Susan B

“Get back from that window!” Mia Langford cried, racing across the room, to pull her sister away, but the gruesome spectacle passing in the street below held both Mia and Lottie in its horrific thrall. A mob of rag-tag patriots, wielding torches, surrounded a donkey cart carrying their latest victims, and it was unsure if either man would live after having been given a suit of boiling tar and feathers.

Not many did.

Mia gulped back the bile that rose in her throat.

How soon would they be coming for us?

The chants grew louder, attracting more and more men to the rebellious parade, some bringing drums and pipes to accompany their treason. Clouds of smoke from the pine torches tarnished the dusky sky sending plumes of acrid smoke into the night.

Mia prayed the mob would pass her home untouched. Other loyalists had not been so lucky, but as a woman alone she’d hoped to stay above politics. In her bones, now, she realized that was not going to be possible.

The noise drew the slaves, Rosie, Cicero and Tom like a magnet, to the other window of the parlor.

“Oh dear, oh dear, oh day,” Cicero mumbled, shaking a wooly, white head. He leaned over Rosie who held Tom beside her, to get a better look.

“Why are they doing this?” Lottie asked, her blue eyes wide.

“They want independence.” And as Mia uttered the word, a missile flew from the hand of a straggler shattering a window in the carriage house.

“Now they’ve gone too far!” Cicero bellowed breaking away from Rose and Tom.

“No, Cic…” Mia raced to stop him. “They’ll kill you.” She caught his arm. His pale blue eyes locked on her, intense against his dark skin.

“I’m here to protect y’all and I’ll be damned if those… those…” He was seething. The breath coming in bursts between his teeth.

“You can’t.” Rosie joined Mia on the other side, her voice breaking. “We need you more than we need you dead,” she pleaded.

Cicero tugged ineffectually, the fight in him gone at Rosie’s words.

“They’ve passed.” Mia said, glancing back at the window, releasing Cicero’s arm. “They can’t do much more damage here.” Anger held her so tightly it made her stomach churn.

Why did father leave them here on the brink of a revolution with only and old man and a boy to protect us?

Lottie sobbed softly, still gazing out the window as the raucous jeers and barks faded.

“Come away now, Lottie,” Mia said. She turned to young Tom. “Run down to the stables and tell Henry to patch that window up till I can get a pane of glass. And look sharp before you go!”

“It’s Governor Campbell’s fault,” Lottie sobbed. “Ever since he left, the balls and parties stopped and those horrible men were let loose.” She waived toward the street, her lips turned down in confused anguish.

Mia patted the turquoise silk couch, inviting Lottie to join her. She took a deep breath hoping to calm the agitation roiling inside her. “Rosie, would you bring some tea?”

Rosie nodded, taking Cicero with her.

Lottie flopped down on the delicate sofa beside Mia and swiped the tears from her eyes. “I don’t want any of that dreadful tea, I want real tea!”

“Neither do I, but that’s all we have now.”

Charleston’s troubles exploded when that gutless poltroon, Governor Campbell fled in September. The city throbbed in fear, but Mia refused to be cowed. Her father had turned over the reins of Langford Shipping before leaving for the Caribbean, and Mia found the taste of power far more intoxicating than the rum distilled from her families’ plantations.

Now she was paying the price for her ambition. Already she’d sent little Tabitha and Mamma Bea out to Oak Grove Plantation for their safety, but it broke her heart to see Tabby’s empty cot each morning. If only Farley were still alive, he’d know what to do. But Tabitha’s father had been cold dead for half a decade now, his ship, Bonaventure, sunk off Bartuga in a hurricane.

After a time, Lottie calmed down to the occasional sniffle and was sipping the heavily sugared raspberry leaf tea Rosie prepared for her while Mia opted for something stronger. The contraband French brandy burned its way to her empty stomach warming her with a false sense of security. Indignation rose licking the flames of her anger once again.

 “I heard they were traitors,” Lottie said, her cornflower blue eyes sought reassurance.

