‘I know a poem, sir,’ he suddenly said.
‘Do you, lad?’ Wolfe’s pale face raised to him, a weak smile came. ‘Not Virgil, is it? Can’t bear the damned Romans myself.’
‘No, sir.’ Jack had thought of pulling out the copy of Hamlet his mother had given him, the volume carried next to his heart for luck. But nothing in that doom-laden play seemed appropriate – and there was hardly light to read by. ‘No, it’s Thomas Gray. His “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard”.’
‘By God! I have a copy in my tent. It is the finest, the most majestic …’ Colour had come again to the pallid cheeks. ‘Recite it for us, lad. But softly, eh?’
Jack took a breath, cleared his throat, began.
The curfew tolls the knell of parting day,
The lowing herd winds slowly o’er the lea,
The plowman homeward plods his weary way,
And leaves the world to darkness and to me.
He could feel the men on his boat, on the surrounding ones, draw in again; yet instead of being daunted by their attention, by this silent audience on this moonless night, Jack felt emboldened. The chill slipped from him, his voice grew stronger, as he used the poet’s words to conjure that simple graveyard at dusk, the simple graves that filled it, their unadorned headstones marking unacclaimed men who, for all their anonymity, were yet of the same earth as the men who listened so intently now, that earth of England. Who had strived for that land, as the men who listened would strive that day, the verses binding those in their plain brown coats to these brothers and sons in russet-red who had left those fields to toil for their country in a different way, with different tools, with musket and bayonet not scythe and mattock, with cannon not with plough.
Jack felt it, almost as he thought it, coming not as a subtle caress but a jolt, a surge under the boats that lifted them, banging them once more against the Sutherland’s oaken sides. The tide had turned, Wolfe and his officers, indeed all who’d waited so long, shifted, and though he was not near the end of the elegy, he gave them the next verse as if it were the last.
The boast of heraldry, the pomp of power,
And all that beauty, all that wealth e’er gave,
Awaits alike th’ inevitable hour.
The paths of glory lead but to the grave.
‘Yes!’ cried Wolfe, ‘But note how glory comes before the grave! And if she does, I’ll lay me in the earth with a thanks. Is that the tide at last, Mr Chads?’
‘It is, sir, aye.’
‘Then put us upon’t, if you please.’ As commands were passed quietly along the line of barges, as ropes were cast off from the Sutherland – on whose mainsail two lamps were hoisted, a signal to the rest of the armada – Wolfe rose to move back to his own boat. Passing Jack, he squeezed his shoulder. ‘By God, young Absolute,’ he said, ‘I would rather have been the author of that piece than beat the French tomorrow. Well,’ he smiled, ‘perhaps not quite!’
And he was gone. Beside Jack, MacDonald had reached up to wipe his eyes and even in the dull light, Jack could see moisture on his fingers. Caught, the Scot gave a smile. T’was a fine verse, laddie, and finely spoken. I think yon poet must truly be a Highlander. It’s rare to find such passionate phraseology south of Inverness.’
The barges swiftly disengaged from the Sutherland and each other and the eight were soon scattered by the effects of the tide and the force of the St Lawrence, much swollen with early autumn rains. Perhaps their barge benefited from the superior skills of Captain Chads for they were soon ahead of any other vessel and steering for the opposite, northern shore. Jack had leaned right forward in an effort to pierce the darkness; a hand pulled him back.
‘Calmness, young Absolute, dinna ye fash. We’ve a muckle less than two hours to go and since we’re clear of the Cap, the next French outpost won’t be for a few miles. Ye can sit and bide.’
The lee of the northern shore was gained, the boat settled in a stream about a hundred yards offshore and was borne along by the swollen river’s force, the sailors only using their oars at a rare command from Captain Chads, when his tiller alone could not harness the surge. The land loomed to their left, a dark mass rising to the star-lit sky. Twice they saw lights, lanterns waved from a French piquet placed atop the cliffs. But no shore patrol challenged them and on their boat, no one spoke. Silently, they swept downriver.
Time was hard to gauge without sight and little sound but Jack felt it was over an hour into their journey that the first noises came from ahead of them.
‘Thunder?’ whispered Jack, looking up into the now cloudless sky.
