Fall 1863
The weather stayed warm for a long time during the fall of 1863, giving us a near-perfect Indian summer. But even the finest weather couldn’t dispel the twin shadows of poverty and defeat that closed in on Richmond. It became a common sight to see some of the city’s wealthiest families, their clothes threadbare, trying to sell their jewelry and other valuables in order to eat.We still had some of Daddy’s gold, but it did little good since so many of the stores had empty shelves. The goods that were available sold for such exorbitant prices that I watched Daddy’s “fortune” rapidly dwindle.
The Confederate dollar had depreciated until it was worth only four cents. The shoes I had bought Gilbert six months ago now sold for four times as much. The four-dollar butter Esther had complained about seemed cheap with butter now selling for fifteen dollars a pound. We ate a lot of potatoes, but even they were expensive at twenty-five dollars a bushel. And flour, if you could find it, had gone from six dollars a barrel three years ago to as much as three hundred dollars a barrel. With heating fuel scarce and very costly, everyone dreaded winter.
News of the battles raging out west added to the gloom. Federal troops occupied Chattanooga, eastern Tennessee, and the Cumberland Gap. Our Rebel forces under General Bragg won an impressive victory at Chickamauga, but it cost him two-fifths of his men. The North, with its larger population, could replace their losses with fresh troops; the Confederates had no way to replace their soldiers when they fell in combat.
By November, General Ulysses Grant had taken command of the Federals. From Tennessee, they began pushing our Confederate forces back, driving them from Lookout Mountain, inching their way toward Atlanta.
Even with all this suffering, neither Daddy nor anyone else in Richmond talked of losing the war or abandoning the fight for Southern independence. Like the Old Testament pharaoh, their hearts grew harder, leaving me to wonder how many more plagues we would have to endure before the slaves finally won their freedom.
My father still entertained important guests—although on a more modest scale than before—and I continued to collect information and pass it along to Mr. Ferguson. I made it a point to learn more about military tactics so I would know which questions to ask and which facts were important. I became very skilled at acquiring information and remembering details. I not only told the Yankees what the Rebels’ plans and movements were, but I told them what the Rebels already knew of the North’s movements and strengths.
I no longer felt remorse at deceiving my father or using him this way. Not after eavesdropping on his conversation with Mr. St. John one afternoon. “I might be forced to sell some of my slaves this winter so we’ll have fewer mouths to feed,” Daddy said.
I nearly cried out. I had come into his library on the pretense of looking for a book to read, hoping to pick up some new information from the two men, but Daddy’s words stunned me. I wanted to plead with him not to do this, but I was afraid that if I let him know I was listening he would stop discussing his plans. I randomly pulled A Tale of Two Cities from the shelf and pretended to leaf through it, biting my lip as I listened.
“I didn’t think you could get a decent price for slaves these days,” Mr. St. John said. “I’d sell a few of mine, too, if I thought that I could get a fair price for them.”
“No, no, they’re not selling for anywhere near what they’re worth,” Daddy said. “I could use the money, but that’s not why I’m thinking of selling them. Frankly, food is just too hard to come by, and I don’t want the expense of feeding so many slaves this winter.”
“I know what you mean,” Mr. St. John said. “The way things are, it hardly seems worth feeding one just so she can polish the silver.”
“Caroline and I can probably get by with two maidservants,” Daddy said. “After all, there’s only two of us. And I really don’t need two menservants either, since we only have the one mare to care for. But it will be hard to decide whether to sell Eli or Gilbert. They’re both good slaves.”
I couldn’t listen to any more. I closed Dickens’ book and hurried from the room with it. By the time I reached the backyard where Eli was hoeing his vegetable patch, my tears were falling fast. Eli took one look at my face and dropped the hoe to run to me.
“It ain’t Massa Charles, is it?” he asked, gripping my shoulders to steady me. “I seen Mr. St. John come, but I didn’t think—”
“No, Charles is all right. It’s . . . it’s you and the others, Eli . . .” I wanted to lean against his broad chest and sob, but Eli took my arm and led me into the carriage house before trying to comfort me.
“Go ahead, Missy . . . it’s all right,” he soothed as he finally wrapped his arms around me. “You can tell me all about it . . . it’s okay. . . .”
