‘Indeed I would.’ What else could he say? Besides, he knew with shame how completely he meant it.
Dick, apologising for having no kind of sporting vehicle, no curricle or high-perch phaeton in which to drive to London, had suggested that they ride there instead, sending a servant ahead on the waggon with their baggage. ‘My father keeps his carriage in town, of course,’ he explained, and Hart felt a sudden qualm of anxiety at the thought of meeting this unknown relative.
‘I hope he won’t mind my coming,’ he said.
‘Mind? I just hope he won’t try to make political capital of you. It’s his life, you know, politics, and I’m afraid a disappointing one. He has never had the gift of holding the House with a speech, and somehow office has always eluded him. But of course, he will be delighted to see you. He wrote in the warmest terms about your saving the Sparrow.’
‘Good of him.’ Hart had noticed that Dick always spoke of his father with a touch of reserve and wondered a little just what Mr. Purchas, Senior, was like.
They set off betimes next morning, Hart almost dizzy with fatigue after yet another night divided between wakefulness and nightmare. Hard to decide which had been worse, the waking memory of his mother and aunt or the horribly vivid dreams about their deaths. And in some ways worse still, there had been other dreams, dreams with Mercy and Julia changing faces, changing bodies. He was ashamed to remember them.
‘Ah, poor Cousin Hart.’ Julia had got up early to see them off. ‘You look as if you had not slept at all. Should you put off your journey till tomorrow, do you think?’
‘No!’ It came out more strongly than he intended and earned him a quick, enquiring glance from those perceptive dark eyes.
‘You’re right, of course.’ Her smile was understanding. ‘The change will help, I am sure. I like you for loving your mother so much, Cousin Hart.’ She was all in black this morning, and it made her look incredibly slender, as if the merest breath of wind would blow her away as she stood on the steps to watch them mount. ‘Take care of him, Dick. And give my loving respects to Father. I shall pray for you, Hart.’ She came down the steps to say it to him alone.
‘Thank you.’ Miserably inadequate phrase for all that he was feeling.
IX
‘Are you sure you are well enough to travel, Mrs. Purchis?’ Charles Brisson looked anxiously at Mercy across the breakfast table of Mr. Williams’s inn at Trenton.
‘Of course I am.’ Mercy brought out the lie as robustly as she could and combined it with a quelling look for Ruth, who had shared her bed and must know how she had shivered and sweated all night long after the icy shock of her near drowning the day before. She drank tea with a hand that would shake. ‘The air will do me good,’ she said.
‘I hope so.’ Brisson sounded so doubtful that she was afraid she must look as ill as she felt. ‘But you must let me drive all the way,’ he went on. ‘My shoulder is wonderfully better this morning, and your horses are so worn out they won’t give me any trouble.’
‘Just so long as they get us there,’ said Mercy. ‘But it won’t be a long day, will it?’
‘No indeed.’ George Palmer helped himself to more ham. ‘A mere nothing compared with the distances you have covered, Mrs. Purchis. I am sure you are best making the effort and getting to Philadelphia today. You’ll be much more comfortable in our house on Front Street than pigging it here in this damned expensive inn.’
‘Your house?’ she asked, surprised.
‘Why, yes. Did you not know that we are Philadelphians, my brother and I? Have been since the damned British took New York and threw us out of town with nothing but what we stood up in. It’s of course that you and Miss Paston will stay with us until you find your own friends. I have sent Sam on already to give orders for our reception. One more cold day’s journey, ma’am, and I think I can promise you all the comforts of home.’
‘Oh, thank you!’ It seemed like an answer to prayer, and she forced down some thick bread and butter, despite the soreness of her throat and the throbbing of her head. She had been too tired and shaken to bargain with the landlord the night before, and the price he had quoted would nearly exhaust her funds. Now, miraculously, her little party would be lodged free in Philadelphia, at least for a while.
‘And you too.’ George Palmer turned to Brisson. ‘With the Congress in session, Philadelphia will be as full of people as it can hold. You’ll be a deal more comfortable with us. And it’s time our lazy dogs of servants had something to do with themselves, after all these months on board wages while we’ve been at the North.’ He pulled out a huge gold turnip watch. ‘I suggest we start as soon as possible. I quite long to be home, and Mrs. Purchis will be better avoiding the chill of evening.’
