Até came off the wall too, equally pained, equally determined. They met at the exact centre of the pit, both clubs descending for a blow, clacking above their heads, bouncing off, coming together again. Jack struck, Até blocked it; Até struck, Jack fended him off, both sucking air as they brought up their weapons, expelling it as they clashed.
It could not go on, exhaustion and pain had to make one slip and it was Jack. A blow hit his club from his grasp. But Até had not anticipated that giving and his whole body, which he’d put into the blow, followed it through. Suddenly they were side to side, shoulder pressed to shoulder, and Jack reached both his hands down to twist the Mohawk’s wrist, jerking the weapon from his grip, his own hands coming around to grab. Fingers entwined, they spun round and around like a children’s top, bouncing off the earthen walls, to their grunts, to the growing screams of those above them.
Then noise ceased, or at least dropped to only their harsh wheezing, the crump of bodies slammed into packed mud. Until a voice came, new, authoritative, roaring anger and commands. On the instant, the pit was full of bodies breaking them apart. And though he saw the fury and the desire in the Mohawk, Jack saw a glimmer of something else there too, that he suspected was mirrored on his face – relief. Death would not come to either of them that day. And they would not have to kill to avoid it.
– FIVE –
Deliverance
Jack lay listening to the night, wondering what it was that had woken him. He didn’t think it was pain. Though he was beaten for his part in the duel, it wasn’t any more than he usually suffered, the matriarch of the longhouse lacking the stamina and accuracy of even an under-usher at Westminster. It was the organizers who suffered more, Segunki and his cronies, unused to the punishment given to slaves and to the slave work that followed. And he hadn’t rolled onto his side, which, for the first three nights after the fight, had pained Jack far more than the switch stripes on his arse; a bruise had spread in a profusion of purples and eventually yellow.
Of the deliverer of the blow, he saw little. If they had shared the briefest of realizations at the end of their fight, Jack had no desire to expand on the acquaintance. The fellow was still a cheat and he would prefer to keep from his company.
And yet it was from a dream of Até that Jack had awoken. At first he hadn’t been there, hadn’t intruded into the delight of a night at the Five Chimneys, the taste of the inn’s fine Porter more exquisite than Jack had ever known, his comrades’ banter more amusing. Then Mohawk had replaced Mohock at his side, though Até had retained some of Marks’s features, his one knitted eyebrow startling beneath the brightness of the warrior’s shaven head. There were tattoos upon his scalp which seemed to be leaking ink.
Até had led him outside onto a Tothill Fields more studded with trees than Jack remembered it to be. He’d thought the Iroquois wanted to renew their combat but instead he just stared, immobile.
‘What do you want?’ Jack had said and, for reply, the other man gestured toward the river that was the Thames and yet was not, for neither warehouses nor pleasure gardens lined its banks, only an endless forest. Até seemed to be inviting Jack to enter it with him.
‘Now?’ Jack had wanted to be back amidst the tankards and the laughter. Até had nodded, turned … and then Jack had awoken and lay there wondering why. It wasn’t the cold, despite the slave’s position furthest from the hearth. He had taken precautions against it, his thin blanket tucked around, one of the hut dogs pulled close despite its fleas and fetid breath. The hound was asleep, twitching but only slightly, in some dream of its own. No one else moved and the snoring, which could be as bad as at Porten’s dormitory, was light. Pulling the dog closer, Jack was about to try to sleep again, suspecting dawn not to be far off and he would need to be about his chores soon enough. Then what had woken him came again, a whisper, through the thin birch-bark walls.
‘Pass up to the junction there.’
