Candle in the Darkness

by Lynn Austin

  When Dr. Minnegerode pronounced Sally and Jonathan man and wife, I glanced across the aisle at Charles’ parents. Against my will, I remembered Charles’ words: “You must prepare yourself . . .I’ll need you to be strong, for my parents’ sake . . .”

  There had been so few joyous moments since this terrible war began that I determined not to spoil this day with morbid thoughts. I pushed them from my mind and joined my aunt Anne and uncle William for the short carriage ride back to the St. Johns’ house for the reception.

  The St. Johns’ vast drawing room had been opened for the first time in over a year, and every inch of it gleamed—even if there were no fires in the fireplaces and the chandeliers weren’t lit. The buffet lunch of carefully hoarded foods had been stretched to the limit by Esther and the St. Johns’ cook and was beautifully arrayed on polished silver platters. Daddy’s wine, watered down with juice and cider, filled the punch bowl, and we raised crystal glasses to toast the new bride and groom. The only musicians we could find were the members of the Home Guard band, comprised of old men and young boys who were ineligible to fight, but we waltzed to military marches that afternoon, pretending it was Richmond’s finest orchestra.

  Sally and I had been unable to arrange a hotel room ahead of time. There hadn’t been an empty room anywhere in town for the past three years, so Ruby, Tessie, and I prepared Mother’s bedroom as a bridal suite. Sally and Jonathan retired there that evening— and didn’t come out again until Jonathan’s furlough was nearly over, five days later. I envied their happiness.

  “Take care of her for me, Caroline,” Jonathan begged when it was finally time for him to leave.

  “I will. You be careful now, okay? And please, don’t forget to tell Charles that I love him.”

  Josiah was returning to the front with Jonathan, and he could barely tear himself away from Tessie and his son. “I was afraid you and Josiah were going to run away,” I told Tessie later. “I wouldn’t blame you if you had.”

  She reached out to stroke my hair and caress my cheek. “I couldn’t leave you, honey,” she said. “Don’t you know that you my child, too?”

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Spring 1864

  “I understand that the roads are drying out,” Mrs. St. John said with a sigh. “I suppose that means the fighting will begin again.”

  Sally and her mother and a mere handful of other ladies had gathered in my parlor, along with all our maidservants and Negro seamstresses, for an afternoon of sewing. We weren’t sewing for the soldiers this time but for ourselves, helping each other restitch last year’s faded and frayed summer clothing into something we could wear now that warmer weather had arrived in Richmond. Even if bolts of new cloth could somehow make it through the blockade and onto store shelves, none of us could afford to buy any. But Sally had the latest copy of Godey’s Lady’s Book, and we were doing our best to remake our clothes in the newest styles.

  “Well, even if it does mean more fighting,” one of the other ladies said, “I’m so glad another winter is finally over and done with.”

  “I was just thinking this morning that it’s been three years since our first victory at Fort Sumter,” Sally said. “Remember that night in 1861 when all of Richmond celebrated? We went together, Caroline—you and Charles, Jonathan, and me.”

  “Yes, I remember,” I said. “In one of the speeches that night, didn’t someone predict that the war would be over in sixty days or maybe even thirty days? How in the world has it stretched to three years?”

  “I remember the first time we thought the Yankees were going to invade Richmond on that warship, the Pawnee,” Mrs. St. John said, her scissors busily snipping a seam. “How foolish we were, worrying like that when there hadn’t been any danger at all.” She smiled at the memory.

  That had been the first of many nights that I had prayed for Charles’ safety. He had been in real danger many times since then, fighting in some of the bloodiest battles of the war—Manassas, Malvern Hill, Sharpsburg, Fredericksburg, Gettysburg. I had decided to trust God that first night, and so far, He had kept Charles safe.

  “My husband was adding it all up the other day,” Mrs. St. John said. “The Yankees have set out to make Richmond their prize six times, under six different commanding generals—McDowell, McClellan, Hooker, Burnside . . . I can’t even remember all the others he named, but there were six of them. And they all failed.”

