The Blooding of Jack Absolute (43 page)

Both Craster and Segunki emerged gasping, their faces red and chafed from the material’s rubbing, their lips rimed in the
pemmican
that had been their main diet. Both sported near-identical bruises where war clubs had struck them, though Craster’s had
a crust of blood at its centre. His gold hair was
akimbo, a disordered profusion compared to the part-shaved scalp of the Abenaki, while Segunki’s face-paint had been smeared
into some indeterminate colour. Both, however, wore identical expressions of fear and outrage.

It was the latter that manifested itself first in the Englishman. ‘How … dare you treat an officer of the Crown in such a
manner? You will be punished for this, unless you return me instantly to my regiment! Instantly, do you hear?’

Até turned and said, in Iroquois, the only tongue they had spoken in the entire trip at Jack’s instigation, ‘He must indeed
have your blood, Daganoweda, for he does not whine and beg but shouts.’

Jack nodded. ‘I never called him a coward. He’s too stupid to be one. But every other name I have given him is also true.
He is a brute and a rapist and I cannot remember a time when I did not hate him.’

Something in the tone caused Craster’s next tirade to abort. Instead he stared at Jack, studied the tattoos, the scalplock.
Then he obviously shook the preposterous idea from his much-abused head and was about to embark on another rant when Segunki
spoke. Jack had only picked up a few Abenaki words in his time at St Francis and the speed with which they poured out now
admitted no understanding. The tone was clear, as Até rapidly confirmed.

‘This one does not have your cousin’s fire. He whines and begs and bargains.’ Até uttered a short sentence in Abenaki before
continuing, ‘I have told him to rest easy. He will know his fate soon enough.’

Ignoring both plea and threat, they rose from their squat, the Mohawk leading Jack around the small valley, pointing out its
suitability. Water there was, under a fresh sheet of ice created by winter’s harsh return. New snow revealed deer tracks and,
in one place, the unmistakable five-toed print of a bear.

‘Good,’ said Jack at the sight. Indeed, all was well. If there was no cave, there was balsam and hemlock a-plenty, assuming
the Abenaki knew how to craft them into a shelter. Snow scraped up revealed the clover-like minty leaves and their red berries
Jack had eaten before and, in a bog on their route in, Jack had noticed cattails thrusting up feathery leaves. There was just
enough to survive on. Just as much, anyway, as he and Até had had.

The snow had started to fall again, heralding the long-anticipated big storm. Até was impatient to be away. He led the horses
up to the last ridge they’d descended, then came back to Jack. Swiftly cutting two hemlock boughs, he handed one over. ‘To
sweep over our tracks,’ he said. ‘Don’t want them to follow us out.’

When all was ready, they went and stood in front of the two bound men. The increasing cold had removed much of Craster’s bluster,
frozen Segunki’s pleas. They stared numbly up at their captors now, eyes following as Até moved behind them, untied Craster,
to his very temporary relief for he was swiftly rebound to the same tree as the Abenaki, their fingers almost conjoined. When
he was done, Até once more took his place beside Jack and nodded.

Jack turned back to the captives. His voice was soft. ‘Craster Absolute,’ he said.

The gaze leapt to him. ‘Eh?’ he muttered.

‘Do you not know me?’

The thought that had come before, that had obviously been dismissed as a phantasm, madness following suffering, now returned.
The eyes narrowed into a stare of disbelief. ‘No. No! It cannot be. Cannot be …’

Jack leaned down. ‘It is. Exceedingly strange to you, I am sure. But true.’

For a moment, Jack wondered if he’d inadvertently spoken in Iroquois, so lacking in comprehension did Craster’s face appear
to be. Then suddenly he had it and something else came with it. Hope.

‘Jack! My dear cousin! I am … amazed! You live.’

‘I do.’

‘By all that is holy!’ Craster was nearly in raptures. ‘Your mother, my aunt, will be so pleased. She asked me to look out
for you before I embarked, she …’ A memory of Lady Jane came that obviously didn’t tally with the vision of family he was
trying to create and Jack suspected why. His mother knew everything about the brute’s behaviour. But Craster rallied. ‘She
will be delighted when I take her the news.’

‘And why will you be the bearer of such tidings?’

Incomprehension, hope, still gripped him. ‘Egad, Jack, you are in the right. We will take her the news together.’

