Candle in the Darkness - Lynn N. Austin [148]
“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,