But it wasn’t okay. I remembered the expression of joy on Gilbert’s face the day Daddy returned home from blockade running, how Ruby and the others had spread a banquet in celebration, how Esther had cooked all his favorite foods. They loved Daddy, trusted him, served him faithfully—yet he planned to sell them as if they were simply useless possessions he no longer needed. I didn’t want to tell Eli the terrible truth, but I knew that I had to. When I could control my tears, I raised my head to look up at him.
“My father is planning to sell three of you before winter,” I said.
For a moment, Eli appeared not to believe my words. Then an expression of such intense pain filled his eyes that I had to look away. “It’s okay. . . .” hemurmured, “God gonna have His way . . . it’s okay. . . .”
“No, it’s not,” I shouted. “I can’t part with any of you. This is wrong, Eli. Help me think of a way to stop him.”
“Can’t nobody stop him, Missy. We can only pray and trust God to—”
“No! You can’t let him do this. You have to escape to freedom, Eli. All of you.”
“Escape?” He said it as if he’d never heard the word.
“Yes. I’ll never let my father sell you. Never. I’ll help all of you run away first.”
I could see that Eli was deeply shaken. He had to sit down. “It ain’t an easy thing to go running off, you know. Esther’s ankles always swelling up . . . and Tessie has my little grandbaby to think about. Ain’t such an easy thing.”
“You don’t have to go far. As soon as you cross over to the Yankee lines you’ll be free. The Yankees are right here in Virginia. They have troops stationed at Williamsburg and Norfolk. I can draw you a map. Here . . .” I opened the book I still held in my hand and ripped out the title page. “Do you have something I can write with?”
Eli simply stared into space. The look of sorrow in his eyes was so profound it broke my heart. “Please don’t give up, Eli. I’m doing everything I can to help the North win this war so you’ll be free, but you’ve got to think of yourself and the others in the meantime. You’ve got to be ready to escape if my father goes through with this.”
“All right,” he finally said. “All right . . . There’s a pencil in that box over there.”
I dug through the wooden crate where Eli kept the horse brushes and some extra lengths of rope. Packed away near the bottom, wrapped in a clean rag, was his Bible—and a pencil. Using the lid of the crate for a table, I drew Eli a map of the route to Williamsburg, explaining it to him as I drew. Then I showed him another route, crossing the James River and going south to Norfolk.
“I want you to tell the others about this,” I said when I finished. “They have to be ready to leave at a moment’s notice. I’m quite sure that my father won’t give us any warning, so make sure Gilbert pays close attention to his movements. If Daddy drives down to the slave auction on Fourteenth Street . . .”
“Okay, Missy. We all be ready,” Eli said. He hadn’t looked this sorrowful since the day they’d taken Grady away. “But I’m gonna be praying that God change your Daddy’s mind so we don’t have to go nowhere. God can do that, you know. I be praying that we never have to use this map.”
My task of spying took on a new urgency. The North had to win—and soon. For a full week after I’d overheard my father’s plans I lived with the fear that he had already sold some of our servants without my knowledge. Each time a carriage or a wagon passed the house, I worried that it had come from the slave auction, that two burly men would jump out and drag away Ruby or Luella or Gilbert the way they had dragged poor Grady. Then one night while Daddy and I were eating dinner he said, “Caroline, I’ve been forced to make a very difficult decision.”
I stopped eating, waiting.
“I had a meeting with President Davis a few days ago,” Daddy said. “He asked me to return to blockade running.”
“What?” It took a moment for his words to sink in—he wasn’t announcing that he had sold our servants. I closed my eyes, bowing my head in relief. Daddy mistook my reaction for grief.
“I know you’re upset, Sugar, but I have to do it. The Yankees have a fleet blocking Charleston harbor, another squadron at Wilmington, North Carolina—that’s why goods are so expensive. And so scarce. Our soldiers need medicine and guns. . . . The Confederacy needs my help. I’m sorry, but I’m going to do what the president asked.”
“When will you leave?”
“There are a few things I need to take care of first,” he said, looking away, “but as soon as I possibly can.”
