The Blooding of Jack Absolute

by C. C. Humphreys

  By the warmth of a piquet fire, made more loquacious by a tot of rum, information was swiftly conveyed, with Jack a little regretful. His plan had been to give the British a day’s warning at the least; this had been reduced to hours by the French following fast in their canoe’s wake.

  ‘We made the mistake of trying to paddle against the tide and tired ourselves. We grounded to rest and wait for it to turn and then only just preceded the French upon it.’ Jack held out his hands to the flames. ‘But we lingered long enough to watch them begin to debouch upon the shore at Point aux Trembles.’

  ‘Dinna fash, lad, for you’ve done well. We’d pulled a Frog boatman from a large piece o’ floatin’ ice who said he’d fallen off one of their landing bateaux. He confessed their army was landing at the Point. But some thought it a little too pat and were looking for signs o’ ’em elsewhere. It’s nae wonder you got such a reception on the strand.’ MacDonald took Jack’s arm, raised him from his crouch. ‘But now I think ye must report this in person to Murray. He and I dinna get on so good since he remembers me being, first and always, Wolfe’s man. If I say black, he says white and since I’d an opinion the boatman should be believed, he’s chosen to think t’opposite. Come, let’s to him.’ They began to move away along the cliffs toward the city walls, bulkier shadows within the first light of dawn. ‘And as we walk, ye can tell me of the enemy’s strength. Ye mentioned ye’d scanned their tallies, nae right?’

  By the time they entered through the postern by the Glacière Bastion and were marching up toward the looming mass of the Ursuline Convent over which the Union Standard flew, Jack, with Até adding his observations from his own wanderings in the French bivouac lines, had appraised MacDonald of all they knew.

  ‘That means Lévis has nigh on double our numbers. For many have died here during this awful winter, and most of those that remain are sick from the bloody flux and the bloody gruel we’ve called food. We’re nae in a good state, ken.’

  Jack had already noticed. Most of the soldiers they passed were urchins in uniform, gaunt limbs protruding from over-large coats. In contrast he and Até, with their winter diet of bear, deer and burdock root, appeared like town burghers to beggars. Yet if in some armies their leaders contrived to feast while their followers starved, this was not true of Murray. Jack remembered his features to be sharp but they had thinned to the point of caricature: his brother general, Townshend, would have made much of them upon a paper, no doubt. They reminded Jack of nothing so much as the gargoyle’s mask Burgoyne had sported at the Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens, in that other life he’d led.

  Murray’s dourness though, had diminished not a jot. Jack’s resurrection elicited no more than a grunt, his appearance in top-knot and tattoos only the muttered comment of, ‘Fellow’s gone Native? Seen it in India, of course. Shows a lack of Christian virtues and a weakness in the blood.’ His shake of the head indicated that he’d expected nothing less.

  Jack’s report did, however, finally force the diminutive Scot’s head up from his map table. He was silent as Jack repeated the French regimental tallies and only spoke when he confirmed those regiments’ arrival. ‘So the frozen Frog was being truthful. Hmm! Thought so all along.’ Ignoring the obvious rolling of MacDonald’s eyes, he continued, ‘Then the Chevalier de Lévis will seek to cut off my outposts at Lorette,’ he stabbed down at his map, ‘and Sainte Foy,’ he stabbed again. ‘So we must sally out and withdraw them at dawn. And then,’ a light finally enlivened the studiedly dull eyes, ‘then we’ll see if the chevalier has the balls for a real fight. MacDonald, summon my brigadiers.’

  His sunken eyes dropped again to the map before him.

  Jack and Até were halfway to the door MacDonald had left open when Murray spoke again. ‘Cavalryman, ain’t you, Absolute?’

  ‘Dragoon, sir.’

  ‘A dragoon without a horse is as much use to me as a cundum with patches. But your present garb and your companion,’ he had failed even to look at Até during the previous conversation, ‘might prove useful.’ He looked up now, regarded them both keenly. ‘One of the French advantages over us is their exploitation of their Native alliances. Only General Amherst in the south has many such Natives in his command, useful creatures who provide his eyes and ears and terrorize with their infernal yelps. I have only a few. Untrustworthy dogs, the lot.’

  Jack was hoping that Até was not understanding all of the general’s Lothian drawl. He doubted it, from the stiffening at his side.

  Murray continued, ‘But you and he, Absolute, you have already had a moderate success in that way. Perhaps you could continue it.’

  ‘Sir, I would be hap—’

  Murray cut him off. ‘Stay outside the city. If I can, I will give Lévis a bloody nose, a quietus that may make Wolfe’s victory of last September seem the paltry and fortunate thing it was. But these odds you speak of are heavy. So if I am forced to withstand a siege within these ill-prepared walls, then you must be my eyes and ears without them.’ He reached up to remove his spectacles and pinch between his eyes. ‘This, above all else, is your task: to give me a day’s notice of any ship coming upstream and, most importantly, what colour that ship flies. For if it’s the Union Standard then the Navy has won the race following the ice-melt and we will, by God and the Admiralty’s good grace, be relieved. But if it’s the fleur de lys at the main mast … well, then maybe I can get better terms from Lévis before he realizes. Is that all clear?’

  It was barely a question. ‘Yes, sir,’ was all Jack could say.

  ‘Good. Now go away. I’ve a battle to fight.’

  Outside the walls of the convent, Jack turned to Até. ‘I am sorry,’ he began, ‘about the reception that my countrymen—’

  ‘I care nothing for that,’ said the Mohawk, ‘I only care that he is giving me what I missed out on when the Abenaki took me prisoner. What I most want in the world.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  Até’s eyes gleamed. ‘A battle, Daganoweda. I am going to fight in a battle.’ And on the word, he threw back his head and gave out that war cry Murray had referred to and Jack had failed to master. ‘Ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-Ah-Hum!’ It started on a high note, descended down the scale, then paused fractionally before ending in an explosive return to that first note. Jack, who’d heard it before, merely winced. But the town’s people nearby began instant and frantic genuflections while Redcoats reached for their swords.

  ‘“O that this too, too solid flesh would melt, thaw and resolve itself into a dew.”’

  Até’s propensity for applying Hamlet to any and every situation was starting to annoy Jack. He was all for apposite quotes, but the sole connection here was the word ‘thaw’, evidenced by the continuous drip from the striped maples and cedars, the occasional sloughing of branches of snow that had already drenched more than one unwary soldier. The two of them, having moved away from the cliff top tree line for that reason, now rested halfway between the edge and the two blockhouses that dominated the flat ground. The soldiers could not move without orders but as the only two Iroquois fighting for King George that day, Murray’s licence meant they could go where they chose, within reason. And MacDonald, in charge of the extreme right flank, had rapidly acknowledged Jack’s strengths … and weaknesses.

  ‘Ye’re no infantryman, Absolute,’ he’d said. ‘So if ye’ve a mind to fight in feathers that’s grand. Just so long as ye keep yer feet on the ground and don’t go leading any cavalry charges, ken?’

  Though Jack now grunted his displeasure at Até’s versifying, the Mohawk merely grinned and jiggled the raven plumage he’d fashioned into a head-dress. He was as delighted as Jack had ever seen him, as much as when they’d killed the bear or when Segunki had been halted mid-scalp. If the Mohawk shook with pleasure, his wish, to take part in a pitched battle, having been granted, Jack, who had already experienced one, and on this same field, shivered. It wasn’t the slush he was lying in to avoid fire so much as the dislocation. All through his life Time had played tricks on
him – his inability to be punctual was just one sign of that. But that dislocation was even more clearly expressed in the scene unfolded before him now; for it was as if seven months had not passed and he’d just arrived from England.

  Once more armies manoeuvred upon the Plains of Abraham. Once more he began the fight atop the cliffs above the beach. Yet what had been the British right flank then was now its left; it was the Redcoats who had their backs to the distant walls of Quebec, the white-clad French who assembled to assault them. And looking across the field now, Jack could not help but note the main difference between the days: the huge gaps between regiments and the thinness of what had anyway been a thin red line.

  The windmill that stood on that far flank had been under sustained attack for an hour now, had been taken, then taken back. Their turn would be coming soon enough. MacDonald’s volunteers – light infantry together with Moses Hazen’s green-clad Rangers – were charged with holding the British left. They had learned from that first battle, where overlapping Canadians and Indians had caused such damage with their sniping, probably killing Wolfe himself. So they were part of a loose line that held the cliff-top scrub – Jack’s second reason for being there. For if the battle went badly, he needed to be close to the river, their canoe and Murray’s mission.

  Shouting from afar caused Jack to raise his head. Through breaks in the powder smoke and the snow that had started to come sporadically in big-flaked flurries, he could see Redcoats streaming away from the windmill, a standard with a white cross and red and gold bars raised. He saw the regiment on that far side – the 48th, he thought – ‘refuse’, swinging its ranks so they now formed a side to the British line, a front to the French beginning to overlap. And he saw a slight shifting in each of the regiments, passing down them in turn like a breeze disturbing rows of barleycorn.

  MacDonald, ambling toward them along the line of prone bodies as if he were out for a Sabbath-day stroll in Edinburgh, distracted Jack from his bloody thoughts. ‘The windmill’s fallen, ye’ll have seen?’ To their nods he continued. ‘Aye, weel, it’ll be our turn next, nae fear. Lévis is no’ the fool Murray thinks him. He’ll no’ charge our guns in the centre. He’ll fold in our flanks and send us pell-mell back to town. In fact,’ he raised his face into the wind and sniffed like a hound, ‘if I’m no’ mistaken, that’s him coming now.’

  The sniper fire had increased even as he spoke. Scattered figures had begun to run towards them, would squat, shoot, reload, run on. Some sported tunques, the knitted wool caps of the Militia, white and red and blue. Many, though, wore very different headgear.

  ‘Abenaki,’ said Até, pointing.

  Jack could indeed see the shaved heads, painted in black or yellow blocks from crown to nose tip. Their top-knots were shorter than those of the Iroquois, with shanks hanging over their ears. ‘Will our friends from St Francis be among them?’ wondered Jack aloud.

  ‘By God’s grace,’ said Até, fingering knife and crucifix at his belt.

  Behind those darting, yelling men, more ordered ranks had formed. With a cheer of ‘Vive le Roi! Vive la Paix!’, with drums thumping and standards dipping only to rise aloft, the French right flank advanced.

  ‘Up, men,’ yelled MacDonald, drawing his claymore for emphasis. ‘Up and face them.’

  The scattered line rose, their threadbare single rank at least meaning that the sniper fire had little effect.

  ‘Cock your firelocks!’ MacDonald bellowed. ‘Present your firelocks. Now, steady, lads. Steady!’

  Hazen’s Rangers, out of earshot in the blockhouses, had already begun to shoot, from too great a distance to cause much harm. The French swept on.

  ‘Fire!’ MacDonald yelled.

  Jack and Até discharged with the rest; several Frenchmen fell. But these were not the ranks that Jack had stood in that day in September. This was not a volley to halt an army. This was a hundred muskets at best. The white ranks merely flinched and marched on.

  ‘Le Roi! La France! La Paix!’

  ‘Thought as much.’ MacDonald peered through the dissolving gunsmoke. ‘I doubt the Rangers will bide long in those houses. So I’m off to bring Fraser’s and Bragg’s over to steady the flank. You lads take to the trees and harry them. Try to make them divert some men your way.’ In a softer voice he added, ‘Good luck, Absolute. There’s nary another man can say he fought the Plains of Abraham twice, once as soldier and once as savage. It’s too good a story for you not to live to tell it. Adieu.’

  He turned, began to walk toward the red ranks some hundred yards away. He took perhaps ten paces.

  ‘Ah-ai-ai-ai-ee-yah!’ came the cry, seeming to split the mists of smoke just ahead of the running figures that actually parted them. A muddle of Militia and Abenaki ran at the gap that had widened between the cliff top and the 28th Foot. Ran at MacDonald.

  ‘No!’ screamed Jack. Already re-loaded, he dropped now, aimed, shot. A shaven figure jerked, tumbled; but he was only one of the horde that engulfed the Scot. He’d drawn his claymore again, the huge sword rising high, sweeping down, even as Jack took a step forward. But then the swirl split, the wave rolled on, leaving a body crushed on the ground like a broken Chelsea figure. For a moment, there was no one between Jack and MacDonald. He got up, ran, aware of Até following.

  Donald MacDonald lay there. Or rather a part of him did, for it was obvious that the Scot’s soul no longer inhabited his body.

