Townshend muttered an audible, ‘Jesus spare us!’
The bald Murray’s jaw fell open. He stuttered, ‘B … b … but, for pity’s sake, man! We all agreed upon it. Studied every other alternative.’
‘Not every one.’
‘Then tell us, Wolfe. Tell us!’ Townshend had stood, his face a vivid red and angry contrast to his commander’s.
Yet instead of reacting to that anger, the general now glanced to his right, to where Jack stood, frozen with embarrassment. ‘And who, pray, are you?’ he said.
‘J … Jack … uh, Cornet Absolute. Sir … General! Sixteenth Light Dragoons. With messages from His Majesty. Amongst others. Sir.’ For some reason, Jack gave a little laugh.
They all stared at him a moment. Then Wolfe spoke. ‘Absolute? Absolute? You are not … not related to Mad Jamie Absolute, are you?’
It was not a term Jack had heard before. ‘I don’t think so, sir. My father is Sir James—’
‘Must be the same fellow. Dragoon? Cornishman?’ On Jack’s confused nod Wolfe continued, ‘Mad Jamie. Led the counter charge at Dettingen. Saved me from a claymore at Culloden.’ The smile on his face was the first genuine one Jack had seen there and it transformed it. ‘Damn me, if I wouldn’t rather have an Absolute from England than another hundred grenadiers.’ The smile widened. ‘I suppose they didn’t send me another hundred grenadiers?’ On Jack’s shake, Wolfe nodded. ‘Never mind.’
‘Sir, Absolute or not, a cornet cannot be privy to what you have to impart to us now?’ Murray had moved around the table, went to take Jack’s arm.
‘And what would that be?’
‘This new … plan of yours,’ Townshend added through a fixed jaw, the emphasis unmistakable.
Wolfe turned back, the smile vanishing, the red on the cheeks heightened. ‘And I will not tell you of it now,’ he said sharply, ‘for you have obviously partaken of too much of my wine and that makes you too dull to take in my commands.’ He looked around, at each of them in turn. ‘My commands, gentlemen. I have left you without them for too long. Besides,’ and here the smile returned, ‘I will not tell you of them. I will show you … on the morrow. We’ll go downriver with the morning tide. Be ready. And wear civilian clothes.’ Each of the men looked as if he would protest but Wolfe went on, ‘That is all. You will now leave me with the King’s messenger.’
There was no mistaking the firmness of the instruction. With a varying degree of reluctance – Townshend’s the most obvious – the three men left the tent. Wolfe called out after them, ‘Gwillim?’ and an officer appeared immediately. ‘Tell Captains Delaune and MacDonald I would see them. And Surgeon MacLeod.’
The man nodded and left. As soon as the tent flap settled, Wolfe collapsed into the chair and was immediately racked with a burst of wet and violent coughing. Jack could not help but see that the handkerchief the general snatched out was stained as red as his coat. He immediately filled a glass with wine and took it to the table head. Coughing subsided, Wolfe drank, spluttered, drank again, sank back. His face was a chalky white, all the more pale for the contrasting spots that flamed upon the cheek.
When strength had returned – a process that took some minutes – the general waved Jack to a chair and smiled. ‘Your father? Is he well?’
‘He was, sir, when last I saw him. He has … uh, gone to Hanover, sir.’
‘Riding to the sound of the guns. Of course, of course. Jamie could not keep away. Would that he had chosen this theatre of operations and accompanied you. The next few nights would suit his especial brand of lunacy! You’ve always known he was mad, I suppose?’
‘With all respect, sir,’ Jack blurted, ‘he said exactly the same thing of you.’
Jack didn’t know why he said it. Maybe he just hadn’t been a soldier long enough. Maybe it was because he’d felt peculiar from the moment he stepped ashore in this land that felt so strange … yet strangely familiar too. Maybe it was just something in the man before him, the young man within the old.
But Wolfe, thankfully, laughed, hearty laughter that brought more blood into the handkerchief. During this burst, a man in a blue frock coat came in and went straight to the general, wordlessly undoing the plain black stock at his neck, opening the buttons on his shirt, rubbing some salve from his leather bag. The smell of camphor filled the tent. Wolfe gestured toward Jack’s pouch. The dispatches were instantly spilled upon the table and the general, around the ministrations of his surgeon, sought and discarded amongst them. The one with the Royal seal he threw down with a sigh.
