by Lynn Austin
It snowed just before Christmas, burying the ugliness of wartime Richmond beneath a blanket of pure white. Unbelievably, this was the third Christmas we had celebrated since the war began. The night of Charles’ and my engagement seemed like a lifetime ago, instead of four years. Indeed, hadn’t we both lived through a lifetime’s worth of experiences since that night? The fact that no end to this war was in sight made our sorrow worse. As we gathered in church on Christmas Eve, everyone prayed that this would be the last Christmas our men would be away from us. I asked for that, too. But while the others continued to pray that the Confederate States would win their independence, I struggled to surrender to God’s will, trying to pray “Thy will be done.”
Christmas dinner in most Richmond homes was a somber affair. It wasn’t the scarcity of food that caused the sadness but the missing faces at each meal, the ever-increasing tally of loved ones who would never return home. I shared a simple meal in the kitchen with my servants again, a quiet celebration of the fact that we were all together, that no one had been sold. The celebration was enriched by baby Isaac’s robust laughter as he bounced in his grandfather’s arms, pulling on his snowy beard.
I spent Christmas Day with the St. Johns again, but I eagerly looked forward to dinner with them this year because of the secret errand my cousin Jonathan had entrusted to me—delivering Sally’s Christmas present on his behalf. Sally hadn’t seen him in over a year, ever since he’d recovered from his injury and had returned to fight at Fredericksburg. Of course, wrapping paper and ribbons were nowhere to be found, but I managed to make the present look special by covering the little gift box with an embroidered handkerchief from my trousseau and tying it up with a ribbon cut from one of my hats. For the first time in three years, I was anticipating the holiday.
“Special delivery,” I said, handing the present to Sally on Christmas Day. Her family had gathered in her little parlor that morning, huddling around a skimpy fire. “It’s from someone who wishes he could have given it to you himself.”
“From Jonathan? Really?” She was nearly speechless with delight.
“Go ahead, open it. There’s a note from him inside, too.”
Sally carefully untied the ribbon and parted the folds of the handkerchief. I saw her hands tremble as she lifted the lid off the box and pulled out a glittering topaz ring.
“Oh . . . it’s beautiful!”
“It belonged to our Grandmother Fletcher. Jonathan’s father made a special trip into Richmond to deliver it. Read the letter.”
Sally covered her mouth with her hand in a futile attempt to hold back her tears as she read the note Jonathan had enclosed. “He’s asking me to marry him,” she said, looking up at her parents and me. “Daddy. . . ?”
“I know, I know. He already wrote and asked for my permission.” Mr. St. John spoke gruffly, as if unwilling to reveal his emotions.
“Did you give him your blessing, Daddy?”
He nodded, frowning. “Very unusual way to court someone, if you ask me. That’s the trouble with wars, they disrupt all the old traditions.” Sally flew into his arms, hugging him tightly. She hugged her mother, then me.
“Now you and Jonathan are in the same boat as Charles and me,” I said, “waiting for the war to end, praying that it happens soon.”
“Whoever heard of an engagement by mail?” Mr. St. John mumbled, shaking his head.
Later, when Sally and I were alone in her room, I gave her a second letter from Jonathan—to be opened in private, he had said, after Sally accepted his proposal. I sat across from her on the bed, both of us wrapped in quilts to keep warm, and watched her read his letter through twice. The topaz ring sparkled on her finger.
“Jonathan doesn’t want to wait until the war ends,” she told me when she finished. “He’s trying to get a furlough. He wants us to be married as soon as possible.”
“Is that what you want, too?”
She nodded, swiping at her tears before they dripped onto the precious letter and smudged the ink. “I used to dream of a big, fancy wedding in St. Paul’s with flowers and bridesmaids and hundreds of guests,” she said. “I wanted to wear a beautiful gown and sail to Europe on my wedding trip . . . but now none of that seems important anymore. I only want to be Mrs. Jonathan Fletcher for as long as we both shall live. I love him, Caroline. I love him so much.”
I reached for her hand. “I know. I would have gone to a justice of the peace to marry Charles the last time he was home . . . but he wouldn’t do it.”
