She’d give anything if she could faint now. Anything if she didn’t have to answer. Last night, with him, she’d tasted heaven. This morning, she’d been cast into the deepest hell.
Since she could no longer bear to look at him, her gaze swept over his shoulder. It settled first on General Branard, whose fierce sternness put her in mind of her grandfather as he’d once railed against “those black Republicans.” It traveled next to Jonathan Snyder, who flushed beet red behind his sandy mustache. And then to poor Delaney McMahon, whose brown eyes shone with tears. And finally to Gideon Williams, with his face as gray as death.
She looked down at her feet, the only safe spot, and amended her earlier desire. She didn’t wish to faint, but to die.
Ben’s hand grasped her upper arms and spun her in front of him. “Damn you! Answer me!”
Alarmed, she met his gaze and was nearly overwhelmed by the combination of pain and hatred she saw there. She wanted to answer him – half out of terror that he would choke her on the spot if she refused – but her own sobs made speech impossible.
Finally, she forced the words beyond the near-impenetrable blockade. “T-to all – to all of them. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, Ben. I – I only wanted to make all of you go away.”
He released her, took two steps, and slammed the heel of his hand into the phaeton’s side. The still-harnessed mare spooked, and, tied or not, dragged the carriage several yards away. When Charlotte glanced in that direction, she saw Mrs. Martin watching, her jaw unhinged in disbelief.
“Go away?” Ben’s words mocked her cruelly. “You thought you’d make us go away by whoring?
“That’s enough, Captain Chandler,” General Branard said, and Charlotte could see that unlike Ben, he was aware of Mrs. Martin’s presence.
“Lady or not, she deserves to hang for this – this abomination!” Lieutenant Snyder added. “Did she promise you, too, Chandler?”
Ben shook his head and glared at her. Would he tell them she had refused to speak with him of the future? That she had, instead, made love with him last night?
Terror overwhelmed her, prevented her from breathing, and flickering black dots swarmed in her vision. She would die – literally die - if he said such a thing in front of Mrs. Martin and the others, if he put their sacred act into the same class as the deceptions she’d carried out to garner information for the cause.
But Charlotte did not die. Instead a faint, the same that she had prayed in vain to take her earlier, robbed her of the answers to her questions.
In her last flicker of consciousness, she realized that Ben Chandler caught her before her body struck the ground.
Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence.
-- John Adams
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Thursday, July 24, 1862
Jonathan Snyder finished sorting through the day’s deliveries addressed to their prisoner. There were other duties he might have chosen, other places he might have worked, but he’d be damned if he ran sniveling from Charlotte Randolph’s treachery.
“That’s seven notes of praise, four flattering poems, three death threats, two cakes, a basket of flowers,” he took a breath, “another proposal of marriage, and --”
“And a partri-idge in a pear tree,” Delaney McMahon sang as he looked up from the paperwork he’d spread across the dining room table. “Yesterday, I took up a box of black trimmed underthings the dressmaker sent to accompany the mourning garments he delivered Monday. Next thing, they’ll be sending --”
Jonathan interrupted the younger man, who sat across from him, with a withering look. What Charlotte had ever seen in the puny Irishman he could not begin to fathom.
McMahon dropped his pretense of humor and shrugged on the whipped pup look he’d worn since learning of Charlotte’s treachery. He gestured toward the stack of cards, gifts, and threats addressed to the woman in question. “More than three weeks now, and it shows no sign of stopping.”
“Every time I think of that old woman spreading this around, I want to rush next door and break her neck,” Jonathan grumbled. The comment had come up more than once before. Though he considered himself a cut above McMahon, their common misery had led them to many discussions of those they felt were to blame.
McMahon ignored the reference to Mrs. Martin, who had spread the rumor so efficiently that the newspaper soon caught wind of the most titillating story of the summer. Instead, he said, “I asked General Branard about that transfer I requested. I told him any unit would be fine, anywhere he wants to send me.”
