Judas Flowering (11 page)

“Mark!” cried one. “You're home at last!”

“And you brought him,” said the other, then both withdrew their heads, closed the window with a bang, and vanished.

“The twins,” explained Mark as the horse turned off the road towards the little house. “You'll get used to them.” As he jumped down from the chaise, the door of the house flew open and the twins bounced out and flung themselves upon him.

They were followed by a plump, smiling, middle-aged woman dressed in brown homespun. “You brought him, Mark. I'm so pleased.” She held out a welcoming hand to Hart as a boy appeared from round the side of the house to take charge of the horse and ask, quickly, what was the news from Boston.

“Not good,” said Mark. “It's going to be a hard winter there, I'm afraid, what with British tyranny and mob violence. Yes, yes …” He fended off the twins. “I did my best with your commissions, but you'll be disappointed just the same. Things are even tighter in Boston than I had supposed. I managed to find the stocking needles, but you'll have to make your own silk mitts.” And then, as their faces fell, “And if that's the worst privation you suffer, you'll be two lucky girls.” He kissed his mother robustly on the cheek. “How are you, Mother, and how have the imps been behaving?”

“Well, and well. Come into the house, the two of you, and get warm after your drive. You must be starved with cold. I put back dinner in the hope you'd be here, Mark, and it will be on the table directly.”

It was a frugal enough meal of boiled beef and dumplings, but made up in quality for what it lacked in variety. Aunt Anne Mayfield, thought Hart, would have been insulted by it; for his part, he was delighted both with the good, plain fare, washed down by sweet cyder, and the friendly family talk, in which even the youngest of the five girls joined. In Savannah, she and her next sister would have been upstairs with their black nurse; here they were very much part of the family, and he found he liked it.

Nor did he mind the volleys of questions with which the fifteen-year-old twins plied him. Sitting one on each side of him at table, they cross-examined him mercilessly about what they seemed to think the barbarous customs of Georgia. When they came to the question of slavery, he found himself remembering his first meeting with Mercy. “No,” he told
them. “We do not have slaves at Winchelsea, only servants, who, I hope, love us.”

“Do they eat with you?” This was Ruth, older by half an hour than her sister, Naomi. She spiced the question with a significant glance for the other end of the big table, where the boy, Paul, was sitting tucking away a vast slice of apple pie.

“Well, no,” said Hart.

Mark pushed back his chair. “Time you girls were back at your lessons,” he said. “And gave your cousin a bit of peace. You'll get used to them, Cousin Hart, never fear.”

“But I like it.” Hart too rose to see the ladies out of the room. “It makes me realise what I missed through being an only child. You're lucky, Cousin Mark.”

“I know,” said Mark Paston.

“I'm worried to death about that boy.” At Winchelsea, Mrs Purchis threw Hart's latest letter crossly on to her worktable. “He writes eternally about those Paston cousins of yours, Abigail, and they sound nothing but a parcel of arrant rebels to me.”

“Not the children, surely?” As usual, Abigail did her best to soothe her aunt, and as usual, she failed.

“On the contrary—they're the worst of the lot!” She picked up the letter again. “Those twins! No conduct whatsoever, ridiculous names, and they dare to twit my son with the institution of slavery. They remind him of you, he says.” A furious glance included Mercy in the general condemnation. “Imagine asking him if our servants eat with us!”

“Well, I eat with you.” The guilt of her secret engagement had made Mercy wretchedly aware of her anomalous position in the household. Sometimes she actually found herself wondering if she should not have accepted that invitation of Saul Gordon's. But, even backed by Mrs Purchis, there had been something strange about it. Was it a nurse for his wife
he wanted, or a substitute for her? Or, in his frugal way, both? She was not sure and had no intention of finding out.

And, luckily, Mrs Purchis had lost all interest in the scheme when Abigail became engaged to Giles Habersham. “I should hope so, too,” she said now, “as indispensable as you are! What I should do without you when dear Abigail leaves us is more than I can imagine.” She turned to Abigail, mercifully distracted from the subject of Hart's letter. “Have you and Giles agreed to name the day yet, child?”

