Celia Garth: A Novel (20 page)

Now I’m getting mopey, she thought. I’d better do something.

She glanced toward the bookcases. There was plenty to read, for Herbert had taken only the valuable books to Sea Garden. Celia brought a candle, and chose
Robinson Crusoe,
which she had heard about all her life but had never read. Going to a big cushioned chair by the window, she curled up comfortably and opened the book.

After a few pages she was absorbed. The guns made an undertone like distant thunder. The evening grew dark, the candle burned steadily, the damp fragrances of the garden came in by the window. Celia read on and on. And then all of a sudden she heard a noise as if the world had exploded.

She sprang up. The book fell sprawling at her feet. The noise went on like the roar of a thousand volcanoes; the windowpanes shook, the poker fell clattering on the hearth; at her side the candlestick quivered on the table, and she snatched it up and set it on the hearth close to the grate so if the candle fell it would not set anything on fire. She heard screams of fright as Elise and the maids woke up, and more screams from the street. Flashes of light were splitting the dark over the garden.

Grabbing the candle seemed to have used up her own power of movement. Her hands clasped in front of her, she stood still, listening.

At first the noise had seemed to be everywhere, on all sides of her and in the sky and under the earth. But now she could tell that the roars were coming, not from the lines across the Neck, but from the southwest, somewhere close to the spot where she had seen the first redcoats across the Ashley River. She had never heard so much noise in her life. Slowly, she raised one hand and stroked her ear. It seemed strange that she could also hear the little brushing sound of her fingertips.

Now that she had moved she kept on moving, doing things with little jerky motions like a doll. She bent and picked up her book, smoothed a crumpled page, and placed the book on the table. She saw that the glass holder on the mantelpiece, which contained the rolled paper lamplighters, was trembling under the force of the guns; she took it carefully and set it on the floor so it would not fall and break. Kneeling by the hearth she took the tongs and fire-shovel and laid them beside the poker so they would not fall either. Still kneeling there, she burst into tears and began to sob with fright.

The first sound of the bombardment had nearly stunned her. But now that this first shock had passed, her senses were awake again and what she realized made her shake with terror.

This was no token firing to remind you that the British were here. These guns meant business. She remembered what Tom Lacy-had said—that Sir Henry Clinton had not forgiven Charleston for his defeat at Fort Moultrie. This time he had vowed to turn the place into a pile of dust and corpses. And tonight he had started.

Burying her face in the seat of the chair Celia pressed her arms against her ears and clasped her hands behind her head. This shut out some of the noise but it did not make her stop shaking, long violent shakes that went through her whole body and made her neck jerk and her teeth chatter. Nobody came in to ask how she was, maybe because they did not know she was in the library, maybe because they were all too scared to think of her. She was not thinking of them either. All she could think was that any minute one of those shells might land in here and blow her to pieces.

But after a long time the shakes in her body began to lessen. The noise was still as great as ever, but somehow it was no longer so terrifying. Celia felt herself relaxing. Her hands untangled themselves. The fingers were stiff and her elbows were painful with tension. As she slowly raised her head, and sat back on her heels, she moved her arms and hands to get them feeling natural again.

The guns crashed. The room was full of great fluttering shadows thrown by the candle on the hearth. Suddenly it was lit for an instant by another flash from outside, as if the sky had cracked with great lightning.

Celia felt a sense of astonishment. She wet her lips. She heard another crash of cannon. She said in an awed voice,

“I haven’t been killed.”

She wet her lips again. The noise hit on her ears. She said,

“Maybe I’m not going to be killed.”

She got to her feet. Her legs were stiff, and she walked around the room in the noise, to ease them. As she walked she had a feeling that there was something familiar about all this.

At first she did not know what she was thinking of, but as the firing went on she remembered—the first time she had talked to Luke, in the parlor at Mrs. Thorley’s, when she had said to him, “You like being scared,” and he had answered, “What I like is the way I feel when I wake up in the morning, when I look around and say, ‘Good Lord, I’m still here!’”

