The Blooding of Jack Absolute (30 page)

‘I don’t understand …’ he said.

The man leaned in, thrust his face – heavily tattooed with blue lines running across it – and spoke even more rapidly, doubling
his volume.

‘No … understand … no … speak …’ Jack gestured helplessly to his own mouth.

The man muttered something that could only be a curse then turned and spoke to a youth beside him – one who, Jack had noticed,
had slid in a few, especially painful kicks of his own when the woman had attacked. He nodded, left the circle and silence
came, Jack still lying there half-curled up, the woman weeping quietly, the warrior glaring. In a moment, the dispatched youth
returned, dragging someone with him.

The newcomer was a Native of about Jack’s own age, taller, thinner. His hair was even blacker and more unkempt than Jack’s.
What looked like the remains of a warrior’s top-knot was at the crown, standing up from a sea of greasy curls. One eye was
discoloured by an old, yellowing bruise. There were crusted scratches down one cheek. Unlike the bare-chested warriors, he
wore a shirt of sorts, though how it still clung to the body Jack could not tell, so shredded and torn was it. Through the
rents, he could see that the skin was mottled, filthy and reddened.

The fetcher threw the youth down with a vicious twist of the ear. Immediately, the warrior who had confronted Jack began to
shout at the newcomer, who gazed forward and showed no real sign that he was hearing. Then, when the latest tirade stopped,
the youth, without lifting his head, said, ‘You kill this man.’

Already unused to hearing English, Jack wasn’t sure if he had heard the words or made them up himself. ‘What?’ he said, startled.

In the same monotone, the words were repeated, accompanied by the faintest of nods toward the corpse.

‘But … I didn’t … I …’

The youth now spoke, in the same low-voiced way. The warrior let forth a burst of vowels, reached back behind him … and suddenly
Jack’s sword was being waved in the air above them.

‘You kill him, with this. On horse.’

In the vagueness of memory, a little flicker came, of a sword swept backwards, a cry, just before the darkness had taken him.
‘Ah,’ he said.

The woman, who had been following the words, now leaned into Jack and screamed again. The boy translated. ‘She is dead man’s
mother.’

‘I am … very sorry.’

‘Sorry, not enough. She wants … wants …’

Jack swallowed. ‘Revenge?’

‘Payment. You pay.’

Jack was relieved and puzzled at the same time. ‘They have stolen all I possessed.’ He reached up, touched the skin where
Clothilde’s half-shilling had rested. He’d known it was missing immediately, had felt its absence like a wound ever since.

His words were translated, producing another burst from the warrior.

‘He say: You pay or you slave.’

Jack was sure he’d misheard. ‘I’ll do … what?’

‘Slave.’ The downcast eyes flicked up, only for a moment. ‘Like me.’

‘Slave!’ Suddenly the meaning was all too clear and the outrage it brought overpowered the terror that had held him since
he’d entered the hut. ‘Now look here,’ he said, rising up on his knees to stare straight at the warrior, ‘I am a free-born
Englishman and, by God, no savage can turn me into a slave. Tell them that if they take me to Quebec, to the British Army,
I will see that they are not punished for what they have done. May even be able to get them some rum and … bead thingies.’
He turned to the man beside him. ‘Tell ’em.’

‘I don’t think—’

‘Tell ’em, damn your eyes!’

The other man pushed his neck to one side as if stretching it then began to speak. He had only got a few words out before
there was a roar from the warrior, a screech from the woman, and both immediately began striking Jack, knocking him back down
to the floor where several kicks were delivered. Then they pulled away and began to jabber at each other.

‘What did you tell them?’ gasped Jack.

‘Only what you say. How you were not a
savage’s
slave.’

‘Next time, ignore me,’ groaned Jack, holding his bruised ribs. As the volume and the gestures over him increased, he continued,
‘How is it you speak English?’

‘How does a savage speak?’ There was a little gleam in the dullness of the eyes. ‘Because I was not always slave to these
Abenaki … dogs,’ he whispered. ‘I am Iroquois. Mohawk.’

‘Mohock?’ said Jack. It was a word from a better world, a civilized one; brought a memory of pleasure beyond the pain. ‘That’s
strange. For so am I.’

The gleam grew. ‘What you mean?’

‘Friends and I. Back home, in England. A little … society.’

