The Blooding of Jack Absolute (42 page)

‘So you are to return, sir.’

‘When, sir?’

‘When, sir. Now, sir! By the next available ship, sir. You are half a year late.’

Even by Jack’s standards that was extreme.

Murray had seized another piece of paper. ‘Too risky to try for Quebec with the ice due. Have to be Boston.’ He scanned the
sheet. ‘Plenty of ships going from Boston end of October. You’ll go from there.’

Murray read on and Jack waited. When he realized that the general had dismissed him, he spoke. ‘Uh, sir … ?’

‘Still here?’

‘I have no uniform, sir, and no—’

‘For God’s sake, man, just speak to the quartermaster, will you? He has everything for you. Will fit you out with dead man’s
boots and full fig. Though you’re a dragoon, ain’t you? Well, you’ll be a lobster-back on the way across. Give you gold,
too, and your papers for the ship, together with the letters I require you to carry. Your hair will grow out on the voyage
and till then wear a wig, sir. Wear a wig!’

An hour later he emerged from the quartermaster’s. Murray had sent a note down that indeed arranged everything. Jack had a
new fustian haversack stuffed with the full uniform of a man a touch smaller than himself, with a large blood stain under
the armpit, inadequately patched. He had a horsehair wig, a tricorn hat, a sword, gaiters and shoes, and a rather fine silk
shirt. He had a purse containing five guineas and a requisition for a third-class berth on the West Indiaman,
Accord.
Yet he still sported the single top-knot and tattoos of a Mohawk warrior so when a soldier shouted, ‘Thief!’ at him, he took
the bearskin off and wrapped everything in it, suspending it from the end of his musket’s barrel to be carried across his
shoulder. Then he ducked into the sleet that had begun to blow off the river and headed for the wharf in search of Até. The
cold and the news together numbed him to all but what lay ahead. Out of Limbo, bound for home, a hard farewell still awaited.

He didn’t make fifty paces down the Rue St Joseph before a crowd blocked his passage. Men and some women were gathered, civilian
and soldier, yelling at something before them. Taller than most there, Jack peered and winced as he saw four hefty Redcoats
thrashing one of the townsmen, a balding man in his later-middle years. When a woman ran from an open door and slapped a broom-handle
onto the largest assailant’s back, Jack winced again as that man took the implement from her, reversed it to beat in his turn.
He also noticed that the soldier thrust a hand inside the blouse he casually ripped.

Soldiers cheered or jeered, civilians looked on powerlessly. The largest soldier was still laughing cruelly as he groped,
tugged, beat; and it was that cruelty that suddenly made Jack notice something familiar in this man’s obvious enjoyment of
pain. And in that recognition, in the moment before a
detachment of soldiers began to stroll toward the fray from the guardhouse at St Sulpice, Jack suddenly realized what that
something was.

The man with his hand in a defenceless woman’s blouse was Craster Absolute.

He gasped, his legs gave. If his cousin had descended in lightning, he could not have shocked more. Jack had thought often
of his former life through the winter in the cave, in the campaign that followed. Indeed, his dreams had become more urban
the more his daytime life adapted to the forest. Fanny would come in heat and pleasure and, on waking, memories of her would
linger happily. If he knew his actions had led her to her shame at the Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens, had caused the death of
her patron, Melbury, he also knew that she would survive because she always had done. But Clothilde! Dreams of her came too,
these swathed in sadness. She was innocent and he should have protected her and instead had opened her to the ravages of …
the man before him now. Absolute gold had bought her off, paid for her to wed someone she could not love, all to preserve
the family name. More gold had bought the uniform that Craster wore and disgraced even now.

He did not realize he had taken the five paces forward, arriving at the same time as the platoon, did not know his hand was
gripping his tomahawk. Then he stood before his cousin, saw again that jowly face, little diminished by a campaign’s privations,
like a bear who had stored up fat; noted again those close-set eyes that only ever gleamed when there was pain to dispense,
pain Jack had borne all his life.

Craster had stepped away from the fracas once the troopers moved in. He stood back now and let his comrades take the half-hearted
blows, laughing and leering still. Then, suddenly, he turned and looked at Jack, and he said, ‘So what do you think you are
staring at, you poxed brown monkey?’

