Wide is the Water (32 page)

‘Nothing to it, I expect, really, but there was a bit of talk.' He looked unhappy and gestured to his man to refill their glasses. ‘Understandable enough,' he went on. ‘London for the first time, lionised a bit, hero of the hour, you know the kind of thing. By what I heard, he was lucky to get safe to the Tower, or he would most certainly have had to take refuge in the rules of court. You're safe there from debt, you know. He'd been spending money like water, like a drunken sailor … clothes … parties of pleasure.' He had been carried away by his own eloquence, now stopped short, surprised at how far he had gone,

‘You said he rescued someone.' Mercy forced boiled beef down her throat. ‘A cousin, did you say?'

‘Dick Purchas's sister. Julia Purchas. A goer by all reports. Quite a goer. Whig family, you know. Wild blood. The older brother's said to be a member of the Hell Fire Club. That kind of thing. Time you got there, ma'am.' He helped himself to more beef and changed the subject. ‘Now I have to question you ladies. Decide what to do with you. Beauty in distress.' He drank to them, one after the other, and Mercy did not like the leering admiration of his glance. ‘Gallant young ladies,' he went on, ‘I'd like to make things as easy as possible for you. The
British navy don't make war on females. Better uses for them.' His speaking glance travelled from Mercy to Ruth, then back again. ‘Tell me how I can serve you?'

‘No,' said Hart, ‘I will not marry her. Not if it means I have to spend the rest of my life here.'

‘Which may be short.' Mr. Purchas picked up his hat and gloves and looked round the bare stone-walled cell. ‘We have done our best for you so far. Not all the apartments here in the Tower are so comparatively luxurious as this one. When the turnkeys learn that you are penniless and we have washed our hands of you, you will find your treatment quite other. Commons here have to be paid for, you know. Though I doubt that will be a problem to you for long if we do not intercede for you. Did you know that they hanged some of the convicted rioters yesterday? A pity you are not allowed newspapers. You might have found the descriptions interesting. They were taken to the scenes of their crimes and turned off there. Made good ends, most of them. Merely hanged, of course. The delights of drawing and quartering are reserved for state criminals like yourself. I saw it done once. The man lived a surprisingly long time. I wonder where they will choose to execute you. Leicester Fields? Lincoln's Inn Fields? Or Newgate, of course. I hope for my poor Julia's sake that they do not turn you off in St. James's Square.' He rapped on the cell door for the gaoler to come and let him out. ‘I will be at the house in Charies Street another week. Consider my offer of help as open until then.'

‘Consider it refused,' said Hart.

Left alone, he moved over to stare sightlessly out of the slit window that showed him only a strip of sky. The Tower of London. All Hope Abandon, You Who Enter Here. Was
he mad to have refused Mr. Purchas's offer? But how could he accept it? He had married Mercy for better for worse … till death them did part … Nothing she did could alter that. And yet it was strange almost beyond belief that he still had not heard from her. If she was really at Philadelphia, she must have heard of the deaths of his mother and aunt. Impossible, surely, that she would not have written to him then. He had talked to enough Americans in London to know that letters reached them by all kinds of strange channels. So why not Mercy's?

‘Till death us do part.' Bougainville had not used the words in that strange, hasty shipboard marriage. It had not seemed like a marriage. He had never felt happy about it, had intended to marry Mercy again as soon as they reached Boston. That had been part of the whole disaster of their ‘honeymoon' on the crowded
Georgia.
In his mind, if not his heart, he could not help believing Purchas's and Busby's assurances that his marriage was invalid. But that was no argument for marrying Julia. Not now. Not knowing what he did. Rather die?

