The Women Spies Series 1-3

by Sergeant, Kit

  When Timothy didn’t reply, Hattie’s next words caught in her throat. “I will send word to your wife as soon as I can.”

  “No.” Timothy’s words were firm. “Not until after you’ve been released. You cannot compromise your identity as Mrs. Webster.”

  Hattie nodded, wondering if his family had any notion as to what had happened. What was going to happen. It was possible they had no idea their husband and father was about to be put to death. Perhaps they were under the impression that Webster was still undercover, working to expose Confederate plans in favor of the Union. If only…

  Timothy must have caught sight of the wistful look on her face. “Don’t you worry about me. I’m not afraid to die a martyr to my country. Have you ever passed through a tunnel under a mountain?”

  Hattie nodded, thinking of the time she’d accompanied Lincoln on his journey, before the war began, when she had been filled with hope and ambition.

  Timothy continued, “My passage, my death may seem dark and ominous, but beyond is light and bright.”

  Hattie lost the battle with her tears. They slipped down her face as she thought about the great man the Union would lose when Timothy died.

  “Mr. Webster?” a voice inquired. Both Timothy and Hattie turned to see a brawny man dressed all in black beside the open cell door. “I am Captain Alexander. I’ve come to escort you.”

  Timothy used the crutch they had provided him to get to his feet, carefully balancing himself as he leaned in to Hattie. “Tell Major Allen that I can meet death with a brave heart and a clear conscience.” He kissed Hattie on the forehead. “Goodbye my friend.”

  Captain Alexander offered Timothy his arm, but he politely refused, instead hobbling out of the room, and Hattie’s life, on his own.

  Hattie did not move from her bed all day. In the late afternoon a guard announced that she had a visitor. She sat up in bed and told the guard to allow the visitor in.

  Hattie did not recognize the older woman with the crafty blue eyes. “Yes?” she asked, cautious that it was a Confederate woman there to gloat over Timothy’s death.

  “I am here to bring news of your husband.”

  Hattie stood. “Did you attend his execution? Did they allow him to die like a man by a firing squad?”

  “No. He was hanged, and I’m afraid the noose slipped.”

  Hattie took in a hopeful breath, but the woman held up a gnarled hand as she continued, “the first time. When they prepared him again, he told the crowd, ‘I suffer a double death.’ But he died bravely, no matter what you might read in the papers tomorrow. They are determined to vilify him as a traitor. They left him hanging for half an hour. When they finally took him down, some of the spectators cut pieces of the rope to keep as souvenirs.”

  Hattie nodded, the tears threatening yet again. She wished the Richmonders could have known the type of man Timothy had been. Enemy or not, he deserved as much respect in death as he did in life.

  The woman offered Hattie her handkerchief.

  “Mrs. Webster, the body of your husband has been brought back to the prison.” Once again the black-coated Captain Alexander had appeared without warning. This time he was accompanied by a large bloodhound, whose coat was predictably pitch-colored. “Ah,” the captain said, turning his eyes to Hattie’s visitor. “Miss Van Lew can escort you to the viewing if you’d like.”

  It seemed to Hattie that Miss Van Lew’s eyes turned cold and icy. “That’s quite all right,” she said in a haughty tone. “But I would ask if it would be possible for Mrs. Webster’s sentence to be carried out in my home.”

  “I think you’ve done quite enough for our Yankee prisoners of late, don’t you agree, Miss Van Lew?”

  “No,” the old woman replied. “It’s never enough.”

  Captain Alexander kept his beady black eyes on Miss Van Lew’s back as she left the cell. “Mrs. Webster?”

  Hattie followed him to a room in the rear of the prison. Timothy’s lifeless body lay on a table. There were rope burns around his wrists. She reached out to touch one of the bruises on his neck. “I am sorry, Husband,” she said aloud. After a moment, she turned to Captain Alexander. “How will he be buried?”

  He shrugged.

  “I’m going to purchase him a metal coffin. Could it be arranged for his body to be sent North?”

  “I doubt it,” the captain replied. “He angered a lot of higher-ups in the Confederate government in his betrayal. I don’t think they are inclined to do him any favors.”

