Ben nodded, apparently satisfied that Charlotte was minding her reputation. What he couldn’t guess was that Ida April would carry news of any trouble to Michael.
“Miss Tillie tol’ me I gotta dust the second story next,” Ida April answered sullenly. The two of them had worked to maintain the illusion of friction.
“Does Miss Tillie own this house?” Charlotte demanded.
Ida April looked down. “No, miss.”
“Then you’ll wait here as I told you.”
The slave didn’t meet Charlotte’s eye, but she shrugged.
“I’d appreciate it if you’d rest here for a few minutes,” Ben added, gesturing toward a chair outside the nursery. “You probably have few enough chances to get off your feet. I’ll tell Tillie we delayed you.”
“Suits me fine, sir,” Ida April answered, and she dropped into the chair.
Her gaze, however, remained lowered, and Charlotte realized this was not part of their act. Ida April, like Mama Ruth, rarely looked a white person in the eye. Somehow, after Charlotte’s conversations with Tillie, she found this troubling. So much passed between two people when their gazes met.
Putting the strange thought aside, Charlotte went into the nursery with Ben.
He told her simply, “I’m sorry that I have to do this, Charlotte.”
Like Ida April, he did not look at her. Perhaps, thought Charlotte, the failure to do so communicated a great deal in itself.
Methodically, Ben worked his way from one side of the room to the other. As she had feared, his attention lingered on the Greek book.
“Doing a little light reading?” he asked. He was watching her now closely.
“You’ve seen Alexander’s soldiers. He likes the parts where Homer tells about the battles,” she explained. “From time to time, I’ll share a scene with him – in simple English, of course. Have you ever read --?”
Ben lifted the book, flipped through the pages, and shook his head. “We have different tragedies in Texas: the Alamo . . . and Goliad.”
Some change in his voice prompted Charlotte’s question. “Was your father there?”
Ben nodded. “Do you know the story?”
She believed that her father had once spoken of it. “Some kind of massacre of men who’d already surrendered.”
“He was one of the few survivors. It haunted him until his death in Buena Vista. Santa Anna wanted to make them an example for the Anglos. Instead, he made those he murdered martyrs.” Ben put down the book and resumed his search.
“Do you mean to make a martyr of me, too?” Charlotte asked.
“No. I just hope to dam a leak, if you’re the source.”
He had his back to her as he opened the first of several cupboards where Alexander’s toys and clothes were stored. The door had been ajar, so Charlotte was not surprised when Polly bolted through the opening and dashed out of the room. Ben jerked back, obviously startled by the gray and white streak.
Charlotte could not help smiling. “There’s your spy, captain. Shall we withhold her milk until she confesses? Put her on a mouse and water diet?”
Ben shot her a disgusted look, then ducked his head inside the cupboard. When he withdrew, he held a crumpled stack of papers in one hand. The other held a large key, one that Charlotte was certain would fit the library door.
She felt as if she’d been doused in ice water. “You – you must have put them there yourself! I’ve never seen them.”
“Oh, Charlotte.”
She saw the sorrow in his gray eyes, the same she’d glimpsed when he had spoken of his father’s death. She knew then that he had come here hoping to prove her innocence, at least to himself. She sensed the struggle in him, his duty against their moonlit kisses and the fragile friendship they had forged.
“I’d expected that you at least would have hidden these more carefully. Did you really imagine that no one would dare to look?” he asked, letting her know that, regret or not, his duty would always prevail. He thumbed through the few papers and shook his head. “These aren’t even anything of import – a letter to Mrs. Branard, an outdated inventory, and look at this: It’s nothing but a social invitation! Why risk so much for a few useless papers?”
“I didn’t put them there. I swear it!” She felt panic rising. Was he only trying to bluff her into confessing to passing information through Mrs. Perkins? Somehow, she could not imagine him doing such a thing. Ben was the type of man who confronted people and problems directly; she sensed that he’d consider such deceit immoral.
“We’ll have to bring this to the general’s attention.”
