The Blooding of Jack Absolute (41 page)

A cry from behind him, something whirring through the air
above him, another body falling before him. The first Abenaki, who had held Jack’s tomahawk in his leg, now had Até’s in his
chest.

‘That’s one I pay you back, Daganoweda!’

Jack, his eyes watering from the blow he’d delivered, looked through liquid to his companion. Até had taken a cut to his chest,
the blood running freely to meld with the war paint. But the two Abenaki who’d come for him lay at his feet.

Jack wiped his eyes, looked swiftly around them. Others yet moved, fought, scavenged and scalped over the battlefield, none
within a hundred yards. Anything beyond was hard to tell for the snow, that had drifted in occasional flurries throughout
the morning, had returned in force. He suddenly realized how cold he was and he cursed his choice to imitate the Mohawk and
fight with nothing but tattoos covering his chest. The chill removed all power to think.

‘What now?’ he said to Até.

‘Now?’ Até snatched up one of his recent opponents’ knives, bent and lifted the Abenaki by the scalplock.

Jack looked, not to the man just about to receive the very thing he’d intended for them but to the other of Até’s victims.
There was something about him, something familiar. He had seen this man before.

‘Wait!’ he yelled, and Até paused, knife raised. ‘Do you see who that is?’

Até looked where Jack pointed. It took a moment and then he dropped his intended victim stepped to the other, jerked his head
up. ‘Segunki!’ he cried.

It was indeed their late slavemaster. The man who’d handicapped him like a racehorse with corn cobs, who’d hung Até like meat
and had begun trying to separate his hair from his head, that scar still bright on his forehead.

‘So much the better.’ The Mohawk’s eyes gleamed. ‘God has indeed favoured me.’ He bent, lifted the prone warrior who gave
a groan. ‘Still alive! Good! Wake, dog. Wake so you know who it is who eats your heart.’

Jack, unwilling to look, was unable to look away. It was as if Até was silhouetted against a backcloth in some theatre, the
smoke and snow so extraordinarily rendered it could only have been created by that young painter he’d surprised at Fanny’s,
Gainsborough. And how the artist would have loved the pose, the knife held just so above the scalplock, the power of Até’s
crouching body, the limp contrast of Segunki’s. Then, just as the intended victim stirred to fulfil Até’s desire, something
moved behind them. The snowflakes were solidifying into snowmen.

‘Até,’ Jack screamed, again halting the rise of the blade. Até looked and saw too: the French reserve regiment seeking to
march through them and on to the walls of Quebec.

‘We must go, Até.’

‘But …’ Até had not moved, the knife still raised.

‘Now!’

Reluctantly Até let the head fall. Then just as he was about to step away, he stepped back and slashed just the tip of the
blade just below Segunki’s scalplock. The blood was a sudden red fountain against the white.

‘I will not kill him till he is looking into my eyes. But now, he and I bear each other’s mark at least,’ said Até, flicking
the knife point up to where his own scar shone. ‘And next time, one of us will die.’

The marching men were less than twenty paces away. He had no choice but to leave MacDonald’s corpse and hope the French would
treat it with respect. They ran, back towards the cliffs. They would have to take them again, for the enemy would have secured
the beach path. If he was indeed no infantryman even he could recognize the sounds of British bugles and drum, calling the
retreat. Murray had failed. Yet he had given Jack a mission should that happen. Their canoe was still hidden on the beach.

Twelve nights later, Jack and Até slipped back over the walls of besieged Quebec. They had less difficulty with the French,
accustomed to seeing Natives in their camps, than the English who held the walls. But Murray had assigned an officer to watch
for them at the St John Bastion and when he heard that an English-speaking Iroquois lurked without, he came rapidly.

Jack brought the news all wanted to hear. The first ship to appear in the upper St Lawrence sported the Union Standard at
its main mast. And HMS
Lowestoft
was only the swiftest of the entire British fleet.

