Just Jane (16 page)

They fell silent then, Simon lying motionless in one end of the skiff, Billy lolling in the other end, arm over the side, fingers idly dangling in the placid brown water of the creek. It was a rare moment of peace and restfulness in the harsh life they led. But for Simon it was also a time for grieving—for his own lost ideals, and for two good soldiers, one American, one English, lying dead back there, together in the sand.

General Clinton left Charlestown before Captain Fleming could secure Robert's desired introduction. His replacement, General Cornwallis, was not interested in Robert's offer of Rosewall Plantation as a backcountry military base. Robert swallowed his disappointment and told Captain Fleming that the offer still stood, in case the new commander changed his mind. Fleming's inquiries in another area were more successful, and soon Brandon was a lieutenant in the American Loyalist Cavalry. He was grateful, but gratitude didn't stop him from being upset over rumors that Jane was keeping company with the English officer. He was waiting for her one day when she returned from the city market, and one glance at his face told her that something was wrong.

“Jane, I need to talk to you about a very serious matter. I've heard you're being seen in public with Captain Fleming. Is that true?”

“I've walked out with him a few times. Why do you ask?”

“Why do I
ask
? I want you to desist at once, that's why I ask! It's humiliating for me that the young lady everyone expects to become my wife is going around with another man. Surely you can understand that!”

In the face of his anger, Jane drew a sad sigh and took his arm. “Walk with me a bit, please.” As they walked slowly down toward the next corner, she spoke as gently and patiently as she could. “Brandon, I'm afraid you're deluding yourself about me, and it's partly my fault. I've let your mistaken impression go on far too long. But now I'm going to correct it, so listen carefully, please. Contrary to what ‘everyone' expects, I do not intend to become your wife. What we are—and what I sincerely hope we can always remain, because I'm very fond of you—is good friends.”

“Good friends!''
He stopped, recoiling as if the words had struck him like a slap in the face. “After all we've meant to each other, all the happy hours we've spent together, all the dreams we've shared—”

“Now
you're
dreaming, Brandon. None of those things ever happened, except in your imagination. I'm truly sorry, but I think it's time you—”

“Enough, Jane. You've made yourself abundantly clear. So it's good friends, eh? Well! Perhaps I should start keeping company with Lucinda Dunning. You remember Lucinda. She's a lovely girl, she dotes on me, and quite frankly, she has a much more affectionate nature than you do!”

“Good. In that case, I hope you two are very happy together.”

Bristling with anger, Brandon stalked away, while Jane, feeling at the same time relieved and a little ashamed, returned to the house.

Did I do the right thing?
she asked herself.
Yes—but I should have done it long ago
.

 

Having decided to be “nice” to Richard Fleming, Jane had found to her pleasant surprise that it was easier than she had expected it to be. He was intelligent, thoughtful, gallantly well mannered, and altogether charming. They attended open-air concerts by the hired German band that traveled with the British army, plays at the Dock Street Theater, and social events in the Georgian mansion that served as the British Officers Club. They took long walks and talked of England, Richard speaking fondly of his family home in Essex, near London. It was quite enjoyable, except when Jane felt guilty thinking of her rebel friends.

But all hopes for Arthur Ainsley remained unfulfilled. Often Jane asked Richard about it, and each time he noted that Mr. Ainsley still had not signed the Oath of Allegiance. “He says he won't until his property is returned to him, and that's out of the question. No one can help him if he refuses to help himself.”

Finally Richard himself brought up the subject, though in a roundabout way. During a walk one Saturday afternoon, he said, “I leave tonight for a week or two of patrol through the backcountry.”

“Whatever for, Richard?”

“There's a great deal of rebel smuggling in these colonies, you know. Naturally, my work with the Board of Police concerns such things. Speaking of which, I'm afraid Mr. Ainsley's situation is more complicated than I thought.”

Jane felt a twinge of uneasiness. “What do you mean?”

