“That a fact? Just like all these other Johnnies here, eh?”
With a thud, Billy Yank’s fist blasted Harrison’s stomach, and he doubled over as the pain spread throughout his middle. In the next moment, as he spun out of reach, he realized what he should have predicted all along: the advance teams of Rebels who had posed as deserters made a mockery of Harrison’s truth. No Union soldier would believe him now. Worse, they wouldn’t want to.
Within minutes, the Confederates won Fort Stedman. Stunned, Harrison watched as Yankees double-quicked back to the Confederate works as prisoners. The ten-month siege of Petersburg is breaking. Acid burned from his stomach to his throat. How long will the war go on now?
Sometime after the sun rose—had an hour passed, or two?—punishing fire blasted down upon Confederate-held Fort Stedman. Between the earthshaking explosions, Rebel scouts burst into the fort with reports of a Union line forming a semicircle around them a mile and a half in length. When Gordon ordered the Rebels to hightail it for safety back in Petersburg, Harrison read heartbreak in their shaggy, gaunt faces, defeat in their quivering frames, even as he scrambled pell-mell among them to get clear of the coming fire. The battle was turning.
Federal infantry massed behind them, charging with repeating rifles and bayonets. Then artillery’s furious thunder filled the air as though the heavens were colliding. Shells shrieked above the Rebels retreating past the moat and chevaux de frise. One hundred fifty yards of open space gaped between Harrison and the Confederate side. Unless, of course, he surrendered.
I could do it, Harrison thought. After all, Union victory would be hard to celebrate from the grave. One after another, several Rebs about-faced, hands in the air, rather than cross that yawning distance. Others pushed past him, fleeing toward safety like madmen, while older or convalescent soldiers labored in their wake through the smoking, lead-ridden field.
Harrison squinted into the sun as he turned toward the Yankees. Southerners scuttled past him. Recognition seized him.
No.
Harrison wheeled west again, his gaze following the form of Preston Kent. Why is he here? Why not in the local troops instead, away from the fray? Questions exploded in his mind as he watched Sophie’s father push forward. Lead arced through the sky above Preston, while musket fire rattled behind Harrison. Fifty yards in, Preston stumbled at the edge of a smoldering crater made by a cannonball, righted himself, and charged ahead, darting around fallen soldiers, more holes, and shells that had yet to detonate.
Halfway to safety, the soldier twenty feet from Preston was ripped apart by a cannonball as though he were made of cornhusks. For an instant, Harrison lost sight of Preston.
Where is he? Harrison sifted through the dashing figures until—oh no. Not now.
Preston had stopped running. His hand clutched over his chest, he staggered, dropped to his knees. Collapsed. He has no business being out here! If his heart did not fail him completely, it was only a matter of time until a bullet or shell stopped its beating.
Soldiers rushed by Preston on both sides. Not one of them slowed to spirit the older man away. They think he’s already gone.
Deliver me, deliver us, Harrison prayed, and launched into the deafening fray. The sulfurous fog of gunpowder choked him as he distanced himself from the country he loved to save a man fighting for a cause he despised. None of that mattered now. Hang on, Preston! If Harrison had any power at all to save him, he would not let Sophie’s father die today.
Seconds ticked by as Harrison dodged death and disfigurement on his way to Preston. Sweat stung his eyes and spilled down his back between his shoulder blades. Blood and Virginia clay stained his bare feet crimson. Charred earth and grass burned his soles.
Finally, he skidded to Preston’s crumpled form. His face was ashen but still he breathed. “I’ve got you!” Harrison shouted though his voice couldn’t be heard. “Come on!” With Preston’s arm around Harrison’s neck, he bore up under him, cinched his waist with an iron-tight grip, and half-guided, half-dragged the man forward. We’ll never make it. Harrison silenced the voice with prayer. Please God. Please.
Miraculously, another soldier heaved up under Preston’s other arm. He and Harrison clasped wrists to form a hammock for Preston. As soon as the older man slumped into it, feet off the ground, they charged forward. Harrison’s hair rippled from the wind of crashing shells and flying bullets.
