Wide is the Water

by Jane Aiken Hodge

  ‘I wish you would call me Charles,’ he said. And then, sensing her reaction: ‘Forgive me. I know it is presumptuous. But I really do not wish to be known as a Frenchman. My business is most confidential.’

  They found the Palmers and Jed anxiously awaiting them at a place where the road forked. ‘We were beginning to be afraid you’d had trouble with those soldiers after all,’ said George Palmer. ‘I’d told them all about you. I was sure there would be no difficulty, or we would have waited for you.’

  ‘No trouble,’ said Mercy. ‘But they gave me terrible news. My mother-in-law and her sister …’ She could not go on and was deeply grateful when Brisson intervened to explain, as briefly as possible.

  After the inevitable exclamations of horror and sympathy she managed to explain her gnawing anxiety about Abigail, and it was soon decided that they would push on through Princeton to Bristol and hope to reach Philadelphia late next day. ‘You should get news there, and let us hope it will be good,’ said George Palmer. ‘I really think we could get another stage even out of your horses, so long as we make sure they are extra well fed at night. And to tell truth, it would suit us very well, ma’am.’

  That night, as they were getting ready for bed in a tiny room that they actually had to themselves, Ruth suddenly stretched out a hand to Mercy. ‘Poor Hart,’ she said. ‘How he will mind. And poor Mercy. I am so sorry.’

  ‘Why, Ruth!’ The tears Mercy had controlled all day suddenly flowed fast and free. ‘Why, thank you!’ She pulled her close for a long, warm kiss. ‘You love Hart, too, don’t you?’ Suddenly she was glad she had assumed what had seemed the burden of Ruth and reproached herself for her previous doubts. ‘Maybe this sad news will bring him home.’ She was ashamed to hope it. ‘And surely there will be news of Abigail in Philadelphia.’

  ‘My cousin Abigail,’ said Ruth.

  Next day the sun shone at last, a brilliant change from grey, snow-laden skies, and from time to time, passing under trees, Mercy would hear the drip of water, as icicles began to thaw. The sun was actually warm on her face, and she felt a strange little leap of hope and began to think about spring – and Hart. Disgusting. And yet it did seem possible that the deaths of his mother and aunt would make it necessary for him to come home, if only to make arrangements about the Mayfield house in Charleston. Besides, he, too, would be racked by anxiety about Abigail. She herself was beginning to hope that Abigail had stayed in Savannah. After all, she had always been Loyalist in her sympathies and was in love with another Loyalist, Giles Habersham, who was overseas somewhere, serving with the British. What a strange, horrible business it all was. More than anything else that had happened to her in the long, sad years of the war, the deaths of Mrs. Purchis and Mrs. Mayfield had brought home to her the savagery of this fight between friends.

  She was driving, and glad of the distraction, when they caught up with the Palmers, who had stopped by the side of the road to mend a broken piece of harness. I’ll go on,’ she told them. ‘The road’s clear enough now; ‘I’m sure I can find the way. We’ll see you at the inn in Bristol.’

  Driving on, she found her mind kept coming back to Mrs. Purchis and Mrs. Mayfield. The Scopholites, followers of the illiterate Loyalist Colonel Scophol, were known for their barbarous cruelty. What horrors had the two elderly ladies endured before they died? Plagued with these thoughts, she had been letting the horses take their own reliable way downhill along the well-used road when an exclamation from Brisson brought her attention back with a jerk. She had thought the road unusually smooth as it reached level ground and now realised that they were crossing a river on the ice. She could hear the rush of water. But that was all wrong. That was horribly dangerous. And on the thought, one of the horses plunged suddenly through the ice.

  ‘Dear God!’ said Brisson. ‘Stay where you are, madame. The sledge should be safe enough.’ He was out already, struggling to free the horse from the sledge, before she remembered his bad shoulder. He would never manage by himself.

  ‘Stay here, Ruth,’ she commanded. ‘Here, take the reins, hold the other horse steady. Please God he doesn’t go through too.’ The broad-based sledge really did seem safe enough, but as she spoke, the second horse also let out a snort of fright and plunged through the ice. ‘Let go the reins, Ruth,’ she urged. ‘It’s our only hope, even if we lose them both.’ She was out on the ice now, beside the sledge, frantically trying to push it back to safety, desperately aware of the struggling, panicked horses, dangerously close. Then, horribly, she felt the ice give under her. Plunging into freezing water, she felt, with despair, the unexpected strength of the current and was fighting for her life, trying to get a grip on ice that crumbled away as she clutched at it.

