Wide is the Water (10 page)

‘What did you hear, Jed?'

‘Oh … talk.' The inn had been a small one, and Mercy and Ruth, the only women travellers, had slept with the landlord's three buxom daughters, while the men dossed down in the big, warm kitchen which served also as dining and living quarters.

‘What kind of talk?'

‘Cowboys,' he said grimly. ‘Or Skinners. No one seemed sure which, and it don't seem it makes much difference. They raided a farm over there a piece.' He waved a hand vaguely in the direction of New York. ‘Took all the cattle,' he said. ‘And all the food they had.'

‘Did they' – she paused – ‘hurt anyone?'

‘I dunno.' He looked quickly at Ruth.

‘We'd best keep going then.' She twitched the reins, and the sledge moved smoothly forward. Jed was right, she knew. It made little difference whether the marauding bands that ravaged the farms round New York were Tory Cowboys or Patriot Skinners. All they really wanted was loot. She shivered a little. ‘If we should meet them, don't fire unless you have to. We'll give them the money I've got out for today, and pray God they believe it's all we have. But I'm glad you've got the pistol.'

‘So'm I,' said Jed.

The morning passed quietly enough, but as the country grew less mountainous and the road better, Mercy was increasingly
aware of the menacing nearness of New York. They were in a district, she knew, where a landowner like Mr. Vanhorn, whose handsome country house they had passed, might entertain the British general Cornwallis for breakfast and the American Lincoln for dinner. As to whose side he was on, that was his secret.

They passed through Monmouth Courthouse, where Hart had been wounded in 1778, and saw the relics of the huts where Washington's troops had spent the following winter. The light was beginning to fade, and Mercy to look anxiously ahead for signs of the village that surrounded Somerset Courthouse, when she saw a dark band of woods ahead and heard a shot and the sound of shouting.

‘Trouble.' Jed pulled the horses to a halt. ‘What's to do?'

She looked about her, her first instinct to hide. But frozen piles of deeply drifted snow would make it an impossibly dangerous business to get the sledge off the road, and even if they did, there was no cover except for the wood ahead of them. ‘I thing we'd better go on, get into the wood, hope to hide there,' she said. ‘It looks quite big. There might even be a side track we could take.'

‘I surely hope so.'

As the sledge moved forward again, a horseman emerged from the wood, riding hard, sparks of ice flying up from his horse's hooves. He was holding his reins left-handed, Mercy saw, and swaying dangerously in the saddle. Whether friend or enemy, he was badly hurt. And now, behind him, she could hear shouting from the wood. How many voices? Not many, she thought.

He had seen them. ‘Help!' he cried, and then, near enough to see that two of them were girls: ‘No, save yourselves! I'll hold them as long as I can. I killed their leader, I think. Quick! Back the way you came. It's your only hope.' Level with them now, he pulled his horse to a sliding halt and made a fumbling effort to reload the pistol he held in his left hand. ‘Save yourself, madame. There's no hope for me.'

Now she recognised his slight accent. He was French, one of America's new allies.

‘The British?' she asked.

‘No. Some
canaille
. They ambushed me in the wood. I killed their leader, hoped for a moment the others would run for it. They're on foot,' he explained.

‘Then we can all escape them!' exclaimed Mercy.

‘No. I can ride no further.'

It was too obviously true. Blood was showing now, a dark stain on the right side of his coat.

‘Give me your pistol.' Mercy had made up her mind. ‘You can't use it. I can. And will. Jed, turn the sledge across the road. We'll fire on them from behind it, try to keep them from seeing how few we are. Better that than trying to run for it. Besides, we can't leave him. Sir' – she turned to the Frenchman – ‘let me help you dismount. Then they need not see that you are wounded. It will make us seem more of a threat. Quick! They'll be out of the woods any minute now.' The sounds of shouting were much nearer. ‘How many?' she asked as she steadied his difficult descent from the horse.

‘Five. Four now. And I may have wounded another.'

‘Then we have a chance. The light's going. When they appear, you must speak to them. Tell them to stand, or we fire. Make it sound as if we were friends of yours, soldiers, a threat. That's right, Jed.' He had been manoeuvring the sledge so it lay at an angle across the road, the horses to one side in a passing place. ‘Fire when I give the word,' she told him, swiftly examining the Frenchman's pistol. ‘Does it fire true?' she asked.

