The Blooding of Jack Absolute (29 page)

‘That’s Absolute, sir,’ Jack muttered to the back moving away from him.

As they climbed the slight rise, the sound of the Native cries got fainter while the drum beats became clearer. Gaining the
height, the road lay beneath them. ‘First company onto the road. Second and Third up here. Open ranks, Sergeant,’ Howe called.
As the three companies, ninety men or so, spread out along the edge of the bluff and on the road, Jack suddenly tilted his
head toward the sound of the drums. There was something else underneath it, a different sound.

‘Sir?’

‘Hmm?’

‘Aren’t those … hoofbeats?’

‘Shouldn’t think so. Not a cavalry regiment in Canada, more’s the pity.’ Then he suddenly looked quizzical. ‘No,
wait, I think someone did mention that Montcalm had perhaps a few …’

From around the wooded bend burst men … on horses. Not a few either; at least two hundred in blue coats and bearskin caps
and each one brandishing a sabre.

‘Present! Fire at will!’ Howe shouted but his words were lost in the noise of the charge, of cavalrymen yelling, horses snorting,
the English soldiers’ ragged discharge and their screams as those on the road were ridden down. The shots from the rise drew
the Frenchmen’s attention but its puny slopes provided no protection, the horses were at the top in a moment.

Jack had fired, missed he was sure, dropped down and reached for a cartridge; but a horse cleared the ridge above him and
he could feel the animal’s heat as it passed over him. The rider slashed down at Jack with his sabre, just missing him, then
his horse’s momentum carried him past. There were easier victims for them there, six men had broken at the sight of the enemy
and were seeking to run for the woods, which were too far away. They were hunted down, slashed, impaled, trampled. Then the
cavalryman who had just missed Jack turned and began to gallop back towards him.

There was little time to think, enough only to run or to fight, and Jack had had enough of running for the day and had just
seen what happened to those who did. Beside him, Billy Howe’s Light Infantry now had bayonets fixed, the man himself waving
two pistols. Jack remembered reading that cavalry against scattered light infantry usually led to the latter being massacred.
But the Yorkshireman aboard ship had assured him that a man with a bayonet on his muzzle could outreach any man with a sword.

Even one on a horse? Jack thought, in the moment before the cavalry swept towards him. The French trooper who’d missed him
before drove hard at him now, and Jack leapt to one side to dodge the horse’s chest, then to the other as the sword swept
down. Spinning round, he stabbed up with the
bayonet at the man’s leg, missed it, stabbed saddle. Jerking the point out, he was just in time to knock aside a second cut.
Metal screeched on metal, the man cursed something unintelligible, jerked the reins, bringing his mount sharply up onto its
rear legs. Hooves flailed out, Jack just dodging them. They crashed down and the rider fell slightly forward onto his horse’s
neck, just a little. Just enough.

‘Yah!’ yelled Jack, thrusting up, the triangular blade sticking the rider just below his waistcoat. He screamed, raised his
sword to cut down at Jack once more, so Jack shoved harder, pushing in the bayonet point with all his force behind it. The
scream went into a higher pitch, he jerked the reins and his horse’s hoofs scrambled for purchase before powering him away,
sucking Jack’s musket with them.

Weaponless, he turned, looked along the line of the rise. Just below him, Billy Howe shot a man even as he raised his sword.
The weapon fell backwards, stuck, point first, into the soft earth at Jack’s feet. In a moment, he had it in his hand. The
cavalryman followed his weapon, thumping into the earth, and suddenly, just beneath Jack, there was an empty saddle. All he
had to do was fall onto it.

His arse hit the leather, his feet found the stirrups – a little high-set for he was taller than the Frenchman – one hand
grabbed the reins. The horse tried to throw him, bucking and spinning. But he had had the mastery of horses since he was five
and he soon had this one. To his left, three Frenchmen had surrounded the ensign and he was flailing his spontoon around him
in a circle to keep them off. Driving his heels into the horse’s flanks, Jack drove it along the ridge-line. He had spent
three months in London with the Dragoons training for just such a fight.

