The Blooding of Jack Absolute

by C. C. Humphreys

  For seven days and nights the wind had screamed and driven snow against their shelter; they’d gone outside only to clear it from the entrance, relieve themselves, fetch firewood from their pile or duck into the other cave – for its flames had to be fed too, to continue the drying out of the hide, which Até rubbed every day with a rancid mélange of bear brains and wood pulp. Soon implements of every description awaited the day when they could venture out. Strands of the rope, peeled down, were tipped with small bones as hooks, for the lake might have perch to be fished for through the ice. Larger bones transformed to tools; a shoulder blade became a shovel, a thigh bone a hammer. Teeth became needles to sew the hide Até finally judged ready, which was transformed into two coats, the fur facing in, cattail down stuffed in for a lining, smaller teeth becoming toggles to close them.

  But the bear provided hazards too. However useful its guts, their own seemed unwilling to part with any ingested till Até brewed up a concoction of berries and white cedar pulp that had them outside for freezing minutes, groaning in snowdrifts. And the coats were infested with fleas.

  Aye, a very long winter, Jack now thought again, scratching hard at his chest, his head, his legs. Then he reached into one of his yew trays, pulled out a fingerful of bear grease, rubbed it on the worst of the inflammations. It soothed … and it warmed. What remained on his fingers, he sucked off. His detestation of the taste had only lessened because it was no more disgusting than many of the bear bits he’d eaten in the last few days. Indeed, compared to colon, it was positively bland!

  He reached for another fingerful, heard a grunt. He looked up, again met Até’s disapproving stare. Deliberately pulling up two fingers of the crystalline grease, he waved them at Até before he licked. Then he stood up, ‘I am going out,’ he declared.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Why do you think?’

  ‘Bring wood,’ the Mohawk said, his most common order.

  ‘Yes.’

  Then Até surprised him. ‘And don’t get lost.’

  ‘I won’t,’ he replied, lifting the bough door out of the way.

  Well, Jack thought, that was almost a conversation.

  He replaced the door, stood before it, shuddering. Though a bollock-puckering wind funnelled down the canyon, finding the many gaps in his attire, it was not snowing, though he suspected only a brief respite. They’d had to clear the front of their cave three times already with their shoulder-blade shovels to prevent entombment.

  Usually a dried-out tributary, a short stagger from the entrance, acted as their latrine but it had lately become treacherous with icy turds and anyway, now he was out and the snow abated, he felt he’d like to venture a little abroad. Anything to be away from the cave and its taciturn inhabitant, whose stares and silences Jack was beginning to find threatening. Also, he was starting to experience some odd things in there. Only that morning he was sure his pemmican had tasted of ‘curry cooked in the Indian way’ while the stream water had a distinct savour of London Porter.

  He followed the canyon out, climbed to the plateau above, the land where the bear chase had occurred. Putting his back to the wind, he began pissing, idly amusing himself by attempting to draw his initials in a snow bank.

  Something drew his eye, something dark standing proud from the white. Tucking himself away, he moved to it. It would not come to a tug so he began scraping at the frozen snow with a stick. It took a little while but eventually the bag that he’d stolen from the church in St Francis lay before him. The frozen opening gave to his pressure with a crack; he reached within and pulled out an ice block.

  ‘Hamlet, Prince of Denmark,’ he read aloud. Under this was the inscription his mother had written in her strong hand.

  ‘All truths are within. Seek them out, sweet prince.’

  He smiled sadly, thinking of his mother dining alone at Curzon Street, waiting for news of her two men, gone to war. Then he suddenly remembered something else about the volume and, blowing carefully upon it, he peeled back its ultimate page.

  There it was, where he had pasted it, the scrap of paper that had wrapped Clothilde’s last gift to him, the half-shilling that the Abenaki had stolen, her last words written upon the paper: ‘La moitié de mon coeur.’

  He looked up, eyes wide, careless of the freezing wind. He wasn’t there anyway but back in Thrift Street, whispering secrets across the table while his feet met hers under it, concealing all from her father a room away; her father and the man beside him, Claude the apprentice … now Claude, partner in the house of Guen and husband …

  He was back in the forest and his tears ran in icy trails down his cheeks. The wind began driving harder, bringing more memories and the new snow.

