Candle in the Darkness

by Lynn Austin

  Illness struck the army camps as well, with dysentery, typhoid, diphtheria, and pneumonia claiming hundreds of soldiers who had successfully dodged bullets and Minie balls. Everyone in camp is coughing, Charles wrote. The Yankees can probably hear us clear across the Rappahannock.

  On New Year’s Day, 1863, President Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation officially granted all of the slaves in all of the Confederate states their freedom. But across the South, nothing changed for the Negroes as the war plodded on. I decided that helping Robert escape was the least I could do to win freedom for my slaves.

  On a cold January morning, Eli and I set out to explore the fenced yard east of Libby Prison, the best potential exit site for Robert’s tunnel. We agreed that I would go inside Kerr’s Warehouse, which faced Cary Street, while Eli snooped around in the vacant lot adjacent to it. We parked the carriage across from the prison and walked back to the warehouse so that I could pace the lot’s width; I found out Robert would have to dig a tunnel thirtythree paces long.

  I left Eli outside and stepped through the warehouse door into a tiny, square office. The clerk seated at a desk inside the door looked tired and ill and at least seventy-five years old. Good manners required him to stand in a woman’s presence, so I scanned the small office as he struggled to his feet.

  “I’d like to speak to Mr. Gallagher, please,” I told him, fabricating a name.

  “Who? Gallagher?” he repeated. “There’s no one here by that name.”

  I had hoped there would be a window overlooking the backyard, but the only window faced the street. The door leading into the rest of the warehouse was closed.

  “I was told Mr. Gallagher was the manager here,” I said.

  “You were told wrong. I’m the manager. Name’s Kerr, like the sign says. Maybe I can help you.”

  “I don’t think so. I need to see Mr. Gallagher on personal business. It concerns his sister. Is it possible that he worked here before the war? Maybe someone else might know where I can reach him.” If Mr. Kerr went into the back to check, perhaps I could catch a glimpse through the open door. But he didn’t move. His weary, unfriendly expression didn’t change, either.

  “Never has been anyone here by that name. I’ve worked here fifty-two years. I would know.”

  “Oh dear. I wonder if I have the wrong warehouse?” I tried to act flustered, digging around in my reticule as if searching for something, but I was really stalling to give Eli more time outside. “Now, where did I put that address? There isn’t another Kerr’s Warehouse in Richmond, is there?”

  “Not that I know of.”

  He sounded irritated. I delayed as long as I dared, painstakingly removing my gloves, searching my coat pockets, and going through the contents of my reticule again. When Mr. Kerr looked as though he might throw me out the door, I thanked him for his trouble. “I’m very sorry to have bothered you.”

  Eli hurried over to the carriage to compare notes with me as soon as he saw me. “The warehouse was a dead end,” I told him. “There’s no view out the back. Were you able to learn anything?”

  He shook his head. “Not a thing. I act like I’m bored, waiting for you. Walk all around the empty lot, looking at the ground like I expecting to find treasure. Got near the fence but it’s too high to see over.”

  “Were the prison sentries watching?”

  “You bet. One of them ask what I’m doing but I play like I just a crazy old slave looking around for pennies. They yell for me to get on out of there, so I did—taking my time, of course.”

  “What if they remember that we were snooping around, after the prison break?”

  “Let’s worry about that when it happen.”

  We waited a few days. Then on a snowy, overcast morning, Eli and I drove down to Canal Street and went inside the other building that shared the fenced yard—the James River Towing Company. This time the low-ceilinged office ran the width of the building, and there were indeed a pair of windows overlooking the rear yard. Unfortunately, shutters covered the lower half of the glass, blocking the view. Three desks shared space in the cramped office, but only one of them was occupied—by another very elderly man. Manners or not, he looked too frail to stand and made no attempt to do so. A wooden countertop separated his area of the office from the public.

  “May I help you?” he called.

  I put on my sweetest smile. “I hope so. I’d like to inquire about your towing rates. Do you haul only for commercial companies, or would you consider a small private contract?”