‘The King will have delivered another military lecture and that I can do without. How he expects to conduct a battle from three thousand miles away, and hoodwink as capable a Frenchie as Montcalm, when he barely succeeded controlling one when he stood on the field at Dettingen is beyond me. Ah …’ He drew out the dispatch Jack recognized as coming from his own commander, Burgoyne – his letter of introduction. The seal was broken, the contents swiftly scanned. Wolfe looked up. ‘He speaks highly of you, acknowledges your courage if tempering it with your lack of experience. He says you are fast, lad.’
Jack nodded. ‘Show me the horse, sir, and I will take it to its utmost.’
Wolfe laughed, coughed. ‘The only pony you’ll find here is Shanks’s. You are the only English cavalryman in Quebec, Absolute. Can you run?’
‘Aye, sir,’ said Jack, thinking of cricket and Tothill Fields.
‘That may prove useful.’ He glanced down, read on. ‘And you speak French, do ye?’
‘Tolerably, sir.’
‘Then you undoubtedly speak it better than most of my other officers, including myself. And that may be useful, too.’
The surgeon, who was preparing a cup of viscous fluid, now said, ‘General, you must rest.’
‘Can’t,’ whispered Wolfe, ‘Mustn’t.’ He sat up straighter. ‘I know you cannot cure me, MacLeod. But patch me up so that I may do my duty for a few days and I will be content.’
The surgeon sighed, then lifted the cup to Wolfe’s mouth. He drank, muttered a curse, drank on. As he did, the tent flap twitched again and the adjutant appeared again. ‘Captains Delaune and MacDonald, as you requested, sir.’
The two men entered. One, dressed as Wolfe, in simple and unadorned scarlet went straight to him. ‘Are you all right, sir?’ he said, squeezing the hand he’d taken.
‘Never better, William.’ Wolfe coughed again into his handkerchief. ‘Well, that might be a slight exaggeration.’ He gestured to Jack. ‘Cornet Absolute, fresh off the boat from England. Captains Delaune,’ he patted the man still crouched over him on the shoulder, ‘and MacDonald.’
The other man, small of stature and watchful, was a Highlander, complete with a kilt, stockings and a plaid cloak. ‘Absolute?’ he echoed. ‘He’s nae kin to Mad Jamie, is he?’
‘His son.’
‘May Christ defend me! The sire nearly gave me my quietus at Culloden. Does the cub come to finish the job?’
‘You’ll have to forgive Donald MacDonald,’ Wolfe smiled. ‘He fought us with the Royal Ecossais on that Moor. Then joined Fraser’s Seventy-eighth to fight for us here.’
‘I’d little choice, ken,’ the Scotsman growled. ‘Rot in Inverness gaol or go where the fighting is. And since the cursed English was the only ones offering …’
‘Do not mind this old Jacobite, lad,’ Delaune said. ‘He’s as loyal as any of us.’
‘More loyal than many,’ growled MacDonald. He had seen the caricature upon the table. ‘I saw that sneck-draw Townshend a-laughing with his noble cronies. Nae doot at the general’s expense.’ He picked up the paper and ripped it savagely into several pieces.
‘His particular loyalty is to me,’ Wolfe breathed, ‘for which I am very grateful. I need men like these, young Absolute. Especially now. Especially for this plan.’
With a wave, he dismissed the surgeon’s further fussings. The man shook his head, gathered his things and left. Delaune leaned forward. ‘Your reconnaissance, sir …
was it worth this blood?’
‘It was, William and several pints more. I have sketches.’ He gestured to his record book but as Delaune eagerly reached, he laid his hand on it and looked at Jack. ‘You must leave us now, Absolute. Though I am sure you are discretion itself, only these two must know of my plan till the morrow when I shall be forced to share it with my brigadiers.’
‘Of course, sir, I’ll …’ Jack saluted, started for the entrance.
‘Your time will come soon enough,’ Wolfe called after him, halting him. ‘He’s young, gentlemen, and does not know what to expect in battle.’
‘Perfect,’ said Delaune.
‘Aye,’ said MacDonald, ‘assuming ignorance holds him, not fear.’
‘Mad Jamie’s son, Donald.’
‘Oh, aye.’
