So far that morning he had managed to keep his mind fixed on such trivialities; to let it wander would be to succumb to despair and he was determined, whatever else, not to cut a sorry figure at his noon appointment. Also, he still had one little hope. Not for himself – on the evidence presented in the court martial the day before he would have donned the black cloth with the judge and condemned himself to hang – but Louisa! An appeal had been made, based on her youth, her father’s loyalty, the influence upon her of evil traitors such as Jack Absolute. General Howe did have the power to commute. Jack was not and never had been a praying man. He would never think of beseeching anyone for himself. But he prayed that morning for Louisa. He wondered if, somewhere in the building, she was doing the same for him.
The clock in the square was striking half past eleven, its toll barely audible above the people now thronging out there, when bolts were thrown, the door pushed in. Jack rose to meet his visitor.
‘Good news, Jack. The first of two gifts I bring you,’ John André said, striding into the room. He was dressed, as befitted the day, in the most elegantly cut of uniforms and his hair had been some time in the styling, falling in ordered waves on to his neck, held there in a black silk bag and solitaire. With a smile that seemed to bring sunlight into the cell, he was once again the friendly young buck and theatre enthusiast, no longer the cool interrogator who had examined Jack again and again during his week’s confinement.
‘Louisa?’ Jack could not hold back the desperation in his voice.
André stopped, the smile vanishing. ‘Alas, Jack. I did not mean to toy so with your hopes. No, indeed, the sentence of the court will be observed. While recognizing the necessity, I am most truly sorry for it.’
Jack had sunk down again on to the cot. ‘And the good news?’ he muttered.
André swung the one chair around, sat, leaned on its back towards him. ‘They have commuted your sentence.’
Jack looked at him dully. After his disappointment for Louisa, what joy could there be in this? ‘They kill her and let me live?’
‘No, Jack, be serious.’ André had pulled a pouch from his pocket and made busy cramming tobacco from it into a pipe. ‘The good news is that my representations were accepted. You will not hang.’ He placed a taper over Jack’s lamp and, when it caught, held it to the bowl, sucked, then exhaled a deep plume above Jack’s head. ‘You will be shot.’
Jack chuckled. He could not help himself, it was so absurd – and his uncle had been wrong, after all! ‘Oh, thank you,’ he said.
André looked offended at the sarcasm. ‘It is a tribute to you as a soldier, your loyal service before you … strayed.’ He sighed, sending smoke up towards the corner of the cell though he seemed to be looking beyond it. ‘I just hope that, were I ever in your situation, someone would be as kind to me.’ He looked back. ‘So Jack, in view of this benevolence, and the lateness of the hour, have you finally anything to say to me?’
It was spoken without any real hope. André had sought information every day in the five before the trial and every day Jack had told him the same – nothing. There was nothing he could tell him, for André had no interest in the truth. He already had his own version – that Jack was Washington’s spy and, for a reason he had yet to divulge, a hater of all things to do with the Illuminati.
‘I will merely say at the last what I have said all along – watch the German. You say you are his superior in the Order. I know you are not, that the tail wags the dog.’
‘Jack! Jack!’ André coughed some smoke out. ‘I still do not understand this unreasoning fear of yours. I wish you could be persuaded, even at this late hour. For it is English Illumination that will shape the society to come. When we win this war for England, enlightened men from both sides will come to a just peace. The arrangements will set an example of what a society can be like. That model will then be transferred to Britain, to Europe, to the World, for the deliverance of all humanity from the dark. That is what we have sworn.’
‘Do you not find that oath a contradiction to the one you swore to your King and Country?’
André shrugged. ‘To my King? Perhaps. But are kings what we truly need in this world, Jack? George the Hanoverian? The Tyrants of France and Spain? The deranged monarchs of Germany? And as for England … what greater loyalty can I show than to seek to deliver my land out of that darkness? To join it to other lands in a Commonwealth of Illumination?’
‘With you in charge.’
‘With me and people like me, yes. But for the benefit of all mankind.’
Jack looked into the man’s eyes, lit now by his fanaticism. There was nothing more he could say to persuade him had he all the time in the world, which he had not – the building hum of the crowd outside was testament to that. There was something he would know though, which had troubled his sleep.
‘Burgoyne?’
It had been his hope, unreasoning though he knew it to be, that somehow John Burgoyne would sweep from his imprisonment and deliver Jack and Louisa from theirs. Or, at the least, send a message of such outrage that the proceedings could be delayed. Even at this hour it was a hope.
But André shook his head. ‘Alas, Jack. The messengers sent have not returned. The rumour is the imprisoned army is scattered. Given the speed with which justice has moved in your case, and this snow …’ He gestured outside. ‘And what could Burgoyne send, if he was reached in time and the message got back? That he trusts you? The judges that condemned you would say he was merely the most cozened of all your dupes. So, I am sorry.’
It was what Jack expected, disappointing nonetheless. But one last thing rankled with him.
‘I cannot believe the General, preoccupied as he was after the surrender, said nothing of the dangers presented by the Count von Schlaben in the dispatches I brought for General Howe.’
