The Lost Quilter (31 page)

Less than a week later, a massive fleet of Union warships, transports, and supply vessels sailed into Port Royal Sound and launched a ferocious attack on Fort Walker. Within hours the surviving Confederate defenders abandoned the ruined fort and fled inland, and later that night, the defenders of Fort Beauregard at Bay Point on Eddings Island to the north of the sound followed. When word of the defeat came, Miss Evangeline frantically tried to get some official account of her husband’s fate. Days later,
when word finally came that he was safe and uninjured in a camp west of Charleston with his surviving men, the young mistress immediately decided to pack the wagon with supplies and join him. Joanna was content to let her, thinking that she and the girls might slip away in her absence, and she hid her eagerness behind a mask of dutiful obedience as she helped Miss Evangeline prepare for the journey. But Mattie spoiled everything. She watched Abner load the wagon, shaking her head and muttering that the missus was in no fit condition to travel and shouldn’t leave young Master Thomas. Before Joanna could stop her, Mattie strode next door and brought back Mrs. Ames, who managed to stall Miss Evangeline long enough for Aunt Lucretia to come racing over to dissuade her. “You can’t become a camp follower,” said Aunt Lucretia, scandalized. “If Robert were injured and needed you to nurse him, that would be another matter altogether. As it is, you will only distract him. He can’t protect you and lead his men both.” Reluctantly, Miss Evangeline agreed, and Joanna could only fume silently over Mattie’s inopportune caution.

The colonel’s survival and location were the only bits of information Joanna passed along to Mr. Lewis that week, but if he were disappointed, he did not show it. If anything, he seemed especially pleased to see her, which told Joanna that he—and the information she had given him—had played an important role in the success of the Port Royal mission.

In the days to come, the talk of the streets swirled around a new commander assigned to defend Charleston now that the Union forces had established a foothold on Port Royal, a general named Robert E. Lee. Mr. Lewis urged Joanna to discover all she could of his intentions, but only one letter came from the colonel in all that time, and it said nothing of the new commander. “I don’t got nothing for you,” Joanna was forced to admit one Fri
day when they met in the alley. It was the second week in a row she had failed to find even the smallest detail that might help him. “Things ain’t the same as they was before the colonel go to Port Royal. Officers don’t come to Harper Hall no more and we don’t get much news.”

Mr. Lewis said that he understood, and to Joanna’s disappointment, he said that he would not meet her weekly anymore, but if she acquired any information, she should signal him by placing the basket on the kitchen windowsill. She agreed, as she had little choice, but her heart was heavy. She had needed those clandestine meetings even more than the coins Mr. Lewis paid her. Somehow every secret she passed along had made her feel one week closer to freedom, and now that she was no longer useful to him, Mr. Lewis might not feel obliged to save her and her girls from the auction block.

December came, and although Joanna searched Miss Evangeline’s letters in vain for scarce details that might benefit Mr. Lewis, she did manage to find a bit of good news when Marse Chester wrote to broach the subject of the upcoming holidays. This year he wanted Miss Evangeline and her family to come to him. The house he was building on his new acres further inland would not be as grand as the big house at Oak Grove, but there would be room enough for everyone, and with all but the finish work completed, there was no reason why they could not pass a perfectly comfortable Christmas there. What more did they need in those troubled times but four walls, a roof, plenty to eat, and those they loved? He would be delighted if the Harper and Chester families would celebrate the holidays there in a rustic fashion suiting their troubled times.

Miss Evangeline must have replied that she had hoped for the Chester and Harper families to reunite at Harper Hall as they had the previous year, for her father’s next letter expressed his regrets that such a thing would not be possible. Elliot, the elder son, was now fifteen, and too besotted with the military to be trusted near the dozens of various militias that marched in the streets and camped outside the city. Back home he could only gape in wide-eyed admiration at the officers who came to Oak Grove, but in Charleston he would be sorely tempted to run away and join the first regiment he could persuade to take him on as a drummer boy. A letter that quickly followed admonished Miss Evangeline not to even consider passing Christmas or any other day on the Harper family’s James Island plantation. Should the Union invaders swarming over Port Royal decide to attack Charleston, James Island lay directly in their path. Even if the Harpers avoided having their lands taken over by Confederate forces setting up a defense, they would surely be forced to evacuate the moment the Union soldiers began to march. Marse Chester was certain Colonel Harper would agree with him, but even if his son-in-law did not, Marse Chester would not allow his daughter and infant grandson to risk such unimaginable danger.

