Candle in the Darkness - Lynn N. Austin [170]
“How? How could betraying my country possibly show God’s love?”
“I tell you one way,” he said, crumbling the dirt off the vegetables as he talked. “My son Josiah hate white folks. He think they all alike. He turn away from Massa Jesus because he think Jesus is the white folks’ God. But Josiah seen that you different—not because you spying, but because you spying for us, so that we could be free.”
I remembered the tender look I’d seen on Josiah’s face as he’d held his son, the tears on his cheeks as he’d thanked me.
“I been trying to tell Josiah about God’s love all his life,” Eli continued, “and he ain’t listening. But he seen your love, Missy Caroline, he seen how you risk everything you have for us . . . and so he finally seen God’s love—in you.”
My tale is nearly told now. There’s only one more episode to describe, and that’s the afternoon when I knew that the end had finally come for me. Charles’ father arrived at my door, his face the sickly gray color of dirty water. He looked much too unwell to be out of bed, let alone out of the house.
“Are you all right? Did something happen. . . ?” He ignored my questions, pushing past me to enter my father’s library. What worried me more than his obvious illness was the anger in his eyes—no, I saw hatred when he looked at me.
“I need to see one of your father’s books,” he said. He began perusing the shelves without waiting for my permission. I could hear his labored breathing all the way across the room, as if his lungs were a pair of worn-out bellows that could barely pump air. I was afraid he would find the hollowed-out volume, even though it now held only two or three gold pieces.
“Please, let me help you,” I said. “Are you looking for a particular book?”
“Yes. This one.”
He pulled A Tale of Two Cities from the shelf. Something about that book alarmed me but I didn’t know why. Then Mr. St. John took a piece of paper from his pocket and unfolded it. It was the map I’d drawn on a page torn from that book. I watched, paralyzed, as Mr. St. John opened the book to the beginning, to the place where the title page should be. When the map fitted perfectly into place he groaned, swaying as though he was about to collapse. I tried to help him sit down but he waved me away as if my touch would poison him.
“I knew you were involved . . . I knew it!” he said, wheezing. “They recaptured one of our escaped slaves. He had this map . . . and these false documents. . . .” I recognized the freedom papers he showed me as forgeries of the ones my father had drawn up for Isaac. The name had been changed to Jeremiah St. John.
“We got Jeremiah to confess that one of the servants from the ladies’ sewing circle forged these, but he refuses to say who. Every time someone was robbed, though, the victim was here, visiting you. Now you’re going to tell me which one of your slaves can read and write.”
“Please . . . Mr. St. John . . .”
“If you don’t tell me, then I swear I’ll beat a confession out of every last one of them.”
I went cold at his words. “You will not lay a hand on any of my slaves. I drew that map.”
He stared at me, his eyes filled with loathing, not surprise. Perspiration dampened his hair and rolled down his flushed face.
“I drew the map for my servants when I found out that Daddy planned to sell some of them.” I said. “I don’t have much gold left, but I’ll pay you and all the others for the slaves they lost and for the property their servants stole. It was wrong of them to steal, but I’m not sorry that any of them escaped.”
He glared at me. “So you finally admit that you’re a Union sympathizer?”
“I believe that slavery is morally wrong.”
He set the book and the papers on Daddy’s desk. “None of us ever imagined that you were deliberately deceiving us all this time, Caroline—least of all Charles. We should have guessed when you spent so much time visiting your Yankee prisoner, but we all wanted to believe that you were telling the truth,