The Blooding of Jack Absolute (33 page)

Até was moving ever further ahead and Jack couldn’t blame him. He had made it clear what the Abenaki would do if they caught
them. It would be death for him, as painful and protracted as possible. Jack, more valuable, they might let live. But he would
live without parts of himself he knew he needed.

The track widened, became the floor of a little valley, lined in white birch. He glanced up its steep sides, seeking any shelter
to be had, but none was revealed. And since he was looking up, he didn’t see that Até had stopped, just where the valley narrowed
again. He ran into his back and both of them sprawled on the soft, leafy ground. The Indian was too winded to do more than
gesture. Jack followed the hand, saw that the track didn’t continue into another expanse of forest. It ended, dead, at a cliff.
Forty feet below, a stream full of autumn’s rains drove through boulders.

They rose, turned. Four figures were walking slowly towards them down the little valley. Their faces were painted in two colours,
melding at the nose, blue and red. Two wore tricorns, beads strung from the brims. The other two, the ones that led, had their
heads shaved to the crown, shanks of black hair dangling down their necks. One of these was Segunki, a blue-dyed eagle’s feather
swaying across his brow.

He was grinning as he came, the musket easy in the crook of
his arm. He stopped about twenty paces from them, said something, and two of the others laughed. The fourth, who was older
and must have been the tracker, squatted down, muttering. Segunki nodded then took another step forward.

Beside him, Até had drawn his tomahawk, so Jack did too. The weapon felt awkward in a hand already slick with sweat. He knew
it trembled as he raised it but there was nothing he could do about that. Suddenly, the little curiosities shop in Knaves
Acre came into his head. He could not understand why, until he remembered that it was full of body parts that he had ogled
and pawed and wondered at. Now, in the way that they were looking at him, he felt he was about to become an exhibit himself.

The two other men followed Segunki, and laid down their muskets. Each drew a tomahawk from their belt, a war club from a sling
at their side. Até let out a scream of defiance, raising his own weapon high. Segunki laughed and said something to his companions.
Instantly, the three of them leant back, then hurled the heavy wooden clubs. All were aimed at Até.He dodged one, knocked
another away; but the third took him in the temple and he fell like a poleaxed ox.

The three Abenaki exchanged comments on their throws, the successful one running his fist over his head in some gesture of
triumph, immediately emulated by the others. Segunki just continued smiling at Jack, reached into his belt and pulled out
a long bladed knife before stepping closer.

Jack looked behind him, at the dark-green water pouring over the rocks below. The fall would probably kill him – which might
be a better fate than the one the man advancing with the knife intended for him. But really, there was nothing for it. Setting
his feet square, clutching the unfamiliar weapon before him as if it were a sabre, Jack prepared to fight, prepared to die.

The gunshot was startlingly loud. Everyone jumped, but no one more than the tracker. He staggered back, musket clattering
to his feet, hands reaching to his chest, failing to contain the blood that instantly came there, spreading across the blue
of his shirt in a moment. He was on one knee, and then he was cross-legged on the ground, his head sagging.

Everyone looked at him. For an extended moment, nothing moved. It was the cry that roused the Abenaki, had them leaping for
the guns they laid down, a long drawn-out battle cry, similar to the one Jack and his friends had attempted in the tavern;
very, very different: ‘Ah-ah-ah-ah-AH-HUM!’ It came with something thrown, a tomahawk that plunged into the arm of the second
Abenaki. Shrieking, he fell, rose, began to stagger back towards the valley’s end. Segunki and the other warrior, pausing
only to snatch up their muskets, followed. All disappeared fast into the trees.

Jack had laid down, though he had no recollection of doing so. Now, as the Abenaki vanished, he got up, staggered a little,
stabilized, just as three shapes disengaged from the white birch above and moved rapidly down to the valley floor. There was
a man with thick grey hair tied back with a blue ribbon, a younger man, not much older than Jack, and a boy of about eleven.

The older man spoke, a rapid, incomprehensible sentence. Jack shook his head. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, ‘I don’t speak …’

The man frowned. ‘English? Rich Man, Poor Man, Beggary Man, Thief?’