  Até grunted as he came in. ‘You forgot wood.’

  He had. ‘I’ll g … g … go later,’ he said, making for the fire, his fingers agonizing as warm blood returned. Then, flopping down on the boughs that served as his bed, he reached again into the bag. Holding the volume out to the fire, he sought to thaw both it and himself.

  There was stirring opposite. Jack could feel the tension as the Mohawk strove not to speak. ‘What’s that?’ he said finally.

  Lawks, thought Jack, that is a question!

  ‘Book,’ he replied. The Mohawk was not the only one with monosyllables.

  Silence again. He put another cedar log on, and the flames lapped it, needles crisping into flame. When the book felt pliable, he sat back. The page crackled as he opened it. He read Alexander Pope’s first comment: ‘The story was not invented by our author. Tho’ whence he took it, I know not.’

  The long silence ended. ‘You went to book shop?’

  A question and a joke?

  ‘It was in the bag from St Francis.’ He flipped another page.

  This silence was shorter. ‘What book?’

  ‘It’s a play. Hamlet by William Shakespeare. You know what a play is?’

  ‘I know,’ the Mohawk snapped. There was a longer pause. ‘But I never seen one.’

  ‘Really? Pity.’

  Suddenly, Até leaned forward. ‘You read it to me.’ It was not a request.

  Jack lowered the book, swiftly. ‘Why should I? Did you agree to teach me Iroquois when I asked you to?’ Jack had seen it as a way of passing their time but Até had scoffed at the suggestion.

  ‘No. But since I speak English, you had nothing to trade.’ He pointed. ‘Now you do.’

  Jack considered. The wind had increased in volume, snow was driving again against their walls. Winter was fully here, and far nearer its beginning than its end.

  ‘I will read it to you. And you will teach me Iroquois.’

  Até moved over to his side of the fire. ‘I do not know much reading,’ he mumbled. ‘So you show me words, too?’

  After a moment, Jack nodded and the Mohawk put out his hand, gently took the book. He looked at it from every angle, as if it hid secrets. ‘What kind of story is this?’ he said finally.

  Jack considered. ‘A ghost story,’ he said at last.

  Até dropped the book. ‘Ghost. We call him “Iakotianeronhstha”. He comes from the Village of the Dead, to steal souls.’ He shivered, hunched into himself. ‘Iakotianeronhstha … ghosts … are bad.’

  Jack picked the play up, dusted ash from the spine. ‘You are wrong. For our purposes, ghosts … are good.’

  The wind suddenly caught something, a jag of rock, a bough. A voice seemed to form out there, howled, trailed off. Another replaced it and another on a lower note. Até shivered but Jack knew it was not from the cold. The Mohawk never shivered from the cold.

  Smiling, he looked down to the first line. ‘“Who’s there?”’ he whispered.

  Até looked outside, startled still by the voices in the wind. Then he saw that Jack’s finger moved across the page. He peered closer.

  ‘Onhka non we,’ Até intoned in Iroquois.

  ‘Who’s there?’ they asked, together, each in the other’s language.

  – EIGHT –

&n
bsp; Undiscovered Country

  From behind the silver birch, watching the near-naked man stride to the centre of the snow circle, Jack began to shiver ever more violently. Rubbing his hands together, shrugging deeper into his bearskin coat, he mused, yet again, on the power of words.

  They had transformed the man before him. When engaged on the mundane tasks of survival Até was still taciturnity itself; here, in the arena they’d fashioned from tree stumps and snowmen, the Mohawk was verbosity incarnate. He had fallen in love with language.

  ‘Words. Words. Words.’ That’s what Hamlet said to Polonius’s enquiry as to his reading matter. Yet the joy for Até – and, it had to be admitted, for Jack, too – was in seeing how differently those words could be interpreted. Even that very line, that Jack saw as a weary dismissal, Até infused with individual meaning. ‘Owen’na … Owen’na? Owen’na!’ he’d bellow, a statement, a question, a furious challenge.