So McMahon meant to run from the place where Charlotte Randolph remained under house arrest. Snyder remembered with disgust the day he’d found the Irishman writing a letter to his mother about the circumstances of his broken engagement. Tears had run freely down McMahon’s flushed face.
“What did the general tell you?” Snyder asked. He wasn’t going anywhere. Not when he could repay Charlotte for a fraction of the humiliation he’d felt at that first headline in the Argus: “Federal Officers Duped by Female Spy.” He saw it in stark black and white each time he closed his eyes. The report had named Williams, McMahon, and himself, and in the days that followed, the scandal had exploded.
Fortunately, the bulk of criticism had fallen onto Colonel Williams. Though the citizens of Memphis seemed divided on whether Charlotte Randolph was a heroine or the Antichrist in a corset, most were appalled by the idea of a married colonel being caught up in such sordidness. Though McMahon and Snyder’s futures remained in doubt, Williams had already been charged with conduct unbecoming an officer and a gentleman. He’d been so far allowed to retain his command until the trial, but his position appeared more dubious with each passing day. Unfortunately, Jonathan’s connection to the case prevented him from reveling in his enemy’s misfortune.
“The general told me none of us are going anywhere before Miss Randolph’s hearing is complete,” McMahon said, “and that he fully intends to see the traitors punished.”
Snyder didn’t answer. So far, Charlotte had refused to testify regarding the sources of her information. Though all three of “the fiancés,” as they were now known collectively, remained under suspicion, nothing could be proven without her cooperation. General Armsworthy, a wheezing lump of a man who was acting as presiding judge advocate, had grown impatient with Charlotte’s silence – impatient enough that he had threatened to have her removed from the Randolph house and sent to prison. When even that had failed to move her, he had called her an unfit guardian for the child she was raising and promised to see to it that such rights were terminated.
Jonathan frowned at the memory of her hesitation – and of the terror in her eyes. She’d glanced briefly in his direction, remembering, no doubt, the one occasion he’d been allowed to carry mail to her, when he had made it clear that any improvement in her memory might prove less than healthful. She might have buckled anyway, but General Armsworthy’s wheezing had grown suddenly louder. Within minutes, the choking man was carried bodily from the room. Charlotte’s hearing had been postponed until next Monday while the general recovered from his worst asthma attack in recent memory.
McMahon leaned forward and lowered his voice. “But that’s not all General Branard said. He chewed on me something fierce about how I never should have disobeyed him and led his poor Emma astray.”
Snyder felt his brows climb. Armsworthy was not the only general with health problems. “Another bad day for the old man, eh?”
Lowering his voice even further – for deafness was not among Branard’s infirmities – Delaney nodded and added, “I think he’s sleeping in his chair now.”
“Again? And where’s the Model Officer?” Jonathan had taken to calling Chandler by that name after Branard – in a more lucid moment – had praised him for being the only man among them who’d been wise enough to suspect Charlotte from the start.
“He’s still resting in
his room,” Delaney answered. “The sawbones told him to stay off that sore leg.”
“I still can’t believe a rancher got kicked by a horse.”
McMahon shrugged. “His gray was getting a new set of shoes, and that bay he borrowed didn’t take to being mounted from the far side. Captain Chandler said he should have known better, but the general asked him to dispatch a telegram in a hurry.”
Jonathan thought about it for a moment. He’d never noticed it before, but with Chandler’s lower left leg missing, he would have to mount from the right side. A horse unused to the change might well take exception.
The resulting kick to Chandler’s left thigh had laid him up the past two days. Just as well, thought Snyder, since the Texan had subjected him to black looks ever since the discovery of Charlotte’s treachery. Jonathan suspected Chandler, too, had had designs on the harlot. Chandler ought to be grateful she’d been caught before he stepped in the same pile.
“Think I’ll take these deliveries upstairs then – to Charlotte.” Jonathan smiled and waited to see if McMahon would react.