“Why not? I know how much he loves you.”
“This is hard to say, Sally, but he says he doesn’t want to leave me . . . a widow.”
The memory of Charles’ terrible words sliced through my heart: “Caroline. You must prepare yourself for the fact that I might die.”
I looked at Sally’s stricken face and was sorry I had raised the specter of death on such a joyful day. “Your wedding to Jonathan might not be a lavish one,” I said quickly, “but we can make sure it’s a wonderful one. Let’s plan it together, shall we? Then everything will be ready the moment Jonathan walks through the door. You won’t have to waste a single moment of his furlough.”
The idea excited her. “Which dress should I wear? My rose silk is the nicest one I have but it’s old and quite frayed around the hem. Do you think I can open the seams and turn it so it looks new?”
“Let me see it.” As she pulled the dress out of her wardrobe and spread it across the bed, I remembered how beautiful she had looked in it the night of her Christmas party, five years ago. She had stood in her soaring entrance hall, greeting her guests, the stairway behind her decked in candles and greenery. I had been awed by the St. Johns’ wealth, their magnificent home, their countless servants. We had no way of knowing on that joyful night what the future held for all of us, that war would ravage that prosperity, that Sally would have to remake a five-year-old dress into her wedding gown. And we couldn’t know what next Christmas would bring, either.
For the second time that afternoon, I recalled Charles’ terrible words: “Listen now. I’ve had to prepare myself . . . and you must, too.”
Quietly, tenderly, I felt the Lord’s presence surrounding me, drawing me to Him, coming to dwell among us as He had that first Christmas. As the angels had sung their song of joy, no one in Bethlehem had known about the coming tragedy of the cross— or the triumph of the empty tomb. I couldn’t know my future either, but I could trust the One who held it in His hand. I opened my heart and my hands to God, offering Him my dreams, trusting in His resurrection power. Thy will be done.
“I want you to wear my wedding dress,” I told Sally.
She stared at me, openmouthed.
“I really mean it. The dress and everything else I made for my trousseau are just going to waste, moldering in a trunk at the foot of my bed. It would make me so happy to let you use my things.”
“But . . . what about your own wedding?”
“Charles wants to wait until the war ends. By then we’ll have boatloads of new dresses to choose from. Please, Sally, let me give it to you for a wedding present—all of it—the dress, the chemise, the petticoats and crinolines. They’ll look so beautiful on you.”
“I . . . I don’t know what to say.”
“Say yes. Then we can plan your reception, too. Do you suppose they have ‘starvation club’ receptions during wartime?”
Sally laughed and cried at the same time. “You are so dear to me, Caroline. I’ll never be able to thank you. And to think I hated you the first time we met. I was so jealous of you and Jonathan.”
“That was his plan that night,” I said, smiling. “To storm the castle and win your heart. See how well it worked?”
In the new year, 1864, Sally and I poured our energy into planning her wedding. “You’ll have the best reception ‘no money’ can buy,” I joked. All we needed was the groom, and Jonathan wrote to say that he’d threatened to desert if his commanding officer didn’t grant him a furlough soon
.
While we waited, I continued to host evening get-togethers at my house and afternoon gatherings of our ladies’ sewing circle. Our latest project was to stitch a new Confederate uniform jacket for Jonathan, cut from an old blanket and dyed “butternut gray” with homemade dyes. But before we had time to finish it, Sally drove up Church Hill to my house one afternoon with bad news.
“I came to tell you that there won’t be any more meetings or parties,” she said. “It happened again. Mrs. Fremont came home yesterday to find two of her maidservants missing. So was the emerald necklace that has been in her husband’s family for eighty years.”
“Oh no.” I groaned as I sank into Daddy’s chair. This wasn’t the first time one of my guests had returned home to find that her servants had run away, taking some of the family valuables with them. “Two of them ran away?” I asked. “And it happened during sewing circle?”
Sally nodded. “That makes four times that somebody’s slaves have run off while we were at your house. I’m sorry, but the ladies don’t want to come to the meetings anymore. They think . . .”