  Hattie sighed, thinking his statement was a testament to Timothy’s skill as a spy: he’d earned their trust and respect, and their resentment was born out of embarrassment. Hattie said one final, tear-filled goodbye to her friend before Captain Alexander escorted her back to her cell.

  Chapter 37

  Loreta

  April 1862

  Loreta stayed in Grenada for a few days recuperating until her fever had subsided. The pain in her arm was still overwhelming, but she was resolved to continue on to New Orleans, only stopping for a few hours when the aching became too great to remain on the train.

  Loreta felt almost too unwell to keep up appearances, especially considering her uniform had been badly battered and her mustache was the worse for wear. Almost as soon as she returned to the city of her youth, a large man in a police uniform commanded that she come with him, telling her that she was under arrest.

  “What are the charges, sir?” she demanded in a tone that she hoped covered her anxiety.

  The officer did not reply, and she soon found herself in front of Mayor Monroe, whose squinty eyes were fixed on the arrest papers in front of him. “Lieutenant Buford, you are under suspicion of being, in fact, a woman.” He finally looked up, gazing at Loreta with interest. “You are ordered to change your apparel immediately.”

  His pompous manner angered Loreta. “Sir, you will have to prove that I am a woman first.”

  Loreta saw with delight that her challenge seemed to disconcert the mayor. He pushed back his wild dark hair, revealing a receding hairline. She took a seat as he left his desk, summoning someone from outside his office. Loreta watched Monroe scratch at his long beard that was more gray than black as he conferred with the unseen person. He nodded and bid his conspirator adieu before returning. “I’m confining you to prison until we can decide who you really are, once and for all.”

  Though horrified at the sentencing, Loreta was still unwilling to give herself up as a female, and left the office without another word.

  She was taken to the Parish Prison. Luckily a guard summoned the prison doctor, who set Loreta’s arm and redressed her wounds. He was a quiet man and promised not to inform anyone of the fact that she was female, especially after Loreta gave him some money for his services. But a few days later, the local paper printed a story of a woman arrested in a soldier’s uniform. A guard let her read the article, which was almost an afterthought, taking up only a small portion of the interior of the paper. The article did not state either her real name or her alias. She folded the paper, and then looked up, startled.

  “Is this true?” she asked the guard, pointing to the headline claiming that Union gunboats had broken through the Confederate defenses on the lower Mississippi.

  “That’s the rumor,” the guard replied. “If it’s true, it won’t be long before the Yanks occupy the city. Most of our troops were called to hold the forts. We don’t have much defense left.”

  Loreta’s fear of being taken as a soldier prisoner by the Yankees overcame her indignation at Mayor Monroe. She’d been operating under the premise that the best way to keep a secret was to not tell anyone, but perhaps now was the time to reveal. “Is it possible for you to let the Mayor know I’m ready to confess?”

  The guard walked closer to her cell and peered at her. “Are you really a woman?”

  She nodded, and the guard left immediately. He returned a few minutes later and unlocked her cell, stating the mayor was ready to see her.

  Ma
yor Monroe was sitting behind his desk in the same position as she had last seen him, but this time he held an expectant look on his smug face. “Well, miss, I’m told you are ready to confess.”

  Used to spinning stories, Loreta again told partial-truths: that she had decided to pose as a soldier in order to write a history of the war, giving her name as Mrs. Mary Ann Keith. She gestured to her shoulder. “This is from Shiloh, where I fought heroically for our side.”

  The mayor waved his hand. “Seeing as how the Union is set to occupy the city at any moment, you are the least of my worries.” He ordered her to pay $10 and not to fall on the other side of the law again.

  As Loreta made her way out of the office, Monroe summoned his personal secretary to ask about news of the federal fleet.

  Loreta paused in the doorway as the secretary took her former place in front of the mayor’s desk. “I believe they are now making their way up river,” he stated.

  “We won’t go lightly,” Monroe declared. “Mr. Baynes, can you see that the flag of the venerable state of Louisiana is poised above the courthouse? I’ll be damned if they try to raise the flag of the Union anywhere in the city.”