Abigail laughed, sighed, blushed, and shook her fair curls. “No, Aunt. I have a perfect slow coach for a lover! He says we mustn't consider our own happiness at a time like this. His visit this morning was to tell me that Sir James has asked him to go on a special mission to England. He came, he said, for my permission, but I knew my place too well not to give it!”

“Why not marry him and go too?” asked Mercy.

“If only I could! We did speak of it a little, but he says the conditions on board ship will be too rough at this time of year, and besides, until he returns and Sir James finds him some more permanent office, he is hardly in a position to support a wife.”

“If I were you, I'd go just the same,” said Mercy stoutly. “Even if it meant washing the captain's shirts for your passage.”

“I believe you would.”

“Of course I would, but then it's different for me. I was brought up hard. You and Giles must know what is best for you.”

“I hope so.” Abigail looked down thoughtfully at the small ruby on her engagement finger.

“Naturally they do,” intervened Mrs Purchis. “If dear Abigail had a dowry, everything would be different. I wish we could do more for you, my dear, but Francis says we'll be lucky if we break even this year, the way things are going.”

“Dear Aunt.” Abigail jumped up to kiss her. “Don't mind it! I only wish I could be the help to you that Mercy is.”

“I wish I had the strength I used to have.” Mrs Purchis had failed visibly since Hart had left, and had been glad to let much of the domestic management at Winchelsea slip into Mercy's capable hands. “As for you, child, you have enough to do with your trousseau. Let Mercy make herself useful; she likes it.”

“Of course I do,” said Mercy warmly. But Mrs Purchis' very kindness exacerbated her sense of guilt, and she made an excuse to meet Francis “by accident” that evening as he rode home from Savannah.

“You're out late.” He dismounted as he saw her waiting for him halfway down the ilex avenue.

“Yes, I must speak to you, Francis.”

“Must?”

“Yes. I've picked some flowers for my father's grave. Will you come with me?”

“Well.” He looked doubtfully at the great white bulk of Winchelsea, illuminated now in the glow of a brilliantly setting sun. “We'd best not be long. It will be dusk soon.”

“Dear Francis.” She smiled up at him. “Please. I'm so unhappy.”

“Unhappy? Why?” But he looped his horse's reins over his arm and turned to walk beside her towards the family lot at the back of the house.

Well, why? A trace of impatience in his tone made it hard for her to begin. “Mrs Purchis is so kind …” she started, hesitantly.

“Well, of course she's kind.” No question about the impatience in his tone now. “Old and ailing as she is, she knows her luck in
getting
you for unpaid housekeeper.”

“I'd do anything for her,” said Mercy. “That's just why I so hate to deceive her. Francis, could we not tell her? About our engagement?”

“No!” It came out with the force of an explosion. “Dear Mercy.” He had seen her face whiten. “We've been through all this before. You know it's impossible. You agreed …”

“Yes, but I didn't understand what it would be like. Deceiving people who have been so good to me …”

“I know.” They had reached the graveyard now, and he tied his horse to a tree while she bent to lay the flowers on her father's grave. “It's hard. But if it's hard on you, Mercy, think how much harder it is on me. Loving you as I do, how can I bear to keep my happiness secret!” He turned for a quick, careful look at the trees that hid the house before he gathered her into his arms. “You'd been forgetting!” It was almost reproachful as he released her from the long, hard embrace.

“How could I?” But it was true. She had forgotten how the whole centre of her shook under the force of his kiss.
“Francis!” Despite herself, her arms were round his neck, her body worshipped him.

“That's better.” He let her go at last, gently, laughing a little. “Inconstant puss.” His tone cherished and mocked her. “Must we meet thus, every night, just to remind you of me? I doubt it would be safe for either of us.”