“What? What do they think? That I’m involved?”
Sally shrugged. “It is an awfully big coincidence.”
The thought had occurred to me that my servants might be involved in helping all these slaves run away, that they were using the map I had drawn for Eli. I would have to find out, but for now I had to allay the women’s suspicions. “How could I be helping these slaves if I was here at the meeting the entire time? Did you ask them that, Sally? And don’t you think it would have happened no matter where we’d met?”
“Please don’t be angry with me. I never said it was your fault. I’m only saying that it’s what the others think—and it’s why they don’t want to come here anymore. If we’re meeting regularly, you see, the slaves know when to plan their escape.”
“Well then,” I said, trying to act unconcerned. “If the ladies don’t want to come anymore it will be their loss, not mine.”
I put on my cloak and gloves later that afternoon and went out to the carriage house to talk to Eli. He had the back door open so he could shovel out the manure, and the stable was freezing cold inside. I hugged myself and rubbed my arms to keep warm while I waited for him to set the shovel aside and close the door.
“If you need to talk, we can go in the kitchen where it’s warm,” he said.
I shook my head, trying to find a way to begin. “Eli . . . do you know anything about Mrs. Fremont’s two servants running away yesterday?”
“Ivy and Lila,” he said, smiling faintly. “They’s mother and daughter, did you know that? Missus Fremont planning to send Lila away to North Carolina to be a nanny to her son’s new baby. Lila only thirteen years old. She ain’t never been away from Mama Ivy before. Don’t neither one of them want to be torn apart.”
His words shook me. I found it easy to see my own servants as individuals who loved and dreamed dreams, just like me. But I had looked past Mrs. Fremont’s servants—and everyone else’s servants— as if they weren’t even there. Now I was learning that their stories were much the same. Tessie had been only fourteen when my father took her from her parents at Hilltop to be my nanny.
“I understand,” I said quietly. “What about the other people who have run away?”
“Well now, let’s see . . .” he said, settling down on the wooden stool. “There was the two that run off on the same day—Lizzy, the Clarks’ chambermaid, and Darby, who worked for the Dunkirks. Those two young people wanting to get married real bad, but their owners wouldn’t let them.” I thought of Tessie and Josiah. “Mr. Clark had his eye on Lizzy . . . if you know what I mean.” Eli looked away, embarrassed.
“Go on,” I said after a moment.
“The Smiths’ servant, Arthur, hear the massa needing some money and planning on selling him. No telling what a new massa gonna be like.” Eli sighed. “I didn’t think you’d mind me helping all them people, seeing as they in the same bad way we was a few months ago when your daddy gonna sell us. But I ain’t never telling any of them to steal. I’m real sorry they all done that, Missy Caroline. Stealing ain’t right.”
Eli paused, and I heard the mare whinny softly as she stamped in her clean stall. “I sure hope you ain’t mad at me, Missy.”
“Not at all,” I assured him. “I’m glad you helped them. I would have done the same thing.”
“You ain’t gonna get in trouble for what I done, are you?”
“I don’t think so. It’s just gossip. But everyone’s afraid to go out and leave their servants alone at home. I’ll have to think of another way to gather information.”
“Something else you should know,” Eli said as he stood and retrieved his shovel. “Two of the St. Johns’ servants planning to run away next. Their massa talking about sending them out to dig trenches and build fortifications around Richmond soon as spring comes. Them army folks work the Negroes half to death. And there ain’t hardly no food to feed the soldiers, let alone feeding slaves. It’s a death sentence, Missy. Those two boys want their freedom, too.”
“All right,” I said. “Do whatever you have to do to help them, Eli. But please, ask them not to steal from Charles’ family.”
On a cold, clear night in March of 1864, Jonathan waltzed into my parlor. “Good evening, Cousin,” he said, grinning. “Can you spare a tired soldier a bed for one night?”
I ran to hug him. “Jonathan! How did you get here?”
“Let’s see, by train . . . wagon . . . horseback . . . on foot. Every means but by boat, I believe. I have a one-week furlough and I already used up a whole day of it getting here.”
