Jack Absolute Read online

  ‘This is the fellow of whom I was telling you,’ Burgoyne spoke to the shadows there, ‘whose history has been so diverting us tonight. My dear, allow me to present the real Jack Absolute. Jack, Miss Louisa Reardon.’

  The shadow shifted, a face came into the light, and Jack took a moment – for it was worth the study. Eyes the colour and pattern of eastern jade, a delicate nose surmounting an ‘O’ of a mouth, gold and russet-red hair falling in waves, framing skin that, wanting any touch of make-up, wanted nothing. The voice, deep in timbre yet light in delivery, was as velvet as the skin.

  ‘This the heroic Captain? The ardent lover?’

  Jack bowed over the hand offered, his lips brushing it before he spoke. ‘I am sorry to disappoint, madam. A captain no longer, heroic or otherwise. And as for the ardent lover … well, surely, that is not for me to say?’

  ‘But have the ladies of London been given the opportunity to discover it for themselves?’

  It was said matter-of-factly, with a lack of flirtation that made it all the more beguiling. And there was something intriguing in the accent, a memory. While he sought it out, Jack replied, ‘Perhaps fortunately for everyone, that sort of exploration requires time, which is not available.’

  ‘A pity. I am certain there are … some ladies who would find the true Jack Absolute more compelling than his onstage counterpart.’

  ‘Compelling codswallop! Younger and more handsome is what you would say, is it not?’ A smile had come to Burgoyne’s face as he witnessed the exchange. ‘I tell you, Jack, here have I been at my most gallant and charming all evening, and the most I have got in return is genteel civility. Yet the moment you walk in—’

  ‘It was mere observation, General,’ said Louisa Reardon, laughing. ‘With so many gallant officers abroad in the service of their King, the Captain would have made a welcome addition to the society of the town. And,’ she leaned forward, tapping her fan into her hand, ‘I have only behaved with such reserve towards you, because we are nearly alone in this box …’ She gestured to a rotund maid who sat in the far corner, soundly snoring, ‘… and I was concerned that if I admitted merely one of your addresses I should not be able to resist any of them.’

  Burgoyne gave out a sharp bark of laughter. ‘Ah, Jack. You may now guess how my poor wits have been addled in our exchanges of fire tonight. If I did not know you was coming as reinforcement, I should have fled this field long ago. And as to the time needed for “exploration”, how does at least five weeks at sea suit? For Miss Reardon is to sail with us on HMS Ariadne. She returns to her family in New York.’

  Ah! That was the memory, the accent. He would have liked to converse more with her, for he had often found the women of the Colonies to have an openness, a lack of guile that was most attractive. But the General had returned to business. So, sighing, Jack did too.

  ‘Sir, that news makes what I must say all the more regrettable.’

  He watched the smile vanish from Burgoyne’s face and pressed on before any other expression could replace it. They had been through much together over the years and he hated to disappoint him.

  ‘I am aware of the immense honour you do me, sir, in offering to reappoint me to the Dragoons. And it is with a heavy heart that I must refuse you.’

  ‘What’s that? Refuse?’ Burgoyne’s warmth had been replaced by a dangerous coolness. ‘It would not be me you refused. It would be your King. Your country.’

  ‘I am aware that is how it could be perceived.’

  Burgoyne snorted. ‘Could be? Will be! England is at war with damn’d Rebels in a land you know better than almost any man in the realm. And you would refuse to go to her aid? There’s no “could” about it.’

  Jack tried to keep the colour from his voice, though he was aware it had flushed his face. ‘With respect, sir, there are many here who also refuse. Many, even, whose sympathies are with those Rebels.’

  ‘Yes, and I well remember how often your own sympathies have sided with so-called freedom’s cause. That Irish mother of yours, God bless the memory of her beauty! But this is different, sir. You are an officer of the Crown. Dammit, you are an officer of my own regiment.’

  ‘Was, sir. I resigned my commission eleven years ago, as you well know, since you struggled long to dissuade me from doing so. And I have since been with the East India Company and about my family’s business.’