Joanna didn’t care where the Chester and Harper families finally decided to spend the holidays as long as Miss Evangeline required Joanna to accompany her and Titus drove Marse Chester to whatever location they settled upon. It was always possible that the whirl of holiday gaiety would distract the buckra long enough for Joanna, Titus, and the children to run off. It wasn’t likely, but it was possible, a gentle breath of wind on the fading embers of her hopes.

One night two weeks before Christmas, Joanna was asleep, dreaming of Union warships anchoring in Charleston Harbor, blue-coated Union soldiers pouring onto the docks like a wave of indigo, the church bells reformed from Confederate canons and restored to their steeples and ringing out freedom. The bells pealed on as someone shook her awake. “Get up,” said George. “Whole city burning. Get up!”

Joanna scrambled out of bed and hurried to the window. The sky was red with flame; she smelled smoke and tasted ash.

“We on fire?” cried Sally, throwing back the covers.

“Not yet,” said George. “Not yet.”

Heart pounding, Joanna stood on tiptoe and peered through the leaded panes. The sky was a lurid, swirling gale of red and black, of smoke and fire. As the other slaves scrambled into their clothes, she stood transfixed, craning her neck, pressing her face against the glass, trying in vain to discover the fire’s location, its distance and direction. The window was too small, the palmetto trees too close. Did walls of flame surround them? Could they flee to the river?

Ruthie’s wail roused her. She snatched up her daughter, seized Hannah’s hand, and hurried down the stairs and outside. Miss Evangeline was already there, standing before the carriage house and studying the smoke-filled sky with Abner. The strong wind carried the sound of the horses’ terror-filled whinnies, their stomping hooves.

“We got to run,” George said, close by her side. “We got to get to the river or we be burnt up like dry straw.”

Hannah’s grip on Joanna’s hand tightened. “Which way?” Joanna asked George, gesturing to the north, to the south, in every equally uncertain direction. “We run away from the fire or into it?”

Before George could reply, Miss Evangeline spotted them.
“Fetch water,” she screamed into the wind, her golden curls whipping about her face. “Soak the house. Every inch of it!”

“Missus Harper,” George called back, incredulous. “We got to go. Joanna go fetch young Marse Thomas while Abner get the wagon ready.”

“I will not abandon my husband’s house to the flames,” Miss Evangeline shouted over the clamor of bells and sirens. Her eyes were wild and red-rimmed. “He must have a home to return to.”

“He must have a wife and baby to return to,” Joanna retorted. “What good this house to him if you and young marse dead?”

Suddenly Miss Evangeline raced across the garden, nightdress trailing ghostly in the smoky air, to slap Joanna hard across the face. “Fetch the water! Your impudence will kill us all.”

“Your stubbornness kill us first,” Joanna snapped. Miss Evangeline slapped her again, harder, then shoved her toward the laundry, toward the pump. Joanna stumbled, nearly dropping Ruthie and releasing Hannah’s hand. George caught her by the arm and kept her on her feet. He gave her a long, grim look before racing off to the pump.

Joanna shifted Ruthie on her hip and beckoned to Hannah. “Come on.”

They hurried after George, but before filling a single bucket, George soaked the two girls from head to toe. “Take the baby into the kitchen,” he ordered Hannah. “Kick the logs out of the way and stand in the big fireplace. You understand me?” Hannah nodded, reached for Ruthie, and darted back inside.

