Jack Absolute (5 page)

He drew himself up to his full height, arms extended before him, as if he was about to speak in the meeting lodge of his tribe
and, in sonorous Iroquoian, declaimed, ‘“If it be
now, ’tis not to come. If it be not to come, it will be now. If it be not now, yet it will come. The readiness is all.”’

‘Zounds,’ Jack muttered,
‘Hamlet
again! I wish I’d never introduced you to that bloody play.’

‘He is the Wise One. Wiser than you, Daganoweda. For when he was to die, he knew why. He had accepted it, like a warrior.
Yet you still think you are to die for a woman. And I think you are wrong.’

Jack had little time to consider his friend’s words. Tarleton had taken his position at one end of the rectangle of snow,
tamped down by those who’d come early to enjoy the fight. He stood there, swishing his sword, still clad only in his linen
shirt.

‘Your coat, Jack?’ Sheridan already held his cloak.

‘No,’ Jack sniffed. ‘I don’t mind being killed – but I’ll be damned if I’m going to catch a cold.’

He stepped up to his mark. They saluted the President, their opponent’s Seconds, each other. Then their two swords rose, ends
meeting with the faintest of chimes. It was like the toll of some far-away bell, a stirring of consciousness, and it instantly
cleared the very last effects of cognac from Jack’s head.

His plan was simple. He assumed, from their previous dealings, that his opponent would be mad in assault, contemptuous of
defence, that he would fall like a storm upon Jack’s artfully casual resistance. Fire and fury was what was expected from
youth; coolness and calm the prerogative of age and experience.

Yet in the opening exchanges, the younger man refused to conform to Jack’s prejudice; was not tempted into an extended lunge,
did not respond to the first of Jack’s feints when he left his weapon slightly out of true, in tierce. He parried and riposted
and parried again in the least exerting of ways.

Damn him
, thought Jack, taking a breath,
the bastard’s come to fence.

Tarleton was obviously conscientious in his attendance at Master Angelo’s Academy in the Haymarket. Though Jack had himself
been one of the Italian’s foremost pupils, it had been fifteen years since he’d last ascended those steep stairs – and the
small sword required a subtlety of mind, a strength and nimbleness of wrist, and continual practice. The last thing he wanted
was a fencing bout.

The fighters separated, sword tips an inch apart, the preliminaries ended. Each had a sense of the other. Jack breathed, tried
to focus on his plan. A glimpse of blood was all that was needed for honour to be satisfied, to enable him to walk away. If
Tarleton would not be drawn into rashness, there were other ways to attain this end. A good scratch would do it. He just had
to set about inflicting one.

Yet as Jack considered, his opponent began on stratagems of his own. A dozen rapid passes, a flank temptingly exposed; Jack
lured, over-lunging. His rear ankle bent instead of staying sole-flat to the ground, requiring an extra second to restore
his balance; and in that small moment, Tarleton circular parried hard to the right. Jack’s thigh was stretched out, exposed,
his weapon too extended for protection; and the spectators who knew their sword-work, waiting for the swift strike at thigh
that would at least wound but could kill if the artery were pierced, caught their breath.

The moment passed. Tarleton did not move; Jack regained his balance, dropped his point, and slashed. Since the small sword
has no cutting edge, all knew that was mere desperation on Jack’s part. They also knew that a chance for Tarleton to end the
fight had not been taken; most realized, then, that for him, a glimpse of blood would not be enough.

Recovering, Jack returned once more to guard. His breath plumed the air before him, dissipating before it could join
with his opponent’s negligible exhalation. He was hot and now wished he
had
taken off his jacket. Yet to do so at this stage would be an acknowledgement he would not give his enemy. That last desperate
slash had spent enough of his credit for coolness.

‘Agitated, Absolute?’ Tarleton’s voice was calm, seemingly unaffected by the exercise. ‘You’re as red as you were when I caught
you astride that whore last night.’

Recognizing the goad to anger, disdaining it, Jack took a deeper breath and smiled. ‘You malign a lady, sir, whose only wrong
is preferring a man to a boy. Though, if the story be true, her rejection of you was more to do with the, uh, length of your
sword. Quill-trimmer was the term used, I believe.’

