Judas Flowering (29 page)

“Miss Mercy.” William had emerged from his hut at the far corner of the yard. “You want some fresh fish? Give Jem and me the afternoon off, and you'll have your party.”

“Delicious.” Hart had not brought Bridget McCartney. He finished his second helping of devilled crab and smiled round the table. “It's good to be home.”

“And good to have you, Hart.” His mother raised her glass. “To stay this time, I hope. No more running off to Winchelsea.”

“Oh, Mother.” His tone was at once apology and warning. “I'm sorry … I should have told you at once.” And then a quick aside to Mercy, “Have you her drops?” And as she nodded, speechless, he went on. “Lachlan McIntosh goes north,” he told them. “His friends advise it. He can do no good here, after what's happened. And, Mother, the same is true of me, I am afraid. I have said I'll go too.”

“And leave us defenceless!” Anne Mayfield turned on him, while his mother sat rigid, fighting for composure. “Of all the obstinate, inconsiderate, cross-grained boys …” She was working rapidly towards one of her bouts of hysteria.

“Hush!” said Martha Purchis. “No, dear”—to Mercy—“I don't need my drops. I'm not quite a fool.” She turned with a travesty of a smile to Hart. “I saw this coming. Purchis of Winchelsea must do his duty, and you're right, there's no place for you here. Not now. And as for us, a household of women, we have nothing to fear, and Saul Gordon to protect us. But, Hart, have you no other news? No good news for me?”

He looked at her squarely. “No, ma'am. I don't think these are times for good news.”

And what did that mean, Mercy asked herself for the hundredth time, sleepless in her bed. That he had proposed and been refused, or decided not to propose? She would never know. Did she want to know? He was going away. That was a good thing. That was what she had wanted. She put her head under the pillow for fear that Abigail, in the room next door, might hear her sobs.

It was strange to be sewing shirts again, as she had three years ago before Hart went to Harvard. It seemed much longer than that. It seemed a lifetime. A disastrous one. When
there was no chance of hearing that firm tread or listening for the voice that seemed to grow deeper and graver every day, might she manage to achieve some kind of pretence at quietness? Not peace, never happiness, but surely she might hope to be quiet?

They were all going to Winchelsea at the end of June, and Mercy was glad of it. Hart and his mother would both be better away from the gossiping tongues and sly glances of Savannah. “It may be the last visit for a long time,” Hart warned. “I'm afraid, with things as they are since that last disastrous expedition of poor Gwinnett's, it's altogether too far from town and too near the sea for your safety, Mother. You'll not go when I'm not here?” It was as much order as request.

“Of course not. But, Hart, do you know when—”

“Not for some time. I must wait for my posting. I'd much rather wait at Winchelsea.”

“So would I,” agreed his mother. “Hardly anyone came to our sewing circle last night, I can't get up a hand of whist, and even the McCartney girls seem to be avoiding us now.”

“They've other interests,” said Hart shortly. “I called this afternoon and found Joseph Wood there, and two of those cousins of his who all have such profitable appointments since he's crept into power. I wish we may not be carrying democracy too far.”

“Can one?” asked Mercy.

“I begin to think so. As to Miss Bridget”—the heavy brows drew together—“she sent a message to you, Mother. As I was leaving. To say how sorry she is not to be able to visit you.”

“Not able? And what is stopping her, pray?”

“She came out on to the porch with me, on purpose to explain … to apologise … She feels it very much, she says.… It's because of their mother … and … and Francis and Giles. She thinks two households, so tainted with loyalism, had better not be seen to associate.”

“Well!” Martha Purchis drew herself up. “Of all the ungrateful hussies. When I think what we've done for those girls. I should like to give them a good piece of my mind, but I suppose they would be ‘not at home' if I were to call.”

“I don't know.” He looked and sounded wretched.

“Hart.” Abigail had turned very white. “I said this before, when the Loyalists were proscribed in October, and I say it
again. You have only to say the word, and I go.”

“Dear Abigail.” He crossed the room quickly to take her hand. “So long as I have a house, its protection is yours. Thank God, as you are a woman and without property, there is no need for you to take the patriotic oath.”

