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don’t find the subject amusing. Slavery is an abomination before God. It paid for your glorious holiday in England, didn’t it?”
    â€œDamn, Joanna, you’re—”
    â€œThe tide’s running. I must hurry. Good day, Edward.”
    And off she went, her broad hips swinging in a way that might have intrigued him in other circumstances. He shookhis head. Not much of a homecoming, this. He hoped he’d experienced the worst of it.

3
Adrian’s Thunderbolt
    The return of the British had changed his city. Soldiers, vagrants, blacks, bawds, and refugees from the country crowded the dirt streets and the footpaths on either side. Wagons and chaises and couriers on horseback added to the clamor and congestion. Families squatted on empty patches of land with barrows and bundles holding their few possessions. Edward guessed that Charleston’s population of twelve or thirteen thousand might have doubled.
    North of Boundary Street at Meeting, slaves with shovels and barrows were building a sizable hornwork from tabby, a kind of masonry made of lime mixed with oyster shells. The hornwork was the centerpiece of a line of fortifications running east and west toward the two rivers. He climbed a mound of dirt to observe more black men digging a broad ditch some distance in front of the earthworks and parallel to them. He approached a sweating engineer studying a diagram. “Sir, what’s the purpose of the ditch?”
    The annoyed man barked at him. “To save your life, sir. We expect Clinton to cross the Ashley and come at us from the Neck. The ditch will be dammed at each end, and tidal seepage will fill it. Behind it we’ll have two abatis, another moat, and there”—he pointed downward—“a fraise.”
    â€œI’m sorry, I don’t know the term.”
    â€œA fraise is a barricade of sharp stakes, pointing at the enemy. Obviously you’re not an army man. You certainly look old enough.” He didn’t mean it as a compliment.
    Edward walked south again. The soldiers he saw were ahard lot, armed with muskets and fowlers, tomahawks and knives. Blue uniform coats with white-edged buttonholes, the uniform of South Carolina regulars, were scarce. Most of the soldiers wore leggings and long hunting shirts dyed an assortment of bright colors. Whether the men were regulars or militia, Edward couldn’t say.
    He turned over to King Street a block west of Meeting and found more than one merchant hammering up boards to protect a shop. Packs of wild dogs fought for garbage strewn about. The only laughter came from youngsters romping as though no enemy threatened.
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    Mr. William Holliday’s Queen Street taproom, a successor to Dillon’s, was a favorite of the young gentry. Here, in the middle of the afternoon, Adrian Bell sat drinking and chatting with two friends.
    Adrian resembled his younger brother and was nearly as tall. The strongest differences were large jug-handle ears and a pinched, off-putting face; Adrian’s eyes were set too close together. What he lacked in good looks, he made up for with a prosperous appearance and a cultivated air of importance.
    Adrian’s friends were scions of wealthy plantation owners. The first, Storey Wragg, was a glutton with a face as red as an uncooked mutton chop and a stomach big enough for a woman about to deliver triplets. The other, Archibald Lescock, was a fop who perfumed his wig with cloves and cinnamon and padded his breeches to enhance the shape of his legs. All three young men were in fashion: long, narrow-tailed coats showing elaborate turnback cuffs, standing collars, stocks, fancy hose garters. Lescock’s wig was expensive human hair. Adrian’s was of less costly goat hair. The miserly Wragg settled for horse mane.
    â€œI thought Gadsden was our resident radical madman, not Henry Laurens,” Wragg said between forkfuls from his trencher of pork loin. “I consider Laurens a