Charleston (23 page)

Few people were abroad north of Boundary Street, but to the south lanterns and brandished torches spoke of a large, possibly volatile crowd. Henry called softly, “Best we go another way. Let's ease over to Anson Street.”

Despite Hamnet's caution about walking separately, he took her hand. She shivered pleasurably. When he broke into a trot she kept pace. The rising moon limned his forehead and strong chin.

They jogged from Anson over to Church. Odors of garbage and fish and human ordure swirled around them. No one bothered them on the desolate streets. All the hul
labaloo seemed to be in the direction of Meeting and King. Above the roof peaks the sky had a hazy copper cast.

St. Michael's bells pealed again. They listened. “Another fire,” Henry decided. “Sounds big this time.”

 

On Liberty Street west of King a rickety two-story house was burning. Edgar and two friends were among the first to reach it. They'd been mingling with the crowd in Meeting Street, trying to spot Nullies rounding up illegal voters. Apart from glares and occasional shouted obscenities prompted by their white armbands, they weren't molested, perhaps because all three were well known: Edgar; gray-eyed James Petigru, attorney of St. Michael's Alley; and Morris Marburg, the rosy-faced banker. He carried a truncheon.

Edgar was the conservative and retiring one. Petigru, who mesmerized juries with his theatrics and a yellow silk handkerchief he waved about during his arguments, was the most liberal and outspoken. Where Petigru preferred simplicity, seldom throwing legalistic Latin at his listeners, Marburg liked to display his erudition by lacing his speech with Latin and German.

In front of the burning house a man lay facedown on the paving stones. A black pool spread under his nose and mouth. Edgar crouched beside him.

“Dead.”

“Drunken sod fell out the second-story window,” a man near the front door said. He called into the house, “Hurry up, 'less you want to roast alive.” Lit by flames devouring the interior, several vagrants in various stages of inebriation stumbled to safety.

“Found one of their whiskey houses, I think,” Marburg said.

St. Michael's bells clanged and clanged. The crowd grew. Edgar and his friends drew back from the heat of the blaze. A fire warden came running from St. Philip Street. “Clear away, clear away.” Behind him members of a volunteer company pulled a pumper and a two-wheeled hose cart. Other men brought ladders and
hooks. Edgar heard a cry familiar to every Charlestonian who'd lived through a fire: “Throw down your buckets. We need your buckets in the street.”

Fortunately it was a calm evening, with no wind to drive the fire across rooftops and spread it. Men positioned themselves at the treadles of the pumper while others unreeled hose. A Charleston fireman took risks—a careless client of Edgar's had lost three fingers when a treadle caught and crushed his hand.

“We can't save her, lads. Use the hooks,” the fire warden ordered. Firemen flung two lines to the roof peak; iron hooks caught, dug in. Half a dozen men on each line braced themselves and heaved. A hole in the roof opened; flames shot out. As soon as the roof was off, the walls would be pulled down. Then the pumper and bucket brigade could do their work. Edgar watched intently, failing to notice a man in a dirty black coat and floppy wool hat. The man's left eye resembled milky glass. A bent pin held a grimy blue rosette to his lapel. He worked his way through the crowd, his good eye fixed on Edgar.

 

At the intersection of Church and Market, Alex paused. Light came from a burning building several blocks west. Behind her, hidden by darkness, Henry said, “Go on across.”

In the middle of the intersection her shawl dropped off her shoulders. She turned back for it, right in the path of three men striding from the direction of East Bay. They were young dandies, wearing tall hats with blue cockades. All three were drunk as sinners on Saturday night.

She snatched up the shawl but before she could run, one of the three sprang at her, snared her wrist. “Boys, what's this?” Alex smelled rum.

“Looks like a bit of Unionist cunny, Herbert,” one of his companions said. “Look at the shawl.” Oh, Lord—she'd completely forgotten the colors of the factions when she put on the ivory shawl.

Herbert sniffed. “Not much titty on her, but she'll do. Where do we take her?”

Alex lunged backward, hair flying in her face. She couldn't get free. Herbert yanked her arm, sending fierce pain up to her shoulder. Henry walked out of the dark. In the glare of the distant fire his skin looked like oiled brass.

“Gentlemen, I ask you kindly. Please let my mistress go.”

“You're her property, are you, boy?” said the third one, a beaky chap with a silver-headed cane. “Let's see your pass.”

Alex said, “Why does he need a pass? He's with me.”

“So you'd best let her go,” Henry said.

