by Gwen Bristow
As if I hadn’t been counting too, thought Celia. Aloud she said, “And we won’t have to live at your house with Miles and those strange officers. I can stay right here, and when you get leave we can be alone together, with Marietta and Amos to take care of us.”
“And I love you,” Jimmy said softly, “more than—”
There was a pounding at the front door and a man shouted Jimmy’s name.
“Time’s up,” said Jimmy. He kissed her again quickly, and opened the door. Before she could say good-by he had whisked down the steps and away.
Celia called Marietta. They went out to the back yard, and using garden-spades they filled four buckets with loose earth. Each of them took a bucket to her room and they put the others on the staircase landings. Celia was not at all sure this was necessary. Not only was this house built of brick with a slate roof, but so were the houses on both sides and most of the others near by. In its early days Charleston had had several disastrous fires, so now most people built with brick, using as little wood as possible. But she wanted to do everything Jimmy had ordered. If he had scolded her for staying in town she would have been hurt and defiant, but after what he had said she was glowing with happiness. Now she knew she was necessary to him. Nobody had ever really needed her before.
That night the town was as quiet as if the British were back on the other side of the ocean where they belonged. The next day was Sunday, but Celia did not try to go to church. About mid-morning she heard the guns, but the firing was off-and-on and when she looked from the roof she saw that only a few shells were coming over the earthworks into town. Most of them were just burying themselves in the earthworks, sending up great explosions of dirt. But now she saw that not all the British missiles were exploding shells. Some of them were real balls of fire. She could see them blazing their way through the air. So this was what Jimmy had foreseen. Brick walls or not, if those things hit wooden posts and shutters they could make plenty of trouble. Celia went in and began to look for more buckets.
Again that night the guns were fairly quiet, but at dawn Monday they started again. All morning they boomed. The air was sultry, and acrid with smoke. Celia and Marietta carried blankets down to the cellar. Built with heavy brick walls and iron air-gratings at sidewalk level, the cellar was dim and dismal. It was not dirty, for Vivian kept house the way she did everything else, by demanding perfection of other people; but it was not inviting. Celia and Marietta agreed that they would not spend any time here unless things got really dangerous. When they had also brought down two chairs, and a covered jar of water and two cups, they went up to get their dinner.
While Marietta put on the rice to cook Celia went out to the garden to cut mustard greens. To her surprise, the guns had fallen silent. The smell of smoke had nearly all blown away, and she could hear birds twittering. From over the wall where Godfrey’s Bernard’s back yard touched this one, she heard him call to her, and she went to the gate.
Godfrey, who was out most of the time directing the storage of food supplies for the garrison, had been surprised to see that she had not left town with Burton. He made no protest, however; Celia got the impression that he had too much on his mind to care what anybody did. She asked him why the guns had stopped. He told her Sir Henry Clinton had sent a formal demand for surrender, and the guns would stay quiet until an answer was received.
“Surrender!” Celia exclaimed. “We’re not going to surrender, are we?”
“Of course not,” said Godfrey. “It’s just a formality.” He smiled a little, but it was a wry smile, almost mocking. Godfrey’s face was lined with fatigue. He pushed his handkerchief across his forehead. “This crazy weather!” he burst out. “We haven’t had an April heat-wave like this in twenty years.”
As he walked off Celia looked after him with a frown. Usually so jaunty, today Godfrey was troubled. His comment on the weather had been spoken with a fury hardly justified by a few days of merely uncomfortable heat. There was such a lot she did not understand.
Monday night was silent, hot, and sticky. When she came down Tuesday morning Celia told Marietta they could do very well with a cold dinner. Just cornbread and cheese, and a salad. After breakfast she went out to gather salad greens.
The lettuces grew in neat crisp rows. Celia stooped to pull up one of the heads. As her hand touched it she heard a long screaming whistle in the air. An object flashed by her and struck the ground between her and the stable, with such force that it shook the ground in ripples like those made by a stone thrown into water.