‘Bastards,’ he yelled, drawing their attention, enough for the ensign to thrust the spear up into the chest of one of them.
The two others jerked reins around to face Jack but he’d gathered speed, even in that short space and they were not ready
for him. He passed between them, his sword whirling above his
head; one ducked, one didn’t. With a yelp, the survivor put heels to his horse and fled.

In fact, he joined the column of French troops as they hurtled back down the road. They hadn’t been beaten – the red dead
outnumbered the blue – but something else had clearly spooked them. And then, with gaps opened between them and the surviving
light infantry, Jack saw and heard what it was.

‘Sixtieth, prepare to fire. Fire!’

A solid red line had advanced. Several more horses and men fell, Billy Howe’s command let out a cheer and Jack, waving his
captured sabre around his head, carried on with huzzah after huzzah.

Until a nasal drawl intruded. ‘Yes, that will do, Aspinall. That will do.’

Jack looked down. Howe was stood before him, distaste on his long thin face.

‘That’s Absolute, you donkey’s arse!’ he screamed. ‘Jack Absolute! Mad Jamie’s boy!’ And with that he kicked hard at the horse’s
flanks and gave the beast its head. It took off after its companions.

He’d missed one pursuit and he was not going to miss another! If he was the only cavalryman King George had in Canada then,
by God, he was going to honour his branch of the service! He yelled, ‘View halloooo!’ and the sound appeared to give the blue
coats ahead some extra speed. Jack slapped the sword flat across his horse’s rump and it responded, carrying Jack around the
wooded bend just behind the nearest Frenchie. One more push and he’d reach forward and just flick him out of his saddle …

He rounded the bend. A regiment was drawn up there in open order. White uniforms. Their mounted countrymen streamed down between
their files.

‘Oops,’ cried Jack, reining in so sharply he nearly flew over his horse’s neck. Yelling men were running towards him and,
whirling his sword over them, he just managed to regain
control before they reached him. Kicking again, he drove into the tree line.

The wood was thin at its edge and he swiftly outdistanced the footed pursuit. It thickened more the deeper in he went, forcing
him to walk, sometimes to stop to pick a way forward. It was dark, the maples’ leaves, just beginning their slide to crimson
but plentiful on the branch, blocking out much of the light. Clouds had come too, bringing a scent of rain.

He listened. The silence was deep, unsettling after the battle. In the distance shots came, some shouting; but it was as if
he heard it all through a bolster. The horse pranced nervously to the side, jerking its head up and down, and he had to sheathe
his sword now, use both hands to control it. He tapped his heels, steered the horse to his left. Towards the east, he hoped.
It seemed to be a little fuller of the morning light.

Something called, a chittering cry. A bird or a squirrel, he wasn’t sure, but it was loud in that cathedral silence, startling
enough for him to reach down and half draw his sword. When the echo of the cry faded he let the blade slide back. There was
nothing to do but move on. Ride to the sound of the guns.

The next cry was closer, much closer and though he was sure it was meant to sound again like a bird or an animal it had a
human feel to it. Now his sword did come out and it was bending to draw it that saved him for he felt something pass over
his back, heard it strike the tree beside him and looked up to see a tomahawk sprouting from a trunk. Wheeling, he sought
where it had come from, saw two figures – naked, painted demons from a nightmare – sprinting toward him, each with hair in
a single twist bouncing on their necks. They were yelling as they came, yelling something that was close to, yet nothing like
the Mohocks’ cry.

Yelping, he turned the horse, drove at what looked like thinner growth. It seemed almost like a path and his horse, as panicked
as he, picked up speed along it. He felt, rather than saw, something reach for the horse’s tail; he slashed back with
his sword, heard a shriek of pain, someone falling. He was free, moving faster. He could get away now. He could.

The suddenness of the blow surprised him, hitting him slap over his heart, lifting him from his saddle, his feet clearing
the stirrups, throwing him back so fast that he missed the horse’s arse entirely and landed flat on his back on the forest
floor. That little air that had stayed in his lungs left now, though surprisingly he didn’t pass out immediately. His head
was partially propped up, on a root perhaps, thus enabling him to examine the war club that was resting on his chest. It seemed
stuck to him, which was odd; yet he had no time to work out why, as a man ran at him, raising something on high. It may have
been then that the lack of air finally told, because he didn’t note a blow. Just darkness.

