Judas Flowering (14 page)

“They will be hard put to it to outshine their handsome mamma, Mrs McCartney. It's good to see you in colours again at last.”

She smiled, blushed a little, and flirted her fan. “La, Mr Mayfield, only fancy your noticing. To tell the truth”—she leaned forward to include them all in the confession—“I thought, since the non-importation forbids mourning, as requiring imported goods, it might seem a patriotic gesture to leave my blacks. And it has been some little time since my poor dear Mr McCartney—” She left the sentence unfinished, drooping elegantly in her chair, and Mrs Purchis took the cue to ring and order refreshments. “You will need a glass of cordial before we begin our game.”

But Mrs McCartney, accepting the cordial, declined the game of whist. “In truth, my dear creature, I have stayed a monstrous time already and must be on my way or I'll be benighted. Just think if I should encounter the mob in my way across the Common! God knows what they may not be up to tonight, with the Assembly dissolved.”

“You're right.” Francis stood up. “What escort did you bring?”

“Why, just my coachman, my faithful footman, and an outrider.”

“Not enough.” He put down his glass. “Should have apologised for joining you in my riding clothes, but now I'm glad of it. With your good leave, I'll see you safe home. No need to look so anxious, Mamma. I'll spend the night in town, do some business with Gordon in the morning, and be home for dinner, with the latest news and such silks and laces as you ladies trust me to buy.”

This was a clincher so far as the two older ladies were concerned, and if Mercy thought he was more eager for news than for silks and laces, she kept her thoughts, as usual, to herself.

In Cambridge, it had been an unusually mild winter. Hart was lucky, the Pastons told him, to have his first experience of a New England winter such an easy one. “Why, here you are for your spring vacation,” Mrs Paston greeted him on a fine April Saturday, “and the ground's thawed already
and the spring ploughing well begun. Poor Mark has had to leave his books to help.”

“Then I will go and join him,” said Hart. “I'd like to see how you manage this bleak New England soil of yours.”

“Bleak!” She laughed up at him. “Just because it has a few rocks in it. And see how useful they are for our walls. You'll find Mark in the pasture beyond the Common, the one by Jonas Clarke's house. Unless he's sneaked in for the latest news from Jonas. He's got Mr Adams and Mr Hancock staying with him, has Jonas Clarke, while the Provincial Congress meet in Concord. I don't know how Lucy Clarke manages, with those eight children and dear knows how many guests besides. In fact”—she had ushered him into the big main room of the house as they talked—“if you do reckon to go and join Mark, I might make bold to ask if you'd take some of my cookies to Lucy as you go. She must be hard put to it, with things the way they are. Would you mind?” She had suddenly remembered the Southern gentleman they used to think him.

“Mind? Of course not.” Hart, too, remembered a time when he would have thought this an extraordinary commission. “In fact”—he had put his grip in the small downstairs room he always used, and now turned back to her—”I'm as bad as Mark, I'm afraid. I'll be glad of an excuse to go and hear the latest news from Concord. Besides, I'd like to see Mr Adams and Mr Hancock; I've heard so much about them.”

“I dare swear you have!” Once again, laughter creased the familiar lines across her weather-beaten face, and he found himself wondering what Mark's father had been like. “Don't tell the twins you heard me swearing,” she went on. “I'd never live it down. They're at the dame school. Village school's closed. Economy!” She sniffed. “I don't call it economy to stint the children of their learning. There.” As she talked, she had been deftly packing fresh-baked cookies into a home-made flat wicker basket. “With my kind love, for Lucy. And I'll expect you and Mark for dinner, and no excuses. If the Minutemen need drilling, let Captain Parker do it, and let Mark take an evening off for once, in honour of his guest.”

“I'll do my best, ma'am.” Hart took the basket and set off down the familiar road to the Common. As he passed Widow Mulliken's house, young Nathaniel raised a friendly hand in greeting, and Hart, shouting a “good day,” thought
how pleasant it was to have near neighbours, as one did in New England. It was very different from the remote plantation life of Georgia. But he did not much want to think about Georgia. He would talk about his mother's letter presently, when he and Mark had a moment alone. And, thinking this, he thought all over again how lucky he was to have found such a cousin and such a friend.

