The shopkeeper smiled as though they shared a secret. He turned a key in a wall cabinet, brought out two sets of lead knuckles. In a melee outside an Indianapolis meeting hall she’d been hit with similar knuckles made of brass.
“These came my way from a brawl down in Fernandina. I can melt them down. Come back Friday and I’ll be ready to give you a lesson. Leave the piece with me till then.”
“It had better be here Friday.”
“Oh, it will be. I know who you are. I can’t afford to have your brother hail me into court for larceny. I have mouths to feed.”
He wanted a hundred dollars Confederate. She bargained him down to sixty. She borrowed the money from Ham. His younger partner, Argyll Buckles’s nephew Cedric, grudgingly agreed to the loan. Ham took the money from the cashbox of Buckles & Bell, replacing it with a promissory note.
Cassandra showed more animation every day. She encouraged her daughter to keep the windows open for fresh air. She said that when she felt a bit stronger, she’d like to attempt the stairs and visit the garden.
Friday, in a secluded yard behind the gun shop, Lorenzo set up a straw bale. He displayed a lead ball in his palm. He’d molded a dozen.
She watched attentively as he loaded and primed the pistol. Then he stood behind her, reaching around to position her arms. “Take aim, but it’s well to avert your head in case of a misfire. A slow and careful shot is better than one that’s too fast and off the mark.” She disliked having Lorenzo thrust his hips against her but endured it until she fired the round.
The recoil rocked her. The ball buried harmlessly in the bale. “One more?” he suggested.
“Yes, but I prefer to try it alone.” He stepped away, visibly disappointed.
She paid him, stowed everything in her reticule, and set out for home along Church Street. She wasn’t confident that she could be an expert marksman, but she felt she could load the old pistols and use them at close range in an emergency.
The Union barrage continued; a gun boomed every ten minutes or so. Mortars and Parrott rifles, coehorns and British Whitworths poured out their fire, abetted by the guns of ironclads and monitors. They hammered Sumter and also Battery Wagner, to keep the defenders crouching in bombproofs, unable to get to their artillery and return fire. The noise gave Alex fierce headaches.
General Gillmore sent a note into the city demanding surrender of Fort Sumter and Confederate positions on Morris Island. He threatened to fire on Charleston if refused. Beauregard didn’t receive the note immediately. Around half past one on Saturday morning Alex was jolted from sleep by a stupendous explosion. She ran into the hall. Cassandra cried out. Alex called back to say all was well, though clearly it wasn’t.
Ham stumbled out of his room in his nightshirt, candle in hand. “They must have fired the Swamp Angel.”
“They’re attacking civilians.”
“Under the rules of war they have the right. The city’s fortified and garrisoned. The docks are points of entry for munitions. And this is the most hated place in the Confederacy.”
They sat downstairs for the next hour. Alex asked about an eerie white glow in the south. “Calcium lights,” Ham said. “Illuminating the Confederate batteries so the guns can find them. Union engineers work under the lights to advance the trenches.”
Two more shells detonated in the city, the last no more than a few blocks away. They heard the whistles and bells of a fire company. Ham pulled on trousers and boots and ran to Meeting Street. He returned to say buildings were burning in Price’s Alley. “Incendiary shells. They explode and scatter Greek Fire.”
The sixteen rounds that struck Charleston before dawn brought uneasy quiet. General Beauregard replied to General Gillmore’s note with a scathing refusal. The city braced for more shelling.
Alex wrote a short list of items for Rolfe to look for at the City Market. Some farmers still brought produce into town. She wanted to buy dates or, as a substitute, dried persimmons. She wanted an Irish potato; barring that, a sweet potato. She wanted milk if it wasn’t too heavily watered, and any green vegetables available. They were scarce; Cedric Buckles’s wife grew flowers and herbs to cook as substitutes.
Rolfe held out the list. “Can’t read this here. Mistress never taught us. Agin’ the law.”
“Rolfe, you’ll be a free man when the North wins the war. Abraham Lincoln promised it in his proclamation last winter.”
“Yes’m, we heard what Linkum done.”