I knew by the way he avoided my gaze that one of those things was to sell three of our slaves. They would have to flee tonight unless I could convince my father to change his mind. Then I suddenly had another idea—but it meant taking a huge risk.
“Daddy, can I tell you something?”
“Certainly, Sugar.”
“I overheard you telling Charles’ father that you might sell some of the slaves.”
“Now, Caroline—”
“No, listen. I admit that I was upset about it at first, but I feel differently now that I know you’re leaving. It’s such a huge responsibility for me to take care of this house and six servants all by myself. I’m so worried that we’ll all starve this winter. I agree with you that we should sell some of them.”
“It’s a relief to hear you say that, Caroline. I was afraid you would fuss.”
“No, this war has forced me to change. And I know they have to be sold. If you tell me who to contact, I’ll take care of selling them for you. I could use a week or two to decide which ones to part with—and I know you’ll want to set sail before the winter storm season begins.”
“Are you certain you can do this?” he asked.
“I’m certain.”
He reached for my hand. “You’ve grown into a strong young woman, Caroline. I’m proud of you.”
My father gave me the names and addresses of two slave traders a few days before Gilbert and I drove him to the train station. “What you gonna tell him when he come home and see you ain’t sold nobody?” Gilbert asked as we waved good-bye to him.
“Hopefully the war will be over by then,” I said, “and you’ll all be free.”
When I returned home, my servants came to me, one by one, and thanked me for what I had done for them. I didn’t know how we would all get through the coming winter, but I knew that we would take care of each other and that God would provide.
My new concern was how to continue gathering military secrets without my father. I turned to Sally for help without her ever knowing it. “I’m bored and lonely now that Daddy’s gone,” I told her. “Will you help me plan some parties or something for entertainment?”
Sally, with her vivacious personality, eagerly embraced the idea. “I would love to. We could have musical evenings, put on plays . . . I know all sorts of parlor games. And let’s have a dance, Caroline. Oh, it’s been so long since I’ve danced. Who shall we invite?”
“I was thinking that some of our army officers and government officials and their wives could use some cheering up,” I said. “Your family knows all those people don’t they?”
“Oh, yes. Mother and Daddy know everyone.” She gripped my arm, her eyes dancing with excitement. “I know, we could start a ‘starvation club.’ ”
“What’s that?”
“It’s when everyone gets together for an evening of socializing, but the hostess doesn’t serve any refreshments. In fact, she’s forbidden to serve anything—mainly because no one can really afford it. But it still gives us an excuse to spend an evening in each other’s company.”
Food or no food, an invitation to one of the parties Sally and I hosted quickly became a coveted thing in Richmond that winter, offering welcome relief from the sadness and privation of war. Sally and I also started up the sewing circle again, gathering all the society wives together to knit socks and scarves and mittens for our soldiers. The women’s conversation often proved a richer source of information than their husbands’.
It snowed just before Christmas, burying the ugliness of wartime Richmond beneath a blanket of pure white. Unbelievably, this was the third Christmas we had celebrated since the war began. The night of Charles’ and my engagement seemed like a lifetime ago, instead of four years. Indeed, hadn’t we both lived through a lifetime’s worth of experiences since that night? The fact that no end to this war was in sight made our sorrow worse. As we gathered in church on Christmas Eve, everyone prayed that this would be the last Christmas our men would be away from us. I asked for that, too. But while the others continued to pray that the Confederate States would win their independence, I struggled to surrender to God’s will, trying to pray “Thy will be done.”
Christmas dinner in most Richmond homes was a somber affair. It wasn’t the scarcity of food that caused the sadness but the missing faces at each meal, the ever-increasing tally of loved ones who would never return home. I shared a simple meal in the kitchen with my servants again, a quiet celebration of the fact that we were all together, that no one had been sold. The celebration was enriched by baby Isaac’s robust laughter as he bounced in his grandfather’s arms, pulling on his snowy beard.
I spent Christmas Day with the St. Johns again, but I eagerly looked forward to dinner with them this year because of the secret errand my cousin Jonathan had entrusted to me—delivering Sally’s Christmas present on his behalf. Sally hadn’t seen him in over a year, ever since he’d recovered from his injury and had returned to fight at Fredericksburg. Of course, wrapping paper and ribbons were nowhere to be found, but I managed to make the present look special by covering the little gift box with an embroidered handkerchief from my trousseau and tying it up with a ribbon cut from one of my hats. For the first time in three years, I was anticipating the holiday.
