by Cat Lindler
The night before the siege began, Ford steered Dancer through the American camp, which had settled in an old field behind Wright’s Bluff. He tethered his horse outside Marion’s tent and ducked through the open flap to report to duty.
“Captain Ford,” Marion said with evident delight. He stood and extended his hand. Ford clasped it firmly. “'Tis heartening to see you keeping well, Captain. We despaired of your recovery. But now that you are hearty and hale again, I have great need of you. My men are few, as seems to be the case lately, and every able-bodied man is a boon.”
Ford occupied a chair at Marion’s direction. “You could not keep me away, sir. In fact, Plato shackled me to the bedpost to keep me from the war this long.”
Marion glanced past Ford’s shoulder toward the tent opening. “And where is our talented Negro gentleman? Did he accompany you? We could put his medicinal skills to good use.”
Ford leaned back and steepled his hands on his chest. “I sent him to Willowbend to watch over Miss Bellingham.”
Marion’s brows lifted. “Then you and Miss Bellingham have resolved your differences?”
Ford smiled with tolerant amusement at Marion’s obvious interest in his officer’s love life. The general remained unmarried at forty-nine years of age, though gossip suggested he had a tendre for a cousin. “Not quite. Plato explained the reasons behind the trap she set for you and her part in my escape from Georgetown. He also mentioned I had some rather harsh words for her during my rescue. I trust she did not take my ravings to heart. To be perfectly truthful, I recollect naught from that night. I had been having hallucinations and may have seen someone else in my delirium. In any event, I managed to tame my pique at her penchant for placing herself in dangerous situations. I sent Plato home as I felt she was in need of protection.”
Marion’s lips slanted downward, revealing his personal fondness for Willa. “Do you judge her to be in some peril?”
“You mean other than from her own rash exploits?” Ford released a short laugh. “Not precisely. My action is driven by an uneasiness I seem unable to shake. She keeps constant company with Major Thomas Digby and her stepmother, Marlene Bellingham. Neither have any cause to feel affection for her. Quite the opposite, in fact. And I lately have come to the belief those two had a hand in Colonel Bellingham’s demise.”
Marion half-rose from behind the desk and placed his hands on the surface. “Have you proof of murder?”
Memories dribbled back of a conversation Ford overhead and a mention of poison. He pressed the fingertips of one hand to his temple as if to make the image clearer. “Not precisely, simply a vague recollection.” He dropped his hand to his lap. “'Twas more likely a figment of my imagination. Still, my reconciliation with the impetuous Miss Bellingham will have to wait until the war no longer requires my services.”
“Then we must end this war quickly, Captain,” Marion said with a wry smile as he sat back down, “so you may resume your courtship of the lady.”
The commander of Fort Watson, Lieutenant James McKay, had supplied well for a siege, with large stocks of food and ammunition. All he lacked were cannon, as Colonel Watson had confiscated the fort’s two artillery pieces for his pursuit of the Swamp Fox. But McKay’s men, with an abundance of muskets, managed to meet the attackers’ fire shot for shot. General Marion was in need of a strategy other than direct assault to overtake the fort. The defenders had stout walls to hide behind and more ammunition than the patriot army.
The fort drew its water from Scott’s Lake, and Marion cut off its supply by sending sharpshooters down to guard the lake. The snipers sat out of range of the enemy’s muskets and dared the fort’s defenders to come out for water. Undaunted, McKay set his men to digging a well inside the fort. They hit water three days later.
With no field artillery and despairing of success, Marion summoned a conference of his officers. “We cannot capture the fort by storm,” he told the assembled men. “We lack cannon, and our men see their companions wounded and killed in forays resulting in no visible damage to the fort defenders. Further actions will only give rise to more desertions. Should we be unable to devise another plan, I’m inclined to end the siege rather than tie up our troops in a fruitless effort when we can use them more effectively elsewhere.”
Ford bent forward, resting his elbows on his knees and lacing his hands beneath his chin. “If I may make a suggestion, General? Perhaps we could steal a trick or two from ancient history.”
Marion, Harry Lee, and the other officers looked at Ford keenly.
