Celia Garth: A Novel (44 page)

Perhaps it did, but his temper hurt worse. Balfour could not take away knowledge of Kings Mountain from the Charleston rebels, but he could punish them for knowing. A squad of redcoats knocked at the door of the house on Meeting Street and told Burton that he was under arrest and would be shipped to St. Augustine. At the same time, other squads of redcoats were at the doors of some twenty-odd other prominent men who had not taken the king’s oath, telling them that they also would be shipped to St. Augustine. The men were marched through the streets and hustled aboard a British ship in the harbor. Two days later the ship sailed.

The next time Celia saw Darren, he told her that Cruden had confiscated Burton’s plantation and sold it for almost nothing to a deserving Tory. Cruden had not taken the Meeting Street house, possibly because it was not grand enough to be tempting. So Elise and her children still had a home, and Godfrey would see to it that they did not lack anything they needed.

There were now sixty exiles in St. Augustine, all of them leading men of South Carolina who had refused to take the king’s oath. At first Celia was distressed that Burton had to be one of them. But as she thought it over she felt sure that he was not distressed about himself. Burton was a yes-or-no man; he was simply not capable of leading a double life, as Godfrey was doing now. Burton had always tried to do the right thing, and this time he had no doubt about what the right thing was. He had the approval of the best people. As long as he had this, Burton would not be miserable.

After Kings Mountain, Balfour tried to keep Charleston shut up tighter than ever. But as long as food had to come in, he could not keep out all the rebel news, nor even all the rebels themselves. So it happened that on a Sunday morning shortly after breakfast, the maid came to tell Celia that Mr. Darren Bernard had called, and wanted her to walk with him to the tea-shop.

When they reached the tea-shop they found Godfrey and Ida already there. Mrs. Westcott told them Luke had slipped in last night from a fishing-boat. She said he had a grand tale to tell.

She led them down to the muffled room, where Luke had just finished a breakfast of hominy and fresh mackerel and hot buttered raisin rolls. Beside him on the table stood Vivian’s hourglass and a lighted candle. Mrs. Westcott took the tray and went upstairs, while the others gathered around Luke to hear his story. Luke strode up and down, talking with big vivid gestures that made the little room seem even smaller than it was.

He was talking about General Marion. Yes, general now, he said, no longer colonel. From his hiding-place in North Carolina, Governor Rutledge had sent couriers to both Sumter and Marion, bringing them commissions as brigadier-generals.

“Here in the Carolina Lowcountry,” said Luke, “we swamp-dodgers have been making pests of ourselves. We pop out of the swamp, we attack, we disappear. Tarleton hollers that we ‘won’t fight like gentlemen.’ I suppose he’s right. Tarleton went to Oxford, and most of us are not gentlemen in his sense of the word. Quite a few of us can’t read Latin. To tell the truth, quite a few of us can’t read English. But every man of us can shoot the eye out of a squirrel at the top of a pine tree.”

Luke’s eye caught Celia’s, and he grinned. Thrusting his hands into his pockets he said to her, “The swamp-dodgers have a proverb. They say, ‘A Carolina fightin’ man, sir, owns all the ground within shootin’ distance of where he stands.’ And that’s just about the way it is.” Celia laughed, and Luke went on.

“Well, as you know, Cornwallis left Camden and started north to meet the troops Clinton was sending south. But the word had gone out—delay him, make the going hard. His men were sniped at from behind the fences. Boys and girls went out with hatchets and chopped up the road signs, or sometimes turned them around so the men went miles in the wrong direction and had to march back and start over.

“They had trouble getting food. In that country above Camden, Tarleton and Wemyss had been busy in ways you already know about. People who still had corn, or meat animals, burned the corn and killed and buried the animals, to keep Cornwallis from getting them. And behind him, we were attacking the wagon trains that were bringing supplies for his men.

“Then those heroes in the Upcountry won their victory at Kings Mountain. When that happened, Cornwallis had been on the march a month and he had gone only fifteen miles past the South Carolina border. He brought his army back as fast as he could.

“When he got settled in camp he had still more reports on Marion’s men. He decided Marion had to be captured. He sent an order to Tarleton.