It had happened so suddenly that Celia had hardly moved. Now she heard the air full of screaming whistles, and thuds of things falling, and cries of panic. There was a tremendous noise as the thing in the garden exploded. The earth around it rose up like water from a fountain; the earth under Celia’s feet seemed to rise and strike her, and her face went down into the lettuce bed.
Her fall was so violent that the breath was knocked clean out of her chest. Struggling for air, she breathed in nothing much but grains of dirt. Choking and coughing, she managed to push herself up with her hands. For a moment the stable and trees and garden walls swung around her. Gradually as her head cleared she wiped her eyes on her sleeve and spit out the dirt in her mouth. She heard more whistling noises, and more sounds of people screaming and running in the street, and she saw more things flying in the air above her. She heard guns roaring from every direction, and now she knew what had happened. The rebels had refused to surrender and the attack had really begun.
The shell had made a hole five or six feet across, but falling in the grassy space between garden and stable it had done no harm. The near edge of the hole was about twenty feet ahead of her. Celia felt herself tremble as she thought, “If I had been standing there instead of here, I would be dead now.”
But she was not dead. Again, as on the night of that other bombardment, she had a sense of triumph. She rubbed her arm, grimy with garden soil, and the feel of her fingers on her healthy skin gave her a delicious pleasure. The guns were yelling and smashing as if they would split her ears. And she had thought the other attack was noisy! It seemed to her that until this minute she had never heard a real noise in her life.
But she was not as panicky as she had been that night. Jimmy had told her to take refuge in the cellar. As she turned toward the house she saw Marietta, just getting her own wits in order, running toward the back steps. Celia went to join her and they fled together down the cellar stairs.
Here in the musty dark they could hear the guns crashing, and through the street-gratings they could see running feet and hear screams—whether of pain or fright they could not tell. Before long Celia felt that her nerves were being torn to strings. For all she knew, half the town might be blown to pieces by now. Staying in the cellar was like being buried alive.
“Marietta!” she said sharply.
Marietta stood peering out of a sidewalk grating. She wheeled around. “Yes ma’am?”
“Let’s go up in the house,” said Celia. “I’m sick of this.”
“You and me both, Miss Celia!” Marietta exclaimed, and they ran up the cellar steps. After all, Celia was thinking, that shell this morning had landed in this yard by pure chance. The British might fire a thousand more before another one came close.
Up in the light again she found that her idea was reasonable. The bombardment was as fierce as ever, but no more shells had fallen on this lot. With Marietta she went up to the attic. From here they could see that a brick sidewalk not far away had been torn up, and over near the harbor-front threads of smoke showed them that some buildings were on fire. Marietta shivered, and wondered if many people had been hurt. Celia hoped not. But again she found that there was a dark fascination about it all.
The guns fired all that day and all that night. At dark Celia and Marietta dragged the mattresses off their beds and carried them down to the cellar, but they could not sleep. It all seemed more frightening at night. The explosions were so hideously brilliant; the f
ireballs, which were merely pink glimmers in the daylight, now in the dark looked like imps flying across the sky. When they had stayed in the cellar till they could bear it no longer Celia and Marietta went upstairs and looked out of the windows till they could bear that no longer, and they fled to the cellar again.
At last it was morning. The bombardment still went on, but the daylight was friendlier than the dark. They made their way to the kitchen, where they ate a breakfast of cold cornbread, then they went back to the cellar. And finally that night, after forty hours of battle the men on both sides were exhausted and the firing died down to a few irregular shots.
How wonderful to sleep all night and wake up to a quiet morning! To have hot coffee and bacon for breakfast, to look out with the spyglass and see what surprisingly little damage the bombardment had done.
For Charleston was not only a city of brick, but a city of gardens. In colder climates people placed their houses close together, with little or no space between them, so that a town was an almost solid target and any shell fired at random was likely to hit something. But here, even in the poor neighborhoods, the houses stood wide apart for air and coolness. There were abundant green trees, and every family had its own well. The British had made a few direct hits, but most of their missiles, like the one Celia had seen, had fallen into damp garden earth and fizzled out.