  “I guess that makes General Grant the seventh,” Sally said, threading another needle. “I’ve heard he has a reputation for stubbornness, but I’m sure our men will drive him back just like they chased away all the others.”

  Everyone agreed with Sally except me. I silently hoped that Grant would succeed where the others had failed so that my life with Charles could finally begin. I longed for this war to end before more blood had to be shed and before the war completely ravaged the South. The longer the conflict dragged on, the greater the odds that Charles would be wounded, taken prisoner, or killed in action, like so many tens of thousands of other men. I just wanted it to end—I wanted the slaves to be freed and this terrible, bloody war to end.

  “My husband said the Yankees will be coming at us from more than one direction this time,” Mrs. St. John said. “Grant will go after Lee’s army near Fredericksburg, and General Butler is going to come up the opposite shore of the James to try to cut us off from our southern rail lines. Some other general whose name I forget is going to move up the Shenandoah Valley to try to cut Lee off from his supply base at Lynchburg.”

  “Jonathan says to let them come, we’ll be ready for them,” Sally said. “He says our men are digging in, building a line of defense more than sixty miles long, from northeast of Richmond to south of Petersburg. When Grant attacks our fortifications he’ll lose so many men that the North will finally get sick of this war.”

  “My husband says this is an election year up north,” another woman added. “He says that Mr. Lincoln isn’t very popular, so if we can just hold the Yankees off until November, maybe the new president will make peace.”

  “Is there any truth to the rumors that Richmond is going to be evacuated soon?” I asked, fishing for information.

  But before anyone had a chance to reply, Mr. St. John suddenly arrived, storming into the parlor without waiting to be announced. He looked so badly shaken that I dropped my scissors and thimble, immediately fearing for Charles.

  “My dears, you need to come home right away,” he said. “Two of our servants have run off—Jeremiah and Gus.”

  I closed my eyes in relief. Eli had warned that the two men planned to escape rather than help dig miles and miles of fortifications for the Rebel army.

  “Did they rob us? Is anything missing?” Mrs. St. John asked, hastily gathering up her sewing.

  “I’m not sure. I don’t know where you and Sally have hidden all your things. I think you’d better come home and help me look.”

  The other ladies quickly packed away their sewing, too. “Oh, I do hope nothing irreplaceable is missing,” Mrs. St. John said as her servant fetched her bonnet and shawl.

  “I warned you,” Mr. St. John said. “I told you that I thought it unwise for you to come here together, didn’t I?”

  I gladly closed the front door behind him.

  When I was alone, I wrapped a shawl around my shoulders against the spring chill and went out through the drawing room doors into the yard. I had watched Eli and Gilbert through the windows all afternoon as I’d sewed. They were working in our garden, planting the food we would eat in the months ahead. I silently thanked God for them—that they hadn’t left me, that they knew how to keep us all from starving. The lovely mazes of flower beds and boxwood hedges were gone, but it didn’t matter. With the Yankees planning to besiege Richmond, food was much more important. The last time I had looked in my father’s hollow book, only four gold coins remained.

  At the rear of the yard, the magnolia tree that Grady and I used to climb was getting ready to bloom. Charles had
kissed me beneath that tree the night he’d left for the war. Last winter, I had told Eli he could chop it down for firewood if we needed to, but he had urged me to wait. “We can bundle up to keep warm, Missy. But a tree that fine takes too many years to grow back.”

  When Eli looked up and saw me he stopped digging. “Something wrong, Missy?”

  I shook my head. “I just thought you’d like to know that the St. Johns’ servants, Jeremiah and Gus, ran away this morning.”

  He leaned against his shovel. “I was expecting it any day,” he said slowly. “They didn’t steal nothing, did they? I made them both promise that they wouldn’t.”

  “The St. Johns aren’t sure yet. They just went home to look things over.”

  I stood watching the two men work for a while, their shovels and hoes churning the rich brown earth, and I was suddenly filled with an intense longing for Hilltop. I remembered the way it had looked before the war, with verdant crops growing in the fields and the smokehouse filled with hams—and Jonathan holding my hand as we walked in the fragrant woods, naming all the trees that were no longer there. I wondered if he and Charles and my father would have entered into this war so willingly if they could have seen how much they would lose. Even if the South won the war today, would it have been worth such a staggering cost?