“Tarleton was aching for glory. He’s ambitious and extravagant and he has a pile of gambling debts. When Cornwallis told him to get Marion, he was delighted.

“I don’t know where Tarleton was when he got the order. But the main body of his legion was at Camden. He was in such a hurry to get after Marion that he wouldn’t wait for the legion—he sent them word that he was riding toward the Santee River and they were to catch up with him. He set out with a few horsemen and rode toward Nelson’s Ferry.

“Marion got word from his informers—don’t ask me who they were, I don’t know. They told him Tarleton had set out with a small escort. We had about five hundred men, and Marion figured that if we could meet Tarleton before his legion caught up with him, we could make him prisoner. So we got orders to ride toward Nelson’s Ferry.

“We rode hard. The night of November tenth—it was a Friday, I’ll never forget it—we had had a long day’s ride and were mighty glad when Marion told us to halt. We were in a grove near a plantation owned by a rebel officer named Richardson.

“While we were making camp, Marion saw a glow on the sky over toward the Richardson place. He told a guard to see what was on fire. Pretty soon the man came back with Colonel Richardson—he’d been home sick and was barely strong enough to walk.

“Colonel Richardson said Tarleton’s men must have caught up with him some time during that day. He said Tarleton and the whole force had come riding down the road toward his place not long before dark. They were looking for Marion, but when Tarleton saw a rich-looking country house ripe for looting, he couldn’t resist it.

“The men stormed through, helping themselves to whatever they wanted. They even dug up the dead body of Colonel Richardson’s father, to see if anything worth stealing had been buried in his grave. When they had taken as much as they could carry they started the fires. The glare of the burning was what Marion had seen on the sky.

“Now that Tarleton had his legion with him, Colonel Richardson said we were outnumbered two or three to one, and also they had brought along a pair of cannon. We’ve got no field-pieces. And what was most heartbreaking—Colonel Richardson said we had an Arnold right along with us. One of our men had deserted to Tarleton and had told him where we were camped that night.

“There just one thing for us to do. We had to move fast.

“So we did. We went through a swamp the like of which I hope I never have to go through again in the black slimy dark of a night in November. Six miles of it that night, and we’d already had a hard day. We sloshed on till we had passed a mill-dam on a little branch called Jack’s Creek—that’s around the bend of the Santee, upstream from Nelson’s Ferry.

“But Marion knew exactly what he was doing. At the end of that six miles, he had put a bad swamp and a millpond between us and Tarleton. We had come to some big trees on high dry ground. He let us stop here, to eat whatever we had in our saddlebags—mostly cold roasted sweet potatoes—and fall down for some sleep.”

Luke let out a tired-sounding sigh, as if remembering his own exhaustion after that night’s escape. He went on.

“Tarleton sent some fellows to spy out our campsite. They came back and reported that we weren’t there any more.

“They didn’t have any trouble seeing which way we had gone. We had had to move in such a hurry that we had left a clear trail. Tarleton ordered his men to their horses and they set out after us.

“Marion expected Tarleton to follow. We were sleeping like pigs, but it seemed like no time at all before he was waking us up. I had time to eat half a sweet potato while my horse got some grass, and that was all before we were moving again.

“Marion led us. It was broad daylight now, but under the trees where we were there was hardly enough sun to make shadows. Just that green swamp twilight. Do you know that country?—cypress trees hung with moss like gray curtains, vines thick as tree-trunks growing from tree to tree, swamp-water black from the cypress drippings. All around us birds and butterflies and a million flying things biting our faces and getting into our eyes, and little animals scurrying under the brush and sometimes an alligator in the water. Everything teeming with life, and yet there’s a silence—I don’t know why. The noises get lost.

“We went on and on, splashing through water or picking our way along the ridges, our horses so tired they could hardly move, ourselves slapping and scratching and sweating and shivering and too tired even to complain. Marion was leading us northeast, toward the Black River. We rode, we stopped and cut the way through, we mounted again and kept riding. We had no stops to eat or sleep. You munched what you had, as you rode. When you couldn’t stay awake any longer you fell out for some sleep. When a man fell out nobody waited for him. The rest kept going, and he had to catch up when he could.

“We rode to the river. Then we rode downstream.

