Impossible not to like them, and equally difficult not to enjoy this enforced idleness. There had been no time like this since that day almost five years ago, at Lexington, when Mark Paston had died in his arms. His only other spell of inactivity had been after he was taken prisoner at Monmouth Courthouse, when he nearly died on a prisoner of war hulk in New York Harbour. Mercy had arranged his rescue from there. Mercy had nursed him back to health and had saved him once again when Savannah was taken by the British. He owed her his life. Horrible to feel that in some curious way this seemed an obstacle between them. That and the sea, the ever-widening cold grey waste of sea that lay between them now.
Oh, wide is the water, I cannot get o’er,
The water lies wide twixt my true love and me …
His mother had sung him the ballad when he was young. How did it go on? He could not remember.
‘Sir?’ Bill had brought his shaving water and was laying out a clean shirt, part of the wardrobe to which all of the Sparrow’s officers had contributed.
‘Yes?’ Hart watched with surprise as Bill opened the cabin door, looked cautiously to right and left, then shut it again.
‘I’ve a message for you. From the men.’
‘The men?’
‘Some of them. Grant that was mate on the Georgia and his friends. Grant was flogged the other day, as you know.’
‘He was lucky to get off so lightly.’ It was true, but just the same it had been horrible to have to watch the blood-drenched back writhe under the lash. And, he remembered now, he had felt something sinister in Grant’s clenched silence and that of the other Americans.
‘He don’t see it that way,’ said Bill. ‘He’s had his bellyful of British discipline, he says. Told me to tell you’ – he lowered his voice – ‘that he and his friends are ready to rise and take over the ship if you’ll just lend them a hand. They’ve found friends in the British crew who say they’re sick, too, of low pay and the lash. One of them’s assistant to Doc. Burnard. He prigged this the other day.’ He handed Hart a small bottle. ‘Laudanum. Your part’s to put it into the officers’ wine the first chance you get. We’ll have to think of some way you can let me know you’ve done it.’ He looked round the cabin. ‘Your Bible. Leave it open on the desk. I always come in after dinner to see all’s right here. I’ll pass the word to the others. And we’ll be sailing home in no time. What is it, sir?’ He felt Hart’s lack of response.
‘Bill, I can’t. I gave my word. So did the others. Swore allegiance to King George.’
‘This is war,’ said Bill. ‘Sir, think! Think of the Georgians who are still prisoners belowdecks. What’s going to happen to them when we get to England? If we get to England. Mill Prison, sir. We all know that. You better than most after that time you spent on the prison hulks at New York. A living death. What’s a man’s word compared to that? And just think of the other side of it. Sailing the Sparrow into Charleston Harbour! The welcome we’d get. And the difference it would make. A spanking frigate like her. We’d be heroes.’
‘We’d be villains. Bill, I’m sorry. I can’t do it.’ And yet how appallingly tempting it was. ‘What would happen to the officers?’ He realised as he asked it that it betrayed him as wavering.
‘Oh, they’d be right enough. Held for ransom, most like, or’ – he corrected himself, seeing Hart’s expression – ‘exchange, rather.’
‘I wonder.’ Hart was remembering that writhing, bloody back under the lash. If Grant got the chance, he would never stop short of the fullest possible revenge. ‘No,’ he said, ‘I’m sure you believe Grant, but I don’t. He’d kill them all. Captain Purchas is my cousin. He’s been – they’ve all been good to me. To us all,’ he added with less conviction. ‘Think how Dr. Burnard cared for your wounds. All your wounds.’
‘So we could help sail their ship,’ said Bill. ‘Sir, it’s such a chance.’ He was pleading now. ‘For me, most of all. They need me, see; they’re treating me like one of them again.’ He looked suddenly grey. ‘If you don’t agree, sir, and I have to tell them so, my life’s not worth a straw. And there’s something else. Something Grant told me to tell you if you should be uncertain like.’ He paused for another quick, cautious look outside the cabin door. ‘It’s about Miss Mercy, sir. Mrs. Purchis, I should say. Grant said to tell you that when you and she were ashore that day at Cohuit, some men came out to the Georgia across the ice from Boston Harbour. You never knew that, did you?’
‘No?’ For a moment he did not see where this was leading.
