The Blooding of Jack Absolute (39 page)

The Frenchman moved to the bed, threw back the coverlet. Turning back to Jack, reaching to his belt, he smiled. ‘You must
be swift, my savage,’ he said. ‘Brutally swift.’

‘Oh, you may be sure,’ Jack said in English.

‘Eh?’ was all the loquacious Frenchman could manage, just before Jack hit him.

*

He glanced back from the doorway. Perhaps Hubert would not have been averse to the arrangements – his hands tied to the head
posts, his feet to the frame – though he might have objected to the gag, and he would probably have preferred to be conscious.

The slitting of sheets and binding had taken time, probably half the twenty that had been allotted for the act of love, so
Jack did not hesitate. Servants’ quarters were always elevated, in French houses as well as English; the masters’ would be
on the ground floor, so this conference of colonels the guards had spoken of had to be taking place there. Lurking inside
the stair door, he waited till the kitchen was empty, following the servants who departed with their loads of chicken, stew
and bread. He blessed his luck again, for the traffic was one-way, leading down a long passageway into a brightly-lit entrance
hall. The main doors of the house gave onto it, as did three other sets of internal doors. As Jack eased into an alcove bulging
with bearskin coats – a smell he knew well – one of these sets of doors opened, and a group of men emerged. At their head
was a compact man in a tight-fitting blue-gold uniform.

‘Supper first, gentlemen,’ he declared. ‘My rule is never to make important decisions on an empty stomach!’

Soldiers and civilians passed in hard debate. When the last of them had entered what must be the dining room, when the last
of the servants had crossed back to the kitchen passageway, Jack moved swiftly across the room they’d come from.

It was empty. Stepping swiftly in, he pulled the heavy door closed behind him and turned. Shelves bearing sheaves of papers
stretched up one wall; ledgers occupied the one opposite. A huge fireplace gave out some heat that yet could not account for
how damnably hot he suddenly felt, with sweat on his forehead and his breath shallow. Moving to the tall windows, he found
the catch, threw one up. Cool air calmed and he turned back to his study. At the room’s centre stood a
huge desk, chairs pushed back around it. The top of the desk was covered in parchment sheets, among which ornate silver candlesticks
stood out like islands in a paper sea. With a nervous glance at the door, Jack moved to study the documents.

They varied from close scrawled, almost illegible sheets, to ones with barely a sentence upon them. Forcing himself to breathe
and concentrate – he found he’d forgotten every word of his French – he bent to study one of the plainer ones. It seemed to
be a tally of one of the
troupes de terre,
the French regular regiments. This one, the second battalion of the Régiment Languedoc, seemed to have about 480 soldiers
with just 50 listed as
malade.
Since the date was 23 April – yesterday – if true, it meant this regiment was remarkably close to full fighting strength.

Other tallies provided similar figures. Though it seemed that some of the battalions had made up their numbers by drawing
from the Militia, which would mean a consequent drop in effectiveness, if these figures were accurate, they gave account of
an army that was remarkably strong after a brutal winter. The tally of regulars came close to four thousand. He suspected
that the British at Quebec would muster considerably less. The French also had that Militia and, of course, their Native allies.

From the moment they’d entered Montréal, he’d had no doubt the chevalier was planning an offensive and soon. But where was
this army to be aimed? North or south? Aware that his sand glass was fast running out, still hot despite the cold air from
the window, Jack scanned the mass of paper with increasing agitation.

A shout of laughter startled from beyond the door, together with the noise of pewter mugs being clinked, then slammed down.
Jack moved towards that open window. When the noise subsided to a rumble, he stepped back, began to search ever more urgently
through the papers.

There were too many of them.
He couldn’t read them all, not
in this increasingly foreign tongue, while place names he expected – Quebec, Ticonderoga, Oswego – all leapt out at him and
confirmed nothing. Then, suddenly, the volume of voices doubled; the other door had opened and footsteps now moved across
to his own. He half stepped to the window, glanced back … and saw it, the corner of an inked, wavy line. Jerking the parchment
out from under all the others, sight confirmed his guess. It was a map, almost identical to the ones that had littered Wolfe’s
desk in September. For at that time, Wolfe was planning exactly what the Chevalier de Lévis was obviously planning now – a
landing by boat to assault the city of Quebec.

