Absolute Honour

by C. C. Humphreys

  The explosion was temporarily halted. Jack turned to her. ‘I am not sure I have anything more to say, Mother. I just know,’ he closed his eyes, ‘that I have already killed my fair share.’ He opened them again, so he would not have to see the shadows, dancing there upon a canvas wall. ‘One more than my fair share, actually. I have killed enough.’

  The Llandoger Trow on the Bristol Docks had not changed much in the two years since his stay, but his reception there had. He’d been slightly disappointed to discover that he no longer had his former allure for Clary the maid and the landlady, Mrs Hardcastle. There was no fighting over his blanket now. Partly because there wasn’t one, partly because he was not alone in the bed but shared it by day with a Maltese sailor called Cunha and half the night with a Scot who had vouchsafed no name because he was always too drunk to recall it. The ladies remembered him well enough, to tell by their greetings; but they remembered his purse even better, it appeared, and when they were made aware that it now contained only the sparse five guineas his mother had managed to slip him when his father cut him off, they were quickly about other business.

  Still, the tavern was the place to be, for all the news of the docks came to it with the clientele. If he were to find a ship, the name would be mentioned there first. But Cunha and the insensible Scot were just two of many who also lingered. The war’s ending had thrown sailors out of service along with soldiers. The privateers had disbanded, the Navy reduced its establishment and the merchant fleet could take its pick of experienced seamen, thus severely reducing a landsman like Jack’s hopes of working his passage. What was left of his guineas – most of it, he lived cheap – might buy him a fourth-rate berth in a fifth-rate tub. But he would have nothing left when he reached his destination.

  Perhaps I should have stayed on half-pay, he thought, staring down into the dregs of ale that had lasted an hour. Or waited until our wages arrears were issued. But once his decision had been made, Absolute House was no longer welcoming. Burgoyne had offered him room with the regiment, obviously hoping that he would eventually persuade Jack to change his mind. But he was determined to be off.

  He had got as far as Bristol and here he was stuck. Laying down his pint pot – the barman was encouraged to move lingerers on and had been eyeing Jack for a good quarter-hour – Jack decided to take another stroll around the docks. Ships came in all the time. Perhaps he could make himself useful to an owner during unloading, ingratiate himself into a berth.

  He turned up the collar of his coat against the wind that blew in from the harbour mouth. It had been a chill May and, in the two weeks he’d been there, did not appear to be getting any warmer.

  His walk took him to the Customs House. Captains would report there first and notices would often be placed in its windows regarding the hiring of crews. But the ones that greeted Jack were those he had already read, all vacancies filled. Disconsolate, he was about to turn away when he suddenly saw, in the left corner of a window, an announcement in newsprint that had not been there before. It was torn from the London Gazette and read:

  This is to give notice to the officers, seamen and others belonging to the Sweet Eliza that all disputes concerning the recent action against the French privateer, Robuste, have been settled at last and that the prize money for the capture of said privateer, together with the sale of all its goods, will be paid on Tuesday 17 May at nine o’clock in the morning, at the sign of the Llandoger Trow on the docks.

  Jack turned and ran back to the inn, straight to the rear of it where he forced a grumbling landlady to open the strong room. The woman stood over him as he threw up the lid of his trunk and riffled through the three books he had there. It was in the last one, a copy of Pope’s Rape of the Lock, that he found it, marking his place.

  Clutching the prize ticket, he turned and smiled up at the landlady. ‘Mrs Hardcastle,’ he said, ‘is that charming room over the front still available?’

  Both the landlady and her maid were suddenly as friendly as they had been during his previous stay, though Jack declined any offers beyond the best of food and ale. The prize agents were less so because they’d hoped that few of the Sweet Eliza’s crew would still be in Bristol after such a long delay and they would be able to hold the money in their banks on interest. But more than half showed up at the tavern the next morning with Jack first in the line. His fears that somehow Red Hugh had made it to Bristol before Portugal with the paper signing over Jack’s share to him proved groundless.

  ‘A lieutenant’s six, is it?’ The agent, an ill-shaved fellow with greasy black ringlets, looked up at him suspiciously. ‘You don’t look much like a seaman to me.’

