Jack Absolute (38 page)

His director had risen between them. ‘You know each other?’

‘But yes. Did I not mention that fact?’

André frowned slightly. ‘Not a word of it, no.’

Von Schlaben’s voice was as soft, as insinuating as ever. ‘Really? Oh, I have long been a great admirer of Captain Absolute’s
remarkable and varied talents. Not least his one for survival.’

‘You—’

Jack had left his grip on the chair, taken one step towards the man. But André was in the way and, as Jack moved to go around
him, two shapes cleared the shadows in the box. An Abenaki rose from his squat beside Von Schlaben’s seat; and the huge German
Sergeant, his face now half-obscured by a full moustache and sideburns, stepped away from the wall.

Jack halted, a measure of calm returning with a deeper breath. He turned to André, who was still looking quizzical, and said,
‘The Count and I are indeed old acquaintances. Or perhaps I should say,
rivals.
How appropriate that we meet here.’ He took in each of the bodyguards, letting his gaze meet and hold theirs, before returning
it to Von Schlaben. ‘I so look forward, Count, to the end of the play and the renewal of that rivalry.’

‘As do I, Captain. As do I.’

Music had underscored their last words. Now someone
hissed at them from the pit just below the box. ‘Shh, sirs. The play continues!’

Von Schlaben’s voice lowered to a whisper. ‘I hope you will not be offended but, despite your talents, it was really this
next player that I was most looking forward to seeing. It was I who recommended him to Major André, you see. I do hope he
justifies my confidence.’ He gestured behind Jack to the stage.

‘Here he is, Jack.’ André had taken him by the elbow, was swinging him around. ‘Talk about a late entrance! Here’s your other
rival, Sir Lucius O’Trigger.’

Though he was meant to be playing an impoverished Irish baronet, the figure who entered was dressed in the smartest of uniforms,
a beautifully tailored green jacket with three columns of silver buttons up the front, braid at sleeve and neck, buff trousers,
gleaming black riding boots. He had a cavalry sabre at his waist, his hand, resting on the pommel, tipping it up to a jaunty
angle. And it was the weapon that brought the man’s name to Jack, rather than the voice, which was anyway speaking in a rather
well-done Irish accent, or the face, even more eerily beautiful in the underlit glow of the footlights. It was the weapon;
because when he’d last seen this man it had been on Hounslow Heath in London and the sabre in his hand was descending from
a winter sky to snuff out Jack’s life.

‘Banastre Tarleton,’ Jack breathed.

‘It is he, indeed. And how delighted my young friend will be to see you again.’

He had no time to pause, to consider. ‘Jack,’ whispered André, taking him by the arm, ‘you’re on.’

Somehow he walked to the wings, waited while the actors talked before him, watched Tarleton exit on the opposite side, leaving
the servants to their gossip. He saw the action, heard the words spoken, but it was as if everything before
him now was a stagecloth against which his whirling thoughts played.

Von Schlaben
, he wanted to scream to General Howe, to the audience.
He is the head of a secret society and a Rebel spy, plotting against the Crown!
But what was this dangerous man doing with John André, Howe’s intelligence officer? Was André aware, and drawing the German
into a trap? If Jack cried out against him, would he tear apart an intricate web André had woven? And if he exposed the Count,
would he not also expose Louisa? All he knew for certain was that Louisa had been consorting with this enemy. He had probably
controlled her as an agent from the moment they docked in Quebec. He remembered Von Schlaben’s grip upon her elbow. Louisa
had said he was a spurned suitor from London. She had lied to protect him. For if, in that first secret message he had decoded,
Louisa was ‘Diomedes’ then Von Schlaben was, undoubtedly, ‘Cato’.

The play was accelerating towards his entrance. He could see his ‘father’ in the wings opposite. But he was trapped there
by a thought: what if Louisa truly was a sublime actress? What if she had seduced him to turn him to their cause?

He shook his head, though the thoughts refused to vacate. He could only do one thing now – finish the play and get Louisa
out of the city, there to uncover her true nature. Only when he knew everything could he return, expose – and kill – Von Schlaben.

There was applause. Actors left the stage, scenery changed and his ‘father’ was on. He walked to meet him.