He heard Sheridan mutter, ‘For God’s sake, Absolute.’ Indeed, the jibe was barely worthy of the playing field at Westminster.
Yet it seemed to have such a startling effect that it left Jack speculating it must indeed have been true.

‘My sword? You shall feel the length of my sword, you dog!’

Jack had but a moment to marvel at the change in Tarleton’s colour. Roaring, the youth disengaged his blade and hurled himself
wide, thrusting for Jack’s right flank. Retiring a step, parrying with point down, Jack riposted to the man’s breast, under
his arm. Stuck at the full length of his lunge, Tarleton went to parry hard … but encountered no blade there; for Jack had
merely feinted, disengaged again and thrust to Tarleton’s left shoulder. The younger man was forced to pivot off his front
foot to make the parry, his back leg spinning out and round. Jack followed, keeping his blade bound tight to his opponent’s,
moving him around. He could have struck again but decided to savour this first little victory – and let Tarleton savour it
too. Finally he stepped away.

Oaths were uttered, in approval or condemnation depending
on the support. Suddenly, a one-sided fight had become a contest. Tarleton, smarting from conceding even a point, immediately
began another assault. Jack had only a heartbeat to congratulate himself on the success of his provocation before he was protecting
himself from the result of it.

A lunge in carte, one in seconde, the next in tierce. Jack contented himself with parrying and nothing more, but refusing
to give any ground. This was forcing Tarleton to ‘thrust at the wall’, an academy exercise to make sure parries were true
… and almost an insult to a good swordsman. For Jack had discovered that, once the river of Tarleton’s anger had flooded,
it would not recover its banks with any rapidity.

Another thrust came, another step to the right taken, parrying with point down. Jack’s weight was on his back foot and, still
in his fury, Tarleton slashed diagonally up at Jack’s face. Yet Jack had seen the preparation for that, the slight withdrawal
of steel that indicated it. He ducked low, back over his bent right leg. The slash had taken the younger man off-balance,
and now Jack lunged, stretching from the crouch to his full length. Desperately, Tarleton threw himself to his right, his
sword point down, just preventing Jack’s from puncturing him. Their hands were almost touching, their bodies close, and the
youth tried to pummel his sword-fist into Jack’s face. Withdrawing his blade and swinging his back leg away, Jack used his
left hand to slap down the blow.

They separated again. Two equal clouds of breath met and mingled in the frigid air.

A voice called out, English, but with an Iroquois accent. ‘You can finish him now, Daganoweda. Your name says what you are
and his says nothing.’

‘And what does that name mean, Até? I always meant to ask,’ said Sheridan.

‘“Inexhaustible”.’ He turned to the Irishman and winked. ‘His first wife gave it to him.’

Jack, meanwhile, simply breathed. He was not as inexhaustible as once he’d been. And his younger opponent would recover quicker.

So he began to attack. He’d noticed that a patch of mud and grass had appeared beneath the snow, scraped up by their endeavours.
All he had to do was draw Tarleton into an extended lunge …

Yet it was he who was drawn. Instead of parrying, Tarleton avoided the blade with a volte, a leap and a thrust to the left
side. Jack had to step hard right to parry it … and his foot landed square in the churned earth and melting snow.

He slipped down to one knee, his sword arm halting his fall. With a grunt, Tarleton drew his weapon back and thrust down with
a blow meant to puncture flesh and snap bone.

With a part of his mind Jack watched the weapon come, aimed straight into his watching eye. With another he let the hand,
still holding his sword that pressed into the snow, slip. So sure was Tarleton of his triumph that his blade didn’t waver,
didn’t follow the slight movement of the head. So he was as surprised as Jack when the point met cloth, not flesh, and plunged
through the collar of Jack’s jacket, the one he’d wished he was no longer wearing, ripping half of it away.

The force of the blow pushed the torn shred of wool down, impaling it into the frozen ground. The weapon shivered with the
blow, then snapped.

‘Hold, sir, hold,’ cried the man acting as President. Tarleton would not be halted. Pulling back the half-sword, now with
its jagged end, he made to thrust again. Yet his target had shifted, Jack had rolled on to his back. His own weapon, lifted
from the snow, came round. The broken blade descended but Jack swiped it aside with the outside of his left hand. At the same
time he jabbed up with his right.

He didn’t have to jab far. Tarleton was falling. Jack’s point pierced his ear in its centre, went through, and held it like
a
piece of meat prepared for an open fire. Blood, for the second time in twenty-four hours, spattered Jack.