“To survive you’ll need to read and write and know your numbers.”
“Who going to hire a teacher for this nigger? What I do with old Linkum’s freedom anyway? I can’t eat it. I can’t carry it in a sack. Ain’t no good to me at all. You want to tell me that list out loud?”
The exchange haunted Alex. How many thousands lived in dread of emancipation because they weren’t prepared for it and didn’t even know how to begin?
Ham visited the city jail to interview prisoners with Nelson Mitchell. The lead defense counsel was a thoughtful, slow-spoken man, well regarded in the community. A few naysayers whispered that he was a secret Unionist, but there was no evidence.
Of the captured soldiers, two dozen had suffered no wounds. They insisted they had never been slaves, though of course this was to be expected, and they could offer no proof. At the end of the long day, Ham came home with a doleful report:
“They’re a dispirited lot, and not solely because of the danger they’re in. They believe the army betrayed them. Promised them the same pay and enlistment bounties given to white men, then reneged. At Battery Wagner they believe they were thrown in the front ranks to spare the white soldiers. One man said his captain warned him that if he objected or balked, he’d be shot in the back. Others verified the story.”
“But the state is going ahead with the prosecution?”
“Yes, though now it’s a two-edged sword. Lincoln has issued an order saying that if any Negro soldier is killed in violation of the rules of war, one of our soldiers will be executed.”
“Can you and Mr. Mitchell save the lives of those men?”
“A moot question. Mitchell is adamant on one point. He insists the situation is too highly charged for us to risk mounting a defense based on the main issue—whether the men are soldiers or insurrectionists. We need another strategy.”
“Which is?”
“Unknown. We’re still searching.”
Saturday the attack on the city resumed. In late afternoon Folsey Lark held court in the Mills House bar. He’d lately returned from Richmond, where he’d solidified new contracts by plying army purchasing agents with smuggled champagne and Virginia whores. Certain Charlestonians called Folsey a codfish aristocrat—a man of no breeding who made his money from trade. He didn’t give a damn. His critics were pretentious bluebloods living in poverty.
A new round came screaming in every few minutes. The hotel lobby was full of guests running about in panic. In the bar liquor and fine cigars promoted a cheerful complacence. Folsey struck up a conversation with a German military observer, Count von Ravenstein. As soon as they heard the next shell arriving, Folsey exclaimed, “I’ll wager fifty that it won’t hit us.”
“Ja, done, but if you lose, how will you collect?”
They watched the ceiling. The shell passed over, exploding somewhere to the north. Von Ravenstein produced a wad of Confederate notes, counted the bluebacks onto the bar. Folsey saluted the officer with his glass.
Applause greeted a surprising arrival, Gen. P.G.T. Beauregard. He was a stocky man, with brilliant dark eyes and elegant mustaches. His headquarters was just down Meeting Street in the James Simmons house. He marched in with his aide, Col. Tom Jordan,6
6Jordan, Beauregard’s longtime right hand, helped establish the Rose Greenhow spy ring in Washington in 1861. See Part Two of On Secret Service.
close behind. The two officers sat at a corner table with a white-whiskered gentleman Folsey recognized as a prominent cotton broker. They seemed to be arguing o
ver a sheet of figures, Beauregard puffing his cheeks and shaking his head repeatedly until the broker pulled out a pencil and wrote another figure that produced smiles and handshakes all around the table. Beauregard was a Creole, the privileged child of a Louisiana sugarcane plantation. He’d gone to West Point, served in Mexico, and resigned his army commission when war broke out. He was beloved in Charleston because he commanded when Sumter fell. People called him the first Confederate hero.
He wasn’t so favored in Richmond. His reputation had suffered after the Union victory at Shiloh Church in ’62. When Gen. Albert Sidney Johnson fell on the first day, Beauregard assumed command of the army and that evening failed to press the attack. He was condemned for bad judgment, cowardice, and worse. Richmond whispered of Beauregard hiding in his tent, paralyzed by a temporary insanity.