‘And he speaks French. That may prove very useful in my calculations.’
‘Do he indeed?’ The Scot stepped towards Jack. ‘Où avezvous appris votre français, mon brave?’
‘À Londres, monsieur. Avec une jeune femme de … de …’
‘De la nuit?’
Jack blushed. ‘Mais non, monsieur. Elle était la fille d’un ami de mon père.’
MacDonald turned back. ‘He speaks like a Parisian limmer. But with a little help he may pass muster, given muckle years.’
‘What can you manage in a day and a night, Donald?’ Wolfe’s voice came in a whisper. ‘I’ll have him billeted with you, and you can bring him up to the mark.’
The Scot looked as if he would protest; then the import of the general’s words drew him back toward the table. As he moved he called over his shoulder, ‘You’ll find my bivouac in the lines of the Seventy-eighth, callant. Ye can await me there.’
Jack hesitated at the flap, looking back. Delaune had drawn the lamp close and, in the small spill of its light, the three men now crouched over the general’s record book. A faint whisper came, but Jack could not make out any words. All he could sense was the excitement as they bent to the task of conquering Canada.
– TWO –
The Blooding of Jack Absolute
He had been cold long before embarkation; now, well into the third hour, he felt like a lump of suet, sitting in an ice house. He had tried to control his shivering at first, fearing that it would be perceived as something else. Yet since everyone around him, crammed on the narrow benches and wedged into the tiniest of spaces, was soon shaking as much as he, he had given in. Only Captain MacDonald, who sat beside him, seemed unchilled, but he was wrapped in a great tartan blanket and had the extra warmth of his pipe, rarely unlit in the hours that they had waited.
At least it had not rained. The clouds that had obscured the sky had dispersed and their absence allowed Jack to see by starlight – there was no moon – as well as by the faint glow of the lamps aboard HMS Sutherland. He looked up at the man-of-war now, hoping that the sailor who’d visited twice would return again, bearing his barrel of rum. Jack had refused the first issue, to MacDonald’s vocal disapproval, fearing a clouding of his mind. He’d taken the second and it had temporarily thawed him. He eagerly awaited the third. No one stirred up above though, save for the men about the running of the ship. Everything aboard was to appear as normal, so the bells were sounded and the watch went about their usual tasks. Earlier from the vessel’s depths a fiddle had been heard, a shanty sung, followed by the thumping of feet in a hornpipe. Lately, the ship had returned to its customary night running. The French sentries on the shore would have nothing to note but normality.
Unless they have the ability to see through wood, Jack thought, peering around. For then they would perceive that the activities on the Sutherland this night were far from normal. Lined up along its larboard side, out of sight from the shore, four flat-bottomed barges wallowed, bow to stern, with another line of four beside them attached by ropes. Each one held fifty men.
Jack, in the stern of the first boat, gazed down an avenue of oars that rested across the gunwales, sailors occupying the rowlocks the length of the vessel. Beside them, on the benches and squatted down on the planking of the deck, were the thirty-five soldiers each barge could carry. Around him in the little space of the stern sat the officers of the company, MacDonald to his left, Captain Delaune to his right and, opposite the seaman at his tiller, the commander of the three light infantry companies to go in first – William Howe. When Jack was introduced, the man had grunted and promptly forgotten his name, referring to him by various names beginning with ‘A’ ever since. MacDonald, in an aside, had told Jack that the man was ‘as pompous an arse as England ever raised and not a patch on his unchancy, dear, dead brother. But he’s brave for all tha’.’
When they’d boarded, the last of the light had been in the sky so they did not fumble in the darkness and alert the listening piquets on Cap Rouge. Although they did not know exactly where they were to land, they were aware they awaited the turning of the tide to carry them downstream to the City of Quebec. It would come after the one bell sounded. Now the brass note came … and there was a perceptible shifting down the ranks. No common soldier talked, that was a privilege reserved for officers. But the men ahead rolled stiff shoulders and necks, shuffled their feet, released their white-knuckled grip upon their muskets only to grip again. Looking at them, Jack was struck again by the youth of all in the boats that were to land first, all volunteers. When he had observed this to Captain MacDonald, the Scot had removed his pipe only long enough to mutter, ‘Children will obey blindly and dare where experience dares not.’ Jack had heard it whispered that this advance guard of young light infantry was called Delaune’s Forlorn Hope. It had not decreased his shivering when he’d heard that whisper. He was among the youngest.
