As he entered the gorge, voices came from their abattoir cave, sounds of more blows and a groan – Até was still alive. Whatever they’d found hadn’t yet confirmed or denied the Mohawk’s protection of Jack. He crouched, waiting, unsure. Then the two Frenchmen came out of their living cave. Jack waited, wondering if Segunki would also emerge. When he didn’t, Jack began to run forward. Adept though he’d been with deer, he was no Robin of Sherwood, and had missed more than he’d hit. The closer he got, the better.
They heard his feet crunch on the ice and, as they turned, Jack shot. The arrows – they had made three altogether – were of shaved hickory, tipped with shaped stone. But they weren’t the straightest, the crow feathers making the flights uneven. This one rose as it went, seemed to be bound for the first Frenchman’s face. Then it deviated sharply right, missing him by a good foot.
Fuck. Jack reached back, fingers fumbling for the second arrow, too aware that both of his enemies had unslung their muskets, were swinging them down. He notched, pulled, let loose. There was little in the way of aiming but this arrow went straight where the other had not. It took the man on the left in the centre of his chest; he staggered back, colliding with his comrade, who was forced to step to one side before he could bring his musket to bear. Jack had dropped the bow, was running flat out now, tomahawk in hand. The man fired when he was three paces away, the noise deafening within the narrow, canyon walls. He missed.
Jack crashed into him, shoulder dipped, but the Militiaman was burly, thick-set and strong, and he braced himself, one hand flat-palming Jack in the chest, the other pulling a tomahawk from his own waistband. In a moment the two weapons rose, clacked over head, parted, rose again. His enemy’s falling first, Jack ducked to the side, low, and struck at the man’s leg. With an agility that belied his bulk, he dodged it, struck again, at Jack’s shoulder. To save it, Jack spun out, his back colliding with the stone wall hard enough to expel air. The man, sensing victory, stepped back to give himself room to swing, stepped onto ice; weakened by the thaw, it gave and he sank to his knee. Off-balance now, he swayed and Jack, propelling himself off the wall, swung the tomahawk hard at the side of the man’s head. It lodged there, and the bone-splitting force of the blow followed by the man’s instant fall, sucked the weapon from Jack’s grasp.
A shout made Jack, whooping great gasps of air, turn to see Segunki step out of the abattoir cave. He held a knife in one hand, its blade reddened; on seeing Jack, he dropped it, reached around and had his musket unslung and pointed in a moment.
Jack fell forward. The Frenchman with the arrow in his chest was curled around it, his hands grasping the shaft, cursing and weeping. Beside him was his musket. Jack couldn’t remember if he’d fired it or not but he picked it up nonetheless and pointed it down the canyon at his tormentor.
They pulled their triggers simultaneously. Jack had no idea where the other’s bullet went but he saw his own’s course for it snapped the blue-dyed eagle’s feather in the Abenaki’s headdress. The smoke curled between them as, almost slowly, Segunki reached up and pulled the half-feather from the headband. Jack moved quicker, first, running the three paces forward to his dropped bow, snatching out the last of his arrows, notching it. Segunki looked up from the feather at him, turned and sprinted away. He was gone before the feather had floated to the icy canyon floor.
Jack was suddenly hotter than he’d ever been. If he’d been wearing any clothes he’d have taken them off. As it was, he bent down to scoop up ice melt, rub it onto his body, his burning face. A bass drum was beating blood throughout his head and he suddenly found he was yawning, his jaw crackling with the width it was forced to. Yet there was not a trace of tiredness to him. He thought he might never be tired again.
‘Monsieur? Prend pitié. Par la grâce de Dieu, aidez-moi!’
The whisper was startling in the silence. The Frenchman’s lips were stained and bubbling with bright pink blood, he was reaching an arm out to Jack now, paralleling the arrow shaft sticking straight out from his chest. Blood made Jack think of the brightness of Segunki’s blade when he came out of the cave and at the thought, he was up, weakened legs propelling him on.
He’d always thought that the bear, stripped of its hide, looked strangely human dangling upside down against the cavern wall. The body hanging there now seemed to have the same bluish-grey tone of flesh, similar sheets of blood.
