Jack Absolute (11 page)

‘A little. He and Até are both Mohawk and Wolf Clan, and also both graduates of Moor’s Indian Charity School.’

‘Good friends, then?’

‘Can’t stand each other.’ Jack laughed. ‘But they’ll work together nonetheless.’

‘Good. Well, you and Até and his schoolfellow Brant will drink with the tribes, smoke with them, speak their blessed lingo
with them. Rally them, Jack. And then, set them loose in their thousands. I wager you’ll depopulate the Mohawk Valley of Rebels
inside a month.’

While the General was occupied with the buttons of his waistcoat, Jack stared at the map. He had already voiced his doubts
as to the size of the Native contingent that could be expected, as well as their enthusiasm. ‘Who is to lead us?’

‘Wish it were you, my boy. Alas, not even I have the dispensation to raise a Captain to Brevet-Brigadier in an instant. No,
it will be Colonel Barry St Leger. Know him?’

‘A little. Experienced. Is he still … ?’ Jack cocked a hand towards his mouth.

‘Apparently not. Found temperance and God, they say.’ Burgoyne shuddered. ‘Still, better for our purposes to have him sober,
eh?’ He laid his finger again upon the map. ‘Do you remember what’s here?’

Jack looked at the point indicated. ‘Fort Stanwix, is it not?’

‘Aye, Jack. Apparently it’s close to a ruin and defended by half-trained Militiamen, at best. They’ll probably run off; but
if they do fight, just encourage St Leger to end it with all dispatch. A week at the most, eh? The swifter you move inland,’
Burgoyne’s finger traced along the Mohawk Valley, ‘the swifter the Americans will have to detach men to oppose you, while
half the Militia will desert to protect their own farms. The weakened forces they put up against me I’ll sweep aside,’ his
finger drew down the line of the Hudson from Canada, ‘while General Howe will be scattering Washington’s forces to the south
and marching to join us here.’ His finger climbed from New York then stabbed down on a black circle. ‘Albany, Jack. We’ll
see what the kidneys are like in Albany at the end of August. Three months! Why, it will be like a stroll around Vauxhall
Gardens!’

Jack decided merely to nod. There was so much he could say as to the hazards that lay ahead and no point in saying them. The
General would counter anything he brought up. He was that most dangerous of military men – an optimist.

‘When do I leave, sir?’

‘Immediately. I have your papers here – orders, requisitions for horses and equipment, some gold so’s you can do some bribing.
No doubt you and Até will prefer to travel as civilians so you can leave your uniform with me. Then you and your savage can
go where you think fit, urging all the warriors you meet to the fight. You know the country better than anyone. Just be at
Oswego for the gathering of the tribes in the last week of July.’

‘Must I leave immediately, sir? There was a personal matter I wished to attend to in the town.’

Burgoyne smiled, somewhat sadly, then reached for his scarlet coat. Even in the dawn light the gold thread dazzled. It was
exquisite, as were all his clothes, the facings the deep blue
of his own and Jack’s regiment, the 16
^th
Dragoons. ‘I would give you the time, dear Jack, but you would find it fruitless. The boat that brought the kidneys brought
this as well.’ He picked up another note and passed it to him.

It was in Louisa’s strong hand and asked the General to convey to Jack her deepest regrets; but her father had made arrangements
for her to travel to Montreal with the dawn sailing.

His face must have betrayed his disappointment. Burgoyne laughed. ‘Damn me, Jack, but I fear you have become a sentimental
dog. When you were younger such a letter would have given you joy. You’ve had five weeks of her charms. As a youth, that would
have been an eternity. Sheridan had you to perfection in his play as a rogue and a schemer. What’s happened to you?’

‘Age, General.’

Burgoyne glanced at the screen and smiled. ‘Don’t know what you are talking about. Well, never mind, my boy. The lovely Miss
Reardon travels with the army. I will watch over her as a second father and you will see her in Albany, if not before. Should
goad you to keep St Leger pushing swiftly forward, eh?’

‘Aye, sir.’

Briskly, his sash was tied, his gorget affixed, his high black leathern boots slipped on. Burgoyne paused briefly to whisper
behind the screen, then he strapped on his sword, picked up his gloves and hat, and beckoned Jack towards the door.

‘Follow me, Captain Absolute. Let us take the first step together on to the land we shall soon rule completely once more.’