The army retreated to Corinth, Mississippi. An infected throat and general debilitation sent Beauregard home on sick leave, ostensibly on the advice of doctors. He left Braxton Bragg in charge. He thought he carried out the transfer of command properly, but Davis construed his unauthorized departure as dereliction of duty and took the Army of the West away from him.
More than fifty of Beauregard’s friends in the Confederate Congress petitioned Davis to restore him to command, on an equal footing with Lee. Davis would not. He sent Beauregard back to Charleston as commandant of the Department of South Carolina and Georgia. Beauregard’s dislike of the President became something close to hatred.
Beauregard said good-bye to his civilian guest and worked his way down the bar, shaking hands. Folsey bowed to him. “General. This is indeed a pleasure.”
“Mr. Lark, sir,” Beauregard said, returning the bow.
“I hardly expected to encounter you in a hotel.”
“A business matter to be settled. I’ll not skulk at headquarters. I prefer to move about, show the citizens that we aren’t intimidated by Gillmore’s cowardly attacks.”
“Allow me the honor of offering you and Colonel Jordan a whiskey.” Beauregard nodded agreeably. Because Folsey liked to drink at the Mills House, he supplied the bar with contraband bottles at reduced prices.
“I hear you have a relative newly arrived from Yankee country,” the general said. “An interesting creature, I’m told.” Although married, Beauregard openly admired and flirted with women. In Charleston he could do it without hindrance; his second wife, Caroline, was ailing in New Orleans.
“You must mean Alexandra Bell. I’m only related by marriage. My half-sister is married to my partner, Mr. Gibbes Bell. He and Alexandra are second cousins. She’s from one of the old Charleston families. She left because of a scandal. Took a fancy to a freedman and had quite a hot affair until a few gentlemen of the town objected and put a stop to it. I have it on good authority that up North, she offered herself to niggers at every opportunity.”
Beauregard took a moment to twist a point on his thick mustache. “Then perhaps I should not make her acquaintance.”
“That’d be my advice. She’s a tramp, probably diseased. I wouldn’t have her if she offered herself with a sack of gold between her legs.”
Folsey’s loud remark generated laughter in the smoky bar. “Thank you for the counsel,” Beauregard said.
Another shell flew over, landing nearby with a detonation that shook the chandeliers and rattled glassware behind the bar. Folsey toasted the general. “Here’s to your courageous defense of our city, sir.” He tossed off his whole glass; Beauregard took a single sip.
Folsey had already enjoyed several rounds. A warm, enveloping confidence overtook him as Beauregard and his aide left the bar. Spreading canards about Alex Bell was pleasurable and could be interpreted as honoring his promise to his father. Best of all it placed him in no personal danger.
Early Sunday morning Ham and Alex went to the attic, opened a round window, and looked through a telescope at Fort Sumter. The flag of the Confederacy still flew, but large sections of the wall had been blown down, the rubble falling to form rough slopes leading to the water. Alex expressed dismay over the concentration of Union ships offshore.
“You know you can leave whenever you wish,” Ham said.
“Abandon you and Mother? Not at a time like this.”
Sunday evening was quiet. The air was tainted with the smell of fires. Alex sat in the shadowy garden, softly picking out “The Blue Tail Fly,” President Lincoln’s favorite. Rolfe had gone home to avoid curfew trouble, but before that he’d sat on the piazza for half an hour, listening to the banjo. For once he smiled.
A carriage rolled up in the street, an ornate coupe rockaway with shiny carmine paint. A large letter B, scrolled and gilded, decorated the side panel below the glass window. The Negro driver tied the dapple gray to the ring block and opened the door for his passenger. Alex saw, at the gate, a square-toed ankle boot and a striped trouser leg jut from the carriage.
The driver reached up to help Gibbes Bell alight. What effrontery, to call after all that had passed between them.
56
Alex and the Hero
Gibbes appeared nonchalant as he approached the gate. He didn’t look the least bit like a victim of wartime shortages. Fancy black braid edged the lapels and pockets of his gray frock coat. His black cravat set off a vivid scarlet waistcoat. He was as stylish as a London nob.
