Jack Absolute (40 page)

André’s face had changed. ‘Who? What secret society?’

‘It is called the Illuminati. And their leader in the Colonies was your guest tonight – the Count von Schlaben.
He’s
your 597, and his code name is Cato.’

André stared at Jack and Jack stared back, desperate to be believed. It was suddenly beyond himself and Louisa, beyond even
this war. Von Schlaben and the Illuminati, bastard offspring of German Masons, they had to be stopped. André, General Howe’s
intelligence in Philadelphia, had to stop them.

The Corporal made the final adjustments to the ropes. ‘Done, sir.’

‘Thank you,’ André said, handing over the gun. ‘Take this and wait outside.’

As the soldier retired and André stepped towards him, Jack whispered, ‘You must believe me, John. You must!’

They were so close now their faces were almost touching. ‘I would so like to, Jack. But unfortunately, I cannot.’

‘Why not? For God’s sake, man, why not?’

André smiled. ‘The Count von Schlaben is not the leader of the Illuminati in America, Jack. I know this for certain. Because,
you see …
I
am.’

Jack had spent much of the morning thinking on his childhood. He presumed it was because his life was to end with the midday
bell that his mind kept returning to its beginning; to the country about Land’s End, its granite cliffs, rock-strewn fields,
sandy beaches. Disturbingly – for he had not cared for the fellow at all – he seemed to dwell most on his uncle, Duncan Absolute,
his guardian for the first nine years of life. ‘Druncan’, as he was inevitably referred to by all who knew him, was perpetually
incapacitated with brandy, and thus easy to elude. It was a rare day that Jack would be apprehended and thrashed for some
misdemeanour, which he had undoubtedly committed. Far more often he would hear his uncle yelling after him down the lanes,
‘You’ll hang one day, Jack Absolute. You will hang!’

So the sot was right after all.
It was most annoying.

As death cells went, this was one of the more comfortable Jack had occupied. It was within the town gaol, a recently built
brick building that formed one side of a square. A ventilation hole set high up in the wall – too high for him to reach, too
small to squeeze through anyway – gave on to that square, allowing in the sounds that had stimulated many of Jack’s thoughts.
In the two days that he had been there since his trial, there had been much hammering and sawing of
wood, many shouted commands and curses, much heaving and grunting as the scaffold and gallows were erected. They had only
finished last midnight and Jack had barely got to sleep when the first spectators arrived to claim their sites, waking him
with squabbles and loud speculations. Long before the dawn the hawkers and stallholders had set up and there was much trading
when the sky was yet dark. Bakers were there and the scent of warm bread reached him, soon joined by brewers proclaiming the
merits of their stock. Such was the enthusiasm of one bass voice that Jack had determined to bribe a guard to fetch him up
some of the fellow’s product. He still felt, on considerable evidence, that Americans did not know how to brew a decent ale,
but perhaps his last quart in the Colonies – on earth – would persuade him.

So far that morning he had managed to keep his mind fixed on such trivialities; to let it wander would be to succumb to despair
and he was determined, whatever else, not to cut a sorry figure at his noon appointment. Also, he still had one little hope.
Not for himself – on the evidence presented in the court martial the day before he would have donned the black cloth with
the judge and condemned himself to hang – but Louisa! An appeal had been made, based on her youth, her father’s loyalty, the
influence upon her of evil traitors such as Jack Absolute. General Howe did have the power to commute. Jack was not and never
had been a praying man. He would never think of beseeching anyone for himself. But he prayed that morning for Louisa. He wondered
if, somewhere in the building, she was doing the same for him.

The clock in the square was striking half past eleven, its toll barely audible above the people now thronging out there, when
bolts were thrown, the door pushed in. Jack rose to meet his visitor.

‘Good news, Jack. The first of two gifts I bring you,’ John
André said, striding into the room. He was dressed, as befitted the day, in the most elegantly cut of uniforms and his hair
had been some time in the styling, falling in ordered waves on to his neck, held there in a black silk bag and solitaire.
With a smile that seemed to bring sunlight into the cell, he was once again the friendly young buck and theatre enthusiast,
no longer the cool interrogator who had examined Jack again and again during his week’s confinement.

