Tom was predictably disappointed to hear about Loreta seeing the Yanks’ reinforcements arrive, but he convinced her that she could not go to headquarters with her report, assuring her that General Beauregard would be well aware of their arrival. “You should get some rest now, Harry. Something tells me tomorrow will be a difficult day of fighting.”
Loreta left, her reluctance doubled—not only was she upset that she couldn’t tell the general what she saw, but also because she would have given anything to be able to linger in Tom’s tent. But she knew that Tom was right: she risked being arrested if any high-ranking officer knew that she’d been behind enemy lines without the general’s permission. Not to mention that would put Tom in danger for having given his friend Harry consent to do so.
Loreta tossed about all night. Her agitation was soon replaced by regret that she couldn’t bring herself to shoot General Grant.
Loreta rose at dawn to the ominous sound of Federal gunboats firing. The Union army, which had been nearly annihilated just the day prior and who should have retreated in defeat according to the rules of war, managed to recover its lost ground and assume the offensive. By two o’clock, Loreta knew the day had been lost.
“It is useless now,” she confessed to Tom as they withdrew into the woods. “We should have pursued them yesterday.”
“It is not up to us, we were following the general’s orders.”
“Indeed. Soldiers may lose their lives, but generals lose the war.” Loreta had not sooner gotten the sentence out when a Minié ball hit the ground beside Tom. Time seemed to slow as she watched her beau’s body rise into the air and then land nearby with a sickening thud.
“Tom!” she screamed with a woman’s voice, rushing to his side. He was still breathing, but barely. “Tom, Tom, Tom,” she repeated as she checked for bullet wounds.
His eyes stared up at the sky. “Harry, you’ve got to get out of here.”
“Not without you.” She attempted to lift him to his feet, but he was considerably heavier than her.
“My leg is broken,” he gasped. “I can’t walk.”
Loreta looked back to see bluebacks advancing on them.
Tom turned his face to the side. “Harry, you’ve got to go.”
“Drop him and run!” another Confederate called. “The Yanks are coming. He’s as good as dead anyway.”
When Loreta refused, the man grabbed her arm, jerking her away from Tom. When she glanced back, she saw Tom raise his hand briefly before letting it drop again.
Although the Yanks were victorious, they did not push the Confederates back much further than Shiloh Church. The battle was over by dusk, and Loreta resolved to go back to find Tom. She found Bob at camp, who had managed to confiscate a horse. The steed carried a branding of “US” on its quarters and the saddle was made of fine leather—an officer’s horse.
“I found him in the woods without a rider,” Bob stated.
“Thank you, Bob.” Loreta mounted him, accepting Bob’s proffered lantern, and filled her canteen before going back to where she had last seen Tom. As if to add to the day’s miseries, the sky opened and rain began pouring down. The bodies in the field lay so close together that Loreta had to tie her new horse to a tree and walk among the slain, searching for her beloved. Occasionally she would come upon a man who was still alive and, after offering him water, called out to the ambulance corps, “Over here!” The men with stretchers would eventually arrive and carry the wounded off. They were Confederate, but Loreta noticed they would occasionally pick up Union men as well.
When her canteen was halfway empty, she resolved to save the rest for Tom. She heard a woman’s voice and marveled that they would send nurses to the battlefield, but as they crept closer, Loreta saw they were ladies in civilian clothes. Like her, they shone their lanterns onto to reveal the faces of the bodies as they stepped over them.
Loreta thought she had an inkling of where they had been when the Minié ball hit, but with the rain and the darkness, she could not get her bearings. It was as if she were trying to find a four-leaf clover in a field of grass. She was exhausted from the battle and after an hour of searching in the pouring rain, had to force herself to quit before she became yet another body on the ground. She had just started for her horse when she heard one of the ladies emit an unearthly scream. Loreta watched as the woman sat down on the muddy ground with a dead man’s head in her lap and cried, “Oh my Samuel, my poor husband.” She stroked his hair as she repeated, “My darling,” over and over. Her companions rushed over to kneel beside her, wrapping their arms around the anguished woman. Loreta could stand it no longer and mounted her horse, vowing to return once again in the morning to search for her own loved one.
