Judas Flowering (3 page)

“You awake, ma'am?” A smiling black woman in a scarlet turban moved into her line of vision. “No, don' you stir. Miss
Abigail told me you was to lie quiet, while I fetched her to you.
And
your breakfast. I reckon you'll be ready for that.”

Shameful to be hungry, after yesterday. She looked up, speechless, her eyes filling with tears.

“Don' you cry, missy. What's done's done. Just you thank the good Lord you've fallen among friends.” And then, divining the question Mercy did not dare to ask. “Mr Hart, he rode out at first light. He ain't back yet. He took Jem with him.
And
his father's pistols. I'll go call Miss Abigail.”

‘Thank you.” Alone, she wiped streaming eyes with the soft, frilled cuff of her nightgown. It was the advice her father would have given. “Praise God for all His blessings, and serve Him with all your heart.” And this was his reward.
I'll be revenged
, she thought. And then,
Idiot. Revenged on whom? On God?

A gentle scratching on the door heralded last night's angel of mercy, Miss Abigail, who had insisted on helping to bathe her, had washed her hair, and helped her into one of her own nightgowns. At the time she had been too weak and shocked to resist, but now the memory sent hot colour flooding her face.

“Good morning.” In demure day-time grey, Abigail Purchis was prettier than ever. “I do hope you slept well, and feel better.”

“Yes, ma'am. I don't know how to thank you.”

“Don't try, dear. It was only what any neighbour would do. Now, you're to stay in bed and eat the breakfast Sally's bringing and get your strength back. My cousin Hart has ridden out. Presently, he will be back with news.”

“Bad news,” said Mercy.

“I'm very much afraid so. They're horrible, these mobs. They seem to whip each other up until they don't know what they are doing. Oh, we've not had them here.” Proudly. “My grandfather came over with General Oglethorpe. Everyone knows how much he did for the colony. Why, the very design of Savannah was his idea … modelled on Winchelsea, the English village he came from. He worked like a Trojan—Oglethorpe's right-hand man, everyone called him. And lived like all the others, first in a tent and then in a kind of log cabin.… It was my Uncle Hyde that built this place,” she explained. “Or”—with a smile—“you could almost say my Aunt Martha. She's from Charleston and didn't much fancy living in a log cabin, even if it was on Oglethorpe
Square. Poor thing, she was widowed before this house was finished. Her husband and my father both died gloriously, fighting for their country.”

“Which country?” asked Mercy Phillips.

Abigail flashed her a startled look. “Hush! We're all Loyalists here. And so, surely, was your father, or the mob wouldn't have—”

“Yes. I just wonder, sometimes …” The tears were starting again.

“I know, dear.” Abigail moved forward to give her a quick hug. “So do we all. But we never, never admit it. And now”—with relief—” here's your breakfast, and I'm going to see you eat every bite of it.”

Hot chocolate, rolls, and the best Johnny cake Mercy had ever tasted. She looked up at Abigail. “It's dreadful to be hungry.”

“I know.” Abigail had seated herself, very upright in a straight-backed chair. “I remember when my father was killed. He was scalped by the Indians.” She said it almost matter-of-factly. “You get used to it in the end. I promise you do. But—I remember—Mother couldn't eat a thing, and I was hungry all the time.”

“Your mother?”

“Died. Swamp fever, they called it. She was never happy here at Winchelsea. Not the way I am. She came from New England, you see, a place called Lexington. It's quite different there, seems like. They have schools for girls. Or let them study with their brothers. My cousins learn Latin.”

“I know some Latin.” Mercy could not help the boast.

“Do you so? You're a proper puzzle, Miss Phillips, that's one thing certain.”

“Do call me Mercy.”

“That's a pretty name.”

“My father chose it. He said it was a mercy I was a girl, because if I'd been a boy, I'd have been cannon fodder, one way or another.”

“Oh.”

“Yes.” She ate one more delicious bite of Johnny cake. “Why am I a puzzle, Miss Purchis?”

“Abigail, dear. Because …” She coloured. “It's the way you speak. The ways you speak … and then, Aunt Martha said, you swept her a curtsey … like … like a duchess.”

