The silence that followed was broken by the uneasy barking of the watchdog as his master presumably investigated the stable and found only the horse. “Hart!” he called again. “What are you playing at? Come on in—fire’s lit, grog’s hot. Don’t play games with me, boy!” Now, surely, there was more than anxiety in his voice? Carefully masked, anger and fear were beginning to show.
Hart steadily put another hundred yards between himself and the farm, climbing a little as he crossed the arm of the creek. As he paused at the top to get his bearings from the dull gleam of more water ahead, a single shot from the direction of the farm sent birds scattering and squawking from their nests.
“Hart Purchis!” The voice was furious now. “Come back this instant or you’re in bad trouble.”
Trouble enough. Hart began to push his way quickly through the undergrowth towards the first creek. As a threat to him the shot was useless, but as a warning to an approaching posse? The tide was running out fast, but the first creek was still dangerously deep and he thought for a moment he might have to swim for it and wondered whether he would be able to breast that swift current one-handed. But he just managed to keep his footing and was climbing over the second spit of land when he heard a horse neigh somewhere to the west, where the track ran to Savannah. There was a posse, sure enough, and by the sound of them they were pushing forward hard along the soft, delaying sand of the track. If their officer should think to send a detachment out to search the shoreline, he was bound to be caught. But, surely, they would go first to find out the reason for the shot at the farm? And, equally, all logic would suggest that an escape would be made to the south. That was precisely why he was coming north.
And hurrying. The second creek, considerably shallower than the first, was a warning that his boat, if it came, would have to stay well out in the mouth of the appointed creek. If it came? He knew it would come. In a world that was indeed turned upside down he felt, now, that there were only two sure focusses of trust, William and his own ship’s crew. Horrible to think that it might be Mercy who had sent those soldiers after him, so quietly through the darkness.
Horrible, and surely, not likely? Mercy knew nothing about the farmhouse and his doubtful friend there. Mercy could have had nothing to do with the significant firing of that gun. If she had not told him to trust no one, he would not be here now, plunging into the last intervening creek, but back at the farmhouse, drugged with rum, easy prey to the approaching soldiers.
Drugged. Mercy had drugged him. He was grinding his teeth again, but the shock of cold water caught at his breath and stopped him. He would not think of her. He could not bear to think of her. But how could he help it? Now he saw her in Francis’ arms. Francis’ hands, white like her own, were peeling back the bronze satin from a fruit worth the plucking. His foot slipped on a slimy stone and he went down under water, helpless for a moment, taking one salt, unexpected swallow before he staggered to his feet again and struggled on to the shore.
Between this creek and the next was swamp, and he had no time for thought, as he fought and jumped his way from tussock to tussock, praying that his old skill had not failed him. At least no one would follow him through this nightmarish, shivering quag, where simply to hesitate for a moment might mean a slow, horrible sucking to death. He was shaking with more than exhaustion when he pushed his way at last through tangling scrub to a view of the rendezvous creek, and, dauntingly far out, his boat, a darker shadow on the gleam of the water.
The agreed signals exchanged, he began the slow wade down the creek, slipping and staggering with fatigue, incredibly relieved when two of his men came to meet him and almost carried him the rest of the way. Dumped unceremoniously inboard, he could only lie there gasping and listen to the smooth splash of the oars as the boat moved steadily out to sea.
“You ran it fine,” said one of his men. “Listen!”
The sound of horses, ridden hard, harness jingling, coming down the track to the head of the creek. A confusion of voices. Hart raised his head with an effort. “I could see you,” he said. “Will they be able to see us?”
“Not a chance. Tne moon’s gone in. And if they did, they wouldn’t catch us.”
“Good.” Someone threw a jacket over him, where he lay, and he slid off into something between sleep and unconsciousness.
He slept for two days and was wakened with stirring news. Admiral d’Estaing had actually arrived off Tybee, fresh from his victory over the British in the West Indies. His fleet with its twenty-two ships of the line and attendant frigates and cutters, far outnumbered the British naval defences, and the element of surprise had been complete. He had captured several British vessels at the mouth of the Savannah River and taken the fort at Tybee, thus compelling the British to retire on Savannah.