“No.” She sat down again, her hands limp in her lap. “But I know what harm my abstaining does you with Joseph Wood and his creatures.”

“Hush!” He surprised them all. “I know it seems odd that someone like Joe Wood, who has actually been taken to court as a dishonest man, should be sent to represent us at the Continental Congress. We cannot help thinking these things, but, Abigail, I think we should not speak of them.”

She looked up at him sadly. “You'll be glad to get away, won't you, to the North, and your hero, Washington.”

The day before they were due to leave for Winchelsea, they were amazed by a visit from Bridget McCartney.

“Dear Mrs Purchis!” Bridget was at her most winning. “I am come as a suppliant to you.”

“A suppliant?” Martha Purchis had received her with a cool dignity Mercy admired.

“Yes. Claire and I have minded so much, these last weeks, that we have not seen you.”

“There was nothing to stop you,” said Mrs Purchis.

“Only our wish not to make matters worse than they were already for Hart,” explained Bridget. “If you but knew, Mrs Purchis, how we have been pleading his case with our friends, but now my poor Claire is not well. Above all things she needs a breath of country air, and what better excuse could there be for us to visit you at Winchelsea?”

“At Winchelsea?” Martha Purchis did not try to conceal her amazement.

“Dear Mrs Purchis, I could not bear to let Hart go north, to such a danger, without saying a real good-bye, and how can I, here in Savannah, where even the walls have ears?”

Martha Purchis looked round her handsome sitting-room as if wondering whether this was true. “You and Claire actually want to come and stay?”

“Do you not know that the time we spent here in Savannah with you was one of the happiest of our lives?” Bridget looked down thoughtfully at her diamond bracelets. She was wearing two today, Mercy noticed. “We owe so much to you
all, and most especially to Hart. Dear Purchis, just for a few days, just to say good-bye.”

“I said yes,” Martha Purchis told her son that night. “It seemed only civil.”

“Just so long as the Woods don't come to call,” said Hart. Impossible to tell how he felt about the proposed visit. The days when one could read his thoughts in his face were long gone.

For Mercy, the visit was the last straw. Bad enough that Saul Gordon was coming, but now this. “I shall be glad when it's over,” she told Abigail.

“If only it is well over,” said Abigail. “And no harm done. Do you know, Mercy, I cannot quite like this visit of the McCartneys.”

Mercy laughed. “Oh, Abigail, I do so agree with you.”

She remembered Abigail's words when the McCartneys arrived. Claire did indeed look far from well and had been glad to be urged to spend her mornings in bed, but Bridget showed herself remarkably friendly and actually insisted on accompanying Mercy on her morning visit to her father's grave. She talked all the way volubly, about fresh country air and the blessed quiet after Savannah, but when they reached the low wall that surrounded the family lot, she paused. “You will wish to be alone with your memories. I will explore a little farther along the path towards the river.” She took a deep breath and started again. “It is so
good
to be away from the heat and bustle of town, but a breath of river air will be best of all. I will see you back at the house.”

“Be sure and keep to the path,” advised Mercy.

“I shall indeed. I have no wish to lose myself in Hart's jungle. Besides”—she lifted muslin skirts to reveal the softest of white kid slippers—“I am hardly shod for it.”

Mercy was glad to be left alone to put her morning-gathered flowers on her father's grave, but ashamed to find herself thinking more of Bridget than of him. And yet … she put her flowers in the porous clay container the estate potter had given her and stood for a moment looking down at them. What would her father have thought of this curious visit of the McCartney sisters, and odder still, of Bridget's behaviour this morning? He would have questioned it, as he questioned everything. “
Cui bono?
” he would have asked. “Who gains what by it?” Well, she smiled down at his grave as if she were actually answering him. Bridget obviously
intended to gain Hart if she could. Or did she? She had certainly managed to suggest this to Mrs Purchis so as to get invited, but Mercy was not so sure, suspecting her of flying at higher, more political game. So, why this visit? Perhaps the game had eluded her and Hart was to be second best? Odious thought. And, somehow, she did not think her father would be satisfied with it. Following his mind with her own, she decided that he would question the purpose of this morning's walk. Bridget McCartney never walked if she could ride, never rode if she could drive. So what was she doing in her soft little kid shoes, looking for a breeze by the river?

