“Marriage is like a conspiracy for you,” Emily said, smiling. “You look for it everywhere.”
On the day before she and Susan planned to return to Charleston, John Ellison called on her. He chatted politely with Susan for a while—about corn and cotton, which came easily to him—and asked her, “Ma’am, will you excuse us? May I speak to Miss Emily in private?”
“Of course,” Susan said, smiling, her skirts rustling as she left them with each other.
John Ellison pulled up his chair. He said, “Miss Emily, I ain’t grand, and I probably won’t say this as smooth as you’d like to hear. But I care about you a lot, and I believe you like me, too. I’ve been a widower for nearly two years, and I’m ready to marry again. Will you do me the honor? Say yes and be my wife?”
The subterfuge had worked better than she thought.
She blushed—it wasn’t coquetry; she was genuinely surprised—and she said, “It’s an honor to be asked, Mr. Ellison. But I’m not quite ready yet.” She gestured to her dress. “Despite this.”
He took her hand in his roughened fingers. “You take your time,” he said. “I can wait.”
She let her hand rest in his. “Thank you, Mr. Ellison. Will you do me a favor?”
“Of course, Miss Emily.”
“Don’t let my mother or father know you asked. Not yet, until I’m sure.”
He patted her hand. “I never did want to press you.”
She would be sorry to disappoint him. He might actually regret a refusal, once he had accounted for every bale and bushel, every hog and horse and hand. “Thank you, Mr. Ellison.”
It was October, past the frost, when Emily and her family finally abandoned the pines to return to the city. Emily sat at the breakfast table with her father and stepmother. Her father barricaded himself behind the newspaper, rustling the pages, until her stepmother asked, “Lawrence, whatever is in that paper to aggravate you so?”
Her father said, “It’s nothing for a lady to know about.”
“Then it’s politics,” her stepmother said, her tone aggrieved.
Emily knew, as her father did not, that her stepmother had already begun to calculate the effort of a wedding and a trousseau and weigh it against the effort of the Charleston season, when her father would go to the expense of entertaining the men who would support his candidacy for the Assembly.
Her father shut the paper and tossed it onto the table. He looked tired and pinched, as though his head ached all the time. Untangling Uncle James’s estate had burdened and aged him. His temper was short. Usually courteous to a servant, he had raised his voice to Ambrose, the most amiable of servants.
Susan asked, “Lawrence, do you have the headache again?”
“It’s nothing,” he said, but he pressed his fingers to his temple.
“I’ll make you up a dose of laudanum.”
“Laudanum? Do you think I’m a lady invalid? I have business to transact today.” He took up the paper again, shielding himself with it.
Emily was fiercely curious to know what had aggravated her father. After breakfast, when the table had been cleared, she went in search of the newspaper. Likely her father had left for his office on Broad Street, and the study was empty. She put her head into the room to look.
As she stepped into the room, Ambrose startled her. “Miss Emily, what do you look for?”
“The newspaper, Ambrose. This morning’s Mercury.”
“I set it on your daddy’s desk,” he said, gliding into the room, finding it for her. “Right here, Miss Emily.”
“Thank you, Ambrose.”
And he knew to leave her to read the paper that young ladies shouldn’t see.
She scanned the pages, looking for something that would upset a South Carolina planter. She found it on the second page. A “disturbance” at Harper’s Ferry in Virginia. An “uprising” of “negroes and infuriated abolitionists” that required the “infantry and artillery” to quell. A “miserable” business, the work of “insurgents.”
What her father would call “an insurrection.”
“Emily!” Her father strode into the room. “What are you looking at?”
She dropped the paper as though it burned her fingers. “Nothing, Papa. I was just straightening your desk.”
“Give that to me,” he said, as if the act of reading it had been an insurrection, too.
“I thought there might be a poem. Sometimes there is.”
“I saw no poem.”
Her ability to lie suddenly failed her. She met her father’s eyes. “I wanted to know what upset you so at breakfast,” she said. “I saw it. I read about the”—she groped for the word—“events in Virginia.”
