Judas Flowering (12 page)

“Pleasantly occupied?” His mother broke one of the long silences in which she would sit, staring at nothing, so that one tended to forget she was in the room.

“Vastly so. Were it not for the duty I owe Hart at Winchelsea, I should urge that you and I go back there, get rid of our tenants, and enjoy ourselves for a change. Social life here in Savannah is positively primitive compared with Charleston. Why, at the Doones' the other night we sat down sixty to supper, after a ball as good as you could hope for in London.”

“And what, pray, have you been using for money?” asked his mother with unwonted sharpness.

“Dear Mamma.” He moved over to lean on the back of her chair and gaze down upon her with mocking affection. “Always so captious. Don't forget that my kind cousin now pays me a handsome—and well-earned—salary for my labours in the field. Besides, to tell truth, I had a good run at the tables over Christmas.”

“Oh, Francis,” wailed his mother, “you're never gambling again! Oh, where is my vinaigrette!”

“What else is there to do in life?” He said it, across his mother's back, with a strange, hard glance for Mercy. And then, half-concealing a yawn, “How do we propose to entertain ourselves tonight? If at all.”

“We dine out. Have you forgotten? With the McCartneys. Your Aunt Purchis insists that we go, though she is not well enough. I hope you will find it sufficiently entertaining after the gaieties of Charleston. Mary McCartney said there would
be dancing for the young people.”

“Ten couples! And the butler scraping away on his fiddle. I'd as lief be out ruralising at Winchelsea.”

“The McCartney girls are very charming,” said his mother.

“Dear Mamma!” Tolerantly, “What a good friend you are! Oh, I suppose Bridget's well enough in her freckled way, but I doubt Claire will ever see thirty again. No wonder if their mother has taken to entertaining all Savannah.”

“All Savannah accepts her invitations,” reminded Mrs Mayfield. “They remember, if you don't, Francis, that there's a dollar for every freckle.”

“It would have to be a thousand to tempt me. But, never look downcast, Mamma, I'll trip it with the best of their ten couples tonight. Particularly, if Cousin Abigail will honour me with the first dance? And”—slowly turning towards Mercy—“Miss Phillips with the second?”

So, at last, she was to have her chance to speak to him alone. The February evening was mild, even for Savannah, and the McCartneys' ballroom oppressively hot from the scores of candles glittering in candelabra along the walls. The doors were soon thrown open onto a paved terrace overlooking the Common and young couples danced their way out into the half darkness. “Scandalous.” Francis guided Mercy skilfully through the doors as the music of their dance came to an end. “But pleasant.” He led her to the far end of the terrace, lifted the hand that did not wear his ring, and kissed it. “I've a pardon to beg, Mercy,” he said. “I've behaved like a brute to you, but it's for your protection. Besides, how can I help it, when you hurt me so by your lack of confidence in me?”

“But, Francis …”

“Hush!” He looked quickly round. “Must be careful, love … must bear with me while I play the gallant to my Charleston Misses Doone and those freckle-dollared McCartneys. It's for your own comfort I do it. What would happen to you, do you think, if my mother and aunt were to guess at what's between us? Don't imagine that Hart could be any protection to you, way off in Harvard, and taken up with those Pastons. You'd be out in the street, my dear, and enemies enough waiting for you.”

“Enemies?”

“Don't think those savages who killed your father have forgotten you, do you? You've convinced me, at least, that
you truly don't know about that press of his. But if I, who love you and want to trust you, am still sometimes a prey to doubt, what do you imagine the Liberty Boys think? Don't walk alone here in Savannah.”

“I never do.”

“Of course pot. My aunt would not allow it, or I should have warned you against it long since. In Winchelsea you are safe enough, so long as the slaves stay faithful.”

“Slaves?”

“Servants, then.” Laughing, “Suits my cousin to call them so.” He looked up quickly at the sound of one shot, fired somewhere over towards the river. “Oh, my God!”

“What is it?”

“Trouble. Been on edge all evening, half expecting it. Lot of talk earlier at Tondee's. Hoped I'd calmed them down.”

“But what is it?”

