April 1863
On the night of my father’s party, our house seemed to come alive, like Rip Van Winkle waking from a long slumber. For the first time since the war began two years ago, we had people crowding into every downstairs room, food and spirits spread across our dining room table like a banquet, and brilliantly lit chandeliers filling every dark space with light and cheer. Tessie and Ruby served at the buffet table wearing starched white aprons. Gilbert padded among the men, refilling their glasses, the leather of his new shoes squeaking jauntily. Esther had outdone herself, cooking for days, refusing Daddy’s offers to hire an extra cook. Now, after the spectacular meal, laughter and music spilled from the drawing room as our sated guests forgot the war and their privations for a few stolen hours.
The prominence and prestige of Daddy’s friends amazed me— cabinet members, senators, army generals, city officials. The only men of importance who were missing, it seemed, were General Lee and President Davis. Of course, the St. Johns had been invited, and I was relieved to see Charles’ father laughing with mine, his suspicions and accusations seemingly forgotten.
As I circulated through the drawing room, engaging my guests in conversation, accepting their compliments and congratulations, Charles’ mother waved me over. With her was a group of government wives.
“This is a lovely party, Caroline,” Mrs. St. John said. “You’ve done a wonderful job. Caroline is engaged to my son, Charles, you know,” she bragged to the others. “She’ll be a fine asset to him someday, don’t you think?” They nodded and murmured in agreement.
One of the ladies took my hand in both of hers and pressed it warmly. “Thank you so much for a splendid evening, Miss Fletcher. My husband, Lewis, really needed this diversion. He works in the War Department, and ever since those spies were captured last week he’s been under a great deal of pressure.”
The very word spies made me shudder. I had read about their arrest in the paper.
“You mean, your husband knew that horrible Mr. Webster?” Mrs. St. John asked.
“Yes, he worked as a clerk in the War Department. We knew his wife, too. They’ve both been arrested. It seems they were both spies.”
“I heard that he was a double spy,” one of the ladies said. “He sold Yankee secrets to our government as well as selling ours to the Yankees.”
“It will all come out in the trial, I suppose. If he’s convicted of espionage he’ll be condemned to hang. No telling what they’ll do to his wife.”
“They say there are all sorts of spies living among us,” one of the generals’ wives confided. “They even come to gatherings like this one. They hear every word our leaders speak in private and take it straight to the enemy. And they do it for money—can you imagine?”
“That’s what upset my Lewis so much—the way those people deceived us all. Mr. Webster worked side-by-side with him. His wife even wore a secession badge. They worshipped with us at church, worked in the hospitals—and all this time they’ve been lying to us.”
“I think they should both hang,” the general’s wife said. “Their treachery not only cost the lives of our men on the battlefield, but it put all of us at terrible risk. If the Yankees were to take Richmond, heaven only knows what they would do to us.”
Mrs. St. John shuddered. “God will repay them for their deeds.”
I stared at the floor, terrified to meet anyone’s gaze, certain that these women would see me for what I was. Fear of being caught, of being hung for treason, vibrated through me. I wanted this party to end. I wanted nothing to do with passing information to Mr. Ferguson, to Robert, or to the Yankees. I couldn’t remember why I had ever decided to do such a thing in the first place. I glanced up to see if anyone had noticed my anxiety, and I saw Tessie standing a few feet away. I could tell that she wanted to speak with me, but she hadn’t wanted to interrupt. I thanked God for the timely escape.
“Excuse me please, ladies. I believe my servant needs me.” I hoped my voice sounded normal.
I clung to Tessie’s arm as we walked into the dining room. At first she didn’t notice anything wrong with me or realize that I was hanging on to her for support.
“Esther’s wondering when you want us to serve the coffee and dessert,” she began. Then she looked at me for the first time. “What’s wrong, honey? You looking like you about to faint. You need smelling salts?”
“The women were talking about those two spies who were caught . . . the Websters.” My heart pounded against my corset stays. “I . . . I don’t think I can do this, Tessie. What Robert asked me to do is too hard.”
