Wide is the Water (30 page)

The sailors spoke a language Mercy did not understand, but there was no mistaking their urgent haste as they helped the little party on board. ‘Hush,' said Brisson.

The mist was lifting fast as they were rowed swiftly out towards the ship. It was going to be a beautiful day. They could not be very far south of New York. At any moment a British frigate might appear. Well, Mercy thought, after all, she wanted to get to England. But she wanted to get there free, a volunteer witness for Hart, not a captive. She could see the ship more clearly now, a merchantman, lightly armed, for defence only. She strained her eyes:
Amsterdam.
Dutch. Of course. The neutral Dutch. So, it dawned on her, once they were aboard, they would be safe. Or as safe as one ever was at sea.

Ruth had seen too. Her hand found Mercy's and pressed it.

‘Nobody speaks English.' Brisson had carried their portmanteau to the tiny cabin. ‘Or very little. Captain van Loon asks that you keep to your cabin except when he or I summon you up on deck. It will be dull for you, I fear.'

‘Dull!' said Mercy. ‘Monsieur Brisson, I don't know how to thank you.'

‘Wait until we are safely there,' he said.

‘Tell me.' She detained him for a moment. ‘What will they think in Philadelphia?'

He shrugged. ‘That we have been captured presumably. At first, no one will know whether by the British or by one of the marauding bands that operate in the debatable ground. You know as well as I do that it could be either Cowboys or Skinners.'

‘Yes, indeed. The French will be anxious about you …' And then: ‘No, absurd. Of course, they must know. And no one will care much about Ruth and me. So – a nine days' wonder.'

‘Something like that. Will you mind if your meals are brought to you here in your cabin? Captain van Loon does not care much for women.'

‘Then it is very good of him to have us, and we will do nothing we can help to inconvenience him.'

‘I knew you would see it like that. Send for me if there is anything you need. And now – forgive me?'

Left alone, they looked at each other. ‘Well!' said Mercy.

‘Dear Mercy.' Ruth smiled bravely. ‘What an adventure!'

She did not think so when they met their first high winds a few days later. Although she had grown up so near the sea, she had never been on it before and became horribly sick as soon as the ship began to feel the weather. Mercy, a hardened sailor, ministered to her as best she might but grew anxious as the days passed, the storm raged on, and Ruth still lay sick and sweating in her cot. She sent for Brisson at last, by the simple expedient of repeating his name to the grinning seaman who brought their cold, unappetising food.

‘Is there a doctor on board?' she asked Brisson when he came.

I'm afraid not.' He looked past her to the cot where Ruth lay so alarmingly still. I'll speak to the captain.'

Captain van Loon recommended liberal doses of
schnapps, and Mercy, increasingly anxious, agreed to let Brisson help her try to get Ruth to take some. The storm was beginning to slacken at last. Things actually stayed in their places in the tiny cabin that had become almost a battleground. It was easier to get Ruth to take the curious mixture of schnapps and cold soup that Captain van Loon recommended, and to Mercy's deep relief, the unorthodox treatment, combined with the easing of the ship's movement, seemed to make a slow but unmistakable improvement in Ruth's condition. Watching anxiously, she saw Ruth's sleep become deeper, easier. ‘I really think she'll do now,' she told Brisson when he next tapped on the cabin door to enquire.

‘Her colour is better,' he agreed. ‘Thank God for that. But you look exhausted. When were you last on deck?'

‘I don't remember.' She put a tired hand to her brow. ‘Before the storm.'

‘As long as that? No wonder you look so wretched, confined here all that time. Wait here, I'll find you a boat cloak, someone to sit with Ruth … It's a little quieter on deck; the air will do you good.'

‘Oh,
yes
! But – Captain van Loon?'

‘Fast asleep in his cabin. He's been on deck, almost all the time, since the storm hit us. It's a sign of how much better things are that he's gone below at last to get the rest he needs.'

He returned five minutes later with a heavy cloak and one of the ship's boys to sit with Ruth. ‘He'll call us at once if she wakes.'

