‘You see, messieurs, while I would agree with you about most generals, the Chevalier de Lévis is different. He will listen to men of experience, men of intellect … well, men much like myself. Only yesterday he deferred to me over a matter of artillery. For you know, messieurs, that that was my branch. Before I received my wound.’
With a sigh of a martyr, he patted at his shoulder, stirring up a cloud of fine white powder there. He then tipped the dregs of the jug into his own pewter, raised it to the company. ‘To the nobleman who has paid for our conviviality this night: my employer and, may I say, my friend – the Chevalier de Lévis!’
The audience barely joined in the toast to their commander before, sensing an end to hospitality, they went to seek it elsewhere. The dandy sighed as the crowd dispersed, reached to place his empty vessel on the table … where Jack intercepted it, slopping in some rum.
‘Why, thank you, my lad.’ He slurped, belched and refocused on Jack. ‘My,’ he said, his voice lowering to a whisper, ‘but you’re a handsome brute. Where do you come from?’
He spoke as an adult does to an especially dense yet favoured child. Jack responded tersely to cue. ‘Oswegatchie,’ he replied, naming one of the main settlements of Canadian Iroquois who fought for France, then went on in a French he was careful to break up, ‘I come to kill Englishman. Many kill I yesterday!’
The fat man gave an indulgent smile. ‘I am sure you did. And the Great Father Lévis has paid you well for the scalps so you can buy rum, eh?’ He nudged his tankard against the jug, and Jack nodded and duly poured a hefty tot, which was duly drained. The next words that came were still slower and more slurred. ‘And may I be honoured with your name?’
‘Daganoweda.’
‘Hubert.’ He inclined his head, shedding more powder. ‘And who taught you such excellent French, mon brave?’
For a moment Jack was tempted to say, in his finest accent, ‘A young lady above a goldsmith’s shop in old London Town,’ just to see the shock it caused. Instead, he replied, ‘Black Robe, at village. Me, altar boy.’
‘Altar boy, eh?’ A gleam came into eyes already fired by rum. Then Hubert dropped a hand onto Jack’s thigh, squeezed gently and spoke a phrase not directly translatable but understandable nonetheless.
Jack was not unacquainted with such advances. He doubted there was a Westminster boy who was. And though there had been the usual boarding house fumblings of youths stumbling into manhood, as soon as he was offered the alternative, Jack had wholeheartedly chosen women. Yet though the resting hand began moving up his deerhide breeches, Jack was careful to keep his face neutral. And when the hand reached his upper thigh, Jack dropped his own upon it.
‘No?’ The word came out on a purr. Jack shrugged, looked around. ‘Yes,’ the Frenchman continued, ‘it is a little crowded here.’ He gestured with his eyes to the door and Jack immediately got up and started to push through towards it. Até was moving to intercept him but, at the slight shake of Jack’s head, merged again into the mob.
From fetid warmth they were plunged into a damp chill. It did not seem to affect Hubert. As soon as the door closed, he slid into Jack, his hand reaching to the place it had sought before. Jack’s closed over his wrist, held him firmly a few inches away.
‘My, but you’re a strong one,’ Hubert breathed. ‘Shall we slip into that alley?’
‘Too cold.’
The Frenchman looked annoyed. ‘I thought you savages never felt the cold?’
Jack guided the hand to his upper thigh. ‘Need present, too.’
‘Present? Ah, of course.’ Hubert reached into one pocket, then another, then sighed. ‘Present later. Tomorrow.’
‘Now,’ Jack said, letting the hand slip up a little.
Hubert swayed there, caught. It was obvious he had spent all he had inside. ‘Very well,’ he said suddenly, straightening. ‘You come with me, my handsome lad. But you’ll be silent, yes?’ He reached out, stubbed a grimy finger onto Jack’s lips.
Jack followed the stumbling figure away from the tavern, aware that the doors opened and closed behind him. Até? The sky had cleared, a half-moon and starlight reflecting off the snow-packed street. As they advanced away from the wharf towards the Seminary, the houses began to get gradually grander. Soon, there were especially high walls, some impressive, ornate gates; they halted before a small postern. ‘Quiet!’ Hubert ordered, before knocking softly. After a moment, there was a shuffling from within. The lock screeched, the door opened, a lantern was swung out.
