Celia Garth: A Novel (22 page)

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?

A
T 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 voice 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.”

“I’ll get a surgeon,” Celia said. She spoke vehemently, to hide from herself as well as from Amos the fact that she did not know where she was going to get one. “He can’t lie here in the street,” she went on briskly. “Bring him in—not this gate, it’s not wide enough, I’ll open the gate to the driveway.”

Snatching the keys from her pocket she ran past the house to the carriage drive on the other side. She heard a shrill grating sound—in her confusion she could not tell whether it was the whine of a shell or the screak of her key in the lock—but anyway she got the gate open and Amos dragged in the cart.

He brought it to the edge of the back porch. Vivian’s bedroom was on the first floor, next to her boudoir, but when Celia said she would make up the bed in there for Jimmy, Amos shook his head.

“Miss Celia, excuse me ma’am, I don’t believe that’ll do. I could tote him, I’m right stout, but I’m scared to move him that far. He’s not bleeding much now, but if it really got started again—”

“I see.” Celia looked at the blood oozing out of Jimmy’s wound. With a shudder, she pulled off the kerchief around her neck. “Here, Amos, tie this around his leg, and maybe you can make the blood stop.”

While Amos obeyed, she ran to find Marietta. With frantic haste they pulled the mattress off Vivian’s bed and dragged it to the back porch. Standing each on one side of the cart they held it as steady as they could while Amos lifted Jimmy and let him slip gently down to the mattress. The pain of movement roused him; Celia heard him groan faintly, and murmur something about water. Marietta went for a cup. Celia dropped on her knees by the mattress and put her hand on Jimmy’s forehead. The skin was dry and blazing hot. Jimmy’s eyes opened. She was about to bend and kiss him when a stern dark hand closed on her wrist and Amos spoke with dreadful urgency. “Miss Celia,
that surgeon
.”

Celia sprang to her feet. Of course, this was no time to be a sentimental fool. While Marietta brought the cup of water and Amos lifted Jimmy’s head, helping him to swallow, Celia glanced toward the gate that led into Godfrey’s back yard. Godfrey knew everybody.

“I’ll be right back,” she said to Amos.

She ran across the yard and through the gateway. The guns seemed louder, the shells closer, or maybe it was only her imagination. Godfrey’s back door, like all doors these days, was locked. Celia pounded with her fists, shouting his name.

After what seemed an endless time—though it was really only a minute or two—a startled Negro woman’s voice demanded,

“Who’s that? What you want?”

“It’s me!” Celia cried. “Celia Garth. I want Mr. Godfrey Bernard—open the door!”

With exasperating slowness, a key turned and the door swung open. In the doorway stood a fat colored woman with gilt rings in her ears and a blue kerchief on her head. “What’s the matter, honey? You scared?”

“I want Mr. Bernard. I need a surgeon. Captain Rand has been hurt—Captain Jimmy Rand—”

“Oh Lawsy mussy!” The woman threw her apron over her head and rocked back and forth, wailing. Two other colored women came up the stairs from the cellar where they had taken refuge, shrilly demanding a share in the new trouble. Celia caught the arm of the nearest one in a savage grip.

“Oh hush, can’t you?” she exclaimed. “Where is Mr. Bernard?”

“He’s not home, honey.”

“Where is he?”

They didn’t know. He was all over town these days. Was Mr. Jimmy bad hurt?

Farther down the hall a door burst open and a man’s voice demanded, “What’s going on? Don’t you know I’ve got work to do?”

Celia cried out in relief. The man was Darren, holding a ledger in one hand and in the other a quill that was just dropping a blot on his shirt. Not long ago a blot on Darren’s shirt would have been a calamity, now he hardly noticed it. He gave Celia a tired smile.

“Sorry, I didn’t know it was you. But Godfrey’s feeding half the army and I have to keep these records for the quartermaster.”

“Mr. Jimmy done been hurt!” cried the fat woman, eager to be first with the bad news. The other women burst out wailing again. A shell whistled close and they all ducked.

“Can I speak to you, Darren?” Celia begged.