Charleston

  Sophie Lark no longer had any interest in the physical side of marriage. On rare occasions when he attempted to enjoy her favors she made her distaste evident. He supposed she felt the same way about all men. He left her alone most of the time and found his pleasure elsewhere, chiefly with nubile young Negresses from the household. Whores cost money; slaves cost nothing.

  Both of the Lark children were unmarried. Snoo, whose mother was Sophie, was beautiful and stunningly proportioned. She attracted young men Lark considered predators in pursuit of her money. He bullied her into rejecting them. Snoo’s older half-brother, Folsey, ran with a wild crowd that included Gibbes Bell. At nineteen he’d gotten a white girl in trouble. The girl’s father demanded $200 and “perpetual care” for his grandchild. Lark preferred to deal with such threats through third parties. He hired two Bay Street toughs to waylay and beat the man until he could barely crawl. Father, daughter, and Folsey’s unborn brat left the city and were not heard of again.

  Despite these vicissitudes Crittenden Lark considered his life one of personal accomplishment. He had no desire for social position, as Sophie did. Only one page in his mental account book plagued him. It showed the payment owed by the Bells for the murder of William Lark.

  Several times Crittenden had thought of moving against Hampton Bell. The right opportunity never presented itself. Ham Bell’s sister was another irritant, a strident voice railing against the South. Her name appeared regularly in the national press and millions sang her antislavery ballads, though not locally. Alex and her brother were never out of Crittenden Lark’s thoughts for long.

  After complicated legal maneuvers and a nine-hour defense oration by seventy-five-year-old John Quincy Adams, the Amistad rebels won their victory in the Supreme Court. Justice Story freed them. Abolitionists raised money for their return voyage to West Africa in 1841. Charleston gentlemen, including Lark, went into a rage when they read that a star speaker at one of the New York fund-raisers was “that damned woman,” Alexandra Bell.

  A few months later inspection of some potentially lucrative cotton acreage in Georgia took Crittenden Lark away for a week. When he returned, his friend Simms Bell invited him to the saloon bar of the Planter’s Hotel and there informed him that Sophie Lark had been seen at an inn near Orangeburg, accompanied by a planter named Randolph Routledge III.

  “They stayed the night. I’m told it isn’t the first time,” Simms concluded dolefully.

  So it wasn’t every man who repulsed Sophie. Lark cursed her for deceiving and humiliating him.

  That same evening, with a thunderstorm flinging hail on the roof, Lark stalked into his dining room, where Sophie sat with her genealogic materials. Before she could speak, he grabbed her by the hair and yanked her head up.

  “Time for the truth, you bitch. How long has it been going on?”

  “I don’t know what you—”

  He yanked again. Lightning glazed the windows; raindrops glittered. He seized her throat and choked. “You’d better tell me before I hurt you seriously.”

  “A year,” she gasped. “I’ve known him for a year.”

  “Where did you meet him?”

  “At a church bazaar, when I went up to Orangeburg to see about repairs at Pa’s farm. His mother introduced us. Let me go.”

  “Not until you tell me why you did it.”

  “Because he’s a gentleman. Because he has what you’ll never have,” Sophie cried. “A proper pedigree. I’m going to marry him. I’m going to be respected.”

  “The hell,” Lark screamed, just as loudly. He released her so he could bunch his fist and break her jaw. Desperately afraid, she was quicker. She sank her teeth into his hand.

  Lark howled and lunged at her, but she evaded him. She threw pens, the inkhorn, two leather-bound books. While he retreated, she picked up her chair and broke it over his head. He reeled into a corner and leaned there groggily. She ran.

  He shouted obscenities at terrified slaves when they looked in. Thunder shook the house as he ran up the curving staircase. Sophie wasn’t in her bedroom. He questioned a frightened house girl.

  “She wen’ out with a little trunk she carried her’sef. Must been packed a’ready.” Furious, he punished the messenger by throwing her bodily down the stairs.

  He went to bed unattended. Snoo had traipsed off to visit a former school chum in Moncks Corner. Folsey was, as usual, out with his worthless companions. Next morning Lark didn’t shave or dress. At noon, still in his evening robe embroidered with tiny golden peacocks, he sat over a cold cup of coffee, hatching revenge plots. A manservant tiptoed in to announce Simms Bell.

