Absolute Honour (22 page)

‘Jack, put it down. Put it down
now
!’
On the shout, Red Hugh shoved the footpad forward. Jack fired. He had reloaded the gun with two balls and as much powder as
he could cram in. It even gave a little kick and the discharge took the man in the chest, knocking him back, screaming in
agony, into Red Hugh, who was trying to get past him. Jack ran towards the open bedroom door and, as he did, touched the cord
end to the fuse.

Red Hugh, caught in the other man’s agonized fall, was
half crouched on the ground, trying to extricate himself. He looked up, just as the grenade was lit.

‘How many elephants?’ Jack shouted.

‘You crazy bastard!’

‘How many?’

‘Chuck it! Chuck it now!’

The man was too panicked to be lying. Jack turned and tossed the grenade out of the door and into the other bedroom, diving
into the corner as he threw. He doubted the bomb had even hit the ground, so fast did the explosion come. It ripped the other
room’s door off, sent it smashing into their room, an end catching Jack’s trailing foot with a blow that hurt. Chunks fell
from the ceiling, a rain of plaster and horsehair. Simultaneously, there came the sound of windows exploding outwards, of
glass panes shattering and showering debris onto the street below. Down there, most musicians had stopped playing. A few,
drunker than the rest perhaps, went on a few bars more.

Red Hugh had caught some of the door as well. He lay crumbled against the wall, his fall snapping the legs of an armoire that
he now appeared to be cradling. Through the dust, Jack could see his nose was splayed at a strange angle to his face.

‘Shite, Jack.’ He stared through the dust. ‘You crazy bastard.’

Dazed, his ears filled with high-pitched whining, Jack sat up. The door had bounced, knocked the chair with the grenades onto
the floor where one rolled. Red Hugh’s pistol was still in the holster, its butt towards him. Jack reached forward, drew it
out, cocked it.

Through the buzz, from the street, at first all he heard was screaming. Then there came the distinct sound of the front door
being pounded. He could feel the vibration of the blows through the floor.

Red Hugh could feel it, too. Wiping blood from beneath his nose, he said. ‘They’ll be coming for me.’

Jack shook his head, trying to clear it. ‘Good.’

‘It will mean the Tyburn jig. After they’ve finished with me.’

Jack nodded. ‘You deserve it.’

‘Maybe so, lad. There’s many who’ve predicted my last caress would be from a noose.’ He peered through the falling plaster
dust. ‘But is that the fate you’d wish for a friend?’ He nodded at the gun in Jack’s hand, now levelled at him.

Jack snorted. ‘A friend who has betrayed me? Allied me with his treachery, sullying the name of Absolute, possibly for ever?
Pandered his cousin to me, made me fall in love …’ Jack choked as he thought on Letty, knew it was not the dust that made
him do so. The muzzle wavered. ‘You tell me if a friend does that.’

The Irishman’s voice came soft. ‘Perhaps not, lad. But a friend does save another’s life.’

The hammering below had changed. Someone had brought up something more solid, was using it to bludgeon the door. Jack looked
at the Irishman, with his red hair, his red blood and remembered. Hauling him naked from the sea off Newport. Grenade lessons.
The fight on the
Sweet Eliza.
The spider crawling around and around inside the nutshell as Red Hugh barricaded himself inside a cabin and refused to let
them off-load Jack to die on a fever island. There was no question. He owed this man a life.

He lay the pistol down on the floor. ‘Go, then.’

‘Truly?’ Red Hugh was up fast, throwing aside the shattered armoire. He bent to his fallen comrade, touched him at the neck.
‘Dead. Who’d have thought it?’ He straightened. ‘I’ll be off, then,’ he said casually, turning toward the servants’ staircase
as if he had all the time in the world, as if the King’s Guards were not nearly through the front door.

‘Wait!’ Jack took a step toward him. ‘You have to knock me out. And do it better than your late friend did.’

Red Hugh came back. ‘Are you sure? I could …’ He lifted Jack’s wrist, pressed the ball of his finger into the flesh. There
was a flash of pain.

‘No,’ said Jack, ‘they’d never believe it. I still don’t believe it.’

‘Very well.’ The Irishman looked deep into Jack’s eyes for a moment. ‘You have to believe this, Jack. Yes, Letty was also
working for the Jacobite cause. But she did love you. Does love you.’

The man picked the strangest times to discuss Jack’s amours. But he couldn’t help himself. ‘How do you know?’

