The Lost Quilter (28 page)

The South Carolinians were bombarding Fort Sumter, and
as far as Joanna could see, no Union ships were speeding to the rescue.

On other rooftops throughout the city, others gathered, watching the fierce spectacle. For hours every other fort in the harbor unleashed its fury upon the starving men holed up in Fort Sumter, but not a single shot came from the Battery. More than two hours had passed since the shot that had awakened Joanna, about two and a half hours of constant cannon fire. At daybreak, Anderson’s men struck back, but Joanna could see they were no match for their attackers.

“Not Fort Moultrie. Not Fort Moultrie,” Miss Evangeline murmured, clutching her hands together as if in prayer.

Joanna knew at once that the colonel was there. “Maybe you should go back down,” she said. If Fort Moultrie were reduced to rubble, Joanna would not grieve for her dead master, but she didn’t believe Miss Evangeline ought to be there to see it.

But the young mistress refused to go. She did agree to let Joanna return inside and bring her food and drink, but she kept her gaze fixed on the distant harbor even as she broke her fast. Joanna remained with her, since she had not been given permission to leave. By midday the mists had lifted and Joanna could easily make out three dark shapes off the bay, warships from the North, but they remained out of range of the cannon fire, their captains unwilling or unable to bring relief to Anderson’s men.

On and on the fighting continued, but it was late afternoon before Joanna could persuade Miss Evangeline to come back into the house. The mistress sat in the parlor brooding, unfinished knitting on her lap. Once she sent George to her aunt’s house for news, but when he returned, he reported only that three Union warships sat out in the harbor, Fort Moultrie seemed undamaged, and Fort Sumter was being hit hard.

The colonel did not return all that day.

The next morning Miss Evangeline was determined to take the carriage to the Battery, but Joanna managed to talk her out of it, for her unborn child’s sake. Thus they did not witness the firebombs explode in Fort Sumter and set it aflame, nor were they among the thousands who stood watching and waiting for the three Union ships to enter the harbor and join in the battle. The ships never moved.

Miss Evangeline learned all this from rumors that flew through the streets of Charleston after the cannons subsided, rumors confirmed when Colonel Harper finally returned home, filthy, exhausted, triumphant, on the same day Major Anderson surrendered. Miss Evangeline waved off Asa—who was just as weary and bedraggled as the colonel, having endured the same harrowing firefight as the man he served—and tugged off her husband’s boots herself, then removed his soiled uniform while Joanna drew him a bath. As he washed off the filth of battle, the colonel recounted the formal evacuation of Fort Sumter, how Anderson and his men had been allowed to withdraw honorably to one of the Union ships sitting in the bay. His voice rang with pride and Miss Evangeline exclaimed in admiration over every detail. Later Abner drove the couple to the Battery, where—as the coachman reported later—South Carolinian buckra of every age and social station, men and women alike, took to boats and filled the harbor to see for themselves the destruction wrought on the former stronghold, to exclaim over the piles of debris that had once been the fort’s upper story, to study the traces of cannon shot on the parapet, to marvel at the smoking ruin.

It’s begun,
Joanna thought wearily as she went about the duties neglected during the young mistress’s vigil. It was impossible to guess how it would end.

The buckra of Charleston reveled in their glorious victory. Miss Evangeline threw party after party, even as her husband cautioned her that they must now prepare to settle down to the hard business of war. This time his predictions proved true. Soon after Anderson’s surrender, Union warships blockaded the harbor, immediately shutting down the transport of goods and food in and out of the city. Often Joanna found the shelves of the mistress’s favorite shops empty of the items she had been instructed to purchase, and she was forced to search from street to street until she found what was needed rather than return to Harper Hall, basket empty, punishment certain.

Military camps formed throughout the city; slaves were put to work setting up cannons and barricades and fortifications. Once a pair of soldiers with accents Joanna did not recognize detained her outside the fish market and ordered her to return with them to their encampment to work at the battalion’s laundry.

“My mistress expect me home,” she gasped as the taller of the two seized her upper arm in an iron grip, nearly lifting her from the ground. “She don’t hire me out. I got a pass in my apron pocket.”

