Wide is the Water

by Jane Aiken Hodge

  Mercy was glad to let her go. She liked Colonel Livingston very much less even than she did General Arnold. He had a way of looking at women that sent shivers down her spine. And what kind of soldier was it who gave up his command in order to dangle after a young woman who was as evidently in love with someone else as Nancy Shippen was with Monsieur Otto?

  But that was no affair of hers. She turned her mind to the problem of how she was to get the portmanteau she had packed for herself and Ruth into Brisson’s carriage. It would be so much easier if she could tell Ruth, but she knew that Brisson was right in forbidding it. Ruth was wonderfully better since that disturbing confession of hers, but her face was too open for secrets.

  In the end, as she might have expected, Brisson himself solved the problem for her. He called two days before the projected party to say that his friend Mr. Jones would not after all be accompanying them. ‘Will you ladies resign yourself to just one escort between you,’ he asked, ‘if I promise to make up in assiduity for what I lack in numbers?’

  Mercy laughed. ‘Of course we will,’ she said. ‘It will be quite a change, here in Philadelphia, to see the men outnumbered for once. If I were a congressman’s wife, I think I would insist on spending at least some of the year at my husband’s side. It is not good for men to be too much alone.’

  ‘You should meet the redoubtable Mrs. John Adams, who shares your views,’ said Brisson. ‘I had that pleasure when I landed in Boston, and I believe you and she would deal wonderfully together. She is quite in the Roman line. Calls herself Portia, I believe, in her letters.’

  ‘A bluestocking?’ asked Mercy. ‘Her husband’s in France, is he not? Have you met him?’

  ‘No, I have not been so fortunate.’ He changed the subject. ‘To return to our outing. May I be so bold as to suggest that you two ladies bring whatever you might need for a night at Mr. Benezet’s inn? I know you for a couple of experienced campaigners, and I am sure I do not need to explain that though Mrs. Arnold and Miss Shippen intend that their party should start off betimes, they may not contrive to do so.’

  ‘No, indeed,’ said Mercy. ‘It is well thought of Mr. Brisson. We will most certainly do as you suggest.’

  The day of the outing dawned brilliantly fine, and Mercy and Ruth, at least, were ready when Brisson called for them. If Ruth had been slightly surprised by the extent of Mercy’s packing, she said nothing about it. Mercy’s whim was law to her.

  ‘That’s good. You remembered.’ Brisson handed the portmanteau to his groom. ‘If you will take my advice, ladies, we will not set off for a while. I took a turn by the Arnold house on my way here, and Mrs. Arnold will not be ready this hour or more. Her husband has business to see to before they set forward.’

  ‘He is coming too?’ Mercy was surprised to find how much she had hoped that General Arnold would find himself too busy to join the party.

  ‘Oh, yes, a most devoted spouse.’

  In the end they had no time for more than the most cursory inspection of the scene of the bloody Battle of Germantown, and Mercy was glad of it. It seemed to her extraordinary that a party of pleasure should even be considered to such a place when everyone was waiting in increasing suspense for news of the British attack on Charleston. ‘I shall never understand the Philadelphians,’ she said to Brisson and Ruth as they left the straggling two-mile-long village of Germantown. ‘How can they live such a frivolous life when they know what is going on in the rest of the country?’

  ‘Ah,’ said Brisson, ‘but do you think it is really a country, madame? Is it not rather a collection of states only held together by their hostility to Great Britain? How much did you really care down in Georgia for what was going on in New England?’

  ‘Well.’ She thought about it. ‘A good deal, in fact. But then’ – she reached out to take Ruth’s hand – ‘we had family there.’

  By pushing the horses, they managed to reach Mr. Benezet’s inn in time for a late dinner, which they took on a verandah looking over the wide waters of the Delaware. Since the meal had been ordered in advance, it was long and elaborate. ‘A very different matter from our commons the last time we were on this road,’ said Brisson, toasting Mercy and Ruth.

