Jack Absolute (33 page)

Philadelphia was a well-made place – broad, tree-lined avenues behind which sat handsome, two-storey houses. No doubt, several
belonged to the signatories of the famous Declaration with which they had proclaimed Colonial independence from this very
city the previous year. Men now
driven away to shiver with Washington in the field, while British officers enjoyed their well-appointed residences, their
servants, and, Jack was sure, many of their daughters and wives as well – for the city appeared full of women, all claiming
to be Loyalists, strolling down the streets despite the chill wind, smiling at British officers, giggling and gossiping in
groups on every corner. Jack had secured fine quarters on Chestnut Street, sharing with just two other officers of General
Howe’s staff. It was costly but after what he’d been through, he saw no reason to scrimp and, with Burgoyne’s generosity,
no need to. Até had paid a swift visit, grunted his disapproval of such luxury, and departed the next day, pausing only to
stock up on second-hand books. After toting the hefty
Clarissa
throughout the campaign, he had developed what Jack found to be quite a disturbing taste in novels, the more sentimental
the better. Jack couldn’t abide novels himself. Give him a good play any day! Yet it was sad to see his comrade go, back to
the dangers of the Mohawk valley, to the civil war of the Iroquois. They made arrangements to keep in contact, hard though
it would be in that fractured world. At the least, the plan was to rendezvous in the Cherry Valley when the blossoms came.

Locust Street was more of an alley, lined with stores of varying size. Above the door of one ‘Alphonse’ was lettered in gold
leaf. A half-crown to the elegantly attired and be-wigged doorman gained him entrance and a private room. The sight of silver
also brought
le patron
quite swiftly. Jack’s French was praised as much as his physique – mere flattery given his privations – but the greatest
approbation was reserved for his coin. A price that would have shocked the denizens of Jermyn Street was eventually agreed.
Jack felt that, if he was to honour the command of his General, he would have to operate in the same circles, the same balls
and events Diomedes would to glean his information – the very highest.
Besides, Burgoyne would not begrudge him. The two men had always shared a love of good tailoring. And Jack had been grubby
in this campaign quite long enough.

The only difficulty, as Puxley had foretold, came over timing. Jack wanted it yesterday and at that the diminutive Frenchman
baulked.

‘Impossible, monsieur. It is the Governor’s Ball next week and all the ladies of the city will only come
à la maison Alphonse.’
He sighed and looked as if this was the greatest source of regret instead of the reason his own coat was so threaded through
with gold.

‘And I am to attend the same event. Do you wish me to go like this?’

Alphonse looked with ill-concealed distaste at Jack’s apparel. ‘Perhaps we could adapt something already made—’

‘Already
made?’
Jack’s voice deepened. ‘I will not be seen in cast-offs, sir. I don’t think you quite realize who I am. I am to be fêted
at this same Governor’s Ball. For I, sir, am Lord John Absolute – hero of Saratoga.’

The name meant nothing, the title only a little – Jack knew you could throw a stick on any street corner in Philadelphia and
strike three lords – but the idea that a man dressed in one of his creations would be the focus of the festivities obviously
appealed. As did the producing of a two-guinea gold piece as down payment. Alphonse pocketed it with the sigh of a martyr
while agreeing to all. Then the footman informed him that a large party had arrived for final fittings and he rushed away,
promising to send his subordinates to take measurements.

Soon Jack was stripped down to shirt and breeches, while Alphonse’s assistants – who somehow achieved the near-impossible
by being more haughty than their master – moved around him taking down his every detail. A middling white port was served,
which Jack happily sipped. Indeed he
was beginning to feel more relaxed than he had in many a day. He had a mission, and a deadly one at that. He’d always found
it intriguing when pitted against a worthy opponent, which this Diomedes certainly was. But the mission’s pursuance required
a role of him, the elegant officer. One for which he was – or soon would be – well suited.

Laughter came from the next room, only a little muffled by the thin walls. Both men and women were there and Jack enjoyed
listening to the cadence of the bantering, if not being able to distinguish many words. When was the last time he had heard
people really laugh? At Drury Lane? In another life, certainly. He half-listened, as the assistants wielded tapes and sticks
around him.