  “You want us to haul your household goods, right?”

  “Yes, how did you know? I’m concerned about protecting our family’s heirlooms if the city should be torched. Do you get a lot of requests of this sort?”

  Eli rocked on his tiptoes beside me as I talked, trying to peer over the shutters. We were still too far away to see out the windows. We had to get closer.

  “Sure do,” the man said with a sigh. “But we have more business than we can handle just hauling ore down the canal to Tredegar’s. Not nearly enough labor, either, with everyone off to war. You wouldn’t be interested in leasing that big Negro of yours, would you?” he asked, gesturing toward Eli.

  “No, sorry. I’ve had a lot of offers for Eli, but I need him myself.” I glanced all around the office while we talked and I spotted a yellow cat on the other side of the counter, curled up asleep on one of the desks. “What a lovely cat. May I pet her? Is she friendly?” I sidled through the opening in the counter without waiting for his reply. Eli followed as if he’d been trained to stay glued to my heels. The man didn’t stop us.

  “Cat’s friendly enough, I suppose. I don’t keep her for company. She’s a pretty decent mouser.”

  “You don’t say? We have a terrible problem with mice in our stable, don’t we, Eli? They’re always into the feed, and they make an awful mess. Would you consider selling her?” The cat purred as I stroked her head.

  “Nope, can’t sell her. I need her myself. She’s always having kittens every time I turn around, though. You’re welcome to the whole litter of them. I’ll just have to toss them in the canal, otherwise.”

  I glanced over the shutters into the yard while he talked and saw why they had blocked the view. Overgrown weeds, rusted machinery, and piles of used lumber poked through the thin blanket of snow. But aside from a tool shed and all the junk, the yard was empty. I gave the cat a final scratch behind her ears and slowly retraced my steps toward the door.

  “Thank you for your time,” I said. “I’ll stop by in the spring for a kitten, so make sure you don’t drown them all.”

  We walked outside into the gray afternoon. Fresh snow dusted our carriage like talcum powder. “I guess we found our spot,” Eli said. “Just an empty yard. Nothing in it but junk.”

  “You don’t suppose the office hires a night watchman, do you?”

  Eli shook his head. “Man said there ain’t no one to hire.”

  The following afternoon we went to Libby Prison to tell Robert the good news. “I think Eli and I have found a good exit site for your tunnel,” I said.

  Robert stopped eating the cornbread I’d brought him and looked up in surprise. “How far will I have to dig?”

  “Only about fifty feet—thirty-three paces, to be exact. You’ll surface inside a fenced yard where the guards can’t see you.”

  He stared into the distance for a long moment as if trying to visualize his freedom. “This couldn’t come at a better time,” he said. “We’ve loosened enough bricks to crawl inside the chimney that runs through the center of my building. We just broke through into the basement last night. The east cellar is empty. There’s a kitchen and some cells for condemned prisoners in the middle one, but otherwise there’s nothing much down there except rats.”

  Robert seemed stronger, saner, now that he was doing something to control his fate. I didn’t want to remind him of the penalty if he was caught.

  “Can’t the guards hear you chipping into the chimney?”
I asked.

  “We only work in the daytime when it’s noisy. Sometimes if we’re afraid the guards might hear us, we get all the men to sing or start an argument or yell at the lice races to cover up the noise.

  But now that we’ve dug through the masonry, we’ll be able to tunnel all night through the dirt.”

  “What on earth are you digging with?”

  “Chunks of brick, scraps of metal, a couple of spoons—things like that. But as I said, now that we’ve reached the cellar we’re stuck. We didn’t know in which direction to dig or how far.”

  Eli had always stood silently beside the door without uttering a word, but he suddenly stepped forward between Robert and me. “Let me take it from here,” he said. He squatted down and began drawing on the floor in the tobacco dust. “This here the northeast corner of the building. This the east wall . . . Go south to the second basement window. If you start digging there . . . and go straight across beneath the empty lot for thirty-three paces . . . you come up here . . . behind a fence.”