The soldier grinned, baring yellow teeth. “I’m sure your mistress won’t mind you serving the defense of her city.”

Joanna struggled and protested, but the pass fell from her pocket and fluttered into an open sewer as the soldier pushed her stumbling along to one of the many encampments that had sprung up along the edge of the city. There the armed soldiers forced her to join three other slave women in bright headscarves toiling over large kettles set upon the fire. Each of the others wore a small, hexagonal copper badge pinned to her blouse with the
name of her master and a license number, showing that they had been hired legally. None of the other soldiers milling about with guns slung over their shoulders seemed to notice or care that Joanna had no badge. She was colored, so she would do.

Joanna’s eyes darted around the encampment as she stirred lye into a bubbling kettle. She knew she could not sneak away yet, not with so many eyes upon her, so she worked without complaint alongside the other women, waiting for the soldiers to relax their guard. As soon as they did, she would flee.

Before an opportunity came, Abner and George arrived. A familiar wagon pulled to a hasty stop just beyond the last row of tents, and while Abner held the horses steady, George leaped down from the back and quickly approached a group of soldiers polishing their boots not far from the working women. “That there girl needed at home, suh,” George said deferentially, handing one of the soldiers a folded paper.

“That there wench is busy, boy,” drawled the solider, but he unfolded the paper and read it, frowning. Then his glance darted to Joanna, who feigned obedient disinterest as she hung shirts on the clothesline. “You mean to say she’s Colonel Harper’s wench?”

“Yes, suh, and Mrs. Harper needs her right now. She say if you don’t let her come home right this minute, I’m to find Marse Colonel and—”

“No, no, that’s all right. You, there. Girl,” he snapped to Joanna. “Collect your wages for your mistress and get home. Thank her for her trouble and be sure to tell her we treated you fair. Can you remember that? You a sensible wench?”

Joanna looked at the ground and bobbed a nod, silent. A few minutes later, she was sitting in the back of the wagon beside George, coins jingling in her pocket, heart in her throat. “How
did you know?” she managed to ask as the encampment disappeared behind them. If they had not come after her, if they had not found her—

“Missus Ames’s Jenny saw you picked up by them soldiers. Missus Harper go into a fine fury when she get the news.” George shook his head. “I thought you smarter than that, girl. The missus plenty mad you go off with them soldiers.”

“I didn’t go off with them! They drag me along all the way from the fish market. Jenny don’t see that?”

“You shoulda got away. I hear you know how to run.”

“They had my arm,” Joanna said, but she knew it would do no good. Miss Evangeline was sure to blame her just the same.

Sure enough, before Joanna could slink in through the back door, Miss Evangeline met her outside and slapped her twice across the face, so hard that Joanna knew her palm stung almost as badly as Joanna’s scarred cheek. “Your duty is to this household,” the young mistress snapped. “If the soldiers need your services so badly, they should consult your master. You are never to go off without my permission ever again, even to serve the Confederacy, is that understood?”

“Yes, Missus Harper,” Joanna mumbled, eyes downcast to conceal her anger.

“Take care you remember that.” Miss Evangeline’s blue eyes narrowed. “If you should fail me, I’ll sell your baby and that girl Hannah so quickly it will take your breath away. Do I need to rid you of all distractions so that you’ll remember your duties, or can your sorry little nigger mind carry more than two thoughts simultaneously?”

Joanna’s heart burned, anger and fear searing her chest. “I can carry as many thoughts as you need me to, missus.”

Miss Evangeline put her head to one side and regarded Joanna
through narrowed eyes, suddenly calm. “That was a very good answer. Get inside. There’s mending waiting in your basket.”

Joanna obeyed, closing her fist around the coins in her pocket so the mistress would not hear them jingle.

Miss Evangeline did not let Joanna leave the house for two weeks, but eventually necessity overcame her resolve and she sent Joanna out to the market for a spool of thread and a packet of needles. On her way home, a man in a long brown coat stopped her and asked to see her badge. “I ain’t got no badge, suh,” she said, showing him Miss Evangeline’s handwritten pass, praying he would not order her to some other task. “My master don’t hire me out.”

He studied the pass. “You belong to Colonel Harper?”