  It was only one of the many contrasts in their respective performances – as Até now began to illustrate with his stamping, clapping rendition of ‘To be or not to be’; or ‘Akwekon katon othe:non tsi ne’ken’ as Iroquoian had it. Jack recited the soliloquy as an internalized reflection both on death and the demands of action; Até played it directly to God, a summons to arms.

  Jack sniffed. Ate, as usual, was ignoring the verse, his voice swooping through octaves. Yet despite the fractured pentameter – as Até now began to question God directly, one moment prone in a whisper, then leaping with a shout – Jack found himself moved, as even David Garrick had failed to move him. Até had said that his people spoke exactly so in their councils and that Shakespeare was thus the most Mohawk of authors. And Jack had finally, grudgingly, come to admit that though he had made rigorous study of rhetoric at Westminster, he doubted if any Roman had ever harnessed the power of that art as skilfully as the shaven warrior before him now.

  A large drop of iced water detached itself from the branch above him, ran down inside his bearskin. Is this the true thaw at last? Jack wondered. The one that sets us free? In the months they’d been there – Jack had again lost track of time, but believed it to be above five since his capture at Quebec – each time the snow had begun to melt, he would urge Até to prepare to leave; each time Até would bid him wait. Within a day, two at most, there would be another vicious drop of temperature, the world frozen again. Away from their shelter, on a path that led they knew not where, they would have died. So they would use the false dawn to scurry, finish the tasks required to survive, hunt, kill, butcher a deer, fish for perch through the ice, stockpile the wood needed for their fire, gather cattail, burdock and wintergreen berries. Then, as the wind again howled its mournful note, Até would pull the bough-door to, dust the snow from his furs, lift the, by now, much-tattered copy of Hamlet and say, ‘Shall we play?’

  Watching the man raise his arms to the sky, Jack smiled. The Dane has kept us sane. He had made them talk, argue, shout, sometimes – actually, often – laugh. Months of daily wrangling over words and meanings had taught Jack Iroquoian to quite a sophisticated – if somewhat specialist – level. And with the language, other aspects of the culture had come.

  It had begun with the fleas. To reduce their habitation Jack had allowed his thick, black hair to be reduced to the single top-knot of a native warrior. Thus matched to the Mohawk, he’d begun to admire the delicate skin paintings Até rendered on himself – and on days when even Hamlet palled, other things were needed to stave off the boredom. He looked at his own tattooed forearms now, at the lines of blue-inked patterns: a diamond-backed snake; a wreath of beech leaves; a wolf’s jaws curling up over his shoulder. The agony of their application had been appalling, Até dotting the trimmed porcupine quill rapidly into his skin, dipped in an ink made of ground rock, berries and blood. But, of course, he hadn’t acknowledged that pain by even a grunt. You didn’t give such a weapon to a Mohawk.

  Jack watched him for a moment longer before slumping back. He truly was quite transported. The words had worked upon him and Jack felt he was not quite there, as if he was lost in one of his tribe’s religious ceremonies – for though he claimed to be a baptized, indeed fervent, Christian, the antics Até described, and had got up to at various points during the winter, were quite unlike any service Jack had ever attended at the Abbey. Not to mention the praying he’d done over the dead bear. Thanking it, apparently, for sacrificing its life to them. If that wasn’t pagan, he didn’t know what was! Still, Jack had amused himself for a whole day with a vision of Sir James mumbling thus over a fox.

  Jack pulled his bearskin tight, put his back against the birch, shivered once more. This would always distinguish him from the savage. They never seemed to feel any cold!

  After a minute or so he heard Até stride again to the centre of the circle but he did not turn to look. It was the speech to the players next and both of them had decided that it could be delivered to tree stumps and snowmen; for the other actor, taxed with playing all the roles, needed time to prepare for the important ones to come: Claudius, the Player King, Gertrude, eventually the return of the Ghost. Jack started whispering Iroquois words to himself from the various guises he would assume. He liked the ghost best. Até was always genuinely terrified when the Iakotianeronhstha appeared!

  It was the change of voice that halted Jack’s mumbling. At first he thought Até was filling in the other parts.

  Then he realized that someone just the other side of the tree was speaking French.

