All Things New

by Lynn Austin

  “How did you know they were coming for me?” he asked. “Who are these men?”

  “My brother is one of them. I couldn’t sleep and I accidentally overheard him and the others plotting. They know that you’re investigating the arson and the murders, and they’re the ones who are responsible. They decided to kill you and destroy all your evidence.”

  “But you . . . you came all this way alone? In the dark?”

  “Otis came with me part of the way. I prayed and asked God to get me here on time, to get you out of there on time, and He answered my prayer.”

  “Wait. You mean . . . you . . . you prayed?” Josephine nodded, as amazed as Alexander was. He took her in his arms again and held her.

  “I love you, Josephine. Not just tonight or because you saved me, but . . . I’ve loved you all along.”

  He pulled back, and they looked at each other in the darkness. Josephine remembered the overwhelming emptiness she had felt after Daniel took her letters and she was cut off from Alexander forever. She remembered her terrible fear as she’d raced here to save him and the certainty she’d felt in her heart that she loved him.

  “I love you, too,” she whispered.

  He cradled her face in his hands, smoothing her damp hair from her cheeks. Then Alexander leaned toward her and kissed her. His kiss was tender and beautiful, and she put her arms around him and kissed him in return. She thought her heart would burst from the wonderful, terrible mixture of love and sorrow. Her love for him was impossible. She loved him, wanted him, but she could never have him. When the kiss ended and he finally pulled away, she rested her head on his chest, and they held each other tightly.

  “Remember in my letter,” he murmured, “how I said that you should marry a man you loved? I meant me.”

  “I know . . . I know . . . but it’s impossible. My family would never allow it. My brother is trying to kill you.”

  “We could run away together and get married. I’ll take you home with me, and we could start a new life together, away from all of this.”

  Could she leave her home, her family? Josephine was still angry with Daniel and Mary and didn’t know if she could ever trust them again. And Mother would persist with her matchmaking plans until Jo ended up married to Harrison Blake. Mother was strong and would have her way—she always did. But could Jo really run away from her family and White Oak and never look back? If not, could she bear to stay here and live the life that would be forced upon her? To live without Alexander?

  “Come away with me, Josephine.”

  “I-I can’t. It would hurt too many people if I just disappeared. My family has suffered enough, endured too much. I can’t add to it.”

  “What if I found a way to ask for your hand?”

  “That’s impossible. They hate you.”

  “But what if I found a way to make peace with them, and I asked for your hand, and we left here with their blessing—would you marry me then?”

  “Of course, but . . . it can’t possibly happen. They’ll never make peace with you, much less give us their blessing.”

  He leaned forward and kissed her again. “I’ll find a way. Trust me, Josephine. And trust God.”

  He stood and reached for her hands, pulling her to her feet. Her legs felt stiff from their cramped position, her muscles tired from running. “Wait. Shouldn’t we stay hidden a while longer? What if they’re still searching for you?” He was leading her out of the sanctuary and back through the vestry. “Where are we going?”

  “I’m going to make sure you get home safely.”

  “No, wait!” She stood in front of the door, barring it before he had a chance to open it. “I can get home by myself, but you can’t risk being seen. It’s still too dangerous.”

  “I won’t leave you, Josephine. I need to make sure you’re safe.” He reached to stroke her hair, her cheek.

  “God got me here safely tonight. You can trust Him to get me home again.” Josephine knew then what she needed to do. She took his hand and kissed his fingers before letting it go. “Where’s your horse?”

  “In the livery stable.”

  “Ride to Richmond—as fast as you can. Don’t come back unless you have a squad of soldiers with you. Armed soldiers. If you return without protection, these men will kill you. They won’t fail the next time.”

  “But you—”

  “I’m going to create a distraction.” She stood on her tiptoes and kissed him one last time, cutting off his protests. As she did, she reached behind her and opened the door. “Good-bye, Alexander.”

  “No, wait—!”