‘So … soci …’

‘Uh, gang. Of warriors, you know. Drinking, eating. Uh, whatchamacallit … whooping.’

‘You … say you are warrior of my people? You …’ The gleam was now a flame. ‘You no Mohawk. You steal a name. You know nothing
of honour—’

‘Now look here, fellow—’

‘Argh!’ yelled the Iroquois, throwing himself on Jack, knocking him backwards. He was underneath, fending off the blows that
fell for the short while before the others dragged them apart, only to beat each in a simultaneous assault in which everyone
joined in. When it was over, both of them were thrown onto a platform, while the crowd went back to their debate.

Jack was now feeling pain in the few places where he had not felt it before. He lay curled up, finally daring to open his
eyes again. He found himself staring into the eyes of his recent opponent. There was no dullness in them now as he whispered,
‘I am warrior, not you. I am Mohawk, not you. I am Até of the Wolf Clan. Keep out of my way, White Face. Or you die … pretty
damn quick!’

Slavery is a bloody slow way of passing the time, Jack thought, as he began his twentieth trip down the river path that day.
He held the yoke away from his raw-rubbed skin, the birch-bark buckets jiggling before and behind him as he walked. On the
return he’d have to lower the yoke onto his pain, it was the only way to get the full buckets back and only full buckets could
be poured into the longhouse’s trough. Anything less and he would get more kicks, less food at the end of the day. He’d tried
folding the tattered remains of his lawn shirt
between the wood and the flesh but it had barely helped and the blue, cotton shirt they’d given him was proof against neither
cold nor chafing. The meat fat he’d rubbed on, taken from his ration –
pemmican,
they called the foul conglomeration – had eased the hurt a little. Then someone had seen him doing it and he had been cursed,
and struck, for wasting food. So now he just suffered, less on the way to the water, more on the way back.

Pain blurred the hours, toil the days. How long had he been there? He had tried to keep a rough calendar, gouged into the
slats where he slept in the longhouse. But, exhausted, he’d forget to scratch the marks at day’s end and was anyway unsure
how long that darkened journey had taken to bring him here. If it was about two weeks since the battle, it was the end of
September, beginning of October perhaps. The weather gave little clue except that it was colder than any autumn he’d ever
known. There’d been some snow three days before.

If time eluded him, he had learnt other things, to be mused on as he dragged himself down the path. Some of the tribe – they
were called the Abenaki – spoke French, albeit with an accent that had him always groping for meaning. Jack had been given
as slave to the family he’d robbed of a son and one old man, Bomoseen, who lived in their longhouse, spoke it better than
most. He treated Jack a little more kindly than the others, speaking to him each day and tolerating the occasional question.
From him Jack had learned that he was in the village of St Francis though he was given no indication where that was. That
the Abenaki were old allies of the French in the fight against the ‘bastard
Anglais’
and that many of the scalps, both men’s and women’s, that decorated the lodge pole were taken by Bomoseen himself. He also
informed Jack that what the tribe fought for was not land, the owning of which was an absurd idea, nor any distant king. The
Abenaki fought for scalps – which proved prowess and brought glory – and prisoners, like Jack, who could eventually be exchanged
for gold or goods to enrich the village. It was that ‘eventually’
which concerned Jack the most, yet further questions gave no answers, time an irrelevance in the Abenaki world. It was either
before or after. Before the winter? A shrug. After? Another shrug. Running away was a fantasy. He had no idea where he was
and was certain he would not last long alone in the forest. It had also been made clear to him what would happen if he tried.
Bits of him would be cut off. Bits he was fond of.

There were white captives in other longhouses, men and women; Jack had tried to talk to them but it had proved frustrating.
They were all either Dutch or Palatine German and spoke no languages but their own, though their weary gestures indicated
they had been there a worryingly long time. There was only one other person there who spoke English and he had made it clear,
from the first, that he wanted nothing to do with Jack.

As he lowered the buckets onto the shingle shore, Jack rolled his shoulders and mused on that person. The old man had spat
that all Iroquois were demons and the Mohawk tribe the worst of all, their very name meaning ‘cannibal’. This Até had been
taken in war because the Mohawk usually sided with the British. But there was no profit to be had from such an uncivilized
people. So the youth would live and, judging by his treatment, probably soon die, a slave.