  How long did she struggle there? The cold was numbing; her hands and feet would no longer obey her; her skirts had become a clinging shroud; she felt herself begin to give up, to let go. Cold … cold …

  Life, coming back, was thrillingly painful. Someone was chafing her hands. She could hear shouting. Then: ‘Mercy! Mercy!’ Ruth’s voice. ‘Dear Mercy, be better.’

  She was in the sledge, soaking wet, wrapped in all the rugs. Ruth was bending over her, smelling salts in hand. ‘You are better.’ Smiling, Ruth was suddenly beautiful. Life was beautiful. To be alive was a miracle.

  ‘What happened?’ Mercy saw that the sledge was safe on the other side of the river.

  ‘Mr. Brisson saved your life. He got you to the bank before the Palmers caught up. I don’t know how they got the horses out. I was looking after you. Oh, Mercy, I was afraid you were dead.’

  ‘Not a bit of it.’ Mercy was amazed at the change in Ruth. ‘And the horses?’

  ‘Will be all right tomorrow, they say. We have to spend the night at the inn here.’

  That night it was Ruth who insisted that Mercy must go straight to bed and persuaded the landlady of the little inn to make her a great bowlful of steaming soup. ‘You must get warm.’ She brought her a hot brick. ‘You keep shivering, dear Mercy. You must not think about poor Mrs. Purchis and Mrs. Mayfield. You must have loved them very much.’

  ‘Well.’ Mercy thought about it. ‘They were good to me. In their way.’ It was true, at least, of Mrs. Purchis. Anne Mayfield had never been her friend. But what difference did that make now? ‘I can’t stop thinking about Abigail,’ she said. ‘Pray God those devils of Scopholites have not carried her off,’ It did not bear thinking of, and she could not stop.

  ‘You must sleep.’ Ruth took the empty bowl. ‘Mr. Brisson said to tell you the horses will be fit to travel in the morning, if you are.’

  ‘I shall be,’ said Mercy.

  VII

  ‘Your England’s beautiful, Cousin.’ Hart and Dick Purchas were driving swiftly through high green Devon lanes. ‘It all seems like a dream. I don’t know how to thank you. To be free, to be coming home with you like this.’ But was it dream or nightmare? On the face of it, he had been incredibly lucky. Dick Purchas had stood his friend indeed. His report to the Admiralty had not spoken of the conspiracy to seize the Sparrow. Instead of figuring as the two-faced wretch he felt himself, Hart was the hero who had caught a madman trying to fire the Sparrow and saved the ship at the risk of his own life. As a result, he had been paroled to his cousin’s custody, and they were on their way to the Purchas home, Denton Hall in Sussex, while the Sparrow refitted at Plymouth.

  ‘No need for thanks,’ said Dick Purchas. ‘You saved my ship.’ He leaned forward to look out of the post chaise. ‘It’s a late spring. Here it is May, and the blackthorn’s still out. If only I could have got home for the last of the ploughing. And the spring planting … I do look forward to showing you my home, Cousin Hart, and having you meet my family. Remarkable that Julia has still not married.’ He had found letters awaiting him at Plymouth, but as they themselves had brought the latest news from America, there was no knowing how long Hart might have to wait for word from Mercy and his mother. It was small comfort to have learnt, on board the Sparrow, that
an English fleet had sailed from New York in December to launch the attack on Charleston that Mercy had predicted. That was another thing. Now that he had lived on such friendly terms with the officers of the Sparrow, he found he did not altogether like to remember Mercy’s activities as a spy in Savannah.

  That was part of the nightmare, and so were the expressions on the faces of the Georgians when he had said good-bye to them. Whatever Dick had told the Admiralty, they must know the truth, must know that he had foiled Grant in his attempt to fire the Sparrow and perhaps free them. He fought that savage battle over and over again in his dreams. At the time his captain’s instinct to save a threatened ship had sent him straight into combat with Grant. And looking back, he did not see what else he could have done, but the fact remained that however publicly acclaimed, he cut a sorry enough figure in his own eyes. He had saved an enemy ship and owed the shreds of his reputation to his cousin’s glossing of the story, but felt in his heart that it could not last. Some of the members of the Georgia’s crew must have known what Grant had planned. Or must they? Might Grant not have seized the sudden chance offered by the fog, relying on his fellow conspirators to back him up in the confusion caused by the fire?

