Absolute Honour (44 page)

Perhaps I should have stayed on half-pay, he thought, staring down into the dregs of ale that had lasted an hour. Or waited
until our wages arrears were issued. But once his decision had been made, Absolute House was no longer welcoming. Burgoyne
had offered him room with the regiment, obviously hoping that he would eventually persuade Jack to change his mind. But he
was determined to be off.

He had got as far as Bristol and here he was stuck. Laying down his pint pot – the barman was encouraged to move lingerers
on and had been eyeing Jack for a good quarter-hour – Jack decided to take another stroll around the docks. Ships came in
all the time. Perhaps he could make himself useful to an owner during unloading, ingratiate himself into a berth.

He turned up the collar of his coat against the wind that blew in from the harbour mouth. It had been a chill May and, in
the two weeks he’d been there, did not appear to be getting any warmer.

His walk took him to the Customs House. Captains would report there first and notices would often be placed in its windows
regarding the hiring of crews. But the ones that greeted Jack were those he had already read, all vacancies filled. Disconsolate,
he was about to turn away when he suddenly saw, in the left corner of a window, an announcement in newsprint that had not
been there before. It was torn from the
London Gazette
and read:

This is to give notice to the officers, seamen and others belonging to the
Sweet Eliza
that all disputes concerning the recent action against the French privateer,
Robuste,
have been settled at last and that the prize money for the capture of said privateer, together with the sale of all its goods,
will be paid on Tuesday 17 May at nine o’clock in the morning, at the sign of the Llandoger Trow on the docks.

Jack turned and ran back to the inn, straight to the rear of it where he forced a grumbling landlady to open the strong room.
The woman stood over him as he threw up the lid of his trunk and riffled through the three books he had there. It was in the
last one, a copy of Pope’s
Rape of the Lock,
that he found it, marking his place.

Clutching the prize ticket, he turned and smiled up at the landlady. ‘Mrs Hardcastle,’ he said, ‘is that charming room over
the front still available?’

Both the landlady and her maid were suddenly as friendly as they had been during his previous stay, though Jack declined any
offers beyond the best of food and ale. The prize agents were less so because they’d hoped that few of the
Sweet Eliza’s
crew would still be in Bristol after such a long delay and they would be able to hold the money in their banks on interest.
But more than half showed up at the tavern the next morning with Jack first in the line. His fears that somehow Red Hugh had
made it to Bristol before Portugal with the paper signing over Jack’s share to him proved groundless.

‘A lieutenant’s six, is it?’ The agent, an ill-shaved fellow with greasy black ringlets, looked up at him suspiciously. ‘You
don’t look much like a seaman to me.’

‘He’s not. But he’s a bonny fighter and you’ll pay him straightway, Peters.’

Jack turned. ‘Lieutenant Engledue,’ he said, ‘or is it Captain now?’ The man looked vastly different from the old drinker
Jack had known aboard. The capture of the
Robuste
had obviously been the beginning of his revival.

‘Captain, aye.’ The man nodded. ‘And when we are done our business here, I’d be delighted to buy you a drink.’

‘And I shall drink it with pleasure,’ said Jack.

Because the
Sweet Eliza
was a merchantman with a small crew, and since many had died in the fight or of the subsequent sickness, there were fewer
to share the bounty.
The owners having taken their half and money having been already set aside for legitimate relics of the fallen, each share
was worth thirty pounds, Jack’s six thus netting him thirty in coin and a promissory note on Coutts bank for one hundred and
ten more, the advance being deducted. Handsome enough, even if the promise of fifty to each boarder had gone into the barrel
along with Captain Link.

Much later, over many ales and not a few rums, with the fight refought from a dozen different angles, new heroes made, new
villains damned and, at last, most of the crew asleep where they sat at the long tables of the tavern’s back room, the two
most sober – or least drunk – conversed.

‘And now, Mr Absolute,’ Engledue, on Jack’s urging, had at last dropped the appellation Lieutenant, ‘What will you be doing
with your share of the prize?’

Jack swirled rum in the mug before him. ‘The paper I’ll trade for one in a colonial bank. The coin I’ll use to buy a passage
thither.’