‘Hubert?’
‘It’s me.’
Two soldiers in greatcoats stood there. The one in front yawned, stepped aside. ‘Come in, then, and let me get back to my fire.’
‘Is the chevalier still with his colonels?’
‘Yes, gabbing away. And until he finishes we can’t get any sleep.’ He yawned again then, as Hubert moved past, saw Jack. ‘Shit! Who’s that?’
‘Just a friend.’
The lantern was raised and Jack squinted into a light that moved up and down him. ‘What’s the matter, Hubert? Navy not in town?’
The other soldier sniggered and Hubert came and drew Jack in. ‘You know how the chevalier says we must reach out to all our Native children. I am merely obeying his commands.’
The hitherto silent soldier muttered, ‘And our commands say no one comes in tonight.’
‘Not even a friend?’ Hubert reached inside his coat. Jack hadn’t seem him secrete the jug of rum he now handed over. The soldiers only hesitated a moment. Taking it, the gruff one said, ‘Twenty minutes, Hubert. That’s all. Just make sure you bring him out to us then.’
A huge key was turned in the massive lock and the soldiers returned to a little hut beside the door. ‘Come then,’ said Hubert.
Jack, finding that he’d stopped breathing, started again. This was beyond anything he could have hoped for! Hubert, who had taken his arm, was drawing him up a path towards the side of a large stone house. From the talk at the gate, within that house lived the commander of the French army.
The side door opened onto a large kitchen, unpeopled, yet probably only recently so, for chickens dripped on a spit and something bubbled in cauldrons. Tugging still, Hubert led him up three flights of narrow stairs and into a low-roofed room that was well furnished with an armoire and a wood-framed bed. Hubert was obviously quite a senior household servant.
The Frenchman moved to the bed, threw back the coverlet. Turning back to Jack, reaching to his belt, he smiled. ‘You must be swift, my savage,’ he said. ‘Brutally swift.’
‘Oh, you may be sure,’ Jack said in English.
‘Eh?’ was all the loquacious Frenchman could manage, just before Jack hit him.
*
He glanced back from the doorway. Perhaps Hubert would not have been averse to the arrangements – his hands tied to the head posts, his feet to the frame – though he might have objected to the gag, and he would probably have preferred to be conscious.
The slitting of sheets and binding had taken time, probably half the twenty that had been allotted for the act of love, so Jack did not hesitate. Servants’ quarters were always elevated, in French houses as well as English; the masters’ would be on the ground floor, so this conference of colonels the guards had spoken of had to be taking place there. Lurking inside the stair door, he waited till the kitchen was empty, following the servants who departed with their loads of chicken, stew and bread. He blessed his luck again, for the traffic was one-way, leading down a long passageway into a brightly-lit entrance hall. The main doors of the house gave onto it, as did three other sets of internal doors. As Jack eased into an alcove bulging with bearskin coats – a smell he knew well – one of these sets of doors opened, and a group of men emerged. At their head was a compact man in a tight-fitting blue-gold uniform.
‘Supper first, gentlemen,’ he declared. ‘My rule is never to make important decisions on an empty stomach!’
Soldiers and civilians passed in hard debate. Whe
n the last of them had entered what must be the dining room, when the last of the servants had crossed back to the kitchen passageway, Jack moved swiftly across the room they’d come from.
It was empty. Stepping swiftly in, he pulled the heavy door closed behind him and turned. Shelves bearing sheaves of papers stretched up one wall; ledgers occupied the one opposite. A huge fireplace gave out some heat that yet could not account for how damnably hot he suddenly felt, with sweat on his forehead and his breath shallow. Moving to the tall windows, he found the catch, threw one up. Cool air calmed and he turned back to his study. At the room’s centre stood a huge desk, chairs pushed back around it. The top of the desk was covered in parchment sheets, among which ornate silver candlesticks stood out like islands in a paper sea. With a nervous glance at the door, Jack moved to study the documents.
