Alex couldn’t help a retort. “The Yankees aren’t solely responsible for the war. Charleston fired the first shot.”
“And all you can do is gloat over what’s happening to us.”
“Look here, Ouida. I feel sorry for everyone in Charleston, including you. No sane person wishes suffering on others.”
“You make me sick with your piety. How dare you come back to taunt and insult us.”
“I’m doing neither. This is my home as much as it is yours. I came back because my mother was ill.”
“She deserved to die. She raised a Yankee whore.”
Alex slapped her, then instantly wished she could roll back time and cancel the mistake. Ouida touched her powdered cheek. “I can have you charged with assault.”
Sorrow melted Alex’s anger. “Oh, Ouida. Haven’t you vented enough hatred for one lifetime?”
“No, not yet. Mr. Calhoun says you and your kind must never be forgiven. You want to destroy the South with your insufferable righteousness. He told me that today.” Ouida’s high, hectoring voice attracted attention from passersby. The Negro driver, torn between mortification and fright, looked wildly up and down Church Street.
Ouida picked up her skirts and swept to the coach. The driver jumped to the box, jerked the whip from its socket, and flicked the croup of the horse.
That evening Alex described the encounter to Ham. “You called her unbalanced. If she talks to someone who’s been dead since 1850, she’s more than that. She’s a madwoman.”
“Yes, that fact is widely recognized but largely unspoken. Ouida’s wealth and position protect her. Best to avoid her.”
“I fully intend to do so. My God, Ham, how many enemies do we have in this town?”
“Many more than I’d like. Care to change your mind about the school?”
A Union round crashed in the distance. “No. People like Folsey and Ouida don’t own Charleston. It’s our city as well as theirs. I won’t run.”
60
Prisoners
In the spring of 1863 Richard Riddle and Cal Bell hoped for parole from Fort Delaware under the cartel for general exchange of Union and Confederate prisoners. It was a man-for-man exchange, with tables of equivalencies for different ranks. Richard, a captain, was worth six privates, Cal, a second lieutenant, three.
In May their hopes were dashed. Largely at the instigation of Lincoln’s secretary of war, Mr. Stanton, the cartel collapsed. Stanton and General Grant objected to continually resupplying the Confederacy with men likely to violate parole and return to the fight.
During the summer all Confederate officers in the North were loaded on the cars and moved to Johnson’s Island Military Prison in Sandusky Bay, a mile from the shore of Lake Erie. A Union sloop continually patrolled in the bay with guns trained on the prison.
“Well, here we are again,” soldiers liked to say when confronted with a circumstance no different from their last. The expression was never more relevant than when the two South Carolinians arrived at the prison compound. The same fierce winds blew through gaps in the barracks walls. The same Lincoln hirelings guarded the deadline. The same putrid rations—wormy bread, beans, occasionally some pickled pork—were distributed at noon, one meal every twenty-four hours. The same chinch bugs and grayback lice deviled unwashed flesh. The same sinks overflowed with waste and bred plump wharf rats. Prisoners caught the rats, skinned, and roasted them. Richard was damned if he’d eat rat. Cal said it was passable fare.
By this time Richard and Cal were no longer fresh fish but salt fish—prison veterans. On their second night at Johnson’s Island muggers from the next barracks swarmed in to raid for possessions. It was a curiosity of prison life that guards often overlooked knives belonging to inmates. Richard kept a six-inch folding Bowie hidden in his pocket. One of the muggers got a feel of it, buried in his thigh. The raid ended abruptly.
Cards and dice helped pass the time. Richard never gambled. Surviving day to day was enough of a gambling game for any man. You wagered your stamina against smallpox, and pneumonia, and typhoid fever. If you lost, the good men who’d organized the prisoner YMCA carried your corpse away.
Northern winter closed down. The wind howled. The temperature stayed below zero for days. A wood-burning stove in each barracks did little to alleviate suffering at twenty below. Prisoners hacked up chairs and legs of bunks and fed the pieces to the stove. At night, when Richard put his canteen under his head for a pillow, the contents froze.