  ‘Yes, indeed. How well I remember those tough, raw beefsteaks. And how glad I was of them at the time.’ Mercy was finding it difficult to keep up her part in the light-hearted conversation. Was this party really the prelude to a dangerous voyage to France? It seemed impossible. The way things were going, there would be no time, when they had finished dinner, for anything but a return by the way they had come.

  But General Arnold had suddenly pushed back his chair and walked over to the edge of the screened verandah. ‘The day’s wasting,’ he said. ‘Who’s for a turn down the Trenton road before we start for home? We’ve not shown the ladies nearly enough of the garden of America.’

  His wife seconded this proposal with enthusiasm, remembering a particularly beautiful view of the river a few miles farther on, but Nancy Shippen looked grave and said her mother had urged her not to be too late, and the other members of the party also decided to start home at once for fear of being benighted. In the end only the Arnolds and Mercy’s party set out to look for the beautiful view.

  ‘I’m glad there is a moon,’ said Ruth, who had, Mercy thought, looked unhappy while the question was being discussed. As well she might. It seemed an odd enough venture, with the heat already out of the afternoon and a three-or four-hour drive still between them and Philadelphia.

  Peggy Arnold had given Brisson careful instructions as to how they would find the side road that led to her beautiful view, where, it was agreed, they would stop and drink a glass of wine, provided, for a handsome consideration, by Mr. Benezet. They all started out together, but the Arnold carriage was drawn by four horses and soon pulled ahead and, gradually, out of sight.

  ‘Mercy,’ said Ruth.

  ‘Yes, dear?’ They were just entering a little wood, and Mercy had a sudden memory of the wood where they had first met Brisson.

  ‘Do let us turn back. It’s very late, and we are getting nearer New York all the time. And I don’t care what you say, I cannot like Mrs. Arnold or her husband. I wish we had gone home with Miss Shippen. I don’t think Mother would have liked us going on.’

  Mercy looked at Brisson. Suddenly this whole venture seemed merest madness. What did she know about him? What right had she to draw Ruth into such an escapade without even consulting her? She was both ashamed of herself and, most unusually for her, frightened. ‘Ruth, you must trust me.’ But why should she? ‘May I tell her?’ She looked back at Brisson.

  ‘Tell me what? Mercy, what’s happening? What have you done?’ And then, on a rising note: ‘Why are we stopping?’

  ‘We change carriages here,’ said Charles Brisson.

  XIV

  ‘The mob was out again last night.’ Price had brought Hart’s breakfast to his room, as Mr. Purchis had ordered. ‘Played hell in Moorfields, they say. An Irish Catholic district, but harmless enough, poor things. Mr. Malo, the silk merchant, sent message after message to the Lord Mayor, asking for troops, but that old bastard Kennet would do nothing. In the end it was sheer luck the mob decided to go home without doing much damage. Shall I pour your tea, sir?’

  ‘Thank you. What’s happening today?’

  ‘It’s quiet, sir, so far. Well – Sunday. Please God it remains so.’

  All morning Hart prowled about his room, racking his brains, searching for some way, some faintly honourable way out of his appalling dilemma. If he had really compromised Julia so fatally, he owed her marriage. He, a married man. And yet – it had been her suggestion that they stay at the Bonds’. He could not understand it. She was thoughless, he knew, a madcap, of course, but surely she would not knowingly have compromised herself. Unless … He had sometimes thought she had a special look for him. Could it really be a case of All for Love, or The World Well Lost with her? Cockscomb to be thinking like this, but what else could he thi
nk?

  And nothing altered the fact that he was a married man. For good or ill, nothing Busby or Purchas had said could shake his conviction of this. Bougainville and his officers, who had witnessed the ceremony, might be scattered to the winds, but that did not affect his position or Mercy’s. Even if, horribly, the story about her and the French Minister in Philadelphia should prove true, he was still her husband. Her cuckolded husband? He would not believe it.

  But why was she in Philadelphia? And why, most important of all, had she not written to him? He longed to talk to someone, but there was nobody. His feelings about Julia were not something he could discuss with Dick. Did Dick feel that? Was that why he was keeping away from him? Or had his father told him to keep away? He had looked hagridden, desperate, the day before, when he came to the Bonds’ house. Not the Bonds. It remained incredible that they were not married and that knowing this (she must have known), Julia had taken him to that unlucky party of theirs. More and more he realised that he understood nothing about these English, about the way they loved their lives. He was not even sure that he wanted to.

