The Cane Creek Regulators Read online

  Outside, the bells from some church began announcing the noon hour.

  Several minutes later, the black man opened the door, and in walked a woman in a sack-back gown of pink and cream stripes, with a satin skirt and sleeve ruffles, satin embroidery, all in all the most dazzling dress Emily had ever seen.

  Stewart, who had no reservations about sitting down, rose, bowed, and, taking the woman’s proffered hand, kissed it before straightening his back. “Missus Bull,” he said, “allow me to present my daughter, Emily Stewart of Ninety Six.”

  The woman’s smile seemed both pleasant and genuine as she curtsied and stepped toward Emily. She looked to be in her late thirties, maybe early forties, still slender, still with exquisite features. Emily found it hard to believe that this beautiful woman had married William Bull, a man who, she had heard her father once say, “had a face that could sink ten thousand ships.”

  “Why,” Mrs. Bull said, “she is so lovely. You do me a great honor by bringing her to my house, sir. But you are here to see the Lieutenant Governor, I presume.”

  “Missus Bull.” Emily tried to return the bow without tripping over her feet.

  “Child, you shall call me Mary Hannah, and I shall call you Emily, if that suits you.” Without waiting for a response, Mrs. Bull turned to Breck. “Mister Stewart, you should find William at the Corner Tavern. I will summon Charles and he will take you there by carriage.”

  “I can walk …”

  “In this dreadful heat. I think not, sir. And you will leave this darling child of yours with me. We will have strawberries and cream with my … ahem … other guest.” She was already ringing a silver bell. Almost immediately another Negro servant appeared at the entrance to the parlor. Before Emily could say a word, the slave and her father had left her inside this palace with Mrs. Bull and a second woman who had appeared as her father headed out the door. The woman looked Emily up and down, and, unable to hide her distaste, she perched herself in a parlor chair and began immediately to fan herself.

  “Is it always this hot, Mary Hannah?” the woman asked Mrs. Bull.

  “Hot?” The lieutenant governor’s wife laughed. “Wait until August.” She rang the bell again, ordered food, and presented Emily to Lady Charles Montagu.

  “Charmed,” said the governor’s wife, and then began to fan herself furiously. She wore a purple periwinkle silk crepe gown embroidered with silver leaves and silver filigree buttons forming a square around the blouse.

  “Please, Emily, sit down. Tell us all about Ninety Six,” urged Mrs. Bull.

  Emily sat on her hands, hoping they might keep her clothes from dirtying the brocade chair. It was dark in the parlor, too dark with the shutters closed—to keep out the heat, she presumed—for her to get a decent look at the governor’s young wife. She was much younger than Mrs. Bull, bigger, and, Emily quickly decided, repulsive and obnoxious.

  “I cannot wait until we leave for New York on vacation,” Lady Montagu said. “This place is oppressive. How is the heat where you hail from, child?”

  This place, Emily thought, might not feel so hot if her highness did not exert herself so in flapping her damned fan with that flabby arm. That alone produces more heat than the pendulum pumps of an indigo machine.

  “Hot now,” Emily said, “but most in the district expect a hard winter.”

  “How so?”

  “Ma’am?”

  “How … can … you … predict … a … hard … winter?” She enunciated each word as if she were speaking to a small child.

  Mrs. Bull rolled her eyes and, making sure the governor’s wife could not see, gave Emily a sly wink.

  “Bark,” Emily said. “And hides.”

  That got Lady Charles Montagu to stop with the fan. She even lowered it to her lap, eyes suddenly curious, and asked, “How is that?”

  “Tree bark, Lady Charles,” she said. “It is thicker than normal. Thicker, actually, than anyone in the district has seen in years. Even the Cherokees say so.”

  The large woman leaned forward. “Cherokees? Do you mean that your men actually speak to such heathen savages?”

  “We all do, Lady Charles,” she said. “And they are not what I would call heathen … at least compared to some of the white …”

  Mrs. Bull cleared her throat and rang the bell, and Emily understood she had best watch her tongue around a gentrified lady like the governor’s wife. Maybe around Mrs. Bull, too.