‘Louisa?’ Jack could not hold back the desperation in his voice.

André stopped, the smile vanishing. ‘Alas, Jack. I did not mean to toy so with your hopes. No, indeed, the sentence of the
court will be observed. While recognizing the necessity, I am most truly sorry for it.’

Jack had sunk down again on to the cot. ‘And the good news?’ he muttered.

André swung the one chair around, sat, leaned on its back towards him. ‘They have commuted your sentence.’

Jack looked at him dully. After his disappointment for Louisa, what joy could there be in this? ‘They kill her and let me
live?’

‘No, Jack, be serious.’ André had pulled a pouch from his pocket and made busy cramming tobacco from it into a pipe. ‘The
good news is that my representations were accepted. You will not hang.’ He placed a taper over Jack’s lamp and, when it caught,
held it to the bowl, sucked, then exhaled a deep plume above Jack’s head. ‘You will be shot.’

Jack chuckled. He could not help himself, it was so absurd – and his uncle had been wrong, after all! ‘Oh, thank you,’ he
said.

André looked offended at the sarcasm. ‘It is a tribute to you as a soldier, your loyal service before you … strayed.’ He sighed,
sending smoke up towards the corner of the cell though he seemed to be looking beyond it. ‘I just hope that,
were I ever in your situation, someone would be as kind to me.’ He looked back. ‘So Jack, in view of this benevolence, and
the lateness of the hour, have you finally anything to say to me?’

It was spoken without any real hope. André had sought information every day in the five before the trial and every day Jack
had told him the same – nothing. There was nothing he could tell him, for André had no interest in the truth. He already had
his own version – that Jack was Washington’s spy and, for a reason he had yet to divulge, a hater of all things to do with
the Illuminati.

‘I will merely say at the last what I have said all along – watch the German. You say you are his superior in the Order. I
know you are not, that the tail wags the dog.’

‘Jack! Jack!’ André coughed some smoke out. ‘I still do not understand this unreasoning fear of yours. I wish you could be
persuaded, even at this late hour. For it is English Illumination that will shape the society to come. When we win this war
for England, enlightened men from both sides will come to a just peace. The arrangements will set an example of what a society
can be like. That model will then be transferred to Britain, to Europe, to the World, for the deliverance of all humanity
from the dark. That is what we have sworn.’

‘Do you not find that oath a contradiction to the one you swore to your King and Country?’

André shrugged. ‘To my King? Perhaps. But are kings what we truly need in this world, Jack? George the Hanoverian? The Tyrants
of France and Spain? The deranged monarchs of Germany? And as for England … what greater loyalty can I show than to seek to
deliver my land out of that darkness? To join it to other lands in a Commonwealth of Illumination?’

‘With you in charge.’

‘With me and people like me, yes. But for the benefit of all mankind.’

Jack looked into the man’s eyes, lit now by his fanaticism. There was nothing more he could say to persuade him had he all
the time in the world, which he had not – the building hum of the crowd outside was testament to that. There was something
he would know though, which had troubled his sleep.

‘Burgoyne?’

It had been his hope, unreasoning though he knew it to be, that somehow John Burgoyne would sweep from his imprisonment and
deliver Jack and Louisa from theirs. Or, at the least, send a message of such outrage that the proceedings could be delayed.
Even at this hour it was a hope.

But André shook his head. ‘Alas, Jack. The messengers sent have not returned. The rumour is the imprisoned army is scattered.
Given the speed with which justice has moved in your case, and this snow …’ He gestured outside. ‘And what could Burgoyne
send, if he was reached in time and the message got back? That he trusts you? The judges that condemned you would say he was
merely the most cozened of all your dupes. So, I am sorry.’

It was what Jack expected, disappointing nonetheless. But one last thing rankled with him.

‘I cannot believe the General, preoccupied as he was after the surrender, said nothing of the dangers presented by the Count
von Schlaben in the dispatches I brought for General Howe.’

‘Ah.’ The pipe had gone cold. Rising, André tapped the remains of tobacco out on the back of a perfectly shined boot. ‘He
did. And I’m rather afraid that I chose not to highlight that warning when I précised the contents of the dispatches for General
Howe. It is one of the advantages of having a Commander whose interest in detail is confined to the softer parts of Mrs Loring’s
anatomy.’

