Jack Absolute (27 page)

‘Then, sir, may a grateful citizen offer some recompense for your troubles.’

The eyes narrowed within the bearded face. ‘If recompense is real pence, then, yessir, ye may.’

Jack reached slowly into his jacket. His fingers brushed one pistol butt, went past; he had a single silver dollar in his
waistcoat pocket there. He hoped it would suffice.

He never got a chance to find out. ‘Here, my man,’ said Louisa, moving Caspiana towards the leader, ‘take this and kindly
leave our path.’

Jack turned, startled, at the hauteur in her voice, at the coin suddenly spinning through the air. Even in the fading sunlight,
he saw its colour. It was gold – and it was too much.

The man saw it too, verified it when it landed in his palm. ‘A John, begod,’ he cried, raising it into the light. Jack couldn’t
help a groan. A guinea they might have got away with. But a Portuguese John was more than these men would see in a month of
good extortion.

As he’d thought, it was the hitherto silent man who was the danger. Crying, ‘Rich, and a damned King’s man, I’ll swear,’ he
declared both his allegiance and his intention. His hand was on his pistol’s butt; Jack’s, still inside his jacket, was an
inch away from his own. They drew near simultaneously, cocked, and fired as one. The man’s ball buzzed past Jack’s ear, while
his own struck home, the man spinning away with a yell.

The youth had belied his slow appearance by leaping smartly for Louisa’s reins. She struck him a good blow with her riding
crop and he yelped, but held on, dodging from side to side around the horse’s neck. Jack’s interrogator had taken time to
stow the coin and now drew his own pistol from his belt.

‘You’ll step down smart or the lady dies,’ he cried.

Whether it was the threat to her mistress or the way the youth jerked her bridle in avoiding Louisa’s blows was hard to tell,
but Caspiana, the high-strung filly, reacted. She reared, forelegs lashing out, and caught the boy in the chest, reeling him
backwards. The bearded man’s pistol tried to follow the lady and Jack took his chance. In a moment, he had pulled Angus MacTavish’s
shillelagh from behind him, in another struck down with it. The heavy stick with its iron ferrule connected with the wrist,
dashing the gun from the grasp. As it fell, it fired, the bullet skittering off the wood between Doughty’s legs. The horse
reared, too and, for a moment, Jack had to fight to control him. There were screams from the waiting passengers, calls from
the fast-approaching ferryboat … and a shout from behind them, at the nearest house of the settlement.

Jack turned. There, standing in the doorway, was a trooper in a blue coat and silver-laced hat. He was slowly lowering a tankard
to his side, beer frothing over its lip. Behind him in a barn, ready saddled – and, Jack now realized, impossible to see from
the hilltop – were a dozen cavalry horses.

Doughty pranced, jerking Jack’s gaze away; but not before he’d seen the trooper turn back into what could only be a barracks
and begin shouting.

‘Ride, Louisa!’

‘I’m sorry, Jack, I—’

‘Ride!’

They turned in unison, hooves striking splinters from the wooden dock. Then they were on the mudded earth of the slope. As
they reached the road, just before they began to gallop, Jack saw the Colonial cavalry troop running to their mounts.

Jack led them southerly, though it was distance not direction that was important. There was no worth, while in sight, of making
into unfamiliar woods where paths could peter out and roots might snag at galloping fetlocks. He used the shillelagh across
Doughty’s rump to speed him still more. Beside him, Louisa plied her crop. The wind of their passage took away most sound
and the shouts behind them on the straight road faded but did not die entirely away. Still, Jack thought, they were pulling
ahead. They had to be, for he would trust Doughty and Caspiana against any cavalry nag in Washington’s army. Soon he would
begin to look for concealment.

They had just rounded a bend. She was a pace behind him so he heard first rather than saw. But he turned in an instant, in
time to watch Louisa’s side-saddle slip. Caspiana slowed as she pulled on the reins but not enough. The saddle twisted and
Jack could only look on in dismay as Louisa toppled to the ground.

He had reined up in a moment, was off Doughty the next and at her side one after, pulling her up. Caspiana, ever jittery,
skittered away.

‘Louisa—’

‘No.’ She coughed, drew a juddering breath. ‘I am well.’

