by Lynn Austin
I forgot all about my father until I heard him say quietly, “Welcome home, Charles.”
“Thank you, sir.” Charles kept one arm firmly around my waist as he extended his other hand to Daddy. “Please, forgive me. . . .”
“It’s all right, son. I was young once. And her mother was every bit as beautiful as Caroline is.” He cleared his throat, then said, “If I know Esther, she’s going to want to feed you. Have you eaten?”
“No, sir. I came straight from the train station.”
“Then I’ll go and tell her you’re here.”
As soon as the door closed behind Daddy, Charles took my face in his powder-stained hands and kissed me—a year’s worth of longing finally unloosed. Afterward, we clung to each other again.
“Dear God . . . how I’ve missed you, Caroline.”
“I love you so much,” I murmured. “I pray this isn’t a dream . . . or if it is, that I’ll never wake up.”
“You scared me when you first looked at me,” he said. “You didn’t know me—I was a stranger to you. And I thought for one terrible moment that you no longer loved me. It was a horrible feeling.”
“I truly didn’t recognize you.”
“Have I changed that much?”
I caressed his cheek, smiling. “Have you seen a mirror lately? No one could ever tell by looking at you that you’re from one of Richmond’s wealthiest families. I’ve taken care of soldiers from all walks of life in the hospitals, educated men and illiterate men, and there’s no way you can tell the difference between most of them until they speak. They all look like you—somber faces, ragged uniforms, worn-out shoes, overgrown hair and beards.”
And something more, I thought. There was a hardness in Charles’ eyes and in the set of his jaw that hadn’t been there before. I had seen the same deadly determination in Robert’s face, and I knew what had stamped it there—hatred. How had it come to this, I wondered. How had two men who’d never even met learned to hate each other so much?
Beloved Charles. He was the same—yet he was completely changed. All the remnants of his old way of life were gone: his tailored suits, his starched shirts, his clean fingernails. He didn’t seem at all aware that he smelled of woodsmoke and sweat or that he needed a bath. He had a wildness about him after more than a year of living and sleeping in the woods that made it seem as though he had never slept on linen sheets in his life or danced in formal evening attire.
“I may not always recognize you,” I said, “but I’ll never stop loving you.”
Charles looked at me, and the hardened soldier melted away. His love for me shone in his eyes. “May I steal one more kiss from you before your father comes back?” Charles kissed me the second time as if there had never been a first.
I saw more changes in him as I sat beside him at the dining room table, watching him eat the meal Esther had laid before him. I had grown to love his relaxed, languid movements, his smooth, leisurely gestures. But now there was an alertness in his posture, a wariness about him, as if he needed to be constantly attuned to the slightest sound or movement. Even his drowsy voice seemed cold and hard at times, especially when he talked with Daddy about the war.
Charles had traveled to Richmond as an aide to General Longstreet, who had come to attend Stonewall Jackson’s funeral. They would be here for only two days. But at least I could accompany Charles to the funeral.
It was very late when he finally said, “I should go. I haven’t been home yet. My family doesn’t even know I’m here.”
I walked with him to the front door. I could tell by the way he held me, the way the muscles in his arms tensed, that he didn’t want to let me go. “I should have married you before I went to war,” he said hoarsely. “Then we’d be together tonight.”
“I’ll marry you right now, Charles,” I replied. “We’ll find a justice of the peace.”
I saw the longing in his eyes. Then he shook his head no. “It’s pure selfishness on my part,” he said. “I have to think of you. General Jackson leaves behind a young widow and a baby.”
I thought of Tessie, of her joy at feeling Josiah’s child growing inside her. “Mrs. Jackson is probably grateful to have his child,” I said. “At least she’ll always have a part of him. If I were in her place, I would rather be his widow than never know what it was to be his wife. Please . . .”
Charles looked at me for a long moment, then kissed me gently, slowly. “I’ll come for you in the morning,” he whispered. “Good night.”
When Charles came the next day, I once again recognized the man I had fallen in love with. He had bathed, trimmed his hair and beard, and scrubbed his fingernails. His servants had performed a near miracle with his uniform, cleaning it overnight somehow and mending the worst of its rips and tears and scorch marks. But I knew it would require more than one night at home to take the tension from his limbs, the coldness from his eyes. The lethal hatred I saw in them seemed to grow by the hour as we waited at the train depot for the great general’s body to arrive and as Charles talked quietly about the battle at Chancellorsville.
For more than four hours, every church bell in the city slowly tolled in mourning. Then the train finally pulled into the station, and we joined the crowd that followed the hearse to the governor’s mansion on Capitol Square. The mantle of grief that had fallen over the city weighed heavily on Charles, and I didn’t know how to help him lift it.