‘Até!’ Jack cried, taking the weight on his shoulder, hoisting him so that the leather cords came off the promontory of rock above and the body slumped across his shoulder. Lowering him to the ground, he cut the ties, wincing at how they had gouged the flesh; yet looking at the deep scalp cut that gushed blood, Jack wondered if the Mohawk was not already beyond pain.
‘Até! Até!’ He went outside, into the other cave, grabbed a bark container, stooped to fill it with iced water. He washed away the worst of the blood, though more kept gouting from the slash. There was some deer skin tanning on cedar frames. Ripping a piece off, Jack wrapped it round the head and, as he did, the dark eyes opened.
‘Daganoweda,’ Até coughed, tried to sit up.
‘Rest!’ Jack tried to push the man down but the Mohawk resisted.
‘He tried to … tried to …’ Até raised a hand swiftly over his scalp in a cutting motion. ‘Then he heard gunshots from outside. He said he would be back to finish …’ Até suddenly gripped Jack’s arm. It was the first time Jack had ever seen anything like fear in the Iroquois. ‘Is he …? Where is he …?’
‘Gone. For the moment, at least.’
‘The others?’
‘Dead. I think they are all dead.’ He jerked his head to the outside.
‘You killed them, Daganoweda? All of them?’
Exhaustion came then and Jack flopped down. One man on the Plains of Abraham had told him, when he’d killed for the first time, that killing never got easier. Another on that same field had told him later that it did. The second one had been right and the realization shocked.
‘I did.’
They sat there for a moment, staring at nothing. Then Até stirred, rose to his knees. Leaning forward, he took the second tomahawk from Jack’s belt. ‘This Abenaki … he may come back.’
‘You cannot go after him. You are wounded.’
‘This?’ As he pointed to his own head, Jack saw the old Até return. ‘I have had worse playing otadajishqua.’ Tightening the bandage around his head, he got up, staggered a little, then moved to the cave’s entrance. Reluctantly, Jack followed.
The Frenchman with the arrow in him had managed to crawl about ten paces, collapsing on a bank of snow, staining it red to a depth of several inches. He was still breathing, just.
As Até bent to examine him, Jack said, ‘There’s one above. I’m not sure I killed him. I’ll go see.’
Out of sight of the Mohawk, halfway to the cliff top, Jack stopped, looked around once for any sign of Segunki, then leaned over and voided the contents of his stomach. Wiping his mouth, he carried on walking till he could see the first of the men he had struck that day, a short inspection revealing him to be definitely dead. The carnage made him think of how their day had begun, with Até’s rendering of Hamlet. And if the Mohawk had not been allowed to finish his performance, at least this stage was as littered with bodies as any production of the tragedy.
Até returned from the forest when the sun was at its height.
‘He flees fast, this Abenaki coyote, with the wind in his anus,’ he said, leaning his snowshoes against the cavern wall. ‘His tracks lead east, toward St Francis. But he did not come from there.’
‘No?’ Jack dropped another cedar shingle on the fire. He could not stop shivering.
‘No. He came with les Canadiens. From the south-west. From Do-te-a-co, what you call Montréal. Their tracks come from there.’ Até fell down beside Jack, re-tying the bloody bandage that had slipped across his face. ‘I think he went to Montréal to tell of you, a Redcoat officer in the woods, and they send these Coureurs du Bo
is to help take you.’
‘How did they find us?’
‘It seems we are close to one path from Montréal to St Francis. They cross our hunting tracks.’
‘And the one with the arrow said that Montréal was two days’ march.’ He had sat by the Frenchman as he slowly bled to death. There was nothing Jack could do for him; but it was surprising how much the man talked, thinking that he might. ‘He also said that a big army is gathering there.’
‘To march north or south?’
Jack shook his head. ‘No one knows … except Montcalm’s successor, the Chevalier de Lévis and presumably some of his staff. General Murray is holding out in Quebec. Your General Amherst is mustering in the south. Who will Levis choose to fight?’
Até sat up. ‘I can go to Amherst. My uncle-by-law, William Johnson will be there. I can fight with my people.’ He studied Jack’s silence. ‘You can come with me, Daganoweda. For we will fight your enemies too.’
