Candle in the Darkness

by Lynn Austin

  “You can go on and lay him down now,” she said. “He’s asleep.”

  “I know. I like holding him.”

  Tessie’s heart swelled with love as she looked at Josiah. She cupped his face in both her hands to kiss him and felt the hard muscles in his jaw, the stubble of beard on his cheeks. She had waited for so many years for them to be together this way, and now they finally were. But when she thought of the emptiness in Missy Caroline’s heart, tears came to her eyes.

  “What’s wrong, Tessie?” Josiah asked. “You thinking about Grady again?”

  “No, my Grady coming home someday. I know he is.” She sat down on the floor beside Josiah, leaning against his muscled shoulder. “I keep thinking about Missy Caroline. She always looking out for you and me, all these years . . . always fighting so we can be together. Now we are—and she lost the man she love because she helping us. That ain’t right, Jo.”

  “I know. But there ain’t nothing we can do.”

  “She talking tonight about going off with Massa Robert. She ask me what I think. I think it’s a mistake because she don’t love him. But it breaks my heart to see her so lonely. Ain’t no other man in Richmond gonna marry her after what she done.”

  “There ain’t enough men left in Richmond to marry all the girls who still alone. I watched them all die, Tessie, one right after the other.”

  “When you was away at war with Massa Charles . . . he ever talk about Missy?”

  “All the time. Seem like he loved Missy more than anything else in the world.”

  “Do you think he still does?”

  “I don’t know. I ain’t seen him since the night I carried him to the hospital.”

  Tessie lifted Isaac from Josiah’s arms and laid him on the bed, patting his bottom for a moment until he fell back asleep. Then she took his place in Josiah’s arms. “Will you take me to see Massa Charles tomorrow?” she asked.

  “Why? What good that gonna do?”

  “I don’t know. I just want to talk to him, ask him if he still loves her. I got to try, Jo . . . for Missy’s sake. She fought for us, now I got to try and fight for her.”

  “That make you happy, Tessie?”

  “Yes,” she nodded. “Yes, it will.”

  “Then I’ll go,” Josiah said. “I’ll talk to him.”

  Charles stood among the ashes of his burned-out mill and swallowed the bile that had risen in his throat. All that remained of the huge brick building was a blackened shell. Gaping holes, like empty eye sockets, showed where the windows had once been. He kicked uselessly at the rubble beneath his feet. The loss of the flour mill had killed Charles’ father. And deep in his heart, Charles wished that the skeletal walls would fall in on him, burying him among the ruins.

  He had come down this morning to see if maybe the gears that turned the mill wheels were still good, to see if there was any hope of salvaging something, of rebuilding. But it took hope to rebuild, and Charles’ hope had died with the Confederacy.

  An enormous ceiling beam lay across the floor, blocking his path. He bent to lift the charred wood, but he still hadn’t recovered the full use of his arm and shoulder. The beam wouldn’t budge. He kicked at it in frustration.

  “Need help with that?”

  Charles whirled around. Jonathan’s former slave, Josiah, stood a few feet away. Charles’ first reaction was to refuse his help. He felt bitter toward the burly Negro without knowing exactly why. But Josiah was already bending to grip the beam. Charles grabbed the other end. Josiah moved it as though it weighed nothing.

  “Thanks,” Charles said. There was an awkward silence. “What are you doing down here?”

  Josiah’s expression stiffened. “I’m a free man. Guess I can go wherever I want, talk to whoever I want.” Then he seemed to catch himself, and his features softened. “It’s time we had a talk about the night you was shot.”

  Charles ran his hand over his face. He hated being indebted to any man—especially this one, the son of Caroline’s beloved servant. He didn’t want to be reminded of her. He wanted to forget.

  “I’m glad you came,” he finally said. “Listen now. I never had a chance to thank you for taking me to the hospital. I didn’t remember how I got there at first. And by the time my memories of that night started to come back, you were gone.”

  Charles hated remembering that day, how the Yankees had streamed over the embankment, punching a hole through the Rebel lines, moving relentlessly forward, shouting in victory. He had lain on the bottom of the filthy trench between two dead men, unable to move, feeling the warmth of his own blood pumping from his wounds and soaking his clothes, shocked that death had come for him at last. His last thoughts were of Caroline. He’d wanted to take her picture out of his pocket, look at it one last time before he died. . . .

  “I don’t want your thanks,” Josiah said. “I didn’t do it for your sake, or for Jonathan’s.”

  “May I ask why, then?”

  “I did it for Missy Caroline.”

  Charles’ stomach clenched at her name. He bent and began picking up fallen bricks, moving them uselessly from the ruined floor and tossing them aside.