He repeated the words of the breakfast table. “That’s nothing to concern a lady.”
“Papa, if there were”—she hesitated again—“an insurrection here, surely a lady would be affected as much as a gentleman. Why shouldn’t she know beforehand, if the worst came to pass?”
“You’ve never seen an insurrection,” he said. “You don’t know what it’s like.” He shook his head. “I was only a boy during the Vesey rebellion, but I saw how it marked my father, and he passed all his feeling about it to me.”
“The cheval de frise,” she murmured.
“We thought—we believed—that the Negroes would rise up to murder us,” he said, his face grave with the inherited memory. “We have long memories in Charleston. Your mother’s family fled San Domingo during their insurrection.” He looked past her at something that was not in the room. “The scenes of horror…the murders…the bloodshed…” He returned to the present and met her eyes. “We have never forgotten it, and it haunts us to this day. All of us who live in Charleston.”
“But it’s past now,” she said.
“Ah, Emily,” he said, his voice softening. In a rare gesture of affection, he stroked her cheek. “I’d much rather worry about your trousseau,” he said. “I hear from your stepmother that Mr. Ellison of Sumter County has taken a liking to you over the summer. Do you like him, too?”
“I don’t know,” she stammered.
“He’s an upcountry man. Not a man of Charleston. But very sound.”
“He is, Papa.”
“Leave politics to those who need to know,” he said. “Let’s get you happily settled, as a girl should be.”
“Yes, Papa,” she said.
He patted her cheek, as though she were still a little girl.
As she left the study, she thought of her real defiance. Now that she had returned to Charleston, so had Joshua’s letters, which again went into Caro’s hands for safekeeping. Emily left the house, her sketchbook in her pocket, to ask Caro if she had a letter for her. She felt more than a twinge of guilt about Caro, whom she hadn’t seen in the weeks since she had been home.
Had there been so many Guardsmen on the street last spring? They seemed to be everywhere in their greatcoats and their military hats, billy clubs tucked under their arms. Black people, usually so easy and voluble on the street, fell silent and dropped their eyes as a Guardsman walked by. They seemed to shrink into themselves.
At the corner of Broad Street was a familiar sight, the market woman who sold flowers from a basket balanced on her head. Emily knew her market song as she knew Sophy’s. As a Guardsman approached her, she fell silent. He was a short man, made taller by the cap he wore. He grasped his club firmly as he called to her, “You! Let me see your badge!”
The badge glinted on the woman’s chest, pinned there like an amulet. Last spring, Emily recalled, few slaves wore their badges so prominently. The woman lifted the badge for the Guardsman to examine, and he bent close to peer at it. Awfully close, Emily thought. But the woman stood quietly without drawing back or flinching.
“It looks all right,” the Guardsman said gruffly. Still standing too close, he said, “You watch yourself.”
“Yes, suh,” she said, touching the badge with her fingers a
s though it would protect her from another Guardsman’s scrutiny.
Emily pulled out her sketchbook and began to sketch the Guard. He noticed and strode over to her. “What are you doing?”
She said politely, “Taking your portrait, sir.”
“Why? You ain’t one of those abolitionists, are you? Sketching for a paper up North?”
The half-truth startled her so much that she tore the page from the book and handed it to him. “No, just taking a likeness. It’s yours, sir. Perhaps your wife would like it.”
He refused the proffered page. “I ain’t married,” he said. He tapped the club in his palm.
Emily began to tremble with anger as well as fear. “Sir, you forget yourself,” she said, as she walked away.
She was still unsettled when she arrived at Tradd Street. She found Caro in the kitchen, her sewing in her lap. She rose when Emily entered.
“Caro, don’t,” Emily said. “Not for me.”
Caro sat. Her face had a grayish cast, and her eyes were red-rimmed. At the familiar signs of grief, Emily felt a flash of alarm. “Oh, Caro, what is it? Is your mother ill?”