The beaky one sneered. “Say, here's a brave nigger. Suppose we cut off his balls. He won't be so brave then.”

Henry whistled at Alex.
“The one who's holding you, kick him. Between his legs.”

“What are you saying, you damn baboon?” Herbert yelled. He didn't understand Gullah. Alex sank her teeth into Herbert's wrist. “Christ on the cross,” he screamed, letting go.

She lifted her skirts, brought her left knee into his groin as hard as she could. He fell and she stomped him in the same place.

The beaky boy raised his cane and ran at Henry. Henry stuck out his foot and tripped him. The boy's feet flew up behind him; he seemed to swim in the air until he fell, landing with a horrendous crack: the sound of a jaw breaking.

Henry ripped the cane from his assailant's hand as the other dandies rushed him. Henry swung the cane like a club, hitting the temple of the nearest attacker. A second blow laid him on his back.

Alex peered down Market Street. The fight had attracted attention; men were moving toward them. “Bell's Bridge,” she exclaimed.

“I know the way. Follow me.”

Half a block east they darted into a narrow passage. She stumbled over a cat that spat and clawed her ankle. Henry booted the cat away, threw his leg over a board fence. She
fell twice before she scaled the fence on the third try. The effort ripped her skirt and drove splinters into her hand.

They dashed through a courtyard strewn with refuse, then more alleys, emerging behind a vendue block, empty and strangely forbidding in the moonlight. The passage beyond it led to the broad avenue along the Cooper.

“Is there a watchman?” Henry said.

“He inspects about once an hour. The rest of the time he sits in a grogshop.” The enormity of what Henry had done was sinking in.

 

The front wall of the house had been hooked down into glowing rubble. A stream of water poured from the hose clamped on top of the pumper. Six men worked the treadles, three on a side. The foreman set the rhythm, chanting, “Up, down, fire out, up, down, fire out.”

It was Marburg who spied the man with the milky eye sliding up next to Edgar. He reached past Edgar to jab the ruffian with his truncheon. “Stand away, you lout.” The man's hand flew from under his filthy coat. Marburg pushed Edgar, too late. The tip of the knife tore Edgar's coat and cut his arm.

Jim Petigru reached for the assailant's neck. The knife flickered; a thin bracelet of blood appeared on Petigru's wrist. Marburg brought the truncheon down on the man's forearm. The knife dropped. The man turned and shoved through bystanders while Marburg shouted, “Hold that fellow.” No one did. The night was mad with noise: St. Michael's bells, the pumper foreman's chant, the burning house hissing and crackling as water poured on it.

Petigru said, “Shall we chase him, Morris?”

“No, let him go. Edgar's hurt.”

Edgar clutched Marburg's burly arm, blood leaking through the rip in his coat. He didn't want to faint. That was what he wanted most, not to faint.

 

They scanned Bell's Bridge from the other side of East Bay, making sure the watchman was away. Alex left Henry
at the small office, ran through the maze of stacked cargo to the slippery stairs where the skiff was tied. A nail under the top step held a key. She hurried back to the office, opened the padlock and undid the chain.

Inside, she shot the bolt, slid the flannel curtain back. The moon gave them light. They were both sweating. “They almost had us. All because I picked the wrong shawl.”

“Where is it?”

Her mouth formed an O. “I don't know. I must have left it. Doesn't matter. We're safe, you saved us.” She rested her cheek against his chest, listening to his heartbeat. Henry put his arm around her.

She realized their compromising position, raised her face to his. The moon reflected in his eyes. Through her skirt and petticoats she felt his maleness. “Still need to get you home,” he said.

Over a rushing in her ears she heard herself saying words she couldn't have imagined an hour ago. “Not yet.” She slid her arms around his neck and kissed him.

“Oh, God, Alex, we shouldn't—”

“Be still. Lie down on the floor. I want this. I've never wanted anything as much. It's new to me, we'll have to go slowly.”

Silent a moment, he answered her with a long, sibilant sigh. Then, “We will.” He pulled her down beside him.

 

When it was over, they lay twined around each other, half dressed, heedless of the hard boards under them. He brushed at hair on her damp forehead. “That was sweet. Sweetest thing ever happened to me. I love you, Miss Alex Bell. I love you so much. Been scared to say it before. Never thought I would.”

“Don't talk,” she whispered, kissing his chin. A delicious lassitude enfolded her. After the first sharp discomfort she'd slipped into a rhythm, found sensation of a kind she'd never experienced, or even imagined. At the end her whole body had shuddered with pleasure. So had his.

