Judas Flowering (13 page)

“Yes. Yes, of course.” Mrs McCartney dropped her vinaigrette and sat up straight on the sofa. “You, James,” she called a footman who had been standing by the doorway apparently enjoying the scene, “fetch a light, quick, and one of the girls to clear up in here.”

“And perhaps a glass of something for the company?” suggested Francis. “I know it's a little early.”

“Yes, indeed!” As she gave the necessary orders, the last shutter banged to and the footman started relighting the candles. People began to talk again, low and anxious, only to be silenced as the steady roar from outside suddenly rose to that subhuman shriek Mercy remembered so well. Faces, already pale, turned ashen. Mrs Mayfield fell back into her swoon.

“You there,” said Francis to the musicians, “strike up, can't you! Something lively.”

“It's not decent.” Mercy turned on him.

“Have you a better idea?”

“No.” She had to admit it. “But …”

“Later,” he interrupted swiftly. “Go and revive my mother, for God's sake, and stop her making an exhibition of herself. If you can.”

Mercy found Abigail there before her, offering her vinaigrette and the cherry bounce that servants were now handing round to the ladies, while the gentlemen retired, one by one, to the downstairs room where stronger stuff awaited them. “It's monstrous,” said Mercy.

“Yes,” agreed Abigail. “But Francis is quite right. There is nothing in the world we can do. There, Aunt Anne, take a sip of that and you will feel better.”

“What happened?” Mrs Mayfield made a little business of “recovering consciousness” and gazed round her in apparent puzzlement.

“The mob is out, Aunt. They're tarring and feathering a poor man on the Common.”

“Horrible!” Mrs Mayfield shuddered artistically and took a good pull at her cherry bounce. “Barbarians.” Another sip, “Brutes. That poor man.” And then, on a note of genuine misery, “I don't feel well. I want to go home!”

“Not yet, I'm afraid.” Francis had just re-entered the room. “I don't suppose you want to encounter the mob yourself. I've been out to reconnoitre. The worst is over, I think, and they're beginning to drift away, but we must trespass on Mrs McCartney's hospitality awhile longer, I'm afraid.” He bowed across to where she still sat on the other sofa.

“No, indeed!” She, too, was feeling rather the better for her cherry bounce. “You mustn't leave me and the girls with no one but the servants to protect us. But is it all over, Mr Mayfield? Is the poor man …” She left the sentence unfinished.

“I couldn't get near enough to see just what they've done to him, but he'll be lucky if they don't end up riding him out of town on a rail.”

“Oh, the poor thing.” And then, on a quite different note, “But at least it should get them away from here.”

“Yes.” A quick glance for Mercy recognized her sublime selfishness. “I rather hope it should.”

Half an hour later, the Common was quiet, with only the smouldering end of a torch here and there to show what had
happened. It was still early, by Savannah standards, but there was no life left in Mrs McCartney's party, and her guests were soon summoning their carriages, despite her pleas that someone stay and protect her and her “poor defenceless girls.”

“No need to fret, ma'am.” Crisis seemed to suit Francis. “Lightning doesn't strike twice. You're probably safer here than we will be on our way home. Who knows, we may yet encounter the mob.”

They got home unmolested, though the embers of torches, still glowing in the sand of South Broad Street and Broughton, suggested that the mob had indeed paraded their unfortunate victim through the town. And Francis, out early next morning, came back with a grave face. “I'm afraid the tarring and feathering wasn't the worst of it,” he told the two girls. “There were two sailors on guard at the dock with the tide waiter. The mob threw them in the river. One of them couldn't swim.”

“You mean—” Mercy looked as if she had not slept.

“He's vanished. Drowned, for sure. A hanging business if they can identify the ringleaders of the mob.”

“Will they be able to?” This time it was Abigail who asked the question.

“I doubt it. The survivor swears the men who manhandled him had their faces so blackened he had no chance of recognizing them. But they were gentlemen, he says. And”—with an ironical laugh—“in the confusion, the sugar and molasses that caused the trouble seem to have vanished. Sir James has offered a fifty-pound reward for information. I wish him luck.”