After Jonathan’s first trip, Branard had told him it wasn’t fitting for a man implicated in Miss Randolph’s espionage to have any contact with her. He’d then assigned the chore to Tillie, who complained incessantly about the added duty without added pay.
About a half hour earlier, they’d seen Tillie take Alexander with her to the kitchen, where she’d either set him to the task of shelling peas or stirring batter before she took him out to play this afternoon. Though the mulatto woman complained about this task, too, anyone with eyes could see that she enjoyed it.
McMahon looked up from his stack of papers. “I don’t think that’s such a good idea.”
“I won’t be but a minute. Besides, do you really want to listen to Tillie if I ask her to do it?”
Frowning, Delaney shook his head. “Saints preserve us both from another of her tantrums. I suppose it’d be all right if you just dropped off the letters. General says to sort out the death threats – and don’t take up the food. Too likely to be poisoned by someone who sees things our way. Like maybe my mother.”
Ignoring him, Snyder placed all the deliveries in his basket. Where Charlotte was concerned, he was fresh out of chivalry. And if someone killed the lying bitch with poison, he’d send the cook a thank you note.
And he’d never have to worry about her telling tales again.
o0o
Ben held the morphine pills in one hand and Charlotte’s note in the other. He knew from experience that the first would ease his misery while the second would serve only to inflame it.
In a way, Charlotte’s message had led to the injury that had laid him up since Monday morning. Or perhaps not the note itself, but his preoccupation with its contents. Certainly, had he been in his right mind, he would not have made such a foolish blunder with an unfamiliar mount.
Unable to resist temptation, Ben set aside the medicine and unfolded the paper. As he did so, he noticed that it was beginning to show signs of wear from his handling since Charlotte sent it to him two weeks earlier. As well it might, for he had read it more times than he would ever admit. Still, he could neither prevent his gaze from lingering on the distinctly feminine handwriting nor his mind from trying to read new meaning into the words he’d memorized.
Dearest Ben,
I would gladly die for the chance to undo what I have done. Foolishly, I allowed myself to be convinced that spying was my duty and that manipulating men’s affections was the way to accomplish this most quickly, so that I might end a thoroughly unpleasant situation.
I never planned on losing my heart in the process – not to any of those I gave false promises, but to you. I know you have no reason to believe a proven liar; I know that I have no chance of forgiveness. No matter, for I still need to ask it and to tell you how very sorry I am for what I’ve done.
Please come and see me, Ben. Please let me try to make you understand. And if you could find it in your heart to do for me one small favor, please bring me news of Ida April and Mrs. Perkins.
With all my love,
Charlotte
P.S. “Once harm has been done, even a fool understands it.”
Tillie had been the one to bring the message. And though she was not capable of having read it, she’d told him in an uncharacteristically gentle voice, “That girl’s heart be changin’.”
Was it? Or had Charlotte sent similar notes to all her legion of admirers? Certainly, she’d had time enough to write them and sufficient solitude to consider their effect.
Yet his memory was rife with the ways that their relationship had been different from the ones she’d had with Williams, Snyder, and McMahon. She’d clearly shared with none of them the story he’d wrested from her in her uncle’s farmhouse, or Alexander’s illegitimacy would have been entered into evidence against her character early in her hearing. And instead of extracting a proposal from him, as Ben had to admit she might have done in the wake of their lovemaking, Charlotte had steered him from any discussion of the future.
She signed with all her love – and with a quote from the translated Homer, a suspicion it had taken him a trip to the local bookseller to confirm. He’d ended up buying a well-worn copy and had spent much of the past two days reading, as if the tale would offer him a clue, a key to understanding . . . or was it the power of forgiveness that he sought?
