Jack Absolute (24 page)

‘Yours to command, General, as always.’

Burgoyne nodded. ‘Then … care to be my third messenger?’

‘Do you not need me here?’

‘I always delight in your company, dear Jack. But I do not need you to help me build redoubts and dig entrenchments. I need
you to persuade Clinton that he must not dally at the forts on the Hudson but come on with all dispatch. For if he does not
…’ Burgoyne stared above the younger man’s head. ‘Then we are finished.’ He leaned across the table. ‘That, I’m sure you realize,
is for your ears only. Yours and Clinton’s. He must come or …’ he looked up at Jack and the younger man again noted in the
elder’s eyes that hitherto unseen desperation, ‘… or he must order my retreat. He is still my senior officer. He is aware
of what General Howe is about if I am not. If he ordered me to retire in good order to Canada, to conserve my army to fight
again then I would do so. I would, by God!’

Burgoyne’s eyelids, which had begun to flutter, closed. As if summoned to the stage Braithwaite appeared, carrying what looked
like a bundle of polished wood in his arms. ‘Shall I, sir?’ the servant said.

Burgoyne nodded. ‘I’m afraid I must sleep, Jack. I’ll dictate the letters to Clinton for you and Willis and sign them on the
morrow. Not so young as I was …’

He got up and moved across to where his servant had transformed the sticks into an ingenious folding bed. A mattress appeared
from behind a screen – there was always a screen with Burgoyne though Jack was relieved, for the General’s sake, to see that
this one concealed no mistress. Burgoyne swayed above the bed, as his servant decanted blankets and pillows from a chest.

Jack crossed to stand beside him. ‘Three final things, sir.’

‘Hmm?’

‘I will report to Captain Money all I have learned of the Rebels during my stay with Benedict Arnold.’

‘Yes,’ Burgoyne yawned, ‘do that, please.’

‘Até.’

‘If he returns, I shall hold him here for you.’

‘Thank you. And finally – the Count von Schlaben.’

The exhaustion left the General’s eyes. ‘There is no further point in keeping “mine enemy close”. He must not be allowed to
cause any further harm to us, nor threaten you. Kill him.’

‘It will be my especial pleasure to obey that order, sir.’

The General was snoring by the time the sentry had swung open the door. Jack felt nearly as exhausted himself. Survival had
taken precedence over sleep in the previous weeks. He would take up Pellew’s offer of a pillow. However, he had one call still
to make.

He found her at the flap of her tent, watching. As he approached, Colonel Reardon rose from his cot behind her.

‘Jack.’ She raised a hand to him, then, aware of her father, let it fall back.

‘Have you come for that Madeira, Captain?’ Colonel Reardon said as he reached the entrance.

‘I fear I should be asleep before the glass was poured, thanks kindly just the same. I merely came to bid you and your daughter
a good night.’

‘On the morrow, then?’ Louisa smiled.

‘Perhaps, if there is time. I am away again.’

‘When? Where?’

‘Noon. I leave for,’ he hesitated, ‘a small mission of the General’s devising. Nothing dangerous, I assure you.’

‘Do you think me a child, sir, to be pacified with little lies?’
The instant transformation of her face was again remarkable, the spirit he’d noticed sometimes when they ‘jousted’ on board
fully and immediately in evidence, flushing crimson to her cheeks. ‘“Not dangerous?” You go to New York as one of the messengers,
I am certain. There is not a more dangerous job in the army.’

Jack stepped closer. In a low tone, he said, ‘If that were true, Miss Reardon, you would do such a mission no good by declaring
it so loudly.’

She had the decency to look a trifle abashed. Yet in a tone that matched his, she continued, ‘I must go with you.’

Jack, not for the first time in her presence, was astounded. His reaction was, as hers had been, monosyllabic. ‘How? Why?’

‘I have been awaiting just such an opportunity, haven’t I, Father?’ She turned to rest a hand on the old gentleman’s arm.
‘We received a letter from New York. Sickness has broken out there and my mother has been taken by it. She is gravely ill,
and almost unattended. I begged the General to let me go to her but he would not allow it. He could not spare sufficient troops
to ward me and would not let me travel alone.’

