Jack Absolute (31 page)

As the Rebels began their charge, Jack stripped off his red coat, and threw it under a bush. Then, slinging his musket over
his shoulder, he ran forwards, screaming the cry he’d most heard on the battlefield that day …

‘Kill the bastards!’

A man fell away from the rear of the log, clutching at his neck. Jack shoved two men aside to take his place, just as the
door’s planks began to sunder. Three more thuds and it gave and the men at the front of the log died when it did, felled by
a volley from within. The rest began to thrust through the gap, some dying, many making it in.

He was maybe the twentieth man inside and it was as if he’d been whipped fast to hell. Fire was already encasing the rear
wall in crimson flowers of flame, smoke spiralling up in columns. Screaming men were everywhere engaged, bayonets plunging,
guns exploding, tomahawks scything down, jerked from bodies to strike again. The floor was already slick with blood-soaked
straw and men would fall and rise only to fall again.

It was hard to discern anything in that human abattoir. Jack, using his musket like a quarterstaff, parried blows from men
who believed him to be an enemy while he sought for a friend. And there, in the darkest corner, where the most bodies lay,
he found him.

It took five strides of slip and slide, strike and block, to get to him. By that time Até had felled the largest man before
him and was engaged with four more, a tomahawk in one hand, Ironwood club in the other. But the dead before him testified
how long he had been fighting. His arms were clearly growing weaker; a bayonet grazed his hip, two men with sabres were cutting
down …

Jack stepped in, chucked his musket, taking one opponent full in the chest. Crossing his arms, he pulled the bayonet from
his belt with his left hand, his sword from its sheath with his right, needing both weapons to counter the two that came,
one for him, one for his brother. Parrying the sabre of a Militia officer, who had overstretched on his lunge, Jack pulled
his own sabre back and hit the man, fist to face. He went down but Jack barely noted it, for he felt the bayonet in
his left hand twitch as the sword he’d blocked with it withdrew to strike again. The man he’d punched falling away freed his
sabre and he span out, ripping it straight across the white-clad chest, this man screaming, staggering backwards. The last
one before Até, seeing the odds, turned, ran. The smoke was thickening around them and, for just a moment, Jack and Até were
quite alone within it.

‘Daganoweda!’ Até’s dark face split in a huge smile. ‘I thought you were dead!’

‘Very nearly. Very often. And that,’ he said, gesturing with his bayonet to the bodies before them, ‘pays you for Oris-kany.’

Até’s smile disappeared. ‘What …
these
?
Only four of them? I could …’ But the rest of his protestation went unheard, lost in two distinct sounds – the screaming of
the remaining defenders, offering, almost as one, their surrender; and the burning rear wall of the cabin suddenly dissolving
in a cascade of flame a foot from Jack and Até’s backs.

All there, on either side, bent away from the sudden gust of heat, the surge of spark. Then Jack saw clear sky beyond the
fire.

He yelled at Até over the roar. ‘Surrender or …?’ He gestured.

‘Or!’ Até shouted back and, on the word, dropped his powder horn and ran into the inferno. Jack dropped his, sheathed his
sword and, a pace behind, leaped too, felt the fire snatch at him, sear his skin, crisp and dissolve some hair. Then the two
of them were slipping down a slope to the rear of the cabin, rolling to dampen the flames, slapping themselves, each other.

‘Up there!’ Jack pointed, and the two of them ran towards Breymann’s Redoubt. Bullets came, from behind and before – the Germans
were trying to shoot them as well. But when Jack yelled, ‘Officer of the Crown!’ someone up there held the
muskets back long enough for them to scramble through a door hastily opened, hastily closed.

At first, they were most concerned with extinguishing the flames that seared and burned them still. No sooner was one damped
out than another made itself known in sudden pain. Até’s brown skin had gained a feverish hue and he seemed to have mislaid
one of his eyebrows. From the rawness he himself was feeling, Jack thought he must have fared no better. And Até, when he
pointed at Jack’s clothes, confirmed this.

‘A king of shreds and patches,’ he roared.