‘Then we have to go on.’ There were shouts, voices drawing closer to the corner.

‘You must.’ Her words came in gasps. ‘I cannot ride bareback in a dress. Go!’

‘I will not leave you—’

‘You must!’ She pulled herself a little up, gripping his arms. ‘I will say we thought them robbers – which they were. They
will not harm an American lady. But you …’ They both looked back to the corner, both now felt the drumming on the earth. ‘And
your mission … for Burgoyne, Jack! Go!’

She was right. Mission aside, he would not survive long in American hands. They were on constant lookout for spies. They would
soon find the General’s dispatch, hidden in a half-hollow canteen. And he had probably killed the man at the dock.

He vaulted on to his horse. As he grabbed the reins, he looked down. ‘I promise I will find you again.’

‘I believe you.’ She smiled, though her eyes filled with tears. ‘For as we both know, you are a gentleman who keeps his word.’

He raised his fingers to his lips, saluted her with a kiss. As he drove his heels into Doughty’s flanks, the cavalry troop
finally burst around the corner. They reined up slightly when they saw the fallen body, the riderless horse. Then, when Jack
took off, Doughty almost instantly into a gallop, some continued their stride, while others circled the prone Louisa.

The shouts for a moment were close, closer and Jack’s shoulders instinctively hunched; then gradually they began to fade behind
him. Sandy Lindsay had been right and Doughty well named. The horse
would
bear him over three counties!

As the road curved, at each bend, the cries lessened. They were still there but he was losing the pursuit.

As he rode, he swore. What had made Louisa pre-empt him like that with her gold coin? The impetuosity he admired
in her in other situations made him curse her now. And he knew it was fear for her, laying back there surrounded by soldiers,
that was driving his anger. Leaving her had been one of the hardest things he’d ever had to do and he’d only done it on the
instant realization that she’d been right. If she’d been caught with him, they’d both hang.

The road went through a series of curves, thickly forested on either side. He began to look for a suitable path, one that
might carry him up into the hills where he could really lose the hunters. He would trust himself in a forest over any Continental
trooper. Then the road suddenly straightened … and immediately before him was a wagon drawn across it, its driver manoeuvring
his team to extract it from the mud, other men heaving and pushing from the side.

Doughty was a hunter, bred for the hedgerows of England. Jack let the reins go slack, gave the beast its head, and he took
the challenge majestically, clearing the wooden sides by a good foot. But Jack’s joy was cut short by the landing; by the
screaming men he plunged into, who threw themselves from the flailing hooves. Doughty nearly halted and Jack was thrown forward
on to the great bay neck, his own face low down and nearly level with the face of another man.

‘Aghh!’ the man screamed and fell back, and he was not the only one, others scurrying away on each side. Blue-coated men.
Looking up, Jack realized he had landed in the middle of – or rather the end of – a column of Rebel troops.

There was no choice now. The forest still reached down to the roadside and he directed Doughty towards it, brushing through
the thinner undergrowth and on, under the canopy. There could be no more concerns over roots. He pushed the horse to a canter,
hearing the shouts behind him intensify, more screams of fear and pain, from both horses and men, as the pursuing cavalry
arrived.

They were behind him soon, running men as well as
mounted. Some carried weapons; he discovered this as he reined in at a fallen tree and tried to see which way to go around
it. The sun was almost out of the sky and, as he squinted, a musket ball embedded in the trunk.

‘Yah!’ he cried, turning the horse’s head to the left. They cleared the fallen beech and he noticed the glimmer of a path
ahead. Digging his heels in, he drove his mount along it. Another musket fired, the bullet going he knew not where.

The path widened, went downhill, then up. Doughty was struggling now yet still game, that magnificent heart pushing him on.
Jack suddenly had hope, felt he could break his pursuit on this slope, both men and horses, less well bred, fading away. A
smile came as he gave the horse its head again, leaving the wielding of his stick, nudging him along with the lightest tap
of his heels, with whispered commands.