Thick ice on the bay drove the guard sloop away and encouraged escape attempts. Richard was asked to join one in late December. Wary of the leader’s intelligence, he declined. It was well he did; three of the four who scaled the wall and fled across the lake came back in chains, hands and feet frozen. One died in the prison hospital. The leader had perished when his pursuers put two bullets in his back. They left him for the fish when the ice melted.
Richard had seen snow in Columbia, but never in such heavy quantities as fell on Johnson’s Island in the winter of 1863–1864. He engaged in a new sport, snowball fights. His bones creaked, but his ferocity and his throwing arm quickly raised him to the rank of commander of the Blue Army. It took the field against the Red Army in exchanges of icy missiles that lasted two and three hours, until the warriors fell back, too cold and exhausted to continue.
A sadistic guard observed Richard and Cal’s friendship, accused them of being lovers. Both of them considered it an insult to their honor. Southern men could be friends without that kind of thing, although there was plenty of it in the prison. Strange whispers and groans often disturbed the night.
Richard sharpened his folding Bowie on a borrowed whetstone. One bitter February morning the offending guard was found stiff in the snow with his startled eyes bulging and his throat slashed.
Questioned, Richard said he and Cal had played cards until dawn. Others in their barracks swore to it. Richard and Cal were spared transfers to an eight-room death house where convicted prisoners lived with a sixty-four-pound iron ball on a six-foot ankle chain until they were hung.
Richard went back to carving miniature soldiers. Cal was much better at whittling. His canoes and little sailing ships rigged with sticks and thread sold well as souvenirs in Sandusky shops. The money was returned to the prisoners by the fair-minded prison commandant. Cal spent his on whiskey smuggled in by the guards. He drank steadily, a sip at a time, from first light until dark. Richard hated to see it.
Richard lived for an end to the war and a return to his native state and his wife, Loretta. Then, God willing, he’d never have to look at another Yankee face, never have to speak to a Yankee or do business with one. He’d go home hating Yankees. Cal just wanted to go home to some better whiskey.
61
Dark December
Adah Samples took a colored-only car of the Northeastern Railroad up to Florence. Adah’s mother, widowed in the summer, had gone to live with her brother on his farm. Adah was depressed to see so many people following the train on the road beside the right-of-way. On horseback and on foot, in buggies and wagons, they were fleeing the endangered coast for Columbia or Flat Rock or some other refuge.
Adah, in her late twenties, was handsomer than ever. She had a resolute eye and a ripe body men found desirable. It belonged to Folsey, though of late they’d hit a rough patch. Folsey was inattentive, short-tempered. Palmetto Traders had suffered a huge loss in October when the blockade runner General Bee broke apart in a coastal storm. The firm lost six hundred bales of cotton bound for Liverpool.
The blockade had all but closed Charleston Harbor. The one Atlantic port remaining open was Wilmington, North Carolina, a hazardous twenty miles up the Cape Fear River, past the Union guns at Fort Fisher. Lately Folsey spent all his time in Wilmington. He’d been there the past four weeks.
Adversity had a way of weakening and defeating some, but not Adah. Folsey’s recent behavior only toughened her resolve to preserve the relationship. He wasn’t the kindest of human beings, bu
t he was a stallion in bed, and a richer man than she had a right to wish for. He might be pleased if she demonstrated her loyalty with a surprise visit.
After she left her mother at her uncle’s farm, she went to Florence and bought a ticket for the eighty-mile trip on the Wilmington & Manchester. The ticket agent asked for $12.75. Adah calculated quickly. “Fifteen cents a mile. That’s outrageous.”
“Tell it to Jeff Davis. What’s a nigger got to say about it anyway? There’s one coach, be sure you sit in the last three rows.”
From the separate shanty reserved for Negroes she watched workmen piling fragrant sacks of coffee beans on a flatcar. Blockade bounty, surely. Her train arrived. Five miles up the line she asked the conductor why they were traveling so slowly.
“Can’t go more’n fifteen miles an hour. Track’s all run down. Can’t be repaired, mills that made rails make armor plate now. South’s falling apart. You be careful in Wilmington, missy. Meanest city in the Confederacy these days.” He squeezed her arm and bumped her breast with his knuckle. “I like that pretty yellow turban.”
