Judas Flowering (25 page)

“It's probably killing men too.” Mercy spoke more drily than she had intended. “But I think it's slackening.” She picked up a black shawl she had knitted for herself, which combined with her homespun dress to make her look like any countrywoman in town for the day. “I'm going out to see what's happening.”

“You'll never dare!” protested Miss Claire.

“She should be safe enough looking like that,” said Miss Bridget. “But don't loiter, Miss Phillips. I long for news of dear Mr Purchis.”

“I doubt if I shall be able to bring that,” Mercy told her. “I merely mean to go down to the bluff here, not up to Yamacraw. They will hardly want females there.” She wound the shawl firmly round her head, crossed its ends in front, and tied them at the back, then slipped out through the back yard and down across Bay Street to the bluff.

It was crowded with people, white-faced, watching, listening, whispering to each other, oddly, between the deafening sounds of gunfire. But these were slackening. Fire still from the ships on Hutchinson Island, but none from Yamacraw. Why? She worked her way gently forward through the crowd, listening to a phrase here and there. “Fired on Captain Screven,” said a voice. “Nearly sank their boat,” said another. “They'll pay for it now. Yes! Look! There comes the fireship!”

Mercy reached the edge of the bluff and looked across the wide, grey river to the flat marshy land beyond. No way, from here, to tell it was an island. But no doubt about the frenzied activity on the decks of the ships that lay there. Red and white figures swarmed on them. “What are they doing?” she turned to ask the man nearest her in the crowd.

“Trying to turn their guns on our fireship, the
Inverness
.” Intent on what was happening, he did not even turn to look at her. “That's why we've stopped firing, see, for fear of hitting her. Look, there she comes! A floating powder-keg. Thank God I'm not on board.”

“Who is?” Mercy could see white sails now, outlined against the farther bank of the river, as the small ship swooped down towards the anchored merchant vessels.

“Volunteers.” His eyes were still fixed on the ship's rapid progress. “Captain Bowen, Lieutenant James Jackson. The men who took that powder ship of Captain Maitland's.”

“Not Mr Purchis?”

“Surely! They sent for him special, from Yamacraw. He's a dab hand with a boat, is Hart Purchis.”

“Is it very dangerous?” She clasped her shawl with hands that would shake.

“Dangerous? What do you think! Look!” There had been a shift in the red and white pattern on the anchored ships. “Listen! They're firing on her. Please God they've got no rifles.” The water round the
Inverness
churned white; she heard the sharp crack of musketry fire. “Dangerous!” he said again. “Wouldn't you think it a mite dangerous to hold a candle to a barrel of powder? They've got her full as she'll hold of dry rice and deerskins, and they're going to turn her loose across the river. That's why they need Mr Purchis, who knows the currents and ways of our Savannah like the back of his hand. And, by God, there she goes.”

The
Inverness
had swung suddenly towards the ships on the farther bank and surged forward, all sails set, a sinister plume of smoke rising from her deck, and men leaping into the water from her stern.

Men. Who? “I can't see,” she cried, straining her eyes.

“Not faces,” he agreed “Much too far. But no need to fret, ma'am. Our boats are picking them up, see! Most of them, that is. Risky business. Looks like one of them's got caught by the current. Won't fetch up till Tybee, most like. I wouldn't choose to go swimming in our Savannah.”

Impossible even to try and recognise the figures that were being hauled into waiting row-boats. Mercy followed the one, lost drifting head with aching eyes. Hart was a strong swimmer, but suppose he had been wounded in the volley of fire poured into the fireship when the British belatedly realised what was happening.

“Look at her go!” exclaimed the first stranger.

“Straight for them, by golly,” said the other. It might have been some game of skill they were watching, Mercy thought furiously, not a matter of life and death.

“Ho! And look at that.” Another man pushed rudely forward in front of Mercy. ‘The redcoats are running for it. Look at them! Straight into the marsh. They'll get their feet wet surely!”

