The old woman must have recognized the threat, for she immediately released the child, who scurried behind Ben. The woman then gestured toward her bodice and shouted at Charlotte.
“Do you see what this little ruffian did? I tried to invite him to come and have some cookies, and he threw mud at me! He’s as wild as a savage, Charlotte!”
Charlotte glanced at Ben, and he could see her fighting for control. “This is our neighbor, Mrs. Martin, come for her reward. Your informant, I imagine.”
Though the dark-haired, dark-eyed woman ignored the accusation, Ben wondered what had sparked such bitterness between two neighbors. If he spoke to her alone, would the old woman tell him anything of value?
“This dress is a ruin! What do you have to say to that?” Mrs. Martin demanded.
Charlotte turned toward Alexander and beckoned with a finger. “It’s no use hiding behind Captain Chandler. You’ll come here and face what you have done like a Christian and a Southern gentleman.”
“A gentleman, my eye.” Mrs. Martin glared at Charlotte as she spoke. “I’ve never seen a child with worse manners. Comes of having poor examples, I expect.”
In light of Charlotte’s shrewd fierceness during their argument, Ben expected her to level the old woman with some withering retort. Instead, to his surprise, Charlotte glanced away, appearing nearly as shamefaced as Alexander.
The boy hung his head and stepped forward, though Ben noticed he stayed beyond both his sister’s and the old woman’s reach. He picked up Mrs. Martin’s bonnet and then looked her in the eye.
“I’m real sorry, Miz Martin. I figured you was here to eat me up, and I got scared.”
Mrs. Martin’s mouth formed a perfect O, deepening the lines that webbed her face. She bent forward to peer into the child’s eyes, and when she spoke, the angry shrillness softened. “Eat you? Why on earth would you believe --”
Charlotte shook her head. “Oh, that’s just some foolishness of Mama Ruth’s. I told you, Alexander --”
“You think – you think I’m some sort of monster?” Mrs. Martin asked. The idea appeared to upset her far more than Charlotte’s assertion that she had been the one to contact Union officials.
Alexander said nothing, until Charlotte moved close and nudged his arm.
“Answer her,” she prompted.
When Alexander did, his words rushed out in a torrent. “Well, you’re real mean to Charlotte, and Papa always says us Randolphs stick together.”
Mrs. Martin frowned but said nothing in reply.
Alexander edged forward with the bonnet. He clumsily attempted to straighten the hat’s black feathers, but since his hands were muddy, he only succeeded in damaging them further.
“I’m real sorry,” he repeated, passing back the bonnet. Though his words sounded contrite, his limbs were tensed and poised for flight.
Looking weary to the bone, Mrs. Martin glanced at Charlotte and then back to the child.
“I believe I understand,” she said as she accepted the bonnet. She kept her movements slow and her voice soft, as if Alexander were a wild bird she meant to feed by hand.
Charlotte stepped forward and laid her palms on the boy’s thin shoulders. “Go and wash for dinner, Alexander. I’ll be along in a minute.”
He hesitated, turning his gaze toward his sister.
“I ain’t gonna get that puppy now, am I?” he asked, his eyes suddenly liquid.
When she didn’t immediately answer, the boy pounded up the steps and disappeared into the house. The back door banged shut as if to protest the muddy handprints left there.
Ben re-lit his cigar, which had gone out while he had been distracted.
The two women eyed each other appraisingly, reminding him of a pair of arched-back cats. If he did nothing to distract them, the fur would fly at any moment. He should want that, he realized, for the chance to see Charlotte drop her guard. But the look of raw shame he’d glimpsed moments earlier hung with him, and it turned his stomach to think of the old woman hurting her like that again.
Ben offered Mrs. Martin his hand. “Perhaps the next time we meet it will be under better circumstances.”
After a moment’s hesitation, she accepted it. Her own felt cool and fragile as an egg fresh from the springhouse.
“If you’ll excuse us, Mrs. Martin,” he continued, “Miss Randolph and I both have duties to attend to.”
