There’s no evidence left, and the family is satisfied with the explanation. Dredging it all up again at this point would do more harm than good. And he has a point. How do you know it wasn’t a Hunter, a man who got separated from the rest of them and went murdering on his own? In any event, whoever did it is probably miles away by now.”
It would have been much easier for Lewis had his conscience subscribed to this theory, but try as he might, it wouldn’t. There were too many similarities to the other deaths, and he had watched as the Hunters landed, well after the woman had drawn her last breath. He supposed they could have landed farther down the river earlier, committed the foul deed, returned to their ships, then headed for Prescott, but it made no sense for them to attack one lone house and move on. He knew there was a murderer somewhere out there — a murderer who killed for no reason, at least none that made sense to a rational person. He appeared to be the only one who understood this, and reflected on how, if he were not a travelling preacher, he would never have realized the connection between the events. It was only because he was in so many places on so many different occasions that he was able to piece together the details that bound the crimes together.
His thoughts turned again to Francis Renwell. Having murdered once, did he find a peculiar thrill in doing it again? Surely there was no such evil in the world, and yet he knew for a fact that Renwell had been close enough at hand for the first two crimes. But what about this last one? Had he really been in Prescott, huddled against a porch, or was that just who Lewis had wanted to see there? Apparently he had disappeared abruptly from Milford after Lewis had seen him there — packed up his belongings and decamped without a word to anyone, he was told by the carpenter. “Good riddance,” the man had added.
He was sure there was significance to everything he had seen — the Book of Proverbs, the pins, the way in which the bodies were arranged. He could make no sense of it — no connection could be made to Renwell, or to anyone else for that matter. The only thing he knew was that whoever had committed these murders had developed a taste for it — he would murder again. Lewis wanted to find the notion unthinkable, and yet, with the evidence before him, he could only conclude that something vile had been set loose in the land.
VI
News of his labours during the invasion soon spread through the Elizabethtown Circuit, and Lewis was hailed as somewhat of a hero, mostly by the morbidly curious. He was often the subject of inquiries about what had really happened at what was now being called “The Battle of the Windmill.” He protested that he had seen little of the fighting, only the grisly aftermath, and refused to elaborate in any way on the injuries he had encountered.
Not so Morgan Spicer, who had left Fort Wellington to once more take up his self-appointed mission to preach to anyone who would listen, not only to his convoluted and frequently erroneous version of the gospels, but to vivid descriptions of his role in the battle. It was generally believed that he had risked life and limb to single-handedly drag desperate men from under the deadly fire coming from the windmill, and that he had saved countless lives with his courage and tender care. Lewis was often asked if he had worked with Spicer at the makeshift hospital and he merely confirmed that he had been there and had “done what he could,” not adding that one of the things he had done was to hold Spicer’s head while he vomited at the sight of half-eaten corpses.
The trials of the captured Patriot Hunters were proceeding at Kingston. An up-and-coming young lawyer, John Macdonald, was to defend them — an unenviable task, as everyone was sure that they would all be executed anyway. More details of the invasion were coming to light as the prisoners were questioned, and Bill Johnston was the name most often given as the inspiration for the foray. Von Schulz had assumed command only when it became evident that Johnston had wriggled away.
He had not wriggled far; American authorities had finally zeroed in and arrested him, not for piracy or theft, or for any of his other well-known crimes, but for “Violating the Neutrality Act.” They’d jailed him in Albany, but only for a year.
“Violating the Neutrality Act? What kind of a charge is that after all he’s done?” many sputtered when they heard the news. “What about all the robberies and raids? What about all the property he’s stolen?”
Johnston had been careful in this, it appeared. Any of the crimes that might have drawn him a longer sentence had been committed against the British or Canadians on their own soil, and therefore were of no concern to the Americans.
“Still,” most conceded, “better behind bars for a year than out and free to plunder.”
In the meantime, the consequences of the previous year’s rebellions continued to be felt in a spate of transportations and vindictiveness. More reprisals were sure to come, everyone said, after Durham’s report was completed and presented to the British Parliament. The man had been sent to explore possible remedies for the troubles in the colony. Lewis had little confidence that he would recommend anything but the continuation of the status quo, with government dominated by Anglicans and well-connected Englishmen and anyone with any ambition forced to emulate them, professing a Britishness that was more British than anything found on the other side of the ocean. Durham was an earl, titled aristocracy; what else could he possibly conclude other than that the American notions of republicanism were a cancer that had spread to Upper Canada, a cancer that must be excised so that British Lords like himself could continue to reap the benefits of their inheritance? Lewis had no hope of anything different, nor had anyone else.
He would render unto Caesar those things that were Caesar’s, however — as his Bible so aptly advised — and keep his sights fixed firmly on those things that belonged to the Lord. He settled into the pleasant routine of following his circuit’s appointment plan: preaching, christening, marrying, and burying; greeting old friends, and making new ones.
The people on his circuit seemed to noticeably settle into the routine with him now that the Patriot Hunters had been repulsed and most of their band either dispersed or behind bars. The heart seemed to have gone out of their movement to liberate the Canadas, though they had mounted one last raid, far away to the west along the Detroit River, which had proved disastrous. They had been quickly captured and it was reported that many of the prisoners had been shot. And people felt a little safer, especially those along the front, now that Bill Johnston had been rounded up and penned in a cell.
They should not have underestimated the pirate, or, more surprisingly, his daughter. Although he had several sons, it was Kate Johnston who was “the apple of the old man’s eye” according to anyone who knew her, and many who didn’t. She had moved to Albany with the stated intention of tending to her father during his incarceration. His jailers cast a tolerant eye on this pretty, demure girl who was proving so loyal and concerned with her poor father’s welfare. After a time they became used to her presence and allowed her easy access to Johnston. It was a fatal error on their part, for one dark night at the end of June, Kate slipped into the jail and liberated Bill from his cell. The apple apparently had not fallen far from the tree.
She had planned his escape carefully, preparing a hideout in the Thousand Islands at a place they both knew well, but the exact location of which was a closely guarded secret. Kate, they said, slipped in and out of the nearby towns on a regular basis, buying or stealing the supplies they needed, but no one was ever able to catch her or follow her back to the hidden lair.
Johnston’s escape was met with alarm, as everyone expected a renewed spate of banditry, but as the months went by without incident, it appeared that the old pirate was content, for now, to lie low. There was even a certain grudging admiration for Kate. “The Queen of the Thousand Islands,” the papers began calling her, and in a time when women were being convinced that their duties and destinies lay solely in home and hearth, she was a fine, albeit twisted, example of just what a young woman could do when she put her mind to it.
Part