They varied from close scrawled, almost illegible sheets, to ones with barely a sentence upon them. Forcing himself to breathe and concentrate – he found he’d forgotten every word of his French – he bent to study one of the plainer ones. It seemed to be a tally of one of the troupes de terre, the French regular regiments. This one, the second battalion of the Régiment Languedoc, seemed to have about 480 soldiers with just 50 listed as malade. Since the date was 23 April – yesterday – if true, it meant this regiment was remarkably close to full fighting strength.
Other tallies provided similar figures. Though it seemed that some of the battalions had made up their numbers by drawing from the Militia, which would mean a consequent drop in effectiveness, if these figures were accurate, they gave account of an army that was remarkably strong after a brutal winter. The tally of regulars came close to four thousand. He suspected that the British at Quebec would muster considerably less. The French also had that Militia and, of course, their Native allies.
From the moment they’d entered Montréal, he’d had no doubt the chevalier was planning an offensive and soon. But where was this army to be aimed? North or south? Aware that his sand glass was fast running out, still hot despite the cold air from the window, Jack scanned the mass of paper with increasing agitation.
A shout of laughter startled from beyond the door, together with the noise of pewter mugs being clinked, then slammed down. Jack moved towards that open window. When the noise subsided to a rumble, he stepped back, began to search ever more urgently through the papers.
There were too many of them. He couldn’t read them all, not in this increasingly foreign tongue, while place names he expected – Quebec, Ticonderoga, Oswego – all leapt out at him and confirmed nothing. Then, suddenly, the volume of voices doubled; the other door had opened and footsteps now moved across to his own. He half stepped to the window, glanced back … and saw it, the corner of an inked, wavy line. Jerking the parchment out from under all the others, sight confirmed his guess. It was a map, almost identical to the ones that had littered Wolfe’s desk in September. For at that time, Wolfe was planning exactly what the Chevalier de Lévis was obviously planning now – a landing by boat to assault the city of Quebec.
The door opened, he dropped the paper back but even as he stepped again towards the window, Jack could not remove his gaze from the map. For at the top was scrawled in French what looked like a tide chart with various times and dates. One was circled. He may have felt his language skills to be failing him in recent moments but this was certainly clear: on the 26 April – three days’ time – the French army would be landed at Point aux Trembles above Quebec.
‘Sacred Jesus! What are you doing there, you dog?’
The young French officer had a tankard in his left hand and was trying to draw a sword with his right. Jack stared, caught between the desk and escape. Then, in a moment of pure inspiration, he seized one of the silver candlesticks and hurled himself out the window.
The cry that pursued him was of a word even his suddenly diminished French could recognize. ‘Voleur!’ screamed the Frenchman.
Better thief than spy, Jack thought, sprinting down a path he hoped led back to the side gate. Though he was fairly sure that hanging would be the punishment for both.
The two guards had been drawn by the shouting from their shelter. Both had muskets. Jack kept sprinting towards them, partly due to the iced path – if he tried to stop he’d be over – and as he ran, he drew his tomahawk from his belt. All that practice with Até had to be good for something, yet while he was fairly certain he could incapacitate one of the guards he had no idea what he would do about the other.
At ten paces, as the muzzles before him levelled, he jerked to a sudden, sliding stop, bent back and hurled his blade. He watched it travelling forward and thought, for the tiniest of moments, how odd it was that the whirring of the flung weapon seemed to come from right beside his ear, oddity increasing as he saw two tomahawks fly down the path and strike home. Jack’s hit the musket barrel even as the soldier pulled the trigger, gun exploding, bullet clipping a yew branch, man tumbling backwards. The second tomahawk embedded itself straight in the middle of the other guard’s face.
Jack looked behind him as Até ran up. ‘Where the hell did you come from?’ he gasped.
Até jerked his head back. ‘House. I climbed wall, followed you in.’
Before them, the soldier who was still alive was screaming as he ran back into his hut. Behind them, more men were shouting and bolts were being shot at the main doors.
‘Time to go, Daganoweda.’
‘I think you may be right.’
No key was in the gate lock so Até bent, clasped his hands. Jack hurled the candlestick over the wall, then placed his foot in the palms, scrambled up, reached down. Até grabbed and Jack drew him up and, as they were poised on top of the walls, the guard emerged from the hut and fired a pistol, the ball passing between their heads. Yelping, they fell into the night. Jack regained the candlestick and they sprinted away.
