Jack Absolute Page 5

  ‘Revolution?’

  ‘Indeed. To build an “illuminated” new order out of the chaos of the old. With them in control, presumably.’

  Now that Jack’s heart had calmed, his mind was engaged. And there were questions here that puzzled him.

  ‘So why his interest in me? He seemed very set on my extinction.’

  As he asked the question, he recalled again part of their conversation at Drury Lane, Burgoyne’s parting words, and, remembering it, he had the beginnings of an answer.

  ‘Did you not let it be known, sir, that I had already accepted your offer to rouse the Iroquois for the King?’

  Burgoyne smiled. ‘I’m rather afraid I may have given out that impression.’

  ‘So if Von Schlaben understands the importance of the Iroquois to the British cause, he might perceive me as a serious threat to the Revolution? To the disorder he seeks?’

  ‘You know, Jack, I’m rather afraid he might.’

  Jack looked out of the window at the roadway speeding by. The fields were giving way to more houses. They were entering the outskirts of Windsor.

  Of course. There always had been more to it than a dispute over a pretty player.

  ‘Well, General, I think you have enmeshed me here.’

  It was said with a little heat but Burgoyne merely smiled still. ‘Alas, Jack, I fear you are right. How ever can I make amends?’

  ‘You are bound for Portsmouth?’ He received a nod. ‘Then a ride there would quit your obligation. My boat, as yours, awaits. If you will but take me to the docks—’

  ‘And you will be arrested the moment you set foot upon them. My boy, you were called out in the most public setting possible. In accepting Tarleton’s challenge, you in turn challenged the Authorities … and they seem very serious about restricting a gentleman’s prerogative of honour. Examples must be made and you will make a fine one. Not too wealthy to cause a fuss but still well known. Your estates will be forfeit, your neck may well be stretched, you will at the least be thrown into the Clink and nothing can save you.’ Burgoyne smiled again. ‘Well, almost nothing.’

  ‘“Almost nothing”, General?’ Louisa leaned in. ‘Oh, do say there is something that can be done for the gallant Captain!’

  They seemed to be sharing a private joke. Jack, looking from one to the other, suddenly realized what it was. And that it was on him.

  ‘As usual, my dear, you have hit upon the very heart of it. If you were indeed “Captain” Jack Absolute again, entrusted by a commander of one of His Majesty’s armies – odds life, I suppose someone very much like myself! – entrusted, as I say, with a mission vital to your country’s cause … why then, my boy, no civil power on earth could touch you.’

  Enmeshed indeed. There was no escaping from the snare. Instead of further anger, though, Jack could only tip back his head and laugh.

  ‘It really is a very good plot,’ he said, looking at each in turn, ‘I must write Sheridan with it.’

  ‘You will have plenty of time on our voyage to America.’ Louisa smiled, laying her hand on Jack’s arm, squeezing it gently.

  He looked from her fingers up into her steady green eyes and seemed suddenly to see in their pattern something of the land from which she came. It appeared he had no choice now but to return to that land, to North America, eleven years after he’d left it. Até, facing into the wind atop the carriage, would be delighted. And Jack, now he had no other option, was strangely pleased too. His business in Nevis could, with very careful handling, wait a short while. And as for the Colonies, he had had another life there, other causes; it would be a homecoming, of sorts. Once more, to be Daganoweda, the ‘Inexhaustible’ of the Mohawk. Once more to be a captain of the 16th Light Dragoons. Once more to be a secret agent of the Crown.

  Leaning back into the cushions of the carriage, Jack Absolute faced the inevitable with a smile. Até’s words on the duelling ground came back to him.

  The readiness is all.

  He took the flask again, raised it first to the lady and then to the General. Taking a long pull of the exquisite cognac, Jack realized that he was, indeed, ready.

  – FOUR –

  Ghosts

  Jack Absolute leaned on the taffrail of HMS Ariadne at dusk, staring at the skyline of Quebec. It looked very different from the first time he’d seen it, eighteen years before. Then it was undergoing a siege, had been reduced by artillery for a month. In the lower town, roofs had tumbled in, walls had crumbled, and the docks had been turned into a profusion of splinters and spars; in the upper town the French held on, protected by their unassailable cliffs, certain that winter’s approach would force the besiegers to withdraw before the ice of the St Lawrence trapped and crushed their ships. The old enemy looked down upon a starving English army, wasted by the bloody flux, mutinous. Falling apart. Until …

  Jack searched for and found a slice of shadow in the granite rockface.