That was something else Jack had learned about slavery. As in any society, there were gradations to it. There had been much
of the same at Westminster where there was a form of slavery and boys lived in a hierarchy, the seniors catered to by descending
ranks who each persecuted the one below them, down to the youngest boys who could only persecute each other. Jack had contrived
to keep out of this Até’s way and would continue to do so. A man who had no lower to fall was dangerous and his innocent claiming
of Mohock kinship had obviously rattled the fellow.

Shivering, Jack bent to his buckets, wading up to his bare knees in the chill water, filling the bark containers as rapidly
as
he could. When the second was half full, an unusual sound from the village made him pause – a bell, tolling. It was the summons
to church and that gave Jack the day, Sunday, which he should have noticed before because only the slaves were working. Yet
even slaves would stop now, for an hour or two at least. Even slaves had souls, the French had convinced their allies, and
might be saved if only they came to Mass. Thus once a week most of the villagers packed into the slat-boarded, shingle-roofed
church, united in their adoration of a silver Madonna on the high altar. The Abenaki were Catholics of the most rabid kind
and Jack had always been a casual Atheist. But not on a Sunday in St Francis. He had made the mistake of demurring the week
before and so he had been assigned a task – he’d had to slit the throat of a dog, skin, gut and ready it for the longhouse
pot. He would not demur again. Indeed, he looked forward to the hymns and prayers, would sing and chant with the most devout
and display his superior Latin. Anything if it meant he would not have to carry any more bastard buckets for an hour or two!

The service was quite different from any that Jack had attended before. It had the solemnity of a communion at St Peter’s
Abbey in the procession, the hymns. It had the ecstasy of the Chapel in the Tottenham Court Road, the swooning, swaying, chanting
congregation falling before certain sacred items, reverencing them, grabbing them from their robed bearers to shake at the
crowd, staggering at their touch. The objects were different and went beyond what Jack would have expected even from Catholics.
He knew they believed in the sacredness of relics, the living power resting in wood, metal and porcelain. The cross was worshipped
from hand to hand, the small silver Madonna was carried forth to the beating of chests, to ‘Hallelujahs’ and ‘Hosannas’, but
it was the other items that surprised Jack: hoes, flails and threshers; buckets and fishing hooks; tomahawks and muskets,
flint and ball. Intricately carved masks with a variety of grotesque faces were
also passed reverently down the nave, laid upon the altar around the Mother of God. But it was the last object that had Jack
starting forward as it came through the doors.

‘Leaping Christ!’ he cried, and Bomoseen, who stood next to him and who’d used Jack’s arms to be helped into the church, yelled
out, ‘Ave!’ delighted that Jack joined in.

Held on high by the warrior who’d captured Jack was a trophy that elicited as much awe as any other: a war club. It was different
from the more common ones, which were carved from a single piece of wood, the heavy end shaped into a ball. Only a few had
this variation – a metal spike projecting from the head’s centre, which in this case was only partially revealed … buried
as it was in his mother’s gift of
Hamlet,
which Jack had kept for luck in the pocket of his redcoat.

‘Orenda,’
Bomoseen was nodding beside him. ‘Powerful spirit. It save life. Your life.’

Jack could only nod himself. It suddenly made sense of that last sight before oblivion took him in the forest at Quebec. A
war club resting on his chest. The bruise that still discoloured his skin there, the indentation. The thrown club was meant
to kill him, its spike to lodge. Instead he’d been saved by his mother, by the longwindedness of a Danish prince and the craft
of Alexander Pope’s printer on the corner of Dirty Lane, Dublin!

At the end of the service, with the sacred objects – including
Hamlet
and war club – piled before the Madonna on the altar, the congregation stepped out into the weak autumn sunlight. Jack was
helping Bomoseen but the old man went to talk with other elders of the tribe, leaving Jack at the church’s door observing
another Sunday ritual, one seen in any village in England. His uncle, Duncan Absolute, had always done his duty as squire
of Zennor in the parish church; then he would fulfil his other role as figurehead by getting utterly drunk in the village
inn. Here the Abenaki had no less a love for liquor than their Cornish equivalents and drank it openly before their longhouses.
In Zennor, the fuel would have been beer and
cider, with the odd prized bottle of smuggled brandy. Here it was rum, of which there seemed to be a never-ending supply.