Jack Absolute by C. C. Humphreys
Then there was the heat produced by the lamps, by the dozen bodies in their finest clothes, by the richness of the food consumed after weeks at sea on a simpler diet. The cook had not resisted this first chance to shine and had used the fresh provisions brought from the shore to create rare treats: fish baked in herbs and sweet wine, beef wrapped in pastry and flamed with brandy, a dish from India called salmagundi, which consisted of the hot spices of that land enflaming a mélange of minced meat, anchovies and eggs … well, sweat seeped from every man there while the two ladies – Louisa Reardon and one Mrs Skene glowed and dabbed their perfumed handkerchiefs to their brows and breasts.
At that moment, this was distracting Jack the most. He knew he should be listening to the conversations nearest him, the discussions between the officers on whom Burgoyne would be relying. But his attention kept being pulled to Louisa, sat on the General’s left, the way she kept fanning the silk handkerchief across the rise and fall of her glowing décolletage, how the General kept watching her do it as he made her laugh with tales of his London life, his twin arenas of Drury Lane and Parliament. The old rogue had long since conceded Louisa to Jack’s attentions. ‘Miss Reardon is not mistress material,’ he’d declaimed; unlike the wife of the commissary agent, who had already come from shore and awaited Burgoyne in another cabin below. But Jack had drunk enough now to still feel jealous at every laugh.
Fortunately, as Louisa laughed again, that musical run of notes that came from somewhere in her depths, the laugh he wanted reserved only for himself, his attention was demanded by a toast proposed by the man to his left, lower both in age and rank than Jack, and a fellow Cornishman, Midshipman Edward Pellew.
Like Jack, Pellew had the black hair typical of their county. It was pulled back into the queue that most junior naval officers sported, though the wine and the heat had pulled strands from their restraint. These were plastered to the young, flushed face that now thrust towards Jack, a bumper raised before it.
‘’ere, Jack. Let’s you and me pledge to an allegiance as great as we hold to England. And even older.’ He raised his glass. ‘Kernow!’
Jack smiled. He liked Pellew, beyond a countryman’s affinity. When they’d boarded the ship, and the crew had stood to attention to greet Burgoyne on every mast and ratline, one man was at variance with his shipmates. Midshipman Pellew was standing, gloriously alone, on the highest yardarm. On his head. Burgoyne had kept him close ever since.
‘Gwary whek yu gwary tek!’ Jack drained his bumper of Bishop, the heated, spiced liquid firing his throat and chest, and raised the empty vessel.
The loudly expressed toast had halted conversations up and down the table. To the General’s right, Baron von Riedesel, Commander of the German component of the Allied army, leaned into his interpreter and muttered a question. The portly General spoke no English and the attempt for the company to respect that and speak French had degenerated on the third bumper.
The interpreter, a lean Hessian named Von Spartzehn, listened then looked at Jack. ‘Excuse me, Kapitan Absolute. I speak English, as you see, quite excellently. But what you say, it eludes me.’
‘That’s because it is not English, Kapitan, but Cornish, the ancient tongue of Cornwall, now, alas, spoken very little even there.’
‘And what did this mean?’
‘My esteemed young friend proposed the name of our land. Kernow is Cornwall. And I replied with an oath, sworn by two wrestlers before they begin a contest: good play is fair play.’
‘Cornish wrastlers are the best in the world, see.’ Pellew’s Penryn brogue was becoming more pronounced the redder he got.
‘Is that what you were practising on the foredeck on the voyage across?’
It was Alexander Lindsay, Earl of Balcarras who had spoken. Tall, so pale his skin appeared untroubled by his prodigious consumption, seemingly effete, with an accent bred at Harrow and Oxford, Jack had discovered that the man entrusted with Burgoyne’s Light Infantry had a core of metal. ‘Sandy’ was also a fine fast bowler and had taken Jack’s wicket in the annual Westminster versus Harrow Old Boys cricket match seven years before. Despite that, Jack liked him.