For the first time, Mercy Phillips laughed, the thin face
coming alive with pleasure. “Like a play actress, more like.” She lapsed into broad cockney. “We lived in a garret behind Drury Lane.” Now it was the King's English, with just a hint of Southern drawl. “I used to run errands for the actors, and when the house wasn't full, they'd let me in. Papering it, they call it. You know—better a free audience than none.” She pushed the tray aside and sat up straighter in bed. “Please, may I get up now? When … when the news comes, I want to be ready.”

“Yes, dear, of course.” Abigail picked up the tray. “I'll send Sally to you. With some things of mine. You won't mind?” She smiled ruefully. “There are two or three I can't get into anymore, since I took up riding with my cousins, and you're thin as a rail.”

“I could let them out for you,” said Mercy eagerly. “I'm a devil with my needle. If you'll promise to let me do that, I'll borrow something gladly for now. Father always said false pride was one of the worst sins, because it made everybody uncomfortable. Father—”

“Don't, dear,” said Abigail. “I'll send you Sally.”

Mercy was ashamed all over again of the pleasure it gave her to wash in the hot water Sally brought, and let the kind, talkative woman help her into plain calico underwear and a grey stuff dress very like the one Abigail had worn, with the same almost Quakerish white collar. “Miss Abigail, she like to dress plain,” said Sally, almost in apology. “Evenings, she puts on something bright, for her aunts' sake, but this is what she likes. Lawks”—she was fastening neat buttons down the back—”ain't you just tiny. I'll find you a sash of Miss Abigail's or you'll look like a pint in a quart pot.”

“Do you think you could find me a black one, Sally? A ribbon, anything …”

It was Abigail who returned with the black ribbon and the news that Cousin Hart was riding up the drive. “No need to hurry. We've still got to decide what's best to do with your hair. He won't be here for half an hour,” she explained.

“Then how do you know?”

“That he's coming? The servants have a system. Learned from the Indians. There's always someone working on the rice fields where our drive turns off. If they see anyone coming our way they send a signal. Like this.” She put her hands to her mouth and produced a high, musical “cooee.” “One for danger, two for family, three for friends. This was
two. It has to be Hart. Unless”—she coloured—“I hadn't thought. It might be Cousin Francis, home from Savannah, but I wouldn't think so, not so early!”

“Who's Cousin Francis?” Mercy was running a borrowed comb through short, lifeless hair.

“Aunt Anne Mayfield's son. He's not my cousin really, but we've known each other forever.” She made rather a business of tying the broad, black sash. “Of course, you've not met Aunt Anne either. She's Aunt Martha Purchis' sister. She's—” She paused.

Mercy smiled at her in the big glass before which they were standing. “I'll find out soon enough. Father said you should never talk about people behind their backs.”

“He was quite right,” said Abigail energetically. “I can tell you, entirely too much of it goes on here at Winchelsea.” And then, “There I go, doing it myself.” She took the comb from Mercy's hand. “What in the world happened to your hair, dear?”

“Awful, ain't it?” Mercy lapsed into cockney and grinned infectiously. “Father cut it for me on the boat coming over. There were lice, of course. And the places we've been staying since …” She turned impulsively to Abigail. “I can't tell you what it's like to be clean again. I'm only ashamed.”

“Don't be,” said Abigail, persuading a hint of curl into the limp dark hair. “There. Now you'll do to face the aunts.” She smiled like a naughty child. “Won't they just be surprised!”

“Oh?”

Abigail's fair skin coloured easily. “Well …” She hesitated. “I don't think Aunt Martha rightly understood, last night. Goodness knows what they're expecting. You won't mind, will you?”

“Why should I?”

“Good. Then let's go down and get the first surprise over before Hart gets back. They'll be in the morning room, ready for visitors. Not that we get many these days. People stay home, mostly.” She opened the door and led the way across a wide hall and down a shallowly sloping flight of stairs. The whole house shone with polish and smelled of beeswax. The bare, gleaming wooden floors would be cool in summer, Mercy thought, but now, in February, they struck cold through the satin slippers Abigail had lent her, and she was glad of the woollen stuff of her gown.

