The Chest

Alex opens up an old chest. From it he takes out a pair of pistols against the possibility of Radek returning. In the morning he asks Peter top be his son.

       Chapter Twelve

                      The Chest                

 

 

Peter, still waiting for Alex, was curled up in the large chair, reading Gulliver’s Travels. On the table he had placed bread and cheese and a pot of tea.  As the door opened he looked up. Alex stepped in, hesitating for a moment upon seeing Peter.  Then he stepped forward, nodded, removed his coat and hat and placed them on a wall hook.  For a moment he sagged. Straightening he turned towards the boy.  He smiled and rubbed his hands.

“So, what have you been up to?”

“You are hungry? There is food.”

Alex nodded.  “Good.  Let’s eat.”

***

Alex pulled the blankets up over the sleeping boy's shoulders.  The laudanum had settled Peter into a deep sleep. It should last for the night. Alex looked down at Peter. Whatever Josef had been, he was Peter now. As Peter had said, what did a name matter? Yet the memory of the way that he had said it gnawed at Alex. A name did matter.  It expressed one's sense of self, the ties to a family, to a place, to a past that made the present meaningful. Without those how could one hope for a future?

                His name had not meant anything to Josef because he had nothing in the name that he wished to keep. A new name could mean a new beginning.  Alex had believed in new beginnings once. How could the boy hope to make a beginning out of Peter Mueller, a name he knew to be a lie.  Well, lies had grown out of truths before; why not truths out of a lie? Alex brushed back the hair that covered Peter's eyes. He would have to give him a hair cut soon 

Alex slumped down into his armchair and went over all the mistakes he had made with both Ian and Radek.  He should never have told Ian about his past. Bad enough to live trapped within a lie but to drag others in was worse. At least Ian had promised not to say anything as his father had done before him. Alex knew that he had bungled the confrontation with Radek. He should not have told him about Peter's ability to speak English. If Radek had regarded the boy as a threat before how would he regard him now?   The man had been sitting there looking so smug. It had provoked him and he had slipped. Something however had been secured; time, but for how long?

Neither man wished to force the issue so for the moment a stalemate existed but Alex knew that he could not win a stalemate.   Anyway, could he trust Radek to keep his word?  Self-interest was the only basis upon which he could judge the man's actions. For now it was in Radek's interest to leave. What if his interests should change? Perhaps they had already changed.

Neither did Alex know what he himself should do. He could not tell anyone.  He could not go to the courts. The boy and he could disappear but within a few weeks, perhaps even earlier, he would be too weak to travel. The boy would be alone in a land even stranger to him than this.  He could take the boy to Perth. What would he tell Alistair?  More lies.

Alex could be grateful for one thing.  The pain in his stomach had receded.  Every so often it would go away allowing him to eat a bit more, to gather a little more strength. However, when it returned, the pain would increase in intensity.  Before it and Radek returned he would have to find a way to keep Peter safe but how? What if Radek returned tonight? He picked up the lamp and shuffled over to his desk. He placed the lamp upon the desk and groped in his waistcoat pocket for his keys. Turning the lock of the chest Alex pushed the lid up, letting it rest against the wall. Deep into the chest he dug.  From the bottom he drew out a large rectangular bundle bound in white calico, the cloth tied by a white silken cord. Nestling the bundle under his left arm he closed the chest, careful to keep the lid from dropping too quickly and disturbing Peter. He placed the bundle on the desk next to the lamp. Alex fumbled with the knot. When it separated he pulled the cord and cloth away.

The box was of red mahogany.  A curved lid topped its low sides.  In the centre of the lid was a small brass plaque. On the plaque had been inscribed: Alexander MacTavish, M.D. Alex took out his key ring again. This time he chose the smallest of the three keys using it to unlock the box. 

It was the most incongruous gift that Alex had ever received.  He had thought so at the time. He still thought so. On the bottom side of the lid was a small copper plaque. Engraved on it were the following words:

To the bravest of the brave

From the officers and men

Of Sainte Etienne

1809 - 1814

They were a set of pistols, long tapering rifled barrels with brown walnut stocks and handles inlaid with silver. Paris-made they were, as well-oiled and polished as when they had been presented to him thirty-six years ago. Once every month Alex would take them out of their box. He would clean them and check them for any specks of rust or dirt. Ridiculous he thought, every time he cleaned them.   In thirty-six years he had never used them. Alex knew who he was, the younger son of a tailor, descendent of crofters. To have kept the pistols was a piece of foolish frippery. He had no practical use for them anymore than for the sword Fletcher had given him. It still lay in its scabbard, bundled in cloth at the bottom of the chest.