While Marietta put rice and salt beef on the fire, Celia went out to the garden and pulled up the lettuce she had meant to pull up day before yesterday. Here among the vegetables she found a burnt-out fireball. Taking it in her hand she examined it with loathing curiosity: an iron shell six or eight inches long pierced all over with holes. They had packed it with some sort of inflammable stuff—maybe rags or cotton soaked in oil—and set it alight, then they had shot it into town to start a fire. A fragment of the stuffing, still in the shell, had a nasty smell of burnt grease.
Celia threw the thing down. Jimmy had said he did not hate the British. Well, she hated them enough for two.
In St. Michael’s steeple the clock pointed to nine. It was starting out to be another hot day.
Her basket on her arm, she went toward the kitchen-house. She always remembered exactly how it happened. Her foot was just touching the brick walk that led to the kitchen; through the open doorway she saw Marietta steaming the rice; Celia called, “I’ve brought the—”
Then it came.
Every British battery started at once. The guns on the Neck, on the sea islands, on the men-of-war, all burst into action. For a moment Celia stood where she was, stupid with shock. She saw bombs, and red-hot round shot, and fireballs blazing across the sky. They came from every direction, so many of them that above her she saw two shells meet in mid-air and blow up. Marietta had dropped on her knees by the kitchen fireplace. With clasped hand she was rocking back and forth, pleading, “Jesus, have mercy. Jesus, have mercy.”
The basket slid off Celia’s arm to the ground. The whole world seemed to be reeling and cracking around her. She couldn’t just stand here. They had to get down to the cellar. Turning her back to the kitchen she looked along the walk to the main house. The walk was covered, so dishes could be brought in conveniently on rainy days, but it had wide arched openings on both sides. As Celia turned, a fireball flashed through one of these arches. She heard herself scream.
“Marietta! The house is on fire!”
The fireball had struck the edge of the back porch. As it struck, it broke open as it was meant to do. The blazing stuff inside fell on the wooden boards of the porch floor and sent out tongues of oily flame. The boards caught and crackled.
There was a bucket of water by the back door, and a bucket of earth somewhere near—where had they put it? She could not remember, but she ran to the house and snatched up the water. How heavy it was. When they set it here it had not seemed so heavy. She managed to carry it to the fire, spilling a good deal of water in her haste, and dumped what was left on the burning boards. It was not nearly enough. Looking around wildly she saw Marietta, half carrying and half dragging the bucket of earth, which Celia remembered now had been placed by the porch steps. As she reached the fire Marietta gasped, “Get a rug, Miss Celia.”
A rug—of course. Celia dragged out the first one she saw, a thick doormat lying by the hall door. While Marietta looked for more earth Celia beat at the fire. The rough fibers of the mat hurt her hands. She thought angrily of how hard it often was to make a fire burn when you needed it.
At last it was out. The porch looked as if a giant had taken a bite out of the edge, leaving a crescent-shaped indentation. The white posts on either side of the crescent were blackened with smoke.
Celia felt tenderly of her chafed hands. Marietta held to a post, dizzily. Her white apron was scorched and her white cap was pushed over one ear. “Miss Celia,” she murmured, “where do you reckon they are? Mr. Jimmy, Amos—”
“Hush!” Celia exclaimed. “I don’t want to think about—” A shell whistled above the garden. She grabbed Marietta’s hand and they ran to the cellar.
About eleven o’clock the firing slackened, and they filled the buckets again. But at noon it all started over.
A shell struck a corner of the stable and sent bricks flying, another shell tore a limb off the magnolia tree, and more fireballs fizzled in the garden. After dark a fireball struck the stable door. While they beat out the fire Celia remembered Jerry’s handsome head looking out of this door, and she wondered what Luke and Jerry were doing tonight.