‘A most comfortable one, with change to spare.’ Engledue nodded. ‘Yet if you would forsake a little of that comfort for some
pleasant company …’

‘Sir?’

‘I am just become master of a sweet little poleacre, the
Dublin Castle.
Part owner, too, for I bought a share on the promise of this payout. I have taken on most of the old crew from the
Sweet Eliza.’
He nodded at the snoring forms around them, then leaned forward to rest his arms upon the table. ‘We are bound first for
Jamaicy to take on sugar and then we proceed directly to New England. So if you would care to travel again with your old shipmates
… ?’

‘I would – so long as you do not traffic in slaves.’

‘Ah, I remember now. How you incited poor dead Captain Link!’ He smiled. ‘And that Irish fellow. Quite the trickster. I was
hoping to encounter him here today. Are you sure you never did hear of him again?’

Jack had enjoyed the tales of Red Hugh in the fight as much as the rest. But he’d said nothing further. ‘Never,’ he said.

‘And you such shipmates?’ Engledue sighed. ‘Well, anyway, I can assure you there’ll be no slaves aboard the
Dublin Castle.
Save Link’s former one, Barabbas.’ He pointed to a slumped black figure.

‘Then I accept the invitation with delight.’ Jack reached for a jug, poured two more tots of rum. ‘And here’s to a friend
well met.’

They sipped, lowered. ‘And with the French beaten we will not have to fight, thank God.’ Engledue raised his glass, stood
and shouted, ‘Up, you drunken dogs! On your feet. Let’s have a standing toast while still on land.’ The company, such as could
sway up, now did. ‘To calm seas, kind winds and no pirates!’

‘Huzzah!’

‘And to his Majesty the King!’

‘Huzzah!’

He happened to be glancing down, so he saw it, the one man there who did it: McRae, Jack remembered his name to be, a member
of the Forecastle Club of the
Sweet Eliza,
passing his glass over the water jug before he drank.

Jack would not toast the King across the water. But there were two Irish cousins he could remember now. ‘Aye,’ he said softly
to himself, raising his mug, ‘to absent friends and old lovers.’

Moors Charity School, Connecticut, September 1763

As soon as Dr Andrews turned to the board, the young man’s gaze went to the window. It was a question of timing it just right,
to be aware – even as he stared and yearned and imagined – of the black gown beginning to turn back. It would not do to be
caught again, for it would be the third time in a week, and the punishments grew with each offence. The next one would be
physical correction, made to bend before the class while a switch was liberally applied to his arse. The pain was nothing,
an insect bite. But the indignity! Beyond these walls, he was still a member of the Wolf clan, a warrior of the Mohawk tribe
of the Iroquois nation, and five scalps hung from his mother’s lodge post. Here he was a schoolboy not even known by his tribal
name but by his baptismal one, James.

The cloak swung back as did his face. Eleazar Andrews looked at him suspiciously, as if he’d detected movement, then gestured
to the board.
‘Ut
plus the subjunctive. It is called a conditional clause,’ he said. ‘You will turn to your Cicero and find me examples.’

Like the rest of them, he scrambled quickly for the text. The quickest, as always, was Joseph Brant, his hand shooting up,
citing page and verse to the teacher’s approving nods.
Joseph was the bright star in Andrews’s little firmament, which galled since they both came from the same village, Canajoharie,
and Joseph’s triumphs had been told over the lodge fires again and again the previous summer. It had nearly made him refuse
to return, especially after a season of freedom spent hunting again in his forests. It was only the thought of Brant jeering
at his failure to William Johnson, who sponsored them both, that drove the young man back.

The gown turned; chalk scraped out the quote upon the black. He looked outside, to the higher ground and its scant remnants
of forest. He’d sometimes see riders cresting the ridge road there – as one did even now.

The clause written, Andrews turned again, the young man’s face swinging to meet him.

