Wide is the Water

by Jane Aiken Hodge

  She must know what was happening to him. Must she? If she did and was letting it continue, death would be infinitely better than marriage to her.

  He was beginning to be afraid of losing his reason. Sleeping badly, he woke in a cold sweat, imagining himself back in the hulks in New York Harbour. Mercy had reached out her hand then, all the way from Savannah, and rescued him from that living hell. On the fifth morning he woke saying her name.

  He thought it was the fifth morning. Best start counting; it would help him stay sane, and here was a use for the horribly tempting pen and paper. If the gaoler noticed, he gave no sign. Was it not sinister that it was always the same gaoler? It struck him, suddenly, on the fifth morning that he might not be in the Tower at all. It had been dark when the committal proceedings had finished. He had been brought through crowded streets in a hackney cab. The hot weather had broken at last. It had been raining … He remembered the sharp exchange of question and command, the sound of a gate opening … There had been flaring torches; a flight of steps … a corridor … more steps … and at last, this cell, darkness, and nothing to eat until the morning. And since then the one taciturn gaoler and the visits from Mr. Purchas.

  ‘Where am I?’ he asked when the gaoler brought the slops that passed as his breakfast.

  ‘The Tower.’ The man put down the plate and mug and looked about him. ‘Stinks in here. Eat your victuals and be ready to move. You’ve a visitor coming. If I bring you a razor, will you promise not to cut your throat?’

  A visitor? Julia? Horrible. But when the man came back with hot water, a razor, and a clean shirt, he did his best with his appearance. One felt better clean.

  ‘Good.’ The gaoler returned. ‘You look almost human. This way.’ Down the long corridor he remembered. Another cell, very like the one from which he had come, but clean. A view, this time, from the slit window across a grassy quadrangle to Tudor-style red-brick buildings. A big bird on the grass. A raven. ‘It is the Tower!’ he exclaimed.

  ‘Whoever said it wasn’t? I’ll bring your visitor.’

  Not Julia, mercifully, but Dick. Dick looking appalled. ‘Hart. What’s happened to you?’

  ‘Prison,’ said Hart. ‘I’ve never liked it. Lord, Dick, but it’s good to see you.’

  ‘You won’t think so when you hear what I have come to say.’ Dick was looking older, Hart thought. The strain of his disgrace must be beginning to tell on him. ‘Hart,’ he went on, ‘I wish you had told me.’

  ‘Told you?’

  ‘About you and Julia. She told me it all. Asked me to come and speak to you for her. Hart, she thinks she is carrying your child.’

  ‘Dear God!’ It stunned him for a moment. ‘Dick, what can I say?’

  ‘Nothing. Save that you will marry her if we can just get you out of here in time.’

  ‘But I am married.’

  ‘You should have remembered that sooner. Think, Hart. My father has it on the highest authority that you have nothing to fear in treating that lunatic shipboard marriage as a nullity and marrying Julia. Circumstanced as she is, what else can you do?’

  They were still standing, facing each other across the narrow cell. Hart turned away to stare out of the slit window so that Dick should not see his face. Memory of his seduction by Julia burnt in his brain. Now, at last, he thought he understood it. Another man’s child. ‘I won’t do it,’ he said.

  Dick looked more wretched than ever. ‘Then I have no alternative but to call you out and kill you if I can.’

  ‘Fight you?’ It made horrible sense. He looked about him. ‘It’s not likely to come to that. By what your father says, the executioner looks like doing the business for you. Now the small fry have been executed, I imagine it will not be long before Lord George Gordon and I are brought to trial. I’ll be glad when it is over. Dick, my friend, believe me, I am sorrier for this than I can say. And for what I have done to you. I have brought nothing but disaster to your family, after all your kindness to me. I wish I could hope that you would forgive me before I hang.’

  ‘You seriously expect to?’

  ‘Why, yes.’ Hart was surprised at Dick’s tone. ‘You will think me a coward, Dick, but I do pray that I will be spared the final horror, the drawing and quartering. I am an American citizen, not a traitor. And I … I am afraid I might disgrace myself … disgrace my country …’ He had lain awake at night, thinking of it, praying for strength to endure.