For hours they kept the house and yard soaked, filling buckets, flinging water upon the whitewashed brick walls of Harper Hall, trying in vain to discover from people fleeing through the streets, buckra and coloreds alike, where the fire line was, how much of the city had burned, if the fire department or army
had mastered any control over the conflagration, if the flames were heading their way. Rumors whirled about like the ashes that fell like snow and settled over the Harpers’ garden, black and gray and glowing red. Some said that the fire burned in a single north-south line across the peninsula, and where they stood on Meeting Street, they were cut off from the mainland. Or that Union spies had set fire to multiple targets throughout the city, and the fire was burning toward the center, destroying everything in its path. Or that rebellious slaves had set fire to the slave market and were passing out stolen rifles to any colored man willing to fight. There was no discerning truth from fiction, no time to make sense of the hysterical and contradictory tales shrieked or shouted from tear-streaked, sooty faces—men and women on foot, on horseback, in carriages, on wagons loaded with all their worldly possessions—

We should run,
Joanna thought, watching them. The Harper slaves were many, and Miss Evangeline was but one. In the chaos the other buckra would never guess they fled their mistress as well as the fire. But where would they run? Where? She had no idea if the people fleeing down Meeting Street were running away from the fire or toward it. Sometimes her gaze met George’s, and she knew he shared her thoughts. She knew from the set of his jaw that he thought they should flee anyway, that running was better than roasting alive all for the sake of saving Colonel Harper’s house. Suddenly, startlingly, she also understood that as much as George wanted to run, he would never run without her.

Hours passed. Joanna’s shoulders ached from hauling water, from beating out small fires that sparked into small blazes on the piazza, on the grass. On the roof. When Miss Evangeline spotted the first flames high above them, she screamed for George and gestured wildly. George nodded and hurried inside, his
eyes catching hold of Joanna’s before he disappeared through the doorway. In another moment he reappeared on the roof with a bucket of water and a soaked gunnysack, beating out the flames.

Her eyes and nostrils stinging from acrid smoke, Joanna watched as Miss Evangeline’s glance traveled wildly from the roof to the street jammed with people and horses and wagons. Her attention lingered on an elegant carriage packed with trunks and valuables, a gentleman in suit and hat unexpectedly at the reins where his colored driver ought to be, a lady with a fur wrap over her shoulders by his side but looking back whence they had come, where their fine house was likely burning.

“We should go,” Miss Evangeline said. Joanna could not hear her over the din, but she recognized the words the rosebud lips formed. Then, suddenly, the mistress ran to Abner as he flung water upon the tall front doors of the stable. Miss Evangeline gestured frantically and shouted something Joanna could not make out. Abner shook his head, gesturing helplessly toward the choked street—wagons loaded with furniture, buckra on horseback, hired-out slaves carrying the tools of their trades on their backs, their metal badges still carefully displayed on their coat fronts. The Harper household wouldn’t get far, Abner was surely telling the mistress. Too many people in flight, frightened horses—the time to escape had passed. They must it stick out and save the house or perish.

Abner raised his hands to defend himself when Miss Evangeline began beating him about the head and shoulders, but he was not injured; without her whip, the mistress’s blows were merely a shameful nuisance, a distraction when he could not afford to be distracted. He ducked away, took up his bucket, and sprinted for the pump. Joanna knew he cared more about saving the horses
than any punishment that might descend later, if they survived the night.

From time to time Mattie appeared at the back door, plump face creased in worry, shawl around her shoulders as if she awaited the order to flee, young Master Thomas in her arms. Suddenly a man on horseback pulled hard on the reins just outside the gate and came to a clattering stop. “Cousin Evangeline,” he called out. “Why on earth are you still here?”

With a glad cry, Miss Evangeline forgot Abner and raced to open the gate. Joanna recognized the fair-haired man despite his soot-streaked face—Gideon, Aunt Lucretia’s youngest son, the only one who had not yet joined a Confederate regiment. He rode into the yard and swiftly dismounted, but his boots had scarcely touched the cobblestones before Miss Evangeline flung herself into his arms. “We sent Sam for you,” Gideon said, looking her over to reassure himself she was unharmed. “Mother’s evacuated to the Battery. Sam was supposed to escort you and the baby there hours ago.”

Miss Evangeline shook her head. “I’ve seen neither hide nor hair of him all night.”

Gideon scowled. “Likely he’s taking advantage of our distress to run off. Father never did trust him.” He glanced back down Meeting Street. “There’s no time to load the wagon. Run inside, tell your nurse to bring the baby, and fetch whatever valuables you can carry on horseback. We have to leave at once.”