He had retreated behind his official voice now, but she recognized the disappointment in his face. She knew the look well; she’d seen it often enough in her father and her brother. Remembering them, she felt desperation clawing at her. She must not fail now!
“Please,” she begged, “believe me, Ben. I would never take the general’s papers. And even if I had, do you really believe I’m stupid enough to have stolen useless trifles -- or hidden them in an open cupboard? Or invited you up here to take a look? Someone, someone who hates me very much, must have put them there.”
“Who here could hate you, Charlotte?” he asked. “I’ve never seen a woman more talented at winning hearts.”
He was wrong in that, she knew. She might have a facility for attracting a stream of male admirers, but the waters were too shallow to cover up the lust and jealousy that so often jutted out. She thought of Edgar Martin’s mother, who despised her enough to go to almost any lengths.
Mrs. Martin certainly hated her, but she could not have crept inside the house to do this. Charlotte thought next of Tillie. The woman made no secret of her suspicion that Charlotte was toying with the Union officers. Even Ida April, who might have been influenced by the free mulatto, came to mind.
Despair filled Charlotte’s limbs with lead. She couldn’t accuse Tillie anymore than she could speak ill of Ida April, who was sitting outside this very room and listening to every word. Instead, Charlotte shook her head tiredly. “I don’t know. I can’t imagine who would do it or why they would – why they would . . .”
Her mind trailed off into a vision of a cramped, dank cell, alive with vermin, and a small, blond boy being led away in tears. Oh, God, Alexander. She began to tremble, realizing at last what it was she risked. How could she have been so blind to it before? As terrible as imprisonment would prove for her, how much worse an orphanage would be for Alexander!
“You can’t put me in jail!” she cried. “Alexander will have nowhere to go! I swear to you, I didn’t do this!”
As Ben rushed forward and reached toward her, a shrill voice came from the doorway.
“You keep your filthy Yankee hands off her!”
Ben and Charlotte turned as one toward Alexander. After a moment of shock, they looked at one another, and Charlotte knew that both were thinking the same thing.
On unsteady legs, Charlotte went to Alexander. She meant to kneel before him, but instead dropped painfully onto her knees.
“Alexander,” she told him, keeping her voice as stern as she could make it, “listen to me carefully. It’s important that you tell the truth now, more important than you can imagine. Did you take some of General Branard’s papers?”
He stared past her shoulder and at Ben. And Charlotte began to understand.
“If you tell the truth,” she said carefully, “I promise I won’t punish you.”
She saw the child’s throat work as he swallowed.
“They took away my papa,” he said, the bitterness in his child’s voice as raw as a fresh wound. “They killed him.”
Using his cane for balance, Ben squatted beside her and looked Alexander in the eye. “I know you’re mad, and I don’t blame you. I was plenty mad, too, when the Mexicans killed my papa. If I could, I would have squashed them all like bugs.”
Alexander’s gaze slid downward.
Ben laid his palm on the boy’s shoulder. “Your sist
er’s right, Alexander. This is important. If you don’t tell us the truth, Charlotte might have to go away, too.”
Alexander’s body shook with sobs and tears rolled down his face. Charlotte pulled him into her embrace.
“It’s going to be all right.” She rubbed his back in an attempt to soothe him. “Please, just tell us.”
“But then – what if – what if they take me away?”
Ben shook his head. “I think you have to be at least eight or nine to go to military prison.”
“But the general and everybody will be mad.”
“I could give these papers and this spare key back to General Branard,” Ben said. “How about if I just tell him I found them on my desk? Sometimes it gets so full of papers, it would be easy to lose a few.”
Alexander pulled away from Charlotte. “You’d do that for me? How come?”
Ben smiled at him. “Because I know why you did it. And because I owe your sister a big apology.”
Alexander threw his arms around Ben’s neck. “I did do it. I just wanted everyone to go home so me and Charlotte could get back to normal. But maybe I’d miss you a little.”