He tipped his stovepipe hat. “A warm welcome to you, cousin. I wanted to hasten over the moment I heard you’d returned.”
“I imagine half the town knows by now.”
“Oh, all of the town. Those who matter, anyway. Hester Mouzon identified you. Might I come in?”
He’d unnerved her by appearing unexpectedly. She opened the gate Rolfe had oiled and scraped free of rust, led him to a garden bench. His left foot tended to drag slightly but he seemed unbothered. Heroism and commercial success had given him a confidence and polish lacking in his youth.
“How is your dear mother, may I ask?”
“Improving, thank you.”
“Delighted to hear it,” he said as he sat. “We must all have a social evening soon, circumstances permitting. They say the infernal Swamp Angel blew up during last night’s bombardment. Trouble is, the Yankees won’t miss it, they have guns aplenty.”
Alex took the other end of the bench. Gibbes set his tall hat between them and they exchanged brief histories. She’d been widowed in 1855. He offered appropriate condolences. Simms Bell had passed away five years before that; she returned the condolences. Simms had divided his property between his children but left Sword Gate to Gibbes. Ouida was a war widow. Gibbes had settled her in a town house adjoining his on Legare Street. She spent a great deal of time at Prosperity Hall, he said.
“I understand you distinguished yourself on the Peninsula,” Alex said. “Were you decorated?”
“Oh, no, the government can’t afford medals. They established a roll of honor for each battle. My name’s on the one for Seven Pines.” He clasped his soft manicured hands between his knees. “Alex, I say this with all sincerity. I know I behaved badly toward you heretofore, and I regret it. I’d like to heal the breach. I’ll start by reassuring you that I had nothing to do with the death of that young buck, Henry Strong.”
“It’s good of you to say so, but I’m afraid your actions at the time suggested otherwise.”
“Maybe you saw what you wanted to see. For years I’ve hoped we could put the incident behind us.” Not likely, she thought. “They say you’re a tub-thumper for the black abolitionists, like those Grimké women. I hear tell you wear trousers too.” Smiling, he looked at her breasts, so obviously, she couldn’t fail to notice. He seized her hand. “Damn if I don’t still admire you in spite of it.”
Rigid, Alex said, “How is your wife?”
He jerked his hand away. “Doing well, doing well. Since we seem to be getting personal, may I say that I hope your brother won’t persist in defending those niggers posing as soldiers?”
“It’s his decision. I happen to agree with it.” r />
Red-tinted shadows of evening covered them now. A salt crow scolded them from the live oak. Gibbes clapped and shouted “Hah” and the crow flew away. “Naturally you do,” he said.
That angered her unreasonably; she attacked. “I saw some strange cargo on the ship that brought me here. Casks of salt pork, sent through Nassau but loaded at Philadelphia. The casks were marked care of your company, Palmetto Traders.”
“I don’t know a blasted thing about salt pork, I’m only an investor. I’d have to ask my partner, Mr. Folsey Lark.”
“Ask him, then. Ask him why it’s all right to profiteer when children are walking the streets of Charleston, starving. Or don’t you see them? Do you practice looking the other way?”
He leapt up and loomed over her. “This is intolerable. I come here with the kindest of intentions and you insult me.”
A vein beat in his throat. She fisted her hands in case he hit her. Murder is murder, nothing cancels that, she thought. She held her tongue.
“By God, Alex, you’re as arrogant as ever.” He put on his hat and rushed to the gate as fast as his bad leg allowed.
At the carriage his driver took his arm to assist him; Gibbes shoved the man away, pulled himself inside, and slammed the door. The last thing she saw was the golden B disappearing in a cloud of red dust.
She’d been a fool to lose her temper with him. She might not meet him face-to-face again, but she feared she hadn’t heard the end of their quarrel. For the first time since sailing into Charleston she appreciated the danger of her position.
57
Unseen Enemies
Federal engineers advanced their trenches to within eighty yards of Battery Wagner. Beauregard saw the inevitable and issued orders. On the nights of September 6 and 7 his troops abandoned the Morris Island batteries, escaping in rowboats that carried them out to anchored ships.