Charleston Read online

  “Well, I’m not alone in my feeling that—”

  One of Gadsden’s adherents broke in. “Could that be the reason Malvern was burned by the irregulars while Prosperity Hall is still standing?”

  The speaker was older, a thin and feeble man. It didn’t prevent Adrian from rising to confront him. “Sir, in ordinary times that kind of remark would demand satisfaction.”

  A sudden hush fell over the dining room. A naval gun boomed in the silence. Adrian’s face was livid. Edward suspected the reason—the speaker was right about Adrian’s plantation.

  The thin old man surprised everyone by responding not with anger but laughter. “Adrian, my boy, I’m afraid you’ve just confessed your politics to the world.”

  Adrian threw a look to his father, hoping for succor. There was none. Tom Bell said, “Gentlemen, I’ll see to more refreshments. Please apologize to our guests, Adrian.”

  “Damme if I will, sir.”

  Christopher Gadsden said, “We have been friends for many years, Adrian. Now I think our different paths are clearly marked.” He saluted Adrian with his cup. “Long live the Congress.”

  Several others, including Tom Bell, exclaimed, “Hear, hear,” and “Long live the Congress.” Edward stepped forward, touched his brother’s sleeve.

  “Let’s walk in the garden. I have a favor to ask.”

  Under the great live oak Adrian cursed and fumed over Tom Bell’s “damned lunatic friends.” Edward let him rave until the spleen worked itself out. Then he said, “There’s something I need from you if you’ll allow me to have it.”

  “May I know what it is?”

  “The French musket that hangs over your mantel. I trust you still have it?”

  “The St. Etienne arsenal musket? Yes. Damme if I know why I bought it.”

  “Because it’s beautifully made. A gentleman’s gun.”

  “But I’m not an outdoors man like you. I’ve only fired it a few times.”

  “So you’d let it go?”

  “I suppose. Why do you need it?”

  “To join the militia. Every man must furnish his own weapon.”

  “Oh, my God, Edward, that’s folly. Didn’t you hear what I said inside? The battle can’t be won. Charleston can’t be saved. Don’t risk your life for nothing. The men who killed our mother weren’t the king’s soldiers.”

  “They were on the king’s side.”

  Adrian strode past the great tree to an ornamental rain basin on a pedestal. “I shouldn’t give you the gun. I don’t want to be responsible for your death.”

  “My life is my responsibility. You might consider it a fair exchange for Lydia.” He instantly regretted the barb. In the starry darkness he couldn’t read his brother’s reaction. “I’m sorry, that was low.”

  “I’m sure you meant it.” Adrian’s voice had lost its earlier, wine-induced plumminess. There was a chill in it now, a remoteness. “I think I’d better not come back to this house until the issue of surrender is settled. If you want the musket, send Pharaoh’s boy.”

  “Adrian—”

  “I have nothing more to say to you. We’re quits.” Adrian left the garden by the street gate, forgetting his hat inside.

  When Edward returned to the dining room, the guests were rising, exchanging handshakes, extending sympathies once again. Edward said to his father, “Adrian’s gone.”

  “Upset?”

  “Very much so. He made it clear he’s committed to the other side. I don’t think he’ll pay us another visit anytime soon.”

  Two days later, Sunday, on a favorable tide and strong southeast wind, Admiral Arbuthnot’s frigates and ships of the line ran past the booming cannon of Fort Moultrie. One by one the ships dropped anchor in the harbor off James Island, well out of range of Moultrie’s guns and those in the city. Arbuthnot’s losses were small: some rigging, a topmast, and a few wounded seamen. Edward watched part of the action through a spyglass, from a window at the top of the house.

  The elation generated by the relief troops evaporated. Monday, April 10, under a truce flag, emissaries of Clinton and Arbuthnot demanded that Major General Lincoln surrender the city, the alternative being “havoc and devastation.” Lincoln politely refused.