Ben hugged the child back. Watching them, feeling a river of relief course through her, Charlotte surprised herself by thinking, And maybe I will miss you, too.
Friday, June 27, 1862
“If you could wait an hour, I could drive you,” Delaney McMahon offered. The lieutenant led the chestnut mare a few steps and stopped to make a small adjustment to the horse’s harness.
Alexander scrambled into the phaeton that rolled behind the Randolph’s mare, a bouquet of flowers in his hands.
Charlotte waved off the lieutenant’s suggestion. “I’ve been driving old Zephyr on my own for years now. There’s no need to worry.”
She tried to keep the tension from her voice, but she was worried. She’d seen Ben Chandler leave an hour before, and she was anxious about the possibility that he might return before she left.
The mastiff puppy burst out of the stable and crawled into the phaeton at Alexander’s feet. Charlotte feigned surprise, though she had deliberately loosened the rope that tied the animal.
“Can Honeybee come with us?” Alexander asked.
Charlotte laughed. “It may get a bit crowded, but I suppose we can manage for a short trip.”
She allowed Delaney to help her into the light carriage. His touch lingered, and she could see the longing in his eyes. And the love, too, God forgive her. Delaney did love her.
“There are a lot of soldiers here now,” he told her. “And some of them don’t know how a lady should be treated. I could assign someone.”
She smiled and stacked yet another lie against her conscience. “The cemetery isn’t far, and it’s been so long see we’ve left Mama flowers.”
He still looked uneasy. “Does the general know you’re leaving?”
She laughed. “It’s not as if we’re prisoners here.”
Her fingertips fluttered along his jawline, a butterfly touch that lasted but a moment. “We’ll be back before you’re finished with your duties, and later on this evening, perhaps we might slip outside . . . to talk.”
As Charlotte drove away, she felt sick to think that later, Delaney would blame himself for their disappearance. For a while, he’d worry that they had come to harm. Ben would understand first, for he would realize that their confrontation yesterday had deeply frightened her. But that was only part of it. The close call had also convinced Charlotte that she was not only hurting faceless enemies, but people she had come to know and . . . feel for. Worst of all, she was risking Alexander – and for what? To prove that, despite her sins, she still had value? To make her family proud of her at last?
She could accomplish neither by destroying her last shreds of self-respect. And if she lost her son, she would lose herself as well, to a darkness so vast and empty that she knew she would die.
The phaeton rolled past the cemetery gates to the sound of Zephyr’s trotting hooves.
“Where are we really going, Charlotte?” Alexander asked.
When she glanced at him, she noticed he was looking at the valise she had packed earlier and hidden in the back.
She gave the driving lines a flick to hurry the mare’s pace. “We’re going where we should have from the start – as far away from this mess as we can.”
A soldier has fallen! ‘Tis well that we weep!
O soft be his pillow, and peaceful his sleep!
Far, far from his home, and the friends he loved most,
He fell in the conflict, and died at his post.
-from “He Died at His Post,”
by J.W. Holman
CHAPTER TWELVE
Sunday, June 29, 1862
They died upon the Sabbath: seven Union soldiers, ambushed near the Wolf River, forty miles to the east. They’d been escorting critical supplies to support the defense of central Tennessee against what appeared to be an all-out Confederate offensive. The rebel attack had been quick, lethal, and narrowly targeted to those wagons containing desperately needed medicines and ammunition.
As he read the preliminary report aloud to General Branard, Ben’s voice shook with anger. The rebels had been too few to confront the entire contingent of Federal troops assigned to protect the caravan. To compensate, they had blown up a bridge to isolate the rear wagons, shot the five soldiers who resisted, and made off into the dense woods with as many supplies as they could quickly load onto waiting mules. Before leaving, however, they’d set fire to the wagons. When the blaze reached a store of gunpowder, it touched off an explosion that killed the first two soldiers arriving from the river’s opposite bank.
“Damned efficient, weren’t they?” Branard asked him. In contrast to the past few days, the old man’s gaze was penetrating and his expression insightful.
