Jack Absolute (39 page)

There had been no welcoming lamp at the front and the back was as dark as ever, even if the door was unbolted. Louisa was
being suitably cautious. There was no sign that the house was occupied and Jack struck no spark, groping along the passage,
mole-blind, feeling his way along the balustrade up the stairs. He went silently and only on reaching the landing did he whisper,
‘Louisa?’

The silence held for a moment longer until a whisper came back, her voice. ‘Here,’ she said from her bedroom, and there was
something in the monosyllable, some quality, that had Jack reaching for one of the two pistols in his belt. The cocking made
a huge sound in the still house, echoed around the corridor, down the stairs; now there could be no delay. Placing the barrel
against the door, he pushed and it swung in with that familiar creak.

The blackness was almost complete, some lighter shade of it alone at the window, which let in the night. Then it was pierced
by flame, startling in its suddenness. At the desk, a lamp that had been muffled by a hat was uncovered. In that darkness,
it was like the sun at midday, and Jack squinted against it to seek for target or threat. But when he’d seen that there were
at least five figures in the room, he let the gun barrel slowly sink towards the floor.

‘Jack, come in, dear fellow, do come in.’ John André was sat at the desk and had twisted around to look at him. ‘And put that
gun down, eh? There’s really no need.’

He stayed in the doorway till his eyes had adjusted and he could see everyone. One soldier stood behind André at the window,
another rested a blunderbuss on the armoire. Anton Hervey, ‘Bob Acres’ of the play, was by the bed. He had a pistol in one
hand while his other rested on Louisa’s shoulder where she sat, her back against the bedstead.

‘Jack, I—’ She tried to rise, but the Ensign pressed her down.

‘Oh, he knows it is not your fault, my dear.’ André nodded solicitously towards her then faced Jack again. ‘Fact is, we’ve
had her under scrutiny for some time. Useful she was such a damn fine actress. Nothing like the theatre for bringing people
together, eh?’

‘And what need would you have to scrutinize Miss Reardon?’ Jack was quite pleased with how steady his voice sounded. ‘Apart
from the most obvious.’

‘Oh, Jack!’ André’s laugh was pleasant. He turned back to the desk. ‘Do come over here. I’d like your opinion on something.
Sergeant, unencumber Captain Absolute … sorry, Major Absolute, of all that heavy weaponry, will you?’

Jack uncocked the gun in his hand and passed it over, the one at his belt following. Then he went and stood behind André.
Before him, spread open on the desk, was Louisa’s diary.

‘You know, she was trying to burn it when we came in. But the wood was wet. Only damaged it a little.’ He flicked a page over
to one where both blue and invisible ink was revealed. ‘What I am thinking, Jack, is that she has been … how shall I put it?
Playing you? And that you have only just discovered it. You did this?’ He gestured to the decoding.

Jack shrugged. There seemed little point in denial.

‘How long did it take you to break the code?’

‘Half a night.’

‘Ah.’ André seemed pleased. ‘I did it in an hour.’

‘Well,’ grunted Jack, ‘you are younger than me.’

André smiled. ‘And the secret ink? I have a sympathetic developer.’ He picked up a small glass bottle. ‘But it has only just
been discovered, since we captured an agent with letters written in this ink. And it usually stains it green, while yours
is,’ he peered, ‘yellow. So how did you manage? Professional curiosity, is all.’

Jack looked at Louisa. ‘I’d rather not say. Perhaps another time?’

André frowned. ‘Yes, well, I do hope we get that chance.’ He looked again at the text before him. ‘Diomedes is obviously Miss
Reardon, as she is also 642. But this person,’ he pointed, ‘597. He crops up so often. Must be her director, what? Hiding
on our side rather than on theirs. So, a traitor. Who is he, if it is indeed a he?’ He looked up. ‘Any ideas?’

‘Perhaps.’ Jack did not know the way this game was going. And if André wanted to take him for Louisa’s dupe, only recently
enlightened, that was fine. He could bear the title of fool a while longer. And until he knew more, he would keep his trump
card – Von Schlaben and all he knew of him – in his hand. It was the old rule of interrogation, that he and André, both trained
in His Majesty’s Army, understood. You gave a little, only when forced to – by whatever means – and always in return for something.