Montréal, September 1760

He’d always had a strange relationship with Time. And September was the month he felt that oddity most keenly. Até had noticed
it, in Jack’s increasing silences, in his brooding stares. He had tried to spirit him out of it on the game trail, for the
British forces that now occupied Montréal needed endless fresh meat. But even hunting could not brighten Jack’s darkness for
long. It wasn’t so much that the month was the bridge of seasons – though this autumn of 1760 had been a brief flash between
a sweltering summer and the first sudden frosts of winter. It was more that memories came and refused to leave – of the September
only a year before when he’d killed his first man; and of that September eight years ago when he’d still been a child and
the English had finally accepted what Europe had known for two centuries – that a year had 365 days not 376. They had marked
the sacrifice of those eleven days in flame and riot throughout the realm. Jack had marked it by losing an uncle and gaining
parents he’d barely known he had. Eight years before, September had found him an illiterate wretch in Cornwall, wrenched him
away to London. And this September found him in Montréal and took him …

Where? As what? He had no doubt that, with the war over in Canada, he would soon have to trade the garb of an Iroquois scout
and spy for the redcoat and tricorn of an officer. But
then to stay on as a garrison officer, to shiver another winter away in Quebec or Montréal? The thought made him feel nostalgic
for the cave.

He sat where he always did when he was not on the trail, in the walled garden of the Seminary of St Sulpice. He liked to watch
the monks moving through it, readying it for the winter that had hastened upon them. The regularity of the rows of vegetables
being cleared, the ordered profusion of the herbal beds, their steady, slow movements, all calmed him, gave a respite from
his thoughts. Though they had at first objected to a tattooed Mohawk in their sanctuary, his status with the conquerors –
Murray had taken over half the seminary as his headquarters – and his quiet conduct within the walls had won them over. They
had even started to bring him bread and stew. Sometimes he ate it, sometimes he didn’t. Mostly he just sat, stared and waited
for he did not know what. He knew these monks believed in Limbo, that place between heaven and hell. He had started to believe
in it, too. Not as a place but as an aspect of Time. Perhaps that’s what happened to those eleven days; they had come here,
now, and he was stuck in them!

It had been twice that and more since the French had burned their flags and laid down their weapons in the Place d’Armes.
Five months since Jack and Até had snuck over the walls of besieged Quebec and announced the inevitability of that surrender
by informing Murray that the relieving fleet had arrived. The French had no choice but to raise the siege, to be chased by
Murray from the north, harried by Havilland up from Lake Champlain, overwhelmed by Amherst coming down the St Lawrence. By
the time he retired behind the insufficient ramparts of Montréal, the Chevalier de Lévis had less than three thousand men
to oppose an Allied force of near seventeen.

Jack shivered and shifted, drawing ever deeper into his bearskin cloak. It was also coming up a year since the beast had sacrificed
itself so that he and Até could live. Many times, harrying the French south, moving swiftly through the forests
on horseback (they’d been issued with a precious pair because of their role as Murray’s eyes and ears) he had thought of dumping
the fur, for cold had been replaced by such a brutal heat, he’d thought he could never be cold again. Now he was glad he’d
kept the rank thing. He didn’t know what was intended for him now. It was one of the reasons he stayed close to the headquarters,
so he could know of his future quickly and forsake Limbo; the general knew he was there. But if, as now seemed inevitable,
he was to spend another winter in Canada, the bear might save him once again.

In the Tower, the bell sounded five and while its strident toll lingered in the air, a shape rose on top of the wall and dropped
on the garden side of it. Até disdained gates, especially as the monks had once tried to prevent him joining his friend, fearing
a Native occupation. He usually came to see Jack at this hour, as full of plans as Jack was lacking in them. He had met up
with some of his own tribe when the Allies convened at Montréal. Jack had no doubt that, now the war was over, Até would rejoin
them for the winter. Two things kept him close. Jack himself and another type of hunting. One that he was now eager to discuss
when he threw himself down. He was not buried in fur, still wore only hide leggings and the blue cotton shirt he’d taken from
a slain Frenchman. It made Jack cold just to look at him.

‘I have found him, Daganoweda.’ The Mohawk’s eyes gleamed. ‘I have found the Abenaki.’

This was news indeed. Ever since that second battle at Quebec, Até had regretted doing no more than mark Segunki with his
knife blade. He had searched for him ever since.

‘Where?’

Até, who had taken his dagger from his belt, now spat on a whetstone and began to run it down the blade, though Jack couldn’t
see how the weapon could get any sharper. ‘My cousin, Ska-no-wun-de, tells me he sees Abenaki bringing deerskins to sell.
I go look … fah! The dog is one of them.’

‘How many?’