Jack had no words. And by the time he thought of the actions he’d promised himself a thousand times to take when this man
stood before him again, his cousin was already being
pulled away by three Redcoats, already laughing with his captors. Jack, goaded by that braying laugh, still could not move.
An order had been given to free him from Limbo but his body seemed still to be in it.

Slowly turning, he resumed his walk towards the river.

To a man in a trance, the wharf was an assault of sound and sense. The wind blew sleet off the water yet this did not stop
the labours of men, hundreds scurrying over the sides of the ships. One army was leaving, the defeated French being readied
for transport out. Another, their conquerors, continued to arrive. Both needed to be fed. So livestock bellowed in pens or
swung in slings while men in every shade of coat cajoled and argued, hefted sacks of grain and vegetables, barrels of salted
meat and rum. There were a number of Indians of the various tribes: Iroquois, Huron, Nipissing, Algonquin and Abenaki, a group
of them seemingly hunting for something.

Tucked away in a tangle of fishing nets and old barrels, beneath a broken crane, Jack found him. Até was in the shadow of
the upright, his bearskin on the planking before him.

‘What are you doing here, Até?’

The Mohawk stepped back into the shadows, drawing Jack in. ‘Watching them,’ he said, gesturing back to the wharf, to the Abenaki
still engaged in their search.

‘What are they looking for?’

‘Segunki.’

Jack felt a quickening at the name. He might not have suffered from their slavemaster as long as Até. But the memory of being
handicapped like a horse, of fighting like a dog in a pit … He looked to Até’s belt. ‘Where’s his scalp?’

‘On his head.’

At his puzzlement, Até pointed to the bearskin at his feet. Now Jack looked closer, he could see the crown of a head poking
out. There was a slight shifting, a muffled moan.

‘You have not killed him yet?’

‘I have not.’ Até peered out to the wharf. The Abenaki were leaving it, their gestures indicating that they were going to
search elsewhere.

‘You are saving him for … something else?’ Suddenly a vision came, of a body hanging naked from a rock wall, like a bear carcass
stripped of skin. Até had hung like that, exposed to this man’s knife. The idea made Jack a little queasy. Vengeance was something
he could understand well. Indeed, since his sight of Craster, his own heart was full of it. But he’d heard many a dark tale
in their winter cave of how prolonged vengeance could, should be. He had a feeling that Até had spared his enemy’s life for
such purposes – and that he would want to involve Jack in them.

‘Something else, yes.’ Até appeared distracted, by more than the departing Abenaki. Suddenly he turned back. ‘Jack,’ he said,
which was unusual enough in itself. ‘I was thinking of
Hamlet.’

Jack groaned. ‘Fuck, Até, not now, please.’

‘Yes, now!’ He had to raise his voice above a wind now whistling hard. ‘Hamlet doesn’t kill Claudius when he can. He doesn’t
take revenge.’

It was only the absurdity – and a certain gratitude for Time pausing – that made Jack take part in the discussion. ‘He does.
He kills Claudius—’

‘But later! Only when he has to, when his uncle tries to kill him again. He doesn’t, like the other wants to, “cut throats
in a Church”. He chooses … to accept fate, “the fall of a sparrow”. And then fate gives him his enemy.’

An unconscious warrior at his feet. A pass to England in his pack. A blood enemy walking away, unpunished. Why not discuss
a play? Why not?

‘And fate has given you … him.’

‘But now I can choose. Like Hamlet. Kill for vengeance. Slit his throat like a racoon in a snare. Take his scalp. Or …’

‘Or?’

Até thrust his head into the icy wind, sniffed. ‘You smell it?
Winter comes. The snow that buries.’ Suddenly, that rare smile came, transforming the Mohawk’s face. ‘And Grandfather Bear
will just have gone to sleep.’

Suddenly Jack saw and the lethargy that had settled upon him as he contemplated Time, the numbness that had descended when
he’d had the man he’d vowed to kill within the swing of his tomahawk and he’d done nothing, both left him. Six months alone
with the man before him meant he needed few words to clarify.

‘Where?’

‘We cannot take him to the cave, for he has been there and will find his way out. But my people have hunting grounds also
… there.’ Até gestured to the south.

‘How far? By water or land?’