Jack looked around. If he thought they’d escaped from hell he was wrong; they had merely descended to another level. The green-jacketed
Jaeger, the huge, blue-coated German Grenadiers, each were engaged in a fierce and increasingly unequal contest. The walls
reached only just above the men’s conical, metal-plated hats, and the Americans were hurling themselves over at many points.
If one was shot, three more would take his place. The earth floor of the redoubt was breaking up into a series of savage individual
contests.

‘Look there!’ Jack pointed. The main gates were being subjected to the same battering technique that had stoved in the cabin’s
doors. A tall and extravagantly moustached officer – it had to be Breymann himself – was mustering two ranks of men before
it. Até snatched up a discarded musket; Jack pulled out his pistols, which miraculously had neither exploded in the flames
nor been lost in the tumbling. Together they ran towards the rallying men.

They did not make it. With a noise like a drawn-out scream, the gates crumpled in. The German volley was ragged, ineffectual;
Rebels poured through the breach and in their midst was a man on a horse, screaming like a goblin, sword swirling above his
head, urging his men on. Jack recognized him instantly.

‘Arnold!’ he cried, raising both pistols to fire. But a Grenadier beat him to it, shot the horse, which staggered, reared,
both Jack’s bullets passing through the point where the American General’s head had just been. Then the stallion fell and
Jack was close enough to hear the snap, the shriek of pain, as the full weight landed on Arnold’s leg.

Up to now, Jack had been more concerned with preserving his own life and that of his friend. Now, with the man who’d ordered
Simon Fraser shot lying before him, the blood rage descended. Throwing his pistols aside, snatching out his sword, he advanced
on his enemy, seeing only him and this chance for vengeance. As he came, he shouted, ‘Benedict Arnold! Murderer!’

The General, despite his agony, despite the cacophony of chaos that surrounded him, somehow heard Jack’s shout and looked
up.

‘Lord John!’ he cried, surprise paramount. Then his pain-wracked visage twisted into fury. ‘Oath-breaker,’ he screamed.

Arnold groped to his saddle, drawing forth a pistol. Jack advanced, senses centred on the man ahead. Até was two paces behind
him; one pace too far to prevent one of Arnold’s officers raising his rifle, firing. Something struck Jack, gouging fire across
his temple. White light took him and he was down.

Yet this time there was no relieving dark to receive him. He watched the men before him – fighting, falling, dying – yet they
were doing it quite slowly and in a world without sound. He watched Arnold’s mouth, edged in white foam, forming curses directed
straight at him, until he was pulled from under his horse and his head rolled back in a faint. He felt arms slide under his
own shoulders, hands gripped across his chest, noted that the hands were streaked with soot, reddened with burns. He was being
dragged backwards then,
his sword slipping free though his fingers stretched for it, his heels carving twin trails in the earth. Once, the hands left
him and he was aware of swift movements behind, and a soldier, a Rebel, falling to his side, lifeless eyes staring wide at
him. Then he was gripped again, dragged again until his back rested against wood. Still in that slow silence, he watched more
Americans come screaming into the stockade, watched the Germans finally break, watched Breymann cut down several deserters
with his sabre, until one of his own men shot him then used his body to climb the wall.

The grip was on him again, he was being lifted, balanced on the rough planks’ tops, tipped over. He reached out and felt something
snap in the wrist that would stop his fall, though, strangely, this came with no pain. Then the hands were under him and manoeuvring
him over a shoulder.

He had only two more distinct thoughts as he was run across the stubble of Freeman’s Farm. The first was that Até had once
more stolen the lead in the saving of lives. The other arose from a sight, made more beautiful by the silence of that world.
Clinging to a grass stalk was a butterfly, a monarch, its huge wings, red and black-veined, tipped in ovals of white, spread
wide. Like Jack, it too hung upside down and as they passed, he saw it thrust its furred head into a tiny mauve flower.

At the beginning, there was little to differentiate between day and night, the two made one by the rain that fell ceaselessly,
not in drops, but in slabs of water from a sky that simply changed from dark to slightly darker. His fever provided another
unity to time’s passing, holding him in a deeper darkness, tides of consciousness that paid no attention to the hour of the
clock, or what was being done to his body. He woke to find his hand and wrist set in splints and bandage, and having no memory
of it being done. Woke again staring at a horse’s mane, someone’s arms around him while that person argued with men who wanted
him removed from his mount and laid in the thick mud beside the road where other wounded moaned. That had not happened, for
when he next awoke it was to Até forcing some sort of broth down his throat. When conscious, he had no connection with what
was going on around him, except the sight of it; yet that was clear, and every object he regarded was haloed in light. When
he slept, which was nearly all the time, the darkness was total, admitting no sound, no image of dream, only a simultaneous
sensation of heat and terrible cold.