“It's just that for years he managed to keep his store open most of the time in spite of an extremely tight blockade. How was that possible? He says only that he dealt with various suppliers at various times. Who they were and where they got their merchandise, he claims he never knew.”

“That's understandable, isn't it?”

“I'm afraid not. One would have to be a fool not to suspect that those goods were illegally obtained. There's no proof, and I haven't said anything about this to Mr. and Mrs. Prentice, not wishing to worry them unduly. But the fact is, suspicions about Mr. Ainsley's activities are growing.”

“That's absurd!” Jane declared. “I'm
sure
he's done nothing wrong!”

But that night she lay awake, wondering.
Kept his store open despite the blockade . . . How
had
Uncle Arthur done that? Received goods without knowing where they came from . . . Was
that
believable? And if his meeting with Simon last fall was really about how to run a store, why was it such a big secret?
She tossed and turned, trying to evade the questions. But they would not leave her alone.

 

Sunday mornings were normally quiet, with the cries of peddlers and the clattering of traffic largely absent from the street. Robert and Clarissa had gone to church and Jane had just finished dressing to attend a later service, when she was startled by an urgent pounding on the front door. With the maid, Nellie, off on an errand, Jane answered the door herself.

Standing on the stoop was a slender Negro lad she recognized as Luther, the stable boy at the Dudley place in Goose Creek, where the Ainsleys were living with Harriet's mother. Drenched in sweat from hard riding, the boy nervously twisted his cap in his hands. Jane steeled herself for bad news.

“Luther! What's happened. Why are you here?”

“Lordy, Miss, I never seen nothin' like it.” Luther was trembling. “Them Redcoat soldiers come a-gallopin' into the yard at the crack o' dawn—I come runnin' to see what they want wid us—they kept shoutin' where's Mahster Ainsley. When I don't answer fast enough they knock me down—I's scairt half to death they gon' to kill me—”

“Stop it, Luther. You're babbling!” Jane came out on the stoop and grasped the boy's arms. “Just calm down and tell me what happened.”

Luther gulped, trying without much success to calm himself. “'Fore God, ma'am, them Redcoats went bustin' into the house like they own the place. The missus, she come down an' say what you want. Then Mahster Ainsley come out, an' they grab him. They done arrested 'im and tooken im away.

“Arrested
him! Taken him where?”

“I dunno, miss, but they left poor missus cryin' and wringin' her hands. She tol' me, Luther, ride fast to the Prentice house in Charlestown and tell 'em we need help, Mahster Ainsley be tooken away. I been ridin' ever since, seem like.”

Jane tugged at his sleeve. “Come inside, Luther, and sit awhile.”

“No thankee, ma'am. I got to go quick. Them soldiers guardin' the road say I got ten minutes to git in here an' out, or they's havin' my hide!”

Jane could keep him there only long enough to give him a drink of water, a coin for his trouble, and a hastily scribbled note for Harriet, saying they all stood ready to help in any way they possibly could. Then Luther sped off, leaving Jane, all thoughts of church forgotten, dreading the moment when she would have to tell her uncle and aunt the news.

 

But when they returned they had already heard, and knew even more than Jane did. They had learned that a number of men suspected of rebel activity had been arrested that morning, and the list of names nailed up on street corners included the name Arthur Ainsley. Clarissa was in tears and beside herself with worry, but Robert was stern in his judgment.

“Arthur brought this on himself,” he muttered. “He thought he could thumb his nose at our lawful British government and get away with it. Now he'll learn otherwise, and it will serve him right.”

Jane was shocked. “Uncle Robert! He's family! Can't you at least show a little sympathy?”

“Not for a man who insists on acting like a fool!” he snapped back.

“But couldn't you register a protest, or somehow try to help?”

“I cannot be expected to intervene now. I offered Arthur my help when I could, and he refused. Anything I tried now would only compromise my own position, and I couldn't change what has happened anyway.”

“Your
position!”
Jane cried. “Is that all you can think about?” With Robert gaping after her, she turned and rushed upstairs to her room. Her mind was filled with a dark vision of Arthur as a prisoner, shackled in irons. And with this distressing thought came another:
Richard Fleming. He knew. He knew this would happen, all along. . .