“Special delivery,” I said, handing the present to Sally on Christmas Day. Her family had gathered in her little parlor that morning, huddling around a skimpy fire. “It’s from someone who wishes he could have given it to you himself.”
“From Jonathan? Really?” She was nearly speechless with delight.
“Go ahead, open it. There’s a note from him inside, too.”
Sally carefully untied the ribbon and parted the folds of the handkerchief. I saw her hands tremble as she lifted the lid off the box and pulled out a glittering topaz ring.
“Oh . . . it’s beautiful!”
“It belonged to our Grandmother Fletcher. Jonathan’s father made a special trip into Richmond to deliver it. Read the letter.”
Sally covered her mouth with her hand in a futile attempt to hold back her tears as she read the note Jonathan had enclosed. “He’s asking me to marry him,” she said, looking up at her parents and me. “Daddy. . . ?”
“I know, I know. He already wrote and asked for my permission.” Mr. St. John spoke gruffly, as if unwilling to reveal his emotions.
“Did you give him your blessing, Daddy?”
He nodded, frowning. “Very unusual way to court someone, if you ask me. That’s the trouble with wars, they disrupt all the old traditions.” Sally flew into his arms, hugging him tightly. She hugged her mother, then me.
“Now you and Jonathan are in the same boat as Charles and me,” I said, “waiting for the war to end, praying that it happens soon.”
“Whoever heard of an engagement by mail?” Mr. St. John mumbled, shaking his head.
Later, when Sally and I were alone in her room, I gave her a second letter from Jonathan—to be opened in private, he had said, after Sally accepted his proposal. I sat across from her on the bed, both of us wrapped in quilts to keep warm, and watched her read his letter through twice. The topaz ring sparkled on her finger.
“Jonathan doesn’t want to wait until the war ends,” she told me when she finished. “He’s trying to get a furlough. He wants us to be married as soon as possible.”
“Is that what you want, too?”
She nodded, swiping at her tears before they dripped onto the precious letter and smudged the ink. “I used to dream of a big, fancy wedding in St. Paul’s with flowers and bridesmaids and hundreds of guests,” she said. “I wanted to wear a beautiful gown and sail to Europe on my wedding trip . . . but now none of that seems important anymore. I only want to be Mrs. Jonathan Fletcher for as long as we both shall live. I love him, Caroline. I love him so much.”
I reached for her hand. “I know. I would have gone to a justice of the peace to marry Charles the last time he was home . . . but he wouldn’t do it.”
“Why not? I know how much he loves you.”
“This is hard to say, Sally, but he says he doesn’t want to leave me . . . a widow.”
The memory of Charles’ terrible words sliced through my heart: “Caroline. You must prepare yourself for the fact that I might die.”
I looked at Sally’s stricken face and was sorry I had raised the specter of death on such a joyful day. “Your wedding to Jonathan might not be a lavish one,” I said quickly, “but we can make sure it’s a wonderful one. Let’s plan it together, shall we? Then everything will be ready the moment Jonathan walks through the door. You won’t have to waste a single moment of his furlough.”
The idea excited her. “Which dress should I wear? My rose silk is the nicest one I have but it’s old and quite frayed around the hem. Do you think I can open the seams and turn it so it looks new?”
“Let me see it.” As she pulled the dress out of her wardrobe and spread it across the bed, I remembered how beautiful she had looked in it the night of her Christmas party, five years ago. She had stood in her soaring entrance hall, greeting her guests, the stairway behind her decked in candles and greenery. I had been awed by the St. Johns’ wealth, their magnificent home, their countless servants. We had no way of knowing on that joyful night what the future held for all of us, that war would ravage that prosperity, that Sally would have to remake a five-year-old dress into her wedding gown. And we couldn’t know what next Christmas would bring, either.
For the second time that afternoon, I recalled Charles’ terrible words: “Listen now. I’ve had to prepare myself . . . and you must, too.”