He cleared his throat and straightened his back, uncomfortably aware he had become the center of attention, and the fate of the siege may well rest on his scarred shoulders. “Were we to build a siege tower, as soldiers did in biblical times, and construct it higher than the log walls, our sharpshooters should be able to fire into the fort.”
An expression of hope and excitement, the first seen in days, blossomed on Marion’s face. “Capital idea. To take the bull by the horns rather than sit here and rot of inactivity.” He sprang to his feet and threw out orders, directing the officers to dispatch their men to the neighboring plantations in search of pine saplings. Then he turned to Ford. “Take charge of this operation, Captain, since it was your inspiration,” he said. “Oversee the tower’s construction and choose the men to occupy it.” He rubbed his hands together. “By damn, I like this idea.”
Ford met the men when they arrived with the cut pine saplings and led them to a site within rifle range but beyond reach of the fort’s muskets. They worked into the night, dumping the poles, chopping, lifting, and forming them into an oblong tower. When the construction reached a point higher than the fort’s ramparts, Ford commissioned them to build a floor and reinforce the front with a shield of cut logs. As dawn broke, he selected McCottry’s Rifles, the best of the sharpshooters, to climb up into the tower and train their guns on the fort.
Daylight illuminated the fields, lake, and old Indian mound, and McKay found himself staring down snipers’ rifle barrels. Musket balls could not reach the log structure, while the sharpshooters’ bullets whistled straight and true into the fort. Pinned down, the defenders crawled on their bellies to evade the snipers. The remainder of Marion’s and Colonel Lee’s men advanced from outside to tear down the log walls. McKay hoisted the white flag when he caught sight of a sea of armed patriots ready to storm through the breach.
The taking of Fort Watson was the first patriot victory over a British entrenchment in South Carolina. Ford hoped it signaled the beginning of the end.
Willa awoke with her head spinning and her stomach cramping. She leaned over the side of the bed and fumbled around for the chamber pot, barely managing to find it before she vomited. She fell back drained. No sickness had plagued her pregnancy until this morning. Jwana told her she was fortunate. Most women suffered from nausea every morning for the first few months. Another cramp seized her, causing her to lunge for the pot again. Willa was on her knees beside the bed and heaving in violent spasms by the time Jwana entered an hour later.
“Dis ain’t right,” Jwana muttered as she ran to Willa’s side and held back her hair.
“Not right?” Willa uttered between wrenching bouts. Then her stomach seemed to calm. She crawled back into bed with Jwana’s help but began to shiver uncontrollably. Jwana pulled the covers up to Willa’s chin.
“How long you been like dis?” Jwana asked, worry clouding her eyes.
“Not more than an hour. What do you mean by saying this is not right?” Her teeth chattered as she spoke. “Am I losing my baby?”
Jwana shook her head and sat on the side of the bed. “No, chil'. I ain’t be thinkin’ so. But de sickness ain’t be comin’ dis late. You be a good four months gone.” A question formed on her face. “You eat somethin’ dat ain’t be agreein’ wid you?”
Lassitude and melancholia washed over Willa, making it challenging to think. “Not that I recall. I had little appetite last night and requested a tray of
bread and tea.” As small tremors twitched through her shoulders and arms, something, some memory, prowled at the edge of her mind. Though she knew it held great importance, she could not quite grasp it.
“Maybe you jes’ be catchin’ de ague,” Jwana said, smoothing a hand over Willa’s forehead. “Lot’s be goin’ ‘round, wot wid de war an’ all,” she said in a soothing voice. “You jes’ rest, an’ when you be wakin’ up, I be havin’ a nice broth ready fer you.”
Willa’s eyelids drifted closed. She heard Jwana rise and walk over to the table by the fireplace. China clinked as the maid lifted and replaced the teapot lid. Then Jwana left, the tray of empty dinner dishes rattling in her hands.
Willa surfaced from a restless sleep hours later. A headache pounded against the side of her skull. Nausea coiled and tightened around her vitals. She could scarcely move her heavy limbs. Jwana’s words came back; something was wrong. Then that hovering memory slunk out into the light.