‘And do you think,’ Jack spoke still more softly, ‘that I have brought you here just to let you go?’

Craster’s face, strained by its assumption of fellowship, slipped into more customary grooves. As Jack had told Até, his cousin
was every kind of villain but a coward. ‘Then why
have
you brought me here, sir? To kill me? It would be just your sort of poltroon’s trick. Then why don’t you get on with it,
you turd? Our family shall know of it somehow and then, by God, you’ll pay.’

If it was coming from anyone else, Jack might have been amused by the bluster. But Craster had never had the ability to make
his cousin laugh.

‘You raped Clothilde Guen.’

‘Who?’ He struggled with memory. ‘What? That … that chit? I most certainly did not.’

Jack raised a hand. ‘Take care.’

Craster gave, just a little. ‘And if I did! She asked for it, the hussy. Enjoyed it, too, I’ll be bound. Besides, society
scarce notices such a thing. A child like that is not a woman.’

Até, who had watched soundless, now grunted in disgust. But Jack it was who went on. ‘I noticed. She …
noticed.’

‘It ain’t a hanging offence,’ Craster blustered. ‘So you can kiss my arse, Jack Absolute. Go on! Murder me, and have done
with it.’

Jack leaned down, his voice near a whisper now. ‘I could. I long to. To repay you for every kick you gave me, every slap
and every switch your father laid upon my back. Most of all for what you did to that poor girl. By doing that, you changed
all our lives. You did indeed turn me into a killer. Yet these hands,’ he raised them and they shook slightly, ‘have enough
blood on them for now. Stained by worthy opponents and in fair fights. I do not intend to disgrace their memory by adding
your blood to them.’ For a long moment, Jack gazed into his cousin’s eyes, Craster staring back. Then he rose, turned to Até.
‘Ready?’

Até nodded, went to the edge of the clearing, fetched what they’d brought for the purpose; as he laid each item down, Jack
named it.
‘Pemmican,’
he said, pointing to the ball of grease. ‘Enough for two days if you’re not too greedy. A flint, a kettle, a length of rope
and a knife.’

His cousin stared at the items dully. ‘And what am I meant to do with these?’

Jack took his time before he said it. ‘Survive.’

Craster’s jaw went slack. ‘You … you mean to leave me here? With these trinkets and … a savage?’ On Jack’s silence he continued,
‘But what will we live on?’

‘The savage will know. You’ll just have to trade him something to share his knowledge.’

As he said this, Jack moved away to the faint outline of the path head. Até, who had bent once to whisper something into Segunki’s
ear, now joined him. ‘You forget something, Daga-noweda?’

Jack stared at his friend for a moment, then remembered. ‘Of course.’ He went back to Craster whose mouth was now opening
and closing, no sound emerging. He reached inside his bearskin. ‘I do have one last thing for you.’

Craster’s eyes flickered with a little hope. ‘A pistol?’

‘Oh no,’ Jack said, ‘far, far better than that.’

And he dropped
Hamlet
upon his cousin’s chest.

As they climbed from the clearing, Jack and Até were laughing so hard they could barely sweep the hemlock boughs across the
path to obliterate their tracks.

*

A day and night found them at a junction of two valleys, one heading roughly east, the other southerly. There, as the snow
eased again and a pale sunset shone through a rent in the clouds, they set up a night camp. While Até conjured fire from damp
wood and constructed a birch-bark shelter, through the ice of a pond Jack had some luck with perch. These, and the last of
their
pemmican,
made their meal.

At every halt, they laughed still about the men they’d left.

‘How long will they take to free themselves?’

‘With my knots?’ Até smiled. ‘If they work together … an hour. If they pull each their own way they could still be there when
spring comes.’

Jack chuckled. ‘And once free? Will they live? Die? Kill each other? Who would win that fight?’

Até shrugged. ‘Fate decides. Not you or me. “If it be not now, yet it will come.”’

Jack sighed. ‘Do you think they’ll read the play?’

Até, busy with wood, looked up. ‘I think they will eat the pages one by one.’

That made them laugh again, then fall silent, staring into the heart of the fire they’d built between them. Both knew what
was unspoken across it. Both had recognized what the two valleys – one going east, one south – meant.

‘Até,’ said Jack at last. ‘Tomorrow—’

The Mohawk interrupted him briskly. ‘Tomorrow we return to our own worlds, our own wars.’