  But Josephine was already running before he could stop her, racing to reach the alarm bell across the village square from the church. Behind her, the night sky above the train station was lit up by the orange glow of flames, the hot air filling with smoke. She grabbed the bell rope and pulled as hard as she could, letting it ring and ring to awaken the town. The fire was probably too far gone to save the building, but Alexander could get to his horse during the commotion and ride away.

  She saw lights going on in several houses as she kept ringing the bell. Dogs barked and howled. Men began to emerge from their homes, struggling into their clothes, looking all around for the fire. Josephine heard shouts, running feet, but continued to ring the bell. None of the townspeople would care if the Freedmen’s Bureau burned to the ground, but they wouldn’t let the nearby train station burn.

  Her arm was growing tired, and she stopped ringing for a moment to rest. In the momentary quiet she heard a horse galloping somewhere in the darkness and prayed it was Alexander making his escape. But the sound of hoofbeats was coming closer, and as she squinted in the gloom she saw a dark horse and a masked rider racing straight toward her. She let go of the bell rope and turned to run, sprinting in the opposite direction of the livery stable. Where could she go? Where could she hide? Dr. Hunter’s house was nearby. She would run to him and beg for his help. But the horse easily caught up with her before she could get there.

  “Josephine! Josephine, stop!” She recognized Daniel’s voice, even muffled by the mask.

  She kept running, desperate to reach safety. She glanced over her shoulder and saw that Daniel had dismounted and was running after her. Her bulky skirt slowed her down, and he quickly caught up to her, grabbing her. “Let me go!” she shouted. “Leave me alone!”

  Daniel clamped his hand over her mouth. “Quiet! Stop fighting me!” He dragged her and his horse into the shadows alongside a carriage house. The townspeople were still waking up and running toward the fire. No one would hear her even if she could scream.

  “You warned him, didn’t you?” Daniel said, giving her a shake. He still gripped her tightly, but he slowly removed his hand from her mouth as if testing to see if she would cry out. “You shameless girl! You’re helping our enemy. Don’t you know what they do to people who aid the enemy? It’s treason! You’re a traitor!”

  “You were going to murder him—I heard you. Even now, when you heard the bell, you thought Alexander was ringing it and you came to kill him.”

  “And how many of our people did the Yankees kill? What about Samuel and Father and the thousands of others? The Yankees murdered our family and took everything we had. They destroyed our lives. Can’t you understand that? Why are you helping them?” A handkerchief covered her brother’s face, and she could only see his eyes below the brim of his hat. But those eyes glittered with enough anger to kill an entire army of Yankees like Alexander.

  “The war is over, Daniel. If you kill him now, it’s murder.”

  “Grow up, Josephine. As long as their army is occupying Virginia, we’re still at war. That bureau is a symbol of outside interference, telling us that we aren’t free. Your Yankee friend represents a foreign government that’s being forced on us. We have no choice but to protect ourselves from them.”

  “Haven’t you had enough fighting and killing? When are you going to stop?”

  “When the last Yankee and carpetbagger i
s gone. When they all go away and leave us alone and the land is ours again.” Daniel glanced out into the street to see if the coast was clear, then turned to face her again. “Listen. We’re going to get on my horse and go home. But I want you to understand that if your Yankee friend comes back with a pile of soldiers and punishes our community, it will be on your conscience, Josephine. You’ll have to live with the consequences and the guilt for the rest of your life.”

  “How is it my fault? If you had succeeded in murdering him, don’t you think there would have been retribution for that?”

  “If you hadn’t interfered, it would have been an unfortunate accident in a quiet town.”

  “I know the truth, Daniel. It won’t stay hidden.”

  “And I know the truth about you and your Yankee, so we’d both be wise to keep our mouths shut, don’t you think? I won’t have to punish you if the people in this town find out. They’ll be happy to get revenge on a traitor like you.” He pushed her ahead of him, moving away from the square, away from the smoke and the chaos, staying in the shadows where no one would see them. When they reached the outskirts of town, Daniel lifted Josephine onto the horse and climbed on behind her to ride the rest of the way home.