‘Yes.’ Jack poked at the fire. ‘But my people are at Quebec. If Levis does march against the city, my fight is there.’
‘So north or south, where will the war be?’ said Até, lowering himself again. ‘That is the question.’
Both young men now stared into the flames for a long moment. Then Jack spoke. ‘You know, I’ve been sitting here thinking of another quote from that damn play. “There’s a divinity that shapes our ends, rough-hew them how we will.” Now I haven’t suddenly converted, I hold ever to my non-belief—’
‘And will burn in hell for eternity,’ interjected Até placidly.
‘But I do believe in … in destiny, in some force that propels a man along his path. All this,’ he gestured to the forest outside, ‘Canada, slavery, you, even bloody Hamlet, all have been shaping me for something. Look at me!’ He ran his hand up over his shaved crown to the swinging top-knot, traced the wolfhead tattoo over his shoulder. ‘A year ago I was still a schoolboy, pretending to be a Mohock. Now I am living as one.’
Até’s voice was solemn. ‘You have still to journey along that path before you are truly one of us. But you have come a way with my teaching. You have a name, Daganoweda. You can speak well and, in all but a bright light, you could pass for one of us. You have killed, even if you have not taken scalps as befits a true warrior. And you have saved a Mohawk’s life – so now you owe a great debt to the tribe.’ He overrode the objection Jack would voice to this logic. ‘But you lack the one thing that would make you a warrior of the people.’
‘The war cry?’ Jack smiled. Over the winter, Até had tried to teach Jack the full-blooded yell that the Mohawk gave in battle, the one that his Mohocks in London had so singularly failed to render. He had not got it yet.
Até shook his head. ‘You have not gone to war as one of them.’
‘I know. And that’s why I have been thinking about my destiny. If I went to Quebec alone, or south to General Amherst with you, I would have again to become Jack Absolute, the King’s officer. A rather strange-looking one, for a while, perhaps.’ He gestured to himself. ‘But there is another path I could take, one where all this,’ he waved again to the world outside, ‘that has happened to me would make more sense.’
‘A war path?’
‘Aye.’ Jack leaned towards the Mohawk. ‘This war will be decided by which way the French march, which army they choose to fight, and neither your musket nor mine will affect that. But what if we went to Montréal and discovered the truth, then took that news north or south? Is that not … destiny?’
Até rose. It was rare for him to show an emotion but he was flushed with one now. ‘What are we waiting for, Daganoweda? You have chosen for us a warrior’s title: he who goes ahead and warns of the enemy’s approach so that the warriors can gather and destroy them. In your tongue I think you call this man a scout.’
Jack rose too. ‘In my tongue we also call it by another name. So I will go to war as a Mohawk … but I will call myself a spy.’
– NINE –
Single Spies
‘There is a universal law,’ declared Jack, as they walked down the Rue St Joseph toward the wharfs, ‘and thus it applies as well in Montréal as in London. If you want a horse shod, you go to a farrier. To clear your bowels, you seek your emetic tartar from an apothecary. And if you want information,’ he stopped before a set of wooden doors, ‘you go to a tavern.’
Até grunted. It was not unusual for him to say little but his taciturnity had deepened ever since they’d first entered the city. He affected to look unimpressed, but Jack would sometimes catch his companion’s wide-eyed regard for all about him. He knew that Até had visited nothing larger than a village before and though Jack could – and did – assure him that this young, provincial burgh was a shabby country cousin of his own glorious London, still the stone houses and flag-stoned courts, the Seminary Gardens, the walls and bastions, the heaving port with its thousands of civilians and soldiers, all intimidated the Mohawk. It pleased the Englishman; for no matter how advanced Jack’s forest skills had become, Até was always the leader there. In the city, it was clearly the reverse.
