Jack Absolute Page 4

  He stepped up to his mark. They saluted the President, their opponent’s Seconds, each other. Then their two swords rose, ends meeting with the faintest of chimes. It was like the toll of some far-away bell, a stirring of consciousness, and it instantly cleared the very last effects of cognac from Jack’s head.

  His plan was simple. He assumed, from their previous dealings, that his opponent would be mad in assault, contemptuous of defence, that he would fall like a storm upon Jack’s artfully casual resistance. Fire and fury was what was expected from youth; coolness and calm the prerogative of age and experience.

  Yet in the opening exchanges, the younger man refused to conform to Jack’s prejudice; was not tempted into an extended lunge, did not respond to the first of Jack’s feints when he left his weapon slightly out of true, in tierce. He parried and riposted and parried again in the least exerting of ways.

  Damn him, thought Jack, taking a breath, the bastard’s come to fence.

  Tarleton was obviously conscientious in his attendance at Master Angelo’s Academy in the Haymarket. Though Jack had himself been one of the Italian’s foremost pupils, it had been fifteen years since he’d last ascended those steep stairs – and the small sword required a subtlety of mind, a strength and nimbleness of wrist, and continual practice. The last thing he wanted was a fencing bout.

  The fighters separated, sword tips an inch apart, the preliminaries ended. Each had a sense of the other. Jack breathed, tried to focus on his plan. A glimpse of blood was all that was needed for honour to be satisfied, to enable him to walk away. If Tarleton would not be drawn into rashness, there were other ways to attain this end. A good scratch would do it. He just had to set about inflicting one.

  Yet as Jack considered, his opponent began on stratagems of his own. A dozen rapid passes, a flank temptingly exposed; Jack lured, over-lunging. His rear ankle bent instead of staying sole-flat to the ground, requiring an extra second to restore his balance; and in that small moment, Tarleton circular parried hard to the right. Jack’s thigh was stretched out, exposed, his weapon too extended for protection; and the spectators who knew their sword-work, waiting for the swift strike at thigh that would at least wound but could kill if the artery were pierced, caught their breath.

  The moment passed. Tarleton did not move; Jack regained his balance, dropped his point, and slashed. Since the small sword has no cutting edge, all knew that was mere desperation on Jack’s part. They also knew that a chance for Tarleton to end the fight had not been taken; most realized, then, that for him, a glimpse of blood would not be enough.

  Recovering, Jack returned once more to guard. His breath plumed the air before him, dissipating before it could join with his opponent’s negligible exhalation. He was hot and now wished he had taken off his jacket. Yet to do so at this stage would be an acknowledgement he would not give his enemy. That last desperate slash had spent enough of his credit for coolness.

  ‘Agitated, Absolute?’ Tarleton’s voice was calm, seemingly unaffected by the exercise. ‘You’re as red as you were when I caught you astride that whore last night.’

  Recognizing the goad to anger, disdaining it, Jack took a deeper breath and smiled. ‘You malign a lady, sir, whose only wrong is preferring a man to a boy. Though, if the story be true, her rejection of you was more to do with the, uh, length of your sword. Quill-trimmer was the term used, I believe.’

  He heard Sheridan mutter, ‘For God’s sake, Absolute.’ Indeed, the jibe was barely worthy of the playing field at Westminster. Yet it seemed to have such a startling effect that it left Jack speculating it must indeed have been true.

  ‘My sword? You shall feel the length of my sword, you dog!’

  Jack had but a moment to marvel at the change in Tarleton’s colour. Roaring, the youth disengaged his blade and hurled himself wide, thrusting for Jack’s right flank. Retiring a step, parrying with point down, Jack riposted to the man’s breast, under his arm. Stuck at the full length of his lunge, Tarleton went to parry hard … but encountered no blade there; for Jack had merely feinted, disengaged again and thrust to Tarleton’s left shoulder. The younger man was forced to pivot off his front foot to make the parry, his back leg spinning out and round. Jack followed, keeping his blade bound tight to his opponent’s, moving him around. He could have struck again but decided to savour this first little victory – and let Tarleton savour it too. Finally he stepped away.