Quietly, tenderly, I felt the Lord’s presence surrounding me, drawing me to Him, coming to dwell among us as He had that first Christmas. As the angels had sung their song of joy, no one in Bethlehem had known about the coming tragedy of the cross— or the triumph of the empty tomb. I couldn’t know my future either, but I could trust the One who held it in His hand. I opened my heart and my hands to God, offering Him my dreams, trusting in His resurrection power. Thy will be done.
“I want you to wear my wedding dress,” I told Sally.
She stared at me, openmouthed.
“I really mean it. The dress and everything else I made for my trousseau are just going to waste, moldering in a trunk at the foot of my bed. It would make me so happy to let you use my things.”
“But . . . what about your own wedding?”
“Charles wants to wait until the war ends. By then we’ll have boatloads of new dresses to choose from. Please, Sally, let me give it to you for a wedding present—all of it—the dress, the chemise, the petticoats and crinolines. They’ll look so beautiful on you.”
“I . . . I don’t know what to say.”
“Say yes. Then we can plan your reception, too. Do you suppose they have ‘starvation club’ receptions during wartime?”
Sally laughed and cried at the same time. “You are so dear to me, Caroline. I’ll never be able to thank you. And to think I hated you the first time we met. I was so jealous of you and Jonathan.”
“That was his plan that night,” I said, smiling. “To storm the castle and win your heart. See how well it worked?”
In the new year, 1864, Sally and I poured our energy into planning her wedding. “You’ll have the best reception ‘no money’ can buy,” I joked. All we needed was the groom, and Jonathan wrote to say that he’d threatened to desert if his commanding officer didn’t grant him a furlough soon.
While we waited, I continued to host evening get-togethers at my house and afternoon gatherings of our ladies’ sewing circle. Our latest project was to stitch a new Confederate uniform jacket for Jonathan, cut from an old blanket and dyed “butternut gray” with homemade dyes. But before we had time to finish it, Sally drove up Church Hill to my house one afternoon with bad news.
“I came to tell you that there won’t be any more meetings or parties,” she said. “It happened again. Mrs. Fremont came home yesterday to find two of her maidservants missing. So was the emerald necklace that has been in her husband’s family for eighty years.”
“Oh no.” I groaned as I sank into Daddy’s chair. This wasn’t the first time one of my guests had returned home to find that her servants had run away, taking some of the family valuables with them. “Two of them ran away?” I asked. “And it happened during sewing circle?”
Sally nodded. “That makes four times that somebody’s slaves have run off while we were at your house. I’m sorry, but the ladies don’t want to come to the meetings anymore. They think . . .”
“What? What do they think? That I’m involved?”
Sally shrugged. “It is an awfully big coincidence.”
The thought had occurred to me that my servants might be involved in helping all these slaves run away, that they were using the map I had drawn for Eli. I would have to find out, but for now I had to allay the women’s suspicions. “How could I be helping these slaves if I was here at the meeting the entire time? Did you ask them that, Sally? And don’t you think it would have happened no matter where we’d met?”
“Please don’t be angry with me. I never said it was your fault. I’m only saying that it’s what the others think—and it’s why they don’t want to come here anymore. If we’re meeting regularly, you see, the slaves know when to plan their escape.”
“Well then,” I said, trying to act unconcerned. “If the ladies don’t want to come anymore it will be their loss, not mine.”
I put on my cloak and gloves later that afternoon and went out to the carriage house to talk to Eli. He had the back door open so he could shovel out the manure, and the stable was freezing cold inside. I hugged myself and rubbed my arms to keep warm while I waited for him to set the shovel aside and close the door.
“If you need to talk, we can go in the kitchen where it’s warm,” he said.
I shook my head, trying to find a way to begin. “Eli . . . do you know anything about Mrs. Fremont’s two servants running away yesterday?”
“Ivy and Lila,” he said, smiling faintly. “They’s mother and daughter, did you know that? Missus Fremont planning to send Lila away to North Carolina to be a nanny to her son’s new baby. Lila only thirteen years old. She ain’t never been away from Mama Ivy before. Don’t neither one of them want to be torn apart.”