‘Not far. By land.’

Jack looked into a sky swirling with snow. Até was right. Even Jack could recognize that a storm was gathering. And night
was close. ‘Then I will meet you at the horses at midnight.’ Leaning forward, he pulled Até’s ironwood war club from his belt.
‘And I will borrow this.’

‘Daganoweda?’ Até called. But Jack was gone, the wind to his back now. It would blow him once more into the city. It would
sweep him to his revenge.

In the six months since Jack had last supped rum in this tavern only a little had changed, the main difference being in the
colour of uniforms, for the white of France had been replaced by the red of England. But the same half-caste landlord dispensed
liquor and ejected troublemakers, the same whores disappeared to dispatch customers in the alley, the doors barely closing
upon them before they were back, shrieking against the cold. Jack was sure that the English counterpart of Hubert sought solace
this night with sailor or savage. And if there were less of the latter about, there were still enough, for Amherst had brought
his Native allies, mainly Mohawk, north; enough top-knots and tattoos for Jack to remain unnoticed by
the man he’d tracked to this place. Yet he need hardly have worried. Craster Absolute was noticing little save for the filling
of his tankard and the groping of the maid who filled it.

Jack shifted as the door opened again, turning gratefully to the frosty air. The tavern was the usual fug of heat and smoke
and Jack was wearing all his clothes. The scalplock and bearskin proclaimed him an Iroquois. But underneath it his skin was
getting used again to the rub of linen and wool. It was uncomfortable yet he bore it; he needed his hands free.

He had waited and watched for an hour. Craster drank and groped and sang and drank more, yet showed no inclination to move
outside. Jack was wondering if his bladder was unfillable. Yet it was another of his cousin’s organs that gave Jack his desire.
For one of the night-ladies had noticed Craster’s constant touching of the tavern wenches. She had moved in, offered herself,
been accepted and he was even now moving towards the door, passing within a foot of Jack, a dull gleam in those set-together
eyes, a smirk on the lips.

The night air brought relief. The wind had dropped, the temperature gone up to just this side of freezing. Clouds were rolling
over a half-moon. He could smell the coming snow. He stood staring up into the night sky, waiting. Sounds came from the alley,
muttered curses, a woman’s whimper of pain swiftly suppressed, a high-pitched groan. Then the whore emerged from the alley,
shoving a coin away under her dress with one hand. She didn’t seem startled to see a Mohawk there. ‘Con!’ she said, with a
jerk of her head the way she’d come. The doors swung open and sucked her inside.

Most noise was cut off by their closing; he could just hear someone commence another verse from ‘The British Grenadiers’.

Come, come my brave boys, let’s away for the town,

Where the drums they do beat, and the trumpets shall sound.

Our bridge shall be laid, in order to storm ’em;

If they’ll not surrender, so bravely we’ll warm ’em.

Jack was softly humming it as he stepped into the alley. Craster, silhouetted against its end, his piss a stallion’s spray
in the moonlight, was humming too. Jack reached him before they’d finished the second verse.

He had thought of all the things he would say, in a speech born of a thousand cruelties, crafted over a lifetime. He had thought
of recounting all his cousin’s crimes from child to man, dwelling most on the most horrible of them all, the ravishing of
Clothilde Guen. He had thought how he would make Craster feel some of the girl’s terror in the moments before he revealed
to the punished just who the punisher was. He had thought he would say and do all that.

Instead, he just hit him with the war club.

Até had said their destination was nearby, in a valley where he had hunted; but Jack had come to realize that the Iroquois
had a very different relationship to both distance and time. So he was greatly relieved when Até dismounted towards evening
of the third day of hard riding with a gesture to show they’d arrived. The driving snow had hindered and the swaying, hooded
men riding before them had added to the exhaustion of all. They had little enough food, only what they’d gathered in their
hasty leaving of Montréal and what they’d scavenged and traded for from sparse settlements along the way; not really enough
for four young men. They also rationed that little because they’d need some for the return.

The two prisoners had remained under hoods fashioned of oat sacks, even to eat, to shit, to sleep, their hands bound. Now,
in the clearing that Até indicated was their destination, having re-secured their hands around the trunk of a beech, Jack
and Até simultaneously jerked the headpieces clear.