“I don’t know. Join the militia. Give myself up for cannon fodder. Doesn’t make a hell of a lot of difference, does it?”
Tom sat silent, unable to find a useful answer.
4
Lydia’s Proposal
Two days later, lookouts climbed to the steeple of St. Michael’s to observe the British advance. Troops were moving northward on the west shore of the Ashley. Edward wrote a note to Lydia, saying he would call in the afternoon on a matter of utmost urgency. He sent it to Tradd Street with Pharaoh’s boy, another house slave, instructing him not to wait for a reply.
In Charleston the Glass family was older and more distinguished than the Bells, though it hadn’t started that way. Lydia’s great-grandfather had fled Barbados in 1698, under a cloud of cuckoldry and murder. Whether he was the seducer or the cuckold was never clear, but he’d killed a man.
South Carolina was a logical destination. For years Glass had imported Carolina pinewood to heat kettles that boiled the sugarcane on his plantation. Several wealthy Barbadians he knew had already emigrated to the colony to make a new start, and he followed them.
The Carolina Low Country had no sugarcane culture, but a culture of slavery was well established. Having sold his Barbadian holdings for capital, the new arrival financed traders who caught Indians in the highlands and marched them to the coast in coffles to be sold. It proved a lucrative business; Great-Grandfather Glass soon expanded into the importation of blacks from Africa.
Glass was one of the Goose Creek men, so called because they settled in that area north of the small city of some four thousand residents. The Goose Creek men were opportunistic and relatively lawless, buying and selling slaves and trading openly with the buccaneers who cruised the coast in the early years of the eighteenth century. Among their customers were Maj. Stede Bonnet, the famous “gentleman pirate,” and the mad Edward Teach, Blackbeard, who lit slow matches in his hair and beard to terrify his victims.
A faction loyal to the Lords Proprietors loathed the unsavory dealings of the Goose Creek men and constantly fought with them for control of the colonial legislature. As the pirates were caught and hanged, that trade declined. The town’s merchants and lawyers assumed greater control in the Commons House of Assembly. The old Barbadians were by then moderately wealthy, and important.
Those advantages aside, the Glass family was a virtual case book of tragedy. Lydia’s grandfather saw his wife and two daughters hauled away in dead carts, victims of Barbados fever.2
2Yellow fever
His second wife gave him one son, then a case of syphilis, and early death. Lydia’s father, Octavius Catullus Glass IV, had similar misfortunes. Although he traveled to Newport, Rhode Island, “the Carolina hospital,” to escape the pestilential summers, he lost two wives before a third lived long enough to bear three sons and a daughter. Only Lydia, born in 1759, survived to adulthood.
When she was ten, Lydia’s aging father unwisely rode one of his fast-blooded horses in a Jockey Club race. Though a superb equestrian, that day he couldn’t control his mount; he was thrown and paralyzed from the waist down. He retired to his house and never again left it. He saw only his daughter, his physician, his servants, and the lawyers who managed his affairs.
As expenses depleted his money and no more came in, he tried to maintain a position in the outside world by writing letters to the South Carolina Gazette. During the terrible smallpox epidemic of 1760, when Dr. Alexander Garden, a young Scot, successfully inoculated over three thousand residents, Glass wrote letters calling vaccination “interference with nature.” He wrote letters decrying Dr. Franklin’s electrical experiments as “meddlesome tinkering in heaven by an atheist.” He wrote letters excoriating the merchants, mechanics, and a few enlightened planters who led the town’s patriot faction. He called them “the herd,” and “low and ignorant hotheads and incendiaries.”
His letters on slavery were particularly wrathful. He considered “black treachery” a given and urged harsh treatment of slaves, warranted or not, to “deter the vile and criminous intentions of the inferior race.” He thought freedmen “a dangerous source of rebellious ideas.” Lydia grew up distrusting and fearing anyone with a dark skin.
Lydia lived in a fine three-story Georgian brick house on Tradd Street, a few steps west of Legare. Elias, the stoop-shouldered slave who admitted Edward, carried a candle. The afternoon was gloomy and showery. The flickering light picked out a star-shaped scar on the slave’s forehead. He’d been branded for attempting to run away; more of the elder Glass’s “deterrence.”