“Traitors? Maybe. But they were human beings. That mob were rebels. Patriots they call themselves.” Mia spat the word out. “Murderers I call them. No one deserves such brutality.”

She returned to the window across from Rosie, and pulled the curtain back. Tradd Street was quiet now, except for the occasional jingle of a harness or the rumble of cartwheels over cobblestones. St. Michael’s bells pealed six times denoting the hour and it was as if a sudden storm had passed with little incident leaving the streets slick with rain, it’s only trace.

Despite the fire crackling in the hearth, Mia hugged her arms around her as if to ward off a coming chill. What was it the rebels wanted? She’d told Lottie independence but was it simply that? Were they crying out for something unattainable, its absence even unknowable? What made their hearts yearn for something so intangible they were willing to sacrifice life and limb?

Those men with their shouts of liberty and freedom, were blind to the hypocrisy surrounding them. She glanced over to Rosie, gazing into the street and wondered about the inhumanity that blinded them, that allowed them to rest confident in the poison rising from this very soil infecting their souls.

 

 

Assignment 1 - Two people with conflicting loyalties fall in love during a revolution.

 

Assignment 2 – The impending British occupation of Charleston hangs over the novel as an antagonistic force, but Josiah Sykes is the embodiment of an antagonist. When he accidentally causes Mia (FMC) to fall in the harbor, Cole (MMC) dives in after her. Then Sykes disappears and when Cole tries to find him, he gets beaten up. Sykes also embodies the threat Cole will face from backwoods loyalists aligned with the British, whose aim is to aid the British in capturing the city. When Sykes steals a cache of weapons from Cole and sells them to the loyalists, Cole heads into physically dangerous territory after him. He confronts Sykes and learns his motivation is simply profit and not a zealous support for England. Sykes cynicism acts as a mirror to Cole’s own mercenary activities, causing Cole to re-examine his world view.

 

Assignment 3 - Titles

1.     Ride The Wild Wind. (Too GWTW)

2. Rebellion Road. Rebellion Roads — A pirate's refuge | Opinion | postandcourier.com

 

Assignment 4 – Genre

Romantic historical fiction.

My Dear Hamilton: A Novel of Eliza Schuyler Hamilton. Stephanie Dray & Laura Kay

Spirit of the Winds. Judy Kentrus

 

Assignment 5 -   Log line.

During the American Revolution, a young shipping heiress’s prejudices are challenged by the arrival of an enigmatic sea captain with a secret cargo and a darker family secret forcing her to choose between Crown and country.

 

Assignment 6 – Conflict

FMC has attempted to shut off her emotions out of fear of abandonment/death. Having lost their mother as a young teen, she has had to act as mother to her baby sister and longs for the nurturing she missed out on. Burying her emotions in books, her father indulged her keen mind, grooming her to be his heir apparent in the merchant shipping business. When he disappears, FMC is torn, both confused by his abandonment and defensive of him.

A secondary conflict involves the combination of a creditor (MMC) arriving as she is struggling to balance the books, claiming money for a cargo he won’t let her inspect. She is off balance to begin with, with her father’s sudden disappearance and when confronted by the MMC she is distrustful, verging on hostile.

Assignment 7 – Setting

The novel begins in 1775 in a wealthy merchant’s home in Charleston, SC. The opulent furnishings and the seaport provide a sweeping historical setting in a locale not much associated with start of the American Revolution. In the second act, the action moves to the family plantation along the Ashley River and into the backwoods of South Carolina, still a raw and unsettled territory. In the final reversal the male main character returns to an embattled Charleston, and joins the fight, ferrying arms across the harbor for the defense of Sullivan’s Island.

18^th century manners are different from our own, and contribute to the overall setting of the novel. As war became inevitable, the tension between loyalists and patriots increased to violence. There was, (and remains) a struggle between class, immigrant, native, white, and black. And, obviously, slavery played a large role during this historical period.