Wide is the Water

by Jane Aiken Hodge

  They returned home late in the afternoon in great charity with each other, having replanned the entire economy of the Denton Hall estate. ‘And then turnips,’ Dick was saying as they rounded the curve of the drive to see the hall, as they had the day before, mellow in afternoon sunshine. ‘Do you really think I might pay our way without selling, Cousin?’

  ‘With luck and the way agricultural prices are rising? I don’t see why not. Mad to sell land at the moment. And surely anyone who truly loved your sister must be prepared to wait more than a year for her hand.’

  ‘Maybe,’ said Dick. ‘But would Julia?’ And then: ‘Look, there she is.’

  Once again Julia had appeared at the top of the steps to greet them. But this time it seemed to be Hart who had all her attention. ‘Hart!’ She came down the steps as they dismounted. ‘Oh, my poor Cousin!’

  ‘What is it, Julia? Why the long face?’ Dick sounded almost impatient.

  Julia ignored him, holding out her hand to Hart. ‘Come indoors, Cousin. I’ve … I’ve bad news for you.’

  ‘News?’ He gave the reins to the groom. ‘But how?’

  ‘That bundle of New York papers you brought home, Dick.’ She turned to her brother. ‘Price has just unpacked them. You had never looked at them, I collect?’

  ‘No chance,’ he told her. ‘I don’t even know where they got stowed in the end. Just some duplicate copies; the others must be at the Admiralty by now. But why the amazement, Julia?’

  ‘News from New York?’ Hart’s voice shook. ‘My wife? What is it? Tell me!’

  ‘Come in here.’ She took his hand and led him into an empty book-lined room. ‘My mother’s in the morning room.’ She turned to face him. ‘Not your wife, my poor cousin. Your mother and aunt.’

  ‘My mother? Savannah?’

  ‘No.’ Still gazing at him with huge, pitiful eyes, she picked up a ragged copy of Rivington’s Gazette from the study table. ‘Read it. Cousin. I can’t. I’m so very sorry … I’ll leave you. Come, Dick. Hart will want to be alone.’ The door closed softly behind them as Hart began to read.

  When he put the paper down, his eyes were full of tears. Both his mother and his aunt. Dead. Horribly dead. The article in the Loyalist paper was obviously not the first report of the disaster and did not go into details, but its implications were clear. The grim story was used as an argument for a swift, just peace. Mrs. Purchis and Mrs. Mayfield were innocent victims, the anonymous writer said, of savagery of what amounted to civil war. They had decided to flee the safety of British-held Savannah for the hazards of life in American Charleston. Their little party had never got there; their mutilated bodies had been found by a band of Tory soldiers and given decent burial. Mrs. Purchis was the mother of a well-known privateer captain. Every thinking person must feel for him and hope that this personal disaster would bring home to him the folly of fighting against his king and country.

  Horrible. He stared blindly at the paper. Had it been Scopholites, up from St. Augustine, or those other savages, the King’s Rangers, who followed the embittered Tory leader, Thomas Brown? It could even have been Indians. Unspeakable. And his cousin Abigail? No mention of her. Had she been with them and carried off to endure a slower, more horrible fate? He would not believe it. Turning the page with a shaking hand, he found a further paragraph. Sir James Wright, British Governor of Savannah, who had reported the sad news to New York, had written that he had done his best to persuade the two ladies not to leave the safety of Savannah and risk the dangerous journey north to rebel-held Charleston. They had stolen away, in the end, without his permission and in too small a party for safety. It was one of war’s tragedies, and they were mourned by their niece, Miss Purchis, a devoted Loyalist, who had wisely refused to go with them.

  Ah, poor Abigail, he thought, all alone in the house in Oglethorpe Square, mourning the aunts who had brought her up. Why had they gone? And in too small a party for safety? What had been happening in Savannah, since the unsuccessful French and American siege, to make them embark in so desperate a venture? But he was afraid he knew. The disgrace of Mercy’s activities as the Rebel Pamphleteer must have been too much for them. They had loved their social life, enjoyed acting as hostesses to the British officers who visited Mercy’s club. If they had found themselves suddenly ostracised, it would have been painful indeed. So – all Mercy’s fault?