  “Before we was free,” Josiah said, “when things was against Tessie and me, Missy Caroline always make sure we can be together. When my son was born, she ask her daddy to give him to her for her slave. Then she set him free . . . she give my son his freedom.”

  Charles looked up at Josiah as he suddenly realized something. “You could have been free the day I was wounded. The Yankees were right there. You would have been free if you had just kept walking. But you carried me to the field hospital.”

  “When I went to war with Massa Jonathan, my pa made me promise I would look out for you, make sure nothing bad happens to you, because Missy can’t live without you. That gal loves you. So I kept my promise.”

  “I’m grateful.”

  “Then why you breaking her heart, leaving her like you done?”

  Charles felt a sudden rush of anger at this man for poking at a wound that hadn’t healed. “That’s really none of your business.”

  “If I give up my freedom to save your life, it’s my business. I’ll tell you something else. I almost left you there to die, not because I want to run to the Yankees, but because there was so much hatred in my heart. I hate Missy Caroline all my life because I hate her father. George Fletcher use my Tessie. He make her pregnant with his son, Grady, then sell that boy to the auction. Sell me, too, so he could have Tessie all to himself, even though he already have a wife.”

  Charles saw the fury on Josiah’s face, the clenched muscles in his arms and fists. He knew the other man’s pain was at least as deep as his own.

  “My pa say I can’t punish Missy Caroline for the sins of her father,” Josiah said. “He say I have to forgive. But when I seen you laying there I knew I could get even. Let all you white folks see what it feels like to lose someone you love for once.” He paused, shaking his head. “But I can’t do it. What Missy done during the war she done for us, out of love, so we could be free. That’s why she was fighting—to help people be free. Why were you fighting?” Charles answered automatically, angrily. “I was fighting because states should have the right—” “That’s all I hear you white boys saying—‘states’ rights, states’ rights.’ But you name me one other right you wanting besides the right to keep me your slave?”

  Charles couldn’t reply. The South had lost, his city was in ruins. What difference did it make, anymore, why he had fought?

  “You were fighting to have your own way,” Josiah said. “To keep us your slaves. Missy did the unselfish thing, like the Bible say to do, not for herself. If anyone gonna say they sorry for what they done during the war it should be you, not Missy Caroline.”

  Charles looked away, unable to face Josiah. But everywhere he looked, in every direction, he saw nothing but rubble.

  “God use that war to show you white boys what it’s like to be a slave,” Josiah continued. “For four ye
ars, you sleeping on the ground instead of in your fine houses. You eating food that no one would feed a dog. You wearing rags and going barefoot and marching all day beneath a hot sun until you so weary you want to die. You ain’t allowed to see your family or the woman you love. Your life ain’t even your own anymore, with someone telling you what to do and when to get up and when you can go to bed. How you like it, Massa Charles? How you like trading places with me?”

  “Get out of here,” Charles said in a shaking voice.

  “This is what Missy Caroline done for me. I’m a free man. I got a wife and a son. That’s more than you got. You got no family, no money, no future . . . you just like a slave. Except no one took all those things from you—you threw them away. We changed places, Massa Charles. You want to know whose side God’s on? Look at what you got left and tell me if you think God believes in states’ rights. Missy Caroline done right. You the one who’s wrong. You ought to be asking her to forgive you.”

  “Get out of here and leave me alone!” Charles shouted. He didn’t think he could bear to hear her name one more time.

  “No sir, I ain’t leaving yet. I come here to give you this.” He removed the burlap bag that was slung over his shoulder and pulled out a ragged stack of paper, tied together with string. “Tessie say for you to read this. Missy Caroline don’t know I’m giving it to you.”

  Charles stared at the bundle of paper Josiah had shoved into his shaking hands. It looked like ragged sheets of wallpaper from Caroline’s foyer. It was covered with her beautiful handwriting. He recognized it from all the letters she had faithfully written to him, and he felt a pain greater than any of his other wounds.

  “Tessie say Missy still loves you. You didn’t lose everything. She still loves you. You sent her away because you won’t try to understand the reason why she helped us or forgive her for it. Now her Yankee friend Robert’s coming around, offering her his love. Says he’ll give her a new start in a new town. She don’t love him, but she awful lonely. This your last chance . . . you gonna throw it away?”

  “I listened to you because you saved my life,” Charles said in a trembling voice. “I owed you that much. But what goes on between Caroline and me is none of your business.” The anger and rage that gnawed at him swelled from a dull ache to an agonizing pain. All he could do was lash out. “The Yankees are here and you have your freedom, Josiah. Go flaunt it someplace else.”