“What’s he doing now?” Hart pulled himself upright in his narrow bunk. “Why doesn’t he attack at once?”
“Waiting for General Lincoln and General Lachlan McIntosh, I reckon. He sent the Frigate Amazon on ahead to Charleston, they say, to concert plans with General Lincoln. Well, I reckon it would be better if some of us Yankees were in on the attack.”
“Yes, but—” Hart remembered the half-built abatis and fascines of the Savannah defences. Still more he remembered what Mercy had said. If it must happen, let it happen quickly, as it had when the British had taken the town. “I must go to him,” he said.
Finding the French fleet was easy enough. To see Admiral Count d’Estaing proved more difficult. Very sure of himself after his capture of St Vincent and Grenada and defeat of the British Admiral Byron, he thought Savannah his for the taking. Why should he trouble to see a shabby privateer captain, who doubtless had some axe of his own to grind? It was only when Joseph Habersham met a French party at Ossaba to concern arrangements for their landing that the possible importance of what Hart had to say was recognised.
And when he described the unfinished state of Savannah’s defences and urged an immediate attack, Count d’Estaing merely smiled tolerantly and spoke of overall strategy and cooperation with the American forces now marching from north and west towards Savannah. “Trust me, monsieur, we will not give the British time to build up those tumbledown abatis you describe so vividly. In the meantime, your little ship will be most useful in keeping me in touch with our American allies.”
On the eleventh of September, Hart’s Georgia took its own small part in the unopposed French landing at Beaulieu, and he learned that General Lincoln was already crossing his troops over the Savannah River at Zubly’s Ferry. Surely, now, the attack would not be long delayed. An anxiety he did not understand grew worse with every new delay. The night of the landing at Beaulieu, a storm scattered the French shipping, whose captains were inevitably unfamiliar with the shoals and sandbanks of this dangerous coastline. The solid little Georgia rode out the storm easily enough, but it was not until the fifteenth that news reached the reunited French fleet that General Lincoln had joined forces with Lachlan McIntosh and advanced as far as Cherokee Hill, only nine miles from Savannah.
The French too moved forward that day and camped about the same distance from Savannah as the Americans were to the west. Next day, d’Estaing sent a message to the town, formally summoning it to surrender. In reply, Colonel Prevost asked for a twenty-four-hour truce, and this the confident French admiral granted. Hart was grinding his teeth with anxiety, and was right to do so. During those vital twenty-four hours the British Lieutenant-Colonel Maitland, who had been cut off at Beaufort with a considerable body of men, managed the apparently impossible feat of crossing the marshes, dragging their empty boats when necessary, and so getting safe to Savannah in the teeth of the French fleet. Meanwhile, General Prevost had every available man at work on the abatis and fascines at which d’Estaing had sneered. A boom across the river to the west of the town made it impossible to approach or to send down fire rafts from there; houses and barns that might have helped the enemy’s attack had been burned. On the seventeenth, Prevost formally re
fused to surrender.
Still d’Estaing moved leisurely. By the twenty-fourth he had a sap up to within three hundred yards of the abatis, and on the third of October he opened fire with nine mortars. Next day the cannonading continued with thirty-seven pieces of cannon firing from the land and sixteen from the water. General Lachlan McIntosh, whose own family were in Savannah, had asked General Prevost to let women and children leave the town, but Prevost had refused. Now, Prevost in his turn asked d’Estaing to let him evacuate women and children, the greatest sufferers, he said, from the random French firing. This time d’Estaing refused, and the bombardment continued, with an occasional pillar of smoke to bear witness to a burning house.
Hart’s nails were bitten to the bone. The Georgia was in constant use between fleet and shore, and sometimes, venturing as far upriver towards the fortified bluffs as he dared, he could see a busy traffic of small boats between Savannah and Hutchinson Island across the channel. “They’re shipping the women and children over to the barns there.” One of his men confirmed his own guess. “Sensible. They won’t be bombarded there, but they’ll be uncomfortable enough, I’m afraid.” All the crew knew that Hart’s family were in Savannah.
“If discomfort’s the worst of it,” said Hart. “If only we’d attack and get it over with.”
“We will soon, I reckon. There’s sickness on the French ships, mortal bad, and food running short. And that admiral of theirs overdue back in the West Indies, so they say.” He spat over the side. “If we’d attacked a month ago, when the frogs first came, I reckon it would have been a walkover. Now, I’m not so sure. Did you see the British sailors manhandling those ships’ guns ashore when we took that turn upriver? They’ll be a nasty welcome, ask me, when we do attack.”
That night a small boat came drifting silently downstream from Hutchinson Island with the tide and was picked up by a French patrol boat, whose commander fortunately spoke a little English. “He begged to be brought to you,” the Frenchman told Hart a little later. “Said he’d tell us nothing otherwise. Not that I reckon he’ll have much to tell. One of their slaves.”
“Not a slave,” said Hart. “William, what is it?”
“It’s Miss Mercy, sir. They came for her this morning. They seemed know you’d been to the house, sir. Said she’d been harbouring a rebel. Searched. Mr Hart, you must believe me, I had no idea. I only made the secret cellar for her and the other ladies to hide in, if need came. I didn’t know what she planned to do. How could I guess? Mind you, I reckon I’d have done it just the same!”
“What is all this?” broke in the Frenchman impatiently.
“Family trouble.” Hart recognised the appeal in William’s gaze. “I doubt the man has any real information, but if he has, be sure I’ll report it.”
“Bien. Then I’ll get back to my duties.”
Alone with William, Hart turned on him with all the accumulated force of the anxiety that had haunted him. “Quick, what happened?”
“They searched the house, sir. You never saw anything like it. Beds ripped open, panels broke, furniture every which way, and then Mr Francis, he said, what about the cellar?”
“Francis?”
William looked at him greyly. “He was in charge, sir. I never thought I’d see the day.”
“At least he’d have seen the ladies weren’t harmed. His own mother—”
“Bless you, they weren’t there. I should have said. They moved to Hutchinson Island when the bombardment got so bad.”
“Thank God for that.”
“All but Miss Mercy. She wouldn’t go. Well, I understand now. ‘Course she wouldn’t go. When they broke through my secret wall in the cellar and found the press, I saw it all. Too late.”
“The press?”
“Her father’s, sir. The one there was all the trouble about years back. You remember. The one he was killed over. It must have been hidden in Savannah all the time. She and Mr Miles must have smuggled it into the house when they did all that work for the club. Before I got back. It makes you want to laugh, if things wasn’t so bad. Think of her dancing and singing with the British, and listening to every word they said, and going right down afterwards and writing it up for next day’s broadsheet.”
“Mercy?”
“She’s the Reb Pamphleteer, sir. She and Mr Miles. She wrote it; he set it. Only … you mustn’t feel too bad about this, Mr Hart, but seems like they’d been watching the house since the day you came. They caught Mr Miles sneaking out, very early, with the day’s broadsheets. I don’t know what he told them, but enough. They found the press, old broadsheets, everything.”
“And Mercy?” He had led the enemy straight to her. Jackson would have known he would go to his own house, must have guessed that someone there had put him on his guard. Hence the watch. Hence the disaster. All his fault. “What have they done with her?”
“They ain’t got her yet, sir. See, when they come knocking so angrily like, I opened to them, on account of all the other men are out working on the lines. When Mr Francis asked for the ladies, I told him they was all on Hutchinson Island. Surely he knew that, I said. His ma must have told him. I made kind of a noise about it and stood there, plumb stupid. You know Mr Francis, he thinks we’re all trash, the lot of us. I don’t reckon he even rightly knew which I was. So I kept telling him, louder and louder, that no one was home and no reason for them to come in. And Mr Francis, he lost his temper, like he does, and shouted right back, and I felt the draught you get when the back door of the office opens and knew she was safe out to the yard, so in the end, ‘course, I had to let them in. But I surely didn’t reckon on their finding that press, sir. I just didn’t want Mr Francis bothering poor Miss Mercy as can’t abide him, and no wonder. But lucky I did it.”
“Where is she now? Did she get clear away?”
“Not off the place. Not then. They’d put men on the back entrance. She couldn’t get out, but they gave her a bit of time, searching the house first. When they got out to our quarters, I hardly recognised her myself. I reckon she must have had it all planned. Black as me, she was, grizzle-haired, crouching by the fire, trying to light it and muttering to herself.
“‘Who’s that?’ asks Mr Francis, and ‘My wife,’ says I. ‘Poor Amy, she ain’t got her wits rightly since what happened to our Delilah.’ You know Mr Francis, sir, he don’t reckon much to what happens to us, but I thought he just might have heard about Delilah. It shook him a bit. ‘Pity about that,’ he said. ‘Poor old thing.’ And he gives Miss Mercy something between a pat and a shove, and she turns and curses him, low and bitter and so like one of us you wouldn’t believe, and he kind of laughs it off and they go and search somewhere else. But you could see he didn’t like it.”
“Where is she now?”
“Hutchinson Island, thank God. They left a watch on the house, but they didn’t care about a couple of stupid old blacks who’d got a fright and wanted to be with their ladies. I’m sorry about the house Mr Hart. I was in charge, but I reckoned Miss Mercy came first. Anyway, there’s still men on guard there. I don’t reckon they’ll wreck it any worse than they have already. Mr Francis he’ll see to that. I always thought he reckoned to end up with Winchelsea and the house in the square.”
“There’ll be time to deal with him,” said Hart. “But what’s to do now, William? You should have brought Miss Mercy with you.”
“I wish I had, now. But she was tuckered out, time we got to the island, and honest, I didn’t think I had a chance of getting through. And, true to God, she’s safe enough among our people for a few days. She’s with the servants,” he explained. “The ladies know nothing about it. I reckon Mr Francis will have been over to the island asking, but he won’t have found out more than that they left Miss Mercy behind when they moved there. And a lot of grumbles, if I know Madam Mayfield, about how awkward things are there. And he’ll be angry when he finds he must have missed Miss Mercy at the house, and when Mr Francis is angry he does something stupid.”
“Yes.” Hart could not help being both amused and disconcerted by this sharp insight into his cousin’s character. “But what do we do now?”
“I reckon it depends on what you think’s going to happen. They’re all pretty busy in town. Mr Francis won’t have much time, not even to look for the Reb Pamphleteer, and by God they want her bad enough. I guess she’ll be safe with our people on the island until after the attack, if it comes in the next few days. Well, there it is. You allies take Savannah, Miss Mercy’s safe and a heroine. You fail, and I’d rather not think what will happen. She’s stirred up a plenty trouble, has Miss Mercy, with those pamphlets of hers.”
“I know.” Hart could still hardly take it in. Mercy, the Reb Pamphleteer. It explained various things that had puzzled him when he had talked to her. It made his suspicions of her still more horrible, more ludicrous than somewhere deep down they had always seemed. And it put her, most terribly, in danger.
“I think we’re bound to attack in a day or two,” he said now, slowly. “Count d’Estaing’s impatient to be gone; that I do know, everyone does. His sailors are dying like flies of the scurvy; he’s overdue at the West Indies. Yes, I should say in the next three days at latest. You think she’ll be safe that long?”
“I hope so. But, when you attack, Mr Hart, will you win?”
“I wish to God I was sure of it. What do you think, William?”
“I don’t know, sir. If you’d attacked back in September, before Colonel Maitland and his men come in, it would have been another story. But, now—And, I tell you this, sir, those are desperate men in Savannah. There are rumours … Talk of things that’s been said, by both French and Americans, about revenge for what happened when the British took the town. They’ve got their women there. Mrs Prevost and her children. And then there’s Governor Wright, gingering them up. He says, ‘Jose Savannah, you’ve lost America.’ You wouldn’t believe what they’ve done, ‘less you saw it. They’ve turned that sandhill of a town into an armed fortress. There’s an officer called Moncrieff … seems like he knows everything there is to know about fortifications. You’re not going to find it easy, sir, and that’s God’s truth.”
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