“Don’t look.” Hart had her in his arms, her face pressed against his shoulder. “There’s nothing we can do.”
She raised her head to look him full in the face. “And I wouldn’t if I could. Oh, Hart!”
No time for this. “We must go and help the others,” he said.
They climbed up the slope hand in hand. The sounds of fighting had died down. Someone had won. “Quietly,” he whispered. “We may have to run for it.”
“And leave them?”
“You’re more important than anything. And not just to me. I’ve a boat the other side of the island, waiting. Your arrival, you Reb Pamphleteer, will be worth a thousand men in our attack tomorrow.”
“But the others …” As she began to protest they reached the top of the slope and saw that the fight was indeed over. Triumphant black faces gleamed in the firelight, and Bill was just coming up the slope, obviously in search of them.
“Thank God,” he said, “you found her.” He did not ask what had happened to Francis.
“Yes. And the Indians?”
“Tied up. Those who survived. Captain, what are we going to do for the men who helped us. There’ll be trouble here in the morning.”
“Yes. There must be boats at the wharves?”
“Enough. But they’d never get past the guard posts.”
“No, I’m a fool. But we’re in control of the whole island?”
“For tonight. Unless anyone’s noticed over in town, which I doubt.”
“No, they’ve other things on their minds tonight. Very well. Talk to your friends, Bill. Thank them for me and tell them that anyone who wants to cross the island with us is sure of a welcome from the Allies. They’ve black troops of their own, as you know. Well treated.”
“The French have.” Bill’s voice was dry.
“Yes.” No use pretending not to understand. “But, Bill, don’t you see, so long as some come with us the others can pretend they were fighting on the British side, and beaten. We’ll tie a few of them up, alongside the Cherokees.”
“Some of them are,” said Bill as he turned away.
Mercy had stood close beside Hart, listening. “Are you going to visit your mother?” she asked.
Their minds had been running parallel. “I can’t make up my mind.” He turned to her with a kind of desperation. “It’s a terrible risk … and such a chance.…”
“But she wouldn’t come, you know. Still less Mrs Mayfield or Abigail.”
“You’re right, of course. Not across that swamp. Not anyway, I suppose. But, Mercy, will they be safe?”
“Oh, yes. No need to fret about them. You forget, Hart, what a Loyalist house we’ve been keeping. Just think of how angry it made you that day you came to see me.” She was laughing at him. “Besides, where would the officers go for their entertainment if they closed it down. Everyone knows Abigail for the true blue Tory she is, and forgive me, Hart, no one takes your mother and aunt very seriously. No one’s going to blame them for my carryings-on in the cellar.” She smiled past him at Bill, who had returned with a considerable group of men. “And if we’re going to get all these people across the island, we had better get started.”
“You’re right.” It must be past midnight already, and all the time Hart was aware of the minutes ticking away towards the dawn hour set for the Allied attack on Savannah. Already French and American troops must be making their silent way towards the positions from which they were to launch their surprise assault. If it was a surprise. He looked across the river to where lights here and there must indicate Savannah, asleep on its bluff.
“Too many lights.” Mercy had read his mind again.
“More than usual?”
“Many more than last night. And … listen!” Across the water came the muffled roll of a drum. “A surprise attack?” she asked.
“Yes. And not a chance of warning them that it’s been blown.”
Mercy put a warm hand on his. “I thought I’d never hear you grind your teeth again!”
Luckily, the Georgia had already moved upriver with the Truite, which made the task of getting the refugee blacks away much easier. The last, exhausted, mud-covered party were just being helped on board when a signal shot fired by the Truite announced the start of their diversionary action.
“You’ll go below, to my cabin, and stay there.” Anxiety made Hart’s tone sharper than he had intended.
“Yes, sir, Captain Purchis.” A hint of mockery underlay the exhaustion of her voice. “If I just knew the way.”
“I’ll show you, Miss Mercy.” Bill had insisted on waiting to come off with the last escape party and had just climbed on board. “Captain’s busy right now.”
“So he is,” she said.