Afterward, we rode to his parents’ home in nearby Court End. I longed to have Charles all to myself for these two short days, but his extended family had gathered to welcome him home and I knew we must attend the dinner they gave in his honor. Throughout the long evening he talked about his experiences and the battles he’d fought; about Stonewall Jackson and General Longstreet, and the awe in which the men held General “Bobby” Lee; about the state of the Confederacy and what still had to be done to win independence. By the time he drove me home, Charles seemed to have run out of words. The dark sadness that had hung over him all day now enveloped him. I didn’t beg him to talk to me but simply held him in my arms in the back of the carriage, his cheek resting against my hair.
We pulled up in front of my house, but before he kissed me good night, Charles took both of my hands in his and made me look at him, face-to-face. When he spoke, his tone was somber, resolute. “Caroline. You must prepare yourself for the fact that I might die.”
“No . . . no—”
“Listen now. I’ve had to prepare myself . . . and you must, too.” I shut my eyes, as if I could also shut out his words, but Charles squeezed my hands, forcing me to look at him again. “When it happens, I’ll need you to be strong, for my parents’ sake.”
He helped me from the carriage and walked me to the door, kissing me gently before he left. “Good night, Caroline,” he said. But it felt, for all the world, like good-bye.
The next morning I clung to Charles’ arm as we attended General Jackson’s funeral. I couldn’t get Charles’ words from last night out of my mind or stop imagining this funeral as a rehearsal of his own. That was exactly what he had intended. He’d wanted me to imagine his death, to rehearse it, so the shock of it would be less severe—so that I could survive if he didn’t.
But he wasn’t dead. Charles was alive, beside me. I gripped his arm so tightly that it must have been numb by the end of the day.
General Longstreet served as one of the pallbearers as they carried Stonewall’s coffin, draped with the Confederate flag, out of the governor’s mansion. The band began to play the “Dead March,” and I thought surely the musicians must have it memorized by now, they had played it so many, many times in the past two years. Two regiments of Pickett’s division led the mile-long procession through the streets, followed by soldiers from the Home Guard and Wren’s battalion, along with six artillery pieces. Four white horses drew the hearse; eight generals escorted it. But I couldn’t help weeping at the sight of General Jackson’s riderless horse, plodding down the street with his empty cavalry boots strappe
d to the vacant saddle. Convalescents from the Stonewall Brigade who were well enough to leave the hospital marched bravely behind it. President Davis, Governor Letcher, and other officials brought up the rear.
When the grim procession finally returned to the capitol, the coffin was placed in the House chamber. Charles and I were among the twenty thousand mourners who filed past to pay our final respects. I saw Charles fighting his tears as he gazed at the pale, spiritless body, the vacant uniform sleeve.
“He’s going to be buried in Lexington,” Charles murmured as if to himself. “He taught there, at the Virginia Military Institute.” When we finally stepped outside into the late afternoon sunshine again, Charles exhaled as if he’d been forced to hold his breath for a very long time. “He can’t be replaced,” he said. “Stonewall Jackson can never be replaced.”
“Let’s go home,” I said, tugging on his arm. I wanted to drag him away from the depressing atmosphere of death and mourning, to help him turn away from it and welcome life and hope once more. Before sitting down beside him in my drawing room, I opened all the doors to the backyard, letting the calm May breeze drift into the room, bringing the chatter of birdsong, the faint scent of spring.
“I think this war is very close to an end,” Charles said as we sipped the coffee Esther brought us. “People up north aren’t going to stand for too many more losses like Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville. They’re as tired of the bloodshed as we are. I have a feeling that after this latest victory, General Lee is going to take the war into Union territory again. When civilians up north suddenly see their own homes threatened, when they begin to suffer the way Virginians have suffered, they’ll call an end to it.”
“What about you, Charles—when it’s finally over? For two years now, you’ve been trained to march and kill and hate. What about afterward?”
He shifted restlessly on the sofa, as if unable to relax. “It seems like the work I did in Washington, and even in my father’s mills, happened a lifetime ago. I know it will be hard to adjust back to civilian life. I had a hard time adjusting to soldiering at first. But now . . . Caroline, you can’t imagine what an exhilarating experience it is. The camaraderie of the men . . . knowing we’re all in this together, working as one, fighting for our homes, our lives. There’s no other feeling in the world like those final few moments before a battle.”
“Are you ever afraid . . . before. . . ?”
“Not of the Yankees. Not even of dying, as strange as that sounds. If I’m afraid of anything, it’s that I’ll fail—that the Yankees will break through to Richmond, where you are. I think of what they might do, and I know that I must hold them back, keep them from ever entering this city.” He shifted again and I saw the latent energy in his muscles, the warrior who couldn’t relax or be still.
“But I only think those thoughts in the moments before the battle starts. Then all of a sudden the enemy is coming at me and time freezes, and all I can think about is stopping that moving wall of blue. You load, aim, fire, load again. You’re aware of bullets whistling past and men falling beside you, but you don’t think about it until it’s over. You don’t even hear their screams and moans until afterwards.
