“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?”
Chapter 18
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.”
“Can you wonder?” said Abigail.
It was late in October, with the harvest all in, but still Gordon refused to give orders to bring in at least the domestic staff from Winchelsea. He shrugged off Mercy’s protests. “I was out there myself just the other day. Everything as right as can be. I don’t know why you indulge yourself in these alarmist fancies, Miss Mercy. It is like a female, I know, but not like you. And talking of the ladies.” Archly. “You will never imagine who I met taking their promenade out there.”
“No, I suppose I probably will not.”
“Who but Miss Bridget and Miss Claire! They feel no danger in driving out there to call on friends and take a peep, as they described it, at Winchelsea on the way back. I cannot imagine what makes you so timorous.”
“Common sense perhaps.” But she wished she knew what had taken the McCartneys to Winchelsea.
She was wakened, very early, a few mornings later by the news that the packet was in and that Captain Smythe wished to speak to her. “I came myself.” His greeting was unceremonious and she did not trouble to apologise for her thrown-on clothes. “It’s good news, I hope. I have him on board.”
“Hart! Oh, God bless you.”
“Don’t say that yet. I’ve done my best. But, Miss Phillips, he was a dying man when he came on board. He’d been on one of those stinking hulks they call prison ships. All through the summer in New York Harbour. Please God, his exchange came through just in time. The passage has certainly done him good. Fresh air, the little food we could get him to take, but you’ve a nursing job on your hands, and not a light one. I’m on my way to report to the Assembly, but I thought you’d want to start making arrangements for getting him home. My men have orders to help any way they can. He should not stay down there in the harbour a minute longer than need be.”
“He’s bad?”
“Very bad.”
“Wounds?”
“Nothing to signify. If they’d been tended. Miss Phillips, if I had a British prisoner here, at this moment, I think I’d strangle him with my two hands.”
“No!”
“Wait till you see him. I should warn you, he won’t know you.” He picked up hat and cane. “And—good luck.”
“I haven’t thanked you.”
“No need. And no time.”
Saul Gordon was away on one of his visits of inspection to Winchelsea, and Mercy was glad of it. She rang, sent for William, gave her orders, and then hurried upstairs to wake Abigail and break the news. “Will you tell his mother and aunt while I go down to the quay and fetch him. Don’t let them hope too much, Abigail.”
“No? Oh, Mercy!” And then, making herself be practical, “His room. Have you given orders for it?”
“No use. Captain Smythe says we cannot possibly get him up the stairs.” Her mind had been nibbling at this problem. “Only one thing for it,” she said now. “Abigail, have them set up a cot bed in the office. It’s the only way.”
“Mr Gordon won’t like it.”
“No, he won’t, will he?”
Nothing Smythe had said had prepared her for the reality of Hart’s condition. Gaunt as a skeleton, pale as a ghost, he lay in his ship’s cot, hands twitching at the blankets, lips constantly in movement, saying something unintelligible. But a blessing, for the moment, that he did not recognise her. It made the undignified business of getting him ashore and up the bluff a little easier.
And, arrived in Oglethorpe Square, she was relieved to find that not even the news of Hart’s arrival had got the two older ladies up and dressed yet. She was able to get him into the room Abigail had had prepared with a minimum of muss and confusion.
“I’ve sent for the doctor.” Like the servants who had helped get Hart to bed, Abigail was crying quietly. “He should be here directly.”
“Bless you. I should have thought of that.”
Dr Flinn was less discouraging than Mercy had feared. He had met Captain Smythe in Broughton Street, he told her, and had a preliminary report from him. “I do not wish to raise your hopes unduly, Miss Phillips, but from what Smythe said, I think a very pronounced change for the better must have taken place on the voyage down. We have found this, you know, on each of our unlucky expeditions southwards. The fever cases and the wounded alike tend to improve enormously in the course of the voyage back through the inner channel. It’s the fresh air, I suppose, or something.” He rolled up his shirt-sleeves. “And now, if you’ll leave me, I’ll examine these wounds of his.”
“Had I not better stay,” said Mercy. “I intend to look after the nursing myself.”
“You do?” She had surprised him. “Would it not be more suitable if one of the servants—”
“It might be more suitable, but it would be a great deal less satisfactory. One cannot trust them to keep things clean, and my father always said that cleanliness was half the battle when treating wounds.”
“Your father spoke like a sensible man. Very well then, so long as you promise not to faint or have hysterics.”
“I don’t think I know how,” said Mercy.
“He’s been lucky.” Dr Flinn summed it up when the examination was over. “A good constitution, and he must have been hard as nails
when it happened to him. And only superficial wounds. I’d say they must have nearly healed on the march from Monmouth up to New York. Impossible to tell, of course, but that’s the way it looks to me. And then broken out again owing to the frightful conditions on the hulk. Another few weeks of that and it would have been gangrene, and death. As it is, rest and care, Miss Phillips. Keep the wounds clean and dry. I hope you haven’t given all your linen for bandages. I know how generous you and Miss Abigail have been.”
“No, I’m afraid I saved some for our own emergencies.”
“And very sensible too. I’ll call again tomorrow. Oh”—he was putting on his black coat—“no excitement whatever, Miss Phillips. No tears, no scenes of joyful reunion.”
“It’s hardly the occasion for that,” she said. “Yet. But, Dr Flinn, would you add to your kindness by seeing Mrs Purchis and explaining to her? She would take it better from you, I know.” It was going to be difficult to keep Hart quiet in this room, which opened off the main family living room, but it must be done. “Could you perhaps suggest the possibility that it might be a fever?” she asked. “Maybe catching?”
He had known them all a long time. “An excellent idea. I’ll go through straightaway.”
Left alone with her patient, Mercy stood for a long moment, letting herself imagine he seemed a little better, now that his wounds had been dressed. Then she went over to the back door of the office and looked out into the yard, where, as always, a group of the servants’ children were playing under the catalpa trees. She sent one of them for William, and when he came, she asked him to put a bolt onto the door that led from the office into the big ground-floor room. “Mr Hart must have absolute quiet,” she said.
“Yes, miss.” He hesitated for a moment. “My Amy say she’d be right down proud if you’d let her help nurse the master. She don’t reckon much to fevers, she says.”
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