“Got to talk. What we did here is a crime.”

“No, Henry. Never.”

“In Charleston it is. What'll happen to us?”

“Nothing,” she said, though she was far from sure. “We'll go on as we are.”

“Can't go on like that. Everything's changed. First time in my life, holding you, I wish I was a white man.”

In Charleston the Honorable Crittenden Lark declared his intention not to stand for reelection. His four years in Washington had been uncomfortable and unsatisfying. He despised the moralizing Yankees who patronized Southerners and continually sniped at them over slavery. He knew they looked down on him personally for his lack of education.

He'd lost favor with the Vice President by befriending the vivacious Peggy Eaton. When he whispered a lewd suggestion to her at one of her levees, she showed him her back. That was the last he saw of her.

Anticipating a crisis when nullification became law, he couched his resignation in patriotic terms. “I take my stand with Carolina.” In truth he wanted out of Washington because he couldn't make as much money illegally as he'd anticipated. Crittenden Lark's guiding principle was to make more money, no matter how much he already had.

Lark lived in a spacious house on George Street, in what had once been the suburb of Ansonborough. On Wednesday after the statewide balloting he tottered home at 9:00
A.M.
His linen was in disarray; he smelled like a whiskey vat. He found Sophie at the dining-room table with her ge
nealogical materials: leather-bound books, pencils, pens, an inkhorn, a large parchment sheet bearing a family tree marred by strikeouts and alterations. Sophie dressed fastidiously every day, as though expecting some social leader to pay a call. None ever did.

Bending, he kissed her brow. She fanned herself rapidly, her perennial gesture to show disapproval of his drinking. “I didn't fall asleep till nearly three. I was beside myself when you didn't come home.” As he did not many a night.

“Dearest”—he belched—“I stayed to watch them count votes.” Actually he'd been tupping a sixteen-year-old whore in her crib in Roper's Alley.

Sophie fluttered her pale hands over her work. “I've had the most marvelous idea. Suppose Grandfather See went to London when he was a young man.”

“Your grandfather raised pigs, like your father.”

“But suppose. What if he'd enrolled at the Inns of Court like so many Carolina boys from good families.” She opened a book. “This list says Mr. Edward Rutledge entered the Middle Temple in 1767. Mr. Rutledge, who went to the Continental Congress and signed the Declaration. What if he and Grandfather shared rooms and became fast friends?”

“Jesus,” Lark moaned, pressing his throbbing head. “Would you care to tell me how you'd prove the existence of such a friendship?”

“Don't you know someone who could write a letter?”

“A letter?” he repeated, dumbfounded.

“A selection of letters would be better. Written by grandfather to his friend, reminiscing about good times together in London.”

“You are proposing to hire some forger to create documents that look sixty years old? Suppose you could. How in God's name would you explain their magical removal from the Rutledge family to your hands?” Tears welled in her eyes. “Do you think this sort of idiocy will do a whit of good, Sophie? Our status in Charleston was permanently established when I married into a family mired in pig shit.”

“Oh, God, you can be so vile.”

“Truthful. The only thing that buys an ounce of respectability in this town is money.” He slapped the back of his right hand into the palm of his left. “
Money.
Christ. I wish you could feel this headache you caused.”

He turned to go. Sophie sniffled and wiped her nose. “I forgot something. A message came for you yesterday.”

“Who from?”

“I surely don't know, I didn't presume to read it. Bess kept it in the kitchen.”

The cook produced the wrinkled paper from a drawer. Lark spread it between his thumbs, read the crooked handwriting:

FAILED

He crushed the paper in his fist. He kicked the stove door open and threw the paper into the flames, leaving the cook to close the stove after he stomped out.

He mastered his rage by reminding himself that it accomplished nothing. He would make another attempt at Edgar Bell at the appropriate time. He would make a hundred attempts, a thousand, until one succeeded.

 

Like figures in a painting the four sat in amber light flooding Edgar's library and office on South Battery. Hamnet Strong sat beside his son, opposite Edgar and Judge Porcher.

Edgar wore no coat. Cassandra had cut off the left sleeve of his shirt at the shoulder. A sling protected his bandaged wound. The knife-wielding attacker hadn't been caught, nor could anyone identify him.

It was Wednesday after the election. The Charleston Unionists had made a stronger showing than expected. A coalition of professional men and East Bay merchants had brought them within a hundred votes of victory in the city districts.

Henry's expression was not defiant, but neither did it express humility or remorse. He clasped his hands between his knees as Judge Porcher spoke to him.