Reaching the Common, he took the right fork of the road by Buckman's Tavern and paused for a moment outside its stables to look across to the silent school and wonder which of the village dames was teaching the Paston twins. At the next corner, where the Bedford road turned off, he shouted a greeting to Ruth Harrington, who was hanging out her washing between the blossoming apple trees beside her house. She called back a cheerful answer and added, “If you find my Jonathan up at Clarke's, send him home with a flea in his ear for me, Mr Purchis. All these politics are mighty grand, I reckon, but we've got the boy to feed and the spring planting not started yet.”

“I'll tell him,” Hart called back. “And I'll give him a hand, too, when Mark can spare me.”

“Thanks.” She turned back to her clothes line, and he strode on towards the Clarke house, and the meadow that Mark had hired from Jonas Clarke, because the minister was too busy to farm it. No sign of life there, so he crossed the road towards the Clarke house, only to see Mark emerging from it.

“Hart!” Mark shook his hand warmly. “It's good to see you. What's the news from Harvard?”

“Not much. Everyone's gone home. And what from Concord?”

“This and that. Next time the British come out on one of those marches of theirs, we're to call out the Minutemen and keep an eye on them. Good training for the men, I reckon, and might teach the British something.”

“Mark! You wouldn't attack them!”

“Lord, no, it's just a gesture. Defensive only, the order is, unless they should be fools enough to attack.”

“Which they won't,” said Hart positively. “You know how cool General Gage has played it all winter. I'm sure he's hoping for a settlement that will leave us all friends again.”

“Let's hope you're right,” said Mark. “So long as it really is that. It's going to take a good deal to satisfy men like
Sam Adams, I can tell you.”

“I know.” No need to go back over the long winter's discussions, which had left them such good friends and, Hart sometimes thought, so surprisingly close in their beliefs. Up here in New England, things seemed different, somehow. He must remember to ask Mark's advice about how to answer that disturbing, angry letter of his mother's. She actually seemed to think that his loyalty to the Crown was in doubt. Absurd. He did look at things differently, perhaps, but he remained a loyal subject of King George, and so did Mark, who was often scandalised by Sam Adams' revolutionary pronouncements.

The next day, Sunday, April 16, saw an unusual amount of activity in Lexington. Mrs Paston, who did not believe in Sunday travel, was scandalised. “They keep riding by,” she told the young men. “I don't see how I can teach the children to keep the Sabbath if they see so many breaking it. I've a good mind to speak to Jonas Clarke. They're all going to his house.”

“It must be urgent,” said Mark, “or he'd not allow it. I'll walk along there later on.” He did not invite Hart to join him.

The rumour was soon all over the village. The British were planning one of their armed excursions into the countryside. There were various explanations of this. They were coming to arrest Mr Adams and Mr Hancock. No, they were coming to seize the stores of powder and provisions that had been carefully gathered and hoarded in Concord throughout the winter. Or, no again, they were simply making one of their occasional displays of force.

“But this time,” said Mark, “we are going to watch and follow them. How glad I am you're here, Hart. I'd not much like to leave Mother and the girls on their own if they do call out the Minutemen.”

“Absurd,” said Mrs Paston. “As if any harm could come to us! But”—recognising Mark's tactful intention—”that's not to say I won't be happier with a man about the place.”

Two days later, a breathless messenger tapped at the door of the Paston House, just when Mark and Hart, who had done a long day's ploughing, were beginning to think of bed. “The British are coming,” he told Mark, and then qualified it with “I think. All events, Sergeant Munroe's got a guard
at the Clarke house, and we're to rally on the Common.”

“Right!” Mark was already reaching for his musket, powder-horn, and cartridge box from their place behind the door. “I won't rouse Mother.” He turned to Hart after the messenger had hurried on to the next house. “No need to fret her, and it's most likely just another rumour.”