Alex tested the springs. He loaded the barrels, ramming in powder, balls and wadding. From the stainless steel flask he poured gunpowder into the touchholes. He placed the two pistols on the desk beside a tarnished tin plate.  On the plate he had already placed his copy of Scott's Heart of Midlothian and a glass with a dollop of whiskey in it.  He brought his large chair closer to the desk turning the chair to face the door. Alex placed the footstool in front of the chair and then sat settling his slippered feet onto the stool.

He had received the pistols and the sword on the morning he left Paris for Calais, the morning that he began his journey home.  What little packing he had to do he had finished the evening before. He had nothing more to do except wait for the coach. 

The regiment had held a dinner and ball the night before for the officers returning home.  Alex had not attended. He was neither a true officer nor a proper gentleman. Besides he had nothing to wear. Threadbare and faded among those uniforms he would have resembled an ugly little scarecrow among so many peacocks.  He had never learned how to dance or how to make a speech. He would have embarrassed himself and others. A military surgeon was all he was, a glorified tradesman. Nothing more. Alex knew his place.

The only uniform that he owned, his father, Peter MacTavish, had sewn for him. A waste of money his sons had told him. Alex was a doctor, not a fighting man. He did not require a uniform.  Peter would not listen. To please him Alex set off for Spain feeling a bit ridiculous in a red tunic with gold painted buttons sporting the thistle of Scotland.  A bit faded and patched now the tunic had served him well but it was not the sort of thing that one could wear to a formal reception.  Even with five years of accumulated back pay Alex could not afford the gold-braided dress uniforms that the officers wore. Anyway he would need his money to establish a practice in Scotland. He had made his excuses pleading ill health and had supper in his room.

He had packed away his tunic. He would wear a simple black suit more suitable for traveling.  The pains in his back had dwindled into little more than a nuisance.  Sometimes he did not feel them at all.  This was one of those times.  He was buttoning his coat when he heard a sharp rapping at his door. Alex opened it to find Lieutenant John Fletcher looking his best in braids and epaulets, a new dress sword at his side, tassels of gold braid dangling from the basket hilt.

Behind Fletcher stood Sergeant-Major Tom Morgan. His giant frame gleamed from shako to boot tips of polished leather and brass.  Both men saluted Alex. As awkward as ever Alex returned the salutes.  Within another hour time and duty would scatter the three of them. Morgan, defying the French guards, had picked up Alex's senseless body from the mud of the yard after they had cut it down.  He had carried it back to the filthy hole known as the infirmary.  Through the days that followed he had tended Alex as if he were his own child. Morgan would hang in 1826 after killing his wife in a drunken rage.  Young Fletcher would die a major general in 1840 on the retreat from Kabul. Only the memories remained; the gifts and scars that still marked Alex's back.

“Coach is here, sir” Fletcher told him. Unable to say anymore the young man unbuckled the belt of his sword and presented it to Alex. Alex tried to refuse but Fletcher insisted, belting it around his waist. Alex pleaded that it did not become him. In the end he could not refuse. He, as did Morgan, recognized the act for what it was. More than just a gift giving it was a swearing of fealty, a gesture that extended back a thousand years, an act freely given by one man to another. 

The two men embraced. Then, followed by Morgan, who bore the doctor's chest on his right shoulder, they walked out into the courtyard.

Eighteen hundred red-coated statues, these were the survivors of Sainte Etienne. Five years before there had been twenty-six hundred. File after file they had snapped to attention. Beyond them stood the gateway where the coach waited, a small group of officers clustered beside it. Alex saluted and  shook hands with them. He spoke a few words to each. 

A drummer boy, Angus Campbell, stepped forward a red mahogany box in his hands.  He gave it to Fletcher who presented it to Alex. 

“Beg your pardon Alex … sir. The officers and men took up a collection. We had hoped to give it to you last night but maybe this is better.”

Alex opened the chest. He supposed he should say something but as usual could think of nothing.

“It’s … um …. very kind. Very kind.”

Morgan in proper parade ground fashion spun about on his heels.  “Preee…sent arms!”