Chapter 32
Mary Jane
April 1862
Mary Jane had just arrived at the Big House for the day’s work when a courier ran into the dining room. Jefferson Davis was already seated, ready to receive his breakfast.
“Shiloh is lost!” the courier shouted. He bent over to take in a breath before continuing, “Our troops are retreating.”
Mr. Davis stood up. “How can that be? News last night was of a sure victory.”
“Sir, General Sidney Johnston… was,” the courier gulped. “Lost.”
“Lost? As in taken prisoner?”
“No sir.” Mary Jane raised her eyes to see a forlorn look on the young man’s face.
“As in dead, sir. And the number of lost troops is the greatest we’ve seen. On both sides, it appears.”
Mr. Davis sat down and buried his stricken face in his hands. The courier left him alone. Mary Jane, unsure of what to do, fetched him a cup of coffee.
He looked up at her when she put the saucer and cup in front of him. “Has Mr. Harrison awoken yet?”
“No suh, I don’t believe so.” Burton Harrison was Mr. Davis’s personal secretary and had a room on the third floor of the mansion. “Do you want me to rouse him?”
Mr. Davis nodded and Mary Jane went to find Mr. Garvin in order to get Burton Harrison presentable.
Chapter 33
Loreta
April 1862
After yet another sleepless night, Loreta rose to find that the Confederates had been ordered to retreat back to Corinth, Mississippi. Loreta volunteered for burial duty, thinking that it would give her one last chance to locate Tom’s body and give him a proper goodbye. But still she could find no trace of him.
They dug large trenches with garden hoes and laid the boys on top of one another. There was no time to dig individual graves, nor were the gravediggers in the right state of mind to do so. One of them carried a small notebook and would copy down names of any soldiers that were recognized by their comrades, but most of them went into the ground unidentified. They were covered by as many blankets as could be found, and, after a brief prayer, the men commenced covering them over with soil.
Presumably the Feds were burying their own as well, but every once in a while, a shot rang out. As no bullets landed, at least not near the diggers, Loreta did not pay much attention to the gunfire. But when they had nearly finished their mournful duty, a shell landed behind Loreta, and she was thrown to the ground.
A nearby soldier helped her to her feet. “Are you all right?”
Loreta glanced down, noting the man who had been next to her had been propelled into the mass grave. He made no motion to get up. Another soldier commented that “he’d thought they’d been done but this new one needed more dirt.”
Loreta felt sick to her stomach. At first she assumed it was from the shock of what just happened, but then she realized her right arm had gone numb. The soldier who had picked her up noticed as well and helped her back up on her horse, and then began leading it back to camp. The next hour was agony—every time the horse made a sudden movement, the pain in her arm heightened. As they neared, Loreta’s anxiety grew. She knew that she would need to be examined by a surgeon, who would possibly discover that Harry Buford was not who he said he
was.
By the time they reached camp, Loreta’s arm and wrist were so swollen that the surgeon had to cut the sleeve off her coat. He brought a vat of cold water for her to soak her wounds in, but it gave little relief. The surgeon pulled it out to examine it, Loreta gasping in pain. He gingerly held her wrist in his hands and turned it over.
“Such delicate bone structure,” he said, looking up from his attendance into her face. “Your mustache seems to have come loose as well, Lieutenant.”
Loreta could tell by the tone in his voice that he had discovered her secret. At that point all the fortitude and valor that Harry had exhibited in the last year had disappeared. All she wanted to do was to allow her arm to heal, and if she had to do that as a woman, then so be it.
“All right, you’ve discovered my secret,” she told him. “That doesn’t change the fact that I am wounded.”