  He must not think like that. She was a heroine, had risked her life over and over again for the American cause. It was sheer chance that it was not her own life that had been lost, but those of the two elderly ladies who had been good to her. It was all horrible … too horrible to be borne. Absurd. It must be borne. Vengeance? What use was that? He had a sudden, mad vision of himself attacking Dick’s mother because she was English. Attacking Julia?

  A little scratching at the door. ‘Hart? Cousin Hart, may I come in?’ Julia’s big eyes were full of tears as she held out both hands to him. ‘You must not stay alone any longer. It is too much to bear alone.’

  ‘Thank you.’ He pressed her hands in his and raised them to his lips. ‘That is just what I was thinking. It is like you to have thought of it.’

  ‘You must talk about them,’ she said. ‘Tell me about them. It will make you feel better, I promise you. Come into the garden, Cousin.’

  She was right. It did do him good to talk about them, sitting beside his newfound cousin in the little Gothic summer house that looked across parkland to the downs. Extraordinary to sit here, in peaceful England, and try to explain about the Scopholites, about the appalling savagery of the war in the southern states.

  ‘And they are fighting on the British side, these savages?’ she asked. ‘It’s horrible, Cousin. It maked one ashamed … We should have worked harder to make an end of this wicked war.’ She turned her big, tear-dimmed eyes full on him. ‘I am afraid we must face it that our opposition papers will make the most of this sad story. The copies of the New York papers that Dick sent to the Admiralty will have been read by now; the news will be out. You must resign yourself to being very much in the limelight for a while, my poor Hart.’ And then, as he continued silent: ‘Oh, Cousin, I do hope you have not been thinking about vengeance for this tragedy.’

  ‘How can I, when you are all so good to me?’ he said.

  ‘I am so glad you feel like that.’ She reached out an impulsive hand to take his. ‘Thank God Dick never looked at those papers, that you were here, among friends, before you heard the news. Otherwise, it might well have made you mad. As it is, I am sure you will see that it gives you a duty to do everything you can to work for peace.’

  ‘Peace and liberty,’ he said.

  ‘But that’s of course. Only, dear Hart, now you must see that peace can be worked for only by peaceful means. By honest ones. Not’ – she hesitated – ‘not underhand, hole-in-corner … You will be a public figure,’ she went on quickly. ‘You must speak out. Tell of your own tragedy, to help avoid others. You will be happier, doing that.’

  ‘Not at once,’ he said. ‘First I must mourn my dead.’

  ‘But not alone.’ She rose to her feet and put on the big chip hat she had been carrying. ‘Come for a walk with me, Cousin. I have an old woman I visit most days, an old servant, pensioned off, who thinks the sun rises and sets in our family. She will be longing for news of Dick, and to tell truth, he is sure to be too busy to visit her. Will you come with me and get a glimpse of how our people live? It will distract you, a little, if anything can.’

  ‘I’d like that. Thank you.’ Anything to stop thinking about his mother, about Aunt Anne, horribly dead. But what had Julia meant when she spoke of underhand activities, hole-in-corner? Could she have known of Mercy’s work as a spy? Impossible. The British themselves had hushed it up. It was just his morbid imagination that had applied the words to Mercy. Mercy, who had risked her life over and over again for the cause of liberty. Would she be wondering if that rash journey might have been partly her fault? How wretched she must be feeling if so. He longed t
o be with her, to comfort her, and thought with horror of the wide waters of the Atlantic, stretching between them.

  ‘You must not mind it so much, Cousin.’ Julia put a gentle hand on his arm. ‘It is all over, all done with. And here we are. You must smile, please, and be good to my old lady.’

  Granny Penfold lived in a tiny thatched cottage close to the lodge gates at the end of the drive. Approaching it by a shortcut across the park, they came on her in her garden, feeding hens. ‘Miss Julia.’ She bobbed a quick curtsy and surveyed them with bright eyes. ‘This is a sight to cure blindness, and no mistake. Come in, you and the foreign gentleman, and taste a drop of my cowslip wine.’

  ‘Not foreign,’ said Julie. ‘American, Granny, and our cousin.’

  ‘Course I know that.’ She was wrinkled and withered like a last year’s apple, but her eyes were sharp with intelligence. ‘Everyone in Denton knows about the captain and how he saved my Dick’s life, God bless him.’ To Hart’s surprise, she seized his hand and kissed it with dry old lips. ‘Dick was my baby,’ she explained. ‘Did Miss not tell you? I fostered him after mine died. He’s the only son I’ll ever have. And you saved him for me, sir. He says you’re a right one, and no mistake.’

