Jack Absolute (7 page)

‘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.

Then there was the heat produced by the lamps, by the dozen bodies in their finest clothes, by the richness of the
food consumed after weeks at sea on a simpler diet. The cook had not resisted this first chance to shine and had used the
fresh provisions brought from the shore to create rare treats: fish baked in herbs and sweet wine, beef wrapped in pastry
and flamed with brandy, a dish from India called salmagundi, which consisted of the hot spices of that land enflaming a
mélange
of minced meat, anchovies and eggs … well, sweat seeped from every man there while the two ladies – Louisa Reardon and one
Mrs Skene glowed and dabbed their perfumed handkerchiefs to their brows and breasts.

At that moment, this was distracting Jack the most. He knew he should be listening to the conversations nearest him, the discussions
between the officers on whom Burgoyne would be relying. But his attention kept being pulled to Louisa, sat on the General’s
left, the way she kept fanning the silk handkerchief across the rise and fall of her glowing décolletage, how the General
kept watching her do it as he made her laugh with tales of his London life, his twin arenas of Drury Lane and Parliament.
The old rogue had long since conceded Louisa to Jack’s attentions. ‘Miss Reardon is not mistress material,’ he’d declaimed;
unlike the wife of the commissary agent, who had already come from shore and awaited Burgoyne in another cabin below. But
Jack had drunk enough now to still feel jealous at every laugh.

Fortunately, as Louisa laughed again, that musical run of notes that came from somewhere in her depths, the laugh he wanted
reserved only for himself, his attention was demanded by a toast proposed by the man to his left, lower both in age and rank
than Jack, and a fellow Cornishman, Midshipman Edward Pellew.

Like Jack, Pellew had the black hair typical of their county. It was pulled back into the queue that most junior naval officers
sported, though the wine and the heat had pulled strands from their restraint. These were plastered to the
young, flushed face that now thrust towards Jack, a bumper raised before it.

‘’ere, Jack. Let’s you and me pledge to an allegiance as great as we hold to England. And even older.’ He raised his glass.
‘Kernow!’

Jack smiled. He liked Pellew, beyond a countryman’s affinity. When they’d boarded the ship, and the crew had stood to attention
to greet Burgoyne on every mast and ratline, one man was at variance with his shipmates. Midshipman Pellew was standing, gloriously
alone, on the highest yardarm. On his head. Burgoyne had kept him close ever since.

‘Gwary whek yu gwary tek
!’
Jack drained his bumper of Bishop, the heated, spiced liquid firing his throat and chest, and raised the empty vessel.

The loudly expressed toast had halted conversations up and down the table. To the General’s right, Baron von Riedesel, Commander
of the German component of the Allied army, leaned into his interpreter and muttered a question. The portly General spoke
no English and the attempt for the company to respect that and speak French had degenerated on the third bumper.

The interpreter, a lean Hessian named Von Spartzehn, listened then looked at Jack. ‘Excuse me, Kapitan Absolute. I speak English,
as you see, quite excellently. But what you say, it eludes me.’

‘That’s because it is not English, Kapitan, but Cornish, the ancient tongue of Cornwall, now, alas, spoken very little even
there.’

‘And what did this mean?’

‘My esteemed young friend proposed the name of our land. Kernow is Cornwall. And I replied with an oath, sworn by two wrestlers
before they begin a contest: good play is fair play.’

‘Cornish wrastlers are the best in the world, see.’ Pellew’s Penryn brogue was becoming more pronounced the redder he got.

‘Is that what you were practising on the foredeck on the voyage across?’