Candle in the Darkness (33 page)

Daddy stayed less than a week. The government moved swiftly to commission him as a privateer. Then, as abruptly as he had arrived, Daddy was gone.

On a mild spring day, the first Sunday in April, the Army of the Potomac passed through Richmond on their way to the Peninsula. We had been expecting them for days and preparing parcels of food for their arrival, but the news first reached us at noon, at the close of our church service.

“Trainloads of General Longstreet’s men have been arriving from Fredericksburg all morning,” a city official told us as we lingered on the portico outside St. Paul’s. “The poor souls have traveled nearly twenty-four hours without food. They’re half-starved.”

“Where are they now?” Mr. St. John asked. “Do you know if the Richmond Blues are among them? My son, Charles?”

“All I know is that they’re marching through town to Rocketts Wharf. They’re heading down to the Peninsula from there by steamboat.”

The calm of Sunday morning turned into chaos as people rushed around in all directions, searching for their loved ones, desperate to get parcels of food to them. I had come to church in my own buggy that morning, so I left the St. Johns to their own plans and hurried off to find Gilbert.

“Take me to Rocketts Wharf,” I told him. “Hurry! If Charles hasn’t arrived yet, we can wait for him down at the wharf.” I was afraid that I would be too late, that I’d already missed him.

Gilbert drove as if our lives depended on it, maneuvering the little buggy through back lanes and narrow alleys to avoid the worst of the traffic and the columns of men who were tramping through the streets. Bands played and women tossed spring flowers in greeting, and while it was reassuring to see so many thousands of soldiers, I couldn’t help remembering that a year had passed since we’d celebrated the first shots at Fort Sumter. The war, which many thought would be over in thirty days, had dragged on for a year with still no end in sight.

The wharf was a sea of milling, gray-clad men. If Charles was among them, I didn’t know how I would ever find him. I only knew that I had to try. I climbed down from the buggy without waiting for Gilbert to help me.

“Drive home and fetch the food I packed,” I told him. “And bring Tessie back with you so she has a chance to see Josiah.”

Gilbert surveyed the vast host of soldiers and shook his head. “Ain’t right to leave you here all alone, Missy. All these men . . .”

“I’ll be fine. Just hurry, Gilbert.”

I started running toward the dock before he could stop me, pushing through the swarming men, scanning their faces, calling Charles’ name, asking for his company. Then above the rumble of voices I heard him calling.

“Caroline! Caroline, over here!” I caught a brief glimpse of Josiah and of Jonathan waving to me. Then I spotted Charles plowing a path through the crowd as he hurried toward me. I’m not sure I would have recognized him if he hadn’t been calling my name.

His body looked leaner and more muscular than I remembered, his dark hair overgrown and badly in need of a barber. His beard, always so neatly trimmed, was long and scruffy. But his beautiful eyes were the same, his face as handsome as I’d remembered, even with windburned cheeks and a new network of lines etching the corners of his eyes.

We both halted when we were a few feet apart and drank in the sight of each other from head to toe. The gray uniform coat he’d had tailor-made a year ago was wrinkled and worn at the cuffs. A rip in his right sleeve had been crudely patched. His trousers were baggy-kneed, the hems caked with dried mud. The soles of his scuffed boots testified to miles of hard marching.

Charles gazed back at me, his eyes as soft as blue flannel. “You’re even more beautiful than your picture,” he said. “Your letters keep me going, Caroline. I read them over and over.” He slid his knapsack with his blanket roll off his shoulders as he talked and leaned his rifle against it. Water sloshed in his canteen as he lifted the strap over his head to remove it. Then he opened his arms to me.

“Let me hold you, Caroline.” The gray wool of his jacket felt rough against my cheek. It smelled of woodsmoke and gunpowder and sweat. “I want to memorize what it feels like to have you in my arms,” he murmured, “and the scent of your hair, your skin.”

We might have been the only two people on the wharf as Charles held my face in his hands and kissed my forehead, my temples, my neck. I felt the strength in his arms as he held me tightly to himself, the warm pressure of his body against mine. Neither of us wanted to let go. I listened to his heartbeat and the sound of his breathing, remembering the delicate thread of life that held both of us to this earth. I had watched that thread break so many times now—watched helplessly as a heart ceased to beat or a last breath was drawn—and I willed life to fill Charles, to remain in him.

“When I left home,” he said, “I didn’t think it was possible to love you any more than I already did . . . but I do.”

“I love you so much!” I told him, but I don’t know if he heard me as the blast of a steam whistle drowned out my words.

“That’s my ship,” he said.

“Charles, don’t go!”

He clutched me tighter still. “Listen now. God willing, I’ll be back to hold you again soon.” He bent down, and his lips briefly kissed mine. It was all we dared do in such a public place. I sensed his reluctance as he finally released me from his arms.

“Where are they sending you?” I asked as he retrieved his gun and slung his knapsack over his shoulder.

“Yorktown.”