As he refolded the note, he thought again of how she’d written it before the judge had given her his painful ultimatum. Why was she hesitating to tell all she knew? Did she truly regret what she had done and wish to cause no more harm? Even if that were so, it was difficult to imagine her risking Alexander’s future . . . unless. He recalled the look he’d seen pass between Charlotte and Jonathan Snyder, a look he’d taken for an expression of remorse, perhaps even affection. Jealousy had jolted through Ben so powerfully that he had turned away in anger, but now he wondered if something more sinister was at work.
Ben slipped the folded paper beneath the mattress. Afterward, he reached for his artificial leg, in spite of the still-livid bruise on his left thigh.
Tillie had come by a while earlier to complain to him that the screws holding the lock on the door to the third story had pulled loose. He well recalled the intensity in her blue eyes as she had made the statement. The last thing she had said was, “’Bout time you got up anyway. Mind you, tend to that today.”
Alexander had been with her, so she could say no more. In spite of the situation, Alexander appeared to be taking Charlotte’s confinement in stride. Instead of fretting, the boy seemed as eager as ever to escape outside to play with Honeybee.
Though Tillie’s message had been brief, it had quickly taken root. Ben wondered if the mulatto woman had sensed how the note and two long weeks – three, since he’d last held her - had weakened his resolve.
Injury or not, he was going to see Charlotte. He needed answers to his questions, and he swore to himself that he would have them today.
o0o
Charlotte stood beside the window and gazed out at Alexander, who squealed happily as Honeybee danced circles around him. She had tried again last night to make him understand something of their situation. Perhaps her explanations about her refusal to testify and her house arrest had been too subtle, too gentle for a child’s comprehension. Alexander had only commented, “So this is like when I’m bad and you send me to my room.”
Perhaps it was a blessing that he didn’t – or wouldn’t understand how his future, too, hung in the balance. And that he knew nothing of the threats of General Horatio Armsworthy, that gasping windbag of a general who presided over the court of inquiry.
At first, she had imagined the man an unwitting ally after he had categorized her espionage as “a misguided attempt to meddle in the affairs of men” and her multiple engagements as “childlike mischief.” Insulting as his words were, she felt certain that if she had cooperated with his demands, he would have dismissed her with a punishmen
t no worse than continued house arrest. Then he could turn his attention to the more serious charges that would be leveled against the soldiers involved: Snyder, McMahon, and Williams.
Then let him, Charlotte prayed. Let him do anything but take away my child.
The bright peals of Alexander’s joy fragmented into slivers that impaled themselves into her heart. She could never give up the chance to share in his exuberance, to wipe away his tears, to mark his growth and guide his journey into manhood. Not even if her words brought down all three of the men who had been caught up in her web of lies.
She wondered, not for the first time, if she was being selfish to spend the careers – perhaps even the lives – of those Union officers so she could raise her child. But she told herself that all three were grown men, officers who should know better than to share such information with the daughter of a devout secessionist. Alexander was the only innocent in this, and he’d already lost so much.
Within the prism of her tears, Alexander’s and the pup’s forms blurred as they tumbled in grass still glistening from an early morning shower. Though she knew the boy would come inside with his clothes stained or torn, she let those possibilities glide over and around her. If her decision proved fatal, if Jonathan Snyder or one of the others possessed both the will and the means to silence her before she testified, she did not wish to spend her last days troubled by minutiae.
But neither did she intend to sit back and blithely wait to see if death instead of a judge’s ruling would separate her from her son. Instead, she had been searching for some method to ensure her safety.
Outside, the puppy tangled in its own long legs and rolled out of a run. For the first time in weeks, pleasure slipped through Charlotte’s veil of anxiety, and she laughed aloud. She might as well find amusement where she could, she decided, mindful that she’d spent so much time since her arrest in weeping.
She cried for her dead father and the rift with her brother, Michael. For the shame she’d once more brought the family name. For what she’d done – and what more damage she’d be forced to do - to the three officers whom she’d agreed to marry. And especially, for the loss of what she might have shared with Ben, had circumstances introduced them in another place and time.
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