‘Did she not tell me so herself?’ Red Hugh smiled. ‘Of course, the relation to the Earl of Clare is largely fictitious. But
perhaps that won’t bother you?’

‘It will bother my father. As to me, we shall see.’ It was too much to consider now, with the explosion still filling his
ears, with men about to run up the stairs with weapons. He braced himself. ‘Now, for Christ’s sake, stop talking and hit me,
man, will you?’

The Irishman smiled. ‘You’ll not regret this, my boy.’

‘I already do.’

‘And we will meet again.’

Jack sighed. ‘I hope not. But if we do, McClune, remember this: you and I are quits.’

‘I will remember.’

The noise from below doubled in volume; a door coming off its hinges, smashing down, a hallway suddenly filled with men, shouting.
Then all went instantly quiet, from the sudden pain, within the sudden darkness.

Red Hugh
did
know how to hit a man. Jack wasn’t sure how long he’d been unconscious but, when he woke up in an entirely different place,
he had no memory of the journey
there, so assumed he had been out for some time. He’d been carried, undoubtedly, but how long ago, by whom and for what reason
he knew not.

The ‘where’ concerned him initially. The room was dark, but not completely so, some light slipping in from under what turned
out, on a groping exploration, to be a thick oaken door, studded and banded with metal. His feeling around it was movement
enough to make him nauseous, for his head pounded horribly from where he’d been struck by the footpad’s blow to the back of
the head and Red Hugh’s cleaner punch to his jaw that seemed at first to have broken it but hadn’t, as Jack discovered when
he stretched it wide to vomit. Cautiously, he gauged the limits of the stone-lined room, discovered the only objects within
it were a metal bedstead covered with a stinking straw paliasse, and a bucket, presumably for voiding, which he’d missed.
The space was square, only a little over his height across and the same above, discovered when he stubbed his finger in reaching
up.

He sat down heavily upon the bed. A stone box, he thought. Or a sarcophagus? The image made him jump up again, stagger to
the faint light of the door. ‘Hallo? Is there someone out there? Hallo-oh?’

He called and pounded till his head swam and his hand hurt, almost sobbing out the words. Then he heard something outside.
Footsteps. ‘You there! Open this door!’

The footsteps had stopped. He could feel someone on the other side. ‘Hello?’ he said, more quietly.

Then the sound of footsteps again, but slowly receding. ‘Come back,’ he called again, slapping the wood with the palm of one
hand.

But no one came. He knew not how long he stood there hoping that they would. At last he lay down, still listening. Nothing.
He took some breaths and gradually his heart calmed. There was nothing he could do but wait.

Maybe it was an hour, maybe more. He had not slept, had
not moved except to vomit once again, this time into the bucket. His mouth was a sand dune, dry and barren, but he’d checked
the room again and there was nothing to relieve him. Then he heard footsteps again, not the stealthy approach of before but
a rush of them, preceding a crash of bolts, inarticulate shouting, sudden light, a man storming in, grabbing Jack by the throat,
running him into the wall …

‘You fuckin’ bastard! You fuckin’ bogtrotting fuck.’

A monster had Jack, huge fingers gouging his Adam’s apple, enormous face thrust at him, mouth yelling obscenities. Jack tried
to push the monster away, to get a breath. But he was pulled forward, slammed back, driving out what little air remained.
He was beginning to faint, he could feel it. And beyond fainting lay death if this man did not let him go. Over his shoulder,
he noticed someone else standing in the doorway, an indistinct shape lined in red mist.

The shape spoke, one quiet word: ‘Enough.’

Instantly, the hand left his throat, the monster stepped back, and Jack crumpled onto the stone floor. He lay there choking,
dimly aware that other men had come quietly into the room, that one had set up a small writing table, and another had placed
a lamp upon it and a chair behind it. Then the door closed again and the three of them were left together – Jack, the monster
and the shape, still blurred to Jack’s water-filled eyes.

The shape leaned forward. ‘Well, Mr Monaghan. You have given us a little fright, have you not?’

It was a struggle to get words formed in his battered head, then out through his bruised larynx. After several attempts, Jack
managed. ‘Not … Monaghan.’

The reaction was instantaneous. The monster – who Jack now perceived to be merely a man but at least six and a half foot of
him – ran forward, hand raised.

‘Don’t you fuckin’ lie to the Colonel, you fuckin’ Irish …’

Jack leaned away, hands up helplessly, knowing that a slap from this man would be like a punch from most others, even Red
Hugh. But the blow didn’t fall.