‘It was indeed. Though my young friend here is somewhat more agile than myself.’
Pellew said, ‘Tosh, Jack,’ but his argument was interrupted by a voice Jack had already learned to loathe. Its tone was whining, high-pitched, eerily at variance with a corpulent body.
‘Cornwall, eh?’ said Philip Skene. Turning to Burgoyne, rudely leaning right across the vole-like Mrs Skene, he shouted, ‘General, did you read Johnson’s latest satire on the Rebels and the legitimacy of their revolt? He wrote that the Cornish have as great, nay, a greater claim to self-government than these … Americans.’
The tone the fat Loyalist gave the last word made Jack colour, and he saw Louisa’s smile vanish. Her family might be Loyalist too, colonists who supported the Crown against the Revolution. But she was an American as well and proud to be so. Whereas Skene was one of those men who became more English the longer he lived away, the more he profited from the New World he plundered. He owned vast tracts of the Hudson Valley, the very land the British army must march through to wage their campaign. He had boasted of the thousands of Loyalists there who would rise up at his command, to Burgoyne’s aid.
Jack looked at Skene, at the roll of fat that spilled over his too-tight collar, the heat in the porcine eyes. He also had the taste shared by many Americans of wearing a wig, long deemed unfashionable in England. Skene’s was old and wispy, two powdered rolls lodged above the ears. It had worn away in places to reveal patches of flaring pink skin. Rich and miserly, Jack noted, a not uncommon combination. He suddenly remembered a story he’d heard of the man – that when his mother died he’d kept her corpse on a table because so long as she remained ‘above ground’ he could collect her pension.
Jack was there to observe, not comment, let alone debate. But the man irked, not least because he represented all that the Rebels were right to oppose. Feeling the latest bumper to an old allegiance inspire him, Jack spoke.
‘What Johnson failed to address, Colonel Skene, was that my countrymen of Cornwall can make their grievances known in Parliament through their elected MPs. The Colonists cannot.’
‘“No taxation without representation!”’ Skene brayed. ‘The Rebel cry! I hardly expected to hear that treason repeated at the General’s table. But then I ask you, Captain, do children in Cornwall have the vote? Hmm? Do women? Eh? Do the illiterate miners in their holes? Eh? Eh? For that is what these Americans are, sir. Dependants. Nothing more!’ He jeered, ‘The Declaration of Dependence, that’s what they came up with. That’s what must be crushed, this … Children’s Crusade! Do you not agree, sir?’
Jack glanced around the table. The Germans looked bemused; Pellew was already bored and rooting for more Bishop; Louisa’s face was composed, but her eyes glowed still at Skene’s gibe at all Americans; Burgoyne’s face held a slight smile, knowing Jack’s beliefs, relishing his predicament.
He returned his gaze to the flushed face before him. ‘I do not, sir. I believe each American wants only what their brothers in England already have: the freedom to decide their own destiny. And they want it unrestrained by a political process in which they have no voice.’
‘You speak like a follower of John Wilkes, man. Are you, then, a … uh, Democrat?’ Balcarras gave the last word an especially Harrovian shudder.
‘I am … not sure what I am, my Lord.’
‘You sound like a damn Rebel, that’s what. Is this the sort of officer you will rely on, Burgoyne?’ Skene once more shouted up the table.
The smile on the General’s face broadened. ‘Oh yes, I know I can rely on Captain Absolute. I have had a number of proofs of his loyalty over the years.’
‘Even when he proclaims damned traitor sentiments?’ Skene’s heated face had coloured even more dangerously.
‘Especially then. When he stops proclaiming them, I may begin to watch my ba
Thwarted, Skene muttered, ‘Well, you appear like a damned traitor to me.’