  Oaths were uttered, in approval or condemnation depending on the support. Suddenly, a one-sided fight had become a contest. Tarleton, smarting from conceding even a point, immediately began another assault. Jack had only a heartbeat to congratulate himself on the success of his provocation before he was protecting himself from the result of it.

  A lunge in carte, one in seconde, the next in tierce. Jack contented himself with parrying and nothing more, but refusing to give any ground. This was forcing Tarleton to ‘thrust at the wall’, an academy exercise to make sure parries were true … and almost an insult to a good swordsman. For Jack had discovered that, once the river of Tarleton’s anger had flooded, it would not recover its banks with any rapidity.

  Another thrust came, another step to the right taken, parrying with point down. Jack’s weight was on his back foot and, still in his fury, Tarleton slashed diagonally up at Jack’s face. Yet Jack had seen the preparation for that, the slight withdrawal of steel that indicated it. He ducked low, back over his bent right leg. The slash had taken the younger man off-balance, and now Jack lunged, stretching from the crouch to his full length. Desperately, Tarleton threw himself to his right, his sword point down, just preventing Jack’s from puncturing him. Their hands were almost touching, their bodies close, and the youth tried to pummel his sword-fist into Jack’s face. Withdrawing his blade and swinging his back leg away, Jack used his left hand to slap down the blow.

  They separated again. Two equal clouds of breath met and mingled in the frigid air.

  A voice called out, English, but with an Iroquois accent. ‘You can finish him now, Daganoweda. Your name says what you are and his says nothing.’

  ‘And what does that name mean, Até? I always meant to ask,’ said Sheridan.

  ‘“Inexhaustible”.’ He turned to the Irishman and winked. ‘His first wife gave it to him.’

  Jack, meanwhile, simply breathed. He was not as inexhaustible as once he’d been. And his younger opponent would recover quicker.

  So he began to attack. He’d noticed that a patch of mud and grass had appeared beneath the snow, scraped up by their endeavours. All he had to do was draw Tarleton into an extended lunge …

  Yet it was he who was drawn. Instead of parrying, Tarleton avoided the blade with a volte, a leap and a thrust to the left side. Jack had to step hard right to parry it … and his foot landed square in the churned earth and melting snow.

  He slipped down to one knee, his sword arm halting his fall. With a grunt, Tarleton drew his weapon back and thrust down with a blow meant to puncture flesh and snap bone.

  With a part of his mind Jack watched the weapon come, aimed straight into his watching eye. With another he let the hand, still holding his sword that pressed into the snow, slip. So sure was Tarleton of his triumph that his blade didn’t waver, didn’t follow the slight movement of the head. So he was as surprised as Jack when the point met cloth, not flesh, and plunged through the collar of Jack’s jacket, the one he’d wished he was no longer wearing, ripping half of it away.

  The force of the blow pushed the torn shred of wool down, impaling it into the frozen ground. The weapon shivered with the blow, then snapped.

  ‘Hold, sir, hold,’ cried the man acting as President. Tarleton would not be halted. Pulling back the half-sword, now with its jagged end, he made to thrust again. Yet his target had shifted, Jack had rolled on to his back. His own weapon, lifted from the snow, came round. The broken blade descended but Jack swiped it aside with the outside of his left hand. At the same time he jabbed up with his right.

  He didn
’t have to jab far. Tarleton was falling. Jack’s point pierced his ear in its centre, went through, and held it like a piece of meat prepared for an open fire. Blood, for the second time in twenty-four hours, spattered Jack.

  ‘First Blood … sir,’ Jack said.

  A howl from Tarleton, a cry from the onlookers. And another sound, unheard till then – a horn, then another, a third from their proximity minutes only from the duelling ground.

  The combatants were pulled apart. The President came forward.

  ‘Fielding’s men. The Runners are come! Here’s First Blood drawn and honour satisfied, eh? Shake hands and let’s be gone. None of us wants to spend time in the Clink, do we, gentlemen?’

  ‘Come, Jack, to Drury Lane.’ Sheridan’s face was flushed. ‘I’ll dress you as Harlequin in a pantomime and hide you onstage. And, by God, if you don’t put this into a new play, I will!’