‘No perhaps about it.’ The Major’s voice had dropped to near a whisper. ‘You certainly know. Rather better than anyone, I
should say.’ André’s boyish face suddenly lost all its youth. Leaping up, he thrust his face into Jack’s and shouted,
‘You
are the traitor, sir.
You
are 597.’

As Jack stepped back, outrage rose like a physical presence in his throat, preventing him from speaking. And anyway, Louisa
was as quick as he would ever have been.

‘It’s not true,’ she said, shrugging off Hervey’s restraining hand and rising from the bed. ‘Jack knows little of all that.
And he found out that little only when we became lovers.’

‘Lovers? I presume the desperation of your situation makes you careless of reputation.’ André’s face had lost none of its
sourness. ‘Jack Absolute, on stage and off, the Lover Personified.’ He snorted. ‘Then, madam, for Love’s sake, perhaps
you
would care to reveal the identity of 597?’

Louisa looked as if she would speak. Then she merely lowered her head.

‘Thought not,’ André snarled. ‘Ensign Hervey, escort Miss Reardon to the gaol. And if she tries to speak again, gag her. I
will be along to examine her presently.’

The Ensign did not take her arm as gently as he had the night before, when leaving André’s. The soldier by the window took
the other and they almost ran a grim and silent Louisa out of the door.

‘Now, Jack.’ André’s voice had again become soft and moderate. ‘Would you like to hear why we know you are not just Fortune’s
Fool but the traitor 597?’

‘I would be thrilled – since I am not.’

‘Sit then, and I will expound it to you. No, Jack, really. I would prefer it if you sat. You are such a dangerous man even
a blunderbuss might not deter you.’ He gestured to the soldier by the armoire whose hand tightened on the gun stock. André
began to pace, just as he did when commenting on the actors’ performances after rehearsals. ‘We know Louisa is a spy. Quite
a successful one too, as—’

Jack interrupted. ‘She is an idealist, naïve and young. And she has been coerced into this role.’

‘Oh, I am sure. By 597, yourself, in fact. But you
would
try to protect her, now you are her lover and, when that story emerges, the envy of every man in Philadelphia!’ He beamed.
‘I am very fond of her myself. But our regard will not save her from the noose.’

Jack swallowed. ‘You would not—’

‘I would have to
pour encourager les autres.
They will hang our lady spies as we will hang theirs. We will wrap her lovely neck in a silken noose, push her off the scaffold,
watch her kick and wriggle, unless,’ here the smile that had never left his face widened, ‘you reveal the full extent of your
treachery, give us other names, other circles of spies. It could then be made
out that you were the cold manipulator who led this young girl astray. Wouldn’t save you, of course. But she might then find
some sympathy in the court.’

It was almost tempting. To take the blame upon himself, to save her. But he did not think he could make up enough lies to
credibly satisfy such a mind as André’s.

‘This is absurd. Everyone knows my loyalty, to Burgoyne, to the army. I have worn the Redcoat for almost twenty years.’

‘I’ll tell you what everyone knows about Jack Absolute.’ André was walking behind Jack now, hands clasped behind his back,
always turning just when he edged Jack’s vision. His voice was soft. ‘Your mother was an actress – not an amateur one but
a professional with all that implies—’

‘You may insult me by whatever title you choose but you are no gentleman if you attack a woman long dead.’

‘True.’ André smiled thinly. ‘It is unworthy of me. So let us assume that Jane Fitzsimmons was as pure as many of that profession
are corrupt. You would not deny that she was Irish, hmm? And that she held Rebel sympathies?’

‘People speculated so. As you do with me.’

‘There is a taint of blood though, is there not? Speculation perhaps, I acknowledge. But it serves as a neat prologue to the
facts. So to deal in them.’ He halted, looked out the window into the darkness, into the snow falling there again. ‘You resigned
your commission ten years ago to pursue personal wealth in India—’

‘I was also commissioned into the East India Company. I still wore the Redcoat and was serving the Crown when you had barely
been breeched.’

‘You served yourself, sir.
Yourself.
All know how desperate you were for money to save your family estates, bankrupted by your mad father – another taint in the
blood there, eh, for do not lunatics tend to beget the same?’ He began to pace
again. ‘And all know you were coerced into this war, one for which you had little sympathy. I heard of an extraordinary speech
you made at General Burgoyne’s table the night you arrived in Quebec. Full of praise for the American and compassion for his
cause.’