Edward shook rain off his broad-brimmed hat and handed it to Elias, who said, “I tell Miss Lydia you be waiting, Mist’ Edward.”
Edward paced the parlor, looking out to the wet garden. Soon he heard Lydia coming down, and not in a good mood. “Curse your nigger hide, Elias, hold the candle steady. Stop being so careless with fire or I’ll send you to the workhouse and you won’t stand up straight for a month.”
She swept in, blond hair tumbling over her shoulders. No ordinary or proper girl ever let her hair down in that risqué fashion, but Lydia reveled in not being orderly or proper. She was a beautiful, petite creature with delicate features and graceful hands. Small as she was, she’d somehow been blessed with disproportionately large breasts that rose full and ripe under her white sacque gown. Edward had seen those breasts several times when he’d bedded her.
“Darling,” she trilled, on tiptoe for his kiss on her cheek. She carried one of her collection of fashion babies, a twelve-inch porcelain doll outfitted in a detailed reproduction of a London gown several years out of date. No fashion babies had come into America since the war began, nor smart clothes of any kind.
“I was ever so surprised to learn that you’d left London.”
“I got word of the new British campaign. I felt I belonged here with my family. And you.”
She laid the fashion doll on one of the imitation Chippendale tables carved by Mr. Elfe of Broad Street, then settled herself and arranged her skirt. She seemed composed, though surely she knew what he wanted to discuss.
“Adrian told me about your plans,” Edward said. “You’ll forgive me if I don’t offer my good wishes. How could you do it, Lydia? You know I’ve never wanted anyone but you.”
“Wanting isn’t loving, Edward.”
“Words. A lawyer’s quibble.”
“No. If you’ll only stop pacing like a tomcat, I’ll explain.” He took a chair.
“I want to marry Adrian because I’ll be secure with him. Marrying into the Bell family will be a useful alliance. I’ll inherit money of my own, but there’s less every day. Father doesn’t care much for your father, but he knows Tom Bell is well off.”
Edward shook his head. “We had such marvelous times together. I always assumed we’d be married.”
With a little shrug she said, “Assumptions are dangerous. You never asked for my hand. Too little too late, isn’t that the phrase?” When he turned red, she spoke less sharply. “Dear Edward. Let’s not quarrel. You must hear me out.” She patted the cushion beside her.
As he sat down, he smelled the faintly scented warmth of her face and throat. When she cupped his right hand in both of hers, his body reacted strongly.
“Yes, I made a decision to marry your brother, but it’s you that I love.”
“Then how in God’s name—” She stopped his lips with her perfumed fingers.
“Let me finish. I’ve loved you forever, even in your wildest days—all the carousing and gambling, racing horses and consorting with sluts in Roper’s Alley. I knew about ‘the dissolute Mr. Edward Bell.’ So did half the town. I’m sure your behavior was one reason your father sent you to London. It’s also why I decided you’d never settle down as a proper husband. But I don’t want or need you as a proper husband. I want you as a lover.”
Astounded, he sat motionless as she continued. “I recall a letter in the Gazette some years ago. Not one of father’s screeds, a letter with g
enuine wit. The writer said Charleston women make very agreeable companions but very expensive wives.” She brought her mouth close to his. “You can have the pleasure without the cost. After I marry Adrian, there’s no reason you and I can’t enjoy an arrangement.”
She kissed him with her moist lips and tongue, bringing his left hand up to her right breast, large and soft above the rigid stays under her clothes. She tickled his ear with her index finger.
“You would like that, wouldn’t you?”
He jumped up, red faced. “You’re asking me to cuckold Adrian? By God, I may be a lowlife in everyone’s estimation, but I’m not that low.”
“Oh, you’re being silly. Prudish.”
“He’s my brother, for Christ’s sake.” Lydia shot a worried look upward, as though the crippled man hiding in his gloomy lair might hear. “What you suggest is preposterous and wrong.”