Twenty-five yards to go.
Twenty.
Fifteen yards.
Thirty feet, twenty-five feet, twenty—
Oof! Harrison’s knee buckled beneath him as fire seared through his ankle. Hang it all! He’d wrenched it tripping into a smoking hole. Minié balls plowed into the earth beside him, spraying his face with dirt. Seeing at once what had happened, the Good Samaritan Johnny hoisted Preston over his shoulder and scurried the rest of the way. Harrison limped behind them. They were seconds away from safety.
Then an explosion blasted through the dimness of Harrison’s hearing, lifted his body on a wave of air and shrapnel and dirt. He floated on the dirty yellow cloud of gun smoke then, with hell just below him and heaven above. Blood oozed from his nose and ears. Into thine hand I commit my spirit …
St. John’s Church, Richmond, Virginia
Sunday, April 2, 1865
Alone in her pew at St. John’s Church, Sophie’s mind wandered far from the sermon. Bella was still missing. Susan’s story that she’d run away hadn’t convinced her, although Sophie’s inquiries into every slave jail in Richmond failed to turn her up. Her father had been sent home from the front a week ago with a heart so weak he had kept to his bed ever since, but with the stunning news that Harrison had been injured somewhere between the lines of blue and grey. How severely? Did he live? Where is he now? Will he recover? But Preston had no answers. Her nightmare had become reality.
Suppressing a groan, Sophie bowed her head beneath crushing guilt and prayed once more for God to redeem this agonizing mess.
Footsteps whispered on the carpeted aisle. She looked up in time to see a messenger hand the reverend a note in the middle of his sermon before scurrying back out of the church. The reverend’s shoulders sagged.
“Brethren,” he began, though most of the congregants by now were women and children. “Trying times are before us. General Lee has been defeated outside Petersburg. The Yankees will likely push through to Richmond, but remember that God is with us in the storm as well as in the calm.” He raised his voice to be heard above the gasps and murmurs gaining strength. “We may never meet again. Go quietly to your homes, and whatever may be in store for us, let us not forget that we are Christian men and women, and may the protection of the Father, the Son, and Holy Ghost be with you all.”
The church service was over.
“Rumor,” said a woman as soon as they exited the building. “Like so many before. You’ll see, we’ll be fine.”
But Mrs. Blair tugged at Sophie’s elbow. “If Richmond is under threat, my boys will be coming back home now. I won’t have them coming back to an empty house.” As the woman scurried off, neither she nor Sophie acknowledged they might have already been killed at Petersburg. It was too horrible a thought to entertain, especially now that they were so close to the end of the war, for surely that’s what this was.
Wasn’t it? Doubt and hope vied for Sophie’s heart. She had to know for certain.
Daffodils nodded beneath budding dogwoods and magnolias as Sophie’s violet silk hem skimmed the sidewalks. News came first through the Spotswood Hotel on the western fringe of Capitol Square. That’s where she would go.
By the time she crossed the dozen blocks, ash swirled in the air around the Washington statue as government officials burned piles of documents. Lawrence Russell was among them, though he had aged so much she barely recognized him.
“Captain Russell!” Desperate for reliable news, Sophie hurried to his side. “What’s happening?”
Sweat from the fire’s heat trickled down his haggard f
ace. “Lee’s lines were penetrated. Petersburg has fallen. Richmond is next.” Flames danced in his blazing blue eyes. “Happy?”
A spark leapt to her skirt, and she swatted it away with her white-gloved hand, backing away from the fire.
Captain Russell chuckled darkly. “Yes, Miss Kent, run away from this little fire. Before the day is over, it will run after you. It’s poetic, really. You played with fire, and now you’ll be burned by it.”
“What do I do?” she whispered, more to herself than anyone else.
“Go home and wait, of course. I’m getting out of here. Mark my words. Richmond will burn, and no one here will save it.”
The rest of the afternoon was a frenzied haze. Rumors were swapped, modified, and finally, confirmed. The government would evacuate Richmond immediately. The citizens were on their own.