The dark that had taken him held him still; had done for three days, more or less; hard to tell as day and night had only
been indicated by a slight shift from black to grey and back, seen through a blindfold. Denied sight, his other senses had
grown acute; the touch of birch bark to cheek as, with Jack lying face down, the canoe was driven up the river; the sound
of water against the bow; later, the scent of the forest where brief halts were made; the wet leaves and muddy earth he was
thrown upon; the taste of the gristly, dried meat that was held for him to chew; the brackish water that washed it down. Under
all the heightened feelings was the constant one of pain: at his head where he’d been struck and which was roughly washed
and rebandaged above his blindfold; at his thumbs which were tightly bound together with a leather cord; up and down his legs
and buttocks where he’d received the kicking when he’d tried to escape his blind by rubbing it along the ground of the camp.
He’d desisted since, let himself sink into the oblivion thrust upon him. The fear was constant, an undernote to all other
sensations, but panic had receded slightly when he’d accepted that there was absolutely nothing he could do.

Until now. This landing had been different. He’d been thrust ahead of his captors up a steep path, made to duck at an entrance
of some kind. Warmth sucked him in, almost
made him shiver more violently after his days of exposure on the water, for they’d left him only with his shirt and breeches,
his redcoat, waistcoat, boots and stockings stripped away. This place also brought a raft of new smells to his sensitized
nose, most of them unpleasant: wet dog fur; wood and tobacco smoke; humans who had been too close for too long. And beneath
all these, a new-old scent – rum. The structure was awash with it.

The men who’d kidnapped him had barely talked, never to him, rarely to each other. Here, they and others gabbled, alternate
voices rising and falling in passion. Both men and women were present and it was one of the latter who became the clearest,
for after a long discourse from one of the men she began to wail, a low note at first, rising steadily to a keen of sorrow
and pain.

Jack had been dumped on some sort of platform, his legs spilling over it to the earthen floor he could feel under his bare
toes. His blindfold had been left on but someone had ripped off the leather cord that had held his thumbs together. Tentatively,
he started to move his hands up the sides of his body. When no one shouted, or ran at him flailing, he carefully pushed up
an edge of the blindfold.

He was at one end of a long, high-roofed dwelling. He was indeed on a platform that ran along the outer wall and was raised
a few feet above the packed earth floor. At intervals down the length of the house were firepits, smoke rising from each of
them to holes in the ceiling, though these vented only a portion, such was the haze that hung over everything. Some people
sat or lay, singly or in groups, along the platform. Most, though, were gathered before the central and largest fireplace,
around a body laid out there. Even through the haze and with sight accustoming itself again to use, Jack could tell that the
warrior – he had the single top-knot of hair on his otherwise bald head – was dead. His body seemed frozen while a deep gash
of congealed red at his throat proclaimed it as much as the blue tinge of his skin.

The woman who wailed struck herself repeatedly on the chest, pointing down to the corpse. Other women who tried to stop her
blows were shrugged off. Another warrior was talking to her, telling some story that involved the dead man before him, violent
gestures accompanying words that were almost sung. His volume increased, a bass note counterpointing the keening, as if they
were caught in some hideous duet. Then, suddenly and together, they stopped. The woman fell, caught and held up by women to
her side. The man had thrown his arm out, his finger pointing. At Jack. And everyone in the hut now turned and looked at him.

The warrior strode forward then, grabbed him, dragged him off the platform. Jack didn’t try to resist. The man was twice his
size and there were others there equally large and fearsome. There was nothing to do but let himself be dragged along the
earth floor, to be thrown down before the fire.

The wailing woman instantly threw off her restrainers and struck him, her fists bunched, her moccasined feet jabbing. Jack
rolled into a ball, knees up to stomach, hands over his face. The blows fell for a while, as the mob around her yelled encouragement
and landed some hits themselves. When the assault finally stopped, the warrior bent to him, pulled his hands away from his
face, began to jabber, waving from the corpse to Jack.