seemed to object to what was happening, but Sophie couldn’t understand what they were saying until Mr. Christie translated their objections for her. To that point all the testimony and bickering back and forth between the lawyers had been in English. She’d thought that natural. Mr. Christie, though, wondered how many of the men actually spoke or understood English. Sophie asked Luc.
“Probably only four,” he answered angrily but softly. “I don’t see why they can’t have interpreters.”
Mr. Christie shrugged. “That’s only one of many things I don’t understand,” he answered dryly. “These men are farmers, not soldiers. If this were a criminal court, their lawyers could speak for them. Instead, as we’ll see today, they have to be their own lawyers while the government uses two of the best in the entire province. It’s madness,” he finished, shaking his head in disgust.
Sophie immediately thought of her papa. She knew that, even as clever as he was, he’d find it difficult to act as his own lawyer in front of this court martial. She turned to Luc, wondering if he’d known exactly what handicaps Marc faced. To her amazement, he didn’t look perturbed. “Don’t worry, Sophie,” he told her a little smugly. “Marc can take care of himself. You’ll see.”
Although the testimony that morning had little to do with Marc, it was still fascinating. Most of the defendants had been involved in a curious incident the Saturday night before the rebellion began. In Châteauguay, a neighbouring village of Beauharnois, the rebels had been led by Joseph-Narcisse Cardinal, a lawyer. Like Marc, Cardinal wasn’t one of the top leaders, although, again like Marc, he appeared to know their plans. What he hadn’t known, however, was the part he and his men should play in the rebellion.
By listening to the testimony, Sophie pieced together their story. When they met the Saturday night of 3 November, they dithered and dilly-dallied about what they’d do. Some wanted to be part of the attack on Edward and Jane Ellice’s manor house in Beauharnois, others wanted to go off to join the main rebel group in Napierville. Eventually they decided to get some extra weapons from the Mohawks on the nearby reserve of Caughnawaga.
And so they set off, about eighty of them, in the dark. As they stumbled their way through the woods, they lost track of each other and were heard by a native woman searching for a lost cow. She ran back to her village and told the elders about the large number of men in the woods. About dawn the Mohawks challenged some of Cardinal’s men. As the rebels prepared to fight, one of their leaders, Maurice Lepailleur, stepped forward. “Don’t shoot,” he told the men. “We’ve come to get guns, not hurt anyone.”
The Mohawks quickly rounded them up and took them at gunpoint across the frigid St. Lawrence to Montreal in their canoes. Thus, these would-be rebels were in jail before the rebellion even broke out. After the Mohawks finished testifying, a local magistrate named John McDonald corroborated the story, adding his reason for the whole fiasco: rebellion against the queen.
Sophie thought that was ridiculous. How could an attempt to borrow guns be rebellion? Obviously, though, the officer-judges thought it was if the captain closest to Sophie was any indication. She’d never seen anyone sit at attention before. She hadn’t thought it possible until she’d seen him. He stared at the prisoners with a supercilious look on his face and not once did she see him blink. His folded arms were held slightly in front of his medalled chest and he sat so rigidly that he might well have been a statue.
Once the prisoners began cross-examining the witnesses against them, Sophie wondered if, secretly, he might have found the goings-on as silly as she did. It was like a three-ring circus. The accused asked their questions in French. These were first translated into English for the officer-judges, then into Mohawk for the witnesses. The answers were translated into English only.
After realizing this, Sophie turned to Luc. “It doesn’t seem fair. No one tells them the answers. What’s more, I can’t see what Marc had to do with any of it. None of them have even mentioned him.”
She’d no sooner got the words out of her mouth than Magistrate McDonald was recalled to the stand for the sole purpose of implicating Marc. A tall, very thin man, he swaggered to the witness stand with mincing, self-important steps. Once there he nodded to the officer-judges as though he was trying to let them know he was on their side. Marc Moriset, he testified, had crossed the St. Lawrence in the early hours of Sunday morning, the fourth of November. Sophie smiled as she thought it must have been an incredibly busy time on the river. At first light, the Mohawks had been paddling their canoes north with guns aimed at their prisoners. It must have been quite a sight and she wondered if Marc might have seen it when he was supposedly travelling south. She stopped grinning, however, as Mr. McDonald elaborated on his previous testimony.
He’d been captured by the rebels and taken to a makeshift prison in Châteauguay early that Sunday morning. Peering through a narrow slit in a boarded-up window, he had seen Marc teach military drills to the Châteauguay men and drill them daily for the rest of the week. Finally, the magistrate went on, shuddering dramatically as he seemed to remember the horrors of Saturday, November 10, Marc took him and the other captives to the main prison in Napierville.
“We were all important men,” he went on, preening a little, it seemed, for the benefit of the officer-judges. “Men like Mr. Ellice of Beauharnois, as well as myself. Yet we were herded onto a cart like cattle, gagged and handcuffed.”
Sophie bit back a giggle as she wondered how anyone could handcuff cattle. Mr. McDonald, however, didn’t seem to notice that he had said anything ridiculous. “I will remember that morning to my dying day.” His voice wavered pitifully. Probably, Sophie thought, so that everyone could imagine how horrible an experience it had been. He paused, then pointed dramatically at Marc. “And that man, there, was in charge of the convoy. He personally walked beside the cart. Every now and then he spoke. Every time he did, it was an insult to me and my queen.”
“He’s lying,” Sophie whispered fiercely. “He has to be.”
She hadn’t cared much for the man until that point. But when he’d mentioned Mr. Ellice’s name, her dislike escalated into something like hatred.
After her papa became engaged to Lady Theo, she’d met a lot of people like this Mr. McDonald. They floated around the fringes of English society. Generally, they would ignore her. That is, until they found out her connection to Lady Theo and, of course, to Lady Theo’s brother, the Earl of Hornsby. Suddenly, she became their new best friend. Everything she said was clever. They laughed at every joke she made, told her she looked beautiful. She’d smile and try not to let her irritation show. Lady Theo had told her that was the way a true lady behaved but, inwardly, she despised them.
She looked at Luc. Surely, she thought, he has to realize the magistrate’s testimony could mean the hangman’s noose for Marc. This wasn’t a silly attempt to borrow guns. Mr. McDonald had told the officer-judges that Marc drilled men to fight; he acted like a rebel when he commanded the Napierville escort. Luc should have been worried out of his mind. Instead, he smiled as Mr. McDonald added details to his story.
When the magistrate finished, the prisoners began, one after another, to cross-examine him. He waited for their questions with a supercilious smile. Sophie thought it was his way of letting them know that he understood more law than they did. The magistrate also seemed to take great delight in pretending that he didn’t understand French, answering some questions with a dismissive shrug, others sarcastically. He was cruel as well, Sophie thought. One man had a stutter and it took him a long time to get his question out. McDonald answered them in French. Even Sophie, with her poor knowledge of the language, realized that he mocked the man by imitating his stutter.
Finally, Marc stood. Both Luc and Sophie leaned forward on the edge of their seats. In stark