“That fool of a customs collector seized a cargo of Andrew Wells' for failure to pay dues. Eight hogsheads of molasses and six of French sugar. All impounded down at the dock. Know who Wells is?”

“No.”

“Brother-in-law to that madman Sam Adams who's behind all the trouble in Boston. Wells was preaching mayhem and murder at Tondee's this afternoon. Mercy—” Once again he looked round to make sure they could not be overheard.

“Yes?”

“Now is the time to show you trust me. Love me. That I can trust you.”

“Yes?” she said again.

“Must go. My duty. Stop them if it's not too late. But I'd much rather not be seen in it.”

“No?”

“No.” Impatiently, “I know it's hard for a female to understand, but these are dangerous times. One must act for the best, but secretly, carefully.…”

“Yes. So what would you have me do?”

“Hide somewhere in the garden here till I return, so that we can say we were together all the time.”

“But your mother—”

“Will scold, if it comes out. Very likely will not. I took the precaution of asking no other ladies to dance, save Abigail, and you, if I know Savannah, are not heavily engaged.”

“No.” She admitted it defiantly. “Your Savannah young
men know me for what I am.”

“Ah, love, but so do I. An ally in a million.” He bent, quickly, to kiss her full on the lips, then vaulted the low wall that bounded the terrace and was gone.

Mercy looked about her. He had led her to the end of the terrace farthest from the lighted double doors, and they had been standing concealed in the entrance of a small summer pavilion that backed against the wall on the corner of Whitaker Street and the Common. Luckily for her the musicians had struck up again and the other couples were moving back towards the doors. She retreated quickly into the darkness of the pavilion where a stone bench was arranged to command a summer view of the Common. For her, it had the advantage of being concealed from the terrace. She sat down, gathering her light-coloured skirts closely about her, so that they should not betray her to some couple who might decide to stay out for the dance. If she was discovered, she thought coldly, explanation would be unnecessary. Francis had been brutally correct in what he said about her position.

The gentlemen of Savannah knew her for the indentured man's daughter she was. That was why Saul Gordon had been able to make his dubious offer. Only Hart, and Giles Habersham, and of course, Francis were invariably courteous to her. The other young blades of Savannah had a way of looking straight through her that she tried hard to find comic. But, tonight, if she was found sitting here alone, it would simply be assumed that she had been ashamed of being partnerless. Normally, on such an occasion, she would have joined the older ladies at the card tables, for she had achieved something of a reputation for her skill at whist and was much sought after as what was usually called a “lucky” partner. But tonight Francis was here. Had been here.

There had not been another shot, but now, intensely listening as the musicians paused for a moment, she heard a sound with which she had grown all too familiar since that first, dreadful day. Francis had been right. The mob was out, and in force. Worse still, she rather thought they were coming towards the Common. Towards this house, where Mrs McCartney, a widow with two daughters to marry off, entertained Whig and Tory alike?

Ought she to give the alarm? The noise of the mob was
perceptibly nearer now. It was beginning to be possible to distinguish individual shouts from the general ominous roar. “Death to taxes,” she heard, and “Down with the Collector,” and, oddly, “May they swim to hell.” The crowd was very near now. To give the alarm would be to fail Francis, and yet—Those lighted windows were an invitation to violence.

She rose to her feet, shaking a little from remembered reaction to the horrible, half-human noise, then paused, as a group of men's figures appeared in the light of the house doors. They, too, had obviously heard the approaching tumult. One of them turned back indoors, and one by one, the lights began to go out in the house. The musicians missed a note and stopped. In the ballroom someone was saying something, doubtless urging silence, caution, but, just the same, the terrace was already filling up with silent figures, men and women, watching, listening. The mob must be as near as South Broad Street now, coming fast along Whitaker.

The terrace was crowded. She chose a moment when a particularly loud cry of “Death to the British,” held the attention of the couples nearest to her, and slipped quietly out of the pavilion, to mingle with the crowd. Her story, if she was challenged, must be that she had come out with Francis, who had left her for a moment to find out what was happening.