She rested her hands on my bare shoulders, steadying me, reassuring me. “No one saying you have to, honey. And no one blaming you if you can’t. Seems like you done plenty already.”
“Thanks.” I saw Tessie’s love for me in her warm brown eyes and felt my strength slowly returning.
All of a sudden Tessie gave a little gasp of surprise. A look crossed her face that I’d never seen before, a look of wonder and inexpressible joy.
“What is it, Tessie? Tell me.”
In an instant, panic replaced her joy. When she rested her hand against her stomach protectively, I knew. Josiah had gone back to the war with Jonathan last November, five months ago.
“You’re going to have a baby, aren’t you?” I said.
Tessie nodded fearfully. I smiled and pulled her into my arms. “It’s all right, Tessie. I’m happy for you.” I felt the tension leave her as she hugged me in return.
“Let me see you,” I said when we finally separated. I don’t know why I hadn’t noticed before. Tessie’s slender, hourglass figure was fuller, the waistband of her skirt an inch higher. And a quiet joy overspread her face.
“I felt the baby move just now,” she said shyly. “Ain’t no feeling like that in the whole world. Ain’t no way to describe what it feels like to have him kicking . . . and knowing there’s a life inside there. He’s part of me, part of Josiah, yet he his own person. You’ll see for yourself, someday, with Massa Charles’ baby.”
Life. A new child. Life was going to go on, to triumph even in the middle of all the suffering and death. At that moment I wanted the war to end more than I ever had before. I wanted Charles to come home to me, safe and alive. I wanted to create a new life that would be his and mine and yet its own.
And I wanted Tessie’s child to be born a free person, free from the fear and uncertainty his parents lived with. I remembered why I was doing this, why I was risking my life to help my nation’s enemies.
“Tell Esther to serve dessert,” I told Tessie.
“You ain’t mad at Josiah and me?”
“No, of course I’m not mad. I’m happy for you.”
But as I hugged her once more she whispered in my ear, “Please don’t tell your daddy.”
“I won’t.” I pulled myself together and walked straight into Daddy’s library where the men were enjoying their cigars. I played the charming hostess again, asking if everyone was enjoying himself, if he needed anything. “We’re serving dessert in a few minutes if you’d like to make your way back to the buffet table,” I said. But mostly I listened to their conversations, committing every scrap of information to memory.
“The Commissary Department has their own problems,” a cabinet minister was saying. “Imagine trying to come up with enough rations to feed some fifty-nine thousand men at Fredericksburg— and that’s not counting the cavalry. During that blasted food riot last week, the looters took slabs of beef right out of our government warehouses.”
I wandered over to another group of men who were talking with my father. “The Federals have us outnumbered two-to-one at Fredericksburg,” an infantry major said. “We’ve got to send Lee some more troops before the Feds attack.”
“I don’t know where reinforcements would come from,” a second officer said. “There are fewer than three thousand on active service here, guarding Richmond . . . General Wise has only about five thousand on the Peninsula . . . Imboden has maybe twenty-five hundred at Staunton. No other reinforcements can be brought to Lee in a reasonable amount of time.”
“What about the men with Longstreet at Suffolk?” Daddy asked. That was where Charles and Jonathan were.
“He has three divisions. Their effective force, all told, is not even fifteen thousand men.”
“I understand that D.H. Hill has been ordered up from North Carolina to reinforce Longstreet. They’re saying he might take their place so Longstreet can reinforce Lee.”
Daddy suddenly noticed me for the first time. “Did you need to speak with me, Caroline?”
“I only wanted to tell you gentlemen that dessert and coffee are going to be served in the dining room shortly.”
“And it’s real coffee, too,” Daddy said, grinning. “I brought it back from South America myself.”
I drifted over to another group and heard Mr. St. John say, “The defenses around Richmond are strongest at Meadow Bridge and Mechanicsville Turnpike.”
“Which artillery units are manning those gun emplacements?” someone asked him.
“There are no guns in position,” he said quietly. “We haven’t enough to spare. The works are intended for field artillery. All we have there at the moment are Quaker guns.”
Jonathan had explained to me what Quaker guns were—huge logs painted black and set up behind breastworks to look like cannon.