As the old woman drew herself erect, her wrinkled features arranged themselves into a haughty mask. “The whole neighborhood is in an uproar regarding the nature of Charlotte Randolph’s ‘duties.’”
Charlotte reddened in an instant. “How dare you?” she demanded.
Ben kept his voice carefully level, though he found himself furious on Charlotte’s behalf. “There’s no need to trouble yourself over Miss Randolph’s welfare, madam. She and the boy are both under our protection. Her only duties are to see that he’s well cared for. And I assure you, her honor will be guarded.”
“Honor? That’s not what I --”
“Go on home now,” Charlotte interrupted, gesturing toward the woman’s mud-stained bodice, “before I decide to finish what my little brother started. And mind you, don’t bother trying to make a friend of Alexander. You heard what he told you. He’s a Randolph through and through.”
Mrs. Martin’s black skirts swirled as she turned her back to Ben and Charlotte. She stalked toward her brick house, then paused to call over her shoulder, “That’s not all he is.”
She disappeared behind the row of crape myrtle bushes that separated the two homes.
Charlotte sighed and shook her head. “I’m sorry you had to be a party to such ugliness, Captain Chandler. Ever since her son died, she’s been about as civil as a riled copperhead.”
He smiled grimly. “She seems particularly fond of you, I noticed.”
Charlotte pinned him with her gaze. “She’s crazy as a betsy bug. You can’t believe a word she says.”
Behind the determination in her green eyes, he thought he recognized a dim flicker of fear. But where he would have challenged her a day – or even an hour – before, he now said nothing.
“I have to go inside,” she said after a moment’s hesitation. “Supper will be waiting, and Alexander’s a disgrace.”
“Don’t be too hard on him,” he urged her. “The kid’s been through a lot these past few days, and besides, Mrs. Martin makes a pretty tempting target.”
She shook her head. “I ought to blister his backside.”
But her smile belied her words, as did the clear fondness in her voice. She mounted the steps and stood just inside the screened door.
“Thank you, Captain Chandler,” she said before she disappeared, leaving Ben uncertain whether she appreciated the fact that he’d spoken up for her or Alexander.
He might be unclear on that point, but there was one thing he was absolutely sure of: Mrs. Martin could tell him something Charlotte Randolph did not want him to hear. If he walked next door now, he sensed that the old woman would be champing at the bit to share years’ worth of grudges.
So why did he feel hesitant to press this new advantage over Charlotte? Clearly, loyalty demanded that he investigate his suspicions.
Ben’s vision filled with the memory of Charlotte’s face, with its brief flashes of pain and terror. He marveled at how different that face was than the façade of the captivating belle she’d displayed these past few days.
After taking a final puff from his cigar, Ben dropped it onto a sandy patch and crushed it with his booted foot. Then he turned and walked into the house to wash for dinner.
Williams: She never should have been allowed to set one foot inside that house. If she had not, I wouldn’t be here. None of us would be.
- Excerpted from transcripts of the court-martial of Colonel Gideon Williams
CHAPTER SIX
That evening after dinner, Charlotte escorted Alexander to the nursery. When she lit the gaslight, she saw his face had darkened like a looming
thunderstorm.
“After what you did to Mrs. Martin, you may not come to the sitting room. I don’t care what the general said,” she told him.
“That’s all right by me. I’d rather play soldiers anyway than listen to all that grown-up talk and watch them Yanks make hound-dog eyes at you.”
“Hound-dog eyes?”
He gave a solemn nod. “That one with the fat mustache and that other one that plays piano look at you like Daisy looks at Aunt Lila when she’s spoonin’ dumplings in the bowl.”
Charlotte laughed and ran her fingers through his silky hair. “So I’m a dumpling now, am I?”
“Meanest dumpling in Memphis,” he muttered, obviously still angry that she’d denied him dessert, an apple pudding that had smelled like heaven as it cooked.
She swallowed back more laughter at his description. “You’re lucky you didn’t get a switching, too. If Papa were home, you’d be too sore to sit.”
