacLea. Ahead, the firing had stopped. ‘Let’s get to the bridge and find out what’s going on.’

At the edge of the trees they crouched down, looking out through the dim morning across another expanse of ploughed field towards the bridge, a simple wooden structure spanning the creek. A tavern, a two-storey building with a barn and stable block behind it, stood next to the road between their position and the bridge, perhaps a hundred yards away.

The fields were swarming with American infantry, regulars in blue coats with white frogging and cross belts. Some were demolishing the bridge; even at this distance, the steady chunk of axes could be heard. Others were guarding both ends of it. MacLea counted about ninety men at the north end, facing them; roughly three times the size of their own force. A similar detachment stood at the south end. In total he reckoned there were at least two hundred Americans, probably more.

‘We had troops here, protecting the bridge,’ said Captain Givins, crouching beside him. ‘Where are they?’

‘Driven off?’ said MacLea. ‘Scattered in the forest by now. Or dead.’ They could see bodies on the bank at the far end of the bridge, some wearing blue coats, others in British red.

Alec Murray knelt, sighting along the barrel of his musket and watching the Americans. ‘What do you think?’ he asked.

‘If they destroy the bridge, they’ll cut the road between Chippawa and Fort Erie,’ MacLea said. ‘The Americans attacked Fort Erie two days ago but were beaten off. I reckon they’re trying again. These fellows were dispatched to stop us from sending reinforcements to the fort.’

The heavy thump of the axes continued. ‘I reckon you’re right,’ said Murray. ‘So, we need to stop them.’

‘With thirty men?’ asked Givins. ‘We’ll need reinforcements of our own.’

‘I’ve sent a runner to Chippawa,’ MacLea said.

Murray shook his head. ‘It’s ten miles to Chippawa, John, over a damned rough road. It will take Carson at least an hour to get there, and probably two more for Bisshopp to assemble his men and march down here. By that time the Yankees will have smashed up the bridge and be waiting for us on the far bank. We’ll have to do something before then.’

‘Agreed,’ said MacLea.

Givins shrugged. ‘All right. What are your orders?’

MacLea hesitated. ‘I’m just a militia captain,’ he said. ‘You’re the staff officer.’

‘Not any more,’ said Givins. ‘I’ve been dismissed from the staff and sent back to the Indian Department. Anyway, you’re the hero. Tell us what to do and we’ll follow you.’

Sekahos nodded. ‘Chief Norton told me what you did at Queenston. Give us your orders, John MacLea.’

MacLea smiled briefly. ‘On your own heads be it,’ he said. ‘Very well. On my signal, open fire. Stay under cover, but make as much noise as you can. Make them think there’s a hundred men here in the woods, not just thirty.’

Givins and Sekahos nodded, slipping away through the trees to pass the word to the Mississaugas. ‘Is this going to work?’ Murray asked.

‘Ask me in half an hour,’ said MacLea. He raised his musket and sighted on the distant Americans. ‘Open fire,’ he said.

Thirty muskets crashed out, belching dirty white smoke into the wind. Echoes roared in the forest. The Mississaugas began their war cries, whooping and screaming defiance at the enemy. The militiamen joined in, yelling and hollering along with them. Reloading rapidly, MacLea sighted on the American ranks and fired again. An officer, a small man with gold epaulettes on his coat, shouted at his men to stand firm, and on his command they raised their muskets and fired back, a full volley that tore splinters out of the trees but did no other damage. Already some of the Americans were edging away, uncertain of the size of the force they faced and horrified by the cries of the Mississaugas.

Another volley followed, but the Americans were firing blind, unable to see MacLea’s men among the trees. One blue-coated soldier fell, then another. Half a dozen more broke ranks and began to run back towards the bridge. The officer shouted at them, waving his sword, but then Croghan shot him through the leg and he too fell to the ground. They could still hear his voice, screaming now. ‘Help me! Don’t leave me for those bastards to torture! Help!’

Two soldiers dropped their muskets and seized hold of the officer, dragging him back towards the bridge. ‘Now!’ shouted MacLea.