‘Yes, thank you.’ It hurt horribly to speak. Mercy swallowed more tea. ‘We will be ready directly. Are you sure you are fit to drive, Mr. Brisson?’
‘I’d rather drive than ride,’ he told her. ‘You are doing me a real kindness in letting me. And I know the boy will enjoy another day on my horse.’
‘Yes, sir.’ Jed was looking anxious, and Mercy wondered if the Palmers’ invitation had been intended to include him. Time enough to worry about that when they reached Philadelphia. For the moment it took every ounce of her strength to help Ruth pack their portmanteau and settle the reckoning with the landlord. He overcharged her, and she knew it, but let it go. It hurt too much to speak.
The Palmers insisted on lending her their warmest fur rug, and Ruth tucked it anxiously round her, but the seat of the sledge felt ice-cold, and she was gradually becoming aware that her heavy coat, which the landlady had reluctantly agreed to dry for her by the kitchen fire, was still damp. Madness to have agreed to travel today, but it had been obvious that Brisson and the Palmers meant to go on whatever she decided. Even the invitation to stay might have depended on her party’s accompanying them. And that was odd somehow.
But then everything was odd today. Her mind was playing the strangest tricks on her. For a moment she was sure that Ruth, sitting beside her on the cold seat of the sledge, was Abigail, that she was about to turn and reproach her for the deaths of Mrs. Purchis and Mrs. Mayfield. How long since she had heard of those horrible deaths? Two days? Two years? A lifetime?
‘You made them go,’ said Abigail. ‘You sent them to their deaths.’
‘No!’ she exclaimed. ‘No! It’s not true!’
‘What’s the matter, Mercy dear?’ Ruth – it was Ruth after all – reached out a cold, anxious hand to touch her face.
‘Nothing. I was imagining things. Stupid.’ They left the little town of Trenton, the sledge moving easily on the packed snow of a well-used road. And now, all about them, were the signs of the British attack on and final retreat from Philadelphia. Skeletons of burnt houses and barns loomed stark against the snow. Picket fences had great ragged gaps; trees flung broken branches at the sky, witnesses to savage gunfire.
And behind them lurked the ghosts. Mrs. Purchis and Mrs. Mayfield peered out here from over a blackened wall, there from a savaged tree, smiling horribly, beckoning. What were they saying? How could she bear it? How could she not? ‘Come and join us,’ they called. ‘It’s cold, in the snow, where we lie. You killed us, come and join us in our cold grave.’
‘No!’ Fighting her way back to sanity, she found she was clutching Ruth’s hand. ‘No, of course, we should go on.’ By what miracle had she understood what Ruth had just said? ‘I’ll be better when we get there.’ Better? Or dead? Quiet in the cold, like the two women she had killed. Face it. She almost certainly had. And Abigail? Abigail, who had been beside her just now. Was she dead, too, also a victim of her own activities as spy and Rebel Pamphleteer? How proud she had felt, back in Savannah, dressed out in satin and emeralds, smiling and smiling at bemused British officers, tricking them into telling her little, trivial-seeming, possibly vital bits of information. Had any of it really helped the American cause? Had any member of the harassed Georgian government in exile paused to r
ead the reports she had penned so carefully, smuggled out so secretly? She doubted it now. There were two rival exiled governments, she knew in the west of Georgia, feuding bitterly between themselves. How should they have time for the information she sent them at such risk?
Not her own risk. She had escaped. She had married and lived happily ever after. Happily! A dry, bitter little laugh shook her and drew an anxious glance from Ruth. Happily ever after. What would Hart think when he learned that she had killed his mother and aunt? He had never really liked her activities as a spy, even when she had finally come to believe in them. Better, in his eyes, just better to be a spy than the loose woman he had thought her at first? Maybe he had thought so then, but now, with the consequences written in blood on his family? What would Hart think now? What would he feel? Would he be glad that their marriage was still one in name only? And if he was, could she blame him?