“You ain’t gonna – aren’t going to – tell him, are you, Charlotte?”
She folded her arms and pretended to consider.
He leaned his head against her hip and hugged her hard. “I didn’t mean what I said. You’re always nice to me.”
After returning his hug, she kissed the top of his head. “Such a flatterer you are. I suppose it might remain our secret – if you mind your manners after this.”
“I promise!” he said before she left.
As she descended the two flights of stairs, Charlotte wondered how long Alexander would hold to that vow.
Once she reached the sitting room, she found a visitor joining the other officers. With his twinkling blue eyes, neat beard, and black hair going silver at the temples, he cut a dashing figure as he saluted the general.
“Gideon?” General Branard asked, his grin widening with each passing moment. “Lieutenant Gideon Williams, where the devil did you steal that colonel’s uniform?”
The man laughed. “I’m afraid it’s Colonel Gideon Williams after all, sir. A lot of things have changed since we whipped the Mexicans. Tell me, how is Mrs. Branard these days?”
“Oh, not getting around as well, but she keeps busy ordering about our son’s brood.” Branard’s smile was affectionate. He turned toward the officers of his command staff. “Gideon was one of the finest young officers I ever had the privilege of commanding.”
The general introduced those present.
“Colonel Williams,” Jonathan Snyder said, his color darkening, his voice bristling with ill-concealed hostility.
Or did Charlotte merely imagine that? Certainly, none of the others appeared to notice.
In a moment, her attention was distracted from the thought. Charlotte felt her stomach drop when the colonel’s gaze lingered upon her. Though he smiled and greeted her politely, there was a hunger in his eyes that made her uneasy. She’d seen the look before, a distant, dangerous cousin to the yearning in the lieutenants’ eyes – and even Ben Chandler’s in those rare moments when he wasn’t scowling at her.
She didn’t hear what General Branard told her next, but she guessed he’d asked for music, for he was smiling at her expectantly while Delaney McMahon moved to sit at the piano.
“I am truly looking forward to your concert,” Colonel Williams said, but something in the way he said it made her feel unaccountably shy.
Charlotte lifted the recorder. “I’m certain my playing does not qualify for that lofty term.”
“Nonsense,” said the general. “You may not sing, but your recorder does it for you.”
Lieutenant McMahon hastened to chime in his support, while Ben Chandler smiled at her, an event almost as rare as an eclipse.
Lieutenant Snyder asked that he might be excused to make preparations to complete the task he’d been assigned. When the general dismissed him, he nodded to Charlotte before leaving.
Within moments, Delaney McMahon’s hands coaxed music from the old piano. The instrument had not been played so well since Mama died. Charlotte realized that the lieutenant’s skillful improvisation made her simple melodies sound far more accomplished than they truly were. But despite the knowledge, she soared among the bright notes of a well-worn English folk song until she abruptly grew aware of the audience for whom she played.
God forgive her, that she entertained the enemy. The men who plotted to murder men such as Papa, Uncle Pete, and Michael. The people who had taken her home and made a pet of her. A well-kept pet, to be certain, but one with no more power to direct this household than Polly the cat.
Charlotte’s temples pounded with her outrage, with her need to drive these men from her home, to cease being a pretty bauble to be looked at, a soulless music box for their amusement. She wanted all of them to leave her to the tasks of raising Alexander and waiting out this war, waiting for the day things could go back to the way they were meant to be.
The folk song faltered, and before Charlotte knew what she was doing, she was playing “Dixie” for all she was worth.
To her surprise, Lieutenant McMahon, deft as ever, hastened to enrich her music with his own. Charlotte saw Ben Chandler shift uncomfortably and then pick up his cane as if he meant to leave.
Charlotte ended the song abruptly, in the middle of the chorus. Apparently unfazed, McMahon began to sing in a glorious tenor, far different from her brother’s or her father’s deeper voices.
“In Dixie’s Land I’ll take my stand, to live and die
in Dixie!