“Then you’re back in camp again, and you realize that you’re still alive. In fact, it feels as though life is bursting through your veins. You’re exhausted, everyone is, yet the camp comes alive with music and laughter. Even the wormy food they feed us tastes wonderful because you’ve lived to fight another day.”
“Where do you find the courage to fight again and again, to keep facing armies that are so much bigger than yours?”
“You can’t muster the courage to do it when you’re here, at home. It only comes when you’re faced with it. And when you believe in what you’re fighting for.”
I nodded in understanding. “Before the war, I never would have imagined that I could work in a place like Chimborazo Hospital . . . to see such terrible, gruesome sights, to watch men suffer like that. You’re right, I don’t know how I do it, but I do know why.”
“Ever since that first battle at Manassas, Caroline, I feel more alive than I ever have in my life. I know that sounds odd, but I think it’s because there have been so many times when I might have died. I notice things now—like the way the tree branches move when I’m lying beneath them and the way the air smells before it rains. After the battle of Fredericksburg, the northern lights filled the winter sky that night. I can’t even describe how beautiful it looked—as if God had lit up the heavens with His glory. I see the world differently now. And I don’t think I’ll ever take life for granted again.”
I traced the line of his jaw with my fingers. “I know what you mean. I’ve seen so many lives come to an end in the hospitals where I’ve worked. I know how close we are to death each moment—a mere breath away—and we don’t even realize it. I’ve also learned that the God who paints the sky with His glory is the One who holds each one of us in His hands. It’s His will that’s going to prevail, not ours.”
Charles caught my fingers in his hand and kissed them. “The war has changed you, too, Caroline. Your faith is stronger, your compassion deeper, your love more intense than ever before. It’s as if all the qualities I saw in you and fell in love with have been refined and purified. I know the war has changed me in many ways. Perhaps some of them aren’t so good. I think we’ll both be different people when this is over.”
“I want you back, Charles. Not the soldier; the gentleman. I want the life that we had before the war.”
I wanted the Charles of two years ago, handsome in his formal evening clothes, smoothly dancing me around the ballroom floor, his warm hands holding me, his sleepy voice soothing me. I wanted our life of privilege, the courtly manners, the slow pace, the laughter on a picnic blanket on a warm afternoon. It was gone, that entire way of life was gone, like the green splendor of Hilltop.
“We’re never going to have it back, are we?” I murmured.
“Listen now. This war is almost over. And when it finally does end, even if we’ve lost some things, we’ll still have each other.”
Charles talked of being alive when it was over, of being with me afterwards. He was no longer anticipating his own death, and I was so relieved that I didn’t wait for him to kiss me; I lifted my face to kiss him.
Daddy drove with me to the Richmond & Petersburg Railroad station the next morning to see Charles off. He and his parents were already there, and so was the train, chuffing impatiently as it built up a head of steam.
“We’ll change trains at Petersburg and take the Norfolk line,” I heard Charles say. “But I believe all three of our divisions will be coming back this way very soon to join up with Lee’s army again.”
I listened as they talked of trivial things, reluctant to begin the difficult farewells. When I had a moment, I pulled Charles aside. I had one more thing to say to him that I had forgotten to tell him in private.
“When you get back to camp, when you see Josiah, will you give him a message for me? Tell him . . . tell him he’s going to be a father.”
Charles stared at me as if he hadn’t understood. “Is it your maid? Tessie?” he asked, frowning.
“Yes. They’re married. They have been for several years.” I couldn’t understand why he didn’t share my delight at the news. Josiah had marched and camped and gone hungry with him and Jonathan for the past two years. “What’s wrong?” I asked.
“It’s . . . complicated. He and Tessie belong to two separate owners, for one thing. Josiah is never going to be a father in the sense that you mean.”
There was something behind Charles’ words and in his attitude that I didn’t want to examine too closely. Then the train whistle blew and the moment passed. The time to say good-bye had finally come. Charles drew a deep breath, as if steeling himself.
“Don’t say it,” I begged. “Please don’t say good-bye.”
He pulled me into his arms, kissed me softly on the cheek. “All right,” he murmured. “I’ll
see you soon.”
Charles marched north again with General Longstreet to rejoin Lee’s army, and the news he sent was all good. General Rodes took the city of Martinsburg. General Ewell took Winchester on the same day. At the end of June they crossed the Potomac into Union territory. One year ago a huge Federal army had threatened Richmond; now Washington and Philadelphia felt threatened by the invading Confederate army. Daddy’s hopes for another Rebel victory soared. Surely the North would sue for peace. It would all be over soon.
The first three days of July were the longest ones in my life as the opposing armies finally clashed in an unknown Pennsylvania town named Gettysburg. The early reports of Confederate victories raised hopes higher still. While I waited in an agony of suspense for news about Charles, a devastating blow threw the city into despair. The long siege of Vicksburg had ended in defeat. General Pemberton had surrendered the city to Federal forces on the Fourth of July. That meant the Mississippi River was in Union hands; the Confederacy was cut in half.
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.”