‘No. Well, they heard all about our voyage. About Mrs. Purchis being a Jonah and the bad luck we’d had from her. Oh, a parcel of nonsense, of course.’ He quailed at Hart’s look of naked fury. ‘But them New Englanders seemed to believe every word of it. I don’t rightly know what kind of welcome Mrs. Purchis will have had there, sir. Ask him right, once we’ve taken over the ship, Grant might even take her up to Boston, and you could see for yourself. He’s a Maine man himself; it would suit him well enough.’
Without intending it, he had made up Hart’s mind for him. ‘You mean,’ he said, ‘Grant would be captain.’
‘It’s his idea,’ said Bill.
‘Then my answer has to be no.’
‘Good-bye, Mr. Purchis,’ said Bill.
Later that afternoon there was a cry of ‘Man overboard,’ and Hart knew at once that it had to be Bill. But had he gone over alive, in despair, or dead, first victim of his angry accomplices? Certainly, though the ship’s boat was lowered, while the Sparrow swept in a wide circle back on her own course, there was no bobbing head to reward the search, and by nightfall they were on their way again.
‘I’m sorry.’ Dick Purchas had sent Smithers to summon Hart for a glass of wine. ‘I know he was almost part of your family. You’ll miss him badly.’
‘Yes.’ Hart had been battling it out with himself all day, and this friendly, almost family sympathy decided him. ‘But there’s worse than that,’ he said. ‘I’ve been fighting with myself about telling you, but I must. Bill spoke to me this morning.’ It was hard to get it out. ‘He told me there was a plot among the Americans to take the ship. They wanted my help. When I refused, he said, “Good-bye.” I wish I knew whether he killed himself or they killed him.’
‘I don’t suppose we ever shall.’ Dick Purchas raised his glass in a silent: toast. ‘I’m glad you told me, Cousin. I thought they must have approached you.’
‘You mean, you knew?’
‘Naturally I knew. I run a happy ship. Reckon to. Oh, I expect some of the men Grant and his friends approached really intended to join them – there are always some malcontents on any ship – but he was fair and far from the mark in some he spoke to. Our British sailors like to grumble and curse, but come the crunch, they’re solid gold. I won’t tell you how the word reached me, any more than you were going to tell me Grant’s name, but I can tell you this: If you heard only today, it got to me a long time before it did to you.’
‘Good God!’ Hart stared with backward horror at the danger he had run. ‘But what are you going to do?’
‘Nothing. Oh, I’ve got the ringleaders closely watched. That’s why I’m afraid your man may have killed himself. None of the leaders could have done it. I’ve a man on each of them. Reporting daily. When we get to England, I’ll see they are sent to different ships. We need sailors, not gaolbirds. They’ll settle down,, I hope. The only one I’m not sure of is the man Grant. I’m glad you spoke to me. Now I can ask your advice about him.’
‘It’s hard to tell.’ Hart spoke slowly. ‘He’s a damned good sailor but has never liked taking orders. I made him mate on the Georgia for both those reasons.’
‘And did it work?’
‘That’s what I’m not quite sure of.’ He was looking back to the day the Georgia was sunk. ‘Grant was in command when we sighted you that day,’ he said. ‘It was his responsibility to summon me. He left it so late that I had to fight you. I wonder what he really wanted. I do remember one thing
, though. Bill stuck to me close as pitch almost to the end of the fighting that day. I wonder if he was afraid for me. Afraid of Grant … Oh, poor Bill … If I had told you sooner, you could have protected him perhaps.’
‘I doubt it,’ said Captain Purchas. ‘Certainly not from himself. As to Grant, I’ll see he’s watched night and day. One false step, and I’ll throw the book at him. But for all our sakes, the last thing I want is word to get out of what he was trying to do.’
‘I’m more than grateful,’ said Hart. ‘I cut a pretty sorry figure whichever way you look at it.’
‘Nonsense,’ said Dick Purchas. ‘You were on the spot, and no mistake. Now we’ll drink another glass of wine and say no more about it, if you please. I hope to make Plymouth in three or four days if the wind holds, and then this will be all over, best forgotten. But I must say I’m damned glad I don’t have to take you in in irons, Cousin Hart. I was – anxious.’