‘I should think not. And even if I was going there, you would not be much safer with me. The woods abound with desperate men,
of both allegiances and neither. Alone, I have a chance of getting through but …’

The obstinacy never left her face. He turned to the Colonel. ‘Sir, I appeal to you. I must travel at speed and will live in
the roughest of conditions. It will not be the place for a—’

‘A lady? Do you think I was spawned in silks, raised in lace? Before my father made his fortune, before he ever commanded
a regiment in the field, we were ten years on the frontiers. I was formed in the very forests you will travel through.’

‘It is true, Captain, she was.’

‘But the speed at which I must move—’

‘And I was born astride a horse. I have my own, my beautiful Caspiana right here. It is you, sir, who will be chewing my trail
mud.’

The older man said, warningly, ‘Louisa—’

Jack felt he was drowning. ‘Sir, I entreat you—’

But Colonel Reardon gave him no succour. ‘Captain Absolute, I confess I fear to let my daughter go. But I fear even more to
leave my wife friendless and alone in New York. She is, according to the letter my daughter received, very ill. Deathly, I
might say.’ His voice caught at the word. ‘And the Lord, in whom we must place all trust …’ He paused and looked at his daughter.
‘Well, at times, even the Lord needs a little help.’

In the twin appeal of their eyes, in his fatigue, Jack faltered. ‘Well, sir, I suppose if you can get the General’s permission—’

‘Done!’ said Louisa, as if she had just concluded a purchase.

‘Shall we go now, child?’

Louisa took a step forward then halted. ‘No, Father. The General will be sleeping and will not be apt for our appeal if disturbed.
Besides …’ and here a smile displaced the obstinacy, ‘I have been saving a dress for just such an occasion. Nancy! Nancy!’
She took a step towards the next tent from which there came a distinct groan. Over her shoulder she called, ‘Noon then, Captain.
At the farrier’s.’

The words he would speak were lost to her retreating back.

‘Since she was three years old I have been able to deny her precisely … nothing.’ Reardon turned to a still-speechless Jack.
Hesitantly, in a lowered voice, he continued, ‘One thing remains. A boon I must ask of you. My daughter is … fond of you,
Captain Absolute. By her talk, fonder than she has
ever been of any man. She was heartbroken when she thought you gone. You would not … not take advantage of her … regard, would
you?’ Off Jack’s puzzled stare, he added, ‘As her father, I ask for your word as a gentleman.’

It was a consideration he had not yet had the leisure to dwell upon. Louisa and he, alone in the woods. No cramped sea quarters,
close neighbours and resonant wooden walls, just the trees and the stars and themselves. It was the stuff of more than a few
of his most pleasant dreams.

Yet … here was another man asking if he was a gentleman. The Count von Schlaben had discovered that he was not, not entirely.
Indeed, he felt that if he had ever deserved that title, it had not been for many years; not in India nor the Caribbean, nor
when living as a Mohawk. But now he had again assumed the role, if not the uniform, of a captain in the 16
^th
Dragoons, he supposed he once more also assumed certain obligations. Gentlemanly ones.

Sighing, he said, ‘You have my word, sir.’

The older man smiled. ‘Thank you.’ He paused, then added, ‘You have, of course, my permission to pay your addresses to my
daughter once the Rebel is beaten and we are safe again in Boston. We shall look forward to receiving you, sir. Good night.’

With that, he turned into his tent and the flap dropped behind him.

Jack stared stupidly at it for fully half a minute. ‘Addresses,’ he muttered, at last, turning away. ‘The only thing I intend
to address just now is Edward Pillow’s Pellew.’

Mist shrouded the farrier’s camp, rendering horses and men insubstantial, solidifying only at three paces. The swirls had
not lessened since before dawn; Jack knew, for he had been awake since an hour before it, despite the distracting comfort
of Pellew’s pillow. There had been too many things to do before departure, items to gather, a man to talk to.

That man, Sergeant Willis, had made the journey to New York and back already. His information would be vital. And when Jack
had approached him in that darkest hour of the night, though at first he seemed the epitome of a taciturn Dorsetman, barely
grunting in response to comments on the weather and questions as to his sleep, he became positively voluble on the subject
of the road ahead.

‘Trust to yourself, Cap’n, and no other.’ He was pulling at a loose thread on the front of his dark green coat. Like Jack,
in his freshly issued clothes, the Sergeant was dressed as a civilian. ‘The country abounds with gangs, and though the Cowboys
are meant to be Loyalist and the Skinners side with the Rebel, there’s nowt to tell the two apart. They’ll turn coats on a
whim, ’specially if they scent gold. So carry coin in different pockets, use it if ye must, and allus keep your pistols primed.
Best stay clear altogether, lookee, carry or find your own food and make camp in the woods. Do you know the country at all,
sir?’

