The Ironclad Alibi

by Michael Kilian

  Estelle bit down on her lip.

  “Isn’t that so?” Harry said.

  The child was on her way back, skipping some more, pausing to pick up something from the dirt that had fallen from her pocket. She studied it, then continued on.

  “Yessuh,” said Estelle, softly. “I didn’t harm her none. Samuel didn’t neither. Like you say, she already dead.”

  “Dead where?”

  “At the house in Manchester. Mister Mills tell us to bring her to the hotel, like we done before, and put her in your room. He was powerful mad at you, Mister Raines. He say you kill Mrs. Mills. He say you should pay for your crime.”

  “But I didn’t commit any crime. I wasn’t there. You know that.”

  “Yessuh. I know that now.”

  “Did Samuel kill Arabella?”

  “She could be mean sometimes, but not so mean as he do that. Samuel no fool. He know what happen to him if he hurt that lady in any way. They hunt him down with dogs an’ shoot him right off, like they were fixin’ to do to Caesar Augustus.”

  “Why did Samuel attack me?”

  “You was trouble, Mister Raines. Big trouble. Samuel, he hung Mrs. Mills’s body up in yo’ room, so’s the Plug Uglies come for you. But they let you go and then you turn up at our place. He musta figured you comin’ after him. He afeared you goin’ to kill him, or take him off to the hangman. I don’t think he mean you no harm, otherwise. Except maybe he might be doin’ Mister Mills a favor. He and Mister Mills, they good friends. Mister Mills paid him money for what he do.”

  “Why did you shoot Samuel? You fired four times.”

  “Save your life.”

  “Be honest, Estelle.”

  “I is. He was fixin’ to kill you. He do that, the both of us get strung up. Samuel get killed, nobody goin’ to care much, ’cept Mister Mills. Mister Mills and Samuel, they friends.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me what happened before?”

  “Mister Mills say he sell us both off as field hands down to the cotton plantations if we talk to anybody about anythin’. He say it only be right you hang for Mrs. Mills death ’cause everything is all your fault.”

  The little girl had rejoined them and stood peering up at Harry.

  “Are you a soldier?” she asked.

  “No,” he said. “I’m just a friend of theirs.”

  She reached into her pocket and showed him the object that had fallen—a soldier’s brass button.

  “You want it?” she asked.

  “Thank you, Evangeline. But I already have many buttons.” He smiled, then on impulse took the Confederate button from his pocket. “Here, now you have two.”

  The girl held them both in one hand. They matched, both from a Confederate uniform.

  He studied the delicacy of her small, gentle face. Her skin was the color of cafe au lait; her curly hair a dark red, like old copper, with tiny golden glints. Her lips were full, very grown up for a little girl’s—and her eyes were green.

  “Can you read?” he asked.

  “A little.”

  “Do you have a doll?”

  “I have lots and lots of dolls. Pretty dolls.”

  Harry patted her on the head, then looked around the camp. There were very few men in sight—the better part of them Union soldiers.

  “Where’s Caesar Augustus?” he said to Estelle.

  “Down by the water, doin’ carpentry work. The army’s buildin’ things.”

  “But he’s badly injured—a stab wound.”

  “He’s mendin’. And he say he don’ mind. They pays him money—lot more’n Mister Mills pay Samuel—help us to get up north.”

  “Are you going to take care of Evangeline?”

  “Yessuh.”

  “I mean, hereafter.”

  “Yessuh. That’s what I done back home. When she lived in the big house. Least until this war over, and everythin’ get sorted out.”

  “But where will you go?”

  “I don’ know. I’se free now.”

  He put his hand on her shoulder. “Estelle, I want to help you—you and Evangeline.”

  “What you mean?”

  “You can’t stay here. I don’t want you to stay here.”

  “You ain’t goin’ to send us back to yo’ sister? Not back to that plantation?”

  “No, Estelle. Not that. Never that.”

  “You a nice man, Mister Raines.”

