1
The Summons

One night in early November 1779, he dreamed a terrifying dream.

He saw a skiff dancing across Charleston Harbor, running before an offshore breeze that raised what mariners called white horses on the water. Lydia sat in the skiff's bow, laughing and enjoying herself; her hair flew in the wind like a yellow banner.

He couldn't see the face of the man at the tiller, only his back. But he was not the man, of that he was sure. Though he was athletic, a superb horseman, he'd never learned to swim or sail. His mother called it passing strange, since his father, a wharf owner, made his living from the commerce of the creeks and rivers and oceans.

Unseen bells began to peal—the eight church bells of St. Michael's parish, cast by Messrs. Lester and Pack, London, where he lay dreaming. The bells didn't ring the sequence of notes that called the faithful to Sunday worship. They rang another familiar call, the call to calamity: a fire, an impending hurricane. Great danger.

When he woke in his room on the third floor above Fountain Court, the meaning of the dream came clear. He'd been absent from America a year and a half. The desirable young woman he wanted to marry could be slipping away from him.

Edward Bell, twenty-one, was at that time studying at the Middle Temple. He had resisted his father's wish to send him there, saying, "I have no ambition to practice law in South Carolina."

"Nor do most of the young men from Charleston who enroll at the Inns of Court, but it will be useful. It broadens you, like a grand tour. It makes you a keener student of business contracts. It prepares you to be a leader of society—to hold office if you wish."

"Why not send Adrian? He's firstborn."

"I don't mean to speak unkindly of your brother, but to be truthful, he hasn't the head for it. Adrian's a shrewd young man. Shrewd is not the same as smart."

"But we're in the middle of a war with England."

"Where do you think we learned that we have a right to rebel against the injustices of the king's ministers? From English constitutional law, taught at the Middle Temple. Who stood up to the king in Parliament and defended our right to rebel? Edmund Burke, of the Middle Temple."

"Is this a scheme to keep me out of the militia?"

"Do you want to join the militia, Edward?"

"Not particularly. I'm not an ardent patriot like you."

"You're more of one than your brother. Worry about the militia at such time as the British return to Carolina. It may never happen. They've left us alone three years now." In '76, Col. William Moultrie and his brave men had repulsed an invasion attempt at the palmetto log fort on nearby Sullivan's Island, the fort now bearing Moultrie's name. After that humiliation Gen. Henry Clinton and Adm. Sir Peter Parker sailed away and Great Britain concentrated on fighting in the North.

Edward ran out of objections. Soon thereafter he departed for London and the Inns of Court.

On a cold but windless evening in early December, he left his apartment in Essex Court, crossed Fountain Court, and entered Middle Temple Hall. Edward was a tall and lanky young man, not handsome, but possessed of strong features and an engaging smile. There was no fat on him. He'd inherited his height and build from his father, Tom Bell. He was dressed like a sober colonial in a double-breasted kersey greatcoat, a white stock and lace cravat, black leather top boots, and a black felt hat with a flat crown and broad brim. He owned a wig but preferred to keep his brown hair tied back with a black ribbon. He carried a stout walking stick for self-defense at night.

In the corridor he passed a broad open doorway on his right. Students and masters still sat at table in the great hall, a high cathedral of a room walled with plaques bearing the arms of the Templars from whom the Middle Temple took its name. Student friends of Edward's were deep into port and private argument, even as an old lawyer droned on from the dais. Something about torts, in which Edward had no interest. Since coming to London he'd spent most of his time at gambling clubs, cockfights, bearbaitings, and his favorite table at the Carolina Coffeehouse in Birchin Lane, where he hobnobbed with rowdy clerks from the London branch of Crokatt's, a Charleston trading firm.

No one in the Temple's great hall noticed him as he slipped by. A door at the end of the corridor brought him to the water gate. As usual, a boatman stood by, waiting to bear a young gentleman off to the night's adventures. Edward stepped down on a thwart.

Copyright © John Jakes, 2002