Jack nodded. Though he and Até had usually trapped and warred and hunted further north, there’d been times when they’d followed
these trails.

‘You’ll want to ride the lower slopes of the Catskills. Closer you gets to the Hudson the more Rebels you’ll meet. Circle
high and skirt the villages of Altamont, down through Schoharie, Greenville, Cairo, Kingston …’ He took a stick and scratched
shapes in the mud. Then he rubbed his boot across them and continued. ‘If General Clinton has begun his attack, ye might catch
up with him near his targets, the Highland forts. If he hasn’t … try to get across the Hudson to Tarrytown. There’s a ferry
on the west bank. Ride down the eastern shore. Then you’ll have to steal a boat and row across to the city of New York.’

A farrier brought Willis’s horse to him. As he checked the girth, Jack asked, ‘Do you know how many men Clinton will attack
with?’

For the first time Jack saw something stir within the man’s guarded gaze. ‘I know that’s General Burgoyne’s most important
question. But I am just a sergeant. I am trusted with letters only and no information that might spill out of my head.’ Satisfied
with his horse, he turned and saluted, adding, ‘Good luck to ye, sir.’

Jack reached out his hand. After a moment’s hesitation, the man took it. ‘And good luck to you, Sergeant Willis. Perhaps we’ll
meet again in New York.’

The man mounted before he spoke again. ‘Ye never know. Though if two of us were to make it through, it’d be something akin
to a miracle. Yah!’ Spurring his horse, he parted the mists and was gone.

That had been six hours before. The time since Jack had spent gathering supplies. Scrounging objects tradable from his friends
he’d gone to the Indian camp and bargained hard for cornmeal, maple sugar, and some rolls of birch bark.
When he’d returned to the stables, the Earl of Balcarras was awaiting him there and had given him two fine pistols with Lazarino
barrels and horse holsters to hold them. And then he’d presented Jack with the horse to mount them on.

‘His name’s Doughty and he never falters.’ He’d patted the shoulder of the great bay gelding, full sixteen hands of him, who’d
curled his neck around to nuzzle at the Earl’s hands. ‘He’ll carry one across three counties to run down a fox. So he’ll carry
you with ease to the island of Manhattan.’

‘And back again, Sandy. I’ll return him to you. I cannot thank you enough.’

The Earl had smiled sadly, wished him Godspeed, and left. Captain Money was the next visitor, bearing Burgoyne’s dispatch,
concealed in a secret chamber within a water canteen. He also noted down all that Jack could remember of Benedict Arnold and
his men. Money had then, in his dual role of Assistant Quartermaster, issued Jack with a fusil – one of the light and precious
.65 calibres; Burgoyne had obviously given orders that Jack was to be well armed – and a hunk of equally precious bacon, as
well as oats, this latter making up the bulk of his possessions. He could always find food for himself in the forest, but
not necessarily fodder for the animals. He finally handed over a variety of coins, gold and silver, for purchases and bribes
as the occasion arose.

The horse was saddled and the fustian haversacks slung by a quarter of noon. He paced as he waited, Doughty seeming as anxious
to depart as he, hoofing the earth before him.

‘Straight up midday is what I said,’ Jack muttered, trying to broach the mists in the direction of the main camp. Then he
wondered if, perhaps, the General had somehow managed to resist Louisa’s assault and refuse her. He wasn’t sure if it was
disappointment or hope he felt at the thought.

Yet her horse, a pretty, blue-black filly, was already accoutred with a lady’s side-saddle; straps hung ready to
receive what she would need to carry. Turning back to it, Jack suddenly noticed a figure now stood at its head, fingers running
down the filly’s white blaze.

‘A fine morning for our purposes, Captain Absolute,’ Louisa Reardon said.

He had not heard her approach, which surprised him since she was dressed in a dark riding dress, full purple skirts swathing
her legs, which rustled now as she moved to him. Her thick red-gold hair had been tamed into a bun and in her right hand she
clasped an ivory-handled riding crop.

‘You look as though you are riding to hounds, madam.’ Jack could not keep the irritation from his voice, made up of disquiet
at seeing her and an attempt to hide his delight.