  The slave who had answered the door reappeared, and Mrs. Bull asked that tea and slices of watermelon be served before the strawberries and cream.

  With a nod, the man disappeared once more.

  “And the … hides?” Lady Charles asked, obviously finding the word repulsive.

  “Fur skins are thick, too. Animals have an instinct, Lady Charles. They know when bad weather is coming.”

  She sniffed in disgust, and picked up her fan.

  “And what, child, do you do for culture in … what is it that you call your town?”

  “I would not call it a town, Lady Charles, but it’s called Ninety Six.”

  “A peculiar name, is it not, Lady Charles?” Mrs. Bull said.

  “I find it idiotic,” Lady Charles said. “Who on earth names a town a number? As I was saying, child, are there concerts in your …?” She waved her hand.

  “There is music,” Emily said. She hoped Lady Charles did not ask for more information, because if she had to mention bagpipes, fiddles, and Jew’s harps, she feared the governor’s wife would suffer an apoplexy.

  “Are there books?”

  Before Emily could answer that her mother had a Bible, Mrs. Bull said, “Oh, Elizabeth, how could I have forgotten to mention the Charlestown Library Society.”

  Emily let out a silent sigh of relief as the woman turned her attention to the lieutenant governor’s wife.

  “Goodness, why it is almost twenty years old,” said Mrs. Bull. “Many of our city’s fine young gentlemen … William is now the president … established this fine society merely to benefit from the latest books and periodicals from London. It has grown quite substantially and the materials have been moved from the homes of our librarians to …” She paused to take a sip of tea.

  “And where is your fine library now?” Lady Charles asked.

  Mrs. Bull sniffed. “Well, it was at the Free School, but, until we have funds for a new library, it is on the upper story of Gabriel Manigault’s liquor warehouse.”

  Emily blushed, and, seeing the look on Lady Charles’ face, she felt Mrs. Bull’s embarrassment.

  “I suppose your library resides in a groggery, too, my child?” she asked.

  “Da keeps the Bible there,” Emily said. “And we live upstairs.”

  She had had enough of Elizabeth Montagu’s attitude.

  “And what do young ladies do in Ninety Six?” the fat woman said.

  Well, less than two weeks ago, I split a murderer’s skull open with a hatchet.

  Emily didn’t say it, but she wished she had.

  * * * * *

  Charlestown, Emily discovered, did have one thing in common with Ninety Six. Everything that got done here got done in a tavern. Charlestown just had a lot more than Ninety Six’s sole inn. And while you never found a lady inside one of Charlestown’s “groggeries,” as Lady Charles Montagu would call them, her father told her that half of the tavern licenses in the city had been issued to women.

  “How can that be?” she asked.

  Her father smiled, and straightened the collar of his coat. Breck Stewart had rescued his daughter from the boredom of the Bull house on Meeting Street, after paying his respects to Mrs. Bull and Lady Charles. They had taken a hack to their inn.

  “Artisans are forbidden to run a tavern,” he said. “To get around that bit of legality, they marry someone. She pays for the license, and he drinks for free.�
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  Emily grinned. “Does Mum own the license for Cormorant’s Rock Tavern?”

  Laughing, he walked over to the chair where she sat, and tousled her hair.

  “Is that what you desire for me?” she asked. “That I should own a tavern?”

  His laughter stopped, and he leaned over, eyes serious, and said quietly, “I should hope that your goals are much loftier than following in your old da’s footsteps.”

  She changed the subject quickly. “When am I bound for Georgetown?”

  After more than three hours with Lady Charles, she thought Georgetown and her grandparents might be a reprieve. She even had convinced herself that quilting bees, spelling bees, songs, and games of hopscotch, jump rope, rolling hoops, and “London Bridge” might be fun. On the other hand, her grandfather, after a bit too much rum, had been known to take her to see a cockfight. She didn’t much care for the sport, but it certainly beat playing blind man’s bluff.

  “Are you that sick of Charlestown?” he asked.