  “Bad news,” Simms said. “Your wife’s fled to the house of Routledge’s mother in Orangeburg. Eli Prickett presented himself at my door an hour ago with that information.”

  “Why the devil’s Prickett telling you anything?”

  “Because he’s acting as Routledge’s second. Routledge has challenged you under Rule Ten of the code.”

  The color left Lark’s face. He’d never fought a duel, though he owned a pair of beautiful pistols for that purpose. Most gentlemen did. Sophie had bought them for him in Washington, after he slurred the reputation of another congressman who didn’t vote as Lark thought he should.

  Thank God for seconds. Their primary obligation was to effect a reconciliation. “Tell Prickett I apologize. Doesn’t the code say an apology forestalls a duel?”

  “Not when Rule Ten is invoked. Under that rule an insult to a lady who is under a gentleman’s protection is considered a greater offense than if the insult is given directly to the gentleman. Is it true that you did bodily harm to Sophie?”

  “I Goddamn well tried. She Goddamn well deserved it. Look what the slut did to me.” He showed his bandaged hand.

  “Because you resorted to force, there’s no possibility of a reconciliation. Eli Prickett made that clear.”

  Crittenden Lark’s ruling passion had always been self-preservation, which some called cowardice. As far back as 1812 when he sailed as supercargo on his own privateer, he exercised the owner’s prerogative and hid belowdecks at times of danger. No one, including his hired captain, dared chide him, or even speak of it. Lark’s instinct for survival dictated his careful, roundabout way of dealing with those who wronged or opposed him. He said to Simms, “I won’t fight.”

  “Do you want to be posted? Force Routledge to distribute a circular telling everyone you refused? You know the papers always print such material. It would ruin you forever.”

  A fierce pain tortured Lark’s belly. Simms was right. Despite clerics and editors ranting against it and municipal ordinances that prohibited its employment, the 1777 Code Duello from Ireland was venerated and frequently invoked. In 1838 the state’s own governor had penned a revised version for South Carolina gentry.

  “Oh, God, all right,” Lark said. “Will you act as my second?”

  “That’s why Prickett came to me. He presumed I might.”

  They discussed details. As the challenged party Lark had the right to choose weapons and the location. Obviously they would fight with pistols; men no longer settled affairs of honor with swords. Routledge would set the terms of the actual engagement.

  Folsey Lark somewhat reluctantly agreed to join Simms as a second. Simms informed Eli Prickett that the contesting parties would meet at seven o’clock in the morning on the first Monday in March. The site Lark chose was a five-acre plot on the Ashley River, a mile north of his summer home. He’d bought it with the thought of developing it for two or three similar cottages. Deeply shadowed by water oaks, volunteer pines, and thick stands of wild palmetto between, the heart of the property was hidden from traffic on the river road.

  On the appointed day Simms, Folsey, and Lark set out in Lark’s carriage at half past five. Folsey held a brass-chased wooden box on his knee: the big .70-caliber smoothbore flintlock pistols with hair triggers, until this day never fired in anger.

  They arrived to find a light fog drifting over
the dueling ground. The chill of Carolina winter still reddened the face and stiffened the joints. Lark continually flexed his fingers as he stepped from the carriage. Last night he’d received an insulting note from Sophie. She intended to marry Routledge after he disposed of Lark, which she deemed a certainty.

  The fog muted colors of the deserted woodland. The opponents stood a good distance apart while Simms and Folsey let Routledge’s seconds inspect the weapons. Then Simms carefully loaded them in sight of all.

  Lark squinted at his challenger. He was certainly thin as a stick and homely as a hog. Was he a better lover? What the hell difference did it make? He had a pedigree. No doubt Sophie had already notified Iola von Schreck.

  How he wished he could go at Routledge as he’d gone at Edgar Bell before the nullification elections, using a hired assailant. Of course the man had failed, but that wasn’t the point. Lark was never involved.

  The seconds summoned the contestants. Simms Bell said, “We have agreed that you will walk away from each other while Mr. Prickett counts aloud up to ten. On the tenth count you may fire at your pleasure. Is that satisfactory and understood?”