Finally, the movement ended, the army settling into a rough camp. Words penetrated, voices passing the tent he’d ended up
in, telling that they were near Saratoga itself; for the
battles, as was the custom, had been named for the nearest larger town, though fought ten miles to its south. People came,
tarried, left, and it was these visits that gradually pulled his mind back to the world, helped him fix his place in it again.
Até was nearly always there and when he wasn’t he would soon return with food, sometimes with a grimace and thin gruel, other
times with a grin and fresh-roasted squirrel or even venison. The Earl of Balcarras came one morning and sat for an hour while
Jack listened to his tale, following the slow progress of the single tear trickling down that pale face as he described the
burial of Simon Fraser on the battlefield the night of his death, just before the retreat began. He told of the roar of Rebel
cannon that first were aimed at them, earth flying up into the faces of the mourning officers and men. And how, when the Americans
realized it was not a gathering to assault but to bury, they switched to a Minute Gun, its salute punctuating the sad, proud
eulogy delivered by the chaplain.

Two days later, with the balance now swinging to wakefulness in Jack’s hours, it was Midshipman Edward Pellew who came and
made Jack laugh for the first time in an age with his fury at what was being planned for him.

‘’Tis not the fact of surrender, Jack,’ the young man declared, his Cornish accent growing ever stronger with his passion,
‘but ’tis my part in it, see. I command the Marines, so am the senior naval officer present. I told them all in Council –
“Fair do’s,” I says, “I can see the Army has no choice. But the Royal Navy never surrenders.” I mean, Jack, if they’re lettin’
the Loyalists slip away, and your savage is the only Native who hasn’t absconded, why not let me take my twenty lads and break
out? But the General wouldn’t hear of it, for some reason.’

Balcarras had been the first to mention the negotiations. Até had confirmed it with a few disapproving grunts. It
seemed inconceivable, a British army yielding to a Colonial one. It had never happened before. Yet it was Jack’s third visitor
who confirmed the inevitability.

He was up from his cot for the first time, attempting a few foal-like steps across the tent, when a voice halted his progress.

‘And that’s the first gladdening sight to meet these eyes in many a day. Are you then recovered, Captain Absolute?’

Jack turned, nearly lost his balance, held himself on his stick.

‘General … I am better, yes. The ball skinned, but did not enter, my much abused head.’

Burgoyne stood clutching an edge of canvas. Jack was shocked – for the normally ruddy face was almost white, its only shade
deriving from the great patches of darkness under each bloodshot eye. His thick, snowy hair did not have its usual abundance
but looked thin, plastered down. It was only in the exquisite cut of the uniform that Burgoyne was himself. It had to have
been altered to suit a loss of weight and the thought made Jack smile. ‘Gentleman Johnny’ would sooner go on campaign without
a company of Grenadiers than without his tailor.

‘Sir, come in, please. Would you care to sit?’

Burgoyne entered but shook his head. ‘I fear, dear Jack, that if I do I shall not rise again. But you must, please.’

He gestured and Jack sank gratefully down. ‘I have little to offer you, sir.’ His gaze moved around the canvas. ‘Unless …’
He reached forward and pulled down a bundle of fibrous strands from the tent pole. ‘Dried meat?’

Burgoyne took one of the strips and chewed. ‘Venison, eh? By God, Absolute, you eat better than any in the army. That will
be your Até, I suppose?’ Jack nodded. ‘Where is he? I would like to talk with the fellow.’ He sighed. ‘My last loyal savage.’

‘Out procuring more of this, I should think.’ Jack took a strip, gnawed at the gamey meat. ‘So I’ll give him your good wishes.
And I’m sure he’d wish you to take this. A guest’s gift.’ At the man’s hesitation, he continued, ‘There’ll be plenty more
for us, General, never fear. And you know the hospitality of an Iroquois.’