  ‘Who told you of drawing and quartering?’

  ‘Your father, of course. He has been my only visitor. He has warned me what to expect.’

  ‘Nonsense,’ said Dick. ‘You’ve not been seeing the papers?’

  ‘No. And the gaoler won’t talk. Says he has his orders. Dick! Don’t make me hope; I don’t think I am strong enough for that.’

  ‘Let me be sure of this,’ said Dick. ‘My father has been telling you – has convinced you – that it is a choice between marriage with Julia and the full barbarous sentence of the law?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And you believed him? You cannot think very highly of British justice.’

  ‘No,’ said Hart simply. ‘I’ve seen enough of what is called influence since I have been here. I have only asked myself whether your family was really powerful enough to secure my release, granted that they have not been able to save you from disgrace because of what you did for me.’

  ‘But I am safe,’ said Dick. ‘You mean, you do not even know that?’

  ‘Safe? Oh, thank God!’ Hart turned and held out his hand. ‘That makes up for everything.’

  ‘You’ve not heard then of George’s death?’

  ‘Your brother?’

  ‘Yes. His body was found, just the other day, in a gutted cellar in Moorfields. Nobody knows how many died there, from drink, from fire, from untended wounds. And no way to tell how poor George met his end, but I’m afraid you must have been right in your suspicions of him, and more grateful than I can say that you did not speak of them during the committal proceedings. He’s dead now, poor George; it’s over. We are hoping, my father and I, that we can keep his part in the riots a secret, for the family’s sake. My poor mother has been ill ever since, and Julia is taking it hard. She loved him, you know. Hart—’

  ‘Please! I must think. George is dead. Dick, I think I must tell you this. No one else. Ever. I believe your sister knew of his involvement with the rioters. I told her I thought I had heard George’s voice. No one else, just her. She laughed it off. But I think she must have told George. Do you see? He knew why we were looking for him that night. I think he led us on, hoping for just what happened. It has to be her who told him.’ He found he could not use Julia’s name. ‘Dick, you must see I can’t. Not marry her. Oh, of course, I’ll fight you if you insist and if I do get out of here. I’ve faced death for so long now I begin to think it would be a relief. My guilt about Julia … no word from Mercy … your disgrace. But you say you are clear of that?’

  Dick laughed ruefully. ‘You’ve forgotten something. I am now the heir to the Purchas estate. It has made a great difference to my position. The Lords of Admiralty have been glad to close a painful episode by letting me send in my papers. My father sent for me from Plymouth as soon as poor George’s body was found. I got here yesterday and found things well in train already. I am going to get my wish and settle down to run the estate and put into effect all those good ideas we had. Hart, if only … I would so like to have you for a brother.’

  ‘I am a married man,’ said Hart. ‘Nothing will alter that.’

  ‘Ah, poor Julia,’ said Dick. ‘She loves you, Hart. I think she truly loves you. It would be the making of her. It was George led her astray. With you, it would be quite different. If you had seen her this morning. In tears, Hart. Julia who never cries. She looks ill. Ill with unhappiness. If you saw her, I think you must relent.’

  ‘Dick, I’m married.’ There was so much he must not say. As Dick was pleading her case, he had had a sudden, horrible vision of Julia
, the consummate actress, playing off her wiles on her gullible brother. Mercy was an actress, too, but how different. She had acted a part for her country. With him, she had always been the soul of honour. Too honest, perhaps? What a strange thought. And why did talk of Julia now bring Mercy so vividly, so tantalisingly into his mind?

  ‘You’re hard,’ said Dick. ‘I’d not thought it of you.’

  ‘I’m honest, or try to be.’

  ‘And I must tell her not to hope?’

  ‘Yes,’ There was no way of wrapping it up in clean linen.

  ‘Then the first day you are safe out of here, which I trust will be soon, my friends will wait upon yours to arrange a meeting.’

  ‘Very well.’ He would not tell Dick that he had no other real friend in England. He held out his hand. ‘Good-bye. Believe me when I tell you how sorry I am.’