‘Enough, I said.’ The voice was as quiet as before, and the man reacted to it as instantly, moving back behind the chair where
he stood, glowering down like a dog denied meat. Jack would swear that he was panting.

The shape had finally resolved itself into a body, small and dressed in a simple dark-blue coat with a vest of slightly lighter
hue. A short, grey horsehair wig sat upon his head. He reached up and began scratching underneath it, then, with a sigh, lifted
it off and laid it down beside the papers before him. ‘Dawkins doesn’t like men of your land, I’m afraid.
Especially after what your colleague did to his colleague. You don’t like Irishmen, do you, Dawkins?’

‘Fucks,’ growled the man behind.

‘And he has a limited vocabulary. Still,’ he leaned forward, ‘we don’t employ him for conversation. His talents lie elsewhere.’
The man’s huge hands moved in front of him, as if aching to be filled.

Jack mustered thought and voice. ‘But I’m not Irish, sir.’

‘Not Irish?’ A grey eyebrow rose quizzically. ‘But Monaghan is an Irish name.’ He riffled the papers, lifted one. ‘You rented
this house, Mr Monaghan. I have your signature here.’

‘It cannot be mine. I never saw the lease. It was rented for me.’

‘By?’

Jack tried to swallow. ‘By a friend.’

‘Ah. A friend.’ The man carefully slipped the paper back into place, picked out another, studied it. ‘A friend named William
Leadbetter? Or is it Thomas Lawson? Or … and this is my particular favourite, Josiah Tumbril.’ Though the words came out as
if he were amused there was not a trace of a smile. ‘But perhaps you always knew the man as Red Hugh McClune.’

‘I know a man by that name, yes. But he knows me as—’

‘Monaghan?’

‘Absolute. Jack Absolute.’

The man sucked in his lower lip as he again scanned the sheet before him. ‘No, that’s not one of the ones we have down here.
But I shall add it.’ He picked up a quill, dipped it in the ink well. ‘New aliases always interest. Even if Absolute is as
unlikely a name as Tumbril.’ He began to scratch.

‘Nevertheless, sir, it is my true and given name.’

‘I fuckin’ warned you …’

This time no command halted him. The slap came, mainly on Jack’s ear, doubling the whining and the pain.

‘Dear, dear,’ said the other man softly, though he seemed to be referring to a paper. ‘How would you confirm this absurd name?
It would surprise me greatly if there was anyone in Bath who knew you as,’ he squinted at the page, ‘Absolute. Can you think
of someone who will give me a reason not to let my man here have you for a while?’

Dawkins’s huge hands twitched. Jack looked at them, swallowed and thought. Who? Who? Letty knew him as such, as she had mistakenly
revealed. But he could not mention her. If this man and his mastiff did not know of her already, then Jack had no intention
of leading them to her. Everywhere else he had introduced himself as Beverley to maintain his role. Fagg – if he were still
alive – knew him so. The Cornish labourer, Trewennan, the same. Even the landlord at the Three Tuns and the billiard sharpers
he’d played there, all thought of him as the impoverished Cornet. There was no one …

And then he remembered. ‘Fanny Harper,’ he blurted. ‘She’s at the theatre in Orchard Street. An actress.’

‘An
actress
?’
The word could not have come with any more contempt.

‘She … knew me. sir, in London. Before I joined the army. I was in Canada, with Wolfe, you see, I …’

Jack’s faltering words had threatened to become a torrent. The hand that had halted a further assault tapped the table, commanding
silence. ‘I will give you a moment to write down a few things only this woman would know of you as Jack Absolute. I will then
visit the playhouse. And we shall see.’ He leaned forward. ‘But if this is just a delaying lie …’

The monster growled again. Jack crawled forward, reaching for the quill, but the man held it away for a moment. ‘No lie, sir.
I am a true-born Englishman, I swear it. And Fanny will inform you of others who can also vouch for me.’

‘I think we’ll just start with the player, shall we? Write.’ The quill was at last offered. ‘At the least, I shall learn what
stories our enemies invent these days for their spies.’ That no-smile came again. ‘We have plenty of time. And the only space
we could require.’

Jack dipped, thought, wrote. He’d covered half a side when the paper was snatched away. ‘That will do,’ said the man. ‘If
it is the truth it is enough, if lies then too much.’ He stood. ‘My name is Colonel Turnville, as I am sure you already know.
And I will be back eventually.’