Wide is the Water by Jane Aiken Hodge Page A

of club and gaming house for British officers and made a resounding success of it. He smiled wryly to himself, remembering his own savage jealousy when he had come home, secretly, a spy,and seen Mercy flirting with the British officers. And then the astonishing discovery that she, too, had been a spy, egging on her admirers to indiscretions which she had used to good effect in the pamphlets she published in her other, secret identity as the Rebel Pamphleteer.
    Lucky for him – he lifted the pen and put it down again – very lucky, that the British had kept the truth about Mercy as quiet as they could after he himself had accidentally led them to discover her. It had not at all suited their book to have been so roundly fooled by a mere girl. In the one letter he had had from his mother, in answer to his announcement of his marriage to Mercy, Mrs. Purchis had said nothing about the Rebel Pamphleteer, unless a glancing remark about how kind the British had been was intended as a reference to the illicit printing press they had discovered concealed in the cellar at Oglethorpe Square. The British had apparently not penalised the household for this. She, her sister Mayfield, and Abigail Purchis were still running the club, she had told him: ‘We do very well.’
    She had not mentioned Mercy’s emeralds, either, which he knew she and her sister had pawned to meet their expenses, and her comments on his marriage had seemed curiously lukewarm, considering what a tower of strength and comfort Mercy had been to them all. Well, of course, Aunt Mayfield would inevitably be mourning her son Francis, and whatever version of his death had been current in Savannah, it was certainly not the true one. It would have suited neither British nor Americans to have it be known just what a double or even triple game Francis had been playing, with the Purchis inheritance as the stake.
    He picked up the pen again and dipped it in the ink. Francis had lost. Francis was dead, and Winchelsea, the plantation house he had coveted, was burnt. ‘We’ll be back, Hart, you and I,’ Mercy had said, that last day, standing under the ruined Judas tree by her father’sgrave. Would they ever? He sighed and began to write slowly:
    My dear Mother:
    This is to tell you that the
Georgia
is sunk, half her men dead, the rest and I prisoners on board HMS
Sparrow.
By a most amazing chance, her captain proves to be an English cousin of ours – he spells it Purchas.
    (Captain Purchas would read this letter. It was his duty, though he had been too polite to say so.)
    You see how fortunate, all things considered, I have been.
    (The words came more easily now.)
    And I hope you will not mind too much that we are bound for England. You know I have always wished to go there, and my cousin Purchas hopes to be able to save me from imprisonment. So you must not fret about me, dear madam, but take care of yourself, and if you will, write to Mercy and tell her that I am unhurt and as always her loving husband. I am writing to her too, to Farnham, but my cousin Purchas is less sure of the letter’s reaching her. I hope that you have had good news of her from the Pastons and that all goes well with you all.
    He was interrupted by a knock on the door, and a midshipman who looked all of twelve years old announced that Cap’n Purchas wished to see him urgently.
    What now? A ship already or some new disaster?
    â€˜There’s trouble among your crew.’ Captain Purchas had been gazing out the stern windows at a blazing sunset that reminded Hart: horribly of the morning’s battle. ‘I thought you’d want to know.’
    â€˜Trouble?’ Was there no end to it?
    â€˜Yes. My bosun had to intervene to save a boy’s life. A black boy.’
    â€˜Bill!’ Hart exclaimed. ‘Hardly a boy. I thought him dead. I swear he was missing when we abandoned ship. But that’s good news. He’s an old friend,’ he