Yes. He would not let himself think about that scene with Julia. About how she had planned it, duped him, led him on … Horrible … obscene … And going on from there, in the long hours of wretched thought, he had found himself going back to other scenes, wondering about them … That visit to the Bonds'. Could she have planned that, too? Hoped that the mob would come? That they would be compromised? But why? He always stuck there but came back to his one point of decision. Better to die than to marry Julia. Besides – he moved back to gaze at the hopeful strip of blue sky – he would not believe in the threat of death. This was England. This was the land of Parliament, of Magna Carta and habeas corpus. The evidence that had seemed so formidable at the committal proceedings would never stand up in full court. On the Monday night he had been among the crowd; he had proclaimed himself an American, started them singing ‘God save George Washington,' and so managed to get Julia safe away from them.
Julia would support his story. And the next night he and Dick had been trying to rescue prisoners in danger of being burnt to death. If he could help it, now it was all over, he did not want to mention George, and this had told against him at his preliminary examination. So, of course, had Dick's absence, but it was understandable enough that when they were separated by the crowd, Dick had remembered the Plymouth coach he must catch and gone off to face his court-martial.

Dick would come back for the trial and speak up for him. If necessary, he would explain about George. He ought to have told Mr. Purchas that. But – drawn and quartered. Faced with that unspeakable threat, it was difficult to think clearly.

It could not happen. Not here in England. It was merely the long spell of solitary confinement that had opened his imagination to the unspeakable possibility. He had received no mail, seen no newspapers; Mr. Purchas had been his only visitor. After a month of this, if it was a month, he was beginning to wonder whether he really existed.

The surly gaoler, bringing his adequate, unappetising dinner, also brought paper, pen, and inkstand. ‘The gentleman said a line would bring him, any time of the day or night.'

‘And you would take it for me?'

‘Of course.'

‘If I wrote to someone else?'

The man spit, neatly, between Hart's feet. ‘You'd waste your paper, and I've no instructions to give you more.' He withdrew, slamming and locking the cell door behind him.

Left alone, Hart gazed from greasy mutton to the tempting pen and paper. Now, at last, he knew he was afraid. He had read of prisoners in France, confined to the Bastille by the infamous
lettres de cachet.
Could it possibly be that the same kind of thing happened here in England? He would not believe it. He must not believe it. And yet it was strange beyond belief that Dick had not come to him.
He was cold to the very marrow of his bones.

Four days passed. Stale bread; lukewarm coffee; rancid beef. And the pen and paper always there on the table beside the horrible food. The gaoler had grown careless about emptying the sordid bucket in the corner of the cell, and it stank. If Mr. Purchas had asked for a verbal message, he almost thought he might have sent it, but he could not bring himself to write and sign an agreement to marry Julia …

She must know what was happening to him. Must she? If she did and was letting it continue, death would be infinitely better than marriage to her.

He was beginning to be afraid of losing his reason. Sleeping badly, he woke in a cold sweat, imagining himself back in the hulks in New York Harbour. Mercy had reached out her hand then, all the way from Savannah, and rescued him from that living hell. On the fifth morning he woke saying her name.

He thought it was the fifth morning. Best start counting; it would help him stay sane, and here was a use for the horribly tempting pen and paper. If the gaoler noticed, he gave no sign. Was it not sinister that it was always the same gaoler? It struck him, suddenly, on the fifth morning that he might not be in the Tower at all. It had been dark when the committal proceedings had finished. He had been brought through crowded streets in a hackney cab. The hot weather had broken at last. It had been raining … He remembered the sharp exchange of question and command, the sound of a gate opening … There had been flaring torches; a flight of steps … a corridor … more steps … and at last, this cell, darkness, and nothing to eat until the morning. And since then the one taciturn gaoler and the visits from Mr. Purchas.

‘Where am I?' he asked when the gaoler brought the slops that passed as his breakfast.

‘The Tower.' The man put down the plate and mug and looked about him. ‘Stinks in here. Eat your victuals and be ready to move. You've a visitor coming. If I bring you
a razor, will you promise not to cut your throat?'

A visitor? Julia? Horrible. But when the man came back with hot water, a razor, and a clean shirt, he did his best with his appearance. One felt better clean.

‘Good.' The gaoler returned. ‘You look almost human. This way.' Down the long corridor he remembered. Another cell, very like the one from which he had come, but clean. A view, this time, from the slit window across a grassy quadrangle to Tudor-style red-brick buildings. A big bird on the grass. A raven. ‘It is the Tower!' he exclaimed.

‘Whoever said it wasn't? I'll bring your visitor.'

Not Julia, mercifully, but Dick. Dick looking appalled. ‘Hart. What's happened to you?'