“Did I hear you say there was coffee, Caroline?” Mr. St. John asked.
“Yes, in the dining room with dessert,” I said, smiling. “And it’s the real thing.”
I didn’t follow them into the dining room. Instead, I hurried upstairs to my room and wrote down everything that I’d heard.
The next morning I told Esther she deserved a rest after all her hard labor, cooking for all those people. “I’ll go down to the farmers’ market and buy some fish for dinner,” I told her. “Gilbert can drive me. Is there anything else you need while I’m downtown?” I could tell by the long, solemn look she gave me that she knew. All my servants knew what I was doing.
“No, there’s nothing I need. But you be careful down there,” she said. “Some rough people be shopping in that place.”
“Missy knows we praying,” Eli added softly. “She knows.”
Ferguson’s fleshy, red face was easy to spot in the farmers’ market. He stood hunched over a butcher’s chopping block, his apron splattered with fish scales and blood. I watched him raise his cleaver in the air and lop off the head of a large fish, then slit it down its underside with a fillet knife and scoop its entrails into a bucket. He wiped his hands on the bloody towel hanging over his shoulder before taking the customer’s money, then he motioned to the next person in line. My stomach lurched, but whether it was from the stench of fish or my own unease, I couldn’t say. I waited in line with the others, wondering how many of them had information wrapped inside their money.
When my turn came, I pointed to the large rockfish I’d chosen. I watched Ferguson decapitate it, gut it, wrap it, but he paid no more attention to me than he had to anyone else. He wiped his hands on the towel and held one of them out for my money. I passed it to him, my notes from last night’s party folded tightly inside.
This will end it, I thought. The Rebels camped at Fredericks- burg are outnumbered two-to-one. Charles is far to the south in Suffolk. He won’t be involved in this impending battle. This time the war will finally end.
Ferguson stuffed my money in his apron pocket without even glancing at it, just as he’d done with all his other customers. “Who’s next?” he asked.
Please, God, I silently prayed. Please tell me I’m doing the right thing.
The battle we had all expected finally occurred at Chancellorsville during the first few days of May. But the outcome wasn’t at all what I expected. Once again, Lee’s outnumbered forces silenced the Union’s cries of “On to Richmond,” defeating the Yankees and driving them back across the Rappahannock River. The people of Richmond rejoiced. I couldn’t understand what had gone wrong.
I happened to be downtown as the Confederates paraded the captive enemy soldiers through the streets in long lines, and I heard the mocking cheers of those who had come out to watch.
“ ‘On to Richmond,’ eh, boys? . . . Guess you finally got here. . . . What took you so long? . . . Bet you never thought you’d be coming by this route. . . . Hope you enjoy your visit. . . .”
The Confederacy had paid an enormous price, though—more than twelve thousand casualties. Once again, the hospitals filled to overflowing. Among the wounded was one of the South’s bravest and most beloved generals, Stonewall Jackson, accidentally shot by friendly fire. All of Richmond waited anxiously after hearing that the surgeons had amputated his arm, praying fervently for his recovery. But on Sunday, May 10, General Jackson died.
Daddy and I, like everyone else in Richmond, were deeply grieved by the news. As we sat in the library that evening, talking about the cavalry officer’s amazing career, someone knocked at our front door. I heard Gilbert answer it, heard him invite the caller to come inside, but when an unkempt, sinewy backwoodsman appeared in the library doorway, I instinctively drew back. Daddy rose to his feet, about to scold Gilbert for letting such a rough hewn stranger inside. Then the man spoke my name.
“Caroline . . .” The voice was Charles’.
I recognized him then, beneath the rugged exterior, and I leaped up and ran to him. How can I describe the miraculous feeling of Charles’ arms surrounding me again, the glorious sound of his drowsy voice, deep and soothingly smooth?
“Don’t cry, Caroline . . . don’t cry. Listen now. You’ll have us all in tears.”