  ‘Family be damned! This is the King’s business. Have you forgotten your oath?’

  Burgoyne had stood to face Jack, his voice rising in volume as it had deepened in tone. It could have carried across a parade ground. Many in the surrounding boxes had left watching the leaping Italians to stare.

  It was Louisa who calmed them. ‘Captain … Mr Absolute. May an American speak? One who does not side with these “damn’d rebels”?’

  Both men nodded, giving ground slightly.

  ‘The General has confided a little of how he intends to subdue these traitors. Just as much as he thinks a simple girl can understand. But I was raised in a family that has fought for the Crown for three decades. As we speak, my father commands a Loyalist regiment in the field.’

  ‘A damned fine one too!’ Burgoyne growled. ‘And he pays for their uniforms and powder out of his own pocket.’

  Jack looked again at Miss Reardon. He had never found an attractive woman less attractive for being rich.

  ‘Thank you, General,’ she said. She turned again to Jack. ‘He tells me that His Majesty’s Native Subjects are the key to winning the war.’

  Jack smiled slightly. He was glad Até was not there. ‘If the General is referring to the Six Nations of the Iroquois, they are not “subjects”, Miss Reardon. They have never been subject to the Crown. They are His Majesty’s Native Allies.’

  ‘The General also tells me that you know these … allies, better than any man alive.’

  ‘I would not say that, necessarily, Miss—’

  ‘Don’t dissemble, Absolute.’ Burgoyne had lowered his voice under the lady’s influence but the anger had not left it. Turning to her, he said, ‘The man lived as one of them for several years. He speaks their tongue as a native. Under that silk shirt and embroidered jacket his chest is covered with their skin paintings. You should see them!’

  ‘Indeed. That would be most … educational.’ She allowed the faintest of smiles before she went on. ‘But do you agree with the General? Are they essential to winning this war?’

  ‘I have no idea of the Crown’s specific plans—’

  ‘But speaking generally. Can the war be won without them?’

  Jack sighed. This beauty was boxing him in. ‘If the war is to be fought in the north, from Canada down, then … probably not. I am sure you are aware of the wildernesses where any campaign will be conducted. Vast tracts of forest with hardly a road fit for the name. My brothers – excuse me, the Iroquois Nations – know that land, can forage, scout, and skirmish where marching regiments cannot. And they provide the information necessary for those regiments to bring all their force to bear when appropriate. No, Miss Reardon, in truth, the war cannot be won without them.’

  He forestalled her next point. ‘But I … I have no real influence with these people. I have been gone eleven years and new leaders will have arisen whom I do not know. I can speak the language, yes, and I know their ways. I am indeed useful to the General. But I am not essential. And I have spent seven years in India trying to rebuild the fortune my father lost on the turn of one card. If I do not get to our new estates in Nevis in the West Indies, with the profits I have laboured long for, the Absolute fortunes may be lost again. And many people will suffer, not just my family.’

  He turned to Burgoyne. The anger had left the General’s face and it now bore the look that Jack had feared more than any other – disappointment. Nevertheless, he kept his voice steady. ‘And so, sir, I have, most reluctantly, to refuse your gracious offer.’

  ‘And if duty to your sovereign and your country cannot move you, what of your loyalty
to me?’ His voice softened and he looked direct into Jack’s eyes, though his words appeared to be for Louisa. ‘For it is not only his native connections I need, Louisa. The man before you is the finest field intelligence officer I have ever known. He could discover information in the deserts of Araby, simply by talking to the camels. He has a way with codes and ciphers that perplexes a mere horse-trooper such as I. And wars are won by information more than by powder and shot. Absolute here can sniff it out swifter than my hound can start a hare.’ He paused and his hand reached out to rest on Jack’s shoulder. ‘You know how I need you. Will you not come?’

  This appeal, so gently spoken, was far harder to counter than any cross word and Jack winced. He owed this man many times over; for his first commission at the age of sixteen, for countless opportunities since. They had fought together in Portugal and Spain. In 1762, in the mad attack at Valencia de Alcantara, he had saved this man’s life – and among the Iroquois that meant he owed a far greater debt than if his life had been saved by the General. In so many ways, Burgoyne was the father that Jack had lost when Sir James Absolute went mad because the card he’d turned over at the Pharo table had been a queen and not a king.