  They were nearly to White Oak when Josephine remembered the crate full of schoolbooks that Alexander had saved. Tomorrow, somehow, she would find a way to go back into town and retrieve them. Then she would make certain that Rufus and Jack and Roselle and every other Negro child who wanted to learn to read and write would get one of them.

  And even if her family disowned her, even if she never saw Alexander Chandler again, Josephine was still glad she had saved his life.

  30

  JULY 14, 1865

  When the rooster crowed in the morning, it seemed as if Lizzie had been having nightmares all night and had barely slept. Had Missy Jo really come in the middle of the night, waking her up with a terrible story about how Massa Daniel was going to kill Mr. Chandler? Lizzie rolled over, but Otis’s side of the bed was empty. Oh, Lord! She sat up and looked around the dim cabin and saw him kneeling in front of a chair praying, his elbows propped on the seat. She lay back down and waited for her heart to slow down again.

  Lizzie had been afraid to help Missy Jo, but Otis had said that they had to. Nearly half the night had slowly passed as she’d paced the floor and waited for him to return. By the time she finally saw Otis coming back, a dark shape against the darker sky, she had worried herself sick.

  “What happened?” she’d asked. “Did Missy Jo get there all right? She make it there in time?”

  “I could only go with her to the other side of the woods. Lord knows I sure hated to leave her on her own, that’s for sure.”

  Lizzie had sunk down on their straw mattress, relieved to see him, worn out from worry, weary with sleeplessness. “Come back to bed, Otis. It’ll be morning soon.”

  “No, I won’t sleep. I think I’ll sit here and pray, if you don’t mind.”

  Now Lizzie couldn’t help wondering about Missy Josephine. “Otis?” she whispered. He lifted his bowed head and looked over at her, then rose to his feet, stretching his arms and shoulders. “Did Missy Jo come back?” she asked him.

  “I don’t know. Guess we’ll find out soon enough.”

  Lizzie stood and slipped into her dress and shoes. The July sun was already rising, fiery hot. Lizzie wished she was still asleep. Last night had seemed like a nightmare and she was afraid to wake up and see it had all come true.

  Mornings were always hurried for Lizzie, trying to get the white folks fed, trying to get Otis and the other men fed so they could get out to the fields, trying to get the kids up and fed and off to school. The kitchen was the center of all this feeding and hurrying, and it was a busy place, most mornings. But as Lizzie stirred yesterday’s coals and got the fire started in the hearth, she felt like somebody was holding a huge cast-iron pot over her head, filled with all kinds of bad things, and they were just waiting to drop it on her.

  “Massa Daniel’s horse is in the stall,” Otis told her when he came in a few minutes later, “so he must be back.”

  “Well, we better keep the kids home today until we find out from Missy Jo what happened last night.”

  “What’ll we tell Saul and Clara and the others?”

  “The truth. They need to know what kind of man Massa Daniel is and what he was trying to do.”

  Otis nodded. “But don’t tell the kids. I don’t want them living in fear all the time.”

  “But shouldn’t we warn them about him? They need to know.”

  “Let’s just hold off and see what really happened last night first.”

  Lizzie didn’t want to hold off. She wanted to gather her family together and run as far away from White Oak as she could and hide where it was safe. If only she knew where that safe place might be. She picked up the egg basket and went outside to let the hens out of the coop and collect the eggs. A few days ago she had been so content. Her kids were learning to read and write, Otis was growing his own crops with nobody bossing over him, and she had Clara to talk to all day and share the workload—washing and cooking and churning the cream from their new cow. Lizzie had been almost ready to believe the Bible was true and that every tear she had ever cried was going to bring a crop of joy. Not anymore.

  Clara walked into the kitchen with a bucket of fresh milk just as Lizzie was putting biscuits in the oven. She knew by the fear in Clara’s eyes that Otis had told her about last night. Clara set the bucket of milk on the table, but her shoulders still slumped like she was carrying a heavy load. “What are we gonna do, Lizzie?”

  “I don’t know. Otis says to wait and see.”