Yet even Jack baulked at the tavern doors. For near six months the only humanity he’d seen – aside from the men he’d killed – was a single Mohawk, the loudest noises the crackle of a fire and the odd piece of shouted Shakespeare. Here, those doors opening transformed a drone into a roar. Scores, possibly hundreds of men – and some women – shoved and jostled around barrels set upon planks. In one corner flames heated cooking pots; in another, two fiddlers sawed, the space before them cleared by the abandoned leaping of drunken men. For months, the main scents in his nostrils had been bear fat and wood smoke. Here he was assaulted by waves of intense and varied odour, chicken stew, perfumed bodies a season beyond a bath, heady shag tobacco, the monstrous sweetness of warmed rum. It was almost overpowering, even for a Mohock of Covent Garden; Jack hesitated, half-heartedly seeking some passage through the mob, until a shove in his back propelled him to a space barely there and he and Até became the head of a wedge of Canadian Militia in their distinctive knitted blue caps, all baying for booze, all shoving straight for the central table.
A silver coin secured them some rum and a plate of the stew. Prices were high in a city running low of everything after a long winter. Yet he had two more coins in his pocket, Até having shot a doe on their march in. The animal was the start of their fortune, sold to a harried army cook who had pointed them toward this wharf-side tavern; for while most in Montréal were reserved for townsmen, habitants and soldiers, and did not admit France’s Indian allies, here the landlord was part Abenaki and wholly commercial. He’d let in anyone, the cook had told them, so long as they had silver and throw ’em out as soon as it was spent.
A portion of bench cleared as two men rolled onto the ground in the harmless fight of the very drunk. Jack and Até won the race to the hard wood and sat, laying their muskets and sacks at their feet. The first sip of rum, howsoever sickly sweet, was still like elixir to Jack. He closed his eyes, imagining himself back in London; opening them again, it took an effort to realize he was not indeed at Derry’s Cyder House on Maiden Lane where, a lifetime before, he had fallen foul of Craster Absolute’s schemes and too much arrack punch. Fiddles whined, laughter brayed, men fought for women, for booze, for the hell of it. But the differences were clear: in the white uniforms of the regular French soldiers; in the caps of the Militia; in the top-knot bouncing over the plate of stew as Até slurped it back; in his own as he flicked it aside and bent to his eating. And there was a larger contrast between the taverns with an ocean between them, for here he had purpose beyond pleasure. It was this purpose that made him shake his head when Até indicated for another rum. One had made him lightheaded enough after his winter of enforced sobriety.
Their brief time in the Iroquois camp outside the city’s ramparts had yielded no more than conflicting speculation voiced as fact: the army was marching north against Quebec before the snows melted; it was marching south against G
eneral Amherst when they did; it was staying where it was. So Jack had gained little, except confidence. With his natural Cornish darkness, his tattoos, his clothes and a berry stain Até had concocted and rubbed over his head, neck and shoulders, Jack had successfully passed himself off as Mohawk. His accent was credible, apparently; even with its tendency to slip into iambic pentameter.
But it was his French he needed now. Somewhere in this crowd had to be someone who knew more or knew someone who did. Até moved off among the small groups of Natives with a jug of tongue-loosening rum, Jack taking its twin to some white-clad soldiers, who were both surprised at his speaking and contemptuous of his person. Les Canadiens were less prejudiced, many faces showing nearly as much Native ancestry as European. He was accepted among them, not least for the free liquor he dispensed. And once he’d listened to the inevitable stories of soldiers anywhere – the stupidity of officers, the poverty of equipment, the heartlessness of whores – he at last found someone happy to talk of other things. Indeed, boast of them.
In one corner sat a Frenchman who had obviously not spent the winter in a cave or under canvas. Corpulent and pink-skinned, his civilian clothes had been washed at least once in the last months and sported the odd dandified embellishment – a handkerchief protruding from a pocket, a silk collar. A horsehair wig sat atop a jowly and pockmarked face. Among the soberly clad and grimy habitants, he was a peacock among pigeons.
And he could talk. Not converse, just lecture, in an accent that was clearer to Jack than the guttural patois of the provincials; he was from the Old Country. And while he dispensed rations from the large jug sat before him, men were content to receive the words along with the rum. Jack was all set to pass the braggart by when a name, repeatedly flourished, drew him in. He was rewarded with a particularly large smile, a wink and a tot of rum, which he surreptitiously tipped to the floor. Then he just listened.
The Blooding of Jack Absolute Page 29