Peering round him, Mercy saw that chaos had broken out on Hutchinson Island. Two of the ships had managed to get under way and were escaping up river, out of range of the now-flaming fireship, but as she watched, flames passed rapidly from one to the next of those that were still anchored. She could not hear, but could imagine, the terrified screams of the small figures she saw leaping overboard—anywhere away from the swiftly advancing fire. “They must be dry as tinder,” said the man nearest her. “Waiting to sail all this time! The damned redcoats will remember this day for a while. Just look at them wallowing through the marsh. Back to their ships with a flea in their ear, mud on their boots, and lucky to get there! And darkness coming soon. There'll be plenty drowned in the creeks before morning.”

Slipping back into the house on Oglethorpe Square as quietly as she had left it, Mercy found a scene of confusion. Saul Gordon had just arrived with the news that Hart was on the fireship, and this had been the signal for competitive hysterics on the part of Mrs Mayfield and Miss Bridget. While Claire and Abigail were doing the best they could with sal volatile, burnt feathers, and sympathy, Mrs Purchis was sitting bolt upright in a chair, her face rigid, fighting for composure.

Mercy, who knew how bad anxiety was for her, flashed a furious look at Saul Gordon and hastened to reassure her that all but one of the men had got safely back on board the boats.

“That will be Hart.” His mother spoke with a kind of dry despair. “I've had a feeling in my bones all day. Oh, why did this horrible war have to happen? Why must we fight our own kith and kin? And how in the world do we think we are ever going to beat them? If it isn't today, it will be tomorrow. I shall lose my son, my home, everything!”

“But not the cause!” Bridget sat up and dried her tears.
“Dear Mrs Purchis, we must not be unworthy of your gallant son! Just think how horrified he would be if he were to hear you say such things.” She crossed the room and sat down by Mrs Purchis on her sofa, holding her hand and whispering consolation.

“Mercy.” Abigail's voice was low and strained. “The British. Could you see?”

“Only their red coats and white breeches, dear. I'm sorry. I expect most of them got away across the marsh, and some were safe enough on board the ships that got clear.”

“They are bound to have sent Giles,” said Abigail. “He knows the island so well. Oh, Mercy, suppose he and Hart should have met!”

“Impossible.” This at least was true. “It was all long range,” she explained. “No hand-to-hand fighting.”

“They might have killed each other just the same,” said Abigail, and Mercy could not deny it.

Instead, she applied herself to persuading her companions into a more cheerful frame of mind, and even managed to get them to eat a little supper, pointing out that when he returned Hart would not wish to find them already mourning him as dead. It won her a look of reluctant respect from Mrs Purchis and a moan of “quite heartless,” from Bridget, but even she found herself able to toy with a few smoked oysters and drink a glass of Madeira.

“Admirable Miss Phillips.” Saul Gordon had taken advantage of the general confusion to join them at their supper. “What would we do without you?”

“Very well, I expect.” Her tone was sharp with irritation and anxiety. He must know as well as she did that Hart should have been home long since. And there he sat, his white hands tucking smoked oysters into the too-red lips as if nothing in the world was the matter. Hours passed. Minutes? How could she tell. Internally, she was still shaking from present anxiety and remembered violence. The mob had been bad enough. This precisely ordered murder was far worse. Brothers, cousins, friends …

The porch door banged at last, and she jumped to her feet as Hart appeared, his fair hair curling wildly where it had dried, his shirt and breeches clinging to him. “That's good.” He surveyed the cheerful scene. “You got my message then.”

“Message! Nothing of the kind!” Flown with relief and Madeira, his mother turned on him angrily. “No thanks to
you that I have not had one of my attacks.”

“I'm sorry.” He looked past her to Bridget. “I sent a boy to say I had to go straight to the Council of Safety.”

“Of course,” said Mercy. “We should have thought of that.”

“The conquering hero.” Bridget raised her glass. “To your victory, Mr Purchis.”

“Nothing of the kind.” His tone to her was sharper than usual. “A skirmish, that's all. Both sides will be claiming victory tomorrow, no doubt. What worries me is what will come of it.” He reached out absent-mindedly and helped himself to a roll. “Tempers are high at the Council of Safety. I'm afraid we may make bad worse.”

“Can it be worse?” asked Mercy.