It was good to get away from the noise and odour of belowdecks and take great breaths of salt Atlantic air. The wind had almost fallen, but the ship was still wallowing through mountainous seas, and the deck was a scene of ordered chaos as the crew worked frantically to repair the damage wreaked by the storm. ‘It's too rough to walk,' Brisson told her, ‘and we must not get in the way. We'll stand here for a while and take the air. Hold
on tight!' he warned as the ship rose to a huge wave. ‘I can see you are an experienced sailor,' he went on with approval.

‘Yes, it's not my first storm.' The
Amsterdam
seemed huge after the little
Georgia.
‘I love the salt air.' She pulled the cloak more closely round her against a scattering of spray. ‘Monsieur Brisson, what day of the month is it? I have clean lost track of time.'

‘And no wonder, down there with the deadlights on. It's the fourth of June, though it doesn't feel like it. In England they will be celebrating the King's Birthday.'

‘Good gracious, the Birthday! Imagine your thinking of that. Lord, I remember the first one I celebrated in America. 1774. And the mob already on the prowl.'

‘Mob?' He took her up on it.

‘Well – yes. Oh, Sons of Liberty, of course, but some of the things that were done in the name of liberty … They killed my father. The mob.' She had been in deep mourning for him, that fourth of June, but Hart had made her attend the celebrations just the same. Strange to look back and remember how Francis had squired her that evening. She had thought herself in love with him. Extraordinary. ‘It's a long time ago,' she said.

‘I'm sorry. I did not mean to remind you of the sad past. It is the future we should be thinking of. I have been wanting a word with you alone.'

‘Yes?' She braced herself against a great swoop of the deck and against what might be coming now.

‘Mrs. Purchis – Mercy!' He had never used her first name before. ‘I want you to promise to trust me whatever happens. To go on trusting me. It must have been hard enough already, and I admire your spirit more than I can say.'

‘And Ruth's,' she said.

‘Indeed, yes. But she has you to rely on. If you are content, if you keep calm, she will do likewise.'

‘That's true. It's a great responsibility. Well,' – she took a firmer grip on the rigging and smiled up at him,
– ‘having trusted you so far, Monsieur Brisson, there is not much alternative now, is there?'

‘You're a woman in a million! Mercy, I must say it, for my own sake. Let me tell you, just this once and never again, how deeply, how passionately I admire and love you. I think you did my business that first day when you saved my life. And then – your courage on that terrible journey, through your illness, and the transformation in Philadelphia! Dearest Mercy, there is no one in the world like you. No, don't draw away from me. There is no need. I know you too well not to know that you are body and soul devoted to that lucky husband of yours. Why else are you here today? It is selfish of me to tell you how I feel. I know it. But I am allowing myself to do so because knowing I love you, you will know how completely you can trust me. I love you better than my life, Mercy Purchis. Whatever happens, remember that.'

‘Oh, dear Charles.' She touched his cold hand with hers. ‘I do thank you.' Spray or tears in her eyes? ‘I'll always remember, be proud to have been loved by a brave man. And yes, of course, I trust you. It's true, Ruth and I were afraid, that night in the carriage. But now you have brought us so far, what is there to doubt of now?'

‘I beg you will remember that. And remember, too, the promise of secrecy you made me when we first spoke of this venture. Will you reswear it now? And promise me that you will get Ruth to do the same?'

‘It was a strong oath.'

‘It needed to be.'

‘I cannot speak for Ruth.'

‘You can promise to do your best to persuade her.'

‘Yes, that I will do. And now I think I should go back to her. It's getting dark.'

‘Mercy.' He had grasped her hand and now pulled her gently towards him. ‘Will you kiss me, just once? As … as a seal? Something for me to remember all my life?'

She looked up at him for a moment, puzzling to read his face in the gathering dusk. Behind them someone had lit a lantern, and its light made his face look pale as a ghost … as a corpse? ‘Yes.' His lips were salt on hers. What were they saying to her, trying to say? She drew away at last, shaken. For an instant, as his lips held hers, she had forgotten Hart, forgotten everything, felt her whole body answer his. Shameful. Frightening. ‘I must go back to Ruth.' She made her voice matter-of-fact. ‘But I do thank you.'

‘You believe that I love you? That you can trust me?'

