Candle in the Darkness (60 page)

For the second morning in a row, Caroline was jolted awake at dawn, this time by someone pounding on her front door. Gilbert ran to open it. A moment later she heard Mr. St. John shouting, “Where are they? What have you done with my wife and daughter?”

Caroline hurried into the foyer. Soot smudged Mr. St. John’s face and hands. His charred clothes reeked of smoke. He was coughing, wheezing, but when he saw her, he began shouting louder still. “What kind of chicanery are you trying to pull, stealing my family away from me this way? Your little deceptions won’t work anymore. We know what you are—”

“Daddy, stop,” Sally cried out from the top of the stairs. “Caroline hasn’t done anything wrong. She helped Mother and me.”

“Helped you! Get down here. Both of you. I’m taking you home.”

“We were terrified yesterday, Daddy,” Sally said as she helped her mother down the stairs. “You left us, and the servants all ran off, and we thought we were going to die. If Caroline hadn’t come and brought us here where it was safe, I don’t know what we would have done.”

“Get in the carriage,” he said coldly. Mr. St. John opened the front door himself and pointed toward the street. Caroline saw his carriage parked at the curb, but it was without a driver.

“Did you even hear a word that Sally just said?” Mrs. St. John asked him.

He glared at her. “Our mill burned to the ground yesterday. You can thank Caroline and her Yankee friends for that. Now get in the carriage.”

They started to leave, but before she reached the door, Sally turned and ran back to take Caroline in her arms. “Thank you,” she whispered as she held her tightly. “I’ll never forget what you did for us yesterday.”

Morning revealed that most of the fires were out. Caroline and Gilbert drove downtown to see what was left of Richmond.

Fifty-four city blocks lay in charred ruins. Nearly the entire business district was gone. More than nine hundred homes and businesses. Nothing remained except skeletal brick walls, or maybe a blackened fireplace and chimney rising from the smoking debris. In some places, the rubble of fallen bricks was piled so high it blocked the streets. The town didn’t even look like Richmond.

The enemy’s occupying forces had moved into President Davis’ Confederate White House. Everywhere that Caroline and Gilbert looked, on every street corner and city block, she saw armed soldiers dressed in blue standing guard. They drove past Capitol Square, where hundreds of Yankee horses grazed, and Caroline remembered sitting on a bench in that square beside Charles the night Virginia had seceded. Four years ago this month, the city had celebrated the birth of the Confederacy. But Charles had looked at her that night, his eyes filled with sorrow, and said,
“You deserve to know the truth . . . I don’t think we can possibly win this war.”

If Charles had known just how much he would lose—not only the war itself, but his city, his livelihood, thousands of his fellow soldiers, and worst of all, their love, their future—would he still have fought? If she had known that fighting to abolish slavery would have cost her Charles’ love, would she still have done it?

Her questions had no answers. It was useless to ask them, as useless as trying to pick up the fallen bricks from among the rubble to put the city back together again. It couldn’t be done.
“Trust that everything you done for God and everything you gave up for Him has a purpose,”
Eli had said.
“God will give it all meaning in the end.”
Caroline could only pray that it would be so.

When she could no longer stand the sight of her beloved city, she asked Gilbert to take her home.

That day, April 4, President Lincoln arrived to tour the vanquished city. Eli and Gilbert took all of the other servants down to Capitol Square to cheer for the president who had purchased their freedom. Even baby Isaac got a glimpse of the man the Negroes hailed as their Moses.

Not quite a week after Richmond fell, General Lee and his exhausted troops surrendered to General Grant at Appomattox Court House. Charles laid down his rifle for the last time in bitter defeat. He and the friends he had fought and starved beside for four long years would finally go home. But when Charles arrived in Richmond, it was to a house of mourning. His father had died on April 9, the day Lee surrendered.

One week after the surrender at Appomattox, Josiah walked through the kitchen door as Caroline and the others were eating their dinner. Between the three of them, Tessie, Eli, and Esther, they hugged Josiah so hard they nearly knocked him to the ground.