She tried to call for help but could only whisper. Her hand slid out from under the covers, and she struggled to raise it to the bedside table. Her fingertips caught on a crystal vase of cut spring flowers. By concentrating all her waning energy on the vase, she inched it forward until it fell off the table.
Her door burst open a few moments later, and Jwana hurried in. The maid’s shoes crunched on the crystal rubble littering the floor.
“I … I could not call you,” Willa mumbled. She clutched Jwana’s wrist in a limp grip. “I remembered.”
The maid’s brows lowered; her lips thinned. “'Membered wot?” Jwana eased down on the bed and picked up Willa’s hand to tuck it back beneath the covers.
“The bottle,” Willa whispered. Jwana leaned down to hear her words. “The laudanum.”
“Tell me ‘bout de bottle.”
“By Papa’s bed. Poisoned him.” Her eyelids drifted down, and she pushed out the words. “Hid it.”
Jwana gripped Willa’s shoulders and gave her a gentle shake. Willa slowly opened her eyes again. “Where?” Jwana asked. “Where you done hid it? I ain’t be helpin’ you lessen I knows wot be in you.”
Willa looked off to the side, toward the chest-on-chest. “There,” she said on a breath of a sigh. “Drawer. Third one down. Underneath. Latch in the back corner. Papa made it.”
Jwana jumped up and ran to the chest. Three drawers down. She yanked out the drawer, dumped out the contents, and ran her fingers along the inside edge, feeling for the latch. There it was, as Willa had said. She pushed it to one side, and the bottom of the drawer came loose. Lifting it out, she rummaged through the pressed flowers, diaries, and other girlhood treasures. She found the bottle beneath an embroidered lace handkerchief and beside Willa’s journal. Small, dark amber glass, half-full of liquid. She pulled the stopper, took a whiff, and smelled the miasma of poison but could not identify the substance.
“Lordy, Lordy,” she lamented. She scrambled to Willa’s side, the bottle clutched in her hand, and tucked in the covers about the shivering girl once more. “I has ta go, Willa, an’ find out wot dat wicked stepmother ‘a yourn done give you. You jes hang on, an’ I be comin’ back soon’s I kin.”
With her eyes pressed closed and her body trembling, Willa nodded almost imperceptibly.
Jwana gave her one last worried look and rushed out. She first found Quinn and informed him of the situation in terse words.
His expression hardened into steel. “I shall guard her with my life,” he said and made his way to the staircase. “That witch will not get by me.” Lifting an oak walking stick from the brass stand at the foot of the stairs, he brandished it like a sword and stalked up the treads, all stiff poise and indignant fury.
Jwana snatched a shawl from the hall rack and bustled from the house, breaking into a trot as she neared the stable. “Plato,” she called out when she entered the dusky interior. He popped his head around the edge of a stall on the far side where he was treating a horse for a cut on its hock.
“Saddle a horse dat be carryin’ us both,” she rattled off. “We got business in de swamp. An’ move dat black ass’a yourn. We ain’t got but a li’l time ‘fore ma girl dies.”
They rocketed out of the stable within five minutes, Plato in the saddle, Jwana astride behind and clinging to his waist like a burr.
Chapter 32
Mathia practiced her arts from a shack beside Socastee Swamp and looked nothing like a witch. Rather, she was young and plump with a bushy head of hair framing her face in a cloud of soft, tangled black wool. Every slave and planter from Charles Town to the North Carolina border knew her. She supplied love potions to passion-stricken swains, and gris-gris, powerful spells to extract revenge. Young girls sought her out for abortifacients to rid themselves of unwanted babies. But mostly she mixed up healing potions from the swamp plants for every ailment from broken hearts to malaria.
Mathia looked up from tending her garden when a horse thundered into the weedy yard fronting her cabin. She recognized Jwana and Plato and smiled at the two familiar faces. Her smile thinned when she noticed the bottle clutched in Jwana’s hand and the frightened expression on the woman’s coffee face.
Despite the aura of doom emanating from the two visitors, she strode forward and spread her arms. “Welcome, Sister Jwana an’ Brother Plato. How kin Mathia help you dis beautiful spring day?” She gestured at the bright sunshine and the green leaves spurting forth on the tree branches.
