Judas Flowering

by Jane Aiken Hodge

  “Of course I do,” said Mercy warmly. But Mrs Purchis’ very kindness exacerbated her sense of guilt, and she made an excuse to meet Francis “by accident” that evening as he rode home from Savannah.

  “You’re out late.” He dismounted as he saw her waiting for him halfway down the ilex avenue.

  “Yes, I must speak to you, Francis.”

  “Must?”

  “Yes. I’ve picked some flowers for my father’s grave. Will you come with me?”

  “Well.” He looked doubtfully at the great white bulk of Winchelsea, illuminated now in the glow of a brilliantly setting sun. “We’d best not be long. It will be dusk soon.”

  “Dear Francis.” She smiled up at him. “Please. I’m so unhappy.”

  “Unhappy? Why?” But he looped his horse’s reins over his arm and turned to walk beside her towards the family lot at the back of the house.

  Well, why? A trace of impatience in his tone made it hard for her to begin. “Mrs Purchis is so kind …” she started, hesitantly.

  “Well, of course she’s kind.” No question about the impatience in his tone now. “Old and ailing as she is, she knows her luck in getting you for unpaid housekeeper.”

  “I’d do anything for her,” said Mercy. “That’s just why I so hate to deceive her. Francis, could we not tell her? About our engagement?”

  “No!” It came out with the force of an explosion. “Dear Mercy.” He had seen her face whiten. “We’ve been through all this before. You know it’s impossible. You agreed …”

  “Yes, but I didn’t understand what it would be like. Deceiving people who have been so good to me …”

  “I know.” They had reached the graveyard now, and he tied his horse to a tree while she bent to lay the flowers on her father’s grave. “It’s hard. But if it’s hard on you, Mercy, think how much harder it is on me. Loving you as I do, how can I bear to keep my happiness secret!” He turned for a quick, careful look at the trees that hid the house before he gathered her into his arms. “You’d been forgetting!” It was almost reproachful as he released her from the long, hard embrace.

  “How could I?” But it was true. She had forgotten how the whole centre of her shook under the force of his kiss. “Francis!” Despite herself, her arms were round his neck, her body worshipped him.

  “That’s better.” He let her go at last, gently, laughing a little. “Inconstant puss.” His tone cherished and mocked her. “Must we meet thus, every night, just to remind you of me? I doubt it would be safe for either of us.”

  “No.” She looked up at him gravely, aware that the light was ebbing from the tops of the trees. “But, Francis, there was something else. About Abigail. Is there really no money for a dowry? I thought, from something Mr Gordon said …”

  “Saul Gordon! That penny-lover! You’d believe him against me! Mercy! Is this your love? Your confidence in me?” He let her go so suddenly that she reeled and steadied herself with a hand against the Judas tree that grew beside her father’s grave. “It’s all of a piece,” he went on, more angrily than ever. “You’ve never trusted me! If you did, you would tell me where your father hid that press of his.”

  “But, Francis, I don’t know!”

  “Don’t know! Won’t tell? Like to keep me dangling, looking a fool to my friends.…”

  “Which friends, Francis?”

  But he had turned angrily away to untie his horse. “Must get back. You know how quick the dark falls. I care for your good name, if you don’t.” And indeed, as they looked towards the big house they saw here and there the first flickers of light from indoors. “No time for more.” Francis bent for one of his quick, hard kisses. “Go in at the front, love, while I go by the stables—and have some sense, do.”

  It was their first quarrel. Crying herself to sleep that night, she resolved it should be their last. But when she woke next morning it was to learn that Francis had ridden off, very early, to Savannah, and then to Charleston on some errand of his mother’s. There was no message for her. How could there be?

  He stayed in Charleston over Christmas, which was celebrated quietly enough at Winchelsea, since Hart was spending the vacation with the Pastons, and Giles Habersham had left on the long voyage to England. Naturally, Mercy had known that Francis would not be able to write to her, but had at least expected some trivial, significant Christmas gift. Instead, there were presents for all the family except her, and a long letter to his mother describing a party at which he had met “a very rich Miss Doone.”