I would never let him go again but keep him with me always, a part of me. I ran my hands over his hair, his bearded face, his shoulders and chest, making certain he was real and alive, safe and unharmed. I alternated between holding him, looking at him, holding him—wanting to feel the strength and power of his embrace yet wanting to gaze at his beloved features.
I forgot all about my father until I heard him say quietly, “Welcome home, Charles.”
“Thank you, sir.” Charles kept one arm firmly around my waist as he extended his other hand to Daddy. “Please, forgive me. . . .”
“It’s all right, son. I was young once. And her mother was every bit as beautiful as Caroline is.” He cleared his throat, then said, “If I know Esther, she’s going to want to feed you. Have you eaten?”
“No, sir. I came straight from the train station.”
“Then I’ll go and tell her you’re here.”
As soon as the door closed behind Daddy, Charles took my face in his powder-stained hands and kissed me—a year’s worth of longing finally unloosed. Afterward, we clung to each other again.
“Dear God . . . how I’ve missed you, Caroline.”
“I love you so much,” I murmured. “I pray this isn’t a dream . . . or if it is, that I’ll never wake up.”
“You scared me when you first looked at me,” he said. “You didn’t know me—I was a stranger to you. And I thought for one terrible moment that you no longer loved me. It was a horrible feeling.”
“I truly didn’t recognize you.”
“Have I changed that much?”
I caressed his cheek, smiling. “Have you seen a mirror lately? No one could ever tell by looking at you that you’re from one of Richmond’s wealthiest families. I’ve taken care of soldiers from all walks of life in the hospitals, educated men and illiterate men, and there’s no way you can tell the difference between most of them until they speak. They all look like you—somber faces, ragged uniforms, worn-out shoes, overgrown hair and beards.”
And something more, I thought. There was a hardness in Charles’ eyes and in the set of his jaw that hadn’t been there before. I had seen the same deadly determination in Robert’s face, and I knew what had stamped it there—hatred. How had it come to this, I wondered. How had two men who’d never even met learned to hate each other so much?
Beloved Charles. He was the same—yet he was completely changed. All the remnants of his old way of life were gone: his tailored suits, his starched shirts, his clean fingernails. He didn’t seem at all aware that he smelled of woodsmoke and sweat or that he needed a bath. He had a wildness about him after more than a year of living and sleeping in the woods that made it seem as though he had never slept on linen sheets in his life or danced in formal evening attire.
“I may not always recognize you,” I said, “but I’ll never stop loving you.”
Charles looked at me, and the hardened soldier melted away. His love for me shone in his eyes. “May I steal one more kiss from you before your father comes back?” Charles kissed me the second time as if there had never been a first.
I saw more changes in him as I sat beside him at the dining room table, watching him eat the meal Esther had laid before him. I had grown to love his relaxed, languid movements, his smooth, leisurely gestures. But now there was an alertness in his posture, a wariness about him, as if he needed to be constantly attuned to the slightest sound or movement. Even his drowsy voice seemed cold and hard at times, especially when he talked with Daddy about the war.
Charles had traveled to Richmond as an aide to General Longstreet, who had come to attend Stonewall Jackson’s funeral. They would be here for only two days. But at least I could accompany Charles to the funeral.
It was very late when he finally said, “I should go. I haven’t been home yet. My family doesn’t even know I’m here.”
I walked with him to the front door. I could tell by the way he held me, the way the muscles in his arms tensed, that he didn’t want to let me go. “I should have married you before I went to war,” he said hoarsely. “Then we’d be together tonight.”
“I’ll marry you right now, Charles,” I replied. “We’ll find a justice of the peace.”
I saw the longing in his eyes. Then he shook his head no. “It’s pure selfishness on my part,” he said. “I have to think of you. General Jackson leaves behind a young widow and a baby.”
I thought of Tessie, of her joy at feeling Josiah’s child growing inside her. “Mrs. Jackson is probably grateful to have his child,” I said. “At least she’ll always have a part of him. If I were in her place, I would rather be his widow than never know what it was to be his wife. Please . . .”
Charles looked at me for a long moment, then kissed me gently, slowly. “I’ll come for you in the morning,” he whispered. “Good night.”