  The horns were drawing closer, and the yelping of dogs was added to them. The hunt was on. At the far side of the trampled square of snow, Viscount Savingdon had withdrawn Jack’s sword and was trying to stem the blood flowing from Tarleton’s ear while Von Schlaben whispered urgently into the other.

  ‘No!’ screamed Banastre Tarleton. Suddenly he leaped to his left, where his valet still held the weapons that had been rejected for the duel. Pulling one of the cavalry sabres from its sheath, he ran across the square towards Jack.

  Jack, shrugging into his cloak, turned at the scream, but not in time. The heavy blade was rising and, in that instant, both he and Tarleton knew that there would be no second miss, no collar to save him now.

  Something else did. Something that flew from the edge of the clearing and struck the shrieking man on his temple, just before the sabre could begin its descent. Tarleton dropped to the ground as if he’d been shot. The sword sank into the snow beside him while, on his other side, another weapon fell as if from the sky.

  ‘God?’ yelled Sheridan, looking up, as if searching for the source of such divine deliverance.

  ‘Até,’ said Jack, and bent to pick up the tomahawk. ‘Good throw, brother.’

  The Mohawk thrust the weapon back into his belt and shrugged. ‘I do not understand all the rules of these contests. But as your Second, was I not meant to stop such a thing?’

  Savingdon had rushed to the fallen man. ‘Your savage has killed him!’ he cried.

  ‘If my savage had meant to kill him, then he’d be dead.’ Jack smiled. ‘Is that not right, Até? You struck him with the top of the weapon, not the cutting edge, eh?’

  For the first time, Até looked a little disconcerted. ‘Actually, brother, maybe it was just not such a good throw.’

  The horn blasts sounded again, much nearer now. Shouts too, seemingly from all sides.

  ‘Come, gentlemen,’ said Sheridan, ‘time to make our exit.’

  The crowd had scattered swiftly, for anyone arrested at the scene of a duel could be prosecuted. The largest body, counting on the strength of their numbers, headed for the most direct route back to the road – which was, of course, the direction from which the constables were approaching. Others broke, in singles and pairs, in all directions.

  ‘This way,’ called Sheridan.

  They burst through a screen of trees cresting a small bank. The snow had drifted here, rising to their thighs, making it hard going. To their left came an excited shout, a blast of horn. Looking there, Jack saw three men in grey greatcoats. Each was armed and one now unleashed two hounds.

  ‘To the right, lads,’ Jack cried, and began to straddle the snow, seeming to go where it was thickest. It was exhausting work but looking back, Jack saw his choice had been correct; for the dogs were finding the drifts too deep, leaping like porpoises in a white sea only to be swallowed and having to leap again. Their handlers were not faring any better.

  They had gained some advantage when they reached a drover’s path where the snow had been beaten down with hooves. Immediately, they began to run, stumbling at first, used as they were to the sensation of resistance. Soon, however, they picked up a good pace, though by the sounds of the yelps behind them, it would not be long before the dogs were moving swifter than they on the packed snow.

  Ahead, through the gloom and falling snow, they saw a light. A shepherd’s hut stood on the edge of the common there.

  ‘The Windsor Road, I think. Means our landau is round the other side, dammit.’ Sheridan was breathing more heavily than the others, unused to this outdoor work.

  ‘It would have been secured by the Runners anyway.’ Jack led them around the side of the hut. In its lee they paused for a moment, squatted down. Sheep in a pen regarded them incuriously. ‘If Windsor’s that way then so’s the river. We can lose the dogs in the reeds on the bank. Come on.’

  Jack rose, Até beside him. Sheridan struggled up but, red-faced, fell back.

  ‘No, me boys, this hare has run his last. I think I’ll converse with the owner of this fine establishment. Always useful to hear how the simple folk are talking these days. And when the Runners find me here, I can entertain them for a while.’

  Jack began to protest but Sheridan interrupted him. ‘Go and Godspeed. They will not incarcerate me long. We play my new comedy, The School for Scandal, for the King next week, and he will not like to be disappointed. Go!’

  Two swift handshakes, and Jack and Até turned, began to run. Behind them Sheridan called out, ‘Write me, dearest Jack, of your exploits, if you please. You always provide such thundering good plots!’