  Harry sighed. “Sometimes I could be nicer.”

  Harry started to walk away, but something nagged him to a halt.

  “Estelle,” he said. “Miss Van Lew. Did you talk with her while you were at her house?”

  “Yessuh. She come up and talk to me when I was in the secret room.”

  “Did she say anything about me? Tell you not to talk to me about all this.”

  “She say I should be careful around you—not tell you anythin’.”

  “Did she say why?”

  “She say you weren’t very good at what you do. She say she afraid you let slip somethin’ to Jeff Davis or that general and we all get put in Castle Godwin.”

  He found Caesar Augustus working a long, cross-cut saw with another black man, using only his right arm. His left sleeve was torn off, and a large, dirty dressing was wound around that shoulder, but otherwise he seemed not much affected by his wound.

  Harry waited until they had finished cutting their plank, stepping forward as they reached to pick up the slab of wood.

  “Let me help you,” Harry said.

  Caesar Augustus stood up straight, saying nothing, eyes hard, his expression empty.

  Harry looked for someone in authority, settling on a fat sergeant dozing on a pile of lumber a few yards distant.

  “You, Sergeant!” he called.

  The man sat up, then stood up. “Sir!”

  “I need this man for a while.”

  “Yes, sir!”

  They walked along the muddy shore, keeping to the dry brown and yellow grass.

  “They told me you’d abandoned me, Marse Harry.”

  “Miss Van Lew did?”

  “No. The Rebel officers at Libby Prison. Man named Maccubbin.”

  “Well, they lied.”

  Harry had no destination in mind. He only wanted to get away from the labor party.

  “Boston Leahy,” said Caesar Augustus, “he saved my life.”

  “Yes he did. He’s a very brave and resourceful fellow.”

  There was an old weathered rowboat lying upside down just ahead. Harry gestured toward it. Caesar Augustus sat down on its stern, glad of the respite, if not necessarily the company.

  “I was trying to prove you innocent,” Harry said, seating himself as well. He wished he’d remembered to ask Leahy to find him some cigars.

  “Why try to do that in a place like Richmond?”

  “I might have succeeded if you’d been a little more forthcoming.”

  Caesar Augustus broke off a piece of wood from the boat’s transom, then took out a pocketknife and started whittling.

  “That woulda done nobody no good but me, Marse Harry. And maybe it wouldn’t even do that.”

  Harry lifted his head, gazing out over the water. They were by a small cove that opened onto the wide one that ran north to the town of Hampton. The sun was high, and the breeze was warm. Listening for it now, he could hear the distant cannon fire of the still continuing sea battle.

  Reaching into his pocket, he took out the two carved figures, holding them out in his palm to Caesar Augustus. The black man pondered the little sculptures, then quickly picked them up, setting them aside out of view.

  “The female figure represents who?” Harry asked.

  Caesar Augustus sighed. “I gave it to Estelle, Marse Harry. Long time ago.”

  “Not to Arabella Mills.”

  “No. Where you find it?”

  “In my hotel room. On the floor. Why did you give it to Estelle?”

  “She want to have a baby. It’s supposed to be magic. She
thought that, anyway.”

  “A baby by you.”

  “Yes. But it didn’t work.”

  “Estelle is not the mother of that child.”

  “What child you mean?”

  “The one who’s here. The one you helped escape.”

  “No, Marse Harry. Evangeline is not her daughter.”

  “She’s Arabella’s daughter.”

  “Why do you think that?”

  “I looked upon her face, Caesar Augustus. Her parentage is writ large.”

  The black man’s knife dug too deep into the slice of wood, causing a chunk to break off. He stared at it, then resumed whittling.

  “And you are the father,” Harry said.

  It was not a question.

  Caesar Augustus frowned. “Miss Arabella told Mister Mills you were her father when Evangeline was born—after you and me went north to Washington.”

  “He accepted that?”