When Charles came the next day, I once again recognized the man I had fallen in love with. He had bathed, trimmed his hair and beard, and scrubbed his fingernails. His servants had performed a near miracle with his uniform, cleaning it overnight somehow and mending the worst of its rips and tears and scorch marks. But I knew it would require more than one night at home to take the tension from his limbs, the coldness from his eyes. The lethal hatred I saw in them seemed to grow by the hour as we waited at the train depot for the great general’s body to arrive and as Charles talked quietly about the battle at Chancellorsville.
For more than four hours, every church bell in the city slowly tolled in mourning. Then the train finally pulled into the station, and we joined the crowd that followed the hearse to the governor’s mansion on Capitol Square. The mantle of grief that had fallen over the city weighed heavily on Charles, and I didn’t know how to help him lift it.
Afterward, we rode to his parents’ home in nearby Court End. I longed to have Charles all to myself for these two short days, but his extended family had gathered to welcome him home and I knew we must attend the dinner they gave in his honor. Throughout the long evening he talked about his experiences and the battles he’d fought; about Stonewall Jackson and General Longstreet, and the awe in which the men held General “Bobby” Lee; about the state of the Confederacy and what still had to be done to win independence. By the time he drove me home, Charles seemed to have run out of words. The dark sadness that had hung over him all day now enveloped him. I didn’t beg him to talk to me but simply held him in my arms in the back of the carriage, his cheek resting against my hair.
We pulled up in front of my house, but before he kissed me good night, Charles took both of my hands in his and made me look at him, face-to-face. When he spoke, his tone was somber, resolute. “Caroline. You must prepare yourself for the fact that I might die.”
“No . . . no—”
“Listen now. I’ve had to prepare myself . . . and you must, too.” I shut my eyes, as if I could also shut out his words, but Charles squeezed my hands, forcing me to look at him again. “When it happens, I’ll need you to be strong, for my parents’ sake.”
He helped me from the carriage and walked me to the door, kissing me gently before he left. “Good night, Caroline,” he said. But it felt, for all the world, like good-bye.
The next morning I clung to Charles’ arm as we attended General Jackson’s funeral. I couldn’t get Charles’ words from last night out of my mind or stop imagining this funeral as a rehearsal of his own. That was exactly what he had intended. He’d wanted me to imagine his death, to rehearse it, so the shock of it would be less severe—so that I could survive if he didn’t.
But he wasn’t dead. Charles was alive, beside me. I gripped his arm so tightly that it must have been numb by the end of the day.
General Longstreet served as one of the pallbearers as they carried Stonewall’s coffin, draped with the Confederate flag, out of the governor’s mansion. The band began to play the “Dead March,” and I thought surely the musicians must have it memorized by now, they had played it so many, many times in the past two years. Two regiments of Pickett’s division led the mile-long procession through the streets, followed by soldiers from the Home Guard and Wren’s battalion, along with six artillery pieces. Four white horses drew the hearse; eight generals escorted it. But I couldn’t help weeping at the sight of General Jackson’s riderless horse, plodding down the street with his empty cavalry boots strapped to the vacant saddle. Convalescents from the Stonewall Brigade who were well enough to leave the hospital marched bravely behind it. President Davis, Governor Letcher, and other officials brought up the rear.
When the grim procession finally returned to the capitol, the coffin was placed in the House chamber. Charles and I were among the twenty thousand mourners who filed past to pay our final respects. I saw Charles fighting his tears as he gazed at the pale, spiritless body, the vacant uniform sleeve.
“He’s going to be buried in Lexington,” Charles murmured as if to himself. “He taught there, at the Virginia Military Institute.” When we finally stepped outside into the late afternoon sunshine again, Charles exhaled as if he’d been forced to hold his breath for a very long time. “He can’t be replaced,” he said. “Stonewall Jackson can never be replaced.”
“Let’s go home,” I said, tugging on his arm. I wanted to drag him away from the depressing atmosphere of death and mourning, to help him turn away from it and welcome life and hope once more. Before sitting down beside him in my drawing room, I opened all the doors to the backyard, letting the calm May breeze drift into the room, bringing the chatter of birdsong, the faint scent of spring.
