Chapter Forty-One

MAY 1865

Soldiers, returning from the war half starved, many of them barefoot or their feet wrapped in rags, stopped by Belvidere Hall, hoping for a plate of beans, a biscuit, a slab of corn pone, or anything we might spare. They were men on their long treks home to the bosom of families they hoped still lived and breathed. Most came with all their limbs, but some with empty sleeves or glass eyes or no eye at all where they’d been shot.

Martha and I gave them what we could and even Rose came downstairs to help when Grayson was away. He kept her close when home, as if afraid she might be contaminated by Martha or me, the only ones in the house full-time now besides Father and Ellie.

Rose took to Ellie like a duck to water, laughing, playing, cooing with the little girl, and Ellie responded, glad for a new playmate. Martha and I had but little time between the cooking and laundry. I looked forward each day to the hours that Alma came, not only for her help but for her friendship. I could see that friendship was a mystery to Rose, whose family, I learned, had owned a dozen slaves for house and garden, though they lived in a mansion in Raleigh. Her father was a man of old money, much of which he lost in the war, having invested heavily in Confederate bonds.

“Papa could never afford to pay slaves —freed people —as you do here. I don’t know what Mother will do without them when their hand is forced, how she’ll manage,” Rose lamented, watching from the window as Alma hung the wash.

“Just as we do. Just as anyone does. Women who’ve never owned slaves know how to take care of themselves and their families. We’ll learn what we don’t know.” I smiled. “Things we never imagined.”

Rose smiled, tenuously, for the first time since the day she’d stepped through the door of Belvidere Hall. I could only imagine the bill of goods Grayson had sold her to get her to marry him, including the lie that he was five years older than he looked, than he was, and that he was indeed master of Belvidere Hall. Rose was caught in a trap not much better than the rest of us.

None of the freed men and women of Belvidere Hall trusted that I’d be able to get their deeds rewritten, filed, and made legal after the burning of the courthouse. “No matter what you do, Miss Minnie,” Mother Sally had confided, “they not gonna let us have that land. Mr. Grayson see to that —and if he don’t, there’s others will.”

I hadn’t wanted to believe her, but I knew it was true. The war didn’t end all of slavery. In the end, none stayed on the land except Obadiah and Martha, Alma and Shadrach. Even Mother Sally went away with her oldest daughter and her husband. When I asked where they were going, most didn’t know. “West. Just west, or north, or anywhere that Confederate flag don’t fly.”

I had no means to help them beyond sending what food we could. At least they had the gold Father and Elliott had given them to make a new start.