  Enemy artillery made good on Clinton’s threat with a two-hour demonstration bombardment of round shot and incendiaries that set roofs afire, started the bells of St. Michael’s and St. Philip’s ringing in wild alarm, and drove terrified citizens to any available cellar or place of refuge. Charleston’s fire masters directed bucket brigades of slaves from one conflagration to another. The physical damage turned out to be less than the damage to nerves already strained by worry and hunger. Tom Bell told his son that General Lincoln wanted Governor Rutledge to flee across the Cooper before it was too late.

  “As I fear it soon will be” was his glum conclusion.

  On Thursday, April 13, Governor Rutledge finally heeded General Lincoln’s warnings and left the city with three other members of the governing council. Lieutenant Governor Gadsden remained in charge of those who stayed.

  That same day Edward signed articles of enlistment and became part of the second battalion of Charleston militia, Gen. Isaac Huger commanding. The general himself had moved thirty miles inland with a mixed force of infantry and cavalry, to block any attempt by Clinton to cut the escape routes still left open.

  The recruiting officer indicated Edward’s French musket. “In addition to that you need a priming pick and brush, flints, a cartridge box, a canteen or wooden bottle.”

  “I’m acquiring those, sir.”

  “Have you experience with firearms?”

  “I know how to load and fire a fowling piece. I’ve hunted with my father.”

  “You must provide your own uniform.”

  “Someone is sewing it today.”

  “The pay is a dollar a month, hard coin. When the paymaster can find it.” He appreciated his own humor with a great bellowing har-har.

  Perhaps too eagerly, Edward said he presumed he could join Huger’s force in the field after some instruction in loading and firing the musket.

  “Why, no, sir,” the recruiting officer said. “You won’t have to drill before going to the Comings Point fortifications with other new recruits and the niggers we’ve pressed into service. You’ll do your fighting with a wheelbarrow and shovel.”

  Edward’s disgruntled expression prompted a sharp “You’re unhappy, sir?”

  “No, sir.” But he was. No training, no drill—all that was wanted was a strong back. Devil of a start, he thought as he walked out.

  8

  Joanna and the Colonel

  To his surprise he reported to a captain he knew. Earle Hughston was the tanner’s son, a burly young man with a workingman’s lack of pretension. Like many sons in Carolina families Earle Hughston had fallen out with his father over issues of loyalty and duty. Hughston’s uniform was standard militia: fringed deerskin hunting shirt and leggings and a bicorne hat decorated with the black cockade of the American armies.

  In the breastworks already in place at Comings Point, wooden-wheeled garrison cannon and high-trajectory howitzers annoyed the British on the Ashley’s far shore, as well as any small vessels that happened to sail up the channel. Edward fell to with a hundred other men, white and black, extending the breastworks southward past Beaufain Street. Gabion baskets woven of sweet grass were arranged three deep on top of earthen berms. Edward and the others moved barrows of sandy soil to fill the baskets.

  Women and children came out to watch, offering encouragement and, occasionally, food and drink. Enemy batteries on the Neck and James Island shelled the city on a random basis, without warning. This inevitably provoked a reply, though because of a dwindling supply of ammunition, Charleston’s guns fired less often than those of the besiegers. What Edward found heartening was the calm resolve of the civilian population. People went about their business; sent their daughters to their private academies as usual, searched for food in the pu
blic market, evacuated their cows and pigs to the presumed safety of the other side of the Cooper. Unless a shell was whistling down on your own roof, you tended not to be too alarmed by cannon fire. A more common reaction was aggravation. The noise interrupted thought, conversation, and, most annoyingly, sleep.

  With Hughston’s permission Edward limped home after dark rather than spend the night in one of the common tents near the site. The tents were meant for six but presently held ten. Edward’s arms and legs and back were a mass of pain. He was fit but not used to long hours of hard labor. Sleep came hard; the pain woke him often.

  Because Tom Bell and Hughston the elder knew each other, the captain treated Edward with more civility and cordiality than he did some others under his command. Hughston had a fondness for rum and a seemingly limitless supply for his tin canteen bottle. Every day at midmorning and again at sunset he shared the rum with Edward, relating such news as he happened to have.

  On the Neck the British were completing a second siege line parallel to the first, the new one close enough to bring the city within range of howitzers and mortars.