“I think this war is very close to an end,” Charles said as we sipped the coffee Esther brought us. “People up north aren’t going to stand for too many more losses like Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville. They’re as tired of the bloodshed as we are. I have a feeling that after this latest victory, General Lee is going to take the war into Union territory again. When civilians up north suddenly see their own homes threatened, when they begin to suffer the way Virginians have suffered, they’ll call an end to it.”
“What about you, Charles—when it’s finally over? For two years now, you’ve been trained to march and kill and hate. What about afterward?”
He shifted restlessly on the sofa, as if unable to relax. “It seems like the work I did in Washington, and even in my father’s mills, happened a lifetime ago. I know it will be hard to adjust back to civilian life. I had a hard time adjusting to soldiering at first. But now . . . Caroline, you can’t imagine what an exhilarating experience it is. The camaraderie of the men . . . knowing we’re all in this together, working as one, fighting for our homes, our lives. There’s no other feeling in the world like those final few moments before a battle.”
“Are you ever afraid . . . before. . . ?”
“Not of the Yankees. Not even of dying, as strange as that sounds. If I’m afraid of anything, it’s that I’ll fail—that the Yankees will break through to Richmond, where you are. I think of what they might do, and I know that I must hold them back, keep them from ever entering this city.” He shifted again and I saw the latent energy in his muscles, the warrior who couldn’t relax or be still.
“But I only think those thoughts in the moments before the battle starts. Then all of a sudden the enemy is coming at me and time freezes, and all I can think about is stopping that moving wall of blue. You load, aim, fire, load again. You’re aware of bullets whistling past and men falling beside you, but you don’t think about it until it’s over. You don’t even hear their screams and moans until afterwards.
“Then you’re back in camp again, and you realize that you’re still alive. In fact, it feels as though life is bursting through your veins. You’re exhausted, everyone is, yet the camp comes alive with music and laughter. Even the wormy food they feed us tastes wonderful because you’ve lived to fight another day.”
“Where do you find the courage to fight again and again, to keep facing armies that are so much bigger than yours?”
“You can’t muster the courage to do it when you’re here, at home. It only comes when you’re faced with it. And when you believe in what you’re fighting for.”
I nodded in understanding. “Before the war, I never would have imagined that I could work in a place like Chimborazo Hospital . . . to see such terrible, gruesome sights, to watch men suffer like that. You’re right, I don’t know how I do it, but I do know why.”
“Ever since that first battle at Manassas, Caroline, I feel more alive than I ever have in my life. I know that sounds odd, but I think it’s because there have been so many times when I might have died. I notice things now—like the way the tree branches move when I’m lying beneath them and the way the air smells before it rains. After the battle of Fredericksburg, the northern lights filled the winter sky that night. I can’t even describe how beautiful it looked—as if God had lit up the heavens with His glory. I see the world differently now. And I don’t think I’ll ever take life for granted again.”
I traced the line of his jaw with my fingers. “I know what you mean. I’ve seen so many lives come to an end in the hospitals where I’ve worked. I know how close we are to death each moment—a mere breath away—and we don’t even realize it. I’ve also learned that the God who paints the sky with His glory is the One who holds each one of us in His hands. It’s His will that’s going to prevail, not ours.”
Charles caught my fingers in his hand and kissed them. “The war has changed you, too, Caroline. Your faith is stronger, your compassion deeper, your love more intense than ever before. It’s as if all the qualities I saw in you and fell in love with have been refined and purified. I know the war has changed me in many ways. Perhaps some of them aren’t so good. I think we’ll both be different people when this is over.”
“I want you back, Charles. Not the soldier; the gentleman. I want the life that we had before the war.”
I wanted the Charles of two years ago, handsome in his formal evening clothes, smoothly dancing me around the ballroom floor, his warm hands holding me, his sleepy voice soothing me. I wanted our life of privilege, the courtly manners, the slow pace, the laughter on a picnic blanket on a warm afternoon. It was gone, that entire way of life was gone, like the green splendor of Hilltop.