This was how she felt right now. She was still alive and it gave her a sense of triumph. Standing there in the bombardment, still trembling, Celia nodded slowly. This was what he had meant.

The firing lasted all night. Toward morning it lessened, but it went on at intervals all day.

Before daybreak Burton had promised Elise that they would leave. They would take their maidservants—the men he would have to leave on the earthworks—and Celia and Marietta too if they wanted to go. Celia said no.

When they had had a few hours’ sleep Marietta put on some hominy grits to cook, along with a pan of bacon. As soon as he had finished his breakfast Burton went out to arrange for sharing his boat with some friends who would help with the sailing.

Elise went to her room and began frantically opening her bureau drawers and throwing her clothes around and calling for somebody to pack them. Celia said she would do it—not that she loved Elise, but she wanted to keep occupied. The maids were bringing all sorts of tales about people who had been hurt last night, and Jimmy might have been among them. She did not want to think about it.

But while she was packing, a maid came to say that Mr. Darren Bernard was here to see her. Her heart jumping at the thought of the news he might have brought, Celia dashed downstairs and out to the front steps where Darren was waiting.

“How’s Jimmy, Darren?” she gasped as she reached him. “And you?”

“Fine, both of us. That’s what I came to tell you, and to ask how you are—all right?”

She nodded, nearly sobbing with relief. Darren drew her against the side of the open doorway and waited for her to get calm. Celia blinked, and looked up with great thankfulness. She noticed that it was a beautiful day, cool and clear, and an acacia tree across the street was blooming in a great big fluff of gold. How strange Darren looked, soiled and unshaven, with a long jagged tear in his stocking—Darren who had always been so well dressed. “Can you come in?” she asked. “A glass of wine, something to eat—”

He shook his head. “Too much to do. I had to pass here, and Jimmy told me to take five minutes, no more, to stop by and give you a note.” He drew the note from his pocket.

She thanked him. “Tell me what happened last night, Darren.”

Darren said a few men had been struck, and two small houses had been knocked flat, but altogether the bombardment had done remarkably little harm. He had no time to say more.

Celia went indoors and up to her room. Jimmy had written his note on a scrap of paper torn from some account book. He had scribbled hurriedly.

“My dearest,

I asked you to stay, now I am asking you to go. If Burton leaves town, or anyone else you know, go with them. Go to my mother at Bellwood. If you cannot get to her go to Vivian or any friends you have in the country. When this is over I’ll find you. Jimmy.”

Celia crumpled the note in her fist. From her open window she heard the chirp of a sparrow above the grumble of cannon. She said aloud,

“I am not going.”

She tore Jimmy’s note in half and then in half again.

“I am going to stay here,” she said, “because I love Jimmy.”

But even as she spoke she knew this was not the reason. She was going to stay with Jimmy not because she loved him but because he loved her. Until that gray Sunday afternoon last fall she had never had any feeling that anybody loved her. She had not known how precious it was, this knowledge of being loved. No, she was not going anywhere.

She gathered up the scraps of Jimmy’s note. There was no fire in the house, so she went downstairs and across the back porch and along the covered brick walk to the kitchen. Here the cook-fire smoldered in the fireplace, watched by a small black girl on a stool. Celia dropped the scraps on the fire and watched them burn.

N
OW AT LAST THEY
were gone. Celia and Marietta were alone.

At the last minute Burton had had an attack of propriety. It disturbed him that Celia should be here with her only companion a maid no older than herself. For a moment Celia was afraid she was going to be carried off, but she reminded him that her twenty-first birthday was only a week ahead and after this Mr. Moreau would marry her to Jimmy. And so, glad not to have any more women on his hands, Burton let her have her way.

They left Friday, the seventh of April. It was surprising how peaceful the house was. The cannon were firing, but no shells were coming into town and by now Celia was so used to the distant grunts and grumblings that she hardly noticed them.

She planned that while Marietta did the cooking she would take care of the garden. They had plenty of rice and meat, but they would need vegetables too. That afternoon they went to the storeroom and cut off a slab of spiced beef, and put it in water to soak out the salt overnight so it could be roasted for tomorrow’s dinner. “We’ll have it with rice and gravy,” said Celia, “and some green peas. I’ll pick the peas in the morning.”