The door opened, he dropped the paper back but even as he stepped again towards the window, Jack could not remove his gaze
from the map. For at the top was scrawled in French what looked like a tide chart with various times and dates. One was circled.
He may have felt his language skills to be failing him in recent moments but this was certainly clear: on the 26 April – three
days’ time – the French army would be landed at Point aux Trembles above Quebec.

‘Sacred Jesus! What are you doing there, you dog?’

The young French officer had a tankard in his left hand and was trying to draw a sword with his right. Jack stared, caught
between the desk and escape. Then, in a moment of pure inspiration, he seized one of the silver candlesticks and hurled himself
out the window.

The cry that pursued him was of a word even his suddenly diminished French could recognize. ‘
Voleur!
’ screamed the Frenchman.

Better thief than spy,
Jack thought, sprinting down a path he hoped led back to the side gate. Though he was fairly sure that hanging would be the
punishment for both.

The two guards had been drawn by the shouting from their shelter. Both had muskets. Jack kept sprinting towards them, partly
due to the iced path – if he tried to stop he’d be over – and as he ran, he drew his tomahawk from his belt. All that
practice with Até had to be good for something, yet while he was fairly certain he could incapacitate one of the guards he
had no idea what he would do about the other.

At ten paces, as the muzzles before him levelled, he jerked to a sudden, sliding stop, bent back and hurled his blade. He
watched it travelling forward and thought, for the tiniest of moments, how odd it was that the whirring of the flung weapon
seemed to come from right beside his ear, oddity increasing as he saw two tomahawks fly down the path and strike home. Jack’s
hit the musket barrel even as the soldier pulled the trigger, gun exploding, bullet clipping a yew branch, man tumbling backwards.
The second tomahawk embedded itself straight in the middle of the other guard’s face.

Jack looked behind him as Até ran up. ‘Where the hell did you come from?’ he gasped.

Até jerked his head back. ‘House. I climbed wall, followed you in.’

Before them, the soldier who was still alive was screaming as he ran back into his hut. Behind them, more men were shouting
and bolts were being shot at the main doors.

‘Time to go, Daganoweda.’

‘I think you may be right.’

No key was in the gate lock so Até bent, clasped his hands. Jack hurled the candlestick over the wall, then placed his foot
in the palms, scrambled up, reached down. Até grabbed and Jack drew him up and, as they were poised on top of the walls, the
guard emerged from the hut and fired a pistol, the ball passing between their heads. Yelping, they fell into the night. Jack
regained the candlestick and they sprinted away.

‘Where we run to?’ Até grunted.

‘Christ knows. Somewhere to hide. I thought … the harbour?’

‘Many white faces there. Not many brown.’ Até jerked his thumb towards the hill outside the city walls, where the Native campfires
glowed. ‘Different up there.’

As Jack veered toward those lights he smiled. ‘And maybe we can swap this,’ he hefted the candlestick, ‘for a canoe.’

‘For many canoes.’ Até slipped on a patch of ice, regained his footing, ran on. ‘But which way do we paddle, once we have
one. North or south?’

‘North, my friend, north. And as fast as ever Westminster Sculler did scull. North, to Quebec.’

From the moment their canoe ground onto the shale at Anse du Foulon – the same shale he’d stepped onto from that barge six
months before, just prior to the assault on the city – Jack had difficulty communicating. It wasn’t that he’d latterly been
speaking mainly Iroquois and some French; he remembered English perfectly well. It was just that the assorted Scots, Londoners,
Ulstermen, Tynesiders, Welsh and Devonians (who Jack, ever Cornish, remembered to be a particular set of knuckly-downs) would
not give him a chance to use it.

‘Fucking scrounging savages!’ was the term applied as soon as he and Até approached any of the piquet campfires on the beach.
Each time, he’d call out, ‘I’m English, damn ye!’ only to be answered with thrown stones and more curses. They’d kept trying,
until at last he was struck, a gash opened on his jaw. Clutching a piece of deerhide to the wound, Jack led Até back to the
canoe, which they pulled up and hid beneath some bushes. ‘Pox on ’em,’ he said. ‘If they won’t let us up the Foulon road,
I know another way.’

The cliff was as slippery as before but his moccasins gave better purchase than his boots had and a full moon helped. They
made the cliff top in good time. But the British patrols were more frequent than the French had been, and the soldiers
more vigilant, muskets levelled as they surveyed the scrub where Jack and Até crouched.

‘I haven’t come this far to be killed by my own army,’ Jack muttered, dabbing blood from his chin. ‘Let’s wait till dawn.’