“Murder,” said Mercy.

“Mr Wells?” asked Abigail.

“I don't believe I'd even speculate about it, if I were you, cousin. These are strange times.”

“What of the poor tide waiter?” Mercy made herself ask the question.

“Vanished, poor man, and do you wonder. What with the pain and the shame, I doubt we'll see him in town again.”

“Horrible,” said Abigail. “Ah, there's Aunt Martha's bell at last. I wondered if she and your mother would ever wake this morning. I'll just see how they are.”

“Do, there's a good cousin, while I persuade Mercy here to pay a visit of sympathy to Mrs McCartney. I think we should, don't you?”

“It would be more to the point to condole with that poor tide waiter,” said Mercy more tartly than she had intended.

“He wouldn't thank you. Mrs McCartney will.”

“She'd rather have Abigail.” They were alone now.

“Yes, love, I know, but I would rather have you. And if I know anything, Abigail will be busy all morning with the two old tabbies upstairs. Oh, yes”—he smiled at her shocked face—“I know one of them's my mother, but if we can't be honest with each other, you and I—”

It warned her what to expect. He had chosen to drive her himself in his gig and had no sooner got her comfortably settled beside him that he was back at the old theme of her father's press. “Must understand now, Mercy, what a risk you run. The mob have not tarred and feathered a woman yet, but”—he paused—”I'm afraid they would enjoy it.”

“I wish you had given me an engagement ring.”

“Why?” She had surprised him, as she intended.

“So that I could throw it in your face. If you will not believe me in this, how can I trust you with myself?”

“How can you not? Surely you must realise that all this winter I have used such influence as I have at Tondee's Tavern to protect you? If I withdraw it”—he flicked his horse with the whip—”you'll not be riding like a lady in a gig, but like a harlot, out of town on a rail. I can save you, Mercy Phillips, or destroy you. Only, I must have your help. If your father truly did not tell you where he had hidden that wretched press, surely you know him—knew him—well enough to make some kind of guess?”

“Oh.” Wearily, “If it's guesses you want … I hadn't thought to waste your time with something so vague and so unpromising.”

“No?” He slowed the horse again, turning towards her eagerly. “But?”

“Well, those last few days, when the news from town was so bad, Father set me to work cleaning the house. He said we might have to flee at any minute, and we must leave all things in order behind us. He was like that, Father—”

“Yes?” Impatiently now. They had reached South Broad Street.

“The press was hidden behind a stack of wood in the barn. He went out every day while I was cleaning and scouring. I watched when I could. He took a spade and went down towards the river … every day, for three days, four? I don't rightly remember. Then, one night when the moon was at the full, I woke and found him gone. He was back in the morning. I said nothing. Why should I? Only—”

“Yes?”

“Next day I went to the barn for wood. The press was gone.”

“You didn't ask him?” Furiously.

“If he had wanted me to know, he would have told me.”

It was unanswerable, or at least he found it so. “Mercy.” He slowed the horse at the McCartneys' door. “If I've spoken harshly, it's out of anxiety for you. You'll forgive me? Forget?”

She looked up at him with wide eyes. “You know I can't help myself, Francis.”

“That's, my girl.” He jumped down, swung her to the ground, and called a boy to hold his horse.

Mrs Purchis insisted that they go back to Winchelsea next day, and Mercy was glad of it. She rather thought Francis had frightened his aunt into the move, and thought him wise. And back on the plantation, she respected the energy with which he threw himself into improving the warning system Hart had set up the year before. Extraordinary to think that it was almost a year since her father's death. Visiting his grave under its flowering Judas tree in the quiet family lot by the river, to dress the sunken rectangle with fresh leaves and a few sprays of wild jasmine, she looked up and saw Francis riding towards her on his way back from the rice fields.

“Hoped I'd find you here.” He looped his horse's reins round a branch of the Judas tree. “See how I study your habits, little sphinx. You've been avoiding me. Frightened of the old tabbies?”

“A little.” She yielded herself to his hard embrace, aware, as she did so, that he had made sure they were out of sight of the house.