  ‘He’s not. But he’s a bonny fighter and you’ll pay him straightway, Peters.’

  Jack turned. ‘Lieutenant Engledue,’ he said, ‘or is it Captain now?’ The man looked vastly different from the old drinker Jack had known aboard. The capture of the Robuste had obviously been the beginning of his revival.

  ‘Captain, aye.’ The man nodded. ‘And when we are done our business here, I’d be delighted to buy you a drink.’

  ‘And I shall drink it with pleasure,’ said Jack.

  Because the Sweet Eliza was a merchantman with a small crew, and since many had died in the fight or of the subsequent sickness, there were fewer to share the bounty. The owners having taken their half and money having been already set aside for legitimate relics of the fallen, each share was worth thirty pounds, Jack’s six thus netting him thirty in coin and a promissory note on Coutts bank for one hundred and ten more, the advance being deducted. Handsome enough, even if the promise of fifty to each boarder had gone into the barrel along with Captain Link.

  Much later, over many ales and not a few rums, with the fight refought from a dozen different angles, new heroes made, new villains damned and, at last, most of the crew asleep where they sat at the long tables of the tavern’s back room, the two most sober – or least drunk – conversed.

  ‘And now, Mr Absolute,’ Engledue, on Jack’s urging, had at last dropped the appellation Lieutenant, ‘What will you be doing with your share of the prize?’

  Jack swirled rum in the mug before him. ‘The paper I’ll trade for one in a colonial bank. The coin I’ll use to buy a passage thither.’

  ‘A most comfortable one, with change to spare.’ Engledue nodded. ‘Yet if you would forsake a little of that comfort for some pleasant company …’

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘I am just become master of a sweet little poleacre, the Dublin Castle. Part owner, too, for I bought a share on the promise of this payout. I have taken on most of the old crew from the Sweet Eliza.’ He nodded at the snoring forms around them, then leaned forward to rest his arms upon the table. ‘We are bound first for Jamaicy to take on sugar and then we proceed directly to New England. So if you would care to travel again with your old shipmates … ?’

  ‘I would – so long as you do not traffic in slaves.’

  ‘Ah, I remember now. How you incited poor dead Captain Link!’ He smiled. ‘And that Irish fellow. Quite the trickster. I was hoping to encounter him here today. Are you sure you never did hear of him again?’

  Jack had enjoyed the tales of Red Hugh in the fight as much as the rest. But he’d said nothing further. ‘Never,’ he said.

  ‘And you such shipmates?’ Engledue sighed. ‘Well, anyway, I can assure you there’ll be no slaves aboard the Dublin Castle. Save Link’s former one, Barabbas.’ He pointed to a slumped black figure.

  ‘Then I accept the invitation with delight.’ Jack reached for a jug, poured two more tots of rum. ‘And here’s to a friend well met.’

  They sipped, lowered. ‘And with the French beaten we will not have to fight, thank God.’ Engledue raised his glass, stood and shouted, ‘Up, you drunken dogs! On your feet. Let’s have a standing toast while still on land.’ The company, such as could sway up, now did. ‘To calm seas, kind winds and no pirates!’

  ‘Huzzah!’

  ‘And to his Majesty the
King!’

  ‘Huzzah!’

  He happened to be glancing down, so he saw it, the one man there who did it: McRae, Jack remembered his name to be, a member of the Forecastle Club of the Sweet Eliza, passing his glass over the water jug before he drank.

  Jack would not toast the King across the water. But there were two Irish cousins he could remember now. ‘Aye,’ he said softly to himself, raising his mug, ‘to absent friends and old lovers.’

  – EPILOGUE –

  Indian Summer

  Moors Charity School, Connecticut, September 1763

  As soon as Dr Andrews turned to the board, the young man’s gaze went to the window. It was a question of timing it just right, to be aware – even as he stared and yearned and imagined – of the black gown beginning to turn back. It would not do to be caught again, for it would be the third time in a week, and the punishments grew with each offence. The next one would be physical correction, made to bend before the class while a switch was liberally applied to his arse. The pain was nothing, an insect bite. But the indignity! Beyond these walls, he was still a member of the Wolf clan, a warrior of the Mohawk tribe of the Iroquois nation, and five scalps hung from his mother’s lodge post. Here he was a schoolboy not even known by his tribal name but by his baptismal one, James.