‘Yes, if you can handle it.'

‘Oh, never fear for that.' She was trying to decide whether to leave Ruth in the sledge. It was a good deal darker now, and she thought that they would present a fairly formidable-looking group silhouetted against the snow. ‘Keep down, Ruth,' she urged. ‘And keep quiet.' Fatal if she should scream. ‘Jed, you take the one to your left, I'll fire to the right. Here they come!' A little group
of dark figures had emerged from the wood and hesitated at the sight of their party. ‘Now, monsieur. Frighten them if you can,' she urged.

‘Halt, there,' he shouted as they began to come forward, rather hesitantly, Mercy thought. ‘I have met my friends. We are armed and ready for you. Come any further, and we fire.'

They paused, an indistinct huddle against the dark of the wood, and Mercy turned to Jed. ‘We'll have to hold our fire until they are clear of the trees,' she told him. ‘We'd never hit them now. When they are outlined against that bank of snow, that's our time.'

‘If they don't fire first,' said Jed.

‘I doubt they can see us any better.'

‘I hope they don't hit the horses.'

‘They don't want to,' she said. ‘That's why they're not firing already.' The men had started moving forward now, spreading out to present a wider field of fire. Four of them, as the Frenchman had said. ‘We'll have to reload fast.' Despite the cold, her hands were damp with sweat on the pistol. The outlaws were coming forward steadily now, silently, drawn by the irresistible target of sledge and horses. If either she or Jed missed a first shot, they would be lucky to get a second. ‘Now!' she said, and the two shots rang out, dull-sounding against the snow. For a horrible moment she thought they had both missed, then saw the man to the right of the group begin to crumple downwards while the one on the left was cursing and holding his right arm with his left one. No time to be looking at them. She was reloading with cold hands that would shake.

‘After them, my friends,' shouted the Frenchman. ‘Don't let the villains escape!'

That did it. The three who had remained standing turned and fled, leaving their comrade where he lay. The Frenchman turned shakily to look at Mercy for the first time. ‘Thank you, mademoiselle,' he said. ‘You saved my life.'

‘Then I'd better make a job of it by bandaging that wound of yours,' she told him. ‘Jed, help me get his coat off. Ruth, there's a petticoat at the top of the valise. Get it out for me, would you?'

‘Yes, Sister.' To Mercy's immense relief, Ruth responded to the tone of command and began obediently tearing the petticoat into strips as Jed and Mercy eased the Frenchman out of his coat. The wound in his forearm, though bleeding freely and obviously incapacitating, was less serious than Mercy had feared. ‘But we must get you to some shelter,' she said as she bound it up. ‘Do you know these parts, monsieur?'

‘Call me Charles,' he said, pronouncing it in English.

‘Or
Charles
?'

‘Quick of you, mademoiselle, but English is better. You Americans do not seem to take kindly to strangers. I believe those ruffians back there might have let me alone if it had not been for my accent. No,' he replied to her question. ‘I am quite a stranger here. I had intended to spend the night at the inn at Somerset Courthouse. The other side of the wood, I take it.'

‘So had we.' Mercy looked unhappily at the dark bulk of the wood, which seemed increasingly sinister as the light faded. ‘And it's a long stretch back to the last inn.' She had been thinking about this. ‘It would be quite dark before we got there.'

‘It will be dark in the wood,' said Jed.

‘And the longer we stay here talking, the darker it will get.' She made her voice as positive as she could.

‘Listen!' said Jed. ‘Someone's coming.'

Mercy had been helping the Frenchman into the sledge but straightened up at the sound of voices, a horse's neigh, the creak of a sledge, clear in the twilight hush. ‘Thank God,' she said. ‘Someone else on their way to the inn. We'll wait for them, go through the wood together.'

‘Excellent,' said the Frenchman. ‘Have you a lantern, mademoiselle? I think we will need it.'

‘Madame,' she said. ‘Mrs. Purchis. Yes. Would you light the lantern, Jed? My brother and sister,' she told the stranger. ‘Ruth and Jed Paston.' What had made her give him her real name?

‘And I am Charles Brisson, your most indebted servant.' He pronounced his name English style to rhyme with prison. ‘I am here on business for my government,' he explained. ‘But the less said about that, madame, the better. I shall hope that these people have less acute ears than yours, and pass myself off as an American merchant on his way to Philadelphia.' She noticed that since the moment of crisis had passed, he was speaking with much less of an accent.