Then he heard something else, a fall of pure merriment in a woman’s voice. There was something especially musical to it and
he had heard something like it before. When he realized where, he was through the door in a moment, protesting tailors scattering
from his path.

The next door was ajar. A male voice had joined in the laugh, so Jack felt no need to pause and politely knock before intruding
on ladies. Besides, his accelerating heart would allow no such niceties. Shoving hard, he swept in.

They were obviously used to people coming in and out, for no one looked up. Two young ladies sat on a divan, each tugging
at an exquisitely dressed young gentleman between them, who was clutching a paper pad in one hand while endeavouring, despite
the wrestling, to sketch a third young lady with a soft crayon. She was standing across from the divan, surrounded by kneeling
tailoresses with pins in their mouths and it was her, fighting for balance, trying to hold a pose, who was still laughing
the laugh that had drawn Jack there.

The third young lady was Louisa Reardon.

She saw him last. One of the young ladies looked at him
with interest, the other with distaste, as her eyes climbed from his stockinged feet to his stock-less neck. The gentleman
rose, laying the pad down. Jack took them in as if he was in some sort of dream, or at that moment in battle when time moved
slowly. When his regard returned to the model, her eyes rose for the first time and met his.

They widened. She gasped, tottered. There was a cry of dismay from the women at her feet as pins popped and something ripped.
Louisa struggled for balance then, heeding the shrill warnings, settled. He could, however, move and did and was across the
room in three strides.

Only the assistants at her feet prevented him from seizing her.

‘Jack! How … When?’ Colours chased each other across her face.

‘Louisa!’ He saw a gap, moved to go through it – till her hand, thrust out, halted him.

‘Jack, have a care, or you’ll ruin this dress.’

‘I
don’t
care, I …’

‘Jack!’ The hand now gestured, to the man and the two ladies rising from the divan. He did halt then, even turned partly to
them.

‘Another admirer, Louisa?’ The man’s voice was pleasant, full of laughter.

‘An old friend.’ Her voice shook. ‘Jack, this is Major John—’

It was not the time for tedious, polite introductions. ‘How are you here? How did you escape? How, by all that’s holy—?’

‘It’s a long story. Jack, these are my good friends—’

‘I thought you … a prisoner at the least, if not—’

‘Dead?’ The word at last halted her attempted introduction. ‘I heard you were taken but only later, for they had already let
me go and I did not linger for them to change
their minds. They’d believed my story of fleeing those who would rob us. But I learned, once I reached New York, that you’d
been proclaimed a spy. They were going to examine then … then hang you.’ She shook her head slowly. ‘Oh, Jack. I believed
you
were the one dead. I mourned for you – once more.’

Confusion stirred something in him, compounded by the presence of this handsome young man, the laughter he’d overheard, that
had drawn him here.

‘Yes, I can see how well black suits you,’ he said, looking at the vibrant pink of the skirt, the canary yellow of the bodice.

The blow struck home and she blushed, nearly the colour of the dress. Before she could speak, the young man had come forward,
arm extended. He took Jack’s unbandaged left hand.

‘Major John André. And these ladies are my two adorable Pegs – Miss Peggy Shippen and Miss Peggy Chew.’ Both misses curtseyed,
giggled, then turned to whisper to each other, their gaze still upon him. ‘And you must be the officer who accompanied Miss
Reardon on that hazardous ride. We all rejoice to see you alive, sir. We have heard so many tales of your forest skills, your
gallantry, “Jack, this” and “Jack, that”. The only thing she failed to supply us with was your surname.’

André was in his mid-twenties, Jack guessed – closer in age to Louisa than himself. He was small, in height and physique,
almost delicate, with a face that would have been called pretty on a woman. Each of the Peggys would have fought the other
for his eyelashes. He reminded Jack of Banastre Tarleton. Yet in Tarleton’s face the man’s cruelty revealed itself in a thrust
of jaw, the mad-dog gleam of his self-regard, the fanaticism in his eyes. André’s displayed nothing so much as a profound
amiability. Intelligence was there too, keenly so. But he was obviously a lover of life – and life returned the compliment.
Indeed, if the ladies’ marked attention to him was anything to go by, life returned the compliment in trumps.