  “Indeed I am.”

  His laughter filled the room. “As am I, too, Emily. I do not know how a man survives in this city. Certainly it is not Georgetown.”

  “It is not Ninety Six,” she said quietly.

  He did not hear. “There are certainly few shillings to be made running a tavern in this city. One tavern for every five freeborn men.” He shook his head, but Emily decided that would explain all of those containers of rum she had seen at the mercantile—and even more on the wharves. “Besides, they also fine a person five shillings for drinking or serving drinks on Sunday. Perhaps we need no law in Ninety Six if they will be fining us for drinking on Sundays.” He had moved away to pull on his buckle shoes, then doffed a wig and turned, cocking his head and grinning at Emily. “Do I look like a gentleman?” he asked.

  “Another meeting?” She sighed.

  “After we take our supper.”

  “In another ‘ordinary’?” Emily pulled a fake smile to show her father she was joking. But, of course, she wasn’t.

  “No, not at a tavern, but here at this inn,” he said, shaking his head. “Then I shall meet Bull, Gouedy, and Shinner at Shepheard’s Tavern. We had to adjourn our meeting this afternoon so that Bull could fetch the chief justice and governor.” His head shook. “The governor is not much older than you.”

  His wife, Emily thought, will turn him into Methuselah.

  It all made sense, of course. Solomon’s Lodge No. 1, Free and Accepted Masons had been organized at the tavern on Broad Street almost thirty years ago. The first theatrical troupe to perform in the city had done so at Charles Shepheard’s place. They called the tavern’s long room “the courtroom,” and for good reason—before the floor above the guardhouse on the battery and before the statehouse had been finished, the governor, lieutenant governor, and the Assembly met in Shepheard’s Tavern. Apparently government officials still met there.

  Yes, just like Ninety Six, Emily though to herself.

  “But to answer your question …” her father said.

  She looked at her father, resplendent in his coat, if a bit frayed, and wig. Question? Emily had forgotten what she had asked.

  “Georgetown will wait another day until your grandfather arrives. I thought you might care to accompany us to New Market Course.”

  “What is that?”

  “It is how the gentlemen and ladies of Charlestown entertain themselves, usually in the winter and spring, but a special event has been scheduled for the morrow … even in the heat of July.”

  She waited.

  “It is a racecourse, Emily. Horse racing.”

  “Can I ride?” she said.

  He rolled his eyes. “You are a wonder, Daughter. Let us eat our supper now. Then to bed with you.”

  Chapter Five

  She did not care what ladies were wearing in Paris, or what Lady Charles Montagu thought of Love in a Village by some Irishman named Bickerstaff, or even Mrs. Bull’s opinion on Bishop Thomas Percy’s Reliques of Ancient English Poetry. So Emily tried to ignore the chatter around her and focus on the conversation of the men seated below. Although she was surprised to see that most of the jockeys were slaves, it was the horses being saddled for the race that interested her most. Especially the dun.

  Located on a pasture east of the Broad Path, Charlestown’s New Market Course had opened in 1760, forcing another racetrack, the York Course, which had been built on Charlestown Neck much farther from the city, to close. New Market was much fancier than any course found in the Long Canes, but then any such racecourse in the Ninety Six District was usually decided ten to fifteen minutes before the race was run.

  It was always something like: “You shall ride underneath that big limb hanging from the elm, straight down the pike to Spring Branch, fetch the flags in the clearing, then ride as hard as you can, leaping over the fence in front of Breck’s tavern, and … careful not to trample Missus Stewart’s garden … right betwixt the well and Ol’ Benji Cooper’s work shed. Mister Gouedy and Mister Thomas shall be official judges. Do not flog the other jockeys with your quirts, if possible.”

  “I do not understand how you live in this furnace.” Mopping his brow, the governor sounded just like Lady Charles.

  “Well, sir,” Justice Shinner said, “as they say of South Carolina … in the spring, it is paradise. In summer, it is hell. In autumn, it is a hospital.”

