‘Drammach,’ MacTavish said, pointing. ‘’cos we’ll no light a fire to make parritch. There’s reepons mean us harm in these woods, ye ken?’
Though Jack was still not understanding all the words directed at him, he could now make out most of what was being said, partly because the huge Scotsman was speaking slowly, as if to a child or simpleton. While Jack consumed a second bowl of the drammach – he’d discovered his hunger was as fierce as his thirst – MacTavish squatted beside him, explaining that when Jack awoke, he and his two men, Alisdair and Gregor, had been arguing as to what to do with him. They had set out for the disaster at Oriskany three weeks before and God only knew what havoc war was wreaking on their homes, their kin. The others were for abandoning him, pressing on.
‘But Angus MacTavish is nae one for inhonestie.’ He was scratching shapes into the mud before them with a hefty walking stick, carved from the same Ironwood that the Iroquois used for their war clubs. ‘Yon man saved oure lives, I seid. I’ll stay by him till I’m sartin the favour has been returned.’ He rose. ‘Ochone! We canna bide mere. We must be tenty, flit and flit fast. The Heathen are fighting each other the noo and we can never ken which we’ll meet. But what to do with thee, eh? Th’art still the enemy, officer of the tyrant we fight, life-saver or nae. Th’art oor prisoner noo, as I once was thine. But can thee e’en walk, laddie?’
The Scot reached down an arm and Jack grasped it, pulled himself up. He tottered a step, another. He was weak, there was no doubt. He had lost a lot of blood.
‘I can walk, if I can borrow that shillelagh of yours, and perhaps an arm over rougher ground.’
MacTavish handed over the heavy piece of wood. Its solid ball-head fitted Jack’s palm perfectly. ‘And, as my prisoner, wilt thou gie me a gentleman’s word that thou’ll not try to fly?’
Jack squinted up into the broad face. ‘Did you not give such a word at Stanwix?’ He received a grudging nod. ‘Yet here you are.’
For the first time, Jack saw the Scotsman’s face transformed by a smile. ‘Ah did. But then again, ah never laid any claim to being a gentleman. And the circumstances changed a muckle.’
Jack returned the smile. ‘Well, there are many who do not consider me a gentleman either – including the man who left me to this fate. A man I desire greatly to meet again.’ Jack glanced at the cedar to which he’d been bound, the bloodied cords lying at its base, and shuddered. ‘But I have no desire to be left in these woods. And I presume you are bound up the valley, to Tryon County?’
‘To Tryon, aye. To oor homes.’
The direction he needed to travel. Up the Mohawk, to Canajoharie, his rendezvous with Até and on to the Hudson, to Burgoyne. ‘Then I will rest your contented prisoner at least till we have reached them. And until circumstances change – a muckle.’
There was a moment’s study before the smile came again and a huge hand reached out to pump Jack’s with reckless vigour. ‘A deal made, till Tryon at the least. I’m relieved, I tell thee. T’would seem a dour act to save thee then pike thee with my dirk straight after.’ Finally releasing Jack’s hand – to his great joy – MacTavish turned to his men and yelled, ‘Let us link!’
While they gathered what little they had managed to grab from the rout at Stanwix, Jack, with the support of the stout stick, tested his legs. Maybe it was the relief of being alive. Maybe the thought that the man who had left him thus to die was ahead, seeking to wreak further mischief upon Burgoyne’s campaign. But they seemed a little stronger with every step.
As they walked, they talked. First Jack asked by what luck he’d been discovered. MacTavish informed him it was luck indeed because, having escaped the British in the chaos of the march from Fort Stanwix to Lake Ontario, they’d just come up to the place of Jack’s ambush when the Germans set out from it.
‘And them callants are nae woodsmen, ken. The noise they made through the scrog! We went to bide off the path … and there ye were.’
They talked more and through the day. MacTavish was of ‘auld Jacobite stock’, English haters to a man, his clan driven from their homes in the aftermath of the ’45. Fifteen when he reached the Colonies, his family had immediately pushed to the farthest boundaries, clearing the Frontier land, planting corn, raising cattle as they had done in the Highlands, yet here free of the threat of the despised Redcoats and the control of the Crown.