  “I won my freedom long before the Yankees came,” Josiah said quietly. “I was free the moment I picked you up and decided to forgive Missy Caroline and her daddy. You can start living as a free man, too, once you forgive. Maybe then God will start giving back all the things you threw away.”

  Josiah turned then, and walked away. When he was gone, Charles sank down onto the charred beam and buried his face in his hands. Pain and anger filled every inch of him, until he thought it would consume him. But even in the blind heat of his rage, he knew two things: that Josiah had spoken the truth and that the reason he so deeply resented facing that truth was because the man who had spoken it was a Negro.

  Against his will, Charles remembered his first few encounters with Caroline, how her outspokenness had angered him. He knew, now, that it was because she had shone a beam of light on the darkness that was inside him, exposing the racism that he’d never wanted to admit was there. He’d seen a little Negro boy as a thief, not a hungry child. He’d seen a Negro carriage driver as a convenience, not a man.

  But hadn’t that also been what had drawn him to Caroline from the very beginning—the deep compassion she had for all people? The light that had shone so brightly from her?

  Charles looked down at her handwriting on the ragged pile of paper on his lap. Then the words slowly slid into focus. He began to read:

  As I write this by candlelight, Union troops have my beloved city of Richmond under siege. The hall clock tells me that it is well past midnight, but I am unable to sleep. I no longer know what tomorrow will bring, nor do I know when my arrest will come—but I’m now quite certain that it will come . . . I’m not sure anyone will ever understand why I’ve acted the way I have. I can only pray that they will try . . .

  Twenty little Negro children sat in a circle at Caroline’s feet in her drawing room, listening in wide-eyed wonder as she read Longfellow’s poem, The Song of Hiawatha, to them. When she first began teaching these young students, it had brought back memories of Hilltop and of her afternoons beneath the pear tree with the little slave children gathered around her. Caroline enjoyed teaching her adult students very much, but these little ones had become as dear to her as her very own children.

  She finished the poem and looked up at them. One small boy raised his hand. “Yes, Jesse? What is it?”

  “Someone here to see you.” He pointed behind her. Caroline turned around.

  Charles stood in the doorway.

  Her heart felt as though it was being squeezed so tightly she wasn’t sure she could bear the pain. His eyes—so wide and expressive, so deeply blue—gazed down at her with a softness she thought she’d never see in them again.

  “I can come back at a better time,” he said.

  “No . . . give me a minute.” Her voice shook as she quietly told her class to take out their slates and practice writing their names. The slates had been a present from Robert. He had used his army connections to help stock her school with supplies.

  “Please work quietly until I come back,” she said.

  Charles followed her through the drawing room doors into the backyard. The June day was warm and very humid, a foretaste of the summer that fast approached.

  “You’re a wonderful teacher,” he said. “I was watching you.”

  Caroline couldn’t answer, couldn’t speak past the knot of emotion in her throat. She didn’t know why Charles had come, but she knew now that she would have to tell Robert that she could never marry him. It wouldn’t be fair to spend her life with one man when she still loved another so deeply. Even after all this time, all the sorrow and pain.

  “I came to give this back to you,” he said. He took his battered army haversack off his shoulder and pulled out a ragged pile of papers—her papers, the story she had written on torn sheets of wallpaper.

  “How did you get that?”

  “Josiah gave it to me.”

  He looked away from her, gazing into the distance at things she couldn’t see. Caroline was afraid to hope that he had come back into her life to stay. She silently prayed the only words that mattered anymore—Thy will be done—trusting in God’s love, knowing that His will was the very best thing for her life.

  “After reading this,” Charles said, “I realized how different we are. Those differences should have been obvious from the first day we met. Even now, I look at that roomful of Negro children in there, and I know I don’t see them the way you do.”

  He paused, then turned to face her again. “I wish I could see them your way. I’ve lost everything but my blindness, it seems— I’ve lost the war, my father, most of my friends, my wealth. The mill is gone and I have no money to rebuild it, no future. But Josiah said I hadn’t lost you. He said you still love me. And I don’t think it would hurt to see you as much as it does unless I still loved you, too.

  “Listen now,” he said softly. “Am I too late, Caroline? Could you ever forgive me and start all over again?”

  She moved into his arms as if she and Charles had never argued or parted. He clung to her, holding her tightly in return. “I love you, Charles,” she told him.

  Behind Caroline was her schoolroom full of bright, eager students. God had given them to her as a gift, to show her that the sacrifices she’d made did have meaning. His purposes for her life would be partly fulfilled in them, and in those children’s futures. And now He was giving her still another gift, giving Charles back to her.

  “Thank you, Lord,” she whispered as she held him in her arms. “Thank you.”

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