The boats creaked against their bindings. On the next barge, the one flush to the side of the Sutherland, the naval officer gave the order for rolled blankets to be lashed to the sides to cushion the collision. Drawn by the quiet command, Jack suddenly noticed the man to the officer’s left, whom he must have glanced at a hundred times since he boarded. He suddenly recognized him to be General Wolfe. He was almost inconspicuous due to the unadorned uniform he was wearing and Jack remembered why. MacDonald had not only improved Jack’s French in the two days he’d accompanied the Scot, he’d laughed at Jack’s elaborate clothing and helped him strip all fanciness from it. ‘The Canadian Militia have sharp-shooting men who’ll delight in plugging anyone in the lace. Why d’ye think our leaders wear none?’ he’d said.
Jack was rather startled to find that the general was looking back at him and since the inner boats were facing downstream, and his own boat up, they were not very far apart. Jack nodded, tried to smile and was further disconcerted to see the general rise, and clamber between the ranks over to their boat. Hands reached up, as the barges gave another lurch, and Wolfe came over. Room was made for him beside Colonel Howe.
‘Can you feel her shift, Billy?’ Wolfe said to him.
‘I can indeed, sir. And about time too.’ Howe replied with a degree of petulance that showed what he thought of mere tides delaying him. He looked at the officer on the tiller. ‘How long, um, fellow?’
The man sniffed. ‘Be fully turned in ’alf an ’our, more’n less.’
Despite the prohibition of talk, the word travelled in whispers up and down the barge and to all those beside and behind. It was as if the night was suddenly full of starlings until a sergeant’s harsh curse silenced them.
‘Excellent,’ said Wolfe, rubbing his hands. ‘And a fine night for it, is it not, Captain Chads?’
‘If hell’s darkness is fine to steer by, aye,’ the seaman grunted then relented when he saw Wolfe’s face drop. ‘I’ll get you ashore, sir, ne’er be feart. Don’t know why the Frogs make such a fuss about the shoals ’ereabouts. Swear there be nigh to a thousand places on the Thames more perilous.’
Soft laughter came and with it another burst of coughing from Wolfe. He’d managed to hold it in as he sat quietly in his boat but this would not be contained and
the handkerchief was lifted too late to catch all of it, blood darkening on the scarlet coat, snatching the humour away in an instant. Wolfe, busy with bleeding, looked up finally to the concerned faces before him.
‘Pardon me, gentlemen,’ he whispered and coughed again, the only human sound suddenly as the barges creaked on the rising waters, their sides banging through the muffling of blankets against the warship. From somewhere close to the shore, a bird suddenly called, a sharp cry, almost a shriek, with a dying fall as if its life was being sucked from it. Several of the men before Jack crossed themselves, a movement Wolfe noticed. He leaned forward.
‘Come, lads, does anyone here know any poetry? Hmm? I heard a snatch a month ago from our trusty Sergeant Botwood of the Forty-seventh. Does anyone know it?’
Captain Delaune spoke. ‘I remember only the title, sir. Tis called “Hot Stuff”.’
‘Well, zounds, let’s send for Ned Botwood himself. The Forty-seventh are three boats back if I remember me own Morning State.’ He had half stood, was staring back along the barges.
‘Sir,’ said Delaune quietly, ‘the good sergeant was killed at Montmorency.’
‘Ah. Ah yes.’ Wolfe sat down heavily again, such colour as had briefly come there now gone from his cheeks. No man would meet another’s eyes, none spoke and there was only the sound again of the water lapping and that bird giving another solitary cry. Jack too looked down. He had not shared in the months of hard campaigning but MacDonald and others had acquainted him with many of their grim details. The landing at Montmorency was the worst of several costly failures to get the British Army ashore so they could seize the capital of New France, Quebec. With each setback, with more weeks spent in makeshift camps where the bloody flux weakened or killed every third man and officer, with Wolfe prostrate in his tent spitting red and Montcalm seemingly invulnerable atop his fortified cliffs, the army’s belief in itself and its powers had steadily eroded. And the death of stalwarts like the poetic Botwood in futile operations only increased the despair. Despair plain on the faces of the men looking down around Jack now.