Absolute Honour (21 page)

She stopped. Something in his face made her stop.

‘You kept me here,’ he said, gesturing to the bench. ‘Isn’t that what you did? Seduced me to keep me here.’ He moved close,
grabbed her arm roughly. ‘Didn’t you?’

‘No, I didn’t,’ she cried, ‘I swear it, Jack, I …’ He let go of her arm. ‘What?’ she said. ‘Why do you look at me like that?’

‘Because you called me Jack.’

It was all he could do not to vomit. He felt as he had aboard the ships he’d voyaged in, sick in his stomach, the ground shifting
beneath him. ‘You called me Jack,’ he repeated softly.

‘Yes,’ she shrugged, her eyes downcast. ‘Jack.’

And suddenly it came, in recent voices, echoing.

You’ve the finest view in Bath.

I’ll tell you how it all turns out.

And further back …

I used to be a dangerous man. Not any more.

And even longer ago … Men chasing a naked Irishman down to the dock at Newport, yelling a word after him, a
word Jack hadn’t quite been able to hear because the wind had changed suddenly. He’d thought they shouted, ‘Trader!’ and considered
it odd at the time.
Traitor –
not trader.

‘Your cousin, Red Hugh McClune,’ he said softly. ‘The traitor.’

‘No, Bev … Jack, no, you must—’

He brushed her hand aside, turned and sprinted for the gate. Her cries after him blended with the shouts from the Circus and
the tuneless French horns. Surprisingly, though, at last he could detect a rhythm.

‘One elephant,’ he muttered. ‘Two elephants.’

The long way would be the quickest. The short route across the Circus would be blocked by people hailing the King.

A rough path paralleled the circle within. Part gravel, it often gave way to stretches of mud, sticky and thick after the
day’s downpours. He crossed two stable lanes that serviced the buildings, storage for carriages, stalls for horses. At the
end of the second row of these structures, he glanced into the Circus itself. The platform in the very middle now swarmed
with people. The bands had ceased and he could hear someone speaking poetry. As at Queen Square, there was another glimpse
of that wig.

Three horses were tied up behind his lodgings, like the three he’d left at Letty’s, equally laden. The door to the kitchen
was open, and renewed cheering from the street covered his climb past the parlours and on up to the bedrooms. He stopped,
listened. Under the noise from outside he could detect sounds in his bedroom, something heavy being dragged across the floor.
Quietly, he slipped into the other room, the one he’d used for storage. The uniform he’d forgotten still hung from one bedpost.
Ignoring it, he reached under the bed for the second thing he’d forgotten in his haste. Drawing his small sword, he moved
again onto
the landing and across to his bedroom door, put a hand on the doorknob, took a breath …

He’d expected Red Hugh to be by the window, grenade in hand. In fact, the Irishman was stretched upon the bed, hands behind
his head, though he moved fairly quickly when Jack came through the door; off the bed, into the corner with an indistinguishable
yell.

‘Jack,’ he cried, clutching at his ribs. ‘You near made me shit my breeches! I thought you were the Watch, so I did.’

Jack moved into the room, sword raised before him, his arm straight. Behind its guard he looked around swiftly, saw the things
he expected – a chair by the window, a Dragoon pistol hanging in a holster from it, three grenades bunched on it, a fuse cord
draped over it, glowing.

‘You bloody traitor,’ Jack whispered as he looked back.

Red Hugh shook his head. ‘To whom? I serve the true King, that’s all.’

‘Actually, McClune, I meant a traitor to me.’

‘No, lad, I—’

Red Hugh had come forward and Jack flicked the sword point at him, making him halt. ‘All your reluctance to introduce me to
Letty? A stratagem. You baited a hook for me, your friend …’ He was finding words hard to come by, till his fury made him
shout it out. ‘You used your cousin like a whore, to seduce me.’

Hands came up in protest. ‘What are you saying? I did no such thing, I swear it. Was I not wanting a good match for my lovely
Laetitia? And did I not know of your dealings with women so far? Sure, I caught two hussies fighting over you like cats in
the Llandoger Trow. You’d left that widow in Newport, an actress in London—’

Jack, staring over his blade, couldn’t understand how, at this moment, they were discussing his liaisons. ‘My ambitions for
your cousin were always honourable while you …’

Another huzzah came from the Circus and both men glanced, glanced back swiftly. Red Hugh spoke again. ‘Jack, I just assumed
that what you came by too easily you would esteem too lightly. You’d have been off and straying in a year, with my cousin
walled up in Absolute House or some such.’