It was like playing house. In the evening when they had locked up, Celia took
Robinson Crusoe
to her room and read until she was sleepy. The guns were almost quiet as she blew out her candle.

She woke in the night with a feeling of having had an uncomfortable dream. The room was dark, and she could hear the guns in the distance. Moving restlessly, she realized that she was uncomfortable because she was too warm. She threw back the blankets but she was still too warm. Getting out of bed she pushed back the window-curtains and opened both windows as far as they would go. But the room still felt stuffy, and she had a hard time going back to sleep.

When she woke again it was morning. Before she opened her eyes she knew it was going to be a hot day. After breakfast she went out to the courtyard. Clouds were gathering over the sun and even here among the trees and flowerbeds the air seemed heavy. The birds were silent, as if they had no energy to sing, and the guns were silent too, as if the men had no energy to shoot. Celia felt her chemise clinging damply to her skin.

She wet her forefinger and held it up. After a moment one side of her finger began to be cold, the side toward the south.

Now she understood. In the night the wind had changed. No longer was it blowing from the west, from the high ground and the clean pine woods; it was coming over the swampy sea islands. As she lowered her hand Celia looked at a blue-jay pecking at the grass. In spite of the heat a shiver went over her as she said to him,

“Now those ships can get in.”

She went indoors and up the stairs to the attic. From oversight or consideration, Burton had left his spyglass, and Celia looked out to sea. The British ships were no closer to town than they had been yesterday—the tide was out, she noticed—but no longer were they just sitting there waiting. Alongside the sails, from masts to decks, the seamen had run lines of ropes; along the ropes they had strung small flags of different colors, and they were moving the flags to make changing designs. This was how ships talked to each other and to their friends on shore. Celia had no idea how to read the signals, but she did not need nautical language to guess that the admiral on his flagship was saying to Sir Henry Clinton on shore, “We are coming in! When the tide turns, we’ll be on our way!”

She was not the only one who guessed this. The Cooper River was crowded with fleeing boats—schooners, little fishing craft, even open rowboats where children crouched among bundles of food and clothing while their mothers sweated at the oars. Celia wondered where they were all going to sleep tonight.

As the day went on the south wind grew stronger, blowing clouds thick over the sky. Celia and Marietta had not much appetite for the spiced beef. They told each other it would taste better this evening when they could slice it cold, but they both knew they were not hungry because they were tense about the British ships.

As the afternoon advanced, they waited. They climbed out of the attic window to the roof and turned the spyglass in all directions. Around them the roofs and high windows were crowded with people. Not a gun sounded. All the soldiers—Americans, British, Tories, Hessians—were watching the ships. The men had mounted the earthworks, they stood on the gun platforms or were precariously balanced on the guns themselves, craning their necks. In the top of the black steeple of St. Michael’s stood Peter Timothy, a spyglass in one hand and a pen in the other, watching and making notes of what he saw, while messengers waited to take his reports to headquarters. The clock in the steeple showed that the time was close to four.

The day was tropic-hot, fifteen or twenty degrees hotter than yesterday. Celia could feel the sweat trickling down her face. She lowered the spyglass. Out there in the distance the men-of-war looked no bigger than butterflies. But even so far away she could see that they were tall ships, splendid and terrible. The tide was mounting toward its flood. As she watched, the men-of-war formed into a line, one behind another with long spaces between them and a pilot boat leading the line. They began to move.

The flags held stiff and jaunty in the wind, the white sails billowed high against the gray sky and the gray sea and the gray horizon line. Celia hardly breathed as the first ship came near the island seven miles away from her, where Fort Moultrie guarded the sea-gate of Charleston.

Out of the corner of her eye she saw Marietta’s hand tensely holding the edge of the gable beside her. Celia’s own hands were stiff with excitement. Then it happened, what she and Marietta and everybody else had been waiting for. It was as if Fort Moultrie blew up into a thousand lights as the American guns opened fire.