“Ain’t no one ever gonna make us be apart again,” Tessie cried. “We’re free!”

But their joyful reunion was tempered with sorrow as Eli told his son the news: “President Lincoln, the man who set us free, died today from an assassin’s bullet.”

“Dear Lord have mercy!” Esther cried, running from the house to the backyard. “Would y’all come inside and look who’s here!”

Caroline was in the backyard with the others that warm May evening, watching Eli, Josiah, and Gilbert dig up another section of the yard to plant vegetables. The air was ripe with the scent of spring and with the horse manure the men were spading into the soil. Esther had heard the front door chimes and offered to see who it was. Now she was dancing from one foot to the other in excitement.

“Come on, y’all! Hurry up!”

Caroline ran inside ahead of the others, then stopped in amazement when she reached the foyer. The two thin, bedraggled-looking men standing in her doorway were her father and her cousin Jonathan. She didn’t know which one to hug first.

“Thank God, thank God,” she wept as she hugged them both again and again. “Where have you been all this time? I thought you were dead.”

“I thought I was, too, Sugar. More than once,” her father said.

“We ran into each other at Fort Delaware—the prisoner of war camp,” Jonathan explained. “Uncle George kept me alive. I thought the least I could do was bring him home.”

“Kept you alive?”

“He used some of the gold he had with him to bribe the guards, buying us extra rations and a warm blanket. I owe him my life.”

“I still can’t believe you’re both here . . . that you’re alive!” she repeated.

“Didn’t I promise that I would be back to dance with you?” Jonathan grinned and pulled her into his arms to waltz her around the foyer. He wore the same lively, impish grin she had loved since the day they’d first met. She was so glad that at least one thing hadn’t changed. “I’ll be back to collect a second dance another day,” he said. “I want to see Sally. I want to go home to my wife.”

“She’ll be the happiest woman in the world when she sees you.”

Jonathan’s smile faded for a moment. “Where’s Charles?” he asked. “Why isn’t he here with you? Please tell me that he made it through the war all right.”

Pain knifed through Caroline at the mention of his name. Jonathan would learn the truth soon enough. She decided not to spoil his joyful homecoming. “Charles made it through, safe and sound,” she said, smiling bravely.

“You mean I made it home in time for your wedding?”

“Go now. Hurry!” she said as tears filled her eyes. “Sally’s waiting.”

Suddenly Josiah spoke up from behind her. “I be glad to drive you down there, Jonathan,” he said. “It’s awful far to walk.”

Jonathan looked stunned. “Thanks, Josiah,” he finally said. “I’d appreciate a ride.”

Caroline drew her cousin into her arms again, hugging him close for what she knew would be the last time. Sally and Charles would tell him what she had done. Like the others, Jonathan would neither understand nor forgive her. His brother Will was dead, his home at Hilltop ruined. And she had helped his enemies.

“Good-bye,” she whispered. “Thanks for bringing Daddy home.”

When they were gone, Caroline became aware, for the first time, of all the servants, standing in the hallway behind her, staring at her father as if they were seeing a ghost. She wasn’t entirely sure that they weren’t.

“Sure is good to see you, Massa Fletcher,” Gilbert said.

“Well, now. It’s good to see all of you, too. I thought for sure y’all would have run off by now, like every other servant in the state of Virginia.”

“No, Daddy. They all stayed here with me. They saved my life. I would have starved to death if it weren’t for them.”

He looked at them for a long moment. “I’m grateful to you,” he said quietly. “Now then, I don’t suppose a man could get something to drink around here?”

“Sorry, sir,” Gilbert said. “Drink’s been long gone.”

“I ran out of gold a long time ago, Daddy. It went fast, with flour costing five hundred dollars a barrel.”

“Well, here. Maybe this will help.” He removed his jacket and handed it to Caroline.

“This jacket weighs a ton.”

“I know. It’s a wonder I didn’t sink to the bottom of the harbor when those blasted Yankees sank my boat. I sewed my gold inside the seams so it would be safe. For goodness’ sake, rip it out and buy me something to eat. I’m starved.”