‘Until seventy-five, ye ken.’ MacTavish had dropped the formal ‘thou’ and ‘thee’ now he had shaken Jack’s hand and each had acknowledged that they owed the other a life. ‘Dod! I’d no come so far, and strived so hard, to submit again to dowie tyranny.’ He spat expansively off the path, then continued. ‘I rallied with the first, marched with that great looby Benedict Arnold, and nearly died with him before the walls of Quebec.’
It was near dusk of their second night’s march before Jack had regained enough strength to interject occasionally into MacTavish’s monologues.
‘And you believe that your way lies only in total separation from England? Many would have the rights you claim but still remain loyal to the Crown.’
MacTavish snorted. ‘The only King I might acknowledge is the one across the water.’ The Scotsman circled a fist before him, as Jack had seen many a Jacobite do over beer mugs in taverns from London to Boston when the King’s health was pledged. ‘But braw Charlie had his fling and lost the jing-bang at Culloden. And there’s muckle Palatine Germans, Dutch, Swedes, and Poles here who have nae knowledge of the Bonnie Prince.’ MacTavish sighed and spat again. ‘He’ll come no more.’
Further nostalgia was prevented by a cry from Gregor who had loped ahead. He appeared a moment later, pulling at the nose ring of a reluctant, bellowing cow. Jack took the chance to fall on to the ground, his back to a black walnut, while a swift and hot conversation was conducted, of which he understood maybe every tenth word. Some nuts from the tree lay scattered about him and he was endeavouring to crack one of these – the endless diet of oats and cold water had long since wearied him – when MacTavish squatted down.
‘A coo in a forest, alone. S’not a good sign, ken. And we are only half a day’s march from our own lands.’ He sighed. ‘Too far to gang tonight, in the gloaming, on empty stomachs.’ He reached down, put two nuts into his palm, cracked them with an easy squeeze and handed half the proceeds to Jack. His face brightened. ‘Still now. We’ll feed oor bellies with nuts … and some meat!’ He nodded towards the cow.
‘You’ll slaughter her in the forest?’ Jack had lain fully back, relieved that his day’s march was over.
‘Slaughter a milch coo? You’re no farmer, Mr Absolute!’ MacTavish smiled. ‘Nae, look there.’
Gregor had been busy sharpening his dirk. Now, he crouched by the cow’s foreleg, muttering gentle words while the other young man, Alisdair, held the cow’s nose ring. Then the knife was jabbed swiftly in. So sharp was the point, so swift its insertion, that the cow barely flinched. But blood flowed, caught by Gregor in a wooden bowl. When he had enough, he smeared some spit and mud on to the wound and moved to his sack where four further bowls were filled with oats and the blood poured evenly on top of them. Two were borne across to Jack and MacTavish.
Jack grimaced. ‘You jest.’
MacTavish hooted. ‘Would’na the fine Sassenach gentleman eat a blood sausage?’
‘Heartily. But a sausage is cooked.’
‘Weel, it was oft too wet to cook on the droves to market in Edinburgh or Aberdeen. This is how we survived. If I had disdained the blood in my drammach, I’d have ended up a scrawny wee thing like ye.’
Jack laughed. And despite another lurch of his stomach, hunger overcame his scruples. He ate, gagged, then ate on.
The Scot nodded approvingly. ‘Aye. Eat hearty, Captain. For the morn will bring us to Tryon County and our farms. And let us hope yon coo is just a stray and not a portent of something disemal.’
It was not only farms that lay ahead. Canajoharie, the village appointed as his rendezvous with Até, was also there
. Realizing his waxing strength needed still more support, Jack took the advice and tipped back the bowl.
They were on the path with the earliest glimmer of light. And an hour’s walking brought them the first sign that the wandering cow was indeed the harbinger of hard times.
The farmhouse was smashed like an egg, burnt walls stoved in, the huge, solid logs once so laboriously raised into place now mere charcoal ghosts. Singed cedar shingles lay scattered where the flames had flung them. Their cow, now chewing at one of the few patches of grass not blackened, had been lucky; for four of her sisters lay around, bellies swelling in the muggy heat, clouded by flies, legs stiffened and pointing straight out.