  Yet there was no choice. Possible ruin lay in a change of heart.

  ‘I am so sorry. General. Miss Reardon. A safe voyage to you both, I trust.’

  He bowed, turned to go. Burgoyne’s voice came, still more softly. ‘You have a night and a day to change your mind, Mr Absolute. But a word of advice, whether you accept my commission or no. Watch your back. Or get that savage, your shadow, to watch it for you. I was so certain you’d accept that I told everyone that you already had. And as you pointed out, London is full of those … sympathetic to the Rebel cause.’

  Jack frowned, then nodded, left the box, made his way down the stairs and towards the street. Gaining it, he paused, looked up and down. Now that Burgoyne had drawn attention to it, he realized his ‘back’ had felt strange for some days, as if someone was indeed eyeing it, him. He’d put it down to the mobbed streets of London, so very different from India. Now, as he studied the people swaying back and forth, the audience taking the air, hawkers and whores selling their respective wares, he knew it would be impossible to tell if anyone was interested in him as anything other than a customer.

  In a doorway opposite, Até stood where he had all evening, startling the passers-by. He hated the theatre – unless they were playing Shakespeare; and even then he was a purist. The happy endings appended to Lear or, especially, Hamlet, infuriated him. And despite his mission school education, Até still felt that by portraying Jack in a drama they were somehow stealing his soul.

  At the slight shake of Jack’s head, the Mohawk slipped back into the darkness. Now he would wait for Jack to pass and follow him at a distance, to see if his friend was being stalked. Such caution had saved their lives a score of times.

  Jack turned into an alley. It was the swiftest way to get backstage so he took it despite the fetid darkness. The second of his interviews awaited him there.

  Surely, he thought, it cannot be any harder than the first.

  The necessity for this encounter was Sheridan’s fault. When Jack had learned of his fame and, in a rage, sought the Irishman out at King’s Coffee House, the playwright had placated him, initially with three pints of porter – a nectar Jack had not tasted in seven years – then persuaded him to come to the theatre, where The Rivals was in rehearsal for its remounting.

  ‘There’s someone I would like you to meet,’ he’d said, taking Jack’s arm.

  That someone was Elizabeth Farren. Dressed as Lucy, the mischievous maid of the play, she was the epitome of all Jack had missed in his years away, the embodiment of many a youthful passion. Though small in height, she was perfectly formed – ‘A pocket Venus,’ Sheridan commented in a whisper, as they watched her rehearse. She was dressed and made-up as she would appear that night, breasts thrust up and forward, dusted in a light vermilion powder, speckled with gold. A lace attempted to hold in the front of the bodice, artfully half undone. It made a man instantly desirous of completing the task.

  It certainly made Jack feel so. No matter that it was all artifice, that Lizzie merely feigned the wide-eyed country maid. Jack fell.

  And later, as they were introduced in the cramped wing dressing-room, it seemed that Lizzie did too.

  When the blushing actress had returned to her acting, Jack, somewhat flustered also, had told his friend that it must be the introductions that lured her – for the Irishman had told her that Jack had once written for the stage, rather than any quality he possessed. This had set Sheridan on a roar.

  ‘P’shaw, Jack! I despise modesty in a man as much as vanity. Have you looked in a mirror lately? Here. Here!’ He pulled Jack round to face the cracked glass before which lay the potions and creams of transformation. ‘Four months on a sunlit sea, the winds buffeting your face? You glow, sir! Look at any winter-pale Londoner, lord or baker, for comparison. And if you were always a dark-skinned Cornishman, your years in India have turned you into a positive native! You could pass as the brother of that Iroquois who follows you around.’

  Jack grinned. He often had.

