Candle in the Darkness - Lynn N. Austin [178]
Caroline didn’t think it was possible to hurt as much as she did and still live. She slowly pulled the ring from her finger and laid it on the sheet in front of him. She longed to caress his face, to feel the touch of his hands on hers one last time. But he turned his face away from her. She saw tears in Charles’ eyes before he closed them. She looked at the man she loved for the last time, then hurried away.
For the first time in Caroline’s life, neither Tessie nor Eli was able to comfort her.
Chapter Twenty-five
December 1864
“Can this really be the fourth Christmas that we’ve been at war?” Caroline wondered aloud. She’d awakened to the sound of bells ringing on Christmas morning at nearby St. John’s Church.
“Yes, Missy. I been counting them, too,” Ruby replied. “And I been asking Massa Jesus to please let this one be the last.” She rose from her pallet in Caroline’s room where she slept. Ever since Isaac was born, Ruby had taken Tessie’s place as Caroline’s chambermaid. Now she hurried over to the fireplace and began poking the embers back to life.
“Let the fire go out, Ruby. Let’s not waste the wood.”
“But it’s too cold in here for you to be getting dressed. You’ll catch your death.”
“I’ll dress quickly. I don’t need all my hoops and petticoats and things. It’ll be nice and warm when we get down to the kitchen.”
Caroline couldn’t help shivering, though, as she stood on the icy floor and waited for Ruby to tie her corset laces and help fasten her bodice. She put on both pairs of her stockings to warm her feet, even though they made her shoes feel too tight. Ruby quickly brushed her hair and pinned it up.
The church bells sounded louder as Caroline hurried outside to the kitchen. The carillon of St. Paul’s Church downtown, and dozens of others across the city, had joined in with St. John’s Church, each chiming different tones. She wished they would stop. They reminded her that it was Christmas, and Christmas reminded her of Charles and of their engagement five years ago. Sally would be remembering her engagement to Jonathan this morning, too, and praying that she wasn’t a widow.
In the darkness last night, Caroline had silently wept into her pillow, longing to be in beautiful St. Paul’s for the midnight Christmas Eve service. Confined to her home, she hadn’t been able to attend church in weeks. She wondered if Charles had gone, if he was well enough now to leave his bed and his house.
As soon as Caroline entered the kitchen, little Isaac gently nudged her sorrow aside, running to her with arms outstretched, as overjoyed to see her today as he was every day. She lifted him in her arms to kiss his soft cheeks, accepting his own wet kiss in return. He was a beautiful child, with Tessie’s almond-shaped eyes, Josiah’s ebony skin, and Eli’s broad smile.
“Merry Christmas, Isaac,” Caroline said, caressing his dark, woolly head. “You don’t even know what that means, do you?”
“Oh yes, he does,” Tessie said. “Don’t you know his granddaddy been telling him all about baby Jesus in the manger, and the angels singing, and the shepherds coming? That boy gonna have the whole Bible memorized before he has a mouthful of teeth.”
“It might be Christmas,” Esther said with a sigh, “but we sure ain’t having much of a Christmas dinner this year. We eating the same old thing we eat every day—dried peas, salt pork, and these here potatoes.”
Eli walked into the kitchen with a few sticks of firewood just then and heard Esther’s complaint. “You know what the Bible says about eating poor?” he asked. “Says it’s better to eat a stale old piece of bread in a kitchen full of love than a great big feast in a mansion where everybody arguing all the time.”
“Well, we certainly got plenty of love around here,” Esther said, “but that’s about all we got.