  In 1759, control of that slice, that narrowest of roads, had allowed General Wolfe to move his forces up onto the Plains of Abraham before the City. But seizing the track had required an advanced party to scramble up the cliffs in the pre-dawn dark and dispose of the French piquets before they could sound the alarm. And since half the officers already there were sick, and the majority afraid and since he was newly arrived from England and as foolhardy and expendable as only a sixteen-year-old Lieutenant of Dragoons could be, he had been one of the first to volunteer for the assault. With muffled swords and powderless pistols, the advanced guard, Jack near the front, had killed the sentries on the cliff-top then guided the rest of General Wolfe’s army into position. The Marquis de Montcalm, awaiting his enemy further up the river, had discovered them suddenly before Quebec’s weaker landward walls; he’d marched his men down to confront them. For glory. For France. And had been one of the first to die in the perfect volley the British had delivered that day.

  Distant thunder underscored his thoughts, and Jack shivered in a way that had nothing to do with the chill May wind. That track had not been the first place he’d hazarded mortality even then; but it was where he’d received his first battle scar, now just one of many. And here he was, a lifetime on, back where his Colonial adventures had begun. He wondered briefly if the fate he’d only just escaped then awaited him now.

  Not here though. Not in Quebec. The battle at the end of that track, atop the Plains of Abraham, had won a continent for the Crown. Even if the townsfolk still spoke French, that enemy had been vanquished. The English returned now to fight someone different. Someone that had, until very recently, been on the same side in the overthrow of that ancient foe.

  Jack sighed, wondering how many old allies he would now squint at along the barrel of his musket, men he’d called friends, whom he must now call Rebels and traitors. His secret hope was that Burgoyne meant to keep him at his side. In the five-week voyage from Portsmouth, the General had been large with questions, niggardly with answers, not very specific as to Jack’s duties. ‘Help rouse the Iroquois.’ Yes, but they were a disparate people scattered over a vast wilderness. ‘Gain a true knowledge of the enemy.’ Yes, but was he to seek it out, or decipher it when it arrived?

  They had dropped anchor only that morning. Messengers had come and gone all day, bearing information that Burgoyne would be using to refine the plans he’d hitherto kept to himself. His key officers had been summoned to a special supper that night. No doubt Jack and all the others would get their answers and their orders then. And find out exactly how the man the American Rebels contemptuously called ‘Gentleman Johnny’ planned to defeat their Revolution.

  As always, Jack hadn’t heard him come, until the words were spoken.

  ‘Shall we dive in, Daganoweda, and see who is first to the shore?’

  Jack squinted ahead. ‘It’s far.’

  ‘We’ve swum further.’

  ‘Not when we weren’t being chased.’

  He turned to Até. The Mohawk’s gaze remained fixed ahead. As usual he was wearing the
little that passed for his clothes, so Jack continued, ‘And even you might find it cold, Até. The ice is not long gone.’

  Até grunted. ‘Colder than the high Ganges the day the Thugees chased us to the cliffs?’

  Jack smiled and winced at the same time. Another land, another scar. ‘No, not as cold. And probably not as far.’

  ‘Well then. I am ready if you are.’

  Neither man moved, just stared at the shore, at the sweep of woods above the town just gaining its spring shrouding. The forests here were so different from England, from India and the Caribbean; silver maple and spruce, white cedar, hemlock. Both men breathed deeply, held the scent in their nostrils.

  ‘It is good to be back.’

  Jack said nothing.

  Até turned to him. To his silence. ‘Do you fear what we are to do here?’

  ‘I fear what we may find. Friends who are now foes. All wars are civil wars in some way, Até. This one more than most. Eleven years we have been away. A world changes in eleven years.’

  The Mohawk thumped his chest with a closed fist. ‘It does not change here.’

  Jack studied the shoreline. ‘I think it changes there most of all.’

  Até’s voice came then, a little softer. It was not the Iroquois way to dwell on past sadness. But he had lived in Jack’s world long enough to know that the Iroquois way was not universal, more was the pity.