  ‘You’ve seen him?’ Hart glanced in quick surprise at Julia, but she had turned away to listen to the chiming of the village clock.

  ‘Jimini,’ she said. ‘It’s four o’clock. We must be on our way, Cousin, or we will be late for dinner. We’ll taste your cowslip wine another day, Granny.’

  Julia proved right. The two items of news, simultaneously received in London, of Hart’s saving of the Sparrow and his mother’s death, became a nine days’ wonder. As she had predicted, the Whig newspapers seized on it as typifying the savagery of what they described as an unnecessary war. Even the government papers were friendly in their references to Hart and sympathetic in reporting the deaths of his mother and aunt. To his deep, unspoken relief, there was no reference to Mercy’s identity as the Rebel Pamphleteer. In their fury at having been duped by a woman, the British in Savannah had kept her secret well. But he could not forget it. What had Mercy gained for the American side by her activities as spy and pamphleteer that could possibly make up for this personal disaster?

  He had spent the morning after he learned of his mother’s and aunt’s deaths in trying to write to Mercy and found it even more difficult than the long diary letter he had written her on board the Sparrow. Would she ever get that? Dick had laughed, promised to find a smuggler in Plymouth to start it on its hazardous way to America by way of France, and said, with a note of apology, that he would have to read it. It had not made its writing any easier.

  This one, still more difficult, was to go under cover to the British commander in New York, and it, too, must be read by Dick and, no doubt, in New York too. ‘God knows whether it will ever get to your wife,’ Dick had said. ‘But put it in the post bag in the hall, and pray to God.’

  Trying to write words of comfort to Mercy, Hart found himself wondering again how she would feel when she heard the news. Since it was in Rivington’s Gazette, it was bound to be picked up by the Boston papers. What would she do? Would she go down to Savannah, perhaps, and claim the house in Oglethorpe Square on his behalf? And what would she and Abigail have to say to each other if she did? And, perhaps worst of all, how could he bear the fact that his mother’s death, so publicly reported, had gone far to solve his own financial problems?

  Dick had been surprised to learn that Hart’s mother had in fact owned the Savannah property but urged that they go to London as soon as Hart could bear to. ‘I think, properly handled, this news might earn you your freedom,’ he explained. ‘It’s painful for you, I know, but you must take some thought for the future. There is your wife to be considered, Hart, and, who knows, there may be an heir in prospect.’

  ‘An heir? Oh.’ Hart controlled the mad impulse to say, ‘Impossible.’ The knowledge that there was no chance that Mercy could be carrying his child was most entirely his secret. And hers, he thought, and was appalled to find himself almost glad that she could not be bearing his child. No real record existed of that mad marriage of theirs on board Captain Bougainville’s ship. The paper Bill had risked his life to save was so spoiled by seawater as to be worthless. And Bill, the only American witness of the marriage, was dead. The Frenchmen must be scattered to the four winds by now. Suppose … just suppose that Mercy were to find someone else, some thriving Boston merchant, some teacher at Harvard College … And thinking this, he was appalled at an inward vision of Julia, dark eyes full of sympathetic tears. Julia, who somehow never mentioned Mercy …

  He must not think like this. Horrified at himself, he surprised Dick by agreeing readily to his proposal that they leave for London at once.

  ‘You can buy your mourning there,’ said Dick, ‘and the sooner you put in your claim for the Savannah property, the better.’

  ‘I doubt there is anything I can do about the property this side of the Atlantic,’ said Hart. ‘But I know Sir James Wright will stand my friend.’ He could only hope he was right. Once again he was confronted by the intractable problem of Mercy, spy and Rebel Pamphleteer. However carefully the British had kept her secret, there could be no question but that Sir James Wright knew how she had worked against the British. Would he let it influence him? He rather thought not, but there was no way he could be sure. Nor did he know how his aunt Mayfield’s estate stood, and he was angry with himself for wondering if she had made a will after her son Francis’s death.

  ‘Your aunt.’ Dick must have been thinking on similar lines. ‘She died childless, did she not?’