  And yet, when Price brought him his dinner tray and he saw the little folded note on it, his heart leapt up. Someone wanted to get in touch with him. Someone cared.

  It was from Julia:

  Hart, I have just learned what my father is trying to do to you – to do to us. Dear Hart, I am so sorry. We must talk, you and I. I will not let this happen to you. Say nothing, do nothing, agree nothing, but meet me at Vauxhall tomorrow night. I will be alone [heavily underscored]. I can think of nowhere else safe for us to talk. Price will help you get away from the house.

  Ever your cousin, Julia

  Vauxhall. He did not like it. But then he did not like any of it. What was there to like? The very fact that Julia was behaving so well simply made his position with regard to her more unbearable. What in the world could he do? And the answer, of course, was that he owed it to Julia to do anything he could that she should ask him.

  Mr. Purchas sent for him early next morning. ‘I trust you have reconsidered your position,’ was his uncompromising greeting.

  ‘I am more sorry than I can say …’ Hart began.

  ‘Then don’t say it. Don’t waste my time with your idiocies. Don’t make me angrier than I am already. I have news for you, young man, news that makes me wish Dick had never met you. If it were not for Julia, I’d turn you out of doors this minute, to take your chance of the Tower.’

  ‘The Tower? I do not understand you, sir.’

  ‘A fine fool’s paradise you’ve been living in! Well, let me make a few things clear to you. To begin with, the mob was out again last night. Burned down Mr. Malo’s house in Moorfields and every Catholic chapel in the district. And it’s spreading; I’m told there was looting and burning in other parts of the city too … Fires all over … And the soldiers just standing by, waiting for the Riot Act to be read … And no magistrates to read it. God knows what will happen tonight. It begins to seem that it is all an immense conspiracy, aimed at overthrowing not just Lord North’s government but Parliament itself, everything we Whigs believe in, setting up God knows what kind of revolutionary state. Now do you understand?’

  ‘I hope not.’

  ‘Hope! Bah! I’d start fearing if I were you. Who has the greatest stake in a revolution here in England? Who but you damned American revolutionaries! Even the French, though they are our old enemies, have some sort of decent government, some respect for authority. For law and order. What can one expect from a pack of rascally radicals like you but this kind of underhand conduct? Fomenting violence, hoping for revolution, plotting it! There is something very strange about these riots. Why does the mob suddenly appear in one district or another unless someone is giving them orders? And why are the magistrates so slow to take action unless someone is bribing them? Answer me that, Hart Purchis.’

  ‘I only wish I could. But there is something both terrifying and unpredictable about a mob. It is as if it had a life of its own.’

  ‘Setting up for an expert now, are you? Well, I warn you, the word in town is that it is you Americans have plotted this whole business, and you will pay dearly for it when it is over, as, pray God, it will be soon. In the meanwhile, you need all the friends you can find. Were it not for Julia, I’d have you in the street already. As it is, you shall have until tomorrow morning to consider your position. I’d think hard, if I were you. You can kiss your exchange good-bye, to start off with. So – you are still bound by the terms of your parole. To Dick’s custody! There’s a good joke if ever there was one. Talk about the blind leading the blind!’

  ‘What do you mean, sir?’

  ‘That Dick’s in black disgrace. You did not ask, I take it, why he was sent for to the Admiralty the other day?’

  ‘No?’ Hart was ashamed to remember that he had not done so and remembered Dick’s haggard look. ‘What’s happened?’ he asked. ‘I hoped it was a ship at last.’

  ‘A ship! I should rather think not! Dick’s had his last command. He’s been at the Admiralty all weekend, being questioned about that crazy story you and he invented between you.’

  ‘That what?’

  ‘The Canterbury Tale about you and the madman. How you saved Dick’s ship! It always sounded havey-cavey to me, and it seems some of the crew told a very different story – one of attempted mutiny. Yes, I see you blench, and well you may. However you may come out of it, it will likely mean a court-martial for Dick. Lucky if he is just dismissed from the service! Were it not for the First Lord’s friendship for our family, it might well have happened already.’