Twenty-nine men, all prominent in the revolutionary movement, were arrested that Sunday morning in August. Accused of having engaged in acts of treason, they were taken aboard a prison ship anchored in the harbor. After three days, they were transferred to another vessel that would soon take them away. They would be banished to Saint Augustine, in the British-held province of East Florida, and would be forbidden, upon pain of death, to set foot in South Carolina again until the present hostilities had ended. And they should thank their lucky stars, their captors added, that their punishment was so light.

The prisoners would be permitted farewell visits from friends and family before the ship sailed. The night before, Clarissa and Jane sat up late.

“It's been a week since Arthur's arrest,” Clarissa mused. “And Richard Fleming has not shown his face here once. You didn't do a very good job on him, did you, Jane? Well, perhaps I misjudged the man.”

“Or me,” Jane suggested quietly.

“Or you, indeed. I should have known you couldn't manage it. The whole thing was my mistake, so let's leave it at that. Now, about tomorrow. Robert thinks we shouldn't go out to the ship. I told him I won't let them take Arthur away without saying good-bye. What about you?”

“Unless he locks me in my room, I'm going!” Jane replied with spirit.

“I knew you would.” Clarissa smiled thinly. “You see, I don't
always
misjudge you. I just hope we get to see Arthur, with all those people trying to get out to that ship.”

“We'll get on,” Jane vowed. “Even if we have to swim out there.”

 

Just as Clarissa had expected, hundreds of relatives and friends of the prisoners were gathered on the docks the next afternoon. Many brought food or clothing. The occasion might have appeared festive, but a somber mood prevailed. Little was known of the exiled prisoners' destination except that it was an obscure outpost far to the south. If anyone knew that its harbor was dominated by a grim gray fortress containing a dank prison, they kept silent.

People were rowed out to the ship in small groups for short visits. Wives went first and were allowed to stay the longest. With hundreds of people awaiting turns, it was clear the process would last until evening.

Jane and Clarissa waited on the dock for Harriet to return. She had been weeping but was otherwise composed.

“Arthur's in remarkably good spirits,” she reported. “It's all a dreadful mistake, of course. Everything will be cleared up before long.” Her eyes searched the crowd. “Has anyone seen Brandon? His headquarters said he has leave to come. It will break Arthur's heart if he doesn't.”

“I'm sure he will,” Jane declared firmly.
Or I'll never speak to him again
, she vowed silently.

Jane accompanied Harriet to her carriage. Rather embarrassed to say it, she told Harriet, “Uncle Robert sends his kindest thoughts and hopes you'll understand why he couldn't come today.”

“Certainly, Jane, dear,” Harriet replied. “We could hardly expect him to consort with criminals like us.”

Jane was startled by the bitterness in her voice. She started to say she hoped to see Harriet again soon but was stopped by the same sharp tone. “No, Jane, stay away. Don't compromise Robert's purity! Someday we'll all be reunited. Arthur says so, and I must believe it, mustn't I?”

Harriet gazed for a long moment toward the prison ship far out in the harbor. Then she stepped into her carriage and, with eyes fixed straight ahead, signaled the driver to take her away.

 

Jane took her turn last. It was late afternoon by the time she climbed aboard the prison ship and found Arthur Ainsley on the crowded deck.
I will not cry
, she had vowed.
Weeping will hardly lift a prisoner's spirits
.

Arthur sat on a low stool near the stern. “Good of you to come, Jane,” he said, rising to greet her. “You needn't have, you know.”

“I wouldn't dream of doing otherwise, Uncle Arthur.”

He offered her a stool near his own. “Sit down. Sorry there's nothing better here.” He looked haggard, and his smile seemed forced.

Her own smile felt forced in return. Questions she longed to ask him swirled around in her head.
Is this really all a mistake, as Aunt Harriet says? Or are you guilty of illegal acts, as the British claim?
Instead, she asked only, “How have they been treating you?”