His words shook me. I found it easy to see my own servants as individuals who loved and dreamed dreams, just like me. But I had looked past Mrs. Fremont’s servants—and everyone else’s servants— as if they weren’t even there. Now I was learning that their stories were much the same. Tessie had been only fourteen when my father took her from her parents at Hilltop to be my nanny.
“I understand,” I said quietly. “What about the other people who have run away?”
“Well now, let’s see . . .” he said, settling down on the wooden stool. “There was the two that run off on the same day—Lizzy, the Clarks’ chambermaid, and Darby, who worked for the Dunkirks. Those two young people wanting to get married real bad, but their owners wouldn’t let them.” I thought of Tessie and Josiah. “Mr. Clark had his eye on Lizzy . . . if you know what I mean.” Eli looked away, embarrassed.
“Go on,” I said after a moment.
“The Smiths’ servant, Arthur, hear the massa needing some money and planning on selling him. No telling what a new massa gonna be like.” Eli sighed. “I didn’t think you’d mind me helping all them people, seeing as they in the same bad way we was a few months ago when your daddy gonna sell us. But I ain’t never telling any of them to steal. I’m real sorry they all done that, Missy Caroline. Stealing ain’t right.”
Eli paused, and I heard the mare whinny softly as she stamped in her clean stall. “I sure hope you ain’t mad at me, Missy.”
“Not at all,” I assured him. “I’m glad you helped them. I would have done the same thing.”
“You ain’t gonna get in trouble for what I done, are you?”
“I don’t think so. It’s just gossip. But everyone’s afraid to go out and leave their servants alone at home. I’ll have to think of another way to gather information.”
“Something else you should know,” Eli said as he stood and retrieved his shovel. “Two of the St. Johns’ servants planning to run away next. Their massa talking about sending them out to dig trenches and build fortifications around Richmond soon as spring comes. Them army folks work the Negroes half to death. And there ain’t hardly no food to feed the soldiers, let alone feeding slaves. It’s a death sentence, Missy. Those two boys want their freedom, too.”
“All right,” I said. “Do whatever you have to do to help them, Eli. But please, ask them not to steal from Charles’ family.”
On a cold, clear night in March of 1864, Jonathan waltzed into my parlor. “Good evening, Cousin,” he said, grinning. “Can you spare a tired soldier a bed for one night?”
I ran to hug him. “Jonathan! How did you get here?”
“Let’s see, by train . . . wagon . . . horseback . . . on foot. Every means but by boat, I believe. I have a one-week furlough and I already used up a whole day of it getting here.”
“How’s your arm? Are you all right? Is Charles with you? How did you manage to get a furlough? Charles says they only grant them for hardship cases, and even then—”
“Whoa! One question at a time. I got a furlough by lying, of course. I told them that my—”
“Never mind, I don’t think I want to know.”
“You don’t,” he agreed, laughing. “See? That’s what happens during wartime—all our fine moral principles go flying out the window and we start lying, cheating, stealing . . . whatever it takes.”
I winced when I thought of all my lies and deceptions. “Is Charles with you?” I asked again.
“Sorry. He wasn’t willing to risk being shot as a deserter, even to see his sister get married. I went to see Sally before I came here and she says we’re getting married tomorrow. I can hardly believe it! So what are the chances of me getting a hot bath before my wedding day? I could really use one. And can your servants do anything about this sorry excuse for a uniform?”
I took a good look at Jonathan for the first time and saw a walking scarecrow. I wanted to weep. He wore a tattered slouch hat, and his coat looked shabbier than the one Eli had been too ashamed to wear in the house. His pants were not even Confederate uniform pants but were blue, like the ones Robert had worn.
“I took them off a dead Yankee,” Jonathan said when he saw me eyeing them. “Borrowed his socks and boots, too. Figured he had no more need of them. A lot of our men are barefoot, Caroline. It’s pitiful.”
“I’m quite certain that Sally would marry you just the way you are, but don’t worry, we’ll get you cleaned up as good as new. Did Sally tell you? We sewed you a new uniform jacket so you’d look handsome on your wedding day. We have the entire wedding planned. Wait until you see what desperation and ingenuity can accomplish.”
Jonathan pulled me into his arms again. “Sally told me everything you’ve done for us and how you’re letting her wear your wedding gown and all. I don’t know how I’ll ever be able to thank you, Caroline.”
