Letters полностью

But now it’s history-lesson time! We left the War of 1812 stalemated on the banks of the Niagara in midsummer 1814. Jacob Brown’s plucky U.S. invaders, we recall, having held against us redcoats at Chippewa and won at least a standoff at Lundy’s Lane in July, withdrew to their Fort Erie beachhead: a strategic error, most historians agree, as it returned the military initiative to Britannia. She — after the Scajaquada Scuffle of 1 August — laid siege on 7 August to the Last U.S. Stronghold on Canadian Soil, bombarded it for a week with rockets and cannon, and on the 15th (as Admiral Cochrane’s fleet entered the Chesapeake to move on Washington) attempted to take Fort Erie by main strength. Night assault parties breach the northeast bastion and advance successfully as far as the powder magazine — which, in the fashion of powder magazines throughout this war, inconveniently explodes beneath them. Whether the blast is accidental or adroitly managed by the defending garrison will be much debated, but like the navy yard explosion in Washington ten days later, it knocks the wind out of our attack, which has cost us 905 casualties to the Damned Yankees’ 84 (that epithet is coined by the British General Drummond on this occasion). The survivors withdraw; the siege is maintained for another month, but no further serious attempts are made to storm the fort, nor are massive American reinforcements sent over from Buffalo to lift the siege. After Prevost’s rout at Plattsburgh and Lake Champlain, the besiegers remove downriver (up-map) to Queenston, but the U.S. does not pursue its advantage. By October all the Canadians are back in Canada except the garrison at Fort Niagara, all the Americans back in the U.S. except the garrison at Fort Erie. On Guy Fawkes Day, General Izard blows up what’s left of Fort Erie and ferries his troops back to Buffalo. End of hostilities in this theatre of the war, and end of lesson.

And in our little Theatre of the Preposterous? Just possibly ditto, though we are Wary. Yesterday’s sequence (so Ambrose reported on the Thursday, after a telephone conference with Reg Prinz’s assistants) bore the working title Fort Erie Assault & Explosion; 2nd Conception Scene. It was to commence Friday noon with a (filmed) story-conference luncheon in the mess hall of the Remobilisation Farm, then proceed to the enactment of whatever we saw fit to perpetrate under that title. It was hoped I would take an active role.

I would not, I declared; nor a passive either, unless I were promised that neither “Monsieur Casteene” nor the Medium of the Future would be on hand. The latter I feared for my lover’s sake; the former — but I will not speak of that rose garden! And I was to be counted out if “Fort Erie Assault” or “2nd Conception” involved our doing on camera what we’d been so busy at off.

Ambrose enquired (of Joe Morgan, also by telephone) and was told that Casteene had departed the Farm some days past with Merry Bernstein’s troupe of activists, presumably Remobilised for covert incitement of the Second Revolution. When or whether he would return, no one knew. That Mr Bray had not been seen since Scajaquada, but (according to Mr Jacob Horner, much distraught) had communicated by letter with Bea Golden (a.k.a. “Bibi”), who together with Marsha Mensch (née Blank, a.k.a. “Pocahontas”) had taken French leave from the Farm on Wednesday and not been heard from since. Horner was persuaded they were in Lily Dale, in Bray’s clutches, and was of course immobilised with anxiety on behalf of His Woman.

I was anxious for them both, now neither was a threat to me. Jerome Bray! Ugh! Heartless Ambrose was more amused than alarmed, particularly as Morgan himself judged Horner’s fears premature and possibly misdirected. Both “patients” had been AWOL before, it seems; indeed “Bibi” had disappeared for the whole past weekend and showed up drunk on the Tuesday declaring she’d been down sailing on the Chesapeake with a new boyfriend. Since Marsha (alas) also has tidewater connexions, and the two women have struck up an alliance, it seemed as likely to Morgan that they were lushing it in Maryland together as that they were facing Worse Than Death in Lily Dale. In good Joseph’s view, the real ground for concern was not their whereabouts but their dissolution: “Bibi’s” aggravated alcoholism and (he now regretfully reported to Ambrose) “Pocahontas’s” recent taking to unspecified and unprescribed narcotics, which she shared with her new friend. Joe wished both of them off the Farm for good and “Bibi” in a proper therapeutic institution for alcoholics.