‘Can you think so little of me?’

‘I think so little of all young men. I was one myself.’ He lowered his hands, stretching them out towards Jack in appeal.
‘So I made you take a little test.’

It was almost plausible. But the grenades did not allow Jack to believe even for a moment. ‘You used me,’ he swallowed, trying
to contain his anger, ‘to keep these rooms for you. And you couldn’t afford two houses on the Circus, as you’d spent all your
prize money on Letty’s three dresses. Hence the nightly charade over there; courting her in the garden, never seeing her enter
the house.’ He waved beyond the music. That brought it back to him. ‘By God,’ he murmured. ‘You have used me as a cover so
you can blow up the King.’

‘Now that’s an entirely separate matter,’ the Irishman said. ‘I don’t interfere in your politics and you should have the courtesy
not to bedevil mine.’

Jack gaped. ‘Separate? You have dragged me into your conspiracy, linked the name of Absolute with your treason, compromised
my honour with your cousin, and her honour – if she has any – with me!’ The sword point, still thrust forward, was beginning
to waver with his rage. ‘The lengths you were prepared to let her go to …’ He choked on the memory. ‘Well, I realized in the
nick, did I not?’

‘Did you, lad? Did you now?’

They had circled as they spoke, Jack moving past the window, the Irishman climbing over the bed. It was the suddenness of
the music – the brass refrain loud, its contrast to
the gentle Irish voice – that made Jack’s eyes jerk to it and back only in time to see the other man reach into the corner
there and produce a sword of his own, swiftly cleared from its scabbard. ‘Now, lad,’ Red Hugh went on again in the same quiet
tone, ‘let’s be having no more nonsense, shall we?’ His sword made a pass at the window. ‘For haven’t I got things to be getting
on with?’

‘Not while I stand here, you haven’t,’ Jack replied.

‘Ah, it would hurt me to hurt you, boy. Put up. You know you cannot beat me.’

‘Now why would I be knowing such a thing?’ Jack said, mocking the accent, coming forward.

They fought in the narrow space between the bedposts and the window, as wide as the usual space between fighters in a salle,
not as long. Red Hugh’s sword was in his left hand as always, thus coming at Jack from the brightness of the window.

Jack had attended the fencing school in the Haymarket since the age of eleven. Lately, he’d been using other weapons – the
heavier cavalry sabre, the Iroquois tomahawk – but the small sword was what he was trained in, the combination of wit, suppleness
and strength of wrist what he loved.

He attacked, a feint to the open chest, the blade removed as the parry came across seeking metal, meeting air because Jack
had flicked it under again, a slight withdrawal, a hard jab at the parrying hand. He missed, but only just, Red Hugh dropping
hand and blade away, stepping back as he did. He brought his own weapon up and across to halt Jack’s next lunge, a lunge he
was not going to make. He merely took the space gained with a step forward and waited.

‘Now, aren’t you the prize cockerel?’ Red Hugh smiled. ‘I always knew I was fond of you, lad. I didn’t know how much till
I just saw you crow.’ He gave a swift salute with his sword. ‘Though I must ask you one thing before we
recommence: the missing sleeve? Is it an English swordsman’s thing?’

Jack grunted, came again, taking a high guard, his left hand reaching out far before him. Red Hugh stepped away, keeping the
distance but leaning far forward, his long arm reaching so his own blade was advanced enough to take Jack’s, lift it, keeping
it there as each watched the other’s eyes for the shift that would betray the next move. His blade holding Jack’s up, the
man could strike down – if he had the speed. But Jack would bet he didn’t, not any more, and with a circle of the wrist to
direct the weapon away, his own riposte would have his opponent too spread to protect himself. The fight would be over.

Red Hugh’s eyes shifted, Jack dropped his blade, circled, missed metal, circled quicker, still missed it, stepping back. Something
dazzled from the light of the window and he thought he caught it. He didn’t. It caught him. The Irishman did have the speed
after all.

Red Hugh had followed close, brought the thicker end of his weapon, the
forte,
tight into Jack’s, forcing the younger man’s blade down, pulling it slightly off the wrist. Then, with a sudden hard flick,
it was gone, sailing across the bed, flopping into the pillow. And the point of the Irishman’s weapon was pressed, lightly
but distinctly, into Jack’s throat.