Though the man’s accent was harsh, the words were definitely in English. They were followed by the sound of several pairs of feet moving quietly away. Unfolding himself from the blanket and the dog’s embrace – the animal whimpered but did not wake – Jack climbed carefully over the bodies on the platform, then stepped between those who’d lain closer to the hearths, all the way to the entrance, pausing there, his fingers on the deerskin flap. From another hut a dog started barking, ceasing on the sound of a blow, a sleepy curse. The wind that had been gusting throughout the night dropped now. Jack strained for more English words, which he did not realize till then how much he’d missed. He presumed that the speaker and his soft-footed companions would be trappers like the three Canadians who’d come through the village the week before and had stayed for a night of rum and trading. But they had spoken in their version of French and showed interest in Jack only as a commodity, to be taken off the Abenaki and sold on to the French Army for a suitable price. His captors had declined their offer. These fellows – they were probably from the Colonies to the south – though they might not be able to pay his hostage price, could at least take news of Jack’s imprisonment to the nearest British fort. Contact with them might be his first step to freedom.
Gingerly, he stepped through, lowering the weighted flap behind him. He was immediately shivering, the tattered shirt they’d given him and the frayed buckskin leggings poor protection against a night which smelled of winter fast approaching. The ground was hard and he placed one bare foot atop the other, trying to warm each in turn while he turned in the direction he thought the men had taken. He could see a little, for the night was shading into dawn, the tops of the beech and maples showing what remained of their autumn reds. But there was no movement, no sign of those who had passed. Fearful now that they may already have been on their way out of the village, Jack took a step in pursuit. A bird called, shrill, piercing … and the night exploded.
Lanterns pulled from under overcoats illuminated men where only darkness had been, under the trees, in the shadows of lodges. Brands were lit, flared, and rose like shooting stars to plummet on to birch-bark shelters, barns, piles of drying corn. With the instant crackle came screams of terror from within. A man from the next hut burst from the entrance; gunpowder flashed and the Abenaki flew back as if jerked on ropes.
Whoever was killing his enemy was his friend. ‘Heh!’ Jack yelled, moving along his hut’s wall, waving his arms, ‘Heh, there!’
His reply came in ball, two shattering the bark walls each side of his head. ‘Heh!’ He called again but not so loudly, dropping to the ground, crawling back the way he had come. Another bullet sprayed dirt up into his face and he froze, not sure which way to move, until five warriors ran from his own longhouse, the first two falling to shots, the other three crouching and firing in return, then sprinting away. A group of women emerged, pushing children ahead of them, and Jack took a step toward this crowd – until one of the women pitched forward, half her face ripped away. The children screamed, scattered, some running back inside despite the fire engulfing the wood, some fleeing after the men. The attackers began to whoop and, tomahawks drawn, give chase.
Jack ran too, from the burning longhouse, from the bullet or blade in his back. Yet every way was a variation of one he’d fled – flames, shrieks, gunfire, death. He ran towards a larger group who milled like sheep, until a ragged volley dropped half a dozen into the mud and the rest broke. He found himself running down an avenue of largely clapboard houses that seemed deserted – until another shot came, its wind passing close to his ear. He was looking back, even as he ran forward … and careened into someone.
Bouncing back, falling, he raised arms to ward off blows. Then, through his thrust-out hands, he saw someone doing the same thing.
‘Até!’
The other’s hands lowered. ‘You!’
Another musket cracked nearby, someone shouted, a figure appeared, silhouetted in flame, pointing at them. ‘Quickly,’ hissed Até, leaping up. He disappeared between two houses and Jack followed. A path led
through a copse of trees and leaving it, Até ran another dozen paces then threw himself behind a thick tree-trunk. Jack did the same, just as feet found the path and shouting men ran along it. Ducking his head, Jack waited till the earth stopped trembling before he looked up.
‘They’re … they’re …’
‘Rangers,’ said the Mohawk.
Jack had seen Rangers with the King’s Army at Quebec. ‘They fight on our side, against the Abenaki,’ he said excitedly. ‘They’ve come to rescue us.’
‘They come to kill.’ Até nodded towards the sounds of terror. ‘I tried to speak to them, for Mohawks and Rangers fight side by side.’ He lowered his head. ‘They give me this.’
Jack could see a dark furrow, gleaming red along the crown of the Indian’s head. He swallowed. ‘They tried to shoot me too. But we just have to wait till they beat the Abenaki—’
‘They will not “beat”. They burn, steal, kill. Then go.’
‘So we must go with them.’ Jack half rose, only for the Mohawk to reach out and pull him back down. A shout came from nearby, another two men ran down the path. When they’d passed, Até whispered, ‘They kill all they see, anyone who look like Abenaki. Me. Even you.’ He gestured to Jack’s torn shirt, leggings, his straggly black hair.
‘But …’ Jack’s desperation was overcoming his fear. ‘I must try. I won’t stay here to be a slave any longer.’
Até stared at him intently. ‘Then we go other way.’ His head indicated the forest, away from the river and the direction of the attack.
‘We?’
‘Abenaki maybe think we dead in raid. Maybe they wait for a day to come looking, give us start. We go. Find my people.’
‘Maybe?’
‘Better than here. Better than slave.’
He was right – especially if His Majesty’s Rangers were going to blow his head off before they listened to him. So he nodded and, on Até’s signal, they both rose, heading back down the path towards the clapboard houses. More were burning now but the shots seemed to be coming from their left, so they went right. Soon they came to more bodies, two men, a woman and a child in a huddle. The men had tomahawks which Até picked up, handing one to Jack. The road led them into the centre of St Francis, quiet compared to the noise of fight and terror that now came from the village’s periphery. The doors of the church were thrown back and bodies were strewn up its steps.
Até made to go around, to follow the road out of the village. But Jack hissed, ‘Wait!’ and, despite his companion’s curses, went inside. There were bodies in there too, sprawled over the upturned pews. He didn’t look closely at any after the first one. Each one there, man or woman, had been scalped.
The altar was wrecked, the objects of veneration scattered around. The Silver Madonna was gone, the plinth that had held it, kindling. Beneath it, a moment’s rooting gave him what he sought. Carefully tugging the war club, he pulled the spike out of the vellum and leather. There was a satchel lying in the wreckage on the floor and, dropping Hamlet into it, Jack slung it across his shoulder. There were offerings from the harvest festival too and some ears of dried corn followed the book.
‘Now we can go,’ he said to a glowering Mohawk. Tumult came from the road ahead, shrieks and gunfire, so they cut left and were soon under the canopy. They ran, until the sounds of massacre had faded behind them. And then they ran on.
‘I think we’ve lost—’
Até’s furious gesture halted Jack’s hopeful sentence. He was peering back into the forest so Jack peered too, trying to pierce the thick strands of trees. Even though the canopy had grown thinner with the season, with most of the red and yellows of the maples now lying beneath them, it was still hard to see deeply into the forest, especially in the gloom of twilight. Hard to hear anything beyond the bubbles trapped in his ears that had hummed with every step. They had trotted most of the day since leaving St Francis and, since they’d glanced back from a hilltop an hour before to see sunlight gleaming on muskets, they had run again.
The Mohawk’s hand was still hanging in the air when they both heard it – a distinct crack as something or someone trod on a stick, sounding like a gunshot in the sepulchral silence of the forest. They both looked where they thought it had come from – and there, just passing from tree to tree, a bald head moved, a blue feather, unattached to any bird, swaying across the brow.
Até signalled him down, and the two began to shimmy backwards through the leaves and undergrowth until they reached the scant path they’d stepped off to look. Then they were up, running. Jack felt his back tighten between his shoulder blades as if someone had sighted on a place that would soon hold a bullet or a blade. Immediately, his breath again reverberated in his ears, putting a blanket between him and the sounds of the forest, though it did not shut out the shout that came – the halloo of a hunter sighting his quarry.
Até was moving ever further ahead and Jack couldn’t blame him. He had made it clear what the Abenaki would do if they caught them. It would be death for him, as painful and protracted as possible. Jack, more valuable, they might let live. But he would live without parts of himself he knew he needed.
The track widened, became the floor of a little valley, lined in white birch. He glanced up its steep sides, seeking any shelter to be had, but none was revealed. And since he was looking up, he didn’t see that Até had stopped, just where the valley narrowed again. He ran into his back and both of them sprawled on the soft, leafy ground. The Indian was too winded to do more than gesture. Jack followed the hand, saw that the track didn’t continue into another expanse of forest. It ended, dead, at a cliff. Forty feet below, a stream full of autumn’s rains drove through boulders.
They rose, turned. Four figures were walking slowly towards them down the little valley. Their faces were painted in two colours, melding at the nose, blue and red. Two wore tricorns, beads strung from the brims. The other two, the ones that led, had their heads shaved to the crown, shanks of black hair dangling down their necks. One of these was Segunki, a blue-dyed eagle’s feather swaying across his brow.
He was grinning as he came, the musket easy in the crook of his arm. He stopped about twenty paces from them, said something, and two of the others laughed. The fourth, who was older and must have been the tracker, squatted down, muttering. Segunki nodded then took another step forward.
Beside him, Até had drawn his tomahawk, so Jack did too. The weapon felt awkward in a hand already slick with sweat. He knew it trembled as he raised it but there was nothing he could do about that. Suddenly, the little curiosities shop in Knaves Acre came into his head. He could not understand why, until he remembered that it was full of body parts that he had ogled and pawed and wondered at. Now, in the way that they were looking at him, he felt he was about to become an exhibit himself.
The two other men followed Segunki, and laid down their muskets. Each drew a tomahawk from their belt, a war club from a sling at their side. Até let out a scream of defiance, raising his own weapon high. Segunki laughed and said something to his companions. Instantly, the three of them leant back, then hurled the heavy wooden clubs. All were aimed at Até.He dodged one, knocked another away; but the third took him in the temple and he fell like a poleaxed ox.
The three Abenaki exchanged comments on their throws, the successful one running his fist over his head in some gesture of triumph, immediately emulated by the others. Segunki just continued smiling at Jack, reached into his belt and pulled out a long bladed knife before stepping closer.
Jack looked behind him, at the dark-green water pouring over the rocks below. The fall would probably kill him – which might be a better fate than the one the man advancing with the knife intended for him. But really, there was nothing for it. Setting his feet square, clutching the unfamiliar weapon before him as if it were a sabre, Jack prepared to fight, prepared to die.
The gunshot was startlingly loud. Everyone jumped, but no one more than the tracker. He staggered back, musket clattering to his feet, han
ds reaching to his chest, failing to contain the blood that instantly came there, spreading across the blue of his shirt in a moment. He was on one knee, and then he was cross-legged on the ground, his head sagging.
Everyone looked at him. For an extended moment, nothing moved. It was the cry that roused the Abenaki, had them leaping for the guns they laid down, a long drawn-out battle cry, similar to the one Jack and his friends had attempted in the tavern; very, very different: ‘Ah-ah-ah-ah-AH-HUM!’ It came with something thrown, a tomahawk that plunged into the arm of the second Abenaki. Shrieking, he fell, rose, began to stagger back towards the valley’s end. Segunki and the other warrior, pausing only to snatch up their muskets, followed. All disappeared fast into the trees.
Jack had laid down, though he had no recollection of doing so. Now, as the Abenaki vanished, he got up, staggered a little, stabilized, just as three shapes disengaged from the white birch above and moved rapidly down to the valley floor. There was a man with thick grey hair tied back with a blue ribbon, a younger man, not much older than Jack, and a boy of about eleven.
The older man spoke, a rapid, incomprehensible sentence. Jack shook his head. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, ‘I don’t speak …’
The man frowned. ‘English? Rich Man, Poor Man, Beggary Man, Thief?’
Jack stared at him. ‘I, uh …’
He pointed at himself. ‘King George’s Man.’ Reaching into his shirt, he pulled out a medal, shook it at Jack, who could see, on one of its polished sides, a highly flattering portrait of His Majesty.
The younger man had gone to Até, the boy with him, both helping him rise to a sitting position. Até muttered something and the boy looked up and chattered excitedly.
The older man spoke again. ‘Ga-ne-a-ga-o-no?’ He was pointing at Até.
‘I do not …?’
He thought. ‘Mohawk?’
‘Yes,’ Jack said, ‘he is a Mohawk.’
The Blooding of Jack Absolute Page 25
