The Blooding of Jack Absolute (25 page)

Jack hesitated at the flap, looking back. Delaune had drawn the lamp close and, in the small spill of its light, the three
men now crouched over the general’s record book. A faint whisper came, but Jack could not make out any words. All he could
sense was the excitement as they bent to the task of conquering Canada.

He had been cold long before embarkation; now, well into the third hour, he felt like a lump of suet, sitting in an ice house.
He had tried to control his shivering at first, fearing that it would be perceived as something else. Yet since everyone around
him, crammed on the narrow benches and wedged into the tiniest of spaces, was soon shaking as much as he, he had given in.
Only Captain MacDonald, who sat beside him, seemed unchilled, but he was wrapped in a great tartan blanket and had the extra
warmth of his pipe, rarely unlit in the hours that they had waited.

At least it had not rained. The clouds that had obscured the sky had dispersed and their absence allowed Jack to see by starlight
– there was no moon – as well as by the faint glow of the lamps aboard HMS
Sutherland.
He looked up at the man-of-war now, hoping that the sailor who’d visited twice would return again, bearing his barrel of
rum. Jack had refused the first issue, to MacDonald’s vocal disapproval, fearing a clouding of his mind. He’d taken the second
and it had temporarily thawed him. He eagerly awaited the third. No one stirred up above though, save for the men about the
running of the ship. Everything aboard was to appear as normal, so the bells were sounded and the watch went about their usual
tasks. Earlier from the vessel’s depths a fiddle had been heard, a shanty sung,
followed by the thumping of feet in a hornpipe. Lately, the ship had returned to its customary night running. The French sentries
on the shore would have nothing to note but normality.

Unless they have the ability to see through wood, Jack thought, peering around. For then they would perceive that the activities
on the
Sutherland
this night were far from normal. Lined up along its larboard side, out of sight from the shore, four flat-bottomed barges
wallowed, bow to stern, with another line of four beside them attached by ropes. Each one held fifty men.

Jack, in the stern of the first boat, gazed down an avenue of oars that rested across the gunwales, sailors occupying the
rowlocks the length of the vessel. Beside them, on the benches and squatted down on the planking of the deck, were the thirty-five
soldiers each barge could carry. Around him in the little space of the stern sat the officers of the company, MacDonald to
his left, Captain Delaune to his right and, opposite the seaman at his tiller, the commander of the three light infantry companies
to go in first – William Howe. When Jack was introduced, the man had grunted and promptly forgotten his name, referring to
him by various names beginning with ‘A’ ever since. MacDonald, in an aside, had told Jack that the man was ‘as pompous an
arse as England ever raised and not a patch on his unchancy, dear, dead brother. But he’s brave for all tha’.’

When they’d boarded, the last of the light had been in the sky so they did not fumble in the darkness and alert the listening
piquets on Cap Rouge. Although they did not know exactly where they were to land, they were aware they awaited the turning
of the tide to carry them downstream to the City of Quebec. It would come after the one bell sounded. Now the brass note came
… and there was a perceptible shifting down the ranks. No common soldier talked, that was a privilege reserved for officers.
But the men ahead rolled stiff shoulders and necks, shuffled their feet, released their white-knuckled
grip upon their muskets only to grip again. Looking at them, Jack was struck again by the youth of all in the boats that were
to land first, all volunteers. When he had observed this to Captain MacDonald, the Scot had removed his pipe only long enough
to mutter, ‘Children will obey blindly and dare where experience dares not.’ Jack had heard it whispered that this advance
guard of young light infantry was called Delaune’s Forlorn Hope. It had not decreased his shivering when he’d heard that whisper.
He was among the youngest.

The boats creaked against their bindings. On the next barge, the one flush to the side of the
Sutherland,
the naval officer gave the order for rolled blankets to be lashed to the sides to cushion the collision. Drawn by the quiet
command, Jack suddenly noticed the man to the officer’s left, whom he must have glanced at a hundred times since he boarded.
He suddenly recognized him to be General Wolfe. He was almost inconspicuous due to the unadorned uniform he was wearing and
Jack remembered why. MacDonald had not only improved Jack’s French in the two days he’d accompanied the Scot, he’d laughed
at Jack’s elaborate clothing and helped him strip all fanciness from it. ‘The Canadian Militia have sharp-shooting men who’ll
delight in plugging anyone in the lace. Why d’ye think our leaders wear none?’ he’d said.