‘No traitor, sir. Just a true born Englishman who breathes liberty as he breathes air and would not deny that same air to others.’ He paused but only for breath. ‘It is just fourteen years since all Englishmen, on both continents, put an end to the threat of France and their tyranny in these lands. We could not have done it without the men we now call traitors. Together we can keep ourselves free of that tyranny. Together we can have what every man desires – the liberty to pursue his own course, unhindered by the restraint of obligation. Many of our American brethren feel, with some cause, that they are unequal partners in that enterprise. So let’s beat them, but not humiliate them. Let’s beat them, then welcome them back as brothers – good play is fair play – and, together, we can conquer the world.’
It was a failing of his, this venting of passion. He could no more contain it than he could catch the wind in cupped hands. The hot Bishop, the hot room, the hot eyes of Louisa were all goads. But he’d have probably spoken the same way alone in the Arctic.
Skene seemed as if he were about to choke. He pulled at his collar, grabbed a glass, and drained it, set it down with a determination that spoke to a renewal of the fight. But it was a woman’s voice that prevented him.
‘I’ve always maintained,’ Louisa said calmly, ‘that Jack is an “absolute-skein” of contradiction.’
It was a little joke, the kind of pun they all revelled in. The company exhaled their laugh as one, saving Skene and his timid spouse. The tension punctured, Jack looked to Louisa, joined in the laugh. He had broken cover, revealed his position. Now perhaps he could sink back and resume his watch. He had to report to the General, after all.
The General was not going to give him the chance. ‘Since Captain Absolute has raised the subject of a fight – and given us some indication of the contrary opinions we are likely to encounter – perhaps the time has come to reveal to you all, esteemed allies and officers, how I intend to carry that fight to my opponents. How I intend to pin them to the floor of the wrestling ring and make them plead for terms. You there!’ At his raised voice, servants came into the cabin, at his gesture, the remnants of food were cleared swiftly, leaving only glasses and decanters of port and cognac. Most of the men reached within pouches for tobacco. As the hubbub swirled around him, Burgoyne stood calmly filling his pipe, his eyes unfocused, as if he were staring through the wood of the table and on through a continent.
Louisa and Mrs Skene rose to leave, but the General waved them down. ‘I have a feeling you will both be sharing the hazards of this campaign,’ he said. ‘You should share the knowledge of it too.’
When the last of the servants withdrew, when all glasses were charged, Burgoyne picked up a lamp, held it so that his face was lit from below.
‘St John’s, north of Lake Champlain,’ he said, placing the flickering glass on the table before him. ‘The advance guard of my army gathers there, organized by my dear General Phillips, whose skill with artillery you will all acknowledge.’ There was a muttering around the table, glasses raised. ‘We march to join him with our main forces: our German allies under dear Baron von Riedesel here,’ the General, with his interpreter whispering in his ear, inclined his head, ‘the British regiments of the line, each carrying banners that denote a hundred triumphs. The Canadian and Native contingents will rally to us there and along the way. I vouchsafe I will command a force of some ten thousand men and have them mustered by the first of June.’
More murmurs, more draughts taken. Ten thousand men was surely a force no Colonial general could oppose!
‘A wee question, sir, if I mae?’ A Scottish voice ventured from Jack’s side of the table. It was General Simon Fraser who spoke. He sat to Burgoyne’s right, the perfect place for the man Burgoyne called ‘his rock’. Old for his years, he had been promoted on sheer ability; for his family were said to be Jacobite rebels to a man and could spend no money, exert no influence, to speed him through the ranks. His skills on campaign were legendary, his loyalty to the Crown, and especially to Burgoyne, unwavering.
At his Commander’s nod, he continued. ‘The Americans make much of their ability to fight an irregular war, to harry us from forest and mountain, to obstruct our route to our objectives. Do we no hae muckle plans to counter tha’?’
Jack recognized a planted question when he saw one. If strategy had not been discussed, there had been many conversations on tactics during the voyage. The answer was aimed at others, at the Loyalist Skene and the Germans.