  My thoughts were interrupted when Ruby came up behind me and rested her hand on my shoulder. “Missy Caroline . . . I’m sorry, honey, but there’s a man here to see you. He say he has news about your daddy.”

  “Oh, no . . . did he say what kind of news?”

  “Tell you the truth, I was scared to ask. He waiting in the front hallway for you.”

  I drew a deep breath and followed Ruby inside, my heart jumping. The man waiting for me in the foyer was dressed in working clothes, like the sailors I’d seen loading my father’s ships down at Rocketts Wharf. He carried a revolver stuck in his belt and looked as I imagined a pirate would, with a scarred, weatherbeaten face and a mangy beard. He frightened me at first, making me wish Gilbert or Eli had come into the house with me.

  “Afternoon, ma’am. My name’s John Dooley.” He smiled nervously, revealing a gold tooth.

  “How do you do? I’m Caroline Fletcher. Would you like to step into the library?”

  He shook his head, staring at his feet. I couldn’t tell what was making him so uncomfortable—if it was me, our extravagant home, or the news he had brought.

  “I understand you have news of my father, George Fletcher?”

  “Yes, ma’am . . . that is, I wish I had news other than what I got, which is the fact that . . . well, he’s missing, you see.”

  “Could you please explain?”

  “Yes, ma’am. We was aboard a small steamship called the Florida, running the blockade at Wilmington. The Yanks have the main entrance to the Cape Fear River blocked, you see, but we can still use a narrow passageway around the other side because it’s protected by our Confederate guns at Fort Fisher. So we did like we always done, you see, which is to chart a course along the coast, like we was planning to sail on past it. But then we turned and made a run toward shore at the last minute, trying to outrun them. This time we couldn’t quite make it, ma’am. It was the coal, you see.”

  “The . . . coal? You mean, your cargo was too heavy?”

  “No, ma’am. The coal that fires our boilers ain’t worth a . . . pardon me. It’s poor quality, you see, and we can’t go as fast as we used to. The Yanks spotted us and came after us, firing their cannon. We took a hole in our hull on the starboard side. Captain Fletcher kept us steaming for as long as he could, trying to beach us on land, but the ship started to sink. Some of us swam to shore safely, but the Yanks sent out longboats and picked the rest of the men out of the water.”

  “So now they’re prisoners of war?”

  “That’s right, ma’am. The captain was one of the last to leave, you see, making sure everybody else had a chance to get overboard. Now he’s missing. Mind you, he might have been picked up by the Yanks, so you can’t give up hope.”

  I thanked Mr. Dooley for coming and offered him payment for his trouble. He refused. “I had to come, you see, because the other fellows and me . . . well, we have the highest regard for Captain Fletcher.”

  I didn’t break down until after Mr. Dooley left. Then I fell into Tessie’s arms, praying, “Please, God . . . no. Not Daddy.”

  That spring, Charles and Jonathan fought in some of the fiercest battles of the entire war. The fighting that took place in the wilderness, outside Fredericksburg on May 5 and 6, was so horrific that neither Sally nor I could bear to look at the casualty lists. We waited in the carriage together, praying, while Sally’s mother went to read them, then we wept and thanked God when we learned that He had spared both men.

  Our grim tasks at Chimborazo Hospital began all over again, with wounded soldiers pouring in at the rate of several thousand a day. Sally and I worked for as many hours as we could bear before collapsing with exhaustion, but for all of our efforts, some days it seemed as though the angel of death laughed in our faces. I cut up the last of the linens from my hope chest to make bandages when the hospital ran out of them.

  Many of the soldiers I tended wept as they described the terrible battle that had taken place in the wilderness’s dense thickets and tangled woods. They told me that more than two hundred wounded men had burned to death as fires swept through the underbrush. General Longstreet, who had been Charles’ commander for so long, had been severely wounded.