  “Guess he did. He must a’ hated it, but he accepted it—back then, when he and Miss Arabella got married, and all these years after. Only way he was goin’ to marry her, acceptin’ that child. Only way he was goin’ to keep Miss Arabella.”

  “But you lay with her?”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “I said, her parentage was writ large. Her skin has such color.”

  Silence.

  “I am not aggrieved by it, Caesar Augustus.”

  A sigh.

  “When you went to the Mills house after we got into Richmond, it was to see her, wasn’t it?” Harry went on. “Not Estelle. That’s why Arabella was so agitated when she came to my hotel. Over you.”

  More whittling. The piece of wood was almost a chip itself.

  “Only once, Marse Harry. I lay with her just once.”

  “You could have been strung up for doing that.”

  “I know that well. But I had become a free man then. I was mighty angry at all you white folks. It was a way of feeling free, of being free. And she wanted me. She was powerful mad at you.”

  It was growing late. Harry couldn’t tarry much longer.

  “I know there’s not much point to my pressing on with this anymore,” Harry said. “Even in a legitimate court of law, I’d have no proof. And it wouldn’t do much good for anyone now for these things to be out in public. But, Caesar Augustus, I think I know what happened.”

  “Well, you’re a smart man, Marse Harry, but I don’t think you understand.”

  “Mills found out about your visit to his house. He’s got a terrible temper. Arabella must have told him you were Evangeline’s father, and he flew into a rage.”

  “So you think Mills killed Miss Arabella?” There was an edge of sarcasm to the man’s words.

  “No, I don’t. A man that angry wouldn’t murder his wife that way. Not by hanging her. He might beat her, shoot her, strangle her with his own hands. But not go to the trouble of a hangman’s noose. Those were rope burns on her neck. Maybe not from the rope they found at the hotel, but rope burns nonetheless.”

  The muscles in Caesar Augustus’s face were very taut.

  “I think Mills found another way to get at her,” Harry continued. “To hurt her, very badly. He threatened to sell the little girl into slavery. She’d been brought up white, but he was going to commit her to a life of bondage, just for spite, because she was your child.”

  “You got it wrong, Marse Harry.”

  “With your help, and Miss Van Lew’s, Arabella was able to get the child to safety. But the sadness for her must have been overwhelming. She just couldn’t go on as Mills’s wife and suffer having her daughter gone. She went into the stable, fixed up a rope, and hanged herself. There was straw on her dress and stocking, Caesar Augustus. I found what was left of the rope.”

  He paused, thinking.

  “Mills had Estelle and Samuel take her body to my hotel. I don’t know if he wanted vengeance on me or was just afraid that he’d be accused of murder—like Othello and Desdemona. Perhaps it was both. But they did his bidding. Were it not for you, the blame would have fallen on me.”

  “Marse Harry, I don’ truly know how Miss Arabella died. Your explanation sounds sensible, but you got to understand something.”

  “What I don’t understand is why you confessed to it.”

  An actual smile. “They were going to kill me anyway. Would a’ done it were it not for Mister Leahy. I thought she ought to be remembered better than was likely otherwise. And I wanted you to stop what you were doing, stop frettin’ over me—and her. Get on with what we came for.”

  “In the end, I’m not sure how much what I did mattered.”

  “Everything we do against this goddam Confederacy matters to me, Marse Harry. Every gun. Every bullet. Every one of ’em that falls.”

  Out on the water, the cannon fire was continuing.

  Caesar Augustus ceased his whittling. He looked at what he had carved, then tossed it into the water. He kept the knife in his hand.

  “Miss Arabella didn’t like her husband much, Marse Harry. She married him only because she was with child, and she had nowhere else to turn after we left for the North. But they did not love each other in any way. Always fightin’. Always trouble. She come to hate her life, like you say. After a while, she tried to get a divorce from him from the state legislature, like that actress Fanny Kemble got from that slaver Butler from the Sea Islands down in Georgia. There was adultery enough in the Mills family for such a writ on both sides, as we saw ridin’ into town.”