‘Major Jack Absolute of the 16
^th
Light Dragoons.’

‘Burgoyne’s own,’ André murmured. ‘You weren’t with that noble man at Saratoga by any chance?’

‘I was. I brought his dispatches here to General Howe.’

‘Oh, that was you? I am on the General’s staff but was absent when they arrived.’

Of course. He knew he’d heard the name before. Major John André was the officer responsible for précising the reports Jack
had brought. He was Howe’s intelligence as Jack had been Burgoyne’s. It suddenly put the amiability of the man’s face into
a different perspective, as a mask always will.

André still held Jack’s hand quite in the manner of an old friend. Suddenly, the pressure of his grip increased. ‘Wait! Jack
Absolute? You’re not
the
Jack Absolute, are you? From Sheridan’s
Rivals
?’

Jack flushed. His infamy had leaped the ocean then. ‘I rather think it is the other way around, sir. That … Irishman misappropriated
my name and certain … aspects of my past, for his drama.’

André’s hand was now pumping Jack’s. ‘By all that’s marvellous! I have just formed a little theatre company. Think of me as
Philostrate – “For how shall we beguile this lazy time if not with some delight.” ‘ He laughed, as musically as Louisa. ‘We
call ourselves The Thespians and there is a small but quite acceptable playhouse here, the Southwark. And, sir, sir, this
is the most wonderful thing! We open next week … with
The Rivals.’

Jesus! Would that play never cease to haunt him?

Holding on still, André continued, ‘You don’t, by any chance, perform, do you, Major?’

Summoning his disdain took a little time. Louisa jumped
into the gap. ‘He does indeed. I acted with him on the voyage over. Jack has a wonderful presence upon the stage.’

‘And one of our Thespians has just dropped out,’ André continued. ‘He was inconsiderate enough to get himself shot in the
leg while on patrol. He’ll walk again but not act any time soon. Left me in a predicament, I have to say. Thought I was going
to have to go on for him as well as stage the piece. Too important a role for a divided attention – for he was to play your
namesake, sir.’ André added his second hand to Jack’s single one. Those heavily lashed eyes were at their most imploring.
‘Why don’t you take it on?’

It was such an outrageous idea that it actually stopped Jack’s breath. While he sought for it, Louisa gave a delighted laugh.

He looked from her back to the Major and, detaching his hand from André’s fervent grip, he said stiffly, ‘Since that jackanapes
Sheridan abused me so, I have been pestered by every chairman, porter and ladies’ maid crying, “Are you
that
Jack Absolute?” And you would have me, in a land so far blessedly free of this calumny, personify
myself?’
The words could not have been laden with any more contempt.

Yet they seemed to do little to put off the Major. He countered, ‘But who better to defend the reputation, to give us the
truth of the man than the man himself? Also …’ and here he glanced briefly at Louisa, ‘I can assure you the rest of the casting
is equally strong. For example, could you wish for a better stage partner than our lovely Miss Reardon?’

Of course. Louisa would be playing Lydia, Jack Absolute’s stage lover, based on the bloody girl Jack had made such a fool
of himself over in Bath all those years ago, the story Sheridan had stolen for his bloody plot. And they wanted him to play
himself, to make stage love to the incarnation of his youthful folly, played by a woman he so desired. To parade his history
and his feelings before an audience that
would include the General Staff of the British army, the cream of Loyalist society, as well, no doubt, as every spy in Philadelphia,
including the man he’d been sent there to kill? ‘Never,’ he roared. ‘If I was to be boiled alive, pulled apart between stallions,
offered the key to the Seraglio of the Sultan and a thousand nights to enjoy it. Never! Never. Never.
Never
!’

‘If she holds out now, the devil is in it.’

Jack looked out into the emptiness, waited. Nothing. At the first rehearsal, that line had conjured a huge laugh from the
cast. In the week of rehearsals since, it had received not even a chuckle.

Perhaps he had delivered the line badly? It was the cursed thing about this playing. Did one let the line speak for itself?
Or did one need to emphasize it for the audience, lead them to the laugh? ‘Speak the speech, trippingly upon the tongue,’
Hamlet had cautioned.