‘I am sure you will succeed,' she told him. ‘Of course, we will say nothing. I doubt my brother and sister have noticed.'

‘You are all goodness.' A sparkling glance from large dark eyes made her feel like a woman again. ‘Ah, here they come.'

The new group of travellers approached cautiously through the gathering dusk, and Mercy raised her voice
to call to them. ‘We've been attacked,' she said, ‘by bandits. We beat them off but are hoping for your company through the wood.'

‘You were lucky,' came a friendly voice from the shadows. ‘We had wondered if you were bandits yourselves, but I don't believe there are women brigands yet. We'll be glad to join you. Safety in numbers. Ah!' Jed had got the lantern lighted, and the stranger could see them in its light. ‘So few of you, and you fought them off?'

‘As you say, we were lucky. I'm Mrs. Purchis. My brother and sister, Pastons. Mr. Brisson, who is wounded.'

‘Then we must lose no time. My name's Palmer. George Palmer. My brother, Henry; our servant. We are bound for Philadelphia. And you?'

‘Are going there too.' While they talked, Jed had turned their sledge round to face once more towards the wood. ‘Let us go,' she said. ‘Time to talk when we are safe at the inn.'

‘Let me lead,' said George Palmer. ‘I know the road.'

‘That's good. Jed, let them by, we'll follow.'

‘How many outlaws?' asked Palmer as the servant edged his sledge past.

‘Only two now, I think. We wounded two, but I saw them struggle away. I doubt they'll attack again.' She had been relieved to see that she had not actually killed her man.

‘Then let's go. Keep close behind. Sam—' he spoke to the servant – ‘light our lantern so our friends can follow it.'

Even with company, it was unpleasantly dark in the wood, and Mercy doubted if they would have found their way without the providential appearance of the Palmers. When they reached the inn at last, Charles Brisson was half-conscious from loss of blood, and Mercy was glad to find a capable landlady very ready to help change his makeshift bandage and get him into bed, while her husband looked after the other travellers.

‘The wound's nothing much,' said the landlady when she and Mercy left him at last. ‘He should do well enough.'

‘I hope so.' Mercy shared her slight surprise that a mere flesh wound had weakened the Frenchman so much, but then she had no idea how far he had travelled. He was younger, too, than his voice made him seem, slightly built, with large dark eyes set deep in a pale face that just missed handsomeness. If he was a civilian envoy of the French govenment, this might, she supposed, have been his first encounter with violence and therefore much more shocking than it would have been to an American, after five bloody years of war.

She found the rest of the party gathered in the kitchen, the men drinking rough cyder while the landlord's daughter cooked their supper. The cyder was on the house, the landlord's tribute to their encounter with the brigands, and he insisted that she drink some too, since she and Jed were the heroes of the hour. ‘I reckon it was the Bartram brothers attacked you.' The landlord handed her a brimming pewter tankard. ‘Been plaguing these parts two years or more. If you've rid us of two of them varmints, you've done us a favour, ma'am, and no mistake. I drink to you.'

‘A formidable young lady,' said George Palmer. ‘I certainly hope to have the pleasure of your company for the rest of the way to Philadelphia, Mrs. Purchis, if it's agreeable to you.'

‘It is indeed.' She had been hoping for such a suggestion. ‘But we are travelling with our own horses. Will we not go too slow for you?'

‘We are doing so too,' he told her. ‘Slower stages, but I prefer it.' He rose to move over to the big scrubbed table where the landlord's daughter was laying out steaming platefuls of salt beef and beans.

As always, conversation over supper was general, and careful, but the Palmers, too, had heard the rumour of an attack on Charleston. Eating with appetite herself, Mercy noticed anxiously that Ruth was picking at her food, pale
and even more withdrawn than usual. After a while she excused herself and took Ruth up to the little garret room they were to share with the landlord's daughter. It was not late, and after she had settled Ruth for the night, still without a word spoken, she went back to join the rest of the company for the rare treat of the landlady's own preserved blackberries. ‘We picked a bushel last fall,' she explained in answer to Mercy's compliment. ‘
And
I laid hands on some sugar. We have to make the most of what's going these days.'