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They drank coffee instead, and called it Liberty Tea.
“It’s the thirteenth verse of the last chapter of Proverbs,” said Luke. “This chapter describes a woman. There are thirty-one verses, one for each day of the month, and the verse numbered to match your birthday is yours.”
Now she knew she was necessary to him. Nobody had ever really needed her before.
Was it always like this, she wondered, when you got the things you waited for?
“Lighten our darkness, we beseech thee, oh Lord, and by thy great mercy defend us from all perils and dangers of this night—”
And she would not have been afraid of anything because for the first time she would have felt that she really belonged to somebody.
She did not know which she hated more, the king’s men firing the guns or those other men who had made it all happen by signing the Declaration of Independence.
she supposed, it would all come to her—the bravery and tragedy of it, the steeple dark as though in mourning for the men who had died in this lost fight for liberty. But right now, though she knew it with her mind, she did not feel it with her heart. All that seemed really important was that now she could find out what had happened to Jimmy, and at Bellwood they would have plenty to eat.
There was not a male human being left at home except small boys.
Or she would dream about Jimmy, and wake up to the black knowledge that Jimmy was dead.
Clinton had taken ship for New York, leaving Cornwallis in command of the king’s men in the south.
“You live through it, Celia,” said Vivian. Her voice was firm. “You find out—and sometimes it’s very surprising—that no matter what you lose, there’s always something else. Life can still be good.”
Thus it came about that Marion was not present at the battle of Camden, where Gates led his troops into the worst defeat an American army had taken since the war began.
The harbor was busy with British ships. Ahead of her Celia saw Charleston, glowing like an opal in the evening sun. It would have been beautiful except for the black steeple of St. Michael’s with the white scar where the shell had struck.
She remembered a proverb. “When you get what you want, you don’t want it.”
And so in those bright blue days of September, 1780, Celia went back to her job of minding the parlor.
asked Celia for the Gazette to pass the time. The newspaper these days was edited by a Tory, and he had changed its name to The Royal South Carolina Gazette.
not now when she herself felt nothing but a black helpless hate. She hated Charleston and everybody in it.
The Lutheran Church on Archdale Street, and the lovely little Unitarian Church next door, were both being used as stables.
Day after day she felt nauseated as she watched people in Charleston, in spite of all that was being done to them, toadying to their conquerors.
It seemed to her that nobody had any self-respect any more. Except maybe those men who had been sent to St. Augustine.
Everybody, she thought, has something to sell. And the British and Tories and bootlickers have money to buy it. So we’ve quit. And I’m no better than anybody else. I’m working in a fashionable shop, smiling at the people who have money to spend, forgetting that I ever believed in anything. She felt sick with contempt, contempt for herself and for her country. Americans, she thought, are no good. We don’t deserve to be free.
Oh, what a stately town it used to be, and how ugly it was now.
As she closed the Bible Celia felt a thrill of certainty. Everybody had not yielded. Something was going to happen.
Something was happening and she wished she knew what it was.
“Celia, what will you do to get rid of the redcoats?”
“Some people have given in. That always happens when the going gets hard. But some people have not given in. We’re still fighting. We’re going to free this country or die trying. Some of us will die trying. One of them may be me, and one of them may be you.”
But the result was that when Gates lost the battle of Camden, Marion was not there to be killed or taken. He was still free, Luke said triumphantly, to lead the men of the Lowcountry who wanted to fight.
Their leader was Major James Wemyss.
Wemyss’ men set fire to every building, destroyed every loom and storehouse, killed every animal on the farms. When they got through, that whole stretch of country looked like what Celia had seen at Bellwood. How many girls were raped, how many babies and old people died, nobody knew.
“Well, that was our start. Now men are coming to us from all over. But we can’t fight a war with our fists.” He spoke crisply. “We need guns, clothes, shoes. Some of those fellows came to us half naked. Wemyss had burnt up everything they owned. For something to fight with, we’ve raided sawmills and beaten the saws into sabers. In the farmhouses outside Wemyss’ line of march women have melted their kitchen pans to make us bullets. We take guns and powder-horns from dead Britishers. But it’s not enough. We need everything.”
The city of New York was the headquarters of the northern wing of the king’s army, as Charleston was now the base of the army in the south.
Clinton had left Cornwallis in command of the southern army. Now that South Carolina (as they thought) was licked, the redcoats expected to have an easy time in the south. They had a strong fort in Florida, at St. Augustine; and they held Savannah, as well as other major points in Georgia. Cornwallis thought all he had to do was organize military government in South Carolina, then he could leave a small force to keep order while he, with his main army, marched northward.
“Celia, every day we can delay Cornwallis is one more day for changing the Thirteen Colonies into the United States of America. Understand?”
“So now you’re one of us.” She was not alone any more.
they were not merely getting rid of the redcoats, they were making a nation.
“Celia,” he asked, “did you ever hear of a man named Benedict Arnold?”
The rebels of the Upcountry had won a resounding victory. At Kings Mountain on the line between the two Carolinas, they had defeated a crack Tory troop led by a British colonel.
The news of Kings Mountain, five weeks late, was brought to town by a Negro servant of John Rutledge, the exiled rebel governor of South Carolina.
“The swamp-dodgers have a proverb. They say, ‘A Carolina fightin’ man, sir, owns all the ground within shootin’ distance of where he stands.’
Marion the Swamp Fox.
They had to have absolute faith, like his, in the rightness of their cause.
Marion’s helpers were rich men, laborers, tavern maids, peddlers calling shrimp and oysters in the street. They gathered information, they passed notes, or they engaged the attention of the British guards so other people could do so. More items about Marion’s men were posted in the night, to be read in the morning. Gradually, to redcoats and rebels alike, Marion was becoming a figure of legend, a ghostly hero who came out of nowhere and went back into nothing.
This vault was called the Provost. It was the only place where criminals were kept nowadays, for the town jail was being used as a barracks for British soldiers. The Provost was a stone-walled room, damp and almost airless, crawling with vermin. The place was already jammed with fifty-six human beings. These were men and women, white persons and Negroes; they were killers, drunkards, prostitutes, street-brawlers, some of them suffering from loathsome diseases. There was no separation by sex, day or night. There was no privacy at all, not even for what Simon Dale referred to as “calls of
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He also told her Congress had finally sent a first-class commander to coordinate the troops in the south. This was General Nathanael Greene, the man Washington had wanted to send last year when Congress had overruled him and sent Gates.
This was her wedding day.
“I am not alone any more. I am never going to be alone again.”
CELIA HAD HEARD THAT the real trials of life are not the great tragedies. Not these, but the small vexations that come back over and over till you think that one more day like this will turn you into a screaming maniac.
Over his shoulder she saw his companions, bearded and dirty and glorious, and she loved them every one and would have gladly kissed them all. Marion’s men.
“Mr. Garth, we are here by authority of General Francis Marion. You are ordered to return this property to Mr. and Mrs. Herbert Lacy. Mrs. Lacy’s son Captain Ansell will receive it.”