‘Our lads before the Île d’Orléans,’ said Delaune. ‘Keeping Montcalm busy. He’s convinced we will only attempt to land on the Beauport shore downstream, beyond Quebec. That’s where he sits with most of his army. Let’s hope this show continues to deceive him.’
The sound brought others almost immediately. Suddenly, a lantern’s gate was opened. Though its glow could not reach them, it still seemed like the sun in that thick darkness. A voice called, monstrously loud in the silence of running water, ‘Qui est là?’
MacDonald leaned across Jack, muttering, ‘Let the play commence.’ Then he called out ‘La France!’
‘Quel régiment?’ came the challenge.
‘De la Marine.’
A silence followed and Jack was sure he was not the only one who failed to breathe. Then something flared – the lantern had been opened and a taper inserted. They were close enough to see, in the brief illumination, a bearded face with a pipe, a tasselled woollen cap. The sentinel drew flame into the bowl, waved, closed the lantern. Light disappeared.
‘Well spoken, sir,’ Jack sighed out.
‘It wasn’t just the accent,’ replied MacDonald. ‘We had intelligence that the Frenchies were planning on running some supplies down to the city tonight with this tide. They’d cancelled the plan – but seems yon laddie ne’er got that countermand. Lucky for us.’
Captain Chads, the tiller thrust hard away from him to counter the surge, signalled angrily for silence with his other hand. ‘Fuck!’ he whispered distinctly, peering hard at the shoreline.
‘What is it, fellow?’ said Colonel Howe, too loudly for anyone’s comfort.
‘I think … I think we’ve been carried past the Anse du Foulon, dammit.’
‘What?’ That brought the colonel off his bench. ‘Then put us in, man.’
‘I am not sure …’
‘Put us in! That is an order. We must make land.’
The oars were needed now to counter the boat’s fast progress. Between Chads and his oarsmen, the barge was soon in water shallow enough for the infantry at the bow to leap in. The tide came to their waists but they soon dragged the barge to ground upon the sloping beach.
Jack, like all the men there, slung his musket behind him and clambered out, keeping close to the other officers as they marched up to the tree line at the base of the cliffs, the company of soldiers forming into ranks. On the shore behind, three more boats grounded, drawn in by lanterns flashed over the water. Chads had come ashore with them and Howe quickly pulled him to one side.
‘Well, man?’ he barked.
Chads was as dour on land as upon the water. He took his time, gazing up at the tree-shrouded heights before him. ‘Aye, we’ve overshot. Not by much, mind.’
‘By not-how-much,’ Delaune asked, through a tight jaw.
‘I think the path’s arse is about two hundred yards that way.’ Chads pointed upriver, the way they’d come.
‘Then we’ll need to get there double-quick, to guide the general and the main force ashore,’ said Delaune. ‘And if the arse … the path … up the cliffs is indeed there, that’s where we must be, too.’
He looked as if he would be away on the instant, took a step along the strand. But Howe was staring upwards and did not follow.
‘Colonel …’ Delaune stepped back to him with some urgency.
‘You go,’ said Howe, still looking up. ‘Take
your Forlorn Hope and assay the path. But I’ll wager we can get up there faster by this route,’ he gestured up the cliffs with his chin, ‘and take any Froggies at the road-head in the rear.’
Delaune looked as if he would protest but Howe had already turned to MacDonald. ‘You will accompany me, sir. See if you can’t cozen the sentinels up there as you did the one before.’ With that he brushed past Delaune, who had no choice but to assemble his company of twenty-five and set off at a run. Howe was back with his sergeants, marshalling his men.
‘And you’ll bide with me,’ MacDonald said to Jack. ‘How’s your French?’
‘Can’t remember a bloody word,’ said Jack, grinning. In fact, from the moment his feet were again on land, a smile had been on his face. He waved at the darkness above them. ‘Can we get up them?’
‘Lad, you’ve obviously never visited Glencoe.’
Howe returned at the head of his men. Like everyone else, he had slung his musket, pulled tight its strap to secure it to his back. ‘Forward,’ he said, ‘for England.’