“No need.” He laughed. “I can manage them.” He looked down at the sunken grave. “Pity we can't give him a headstone, but better not. No use asking for trouble. Reminding the mob. D'you know what I think's kept them away this winter?”

“No. What?”

“The absurd letters Hart writes about his visits to those Pastons, Everyone who knows anything is aware there's not a Loyalist left in Lexington. Every time my idiot aunt reads one of Hart's letters aloud, full of philosophical talk she can't understand, don't you think it's reported right back to Tondee's?” This time his laugh was harsher. “Used to flatter myself I had some influence with them on my own account, but now, sometimes, I wonder if they don't bear with me as Hart's cousin. It wouldn't altogether surprise me if he were to receive a summons home, if things got worse.”

“Hart? A summons from the Whigs? But, Francis, you know as well as I do that everything he writes confirms he is still a Loyalist at heart. It's just—”

“Just that he likes those Pastons more than a little? Two young girls hanging on every word he says? A clever friend older than himself, leading him by the nose until he doesn't know what he is saying, still less thinking? Sometimes, Mercy, I wonder if I shouldn't send for him home myself?”

“But would he come?”

“Ah, there's the rub. Besides, we're doing well enough as we are, it seems to me.”

“And to me. I'd never have thought—” She stopped.

“That an idle good-for-nothing like me could turn such a neat hand to the plough? Well, dear Mercy, you must know what the inducement is. Shall I not be an excellent farmer when you and I are Darby and Joaning it in the West?”

“It's hard to believe.” She looked up at him wide-eyed. “Oh, Francis, will it be very long?”

“Who knows? Maybe!” He bent for a quick, light, teasing kiss. “Maybe not! Maybe you'll be a married lady when Miss Abigail is still wearing the willow for that slow-top Giles of hers. Don't try to tell me he couldn't have been back here long since if he really wished it.”

“She says he feels he's too usefully occupied among the
British Whigs who sympathize with our troubles.”

“‘She says!'” Scornfully—then, “Hush! There's someone coming.” He moved quickly away from her and was bent, re-arranging a spray of jasmine, when Abigail joined them.

“There you are, Mercy. I thought—I was afraid I'd find you here. Would you very much mind coming in? Mrs McCartney is come out to visit us from town, and my aunts want you for a fourth at whist. You know what a dunderhead I am!”

“Mrs McCartney? All the way from Savannah?” said Francis sharply. “What news brings her?”

“Nothing to speak of.”

“You mean, nothing she's spoken of. Well, let's go and greet this venturesome lady.” He looped the reins of his horse over one arm and used the other to guide Abigail away from the burial ground. Turning to look back, he saw Mercy bend to pick up the sprig of jasmine he had touched, and smiled.

At the house, he found himself proved right. Mrs McCartney was indeed the bearer of news. A ship had docked from France with a cargo of silks and laces, of which she thought her dear friends would want early information. And with a coy glance for Francis, “What I expect will interest Mr Mayfield more, Sir James has dissolved the Assembly.”

“He has, has he? Why, pray?”

“Because he's had enough, I think. That Georgia Provincial Congress the rebels made bold to call has elected three delegates to the Continental Congress,
and
voted to join the non-importation association. So you see, dear Martha, dear Anne, you would be well advised to come into town and stock up on some elegant trifles before it is too late. I doubt, once we are known to belong to the non-importation lot, the British won't let French ships, or any others, land here.”

“But why dissolve the Assembly?” asked Francis.

“Well.” She made big eyes at him over her fan. “‘Tis like he thought they might approve what the rebels had done. You know as well as I do that many of the Assembly members are on the rebels' Provincial Congress too.” She was looking unusually handsome today, Mercy thought, and then realised why. She had discarded the mourning she habitually wore for her husband, and looked, as a result, at least a generation younger than Mrs Purchis and Mrs Mayfield. She must have been married out of the cradle to have two grown daughters. “The girls are down at the wharf already.” She
spoke of them now. “Hoping for the first choice. You will find them monstrous fine when you next do us the honour of calling, Mr Mayfield.”