‘Thank you.’ Alone in his cabin. Hart sat for a while, very still, contemplating the disaster he had escaped. And Bill, poor Bill, who had not …
The more he thought of it, the more he respected his newfound cousin for the way he had handled the whole business, and the more grateful he felt to him. If the conspiracy had been exposed, his own part or lack of one would inevitably have come to light, and there were no two ways about it – it would have meant ruin for him. He seized the first opportunity to mention that dangerous bottle of laudanum to Dick Purchas, who laughed and said, ‘You don’t think it really was laudanum, do you? Doc. Burnard has more sense than to leave that where thieving hands can reach it. No, it was when that was taken that we knew Grant really meant business. He’s behaving very well, have you noticed?’
‘What does he know?’
Dick Purchas shrugged. ‘I’m not sure. That he’s watched, that’s certain. I gave orders that it must be obvious after your poor Bill’s death. I didn’t want anything else to happen.’
‘And it hasn’t. I envy you your power. I wish we could order things like that in our navy.’
‘I expect you will one day. We’ve been sailors a long while, remember, long enough to learn that there’s no time for divided command at sea. A split-second decision can so easily make the difference between life and death. No time for your committees here. Do you know, I am beginning to hope that even the man Grant is beginning to recognise that. He’s certainly minding his step.’
‘He must be a very frightened man.’
‘If he’s not, he’s a fool! And I never thought him that. If he goes on behaving as he is now, I’m half-inclined to keep him on the Sparrow and just split up his friends. He has the makings of a damn good petty officer.’
‘Cousin, you amaze me.’
Dick laughed. ‘Well, it would solve a moral problem for me. I hardly like to send him to another ship without some word of warning to the captain, and yet how can I give that without telling the whole story, which, as you know, is the last thing I want to do?’
‘And for which I’m more grateful to you than I can say,’ said Hart.
He thought about this conversation a good deal in the next few days, when the Sparrow encountered contrary winds almost for the first time and wallowed unhappily to the west of the Bay of Biscay. And the more he thought, the more anxious he felt. Grant, he was sure, was not a man to change easily. He had a wife and children in Maine and had always seemed devoted to them. Impossible to believe that he had given up all hope of getting home. ‘It’s too good to be true,’ he told his cousin, ‘the way Grant’s behaving. I hope your watch on him is close.’
‘It certainly is.’
But not close enough. The ship ran into fog the next day, somewhere to the west of Ushant, and all attention was centred on the man taking soundings. They had seen no land so far, and though the master’s reckoning showed the ship as well clear of the dangerous, rocky shore, Captain Purchas was taking no chances. ‘I don’t intend to pile my Sparrow up on the rocks, as a gift to our French enemies,’ he told Hart, who had groped his way up on deck through the strangely silent, fog-muffled ship.
Enemies? Friends? Hart had a sudden vivid memory of Captain Bougainville’s French officers crowding round Mercy on the Guerrier, Mercy in her low-cut dress of bronze satin that drew all eyes. Mercy laughing, flirting … Mercy who had laughed and flirted also with the British officers who controlled Savannah. He had watched her, dangerously, through the window of the house in Oglethorpe Square, teasing, tantalising them … How far had she gone? Would he ever know? The question, gnawing at his vitals, had combined with the cramped, awkward life on the Georgia to make him shamefully impotent during that strange honeymoon of theirs. Looking back, he could understand that, but understood it with rage and despair. If he had only been able to take her, he might have known …
‘By the mark, ten,’ chanted the man in the chains. So far they were out of danger. Did he want to be out of danger? A Jonah, the Georgia’s crew had called Mercy. And they had passed the word to the New Englanders who had visited the ship when he and Mercy were ashore. He had been so sure she would be safe with the Pastons. And of course she would be. Mercy had a gift for being safe.
What was he thinking now? Hating himself, he could no longer bear the muted, crowded deck and turned to grope his way down to the privacy of his cabin. The fog had penetrated belowdecks, cutting vision, blanketing sound. Reaching his cabin door, he was surprised to find it ajar with, surely, a faint glimmer of light showing inside. And the hint of movement?