The moment he put boot upon it, Jack realized the slope was not vertical but angled as acutely as a church spire. As a boy he had climbed many a Cornish cliff, seeking gull’s eggs. Those cliffs had been slick with seawater and droppings but they were made of granite, had ledges and outcrops, thus toeholds and fingergrips. This was shale, misshaped pieces of grey-black slate, some the size of supper plates, many like arrowheads. A boot placed full upon them slipped and hands that grasped to steady found only jagged edges that cut but gave no purchase. He quickly learned the angle required to lean against the flow and to kick his instep in, wedge it there while he sought some handhold above. Trees somehow grew on the shale while the carpeting of old leaves was a slick hazard – the tree roots ran close to the surface, and Jack used them to pull himself up. The trunks of the striped maples and ash gave a moment’s rest; their fallen boughs were ladders to be swiftly scaled, though these came with a danger too if the deadfall was old and crumbled when grabbed. Beside him, a corporal relied on one too much and fell away, slipping ten foot and mouthing curses – for the order of silence was upon them, as binding as any monastic vow. Jack still thought the noise they were making was like hunted deer crashing through a copse. But he could not think of who might await them at the top, only of the next handhold, the next heave upwards.
Despite the encumbrance of a musket that would slip around halfway through a long reach, the bayonet that would wedge into a fallen branch, the jagged edges of shale that cut his fingers, the near-complete darkness under the tree canopy, Jack felt an exhilaration in the climb, as if his limbs, long confined aboard a ship, were finally free. Consequently, in less than five minutes, he was among the first to haul himself up to the cliff’s very edge.
Not over it though. In his enthusiasm he might have done so had not a hand hauled him back, and a voice whispered one word, ‘Wheesht!’ So Jack lay beside Donald MacDonald and waited, trying to listen beyond the noise of men who had not yet reached the summit. Howe joined them and a whisper for all to halt was passed back. Ninety men crouched beneath the lip and held their breath.
They waited a minute, two. Sounds came – the slipping and settling of stones behind them; a disturbed bird letting out a cry that sounded as if it were mocking them for their efforts at silence. Faintly, a human noise reached them. Someone was singing somewhere along the cliffs, upriver, back where the head of the beach path had to be. Since MacDonald and Howe raised their heads to peer, Jack did too and saw, with them, the faint glow of firelight through the shrubs and trees that screened the cliff edge and the mist that was held, like the finest spun web, between them.
‘Sergeant,’ Howe whispered down the slope, ‘form the men in one body. MacDonald?’
‘Come then,’ the Scotsman whispered. As each man clambered over the edge and reached for a weapon, MacDonald drew his sword, the heavy Highland claymore with its basket hilt. Jack imitated Howe, unslung his musket and on the third attempt, managed to fix his bayonet. No one had powder and shot in their guns; the order of silence extended up here, even unto death.
The mist had thickened in the time it took them to assemble and it was warmer within it. Jack was certain he was not the only one who sweated inside his redcoat. But a compensating rain fell, a little shower that passed quickly over them as, on a hand signal from Howe, they moved towards that faint glow. As it passed, they heard the sound of boots and a jolly tune, tunefully whistled. A man was coming toward them, invisible in the mist. They halted and MacDonald called out, coarsening his accent in the way he’d tried to teach Jack, ‘Eah, qui est là?’
The whistle and the boots halted, the sound of a musket being unslung coming clearly. ‘Eh, merde! Qui êtes-vous?’
MacDonald signalled them all to halt while he stepped forward. His figure was sucked away but his voice carried, magnified by the mist that allowed only the sense of hearing to function. Jack heard him tell the sentinel that he was at the head of a large command, come to relieve the Militia of their duty. And that the lucky man should call to his comrades along the cliff and bring them together – for Montcalm had sent a barrel of brandy as a reward for their vigilance against the bastard English this night. From the delight in the Canadian’s reply, and his subsequent calling to his fellows, MacDonald’s ruse worked. The darkness and mist must have hidden him, Jack thought, for there was no exclamation against a kilted Highlander. Instead, the voices moved away from them, and Howe and his men followed.
It took a minute, less, to reach the firelight and only a second for the Frenchmen there to recognize them. It was a second too late. MacDonald had his blade at his guide’s throat and the circle of a dozen men who rose startled by their fire were unable to do more than exclaim before bayonets were levelled at their chests and they were thrust back down upon the ground, sacking in their mouths, hands tied roughly at their backs. Soldiers scattered back into the mist and sounds came from it. A cry of surprise, then of pain. A wail, instantly cut off. Wood striking bone.