Her underskirts rustled as she rose. Her own anger seemed to give her height, rob her of softness. “You’re refusing me?”
“I would refuse any woman who proposed such a thing.”
She rushed at him, little fists battering his shoulders. “I’m not any woman. I’m not.” On her toes, she ground her mouth on his, her tongue licking and probing. He felt her hair against his cheek. A kind of delirium briefly weakened his resolve. “I’m not,” she repeated in a whisper.
He drew back. “We should end this conversation.” In the foyer he called for his hat. Behind him Lydia spoke.
“You’d better not walk out.”
He turned back, looked her in the eye. “That’s exactly what I intend. I know you’re accustomed to getting whatever you want, but this time you’ll have to accept failure.”
Tears rushed into her eyes. “You don’t mean it.”
“I do, absolutely.”
“You bastard.” She snatched up her fashion doll and hurled it. He ducked; the doll broke the window. The porcelain head shattered, pieces falling into the palmettos below. He’d seen this destructive streak in Lydia before.
She ran past him, shoving him aside. She darted down the passage leading to the pantry, bumping into Elias, who had his hat. “Elias, Goddamn you, there’s broken glass in the parlor and the garden, clean it up.”
She didn’t look back. Edward took his hat and let himself out. He wanted to tell Adrian of her perfidy but he didn’t dislike his brother enough to do that, ever.
Workmen on scaffolds painted St. Michael’s steeple black, presuming that would make it a more difficult target for artillery. The British squadron sat off the bar, waiting. Hoping to obstruct their passage, Commodore Whipple sank his ships in the Cooper River across from the Exchange, behind a boom of logs and chains.
Governor John Rutledge was given the virtual authority of a military dictator. Christopher Gadsden, the newly appointed lieutenant governor, told Tom Bell that Carolina militia would not come to Charleston’s aid because the British were spreading rumors of a smallpox epidemic.
On March 29 the first British units crossed the Ashley River in shallow-draft boats. They landed at Bee’s Ferry and marched down the Neck. Three days later, April 1, they broke ground for a siege line half a mile in front of the Charleston works. The noose was in place around the victim’s neck.
5
To Malvern
At supper that evening Tom Bell said, “I want you to bring your mother to the city.” There was an unspoken understanding from the past: when circumstances were unusual, or physical hardship called for, Tom Bell looked to his younger son.
“Gladly,” Edward said.
“I may have waited too long. A man who came down the Cooper last night told me that partisans led by William Lark sacked and burned Pertwee’s store two days ago.”
“William Lark?”
“A jackleg Tory. More interested in plunder than principle, I expect. I knocked heads with his father, Ladimer, years ago, when Trott had me driving pine logs from the forest to the wharf.”
“Poorly’s at Malvern,” Edward reminded him.
“Bring him back if you wish. He’s yours.”
“What about the rest of the Negroes?”
“They may go or stay, as they feel necessary. If they leave, I’ll buy others. They’ll probably be safer remaining with the house, but I won’t coerce them.” Edward admired his father for that.
“You’ll have to cross the water to Hog Island,” Tom continued. “It’s the only route left open. I’ll have someone row you over before daylight.”
“It isn’t necessary. I can handle the boat alone. I’d like to say something more about London, sir.”
“That’s done with. I spoke my piece. If you feel any animosity, turn it on the damned king’s men.”
Edward started forward to hug his father. This time Tom permitted a robust embrace. When they separated, Edward thought, Strike me dead. What’s that misting his eyes?
He armed himself with a ten-inch sheath knife with a deer antler handle and, in black leather holsters, a brace of fine London-bought blunderbuss pistols, each with a spring bayonet under the barrel. He left from Bell’s Bridge while the stars still shone. He rowed hard, feeling only mildly queasy about the open water.
The direct journey up the Neck to Malvern was about eleven miles, easily accomplished on horseback. But the British works blocked that route. He rowed to Hog Island and from there followed the shore up to the Wando River and Daniel’s Island, where he beached his boat, rested, and ate a hard biscuit. Then he pushed off again.