“Tell me wot be in dis bottle an’ if’n I kin fix it,” Jwana said as she thrust the bottle toward Mathia.
“Hmmm,” Mathia murmured. She removed the cork and took a deep breath of the fumes, then dipped in a finger and touched it to her tongue. She spat it out on the ground. “Dis person be ‘portant ta you?”
Jwana dipped her head. “Mighty ‘portant.”
Mathia sighed and handed back the bottle. “Den I be givin’ you sorrow. De poison be white snakeroot. It be very powerful. I give it only fer de poisonin’a rats. Dere be no cure.” She tightened her lips. “De yellow-haired woman give it ta yur frien'?”
“Yes,” Jwana said bitterly. “May de Lord damn her soul.”
“She come ta me a long time ago. Says she has rats in de pantry. I warn her’a de snakeroot an’ try ta sell her somethin’ less powerful. But she be firm. She want de snakeroot bad.”
“What kin I do?” Jwana cried as she wrung her hands. Plato rested an arm across her shoulders, his face drawn in anguish.
“It be hard,” Mathia answered. “But if’n yur frien’ don’ get too much, maybe you kin help.”
“Jes tell me wot ta do. Ma frien’ done got a baby in her belly.”
Mathia tapped a plump finger against the side of her jaw. “Dat harder. You can’ do not’in’ but try. How long since dis gal done took de poison?”
“Las’ night, I be thinkin'.”
Mathia smiled. “Dat be good. Not too long. Maybe still a chance. Give mustard in water ta empty de stomach. It make her awful sick, but you be makin’ her swallow it.” She hesitated and held up a finger. “Wait here.” She ran into her shack and came back with a clear bottle of brown fluid. “Boiled dis up from black locust bark dat don’ grow ‘round here. Dis come from a Injun frien’ in Nor’ Car’lina. Mighty powerful fer cleanin’ out de bowels. Give it in tea. Den feed small bits’a powdered charcoal. It be callin’ ta de poison in her body an’ swallow it up. Do wot I be tellin’ you fer three days. Keep her still so’s de poison don’ take ta runnin’ through de blood. No food, but you see she be drinkin’ lots’a water. Den jes’ chicken broth fer a week if she still be livin'.”
“Bless you,” Jwana said through her tears.
Mathia waved a dismissive hand. “Go now. Sooner you start, sooner yur frien’ be well. Don’ be knowin’ ‘bout de baby. Maybe it be okay—maybe not.”
Jwana dosed Willa that night and for the next three days. Willa moaned and writhed with the pain in her throat, belly, and bowels from the powerful purgatives. Jwana beseeched God, praying each
night on her knees beside the girl’s bed for Willa’s life and that of her child.
Willa survived the ordeal and the baby remained firmly attached to her womb, though she became weaker and weaker as the purges sapped her energy. Jwana made a rich chicken broth on the fourth day and spoon-fed her patient. Another two weeks passed before Willa recovered enough to tolerate solid food, but then she grew stronger day by day. As time passed and Willa failed to miscarry or come down with fever, Jwana’s hopes rose for the continued health of both her charges.
Marlene made attempts to gain access to Willa’s bedchamber several times during her stepdaughter’s illness. Quinn and Plato took turns guarding Willa’s door and barred Marlene’s way. Even when the woman insisted she had a legal right to see to Willa’s welfare, a motherly expression carefully arranged on her face, they turned her away. She went so far as to call in the doctor from Georgetown, who insisted Willa be bled. He, too, was refused admittance amidst much sputtering from the thick lips in his red, muttonchop whiskers.
As May burst into a full, glorious spring, Willa arose from her bed and dressed. With Jwana, Plato, and Quinn beside her, the bottle of poisoned laudanum in her pocket, she searched the house for Marlene, but the woman seemed to have vanished. At long last, Willa glanced out the study window to spot the flash of a silk skirt in the sunlight bearing down on the gazebo. She marched outside with her grim group of supporters following her.
Major Digby sat on the upholstered bench in the gazebo while Marlene paced the wood floor. The major eyed the visitors, his mouth tightening a bit as he spread his arms out along the top rail, lounged back, and rested an ankle on his opposite knee.