At last, she and Marietta were simply too tired to feel frightened any more. While the shells went on howling they dragged themselves into the kitchen and ate rice and beef. The food was a help, but they still ached in every joint and the shells were still screaming threats of fire and death. Celia dropped her head on her arm and listened. What a day it had been! The most dreadful day she had ever lived through. Somehow she had an impression that there was something special about this day. At first she was too tired to think what it was, then she remembered. Today was Thursday. It was the thirteenth of April, 1780. Her twenty-first birthday.
She gave a harsh little laugh. How she had looked forward to this day! The golden day when she would be her own boss, free to get married, free of Roy—she wondered where Roy was. Probably on the indigo plantation of Sophie’s family, safely wrapped in their riches and their Toryism. While she, in Charleston, was free to celebrate her birthday.
Was it always like this, she wondered, when you got the things you waited for?
CHAPTER 14
AT MIDNIGHT THE guns quieted. Celia and Marietta stumbled down the cellar stairs and fell on their mattresses and went to sleep. In the morning there was firing, but it was so much less intense than yesterday’s that they hardly noticed it.
It was nearly noon when Celia carried a bucket of water through the flower garden and set it by the brick wall that divided the garden from the street, to be ready in case a fireball struck one of the house-shutters on this side. Through the wrought-iron gate she could see the street, agog with people. Taking her bunch of keys from her pocket she went to the gate. As she put a key into the padlock she remembered the evening when she had pushed open this gate and met Luke under the street lamp. He had said, “You’ve no idea how your hair shines with that lantern behind you—it’s a real moonlight gold.” Celia put up her hand to her hair. It seemed a long time since she had thought of what color it was.
Two militiamen came by, pulling a handcart holding a crate of rifles. Their tired whiskery faces lit with smiles as they were refreshed by the sight of a pretty girl. But one of them warned, “You better go down cellar, miss.”
Celia smiled back and said she would. But no shells were falling in this part of town, so she stayed in the gateway, looking out. Men were moving guns, powder, barrels of meat and cornmeal, all the varied supplies that came in every day by the Cooper River. On the house across the street Celia saw an ornamental white cornice above a window, charred by a fireball.
A man’s voi
ce shouted from down the street. “Miss Celia! Miss Celia!”
Celia ran to the curb and peered around. Rattling toward her was a cart, drawn by Amos in place of a horse.
Usually dressed with the care of a prideful house-man, today Amos was tattered and dirty and soaked with sweat. His shirt was so torn that it was hardly a shirt any more; his breeches, made of good blue homespun, were torn too, and flapped about his knees. He wore no stockings, and his shoes were furry with dust. Panting, he stopped his cart by the curb.
“What is it, Amos?” she cried.
Amos raised his arm to push back the sweat that was about to drip over his eyes. “Miss Celia—it’s Mr. Jimmy. I’ve got him here. He’s bad hurt.”
For an instant it seemed to Celia that the sun turned black. Steadying herself with a great effort, she put her hand on the side of the cart and looked.
Jimmy lay on the bare boards, not even a blanket under him to cushion the jolts. But he did not know this. He did not know anything. In one leg of his rebel blue breeches there was a bloody rip, and under the rip a gash in his thigh, oozing blood. The blood was creeping out to make a puddle beside him.
Celia felt something solid come up into her throat. By some instinct she knew that she was about to let out a hysterical scream, and she knew also that this was what she must not do. She must keep her head now if she never did another sensible thing as long as she lived.
Swallowing hard, she looked up at Amos. “We’ve got to stop this bleeding.”
“I’ve done all I know how, Miss Celia,” he told her earnestly, “but it keeps breaking open. You see—he’s got a bullet still in him.”
Celia gasped in horror. “You—why didn’t you have a surgeon take it out?”
“I tried to, ma’am,” said Amos. There was a sound of desperation in his voice. “But so many men are hurt, I couldn’t find a surgeon that didn’t have them lying in rows waiting for him. That’s why I brought Mr. Jimmy here. I thought maybe you—” Amos looked at the cart, took a step away from it, dropped his voice. “Miss Celia, if we don’t get that bullet out he’ll bleed to death.”