Where was Hart now? If only she could see him, tell him, ask his forgiveness. Eagerly scanning the dog-eared newspapers usually available in the taverns where they spent the night, she had found no reference to the Georgia and made herself believe that no news was good news. But was it in this case? A prize would have been news, and she was afraid that Hart badly needed a prize to settle the allegiance of his disaffected crew. But, she had told herself over and over again, the papers she had seen were invariably old ones. In Philadelphia there would be up-to-date news. And what kind of welcome for Hart’s wife, his mother’s murderer?
‘You’re tired, ma’am.’ Charles Brisson turned to tuck the fur more closely round her. ‘And no wonder after yesterday’s adventure. But keep your brave heart up; it’s not long now. On a good day I believe we could see the steeple of Independence Hall by now.’
‘You’ve been to Philadelphia before?’ Somehow she had thought this his first visit to America.
‘Oh, yes. In happier times. It makes a man mad to see the damage done by the British.’ He pointed with his whip to the blackened shell of a farmhouse, bleak against the snow. ‘It’s starting to snow again. I wish the Palmers had made an earlier start. At this rate it will be dark before we get to town, and cold with it, I am afraid. So much for that thaw that nearly cost you your life. I wish you were safe in your bed, with a hot brick at your feet.’
‘Not half so much as I do.’ A mistake to speak. Cold air and a whisper of snow blew into her mouth and hurt her throat. Her teeth would not close again; she felt them rattling together. She had never believed that one’s teeth could really chatter. ‘I’m cold,’ she managed. ‘I don’t think … I don’t know …’ The chattering was worse, uncontrollable now.
‘Ruth.’ Brisson’s voice came from far off. ‘Mrs. Purchis is ill. Pile more rugs on her, everything there is; it doesn’t matter about us; we must keep her warm.’
‘Oh, poor Mercy. Should we not stop? There are lights in that house over there.’ As she spoke, Ruth folded her own rug over Mercy, who merely felt colder under its weight and was now shivering in great, involuntary spasms.
‘No, no. Much best get her to town: the chance of a doctor, the Palmers’ house. Hardly half an hour, I think, and then you will be warm, Mrs. Purchis.’ He had called Ruth by her first name. How very odd. How very cold. How many miles to Babylon? I am freezing to death, and this cold hell is the one I have earned by all my cleverness. ‘Did Mrs. Purchis and Mrs. Mayfield die cold, too?’ She had not known she had spoken aloud until Brisson answered her.
‘Don’t think of that. Don’t think of dying. Think of fire, and food, and light. Keep up that brave heart of yours.’
‘Hart,’ she heard herself say. ‘He’ll never forgive me. How could he? His mother, his aunt, all my fault. All … all my fault. Playing at heroines … It’s dark,’ she said. ‘It’s so dark.’
‘Give her this; make her drink it.’
‘I’ll try.’ Ruth’s anxious voice. Ruth’s cold hands, fumbling with something; then the sting of fiery liquid in her cold mouth.
‘Rum,’ she said. ‘Like Mrs. Paston. I shall die like her, in the dark. Lay me beside her, Ruth, till the spring comes, and the worms. It’s all I’m good for. Murderer … Are they lying in the cold still? Mrs. Purchis, Mrs. Mayfield … Waiting … waiting for me? I had no idea hell would be so cold. Oh!’ Her mouth was filled with another dram of fiery rum, and this time she felt its warmth all through her.
‘I think she’s asleep.’ Ruth’s voice.
‘Thank God for that. Hold her tight; keep her warm if you can. We’re almost there.’
Blur of lights; a new movement of the sledge; voices. Asleep? Awake? Did it matter? ‘Poor Mercy.’ Ruth’s voice again. ‘Let me.’ Ruth’s cold hands helping lift her. Ruth’s voice so different. What was it?
‘Love,’ Mercy said, and slept at last.
How long? Dream and nightmare; light and darkness; warmth. And always Ruth’s loving hands. Ruth lifting her, helping her drink, feeding her mouthfuls of hot gruel, talking to her. ‘Don’t die, Mercy, please don’t die. You’re all I’ve got. You and Jed. You’re my family. Please, Mercy.’
Too tired to speak. Family: Hart. Something warm was running down her cheeks. Tears? What a waste of time. With an immense effort she managed to turn away from the light, towards the wall, towards darkness, towards death.