‘Where we run to?’ Até grunted.
‘Christ knows. Somewhere to hide. I thought … the harbour?’
‘Many white faces there. Not many brown.’ Até jerked his thumb towards the hill outside the city walls, where the Native campfires glowed. ‘Different up there.’
As Jack veered toward those lights he smiled. ‘And maybe we can swap this,’ he hefted the candlestick, ‘for a canoe.’
‘For many canoes.’ Até slipped on a patch of ice, regained his footing, ran on. ‘But which way do we paddle, once we have one. North or south?’
‘North, my friend, north. And as fast as ever Westminster Sculler did scull. North, to Quebec.’
– TEN –
Encore une Fois
From the moment their canoe ground onto the shale at Anse du Foulon – the same shale he’d stepped onto from that barge six months before, just prior to the assault on the city – Jack had difficulty communicating. It wasn’t that he’d latterly been speaking mainly Iroquois and some French; he remembered English perfectly well. It was just that the assorted Scots, Londoners, Ulstermen, Tynesiders, Welsh and Devonians (who Jack, ever Cornish, remembered to be a particular set of knuckly-downs) would not give him a chance to use it.
‘Fucking scrounging savages!’ was the term applied as soon as he and Até approached any of the piquet campfires on the beach. Each time, he’d call out, ‘I’m English, damn ye!’ only to be answered with thrown stones and more curses. They’d kept trying, until at last he was struck, a gash opened on his jaw. Clutching a piece of deerhide to the wound, Jack led Até back to the canoe, which they pulled up and hid beneath some bushes. ‘Pox on ’em,’ he said. ‘If they won’t let us up the Foulon road, I know another way.’
The cliff was as slippery as before but his moccasins gave better purchase than his boots had and a full moon helped. They made the cliff top in good time. But the British patrols were more frequent than the French had been, and the soldiers more vigilant, muskets levelled as they surveyed the scrub where Jack and Até crouched.
‘I haven’t come this far to be killed by my own army,’ Jack mutter
ed, dabbing blood from his chin. ‘Let’s wait till dawn.’
They didn’t have to wait so long. Voices approached, speaking an unintelligible and guttural tongue, yet one Jack suddenly recognized; when he did, he also realized that the nearest figure lifting his kilt and exploding a stream of liquid into a moonbeam was someone he knew.
‘For God’s sake, Captain MacDonald, could you not piss somewhere else?’ he asked, rising from the shadows.
The explosion of oaths, as men tumbled backwards, the struggle as those men had to decide whether to cease one activity before drawing steel made both Jack and Até laugh. Not so the indignant Scot. ‘Come oot the scrog, ye bastards. Come oot or we’ll plug ye, ken.’
They stepped forward and, on their appearance, the five-man patrol stepped back.
‘Savages!’ yelped a bulky sergeant to MacDonald’s right.
‘You don’t seem pleased to see me, Captain MacDonald,’ Jack said.
The Scot’s claymore was yet aloft. ‘Who the devil are ye?’
‘Why, Captain, do you not recognize the man who stood shoulder to shoulder with you on the Plains of Abraham?’
MacDonald stepped closer, wonder creasing further the craggy face. ‘I fought with no savages beside me, ken. No’ even one who speaks English.’
‘And French. Though you told me I had the accent of a Parisian whore.’
Recognition came, only increasing the wonder. ‘Ja … Jack? Jack Absolute?’
‘The very same.’
‘But … but … you … died, out there. Howe said you cursed him most foully then rode off after the French. The only British cavalry charge that day.’ The Scot gave a small smile. ‘We’ve been singing a song about it, the whole winter through: “Mad Jamie’s Boy”. Needed something to keep us warm. And now you’re here, raised like Lazarus and dressed like a devil.’ The smile became expansive. ‘By Christ, lad, ye’ve a tale to tell and no messin’.’
‘I have and shall delight in recounting it. But there are more pressing matters to discuss now.’ He took MacDonald’s elbow. ‘Such as the arrival of the French tomorrow?’
The Blooding of Jack Absolute Page 30