At their first sight, the lad, Gregor, had run forward with yelps of anguish despite Angus’s shouted caution. Indeed, as soon as he entered the still-smoking ruin, the one wall left standing cracked ominously and swiftly collapsed, sending up a pall of dust, smoke, and sparks. They had each started forward at that, but Gregor emerged almost immediately, a black version of himself, sooted from crown to toe. In his left hand he clutched a rag poppet, a sister’s plaything, and as he muttered what he’d seen inside to Angus, he twisted the little doll’s head back and forth between his fingers till it finally detached. Seeing this, a tear carved a channel down his blackened cheek. Angus patted him on the shoulder and moved over to Jack.
‘A dreigh sight, sure. But nae bodies in there, at the least.’ Angus bit his lip. ‘There’s hope then that Gregor’s kin have taken shelter up ahead, in the Native village. They were always friendly to us, the Oneidas there.’
He was talking of Canajoharie. Though a Mohawk, the wanderings of Até’s family had led many of them to live among their brother tribe.
‘Shall we check on them then?’ Jack said.
‘Aye. And my own farm lies not an hour beyond, on the edge of Herkimer township.’ He looked again at the ruins. ‘Dod! I pray my eyes do not see such blae things there.’
But the sights they encountered at the Native village were beyond the Scotsman’s worst fears. Here the corpses were not only animal but all too human, both Iroquois and white, their differences eradicated now in the uniformity of death. The attackers had not bothered with flame here; they had slaughtered, with gun, tomahawk, and club.
Gregor had fallen, weeping, by a pile of bodies, a family clustered around a man’s corpse still clutching a shovel, his remains, like all the others, violated with the removal of his scalp. Before them, two other bodies lay, stripes of war paint running in bands around their chests, their heads smashed, in what must have been the dead farmer’s last desperate defence.
As Alisdair led the sobbing boy away, Angus poked at one warrior’s body with his toe. ‘Mohawk,’ he said, flatly, as if any colouring of the word would release too much emotion.
‘Yes.’ Jack, his voice as toneless, nodded, turned away. These dead warriors could be the Mohawk who lived among the Oneida, could even be Até’s relatives. They could also have come from another village. Either way, his brothers had taken to the war path and this was the way they fought their wars, in raids, in slaughter. And though some of the bodies lying about were white, like Gregor’s family, the majority were Native. The promised civil war that Jack had foreseen when he saw the Oneida warriors leading the Tryon County Militia into the ravine at Oriskany was upon them. The Hodensau-nee, the People of the Long House, were divided now as they had not been in two centuries, their confederacy shattered. Iroquois fought Iroquois and the result would be a ravaged land and many sights as horrible as the one before him now.
He turned back, something nagging at him. The Mohawks had not been scalped but that wasn’t it. Then he realized.
‘This war party was disturbed. They’d have taken these bodies with them otherwise, for burial in their own villages. Who stopped this slaughter?’
He had the answer in a heartbeat. ‘Lay down your weapons, easy now. Or you’ll die where you stand.’
The voice had called from the tongue of forest that still reached down to the village. And it was from there that the single shot was fired, the ball passing close enough to make MacTavish duck. The Scot’s first instinct had appeared to be defiance but the shot’s passing and the sight of the still-weeping Gregor changed his mind. Laying his rifle on the ground, he raised his arms.
In an instant, men on horses sallied from the woods. They circled, forcing MacTavish’s band to cluster tight. Finally, reining in, the horses jerked their heads up and down while their riders regarded the captives silently – a silence broken by the same voice that had called out before.
‘Zook! If I don’t see the world’s most insubordinate Scot before me.’
MacTavish’s face lightened when he heard the words, then darkened almost instantly. ‘Colonel Benedict Arnold,’ he muttered, ‘is’t thee that mouches aboot to greet an old comrade, with shoots and shouts.’
Jack studied the horseman. Unlike the rest of his men, who were dressed in a ragtag assortment of uniform and civilian clothing, this Arnold wore a fine blue coat with a gold epaulette on his right shoulder and brilliant gold buttons down the front. It parted over a buff waistcoat, again gold-trimmed, with a lawn shirt poking from its top, a black stock spilling out. His tricorn hat split his face at a jaunty angle, perched atop hair as black as Jack’s and that, unlike with most American officers, seemed to be entirely his own. He was taller by a good head than his subordinates and wider too, though not fat. A prominent beak of a nose dominated the swarthy face, grizzled with a half-beard.