  ‘We buried her, Daganoweda. Your woman dwells in the village of the dead. And those who killed her, they burn in hell.’

  ‘I know this.’

  ‘And now you believe love ends in death. This land, our land, makes you think this.’

  ‘No,’ he said, more sharply than he wished, ‘it doesn’t.’ Contrary to what his friend believed, he didn’t live in that past. He had mourned, moved on.

  And yet? A secret path to a cliff-top, the scent of white cedar, an echo of a woman’s laugh on the breeze? Ghosts, gathering.

  Até studied him for a moment, then said, ‘Be careful.’

  ‘About what?’

  Até sighed. ‘I have seen you before. Many, many times. You are as fast as any member of the Wolf clan, as good in a fight with gun or tomahawk. But you are unlike us only in this – you are a fool with women. In this one thing, you are a fool.’

  Jack felt anger again, bit back on it. This was an old argument between them.

  He did not hear Até go as he had not heard him come. He heard the next footfall though, knew it from its soft determination, the way the heels struck upon the deck. He had learned to listen for it, in the five-week voyage from England. More of what Até would call his foolishness.

  ‘The General’s compliments, Captain Absolute. The company is assembling.’

  He faced her. Louisa was wearing something new, obviously saved for this last, most special supper. Nancy, her maid, had gentled her thick, red-gold hair into ringlets that corkscrewed down over the bare shoulders and forward to her décolletage. The silk dress was a shade of green that amplified that of her eyes.

  He reached to her, crimped a piece of the material in his fingers. ‘This is beautiful.’

  ‘Why, thank you.’

  She twirled slightly, let the lower folds float outwards, sink back.

  ‘As if your eyes needed any help.’

  ‘Truly? You think this colour suits with my eyes?’

  She opened them wide and they both laughed. In the first week of the voyage they had established that each despised what passed for conventional intercourse between man and woman; the endless complimenting, the simpering response. That sort of thing was the subject of the sentimental comedies that brought audiences to the theatres, silver to the novelists. Yet rejecting one game left them uncertain which one they should play. Jack had been delighted to discover that his favourite was also hers, even if the eventual endgame was impossible to reach in the cramped conditions of a ship. There could be no checkmate, not with ears a thin plank away.

  He was still holding the sleeve of the dress. With the slightest pressure, he pulled. She resisted, but not enough to dislodge his fingers. Slowly, she began to move towards him.

  ‘You’ll tear it,’ she breathed.

  ‘I’d like to,’ he whispered.

  She leaned into him, but for a moment, till a movement above distracted. A sailor was edging along a spar, towards a stay come loose in the wind.

  She pulled away, began drumming her fan rapidly before her face.

  But, as the feel of silk between Jack’s fingers lingered, he took in the significance of the colour she wore.

  Louisa saw his frown. ‘Something distresses you, Jack?’

  ‘No. Yes.’ He turned to look again at the trees above the town. ‘I was in a reverie here. This,’ he gestured to the shore, ‘world.’ He sighed. ‘Até found me. He has a way of knowing my mind and that was running on … old memories.’

  ‘Good memories?’

  ‘Yes. No. Both. It depends how you choose to regard them. Até would quote you Hamlet: “For there is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so.”’

  ‘Wise words. How did you choose to think on these memories?’

  ‘Badly, I fear.’

  Should he tell her? Did any woman truly care to hear of a man’s previous loves?

  She saw his hesitation. ‘Tell me.’

  ‘I … there was … someone here, once. Tonesaha, of the Mohawk.’

  ‘Tonesaha? A beautiful name.’

  ‘As was she. After the events you saw so selectively depicted by that scoundrel Sheridan in The Rivals I returned here in sixty-three. Met her. She …’

  ‘Died?’

  ‘Was murdered.’

  ‘Oh.’ Red came to the skin that she could not restrain. ‘Oh, I am so sorry.’

  ‘As was I. But it was fourteen years ago, I had not forgotten, however,’ he looked to the shore, ‘returning here, it made me think of her. Of death.’ He turned back to her now, urgently. ‘The dress. Take it off.’

  ‘Why, sir—’ she began, unfolding her fan.

  ‘No. Listen to me. We have an expression in Cornwall: “She who buys a green dress will soon wear a black one.”’