Até shrugged. ‘He will be alone, sometime. Then …’ Até threw the knife down into the earth of a bed of rosemary, pulled it
out and began to strop it again. ‘You come?’

‘Yes.’ At that moment, all Jack wanted to do was sit in the garden. But he couldn’t let Até go alone. The Mohawk would get
into trouble without him.

There must have been something in his tone that caused Até to pause in his activity. ‘You … good now?’

‘Why not?’ Jack had made the mistake of trying to talk to Até about his feelings during this time of year and Até – inevitably,
annoyingly – had quoted ‘The Time is out of joint. O cursed spite/That ever I was born to set it right.’

Jack had glowered and said nothing. There was no contradicting the wisdom of
Hamlet
in Até’s mind. But if Jack took anything from the blasted play it was that he was powerless to decide his fate. Destiny would
have to decide for him. So he rose, followed the Mohawk towards the walls. He would not climb them though. The gate would
do for him.

As he tried to leave, a young officer and a sergeant were coming in. They were not ones Jack knew – so many had come as reinforcements
and these had the pallid faces of those straight from the boat.

The sergeant pointed at Jack, said, ‘Is that ’im, sir?’

‘Damned if I know. All savages look the same to me. Hey, you! Are you … Daga … Daga … what’s the blasted name?’

‘Daganoweda?’

‘That’s the damned word. All sounds like gibberish to me. You there, fellow, are you he?’

Jack stared for a moment. The man was both shouting loudly and speaking very slowly. Finally, he nodded.

‘Then General Murray wants you,’ he brayed. ‘Now.’ He clicked his fingers and the sergeant reached and grabbed Jack by the
arm.

Jack disengaged himself, stepped away. His bearskin fell open, revealing the tattoos on his chest, the tomahawk at his
waist. At the same moment, Até, fresh from the walls, joined him.

‘Egad, ugly brutes, ain’t they?’ Both the Englishmen looked nervous now.

‘Do they arrest you, Daganoweda?’ Até said in Iroquois.

‘They summon me to Murray.’

‘Do you wish to go?’

Jack sighed. ‘Might as well.’

‘Then I go keep watch on this Abenaki dog. He lurks on the wharf trying to trade with the sailors.’

‘I will find you there. Don’t begin anything without me.’ Turning back to the officers he said, ‘Lead on, fellows.’

Neither seemed to realize that Jack had spoken English, but this time Jack didn’t shake off the sergeant’s hand. The man was
leading him to his desire, after all. To the general. Out of Limbo.

As usual, Murray was alone. He’d always received Jack thus; with MacDonald dead, there were barely three men in the army who’d
been told of Jack’s double existence. Also as usual, Murray spoke as if their previous conversation had ended a minute before
and not the three weeks it actually had been.

‘Why did you not tell me you were required to return in the spring?’

He was standing with his back to the window of the large cell he used as his command, pince-nez on the end of his nose, staring
at a piece of paper held at arm’s length.

Jack took a nervous step into the room. ‘Sir? I did not know …’

‘Orders, Absolute. The ones you brought from Pitt. You were to deliver them and bring news back as soon as the river thawed.
Hmm?’

He glanced, and Jack shook his head. ‘I am ignorant, sir, of any—’

‘Course you are!’ Murray glared then resumed his perusal. ‘You arrived, let me see, day or two before the first battle, yes?’
Jack grunted but Murray wasn’t interested in confirmation. ‘And Wolfe wouldn’t have taken time to read
all
the orders. Oh no! Too much work for that lazy turd!’

Jack stayed impassive. In each of their meetings Murray had conveyed how little he esteemed the dead hero of the first battle
of Quebec. ‘Still,’ he sniffed, ‘you stayed and became,’ another glance, ‘well, as we see. God knows how you talked me into
it. Can’t say it hasn’t been useful. Can’t say that. But you will obey those orders now. Especially as the King wants his
messenger back. Or at least his favourite colonel does. Whats-isname?’ He looked at a paper on the desk. ‘Ah yes. Burgoyne.
Popinjay!’

Jack’s heart, which had begun to beat quicker at the beginning of the conversation, quickened again. Burgoyne had requested
his return! He was going … home, if that’s what it still was. Murray had indicated another paper on his desk but Jack’s skills
at reading upside down had not been tested since Westminster and anyway the general strode forward and covered one page with
the other.