Ben thanked God for that. Today, he’d have need of the man’s experience and judgment, as well as his forgiveness.
Outside, a light rain tapped gently at the windows, as if trying to distract them from their conversation.
“Ruthless rebel bastards!” Jonathan Snyder swore. Still looking the part of a caged tiger, he paced the library floor. Since Charlotte and Alexander’s disappearance on Friday, the man had been insufferable.
Lieutenant McMahon, who seemed less likely to shoot everyone he questioned, was leading several enlisted men in the search for the missing Randolphs. So far, the effort had proved fruitless. Ben had been following up what turned out to be a false lead in the Perkins investigation in the hope that it might lead to Charlotte when news of the ambush intervened.
In response to Branard’s question, Ben said, “If you ask me, it was too efficient, as if they knew in advance exactly where the supply caravan would be and what items it carried.”
“Sit down, Lieutenant,” Branard ordered. “You’re making my head spin with all your pointless stalking.”
Snyder apologized and hastened to comply, but his foot tapped restlessly.
“It’s as if the rebels read my mind,” General Branard speculated.
“Or, more likely, your orders,” Ben added. Remorse throbbed at his temples. Had he not allowed himself to be convinced of what he wanted to believe, he might have prevented seven deaths. “Specifically, the set we sent out last week.”
The general nodded. “As much as I hate to think it, that seems likely.”
Lieutenant Snyder’s fidgeting grew more pronounced.
Ben stood. “I’ll resign, of course, or submit myself for any discipline you like. I suspected, even investigated her, but there was no proof, and I was remiss in --”
Unable to contain his energy any longer, Snyder exploded from his seat. “My God, you’re accusing Charlotte! I tell you, she’d have nothing to do with anything like this! She’s met with foul play! We should be out looking --”
“Both of you, sit down!” Branard shouted over them, his face reddening against the white field of his hair and beard.
As the
two obeyed, he continued speaking in a calmer voice. “We were all fooled by her. All of us.”
Snyder glared at Ben and asked, “How do we know it was Charlotte? It could just as well be him. He’s a Southerner, isn’t he? By all accounts, the damned Texans are some of the worst of them.”
The general’s scowl deepened. “Ben Chandler’s loyalty is not in question, Lieutenant. Let’s put an end to that speculation now – and to our own blindness. Charlotte Randolph was not abducted by rebel sympathizers or stolen away by a band of lustful soldiers. She disappeared because the captain’s questions came too close to the mark. She was a spy, unfortunately, a damned disarming one. Do you understand that, Lieutenant?”
He nodded, clearly stricken.
“I asked you a question, son,” Branard persisted. “Do you understand?”
“Yes, sir,” Snyder answered. His hazel eyes had gone glassy with what resembled terror. “I’m afraid I do.”
Branard’s attention turned toward Ben before he spoke again. “If anyone’s responsible for this disaster, I am. I allowed her in this house, over your objections, if memory serves me. But standing here blubbering about who’s guiltiest will get us nowhere. I’ll hear no more about a resignation or a court martial proceeding. Do you understand me, Captain?”
“Yes, sir,” Ben answered, but it did little to ease his regret. He’d known; he’d damned well known, and he’d still let her trick him. He had never felt so foolish – or so furious – in his life.
“Find her for me, Ben,” the general said. “We need to determine how much damage she has done. If the western portion of the South’s noose slips and supplies get past us, the entire Anaconda Plan could be in jeopardy.”
“I’ll find her, sir,” Ben said. “I swear it.”
“And I’ll help him,” Snyder added.
“No. I’ll need someone from my command staff here, and that someone will be you, Lieutenant.”
Ben wondered if General Branard suspected as he did, that Jonathan Snyder had been involved in passing Charlotte information. His reactions had been so intense that there was surely some entanglement. Had Jonathan been duped into sharing secrets, or had he understood what he was doing? Whichever was the case, Ben did not want Snyder with him. In fact, until he understood how far the web stretched, he would prefer to rely on no one but himself.
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