“In reference to your defense of Alexandra we greatly admire your intent, though we regret the results. You say you recognized none of your assailants?”

“No, Your Honor.”

“Nor did she?”

“That's correct, Your Honor.”

“You brought Alexandra directly home after you escaped them?”

“We hid for a while before we came here.”

“I trust you realize your predicament,” Judge Porcher said. “If those men identify you, there may well be a reprisal.” Hamnet laid his hand on his son's knee. “If it can't be accomplished by legal means, they'll find another way. For that reason I have made a proposal to Edgar.”

“What is it, Judge?” Hamnet said.

“My brother Orlando owns a rice plantation near Beaufort. Henry will go there and spend the next year working for him. He will not be a slave, though for his own protection he will have the status of one. He will draw no wages, but he will be well cared for. Orlando is a good master. After one year a return to Charleston can be considered.”

Hamnet was pleased. “He can come into the shop then. As my apprentice.”

“I believe it's a prudent plan,” Edgar said to Henry. “You were brave to defend Alexandra, but that bravery, unfortunately, carries a high price.”

“Because I'm a nigger.”

“Please eschew that vulgar word in my presence,” Judge Porcher said. “You are a free person of color.”

“Hell of a lot of difference it seems to make.” Hamnet glared at his son. Henry went on, “Your Honor, I have a job, at the Charleston Theater.”

“They'll be notified,” Hamnet said. “You took ill suddenly.”

“When would I have to go to Beaufort?”

“As soon as Mr. Strong can arrange it,” the judge said. “You should travel at night. You'll be given an appropriate pass.”

“I'd like to say good-bye to Miss Bell.”

Edgar immediately said, “No, that isn't wise. She will be told.” He'd prevailed on Cassandra to take Alex out for tea with a friend. She'd been given no hint of the meeting.

Henry reacted badly to Edgar's refusal. He scowled at his hands, gathered his thoughts, then said, “I don't think I want—”

“Enough,” Hamnet Strong said, holding Henry's knee. “Thank you, Mr. Bell. Thank you, Judge. We will leave now.”

“The back way, please,” Edgar said.

Henry slipped out of Charleston on Friday night. That same evening Edgar informed Alex. She broke down, wailing and storming. “He saved me and this is how you treat him?” Edgar couldn't deal with it. He called Cassandra and turned his distraught daughter over to her.

 

Gibbes Bell and his crony, Archibald Lescock III, galloped their fine horses through sun and shade on a dirt road near Prosperity Hall. They stopped to water the animals at a crossroads store. Lescock put a heavy linen handkerchief to his beaky nose, blew, then used the linen to wipe sweat on his cheeks. He'd been telling his friend about the fight in town on Monday.

Gibbes cupped water from the trough, poured it over his forehead. “You didn't recognize the girl?”

“I thought I might have seen her somewhere but I wasn't sure. It was dark. Her hair was blowing in her face. The nigger I'll remember till eternity. He can hide in some hole, but not forever. When I catch him, I'll kill the black son of a bitch.”

Gibbes smiled approval. “Shall we ride on? Mother's waiting dinner.”

 

Candidates favoring nullification carried the state by eight thousand votes. They took nearly three fourths of the seats in the new Senate, four fifths in the House. Two weeks after the election they convened a special session of
the legislature to call a Nullification Convention in Columbia on November 24. The convention passed an ordinance declaring the tariffs of 1828 and 1832 null and void; it would be unlawful to collect Federal duties in South Carolina after February 1 next.

The ordinance also established a loyalty oath. At the pleasure of the legislators, state officeholders would be required to swear to enforce nullification. The calculated result would be resignation of Unionist officials who could not in conscience take the oath. Thus the state government would be purged of potential enemies.

Before the convention adjourned, Senator Hayne was nominated to succeed Hamilton as governor. Hayne resigned his seat in Washington, pledging to “maintain the sovereignty of South Carolina or perish in its ruins.” Calhoun, all pretense of cooperation with Jackson gone, resigned the vice presidency and was named to succeed Hayne in the U.S. Senate.

Jackson did not sit idly by. In December he issued his own nullification proclamation, declaring South Carolina's actions treasonous and stating that interference with Federal law would be met by force. He sent Gen. Winfield Scott, a hero of the War of 1812, to take command in the state. Federal revenue cutters appeared on the coast. Detachments of Federal troops arrived to reinforce Fort Moultrie and Castle Pinckney in the harbor. In the city civilians began to arm for war.