“You're famished, you poor man,” said Bridget. “What are we thinking of to keep you talking here! What he needs is hot soup,” she told Mercy. “Not questions.”

“And dry clothes,” put in his mother. “What a figure you cut, to be sure, Hart. Do you mean to tell me you've been talking to the Council of Safety like that! I don't know what your father would say if he could see you now.”

“They would not have listened to me if I had looked like Solomon himself,” said Hart bitterly, but refused to be drawn further.

As he had predicted, morning saw both British and Americans claiming victory, and each with some semblance of truth. The British had indeed captured some of the rice ships they needed so badly, though Governor Wright was undoubtedly exaggerating when he wrote Lord Dartmouth that they had taken fourteen or fifteen of them. Similarly, the Americans inflated the losses they had inflicted on the British, and, an inevitable aftermath of the fighting, the mob was out in force. A group of Governor Wright's councillors who were still in town were lucky to be arrested, and many Tory merchants saw their danger in time and took refuge with the British fleet.

Hart, who had arranged for a guard to be put on the McCartney house, continued silent and anxious, and returned from the meetings of the Council of Safety in such a black mood that only Bridget dared speak to him and even she did not like to ask what was the matter. They learned at last towards the end of the month when he announced curtly, one evening, that he was to go on duty next day. “You will know
where soon enough,” he told his anxious mother. “But there is no need for alarm, and no hope of glory.”

He left at dawn and returned long after dark, grey-faced and uncommunicative. “Yes,” he said curtly, in answer to Bridget's bold question, “we've been on a punitive raid, down to Tybee. Destroyed the houses the British have been using there. It was the only answer the Council of Safety could think of to the British attack on the rice ships. Horrible. The mob's not much worse. “Oh”—as Bridget began to protest—“we didn't tar and feather anyone, but turned helpless women and children out of doors and burned their homes before their very eyes.”

“Oh, the poor things,” exclaimed Mercy. “What will they do?”

“Go aboard the British ships. What else
can
they do? And their men will follow them. We've made enemies enough today! And the Indians with us, enjoying it all. That's why I agreed to go.” He needed to explain it. “I was afraid they might get out of hand.”

“Never, with you there.” Bridget smiled up at him admiringly.

“Not this time,” he said. “Archibald Bulloch had his men well in control, I'll say that for him. We were even able to spare one house where a woman and her children were lying sick, but what will she do, poor creature, with her neighbours all gone? We might just as well have killed her and been done with it.”

“I told you it was a wicked war,” said his mother. “Can it not be stopped, Hart?”

“No! It's not our decision anymore, Mother. The British Parliament have settled it for us. No more olive branches now. They've passed a Prohibitory Act announcing to the world that a state of war exists between us: our ships are to be prizes, our goods confiscated. We have it in their own letter to Governor Wright, which they sent here, thinking him still in control. He has their gracious permission to confiscate the property of ‘rebels.' No, Mother, no more talk of reconciliation now, it's independence or slavery.” He turned to his cousin. “Abigail, I think you should stay at home for a few days. I am afraid your sympathies are too well known for your safety.”

“It's as bad as that?” asked Mercy.

“Quite as bad. We learned too much for comfort in the
course of that unspeakable raid on Tybee. Both Giles and Francis distinguished themselves on Hutchinson Island. They are dead men now, if they set foot in Savannah. You must try to forget Giles, Abigail, and”—he turned to the McCartney sisters—“Miss Bridget, Miss Claire, I am sorry to have to say it, but I think you should do your best to put your mother out of your minds.”

“I should think so!” said Bridget

“Poor mother,” said Claire.

“And what about my Francis?” asked Mrs Mayfield.

“Aunt Anne, I'm sorry.” His glance shifted, for an instant, between her and Mercy. “Francis is in the worst case of all. You must face it. We must all do so.”

“My child! My only son!” Anne Mayfield burst into noisy sobs, and the McCartney girls moved to either side to try and comfort her, and finally to lead her, still sobbing, from the room.

Abigail was gazing steadily at Hart. “I will never forget Giles,” she said. “If he had only let me go with him when I asked. Hart, you don't think …”