  “And we lost a sharp engagement at Moncks Corner. Banastre Tarleton’s British Legion attacked General Huger’s garrison at three in the morning. When Major Vernier surrendered—he was commanding the late Count Pulaski’s hussars—he asked for quarter but Tarleton’s dragoons refused it. They sabered him so badly he almost bled to death. Damned bloody butcher, Tarleton. Got away with over eighty remounts for his men. The whole country from Moncks Corner to Haddrell’s Point is open to them.”

  On a sunny, warm morning promising sticky heat later, Edward spied Joanna Willing among town women watching the work. He stepped from the trench where he’d been shoveling, wiped dirt and sweat from his face and bare chest. Smiling, Joanna came straight to him. She presented a large clay monkey jar. “Water, sir?”

  “Yes, indeed, and welcome.” He uncorked the jug and drank. Slaves working nearby eyed him enviously.

  “It’s for them as well,” she said. Edward gave the jug to the nearest black man. “I had no idea you’d be here.”

  “It isn’t my idea of soldiering. I want to fight.”

  The black men gulped water and let some splash over their chins and torsos. “Well, I hope you get your wish. The Negroes must go on doing what they’re told for the rest of their lives. You may better understand their situation now.”

  “I fear you’re preaching again, Joanna.”

  “And I will until I go to my grave. You have choices, Edward. They don’t, unless it’s a choice to give up and end it all in hopes of a better life in heaven.”

  He studied Esau Willing’s daughter, looking so fair in the morning light. Her figure was attractive, her brown eyes warmly appealing. But she put him off with her constant rant about slavery. He took black servitude for granted. It was part of the world in which he’d grown up, and he presumed it always would be, unless the damned British won the war and sanctimoniously abolished it.

  “I believe you should think more deeply about the whole matter, Edward. If you inherit Bell’s Bridge one day, perhaps you’ll tear down those hateful cages. Your father won’t. My father can’t understand why anyone would wish to.”

  “You find a great deal wrong with me, don’t you?”

  “On the contrary. I’ve always believed you have a mind worth changing. I held that opinion before you sailed off to London, when you were behaving like all the young idlers from wealthy families, wasteful of your time and of yourself. The horse races, the dramshops—”

  “Damn, Joanna. How long have you been watching me?”

  “Since we were children. Since the first time I saw you at the wharf. I think you were seven. You hid a hopping toad in your father’s desk.”

  “And got soundly thrashed for it. By God”—he shook his head vehemently—“you’re a strange woman.”

  “Too strong for you? Too outspoken?” It was half challenge, half regret. Or did he imagine that?

  Captain Hughston shouted from the top of the rampart. “Bell. You’ve stood on your shovel long enough.”

  One of the slaves returned the monkey jug with a shy smile. Joanna acknowledged it, nodded to Edward, and walked off to rejoin some other ladies.

  He wished he could like her more. Certainly she was comely, perfectly suitable to take to bed. She could be a convenient temporary antidote to Lydia. But as long as she treated him as she did, anything more than casual acquaintance was impossible.

  A moment later he scored himself for even entertaining such thoughts when Charleston was staring at catastrophe in the form of Sir Henry Clinton’s army.

  “But I’m only a private,” Edward protested when Earle Hughston invited him to an officers’ party at the home of Captain McQueen of the South Carolina 2d. The 2d was a line regiment with a distinguished record going back to the Cherokee Wars of 1759 and 1761. The regiment had fought valiantly at Fort Moultrie and again in last December’s failed assault on Savannah. There, Grenadier Sergeant Jasper, who’d saved Moultrie’s blue palmetto flag in ’76, carried the regiment’s red banner to the summit of an enemy redoubt, only to be fatally hit before the regiment was thrown back.

  “Don’t worry, I’ll promote you to lieutenant for the evening,” Hughston said. “One hunting shirt fits all ranks.”

  “I don’t understand your generosity.”

  “It’s obvious you’re misplaced here. At the party you might make a contact that would afford you a chance to fight. For that you’d tell a lie about your rank, wouldn’t you?”

  “I would, and a lot more. I’d walk through hell’s hot coals barefoot.”