‘First Blood … sir,’ Jack said.

A howl from Tarleton, a cry from the onlookers. And another sound, unheard till then – a horn, then another, a third from
their proximity minutes only from the duelling ground.

The combatants were pulled apart. The President came forward.

‘Fielding’s men. The Runners are come! Here’s First Blood drawn and honour satisfied, eh? Shake hands and let’s be gone. None
of us wants to spend time in the Clink, do we, gentlemen?’

‘Come, Jack, to Drury Lane.’ Sheridan’s face was flushed. ‘I’ll dress you as Harlequin in a pantomime and hide you onstage.
And, by God, if you don’t put this into a new play, I will!’

The horns were drawing closer, and the yelping of dogs was added to them. The hunt was on. At the far side of the trampled
square of snow, Viscount Savingdon had withdrawn Jack’s sword and was trying to stem the blood flowing from Tarleton’s ear
while Von Schlaben whispered urgently into the other.

‘No!’ screamed Banastre Tarleton. Suddenly he leaped to his left, where his valet still held the weapons that had been rejected
for the duel. Pulling one of the cavalry sabres from its sheath, he ran across the square towards Jack.

Jack, shrugging into his cloak, turned at the scream, but not in time. The heavy blade was rising and, in that instant, both
he and Tarleton knew that there would be no second miss, no collar to save him now.

Something else did. Something that flew from the edge of the clearing and struck the shrieking man on his temple, just before
the sabre could begin its descent. Tarleton dropped to
the ground as if he’d been shot. The sword sank into the snow beside him while, on his other side, another weapon fell as
if from the sky.

‘God?’ yelled Sheridan, looking up, as if searching for the source of such divine deliverance.

‘Até,’ said Jack, and bent to pick up the tomahawk. ‘Good throw, brother.’

The Mohawk thrust the weapon back into his belt and shrugged. ‘I do not understand all the rules of these contests. But as
your Second, was I not meant to stop such a thing?’

Savingdon had rushed to the fallen man. ‘Your savage has killed him!’ he cried.

‘If my
savage
had meant to kill him, then he’d be dead.’ Jack smiled. ‘Is that not right, Até? You struck him with the top of the weapon,
not the cutting edge, eh?’

For the first time, Até looked a little disconcerted. ‘Actually, brother, maybe it was just not such a good throw.’

The horn blasts sounded again, much nearer now. Shouts too, seemingly from all sides.

‘Come, gentlemen,’ said Sheridan, ‘time to make our exit.’

The crowd had scattered swiftly, for anyone arrested at the scene of a duel could be prosecuted. The largest body, counting
on the strength of their numbers, headed for the most direct route back to the road – which was, of course, the direction
from which the constables were approaching. Others broke, in singles and pairs, in all directions.

‘This way,’ called Sheridan.

They burst through a screen of trees cresting a small bank. The snow had drifted here, rising to their thighs, making it hard
going. To their left came an excited shout, a blast of horn. Looking there, Jack saw three men in grey greatcoats. Each was
armed and one now unleashed two hounds.

‘To the right, lads,’ Jack cried, and began to straddle the snow, seeming to go where it was thickest. It was exhausting
work but looking back, Jack saw his choice had been correct; for the dogs were finding the drifts too deep, leaping like porpoises
in a white sea only to be swallowed and having to leap again. Their handlers were not faring any better.

They had gained some advantage when they reached a drover’s path where the snow had been beaten down with hooves. Immediately,
they began to run, stumbling at first, used as they were to the sensation of resistance. Soon, however, they picked up a good
pace, though by the sounds of the yelps behind them, it would not be long before the dogs were moving swifter than they on
the packed snow.

Ahead, through the gloom and falling snow, they saw a light. A shepherd’s hut stood on the edge of the common there.

‘The Windsor Road, I think. Means our landau is round the other side, dammit.’ Sheridan was breathing more heavily than the
others, unused to this outdoor work.

‘It would have been secured by the Runners anyway.’ Jack led them around the side of the hut. In its lee they paused for a
moment, squatted down. Sheep in a pen regarded them incuriously. ‘If Windsor’s that way then so’s the river. We can lose the
dogs in the reeds on the bank. Come on.’