Why did it have to be Cicero? The lawyer was so dull. In Caesar’s Gallic wars he’d have found a conditional clause as fast
as his rival. In Shakespeare he knew a dozen, more. But he was not supposed to read Shakespeare, even though that was truly
what he’d come to school to do. Once the rules of English grammar were safely driven into them, Dr Andrews did not believe
further in living languages, except what came in King James’s Bible. So solo study was reserved for the very few hours they
were free, when he could retrieve his book from its hiding place in the barn. It contained all the plays and it had cost him
most of the proceeds from his summer trapping. It was worth every fur.

‘Anyone else?’ For once Andrews was ignoring Joseph’s thrust-up arm, staring over the dozen lowered heads, each one sporting
the black hair of the Iroquois, cropped short above the stiff white collars of their shirts. Someone answered, a Seneca baptised
Jeremiah. The cloak turned, he turned.

The rider was halfway to the school. Closer to, he thought there was something familiar about him. The man rode one horse,
led another, both laden with wrapped bundles. He had
probably seen him before, one of the many traders who passed through Lebanon, a trapper perhaps taking furs to New Haven or
even Boston. Their numbers would grow as the winter drew closer, though this September was the kind that made him believe
the snows would never return. Sweat still pooled under his collar each day, its stain to be scrubbed away each night.

‘James!’ The harsh cry jerked his head back. Andrews had turned, unnoted. ‘I have warned you, boy—’

‘Rider, sir,’ he answered, wondering still how that voice could induce fear in him when, in another world, under another name,
he’d killed five men. ‘You asked to be warned of any approach.’

‘Outside the classroom, and after class, I said.’ Dr Andrews glared but did not reach for his stick. Instead, he peered over
his spectacles through the window. ‘And I told you that we were expecting the Reverend Wilson, from Mount Sinai. A true man
of God to instill some respect into you Indians!’ He glowered at them all. ‘That is obviously some filthy tinker and you,’
he pointed at him, ‘had better pay closer attention.’

He faced the board and the young man immediately looked out again. The rider was only about a hundred yards off now and, if
he did not look entirely clean, he could not be described as filthy. True, he had a thick beard that almost rode up to meet
the uncocked hat, but both head covering and dark coat were clean of all but road dust, and the boots had spurs that sparkled
in the late-afternoon sun. As he watched, he kept an ear on the scraping of chalk. As soon as the squeal stopped he would
turn back. Till then, he could watch the traveller and remember what travelling was like.

The school was an outlying building of the town and the road went past the gate of their compound with its single whitewashed
house, its brown stable and dormitory. Instead of riding out of view, however, the man reined in. One of Andrews’s indentured
servants was hoeing the cabbage patch
nearby and the man called to him, perhaps asking him for directions to the nearest inn. There was only one in Lebanon, a place
of notorious sin, the Doctor always said. So now he had even more envy for this traveller who had goods to trade. He would
ride past the gate. He would go and sin.

Not yet. The man dismounted, tied both animals to a fence. Then he did a most unusual thing. He reached up and pulled one
rifle from its leather sheath, then reached back and slipped another rifle from a bedroll. Then, shouldering both of them,
he walked up the stairs and entered the house.

‘You!’ The shout came loud, startling. Andrews was facing him now, fury on his face, stick in hand. ‘I have warned you. I
have been lenient. Too lenient, it seems. Come up here.’

‘Sir! Someone—’

‘Now, boy. No more excuses!’

He had just risen, when the door opened. The traveller stood there, guns on shoulders, looking slowly around the room. And
it was only then that he realized that the rider did not look familiar because he was of a type that rode past often; he looked
familiar because the young man knew him. Different than he remembered; older, wider, taller. That beard. Also – and he could
see this immediately – there was something in the eyes, some darkness that had not been there before.

Those eyes, searching, found him, despite the cropped hair, the white shirt, the stiff collar. A light came into them, banishing
the darkness, changing the face.

‘So, Até,’ Jack Absolute said, holding out one gun, ‘do you want to go hunting?’

As many may remember, I played the role of Jack Absolute in 1987. This has led to an occasional weirdness in the writing process,
with my old stage incarnation regularly appearing at my shoulder to demand better lines! Well, it got even weirder with this
book – for in it I decided to tell the ‘true’ story of
The Rivals.