Judas Flowering (32 page)

She laughed. “You should have seen Miss Bridget and Miss Claire, William, fine as fivepence in imported lutestring and declaring it was a little old bolt of cloth they'd found in the attic. That attic of theirs—”

“Ma'am.” William turned to her earnestly. “Talking of attics—I wanted to speak to you about the cellar.”

“The cellar?”

“Yes, ma'am. Our cellar in Oglethorpe Square. You know how it is. The big one under the big house, and the little one right beside it, under the office. That we don' use.”

“No.” Puzzled. “Because there's no way through, and plenty of room in the new one.” The big, cool cellar of the main house was invaluable for keeping stores brought in from Winchelsea.

“That's it. I was down there the other day, fetching up salt pork for cook. I had kind of a mosey round. There's a place in the tabby wall where the builder must a' started to make a door through and then changed his mind. Give me half a day down there on my own and I could take it right through. Funny thing”—he threw it off casually—”I'm the only one of the folks knows about that other cellar. Before their time, ‘twas that it was last used, and the only door being from Mr Hart's office. Well, you can see. Actually”—more casual than ever—“Mr Gordon, he don't know neither. The door from the office, it's at the back of a big old cupboard nobody's used since the little house was lived in. Full of cobwebs it is, and black as tophet. He look in and then he come out quick and send for water to wash those white hands of his. He don' know. I reckon Mrs Purchis must a' known once, but bet your last dollar she's forgotten. And that's it. So if I made a kind of a secret entrance in the corner of the big cellar, then, come trouble, you and the other ladies could nip in, I'd close up after you—”

She shivered. “You think trouble's coming, William?”

“Trouble do come, ma'am, as the sparks fly upwards, and we'd be foolish not to be ready for it. Mr Hart, he told me before he went to look out for you ladies, and I'm agoing to do it. I'd hide the door through,” he explained. “It's at the dark end of the big cellar, away from the grating. Easy enough to mask it with a layer of tabby. Just give me a day clear to do it.”

“It would stick to the wood?” She knew about tabby, the curious compound of sand and shells of which so much of Savannah was built.

“Not in the usual way, ma'am, it wouldn't, but my pa, he had a mortal good way of making it. I reckon his way it would stick. If you'll let me try, ma'am? Only, secret like?
Then you'd have two ways in and no one the wiser.”

“Yes. I'll fix it. And—thank you, William.”

The Assembly issued a decree a few days later, banning the export of flour, rice, and a list of other commodities, and Mercy had to be content with sending Hart a consignment of shoes, stockings, and the coarse shirts she and Abigail had been stitching at all winter. She was lucky. Captain Smythe, who commanded the packet, was an old seagoing friend of Hart's.

“Don't fret, ma'am.” He had come himself to arrange about the shipment. “I owe Hart Purchis my life. I'll see he gets it all. And bring you an answer back too, if I can.”

He was as good as his word, and this time Hart wrote jubilantly. The long, grim winter was over, the men were in good heart, and best of all was the news of the alliance with France. All Savannah was
en fête
, with hastily constructed French flags flying beside the new American Stars and Stripes that Congress had authorised the summer before. “It seems odd,” said Mercy thoughtfully, “to be drinking toasts to the King of France just when we are trying to get free from the King of England.”

“It's all of a piece.” There had been no letter for Abigail, and she looked pinched about the face. “With men like Joe Wood for leaders, what better can you expect by way of allies! Of course, Britain's old enemy is happy to seize this chance to do her harm. I expect soon we will hear that Spain has come in too.”

“I wonder what it will mean for George Washington and his army.”

“And for us down here,” Mr Gordon had come quietly through the office door. “I would rather have news of our expedition against East Florida than all your packets from the North. We shall never be safe until St Augustine is taken.”

“If only our men don't all die of the fever first,” said Mercy. Once again the venture, planned from spring, had been delayed until the heat was as great a hazard as the enemy. By July, the expedition was back in Savannah, full of mutual recrimination but maintaining, with some show of truth, that they had scotched the Loyalist plan of invading Georgia.