“Right.” But it was strange to be left alone in the house with only the sleeping women above stairs. Strange and sad. Those were his friends who were gathering on the Common. Mark and Nat Mulliken and Jonathan Harrington and Captain Parker. He heard footsteps hurrying by and wondered which other of their neighbours had been roused and gone to join his friends and do his duty as he saw it. Strange to think how horrified his mother would be if she could know that he was sitting here, watching over the Paston women, while Mark attended what she would think a treasonable assembly.

It was very quiet in the house, and getting cold. He put more wood on the fire, determined that he would stay up until Mark returned, and fetched Hume's
History of England
from his room. But he could not concentrate. From time to time, the sound of a horse passing on the road took him to the window, but it was too dark by now, with the moon not yet risen, to make out faces. Lunatic to think the British would come tonight. And yet there was still much more activity than usual on the road.

Time dragged. The old clock in the kitchen struck midnight, then one, then two. The moon was up now and he longed to walk a little way towards the Common to see what was happening. But Mark had left him in charge here. He turned another page, then realised he had not taken in a word. Was that the sound of voices? He hurried to the door and, looking out, saw a little group of men approaching, the muskets they carried making strange shapes in the moonlight.

“False alarm.” Mark had seen him standing in the lighted doorway. “There's not a sign of the British. Good night, boys. Let out a holler if you find the redcoats camped up at Munroe's Tavern.”

This raised a laugh from the other men who lived farther down the Boston road. “Phew, I'm frozen.” Mark closed the door and moved over to the fire. “Thanks for keeping it up
for me. Get any work done?” He had noticed Hume lying on the table.

“Not much. Is it really all a false alarm?”

“Seems so. Not a word from our scouts. Parker's left a guard on the Clarke house, and the men from farther out are stopping the night at Buckman's Tavern, but the rest of us are stood down. If anything should come up, young Bill Diamond will summon us with that drum he reckons so much to. Too late to go to bed now.” He pulled his favourite chair to the fire. “I reckon I'll see the night out down here, just in case, but there's no need for you to.”

“Oh, I'll stay.” They were both tired and sat there in companionable silence, dozing and waking in the mellow light of the fire. The clock had struck four and, outside, a first bird was chirping in salute to a pre-dawn change in the quality of the darkness, when Mark stirred and sat bolt upright in his chair.

“What was that?” He moved a little stiffly over to open the door and peer out into misty darkness. It came again, unmistakable, the sharp tap of a drum. “Bill Diamond. They must be coming after all. And most of us dispersed. We'll make a poor show of it, I'm afraid. Don't let the girls do anything stupid, Hart, if they should wake.” As he spoke he had quickly collected his equipment. “See you at breakfast. Tell Ma some of her griddle-cakes wouldn't come amiss.” He shut the door quietly and was gone.

It was getting lighter momently. The relentless beat of the drum continued, and Hart was not surprised to hear footsteps in the bedroom above. “What is it?” Mrs Paston opened the door at the foot of the attic stair, her hair bundled up under her cap, a shawl held closely round her long flannel nightdress.

“The British really seem to be coming.” Hart quickly told her of the night's events.

“And you've been guarding us. Thanks. Well, I'd best get dressed and go to work on those griddle-cakes. Mark will be fair famished after this night's alarms. I hope the British don't loiter. I suppose they're for Concord?”

“I don't know. Mark said something about a guard at the Clarke house.”

“They'd never come all this way just for that old windbag Sam Adams. Dear God, what's that?”

A new noise. A kind of dull counterpoint to that agitated
drumming. The sound of marching feet? And another drum? “So soon?” Pulling her shawl more closely round her, she stared at him, eyes dilated with what he recognised, anxiously, as fear. “Hart! It sounds like a whole army. It could mean trouble.”

“Surely not. Just a demonstration.” He looked longingly at the door. “They'll be here any minute. Do you think …”

“Yes! Run, quick! The back way. Tell them to be careful—tell them it's a whole army. They'll be tired, the British, marching all night. Tired men act stupid sometimes. I wish it was day.” She saw him hesitate. “Go on, Hart, please. They won't hurt us, that's one thing certain—women and children. Not the British.”