Jack stared at him. ‘I, uh …’

He pointed at himself. ‘King George’s Man.’ Reaching into his shirt, he pulled out a medal, shook it at Jack, who could see,
on one of its polished sides, a highly flattering portrait of His Majesty.

The younger man had gone to Até, the boy with him, both helping him rise to a sitting position. Até muttered something and
the boy looked up and chattered excitedly.

The older man spoke again. ‘
Ga-ne-a-ga-o-no
?’
He was pointing at Até.

‘I do not …?’

He thought. ‘Mohawk?’

‘Yes,’ Jack said, ‘he is a Mohawk.’

‘Mohawk,’ the man smiled, pointing again to himself.

The younger man had stood, came now and talked, gesturing back down the valley. The older man thought for a moment then nodded,
and the younger, grabbing up the wounded Abenaki’s musket, began to run in the direction they’d fled. The boy took a few steps
after him but a word from the elder – Jack assumed he must be the father of them both – halted him, his disappointment clear.

Até was trying to stand and the boy went to help him. There followed a rapid conversation in what Jack took to be Iroquois,
the older man asking the questions. When at last he seemed satisfied, he nodded again to Jack and signalled past him, up the
slopes.

Até came to Jack, hand pressed to the side of his head where his ear was rapidly shading to blue. ‘He is Jote. He has a camp
over there.’

The man and his son had gone to the tracker’s body, swiftly stripping it of clothes, weapons, jewellery and, in one swift
motion, scalp. In a moment the corpse was naked, save for a little breech cloth. Clutching the prize of a new knife, Jote
pointed with it back up the slopes.

‘London, England,’ he laughed.

‘Don’t I wish,’ said Jack.

Jack lay still, wondering if it was sound that had woken him again or the cold. One side of him was warm enough, pressed,
under the deer skin, against Jote’s youngest son. The other was against the hide wall of their forest shelter for, as the
least important members of the party, he and Até took the extremities. His fellow former slave was against the far wall; a
preferable position to Jack’s, who was also up against the flaps where any breeze would penetrate. Between them, descending
in order of age and importance to the chief in the middle, were the rest of Jote’s family – the two sons, one daughter, a
wife and his wife’s sister, the latter two swaddling him. He was given to snoring most untunefully, in short, sharp grunts;
but now Jack listened and heard nothing from any of his companions but gentle breaths. Perhaps it had been a noise from outside
then that had roused him, an animal call from the vast forest? He tipped his head and, suddenly, he knew, the knowledge bringing
a rush of excitement, memories of childhood, waking like this not to sound but to its absence, to the silence of a world wrapped
and muffled.

Still caught in the thrill, the difficulty he had parting the hide flaps confirmed his belief. For it had snowed heavily in
the night and a wall had drifted against their shelter. Soft, separate flakes, huge as cherry petals, were still drifting
down
from a sky showing a hint of dawn. Stealthily, Jack pushed out through the drift. He had always loved snow, the opportunities
for play and mischief it created, and he wanted to have it to himself for a while, to not have to restrain his exuberance
before the ever-solemn Mohawks.

He plunged out into the clearing. The snow came up over the moccasins they’d given him, to his ankles, bare beneath the deer-skin
leggings. He shivered but it was less cold than it had been, for the icy winds that had swept against them on their three-day
march – deeper into the forest, roughly south-westwards, he believed – had dropped. And some vigorous running on the spot
soon warmed him, together with some slips and slides back and forth across the now-concealed track.

He didn’t know how long he’d been observed in his frolics. He’d been spinning round a tree when he noticed the figures, dark
against the tent. The whole family was standing there, in the same order they’d maintained inside, Até apart on the edge.

‘Ah.’ Jack coughed, brushed his coat. ‘Snow, eh? Wonderful stuff.’

The family continued to stare until Jote said something. Then one by one they ducked under the flaps. Até was the last and
he beckoned Jack to follow, waiting for him at the entrance to catch up. ‘Snow,’ he said, sourly, when he did. ‘Not so wonderful.’

‘What do you mean?’

Até just ducked inside, Jack following him. The family made a semi-circle, passing some dried meat between them. He sat eagerly,
waiting his turn for his exertions had made him hungry. In their time with the Mohawks they had always been treated well,
receiving equal shares; so he was much surprised when the ball of deer jerky halted with Jote’s youngest son and was tucked
away. He saw that Até, too, had received none and he felt the coldest flush of the morning.