The mob debouched onto the Common, torches flaring, a fife tauntingly playing “Yankee Doodle”—a great burst of shouting, and then a queer, horrid, waiting silence. “What's, the crime?” shouted a voice. A gentleman's voice.

The silence prolonged itself for a moment, then the answer came with a roar, “Treason to the people of Savannah.”

“What's the verdict?”

Again that stretching silence, while on the terrace near her people whispered to each other, anxious, irresolute. More torches had been brought onto the Common, and Mercy, straining her eyes, could see, not far from the house, a group of people round a horse that had something laid crossways over the saddle. Something? Someone? She was shaking all over now, remembering her father.

“Death!” came a voice. A few others took up the cry. In the flaring, uncertain light of the torches, Mercy could see that the group who seemed to be leading the crowd were dressed as sailors, with blackened, featureless faces. The other men had hats pulled down or collars turned up so as to
be almost equally unrecognisable. Now, she thought, the first voice spoke again. Certainly it was again a gentleman's. “No, no. Not worth death. A mere tide waiter. Tarring and feathering will teach him, and his like, a lesson. Besides, we've an audience.” He waved a hand towards the McCartney house. “Let us show the ladies and gentlemen of Savannah that the Sons of Liberty deal in justice, not tyranny. Where's the tar”—he hurried on, over-riding a few scattered cries of “Death”—“and the feathers?”

At one point in his speech, Mercy's teeth had clenched so hard together that her whole head throbbed. Almost fainting, she put out a hand to steady herself against the terrace wall, then stood, an automaton, watching the horrible business go forward. The tar was ready; the man was stripped palely naked; a gasp, part horror part pleasure, went up from the crowd and was echoed shockingly by the watchers on the terrace.

“How about
them?
” called a rough voice. “We don't want no haudience!” A rock, thrown from the edge of the crowd broke a window, showering the watchers on the terrace with glass.

“Inside! All of you!” Francis appeared beside Mercy. “It's not safe here. Quick!”

“But that poor man,” objected one of the gentlemen. The ladies were already scurrying indoors, with little squeaks of mixed horror and fright as they shook fragments of glass off muslin skirts.

“If we try to help him, they'll kill him.” Francis' voice rose above the tumult. “He's lucky to get away with tarring and feathering, with the mob in the temper it is. If we intervene, we'll only make matters worse. Like as not they'll burn down this house, and God knows what would happen to the ladies.”

“You're right,” said one voice. “We must think of the ladies,” chimed in another. “Who is he, I wonder?” asked a third.

“Some poor devil from the docks, I'm afraid,” said Francis. “There was a lot of wild talk at Tondee's today about that cargo of Andrew Wells' that got sequestrated. It looks as if the mob has taken the law into its own hands.”

“Oh, is that it?” The men were lingering out in the protective darkness, their faces invisible to each other despite the glow of torches that showed the mob still horribly busy on
the Common. “Well, fair enough, maybe,” put in another speaker. “Poor Andrew. If you ask me, Sir James picked on him because of that New England cousin of his, Sam Adams.”

“Well, Sir James made a mistake,” said another voice.

“Looks like it,” said Francis. “But come, gentlemen, best get indoors and comfort the ladies. The sooner all is shuttered and quiet here, the better.” And as if to give point to his words, a glaring torch, flung over the terrace wall, lit up horrified faces for a moment, then sputtered out on the paving stones. It started a new rush indoors, and Francis was hard put to it to protect Mercy from the shoving and pushing of the “gentlemen” of Savannah.

Inside, chaos. Mrs McCartney was swooning on one of a pair of sofas and Anne Mayfield on the other. Young ladies were crying and wringing their hands, while the card players, who had been in a back room, had crowded in to see what was the matter, the room's only illumination provided by the light that streamed in with them. The three musicians had dropped their instruments and were gazing with a kind of open-mouthed relish at the scene.

“Quick!” Francis turned on them. “You there, close the shutters and look sharp about it. Mrs McCartney, may I send for someone to clear up the glass? I am afraid one of the young ladies might hurt herself. And we need a taper to relight the candles as soon as the shutters are closed. You will take charge, ma'am, with your usual strong common sense, I am sure.”