  His next letter, proudly read aloud by his mamma, had further references to Miss Doone and a request that sounded oddly like a command. He thought it advisable that the ladies go into Savannah for the celebration of the Queen’s birthday on January 18. “I know it is what Sir James Wright would wish.”

  “I suppose it is.” Martha Purchis sounded doubtful.

  “Frank says he will meet us there,” said Anne Mayfield, as if that settled it, and indeed, it seemed to do so. Mercy and Abigail exchanged one long, troubled glance. They had never said a word about it to each other, but both knew that each of them found it disconcerting to see the extent to which Francis now behaved like the master of Winchelsea. Nothing she felt could blind clear-eyed Mercy to this, and Abigail had no cause to love him.

  “I wish Hart would come home,” she said now, secretly convinced that he would see she got her dowry.

  But Hart was having what he affronted his mother by describing as “One of the best Christmases of my life. They do things quite differently in New England.”

  His letter found them in Savannah, where the Queen’s birthday had been celebrated quietly enough by Sir James Wright and with scant courtesy by the radicals of Tondee’s Tavern, who had grown more and more aggressive as the news came in of the sufferings of their fellows in Boston. Despite the generous supplies sent to the unemployed there by the other colonies, there was cold and hunger in Boston that winter, and conditions were inevitably exacerbated by the presence of British troops camped on the Common, and their officers billeted often on unwilling hosts. Perpetual small incidents threatened to blow up into large ones, and every time a letter came south, there were details of some new piece of oppression by the soldiers.

  “I expect they get plenty of provocation,” said Mercy.

  “Yes,” agreed Abigail. “There was something Hart said in his last letter about little boys throwing snowballs with nails in them.”

  “What’s that?” Francis had come quietly into the room.

  “We were talking about Boston,” explained Abigail. “Something Hart said about boys throwing frozen snowballs at the soldiers.”

  “With nails in.” Mercy had hoped in vain for a word alone with Francis, who had arrived the day before.

  “He’s crazy!” Now Francis sounded really angry. “Does he not know that most of the mail from Boston gets opened by the radicals in Charleston when it’s landed from the packet? He’ll get us all into trouble writing things like that!”

  “Writing the truth?” asked Mercy.

  “You can’t be serious,” chimed in Abigail. “They cannot possibly be opening private mail?”

  “No? Then why, pray, did Sir James Wright take the trouble to send your beloved Giles all the way to England with his letters? You’ve not heard from him yet, I suppose?”

  “No. It’s much too soon, unless his ship had spoken another on the way over.”

  “Of course.” Carelessly, “Stupid of me. Forgotten how recently he had left. I have been so much occupied in Charleston that the time seems long.”

  “Pleasantly occupied?” His mother broke one of the long silences in which she would sit, staring at nothing, so that one tended to forget she was in the room.

  “Vastly so. Were it not for the duty I owe Hart at Winchelsea, I should urge that you and I go back there, get rid of our tenants, and enjoy ourselves for a change. Social life here in Savannah is positively primitive compared with Charleston. Why, at the Doones’ the other night
we sat down sixty to supper, after a ball as good as you could hope for in London.”

  “And what, pray, have you been using for money?” asked his mother with unwonted sharpness.

  “Dear Mamma.” He moved over to lean on the back of her chair and gaze down upon her with mocking affection. “Always so captious. Don’t forget that my kind cousin now pays me a handsome—and well-earned—salary for my labours in the field. Besides, to tell truth, I had a good run at the tables over Christmas.”

  “Oh, Francis,” wailed his mother, “you’re never gambling again! Oh, where is my vinaigrette!”

  “What else is there to do in life?” He said it, across his mother’s back, with a strange, hard glance for Mercy. And then, half-concealing a yawn, “How do we propose to entertain ourselves tonight? If at all.”

  “We dine out. Have you forgotten? With the McCartneys. Your Aunt Purchis insists that we go, though she is not well enough. I hope you will find it sufficiently entertaining after the gaieties of Charleston. Mary McCartney said there would be dancing for the young people.”

  “Ten couples! And the butler scraping away on his fiddle. I’d as lief be out ruralising at Winchelsea.”