  Left alone, he could hardly cope with the flood of new ideas. Dick seriously seemed to believe that he was not in danger of death. If only he had asked him more questions, but how could he, with the shadow of Julia between them? He was beginning to hate both Julia and her father and was glad of it. But Dick he could not hate. The idea of fighting him was horrible. Was he in honour bound to fire in the air and let Dick kill him? Time enough to think of that when he was out of the Tower. He found he was actually beginning to believe in the possibility of freedom. George Purchas’s body must have been found in incriminating circumstances, so he would be believed if he explained that his own actions during the riots had been caused by suspicion of him. So … if Mr. Purchas wanted to save his family’s name, he would be wise to do everything to avoid a trial.

  The gaoler confirmed the remarkable change in his position by appearing with a pint of porter. ‘The young gentleman said you was to have anything you liked, sir,’ he explained. ‘I’m glad of it. I do like to see my gentlemen comfortable. You won’t take anything I’ve done amiss, will you now, not a gentleman like you?’

  ‘Not if you will fetch me a newspaper … all the papers you can.’

  ‘I ain’t got none, sir, and that’s God’s truth. I read them at the coffehouse when I can. But I can tell you right out, sir things look a whole lot better for you and even for Lord George than they did. Things is quiet again, see, and folks have turned to the right-about. What’s fretting them now is all the soldiers here in town. Amherst – the Commander in Chief – gave orders, see that no one was to carry arms. First thing the soldiers did was disarm the citizens who’d joined together for their own protection. Well, of course, they didn’t like that above half. So now the cry is all to get the military out of town. And Parliament refusing to sit while they are here. It’s all quite different sir; you’ll find it so when you get out. Well, look at the executions last week. All quiet as bedamned; just a nice day out for the public, you could say.’ He laughed. ‘No need to look so sick, sir, Government’s had enough. The less said about it all now, the better. Bygones be bygones; all that.’ He looked a little anxiously round the bleak cell. ‘Anything you need, sir, short of papers? My bet is you’ll be out of here before many days is passed, and I wouldn’t want you complaining of your treatment.’

  ‘No?’ Hart could hardly help laughing. ‘Then fetch me another pint of this excellent porter if my credit will stretch so far.’

  ‘No need to be fretting about that, sir. The young gentleman said he’d stand the nonsense. A right down open-handed good-hearted gentleman that one. Porter, sir, right away.’

  I shall have to let Dick kill me, thought Hart. It would be a solution, after all. His mother was dead. Mercy had obviously washed her hands of him. And free now from the immediate terror of execution, he remembered that if he did emerge unscathed from the Tower, it would only be to be recommitted to prison for debt. It was tragicomic to think that in order to be able to fight him, Dick would have to pay his debts. He looked back now on those first mad, extravagant weeks in London with a kind of horror. Fool … idiot. The.fact that Busby and Drummond had made it so easy for him to borrow was no excuse. He, better than anyone, had known how his affairs really stood, and yet he had let Julia lead him on from extravagance to extravagance.

  Disgusting to be blaming her like this. It was all his own fault, his own foolishness, and if by some miracle he ever got home to America, he would pay for it, in the sweat of his brow, all his life. How happy he would be to do so. Suddenly, almost unbearably, he remembered the feel of working in the rice fields at Winchelsea, the soft, warm earth as one opened the sluices, the delight of seeing the first green shoots. Oh, God, just to get back there, to get home …

  XVIII

  ‘Mercy, try to rest.’ Ruth had unpacked their portmanteau while Mercy eagerly read through the back issues of the London papers that the landlord of the Portsmouth inn had found for her.

  ‘How can I? With Hart in the Tower! For a whole month now, and no sign of a trial. And no clue in these papers to where I will find his family.’

  ‘The landlord says they’ll most likely be at their country place, Denton Hall, since Parliament has been dissolved. He’s been very kind.’

  ‘Everyone has.’ Mercy sounded surprised. It had been almost disconcerting to find that first Captain Kemp and now the landlord of the inn treated her not as an enemy, an object of suspicion, but simply as an unlucky woman whose husband was in prison, in danger of his life. The Mercy who had been the Rebel Pamphleteer seemed no longer to exist; instead, she had to live with this new creature, Hart’s wife.

