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nothing.’
    ‘And what does that name mean, Até? I always meant to ask,’ said Sheridan.
    ‘“Inexhaustible”.’ He turned to the Irishman and winked. ‘His first wife gave it to him.’
    Jack, meanwhile, simply breathed. He was not as inexhaustible as once he’d been. And his younger opponent would recover quicker.
    So he began to attack. He’d noticed that a patch of mud and grass had appeared beneath the snow, scraped up by their endeavours.
     All he had to do was draw Tarleton into an extended lunge …
    Yet it was he who was drawn. Instead of parrying, Tarleton avoided the blade with a volte, a leap and a thrust to the left
     side. Jack had to step hard right to parry it … and his foot landed square in the churned earth and melting snow.
    He slipped down to one knee, his sword arm halting his fall. With a grunt, Tarleton drew his weapon back and thrust down with
     a blow meant to puncture flesh and snap bone.
    With a part of his mind Jack watched the weapon come, aimed straight into his watching eye. With another he let the hand,
     still holding his sword that pressed into the snow, slip. So sure was Tarleton of his triumph that his blade didn’t waver,
     didn’t follow the slight movement of the head. So he was as surprised as Jack when the point met cloth, not flesh, and plunged
     through the collar of Jack’s jacket, the one he’d wished he was no longer wearing, ripping half of it away.
    The force of the blow pushed the torn shred of wool down, impaling it into the frozen ground. The weapon shivered with the
     blow, then snapped.
    ‘Hold, sir, hold,’ cried the man acting as President. Tarleton would not be halted. Pulling back the half-sword, now with
     its jagged end, he made to thrust again. Yet his target had shifted, Jack had rolled on to his back. His own weapon, lifted
     from the snow, came round. The broken blade descended but Jack swiped it aside with the outside of his left hand. At the same
     time he jabbed up with his right.
    He didn’t have to jab far. Tarleton was falling. Jack’s point pierced his ear in its centre, went through, and held it like
     apiece of meat prepared for an open fire. Blood, for the second time in twenty-four hours, spattered Jack.
    ‘First Blood … sir,’ Jack said.
    A howl from Tarleton, a cry from the onlookers. And another sound, unheard till then – a horn, then another, a third from
     their proximity minutes only from the duelling ground.
    The combatants were pulled apart. The President came forward.
    ‘Fielding’s men. The Runners are come! Here’s First Blood drawn and honour satisfied, eh? Shake hands and let’s be gone. None
     of us wants to spend time in the Clink, do we, gentlemen?’
    ‘Come, Jack, to Drury Lane.’ Sheridan’s face was flushed. ‘I’ll dress you as Harlequin in a pantomime and hide you onstage.
     And, by God, if you don’t put this into a new play, I will!’
    The horns were drawing closer, and the yelping of dogs was added to them. The hunt was on. At the far side of the trampled
     square of snow, Viscount Savingdon had withdrawn Jack’s sword and was trying to stem the blood flowing from Tarleton’s ear
     while Von Schlaben whispered urgently into the other.
    ‘No!’ screamed Banastre Tarleton. Suddenly he leaped to his left, where his valet still held the weapons that had been rejected
     for the duel. Pulling one of the cavalry sabres from its sheath, he ran across the square towards Jack.
    Jack, shrugging into his cloak, turned at the scream, but not in time. The heavy blade was rising and, in that instant, both
     he and Tarleton knew that there would be no second miss, no collar to save him now.
    Something else did. Something that flew from the edge of the clearing and struck the shrieking man on his temple, just before
     the sabre could begin its descent. Tarleton dropped tothe ground as if he’d been shot. The sword sank into the snow beside him while, on his other side, another weapon fell as
     if from