The banks all opened at two o’clock though it was a Sunday, and patrons thronged to withdraw their life savings, as diminished as they had become. As Sophie walked back toward Church Hill in a daze, the streets gradually filled with men waving farewell to families that had boarded them, wagons and carriages teetering with boxes and trunks, slaves carrying bundles on their heads toward the Richmond & Danville depot. Prison guards and bureaucrats joined columns of refugees headed for the canal towpath that led west to Lynchburg.
When she finally arrived home, Sophie shook with suspense. Richmond will burn, Captain Russell had said. And no one here will save it.
Lumpkin’s Slave Jail, Richmond, Virginia
Sunday, April 2, 1865
Iron shackles locked coldly over Bella’s wrists. When another ring snapped around her neck, chaining her to a string of forty-nine other dark-skinned souls, she nearly retched on Robert Lumpkin’s shoes. Every jangle clawed at her heart. Never in her life had she felt so much like cattle.
“Git! Try anything along the way and I’ll have your hide.”
Chains clanked and feet shuffled as the coffle moved out into the alley.
“You know where we’re going?” Bella murmured to the woman in front of her. “Auction?” What else could it possibly be?
The woman merely shrugged. “Don’t know nothin’ about that.”
A gust of wind brought the smell of smoke from the direction of Capitol Square, three blocks west. Something’s going on.
As soon as they turned out of the alley and into the street, the coffle was swallowed up in a thick stream of white folks and their slaves, pushing carts and mules, carrying bundles and toting trunks. Bella only had to listen for a moment to understand. Richmond is evacuating. The Yankees are coming, at last. She would be free. All of them would be.
Hope burst into bloom, then wilted just as fast. Lumpkin aimed to preserve his property. If Bella’s guess was right, he was taking them farther south, where they would remain in bondage at least long enough for him to recoup his investment.
Bella gritted her teeth as she shuffled among the crowd, anger and humiliation licking through her veins. Lord God, she prayed. Show Yourself. Your Word says I am more than a conqueror through You, but you see these chains. Break them. Her faith felt just as shackled.
An hour later, they were at the Richmond & Danville train station, along with hundreds of anxious ladies still in their shabby Sunday best. Home Guard soldiers patrolled the depot, holding back anyone without a pass from the Secretary of War.
“Now see here,” Lumpkin shouted at one of them. “We are getting on this train!”
“Fifty-one people? Have you a pass?”
“Since when does a white man need a pass to get on a train around here?” Lumpkin bellowed.
“Since right now. I have one train for Treasury employees, one for the quartermaster and other officials, another with telegraph operators and crewmen, and one for the president and his department heads. Nongovernment personnel get nowhere without a pass!”
Their voices rose in a useless shouting match. At length, Lumpkin ceded. Red-faced and trembling with rage, he jerked the coffle to turn them around, and herded them back to the jail.
Mayo’s Bridge, Richmond, Virginia
Monday, April 3, 1865, 4:00 a.m.
Revulsion turned Lawrence Russell’s stomach as he guided his mount through the riotous streets of Richmond. These people don’t deserve the Confederate capital anyway. The gas lines having been cut, looters held paper torches aloft as they mobbed warehouses and stores for whatever they could carry away. The commissary near Mayo’s Bridge was thrown open, and a growing crowd attacked barrels of flour and meal, sacks of sugar, and slabs of bacon. Legal plunder quickly slid into illegal, as mobs fanned into the lower city, looting shops and private homes at will.
The scent of alcohol burned Lawrence’s nose as the gutters flowed freely with liquor, in accordance with City Council’s orders to destroy it before the Yankees could get it. Barrels of whiskey had been axed open, bottles of gin and brandy shattered on the sidewalks. Up and down the street, kegs were poured out, and casks and cases smashed. Lawrence’s nose wrinkled in disgust as his horse stepped around men and women scooping liquor into their hats, or their boots, or their mouths. Animals. And yet, what he wouldn’t give for just one civilized shot of whiskey himself.
His horse skittered sideways when a drunken soldier from one of the local troops stumbled into it.
“Ach. Pardon me.”