His arms burned with the pain of steady exertion, but he didn’t slacken. He spent the night in his boat in a broad creek on the north side of Daniel’s Island. Before dawn, badly bitten by insects while he dozed, he shipped his oars and continued on to the Cooper’s western bank. There he found a waterman mending nets on a flimsy pier. He arranged for the man to be at the same spot in twenty-four hours, with a larger boat.
He passed by a familiar crossroads; ashes and black timbers were all that remained of Pertwee’s store. He passed several small plantations, then a bigger one with a fenced pasture where a dozen horses grazed. Four were big handsome Chickasaws, the rest marsh tackies, the little horses common in the sea islands and Low Country. What they lacked in beauty they more than made up for in strength and heart.
The horses belonged to Henry Wando, a neighbor but not a friend of Tom and Eliza Bell. Wando was a self-aggrandizing loyalist who lost no opportunity to boast of his affection for the king. The partisans had left his house, barn, and outbuildings untouched.
He trudged on, following a dirt track that wound through dim cloisters of old live oaks, to Malvern. Tom Bell had bought 150 acres for his summer home but took only ten for personal use. The rest he leased to a firm of Amsterdam Jews with an office in Charleston. They grew and sold indigo, a crop initially brought from the Leeward Islands in the 1740s. When Edward emerged from the trees, he walked between fields where slaves were preparing the ground; next month they would sow seeds gathered in last year’s harvest.
All the windows of the two-story cypress house were open to catch whatever breeze might stir on this balmy March morning. Near some outbuildings that effectively blocked any glimpse of Malvern’s slave cabins, Edward sat on the ground to remove a pebble from his boot. A sound of hammering stopped. Someone hailed him from the carpentry shed.
“Mr. Edward?”
“Poorly.” One boot still off, he jumped up, waved. The black man ran to him, tossed down a claw hammer from the shop, gripped Edward’s shoulders in his big hands, grinning.
“My friend.”
“You’re not surprised to see me?” Edward spoke in Gullah, the lilting black patois that allowed slaves, or friends, to talk with a degree of privacy.
“Your papa sent a message to your mother. Everybody knows you’re back.”
“How are you?”
“Just now this child is lovely, splendid.” Poorly was literate, with a fine vocabulary; Eliza had taught him, at Edward’s request. He was a handsome Gam
bian, blue-black, six feet tall and thin as a pole. Sawdust speckled his hair and the sleeves of his white drill blouse. He was the same age as Adrian, five years older than Edward.
While he lived, Poorly’s father had been a master carpenter, hired out to others by his white master. He had helped floor the bell tower at St. Michael’s. Tom Bell bought young Poorly from the father, to be a body servant and playmate for his two boys. He was called Daniel then. He had frequent spells of sickness; someone in the Bell household started calling him Poorly, and the name stuck.
Young Adrian had taken great pleasure in ordering Poorly about, forcing him to imitate the sounds of animals for hours, or stand on his head until he fell over. Occasionally he whipped Poorly with a willow wand. Out of disgust and sympathy Edward was kinder, and a strong friendship developed. When Adrian matured and launched out on his own, he had other slaves to order about; he didn’t object to Poorly remaining with Edward. Sometimes Edward felt the black man was a better brother than his real one.
“You’re lovely, and splendid, even with the redcoats knocking at the city gate?”
“Yes, I am a happy man with a beautiful wife.”
“I heard you jumped the broom. I’m eager to meet the lucky lady.”
“She’s in the cookhouse.”
As they walked, Edward said, “I’m taking mother back to Charleston tomorrow. Father’s orders. You’re welcome to come along. Your wife too.”
“May do that,” Poorly said soberly. “There’s king’s men in the neighborhood. Burned Pertwee’s at the crossroads.”
“I saw it. What’s in the house in the way of weapons?”
“Two old muskets.”
“Give them to men you consider reliable.”
“Big Walter, the field driver. His cousin, Sam.”
“Make sure they have plenty of powder and ball.”
At the cookhouse door Poorly said, “You want to put guns in the hands of slaves? People won’t like that.”