“That’s music to my ears,” Esther said.

“You mean . . . we’re not broke?” Caroline asked.

“Heavens, no. I told you I made a fortune as a privateer. I just wasn’t able to get it all home safely during the war.We have plenty of gold and even some U.S. Treasury notes hidden away down in the islands. I plan to go collect it all, first chance I get. I could use someone to go with me, but I don’t suppose Jonathan or Charles will want to leave home anytime soon.”

Caroline couldn’t stop the smile from spreading across her face. “I know someone who would love to go with you, Daddy.”

“Who?”

“Gilbert.”

Her father looked at Caroline, then at Gilbert, as if they were both out of their minds. “Go ahead, Daddy,” she said. “Ask him.”

“I’d be mighty pleased to go with you, Massa Fletcher,” Gilbert said before her father could open his mouth. “I been hoping you’d ask me someday.”

“Well, I’ll be darned,” he said. He looked around at all of them in amazement, then noticed the walls of the foyer for the first time. “Good heavens!” he cried as he stared at the ragged patches of bare plaster where the wallpaper had been. “What on earth have you done to my house?”

Chapter Twenty-seven

June 1865

“Some of these books are going to be easier for my students to read than others,” Caroline told Ruby as she handed her another pile.

“Easy or hard, they could all use a good dusting,” Ruby grumbled.

Caroline had attended worship services with Eli at his African Baptist Church, where he’d announced to his congregation that she was willing to teach classes to anyone who wanted to learn to read and write. Hundreds of former slaves had hurried forward to sign up. Now she was working in her father’s library, putting his books in order and making a list of the titles she could use with her students.

When the front door chimes suddenly rang, Ruby set her armload of books on the desk. “Who’s pestering us now?”

“If it’s someone who wants to sign up for classes, send him in,” she called after Ruby. Then she realized that all of her potential students were former slaves who would never dream of coming to her front door. She listened for a moment to see if she could recognize the person’s voice. Instead, she heard Ruby shouting in anger.

“You get on out of here! Ain’t no Yankees welcome in this house! Go away!”

Caroline jumped down from the chair she was standing on and ran to the foyer. Ruby was trying to close the door on a man in a Federal uniform. The officer had his foot wedged inside, preventing it from shutting.

“Wait a minute, please,” the Yankee begged. “It’s me, Robert Hoffman.”

Caroline froze in shock at the name, then stared in disbelief. She recognized him now. Robert had gained back the weight he’d lost in Libby Prison, and he looked surprisingly handsome in his navy blue uniform, his black hair and mustache neatly groomed, his brass buttons and belt buckle shiny, his boots polished. She couldn’t believe her eyes. For the first time in his life, Robert looked every inch the army officer he’d always longed to be.

“Go away!” Ruby said, pushing hard against the door. “You gonna get Miss Caroline and the rest of us in trouble waltzing up to the front door in that uniform. You the enemy! Get on out of here!”

“Caroline, it’s me,” Robert shouted when he saw her. “What’s wrong with Ruby? She’s acting like I’m a stranger. Please, tell her to let me in.”

“No. She’s right, Robert. You have to go away. You’re putting me in danger.”

“What are you talking about? I would never—”

“There are rumors all over town that I betrayed the Confederacy. I’m hated enough as it is. Please leave.”

Robert looked at her for a long moment in sorrow and disbelief. Then he pulled his foot out of the way and left. Ruby slammed the door behind him.

“I’m awful sorry for turning Massa Robert away like that. But everybody in the whole neighborhood looking out their windows and watching that Yankee man sashay up to your door, tying his fat Yankee horse to our post. We let him inside, they be hating you for certain.”

“Thank you, Ruby,” she said. “You did the right thing.”

But later that night, when it was dark, Robert returned. He came to the back door this time, tying his fat Yankee horse to her back gate where fewer people would see it. He was dressed in civilian clothes instead of his uniform. Even so, Caroline didn’t invite him into the house but stood outside the open drawing room doors to talk to him. The June evening was clear and warm, the sky sprinkled with stars.