‘I have compassion, yes. As do nearly half the Members sitting at Westminster.’

‘But none of them are called Daganoweda, are they? They have not established homes in this land, fucked the squaws, sired
bastards—’

Jack came out of the chair. ‘Again, you insult when you know nothing about me or my life—’

‘I. Know. Everything.’ André motioned away the soldier who had stepped forward, gun levelled, when Jack rose. His handsome
face a few inches away now, he continued, ‘You think we only find out about enemy agents? We also discover everything we can
about our own. I have a drawerful of reports on you. What a colourful life you have led! They should put you in a novel, not
just a play. You would rival Tom Jones in ribaldry, out-peregrinate Peregrine Pickle! But as a spy, sir, you are an amateur,
a dabbler. That world has changed since you first donned war paint and feathers and impersonated a savage to peek at the French.’

Jack deflected his growing anger with the sudden realization that André sought to provoke him, with insult and insinuation,
into an outburst, into carelessness. So, breathing deep, sitting again, Jack gave his most charming smile and said, ‘That
may well be. I seem to acquire new titles by the month so … dabbler? Why not? I also acknowledge that I am a man in love and
I readily own the title of fool. But you, young sir, have not yet produced any proof of anything beyond that.’

‘No?’ André sat on the edge of the desk, lifted a piece of goose down, blew it into the air. ‘Oh, I think the contents of
this diary, the references to you by name in the blue ink and to 597 in the invisible, together with your reputation, your
documented outbursts, your family’s legacy, your Indian dalliances, and, above all, your romantic liaison with a proven spy,
would be more than enough to condemn. You are a lone wolf, sir, and their Lordships, who would sit upon your court martial,
don’t trust those who run separate from the pack.’ André leaned down. ‘But you want harder proof, you say? I think we can
find that as well.’ He looked past Jack to the door, whispered, ‘Where is it, Jack? In your saddle pack? On your person?’

‘Where is what?’

‘Jack! Burgoyne’s stolen mask, of course. The one thing that, by some interpretations, including his own speculation in his
dispatches to General Howe, cost him the campaign.’

Jack felt chill creep into his scalp. He blustered, ‘Burgoyne … lost it. I arrived in time to fashion another one.’

André laughed. ‘Oh yes, I heard that story too. Jack Absolute – saviour! A marvellous piece of cover. Perhaps you are not
such a sorry dog after all. But I suspect you didn’t fashion the perfect replacement, what? Perhaps some details still remained
hidden?’ André’s eyes gleamed. ‘I also heard you still have it.’

Jack was motionless. ‘And who told you that?’

‘A friend. Who heard it from a friend. Come, Jack, shall I get my man here to fetch up your bags? No, wait, it is too important
to be left on the back of a horse. You’ll have it on your person.’ As Jack said nothing, André continued, ‘Corporal, give
me the gun and search the Brevet-Major, will you?’

‘Sir.’ The big soldier moved over, handing the weapon across to André, who moved so he could rest its barrel on the edge of
the desk, its wide mouth level with Jack’s chest.

As the man took a step towards him, Jack raised a hand.
‘Here.’ He reached into his waistcoat pocket and pulled the piece of cut silk out. ‘I suppose it will do me no good to tell
you that I was keeping it for the General, to help him clear his name.’

‘None whatsoever.’ André had taken the cloth and was holding it to the light. ‘Such a little thing,’ he murmured, running
it through his fingers, ‘to cause such harm.’ He let the mask slip, its lightness causing it to float, then snatched it from
the air, stuffed it into a pocket. ‘But it’s always the little things that trip us, eh, Jack?’ He turned to the Corporal.
‘Bind his hands. We’ll take him to the gaol.’

As he was jerked to his feet, his wrists roughly grabbed, pulled back, pain sharding through the barely healed one, Jack leaned
into André. He only had that single trump to play now and, strangely, the only one left was the truth. ‘Listen to me. I am
not 597 nor guilty of anything of which you have accused me – apart, yes, from being a fool and falling in love. But I know
the identity of the man you seek. He has tried to kill me three times. He successfully interfered at Oriskany and helped in
our defeat there. This man controls a spy network here and in Europe. He is the most dangerous man on the continent, because
he works not for us or even, ultimately, for the Americans but for a tiny, powerful secret society. And they desire to control
us all.’