  The cloak swung back as did his face. Eleazar Andrews looked at him suspiciously, as if he’d detected movement, then gestured to the board. ‘Ut plus the subjunctive. It is called a conditional clause,’ he said. ‘You will turn to your Cicero and find me examples.’

  Like the rest of them, he scrambled quickly for the text. The quickest, as always, was Joseph Brant, his hand shooting up, citing page and verse to the teacher’s approving nods. Joseph was the bright star in Andrews’s little firmament, which galled since they both came from the same village, Canajoharie, and Joseph’s triumphs had been told over the lodge fires again and again the previous summer. It had nearly made him refuse to return, especially after a season of freedom spent hunting again in his forests. It was only the thought of Brant jeering at his failure to William Johnson, who sponsored them both, that drove the young man back.

  The gown turned; chalk scraped out the quote upon the black. He looked outside, to the higher ground and its scant remnants of forest. He’d sometimes see riders cresting the ridge road there – as one did even now.

  The clause written, Andrews turned again, the young man’s face swinging to meet him.

  Why did it have to be Cicero? The lawyer was so dull. In Caesar’s Gallic wars he’d have found a conditional clause as fast as his rival. In Shakespeare he knew a dozen, more. But he was not supposed to read Shakespeare, even though that was truly what he’d come to school to do. Once the rules of English grammar were safely driven into them, Dr Andrews did not believe further in living languages, except what came in King James’s Bible. So solo study was reserved for the very few hours they were free, when he could retrieve his book from its hiding place in the barn. It contained all the plays and it had cost him most of the proceeds from his summer trapping. It was worth every fur.

  ‘Anyone else?’ For once Andrews was ignoring Joseph’s thrust-up arm, staring over the dozen lowered heads, each one sporting the black hair of the Iroquois, cropped short above the stiff white collars of their shirts. Someone answered, a Seneca baptised Jeremiah. The cloak turned, he turned.

  The rider was halfway to the school. Closer to, he thought there was something familiar about him. The man rode one horse, led another, both laden with wrapped bundles. He had probably seen him before, one of the many traders who passed through Lebanon, a trapper perhaps taking furs to New Haven or even Boston. Their numbers would grow as the winter drew closer, though this September was the kind that made him believe the snows would never return. Sweat still pooled under his collar each day, its stain to be scrubbed away each night.

  ‘James!’ The harsh cry jerked his head back. Andrews had turned, unnoted. ‘I have warned you, boy—’

  ‘Rider, sir,’ he answered, wondering still how that voice could induce fear in him when, in another world, under another name, he’d killed five men. ‘You asked to be warned of any approach.’

  ‘Outside the classroom, and after class, I said.’ Dr Andrews glared but did not reach for his stick. Instead, he peered over his spectacles through the window. ‘And I told you that we were expecting the Reverend Wilson, from Mount Sinai. A true man of God to instill some respect into you Indians!’ He glowered at them all. ‘That is obviously some filthy tinker and you,’ he pointed at him, ‘had better pay closer attention.’

  He faced the board and the young man immediately looked out again. The rider was only about a hundred yards off now and, if he did not look entirely clean, he could not be described as filthy. True, he had a thick beard that almost rode up to meet the uncocked hat, but both head covering and dark coat were clean of all but road dust, and the boots had spurs that sparkled in the late-afternoon sun. As he watched, he kept an ear on the scraping of chalk. As soon as the squeal stopped he would turn back. Till then, he could watch the traveller and remember what travelling was like.

  The school was an outlying building of the town and the road went past the gate of their compound with its single whitewashed house, its brown stable and dormitory. Instead of riding out of view, however, the man reined in. One of Andrews’s indentured servants was hoeing the cabbage patch nearby and the man called to him, perhaps asking him for directions to the nearest inn. There was only one in Lebanon, a place of notorious sin, the Doctor always said. So now he had even more envy for this traveller who had goods to trade. He would ride past the gate. He would go and sin.

  Not yet. The man dismounted, tied both animals to a fence. Then he did a most unusual thing. He reached up and pulled one rifle from its leather sheath, then reached back and slipped another rifle from a bedroll. Then, shouldering both of them, he walked up the stairs and entered the house.

