Jack Absolute (3 page)

He forestalled her next point. ‘But I … I have no real influence with these people. I have been gone eleven years and new
leaders will have arisen whom I do not know. I can speak the language, yes, and I know their ways. I am indeed useful to the
General. But I am not essential. And I have
spent seven years in India trying to rebuild the fortune my father lost on the turn of one card. If I do not get to our new
estates in Nevis in the West Indies, with the profits I have laboured long for, the Absolute fortunes may be lost again. And
many people will suffer, not just my family.’

He turned to Burgoyne. The anger had left the General’s face and it now bore the look that Jack had feared more than any other
– disappointment. Nevertheless, he kept his voice steady. ‘And so, sir, I have, most reluctantly, to refuse your gracious
offer.’

‘And if duty to your sovereign and your country cannot move you, what of your loyalty to me?’ His voice softened and he looked
direct into Jack’s eyes, though his words appeared to be for Louisa. ‘For it is not only his native connections I need, Louisa.
The man before you is the finest field intelligence officer I have ever known. He could discover information in the deserts
of Araby, simply by talking to the camels. He has a way with codes and ciphers that perplexes a mere horse-trooper such as
I. And wars are won by information more than by powder and shot. Absolute here can sniff it out swifter than my hound can
start a hare.’ He paused and his hand reached out to rest on Jack’s shoulder. ‘You know how I need you. Will you not come?’

This appeal, so gently spoken, was far harder to counter than any cross word and Jack winced. He owed this man many times
over; for his first commission at the age of sixteen, for countless opportunities since. They had fought together in Portugal
and Spain. In 1762, in the mad attack at Valencia de Alcantara, he had saved this man’s life – and among the Iroquois that
meant he owed a far greater debt than if his life had been saved by the General. In so many ways, Burgoyne was the father
that Jack had lost when Sir James Absolute went mad because the card he’d turned over at the Pharo table had been a queen
and not a king.

Yet there was no choice. Possible ruin lay in a change of heart.

‘I am so sorry. General. Miss Reardon. A safe voyage to you both, I trust.’

He bowed, turned to go. Burgoyne’s voice came, still more softly. ‘You have a night and a day to change your mind, Mr Absolute.
But a word of advice, whether you accept my commission or no. Watch your back. Or get that savage, your shadow, to watch it
for you. I was so certain you’d accept that I told everyone that you already had. And as you pointed out, London is full of
those … sympathetic to the Rebel cause.’

Jack frowned, then nodded, left the box, made his way down the stairs and towards the street. Gaining it, he paused, looked
up and down. Now that Burgoyne had drawn attention to it, he realized his ‘back’ had felt strange for some days, as if someone
was indeed eyeing it, him. He’d put it down to the mobbed streets of London, so very different from India. Now, as he studied
the people swaying back and forth, the audience taking the air, hawkers and whores selling their respective wares, he knew
it would be impossible to tell if anyone was interested in him as anything other than a customer.

In a doorway opposite, Até stood where he had all evening, startling the passers-by. He hated the theatre – unless they were
playing Shakespeare; and even then he was a purist. The happy endings appended to
Lear
or, especially,
Hamlet
, infuriated him. And despite his mission school education, Até still felt that by portraying Jack in a drama they were somehow
stealing his soul.

At the slight shake of Jack’s head, the Mohawk slipped back into the darkness. Now he would wait for Jack to pass and follow
him at a distance, to see if his friend was being stalked. Such caution had saved their lives a score of times.

Jack turned into an alley. It was the swiftest way to get
backstage so he took it despite the fetid darkness. The second of his interviews awaited him there.

Surely
, he thought,
it cannot be any harder than the first.

The necessity for this encounter was Sheridan’s fault. When Jack had learned of his fame and, in a rage, sought the Irishman
out at King’s Coffee House, the playwright had placated him, initially with three pints of porter – a nectar Jack had not
tasted in seven years – then persuaded him to come to the theatre, where
The Rivals
was in rehearsal for its remounting.

‘There’s someone I would like you to meet,’ he’d said, taking Jack’s arm.

That someone was Elizabeth Farren. Dressed as Lucy, the mischievous maid of the play, she was the epitome of all Jack had
missed in his years away, the embodiment of many a youthful passion. Though small in height, she was perfectly formed – ‘A
pocket Venus,’ Sheridan commented in a whisper, as they watched her rehearse. She was dressed and made-up as she would appear
that night, breasts thrust up and forward, dusted in a light vermilion powder, speckled with gold. A lace attempted to hold
in the front of the bodice, artfully half undone. It made a man instantly desirous of completing the task.

It certainly made Jack feel so. No matter that it was all artifice, that Lizzie merely feigned the wide-eyed country maid.
Jack fell.

And later, as they were introduced in the cramped wing dressing-room, it seemed that Lizzie did too.

When the blushing actress had returned to her acting, Jack, somewhat flustered also, had told his friend that it must be the
introductions that lured her – for the Irishman had told her that Jack had once written for the stage, rather than any quality
he possessed. This had set Sheridan on a roar.

‘P’shaw, Jack! I despise modesty in a man as much as vanity. Have you looked in a mirror lately? Here. Here!’ He pulled Jack
round to face the cracked glass before which lay the potions and creams of transformation. ‘Four months on a sunlit sea, the
winds buffeting your face? You glow, sir! Look at any winter-pale Londoner, lord or baker, for comparison. And if you were
always a dark-skinned Cornishman, your years in India have turned you into a positive native! You could pass as the brother
of that Iroquois who follows you around.’

Jack grinned. He often had.

‘And that smile. Those blue eyes that seem all the bluer in their dark setting. And if your nose is slightly larger than is
perfect for proportion, and your hell-black hair somewhat longer than the fashion and lacking in style,’ he flicked his own
trained locks, ‘what of it? I doubt there is a woman in the realm who could resist you. And you wonder that poor Lizzie fell?
Sure now, if she had not been called to the stage, she’d have had you on the spot, whether I’d been there or no!’

Sheridan had led Jack to a tavern with a slap and a guffaw, and their friendship was further restored amidst more pots of
ale. By the end of an evening Jack barely remembered the next morning, he had forgiven his friend everything; indeed, he had
a memory of begging the Irishman to write him into a sequel. And Sheridan had confessed that by pursuing Lizzie Farren, Jack
would be doing him a favour. He was now the manager at Drury Lane as well as its premier playwright, and John Rich, manager
at Covent Garden, was trying to lure Lizzie away. Nothing would distract her so much as a love affair – at least until she
signed her new contract.

Distracting it may have been. Fulfilling it was not. Between her hours in the theatre and Jack’s chasing of money about the
town, they could snatch only moments from his fast-
diminishing store of time. It heightened their passion. But it left no opportunity to take them from that height.

And that is where it should be left
, Jack had decided in a more sensible hour.

Yet pausing now between the piles of refuse in the court behind the theatre, he took another good pull at his flask of Sheridan’s
cognac, his heart as dark as his surroundings because of that sensible decision. The
Isis
stayed for a tide in Portsmouth and then it would be gone to the West Indies. He had to be on it. But he had grown fond of
Lizzie, her youth, her ardour, even her actorly ways. He was flattered by her attentions but he was no longer the Cornish
Romeo of his youth, to steal a moment’s satisfaction from a pretty girl and then be gone with the dawn.

Such was his resolution as he walked into the wings at Drury Lane. Yet it did not stop him pausing before a mirror near which
the two Italian acrobats were conducting a furious, sotto voce argument, their gestures indicating that something had gone
horribly wrong on-stage. He flicked at his black hair, dishevelled by the wind and falling snow outside.

May as well leave her with a good memory
, he thought, smoothing the thick locks. He remembered how well actresses loved their final scene. Grinning, he stuck his
tongue out at his reflection.

Lizzie awaited him in the same dressing-room where they’d met. She was alone, and through the half-open drape that gave on
to Stage Right, he could see the other actors taking their positions. The orchestra struck up. Act Five, the conclusion of
the play, was about to begin.

‘Leave? Tonight?’ The back of the hand went to the brow, the lower lip trembled, water came to the kohl-lined eyes. ‘Oh, Jack,
my Jack, say it isn’t true!’

It was a damned fine performance. She wanted this scene
and he was still playwright enough to give it to her. But the scene would require a touch of jealousy on his part, to show
her how much he cared. Glancing around, he spotted the prop he needed, a necklace of rubies that lay on a velvet glove. They
had to be paste, yet they were exquisitely done.

‘Will you miss me that much, Elizabeth, when you have admirers who send you such gifts? Do you play
The Rivals
then, for real?’

‘Oh him!’ She ran her fingers down the links. ‘He is a mere boy! And … that is not all he gave me, look …’ She rolled up her
sleeve. Her wrist was coloured with bruises. ‘He is a brute. When I told him I could not see him again, that I loved another,
he …’ She stifled a sob, more genuine this time, and rubbed her wrist.

Jack felt a tug of real anger, now rapidly displaced by a sudden thought. ‘You did not tell him my name?’

‘I … may have mentioned it.’

Excellent! All he needed was some incensed lover stalking him through London on his last night. Was that the regard he’d felt
upon his back? All the more reason to be gone – and swiftly. He would have to gabble his lines.

‘Elizabeth, this is farewell. Adieu, my dearest. I will carry you in my heart to the Indies.’

It was far from his best. But as he swept up from his bow, he saw that Lizzie had stepped near. Very near.

‘Nay, sir,’ she said, ‘you do not intend to leave me without a kiss?’

‘But are you not on soon?’

She turned her head. They listened to the dialogue. ‘Oh no. It is the Faulkland and Julia scene. It goes on and on and on.
Especially the way Mistress Bulkley drags out her lines.’

She mimed a yawn, turned back, smiled. ‘So kiss me, Jack Absolute. Kiss me for the very last time.’

So he did. Pulled her tight and kissed her as if the kiss
could last for ever. The scent of her, some French fragrance rising from her warm body. That lace, half-undone, at her uplifted
breasts. Her hand caught between the velvet of her dress and his tight, black breeches.

She pressed her fingers into him and, in a voice suddenly more Deptford than Drury Lane, said, ‘Ooh, Jack!’

Planned exits and good intentions. Gone in a moment. He pushed her back, or she pulled him, the table behind swept clear of
its potions and bottles, glass breaking, creams leaking, powder rising through the air. She was lifting her dress, parting
her undergarments. He fumbled at the buttons of his breeches, heard two rip.

‘Jack!’ she sighed. ‘Here. Let me help. Here. Oh …
oh
! Yes. Yes!
There
!’

Four months at sea. Seven years away from England. Apparently he was still a Cornish Romeo after all.

She was as ready as he. The whalebone of her stays beneath the dress bent under his pressure, then snapped like bullet shot,
a splinter thrusting into his hip. Jack scarcely noticed – for he was inside her.

There was brief, delightful resistance and then he was moving slowly deeper. She shuddered, squeezed him tighter to her, making
it hard to force his head down. But he persevered. His teeth fastened on the lace of her bodice and he jerked free the tormenting
half-knot.

‘God,’ he cried, ‘I’ve been wanting to do that all week.’

‘And I’ve been wanting you to do it.’ She giggled and, as his head rose, bit his ear.

Tongue and teeth, fingers rubbing, lifting, rolling. Her breasts were as beautiful as their promise. He bent to kiss them,
to tease them with his tongue, then his mouth found hers and she bit him again, his lip, they tasted his blood together. Her
head banged into the mirror, she groaned, but not in pain. A part of him was aware of the noise they were
making, of the voices on stage grown suddenly louder. And he didn’t care. He saw his face in the mirror, his hair dishevelled
again … something else he didn’t care about.

The scent of their lovemaking mingled with spilled creams and French fragrance. She was moaning, a single note, and he joined
her in counterpoint, somehow a fifth below. Their notes rose, as did the volume from the stage; but that was another world,
beyond them now. Inseparable, their voices entwined, along with every other part of them, and when they could not be any closer,
they reached their height as one.

She turned her head aside then, with a diminishing sigh of ecstasy. Jack opened his eyes, looked again into the cracked mirror,
saw again a contorted face … and realized, suddenly, that this time it was not his own.

Banastre Tarleton clutched a long, hot-house rose in one hand, which was slowly drooping towards the floor. His expression
was of greeting, tempered with shock, rapidly escalating to fury, mirroring Jack’s anger, surprised in such an intimate act.
But the expression of the man who held the dressing-room curtain aside for Tarleton was quite different. Indeed, the face
of the Count Von Schlaben displayed nothing but the purest joy.