  Jack snorted. He knew how this plot had to end. They needed to buy – or steal – horses in Windsor and ride south. The Portsmouth road was not far. He had to beat the news of this action to the coast. With the right tide, he could be a-ship and on his way to Nevis ahead of any pursuit.

  They were a few hundred paces along the road when they heard the dogs again. Glancing back, they saw lanterns and shapes moving before the shepherd’s hut. Some lingered, but a significant body set off in immediate pursuit.

  They ran faster, looking to the left for a gap in the hedgerows, a path through the fields and down to the river. Behind them, the horns blew again, dogs bayed. And then another sound came under it all, a rolling, crunching noise, joined by the clear snap of a whip. Half-turning, Jack saw the huge shape of a coach and six, moving at speed through the pursuing pack. He was close enough to hear the curses heaped upon the coachman.

  The vehicle drew alongside, slowing slightly to match their stride. A blind went up.

  ‘Care for a ride, Jack?’

  John Burgoyne leaned in the window, a pipe in one hand, silver flask in the other. Jack didn’t hesitate.

  ‘Much obliged, General,’ he said, swinging a foot up on to the running board. The door of the carriage opened and he threw himself inside while Até, a pace behind, scrambled up the rear of the coach to its roof. As he was joined, the coachman cracked his whip again and the six horses surged forward.

  ‘Strange … that you should just … happen by, sir,’ Jack gasped.

  ‘Strange indeed. And fortuitous, it seems.’ Burgoyne smiled at him. ‘Cognac?’

  ‘A moment … to catch my breath, sir … if you please.’

  He leaned out of the window, looked back. Darkness had enveloped the sight of pursuit. The sounds of horns, frustrated men, and yelping dogs retreated into the night.

  Jack sat back, then became aware of a presence beside him. He turned. ‘Ah, Miss Reardon. Please excuse the intrusion.’

  She smiled. ‘Mr Absolute, how glad I am to see you again.’ Then her smile vanished. ‘But you are wounded, sir! Quickly, may I help you? I have some knowledge of these matters.’

  ‘Wounded?’ He glanced down. ‘Oh, the blood is not mine.’

  And he laughed. It suddenly felt rather good to do so, so he carried on for a little while, until Burgoyne, a broad grin on his own face, said, ‘So, did you kill your man, Jack?’

  ‘I did not, sir. I had hoped to avoid it. I merely pricked him.’

  Bu
rgoyne shook his head. ‘You might come to regret that. This Tarleton has built up a brutish reputation. Scarce eighteen, and he has already dispatched three fellows. He’s not the sort to consider honour satisfied if he loses. And he keeps some strange company.’

  Jack now took the flask and drank. The cognac tasted even better than it had the previous night.

  ‘Are you referring to his Second, this German Count? I did wonder about him.’

  ‘And so you should.’

  Louisa added, ‘The General believes he is aiding the Rebels in my poor country.’

  ‘In what way?’

  ‘Have you heard of the Illuminati, Jack?’

  ‘I have not.’

  Burgoyne took the flask back, drank, then continued. ‘Of course, you’ve been away. And even if you’d been here, you might not have … you do not move within the Mystery, do you?’

  The General was referring to the Freemasons. Jack had always avoided the Brotherhood, even though it might have aided him in his business ventures. He felt there was more than enough secrecy in his life, enough obligation. But he knew Burgoyne to be high up in the order.

  ‘I do not, sir. Are these Illuminati a lodge then?’

  ‘Of a kind. A new one, formed in Munich only last year by a man called Adam Weishaupt. A professor of religious law, apparently, and many of his followers are of the same ilk. Lawyers!’ Burgoyne gave the title a soldier’s contemptuous emphasis, drew on his pipe. ‘Yet these fellows have formed a secret society within a secret society. No one is quite sure what they want, though they have tried to infiltrate every lodge in the realm, succeeded with many. This Von Schlaben even approached me.’ Burgoyne exhaled a gout of smoke towards the carriage window. ‘I now regret not leading the Count on a little to discover more. But a contact who did said this Weishaupt’s motives are shrouded in Jesuitical casuistry. He was educated by Jesuits, apparently, and rejected them later as not extreme enough, too tied to a Catholic orthodoxy. Thus my friend did not learn much; but he got the impression that these Illuminati seek, in all societies, disorder, disruption—’