He could sense the slope beginning to peak. Soon he would crest it, a new world would open up, and he would lose himself in
it. Near the summit, he turned to glance back through the dusky gloom …

The birch had fallen across the slope, its uprooting halted by another on the other side of the path. The trunk connected
with Jack’s head and even if Doughty was no longer travelling at full gallop, he was still going spiritedly enough. Jack didn’t
feel pain, didn’t remember falling, or landing. Just the world suddenly dark.

He had no sense of how much time had passed since his encounter with the tree. The dark that had taken him then, held him
still; though now not in the oblivion of unconsciousness but in the deep blackness of a prison cell.

Once awake, the cold kept him so. They had removed his clothing, leaving him a thin blanket, which had little effect against
the chill and smelled strongly of horse; it also appeared to move when placed against his skin and for that reason alone he
was grateful to his temporary blindness. As to his injuries, though the tree had conjured a lump the size of a crab apple
from his forehead and his back was sore due to his tumble from Doughty, he had sustained far worse, and often, on the playing
fields of Westminster School.

Carefully, he began to feel around him, touch being his most functioning sense, though as he moved he perceived the faintest
light coming from some gap high up on the wall, too high for him to reach. There was straw on the flagstone floor, and a large
barrel to his left. His hand then encountered another to his right, both on their ends. Crawling, with an arm before him,
he felt other such rounded shapes further along the cell, upright or prone. So he was in a cooperage or …

It was then his sense of smell returned. He inhaled and detected something sweet, heady.

‘Beer,’ he said out loud, and then laughed. He had been often warned in his youth that he would end up dead in a beer cellar.

Further explorations confirmed his discovery. There were sacks of grain, a large trough, some heavy wooden paddles. The whole
room was about thirty feet in length, a dozen wide. It had two doors; a great double one set high up in the wall, from whose
edge the light was coming in, probably used to bring the barrels in and out, and a second, smaller door in the wall opposite.
Locked and very stout.

Explorations over, Jack sat facing this door and, despite his distaste, pulled the blanket tightly around himself. A little
warmth allowed his abused head to function. He was a prisoner. He did not know how long he’d been unconscious or whether he
was alone. Perhaps Louisa occupied another cellar nearby. He must have been taken to a township of reasonable size, for this
brewery served a largeish community. He’d had worse prison cells. And he preferred this cold to the heat he’d once suffered
in one in Mysore.

His speculations were interrupted by the tread of feet on a stair, the throwing of bolts. Light came in with the opening door,
enough to make him wince and shade his eyes. Then the entrance was blocked by two men. One carried a tray, the other a blunderbuss.

The younger man with the tray came in and set it down before Jack, then scurried back, regarding him with a not-unfriendly
interest. The older one – they could be father and son – stayed glowering in the doorway and kept his weapon levelled.

Jack looked at the tray. There was something frothy in a jug and a hunk of bread beside it. He smiled. ‘Thankee, sirs, for
this kindness,’ he said, remembering to maintain his Boston tones. He had no idea yet what they knew of him.

The young man nodded and smiled back. The elder grunted and moved out through the door.

‘One other kindness, if you will, young sir. Can you tell me where I am?’

‘Pearl River,’ the fellow blurted. His elder raised a hand to him, and his son – Jack had decided they were indeed in that
relation – cowered.

The man swung the wide barrel of the gun towards Jack. ‘Yous only gets this,’ he gestured to the tray, ‘so you stays alive
for a little. You answers questions, not us, when the officer gets ’ere. And then yous get a rope. Spy!’

He spat with the last word, withdrew. The younger man actually shrugged at Jack, then followed.

Spy. That must mean they had discovered the canteen with its false compartment and Burgoyne’s message. Well, that was set
in a newly devised cypher and would take them some days to decode. But … Pearl River? That meant he was still on the west
side of the Hudson then and not far from where he’d been caught. Well, it was not much, but any knowledge was a beginning.
He groped for the jug, took a sip of the beer and grimaced; it was poor and sour stuff. The bread seemed fresh enough and
he ate all of it.

More footsteps came. The door was pushed in, once more the blunderbuss was levelled at him. There was no son this time but
two soldiers, Militiamen in blue coats. A man was slumped between them, his arms over their shoulders. With a relieved curse,
they threw the body down. The door slammed, the darkness returned.