He pushed the door, silently, gently, and, as it yielded to his cautious touch, saw Grant, faintly illuminated by the lantern he had hung from a nail, very busy with something on the writing desk. Papers … a pile of something that might be wood shavings … Grant reached for the lantern, and Hart sprang at him.
They fought silently, horribly, with bare hands, with teeth, with a deep, sweating, grunting hatred. Grant had Hart by the hair, was banging his head against the deck, and for a moment Hart relaxed, letting him do his worst, thinking hard. They both were unarmed. A weapon? It might make the whole difference. Without one, he was lost. Grant knew about his weak arm, legacy of Monmouth Courthouse, and was taking the fullest advantage of it. But the enforced rest on the Sparrow had done it good. And now, lying quiet, apparently helpless, he remembered something. On the writing desk, somewhere under the pile of paper and shavings, lay the penknife Dick Purchas had lent him to sharpen his pen the other day. He had forgotten to return it and now thanked God. Still playing helpless, he rolled a little nearer to the desk. Now his right hand could reach up, if he could only distract his triumphant adversary.
Grant helped him by letting go of his hair and reaching for his throat. This was to be the end. He had worked off the long rage of his captivity in that savage banging from which Hart’s head still spun. Now he was ready to finish and get back to lighting the fire that would destroy the Sparrow and, if he was lucky, give him his freedom.
As his hands went from hair to throat, Hart’s right one reached up, groping on the low desk. A small knife, but sharp. Was his right hand strong enough? It must be. He had the knife now, and as the calloused, savage hands tightened round his throat, he drove it with all his recovered force, upward, sideways, under Grant’s left ribs.
A grunt of angry surprise; the hands went on tightening; Hart’s head swam; Grant’s body was heavy on his, stopping life, stopping breath … dark, dark … And suddenly, just this side of unconsciousness, he remembered Mercy, Mercy offering her breast to his knife. ‘I can’t kill you,’ he had said, ‘so I suppose I must trust you.’ Mercy … The darkness closed on him.
‘Hart! Cousin Hart!’ Dick Purchas’s voice. Hart travelled a long, reluctant way through heavy darkness to find himself lying on his own cot. His head ached; his throat hurt. ‘Grant?’ His voice came out as a croak.
‘Dead, I’m glad to say,’ said Purchas. ‘And glad I lent you that penknife, Cousin. If I hadn’t, I think we’d all be dead, or in French hands. I should
have listened to your doubts about Grant.’
‘What happened to the men watching him?’
‘Dead, I’m afraid. The fog gave Grant his chance. I should have doubled the watch on him. But I had other things to think of. At least we’ve cleared Ushant now, but it’s thanks to you, Cousin, that we did, and so I shall tell my masters at the Admiralty.’
‘Oh, God!’ Hart struggled to pull himself up against the hard pillow. ‘What have I done?’
V
It started to snow again just as Mercy, Barnes, and Jed finished packing the sledge with everything it would safely hold for the long journey south to Philadelphia. ‘That’s good,’ Barnes said as the first large flakes came floating softly down. ‘That’s the dandy. Bit of luck this will see us safe to the post road south of Cambridge. Though I’m not that worried about the daytime. It’s darkness brings out the devil in men.’
‘Just so long as the snow don’t lie too thick.’ Jed looked up anxiously at the heavy sky.
‘Roads are good,’ Barnes said reassuringly. ‘Right down to Philadelphia, by what I hear. Orders of Congress when the durned British got a hold on the seaways. And inns every six miles. So they say! Believe that, you’ll believe anything. But tonight we’ll lie snug with a cousin of mine, back from the road a piece. Safer like that, so close to Boston. Pity we couldn’t get started sooner.’
‘I’m sorry,’ said Mercy.
When Ruth discovered that they must leave her mother’s body unburied, for Barnes to look after until the spring thaw made burial possible, she had gone first into screaming hysterics and then at last into a numb, biddable silence that Mercy found almost as alarming. It had delayed their start badly, and Mercy had managed an anxious whispered question to Barnes. His answer had been reassuring. Their attackers of the night before had most likely all come from Boston. ‘They’re famous,’ he told her, ‘Boston mobs. Infamous. I don’t reckon on trouble cutting across to the main road south of Cambridge.’
Wide is the Water Page 6