  A forlorn hope, but he clung to it. The Georgians’ black looks, after all, were understandable enough. He had given his word not to try to escape and he was going free, to a life of luxury, while they must endure the captivity of service either in the British navy or, the still worse kind, in prison at Mill Prison. He had hopes of hearing from his wife and family sooner or later; they had none, so long as the war lasted. And that began to seem like forever. Dick Purchas’s hopes that they would arrive to find the peace party in power had proved vain despite the fact that Lord North’s government had actually been defeated by eighteen votes in the House of Commons on Mr. Dunning’s motion: ‘The influence of the crown has increased, is increasing and ought to be diminished.’ Petitions against the war from counties and towns had been heaped on the table in the House, but nothing had come of it.

  ‘We Whigs have no real larder; that’s our trouble.’ Dick Purchas had been thinking on the same lines. ‘If only Charles Fox had more bottom. A brilliant man. Cousin, but unstable … So brilliant that no one else can lead … So rash he is not fit to lead himself. And anyway, the King would never have him. I am afraid you had best resign yourself to spending some time at Denton Hall, though I am sure we will be able to arrange an exchange for you in the end. Now Parliament has passed an act allowing the exchange of naval prisoners, it should be no problem. Just a matter of time.’

  ‘Which I shall be happy to spend with you. I can’t tell you how grateful I am to you, Cousin. I know it’s thanks to you that it’s to be Denton Hall for me and not Mill Hill. I do hope I did right in giving my word not to try to escape.’

  ‘Of course you did.’ It was a measure of the growing friendship between them that Hart was able to discuss his gnawing anxiety about this with his newfound cousin. ‘As I have said before,’ Dick went on. ‘I am sure that you can do more for the American cause and the cause of peace by mixing in society here in England than by rotting in prison.’

  ‘And God knows there’s no future for me now as a privateer captain,’ said Hart grimly. They had passed a file of chained prisoners earlier in the day, and it was not a sight he would forget in a hurry. It was, in fact, the only sign of war he had seen as they drove swiftly through a countryside of neat fields, prosperous houses, and comfortable inns.

  ‘I think that’s just the trouble,’ said Dick Purchas when Hart remarked on this over an excellent dinner at the Dolphin Inn at Southampton. ‘Most of the time this war hits people here in England only in their purses. Unless they’ve a relative involved, that is. From time to time something happens to bring it home to the country at large: the invasion scare last summer, for instance, or your John Paul Jones’s forays along our coast. Then the cry is all for peace … But when the immediate crisis is past, people forget again. America is a long way off.’

  ‘It is indeed.’ Even with favourable westerlies most of the way, the voyage had seemed endless to Hart, the thin thread of love that bound him to wife and family and America stretching and stretching over the long sea miles. ‘But what of France and Spain?’ He pushed away the memory of Mercy. ‘And now this armed neutrality of the northern powers that the Empress of Russia is forming?’ He and Dick both spent their evenings passionately reading English newspapers.

  ‘More words than deeds, if you ask me,’ said Dick Purchas. ‘The northern powers care only about their trade, Spain’s rotten to the core, and as for the French … Well, you saw, did you not, that their Admiral d’Estaing is back home, licking his wounds, after his defeat at Savannah.’ He poured wine for them both. ‘Let’s not talk of the war, Cousin. Let’s drink to your wife and the good news I hope you will have of her soon.’

  They reached Denton Hall next afternoon, and Hart was amazed all over again at the sheer size of English houses. He had thought his beloved lost plantation house at Winchelsea large and luxurious enough, but it seemed, in retrospect, a mere cottage compared with Denton Hall as they rounded a bend in the carriage drive and saw it lying in its hollow of the hills, rambling red brick glowing in the afternoon sun. ‘It’s a palace. Cousin!’ he exclaimed.

  ‘Nonsense! You’ve seen Petworth House and can say that! But it’s home, thank God. And there’s Julia. I knew she’d be here to give us the meeting.’ He opened the carriage door and jumped out before it had even stopped. ‘Julia!’ He took the steps at a bound and threw his arms round the girl who waited at the top. ‘I knew you’d be here! And Mother?’