‘What’s going on?’ he asked, his voice suddenly raspy.

Jote began to speak rapidly, gesturing beyond the walls. Até
nodded, waited till the man finished speaking, then spoke himself, in single sharp sentences. The man shook his head clearly
at each of the questions, finally making a clear gesture, unmistakably conclusive. Até slumped back.

‘What is he saying?’

Até faced him. ‘They must leave us.’

‘Leave us? What do you mean? They are taking us to General Amherst. For the many gifts they will get.’

‘They said they try to do this. If snow did not come.’ He tipped his head to the outside. ‘It has come.’

‘But surely …’ Jack tried to keep his tone calm ‘We can’t be that far away.’

Até shrugged. ‘Two weeks maybe, with no snow.’

‘But this snow may melt. Will melt. We can press on.’

Jote had been following the conversation with his little English. He said something and Até nodded. ‘He say, this snow not
melting kind. Staying kind. Much more in sky. They are within three days of their winter camp. This is the way of many of
our people, families go to their own hunting grounds. My family will be in theirs, many, many weeks away. Jote will go to
his.’

‘Then we will go with him.’

Jote, leaning forward, squeezed Jack’s upper arm. He said something, shaking it, nodding around him. Até translated. ‘He say
that we are both big men. We eat like big men. At his hunting grounds, there will be little to eat, maybe enough for his family.
Maybe not even for them. If we go with them, we will all die.’

Jack was suddenly remembering his happy life as an Abenaki slave, stewed dog for breakfast, the warmth of labour. He shook
his head. ‘Then you and I must continue. To Amherst.’

‘We would never get there. It is too far when the snow covers all the tracks. And even if I knew them and could see them,
we could not walk on them. Also they will not give us food for such a journey.’

‘No food?’ Jack could not help how shrill his voice became. ‘By Christ, you don’t mean they are going to abandon us here to
freeze and starve?’

Jote was still squeezing Jack’s arm. He patted it as he let it go, spoke rapidly to the two women who began to burrow among
the piles of goods lining the tent’s edge.

‘They will give us what they can spare. They will leave us in a part of the forest that might have game enough for two.’

Jack could hear, behind the calm way he spoke the words, a real fear in the young Mohawk. It took away his own voice, the
desperate questions he needed to ask, the pleas he wanted to make. He could only watch as a few items were pulled from pouches
and bags and thrown onto the floor in the gap that was widening between them.

He recognized the ball of fat Jote’s wife scraped from a birch tub, rolled between her hands, then placed on the floor because
he’d been forcing himself to eat this ghastly
pemmican
whenever it was offered: reeking, crystalline bear fat and dried moose meat, studded with little dried berries that exploded
bitterly when cracked. Next to it was placed a musket flint, and finally, and only after Jote overcame an argument from his
sister-in-law, the Abenaki tracker’s knife.

When the women sat back, Jack looked at Até. ‘That’s it? Food for a day, a flint and a rusted blade?’

‘It is much for them, together with the clothes they have already given. My people live by trade and we have nothing to exchange,
except the tomahawks that we will need.’

‘Nothing …’ Jack was still staring in shock at the three items upon the floor. Then he remembered something and, reaching
into the bag he’d taken at St Francis, he pulled out the sole possession he retained from his English life.

‘There,’ he said, throwing down the copy of
Hamlet,
‘I’ll trade that for the musket that goes with the flint.’

Até, despite the fear still in his face, laughed. He spoke and the family found it even more amusing, clutching their sides
in their mirth. Jote picked up the book, held it upside down by a
corner of its green leather binding. Through his laughter he said something to Até who nodded and turned to Jack.

‘Jote says he likes your joke so he will take this. But it is not worth a musket and a musket will not do us much good anyway,
when we have nothing to trade for powder and ball. So I have asked for something better.’

Jote’s sister-in-law had returned to their belongings. She pulled a bigger item out, dropped it beside the other three. Jack
was appalled. ‘A k … kettle?’ he stuttered. ‘You’ve swapped
Hamlet
for a fucking kettle?’