  Hart looked at him with blank horror. ‘Oh, poor Dick! And you still wish me to marry Julia?’

  ‘What has Dick to do with anything? Of course, I do not want you to marry her. Think I want you for a son-in-law now? I would as soon have the devil himself. But it’s not the devil that has compromised her; it’s you. That will do!’ He rose heavily to his feet, and Hart thought with a new qualm of conscience that the events of the last few days had aged him. ‘Go to your room, sir, and let me have a more rational answer in the morning. Once you and Julia are married, we can close ranks in the family. I am not entirely without influence. We Whigs hang together … I don’t say I will be able to bring either you or Dick off scot-free, but there are ways and means …’

  ‘But, sir, whatever else you may think, you must know in your heart that Dick would never have done anything that was not for the best interests of his country.’

  ‘He’s not got a good record.’ Purchas looked at him sombrely. ‘Too lenient by a half. The punishment book shows it. Weeks without a single flogging! And not enough casualties either. It will be better for Dick if it never comes to a court-martial. He’s at the Admiralty again this morning. More questions. God knows what will come of it. And all your doing. Now back to your room, sir, and think a little what you owe this family.’

  If he had been wretched before, Hart was desperate now. He could not even blame Mr. Purchas for wishing he and Dick had never met. He wished it himself. He seemed to have brought nothing but trouble on the relatives who had been so good to him, had welcomed him so kindly. Disgrace for Julia, courtmartial for Dick – where would it end? Bitterly he felt that the Tower was probably the best place for him. And yet, thinking this, he found reason come to his rescue. He himself had always been a little anxious about the story Dick had made up to cover Grant’s attempt to fire the Sparrow, but Dick had laughed off his doubts, secure in his inviolate position as ship’s captain. And indeed, at the time it all had seemed sensible enough. As Dick had said, if he had admitted that the attempt was part of a planned mutiny, he would have had to name the other suspects. As it was, he had been able to keep them as members of his crew, carefully watched, and there had been no more trouble.

  Until now. It was probably some of these very men, whom Dick had saved from the mutineer’s horrible death, who had launched the accusation against him. Very likely Americans, turned m
embers of the Georgia’s crew. And that brought him to the part of Purchas’s tirade that he could not believe. Could not? Or would not? He thought it over. He could not. Inevitably he had met several Americans in London and had even visited the New England Coffee House, where the Loyalists met, in the hopes of getting news of Abigail’s love, his old friend Giles Habersham. And the significant thing about that was that it had been possible. The passions that raged so high back in America seemed to cool in the temperate British climate. The Loyalists he met were mostly concerned with their vain attempts to get anything like adequate compensation for their losses out of the dilatory British government. And the Patriots? Well, they did not seem like Patriots. He thought of John Trumbull, son of the only Colonial Governor to take the Patriot side at the outbreak of the Revolution. Young Trumbull was in England now, studying art under Benjamin West, despite the fact that he had served with distinction in the revolutionary army. Hart had met him at Lady Garrard’s house, and they had talked not about war or even home, but about the exhibition of paintings at Somerset House and Benjamin West’s latest historical picture.

  No, he absolutely refused to believe that the Americans in London had anything to do with the riots. And another thing, if there had been an American plot of the kind Purchas had suggested, he himself would most certainly have been approached about it. But that was small comfort considering his other problems. He was glad that he had tacitly consented to meet Julia at Vauxhall. He was ashamed now of that absurd suspicion of her. Vainglorious fool that he was, why should he imagine that she cared a rush for him? Surrounded by more eligible cavaliers, she very likely had a special glance for each of them. And as for staying at the Bonds’, she was not a strong woman like Mercy; she had very likely been panicked by the violence she had seen and had not thought beyond the immediate danger. But now that she understood their position, she would advise him; she would know what he should do. In so much misery, it was a small miracle that he had her for ally and friend. Mr. Purchas was right, he thought. She was wiser than either of her brothers.