“No, Miss Emily,” Caro said, her voice hoarse and low.
She laid her hand on Caro’s arm. “What’s happened?”
“It’s nothing.”
“Don’t fib to me. I can see how downcast you are.” She addressed Sophy. “Do you know?”
Sophy said nothing.
“Caro, shall we talk in the yard?”
“If you wish.”
“Yes, I do.” She was ashamed of the note of command in her voice. Surely Christian charity was needed here if friendship failed them.
They went into the yard to stand under the live oak. It was too cold to linger outdoors, but Emily tried again, softening her voice. “Please, Caro.”
Caro lifted shadowed eyes to Emily’s. She said, “Danny Pereira asked me to marry him.”
How stupid of me, Emily thought. She’s heartbroken. “Did you refuse him?”
Caro laughed, a mirthless sound. “His family refused me,” she said.
“But why? How could you possibly not suit him?”
“I don’t suit a free man of color,” she said.
“I don’t understand.”
“A slave can’t suit a free man of color,” Caro said bitterly.
Emily reached for Caro’s hand, but Caro pulled away. “But you can marry, can’t you? I thought Negroes could marry. The hands on my father’s place are always getting married.”
“Oh, I can marry,” Caro said, still bitter. “If I don’t mind seeing my children born into slavery or being sold away from my husband. That’s no matter, is it?”
Emily stared at the cousin who had suddenly become a slave again. Upset, she stammered, “I never thought. I never knew.”
“There are many things you don’t know, Miss Emily,” Caro said, her tone angry, intending to hurt.
“What can I do?”
“Nothing,” Caro said, and she turned away.
Emily felt wounded. She would not show it. She said, “I came to ask if there’s a letter.”
Caro took the letter from her pocket. “This is yours, Miss Emily,” she said, in a mockery of servility.
She should put it in her pocket to read later. But she was so eager for Joshua that she tore it open. The bank draft tumbled into her hand, and so did the clipping from the newspaper, Cincinnati’s Penny Press. She scanned it. It was a very different version of the “events in Virginia” than she had read in the Charleston paper. She held out the newsprint with a trembling hand. “You should read this,” she said.
Caro glanced at the page. “I’ve heard about it,” she said, her voice matter-of-fact.
“Is it a rebellion?” Emily asked. “An insurrection?”
“Do you think I’d be crazy enough to tell you?” Caro flared.
Suddenly, Caro, the bookish planter’s daughter who had become her friend, did not trust her cousin. Emily asked, “Caro, what’s happened to make you so angry with me?”
Caro turned her face away. It didn’t hide the tears that slipped down her cheeks. “Leave me alone,” she said.
Emily walked swiftly through the yard and ran into the kitchen, letting the door slam behind her. Sophy, who stirred a pot of rice, looked up at the sound. She sighed. “Did she sass you, Miss Emily?”
Emily felt the tears rise. “What happened to her, Sophy? Why wouldn’t the Pereiras allow it?”
“She didn’t say?”
“No.”
“Don’t tell her I told you.”
“I promise I won’t.” How strange that she would swear like that to a slave.
“Her uncle go to your daddy to ask to buy her.”
“If her uncle owned her, she’d still be a slave. I don’t understand, Sophy.”
“Her uncle her flesh and blood. Do you think he sell her away? Or take her children from her?”
“He would own her to protect her?”
“Yes, Miss Emily,” Sophy said, as though she were a stupid child who had finally said something intelligent.
“Own your kin! Your flesh and blood!”
Sophy was silent, and Emily heard what she had said. Joshua’s letter seemed to smolder in her pocket. She asked Sophy, “What did my father say?”
“He refuse it.”
“Why?”
Sophy shook her head and said, “Better for you if you don’t let your daddy know that you know.” She turned back to the pot of rice.
Outside the gate, Emily pulled her bonnet tightly around her face to hide the storm of guilt and fury that no lady should feel.