The face flushed at MacTavish’s words. ‘That’s General Arnold, as I am sure you are aware. Are you here to scavenge?’
It was MacTavish’s turn to colour. ‘As I’m sure you are aware, Arnold,’ the name was laden with a dose of venom a rattlesnake could have envied, ‘nae MacTavish has e’er been a scavenger. Ah’ve escaped my English captors at Fort Stanwix, and noo am bound to my hame. If it yet stands!’
‘It does. We stopped those raiding heathen here. Everything further down the valley, both your lands and mine, are safe.’ While he was speaking, the General had flung his reins to the man beside him and descended his horse. ‘But tell me, man,’ he said, excitedly, ‘how did my subterfuge work? Did the idiot do his work? Has my little Hans-Yost put fear into the Royal Army?’
‘Aye, that looby did. So much so that Benedict Arnold’s name alone has driven the enemy to flight.’ Jack could hear the sarcasm in the Scot’s voice even if its intended target could not.
‘What? The siege is lifted?’
‘Indeed. Colonel St Leger is now engaged in running all the way to Montreal.’
A great cheer went up from the mounted men and many huzzahed their General. Arnold tried to look modest and failed.
‘The devil you say! The devil! That pays them for Oriskany and then some. And I can now get back to the real war. I can ride to …’
It was only then that Arnold’s wandering eyes finally focused on the other man standing before him. Jack had remained perfectly still and silent amidst all the ballyhoo. He was thus the most conspicuous person present.
‘Who’s this, MacTavish?’ the General barked. ‘Another kinsman? He’s black-browed enough to be a Celt. And with their insolence in his eyes.’
The Scot grunted at the insult but breathed deeply and then laid a hand on Jack’s forearm. ‘’Tis a bonny lad, a fine swordsman, and a true gentleman. He felled me once, then saved my life after Oriskany and gave me the honour of letting me save his soon after. Ochone, his one clear fault is that he is an English officer.’
All cheering stopped. Arnold took a pace back and looked at Jack from toe to crown. ‘He’s not dressed like an officer nor as a gentleman.’ The dark face darkened further. ‘He looks like a damn spy to me.’
There were mutterings from his men at that. There was a constant watch for spies on both sides. And a universal method of dealing with them – a rope slung over a branch. It was time Jack spoke.
‘I regret, General Arnold, tha
t I cannot be presented to you in the uniform of my regiment. For it was stolen from me by the scoundrels who left me for dead in the forest.’
‘Your name, sir? Your rank and regiment?’
Jack had already spoken in the voice of a class somewhat above his own, his friend, ‘Sandy’ Lindsay, the Earl of Balcarras, as his model. It was pure instinct, for he suddenly saw that in anything close to the truth there was no safety. Also some detail about the man interrogating him was lurking in his memory.
‘Lord John Absolute, General Arnold. And I have the honour of being a Captain of His Majesty’s 24th Regiment of Foot, seconded to the staff of Colonel St Leger.’
He was aware of Angus looking at him in some surprise, but he kept his attention fixed on his interrogator. For he had suddenly remembered what it was that nagged him about the man, why his instinct had led him to declare himself thus. Arnold’s fierceness in the Rebel cause, his bravery that was akin to madness, were subjects well known to both sides. But he was also reputed to be a great admirer of all things English – especially rank and class.
Indeed, the grey eyes did almost instantly soften in their regard. ‘General Benedict Arnold, Captain … my lord … sir!’ He flushed again as he struggled with titles to maintain his status yet not diminish Jack’s. ‘And will you now consider yourself my prisoner as you were once MacTavish’s? I am sure I’ll be able to entertain you somewhat more lavishly than he. He’s probably been feeding you blood and oats, what?’ He turned to a soldier mounted nearby. ‘Sergeant, provide his lordship with my spare mount. MacTavish, you may check on your homestead and family then join us if you choose. We ride to verify this information of St Leger’s defeat.’
Instantly, there were shouted commands, horses snorting as they wheeled, men calling out. Not least of the noise was the Scotch invective, unintelligible to most there, aimed squarely at the retreating blue coat of Benedict Arnold.
Jack, who had learned to decipher some in their short acquaintance, turned and whispered in the huge and hairy ear. ‘Wheesht, Angus. It’s what must be. Dinna fash.’