“We’re never going to have it back, are we?” I murmured.
“Listen now. This war is almost over. And when it finally does end, even if we’ve lost some things, we’ll still have each other.”
Charles talked of being alive when it was over, of being with me afterwards. He was no longer anticipating his own death, and I was so relieved that I didn’t wait for him to kiss me; I lifted my face to kiss him.
Daddy drove with me to the Richmond & Petersburg Railroad station the next morning to see Charles off. He and his parents were already there, and so was the train, chuffing impatiently as it built up a head of steam.
“We’ll change trains at Petersburg and take the Norfolk line,” I heard Charles say. “But I believe all three of our divisions will be coming back this way very soon to join up with Lee’s army again.”
I listened as they talked of trivial things, reluctant to begin the difficult farewells. When I had a moment, I pulled Charles aside. I had one more thing to say to him that I had forgotten to tell him in private.
“When you get back to camp, when you see Josiah, will you give him a message for me? Tell him . . . tell him he’s going to be a father.”
Charles stared at me as if he hadn’t understood. “Is it your maid? Tessie?” he asked, frowning.
“Yes. They’re married. They have been for several years.” I couldn’t understand why he didn’t share my delight at the news. Josiah had marched and camped and gone hungry with him and Jonathan for the past two years. “What’s wrong?” I asked.
“It’s . . . complicated. He and Tessie belong to two separate owners, for one thing. Josiah is never going to be a father in the sense that you mean.”
There was something behind Charles’ words and in his attitude that I didn’t want to examine too closely. Then the train whistle blew and the moment passed. The time to say good-bye had finally come. Charles drew a deep breath, as if steeling himself.
“Don’t say it,” I begged. “Please don’t say good-bye.”
He pulled me into his arms, kissed me softly on the cheek. “All right,” he murmured. “I’ll see you soon.”
Charles marched north again with General Longstreet to rejoin Lee’s army, and the news he sent was all good. General Rodes took the city of Martinsburg. General Ewell took Winchester on the same day. At the end of June they crossed the Potomac into Union territory. One year ago a huge Federal army had threatened Richmond; now Washington and Philadelphia felt threatened by the invading Confederate army. Daddy’s hopes for another Rebel victory soared. Surely the North would sue for peace. It would all be over soon.
The first three days of July were the longest ones in my life as the opposing armies finally clashed in an unknown Pennsylvania town named Gettysburg. The early reports of Confederate victories raised hopes higher still. While I waited in an agony of suspense for news about Charles, a devastating blow threw the city into despair. The long siege of Vicksburg had ended in defeat. General Pemberton had surrendered the city to Federal forces on the Fourth of July. That meant the Mississippi River was in Union hands; the Confederacy was cut in half.
Then the awful truth about the battles being fought at Gettysburg slowly began to filter home. The news stunned all of us. Half of General Pickett’s men had been mowed down by artillery and rifle fire in a daring but ill-fated charge up Cemetery Hill. Out of a force of two hundred fifty men in the 9th Virginia Regiment, only thirty-eight had survived. Altogether, Lee’s army suffered more than twenty-eight thousand casualties—more than one-third of his men—and had gained nothing. Lee was in retreat, marching from the battlefield by night in a drenching rain.
After the way Charles had spoken about dying two months earlier, I couldn’t summon the courage to go downtown and read the casualty lists from Gettysburg. “You must prepare yourself for the fact that I might die,” he had said. So many thousands of men had died at Gettysburg, so many more had been grievously wounded, that I lost all hope that Charles might have been spared. “I’ve had to prepare myself . . . and you must, too.”
“I’ll go find out for you, Caroline,” Daddy said. “In the meantime, you’ve got to keep your hopes up.” But I saw him swallow a good stiff drink to fortify himself before leaving on horseback. I waited, sick at heart, unable to hug Tessie with her enormous belly in the way. I told myself that if Daddy galloped up the hill, the news would be good; if he took his time coming home, the news was bad.
“ ‘Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,’ ” Tessie read aloud, “ ‘I will fear no evil: for thou art with me. . . .’ ”
I waited. One hour slowly turned into two.