Jack was rather startled to find that the general was looking back at him and since the inner boats were facing downstream,
and his own boat up, they were not very far apart. Jack nodded, tried to smile and was further disconcerted to see the general
rise, and clamber between the ranks over to their boat. Hands reached up, as the barges gave another lurch, and Wolfe came
over. Room was made for him beside Colonel Howe.

‘Can you feel her shift, Billy?’ Wolfe said to him.

‘I can indeed, sir. And about time too.’ Howe replied with a degree of petulance that showed what he thought of mere tides
delaying him. He looked at the officer on the tiller. ‘How long, um, fellow?’

The man sniffed. ‘Be fully turned in ’alf an ’our, more’n less.’

Despite the prohibition of talk, the word travelled in whispers up and down the barge and to all those beside and behind.
It was as if the night was suddenly full of starlings until a sergeant’s harsh curse silenced them.

‘Excellent,’ said Wolfe, rubbing his hands. ‘And a fine night for it, is it not, Captain Chads?’

‘If hell’s darkness is fine to steer by, aye,’ the seaman grunted then relented when he saw Wolfe’s face drop. ‘I’ll get you
ashore, sir, ne’er be feart. Don’t know why the Frogs make such a fuss about the shoals ’ereabouts. Swear there be nigh to
a thousand places on the Thames more perilous.’

Soft laughter came and with it another burst of coughing from Wolfe. He’d managed to hold it in as he sat quietly in his boat
but this would not be contained and the handkerchief was lifted too late to catch all of it, blood darkening on the scarlet
coat, snatching the humour away in an instant. Wolfe, busy with bleeding, looked up finally to the concerned faces before
him.

‘Pardon me, gentlemen,’ he whispered and coughed again, the only human sound suddenly as the barges creaked on the rising
waters, their sides banging through the muffling of blankets against the warship. From somewhere close to the shore, a bird
suddenly called, a sharp cry, almost a shriek, with a dying fall as if its life was being sucked from it. Several of the men
before Jack crossed themselves, a movement Wolfe noticed. He leaned forward.

‘Come, lads, does anyone here know any poetry? Hmm? I heard a snatch a month ago from our trusty Sergeant Botwood of the Forty-seventh.
Does anyone know it?’

Captain Delaune spoke. ‘I remember only the title, sir. Tis called “Hot Stuff”.’

‘Well, zounds, let’s send for Ned Botwood himself. The Forty-seventh are three boats back if I remember me own
Morning State.’ He had half stood, was staring back along the barges.

‘Sir,’ said Delaune quietly, ‘the good sergeant was killed at Montmorency.’

‘Ah. Ah yes.’ Wolfe sat down heavily again, such colour as had briefly come there now gone from his cheeks. No man would meet
another’s eyes, none spoke and there was only the sound again of the water lapping and that bird giving another solitary cry.
Jack too looked down. He had not shared in the months of hard campaigning but MacDonald and others had acquainted him with
many of their grim details. The landing at Montmorency was the worst of several costly failures to get the British Army ashore
so they could seize the capital of New France, Quebec. With each setback, with more weeks spent in makeshift camps where the
bloody flux weakened or killed every third man and officer, with Wolfe prostrate in his tent spitting red and Montcalm seemingly
invulnerable atop his fortified cliffs, the army’s belief in itself and its powers had steadily eroded. And the death of stalwarts
like the poetic Botwood in futile operations only increased the despair. Despair plain on the faces of the men looking down
around Jack now.

‘I know a poem, sir,’ he suddenly said.

‘Do you, lad?’ Wolfe’s pale face raised to him, a weak smile came. ‘Not Virgil, is it? Can’t bear the damned Romans myself.’

‘No, sir.’ Jack had thought of pulling out the copy
of Hamlet
his mother had given him, the volume carried next to his heart for luck. But nothing in that doom-laden play seemed appropriate
– and there was hardly light to read by. ‘No, it’s Thomas Gray. His “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard”.’