‘Ah.’ The pipe had gone cold. Rising, André tapped the remains of tobacco out on the back of a perfectly shined boot. ‘He did. And I’m rather afraid that I chose not to highlight that warning when I précised the contents of the dispatches for General Howe. It is one of the advantages of having a Commander whose interest in detail is confined to the softer parts of Mrs Loring’s anatomy.’
There! It was the last part of the puzzle, the last rope tied around him, binding him to the stake. And yet, instead of anger, he felt almost nothing. In the half-hour that remained of his life, less, what was the purpose in railing now against those bonds?
He came off the cot, held out his hand. ‘Goodbye, John.’
André shook it. ‘Goodbye, Jack. It’s been a delight. Apart from … well. You missed your vocation, you know. You are an excellent actor. Would that I had you now! The artilleryman playing Marlow in She Stoops To Conquer is more wooden than the furniture.’ He half-turned, turned back. ‘Oh, there is one last and, I’m afraid, disagreeable thing to tell you.’ He bit his lip. ‘Tarleton commands the firing squad.’
The ironies kept gathering. Jack could only smile. ‘Of course he does.’
André shook his head sadly, moved to the door. He was just about to rap upon it to summon the guard when his hand froze. ‘Faith!’ he said. ‘Nearly forgot.’ He went to the wall opposite the cot, searched along it for a while, bent to waist height, his head moving back and forth.
‘What are you about, sir?’ Now he was near the end, Jack only wanted to be alone.
‘Well,’ said André, ‘a fellow spent some time in this cell once. Occupied that time with thoughts of escape. Ah!’ His head stopped moving. He reached out, fingernails digging into a line between two bricks. To Jack’s amazement, one of them came loose, then was out and in André’s hand. ‘The second gift I promised, Jack. Goodbye.’
Laying the brick on the floor, André left the room. Jack waited until the three bolts had been shot before rising and crossing to the gap. It was not the dim light in his cell that failed to enlighten him. There was nothing to be seen, a brick-lined hole was all there was, another brick to the back of it. Then, as
he watched, that other brick shifted, waggled, was removed. There was air, a little light from the far side. Then a voice came. ‘Thank you, John.’ The voice of Louisa Reardon.
A door slammed, bolts thrown in the other cell. ‘Louisa?’ Jack called softly and in a moment she was there. He could see little of her face. Her brow, fringed in red and gold. Those eyes. Enough.
‘Jack?’
‘Yes.’
He stared, scarce believing. The noise outside, the increasing frenzy of the hawkers’ competing shouts, the fiddle and fife that had struck up a series of tunes, the swelling voice of a crowd merging into one eager entity … all these faded away, to a world beyond them, the two of them.
‘Have you a chair there, Louisa?’
‘I have. I’ll fetch it.’
She did and he did the same, then they sat opposite each other, discovering that they could not get too close or they blocked out all light and could not see. And he needed to see her, more than anything. To hold her in his sight where she was safe.
They sat in silence, simply looking. Then they both spoke at once.
‘You have—’
‘I wanted—’
They stopped, started again.
‘I must—’
‘Will you—’
They laughed. When had he last laughed? Lying beside her at the foot of her bed, wrapped in blankets and the scents of their lovemaking? As long ago as that?
‘Jack. I wanted to … there is so little time …’
‘To?’
‘To tell you I am so sorry.’
‘For what?’
‘For what?’ She looked up, away, back. ‘You are about to die because of my actions.’
‘Because of mine too. And my lack of them.’
She hesitated, her eyes moving back and forth, searching each of his.
‘John André told me you kept silent at your trial. You did not defend yourself. Why?’
Jack sighed. ‘Any justification I uttered would have condemned you further. I could not do that. And when they discovered the mask, I was lost. The reason I gave them only sounded like an excuse.’
She shook her head. ‘Oh Jack! I told Von Schlaben that you took the mask. He would have told André.’
‘I thought so.’ There was something else that had been nagging at Jack in his cell. ‘He was your controller here from the start, wasn’t he? Even before Quebec?’
‘No. He revealed himself to me as Cato that last night on the Ariadne. After the General’s dinner, when you saw his hand upon my arm.’
‘I remember. You were flustered but covered it up with a tale of his amorous pursuit of you in London and taxing me with my former loves.’
‘I did.’
He hesitated but he needed to know. ‘And did you tell him much of us?’
Even within the darkness of the brick hole, he could see the light pour into her eyes.
‘No, Jack. I told him nothing of that. I thought,’ she sighed, ‘I thought I could keep it separate. We had not much contact after we arrived, for he went off to St Leger’s expedition and then on to here. But a week ago, that night,’ she bit her lower lip, looked away for a moment, ‘that night when you and I … later, I told him everything. I’m so sorry. But I did not know what you would choose to do, whether you would betray me or no.’
‘You did not know? How could you not know?’
‘I was confused – by everything. The feelings I’d had, our … coming together.’ Her eyes suddenly lost their sadness. ‘You must remember that unlike you, sir, I had had little experience of such matters. While you … Gemini! They wrote a play about your amours!’