They arrived after dark. The Wilmington waterfront was unattractive and noisy, the piers crowded with ships, and the streets full of refuse and wandering sailors. Downriver, along the east shore, low clouds glowed red. Saltworks, Folsey said; the kettles boiled day and night to evaporate seawater.
Groghouses filled the night with raucous voices and tinkly music. A poster advertised Sunday cockfights. Adah climbed steep and muddy Market Street to the boardinghouse where Palmetto Traders rented rooms. She carried her portmanteau up one flight, shivering with anticipation as she raised her yellow glove to knock. Telltale noises stayed her hand.
She wrenched the knob, threw the door open. Light from the hallway gas mantle revealed a naked woman prone on the bed, her hips elevated; Adah couldn’t see much more than her enormous white hams. Folsey knelt behind her, jaybird naked except for his favorite tasseled Hessian boots.
“Told you to lock the damn door,” the woman said.
Folsey snatched his spectacles from the bedside table. Folsey was forty-seven, his soft good looks fading, his blond hair thinning. He peered at Adah through large square bifocals with ugly cement lines where the lenses joined.
“What in Christ’s name are you doing here?”
“I wanted to surprise you. Obviously I did.”
“There’s an empty room two doors down. Wait for me there.”
She stamped her foot. “I will not. You said you loved me, Folsey Lark. In July you said we’d be married.”
“Well, I say a lot of things. I’m damn mad about this, Adah. You have a lot of brass, stalking me like some damn spy.” The woman covered herself while Folsey stamped across the room, his shrunken manhood dangling.
“I reckon it’s time we called a halt. Go on home to Charleston. Haul your things out of the cottage. I get back and find you still there, I’ll burn it down around you.”
More angry than frightened, Adah fairly spat at him. “Bastard. That’s all you are, a no-good cheating fickle white bastard.”
The woman giggled; even Folsey was amused. “I do claim certain parts of that title, yes. Now get out of here before I hurt you.”
Adah stood fast. Folsey took a menacing step, raised his voice. “I said go.”
She ran down the stairs. On lower Market Street she rented a room at a seedy colored hotel, bolted the door, and threw herself on the bed. She cried awhile, then roused at the sound of tapping at her door. A rough voice whispered in some strange language. Sailors from all over the world gathered in Wilmington.
“Whoever you are, you’d better leave me alone. I have a gun.” Evidently her English communicated; he went away.
Adah sat up, rubbed her eyes. This would pass. Folsey had clipped her tail feathers but not forever. She’d survive, without charity from her uncle and her mother. The yellow bird would fly again, see if she didn’t.
“Oh, there’s a nigger watching the house,” Ouida cried. She stood by a window of the sitting room at Sword Gate. Gibbes had sent a trustworthy slave to bring Ouida to town for Christmas Eve. She hadn’t visited Charleston since meeting Alex. Gibbes had convinced her that going to Mr. Calhoun’s grave was unsafe; Union shelling of the city had resumed.
Snoo rushed to Ouida’s side. “Please be careful with the candle, dear.” Ouida held it too near the draperies, and her hand shook. At least she was wearing her glasses.
Snoo lifted the drapery for a clear view of Legare Street, where weeds grew and broken glass lay like scattered diamonds. Ouida whispered, “It’s Virtue, I know it. His left ear’s missing.” She lived with the memory of Lydia’s body crushing her to the heart-pine floor, the warm blood bathing both of them. Ouida still washed her hands and face several times a day.
Snoo gently pried the candle from Ouida’s fingers, blew it out. “Look again, dear. It’s just a boy, with both his ears.” And already gone into the night.
With a vague, helpless gesture Ouida said, “But I was sure. I dream of him all the time, you know.” Twice, she thought she spied her grandmother’s slayer lurking on the grounds of Prosperity Hall. Each time she sent slaves to catch the man, and each time they came back to hesitantly say they’d found no one. Not even footprints. Ouida reacted by calling them liars and locking herself in her room.
Snoo settled Ouida in a chair by the Christmas tree, a volunteer cedar cut from the sandy soil of Malvern. Snoo had decorated the fluffy branches with ribbons, popcorn strings, white mistletoe berries, and an engraving of Robert E. Lee in place of a star. She offered Ouida a plate. “Have some of my special fruitcake, dear.” The wartime cake was made with dried cherries, dark-blue whortleberries, and watermelon rind. Ouida hated it.