  ‘Yes. Her son was killed in the attack on Savannah.’ It was the generally accepted version of Francis’s death, and he smiled grimly to himself as he remembered the facts, the silent, swaying struggle on the rotten wharf across the river from Savannah and Francis’s horrible, well-earned death among the alligators.

  ‘She was a woman of property too? It was her house in Charleston to which they were going, poor things?’

  ‘Yes.’ Impossible to mind Dick’s frank curiosity. ‘I very much hope she will have willed it to my Cousin Abigail after Francis’s death.’ Poetic justice if she had. It was Francis who had contrived to ‘lose’ Abigail’s dowry and so make it impossible for her to marry her Loyalist lover, Giles Habersham.

  ‘If she made a will,’ said Dick. ‘If not …?’

  ‘I suppose I would inherit,’ said Hart reluctantly. ‘But we’re talking of shadows, Cousin. The British may well have taken Charleston by now, and I’ve no friends there.’

  ‘Then we must find you some in London,’ said Dick.

  Julia greeted the news of their imminent departure with approval. ‘We shall miss you two sadly, Mamma and I,’ she told Hart, ‘but I am sure you are right to go. The sight of London will be a distraction for you, and besides, I long to see you a free man indeed. I only hope these Anti-Catholic activities of Lord George Gordon’s will not make things harder for you. I am afraid that he is known as a supporter of you Americans as well as a Catholic hater,’ and then, seeing him look puzzled: ‘How stupid I am! Of course, you know nothing of him. How should you? He’s a mad Scots Protestant lord, Cousin, who is making a great fuss and botheration about an act for Catholic relief that Parliament passed two years ago. He even went and read the poor King a great lecture about it this winter, they say, and has not been let across the threshold of St. James’s Palace since. But what’s that to the purpose, when he has a seat in the House of Commons, and his crazy Protestant associations all over the country? They are collecting signatures for a monster petition to the House. Someone actually came here canvassing, but I sent him away with a flea in his ear.’

  ‘I should hope so,’ said Dick. ‘But, Julia, I hardly see why mad George Gordon’s activities should affect Hart’s affairs. When I was last home, they were saying at Brooks’s that there were three parties: government, opposition, and Lord George Gordon, he had so l
ittle support in the House.’

  ‘In the House, yes, but the country is another matter. And the trouble is he claims that the Catholic Relief Act was mainly intended to make it easier to enlist Catholics for the war against America. He’s a great friend to you Americans, Cousin Hart, but not the kind that will do you much good, I’m afraid.’

  ‘Dear Julia.’ Dick was looking at her with some surprise. ‘What a politician you have become, to be sure. I hardly recognise the giddy girl I left behind.’

  She laughed and picked up her tapestry frame. ‘You think I should mind my needle like a good girl and leave politics to you men. But you know, Dick, this fine useless work always bored me to distraction, and buried here in the country, one must read the newspapers or go melancholy mad.’ She put out a quick hand to touch Hart’s sleeve. ‘Dear Hart, I am so sorry. For a moment I quite forgot. You are being so brave it is hard always to remember just what you must be suffering. You’ll be glad to be safe away from a rattlepate like me.’

  ‘On the contrary,’ said Hart. ‘Your lively spirits do me more good than anything. I only wish you were coming to London, too.’ Now why in the world had he said that when his every instinct warned him to get away from this dangerously attractive cousin as fast as possible?

  ‘Oh, so do I!’ exclaimed Julia. ‘If only we could, Mamma and I, just to help keep your spirits up. Well’ – she put down the tapestry frame with a look of dislike – ‘maybe we will surprise you yet. I know how sad Mamma has felt at being unable even to send in her name at the Queen’s House on the occasion of the King’s Birthday next month. Oh, Dick!’ She stifled a gurgle of laughter. ‘If you could but see your own face! You are imagining Birthday dresses and all kinds of extravagant fripperies! As if I had not long outgrown such girlish nonsense. I would just like to show our poor cousin a little of London. To take him to see the exhibition of pictures, perhaps, in the new rooms at Somerset House, where he will find his compatriot Mr. West well represented, I am sure. There could be no harm in that, however deep our mourning. Our coming to London would be almost an economy, Dick, since it means the servants here can be put on board wages, and you know what it costs to keep up two households. And of course, there will be no gadding, no theatregoing, though we might perhaps take our cousin to a concert of Mr. Handel’s sacred music. Say you would really like us to join you in town, Cousin Hart!’