Chapter Ten

SUMMER 1863

“Miz Minnie, Miz Chatsworth passed me this parcel on her way to the general store, asked me to place it in your hands and none other.” It was Martha’s sister, Alma, who often ran errands to town for me now that she wasn’t tending Emma. Alma helped Martha in the kitchen but was also our own midwife and herb doctor. There was none who knew better what herbs to grow, dry, grind, or brew for a headache or the ague, whether in teas or a poultice or salve. Though young, she’d delivered more babies than I could count for the slave women at Belvidere Hall and surrounding farms.

“Thank you, Alma.” My heart raced. It was a surprise from Tom, surely. “How is Mrs. Chatsworth today?”

“Reckon she’s fine, Miz Minnie. Sportin’ a new bonnet with real feathers. Can’t say where that handsome scarlet ribbon on it come from, though I did see some stowed behind Miz Mae’s counter.” It was a sly observation. Tom’s mother was known to consort with Cordova Mae, who received stacks of fabric and yards of ribbon and laces from a man in the flatlands who traded on the coast with blockade runners. You’d think blockade-run goods would never reach the Piedmont, but they extended even into the mountains. Everything for a price.

“Nor should we say.” I smiled.

Alma smiled in return. She knew Cordova Mae and her secrets ran in many directions. “You reckon some of that scarlet ribbon made its way into your parcel?”

We all longed for a bit of color and joy these days. It was telling that a swath of ribbon we’d once so taken for granted could now be the cause of speculation and hope. “I sincerely doubt it. But you might want to check the bonnet I left on the hat tree downstairs —the one with pink rosettes and ribbons. I’m thinking that perhaps I’ve outgrown it —that my head’s gotten too big.”

“Don’t reckon that’s likely to happen.” Alma looked skeptical, but I pressed on.

“Do you know anyone it might fit? Someone about your size, about your height, someone with your lovely brown eyes?”

Alma’s tempered grin broadened into a smile that filled her face. “I might.”

“Then I hope you’ll take it along and give it to her.”

“Yes, ma’am!” Alma was halfway out the door.

“And Alma.”

“Yes, Miz Minnie?”

“Please don’t mention this parcel to anyone.”

“Yes, ma’am.” Alma hesitated, her hand on the doorframe. “You don’t need to give me that bonnet to keep me quiet. I won’t run my mouth, won’t tell Massa Horace or Massa Elliott. I know it’s a gift from your Tom.”

“I know that you’d never do anything to hurt me, Alma. I’m sorry it came out that way. It was wrong of me to frame it so. I only meant that I know you love pretty things —like I do, like we all do —and I want you to have it. I was teasing, but I should have made it clear that the two things are not related.”

Alma nodded.

“Please . . . a gift from me, if you want it.”

“Thank you, Miz Minnie. I’ll consider it.”

I nodded, wondering again if I’d treated Alma differently than I would treat any friend, sad in the realization that I had, and sorry for it. For all I intended to treat the slaves I lived and worked with as equals, as Mother had taught me, I realized again that I had so much to learn —so much to unlearn and do better.

When Alma had left, I slowly tore back the brown paper on my parcel.

I’d not expected anything. Yet I found a book —five books. Tom knows I love books. We always shared books from our libraries. When I turned them over I laughed, delighted. Les Misérables.

The group was an inferior edition to the one I already owned and had read, books Elliott had ordered from New York for my birthday and had smuggled behind enemy lines through friends in Philadelphia —the set I treasured beyond any gift or book I’d ever read, save Scripture.

It delighted me to know that the two men who loved me most and knew me best had selected exactly the same —just what they knew I would treasure. That the story meant so much to each of them thrilled me. More than that, it gave me hope for Tom’s change of heart for the enslaved. Tom’s family didn’t beat their slaves, but he considered owning them his God-given right and responsibility. Victor Hugo made his love of freedom and detestation of human bondage strong in the story. Only one in full sympathy could rejoice in its publication and popularity.