  “The McCartney girls are very charming,” said his mother.

  “Dear Mamma!” Tolerantly, “What a good friend you are! Oh, I suppose Bridget’s well enough in her freckled way, but I doubt Claire will ever see thirty again. No wonder if their mother has taken to entertaining all Savannah.”

  “All Savannah accepts her invitations,” reminded Mrs Mayfield. “They remember, if you don’t, Francis, that there’s a dollar for every freckle.”

  “It would have to be a thousand to tempt me. But, never look downcast, Mamma, I’ll trip it with the best of their ten couples tonight. Particularly, if Cousin Abigail will honour me with the first dance? And”—slowly turning towards Mercy—“Miss Phillips with the second?”

  So, at last, she was to have her chance to speak to him alone. The February evening was mild, even for Savannah, and the McCartneys’ ballroom oppressively hot from the scores of candles glittering in candelabra along the walls. The doors were soon thrown open onto a paved terrace overlooking the Common and young couples danced their way out into the half darkness. “Scandalous.” Francis guided Mercy skilfully through the doors as the music of their dance came to an end. “But pleasant.” He led her to the far end of the terrace, lifted the hand that did not wear his ring, and kissed it. “I’ve a pardon to beg, Mercy,” he said. “I’ve behaved like a brute to you, but it’s for your protection. Besides, how can I help it, when you hurt me so by your lack of confidence in me?”

  “But, Francis …”

  “Hush!” He looked quickly round. “Must be careful, love … must bear with me while I play the gallant to my Charleston Misses Doone and those freckle-dollared McCartneys. It’s for your own comfort I do it. What would happen to you, do you think, if my mother and aunt were to guess at what’s between us? Don’t imagine that Hart could be any protection to you, way off in Harvard, and taken up with those Pastons. You’d be out in the street, my dear, and enemies enough waiting for you.”

  “Enemies?”

  “Don’t think those savages who killed your father have forgotten you, do you? You’ve convinced me, at least, that you truly don’t know about that press of his. But if I, who love you and want to trust you, am still sometimes a prey to doubt, what do you imagine the Liberty Boys think? Don’t walk alone here in Savannah.”

  “I never do.”

  “Of course pot. My aunt would not allow it, or I should have warned you against it long since. In Winchelsea you are safe enough, so long as the slaves stay faithful.”

  “Slaves?”

  “Servants, then.” Laughing, “Suits my cousin to call them so.” He looked up quickly at the sound of one shot, fired somewhere over towards the river. “Oh, my God!”

  “What is it?”

  “Trouble. Been on edge all evening, half expecting it. Lot of talk earlier at Tondee’s. Hoped I’d calmed them down.”

  “But what is it?”

  “That fool of a customs collector seized a cargo of Andrew Wells’ for failure to pay dues. Eight hogsheads of molasses and six of French sugar. All impounded down at the dock. Know who Wells is?”

  “No.”

  “Brother-in-law to that madman Sam Adams who’s behind all the trouble in Boston. Wells was preaching mayhem and murder at Tondee’s this afternoon. Mercy—” Once again he looked round to make sure they could not be overheard.

  “Yes?”

  “Now is the time to show you trust me. Love me. That I can trust you.”

  “Yes?” she said again.

  “Must go. My duty. Stop them if it’s not too late. But I’d much rather not be seen in it.”

  “No?”

  “No.” Impatiently, “I know it’s hard for a female to understand, but these are dangerous times. One must act for the best, but secretly, carefully.…”

  “Yes. So what would you have me do?”

  “Hide somewhere in the garden here till I return, so that we can say we were together all the time.”

  “But your mother—”

  “Will scold, if it comes out. Very likely will not. I took the precaution of asking no other ladies to dance, save Abigail, and you, if I know Savannah, are not heavily engaged.”

  “No.” She admitted it defiantly. “Your Savannah young men know me for what I am.”

  “Ah, love, but so do I. An ally in a million.” He bent, quickly, to kiss her full on the lips, then vaulted the low wall that bounded the terrace and was gone.