“No.” She looked up at him gravely, aware that the light was ebbing from the tops of the trees. “But, Francis, there was something else. About Abigail. Is there really no money for a dowry? I thought, from something Mr Gordon said …”

“Saul Gordon! That penny-lover! You'd believe him against me! Mercy! Is this your love? Your confidence in me?” He let her go so suddenly that she reeled and steadied herself with a hand against the Judas tree that grew beside her father's grave. “It's all of a piece,” he went on, more angrily than ever. “You've never trusted me! If you did, you would tell me where your father hid that press of his.”

“But, Francis, I don't know!”

“Don't know! Won't tell? Like to keep me dangling, looking a fool to my friends.…”

“Which friends, Francis?”

But he had turned angrily away to untie his horse. “Must get back. You know how quick the dark falls. I care for your good name, if you don't.” And indeed, as they looked towards the big house they saw here and there the first flickers of light from indoors. “No time for more.” Francis bent for one of his quick, hard kisses. “Go in at the front, love, while I go by the stables—and have some sense, do.”

It was their first quarrel. Crying herself to sleep that night, she resolved it should be their last. But when she woke next morning it was to learn that Francis had ridden off, very early, to Savannah, and then to Charleston on some errand of his mother's. There was no message for her. How could there be?

He stayed in Charleston over Christmas, which was celebrated quietly enough at Winchelsea, since Hart was spending the vacation with the Pastons, and Giles Habersham had left on the long voyage to England. Naturally, Mercy had known that Francis would not be able to write to her, but had at least expected some trivial, significant Christmas gift. Instead, there were presents for all the family except her, and a long letter to his mother describing a party at which he had met “a very rich Miss Doone.”

His next letter, proudly read aloud by his mamma, had further references to Miss Doone and a request that sounded oddly like a command. He thought it advisable that the ladies go into Savannah for the celebration of the Queen's birthday on January 18. “I know it is what Sir James Wright would wish.”

“I suppose it is.” Martha Purchis sounded doubtful.

“Frank says he will meet us there,” said Anne Mayfield, as if that settled it, and indeed, it seemed to do so. Mercy and Abigail exchanged one long, troubled glance. They had never said a word about it to each other, but both knew that each of them found it disconcerting to see the extent to which Francis now behaved like the master of Winchelsea. Nothing she felt could blind clear-eyed Mercy to this, and Abigail had no cause to love him.

“I wish Hart would come home,” she said now, secretly convinced that he would see she got her dowry.

But Hart was having what he affronted his mother by describing as “One of the best Christmases of my life. They do things quite differently in New England.”

His letter found them in Savannah, where the Queen's birthday had been celebrated quietly enough by Sir James Wright and with scant courtesy by the radicals of Tondee's Tavern, who had grown more and more aggressive as the news came in of the sufferings of their fellows in Boston. Despite the generous supplies sent to the unemployed there by the other colonies, there was cold and hunger in Boston that winter, and conditions were inevitably exacerbated by the presence of British troops camped on the Common, and their officers billeted often on unwilling hosts. Perpetual small incidents threatened to blow up into large ones, and every time a letter came south, there were details of some new piece of oppression by the soldiers.

“I expect they get plenty of provocation,” said Mercy.

“Yes,” agreed Abigail. “There was something Hart said in his last letter about little boys throwing snowballs with nails in them.”

“What's that?” Francis had come quietly into the room.

“We were talking about Boston,” explained Abigail. “Something Hart said about boys throwing frozen snowballs at the soldiers.”

“With nails in.” Mercy had hoped in vain for a word alone with Francis, who had arrived the day before.

“He's crazy!” Now Francis sounded really angry. “Does he not know that most of the mail from Boston gets opened by the radicals in Charleston when it's landed from the packet? He'll get us all into trouble writing things like that!”

“Writing the truth?” asked Mercy.

“You can't be serious,” chimed in Abigail. “They cannot possibly be opening private mail?”

“No? Then why, pray, did Sir James Wright take the trouble to send your beloved Giles all the way to England with his letters? You've not heard from him yet, I suppose?”

“No. It's much too soon, unless his ship had spoken another on the way over.”

“Of course.” Carelessly, “Stupid of me. Forgotten how recently he had left. I have been so much occupied in Charleston that the time seems long.”