Jack Absolute (2 page)

If I am about to die
, he thought, looking away and up into the cloud-racked March sky,
the least I can do is to understand why.

Something had occurred the previous night at the theatre, aside from the play and the challenge. Something that had brought
them all here to this snowy common. So it was back to Drury Lane that Jack’s mind went, in the few moments before the formalities
were settled, and the dying began.

Captain Jack Absolute marched forward, his eyes reflecting the flames of a hundred candles.

‘There will be light enough; there will, as Sir Lucius says, “be very pretty small-sword light, though it won’t do for a long
shot”.’ He raised an imaginary pistol, ‘fired’ it with a loud vocal ‘boom’, then added, ‘Confound his long shots!’

This last, delivered in an exaggerated Irish brogue, conjured a huge roar of laughter from the pit and a smattering of applause
from the galleries. The bold Captain had a way with him!

Or was that just the actor playing him?

In the pit, the real Jack Absolute had suffered more than enough. He rose and squeezed through the tiny gap between knees
and the backs of benches, trying to obscure as little of the stage as possible, though his kindly efforts were rewarded with
cries of, ‘Sit down, sirrah,’ and ‘Unmannerly dog! Woodward is speaking!’ From above, the actors glared down at him before
continuing the scene.

The evening had been a nightmare. Only one week back in London, his legs still moving as if the deck of the East India Company
sloop and fifty fathoms of water were beneath him, he had been forced to sit and watch this parody of his past. Jack had learned
of his new notoriety when, on his first day
back, he’d taken a chair from the City to Covent Garden and the chairmen, on discovering his identity from the banker who’d
handed Jack in, had called out to all they passed that they had the ‘real’ Jack Absolute inside. A crowd had followed, calling
out his name. Thereafter, every clerk, innkeeper and trader he’d been introduced to had inevitably said, ‘You’re not
that
Jack Absolute, are you?’ And when, in a fury, he’d tracked his old friend Sheridan down, the rogue had barely blinked at
his misappropriation of Jack’s name and history.

‘But you was gone seven years, Jack. We all thought you was dead. You was lucky, actually. I beat poor Ollie Goldsmith – God
bless his memory! – to the name by a hair. He would have used it in
She Stoops to Conquer.
Then you’d have been that st-st-stuttering booby Marlow, rather than the dashing, handsome Captain of my
Rivals
.’

Dashing? Handsome? The ever-popular Mr Woodward, who personated Jack, was sixty if he was a day, and no amount of face paint
and kindly, low-level candlelight could conceal the wrinkles. As for the play itself, Jack had to concede that Sheridan had
a sharp memory and sharper eye. Jack’s youthful escapade had been captured in almost every detail. His on-stage father, Sir
Anthony Absolute – at least the playwright had had the minor decency to alter his name from James – was a perfect study of
the tyranny, humour, and incipient insanity of the original. The object of desire, Lydia Languish, was modelled on just such
a mix of beauty and romantic imbecility. However, Jack knew he needn’t stay till the epilogue. This story would resolve in
universal reconciliation and joy. Unlike the original. Perhaps that was what galled Jack the most, propelled him now from
the auditorium; that Sheridan had usurped his youthful folly for a romantic comedy, when the reality was more of a farce and,
in the end, almost a tragedy. The then nineteen-year-old Jack had
not
ended up with the lady – as his stage incarnation
undoubtedly would this night – indeed, he had nearly died in his attempt to carry her off. And, having failed, he had begun
the first of his many extended exiles from England.

Fortunately, he had good reason not to remain and witness further banality – for another exile would commence tonight. A coach
stayed for him at his inn, as a boat stayed for the tide in Portsmouth. After seven years away, he had been in the realm for
as many days, long enough to deal with the affairs that now took him hence again, with a line of credit from Coutts Bank to
transform the sugar plantation on Nevis in the Antilles, which his recent skill, acumen, and simple bloody-mindedness in India
had won him. He just had two matters to attend to first. Two people to see. A man and a woman.

He gained the side aisle and advanced to the stairs. The first of those people had a box. All that was required was a brief,
courteous refusal of that man’s offer, followed by a visit backstage for an equally swift, if potentially more passionate,
farewell.

Could it have been only one week? In that short time, had one of the most powerful men in the realm sought a favour and one
of its most desired ladies sought to seduce him? And now, in the space of five minutes, was he to refuse them both? He could
not wait to return to the sea. Life was so much simpler aboard a ship.

A ticket collector tried to halt his progress upstairs, but a coin gained him passage. There was an officer at the box door,
wearing the uniform that Jack himself had once worn – ensign of the 16
^th
Light Dragoons, the smartest regiment in the Cavalry. But the young man recognized Jack, and his Commander had obviously
left word that he was to be shown in promptly.

Jack would have preferred a moment to ready himself. To refuse the man inside was no light thing. But the heavy brocade curtain
was immediately slid back. Hearty applause
seemed to greet his entrance, though, in truth, it was paying farewell to his stage incarnation’s exit Stage Left and the
end of Act Four. The Theatre Royal immediately filled with the cries of hawkers selling refreshments, while the orchestra
struck up an air for the entr’acte, an Italian acrobat team called the Zucchini Brothers, just now making their entrance,
Stage Right.

‘Faith! There’s the finest piece of stage trickery I’ve seen all night. Jack Absolute’s coat-tails are still visible in the
wings … and here the man stands in my box!’

‘General.’

Out of long habit Jack nearly saluted but remembered in the nick that he was no longer in the regiment and was there to refuse
that honour again. So the arm gesture transformed into a rather awkward half-bow, which the General would not have failed
to miss. John Burgoyne missed nothing.

‘Cognac?’ A glass was tendered, accepted, gulped. The liquor was even finer than Sheridan’s.

Burgoyne had absorbed the years far more kindly than the actor Mr Woodward. Though his hair was as white as the snow on the
ground outside, it was a drift not a scattering. Black sideburns emerged from its banks like curled highlights for the strong,
straight jaw; while equally dark, full eyebrows sheltered and set off the deep-set, grey eyes. Eyes that showed the intelligence
of a man recently appointed to one of the highest commands in the army, who could also pen a play,
Maid of the Oaks
, which had enjoyed even more success than Sheridan’s
Rivals.
Those eyes sparkled now with the joy of the joke, which he was all too eager to share with a figure Jack could barely make
out in the corner of the box.

‘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.’