There was other news too. The French alliance had indeed altered the British government's plans. For both British and
French, the rich West Indies were infinitely more important than the thirteen rebellious colonies. The British Generals Howe and Clinton had been ordered to evacuate Philadelphia, concentrate their forces in New York, and detach as many troops as possible for service against the West Indies. George Washington had attacked the British army as it retreated from Philadelphia, and the longest and one of the most fiercely contested actions of the war had been fought in intense heat at Monmouth Courthouse. Both armies suffered heavy losses, from sunstroke as well as from wounds; both claimed victory. But the British made their way safely to New York. And they took Hart Purchis with them as a prisoner. The news, received with that of the battle, put out the lights in Oglethorpe Square.

“But we must illuminate,” said Mercy, white-faced. “Mrs Purchis, you know we must. Otherwise the mob—”

“Quite heartless,” said Martha Purchis. “Very well, give the orders; waste my precious supply of candles. Now my son is as good as dead, it's all one what happens to me.”

“Dear Aunt Martha.” Abigail had put aside her own sorrow to try and cheer her aunt. “Comfort yourself with the thought that he covered himself with glory, and that as an officer he should surely be well treated and, let us hope, exchanged.” Sudden colour flooded her face. “I have never done it before, but I could perhaps write to Giles in care of the Loyalist headquarters in New York? I am sure he'd do everything in his power to help Hart, if only he knew what had happened.”

“Oh, my dear Abigail.” Her aunt rose shakily from her chair to kiss her. “Do it today—do it at once. And, Sister, might not you also write to Francis? Intercession from him must come even more forcibly than from Giles since he is Hart's own cousin.”

“But how should I do it?” asked Anne Mayfield fretfully. “You know he has never troubled to write to me.”

Mercy remembered the letter she had received, so secretly, from Francis, with its instructions as to how he could be reached in a crisis. Was this, she wondered, the kind of crisis he had meant? Coldly, she thought perhaps it was. “I think the letter to Giles should be enough,” she said. “From something Miss Bridget said the other day I am fairly confident that he is in New York, and, perhaps, better placed with the British to help Hart.” It was the nearest she could get
to a reference to Francis' double-dealing, which must surely have left him suspect with British and patriots alike.

Anne Mayfield drew herself up with a creak of satin and whalebone. “I suppose I may write to my own son, if I so desire, without permission from you, Miss Phillips? It shall be done today. We might as well use all this candlelight we are proposing to waste.”

It was a long time since Mercy had put on her peasant's shawl and gone out among the Savannah crowds. Well, she thought ruefully, taking the shawl from her empty closet, her ordinary clothes were shabby enough by now. But, still, the shawl tight over her head did give her a comfortable feeling of anonymity as she made her way out of the back entrance of the house and across lots to Bay Street. Here a cheerful crowd was celebrating the good news and waiting for dark and the illuminations it would bring. Nobody had done much work today, and as she looked downriver towards the crumbling fortifications at the Trustees' Garden, she remembered an anxious question in Hart's last letter. Had work begun yet on re-fortifying Savannah?

She was not going to let herself cry. She pushed her way briskly through the crowd and emerged at last on the bluff where she could look down at the quays. Yes, there was the packet that had brought the news, and as she had let herself hope, it was the one with Hart's friend Smythe for captain.

The path down the bluff was steep, and the quay no place for an unaccompanied lady. Perhaps she should have sent William? Too late now. She walked boldly up the packet's swaying gang-plank and asked a grinning sailor for a word with Captain Smythe.

The fact that she knew his name helped, but still the man looked doubtful. “Who shall I say, miss? He's kind of busy.”

“Tell him Miss Phillips.” She was wondering if Captain Smythe would even remember her name, when the sailor suddenly reached out to terrify her with a rum-flavoured embrace.

“I'd a' known you anywhere,” he said thickly, letting her go again. “You and that father of yours, bless him, that talked all the time. Whatever happened to him, miss? Did he get sold all right and tight and has he worked out his freedom by now?”