  Robert was studying Eli, not the diagram. His expression was one of suspicion and disbelief. “Caroline, does he—?”

  “You looking mighty amazed to see that I can talk,” Eli said angrily. I’d seldom seen him this way. “Maybe you thinking there nothing up here but cotton?” he asked, tapping his head. “I always was told that Yankees see colored folk as real people. Always told that things is different up north. Guess I was told wrong.”

  “I’m sorry,” Robert said. “Forgive me. Some of us from up north still need to change our attitudes. Please continue.”

  “Missy Caroline doing this for me and Tessie and the others, you know. She got a lot of love in her heart. But I don’t want her getting into trouble, see? So if something go wrong and you get caught, you tell them the truth—you tell them that it was Eli who showed you where to dig and how far. Understand?”

  “I would never betray either one of you.”

  Eli bent to return to his drawing. “Like I say, this here the northeast corner of the building. Make sure you start your tunnel here . . . by the second basement window. You be underneath a vacant lot. Go straight across it for thirty-three paces. Come up here, behind a tall fence where the guards never see you. You have to break into the south building—James River Towing Company. Then slip on out through the front door and you be on Canal Street. There still a chance the guards along the canal will see you, so you have to watch when they go around. Wait till they pass on by. You got all that?”

  “Yes, thank you.”

  Eli swirled his hand in the dust to erase it. “Now I draw you a map so you know how to get out of the city.” He showed Robert the main routes out of Richmond and explained which ones were the least traveled. “I show you again next time I come so you memorize it.”

  “Thank you for all your help, but that won’t be necessary. I’ve already memorized it. From now on, we will never talk about any of this again.”

  “But I’d like to hear about your progress,” I began, “and—”

  “No!” Robert cut me off so quickly I jumped in surprise. “I’m sorry, Caroline, but I don’t want you to know when I’m going to do this. That way you won’t know anything about it and you can’t be accused of helping. You’ll just come to visit me here one day— and I’ll be gone.” He smiled faintly. It was the first one I remembered seeing since I’d started visiting months ago.

  “I’ll pray that you make it, Robert,” I said.

  “Amen,” Eli added. “We both be praying.”

  On a rainy night in early March, Eli startled me out of my wits when he appeared in the darkness beside my bed and shook me awake. “Missy Caroline? Missy. . . ? Better wake up and come with me. You friend Robert is here . . . and he’s hurt.”

  Tessie awoke, too, and quickly fetched the matches to light a lamp. Eli stopped her. “Guards gonna be all over this city when they find out there’s a prison break. Better not see our lights on.”

  I put on my dressing gown and carefully followed Eli downstairs, the familiar furnishings looming in the eerie darkness. It was raining lightly outside, and I shivered in the cold. With no light from either moon or stars, I could barely find my way down the path to the carriage house. Robert had chosen a good night to conceal his escape.

  “Why did he come here?” I whispered to Eli. “And how did he find our house?”

  “Said he knew your address from writing all them letters. He thinking he just gonna hide out in the stable for while and not let us know he here. But the little mare woke me up—she don’t like strangers, you know—so I go on out and see what’s bothering her. There’s Robert, hiding in the hay. He’s bleeding, Missy Caroline. Guard shoot him in the leg.”

  Robert huddled in the dark in the farthest stall, looking very pale. His face, hands, and uniform were covered with dirt from the tunnel and smudged with blood. Eli had hung an old blanket over the window to mask the candlelight, and Esther and Ruby knelt beside him, doctoring his leg. The bullet had scraped across the side of his calf, taking a good-sized chunk of flesh with it. The wound was deep, but it was already starting to clot. At least there was no bullet to remove.

  Robert groaned when he saw me. “I don’t want to involve you, Caroline. Please, tell your servants to let me leave now.”

  Ruby grunted. “Humph! How far you think you gonna get, dragging this leg like a crippled grasshopper? They catch you in no time, limping along.”