  ‘Here, too. She awaits you in the small saloon.’ She pulled away a little to look up at her brother, and Hart, alighting from the coach, thought her the most beautiful woman he had ever seen. Small, dark, and animated, she looked even lovelier as she made a little face of disgust and explained, ‘No London this season. We’re retrenching, Dick. Economy’s the cry.’

  ‘George in debt again?’

  ‘In debt! He’s drowned in it. Cards … cocking … horses …’ A defiant smile. ‘Women! You’ll have to speak to Father, Dick. He won’t see him in London, won’t let him come here. It’s worse than when he joined the Mohawks. Of course, he’s going from bad to worse, poor George. Oh, Dick, I’m glad you’re home.’

  ‘So am I.’ He turned, with a smile of apology, to where Hart had stood, an embarrassed audience, at the foot of the steps. ‘You must meet our cousin Hart Purchis. Hart, my sister Julia. Forgive the family gossip.’

  ‘I envy you,’ said Hart, with truth. ‘Your most humble servant, Miss Purchas.’

  ‘Oh, call me Julia,’ she said, ‘since we are to be cousins. Welcome to Denton Hall, Cousin Hart.’ She held out a tiny, elegant, gloved hand, and Hart, admiring her from neat kid shoes to exquisitely curling unpowdered hair, longed for the expertise to kiss it but dared not venture.

  ‘Come and meet Mamma.’ She kept hold of his hand to lead him indoors. ‘She longs to see you, Dick.’

  ‘In the vapours?’

  ‘Badly hipped.’ She was walking between the two men, her arm in Dick’s while she still held Hart’s hand, and he admired the wide double doors and spacious hall that made this possible. ‘You know, Dick,’ she went on, ‘for Mamma, the sun had always risen and set in George. To have him forbidden the house … Oh, I am glad you’re home, nice Brother. Now we shall all be to rights again. You’ll talk to Father. You were always the wise one.’

  Dick laughed, a little ruefully, Hart thought. ‘Younger brothers need to cultivate sense,’ he said. ‘I’m glad you’re family, Cousin Hart, or you would think this a strange welcome. But come and meet my mother.’ Anticipating a footman, he threw open a door at the back of the wide, light hall and revealed a small sitting room where afternoon sunshine glowed on rose-pink furniture.

  ‘Richard! At last! Now we shall be comfortable again!’ Like her daughter, Mrs. Purchas was tiny and elegant beyond belie
f, but a small habitual frown marred her still exquisite features, and Hart was oddly reminded of his aunt Mayfield. As she reached up to accept Dick’s kiss, Hart had a sudden vision of Mercy, strong, and brown, and golden from the sun, where these Englishwomen were pale and exquisite as hothouse lilies. ‘Cousin Hart!’ Mrs. Purchas detached herself from Dick’s embrace and held out a hand. ‘Welcome to your English home. And God bless you for saving the Sparrow and Richard’s life.’ She put a tiny lace-trimmed handkerchief to dry eyes. ‘We owe you more than we can ever repay.’ And then, on a totally different note and with a glance at the ormolu clock on the chimney piece: ‘We dine at five, Richard. Country hours. Julia, my love, will you have your cousin shown to his room? You see, Cousin Hart, we do not mean to stand on ceremony with you.’

  ‘I’m delighted.’ She obviously wanted to be alone with her son. Well, that was natural enough. As he and Julia left the room, he heard Mrs. Purchas’s eager question: ‘And the prize money, Richard. How much?’

  Prize money. The Georgia. But she had sunk. ‘I beg your pardon?’ Julia Purchas had said something.

  ‘You must bear with my mother,’ she said. ‘We have been all to pieces since this last news of poor George. But Dick will bring all about again. He always does, our good, hardworking Dick.’ She smiled up at him, black brows exquisitely arched. ‘Tell truth, Cousin Hart, you are wishing our family problems at Jericho and longing for a little peace and quietness. But let me just say, “Welcome to your new home, Cousin.” Soames—’ she addressed a formidable, liveried figure – ‘have someone take Mr. Purchis to his room. We meet before dinner in the small saloon, Cousin, when it is just the family. At live to five? Mamma is a perfect dragon for punctuality.’ A grandfather clock in the hall chimed the half hour. ‘My stars!’ She lifted flowing skirts to run nimbly up the stair, then turned at the top to smile down at him. ‘I do hope you are not a dandy, Cousin. My maid will be at her wits’ end to dress me in time.’