  ‘And that smile. Those blue eyes that seem all the bluer in their dark setting. And if your nose is slightly larger than is perfect for proportion, and your hell-black hair somewhat longer than the fashion and lacking in style,’ he flicked his own trained locks, ‘what of it? I doubt there is a woman in the realm who could resist you. And you wonder that poor Lizzie fell? Sure now, if she had not been called to the stage, she’d have had you on the spot, whether I’d been there or no!’

  Sheridan had led Jack to a tavern with a slap and a guffaw, and their friendship was further restored amidst more pots of ale. By the end of an evening Jack barely remembered the next morning, he had forgiven his friend everything; indeed, he had a memory of begging the Irishman to write him into a sequel. And Sheridan had confessed that by pursuing Lizzie Farren, Jack would be doing him a favour. He was now the manager at Drury Lane as well as its premier playwright, and John Rich, manager at Covent Garden, was trying to lure Lizzie away. Nothing would distract her so much as a love affair – at least until she signed her new contract.

  Distracting it may have been. Fulfilling it was not. Between her hours in the theatre and Jack’s chasing of money about the town, they could snatch only moments from his fast-diminishing store of time. It heightened their passion. But it left no opportunity to take them from that height.

  And that is where it should be left, Jack had decided in a more sensible hour.

  Yet pausing now between the piles of refuse in the court behind the theatre, he took another good pull at his flask of Sheridan’s cognac, his heart as dark as his surroundings because of that sensible decision. The Isis stayed for a tide in Portsmouth and then it would be gone to the West Indies. He had to be on it. But he had grown fond of Lizzie, her youth, her ardour, even her actorly ways. He was flattered by her attentions but he was no longer the Cornish Romeo of his youth, to steal a moment’s satisfaction from a pretty girl and then be gone with the dawn.

  Such was his resolution as he walked into the wings at Drury Lane. Yet it did not stop him pausing before a mirror near which the two Italian acrobats were conducting a furious, sotto voce argument, their gestures indicating that something had gone horribly wrong on-stage. He flicked at his black hair, dishevelled by the wind and falling snow outside.

  May as well leave her with a good memory, he thought, smoothing the thick locks. He remembered how well actresses loved their final scene. Grinning, he stuck his tongue out at his reflection.

  Lizzie awaited him in the same dressing-room where they’d met. She was alone, and through the half-open drape that gave on to Stage Right, he could see the other actors taking their positions. The orchestra struck up. Act Five, the conclusion of the play, was about to begin.

  ‘Leave? Tonight?’ The back of the hand went to the brow, the lower lip trembl
ed, water came to the kohl-lined eyes. ‘Oh, Jack, my Jack, say it isn’t true!’

  It was a damned fine performance. She wanted this scene and he was still playwright enough to give it to her. But the scene would require a touch of jealousy on his part, to show her how much he cared. Glancing around, he spotted the prop he needed, a necklace of rubies that lay on a velvet glove. They had to be paste, yet they were exquisitely done.

  ‘Will you miss me that much, Elizabeth, when you have admirers who send you such gifts? Do you play The Rivals then, for real?’

  ‘Oh him!’ She ran her fingers down the links. ‘He is a mere boy! And … that is not all he gave me, look …’ She rolled up her sleeve. Her wrist was coloured with bruises. ‘He is a brute. When I told him I could not see him again, that I loved another, he …’ She stifled a sob, more genuine this time, and rubbed her wrist.

  Jack felt a tug of real anger, now rapidly displaced by a sudden thought. ‘You did not tell him my name?’

  ‘I … may have mentioned it.’

  Excellent! All he needed was some incensed lover stalking him through London on his last night. Was that the regard he’d felt upon his back? All the more reason to be gone – and swiftly. He would have to gabble his lines.

  ‘Elizabeth, this is farewell. Adieu, my dearest. I will carry you in my heart to the Indies.’

  It was far from his best. But as he swept up from his bow, he saw that Lizzie had stepped near. Very near.

  ‘Nay, sir,’ she said, ‘you do not intend to leave me without a kiss?’

  ‘But are you not on soon?’

  She turned her head. They listened to the dialogue. ‘Oh no. It is the Faulkland and Julia scene. It goes on and on and on. Especially the way Mistress Bulkley drags out her lines.’