  ‘It can’t be long until we hear,’ Ruth said once again. ‘Captain Kemp promised your letters would go off on the night mail. A pity there is no cross mail to Sussex so that the one to Denton Hall will take longer, but surely some member of the family will be in London since Hart is in prison there. And I am sure the captain was right to say we should stay here until we have heard from them.’

  ‘I wish I was.’ Mercy had only yielded after much persuasion. ‘Suppose they have washed their hands of him! It’s so hard to make out from the papers what really happened in those terrible riots. First, Hart’s a hero who saved his Cousin Julia Purchas from the mob, and then all of a sudden the story is that he led it, that the riots were an American attempt to dislodge Lord North’s government.’

  ‘But nobody seems to believe that anymore,’ said Ruth. ‘So we should be grateful, Mercy dear, that there is no sign of Hart’s being brought to trial, when so many others have already been tried and condemned. Time has to be on his side. And just think how much we have to be thankful for. We are not prisoners as we expected; we are in funds, thanks to Charles Brisson; and, best of all, we are here, in England, and treated as friends, not enemies.’

  ‘It’s extraordinary,’ said Mercy. ‘But, Ruth dear, so far as I am concerned, the best thing of all is you. How would I ever have managed without you?’

  ‘Or I without you.’ She smiled rather tremulously. ‘Sometimes I feel wicked because I do not think more about Mother and the others.’

  ‘They would not want you to. I feel the same about poor Mrs. Purchis and her sister. But it’s the living one must think of.’

  ‘I do wish we knew what had happened to Charles Brisson.’ Ruth had found his letter, saying good-bye and containing a draft on Coutts Bank, in their portmanteau when she unpacked it, and they were almost sure that it had not been there when they left the Amsterdam for the Endymion. ‘Maybe he bribed a British sailor to put his letter in the portmanteau,’ Ruth went on. ‘And stayed hidden on the Amsterdam. I hope he is safe in France by now.’

  Mercy was not listening. She had returned to her anxious perusal of the shabby old papers, their tattered condition indicative of the frantic eagerness with which they had been read as they arrived with each day’s batch of bad news from London. ‘It must have been appalling business,’ she said. ‘Half London in flames; the mob in command … And none of the ringleaders caught, by the reports of the trials so far. I’m so afraid, Ruth … that they are saving Hart and Lord George Gordon to make some terrible ex
ample of them.’

  ‘Don’t think like that; try to be patient. Just think, by now Hart may have had your letter. Imagine how happy it will make him.’

  ‘I wish I understood about this cousin whose life he saved,’ said Mercy.

  The next morning’s paper carried a description of the executions of a group of rioters convicted of taking part in the outbreak. An insignificant enough crew, by the report, they had been hanged as near as possible to the scenes of their particular crimes, and there had been no sign of sympathy from the crowd, nor was there any suggestion of a guiding hand behind them. Lord George Gordon was briefly mentioned as being still closely confined to the Tower, with all his letters read and his family allowed to visit him only for an hour at a time.

  ‘So you see,’ said Ruth when Mercy read this out to her, ‘Hart will have been allowed your letter.’

  ‘They say nothing about him,’ said Mercy.

  ‘Perhaps he has been released. He most certainly has not been tried. That would have been reported.’

  ‘Yes. Yes, of course. Thank you, Ruth!’

  ‘I wish you would come out and walk by the sea. You’ve not been out of doors since we landed; it cannot be good for you.’

  ‘How can I,’ said Mercy, ‘when any moment there may be news of Hart?’ She moved over to the window. ‘There’s a private carriage driving into the yard now. It’s a woman. I wonder …’

  ‘My stars, how elegant.’ Ruth joined her at the window. ‘I never saw such deep mourning.’

  A few minutes later a chambermaid scratched at the door and announced, ‘Miss Purchas.’

  ‘I felt it!’ Mercy advanced, trembling, to greet the black-garbed young woman, who had thrown back her mourning veil to show two huge dark eyes in an ivory-pale face.