‘Unless you came with me,’ Jack leaned forward, suddenly eager. ‘You said you wanted to see England.’

‘The land of Hamlet?’ Até’s briskness was replaced by a softness, a stare.

‘Well, Shakespeare. Many other things too.’ He stared across the flames. ‘I could show them to you.’

Até looked away, up into the canopy. When at last he looked back, his gaze was firm. ‘I have thought of this, Daganoweda.
Thought of going with you.’

‘Then do.’

‘One day. One day I would like to see “what is dreamt of in your philosophy”.’

‘Will you stop quoting that bloody play?’

Até leaned forward, reflected fire not the only light in his eyes. ‘And that is why I cannot go. Because I cannot quote from
anything else.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘You have taught me some things. But there is so much still to learn.’ The sadness went, replaced by excitement. ‘But the
French are beaten now; this war ends. And my uncle-by-law, William Johnson, each year he sends some boys to a school in Connecticut.
Maybe he send me. Then I learn everything. Then I come to England.’ Off Jack’s look he added, ‘I will come, Daganoweda.’

Jack nodded. ‘So tomorrow we part.’

‘Unless …’

‘Unless?’

‘Unless you come with me.’ Até’s excitement was building. ‘You know your English ways. And now you know some of our ways,
too. But your ignorance is as great as mine is of yours. I can lead you. You can truly become a Mohawk. You can join the clan
of the wolf.’

For a long moment, Jack stared into the flames.
Why not?
The thought of London excited and appalled in equal measure. He had grown comfortable in the forest, there was game he hadn’t
hunted in this land he’d started to love, a friend to hunt them with, a man whose life he’d saved, who’d saved his. And there
was still that damned war cry to learn!

Yet he shook his head. ‘I cannot. I have orders and to disobey them, to go with you, I would become a deserter. And there
is an oath I swore to my country, to my King, and a promise made to my father to honour the uniform he has honoured, the name
we share. There is a land I love and people who love me there, blood of my blood.’

The silence came between them again, the flames’ snap
suddenly loud. After a time, Até rose and came to Jack’s side of the fire and there he did something strange. He took Jack’s
hand. ‘Nothing is for ever. We will meet again. You will return to this land because you will be drawn by this,’ he pointed
to Jack’s heart, ‘and this.’

He had drawn out his knife and now he pressed it to Jack’s palm, looking up at him. At his nod, Até slashed it in one swift
motion down the flesh under the thumb. In a moment, he had matched the cut with one of his own.

‘So this will bring you back, to the land where you will always be Daganoweda,’ he said, pressing flow to flow, ‘because blood
of your blood is now here as well.’ He gripped so hard he made Jack wince, that smile coming again. ‘Also you owe me more
chances to save you. Because without you last winter I would have died … pretty damn quick!’

It was not the last of Jack’s blood that Até shed. At dawn, a dry shave and many nicks later, he no longer sported the scalp-lock
that, more than anything, denoted him as a Mohawk. With the tricorn upon his head, and his body once more encased within silk
and serge, he was again Cornet Jack Absolute of the 16th Dragoons. And if his skin was still stained with the dye Até had
concocted for him to maintain his disguise, Jack could remember summers in Cornwall when he’d been nearly as dark.

They parted on the ridge where the valleys met. Snow lay before each of them, frozen hard yet not so deep it could not take
the horses; yet both knew that, when the promised big storm came and the paths became impassable to hoof, they could skim
across the surfaces on the snowshoes each had strapped to their backs.

They parted without words. All the necessary ones had been spoken the previous night, then sealed in blood. With a swift salute
befitting the uniform he wore, Jack turned his horse, prodded it downhill through a drift till he came to an avenue between
the trees where the snow was shallower. He picked up
speed there, putting distance between the parting and himself. Soon he was out of sight of the ridge.

Yet not of sound. Suddenly, faintly, Jack heard the familiar, long, drawn-out ululation. ‘Ah-ah-ah-ah-AH-HUM,’ it came, echoing
down the valley.

‘Of course,’ he said aloud, ‘Of course!
That’s
it.’ Tipping his head, he gave it back, listened to the echo bouncing off the crags. It was … perfect! So good in fact that,
if he wished to, he knew he would finally be able to teach the Mohocks of Covent Garden exactly how it was done. But in that
moment, with the cry not yet faded from the valley’s slopes, he knew he never would.