Emily waited until she could keep her temper. She would gain nothing by raising her voice to her father. Christian charity, she reminded herself, even though her heart burned with a sinner’s rage. She found her father in his study, writing a letter. “Papa, may I speak to you?”
He laid down his pen and smiled a little. “Is it about your trousseau? You know that’s a trouble I would welcome.”
“No, Papa, it’s not that,” she said, sitting in the chair before the desk and carefully arranging her hoops to fit its confines. “It’s about the girl Caroline.”
“Yes? Why does she concern you?”
“I heard that her uncle came to you to ask to buy her. To act as her guardian and to protect her. And that you refused him.”
“Who told you?”
“Papa, does it matter?”
“Are the servants gossiping?”
“No, Papa.”
“Well, you heard wrong,” her father said, his affection about her marriage prospects gone from his voice. “I didn’t refuse him. I quoted him a price. He refused to pay it.”
“Why, Papa? Why would you say no? Caroline wanted to marry. The sale would have allowed it. Why would you stand in her way?”
“My brother left her to me,” he said. “He never intended for me to sell her.”
“I heard the will, too,” Emily said. “Perhaps I heard it differently.”
“Emily, it’s not wrong to treat servants with kindness. But they need a firm hand. Especially now.”
“The events in Virginia,” she said bitterly.
“They think of insurrection.”
“Does Caro think of insurrection? I think not.”
“It’s not your business to say,” he said.
“Why not sell her to her uncle and let her marry? Live quietly out of your sight?” She pressed him, even though she should not. “Let her marry and be happy. What any father might wish for his daughter.”
“Your uncle made his intention very clear,” her father said. “To keep them in this family. Not to sell them. It’s not for you to question the will or how I discharge my duties.”
She sat very still, struggling with the words, knowing they were insurrectionary, no matter how quiet her tone. “Is that how you understand family feeling?” she asked.
“That’s not for you to question,” he said.
She cried, “We can own them and sell them, fear them and loathe them. And call it right and good!”
“A firm hand,” he said. “A father’s duty, too.” He picked up his pen, a sign that he was finished with her.
Emily grabbed her sketchbook and left the house without a word to Ambrose. She was suddenly sick of Charleston, where the fragrance of azalea covered the stink of manure and mud, where fever lurked in the flames of the crape myrtle blooms, where grand houses were locked and fenced and guarded with iron spikes, and where men like her father honored the ghost of fiery secessionist John Calhoun and reviled the ghost of the murderous insurrectionist, Denmark Vesey.
She walked without knowing where she wanted to go, but she found herself outside the Slave Mart, just built earlier this year. She had driven and walked past it, the gray stone building in Gothic style, but she had never been inside. Her father, who was still careful with his money despite his inheritance, bought his slaves in the Low Country from other planters rather than in Charleston.
Women bought slaves all the time, but they didn’t attend the auctions. For that, they relied on their agents or male relatives. The man at the gate regarded Emily with surprise. “Miss, do you have business here?”
Act the lady. She smiled politely. “I live in Sumter County, and I was curious to see it,” she fibbed.
The interior of the Slave Mart was as plain as a warehouse, a large, bare room filled with folding wooden chairs. An iron stove sent out a feeble heat. At the front of the room stood the auctioneer’s dais and beside it, a block for the merchandise. The buyers milled together, and among them, she was the only lady. Some of the men smoked and others made notes, reminding themselves of the lots they wanted to bid on and for how much. Uneasy to be surrounded by so many men, Emily found a chair and sat.
To the right of the auction block, on a wooden bench, sat a girl who waited for sale, her hands clasped tightly in her lap. Under her dazzling apron, the sleeves of her dress were intricately ruched. Was she always so well-dressed? With a jolt, Emily recalled attending a horse auction in Colleton County with her father. She had pointed out a pretty little pony. Her father had said, “Can’t you see? He’s been brushed to look his best. To know his real condition, you’d have to look at his hooves and his teeth.”
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