Go and see
, said her imagined father. She rose to her feet and walked across the graveyard to the river path. No sign of Bridget. She must have walked fast indeed to have vanished in either direction. Mercy looked back at the grave under its Judas tree and then across to the family tomb where Francis had hidden. He had killed poor Pete at the disused wharf. And that wharf was reached by a concealed path behind the big magnolia at the corner of the dike. Impossible, surely, that Bridget could have found this, or ventured down it, through what she had called “Hart's jungle,” in those soft slippers. But, already, Mercy was walking swiftly towards the place where the path branched off. Impossible or not, she was going to make sure.

Reaching the magnolia she stood for a few minutes in the hot sun, wondering what to do. Nobody who did not know could possibly tell that a path started here. And how should Bridget know? The answer came instantly. Through Francis or through her mother. Was this the reason for the visit? Was she down there, at the cold wharf now, keeping some treasonable assignation? She shivered in the hot sun, thinking of Pete's death. If Bridget was meeting someone down at the wharf, they would not be alone. Madness to challenge them single-handed. But she must do something. Straining her ears, she could almost imagine she heard voices. It was not far down the path; the shrubbery was thick with a rich June growth of wild bay and myrtle; if she went, very quietly, a little way …

“Miss Mercy!” She turned to see Saul Gordan hurrying towards her along the dike. “I have found you at last! Mr Purchis is asking for you urgently.”

“Oh? Where?”

“By the sheep pens. I hate to ask you to hurry, in this heat, but just the same—”

What should she do? Take Saul Gordon into her confidence? Ask him to go down to the old wharf, see if Bridget was really talking to … to whom? Francis? It was possible. Francis had served at the unsuccessful British assault on Charleston the year before. That was all they knew. He could be anywhere. Here? Delivering a secret message to Bridget from her mother?

Saul Gordon stood there, innocuous in his black suit, sweating in the sun. She trusted him less even than Francis or Bridget. Danger was thick in the hot air. “Very well,” she made it casual, “I will go to Mr Purchis at once.”

It was a half-mile walk to the sheep field, and when she arrived, there was no one there. And the sheep looked contented enough, munching stolidly at the alfalfa Hart had had planted for them. Mercy gazed at them, puzzled, undecided, wondering whether she had imagined that moment of terror. Should she go back to the old wharf? No. Too late, useless. She must find Hart. She hurried back across the sheep field to the house.

Arriving, hot and flushed, she found Bridget there already, sitting on the porch, gently rocking in one of the big estate-made chairs. Her slippers, very evident as she pushed herself off the ground, shone white as they had this morning.

But were they the same slippers? “Did you enjoy your walk?” asked Mercy.

“Vastly.” She was gently waving a broad-brimmed chip hat to create her own breeze. “I went as far as that big magnolia on the river path and then cut through the orange grove to the house. I shall do it every day and become a perfect amazon. But you look hot, Miss Phillips. You must not court sunstroke running about in the heat of the day. You had best go indoors and rest a while. Look, here comes Mr Purchis. Shall I venture out into the sun to meet him? I really believe I will. Besides, it will give you time to make yourself a little presentable, my dear creature. You would hardly wish your employer to see you looking as you do now.” She rose, picked up a white, frilled parasol that lay on the porch floor beside her, and drifted out through the screen door and down the steps towards Hart's approaching figure.

That parasol. Bridget had not had it when they started out to the family lot together. So, she had been up to her
room to fetch it and might at the same time have changed a muddy pair of slippers for the spotless ones she was now wearing. Mercy fell into step beside her. “Mr Purchis was looking for me.”

“So that's why you've been hurrying.” Bridget's amused stare took in every detail of her hot face and crumpled dress. “You have the most devoted housekeeper, Hart,” she greeted him. “You send for her and she courts heatstroke seeking you out.”