  Harry had put the carte de visite photograph of Louise in his wallet. He wondered how well it had survived his swim from the Virginia.

  “Only weapon Mills had to stop her,” Caesar Augustus continued, “was he wouldn’t let her take Evangeline if she left him. That’s his right under law. A wife’s no better than black folks in some respects.”

  “Where was she going to go?”

  “To wherever you were, Marse Harry. To make him let go of the girl, she told him Evangeline was a black baby, and that I was her father. She thought maybe then Mills wouldn’t want the little girl no more.”

  “That’s when he threatened to sell the girl down the river.”

  “Yes sir. Miss Arabella, she got real unhappy, as miserable as any of the widows of this war.”

  “And so she hanged herself.”

  “Not then, Marse Harry. When you came back to town, she thought she was saved. That you had come back for her. She thought you would take her away. But when she came to the hotel, you just threw her out. It was like you threw her away. Once again.”

  Harry remembered. He wished he could not.

  “She asked me to take Evangeline away to someplace safe,” the black man said. “Once I was gone, I guess it was then she hanged herself, like you say.”

  The Negro workers back up the shore were singing now. They seemed almost happy.

  Harry wiped at his eye with the back of his hand.

  “Well then,” he said. “I don’t think we need to say any more.”

  “Somethin’ you still don’t understand, Marse Harry … I don’t think Evangeline is my child.”

  “You said you lay with her.”

  “Well, that happened, that once. But, like I say, I was angry. And I was scared, too. Mighty scared. I saw the way that boy Lucien over at the Pembertons got whipped to death for kissin’ their daughter. Your daddy made us watch that. Miss Arabella, I think she go with me only to get back at you, for leaving her. What I’m trying to say, Marse Harry, is that it didn’t go very well. I don’t think any child could have come out of that. And Estelle and me, mind we got no children, either, after all those times.”

  “And so?”

  “I think Evangeline came from someone else.”

  Harry thought upon it. “Who?”

  “Back then, when we was all so young, couldn’t of been many had that opportunity, Marse Harry. Not out in Tidewater.”

  A cool summer night in the soft grass by the canal. The moon rising over
the trees on Belle Isle. Their first time. Their last time. Because he was leaving, and not even her giving herself to him was enough to keep him in such a hateful place as the South.

  Harry took a very deep breath. “I think perhaps you are wrong, Caesar Augustus. The Raines are a fair-skinned family.” He held out his hand. “My sister Elizabeth is as fair as there is. Evangeline, she’s a darker hue.”

  Caesar Augustus put his own large black hand next to Harry’s. “That may be. But that little girl is as white as snow compared to me.”

  They both sat without speaking. The singing had stopped, and all was quiet. It occurred to Harry that the cannon fire out in Hampton Roads had stopped as well.

  “I’m not sayin’ you got Negro blood,” said Caesar Augustus, finally. “That ain’t the way in your family. But remember how you used to tell me about a granny you had, woman who grew up in the Indian country up in the mountains around Will’s Creek. Dark-haired witchy woman, wild as they come. You used to tell me about her when we talked about Voudon, how she knew all kinds of Injun magic.”

  Harry made no reply, not for the longest time.

  “What’re you thinkin’, Marse Harry?” Caesar Augustus said finally.

  “I was wondering what might have happened if I had married her,” Harry said.

  “I think then we both still be on the wrong side of the river.”

  Harry stood up. He needed to leave.

  “You want to leave this place, Caesar Augustus?”

  “Next minute’d be too long.”

  “Go back to Washington?”

  “Anyplace North.”

  “How about my farm?”

  “That’s in Virginia, Marse Harry.”

  “It’s way upriver on the Potomac. So far north it’s almost in Pennsylvania. You won’t see many Rebel armies there.”

  “What do you want me to do?”

  “Take care of things.”

  “You mean your horses?”

  “Everything.” He hesitated. “I’m sending Estelle there.”

  “Why are you doing that?”

  “She has no other place to go.”