The doctor sat back for a moment. “How did you come about—”
“Please,” Loreta commanded, her voice shaky with pain.
The doctor shook his head, obviously disagreeing with her choice to deceive the Confederate army, but his duties came first. “Your shoulder has been dislocated and much of your hand and arm, including your pinky, has been lacerated from the shrapnel.”
“Tell me you won’t amputate it, sir.”
“The wounds will not require amputation.” The doctor managed a tiny smile. “I’m sure you would have come up with quite a story, however, if you were a woman with an amputated arm.” He applied dressings to the open wounds and then put her arm in a sling. “I believe that will do it for now,” he said, rising.
Loreta got painfully to her feet as well. Despite his words, she did not fully trust that the doctor would not reveal what he’d discovered. Not to mention there was nothing keeping her there now that Tom was gone and she had been wounded. “Please sir, is there any way you can secure a pass for me to travel to New Orleans? I want to go home.”
“New Orleans is quite a long way from here. I suggest you stay in Corinth until you are healed.”
“Sir, I need to get away as soon as possible.” She gave him a pleading look, hoping to appeal his sense of chivalry.
It seemed to work as he nodded. “I’ll see what I can do.”
In her haste to leave the area, she temporarily forgot about Tom. She fell asleep on the train, the sheer exhaustion of the past few days overcoming the pain in her arm. She awoke when the train arrived at Grenada, Mississippi, and disembarked, still in her now ruined soldier’s uniform. The station was in a state of chaos, with people waiting to receive the wounded or corpses that had been managed to be removed from the battlefield.
“Please sir,” a woman touched her good arm and shoved a tintype of a young man in Loreta’s face. “Do you know my Bernard?”
As Loreta shook her head, she was accosted by many more women carrying pictures of men of various ages. The pain in her shoulder mounted as Loreta had no choice but to witness the grief of these poor souls upon not hearing news of their loved ones. She guessed that some of those boys being inquired about were back in Shiloh in the mass graves that had been hastily dug and she was filled with shame and sorrow. “I’m sorry,” she said, pushing past the crowd, cradling her bad arm close to her.
Chapter 34
Hattie
April 1862
Hattie and Timothy were conveyed to Castle Godwin, a former Negro jail in what was called “Lumpkin’s Alley.” They kept up the ruse of being married, and were allowed to stay together, sharing their second-floor cell with a few other men and women who had been accused of passing information to the Union.
Timothy was charged with being an enemy alien to the Confederate States and of lurking around their armies and fortifications. He was put on a trial, which lasted a few days. Because of his poor health, he only occasionally attended in person. He was there the day that Lewis and Scully testified, telling Hattie that Lewis had insisted he had never met Webster before the incident in the hotel room. Scully, however, had made a full confession, including identifying all of them as Pinkerton operatives. “Including you,” he told Hattie with a sigh.
She nodded, knowing that even the Confederates would not execute a woman. Timothy, however, was another story. On Friday, April 25, Timothy was escorted from his cell by armed men as Hattie looked on helplessly. When he returned at dusk, thrown back into the room by the same men, he related to Hattie that he had been taken to City Hall where the official verdict of his case had been read to him. “Guilty,” he said, his voice as stoic as ever. “They sentenced me to death. I’ll be the first spy to hang since Nathan Hale during the Revolutionary War.”
“Oh, Timothy, surely Mr. Lincoln will be able to exchange you for a Confederate spy and you can return home.”
“When they asked me if I had any last requests, I asked to be shot by a firing squad instead of dying a traitor’s death.”
She took his hand in his and they sat in silence. After what felt like an eternity, but was in reality probably less than an hour, a guard entered. “I’m here to move Mr. Webster to the condemned cell.”
Hattie rose. “Oh, please, sir, can he not stay here?”
The man held the cell door open. “I have my orders.”