He smiled. The innocent country maid was so well done. ‘And you mistook the Jack Absolute of the stage for myself. Understandable, madam. And forgiven.’ He peered in, made sure she could see his eyes. ‘I mean it, Louisa. Von Schlaben. Everything. Forgiven.’
‘But you will die because of it.’ The maid had gone.
‘Well,’ Jack smiled, ‘dead for love? I can think of worse causes. I am a little old to play Romeo – though Spranger Barry still does at Covent Garden and he has twenty years on me – and yet, oh, that we had that phial of poison and a dagger. We would cheat them of their show today.’
‘I would not,’ she said, her chin rising, only the slightest quaver to her voice, ‘for I would show them how a true patriot can die.’
Death had entered their cell again, in their conversation, in the intrusion of a drum beginning to beat outside. They could hear the tread of soldiers marching into the square. The clock tolling the quarter-to.
She leaned in again, her tone softened, though there was an urgency to it as well. ‘Do you believe in a heaven, Jack?’
He hesitated. Comforting words or his own confusion? What did it matter now? But she went on. ‘Because I do. I’ve thought of it often, these last days. Not the place commonly described. No clouds, no angels, no bands of the righteous sitting at God’s right hand. I’ve met the righteous and they are dull company. No, my heaven is a farm, like the one where I was born in Cherry Valley. An orchard in full bloom; water meadows thick with spring grass, cows …’
Her voice caught and he saw the first tears come. She had stopped, was staring away, into her vision and he wanted her back with him – or to join her there. ‘Isn’t there a forest too? Yes, I can see it. Maple, oak, beech, hickory for the nuts in the autumn. Até will live nearby, and we will take our sons out to hunt and bring back buck and grouse for you and our daughters to cook.’
‘Our daughters?’ He had her again, a smile on her face, full of mock anger. ‘Our daughters will be with you on the hunt, Mr Absolute, learning as I did. On the frontier, the women must match the men in all.’
‘Aye, they must,’ he said, ‘and ours will be as fierce and beautiful as their mother.’
‘How many will we have?’
‘A dozen at the least. Six of each.’
‘La, sir. You will have me occupied.’
‘For ever,’ he said, the word bringing the silence again and with it the world entering with the sudden cessation of the drum, with the increased hum of the crowd, with the steps in the corridor outside, pausing outside his door, moving on, halting before hers. With one bolt being thrown.
They had come for her first. Oh, God, why had they come for her first?
‘Jack,’ she said.
‘Yes.’
He thrust his hand into the gap. She placed hers there, stretched towards his. The bricks were of no height, the gap so narrow. They struggled, pushed. Another jerked bolt sounded through the tiny hole. Then, just as they thought they would never reach, just as the final bolt of her door was shot, the tip of each forefinger touched and, in the briefest of contacts, a world went back and forth.
‘It is time.’ The voice of a gaoler clamoured, loud, monstrous. Fingers parted, a chair shrieked back. There was a flash of gathered green silk – Green again. Hadn’t he warned her? – and she was gone. They left the door open as they took her out, and Jack sat and continued to stare into the air that had lately held her, staying there, staring there, as the world outside returned in sound.
The drum had started again, a single trump now, and the crowd listened to it in silence until a door was flung open. Then they roared once, and immediately fell near quiet again, only murmuring, seeing the whole of what Jack had just seen only a part – Louisa Reardon, dressed in simple perfection, in defiant green, walking, a few feet below him, from the prison door that opened directly on to the scaffold.
He could sit no more, was up, moving back and forth, wall to wall. He had sworn to Burgoyne to see Diomedes dead and that was another oath broken. Yet he would hear her die and suddenly that seemed so much worse. He thought of trying to block his ears, for each noise, however small, came up to echo round his cell. But as soon as he reached up his hands, he forced them down again. For she was still alive in this world, a few feet below him and his only link to her was … sound. Of her feet, shod in her
finest, that determined walk he had heard a lifetime before on the deck of a ship when she’d come to fetch him to supper. The feet stopping, her voice then, crying out, as firm as her step, ‘God bless the Revolution!’ Answering cries from a few in the crowd, silence returning … till the sound came of a hood being twisted over a head, a struggle as all that hair was shoved in. Sound of hands being tied, of a rope dropping from a crossbar, settling, creaking slightly in the light wind. Silence again, just for a moment, till the clock on the square began to toll, Jack crossing the room with the first stroke, crossing back on the next, running now, touching the wall, throwing himself to touch it, pushing away, back and forth on every note.
It stopped. He stopped. And the next sounds came. Something falling through air, breath inhaled, his own, a thousand others; the snap of rope; then just the creaking of noose and bar as both took the weight and Jack’s howl lost among the many, as if he were now standing outside or they were all in there with him. He fell then, on to the cot, off it, on to the floor. Darkness had come over his eyes, his hands flailed around him, smashed into walls, seemed to touch nothing. The one sense left was still his hearing, though that was now distorted, magnified, selective. Filled only with the creak of rope, the settling of timber, a breeze moving silk.