  “Yessir.” The secretary hurried past Loreta. As she left Mayor Monroe’s office, she couldn’t help admire the man’s tenacity, her punishment and fine notwithstanding.

  Now that she’d been released, Loreta pondered what to do. She had no family and no friends left in the city and was still suffering from the pain in her arm. She began walking, her path taking her right in front of her old boarding school. Seized with an idea, Loreta went in, telling the clerk at the desk that she was looking for an old friend. The clerk helped her locate Nellie Jones, the girl she had stolen William from all those years ago.

  Loreta headed straight to the address the clerk had given her and knocked at the door. If Nellie was surprised to see her old roommate in a soldier’s attire, she did not say so. She’d probably read the newspaper and connected it to Loreta. Nellie had always been quicker than most of the other girls at their school.

  “I need you to lend me a dress,” Loreta stated simply.

  Nellie agreed, as long as Loreta left her steps immediately and never contacted her again, adding, “You needn’t worry about returning the clothes—I have much more appealing ones.”

  When Nellie returned from the inner reaches of the house with the requested clothing, she asked, “Whatever happened to William, anyway?”

  “He died,” Loreta said, accepting the dress. “G’day, Nellie.”

  “G’day, Loreta Velazquez. Or Mary Ann Keith. Or whatever your name is.”

  Loreta headed to a nearby boarding house and secured a room, registering herself with her real name to avoid confusion with the newspaper article. The hotel clerk glanced up from the registry to Loreta’s battered uniform, his eyes narrowing at the dress stuffed under her arm. Loreta pulled out a wad of money and threw it at him before heading upstairs.

  “I hope you enjoy your stay, Miss Velazquez,” the clerk called out in an astonished voice.

  Loreta changed into Nellie’s dress, the garment again feeling foreign. She pulled on a battered bonnet as she heard shouting in the hallway. Opening the door, Loreta inquired of a young man outside what was happening.

  “The Yanks are coming!” he replied.

  Loreta shut the door to finish dressing as quickly as possible and then headed to the levee.

  She had never seen such a sight as the one that greeted her when she arrived at the banks of the Mississippi. Hundreds of wagons, carts, and boards with wheels—anything that could be rolled along—stretched along the horizon. They were stacked with bales of cotton. Slaves hurriedly unloaded them and then threw them into a pile. They then made a teepee of pinewood surrounding the cotton and poured a bucket of whiskey over it before lighting it. Loreta watched as they worked tirelessly, sweat pouring down their black faces. She could feel the heat from the flames from her vantage point and could only imagine how hot it would be in the midst of the burning piles. Like hell itself. Still the slaves worked, and she wondered what for—the Yankees represented their salvation and here they were, endeavoring to burn the material that they themselves had labored over picking and what the Yankees would give anything to procure. Once they ran out of land for the burning piles, they began to pile the cotton on flatboats and lit the cotton on fire before pushing the boats out into the water to drift down the Mississippi. A funeral pyre consisting of thousands of precious dollars in both cotton and liquor.

  Through the blaze and smoke, the federal fleet made its way into view. The gunboats that had fought their way past Fort Jackson and St. Philip were even grander than the ones that Loreta had glimpsed at Shiloh. One by one the vessels dropped anchor. The water outside the levees was higher, elevating the ships to a level in which their guns could point downward at the city streets. The sight gave her a greater understanding of both the federal government’s power and the weakness of the Confederacy. “They can fire at any building at will,” Loreta said aloud.

  “Or they could just destroy the levee and flood the city,” another curious observer replied. “I think our game is all but lost.”

  “Not yet,” Loreta said as she started away, a trace of Harry’s swagger still visible underneath her skirts.

  Even though her identity had been discovered and she could no longer fight, she still longed to do her part to win independence for the South. It was true the Yanks had greater power, but perhaps there was more than one way to win this war. She reasoned that her greatest success thus far had been that she had been under the guise of Harry Buford for over a year, and, save for her confession, no one but the doctors had discovered her true gender. And, having some expertise at being in disguise, she focused on a new tactic: becoming a spy.

  Chapter 38

  Belle

  May 1862

  Belle awoke one morning a few weeks after her Winchester adventure to a commotion below her window.