  Mercy looked about her. He had led her to the end of the terrace farthest from the lighted double doors, and they had been standing concealed in the entrance of a small summer pavilion that backed against the wall on the corner of Whitaker Street and the Common. Luckily for her the musicians had struck up again and the other couples were moving back towards the doors. She retreated quickly into the darkness of the pavilion where a stone bench was arranged to command a summer view of the Common. For her, it had the advantage of being concealed from the terrace. She sat down, gathering her light-coloured skirts closely about her, so that they should not betray her to some couple who might decide to stay out for the dance. If she was discovered, she thought coldly, explanation would be unnecessary. Francis had been brutally correct in what he said about her position.

  The gentlemen of Savannah knew her for the indentured man’s daughter she was. That was why Saul Gordon had been able to make his dubious offer. Only Hart, and Giles Habersham, and of course, Francis were invariably courteous to her. The other young blades of Savannah had a way of looking straight through her that she tried hard to find comic. But, tonight, if she was found sitting here alone, it would simply be assumed that she had been ashamed of being partnerless. Normally, on such an occasion, she would have joined the older ladies at the card tables, for she had achieved something of a reputation for her skill at whist and was much sought after as what was usually called a “lucky” partner. But tonight Francis was here. Had been here.

  There had not been another shot, but now, intensely listening as the musicians paused for a moment, she heard a sound with which she had grown all too familiar since that first, dreadful day. Francis had been right. The mob was out, and in force. Worse still, she rather thought they were coming towards the Common. Towards this house, where Mrs McCartney, a widow with two daughters to marry off, entertained Whig and Tory alike?

  Ought she to give the alarm? The noise of the mob was perceptibly nearer now. It was beginning to be possible to distinguish individual shouts from the general ominous roar. “Death to taxes,” she heard, and “Down with the Collector,” and, oddly, “May they swim to hell.” The crowd was very near now. To give the alarm would be to fail Francis, and yet—Those lighted windows were an invitation to violence.

  She rose to her feet, shaking a little from remembered reaction to the horrible, half-human noise, the
n paused, as a group of men’s figures appeared in the light of the house doors. They, too, had obviously heard the approaching tumult. One of them turned back indoors, and one by one, the lights began to go out in the house. The musicians missed a note and stopped. In the ballroom someone was saying something, doubtless urging silence, caution, but, just the same, the terrace was already filling up with silent figures, men and women, watching, listening. The mob must be as near as South Broad Street now, coming fast along Whitaker.

  The terrace was crowded. She chose a moment when a particularly loud cry of “Death to the British,” held the attention of the couples nearest to her, and slipped quietly out of the pavilion, to mingle with the crowd. Her story, if she was challenged, must be that she had come out with Francis, who had left her for a moment to find out what was happening.

  The mob debouched onto the Common, torches flaring, a fife tauntingly playing “Yankee Doodle”—a great burst of shouting, and then a queer, horrid, waiting silence. “What’s, the crime?” shouted a voice. A gentleman’s voice.

  The silence prolonged itself for a moment, then the answer came with a roar, “Treason to the people of Savannah.”

  “What’s the verdict?”

  Again that stretching silence, while on the terrace near her people whispered to each other, anxious, irresolute. More torches had been brought onto the Common, and Mercy, straining her eyes, could see, not far from the house, a group of people round a horse that had something laid crossways over the saddle. Something? Someone? She was shaking all over now, remembering her father.

  “Death!” came a voice. A few others took up the cry. In the flaring, uncertain light of the torches, Mercy could see that the group who seemed to be leading the crowd were dressed as sailors, with blackened, featureless faces. The other men had hats pulled down or collars turned up so as to be almost equally unrecognisable. Now, she thought, the first voice spoke again. Certainly it was again a gentleman’s. “No, no. Not worth death. A mere tide waiter. Tarring and feathering will teach him, and his like, a lesson. Besides, we’ve an audience.” He waved a hand towards the McCartney house. “Let us show the ladies and gentlemen of Savannah that the Sons of Liberty deal in justice, not tyranny. Where’s the tar”—he hurried on, over-riding a few scattered cries of “Death”—“and the feathers?”