Candle in the Darkness - Lynn N. Austin [145]
I stood frozen in front of the window, watching as the rioters rushed toward the store where Gilbert and I had taken refuge. When they discovered that the door was locked, they picked up bricks and homemade bats to smash the window. Gilbert perceived their intentions a moment before I did, and he grabbed me around the waist, whirling me away from the window, shielding me with his own body as the window shattered in a hail of shards. The proprietor was struck by a brick, several of the others cut by flying glass, but thanks to Gilbert, I was unharmed. Then he stood in front of me, brandishing a cobbler’s mallet as looters poured into the store through the broken window, snatching all the merchandise they could carry.
Outside, firemen turned their hoses on the rioters, but that only seemed to make them more violent, and they turned their weapons against the volunteers. Then the Home Guard came running to the scene, alerted by the ringing alarm bell, armed with rifles and bayonets.
“Better look away, Miss Caroline, in case this get ugly,” Gilbert warned. I stepped back from the window a few more paces, but I didn’t want to believe that the guards would actually use their bayonets or open fire on civilian women and children.
There was a louder shout above the chaos, and the crowd parted right outside our store to let Governor Letcher pass through. “What is the governor saying?” someone asked the store owner. He had stepped cautiously toward the window to listen, holding a bloodied handkerchief to his head.
“He says he’s giving them five minutes to disperse or the guard will open fire. Nobody is leaving, though. The looting has stopped, but even with bayonets pointed in their faces, no one is leaving.”
The tension was as sharp and brittle as the fragments of glass beneath our feet. But before the five minutes were up and the guard would be forced to fire, President Jefferson Davis arrived. Gilbert and I edged toward the window to watch as Davis climbed onto a wagon that had been turned sideways across the street.
“Go home,” he shouted to the crowd. “The Yankees are the enemy, not one another.”
“We’re hungry!” someone called. “We can’t afford to feed ourselves or our children.”
“But if you steal,” the president replied, “then farmers won’t bring any food at all into the city. We’ll starve for certain.” He reached into his pockets and pulled out all of his change, flinging money into the street. “Here . . . take it. It’s all I have. I don’t want anyone injured, but this lawlessness must stop. You have five minutes to disperse or you will be fired upon.”
Davis took out his pocket watch and held it in his palm, waiting. The first three or four minutes seemed to pass very slowly as no one moved. Then the crowd gradually began to drift away, leaving only the Home Guard and a very relieved president and governor when the five minutes were up. I sagged onto the nearest chair, feeling weak.
“Those thieves didn’t steal your new shoes, did they, Gilbert?” I asked shakily.
“No, Missy, they right here on my feet.”
“Good.” I remembered how Gilbert had pulled me away from the flying glass, how he’d protected me from the looters, and I vowed I would repay him someday. I would help win his freedom.
“I believe we’ve done enough shopping for one day,” I told him when my strength finally returned. “Let’s go home.”
More than a month after I said good-bye to Robert, I sat in the drawing room one evening, reading one of my father’s new books, when Gilbert tiptoed into the room and whispered in my ear.
“There’s someone outside who needs to talk to you, Missy. Says he knows your friend Robert.”
Daddy, who’d had more than one after-dinner drink, was snoring loudly in a chair beside me, his book falling closed on his lap. I followed Gilbert