Hart’s sleeping cabin was little more than a cupboard with a berth in it, opening off the main cabin where two brass ten-pounders had already been run out for the attack. The men in charge of them grinned at sight of Mercy with her tousled hair and blackened face. “The Reb Pamphleteer,” said one. “Huzza!”
“Thanks!” She swept them a curtsey with tattered skirts. “And good shooting.”
“Thank you, ma’am. I hope we don’t keep you awake.”
“It would take more than gunfire to do that.”
On deck, Hart was grinding his teeth again as he read his latest order from the captain of the Truite. The little Georgia, with her light draught, was to make the best speed she could down the Wilmington River to the Allied ammunition depot at Thunderbolt, where Hart must urge the need for more ammunition, more troops, everything for a stronger three-pronged attack from Thunderbolt, Causton Bluff, and the Savannah River itself. “Tell them their plans are blown,” wrote Lieutenant Durumain. “The whole of Savannah is on the alert. Our only hope is in a last-minute change of strategy.”
Feeling his way down the familiar channel of the Wilmington, Hart thought it a forlorn hope indeed. The moonlit night was ebbing towards morning now; the troops for the intended surprise attack must be fully committed; even a commander less obstinate than d’Estaing had proved himself would never change his whole strategy at such an eleventh hour. And, besides, his headquarters were at Beaulieu, far to the south, and he himself was doubtless already on his way across the treacherous marshes to lead the assault on the Spring Hill Redoubt to the west of the town.
The morning wind was light, and progress maddeningly slow. What had begun as a forlorn hope was merely ludicrous by the time the Georgia pulled into the familiar landing at Thunderbolt. They had heard spasmodic tiring all the way, when the height of the bluff allowed it, but here was a scene of chaos.
“Ammunition!” The officer in command actually laughed as he read Durumain’s letter. “More men! What we need is stretchers and men to carry them. How many can you spare? Our hospital here’s full. We’ve taken over one down the creek; the British were using it. The wounded are coming in from the right wing already. It was only meant as a diversion, but, by God, it’s been a bloody one. The British were expecting us, met us with music, mocking. ‘Come to the Maypole, Merry Farmers All.’ And musketfire. We Americans did our best, but if you ask me, the French marines hardly tried. And if the English expected us there, knew it for a diversion, what hope for d’Estaing at Spring Hill?”
“You’ve not heard?”
“Only rumour. Sounds bad. No time for that. How many men can you let me have?”
Hart left Bill to guard Mercy on the Georgia and took the rest of his small crew to help move the wounded. Extraordinary to come back to Winchelsea, at last, like this, leading a tired horse with a cartful of wounded, some French, some American, militia, some groaning, some swearing, some dying.
The house was changed beyond belief, beyond bearing. Not a stick of the old furniture remained, only, on the floors of the downstairs rooms, pallet beds put there by the British, now taken over by their defeated enemies. A grey-faced doctor came down the wide stair to greet him, his hands and coat stained with blood. “More? This way.” He directed
the bearers towards what had been the family dining room.
“Dr Flinn!”
“You know me?” And then, after a moment’s gaze from eyes bleared with lack of sleep, “Good God! Hart.” He looked about him. “Sorry about your house. The British did it. We just took over.”
“No matter.” It seemed extraordinarily unimportant. “How can I help? I’m afraid I can’t carry—My hand.”
“Of course. You speak French?”
“A little.”
“Good. I can’t get them to believe I’m a doctor. Can’t say I blame them. Just a few words in their own language would have made all the difference, would have in the battle. God, talk of muddle.”
The rest of that morning was a nightmare of blood and stench, groans and screams, curses in French and American, and, through it all, Dr Flinn, white with fatigue, making decision after decision, until at last, towards noon, he was relieved by a French military surgeon. By now the full news of the disastrous attack on the Spring Hill Redoubt was in, but he hardly paid attention to it.
“There’s something—” He mopped his forehead with a hand that left a smear of blood, and peered at Hart through red-rimmed eyes. “Something needs doing.” And then, “My God, Saul Gordon!”