* * *
The days, the last of Timothy’s life unless Hattie could help it, dragged by in a monotonous blur. Even his Rebel guards managed to take pity on them and allowed Hattie into his cell for a few minutes a day. She tried her best to clean it, but the smell of decay and dying men was not something she could wash away. Every night she prayed for her friend, but she searched her mind for something more she could possibly do to save his life.
Chapter 35
Mary Jane
April 1862
Mary Jane was dusting the bronze busts in the hallway when Mrs. O’Melia answered the door. The man standing there introduced himself as a prison guard. “I bring a request to Mr. Davis from a Mrs. Webster, held of late in Castle Godwin.”
Mary Jane was aware the Websters were a husband and wife team that had been arrested on suspicion of betraying the Confederate government.
Judah Benjamin had just exited Mr. Davis’s office and overheard. “You can tell that damned traitor that the President of the Confederacy is too busy plotting the Union demise with Bob Lee to pay the wife of a Union spy any heed.” He marched past the bewildered prison guard, who then cast a helpless look at Mrs. O’Melia.
Mrs. O’Melia’s face softened in sympathy. “That poor woman,” she muttered to herself. She tapped a hand on his chin before telling the guard she’d be right back. She disappeared into the interior of the house and came back a few minutes later with Mrs. Davis.
“How can I help you, sir?” Mrs. Davis asked.
“Ma’am,” he bowed. “I’m sorry to bother you, but I brought a missive from Mrs. Webster, a prisoner who pleas to save her husband.” He handed a piece of paper over to her.
Mary Jane moved her dusting to just inside the central parlor so she could read the expression on Mrs. Davis’s face. She read the letter quickly before handing it back to the guard. “It’s a terrible fate to suffer, but it’s also a terrible thing they’ve done, spying on our government like that.”
“Yes’m,” the prisoner guard agreed. “I understand.”
“In this case, I don’t think I can offer much assistance. Matters of state are first men’s work, and then God’s.”
“Thank you anyway, ma’am.” The guard tipped his hat and then left.
Miss Lizzie had been incensed upon hearing of the arrest of Mrs. Webster and a few other “good ladies of Richmond” who were being held prisoner. “It’s no good, I tell you Mary Jane, no good at all.”
Mrs. Thompson, the seamstress, paused in her examination of a crumbling hem. “If they are arresting women now, it will only be a matter of time before they get to us.”
“Nonsense,” Miss Lizzie snapped. “What right do they have to suspect an old spinster, a widow seamstress, and a se
rvant?”
“Slave,” Mary Jane corrected her. “I am not paid for my services.”
“Not in money.” Miss Lizzie raised her eyebrows. “What news do you have for us today, Mary Jane?”
She told them of the prison guard’s visit.
“Typical,” Miss Lizzie shook her head. “If Varina Davis had any sense, she would have divorced that traitor long ago.”
Mary Jane, thinking of Jeff Davis’s ill health and daily anxieties, did not reply.
“I hear that they are going to make a public spectacle of the hanging,” Mrs. Thompson stated.
“A warning to the Richmond Underground,” Miss Lizzie added.
Mrs. Thompson nodded. “They’re building the gallows on the city’s former fairgrounds at Camp Lee.”
“That poor Mrs. Webster.” Miss Lizzie nodded resolutely. “I must pay her a visit and offer her my service.”
Chapter 36
Hattie
April 1862
They allowed Hattie to say goodbye the morning of Timothy’s execution. Timothy’s form had grown even more ashen and gaunt than it had been before the trial. She hugged him to her, careful of his frail body. She tried not to let him see the tears that had formed, wanting to show him that she could stay strong, even in this, the face of his death. “I’m sorry,” she said once she was sure her voice would be steady.
“Me too,” Timothy said. “I’m sorry you are being punished.” Hattie had been found guilty of “conspiring with an alien enemy” and was sentenced to a year’s imprisonment. She attempted a smile. “It’s all part of the job.” She’d meant it to be funny, but, after the sentence left her mouth, she realized her mistake.
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