  The adversaries nodded, never speaking or making eye contact. The fog was lifting, tinted by pale lemon-colored light. An unseen horseman cantered by on the road as the duelists took positions back to back. Routledge’s second called out, “Ready. One.”

  Lark began to whimper. Folsey turned away in shame. As the count proceeded, Lark’s fear became unbearable. When he heard “Nine,” he spun around and fired. There was a snap, a spurt of sparks—a misfire. It counted as his shot. Routledge calmly aimed his pistol. Moaning, Lark bolted toward the river.

  Routledge’s ball stopped him, hurled him down with a gaping wound in his side. When the seconds examined him, they agreed that the wound was probably fatal.

  Lark lingered a full day and a night. At half past eight on the morning of the second day, he sent for Folsey. The young man appeared in his father’s draped and darkened bedroom wearing soiled linen and smelling powerfully of gin.

  Even in his last extremities Lark remained a dandy. He wore a French-style bed coat, bright red velvet, decorated with gold braid, as was the brimless cap of purple velvet. A gold tassel dangled from the cap.

  He motioned his son to a bedside chair. Even that minimal exertion produced excruciating pain. “Where is your sister?”

  “Sleeping, sir. The doctor’s dosed her full of laudanum. She’s almost lost her mind over this.”

  “Women are that way.” He hated to ask the next question, but he burned to know. “Have you had any messages from your mother?”

  “No, sir.”

  “She is not permitted to attend my funeral, understood?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Lark coughed. His stale breath flickered the flame of the candle, the only light in the hot, sour room. “Folsey, give me your hand.”

  Dry as paper, his fingers clasped his son’s. “Listen closely, this is very important to me. In my life there is one great endeavor in which I failed. Sometimes I was too busy. Sometimes the opportunity was missing. You must pick up the burden. I want you to swear that you will.”

  Folsey gulped, nodded.

  “You must avenge our family. Hampton Bell mocks and opposes all that is sacred and vital to the preservation of Charleston. His sluttish sister up North promotes nigger rebellion and nigger equality. Both for what they are, and for what Edward Bell did to my father, the surviving family must be punished. You must carry out the punishment, even if it takes years.”

  “Pa, I will if I can.”

  “I must have more than a perhaps. I must have your assurance. I’ve asked little of you in your lifetime. You’re a clever boy but you do nothing with it. You will inherit a sizable fortune. In return I require a promise that will travel with you until it’s fulfilled.”

  Silence. Lark’s fingers constricted. “Folsey?”

  Folsey feared rather than loved his father, but tears flowed anyway. “What can I say except yes, Pa? Yes, I promise. I’ll see to it. Even if it takes years.”

  51

  Reunion

  In 1844, while the cloud of slavery darkened over the land, Americans read England’s poet laureate, Wordsworth, and bizarre tales by a new Southern author named Poe. They flocked to the American Museum in New York to see General Tom Thumb and Phineas Barnum’s other wonders. They filled theaters and concert halls for a new kind of entertainment: white men singing and dancing in blackface. Alex attended one performance of the Virginia Minstrels, whose star, Thomas Rice, brought down the house portraying a character called Jim Crow. Some of the tunes were infectious, some of the jokes amusing, but she thought the whole idea of minstrelsy mocked Negroes.

  Senator John Calhoun sat in the cabinet again, serving as John Tyler’s secretary of state. The Baptist Church tore apart over the slavery issue and formed Northern and Southern conventions. A similar schism loomed in the Methodist Episcopal Church when the general conference ordered the bishop of Georgia to give up his slaves or his bishopric.

  Slave catchers prowled the North. The case of Prigg v. Pennsylvania, decided in 1842 by the Supreme Court, let owners recover runaways under the 1793 Fugitive Slave Act, no matter what the law of an individual state stipulated.

  President Santa Anna of Mexico let it be known that annexation of Texas would be construed as an act of war. Calhoun nevertheless negotiated the treaty to bring a vast new slave state into the Union. Abolitionists decried the treaty and deplored talk of a war to defend it. Henry Clay, Whig, and Martin van Buren, Democrat, each lost a presidential nomination because of public statements favoring Mexico’s position. The autumn election gave the White House to dark horse Democrat James Polk of Tennessee.