Eighteen hundred muskets moved as one. Wellington had called them scum but Alex had never cared much for Wellington.  Many had been rapists, panders, thieves and wastrels, but not all. Most had just been simple country lads driven into the ranks by hunger or boredom. Even the worst had been his men, the ones that Alex had cared for and done his limited best to keep alive for those five long years.  During all that time he had known that his best had never been good enough.

Illiterate, blasphemous drunkards and thieves they may have been but in those dark prison cells they had won their own small victory. They carried a pride in themselves as men true to their oaths.  The symbol of that victory was not a great general on a fine horse but a little man who had never learned how to make a proper salute.  Alex could never quite understand why this was so but it was as real to him as the air he breathed. For the first and last time Alex took the salute. He thought that he should say something but could not. He gulped and stumbled into the coach. All he had seen as he had looked out over those lines had been the men who were not there.

Alex had expected to die under the lash. During the years that followed he often wished that he had. He had not for two reasons.  The cold had stemmed the bleeding and slowed the infection. The French had also saved him.  Fouché, Napoleon's Minister of Police, had known for years of the corruption at Sainte Etienne but had been reluctant to intervene in a military matter. The threat of outright mutiny caused him to write to the emperor. Napoleon, just returned from his Russian disaster, dismissed the matter with a short note, telling Fouché to see to it. He added one condition. A military man had to replace Vigot.

Fouché chose Colonel Claude Gagnon, recuperating at his father's home in Caen after having  lost his right arm at Salamanca.  The emperor disliked the colonel. Gagnon had a reputation as a Jacobite. He also had a reputation for scrupulous honesty and efficiency. For the latter two qualities Fouché chose to overlook his politics.  

In the last week of March a small squad of dragoons led by a tall one-armed officer in a black cloak swept into the courtyard of Sainte Etienne.  The guards snapped to attention at the sight of the tall officer, the ribbon of the legion of honour pinned to his breast.  Followed by his squad he marched into Colonel Vigot's office.  He showed Vigot his commission from the emperor and ordered his arrest. He asked a clerk where he could find the infirmary.

Walking across the courtyard Gagnon noted the half-starved figures in ragged uniforms. He eyed them with distaste. Their filthy condition did not surprise them.  Prisoners fared much the same everywhere. He did not expect what he saw in the infirmary.  Even before opening the oak door he raised a gloved hand to his mouth to keep from gagging at the stink of vomit, excrement, urine and blood saturating the room. A thin trickle of air from a barred window did little to relieve the stench. As his eyes adjusted themselves to the grey lumps emerged sprawled along the wall and on the floor. The lumps solidified into the shapes of men their bodies streaked with dirt and blood.  Vigot began counting. He tallied forty men in a room designed to hold twenty.

Gagnon stepped into the room. Careful to avoid treading on any of the bodies he searched for one prisoner.  The prisoners still strong enough to stand rose. One was Tom Morgan. He was in shirtsleeves having draped his greatcoat over Alex. He had placed Alex next to the room's one tiny stove.

“Doctor MacTavish?” Gagnon asked the sergeant.

“Yes sir.” The sergeant pointed to the man lying at his feet. Gagnon knelt down beside the doctor. Alex, hearing his name and seeing the swimming image of a French officer bending over him, attempted to rise. Fresh blood seeped through the soiled bandages on his back.

Gagnon shook his head and placed one hand on Alex's shoulder. Gently he pushed him back down. As he had watched Alex try to rise, Gagnon knew that France had lost. She had lost the war, yes but wars came and went. France had lost something she might never find again. France had lost her dream.

For twenty years Gagnon had fought for that dream. A young man barely in his teens, he had rushed out with other young men singing the Marseillaise. They would save their republic and spread its promise of equality, fraternity and liberty to all men. He had fought in Italy, Germany and Spain. He had burned and killed so that the republic could live. Because of the victories won by such men as he, the republic had died strangled by its generals.  Still Gagnon fought on believing that out of all the blood they could salvage something of France's dream.

The revolution could have led Europe to freedom.  Instead it had led Gagnon to a village in Switzerland. The Swiss, ruling themselves for centuries, had no desire for French liberty, but their country controlled the supply routes into Italy. Gagnon had the duty of guarding those routes. Against him had stood a mob of Swiss peasants, men, women and children led by their priests.  Armed with old muskets, pitchforks and crosses they had stood against Napoleon's infantry.  It had been a slaughter, Gagnon admitted, an atrocity, but war itself was an atrocity. The republic had a right to live. When peace came it would lead Europe to liberty. So he had told himself through the years that had followed, long after the republic had died.