Screams. Ruth? Daylight now, and Ruth screaming, somewhere quite close by. Screaming … screaming … screaming. ‘I can’t bear it.’ Very slowly, with immense effort, she sat up in bed, pushed away the heavy feather quilt, and stood up, groggily, leaning against the bedhead, her heavy nightgown warm about her. A tiny room, a cupboard really, opening from another one. And from there, the screams, still horribly resounding. ‘Ruth!’ But her voice did not obey her, came out merely as a croak. The screaming grew wilder, more desperate, intolerable. She swayed away from the bed and grabbed at the doorway.
A larger room. Sunlight in it. A bed. Ruth sitting on it, hunched together, drawing breath for yet another scream.
‘Ruth!’ This time it came out, the thread of a whisper. ‘Ruth, don’t!’
‘Mercy!’ She was on her feet, taller, thinner, very white, holding out loving arms to catch Mercy as she swayed and fell.
‘Found them in bed together, snug as you please.’ A strange voice, a woman’s, self-excusing? ‘I ran out round the corner for a moment, for a cup of flour. Left that dratted boy to take care of things. Where is he anyway? But they’re none the worse, surely, Doctor?’
‘Two patients instead of one?’ A cool hand picked up Mercy’s and felt her pulse. ‘This one’s much better. I should have seen the girl was wearing herself out nursing her. So should you, come to that, Mrs. Peabody.’
‘Maybe I did. But no business of mine. Me with my gentlemen to look after, and that guest of theirs. No part of my job to be looking after a sick young lady. Or two of them!’
‘A heroine of the Revolution, Mrs. Peabody.’
‘A fiddlestick, Dr. Marston. What kind of heroine gets her ma-in-law killed, that’s what I want to know? Ask me, all that’s happened serves her richly right, and so I shall tell her, soon as I get the chance.’
Mercy opened heavy eyes. ‘What has happened to me?’ she asked.
‘You’ve been very ill, Mrs. Purchis,’ said the doctor. ‘For a while I was afraid we were going to lose you. I think you owe your life to this child here’ – he was feeling Ruth’s pulse – ‘who has worn herself out, I am afraid, looking after you.’ He sounded anxious now. ‘She’s very fast asleep.’
‘She does that after one of her screaming fits.’
‘Screaming?’
‘That’s what roused me. She saw her twin sister killed by Indians. Sometimes she remembers … Oh, my God!’ It brought it all back. ‘Mrs. Purchis. Mrs. Mayfield. Is there any news of my husband, Doctor? Letters from him?’
‘I’m afraid not ma’am. Now you are not to distress yourself; the worst possible thing for you. Naturally no news is good news, but the fact is there has been none of your husband and the Georgi
a since he landed you near Boston.’
‘He had stores for three months,’ she said. ‘If he had taken a prize, though, he would have brought her in — or sent her.’
‘She might have been retaken.’
‘Anything could have happened. His crew were disaffected.’
‘You knew?’ He sounded surprised. ‘Yes, there have been rumours, down from Boston. Shameful the way they treated you there, you and Miss Paston.’
‘You’ve heard about that?’
‘Everyone has. You must resign yourself to being the toast of the town, Mrs. Purchis. What with the boy Jed’s stories of your courage up at Farnham and the way the Palmers and Mr. Brisson sing your praises for what you did to the Bartram brothers you are quite the lioness of the hour. Now you are better, I can see I must forbid visitors for a while, or you will be worn out all over again.’
‘But, Doctor …’ She had to ask it. ‘Mrs. Purchis. Mrs. Mayfield. People must know about their deaths, too.’
‘A terrible thing,’ he said gravely. ‘But, my dear Mrs. Purchis, you must not be blaming yourself. I know how you feel; you have talked, a great deal, while you have been ill. No, no.’ He held up a friendly hand, seeing hot colour flood her pale face. ‘No need to fret. Secrets of the sick chamber. No one knows but that good child there and me. I don’t think she understood half of what you were saying. And I have forgotten it. But so far as those two poor ladies are concerned, you must not let yourself feel that their terrible death was your fault. Oh, yes, things may have been said in the first shock of their deaths … best ignored, forgotten. There is a letter for you, from Miss Purchis. I hope it will do you more good than anything I can say to you. She had been most generous and most particular in what she has said in public.’
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