‘By God! I have a copy in my tent. It is the finest, the most majestic …’ Colour had come again to the pallid cheeks. ‘Recite
it for us, lad. But softly, eh?’

Jack took a breath, cleared his throat, began.

The curfew tolls the knell of parting day,

The lowing herd winds slowly o’er the lea,

The plowman homeward plods his weary way,

And leaves the world to darkness and to me.

He could feel the men on his boat, on the surrounding ones, draw in again; yet instead of being daunted by their attention,
by this silent audience on this moonless night, Jack felt emboldened. The chill slipped from him, his voice grew stronger,
as he used the poet’s words to conjure that simple graveyard at dusk, the simple graves that filled it, their unadorned headstones
marking unacclaimed men who, for all their anonymity, were yet of the same earth as the men who listened so intently now,
that earth of England. Who had strived for that land, as the men who listened would strive that day, the verses binding those
in their plain brown coats to these brothers and sons in russet-red who had left those fields to toil for their country in
a different way, with different tools, with musket and bayonet not scythe and mattock, with cannon not with plough.

Jack felt it, almost as he thought it, coming not as a subtle caress but a jolt, a surge under the boats that lifted them,
banging them once more against the
Sutherland’s
oaken sides. The tide had turned, Wolfe and his officers, indeed all who’d waited so long, shifted, and though he was not
near the end of the elegy, he gave them the next verse as if it were the last.

The boast of heraldry, the pomp of power,

And all that beauty, all that wealth e’er gave,

Awaits alike th’ inevitable hour.

The paths of glory lead but to the grave.

‘Yes!’ cried Wolfe, ‘But note how glory comes
before
the grave! And if she does, I’ll lay me in the earth with a thanks. Is that the tide at last, Mr Chads?’

‘It is, sir, aye.’

‘Then put us upon’t, if you please.’ As commands were passed quietly along the line of barges, as ropes were cast off from
the
Sutherland –
on whose mainsail two lamps were hoisted, a signal to the rest of the armada – Wolfe rose to move back to his own boat. Passing
Jack, he squeezed his shoulder. ‘By God, young Absolute,’ he said, ‘I would rather have been the author of that piece than
beat the French tomorrow. Well,’ he smiled, ‘perhaps not quite!’

And he was gone. Beside Jack, MacDonald had reached up to wipe his eyes and even in the dull light, Jack could see moisture
on his fingers. Caught, the Scot gave a smile. T’was a fine verse, laddie, and finely spoken. I think yon poet must truly
be a Highlander. It’s rare to find such passionate phraseology south of Inverness.’

The barges swiftly disengaged from the
Sutherland
and each other and the eight were soon scattered by the effects of the tide and the force of the St Lawrence, much swollen
with early autumn rains. Perhaps their barge benefited from the superior skills of Captain Chads for they were soon ahead
of any other vessel and steering for the opposite, northern shore. Jack had leaned right forward in an effort to pierce the
darkness; a hand pulled him back.

‘Calmness, young Absolute, dinna ye fash. We’ve a muckle less than two hours to go and since we’re clear of the Cap, the next
French outpost won’t be for a few miles. Ye can sit and bide.’

The lee of the northern shore was gained, the boat settled in a stream about a hundred yards offshore and was borne along
by the swollen river’s force, the sailors only using their oars at a rare command from Captain Chads, when his tiller alone
could not harness the surge. The land loomed to their left, a dark mass rising to the star-lit sky. Twice they saw lights,
lanterns waved from a French piquet placed atop the cliffs. But no shore patrol challenged them and on their boat, no one
spoke. Silently, they swept downriver.

Time was hard to gauge without sight and little sound but
Jack felt it was over an hour into their journey that the first noises came from ahead of them.

‘Thunder?’ whispered Jack, looking up into the now cloudless sky.

‘Our lads before the Île d’Orléans,’ said Delaune. ‘Keeping Montcalm busy. He’s convinced we will only attempt to land on
the Beauport shore downstream, beyond Quebec. That’s where he sits with most of his army. Let’s hope this show continues to
deceive him.’

The sound brought others almost immediately. Suddenly, a lantern’s gate was opened. Though its glow could not reach them,
it still seemed like the sun in that thick darkness. A voice called, monstrously loud in the silence of running water,
‘Qui est là
?’