Away! Away! Away down South in Dixie!
Away! Away! Away down South --”
Charlotte had heard enough. Tears clouding her vision, she stammered some excuse about the need to check on Alexander.
On her way out of the sitting room, she heard General Branard say, “And why shouldn’t we enjoy it? It was ours before Jeff Davis stole it for his inauguration. Fella that wrote it is a Unionist, for heaven’s sake.”
She felt a momentary rush of gratitude for the old man’s kindness, and she could not help wondering if he might be defending her to Ben. But she dare not linger to hear what they were saying. At this point, she almost hoped they would expel her from the house.
Instead of leading her upstairs, her footsteps took her to the kitchen, where she sat down in the near-darkness of a room lit only by dim moonlight streaming through the window. She felt better here, where she had once shared confidences with her mother and, more often, Mama Ruth.
Her fingertips traced familiar scratches in the table’s surface. Unlike the elegant furnishings of the family dining room, the kitchen’s worktable was heavy, homely, and scarred from years of use. Her father had often threatened to have the “old barge” chopped into firewood, but his words were spoken in jest. Like his children, Papa harbored fond memories of pastries stolen from the table’s surface, which Charlotte later learned had been set out like offerings from Mama Ruth.
It was on this altar that Charlotte leaned her head as she tried to make sense of her pathetic act of mutiny.
Behind her, she heard footsteps, but she felt too demoralized to try to make out who had come into the room. The footsteps came closer, too heavy to be Alexander’s but too light for any of the men’s. Another chair scraped wood, and she realized it was General Branard’s cook who was sitting beside her.
The older woman touched her arm, then pushed something curved and hard into Charlotte’s hands. A glass, Charlotte realized as her fingers closed around it. Thirst rose to meet the thought, and she sipped at the cool liquid.
Charlotte was surprised and delighted at the taste. “I don’t know when I last tasted lemonade. Where on earth did you find sugar?”
Thanks to the Union blockade and the chaos brought by war, sugar, along with cloth and coffee, had disappeared from store shelves. If it could be had at all, the prices were outrageous. With her family’s business closed by the disruptions of war, Charlotte could ill afford to squander money on such a luxury.
The woman didn’t answer, but she didn’t need to. Charlotte had already
noted that the shortages didn’t seem to affect the tables of the Union officers. She should not have asked the question, but this time of night in this dark kitchen, it was easy to forget that she did not speak to Mama Ruth, that she likely never would again.
For several moments, neither of them spoke. Then Tillie said, “Hard, ain’t it? It’s right tiresome, livin’ with the enemy and always smilin’, no matter what you think.”
In the distant sitting room, they heard a rumble of male laughter. The officers, apparently, could entertain themselves.
“Are you living with the enemy as well?” Charlotte asked. Her voice was woven out of quiet night tones: the singing of cicadas, the whispering of breezes among the tops of trees.
The chair scraped the floor more loudly, and Tillie stood so quickly that Charlotte could not help but flinch.
“I’m sleepin’ in that little place you kept your slaves out back. Ain’t nothin’ – nothin’ more an enemy than that.”
Charlotte felt as if she had been slapped. Mama Ruth had her opinions, and not all of them were honey-coated, but she would have never spoken in such a disrespectful tone.
Because she couldn’t. Papa would not have beaten her, of course, but he would have sold her in a minute, would have broken up her family as well.
Charlotte thought of losing Alexander, thought of all she would do to keep that from happening. She thought, too, of all that she was doing for her brother, Michael, now. Certainly for her sons’ sake, Mama Ruth would keep her attitude in check.
With a start, Charlotte realized that she had never for a moment thought of Mama Ruth in such a way, had never imagined herself in the Negro woman’s situation.
A sour taste filled Charlotte’s mouth, and she decided the lemonade had been too tart, to the point of being bitter. She would not have been surprised if Tillie had spat in it.
She rose from her chair and stood facing the dark shape of the older woman.
“Who are you to judge me?” she demanded.
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