‘Prison,' said Hart. ‘I've never liked it. Lord, Dick, but it's good to see you.'

‘You won't think so when you hear what I have come to say.' Dick was looking older, Hart thought. The strain of his disgrace must be beginning to tell on him. ‘Hart,' he went on, ‘I wish you had told me.'

‘Told you?'

‘About you and Julia. She told me it all. Asked me to come and speak to you for her. Hart, she thinks she is carrying your child.'

‘Dear God!' It stunned him for a moment. ‘Dick, what can I say?'

‘Nothing. Save that you will marry her if we can just get you out of here in time.'

‘But I am married.'

‘You should have remembered that sooner. Think, Hart. My father has it on the highest authority that you have nothing to fear in treating that lunatic shipboard marriage as a nullity and marrying Julia. Circumstanced as she is, what else can you do?'

They were still standing, facing each other across the narrow cell. Hart turned away to stare out of the slit window so that Dick should not see his face. Memory of his seduction by Julia burnt in his brain. Now, at last, he
thought he understood it. Another man's child. ‘I won't do it,' he said.

Dick looked more wretched than ever. ‘Then I have no alternative but to call you out and kill you if I can.'

‘Fight you?' It made horrible sense. He looked about him. ‘It's not likely to come to that. By what your father says, the executioner looks like doing the business for you. Now the small fry have been executed, I imagine it will not be long before Lord George Gordon and I are brought to trial. I'll be glad when it is over. Dick, my friend, believe me, I am sorrier for this than I can say. And for what I have done to you. I have brought nothing but disaster to your family, after all your kindness to me. I wish I could hope that you would forgive me before I hang.'

‘You seriously expect to?'

‘Why, yes.' Hart was surprised at Dick's tone. ‘You will think me a coward, Dick, but I do pray that I will be spared the final horror, the drawing and quartering. I am an American citizen, not a traitor. And I … I am afraid I might disgrace myself … disgrace my country …' He had lain awake at night, thinking of it, praying for strength to endure.

‘Who told you of drawing and quartering?'

‘Your father, of course. He has been my only visitor. He has warned me what to expect.'

‘Nonsense,' said Dick. ‘You've not been seeing the papers?'

‘No. And the gaoler won't talk. Says he has his orders. Dick! Don't make me hope; I don't think I am strong enough for that.'

‘Let me be sure of this,' said Dick. ‘My father has been telling you – has convinced you – that it is a choice between marriage with Julia and the full barbarous sentence of the law?'

‘Yes.'

‘And you believed him? You cannot think very highly of British justice.'

‘No,' said Hart simply. ‘I've seen enough of what is
called influence since I have been here. I have only asked myself whether your family was really powerful enough to secure my release, granted that they have not been able to save you from disgrace because of what you did for me.'

‘But I am safe,' said Dick. ‘You mean, you do not even know that?'

‘Safe? Oh, thank God!' Hart turned and held out his hand. ‘That makes up for everything.'

‘You've not heard then of George's death?'

‘Your brother?'

‘Yes. His body was found, just the other day, in a gutted cellar in Moorfields. Nobody knows how many died there, from drink, from fire, from untended wounds. And no way to tell how poor George met his end, but I'm afraid you must have been right in your suspicions of him, and more grateful than I can say that you did not speak of them during the committal proceedings. He's dead now, poor George; it's over. We are hoping, my father and I, that we can keep his part in the riots a secret, for the family's sake. My poor mother has been ill ever since, and Julia is taking it hard. She loved him, you know. Hart—'

‘Please! I must think. George is dead. Dick, I think I must tell you this. No one else. Ever. I believe your sister knew of his involvement with the rioters. I told her I thought I had heard George's voice. No one else, just her. She laughed it off. But I think she must have told George. Do you see? He knew why we were looking for him that night. I think he led us on, hoping for just what happened. It has to be her who told him.' He found he could not use Julia's name. ‘Dick, you must see I can't. Not marry her. Oh, of course, I'll fight you if you insist and if I do get out of here. I've faced death for so long now I begin to think it would be a relief. My guilt about Julia … no word from Mercy … your disgrace. But you say you are clear of that?'