He swept out. Jack hesitated a moment, then turned back to the table, gathering up the maps there, putting them into their
case. He suspected the woman behind the screen was Hannah Foy, wife of a commissary officer, Burgoyne’s
mistress from the previous year’s campaign and too dim to be a danger. Or the reverse, dim enough to blurt out all she had
heard in the cabin that morning to some willing ear. There was no need to leave her with maps as well.

Jack paused in the doorway, listening to this woman’s light breathing, thinking of another. The General had judged the Captain
by his own standards and, he had to admit, some examples from Jack’s youth. He assumed that Jack had been taking the same
pleasure from Miss Reardon as he just had from Mrs Foy. It may just have been possible, despite the restrictions of shipboard
life. There was indeed a time when such obstacles would have held him up not a jot. But Jack had wanted something less transient,
and Louisa had seemed to want that too. It was one of the things that intrigued, this holding off. Quite unlike Lizzie Farren
in London and a host of other liaisons he could name – along with many he could not.

Suddenly, with the scent of a woman in a cabin in his nostrils, Jack began to wish away those wasted weeks. He was going to
war and there were dozens of ways he could die in it. Burgoyne was right, he
had
become a sentimental dog. As he climbed the stairs, to the music of ship’s whistles and the percussion of Quebec’s cannons
saluting the new Commander-in-Chief, Jack knew that in the months ahead, he would spend many nights cursing this change in
his character.

‘Fire
!’

The order was roared with a martial ardour of which Jack could only approve. If the young ensign’s vocal enthusiasm at his
first command of an artillery battery had been enough, the log walls of Fort Stanwix would long ago have sundered and split,
Grenadiers would even now be forcing the breach, the Rebels choosing to yield or die. And the strange new flag that floated
over the ramparts – unseen till that day, concocted of stars and stripes obviously ripped from spare cloaks and petticoats
– would soon be replaced by the Union Standard of Great Britain.

Unfortunately for the besiegers, the officer’s command was the loudest noise made. Jack didn’t even bother to plug his ears
as the British artillery whispered its shot towards the walls. The small balls from the two six-pounders, the two three-pounders,
and the four coehorns went the same way as all the previous ones. They either bounced off the solid pine trunks leaving barely
a mark, or buried themselves with harmless thuds in the sod and earth piled around the fort.

Ignoring the jeers of the defenders, the ensign commanded his troops to swab down and reload. He would keep firing until ordered
to stop, despite the negligible results. Shaking his head, Jack began to step through the ranks of Indians
gathered there for the show. He could at least try to get the order to desist, though he doubted his success. So far, Colonel
Barry St Leger, Commander of the British forces at the siege, had neither sought Jack’s advice nor paid attention to any tendered.

‘Apples thrown by children at a garden fence.’ Até had risen from the rear rank of Natives to join him. He was as disgusted
as Jack, not least because he had persuaded a goodly number of his relatives and clan members to join the expeditionary force
on the promise of watching the vaunted British army in action.

‘I know. I’m going to try to persuade St Leger to get it stopped.’

‘And then what, Daganoweda?’

Jack sighed. ‘I wish I knew.’

And he also now wished that, at the outset, he had made clearer to Burgoyne the obstacles that lay ahead of them. Like all
optimists, the General had only foreseen the progress he desired. And indeed, initially, Jack had found the optimism justified,
his orders easy to obey.

He and Até had left Quebec on the first day of June, with two pack horses, amply provisioned, and loaded with all the goods
and presents his native brothers could desire. It was vital for Até’s prestige that when he returned to his people, he returned
as if from the most successful of trading trips and as befitted his status as a member of one of the ‘royal’ families of the
Mohawk. Indeed, Jack knew that if Até had remained in his homeland, and not followed his white brother to India in 1766, he
would be a senior sachem by now. By bringing gifts, he re-established his status and drew warriors to him as a ‘Pine Tree
Chief – unelected, but able to lead men to the war path.

And men did rally. Many had promised to join them at the meeting of the tribes at Oswego in the third week of July.
Most would come – few Iroquois would miss such a party. Some talked with excitement of the coming war. This generation of
young men had not had a fight in which to prove themselves and they did not fully consider themselves men until they did.