  He lay, frozen in a different way now, trying to make out what was being said, who was saying it. It was difficult, his ear unattuned, and they spoke swiftly, two or three of them perhaps. The European tongue brought to mind one of Jack’s fondest daydreams – that he would be captured by an honourable enemy, taken to the shelter and warmth of Montréal, treated well as an officer-prisoner, eventually exchanged as civilized warfare dictated. He nearly stepped from around his tree as those visions came back to him now. Then Até spoke, in a tongue he did not know but still recognized – the tongue of a slave. The Abenaki words were translated by someone else into French. Jack caught enough to know that Até was lying, saying that the English officer they’d heard about and sought had died at winter’s start, that he had survived alone.

  The sound of a blow followed, a harsh Abenaki voice shouted. Jack braced himself then risked a look past the tree trunk. There were three Frenchmen there, in coats of forest green – Coureurs du Bois. Até was lying in the snow at their feet, where the blow of the fourth man had knocked him.

  That man was Segunki, cruellest of their St Francis’ tormentors. He had come to reclaim his slaves.

  Sounds came, of kicks, then of men moving away. Jack snatched another look. Two of the Coureurs had Até under each arm, were dragging him along the cliff top and down to the entrance of the little gorge, the Mohawk semi-conscious, his wrists already bound. The Abenaki, with one glance back, followed.

  Jack’s gaze moved frantically from tree to tree. Four against one! But what choice did he have? Surrender and there was a good chance they would fulfil his desire, take him to Montréal. He was valuable. It was one option … and none at all. For Até would still die, as escaped slaves did, as slowly as possible. Segunki would insist on it.

  Jack rose quietly, skirting around to the left of their arena, thankful that Shakespeare was not the only thing he’d learned in the forest. Though Até rarely gave instruction, there had been competition between them from the beginning. Jack had observed the Indian, patterned himself on him, could move through the forest almost as silently now. And while he was not as accurate a thrower of the tomahawk, he was better with a bow and arrow, for Até was in love with gunpowder and thought the weapon primitive. Jack had hunted coneys in Cornwall with a bow and, in their time in the forest, had killed three deer to Até’s one.

  They had left their weapons to the side of the arena – performances would be interrupted if game appeared – and the enemy had not found them. Quickly slinging the bow
and the deerskin quiver over his shoulder, taking a tomahawk in each hand, he moved parallel to the path through the trees. He could hear men just beginning the descent to the gorge. One man though had stopped, so Jack did too, the voices of the others fading. The Frenchman who remained went to the cliff edge, peered over.

  Jack slipped from tree to tree till he was within ten paces of his quarry. He thought of the bow, dismissed it; even with a good shot the target would not die instantly, would scream, perhaps plummet over the edge, and Jack’s only odds-lessening strategy – surprise – would be gone. Shrugging off the bearskin and quietly unslinging the weapons on his back, he laid them and one of the tomahawks down. Hefting the other in his right hand, he waited till he heard the voices from below disappear and, with the other men now in the first cave, he moved toward the cliff top.

  He was three paces away when the man turned, so he covered those last three fast. The Coureur yelped ‘Merde’, not too loudly, not loudly enough, reaching to his belt, to his own tomahawk, too late. Jack struck him, not with the blade but with the blunt back of the weapon, high on the temple. The man spun backwards, instantly unconscious, following the trajectory of the blow. He was over the edge, about to plummet down, when Jack grabbed at his heavy belt. Sudden weight nearly pulled them both over and Jack desperately threw himself back, down, his feet slipping, seeking purchase in the melting snow. His moccasins ground into a lip of rock, the man swayed over the precipice … and Jack held him, dangling there, listening to the voices again rising up, to the feet moving along to the second cave. The sound came of the bough door being thrown down. Just when Jack thought his grip would break, he heard the last of them enter the rock face below.

  He twisted the man back, tipped him to the side to fall. He didn’t know if his one blow had killed, didn’t take time to check. The man’s fallen musket was choked in snow, and Jack didn’t have time to clean it out. He thrust both tomahawks back into his hide belt, fitted an arrow to the string of the bow and dropped the quiver over his shoulder.