Candle in the Darkness - Lynn N. Austin [95]
I heard Eli laughing as I slammed the carriage-house door. He still had a playful smile on his face when he and Gilbert came to the servants’ entrance an hour later to tell me their decision. “We reckon that the one little mare is all you need to get around town,” Eli said. “She can pull the buggy instead of the big carriage. ’Specially since Missy don’t weigh much more than a sack of feathers. It pains me to say it, but you can sell the other three horses.”
“What about the . . . the other matter?”
“I ain’t going, Missy Caroline,” Eli said gently. “I promise Massa Fletcher I watch out for you and I determine to do that. You more important than horses. But Gilbert, here . . . he says he gonna go help with the digging.”
“Are you sure, Gilbert?” I’d never known the wiry little man to do much manual labor. He was Daddy’s valet, our butler, our carriage driver. I guessed his age to be in his early forties. “You don’t have to help the Rebels, you know. They’re fighting for the right to keep slaves.”
Gilbert squared his shoulders. “I ain’t doing it for them. I promise Massa Fletcher I watch out for you and take care all his things. I don’t know what them Yankee soldiers do if they come here, but I ain’t intending to find out. This seem like something Massa would want me to do.” I held back my tears until the two men left, then braced myself for yet another loss.
Mr. St. John led our horses away the next morning. Then Tessie, Ruby, and I stood on the front steps and watched Gilbert march off with the Home Guard and a troop of free Negroes, carrying Eli’s garden spade over his shoulder like a rifle.
Chapter Fourteen
I awoke on the morning of July 20 with the realization that today would have been my wedding day. Sally remembered, too, and she drove up Church Hill to invite me to join her in attending the Confederate Congress, convening in Richmond for the first time. “It’ll help take your mind off things,” she promised.
“But I don’t want to take my mind off Charles. I can’t, not even for one moment. I . . . I don’t know how to explain it.” How could I explain the illogical notion I had that it was my loving thoughts, the strength of my will, and my prayers that kept Charles alive—just as a drowning swimmer, treading to stay afloat, dares not stop paddling for a single moment?
“I understand,” she said simply, and she stayed all day with me, instead. We laughed, shared confidences, and dreamed of our futures once the war ended. I talked about Jonathan and reminisced about Hilltop. Sally told me stories about Charles’ boyhood. As the lazy summer sun finally sank from sight, we felt as close as sisters—which we would have been if it weren’t for the war.
Sunday, July 21, was a warm, tranquil day. I went to services at St. Paul’s with Sally and noticed two things: that the worshippers were almost exclusively women, and that President Davis wasn’t in his usual pew, halfway up the main aisle on the right-hand side. I later learned that while we had passed the Sabbath afternoon in peaceful conversation, enjoying a leisurely lunch and an afternoon stroll down the boulevard, the first bloody battle of the war had raged near Manassas, Virginia, on a creek called Bull Run.
As I had knelt in the hushed beauty of St. Paul’s to recite the Lord’s Prayer that morning, I’d had no idea that Charles crouched in a muddy ditch, silently reciting the same prayer as he watched masses of enemy troops march steadily toward him like a dark blue wave. I didn’t know that his lips had turned black from ripping open countless powder cartridges with his teeth, or that his voice had grown hoarse from shouting the Rebel yell, or that his hands had trembled with fatigue and hunger by the end of the day. I hadn’t pictured