They didn’t have to wait so long. Voices approached, speaking an unintelligible and guttural tongue, yet one Jack suddenly
recognized; when he did, he also realized that the nearest figure lifting his kilt and exploding a stream of liquid into a
moonbeam was someone he knew.

‘For God’s sake, Captain MacDonald, could you not piss somewhere else?’ he asked, rising from the shadows.

The explosion of oaths, as men tumbled backwards, the struggle as those men had to decide whether to cease one activity before
drawing steel made both Jack and Até laugh. Not so the indignant Scot. ‘Come oot the scrog, ye bastards. Come oot or we’ll
plug ye, ken.’

They stepped forward and, on their appearance, the five-man patrol stepped back.

‘Savages!’ yelped a bulky sergeant to MacDonald’s right.

‘You don’t seem pleased to see me, Captain MacDonald,’ Jack said.

The Scot’s claymore was yet aloft. ‘Who the devil are ye?’

‘Why, Captain, do you not recognize the man who stood shoulder to shoulder with you on the Plains of Abraham?’

MacDonald stepped closer, wonder creasing further the craggy face. ‘I fought with no savages beside me, ken. No’ even one
who speaks English.’

‘And French. Though you told me I had the accent of a Parisian whore.’

Recognition came, only increasing the wonder. ‘Ja … Jack? Jack Absolute?’

‘The very same.’

‘But … but … you … died, out there. Howe said you cursed him most foully then rode off after the French. The only British
cavalry charge that day.’ The Scot gave a small smile. ‘We’ve been singing a song about it, the whole winter
through: “Mad Jamie’s Boy”. Needed something to keep us warm. And now you’re here, raised like Lazarus and dressed like a
devil.’ The smile became expansive. ‘By Christ, lad, ye’ve a tale to tell and no messin’.’

‘I have and shall delight in recounting it. But there are more pressing matters to discuss now.’ He took MacDonald’s elbow.
‘Such as the arrival of the French tomorrow?’

By the warmth of a piquet fire, made more loquacious by a tot of rum, information was swiftly conveyed, with Jack a little
regretful. His plan had been to give the British a day’s warning at the least; this had been reduced to hours by the French
following fast in their canoe’s wake.

‘We made the mistake of trying to paddle against the tide and tired ourselves. We grounded to rest and wait for it to turn
and then only just preceded the French upon it.’ Jack held out his hands to the flames. ‘But we lingered long enough to watch
them begin to debouch upon the shore at Point aux Trembles.’

‘Dinna fash, lad, for you’ve done well. We’d pulled a Frog boatman from a large piece o’ floatin’ ice who said he’d fallen
off one of their landing bateaux. He confessed their army was landing at the Point. But some thought it a little too pat and
were looking for signs o’ ’em elsewhere. It’s nae wonder you got such a reception on the strand.’ MacDonald took Jack’s arm,
raised him from his crouch. ‘But now I think ye must report this in person to Murray. He and I dinna get on so good since
he remembers me being, first and always, Wolfe’s man. If I say black, he says white and since I’d an opinion the boatman should
be believed, he’s chosen to think t’opposite. Come, let’s to him.’ They began to move away along the cliffs toward the city
walls, bulkier shadows within the first light of dawn. ‘And as we walk, ye can tell me of the enemy’s strength. Ye mentioned
ye’d scanned their tallies, nae right?’

By the time they entered through the postern by the Glacière Bastion and were marching up toward the looming mass of the
Ursuline Convent over which the Union Standard flew, Jack, with Até adding his observations from his own wanderings in the
French bivouac lines, had appraised MacDonald of all they knew.

‘That means Lévis has nigh on double our numbers. For many have died here during this awful winter, and most of those that
remain are sick from the bloody flux and the bloody gruel we’ve called food. We’re nae in a good state, ken.’

Jack had already noticed. Most of the soldiers they passed were urchins in uniform, gaunt limbs protruding from over-large
coats. In contrast he and Até, with their winter diet of bear, deer and burdock root, appeared like town burghers to beggars.
Yet if in some armies their leaders contrived to feast while their followers starved, this was not true of Murray. Jack remembered
his features to be sharp but they had thinned to the point of caricature: his brother general, Townshend, would have made
much of them upon a paper, no doubt. They reminded Jack of nothing so much as the gargoyle’s mask Burgoyne had sported at
the Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens, in that other life he’d led.