Candle in the Darkness - Lynn N. Austin [154]
Then the awful truth about the battles being fought at Gettysburg slowly began to filter home. The news stunned all of us. Half of General Pickett’s men had been mowed down by artillery and rifle fire in a daring but ill-fated charge up Cemetery Hill. Out of a force of two hundred fifty men in the 9th Virginia Regiment, only thirty-eight had survived. Altogether, Lee’s army suffered more than twenty-eight thousand casualties—more than one-third of his men—and had gained nothing. Lee was in retreat, marching from the battlefield by night in a drenching rain.
After the way Charles had spoken about dying two months earlier, I couldn’t summon the courage to go downtown and read the casualty lists from Gettysburg. “You must prepare yourself for the fact that I might die,” he had said. So many thousands of men had died at Gettysburg, so many more had been grievously wounded, that I lost all hope that Charles might have been spared. “I’ve had to prepare myself . . . and you must, too.”
“I’ll go find out for you, Caroline,” Daddy said. “In the meantime, you’ve got to keep your hopes up.” But I saw him swallow a good stiff drink to fortify himself before leaving on horseback. I waited, sick at heart, unable to hug Tessie with her enormous belly in the way. I told myself that if Daddy galloped up the hill, the news would be good; if he took his time coming home, the news was bad.
“ ‘Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,’ ” Tessie read aloud, “ ‘I will fear no evil: for thou art with me. . . .’ ”
I waited. One hour slowly turned into two.
When I heard a horse trotting up the street I forced myself to walk downstairs to the foyer. Daddy burst through the door, his face flushed and dripping with sweat. “He’s all right, Caroline. Charles and Jonathan both came through it safely.”
I sank to the floor, weeping and thanking God.
On a hot, muggy day in August, the police arrested a Richmond woman named Mary Caroline Allan on charges of espionage. I had been making regular trips to Mr. Ferguson’s booth in the farmers’ market with the information I’d gleaned from social gatherings and from my father’s many visitors, and the news of Mrs. Allan’s arrest alarmed me, reminding me of the dangerous path I was treading.
On the very same day, Tessie went into labor. Ruby and Esther settled her into their quarters above the kitchen and forbade me to come anywhere near her. But I could hear Tessie’s cries of pain through the open windows, her suffering intensified by the afternoon’s sticky heat.
When Esther finally emerged with the good news that evening, she was wringing with sweat herself. “Tessie had herself a boy,” she said with a weary smile. “Another beautiful little boy. And I got myself a grandchild.” I was finally allowed upstairs to see them. “But just for a minute,” Esther warned.
Tessie looked exhausted but radiant. Her son, whom she’d named Isaac, had Josiah’s dark, scowling face. Tears filled my eyes as I thought of Grady.
“You go on out, now,” Esther said, shooing me. “I gonna give Tessie a bite to eat, then she gonna have herself a rest.”
Daddy had gone downtown on business, but I sat in the stair hall that sultry evening, watching out the window for his return. I barely gave him time to come through the front door before confronting him with the news. “Tessie had her baby . . . a little boy.”
Daddy looked flustered. “Well. I see.” Neither of us had ever said a word about her pregnancy but he certainly must have noticed it.
“I have a question,” I said, following him into the library. “Does her baby belong to us or to Jonathan, since he owns the baby’s father, Josiah?”
Daddy stared into space for a moment. “Josiah’s the father? Are you sure?” Then he came out of his trance and glanced around the room as if he weren’t sure where