  Our troops weren’t the only ones who’d suffered. The Yankees lost so many thousands of men that everyone believed General Grant would retreat, just as all the defeated Union generals before him had. But regardless of his losses, Grant kept moving forward toward Richmond, skirting around Lee’s forces to the south and east. The exhausted Rebels marched forward to meet him, battling him again at Spotsylvania on May 8. That battle surged back and forth all day, the terrible fighting continuing until after midnight. One of the thousands of wounded men I tended told me that the artillery and rifle fire had been so intense that an entire forest of trees, many more than a foot and a half thick, had been reduced to stumps by bullets and shells. In places, the dead lay piled four deep where they had fallen.

  Since Charles had little time to write, his letters became more brief and, for me, more precious.

  We have been fighting for six long days. When I close my eyes at night it’s very difficult to erase the horrifying sights and sounds from my mind. And so I curl beneath my blanket on the hard ground and dream of the day when you will lie in my arms at night. I study your picture before every engagement so that your face is the last thing I see before the enemy charges. I carry it in my breast pocket, above my heart. . . .

  In Richmond, we felt the pressure of the enemy closing in on us from several directions. While Lee’s men held off the main body of Yankees, a smaller force under General Sheridan marched to the northern outskirts of the city. The Home Guard, along with every available man, young and old, scrambled to our defense. The Confederate cavalry under J.E.B. Stuart arrived in time to stop Sheridan, but Stuart himself was wounded in the fight at Yellow Tavern and later died. Meanwhile, more Yankee troops under General Butler set out from the south, making it as far as Richmond’s “back door” before Rebel forces drove them away. Everyone in the city knew our armies were fighting for their very lives—and for ours.

  On the first three days of June, Charles battled the Yankees again at Cold Harbor. They were now only nine miles from Richmond. We could hear the artillery and smell the gunpowder and smoke whenever the wind blew in our direction. And, of course, we tended to endless wagonloads of wounded. The Union Army had threatened Richmond before, but as Grant edged closer and closer, not giving up in spite of staggering losses, we all wondered if the city would finally fall this time.

  Grant seems to have a determination that the other generals lacked. He doesn’t care how many of his own men die, and has vowed to stay here all summer if
he has to. Our Confederate forces were well entrenched at Cold Harbor, and we turned back fourteen separate Union assaults before the Yanks refused to obey orders to attack again.In a matter of hours, Caroline, we killed about seven thousand of their men, and I pray I never have to do anything like that again.The dead littered the ground for more than five acres. Grant may have hoped that this would be the decisive battle, but he couldn’t defeat us. . . .

  We all thought General Grant would move toward Richmond next, and Charles marched south again with Lee’s army to meet him. But Grant skirted around the city instead, crossing the James River on a pontoon bridge, and headed south toward Petersburg to try to choke off our main supply routes. Petersburg nearly fell on June 15, but the meager Rebel troops stationed there held off a Union force more than three times larger than their own before reinforcements arrived. Then the two armies reached a standstill.

  This war has become a digging contest. We’ve attacked and killed and maimed each other for six weeks, and now both sides have dug in for a siege. I guess it will continue this way until one of us runs out of men.

  Meanwhile, we live like moles in a maze of trenches called zigzags that are open to rain and sun, shell and mortar fire. During a battle, thousands of us are crammed in, side by side, and we can’t get out, stand up, stretch our arms and legs, or even lie down to sleep, for days at a time. Something as simple as raising your head or going for a cup of water could cost you your life. At night, we can hear the enemy talking to each other in their trenches in between the shelling.We can even smell the smoke of their cigarettes.

  When the war first started, I remember how we all dove for cover whenever we heard the sound of cannon or rifle fire. But now I’m so used to the sound of bullets singing over my head and shells exploding day and night, and men dying on either side of me, that I can hardly recall any other way of life. Caroline, my love, I don’t write all these alarming things to upset you, but so that you will understand the truth of my situation—and be prepared. The love we share keeps me strong. My dreams of our future together encourage me to go on.