Abigail must have read her thoughts. “Aunt Martha says Winchelsea will never be warm in winter because it's a widow's house. But there will be a fire in the morning room, you'll see.” She crossed a downstairs hall that must run under the upper one and pushed open a door to reveal two formidable ladies sitting over a blazing wood fire. Both wore black. Both had been beauties in their day, and one was still trying. The other rose at once at sight of the two girls. “Why, Abigail, my dear! Surely … can this be?”

“Miss Mercy Phillips,” said Abigail formally. And then, to Mercy as she sank once more into that stately curtsey, “My aunt, Mrs Purchis, whom you met last night, and my other aunt, by kindness, Mrs Mayfield.”

This lady had risen more slowly and merely gave a languid nod in acknowledgement of Mercy's second curtsey. “Quite a transformation, from what I hear.” She spoke across the two girls to her sister. And then, “Dear Abigail, what a miracle worker you are.”

“Is she not?” said Mercy warmly. “I cannot begin to thank her. Or you, ma'am,” to Mrs Purchis, “for your wonderful kindness.” To Abigail's relief, she was using her purest accent, and the two older ladies exchanged surprised glances before embarking on what struck both girls as a prearranged set of questions.

“You are Miss Phillips?” asked Mrs Purchis, unnecessarily, but more kindly than she had intended.

“Yes, ma'am. Mercy Juliet Phillips. The Juliet was for my mother. She died … back in London … two years ago … when I was fourteen.”

“And your father?” Mrs Mayfield broke ruthlessly through the little sympathetic silence.

“Is a printer.” She used the present tense defiantly. “And a writer. He said the two went together. Only—in London—nothing went right. So, after Mother died, he sold everything, except his press, to pay for our passage. He had to work as an indentured man, to pay for shipping the press.”

“Indentured!” Mrs Mayfield was shocked. “Why, he might as well have been a slave. Sold at auction, like so much beef on the hoof!”

“Yes.” The girl's lips folded hard on the word. “Some of your customs over here struck us, Father and me, as quite strange, ma'am. It was not precisely the welcome to a land of liberty that we had hoped for. But Father was lucky. Mr.
Johnston, the editor of
The Georgia Gazette
, was in Charleston that day. He bought Father.” She used the word “bought” defiantly.

“I'll warrant he did,” said Mrs. Mayfield. “Once he knew about the press! He wouldn't have wanted Mr. Phillips setting up in competition. He's making a nice thing of that paper of his, by all accounts.”

“I remember now.” Mrs Purchis intervened before Mercy could speak. “Someone told me. One of James Johnston's brothers, of course. It must have been Lewis because it was after one of the council meetings. About a stroke of luck his younger brother had had. An assistant from England who wrote like an angel. Would that be your father, dear?”

“Yes.” The unexpected kindness had the girl near tears. “Mr Johnston let Father write some of the letters—you know, that correspondence about the Townshend and Stamp acts. Father was Phil Anglius.” She spoke with pride.

“Very good letters,” said Abigail. “I remember them But … dangerous.”

“Yes.” It brought Mercy back to the present, and her thin face blanched. “It was to be a secret, of course, but it got out somehow.” Her hands clenched at her sides. “Such a secret! If I could only find out who—”

“Don't, dear,” said Abigail.

“They were such a group of friends. If it was one of them …” And then, with an effort, “But Father always said that vengeance was in the hand of God.” This time she had used the past tense. Her head went up, listening. “Someone's coming.”

“Hart.” Abigail was at the window. “And Francis with him.”

“Well, I declare.” Mrs Mayfield had moved over to join her. “Still in his evening dress, the wicked boy.” She threw open the window and leaned out. “Come right up here, Francis Mayfield, and explain yourself, before I have one of my spasms.” And then, “Well, Hart, what is it? Why the long face?” And, in answer to an inaudible question, “Yes, she's here. Come on up, boy, and stop making mysteries. It's bad for my nerves.”

Abigail moved quickly over to take both Mercy's hands. “I've never seen Hart look like that. You'll be brave, won't you? For his sake? He's only a boy, really.”

But Hart, when he walked into the room a few minutes
later, was, visibly, a man. His square jaw was set rigid; the blue eyes that went with fair hair were sombre. He towered over his darkly elegant cousin, who was pale with lack of sleep, but every inch the European beau in black evening dress and ruffled shirt.