The play, somehow, continued. If the audience noticed a change in him they did not show it. They ‘ooh’d’ and ‘aah’d’ where
appropriate, laughed on worthy and unworthy lines, especially when he said the words that had exercised him the previous day
in rehearsal. But as these followed his kiss with Louisa, he barely noted it. The kiss was strange – chill and at
the same time desperate. He had seen her glance into André’s box; she had paled and been less animated since.

Yet it was Tarleton who brought the blur into focus for Jack. They came to the scene in which Sir Lucius challenged Jack Absolute
to a duel. Tarleton looked at him as a fox would regard the occupants of a chicken shed. And he changed a line. When he chose
weapons, he did not say, as scripted, ‘Sir, there will very pretty small-sword light,’ but instead ‘There will be very pretty
light – for sabres.’ As on Hounslow Heath, Tarleton wanted to fight with the weapon that would inflict the most hideous wounds.
Jack now recalled André’s words, which had annoyed him before, with relief: ‘You only cross blades, then the rest will rush
on and separate you.’

The play marched to its climax – the duel at Kingsmead Fields, Bath. As all the actors gathered in the Stage Right wings for
this finale, Jack managed to pull Louisa aside.

‘Be ready! As soon as the epilogue is spoken we must leave the city.’

‘Leave?’ She turned even paler. ‘Have you then decided?’

‘I have decided nothing. All I know is the man who wants me dead more than anyone on this earth is your man in the black cloak.
I believe the Count von Schlaben will try to kill me after the play tonight and with four of them and this cursed arm …’ he
raised his right hand, just that night out of the splints and bandage that had held it for four weeks. ‘I doubt I have the
strength to stop him.’

‘Jack …’ she said, trouble in her eyes. But then his cue was called and he was walking on to the stage. Towards Banastre Tarleton.

‘Well then, Captain,’ he said, the Irish accent still perfect, ‘tis we must begin – so come out, my little counsellor,’ he
drew his sabre with a flourish, ‘and ask the gentleman whether he will resign the lady?’

Jack drew his sabre, buckled on his right so he could draw
it with his healthy left hand. ‘Come on then, sir,’ he said. ‘Here’s my reply.’

The blades crossed, they both settled into their stance. Jack looked to André’s box. The Major was still there. The black
cloak had gone.

His eyes came back to look into Tarleton’s. That hunger was clear, stronger than ever. And it seemed that meeting Jack’s gaze
was all that he required now. Disengaging his blade, he swung it, not with a full force but hard enough. Jack watched it come,
disbelieving. Even when the blade bit into his right upper arm, when he heard the cloth of his jacket shred, when he felt
that familiar, peculiar coldness of steel cutting into flesh, he still could not believe it. It was only when he looked into
the wings and saw the black cloak spread out to block the entrance of the other actors, saw the Abenaki and the giant Sergeant
with their own weapons unsheathed that he knew. The Illuminati, through their representative, the Count von Schlaben, would
pay him for his opposition. He did not need Tarleton’s words to confirm this.

‘First Blood, sir,’ the younger man whispered, gesturing to Jack’s arm, where a darker red was beginning to stain the coat,
‘just a marker, to begin. But this time first blood shall not be the last.’

With a cry, he whirled his sabre above his head and the other on-stage actors stumbled away from the curving blade. Then he
charged, the sword going back, then coming down straight from overhead. Aware now, Jack managed to get his own weapon up just
in time, holding his grip in two hands. The shock of collision shot pulses of intense pain through his barely healed wrist.
He gasped, staggered back, let Tarleton’s blade slide down his own. Still two-handed, he thrust the tip out before him, as
Tarleton took his own sword out to the side, parallel to the floor, then attacked again to Jack’s right.
Jack tipped his own point towards the stage, at the same time stepping through with his front foot. Though he stopped the
blade, his own was knocked backwards, bouncing into the very place where Tarleton had already cut him.

‘Fine swordplay, what?’ came a gruff voice from the audience.

‘Brutish,’ a woman lamented.

‘Bravo,’ shouted three more, while from the wings he heard Louisa cry, ‘No. No!’

Tarleton’s edge rested on his own, his tip still down. Flicking his wrists, Jack sent both blades flying up, stepped back
again, again stood square with his sword held two-handed before him, point to face.

‘Oh, good.’ Tarleton was smiling. ‘It’s so much better when they struggle.’