When I heard a horse trotting up the street I forced myself to walk downstairs to the foyer. Daddy burst through the door, his face flushed and dripping with sweat. “He’s all right, Caroline. Charles and Jonathan both came through it safely.”
I sank to the floor, weeping and thanking God.
On a hot, muggy day in August, the police arrested a Richmond woman named Mary Caroline Allan on charges of espionage. I had been making regular trips to Mr. Ferguson’s booth in the farmers’ market with the information I’d gleaned from social gatherings and from my father’s many visitors, and the news of Mrs. Allan’s arrest alarmed me, reminding me of the dangerous path I was treading.
On the very same day, Tessie went into labor. Ruby and Esther settled her into their quarters above the kitchen and forbade me to come anywhere near her. But I could hear Tessie’s cries of pain through the open windows, her suffering intensified by the afternoon’s sticky heat.
When Esther finally emerged with the good news that evening, she was wringing with sweat herself. “Tessie had herself a boy,” she said with a weary smile. “Another beautiful little boy. And I got myself a grandchild.” I was finally allowed upstairs to see them. “But just for a minute,” Esther warned.
Tessie looked exhausted but radiant. Her son, whom she’d named Isaac, had Josiah’s dark, scowling face. Tears filled my eyes as I thought of Grady.
“You go on out, now,” Esther said, shooing me. “I gonna give Tessie a bite to eat, then she gonna have herself a rest.”
Daddy had gone downtown on business, but I sat in the stair hall that sultry evening, watching out the window for his return. I barely gave him time to come through the front door before confronting him with the news. “Tessie had her baby . . . a little boy.”
Daddy looked flustered. “Well. I see.” Neither of us had ever said a word about her pregnancy but he certainly must have noticed it.
“I have a question,” I said, following him into the library. “Does her baby belong to us or to Jonathan, since he owns the baby’s father, Josiah?”
Daddy stared into space for a moment. “Josiah’s the father? Are you sure?” Then he came out of his trance and glanced around the room as if he weren’t sure where he was or how he got there. “Well. It doesn’t really matter who sired it. The child is the property of whoever owns the mother. Negro women never tell the truth about who the sire is.”
I drew a deep breath. “In that case, I would like to own the baby—as my servant. I know all the servants will be mine someday, but in the meantime I would like one of my own.”
Daddy sank into his chair, his eyes never leaving mine. “Why? What are you going to do with him?”
“I don’t know, but—”
“He’s not a toy, Caroline, not something that you can play with like a rag doll. That’s what you did with Tessie’s other boy and I should have put a stop to it from the very beginning. Slaves are valuable pieces of property.”
“I’d like him to be my property,” I said, forcing the words from my mouth. “When he’s old enough, Gilbert can teach him to drive a carriage. I’ll need my own driver once Charles and I are married. Look, I’ll buy the child from you if you’d like. But I really want to own him, Daddy.” I gazed up at him the way I had as a little girl, begging for favors—the look he’d never been able to resist.
“If that would please you, Sugar . . . all right. But make sure you put him to work. Don’t spoil him. If he grows up to be as big and strong as Josiah, he’ll be worth a pretty penny.”
I made Daddy draw up the ownership papers that same night, making the slave, Isaac Fletcher, my legal property. As soon as the ink dried, I went straight up to my room and transferred my deed of ownership to Isaac, writing it on the back of the same paper, using the legal terms my father had used. I hadn’t even owned my slave for five minutes before granting him his freedom.
When I climbed the steep ladder that night to the stifling slaves’ quarters above the kitchen, Isaac was nursing at Tessie’s breast. I knelt beside them, listening to his soft, baby coos and to the gentle lullaby Tessie hummed as his tiny fingers curled around hers. I could remember her humming the same tune to me years ago.
When the baby finally slept, I gave Tessie the paper. I watched as she read it in wonder and disbelief, trying to absorb what it meant.
“Isaac is free, Tessie,” I said. “That paper proves it.”
“My boy . . . my son is a free man?”
“Yes. No one can ever take him from you.”
Then we both wept.