Candle in the Darkness - Lynn N. Austin [87]
He tore himself from my arms, tearing my heart from its place, as well. I watched him hurry away.
He looked back once when he reached the garden gate—the same gate they’d dragged Grady through—but the night was too dark for me to see Charles’ face.
Jonathan returned for Josiah later that night. When all three men were gone, Tessie and I wept in each other’s arms. We didn’t speak. There were no words to say. We both knew the thoughts and emotions that filled the other’s mind and heart. The color of our skin didn’t matter, nor did the fact that she was my slave and I was her mistress. We each loved a man, and now we each felt the same pain, knew the same fear at his leaving.
The day after Charles left, I began practicing the piano again, using music as an outlet for my hoarded emotions. Concentrating on the notes took my mind off the war, if only for a few hours each day. I was in the parlor one afternoon, so intent on learning Mozart’s “Turkish March” that I didn’t hear my father return home early from work. I don’t know how long he stood listening in the doorway, but when I finished the piece, he applauded softly.
“That was excellent, Caroline.”
“Is there a reason why you’re home early?” My heart had changed tempo the moment I saw him there. It accelerated when Daddy moved a small parlor chair next to the piano and sat down beside me.
“May I talk with you, Sugar?”
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing’s wrong. But I’ve reached an important decision today, and I’d like to share it with you.”
“You aren’t going away to war, too, are you?”
He smiled, and for a moment I saw my childhood daddy again, the man with the familiar, cockeyed smile and uplifted brow. “No . . . no, I’m not going to fight. This war came ten years too late for me. But there is a way I’d like to help the Confederate effort.” I stared down at my hands as I waited, my heart beating a quickstep.
“You’ve read in the papers about ‘Operation Anaconda,’ haven’t you, Sugar? How the U.S. Navy intends to close all our Southern ports?”
I could only nod and wait, fearing what he was about to say.
“Lincoln thinks he can strangle us to death by cutting off all our supplies. Frankly, I think it will be quite impossible for seventy-odd Union ships to patrol more than three thousand miles of Southern coastline. Still, it’s clear that Richmond has already begun to feel the effects of blockade.”
Anyone who had shopped downtown lately had noticed the blockade’s effects, not only in the higher prices but also in the growing scarcity of many consumer items. Richmond relied on imported goods. Everything came from outside the South, from tin pots to teacups, from our hairpins to our shoes. In the months ahead we would quickly learn to either make do, do without, or make it ourselves.
“Is the blockade interfering with your business, Daddy?”
“It is, but that’s not the point. I met with President Davis today. He said the government is having trouble importing the military equipment we so desperately need. England is willing to sell us their Enfield rifles, but we need ships to get them here.”
“Are you going to loan President Davis your ships?”
“Sugar . . . I’m going to sail to England with them myself.”
“He’s asking you to be a blockade-runner? Daddy, no! It’s too dangerous!”
“The president didn’t ask me to go—I volunteered.” I tried to protest, but Daddy wasn’t listening. “There’s nothing useful for an old man like me to do around here. Besides, importing things is my job, Caroline. I’m good at it. I’ve done it for nearly twenty years.”
“But not with the U.S. Navy trying to shoot you out of the water!”
He reached to take my hand in his. “It’s a very big ocean.We’ll be transporting the rifles from England to Bermuda, first. The odds are very good that we’ll never even encounter the Navy. The freight steamers that run from Bermuda to our Southern ports are small enough and swift enough to outmaneuver the Union ships.”
I felt too numb to absorb what Daddy was telling me. I only knew that I was about to suffer yet another loss. “How long will you