  “When I have need to find a new court jester, I shall know upon whom to call,” said Lord Charles Montagu, who appeared to be a young man, not much older than Donnan. “This is simply unbearable,” he added.

  Even Emily found the heat and humidity oppressive, but she knew that Chief Justice Shinner had not been joking entirely. Spring in South Carolina, especially along the coast, could be considered paradise indeed, but during the summers, temperatures often topped one hundred degrees. The rivers, swamps, and marshes bred mosquitoes, and many, many people—those who could afford to, anyway—often left South Carolina around May, not to return until autumn. By then, many of those who had stayed were recovering, if they were lucky, from malaria or yellow fever. Some settlers in Ninety Six had fled from Charlestown after the terrible yellow fever outbreak of 1748. She had thought of trying to use that fear as an excuse to return to Ninety Six, but she knew it would never work with her father.

  In forty years in the New World, her grandparents insisted that they had never fled Georgetown out of fear in the summer. Of course, they usually went to their summer home in the High Hills of the Santee, but occasionally they stayed on the coast. They had never been sick a day in their lives, and both were in their midsixties and as spry as their only surviving son.

  “There are different kinds of heat,” Emily’s father said. “We face our own version of hell in Ninety Six.”

  Emily almost laughed. Breck Stewart knew how to turn a conversation to the subject that interested him.

  Lord Montagu asked, “And in what level of hell do you find yourself?”

  “Our plague is not malaria, but freebooters.”

  “I was warned of this in Huntingdonshire,” Montagu said. “The western portion of our province seems to be something of a penal colony. Perhaps it should be annexed by the colony of Georgia.” He laughed at his own joke.

  Emily whispered to herself, “And when I have need to find a new court jester, I shall know upon whom not to call.”

  “What is that, my dear?”

  Emily sucked in a breath, and turned to Lady Charles Montagu, still fanning herself, still sweating like a pig.

  “Nothing, my lady. I was just talking to myself.”

  “No.” The fat woman folded her fan and used it as a pointer. “What is that?”

  Emily leaned forward, squinting, trying to figure out what on earth the governor’s wife was pointing at down along the course. She couldn’t be asking that, could she?


  “The … horse?” Emily said.

  “That, dear child, is no horse.”

  “It is a marsh tacky,” Emily explained. “This is a race of local marsh tacky horses.”

  “Tacky, indeed,” Lady Charles Montague said.

  Emily muttered an oath, caring not a farthing if Lady Charles heard. Her father had bought a marsh tacky years ago, and she had found the chestnut mare to be one tough horse. Small, sure, no more than fourteen hands, with a short back, long shoulders, and a deep, narrow chest. She turned her attention back to the dun, wondering how much the owner would want for him—in Charlestown, probably a small fortune.

  “What should I expect from such a blight on good culture? Marsh tacky,” the governor’s wife muttered as her fan went back to work. “I suppose one has never heard of a thoroughbred or Andalusian in this colony.”

  Emily forgot about the dun stallion and the sweating Lady Charles, and leaned forward again, straining her ears. She had missed part of the conversation, but now sharp-faced William Bull was talking to the governor, and his voice sounded animated.

  “Governor, you speak of the men who settled in the backcountry as the dregs of society, and, in doing so, you insult our visitors … Squires Stewart and Gouedy.”

  Montagu sighed and waved his own fan faster.

  “Men like these are what this colony needs, Governor,” continued Bull. “They have already driven back the Cherokees and opened up parts of this colony for more settlement. They are not vagabonds, Lord.”

  “They are canaille,” declared the governor.

  Emily cringed as her father’s hands balled into fists as William Bull kept talking.

  “No, Lord Montagu, these are His Majesty’s tenants, landholders all. They are free, white, Christian men, over twenty-one years of age, who have lived in South Carolina for more than a year, own fifty acres … in Mister Gouedy’s case, much, much more … and pay at least twenty shillings a year in taxes.”

  “Then they should serve in the Commons House of Assembly,” the governor said.

  “’Twas the point I am making,” Bull said. “They …”