Jack had rushed to the fire with the rest but once there became a spectator, watching the more experienced soldiers about their task. The sentinels were down and hog-tied before he’d drawn ten breaths. Now, in the returning silence of the night and the sudden intense heat of the flames, Howe came up to him.
‘So, uh, Abbotsford, rumour is you are fast. See how quickly you can make it down to the beach and inform Captain Delaune that the path is under our control. And if the general is already there, my compliments to him. Tell him he may bring his army onto the Plains of Abraham.’
Jack hesitated.
‘Go on, man,’ Howe called.
Fumbling his bayonet off and into his belt, slinging his musket, he took a step, another. MacDonald joined him on the third. ‘Wheesht, lad, and be wary. There’s men we have nae t’aen. This is nae the jing bang.’ With that he laid a hand upon his back, part pat, part shove. Jack followed the trajectory and was soon sliding. The path was steep and shale was again the base of it. It was no more than six foot across at its widest.
Jack had built up some speed, his musket once again jangling against his back, when he was brought up short, striking his knee hard against a tree trunk. The maple had been felled with its boughs facing outwards, down the slope. The path might lead to the Plains before the walls of Quebec but Wolfe would have to clear it if he wanted to bring up his guns.
As Jack was groping in the darkness for the best place to slide over, a sound stopped him. It came from below, from the direction of the beach. Not the reassuring march of several infantrymen. A single man coming, coming fast, scrambling and slipping on the shale, cursing as he came, using words Jack did not know, though the language itself was plain.
French.
Jack’s jaw fell open, his hands gripped the trunk before him. Breath wouldn’t come until he forced it to and then seemed to arrive in a huge and too loud gasp. But if he heard it, it did not deter the Frenchman in his climb; on he came, noisily cur
sing.
Jack forced himself away from the trunk, crouched, put his back against it while his mind jumped. He could hide there; the Frenchman might pass him in the gloom; the English at the slope’s summit could deal with him. He had his orders after all, a mission, his first and his duty was to that. Let the enemy pass; MacDonald and the rest would snaffle him up.
And then, as the thought of the Scot and his other comrades up there, taken in the rear by even this one man, this man who would perhaps slip past them and run across the Plains to the walls of Quebec, rouse its garrison against this surprise assault … Jack knew he could not let him pass. So as the Frenchman reached the other side of the trunk, as he said, distinctly, ‘Merde’, Jack drew the bayonet.
A leg came over, another, a body. The man sat for a moment on the trunk then shoved himself off. He landed a yard from where Jack crouched, took a pace forward.
Jack rose up, his musket butt striking the maple as he stood. The man turned sharply at the sound, staggered back. He looked at Jack’s face and from it down to the bayonet in Jack’s hand. At his shoulder was the hilt of a sword. His hand reached up to grasp its grip and the sound it made as it cleared its sheath was the loudest sound Jack had heard all night.
He pushed off against the trunk, his left arm raised high before him. The Frenchman’s sword arm had gone back further, was about to bring it down in a killing stroke but Jack’s arm reached the man’s wrist before the force and the weight of the weapon was unstoppable. At the same time he thrust up with the bayonet. The man saw it come, deflected the weapon. It slipped past his right side and then the Frenchman grabbed Jack’s wrist, wrenched it back, up. Both men now held the other’s weaponed hand.
His opponent was big, as tall as Jack but wider and higher up the slope. He felt the weight disparity immediately, some wrassling instinct, so he let his body fall back and simultaneously jerked down with the hand that gripped the sword arm. The man fell towards him and Jack twisted away as he did, his own side jarring against the trunk; but the Frenchman hit it harder, just below his armpit. He gasped, tried to jerk his sword arm clear but Jack also felt a slight slackening on his own wrist. Wrenching back, he left the cuff of his coat in the man’s clawing fingers. The bayonet butt banged against a branch, he nearly lost it but, grasping desperately, Jack now twisted his body, putting its force behind the upward thrust. The man’s fingers could not deflect the blade.
The Blooding of Jack Absolute Page 20