“Gordon?”
“He’s off his head. Raving. The British thought him Mercy’s accomplice.” Flinn laughed shakily. “Saul Gorden and the Reb Pamphleteer. They confiscated everything he had—his house, the money he’s made, the lot. Where is Mercy?” It had reminded him.
“Safe, thank God. On my boat. But what of Gordon?”
“He escaped in the confusion of the attack. Came here this morning, ranting, swearing vengeance. The wounded were just beginning to come in. I had no time. I locked him in the cellar.” He felt in a pocket and produced the key. “Hart, go and see.”
But Hart was looking past him at the door to the cellar stairs, and the thin trickle of smoke seeping out from under it.
“Don’t open it,” said the doctor. “There’s no water nearer than the river. We’ve used it all up.”
“We can’t leave him,” said Hart. “Besides, it’s the only chance—to smother it down there.” But when he opened the door a careful crack, a blast of smoke and flame swept up through the long hall. No hope for Gordon, down in that inferno, and not much for wood-built Winchelsea. Anyway, the wounded must come first. Mercifully, only the ground floor had been used, and half an hour of sweating, desperate labour had them all safely evacuated through outside doors and windows as the fire swept upwards through the house, making a great chimney of the hall and main stairway.
“I’m sorry, Hart.” The last commandeered waggon had rolled away, and Dr Flinn turned to where Hart stood watching the great pillar of flame and smoke that had been his home.
“No need. Could you have lived there after what went on today? There would have been blood on it, always. Anyway, it hardly looks as if there will be a chance, after today’s disaster.” He managed a wry smile. “Francis had the promise of it, you know, from the British, I wonder if Gordon had too.”
“I’ll never forgive myself—”
“Don’t mind it.” He ought to tell Dr Flinn about Francis, but could not make himself. “It seems so trivial, compared with our defeat today. What will you do now, Doctor?”
“I’m an old man, Hart. I shall go back to Savannah. The British need doctors. They’ll have me. They might even let me live in my own house. And you?”
“I’ve my ship still. I shall go on fighting. Will you tell my mother, Doctor? About the house? Break it gently? And give her my best love … to them all. And … good-bye.”
It was daylight when Mercy woke, but which day? No gunfire now, but a rush of water to tell her that the Georgia was in motion. She sat up shakily, saw that someone had covered her with a blanket, and found bread and a mug of water securely placed in an ingeniously designed shelf by her head. Best of all, there was a bucket of water equally safe in a similar shelf at the foot of the berth and a sailor’s shirt and trousers lying beside it.
The ship was too quiet. She wolfed the bread, trying to remember how long it was since she had eaten, washed off the worst of the black stain from her face, and was relieved to find that she could just get into the trousers. She smiled to herself, imagining Hart lining up his crew and deciding whose would fit her best. Hart! The ship was too quiet. She pulled on the shirt, grateful for its concealing size, ran her fingers through her hair, and opened the cabin door.
The sailor on duty outside came smartly to the salute. “Ma’am!”
“What day is it?” she asked. “What’s happened?’
“We’re beat,” he said. “All along the line. They was waiting, see! For us, for the troops! D’Estaing’s wounded, Pulaski’s dying, Jasper’s dead. They must be laughing their guts out in Savannah today. I’m glad you got away, ma’am, that’s for sure.” His expression, as he studied the trousers and called her “ma’am,” was comic. “You’d be dead as mutton else.”
“But Captain Purchis?” she asked. “Is he—”
“In a rage, ma’am. In a flat, boiling, bloody-ahem-rage.”
“But he’s not hurt?”
“Hurt? Captain Purchis? No, he don’t get hurt. We see to that. But he sure is mad as hell today, and no mistake.” He straightened suddenly as Hart came storming down the companionway from the deck. “Sir!”
“You’re awake!” Hart nodded dismissal to the man. “Has he told you?”
“We’re beaten.”
“Horribly. Absurdly. God almighty! Allies who don’t understand each other’s language. Muddle. Disaster. And he won’t try again.”
“He?”
“D’Estaing. He’s off to the West Indies and plague take the lot of us. The Georgia’s to help cover the retreat. Retreat! It’s a shambles. Oh, God, what’s going to happen to Georgia now! The British and Loyalists are going to take cruel toll for yesterday’s disaster. Thank God, at least we got you clear, Mercy.” He seemed really to be seeing her for the first time. “But what in God’s name am I to do with you?”
She considered saying, “Marry me,” but decided against it. Looking down at her trousers. “You wouldn’t consider taking me on as ship’s boy?” she suggested.
“I would not. It’s no time for joking. I’ve told d’Estaing I’ll cover his paltry retreat and then I’m taking you to Charleston. It’s the only thing.”
“Oh, no, it’s not.” She regretted the sharp answer the moment it was spoken.
“No?” His face had been white with rage and fatigue under the tan, but now angry colour flooded it. “The Rebel Pamphleteer has orders for me, has she? And what are they, pray?”
“Oh, Hart, I’m sorry! I didn’t mean—Only, there are things I know.”
“Such as?”
“That the British are planning an attack on Charleston. It’s part of the whole strategy, don’t you see? They’ve given up in the North, at least for the time being. They think they’ll get more help here in the South.”
“And they’re right,” he interjected bitterly.
“I’m afraid they are. And holding Savannah will settle it for them. They’re bound to attack Charleston now, sooner or later.”
“You could be right,” he said slowly, and this time she managed to swallow a quick rejoinder. “Well, in that case,” he went on, “I’m taking you north. You’ll stay with the Pastons, of course. Things are quiet in New England now, just as you say. You’ll be safe there. And popular. The Reb Pamphleteer!”
“Hart?” What had happened to that instinctive understanding that had flowed between them when they were in danger?
“Yes?” His face was still rigid with anger. Not at her, she realised. At everything. This was no time.…
“Nothing,” she said. “Just—I’m sorry.”
Chapter 25
The inevitable outcome of that betrayed, disastrous dawn attack was mutual recrimination between the French and American allies. The bitter tension bet
ween them was not eased by the light-hearted way French officers went to and fro across the lines to Savannah on one pretext of business or another. “Anyone would think the British and French were allies,” said Hart bitterly, “not French and Americans.”
“I’ve noticed it before,” Mercy agreed. “They have the same habits and convictions. And in their hearts, they all look on us as barbarians. But at least, Hart, they have brought us the good news that your house and family are safe, and poor Mrs Mayfield rather better than one might have expected. That was a clever story you invented for her, of Francis trying to save me. I’m glad she believes it. And”—she looked down at grey homespun skirts and changed the subject—“I’m glad they’ve brought me some clothes.”
She was the old Mercy again, the one whose image he had carried so long in his heart. Her hair, neatly braided once more round her head, still had the faintest hint of red about it, to remind him of the scarlet woman she had seemed that day in Savannah, but otherwise it was hard to believe that any of it had happened. Only from time to time, she would shake him with a casual remark that showed just how much she had learned from her guests when she was running that strange establishment in his house. He did not like to think about it and could not stop.
When the list of the few British officers who had been killed or wounded came through, his first feeling was rage at the disproportion between the tiny British losses and the huge Allied ones. Mercy too was looking grave, and he assumed she felt the same, only to be disabused by her remark. “Poor things,” she said, “in a way they were my friends.”
He turned on her, white with fury. “You’d better not let the men hear you say that!”
“They would understand,” she said. And then, with an effort, “Hart, I’ve received a most courteous letter from Captain Bougainville. He writes on behalf of Admiral d’Estaing to offer me safe-conduct with their fleet to the West Indies. I think I’d better accept.”
“You will do, of course, what you think best. Naturally, you’d find life much more luxurious—much more what you’re used to—on a French line of battle ship. No doubt you’ll make many new ‘friends’ during the voyage. French or English, as you say yourself, what is the difference?”
Judas Flowering Page 35