My stomach rolled like a wave at his words.
“One hundred thousand enemy soldiers.”

“Don’t go . . .” I whispered.

As the call came to begin boarding the ship, Sally and her carriage driver arrived with food. She filled Charles’ arms with sacks and parcels, so he wasn’t able to hold me or squeeze my hand a final time. I reached out once more to touch his cheek, his hair. “I love you.”

“I love you, too, Caroline.” He walked backward as far as he could, unwilling to lose sight of me, then ran up the ramp and dropped his packages so he could crowd near the ship’s rail and wave.

The soldiers gave the Rebel yell as the boat steamed from the dock, and the sound of it—bold and defiant—shivered through me. I waved until my arms ached and Charles’ boat finally disappeared from sight. Then, as I turned away to wipe my tears, I saw Tessie hurrying toward the dock, searching for Josiah. Too late.

Charles remained in besieged Yorktown, sixty miles away, for nearly a month while McClellan’s massive army assembled nearby. When the report came that the Federals were moving their heavy guns into place to fire on Yorktown, I spent every spare moment in prayer for Charles’ safety.

Such dreadful news filled the newspapers throughout the month of April that Tessie begged me not to read it anymore. “It just making you upset, honey,” she insisted. “Where’s the good in knowing what’s happening in all them places if you can’t change anything? I wish I never learn to read about such terrible things.”

We read about the battle in Shiloh, Tennessee, and the incomprehensible loss of eleven thousand soldiers. Four days later, Fort Pulaski surrendered, leaving the Savannah harbor undefended. A week later, Fort Macon in Beaufort, North Carolina, was lost. Then, at the end of the month, came the staggering loss of New Orleans and the lower Mississippi River.

“I want this awful war to end, Tessie.”
Dear God, when will it end?

I had little time to worry about those faraway places as the enemy pressed closer and closer to Richmond. While McClellan’s army prepared to move up the Peninsula, two other Union forces inched closer to Richmond, one moving south along the Rappahannock River, the other approaching in the Shenandoah Valley. During the first week of May, rumors spread throughout the city that our troops had evacuated Yorktown and had moved to defend the entrenchments around Richmond. I didn’t learn about the fierce fighting that had taken place in Williamsburg, or the danger Charles had been in, until I received his letter a few days after the battle.

We knew the Federal guns were in place, ready to bombard Yorktown, and that it was useless to stay and defend the city any longer.
On the night we evacuated, our batteries rained fire on the enemy throughout the night to cover our retreat. My company was part of the rear guard and among the last to leave. The next day when the Federals discovered that we were gone, they pursued us, catching up with us at Williamsburg and attacking my division.

We battled them from sunrise until sundown—outnumbered and outgunned—but we drove them back. When the enemy finally withdrew, we waited until dark, then marched all night toward Richmond.
I have never been so weary in all my life, nor have I ever fought so hard and marched so long without food. You can see by my shaky handwriting that I am still weak with exhaustion. But the thought of what we are fighting for keeps me going—the knowledge of the freedoms we stand to lose . . .

Charles’ letters were precious to me, but this time his words made me so angry that I crumpled up his letter and threw it across the bedroom. Then I pulled out a sheet of stationery and composed an angry letter to him in return.

I told him how furious I was with him for risking his life for such a hopeless cause. The South was wrong, the “freedom” he was fighting for—the “freedom” to hold people as slaves—was a moral outrage. Couldn’t he see the terrible devastation he was bringing upon our land, the tragic waste of life? I told him to read his Bible, the book of Exodus, and see how Pharaoh had hardened his heart against freeing his slaves until even his own officials begged him to let them go, saying, “Do you not yet realize that Egypt is ruined?” The South was slowly being ruined, and I was so afraid that Charles would die, just as all of Egypt’s firstborn sons had died. I didn’t want to go on living without Charles.

In the end, I carefully straightened all the wrinkles out of Charles’ letter and threw my own letter into the fire instead.

A week after Yorktown, the Confederates evacuated our naval base at Norfolk, withdrawing more of our forces up the Peninsula to defend Richmond. When I read that the Rebels had destroyed their most powerful warship, the ironclad
Virginia,
rather than see her fall into enemy hands, I thought of how devastated my father would be by this news. The
Virginia
couldn’t navigate the shallow waters of the James River, nor could it get past the Union blockade into the open sea, so the decision had been made to destroy her.

Now Richmond faced a new threat. I learned of it when Mr. St. John drove up Church Hill late one afternoon to warn me.

“Caroline, you must pack your things and get ready to leave the city,” he said. Gilbert had shown him into Daddy’s library, but Mr. St. John was too agitated to sit down, too distraught to accept even a glass of brandy or one of Daddy’s last few cigars.

“I’m sending Sally and my wife to safety outside Richmond tomorrow,” he said. “You must get packed and go with them, Caroline.”

“Leave the city . . . why?” I backed into the chair Gilbert had offered Mr. St. John as my knees suddenly went weak. “What’s going on?”