“Tarleton was right behind us. Every now and then Marion would tell one of us to climb a tree, and wait there to see what could be seen, and come down and catch up and report. So we knew. Marion was moving so fast that some of our men couldn’t keep up. They straggled at a distance, following our trail. Tarleton was so close that his foremost men were making prisoners of our hindmost.

“Some of the men didn’t want to keep moving. Miles Rand, and other men who had had experiences like his. They wanted a battle. They wanted to get at Tarleton right now, tear him to pieces. But Marion kept his head, like always. He expected a battle, but he wanted to choose the place.

“And he had chosen it—I know that country pretty well, and it was plain where he was leading us. Benbow’s Ferry. Ten miles above Kingstree. Right there, the swamp meets the river, then there’s some safe high ground. It’s the only spot for miles where you can cross the river safely. Once we got there, we could turn and make a stand on the high ground, and we would have command of the crossing. Since we had to meet a force so much larger than ours, at least there we would have a fighting chance.

“We had left Richardson’s place on a Friday night, and now it was Sunday. For a while we’d been riding along fairly dry ground. Now we came to another bog, about ten miles above Benbow’s Ferry. Folks thereabouts call it Ox Swamp. It’s a mess of mud. Wide and miry, trees growing thick in the water.

“Marion sent for me, and several other fellows who had been with him long enough to be well trained in his ways. He told us he could lead the men around the swamp, but it would take longer. He was going to lead them straight through.

“He wanted us to stay behind, to see if Tarleton went through the swamp or around it. As soon as we made sure, we were to catch up and report, so he could know how much time he had to set up his defenses. He was leaving several of us as lookouts so if one man was caught, or two, there would still be the chance that another man would get through.

“So he left us. We each chose a tree, and climbed up and waited.

“It was bright sunshiny fall weather. I had picked a big tree with moss hanging around me like a tent. Before long, I saw Tarleton’s Legion. And Tarleton.

“They were an impressive lot. Tired as we were and spattered with mud, but still a great array. Fine men, fine horses, fine weapons.

“And a fine leader. Tarleton’s a good-looking man, green coat and white breeches and knee-high boots, and on his head a tall hat with black plumes—a shako, they call it.

“They were coming over the dry ground where we had crossed a little while before. They were riding right in our tracks, Tarleton at the head of them. And there I sat in the tree, almost scared to breathe, waiting to see which way he would lead them.

“They came near. As the ground got softer the men slowed down. Tarleton rode up to where the bad mire set in. He reined his horse, looked around. The leaders of his troop rode up. They all looked at that mess in front of them.

“Tarleton knew Marion’s men had just been there. If Marion could get past the swamp, Tarleton could get past it too.

“The men were waiting for orders. Up in those trees, we were waiting. Tarleton rode a few yards in one direction, then in the other, and back again. Then all of a sudden he stopped with a sort of disgusted snort, he wheeled his horse and shouted his order. He said,

“‘Go back! We can find that gamecock Sumter, but as for this damned swamp fox, the devil himself couldn’t catch him.’”

Luke stopped. His hearers burst out laughing.

“Swamp fox!” said Godfrey.

“Swamp fox!” said Celia.

They all said it, merrily, with appreciation. Celia was thinking that while she had never expected to thank Tarleton for anything, she did thank him for inventing so apt a name. Marion the Swamp Fox.

“And he really turned back?” she said. “So close!”

Luke smiled and shrugged. “He did. I saw him. He quit, and rode up toward Camden to look for General Sumter.”

Godfrey gave an exclamation. The sand had run out. It was time for church. He and Ida had been so dutiful about attending and affecting to join in the prayers for the king, that they did not want to stay away now. Ida drew her cloak around her, laughing softly as she said, “And today we really have something to thank the Lord for.”

They went out, and Luke told Darren to bring some pens and paper. Tarleton’s unsuccessful chase of Marion had been noised all over the country outside Charleston, and now, to spread the story in town, Luke said he would write a summary that could be quickly read. Darren and Celia would make several copies, and Darren would take these around to other friends of Marion who would make more. Tonight—or rather, early tomorrow morning—all these copies would be posted on walls and fences about town. They would be put up by people whose business took them out before dawn: a fisherman going to his boat, a doctor on the way to a patient; an old woman who kept hens, delivering eggs for breakfast.