Gagnon stood and looked at the men. They stared back with listless, empty eyes.  They knew as he did that few of them would leave this cell alive.  He turned to his aide. “Get him out of here.”

“Sir?”

“Get them all out.”

“Every cell is just as crowded sir.”

“Put them in the commanding officer's quarters. I'll bed down with the men.”

“What about Colonel Vigot and his family?”

Gagnon thought for a moment.  “They can stay here,” he said.

The following morning Colonel Gagnon convened a court-martial. Colonel Vigot was tried, convicted, given the sacrament and shot before the cooks served lunch.

Gagnon placed Alex in a bedroom once occupied by Gagnon's eldest daughter. Three weeks after the lashing Alex emerged from his room, walking stiffly to avoid tearing open the scars on his back. The men greeted him with cheers, the guards with respectful salutes. A young French lieutenant brought him a dinner invitation from Colonel Gagnon. With great politeness, Alex declined.

Apart from Morgan and Fletcher Alex did not care for visitors in his room. Having his own room was a novel experience. At home he had shared a room with James. To save money he had shared a garret during his student years. In the army he had shared quarters with another surgeon. For the first time in his life he could claim the entire space within four walls as his own.  He was therefore reluctant to have it invaded.  However in the evening came a visitor that he could not turn away, Colonel Gagnon.

In halting English the Colonel told him that the French government wished to apologize for Colonel's Vigot unwarranted behaviour. It was the government's intention to preserve the lives of as many prisoners as possible for the honour of France and the French army. He requested Alex's assistance. Alex replied that if it did not conflict with his duty to his king, he would agree to help.

 Alex could not deny the man's capabilities. In a country bled of supplies after twenty years of war, Gagnon secured blankets, food, medicines and beds. Gagnon had also obtained qualified physicians not just the drunken army surgeon deemed unfit to serve anywhere else. The dying had continued but at a much lower rate.

The colonel made a habit of visiting Alex during the evenings to discuss his health and the daily events at the prison. These discussions led to other subjects, the war, law, politics and the ideas of liberty and equality.

Alex had been five years old when the Jacobites had executed Louis XVI. Of the revolution he had known only what he had heard from adults or what he had read in the papers. Most British papers had agreed that it was French, Godless and anti-Christian.  Napoleon was a dwarfish ogre, the great disturber of the peace. Whatever abuses the old order in France had been guilty of the revolution had brought disaster for both France and Europe.  Much of Alex's thinking never changed but those quiet discussions left their mark on him.

In the years to come as he worked in the slums of Glasgow and in the backwoods of Canada, Alex would remember the tall, gaunt, one-armed man. He would recall how Gagnon’s hollowed eyes had burned with a belief in what man could become in a world in which governments allowed them to be men. Men had it within themselves to create paradise here, on earth. That was why he and thousands of others had rushed out to defend their republic.

Instead, Alex pointed out, it had all gone wrong.  The massacres, the wars; how could paradise be found in that? Gagnon agreed that they had made mistakes, caused by ignorance, hate and greed. Mistakes could be corrected. With time and education, man could change.

That was the sad thing about Gagnon. Against all the evidence, knowing that France had lost, that the old order had won, knowing that ambitious men had betrayed his dream he still clung to it. Perhaps, thought Alex, that dream had been the one thing that had kept him sane through all those years like Alex's dream of returning to his father's house in Kilmarnock.

He last saw Gagnon in April of 1814.  The colonel had turned the fortress over to the victorious British. He then rode off, alone, heading back to Caen, an old man at thirty-seven. The night before he left he had invited Alex for dinner. They had discussed the war and Napoleon's abdication. Gagnon said that he would take over his father's business and buy a small house with a garden. He should have remained a baker, he told Alex. The discussion became a monologue as Gagnon talked about Switzerland, Spain and the dead. Most of what he had to say Alex could not understand. Sinking deeper into his brandy the man rambled on, his words interspersed with an occasional "Vive La Republique."