  ‘You!’ The shout came loud, startling. Andrews was facing him now, fury on his face, stick in hand. ‘I have warned you. I have been lenient. Too lenient, it seems. Come up here.’

  ‘Sir! Someone—’

  ‘Now, boy. No more excuses!’

  He had just risen, when the door opened. The traveller stood there, guns on shoulders, looking slowly around the room. And it was only then that he realized that the rider did not look familiar because he was of a type that rode past often; he looked familiar because the young man knew him. Different than he remembered; older, wider, taller. That beard. Also – and he could see this immediately – there was something in the eyes, some darkness that had not been there before.

  Those eyes, searching, found him, despite the cropped hair, the white shirt, the stiff collar. A light came into them, banishing the darkness, changing the face.

  ‘So, Até,’ Jack Absolute said, holding out one gun, ‘do you want to go hunting?’

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  As many may remember, I played the role of Jack Absolute in 1987. This has led to an occasional weirdness in the writing process, with my old stage incarnation regularly appearing at my shoulder to demand better lines! Well, it got even weirder with this book – for in it I decided to tell the ‘true’ story of The Rivals.

  In the first novel in the series, Jack Absolute, my hero witnessed a production of the play. During it he mused on how Sheridan, to whom he had told the story one drunken night, ‘had usurped his youthful folly for a romantic comedy, when the original was more of a farce and, in the end, almost a tragedy.’ The one word I regret now is ‘almost’. But I only had the vaguest notions then of how this new novel would develop. It was one of the main reasons I had to return to the very beginning of Jack’s life and tell his whole story – including the episode that became The Rivals.

  An audience at the play (and I have seen it twice in the last two years, in London and New York) would spot the similarities – the baronet’s son assuming the role of an impoverished Ensign to woo a young lady add
icted to romantic novels; the pugnacious Irishman; the domineering father trying to force his son to marry whom he chooses … and choosing the very woman Jack wants to marry! I have had great fun blending, and distinguishing, play and novel. Jack does take the nom de coeur of Beverley, Fagg is his servant, Sir James is undoubtedly modelled on Sir Anthony Absolute in all his bellowing tyranny. And close readers may even spot the odd line – ‘Thirsty work on the roads!’; ‘Their regular hours stupefy!’ and, especially, ‘This is what comes … of reading!’ I hope all this is considered homage and not plagiarism!

  The episode Sheridan steals for his comedy (and I’ve stolen back – did I mention how weird it gets?) turns into the tragedy within these pages. I always hope that Jack grows with every outing, his experiences shaping the man. I want each book to be about something and this one, as the title suggests, is about honour. If men of the age were obsessed by it, living by it and very often dying for it, they still debated it fiercely – this ‘fine, imaginary notion’, this ‘shadow’, as Addison had it in his play, Cato. Jack is part of that debate; he assumes one thing, learns something else – perhaps that honour has a price that it is often very high indeed.

  Research for this book, as ever, was partly on my feet. I did get to Bath, spending several days with one of my editors, the tremendous Rachel Leyshon. She not only lives there, but lives in Gay Street where, at this very period, one of my main sources, Tobias Smollett, began the great Humphrey Clinker whose pages I have pillaged for details of the town and its ways. It was not the only coincidence – while there I was browsing a theatre history in the library only to discover that an actor in the Theatre Royal company of 1760/1761 was one Mr Harper – this is after I knew that Fanny Harper (his wife) would have to be in the company there!

  I didn’t, annoyingly, get back to Rome. But Smollett was again very useful with his Travels through France and Italy, about manners, food and, especially, odours – Johnson didn’t satirize him as Dr Smellfungus for nothing. And the collection The Stuart Court in Rome edited by Edward Corp was excellent. For all things Jacobite, Robert Louis Stevenson was my benchmark; and I was thrilled when, on my way back from Bath, I stopped at the Llandoger Trow pub on the old Bristol Docks, where they used to pay out the prize money (and where I used to drink when I was at the Old Vic Theatre), to discover that it was considered the model for the Admiral Benbow tavern in Treasure Island.