consuming fire.
Finding something to feast on, it rose higher. Charles saw no more of him.
The smoking ceiling creaked and sagged, Charles struggled to his feet, the remaining part of the sword — it resembled a metal cross — gripped in his right hand. Most of the engraved inscription was gone. All that remained was
Blood soaked his right pants leg and squished in his boot when he walked. He spied his fallen Colt and retrieved it. He found the parlor as yet largely untouched by the fire. The windows had been knocked out, presumably so Cooper and the others could escape. He had to find them. The great house was lost.
He ripped down another drapery, cut it by stabbing and sawing with the stub end of the sword until he had a strip long enough to wind around his thigh several times. He snapped off the leg of a taboret, broke that in two, and used half to finish the tourniquet, hoping it would suffice.
His lungs hurt, an abrasive feeling throughout his chest. Smoke grew thicker every moment. He ducked through a window to the piazza, the empty revolver in his left hand, the broken sword in his right.
Daylight was coming. Cuffey's followers had managed to find most everything of value before the fire claimed the house. The evidence littered the drive. They had emptied the wine and spirit racks, the wardrobes, the kitchen cabinets. He saw seedy, bearded men, white and black, slipping away in the smoke between the trees, arms laden with loot.
Not all of them had been equally successful. The blond boy wearing Cooper's frock coat and the petticoat' lay facedown amid silver and smashed plates. A bullet hole showed between his shoulder blades.
There was little shooting now. But all it took was one bullet, so Charles cautiously remained behind one of the white pillars as he shouted, 'Cooper?'
Silence.
'
'Charles?'
The distant voice provided the guidance he needed. They were hiding in the mazy plantings of the formal garden by the river. He crept along the side of the house, careful to avoid touching it; the walls were hot. He turned the corner, passed the chimney, and scrutinized the lawn.
No one. He readied himself to make a dash, then remembered to announce something important with another shout.
'Cuffey's dead, Cooper. Cuffey — is — dead. I killed him.'
The sounds of Mont Royal burning filled the stillness. But no voices. Yet he knew they had heard him. He drew air into his pained lungs, stepped away from the house, and ran as fast as he could on his injured leg down the grassy slope toward the Ashley.
Someone shot at him. He heard the bullet splat the dewy grass to his right, but no second report followed. In the garden he found himself surrounded by familiar faces. Without so much as a word to anyone, he fell forward in a faint.
They hid all day in one of the rice squares, resting with their backs against the dirt embankment that held back the river until the wood gates were opened to let it flow in. The band of survivors consisted of Cooper, his wife and daughter, Clarissa, Jane, Andy, a young kitchen wench named Sue and her two small boys, and Cicero, the elderly, arthritic slave with curly white hair. Cicero had managed to fill his two big coat pockets with rice. He passed it around as the sun approached noon. It was their only food.
Others, including Cooper, frequently spoke of wanting to go back to assess the damage. Clarissa was the most insistent. Charles was adamant.
'Not until dusk. Then I'll go first, alone. No use risking any more lives.'
The tourniquet had helped. The thigh cut had clotted. He didn't feel good, but he was able to stay awake. He did wish he had some bourbon for the pain.
Cooper seemed prone to argue with his last remark. Charles forestalled it. 'Look at the sky. That tells you what's happened.' Above the embankment and the live oaks and palmettos bordering the rice acreage, black smoke banners flew.
Cicero was visibly affected by it. After watching the smoke for a length of time, his tension evident in the set of his lips and the glint of his eye, he exploded. 'What happened to those boys we put on guard?'
'They didn't stay there,' Cooper replied. It was a statement, not an accusation. But it enraged the old Negro.
'Cowards. Wouldn't fight for their home —'
Squatting and drawing patterns in the dirt with a stick, Andy said, 'Wasn't their home by choice, remember.'
Cicero glared. 'Damn skunk-belly cowards, that's what they are. Nigger trash.'
'Don't be so hard on them,' Charles said. 'They knew the South's beaten — that they'll have their liberty the minute it becomes official. Why should they stay here and die when all they had to do was run a mile or so and be free men right away? Tell you one thing. Thousands and thousands of fine, high-principled white Southern boys ran away from the army with a lot less reason.' He put two grains of rice in his mouth and chewed.
Clarissa was particularly displeased by the need to stay in the field most of the day. Shortly after noon, she had to relieve herself and cried because there was no privacy. Jane bent close to her ear, whispered, then gently helped her all the way across the square and over the next embankment. She waited on the near side until the elderly woman reappeared.
Clarissa's familiar cheery smile had returned. When Jane brought her back, she said, 'How sweet the air smells. Spring's coming. Isn't that lovely?'
'Yes,' said Judith, putting an arm around her mother-in-law and patting her. 'Yes, it is.' Andy gave Jane a swift, almost chaste kiss on the cheek. Charles thought he heard the black man whisper, 'Thank you.'
Charles drowsed awhile during the afternoon. Eyes half closed, he visualized bits of the writhing struggle with Cuffey. His eyes flew open and he shuddered, reminded of another day, at the slave cabins, when they had both been only six or seven. Friends, they had wrestled for possession of a fishing rod. This time it had been two enemies contesting one life. My God, how far the wheel had turned.
Toward sunset, Cooper again declared that he wanted to go back to inspect the property. No shots had been heard for more than four hours, or any unusual sound at all. The smoke kept drifting, thinner but still strong- smelling. Why Clarissa no longer noticed, Charles couldn't imagine, unless it was because she dwelled so much of the time in the safer, softer landscape of her own mind and had retreated there again. She was a lucky woman in some respects.
'I don't believe anybody should go up there alone,' Andy said. 'I'm goin' with whoever decides to do it.'
'I suggest the three of us go,' Cooper said. Charles was by now too tired to continue the argument. He gave in with a shrug.
Unarmed, they trudged along the bank of the Ashley. The water shone red-gold in the lowering light. They passed the last rice square and advanced cautiously through the belt of big trees separating the fields from the formal garden and riverside lawn. From their angle of approach, the first visible damage was the broken planking and debris on the bank. The dock no longer existed.
Pale, Cooper wiped his lips and walked out of the garden. Following him, Charles saw pieces of two gold- edged platters on the grass and a ripped dress with a mound of excrement on it. Human, he presumed.
Cooper's attention was on the house. He whispered, 'Oh, God above.' Even Andy appeared stricken. Charles didn't want to look, but he did.
Mont Royal had been burned to its tabby foundation. Nothing stood in the ashes and rubble except a few canted black beams and the great chimney, soot-marked but with all of its thick wisteria vines intact. Charles supposed the vines were dead.
'How could they?' Cooper said, wrath in his voice. 'How could they, the damned ignorant barbarians —'
Softly, Charles said, 'You used to tell me South Carolinians were fools because they were inviting war. They were eager for one. We just got what you predicted. The war paid us a call.'