But despite the sunshine on their progress, as they had moved out of Canada and into the forest fastnesses of the northern
American colonies, there were hints of darkness along the way. They had met others of the Six Nations of the Iroquois, especially
Oneida and Tuscarora, the tribes who lived closest to the Americans and were most influenced by them, who were sullen, even
hostile. They learned that the Supreme Council of the Iroquois League, made up of the chief sachems of all the tribes, had
been unable to decide unanimously on which side to take in the war. In that Council, if unanimity wasn’t agreed, no action
could be taken. Thus, neutrality was declared. This was unacceptable to many warriors who sought the glory and spoils of war,
and to honour their old allegiance to the English. The Iroquois League was split.

The meeting at Oswego, however, had been a qualified success. The British Commander, St Leger, with his Loyalist subordinates,
had brought enough rum and gifts to buy allies. Many had joined when his force marched from Oswego en route to the Mohawk
River. Ominously, many of the undecided had come to share in the continuing handouts of presents and rum, and to observe the
promised easy victory at Fort Stanwix.

How had Burgoyne described it?
Close to a ruin and defended by half-trained Militiamen, at best.
Jack wished the General was there to see the sturdy bastion, the well-armed and obviously well-trained troops. But Jack had
not spoken out, and he had not warned that once the meeting at Oswego was called, their intended target would be clear to
the Rebels.
The Americans he’d fought beside against the French all those years ago were intelligent enough to recognize the strategic
threat posed by a third British force striking down the Mohawk Valley and would have prepared accordingly. As, indeed, they
had.

Now, as he and Até walked through the rudimentary siege lines, his despair increased. The King’s army was a shambles – and
they’d only been there three days! Emplacements had been half-dug then abandoned, as the Colonel thought first of one point
of attack, then another. Men lay about the holes and little caves, smoking pipes, some playing cards or dice, all swigging
ceaselessly from canteens. The early August heat lay heavy on the land. It was hard to tell Native from Loyalist, as all were
wearing as little as possible – tattered shirts, aprons, or leggings, feet bare. Some flapped caps in futile attempts to ward
off the clouds of tiny black insects that tormented. Others slapped and cursed, as the bigger horse flies or mosquitoes savaged
them.

In many ways the Regulars’ lines were as bad. There was order to be sure – tents set up in even rows, latrines dug, a cook
tent gushing smoke – but the soldiers drilling were in full campaign uniform, an insect head-dress around each, unable to
break ranks and swat them away, sweat turning their scarlet almost to black. Those who had fainted lay to the side, a growing
number, while the officers and sergeants controlling the drills were becoming more and more irritable, striking out with stick
and boot. Jack could sense fury building like an electrical storm within the persecuted ranks.

Yet it was not the soldiers of the 8
^th
or the 34
^th
regiment that concerned Jack. When the time came, they would rally and fight and kill and die as they always had, as Jack
had witnessed them do on many occasions and marvelled. It was not even the two green-coated Loyalist battalions under Butler
and Johnson who were exchanging insults and shot with their
former neighbours, friends, even brothers, within the fort. It was rather those warriors who made up the slight majority of
the allied army that worried him, their situation that the Colonel must now address: His Majesty’s Native Allies.

He approached the tent through crowds of them. They sat – some swaying, others chanting. One group was vying with another
to create ever more elaborate paintings on their bodies, for war paint was highly prized and St Leger had obtained a panoply
of colours for them. A small number had formed a circle, each man playing a Jew’s Harp. Many Natives delighted in the instrument,
its strange humming a rival for the buzz of insects. Most had flagons of rum, swiftly passed, swiftly drained, this ‘darling
water’ the most prized gift of all – and the most dangerous. Jack had seen it happen before: rival tribes, too much liquor,
too little space.

The Iroquois kept to their tribal groups: Seneca with Seneca, Mohawks with other Mohawks, the Cayugas, Onondagas equally separated.
Try as he might, Jack could never convince his superiors that they could not deal with the Iroquois as one body, just more
individual regiments for their forces. And that didn’t even account for the other tribes – Delawares, Shawnees, Missausauga
Algonquin, and many others – who had gathered to partake of British hospitality. Even if they were uncommitted to the fight,
as the Senecas were, for instance, they knew they would still receive their share of gifts. Especially the rum. If the British
turned them away, the enemy would not.