“Be happy, Jonathan. That’s all the thanks I want . . . just marry Sally and be happy.”
I sent Jonathan up to my father’s room to start cleaning up, while I ran out to the servants’ quarters to tell Gilbert to prepare a bath and Esther to stoke up the fire early tomorrow morning to start baking. We had carefully hoarded flour and sugar for this occasion. But when I burst into the darkened kitchen, the only person I saw was Josiah, sitting in front of the fire with his six-month-old son asleep in his arms. He held Isaac’s freedom papers in his hand. For the first time that I could ever recall, the brawny servant didn’t look fierce and menacing—he was singing softly to his child.
I started to back out, not wanting to disturb them, but Josiah lifted his head. He looked up at me, and I saw tears glistening on his cheeks.
“Missy Caroline . . .” he said. “Thank you for what you done for my son.”
“You’re welcome,” I whispered.
Jonathan and Sally’s wedding day turned out to be a beautiful one. Her servants had gone all over Richmond the night before, as we’d planned, spreading the news that her wedding would be the next day at eleven o’clock at St. Paul’s Church. Eli rose before dawn and used a borrowed horse and the special travel permit Mr. St. John had arranged to ride out to Hilltop to fetch Jonathan’s parents and his younger brother, Thomas. They arrived just in time to clean the spring mud from their shoes and carriage wheels and race down to the church.
Guests filled the front third of St. Paul’s pews; spring sunshine lit up its rainbow-hued windows. I cried as I watched Sally walk down the long aisle on her father’s arm, wearing my wedding gown. She looked radiant in it. She carried a bouquet of fake flowers pilfered from all our old bonnets. I turned to glimpse Jonathan’s face and saw him fighting tears as he watched Sally walk down the aisle to become his wife. He looked dashing and handsome in his new uniform jacket, even if we had made it too big, not realizing how much weight he had lost.
I thought of Charles a thousand times that day. Our wedding here in St. Paul’s, planned to take place nearly three years ago, would have been much the same as this one. Three long years. I tried to picture Charles and myself in their places, tried to recite the vows in my heart along with them, promising to love Charles and cleave to him as long as we both shall live. But I knew that I was praying, My will be done, instead of Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven.
When Dr. Minnegerode pronounced Sally and Jonathan man and wife, I glanced across the aisle at Charles’ parents. Against my will, I remembered Charles’ words: “You must prepare yourself . . .I’ll need you to be strong, for my parents’ sake . . .”
There had been so few joyous moments since this terrible war began that I determined not to spoil this day with morbid thoughts. I pushed them from my mind and joined my aunt Anne and uncle William for the short carriage ride back to the St. Johns’ house for the reception.
The St. Johns’ vast drawing room had been opened for the first time in over a year, and every inch of it gleamed—even if there were no fires in the fireplaces and the chandeliers weren’t lit. The buffet lunch of carefully hoarded foods had been stretched to the limit by Esther and the St. Johns’ cook and was beautifully arrayed on polished silver platters. Daddy’s wine, watered down with juice and cider, filled the punch bowl, and we raised crystal glasses to toast the new bride and groom. The only musicians we could find were the members of the Home Guard band, comprised of old men and young boys who were ineligible to fight, but we waltzed to military marches that afternoon, pretending it was Richmond’s finest orchestra.
Sally and I had been unable to arrange a hotel room ahead of time. There hadn’t been an empty room anywhere in town for the past three years, so Ruby, Tessie, and I prepared Mother’s bedroom as a bridal suite. Sally and Jonathan retired there that evening— and didn’t come out again until Jonathan’s furlough was nearly over, five days later. I envied their happiness.
“Take care of her for me, Caroline,” Jonathan begged when it was finally time for him to leave.
“I will. You be careful now, okay? And please, don’t forget to tell Charles that I love him.”
Josiah was returning to the front with Jonathan, and he could barely tear himself away from Tessie and his son. “I was afraid you and Josiah were going to run away,” I told Tessie later. “I wouldn’t blame you if you had.”
She reached out to stroke my hair and caress my cheek. “I couldn’t leave you, honey,” she said. “Don’t you know that you my child, too?”