“No.” She did not remember the man, but he must have
been on the ship that brought her father and herself to America. Logical enough that he should now be working in the coastways trade. “The mob killed him.” She looked up at the man's blotched, sympathetic face. “And now I need help. Your captain knows me. Please—”

Five minutes later, Mercy was explaining the situation to Captain Smythe. He looked sympathetic, anxious, doubtful. “It's true,” he answered her final appeal. “By all accounts things are bad as can be for prisoners up in New York. On hulks in the harbour, they are, and off dead more often than alive. You think these letters you speak of might help Mr Purchis?”

“I hope one of them might.”

“Yes.” He studied her thoughtfully across the tiny, cluttered cabin. “I ought not to trust you,” he said at last. “One ought to trust no one these days. But Hart Purchis saved me from certain death year before last. God, there's a swimmer. He never told you?”

“No.”

“No, I reckon he wouldn't. He and I were aboard the fireship that was sent out against those varmints of rice ship captains. Time come to jump clear, we both jumped, he landed nice and tidy, close to the boat that was to pick us up. I landed out in the current headed straight for Tybee, drowning, or the British. I could hear them in the boat, shouting, ‘No time, can't go for him, must get away.' And I heard Hart Purchis, too, damning them for cowards. I'm not a very good swimmer. I was in trouble when he grabbed me. I'd not have lasted five minutes. No, ma'am, I reckon anything you want doing for Hart Purchis, I'll do.”

“Thank you.” She smiled at him, and for the first time he thought her a pretty girl instead of an anxious woman. “I'll tell you—”

She gave him the letters next day, at the open market, where they had arranged to meet. It was very quick, very definite, as they had planned it. “This one for Mr. Habersham”—she handed it to him—“and this to Mr Mayfield.”

“Ma'am, you may count on me. One delivered. One not.” He raised his voice. “Rum at sixty shillings a gallon. Double last year! What's a man to do?”

The waiting was worst of all. Impossible to tell how long it might take for Captain Smythe to find a safe messenger to cross the no-man's-land that now encircled British-held New York. Everybody knew there was a lively traffic in information across what was known as the debatable ground. It was only too easy for a reliable Loyalist in New York to turn into a true-blue patriot on the way over. Always provided he survived the dangerous frontier, where marauding bands tended not to make much distinction between rebel and Loyalist. All they wanted was loot.

It was the same on the southern and western borders of Georgia. Every day brought its new story of horror and bloodshed. “And it's not only the Indians,” said Abigail mournfully. “It seems as if it is worst of all when it's within families. Dear Mercy, we will never quarrel, you and I.”

“No.” They had agreed it long ago, that time Giles came back. “Oh, God, I do hope your letter has reached Giles by now and that he is able to do something.”

“Or Francis,” said Abigail.

“Yes.” Mercy changed the subject. “Abigail, I think we should move everything we possibly can in town from Winchelsea. Will you help me persuade Mr Gordon? Or get your mother and aunt to do so? He calls it defeatist thinking. All he seems to care about is what the Assembly will say. I care more what Hart will think when he gets home.” She would not let herself say “if.” “Imagine how angry he would be if the servants out there were attacked.”

“You think that possible?”

“Dear, I keep telling you anything is possible. Now they've sacked Commodore Bowen for non-cooperation on that disastrous expedition against St Augustine, we've no naval defences whatever. Remember the last time the British fleet came to Tybee and upriver? What's to stop them doing it again? Not any fortifications the Assembly have built, and
not the militia, now it's harvest time. They always go home to get in their crops. And as for the Continental troops: well, you know Governor Houston and Colonel Williamson are hardly speaking since the debacle at Sunbury. It's a miracle they've not fought a duel.”

“Oh well,” said Abigail. “The British seem just as ineffective. Did you hear the rhyme they are quoting from the London
Evening Post
? How does it go?

Here we go up, up, up

And here we go down, down, downy

Then we go backwards and forwards

And here we go round, round, roundy
.

“Yes. While cousins and brothers kill each other in the backwoods, it almost seems as if the American and British armies do not really want to fight it out.”