‘I believe it. Dear Charles, I shall remember you always.'

She could not get to sleep that night, haunted by memory of that disturbing kiss, hoping that Brisson had not been aware of how it had stirred her. And when she slept at last, it was to dream shameful dreams, in which Brisson took Hart's place in her arms, and to wake, as she had so often on the
Georgia,
tense, frustrated, her whole body crying out for comfort it could not have.

When she finally woke, heavy-eyed and angry with herself, it was to the welcome sound of the deadlights being taken off the cabin window. The sky was blue, the ship was surging forwards on a following wind, and Ruth was sitting up in her cot and asking for food. The galley fire had been relit, and there was hot coffee for breakfast. Helping Ruth drink it, Mercy pushed last night's haunting firmly to the back of her mind. ‘It's a following wind,' she said. ‘Not long now.'

‘Dear Mercy.' Ruth smiled at her. ‘Do you feel it taking you to Hart?'

‘That's it.' And away from yesterday's dangerous encounter. When she saw Hart, everything would be right again. ‘It's June, Ruth,'she said. ‘Brisson told me. It was the fourth yesterday, the King's Birthday. Wasn't it odd that he should think of that, a Frenchman?' She must not talk about Brisson. Not think about him. ‘England in June. You'll love it, Ruth. So green, and
the little flowers in the hedges, and the smell of the country gardens …'

‘My brother Mark always wanted to go to England,' said Ruth, ‘He and Hart used to talk about it. They had a book, a book about fishing that they loved to read. They read it aloud to us children sometimes when we were eating our supper. About milkmaids, and cuckoos and ladies' smock, whatever that is, and sitting in the sun.'

‘Izaak Walton,' said Mercy. ‘My father loved it too. Do you know, Ruth, I had no idea I had been so homesick for England.'

‘How are we going to get there, do you think?' asked Ruth, practical all of a sudden.

‘Monsieur Brisson said there were always smugglers who would set one over for a fee,' said Mercy. ‘I'm sure he will help us find one. And that reminds me. I've given him my solemn promise that whatever happens, I will say nothing about him, about the help he has given us. He asks that you should do so, too.'

‘It will be hard to explain how we got there – if we do,' said Ruth, and Mercy was delighted all over again at how much better she sounded.

‘I know, dear, but I think we have to promise – and cross that bridge when we come to it. It will be easier if we are deeply sworn and can say so.' But she had a sudden, disconcerting vision of trying to explain to Hart.

‘Captain van Loon says you have brought him luck.' Brisson had taken them up on deck to see the dim shapes of the Scilly Islands far ahead. ‘He's never made so swift a voyage. It's not what he expected at all.'

‘Thought us a couple of Jonahs, did he?' Mercy had a swift, painful memory of the crew of the
Georgia,
who had thought her just that.

‘He took a bit of persuading. But now he is full of your praises. Says he never had an easier pair of passengers.'

‘Well, I should think so,' said Mercy. ‘He's hardly seen us. How long now till we reach Rotterdam?'

‘Just a day or so, if this wind holds and we have no trouble.'

‘Trouble?' asked Ruth. ‘But this is a neutral ship.'

‘It was when it left the West Indies,' he told her. ‘But think! That's over six weeks old. Anything could have happened in the meantime. There's been trouble enough between England and the Netherlands this last winter about the British and their search of neutral ships.'

‘You mean, this one may be stopped by the British?' This was a new and unpleasant idea to Mercy.

‘It's possible. And if it should be, I strongly advise that you tell the whole truth and ask to be taken on board the British ship if it is heading for home. Do you see, it would be very much your easiest way of getting there?'

‘But you? What would happen to you?'

‘Captain van Loon and I have our story ready. I count on you two to keep your word and say nothing about me.'

‘Then how can we tell the truth? No one would ever believe that we arranged our escape from Philadelphia single-handed.'

‘Say the Palmers helped you,' he told her. ‘It had the advantage of being quite true. Did you never stop to wonder how they had come to get so rich so fast in the course of this war?'

‘I never could like them,' Ruth said.

‘They'd sell their grandmother for a dollar's worth of feathers.'

‘And you trusted them to arrange this passage for us?'