  The splayed fan was telescoped, lowered. ‘We have a similar expression in New York. It is one of the reasons I wear the colour.’

  ‘Defiance?’

  ‘Always. I am a woman of this age, Jack. I will not be governed by nursery fears. Your tale is a tragic one but …’ She shrugged. ‘Death is the only certainty for us all. It will not be cheated by superstition.’

  He looked at her for a moment. Finally, he nodded. ‘Then take care,’ he said softly, as the sailor above began whistling to accompany his work. A shanty, gloriously off-key.

  ‘I am not the one disembarking to danger on the morrow.’

  ‘You are. You have chosen to join your father, and the regiment he commands. We are going to war.’

  ‘And I will be back at the camp, knitting socks, gossiping with the wives. I often wish it could be otherwise. That I could trade blows with these … Rebels.’ She sighed. ‘There will be no danger for me.’

  Her jaw was set, pointed to the lights just now appearing in the windows of Quebec. In the dusk, they looked like fireflies beginning their nightly dance.

  ‘Endless supper parties, young gallants fawning before you, and me, perhaps, away. No, you are right – I am the one in true peril.’

  He had reverted to their game. But now it was she who would not play.

  ‘In that sense, you are in no peril at all, sir. And, at war’s end …’ She paused.

  They had never finally settled on what peace would mean, for much depended on which side was victorious. If the Rebels won, those who had remained loyal to the Crown would be perceived as traitors, driven away. Many whose lands lay in Rebel control had already sacrificed them. But if the Crown triumphed … could there be a future for them?

  The sailor dropped from the mast above, preventing any clarification. He landed with a thump that
made them both start, tugged his forelock to them, and went whistling ever more tunelessly on his way. As he moved off, they laughed and eight bells sounded.

  ‘Supper?’

  ‘Aye.’ Something in him was reluctant, something of their conversation still clinging to him. He remembered something else now about green dresses. Lizzie Farren would never wear one on stage. For the same reason as the Cornish or the New Yorkers.

  He shivered. She took his arm in an instant. ‘Cold, Jack?’

  ‘A little.’

  ‘Then let us get warm together.’

  The aft cabin of the Ariadne, which Burgoyne had commandeered from its Captain, was bright with light. Lanterns perched on every surface not filled with food or drink, dangled from hooks in the ceiling, yellow beams reflecting off cut glass decanters, crystal bumpers, and the silver trenchers that held the best Meissen china.

  On the morrow, John Burgoyne would step ashore and take command of the Army of the North. So the end of the voyage and the eve of a glorious enterprise demanded only the finest in all things. It also was an opportunity for the General to gather his commanders, to make or renew acquaintance with the men who would serve throughout the coming campaign. He intended to feast them well, to test their mettle and know their minds by loosening their tongues with the miracles his personal chef had conjured from the ship’s galley and with special selections from his famous wine cellar. ‘Gentleman Johnny’ was said to dine as well on campaign as King George did in his palace. Better, many maintained, for the General had better taste.

  Jack, as befitted his lowlier rank, sat at the table’s far end, away from his Commander. Yet there were barely a dozen people in the cramped cabin and he was able to hear any conversation he chose. Indeed, one of his particular talents was an ability to keep two in mind at once while conducting a third. A practical skill for a spy and Jack had been asked to use it, to study and note the men gathered there that night, and to report his observations to Burgoyne later.

  The difficulty with any mission of espionage lay in its geography. The terrain Jack had to cover here presented no obstacles of bog or leaf-choked trail; there were no impenetrable codes to crack. Here he merely had to negotiate bumper after bumper of Burgoyne’s fine liquors. Sipping discreetly was only allowed between toasts and it was a rare five minutes when someone did not have something or someone to huzzah. Honour demanded that when a king, a general, a lady, a regiment, or any other of several dozen excuses was called upon, a whole glass must be drained. Upon which some hearty would nearly always cry, ‘Aye, that’s right, fellows, always wet both eyes,’ and a second would immediately follow. If Jack had been in a tavern or even his regiment’s mess, he’d make sure that every second glass, at the least, was thrown over his shoulder but the floor of the cabin was not a suitable receptacle. And even if the glass he’d managed to choose was smaller than most, too many full ones had still found their way into him.