Out of the woods they came in a long skirmish line, militia in white armbands and the Mississaugas with their painted faces, all of them yelling, running, pausing to fire and reload and running on again. Two more American soldiers went down, and another clutched at his arm and dropped his musket. Sudden panic seized the rest; they turned and rushed towards the bridge, shoving each other out of the way in their haste to escape. The men working on the bridge dropped their axes and fled too. Running breathless across the ploughed field, MacLea saw that the American detachment at the far end was also breaking ranks. By the time his little force reached the tavern, the Americans were fleeing south towards Fort Erie, quickly swallowed up by the forest.

Gasping for breath, MacLea flung open the door of the tavern and ran inside, covering the common room with his musket. Schmidt and Thomas followed. The place had been looted; tables were overturned and wooden cups lay on the floor. A cask of rum in one corner had been breached and the air was heavy with fumes. A blue-coated American soldier lay face down on the floor, unconscious. Another lolled against the wall, looking up at them with bleary eyes and then letting his head slump forward onto his chest. Abel Thomas, the runaway slave, looked at them and spat with contempt.

‘Schmidt, tie them up,’ said MacLea. ‘We’ll interrogate them later once they sober up. Corporal Thomas, take Crabbe and Hill and Appleby and get upstairs. Cover the bridge from the windows. The rest of you do the same downstairs.’

Schmidt nodded. ‘What about the rum?’ he asked.

‘Let’s not put temptation in front of our own people,’ said MacLea. ‘Pour it away.’

Schmidt shook his head. ‘What a waste,’ he said, but he carried the cask outside and emptied it, and then came back in and began tying up the two prisoners. The door opened again and Givins walked into the common room carrying his musket, his face stained with powder smoke. ‘That was easy,’ he said cheerfully.

MacLea took off his shako and ran one hand through his black hair. ‘A bit too easy, don’t you think?’

Givins shrugged. ‘They’re scared of Sekahos and his friends. And they had their fill of fighting at Queenston last month. They’re not anxious for more.’

‘Perhaps,’ said MacLea, clapping his shako back on his head. ‘And perhaps not. I reckon they’ll be back before long. Alec, take over here. Captain Givins, let’s go take a look at that bridge.’

---

The American axemen had managed to tear up a fair number of planks, but the supporting beams and struts were intact, and the bridge was still serviceable. Of the Americans there was no sign, save for a few blue-coated bodies here and there, and several big flat-bottomed boats beached on the shore where Frenchman’s Creek ran into the Niagara River.

On either side of the stream, broad fields stretched away towards the encroaching forest a quarter of a mile distant. There was nothing in the way of cover around the bridge save for the tavern behind them. MacLea gestured towards it. ‘Ask Sekahos to send his men to join mine,’ he said to Givins. ‘If there aren’t enough windows to shoot from, they can knock loopholes in the walls.’

Givins called to Sekahos and they had a brief conversation in Ojibwemowin, then the Mississaugas began trotting towards the tavern. MacLea looked at the redcoat captain. ‘You said you were dismissed from the staff. What happened?’

Givins shrugged. ‘I’m sure you can guess. Like John Macdonell, and indeed like yourself, I was one of those Canadian officers who found favour with General Brock. He brought me out of the Indian Department where I had been serving for the last ten years and gave me a position on his staff. But after Brock and Macdonell were killed at Queenston, General Sheaffe decided to purge me. Whether it was because I’m Canadian, or he didn’t want any of Brock’s favourites hanging around, I’ll never know.’ He sighed. ‘Nor, I suppose, does it greatly matter. Sheaffe has his own circle of favourites around him now, British officers mostly, men like that pompous ass Colonel Lawrence. He still hates you, by the way. Lawrence, I mean.’

‘I know,’ said MacLea. ‘After Queenston, he tried to persuade Sheaffe to have me shot for disobeying orders.’

‘And Sheaffe probably would have done it, too,’ said Givins. ‘Only by that time you were a popular hero, and people were singing songs about you. If he had prosecuted you, most of the Canadian militia probably would have mutinied.’ He paused. ‘To be fair, you did defy orders in a fairly spectacular fashion. We had been told to stand fast, but you persuaded the militia to break ranks and attack the Americans, and then the British regulars decided they wanted a share of the fun and joined in. What got into you?’

‘John Norton and his Mohawks were fighting the entire American army,’ MacLea said. ‘Someone had to support them. And the Americans had started to fortify their position on Queenston Heights. If we had waited much longer, we would have lost the battle and probably the war.’

‘Oh, agreed,’ said Givins. ‘All the same, it takes a special kind of lunacy to