  “I just needed to rest. I couldn’t run anymore. It hurt too much, and I had to stop and wrap up my leg. Please, I can’t stay here.”

  “Do the guards know there’s been an escape?” I asked.

  “They do now. A lot of us made it out, though. I volunteered to wait in the Towing Office and watch out the front window. I was timing the sentries, telling the others when it was safe to go.”

  “What went wrong?”

  “One of the men panicked and ran out before it was safe. Three others misunderstood and ran with him. A sentry spotted them and shouted for the rest of the guards. After that, all the prisoners stampeded out. We’re all in Federal uniforms, so there was no point in waiting or trying to bluff our way free. I had to run, too. One of the sentries started shooting at us with his revolver. I was lucky he only nicked me. I know he hit a couple of my friends because I saw two of them fall. Couple more jumped into the canal.”

  Ruby finished wrapping his leg and tied the bandage. “Don’t you be moving your leg all around or it’s gonna start bleeding again,” she warned.

  “I have no choice. Thanks for your help, but I have to go.”

  “They’ll have roadblocks up,” I said. “You’d better stay right here.”

  “No! I won’t endanger you!”

  But in the silent night we could already hear the faint sound of the alarm bell ringing downtown in Capitol Square. “Too late to worry about that,” Esther said. “They ringing the alarm.”

  “You can’t outrun the home guard,” I told him. “They’ll be on horseback. And they’ll have torches.”

  “What are we going to do?” Tessie asked.

  We all looked to Eli.

  “Everybody go back to bed,” he said. “If they come here looking for him, y’all be just waking up. I’ll hide Massa Robert. That way, they ask you where he hiding, you won’t have to lie because you won’t know. And you won’t be giving the secret away by acting nervous.”

  He took Robert’s arm to help him up, but Esther gripped Eli’s other arm to stop him. “I don’t want you getting in no trouble, Eli.”

  “Lord can take care of me if He choose to. Now, you hurry up and go on back to bed.”

  I crept back into the house with Tessie and climbed into bed. I couldn’t stop shivering though, nor could I go back to sleep. Downtown, the alarm bell rang and rang, probably waking all of Richmond by now. Loud shouts and the thunder of hooves drifted uphill on the wind. I thought I heard Ruby or Luella tiptoeing up the stairs and padding down the hallway, but I stayed in bed. T
he clock downstairs struck three.

  I hadn’t been this scared since the war started. I prayed and prayed until I ran out of words to say. Then, not long after threethirty, I heard horses trotting up Grace Street, and the murmur of men’s voices outside. They stopped beside my house.

  “You head around back. Search the stable and all the outbuildings. We’ll go around to the front.” It was Major Turner from Libby Prison. I recognized his boyish voice.

  Moments later, he pounded on the front door downstairs. I nearly leaped out of bed, my heart hammering along with his fist. Then I remembered that I was supposed to be asleep. It was Gilbert’s job to answer the door. I waited. The pounding continued.

  Finally I heard Gilbert’s footsteps in the foyer. “Who’s there?” he called.

  “Major Thomas Turner from Libby Prison. Open up.”

  Tessie got up and wrapped a shawl around herself. “Keep praying, honey,” she whispered as she hurried out into the stair hall. The front door squeaked slightly as Gilbert opened it.

  “I need to speak to Miss Fletcher immediately,” Turner said.

  “She sleeping,” Tessie replied. Her voice grew more distant as she hurried downstairs. “That’s what everybody here trying to do. Don’t you know it’s the middle of the night?”

  “Wake her up,” Major Turner commanded. “Government orders.”

  “Okay . . . guess I got to do what the government says,” Tessie grumbled. “But Missy need to get dressed. Gonna take few minutes.”

  “There’s no time for that. Get her down here now.”

  Tessie returned to my bedroom and lit a candle. “Take you time, honey. You supposed to be asleep, remember?” She helped me into my heavy winter dressing gown. Even so I felt naked, especially in front of Turner.