 Gagnon fell asleep in his chair, brandy bottle drained. Alex rose to go. As he did, Gagnon, woke, looked up at him and asked in slurred English. “So many innocents, it must have all meant something, yes?”

Alex left him there, the question unanswered. As he watched the colonel ride away the next morning Alex could not help wondering how good a baker a man with one arm would be.

Six years later in Canada Alex listened to Alistair Strachan describing his role in the Battle of Waterloo. He told how the French line snapped, exhausted troops shouting “Nous sommes trahis” flinging down their weapons and streaming back, their officers trying to rally them. As the Scots Greys surged through the collapsing line a French officer had confronted Alistair. Alone, waving a sword with his one arm he had stood against the British charge until cut down by the swipe of a sabre.

“A brave man for a Frenchie,” said Alistair.

Alex had declined Strachan's offer to celebrate Waterloo Day. That had been thirty years ago. He had declined it every year since.

Alex had often wondered why Gagnon had gone to fight one last time for a man that he loathed. He understood now that it had not been for Napoleon.      Gagnon had been unable to live in a world in which he could not have his dream. Napoleon's return must have seemed a last chance to restore the France of his youth. He had been wrong. Napoleon's victory would have meant more blood, more burning villages and more bodies of innocents lying in the snow.

Do we ever outgrow the dreams of our youth?  Sometimes he envied Gagnon. His had not been a bad way to die, better than rotting in a land that had no more use for him. Maybe that death had been what Gagnon had been seeking when he joined that last, long march into Belgium.

What are you seeking, Alex? Why are you sitting here, alone, these pistols beside you? Knowing what you know you will say nothing because there is no one you can say it to. In a few months you will be like those men who died at Saint Etienne, just an extra ration of potatoes to be pocketed, nothing more. The boy will be the same. Both of you will be gone. Any knowledge of your existence will disappear; fading ripples on the pond of time, unnoticed by those coming after.

You sought anonymity all your life.  You found it. So what are you complaining about? You pursued a dream that could not and will not exist. It destroyed hundreds of thousands, tore a continent apart and hounded Gagnon to his death. It will do the same to you and to Peter. Admit it, runt, accept the truth. You lost. The voice was very logical. It always reminded him of James. Most of the time, it was correct, but not always.  An idea, still tentative, was forming in Alex's mind.  “I haven't lost yet,” he told the voice. “Not yet.”

***

Had the old doctor lost his senses? “You want me to….?”

“I want you to become my son,” Alex told him.

Peter poured the tea. It gave him a reason not to reply.

“Well?”

Peter had no wish to offend the doctor but he knew what was possible and what was not. “I cannot. Please, I am sorry.”

“Why not?”

“I have a father,” he muttered placing the teapot back on the stove. Peter felt that he could admit that much.

Milos; the man who had placed an X on that piece of paper; the boy must still love him. Alex had no wish to replace the child's memory of him. “So now you'll have two,” he smiled.

Peter picked up a rag and began wiping the breakfast dishes.  He would not fool himself or Alex.  “I … I know who my father is. It is not you. I am sorry.”

“So, you'll pretend. Just for appearances sake. Where's the harm?”

Perhaps it could do no harm but it would be another lie. He was tired of all the lies. He wanted to tell Alex about the pig, to warn him but then Alex would send him away. He did not want to leave, not yet.  True he had not seen any sign of Radek or of the Leugers. They must have decided that he was not worth finding. If that were true he could begin again but to ask anyone to spend his life caring for the pig would not be fair. Then he thought, Alex was not asking Josef, was he? He was asking Peter.

“You do not know me. To make someone your son, you have to know him.”

“I know enough.”

You know nothing, Peter wanted to tell him. Instead he asked, “Suppose you find someone better?”

“I'll risk it.”

“Please, do not ask this.”

“You gave your word to serve me.”

“Yes but…this is not…needed.”

“I would consider it a great personal favour if you would oblige me, lad.”

What the doctor had said was true.  He had promised.  Peter knew that Alex would change his mind once he found out more about him. For now, if it made Alex happy to have a son, why not? Alex would be angry once he learned the truth but he would be angry anyway. What difference would it make? “As you wish.”

             To keep the old man happy he would go on lying. Peter supposed that he should be grateful. Even if Josef could not belong anywhere, Peter could.  All he could think of was what would happen if Alex should discover the truth.

    Alex, Amazon Press

Author's Note

Canadian English