‘I’m so glad you raised that point, Simon.’ Burgoyne’s theatrical skills were not limited to writing. ‘It gives me great pleasure to inform you, and the company, that I have decided your own command will be of our Advance Corps. The grenadier and light companies from each regiment will be formed under you, brigaded with your own, inestimable, 24th Foot. Also a select corps of marksmen will be drawn from the best shots of all ranks. Together with the Canadians and our savages – oh, excuse me, Captain Absolute … our “Native Allies” – we will have an irregular force, capable of taking on and countering anything the American Woodsman can muster.’
Fraser, not an actor, was doing his best to feign surprise. Balcarras, designated to serve as the Scotsman’s second in this brigade, proposed a toast of congratulations. Bumpers were downed.
Then Burgoyne took Louisa’s glass and placed it a foot in front of the decanter of ‘St John’s’.
‘Lake Champlain,’ he announced. ‘Feel free to sip of the lake’s waters, my dear.’ Over the laughter, he continued. ‘Let the Rebel cut trees in our path on the water. If they muster a fleet, we will destroy it, as we did last October. We will move most of our army and our supplies by barge. By the middle of June we will be here, at the lake’s end.’
He moved down the table, placed another decanter, stood regarding it for a long moment, pipe in mouth. Then he gently exhaled, expertly ensnaring the vessel’s spout in a ring of smoke, which hovered and dissipated on his next words.
‘Fort Ticonderoga, gentlemen. The key to a continent.’
Von Riedesel waved his interpreter away, muttering, ‘Das Schloss,’ and leaned in, as did every man at the table. Ticonderoga needed no translation, the name a legend from the French wars. The fortress squatted over the southern route, a bulwark to invasion north or south.
‘I have … ideas for how we will deal with it. And deal with it we will, before we move on, sweeping aside any army they dare send against us. We will move both along and parallel to the Hudson River, which is the second key, the most proper part of the whole continent for vigorous operations. Along it, we will transport our grain, our baggage and powder, even our wine.’ He smiled and took a sip. ‘I sense that, after Ticonderoga, they will try to stop us here,’ a glass placed, ‘at Fort Ann, near the home of our dear friend, Colonel Skene,’ the Loyalist acknowledged the attention with a small rotation of his fat wrist, ‘or here, near Fort Edward, or even here, at Saratoga.’ The General looked up, meeting the gaze of every man there, one after the other. ‘But rest assured, gentlemen, wherever they choose to stand and fight, they will be beaten, and beaten soundly.’ He glanced at Jack. ‘Fairly, of course, dear Captain. We will seek to instruct, to correct, not to humiliate. But we will beat them nonetheless. And then we will seize the prize.’
Since the attention was on him anyway, and recognizing a cue when he saw one, Jack ventured, ‘Which is, sir? Can you now tell us the final goal of all these endeavours?’
A knock prevented Burgoyne’s immediate reply. A servant entered, one of the Baron’s; he spoke softly in the German’s ear, who then passed the message on to his interpreter.
‘A cousin of the General seeks permission to join us. His ship has just arrived.’
Burgoyne looked less than pleased, the playwright in him upset at the interruption to the flow of dialogue and the suspense he’d created. Nevertheless, he nodded and the servant withdrew.
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Jack placed the decanter as instructed, kept his fingers on it as he spoke. ‘And this is, General?’
He already knew, as did most of the men there. But no one would deny Burgoyne his moment. He returned slowly to the head of the table, laid his pipe carefully down, placed his palms on to the wood, leaned forward so that lamplight played on his face.
‘Albany. The heart of the country. When General Howe and I rendezvous there, New England will be split in two. Washington’s armies will scatter or starve. We will have won back the Colonies for the Crown.’
There was a short silence, only just long enough for the words to be absorbed. Not quite long enough for anyone to huzzah, or declare a toast, because another knock came and the door opened. Jack, his back to it, his hand still on the port decanter that was Albany, did not turn at first. Instead he looked at Kapitan von Spartzehn, rising to his General’s right.