That German accent. The spectacles. Lawrence squinted at the man’s sloppy smile. “Fischer? Otto Fischer?”
“Pardon, officer, but my superior released us and said we could do whatever we wanted. Go home, go south, go drink …”
So Fischer had been caught in the conscription net when Congress raised the age limit. “It’s me. Lawrence Russell. I used to court Sophie Kent, remember?”
Fischer flinched as though he’d been struck. “Snake, that one. Too many secrets,” he hissed.
Lawrence dismounted, held the bridle firmly, and pumped Fischer’s hand.
The Kents’ former steward swiped a hand over his hair and swallowed. He’d grown even thinner than Lawrence had remembered him, but that was no surprise these days. “You getting out of here, then, Captain?” His speech was only slightly slurred.
“Indeed, straightaway in fact.” Before they set fire to the bridges. “And you? What are your plans?”
Fischer shook his head. “No plans. I’m old and I’m tired. Tired of starting over in a new world. Coming from Germany to America was difficult enough. If the South falls and the slaves are freed, it will be a new world all over again. One in which I cannot imagine living. I’m a house servant, Captain Russell. If I must compete with millions of Negroes for a job—ach! Even without my livelihood in jeopardy, it simply goes against the laws of nature. The South will no longer be my home, and I’ll not set a foot in the North. So you see, Captain, why I drink tonight.”
Lawrence saw very clearly. “What are you going to do about it?”
“Do? What can I do? What is there to do?”
A dark smile curled Lawrence’s lips. “I’ll let you in on a secret. Sophie Kent is rabidly disloyal. Perhaps even a spy. Only I lost the evidence to convict her.”
Fischer’s eyes rounded. “I knew she was up to something! I knew it!”
“’Course you did. Did you know that she is much to blame for Richmond’s loss? With the government evacuating, she’s getting away with it completely, too.”
It was enough. Swinging back up into his saddle, Lawrence bid the bitter conscript farewell, and galloped over Mayo’s Bridge, away from the wreckage, and toward establishing a new Confederate government in Danville. He had no time to chase after revenge. But Otto Fischer did.
A deafening explosion rocked Sophie right out of her bed. Scrambling up from the floor, she ran out onto her balcony and gripped the balustrade as she looked toward the river. A huge volume of smoke like an illuminated balloon shot high into the air. Another blast shook the house from cupola to foundation, and then another, shattering the windows facing the James. Shells arced and b
urst through the sky like fireworks. The glares from the explosions were as bright as the noonday sun.
Susan burst into Sophie’s room. “What is it? What’s happening? Are the Yankees bombarding us again?” She shook with terror. “Not another Atlanta …” she cried.
“It’s not Yankees. Look.” Sophie beckoned her out onto the balcony, with a warning not to step on the broken glass. “Three Confederate warships were anchored in the James River.”
“I don’t see them. Are they under all that smoke?”
“Not anymore. The Confederates blew them up rather than allow the Yankees to use them and the cannons and ammunition they held.”
“So they’re really coming,” Susan said.
“The Rebels certainly think so.” Sophie’s ears still rung from the blast. Oh no. “The ships.” All of them docked at the wharf caught fire. Then a row of tobacco warehouses on the waterfront went up next. Soon wind whipped the flames into such a frenzy that Sophie could hear their roar even from Church Hill.
Then the bright sound of breaking glass. But all these windows had already shattered from the blast. “Do you hear that?” Sophie asked Susan.
She nodded.
“Let’s check on Daddy.”
Susan led the way with her candle, and Sophie followed her downstairs, where Preston had convalesced in the spare room ever since his return.
“Daddy?” Sophie called.
“Daddy isn’t here now, is he?”
Sophie wheeled toward the voice as its owner stepped into the hallway. Susan cried out.
“Fischer?”
Were it not for the candle’s flare reflecting off his spectacles, he would be a mere shadow.
My shadow? Memory flickered.
“I told you your house would burn.”
“No,” Sophie gasped, comprehension now blazing within her. She stepped backwards. Susan’s shaking hands wrapped around her shoulders.
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