Jack Absolute (35 page)

She leaves him
, Jack thought,
and the young gentleman escorts her home. And I will see her there! I will have an answer to her behaviour this night.
As Jack was pulling on his greatcoat, he saw André close the door, Louisa take her companion’s arm, and the two begin to
walk up the street. Yet as Jack finished his last button and reached for his hat, he saw them halt no more than fifty yards
away, just past an alley entrance, under the wooden shutter of an ironmongery. He watched Hervey kiss her gloved hand, then
retrace his steps, walk past the house, around a corner. Then, at the same moment the Ensign disappeared, someone else emerged
from the dark mouth of the alley – a man in a black cloak and hood, this pulled down so far that only his jaw was exposed.
He took Louisa’s arm, and the two began to hurry away down the street.

Of course. As Jack hurried from the the tavern, he cursed himself for every kind of an idiot. Miss Reardon would be preserving
her reputation! She could not stay with André – for that was whom the man in the black cloak undoubtedly was – not in a houseful
of officers. They were not going to her lodgings, not with her mother there. They were going to a third place where they were
unknown, where their secret, and her honour, would be safe.

Now he was in this deep, he had to know the limit of it. He would follow them wherever they went …
And then what? A duel? Playing the role he’d despised Tarleton for on another
snowy ground? Or kill them both, then fall upon his own sword? ‘Put out the light, and then put out the light.’

He did not know what to do. So he followed the couple ever deeper into the tangle of ill-lit, filthy streets that made up
this poorer quarter of Philadelphia. Still did not know when he stood opposite the house they’d entered, the one with the
notice on the door that said, ‘Clean Rooms – One Shilling and Sixpence.’ It was only when a lamp was lit in one of those ‘clean
rooms’, when a grubby drape was pulled over its window, when he did finally know, that he remembered something; and remembering,
he turned instantly, putting his back to the lowered curtain and the shadows moving behind it, went down the street, almost
the way he had come. Not quite. Her lodgings did not quite lie the way he had come.

He had to know how much of a fool he was. And what he’d remembered was that Louisa kept a diary.

She had taken over a fled Rebel’s small but well-appointed house, almost a cottage, in a quiet street filled with many similar
ones, not far from the theatre. Jack had been of a party that had escorted her home one night but as far as he knew, no one
had ever been admitted inside – her mother’s illness, somewhat hysterical in nature, did not allow for visitors. She had said
that Nancy, her maid, had been allowed to join her from Saratoga and also lived there. She had hired two other servants locally
but these had their own dwellings and left at day’s end.

An invalid and a servant. With luck, both would be asleep by now and in their own rooms.

The new-fallen snow made a soft surface for his boots; no gravel to betray him, just an almost inaudible squeak. He circled
the house twice. A lamp above the front door set for the mistress’s return was the only light, but the moon,
near full, darted among the snow clouds and Jack could see his way tolerably well, indeed could wish it a little darker for
his purpose. But the rear of the house had an overhanging ledge that put the door and windows on the lower floor in sufficient
shadow. Like many rear entrances the owners had not thought it necessary to furnish that door with expensive glass. It was
quartered in wood panels and one had been recently replaced, though not yet treated for the weather. Taking out his penknife
Jack used the blade to scrape away the softer wood around each steel tack. It took some minutes before the panel came out.
Reaching in, he blessed both the negligence of a maid who had left a key in a lock and his longer than average arms that could
reach the bolts above and below.

It was even darker inside and he had no wish to stumble around. So he slipped out again, went to the front of the house, and
removed the oil lamp glowing there. Back in the kitchen – for that was what the lamp revealed it to be – he took off his hat
and gloves, thrusting both into the coat’s ample pockets. Then he slowly opened the kitchen door.

There was little to disturb the silence, aside from the creaking of the house in the wind, the ticking of a clock down a corridor.
He followed it, noted the hour. Not even half past midnight. Louisa and André would be … about their business for some time
yet.
She is worth the hours
, he thought bitterly.

He became angrier, bolder. A dedicated listening at the few doors gave no sound of sleepers within, so he tried them all.
The rooms beyond consisted of a water closet, a handsome dining-room and parlour, and a room with a chaise longue, with chairs
laid out as if for a party. There was a desk, but the drawers were all unlocked and empty, save for some playing cards and
two old newspapers. He had no choice but to
mount the stairs to the first floor where the occupants of the house had to be sleeping.

There were three doors up there. Again, he listened at the first, again heard nothing, so he carefully turned the handle and
discovered a cupboard only, filled with blankets and basins. The second door opened on a small bedroom with just a bed and
an armoire, in the drawers of which were some clothes, maid’s pinafores, and headscarves. It was Nancy’s room but without
a Nancy in it. Blessing whichever soldier was occupying the maid’s time, Jack moved to the third room, the one, he now presumed,
that Louisa must share with her mother. He had no wish to startle an old and infirm lady, but he hoped that what Louisa had
told him of her was still true – she took a thousand drops of laudanum a night and could not be woken from their effect till
long after dawn. All he had to do was slip in, find the diary, slip out …

The door creaked, making him wince. Nevertheless he pushed it full open, held the lamp into the room …

No one. There was no one there. The bed’s coverlet was pulled down, as if it expected its occupant. Nancy had done her work
before taking her pleasure; a small fire glowed behind an iron guard. But of the invalid mother there was not a sign.

He had no time to worry about that. Pushing the door to, he began searching; such an intimate treasure had to be well hidden.
So it took him near two minutes before he found it, just where a diary should be – on the blotter on the desk, a pot of ink
to its right, a metal-tipped dipping pen in a stand to its left.

He held the book up. It was the same Louisa had taken on their journey, a thick tome, wider than his spread fingers and longer.
It was unusual, for it had soft covers, bulging as if filled with down that was trapped between the green linen covering and
the card of the book proper. A golden clasp
locked its middle, no key in its tiny hole. He turned the journal this way and that, not opening it yet. In fact, now he had
it in his hands, he found the urge that had brought him to it had almost vanished. What could be written inside to make him
feel better? That she had loved him once perhaps and her feelings for him had died, that he had been replaced in her affections
by another? Or that she never had, that it was just one of many such amours she used to while away her time?

He had his anger back. The lock provided no resistance to it.

The hand was bold, the blue letters slanting to the right across the thick, cream paper, great loops on the L’s and S’s, curlicues
on the tip of each Y. She was profligate with her words, for the paper was of the very finest, as expensive as could be purchased,
yet she left great gaps between each line, almost a line’s depth for each.

He turned from the labour to its content. The dates were scrupulously marked, even if she did not write every day. This diary
commenced after their arrival in Quebec and their first parting, had been begun sometime when he was away with St Leger and
she was on the march with Burgoyne.

An entry drew his eye. It followed a long description of the country through which they were passing, from Ticonderoga down.
It was written just south of that fortress.

How that fellow still runs so strangely in my head, though I know he should not. How did he ingratiate himself into my heart
so quickly? He is far away, risking all sorts of dangers. Let heaven bring him safely away from them and once more to my side.

How long had she known André? She had said he was an old friend. It was entirely possible that they had met in New York before
she came to England. Likely, in fact, for he had been
on General Howe’s staff at least that amount of time. But surely, Louisa’s behaviour towards himself, on board the ship, afterwards,
could not have been so … so encouraging if she was still longing for an older love in André?

He flicked on, came to a page where the writing was not so measured, nor the tone.

I can hardly see the page for tears. News has come. He’s dead, dead, de
—

The last word was cut off, just so, the next entry a turgid description of a dinner hosted by Burgoyne, each course described
in full. But
‘dead, dead, de …
’ Did she hear that André had died and was mistaken in the report? Or was there another lover, whose name he was yet to discover?

Then something made him pause. His passion was making him see things only one way when he had trained himself to consider
every option. And a tiny hope still smouldered, the flame of which he’d not, despite his misgivings, quite extinguished. Had
his jealousy so misled him that he could not now see the truth?

He turned the pages more swiftly, seeking a date.

They had raised the siege at Stanwix on 23 August. He was bitten the same day, saved by MacTavish, was taken by Arnold three
days later, escaped from him two weeks after that, more, returned to Burgoyne on the evening of the battle, 19 September …

19
^th
September, 1777. He has returned. He is not dead. Jack. My Jack.

He stared at the word, the name, could not quite take it in. Wanting to more than anything, not wanting to … for what was
he doing in the room of a woman who did indeed love
him, or had, at the very least, and thus could again, desecrating the very basis of love – her trust – by reading her most
intimate thoughts? How could he atone for that?

And yet the vision came, of a curtain dropping in a grubby lodging house …

He could not help flicking on. There was only one entry from the forest, cryptic, short:

Here, beneath the trees, I could, if he would but
…
I
called him a fool but he is not. I am.

The entries from Philadelphia came near the end of the book. She would have to buy another soon. Perhaps that could begin
his atonement, to plead the recklessness of his passion then scour the shops of the city for a journal even more lush than
this? But one entry, as he read it, pleased him less.

He is returned, again. I had given up all hope, had reconciled myself to duty alone. And yet, here he is. What can I do now?

There was a mark on the page there, the ink blotched.

Ay, let my tears fall. I weep for an answer.

An answer to what? Had she presumed him dead? If so, had she mourned as she had said then transferred her affections to someone
else? Jealousy returned instantly … yet could he blame her? She was young; men died in war. What this truly meant was that
her love for him had only ended when she was sure he was dead. She had grieved twice; perhaps it was too much. But, if it
yet smouldered, could it be revived, like a fire log at daybreak, with his breath? Despite … whatever was occurring with André
that night!

He turned the page more to the light to gaze upon the
teardrop. And it was in the glimmer of the lamp that he saw something sitting within the stain. He turned the book one way
and it disappeared; another and … yes, there it was again. A number – 2 – sat in the middle of the smudge. It was a phantom,
barely there, and nothing else showed on that page or any nearby. But he could not make it go away once he’d seen it.

The number was written in invisible ink.

He could not allow his mind to focus on what this might mean. It could be a game with which Louisa amused herself. Perfectly
normal people wanted their secrets hidden. Was not a diary a place for that?

There were different methods of reading such ink markings and he set about trying the easiest. But held close to the fire
grate, the book produced no more glyphs, so heat would not bring it forth. It was not lime juice then, nor milk. The fact
that a tear had displayed it, however faintly, meant that something in the tear – the salt perhaps – had done so. But remembering
his own use of such inks, he thought that unlikely to be the full answer. This was more sophisticated, a chemical. He would
need an acid of some kind; but where was he to get one in the night, with the clock downstairs just striking one and Louisa
perhaps on her way home even now?

He looked around. The bedroom had the usual furnishings. An empty basin stood on a table at the side, a jug full of water
beside it. Beneath the bed, the edge of a chamber pot held up the coverlet’s uninterrupted fall to the floor. He looked on
the bed, thought of going to the kitchen, rooting for lye there or …

His stare returned to the chamber pot. At the same time, by association, his mind went to his bladder, to the pints and the
rum he’d had that night. On the thought came action. He unbuttoned his breeches, stooped, filled the vessel near to halfway.
Then he carried it to the desk, set it down beside the
diary. Cursing himself, unable to stop, he ripped away a corner of a page. The quality of the stationery, before a sign of
indulgence, of luxury, now meant something else; for invisible ink only took well on the finest vellum.

He worked carefully, mixing the contents of the chamber pot with water in different strengths in the basin, trying a little
on an eye brush he’d found on the dressing table, spreading it beneath one letter on his scrap at a time, pouring out the
basin when no effect was achieved, starting again. After five attempts, numbers and letters began to appear in the gaps between
the written lines. Certain of his proportions now, he made as much of his ‘revealer’ as he thought he’d need, sat down at
the desk, and began.