‘Now, now,’ he said softly, just as he’d said to Captain Link before he rendered him nauseous aboard the
Sweet Eliza.
‘Now, now.’

Jack swallowed, the motion of his Adam’s apple pressing the point a little harder into his skin, nicking him there. ‘Are you
going to kill me?’

‘Kill my friend? How could you think me so uncivil? I am only here to kill a king.’

Jack, still looking in the Irishman’s eyes, saw them move
on something behind him. He turned just enough to see a man with a cudgel coming up behind him, just quickly enough to recognize
him as the footpad who had attacked Letty and Mrs O’Farrell, not quickly enough to prevent the cudgel falling.

Jack knew a little about clubs. He had knocked out his cousin Craster with one in Montreal and the brute had not woken for
six hours. He had himself taken a blow from an Abenaki war hammer that had him unconscious for near a day; nauseous and half-blind
for three more. There were those who knew how to strike but not kill, and those who didn’t.

The footpad didn’t. There was pain and a little blood, but the unconsciousness must only have lasted a short while. The increasingly
discordant music from the street that had merely annoyed before now physically hurt. The various musicians were now attempting
‘Rule Britannia’. Once he realized he was awake to be pained by it, he knew he was awake.

He lay there, mastering himself. The footpad – it was obvious he was Red Hugh’s cohort, the attack on Letty’s chair merely
another piece of theatre – must have crept up the servants’ stair from the floor below, come through that recessed door. Where
was Fagg, then? Unconscious or dead in his quarters, no doubt. There’d be no help there, no moment’s distraction as he stumbled
in.

He listened, below the music. Harsh words were being
spoken. Jack thought it must be the blow rendering them unintelligible until he realized it was another language, one he recognized
from his childhood though he could not speak it. Anyway, Irish Gaelic was probably different from Cornish; that he knew neither
did not matter. It was clear what was being planned. They would wait till the King stood below. And then they would drop a
grenade on him.

To his ear, Gaelic was harsh anyway, but he was sure they were arguing in it. Then he heard the softer tones of Red Hugh,
giving instructions, in words perhaps impossible to find in that more ancient tongue: ‘One elephant, two elephants.’

He opened one eye. The men were crouched by the window, Red Hugh clutching a grenade, pointing at it, jabbering, the other
man shaking his head. Two more of the metal balls were on the chair. From the street, the town-waits, obviously thrilled to
have found notes and rhythm in common, had gone back to the beginning of ‘Rule Britannia’. The crowd was singing along.

‘When Britain fir … ir … ir … ir … irst

At Heaven’s command

Aro … o … o … o … o … o … ose

From out the a … a … a … azure main

Arose, Arose, Aro … o … o … ose

From the az … ure main.’

‘Arise,’ thought Jack. But first he reached into his waistcoat pocket.

‘You’ll both step away from the window … now!’

The men did not move, Red Hugh’s forefinger still pointing to the metal ball, the footpad’s head arrested in mid-shake. But
their eyes went to the pocket pistol in Jack’s hand.

There was a silence. Only the singing went on, a popular
line increasing in volume: ‘Britons never never never will be slaves.’

After a moment, both men stood, Red Hugh carefully laying the grenade down on the chair. ‘Now, Jack,’ he said calmly, ‘it’s
only a lady’s toy.’

‘Yes,’ Jack replied, ‘but
this
time it’s loaded. Go!’ He shouted the last word, marched forward as he did, the pistol thrust before him, switching the muzzle
between their two faces. The suddenness of the movement, his volume, had the false footpad stumbling back, Red Hugh trailing
him. Jack kept coming, they kept retiring, until they stood by the half-open servants’ door with Jack six feet away between
bedpost and window.

Red Hugh took a step, until the pistol stopped him. He opened his hands towards it. ‘Lad,’ he said, ‘you’ll only shoot the
one of us. And the other would then have to kill you. Give me the gun.’

‘You know, you’re right,’ said Jack, ‘I need to even the odds.’

He stepped back suddenly. It was awkward, keeping the gun up for the second it took to bend, scoop up a grenade with his other
hand, snatch the glowing cord with a trailing finger. Somehow he managed it. When he looked again, they had only taken a pace
forward, the footpad now slightly ahead, his leader’s steering hand upon his shoulder.