Gibbes came in with a bag of striped candy sticks, surely from one of his ships; there was no candy in the South. He presented each woman with a set of silver-chased Parisian hairbrushes, then showed his small gift to himself, a box of imported fishhooks and sinkers. “The niggers can go down to the harbor and catch us a char or a porgy for dinner.” Few people fished in metal-starved Charleston anymore; hooks and sinkers couldn’t be found.
A houseman served snifters of brandy. It was French, not the vile ersatz made with sweet potatoes. Sipping it calmed Ouida. They saw her up to bed at half past nine, then sat on a love seat glumly discussing her mental state. They agreed that the only remedy for it was a continuing supply of spirits and opiate tonics.
Shortly before 1:00 A.M. violent explosions shook the house. Gibbes flung himself out of bed. “The damned villains are firing at us on Christmas.” Under the door a ruddy light shimmered. He pulled on his fine London dressing gown of orange silk. “Snoo, wake up, there’s a fire.”
He ran with the gown flapping around his bare ankles. He discovered Ouida in the lower hall, an old woman’s lace-trimmed cap pulled down low on her forehead. She had another candle, and no glasses. The Christmas tree was ablaze.
“It was an accident, Gibbes. I heard a noise. I stumbled.”
A burly houseman ran from the pantry where he slept. “Luke, fetch a bucket of water,” Gibbes ordered. “Then go into the street and sound the alarm.”
Snoo came down in a robe of vanilla-colored brocade. Gibbes threw the bucket on the fire. Not nearly enough. In Legare Street, Luke hallooed and shouted while Gibbes pulled furniture away from the fire. Smoke thickened. One wall had already caught, devouring a Watteau reproduction Snoo prized. Gibbes, Luke, and another houseman kept a bucket brigade going until the fire company arrived. By then the ceiling was burning, and two walls and part of the floor.
Gibbes, Snoo, and Ouida retreated to a safe spot while the firemen dragged their hose through the front door and pumped water. All the volunteers except the man in charge were colored, replacements for whites gone off to fight. At least the Charleston Negroes were performing a useful service instead of taking advantage of the wartime confusion. Half the slaves at Prosperity Hall had run away. At Malvern every last one was go
ne, making it necessary to close the house.
The water brought the fire under control, then put it out. In the dining room Snoo wept over the smoke and water damage. Ouida wandered aimlessly, getting in the way but never apologizing. Gibbes caught the arm of the white fireman.
“I know you.”
“Yessir, Mr. Bell. Corporal Plato Hix.”
“The Peninsula,” Gibbes said with a sudden pained look, quickly gone.
“That’s right, sir.” Plato Hix was a stout chap with a round, bland face and large dark eyes. He seemed nervous. He showed his right hand, stubs of scar tissue instead of a thumb and index finger. “Took a ball at Seven Pines and couldn’t rightly fire a musket afterward. They sent me home.” He touched his forehead and turned away.
A few minutes later he returned to Gibbes and said, “Fire’s out. Believe it’s all right we go now.”
“Our people will clean up in the morning.” He saw no point in thanking the colored volunteers for doing what they were supposed to do.
Hix said, “They fired on St. Philip’s tonight. Scored a hit, I seen it when we ran over here.”
“Damn Yankees have no respect for the house of God. No respect for anything, including holy days.”
“Yessir, seems so, don’t it?” Plato slipped out the door, his boots splashing in the water escaping over the sill.
Trudging beside the pumper, Plato Hix thanked his blessed Lord that he’d managed to keep his composure with Mr. Gibbes Bell. He knew a secret about that gentleman, a secret so dire, he’d shared it with no one, not even his wife, Mary. If Mr. Gibbes Bell only knew how he’d trembled when the fire company was called to Sword Gate.
From the Peninsula he’d traveled all the way home to Charleston, a long, arduous journey on foot, because Mary and their two little ones waited there. Mary was a free mulatto woman of good character, though poverty and the difficulties of marriage to a white man had worn her down and blurred her good looks.