I belong to myself
was her first thought, and then,
I belong to Titus.
And to Ruthie, and to Frederick so far away but never forgotten. And to Hannah.
I am my beloved’s and my beloved is mine.
“Yes, suh.”

He folded the pass and scrutinized her face, his gaze lingering as everyone’s did on her scar. Then, to her relief, he handed her the pass and waved her on her way.

She saw the man again at the market a few days later; he gave her a tiny nod and looked away before she could drop her glance. Later that same week, she could have sworn he followed her as she went from street to street searching for the items Miss Evangeline had requested. The Union blockade led by the fearsome warship
Niagara
had successfully prevented ships from entering the Charleston port, and though a few swift blockade runners had managed to elude capture and bring in some supplies, the markets were all but depleted of their usual goods. But the brown-coated
man did not demand to see her pass, nor did he speak to her again. He must have some official position in the city, she decided. A secret policeman, or a patroller. Nearly every other able-bodied buckra man his age in Charleston wore the uniform of one militia or another. He did not, so he must serve the Confederacy in another fashion.

With the blockade in force, Fort Sumter taken, and Charleston under siege, Harper Hall became a sort of military compound, with messengers running back and forth with sealed letters and officers gathering at all hours to meet in the colonel’s study. Joanna and the other slaves were constantly in motion, scrambling to attend to their usual duties as well as the extra work the unexpected guests required. With so many buckra eyes and ears around, Joanna had to abandon Hannah’s reading lessons. The girl silently continued on her own, studying the letters on a sack of flour, peering at the cover of a book left open on a chair. Sometimes Joanna had to whisper a warning that she must take care not to seem too interested in the written word, and Hannah would gaze steadily up at Joanna, silent but sure, as if to say that she, of all people, knew the danger.

Summer settled in, and the blockade continued. As Miss Evangeline neared her time, she wrote reams of letters to her father at Oak Grove, to friends scattered on plantations around the low country, to her aunt Lucretia a few short blocks away. Joanna dressed the mistress’s hair, listened to her complaints, and prepared the Harper baby’s layette, wishing she could fashion the soft, gentle fabrics into clothing for her own children. Hannah had outgrown her best dress long ago, and Ruthie grew so quickly Joanna had to make over her dress nearly twice a month. But whenever she asked the mistress for fabric, Miss Evangeline would shake her head and make vague excuses about the difficul
ties of obtaining goods because of the blockade. Joanna, who had seen the bales of cotton piled up on the wharf for the lack of ships to carry them away, knew that Marse Chester surely had stores of his own going to waste. Surely some could be spared for Joanna’s girls and all the Harpers’ slaves. Joanna was willing to learn to weave homespun to clothe the entire household. But when Joanna hesitantly suggested this, Miss Evangeline merely sighed, interlaced her fingers over her rounded abdomen, and said she would ask her father.

One day Joanna was sewing in the back room off the kitchen when she heard the rattle of a familiar wagon—Marse Chester’s wagon. “Titus,” she murmured. Leaping to her feet, she ran outside only to find an unfamiliar slave driving Marse Chester’s wagon up to the carriage house.

“Where Titus at?” she cried, clutching her sewing so tightly that a needle pierced the fleshy base of her thumb. “Why didn’t he come?”

“Titus sick,” the man said, climbing down from the seat as Abner and the stable boys came to help him unload the wagon. “Yellow fever hit the quarter hard. His sister die yesterday. His auntie, two days before that.”

Dizzy, Joanna slumped to the ground. “Pearl?” she said faintly. “The children?”

“They still all right when I left.” The man peered at her quizzically, then drew back, chagrined. “You that yellow girl, Titus’s woman.”

Joanna nodded.

“Titus strong,” the man said quickly, too quickly. “He prolly be sound by time I get back. You want me carry him a message?”

“Tell him I love him.” Joanna’s heart seemed to splinter in her chest, cutting her to the quick as the shards fell apart. Tavia. Aun
tie Bess. Titus, her beloved Titus. “Tell him he got to get better, for me and for Ruthie. Tell him to keep breathin’.”

The man nodded, his eyes full of sympathy that offered Joanna no comfort.