  Mauma Eliza informed her that it was the Yankees that were making all the “fuss in de street.” Still clad in her chemise, Belle rushed to the window. Indeed, the avenue was filled with men in blue coats. She was about to run outside when Mauma Eliza stopped her with her thick arm, hollering to put some clothes on.

  Belle impatiently posed at the bedpost while Mauma Eliza tugged at her corset strings. “Can’t you go any faster?” Belle demanded.

  “No, Miss Belle. Why are you so anxious anyway?”

  “I need to find out where those Yanks are headed.”

  When Belle was finally dressed and out the door, she ran into the hotel and found a Yankee scout she’d become friendly with.

  “What’s happening?” she cried.

  “The Rebel army is approaching,” the scout replied. Belle managed to refrain from crossing herself as he continued, “No one had any idea Stonewall was so close.”

  I did. Belle remembered the talk in Mrs. Winslow’s sewing circle.

  “He’s supposedly less than a mile outside Front Royal.” The man nodded his head toward the chaos outside. “Colonel Shields has ordered his men to burn the depot stores.”

  “What if the rebels arrive before you can burn them?”

  “Then we fight,” the man said, the muscles underneath his mustache twitching. “If, God help us, we retreat upon Winchester, we’ll burn the bridges after we cross them.”

  A man entered the lobby just as the scout was leaving. Belle was dismayed to see that it was Charles Dunham and could not keep her lip from curling. She had met the reporter for the New York Herald shortly before her Winchester trip and found him to be extremely repugnant, as if Dunham’s only joy in life was to insult young Confederate women.

  Belle pushed past him to leave, but he stopped her by grabbing her arm. “What’s the matter, Miss Boyd?”

  “Nothing much to speak of,” Belle edged out of his grasp and made to leave. But she paused at the threshold to tell him, “The rebels are coming and you best prepare yo
urself for a visit to Libby Prison.”

  Dunham’s face went white before he rushed to the staircase.

  Belle knew she should get back to the cottage and prepare, but she couldn’t help herself. She slowly walked up the hotel stairs to stand outside the Yankee reporter’s room. She spotted him hurriedly throwing papers into a bag. “Where are you planning to go, Mr. Dunham?”

  He glanced up. “I’m not sure, but I think it’s best if I skedaddle now.”

  Belle’s gaze fell on his room key, still stuck in the door. Dunham’s focus had returned to his packing. Stealthily, Belle closed the door and turned the lock before dropping the key into the pocket of her apron.

  As Belle headed outside, she saw a few men she recognized as Confederate sympathizers standing in a huddle, jeering at the few Yankees who were still on the street.

  Belle approached them. “Is there one among you who would be willing to relay information of the Yanks’ plans to General Jackson? It is of vital importance.”

  Each man refused to meet her eyes. “Sir,” she said, turning to Mr. White, a man she knew to use any opportunity to denigrate the Union. “If we don’t pass on this intelligence, Stonewall might run into a Yankee trap.”

  “Indeed, it is of great consequence,” Mr. White concurred. “But if any of us were to be caught by the Yanks, we would be hanged.”

  “A small sacrifice for the greater good of our country,” Belle replied as she narrowed her eyes.

  “So says the lesser of the sexes,” another man hooted. “Why don’t you go yourself?”

  “I will,” Belle said before turning on her heel. The dress Mauma Eliza had put on her that day was royal blue. Yankee colors, Belle thought, as she ran in the direction where Stonewall Jackson’s troops were supposed to be coming from. She had not gotten very far when the gunshots began to sound. The Union soldiers had erected artillery on the hill just outside of town and were lighting cannons pointed at Main Street. When Belle spotted the gray uniforms of the Confederacy advancing on the other side, she realized she was trapped between the two armies. The rebels on the front line took aim and began to fire. Belle felt the bullets whizz past her ears but she kept her pace until she felt a tug on her skirt and glanced down, expecting to see a stray dog nipping at her heels. Instead she was confronted by a large hole in her petticoats: a bullet had penetrated her skirts, but, luckily, had not reached her person.