He came at Jack, smashing his blade aside, thrusting up at his groin, Jack staggered backwards, just bringing his weapon across
to deflect the thrust in time but off balance, which his opponent saw and scythed down again at his head. Jack stopped the
blow, just, but the shock that went through his arm made him think he had broken his wrist again.

Tarleton noted it, savoured the pain. As someone in the audience called out, ‘Is this not a little much?’ Tarleton smiled
once more.

‘Oh well,’ he said, ‘all good things must end. I’ll just make it look like an accident.’

The attacks came now in a flurry that was almost impossible to predict. Somehow, Jack managed, getting his weapon across just
in time, though with each blow he felt his wrist shudder, his strength failing. Finally, he slipped, went to one knee, and
Tarleton stepped in and swept his sword up, knocking Jack’s out of his left hand. He barely held on to it with his weakened
right. The blade hovered out there, with all of Jack open, exposed, his sword tip resting on
the floor and the whole weapon as heavy and cumbersome as a tree trunk. He could not lift it if he tried.

‘Quel dommage!’ tsked Tarleton, stepping back to deliver what would be his last blow. Yet just as he did, something strange
happened. There was a noise from outside the theatre, a rumble that became a roar in an eye blink. Tarleton’s blade had not
yet reached the backward point from which he could deliver his death blow, when, directly above him, it looked as if some
malevolent god had reached down and ripped the roof off the theatre.

There was a brief sight of stars and snow, then the flies and their rails were tumbling down. Jack rolled to one side just
before a sheared pole impaled him. Tarleton vanished in the swirl of a backcloth as if he’d fallen down the well that was
painted on it. Before people had time to rise from their seats, a second blow struck the theatre and a cannon ball came through
the riverside wall, passed a foot above the audience’s heads, and exited the cityside wall without touching anything else
in its flight.

‘The Rebels attack,’ came the cry from more than one voice, and in an instant the theatre was transformed into the hall at
Bedlam, men and women screaming, gender ignored, as they struggled over each other to get out. Jack saw that Von Schlaben
and his bodyguards had disappeared; while at his feet, entwining himself further into the backcloth’s folds with every roll,
Tarleton ranted and cursed. Without a qualm, Jack suddenly found the strength in his sword arm to plunge the point into the
mouth of the wishing well. Annoyingly, he felt it lodge in wood. At least Jack was gladdened by the yelp of rage and fear
from the writhing body before the stage swirled with people and he was jostled away. Striking out against the panic, Jack
managed to force his way through to Louisa, who was striving as desperately towards him.

‘Jack! I thought he was going to kill you.’

‘So did he.’ As further Rebel shot flew over the roof, he was crushed against her by the press, and found her lips with his.
Then he said, ‘Do you trust me?’

‘Yes.’

‘Then go to your lodgings, make sure you are not followed, gather what you can fit on a horse and I will bring two there in
an hour.’ He saw her baulk. ‘Louisa, either you or I or both will die this night if we do not flee. You will be exposed …
for your Cato consorts with André. Let us use this attack as cover.’ She still hesitated. ‘We can talk on causes, on what
is right, when we are safe.’

She nodded at last, kissed him, and was gone, pushing through those who yet circled in fear. He turned the other way.

One hour
, he thought.
Pray God one hour is enough.

It took him two, for the streets were swollen both with soldiers marching to counter the Rebel raid and civilians fleeing
it. The 16
^th
had been mustered and ridden out, so there was only a groom in the stables who did not question an officer taking his own
horse, Doughty, and requesting one of the regiment’s reserves plus two weeks’ supply of oats. The rest of his needs were provided
by the Officers’ Mess and Jack was glad he’d stored most of his few goods there and not at his lodgings. He could not return
to them. Von Schlaben, Tarleton, and others of the hellish Illuminati would no doubt await him to finish what they had so
far failed to do. But the regiment provided all he needed to survive a time in the forest. He could live through a winter
there, if necessary. He had done it before.

The bell was sounding from the church on her corner when he led the horses down the alley at the back of Louisa’s house and
tied them up. Midnight, the temperature exceedingly low, a cutting wind. The sounds of battle had diminished as he rode over,
the Rebel driven back or withdrawing.
It had been a raid in force, the biggest yet. Washington would not allow the enemy to hold his capital untroubled.