Charleston by John Jakes Page B

hour’s work.
    Sorrowing black men and women formed a circle around Edward. He thought there were fewer than when the big house burned. With birds warbling cheerily and the sun throwing great shafts of light through the trees, he read Scripture from a Bible belonging to Sam’s wife. All of them sang a Gullah hymn. Dere’s a bright side somewhere, gonna keep on till I find it. The voices in ragged unison had a mournful beauty that stirred Edward’s soul. Did heaven exist? He didn’t know, but if it did, Sam and Big Walter and his mother would surely be there.
    The afternoon remained beautiful and warm. Edward, Poorly, and his new wife set out on the Cooper, bound for Charleston. The boatman put up in a marsh until dark, then rowed downstream on a fast tide. A familiar clean smell of pine rose from Eliza’s temporary coffin. Poorly had built it in the carpentry shop.
    Edward sat on a thwart, one hand resting on the raw wood. He imagined an advancing line of redcoat infantry. Each man wore William Lark’s face. He imagined himself killing them one by one.
    Before the events of last night he’d been unsure of his place in the war, or even whether he had one. Now his bleak eyes gazed at the starlit river and saw a future in which he could no longer be merely a spectator.

7
“Long Live the Congress”
    For years afterward people said that when Malvern burned and Eliza Trott Bell died, Edward aged ten years in one night. Any tendency to lightness in his nature disappeared.
    Eliza went to her rest on Friday, April 7, in the small graveyard of St. Michael’s, where Tom Bell had been a vestryman for eight years. The rector prayed; the sexton tolled the bells. Only the day before, the bells had pealed joyously, with people cheering and celebrating as 750 relief troops, Continentals from North Carolina and Virginia, arrived in a procession of sloops and schooners that slipped down the Cooper while fieldpieces on the Neck banged away, doing no damage because of the range. As family and friends mourned Edward’s mother, Charleston enjoyed a few hours of unjustified euphoria.
    Mr. Gadsden attended the funeral, as did John Rutledge and members of his governing council. Esau Willing brought his daughter, Joanna. She spoke to Tom Bell with sympathy and tenderness. She was attentive to Edward as well. She laid her gloved hand on his sleeve and said, “I heard you acted bravely at Malvern.”
    â€œNot bravely enough, or quickly enough. If I had, she’d be alive.”
    â€œEdward, you mustn’t blame yourself.”
    â€œBut you see,” he said, “I do.”
    Lydia stood with Adrian and scarcely glanced in Edward’s direction. None of the mourners had decent funeral clothes. Edward’s black suit was old and shabby. Good black cloth was loomed in England and no longer available.
    Poorly and Sally stood with the house servants, behind the white mourners. Pharaoh’s wife, Essie, bowed her head and sobbed softly as the rector concluded his final prayer. Edward had never seen his father so shaken, indeed couldn’t remember seeing him cry as he cried when the gravediggers lowered Eliza’s coffin.
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    Tom Bell invited a number of men to the house after the burial. On a sideboard he set out rum and his last two bottles of Madeira. Pharaoh served small beer and mugs of hot chocolate or coffee; no tea had been drunk in the house since the troubles over the duty levied by Parliament. Resistance to the tea tax, led by Mr. Gadsden and his Liberty Boys, had been almost as fierce and militant in Charleston as in Boston.
    Pharaoh’s Essie, who cooked for the household, had baked two huge queen’s cakes, rich concoctions of butter and cream and currants that the gentlemen quickly devoured. Conversation and alcohol gradually tempered the mood of the burial. Tongues loosened; voices rose. The chief topic was the city’s precarious position.
    Most outspoken