  Alex’s eminence in the antislavery movement was now unquestioned. Her name, in large type, dominated posters and handbills, and she typically appeared last on a program. That was the case in December, the week before Christmas, when she returned to New York for a rally at the Broadway Tabernacle, where she’d first sung “A Better, Brighter Morning.”

  She shared the program with a handsome, articulate black man from New Bedford, Massachusetts, Frederick Douglass. He told her privately that he’d been born with the name Bailey. He’d changed it to foil slave catchers. “I expect they’re still looking for Bailey. I ran away from Baltimore six years ago.”

  “How old were you?”

  “Twenty. They’ll have to kill me to take me back.”

  Alex was but three years older than Douglass. Sometimes she felt ten times that. She walked with a slight limp. In cold weather her right leg ached and she used a cane. Three anonymous men had waylaid her outside a church hall in Pittsburgh. Two held her while the third swung a lead pipe. “That’s for Garrison and all the rest of you white niggers who want women to behave like whores.”

  The Broadway Tabernacle at Worth Street had opened its doors as New York City’s first Congregational Church in 1838. The main hall seated four thousand. Tonight it was three quarters full. Alex played and sang a new ballad called “North Star.” She was into the second stanza when a face in the front row of the gallery caught her eye. She was so startled, she forgot the next line. She recovered and smiled at Reverend Drew. After the program he rushed through the crowd to greet her.

  “How grand to see you, Miss Bell.”

  “It’s a pleasure for me as well, Reverend.”

  He held her hand longer than necessary. “I was speaking to the good people of Greenwich last night. One of them showed me an advertisement for this event.” He was more gaunt than she remembered. His Byronic hair was streaked with white; wide swathes of it swept over his ears, a curious winglike effect.

  “I’d be honored if you’d have supper again. Perhaps this evening?”

  “I would enjoy that,” she said, hardly thinking before the words rushed out. She remembered an obligation. “Oh, no, I can’t. I promised to take supper with Mr. Douglass.”

  “My l
oss. He’s an eloquent orator.”

  “Still quite nervous about speaking, but he feels he must. He’s writing a memoir about his escape from Maryland. He says it may put slave catchers on his trail, but he won’t be deterred. A brave young man.”

  “As regards supper, I don’t accept defeat easily. The Tabernacle is holding an antislavery fair tomorrow. Might we take it in together?”

  “I’d be delighted,” she said. Later, she thought she’d sounded altogether too eager.

  He called for her at her hotel on lower Broadway. Soon, by mutual agreement, they were on a first-name basis. They toured the armory hall decorated with Christmas candles and greenery. Ladies of the sponsoring society offered a huge array of treats for sale—mince pie and brown betty, deviled oysters and hot pretzels, pralines and fudge and honeyed popcorn balls. Alex and Drew enjoyed apple dumplings and hot cider, then strolled on to the booths selling merchandise. She bought a packet of needles imprinted with the words PRICK THE CONSCIENCE OF THE SLAVE MASTER. Drew bought a bundle of quills labeled TEN WEAPONS OF TRUTH. Engraved portraits of Garrison sold briskly, as well as pirated editions of Mr. Dickens’s A Christmas Carol and painted Toby jugs sent by an antislavery group in England. As usual at these events black patrons were almost as numerous as whites.

  Afterward Drew took her to an expensive restaurant on nearby Duane Street. Three elderly musicians played a lugubrious version of the new hit “Buffalo Girls, Won’t You Come Out Tonight?” Candles on the table reminded her of their first evening together, but there were differences. Although his smile was no less winning, there was a new gravity about him. Each found that the other had changed.

  “I can’t criticize you any longer for championing the cause of women, Alexandra. The scales fell from my eyes two years ago, when my uncle Nicholas died. After the funeral my dear aunt Bea confessed to me that for years, when Uncle Nick drank heavily, which was often, he abused her. He took offense at the slightest thing, and he beat her. It was always concealed from outsiders. I never saw a hint of it when I was a boy. Aunt Bea suffered it because she thought it was a wife’s duty. Last May she remarried, a much finer man. I no longer think highly of my uncle.”