Celia Garth by Gwen Bristow

Author:Gwen Bristow [Bristow, Gwen]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781480485136
Publisher: Open Road Media
Published: 2014-04-20T20:44:00+00:00

CHAPTER 18

AHEAD OF HER, MILES was riding in silence. But the others were merry—Amos and Marietta laughing about something, the horse-boy Elby flirting with Madge’s maid, and Lewis telling Madge anecdotes of the siege.

“… no roosters crowed in the mornings, all eaten. People had even eaten their pet birds. On the lines we still had coffee—”

Suddenly Miles turned his head. “What’s that smell?” he exclaimed.

Lewis and Madge did not hear him, but Amos did. Amos raised his head and sniffed, scowled, sniffed again. “I don’t know what it is, Mr. Miles. Sure is nasty.”

Miles dug his heels into his horse’s flanks. “Come on!” he cried. “We’re just loafing along! Celia—”

But Celia had already caught up with him. “How much farther, Miles?” she called as they hurried their horses.

“Nearly there!” he shouted back.

She heard Lewis calling to them both. He caught up with them and urged them not to hurry so. The horses would stumble over one of these fallen branches, and then where would they be?

Reluctantly admitting the sense of this advice, they slowed to a more reasonable pace. As they rode along the smell grew heavier. It filled the air with a rank staleness. Whatever the source, they were riding toward it, and they were riding toward Bellwood. Celia clamped her teeth on her lip, afraid lest sheer nervousness would make her cry out.

The woods were less dense. The track widened. They were coming to the edge of the clearing where the fields of Bellwood lay. The smell thickened to a stench. Celia and Miles were side by side, ahead of the others. She gave him a sidelong glance. Miles’ lips were turned in toward his teeth and set in a hard thin line. Between his eyebrows were two ridges of strain. His hand holding the bridle was stiff. At Bellwood were his wife and child, his mother and brother, the household servants who like Amos had been his friends and playmates from childhood. Miles was holding himself sternly in check, but he was in torture.

Celia felt creepy all over, as if things were crawling on her skin. The back of her neck hurt.

Now the air was so foul as to be almost unbearable. They came out of the woods. Below them lay the fields, hundreds of acres broken here and there by orchards and vineyards; beyond, the Cooper River was like a silver ribbon in the sun; and by the river, less than a mile from the edge of the clearing, was the grove of mighty oaks left from the forest to shelter the plantation buildings.

With a groan of horror Miles jerked back on his bridle and stopped his horse. Celia stopped too, rigid with shock.

The others rode up. She heard them exclaiming but she did not understand the words.

She did not need words. She was there. Before her lay Bellwood. And all over Bellwood was the sight and silence and smell of death.

From the edge of the woods the ground sloped gently to the river-bank, so that she was looking downward over the fields.

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