  Lizzie was on her way into the Big House with a platter of scrambled eggs in one hand and a basket of hot biscuits in the other when she happened to look down toward her cabin. A group of former slaves, maybe a dozen or so, were coming up the little hill from Slave Row. Were they coming for Massa Daniel the way he had come after Mr. Chandler last night? Would there be a war now, Negro against white? She shivered with fear and hurried into the dining room with the food, hoping to see Missy Jo sitting there just as nice as you please, hoping Missy would tell her it had all been a mistake, that nothing had happened last night after all. But Miz Eugenia and Missy Mary were the only ones seated at the table.

  Lizzie’s hands shook like an old woman’s as she set the food on the table in front of them. “Anything else, ma’am?” she asked, slowly backing from the room.

  “Where is the butter?”

  “I’ll bring it, ma’am. Sorry.”

  The strangers had gathered outside the kitchen door when she got back, talking with Otis and Saul and Willy and Robert. Roselle and Clara stood in the kitchen doorway, listening. Lizzie’s stomach turned over when she saw how the men were all looking at each other, as if something terrible had just happened.

  “Roselle, honey,” she said, pushing her into the kitchen. “Fetch that dish of butter and bring it to the missus in the dining room.”

  “But I want to hear—”

  “So do I. Go on now.”

  Roselle grabbed the butter and disappeared into the Big House, quick as a wink. Lizzie looked up at Otis, afraid to breathe. “Is Missy Josephine in there?” he asked. Lizzie shook her head. He closed his eyes for a long moment before opening them again. “It’s gone, Lizzie. The Freedmen’s Bureau burned to the ground last night. Ain’t nothing left of it this time.”

  “Oh Lord, no.” Her knees felt weak and she wanted to sit down, but there was no place to sit.

  “Mr. Chandler’s gone, too,” one of the men said. “No one knows what happened to him, if he’s dead or not, but from the looks of things . . . they’ll have to dig through the bricks and ashes to find him.”

  “Oh, Lord.” Lizzie covered her mouth to hold back her grief. Was Missy Josephine dead, too? Had something happened to her because they had left her all alone? This was all because of the school. That’s why they had burned down t
he office. And Lizzie was the one who had talked Mr. Chandler into opening the school again.

  “I guess there won’t be no justice for the men who died in the woods,” Willy said, shaking his head.

  “And without that school,” Clara added, “our kids will be slaves all their lives.”

  Otis drew a breath and exhaled. “Mr. Chandler was a God-fearing man, and if he’s really gone I know he’s in a better place. But Lord help him, all he was trying to do was help us out.”

  Everything was back to the way it was. Lizzie never should have hoped for something better. She was about to sink down on the back step and weep when Roselle came flying out of the door, her errand finished. “What happened? What’s going on?” Otis put his arm around her.

  “The school burned down, honey. I’m sorry.”

  “But . . . but we can sit on the grass and learn, can’t we? We don’t mind.” When nobody answered her, she laid her head on Otis’s shoulder and cried.

  “We come to tell you we’re moving on,” one of the men said. “Mr. Chandler promised to move us out West somewhere and give us our own land and a mule. Guess that won’t happen now, so there’s no sense in staying around here. Thought we’d ask if you all want to come with us.”

  “We can’t lose hope,” Otis said. “The crops are still growing out there, ain’t they? Why don’t you all move back here and we can work the land together?”

  “You think they’re gonna let us keep that cotton and sell it ourselves? They take everything else away from us, why wouldn’t they take that, too, when the time comes? Who’s gonna stop them now that Mr. Chandler’s gone?”

  “We never should have trusted them,” Lizzie said. “None of them. Our massa is probably one of the men who done this.”

  “We don’t know that for sure, Lizzie.”

  “Let’s go with them, Otis. They’re right. There ain’t no use in staying here.” He didn’t reply. He still had one arm around Roselle, and he rested his other hand on Lizzie’s cheek, gently stroking it to calm her fears. As scared as she was and as much as she wanted to run, she knew her husband wouldn’t leave now. Not after all the hard work he’d done. Besides, where would they go? How would they live? They would have to wait until after the harvest, at least, so they’d have food to eat on their journey.