  As one set of drums beat the retreat, their sound moving away towards the city, another drew nearer, calling the advance, its rhythm punctuated by the terrible shrieks of the Native warriors. Jack now recalled what the old man at St Francis, Bomoseen, had once told him, what a Native warrior wanted from war: booty and glory. And the latter was represented by scalps. He could not let that fate befall the body before him. ‘Até,’ he hissed, ‘play dead.’

  Instantly, Até fell back onto the ground, mouth open, eyes half-shut. Jack sprawled across MacDonald’s corpse. He decided to keep his lids fast. He could hear clearly enough what was happening.

  French orders were bellowed. The regiment had halted where the British line had lately stood and their volley rolled over him, wrapping him in its roar. No sooner had its echo died than the advance was cried again, shod feet passing by him, over him … one, onto him, as an infantryman used his back as a stair, a moment of agony he managed somehow to withstand silently. Then they were gone, diminishing shudders as they moved away.

  What had been a continuous roar started to break down into the individual sounds he realized he’d been hearing all the while but which had formerly been subsumed into the whole, like instruments in an orchestra. At first it was the real ones that dominated, French trumpet answering English bugle, drum for drum. Then, as these moved away with the Redcoat retreat, voices succeeded them in a variety of tones and pitches, from the bassoon-like groaning of one felled man, to the piccolo prayer of another. More joined, a chorus growing in disharmony, agony.

  And then Jack heard some of those choristers cut off and he risked an eye.

  Four Abenaki were moving through the bodies. As Jack watched, one bent, knife in hand. There was an increase in high-pitched prayer, a Cockney voice pleading, ‘Nah! Nah! Please Gawd, nah!’ then a sudden shriek, as suddenly cut off. The warrior rose, clutching something bloody, thrusting it towards the sky. ‘Ah-ai-ai-ai-ee-yah!’ he yelled the Abenaki version of the war whoop. Shoving his trophy into his hide belt, he and his companions moved on. Towards Jack. They were less than a dozen foot away.

  Jack looked to Até, still maintaining his semblance of death, with one eye open and glazed. Now he winked it at Jack, who winked back and tightened his grip on his tomahawk.

  Two of the warriors were already over them when both Jack and Até leapt up. Jack jerked his blade hard into the first Abenaki’s calf. He screamed, fell back. In the corner of his vision Jack was aware of Até rising like a snake, striking.

  Another Abenaki was raising a war club to strike down. Jack, on his heels hurl
ed himself forward, arms wrapping around his opponent’s legs, who struck down on Jack’s back, the awkward angle sapping the club’s force. Jack, with a grunt of effort, straightened his legs, lifting the man off the ground, then threw him back, his shoulder jamming hard down into the man’s ribcage. Fingers reached for him, jabbing up into his face, gouging at his eyes. His hands and tomahawk pinned under the weight of them both, Jack did the only thing he could. Bit, and bit hard. The fingers pulled back, the body rolled, and Jack was free. Lifting his head back, he smacked it down on the bridge of the other man’s nose. The body went limp.

  A cry from behind him, something whirring through the air above him, another body falling before him. The first Abenaki, who had held Jack’s tomahawk in his leg, now had Até’s in his chest.

  ‘That’s one I pay you back, Daganoweda!’

  Jack, his eyes watering from the blow he’d delivered, looked through liquid to his companion. Até had taken a cut to his chest, the blood running freely to meld with the war paint. But the two Abenaki who’d come for him lay at his feet.

  Jack wiped his eyes, looked swiftly around them. Others yet moved, fought, scavenged and scalped over the battlefield, none within a hundred yards. Anything beyond was hard to tell for the snow, that had drifted in occasional flurries throughout the morning, had returned in force. He suddenly realized how cold he was and he cursed his choice to imitate the Mohawk and fight with nothing but tattoos covering his chest. The chill removed all power to think.

  ‘What now?’ he said to Até.

  ‘Now?’ Até snatched up one of his recent opponents’ knives, bent and lifted the Abenaki by the scalplock.

  Jack looked, not to the man just about to receive the very thing he’d intended for them but to the other of Até’s victims. There was something about him, something familiar. He had seen this man before.

  ‘Wait!’ he yelled, and Até paused, knife raised. ‘Do you see who that is?’