Tucked inside the first book was a note in Tom’s hand.

My dearest Minnie,

I hope this gift finds you well and enjoying peace in our No Creek these late-summer days. I imagine the fragrance of peaches, ripe and sweet in your orchard, and that the apples are turning shades of red. I miss sunsets over the mountain and walking home with you from services. I miss you, Minnie, and long for home.

I don’t write today of sad things, battles or encampments or any of the things that so cruelly separate us. Today I write, my dear friend —a fine moniker, but one I hope will soon be replaced by terms of greater endearment —of books.

Do you remember those long winter evenings by the fire in your library when your father read aloud, and we’d discourse the merits of books and authors? I remember seeing your eyes light when a new thought came to you or when you embraced a cause from our readings.

I treasure those memories and even now, on cold nights as I watch the stars crawl across the heavens, I recount those discussions —some more lively than others —by the fire, or on those Saturday afternoon rambles through the orchard back of Belvidere Hall, or rocking on my mother’s porch after a full Sunday dinner.

Stories —parables —that offer lessons and insights we are unable to convey in conversation have long proven a thread between us, and for that I am grateful. Never do I fear that we’ll run short of books or ideas to enliven our discussions as we age. Your mind is as keen as mine, Minnie, and I long to share that, my heart, and all that I am with you.

You will find sentiments in these books by Mister Hugo that I have longed to speak but have not found the words for —sentiments that I believe we share. The esteemed author expresses himself more eloquently than I can ever hope to do. He writes of the tyranny of despots, of the oppression of a people longing to live free, to rule their own destiny.

My breath caught. At last Tom understood the longing of slaves to live unfettered, to own themselves as all men and women are meant to. That he had made this leap, even if he still wore the hated uniform, softened my heart, made me long for him.

We have been too long divided over circumstances beyond our control, Minnie. I hope these books will help to mend that, to bring us closer together in our appreciation for all that surrounds us in this broken world.

They are so popular among my men who, unfamiliar with the French, have taken to calling themselves “Lee’s Miserables.” Many are indeed miserable in poverty and near starvation, in their longing for home and freedom. To see the bare and blistered feet they march upon would break your heart, dearest Minnie, as it wears on mine.

I know you will be moved as you read. When you’ve finished, write to me. Tell me what you think, let me know that you understand the gravity of all we fight for. Share my hopes for a time when we, like those battling from the barricade, will end this war, victorious and free to make our own laws and establish forever the rights we deem ours in a country of our own.

It will not surprise you that I end with hopes of seeing you again soon and that I declare my love for you,

Your Tom

My fingers trembled and my heart sank. I opened the cover of the first book. Sheepskin. Printed by West & Johnson in Richmond, 1863, with low-quality paper and ink. That would not matter to me, but the publisher’s preface to Victor Hugo’s undoubtedly pirated masterpiece was chilling:

It is proper to state here, that whilst every chapter and paragraph in any way connected with the story has been scrupulously preserved, several long, and it must be confessed, rather rambling disquisitions on political and other matters of a purely local character, of no interest whatever on this side of the Atlantic, and exclusively intended for the French readers of the book, have not been included in this reprint. A few scattered sentences reflecting on slavery —which the author, with strange inconsistency, has thought fit to introduce into a work written mainly to denounce the European systems of labor as gigantic instruments of tyranny and oppression —it has also been deemed advisable to strike out. With those exceptions —and they are after all but few and unimportant —the original work is here given entire. The extraneous matter emitted has not the remotest connection with the characters or the incidents of the novel, and the absence of a few anti-slavery paragraphs will hardly be complained of by Southern readers. —A. F.

Tom had not read with the same eyes, the same heart, as I. He’d not even read the same words. I closed my eyes to keep back wells that threatened to spill. Tom’s belief that this beloved book would bring us closer marked but one more barrier between us.