  “Then it’s settled. Corner of Tradd and Orange Streets, half past seven.”

  About thirty officers gathered in the house of their host, Capt. Alexander McQueen. Edward immediately noted varied uniforms: brilliant crimson coats from the 2d Regiment; older coats of brown, the color decreed by Congress at the start of the war; coats of dark blue, the color adopted last year. There were several hunting shirts like his and Hughston’s.

  Captain McQueen was stiffly cordial when introduced to Edward. “Gentlemen,” he announced, “I present a comrade of Captain Hughston’s, from his militia company. Lieutenant Edward Bell.”

  “Relation to Tom Bell?” a bewigged major asked.

  “Yes, sir, his son.”

  The major pressed a bumper of hot spiced wine into Edward’s hand. “Drink up, sir, and welcome.”

  Two black servants kept the guests supplied with beer and wine and gin. Clay pipes filled the downstairs with a thick haze of aromatic smoke. A buffet of meats and cheeses was quickly depleted in the dining room, then replenished. The officers seemed to suffer no shortages.

  The party rolled on for an hour amid arguments over strategy and profane condemnations of the enemy, especially the dragoon Tarleton, who seemed to have acquired a Satanic reputation overnight. Edward drank freely without counting the rounds.

  At half past eight a new man arrived, greeted with cries of “Francis” and “Hand the colonel a drink.”

  “You know I take only a little, Alex,” the new man said. He was a short, swarthy fellow with lively black eyes, rigidly correct posture, and a neat uniform of white breeches and red jacket. He laid his black leather cap on a table piled high with similar ones. A silver crescent on the cap bore the words Liberty or Death.

  Edward found himself at the buffet table with the officer. The man seemed friendly, though far less boisterous than his fellows. Emboldened by what he’d drunk, Edward offered his hand. “If I may presume, sir. Edward Bell, Captain Hughston’s militia regiment. Lieutenant,” he added as a hasty afterthought.

  “Lieutenant Colonel Marion, sir. Second Carolina.” Edward knew him then—a bachelor soldier with a reputation for courage and superior tactical thinking. Marion’s people were Huguenots, Protestant refugees from France; Carolina was thick with them. The Marions had settled in the desolate swamps and forests of the Lower Santee. The
colonel was about fifty, Edward judged.

  Marion rested his hand on the pommel of his short infantry sword and looked Edward up and down. “Your father owns Bell’s Bridge?”

  “That’s correct, sir.”

  “An admirable patriot. How are you getting on in the army?”

  “At the moment I’m digging and hauling sand on the Ashley fortifications. It seems a poor contribution.”

  “You’d prefer field duty?”

  “I would. I’ve had no formal training—there’s no time for it, I’m told. But I’m a good horseman and a decent shot.”

  Marion pointed at Edward’s brimming cup. “Drinking is not something that contributes to a soldier’s effectiveness. The opposite, in fact. If you served with me, you’d be sober as a rock day and night, or you wouldn’t serve.”

  Captain McQueen shouted and clapped for attention. “Gentlemen, gentlemen, the meat of the evening. Toasts to our cause, and the downfall of King George, General Clinton, General Cornwallis—the whole bloody lot. Someone tell the niggers to bar the doors. We want no damned Tory sympathizers interfering.”

  Like most of the guests McQueen was barely able to stand. Marion seemed appalled by all the lurching and belching and breaking of wind. A servant shot the bolt of the front door. Marion frowned and put his cup of beer aside.

  “Lieutenant, you must excuse me. I am not here to drink myself into a stupor.” He marched out of the room.

  Earle Hughston climbed on a chair to propose the first toast. “Confusion to our enemies. Victory to our cause. Liberty to our land.” Nearly as much liquid spilled over chins and uniforms as found its way down the gullets of the drinkers. Edward didn’t see Marion anywhere. Had he somehow escaped from the locked house?

  When Edward met Captain Hughston next morning, both of them had bloodshot eyes and pounding headaches. “So you talked to the wrong man,” Hughston said after Edward told his story.

  “Quite. I had a drink in my hand. That finished me. What happened to Marion?”