There! It was the last part of the puzzle, the last rope tied
around him, binding him to the stake. And yet, instead of anger, he felt almost nothing. In the half-hour that remained of
his life, less, what was the purpose in railing now against those bonds?

He came off the cot, held out his hand. ‘Goodbye, John.’

André shook it. ‘Goodbye, Jack. It’s been a delight. Apart from … well. You missed your vocation, you know. You are an excellent
actor. Would that I had you now! The artilleryman playing Marlow in
She Stoops To Conquer
is more wooden than the furniture.’ He half-turned, turned back. ‘Oh, there is one last and, I’m afraid, disagreeable thing
to tell you.’ He bit his lip. ‘Tarleton commands the firing squad.’

The ironies kept gathering. Jack could only smile. ‘Of course he does.’

André shook his head sadly, moved to the door. He was just about to rap upon it to summon the guard when his hand froze. ‘Faith!’
he said. ‘Nearly forgot.’ He went to the wall opposite the cot, searched along it for a while, bent to waist height, his head
moving back and forth.

‘What are you about, sir?’ Now he was near the end, Jack only wanted to be alone.

‘Well,’ said André, ‘a fellow spent some time in this cell once. Occupied that time with thoughts of escape. Ah!’ His head
stopped moving. He reached out, fingernails digging into a line between two bricks. To Jack’s amazement, one of them came
loose, then was out and in André’s hand. ‘The second gift I promised, Jack. Goodbye.’

Laying the brick on the floor, André left the room. Jack waited until the three bolts had been shot before rising and crossing
to the gap. It was not the dim light in his cell that failed to enlighten him. There was nothing to be seen, a brick-lined
hole was all there was, another brick to the back of it. Then, as he watched, that other brick shifted, waggled,
was removed. There was air, a little light from the far side. Then a voice came. ‘Thank you, John.’ The voice of Louisa Reardon.

A door slammed, bolts thrown in the other cell. ‘Louisa?’ Jack called softly and in a moment she was there. He could see little
of her face. Her brow, fringed in red and gold. Those eyes. Enough.

‘Jack?’

‘Yes.’

He stared, scarce believing. The noise outside, the increasing frenzy of the hawkers’ competing shouts, the fiddle and fife
that had struck up a series of tunes, the swelling voice of a crowd merging into one eager entity … all these faded away,
to a world beyond them, the two of them.

‘Have you a chair there, Louisa?’

‘I have. I’ll fetch it.’

She did and he did the same, then they sat opposite each other, discovering that they could not get too close or they blocked
out all light and could not see. And he needed to see her, more than anything. To hold her in his sight where she was safe.

They sat in silence, simply looking. Then they both spoke at once.

‘You have—’

‘I wanted—’

They stopped, started again.

‘I must—’

‘Will you—’

They laughed. When had he last laughed? Lying beside her at the foot of her bed, wrapped in blankets and the scents of their
lovemaking? As long ago as that?

‘Jack. I wanted to … there is so little time …’

‘To?’

‘To tell you I am so sorry.’

‘For what?’

‘For what?’ She looked up, away, back. ‘You are about to die because of my actions.’

‘Because of mine too. And my lack of them.’

She hesitated, her eyes moving back and forth, searching each of his.

‘John André told me you kept silent at your trial. You did not defend yourself. Why?’

Jack sighed. ‘Any justification I uttered would have condemned you further. I could not do that. And when they discovered
the mask, I was lost. The reason I gave them only sounded like an excuse.’

She shook her head. ‘Oh Jack! I told Von Schlaben that you took the mask. He would have told André.’

‘I thought so.’ There was something else that had been nagging at Jack in his cell. ‘He was your controller here from the
start, wasn’t he? Even before Quebec?’

‘No. He revealed himself to me as Cato that last night on the
Ariadne.
After the General’s dinner, when you saw his hand upon my arm.’

‘I remember. You were flustered but covered it up with a tale of his amorous pursuit of you in London and taxing me with my
former loves.’