“How’s your arm? Are you all right? Is Charles with you? How did you manage to get a furlough? Charles says they only grant them for hardship cases, and even then—”
“Whoa! One question at a time. I got a furlough by lying, of course. I told them that my—”
“Never mind, I don’t think I want to know.”
“You don’t,” he agreed, laughing. “See? That’s what happens during wartime—all our fine moral principles go flying out the window and we start lying, cheating, stealing . . . whatever it takes.”
I winced when I thought of all my lies and deceptions. “Is Charles with you?” I asked again.
“Sorry. He wasn’t willing to risk being shot as a deserter, even to see his sister get married. I went to see Sally before I came here and she says we’re getting married tomorrow. I can hardly believe it! So what are the chances of me getting a hot bath before my wedding day? I could really use one. And can your servants do anything about this sorry excuse for a uniform?”
I took a good look at Jonathan for the first time and saw a walking scarecrow. I wanted to weep. He wore a tattered slouch hat, and his coat looked shabbier than the one Eli had been too ashamed to wear in the house. His pants were not even Confederate uniform pants but were blue, like the ones Robert had worn.
“I took them off a dead Yankee,” Jonathan said when he saw me eyeing them. “Borrowed his socks and boots, too. Figured he had no more need of them. A lot of our men are barefoot, Caroline. It’s pitiful.”
“I’m quite certain that Sally would marry you just the way you are, but don’t worry, we’ll get you cleaned up as good as new. Did Sally tell you? We sewed you a new uniform jacket so you’d look handsome on your wedding day. We have the entire wedding planned. Wait until you see what desperation and ingenuity can accomplish.”
Jonathan pulled me into his arms again. “Sally told me everything you’ve done for us and how you’re letting her wear your wedding gown and all. I don’t know how I’ll ever be able to thank you, Caroline.”
“Be happy, Jonathan. That’s all the thanks I want . . . just marry Sally and be happy.”
I sent Jonathan up to my father’s room to start cleaning up, while I ran out to the servants’ quarters to tell Gilbert to prepare a bath and Esther to stoke up the fire early tomorrow morning to start baking. We had carefully hoar
ded flour and sugar for this occasion. But when I burst into the darkened kitchen, the only person I saw was Josiah, sitting in front of the fire with his six-month-old son asleep in his arms. He held Isaac’s freedom papers in his hand. For the first time that I could ever recall, the brawny servant didn’t look fierce and menacing—he was singing softly to his child.
I started to back out, not wanting to disturb them, but Josiah lifted his head. He looked up at me, and I saw tears glistening on his cheeks.
“Missy Caroline . . .” he said. “Thank you for what you done for my son.”
“You’re welcome,” I whispered.
Jonathan and Sally’s wedding day turned out to be a beautiful one. Her servants had gone all over Richmond the night before, as we’d planned, spreading the news that her wedding would be the next day at eleven o’clock at St. Paul’s Church. Eli rose before dawn and used a borrowed horse and the special travel permit Mr. St. John had arranged to ride out to Hilltop to fetch Jonathan’s parents and his younger brother, Thomas. They arrived just in time to clean the spring mud from their shoes and carriage wheels and race down to the church.
Guests filled the front third of St. Paul’s pews; spring sunshine lit up its rainbow-hued windows. I cried as I watched Sally walk down the long aisle on her father’s arm, wearing my wedding gown. She looked radiant in it. She carried a bouquet of fake flowers pilfered from all our old bonnets. I turned to glimpse Jonathan’s face and saw him fighting tears as he watched Sally walk down the aisle to become his wife. He looked dashing and handsome in his new uniform jacket, even if we had made it too big, not realizing how much weight he had lost.
I thought of Charles a thousand times that day. Our wedding here in St. Paul’s, planned to take place nearly three years ago, would have been much the same as this one. Three long years. I tried to picture Charles and myself in their places, tried to recite the vows in my heart along with them, promising to love Charles and cleave to him as long as we both shall live. But I knew that I was praying, My will be done, instead of Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven.