“Dinner is served,” the guard outside called roughly.
“I wouldn’t exactly call a bowl full of boiled beef and month-old bread, ‘dinner,’” Frankie returned, winking at Hattie as she did so. The guard opened the door, stepping aside for a black man to deliver the buckets stocked with their meal.
After Frankie shoveled her food down, and Hattie forced herself to eat what she could, they decoded the rest of Hugh’s letters. They were filled with more updates on the war, filling Hattie in on the progress made in Tennessee and McClellan’s defeat by the newly appointed commander of the Army of Northern Virginia, Robert E. Lee.
“Now there’s a gallant man if I ever laid eyes on one,” Frankie commented.
“Lee? He’s a Confederate.”
“He nearly was Union, and I rue the day he chose them over us. I would have left my husband for him quicker than you could say, ‘Southern gentleman.’ But you’re right, he was on the wrong side of the war,” Frankie added, as if that was the only reason she and Lee hadn’t realized their true potential. “Now about you and Major Lawton…”
Hattie faked a yawn. “The events of the day have me exhausted.”
Frankie waved Hugh’s last letter. “I think I have enough solution left to translate one more.” She accordingly wet the paper and then leaned closer, frowning. “There’s nothing else written.” She tossed the letter at Hattie, who read the visible version.
My Dear Auntie,
As I haven’t heard from you, I can’t help but fear the worst. News from Richmond has become scarce, and I am concerned for your safety. I know that you cannot get word to your family about your welfare, but I wish for you to know that I think about you daily and will be anxiously waiting your release.
Yours affectionately, as always,
Hugh Lawton
His words needed no translation and, after tucking that letter on top of the others under her mattress, Hattie slept well for the first time in a long time, dreaming of the day when she and Hugh would be united at last.
Chapter 47
Belle
August 1862
Despite the ban on socializing, Belle quickly made friends with her fellow captors. The few who hadn’t heard her outburst on that first night soon learned about her through prison gossip, and they slipped her little presents of candy, flowers, and even tiny Confederate flags that had been smuggled into the Old Capitol prison.
In typical fashion, she won the hearts of even her guards: the sentry who guarded her door during the day permitted her to sit in the doorway of her room and sing. The sentry barely batted an eye when Belle sung tried-and-true favorites such as “Dixie” and “Maryland, My Maryland!” Despite the best efforts of the music teachers at Mount Washington, her voice was forever tuneless but she sang as though she was pouring out her soul with every word. Prisoners of both Northern and Southern sentiments seemed to be transfixed by the melancholy sound of Belle’s voice.
The nighttime sentry, however, was not so amused, especially when other prisoners began joining Belle’s singing, shouting the words, She spurns the Northern Scum, at the top of their lungs.
“You girl,” he sneered when his patrolling brought her to her doorway. “Stop that singing.”
Belle rose from her rocking chair conveniently positioned just inside the door. “I shan’t do so and you can’t make me.”
He stared her down. Belle saw that he was a young man, perhaps even younger than herself. She grabbed a nearby broom and swept at the path just recently tread by the sentry, singing the stanza even louder than before.
The sentry walked away, muttering to himself about “damned rebels.”
Belle, being the only woman in the prison, had the room to herself while others shared a cell with up to ten other men. The loneliness began to weigh heavily on her. She was used to gallivanting all over the Shenandoah Valley—remaining indoors was the most torturous part about the prison. She prevailed Superintendent Wood to let her walk in the prison yard accompanied by a guard, but even Wood could not grant her this simple request, claiming it was ordered by the secretary of war himself that she stay confined inside.
The only instances she was allowed out of her room were Sunday mornings, when Wood would pace the hallways, calling, “All ye who want to hear the Lord God preached by Jeff Davis, go down to the yard, and all ye who want to hear the Lord God preached by Abe Lincoln, go to Room 16.” The other prisoners would clamor to be near her in the courtyard, and those that lost out would doff their hats upon making eye contact with her or reach for her hand as she passed by them. Belle would touch them briefly, as though she were a queen walking among her subjects.
Belle’s window faced I-Street. Whenever she heard soldiers marching, she quickly rushed to the window, sometimes interrupting her own singing, to taunt the boys in blue walking by, shouting inquiries as to where they were coming from or where they were off to.
The reply was nearly always the same: “Hush you damned rebel or I’ll shoot you.”
“Then shoot me,” Belle would command. “What are you doing, marching down the street when there’s a war to fight and Stonewall’s waiting for you on the other side of the Potomac?” Sometimes she would instigate things further, telling them that all they had left after being driven out of the Shenandoah by the men of Virginia was to pick on defenseless women. The fact that their abusive and derogatory language was better suited to a brothel than a public street further convinced Belle that these Union soldiers were no gentlemen.
New captives would arrive daily. Their presence was usually announced by one of the prisoners whose window faced Pennsylvania Avenue, shouting “Fresh Fish!” The seasoned prisoners would then all crowd around the window and watch the reoccurring scene of a new enemy of the state being escorted by a sentry or detective into the Old Capitol Prison. One day Belle was astonished to see that the newcomer was none other than Clifford McVay, one of her former beaus from before the war. She’d heard that he’d been wounded during the Peninsula Campaign. His fellow comrades had left him for dead, and, having recovered from his wounds, he became a federal prisoner.
Her favorite sentry happened to be on duty the evening he arrived. As McVay was escorted to the cell directly across from hers, Belle stood in the open doorway and sang “My Southern Soldier Boy” in the most seductive tones she could manage. Belle was pleased to see McVay pause just inside his open door. As she began the final stanza, Belle held up one arm and, with the other, slipped off her right glove and held it between her fingers before dropping it to the floor. She peeked to make sure the guard’s back was turned. As McVay watched, Belle wrapped a note around a marble. She began a new refrain as she bent down, making sure McVay caught a view of her décolletage and then rolled the marble across the hall. McVay stopped it with his foot. He finally broke Belle’s gaze to pick up the note and read it, his lips forming a smile. He winked at Belle as he left his place by the doorjamb just as the sentry passed by. A few minutes later, he reappeared and held up the marble before sending it back across to Belle. Belle unwrapped the slip of paper. She had written, “I’m glad to see you are making a recovery.”
McVay had written, “I’m glad to see you,” in return. He signed it, “Clifford.”
Belle and Clifford continued their marble rolling for the next few nights, their notes becoming increasingly more familiar with each return. It became a sort of game: they’d roll when the sentry’s back was turned. He’d hear it and quickly look for the offending noise, but by then the marble had made it to its destination.
After three nights, Clifford asked Belle for her hand in marriage. Belle refused, and the same the next night. It was a Southern tradition to refuse a man twice before accepting. The morning of what Belle assumed would be the third and final proposal, she demanded an appointment with Superintendent Wood.
“What may I do for you, Miss Boyd?” he asked when she entered his office.
“I am going to be engaged to a Rebel officer and would like
to speak with you about my trousseau.”
If Superintendent Wood was surprised to hear of her impending betrothal, his facial expression did not betray it. “Your trousseau?”
“We wished to be married as soon as possible, and circumstances being as they are, it is very difficult to secure proper wedding attire.” Belle handed him a list of her desired items: a gown with white lace and pink ribbon trim, an underskirt with beaded ruffles, and a velvet cloak.
Wood looked over the demands. His hand was placed over his mouth but Belle detected the hint of a smile. “I’ll see what I can do for you, Miss Boyd.”
That night another admiring prisoner sent Belle a sugar loaf. One of her least favorite guards was on duty, but when Belle asked if she could deliver the cone of sugar to Clifford, he gave his consent.
Belle marched across the hall and knocked on the door. Clifford answered. Belle gave him a deep curtsy, rotating her shoulders for optimum décolletage viewing. When she rose, she held out the proffered sugar loaf.
The sentry was immediately at her side. “What do you think you are doing?”
“Giving a gift to my love, just as you said I could,” Belle replied.
As Clifford reached out to accept the sugar, the sentry hit his musket against Belle’s hand, causing her to drop the loaf. Refined sugar sprinkled all over the floor as Belle held up her sore hand to her lips, tears forming in her eyes.
“Keep your hands off of her!” Clifford shouted.
Belle faced the guard. “You said—”
“You did not tell me that he was your love. It’s bad enough there are Rebel scum like you two. The last thing we need is for you to produce more of them.”
Belle started to bend forward to retrieve what was left of the fallen loaf but the sentry blocked her with the bayonet of his musket. “Go back now, or I’ll break every bone in your body.”
Belle folded her arms over her chest, enjoying loud protests from Clifford and his roommates. The guard pinned her against the wall, his bayonet stuck through the lace sleeves of her dress like a dart. Belle felt a sharp pain in her upper arm. She began to scream, prompting the prisoners to shout even louder. More guards rushed to the scene. One of them shoved her attacker away while another released Belle. She touched her arm where the pain was and her hand came away with blood. Shocked, Belle screamed again. The guard nearest her ripped open her sleeve. Belle tried shoving him, but he was a large, solid man. “Quiet, girl, I’m trying to see where the blood is coming from.”
Belle yanked her arm away and stepped back to examine herself. The bayonet had sliced a small wound shaped like a half moon through her upper arm. The scar that eventually formed after it healed became Belle’s favorite testament to her work during the war.
The next morning, Belle was awakened by Superintendent Wood’s shouting. She tried to focus as she overheard her name.
“What was that?” she asked, coming to the door with a sheet thrown over her sleeping outfit.
“You are to be sent through the lines to be turned over to General Dix starting tomorrow. You’ve been set free.”
“How?”
“Prisoner exchange. Rebels for true union men. Seems the Confederates have one of our women spies among them, so it’s an even trade.” Wood walked off.
“Miss Belle?” Clifford was standing in his doorway.
Belle tightened the sheet around and strolled over. “Yes, Cliff?”
“I never did get to ask you in person to marry me. I was going to ask you agin’ via marble last night but then that,” Clifford’s hands tightened and he took a deep breath. “I was fixing to kill that man if he hurt you any further.”
“Oh no, Cliff. You would have ended up in solitary confinement, or probably worse.”
“Will you wait until I can get out of here? Then we can have a proper wedding.”
“We probably can’t have a proper wedding until after the war is over.” Belle chose her words carefully, not wanting to commit to marriage now that she was going to be set free. Cliff was a handsome, dashing man, but he was still a prisoner and Belle was sure she had many more adventures ahead of her. After Belle left the Old Capitol Prison, she never saw Clifford McVay again.
A crowd of well-wishers and reporters had gathered outside the Old Capitol Prison the morning of Belle’s release. Belle used her now-perfected queenly manner to wave at them as she made her way to her carriage.
“God bless you, Miss Belle,” one woman shouted. She used the hand of the babe in her arms to blow kisses to Belle and the prisoners who had been released with her. The carriage proceeded to the riverboat, the Juaniata, which set sail down the Chesapeake Bay toward Virginia. Belle could see Union ships all down the Bay, preparing an attack on Richmond, Belle assumed. Despite the presence of the enemy all around them as well as onboard, the ex-prisoners on the Juaniata were in a jolly mood and the afternoon and night was filled with singing. Belle joined in many of the songs. When the ship headed up the James River, a Confederate flag proudly waving outside someone’s home came into view and someone called for “three cheers for Jefferson Davis.” Belle’s ebullient calls were louder than any of the men’s.
She stayed in Richmond’s finest hotel, the Ballard House. When she arrived in her room, she found a brown package sitting on her bed. The card on top read, “Complements of Superintendent Wood.” Inside was every piece of the trousseau she’d requested.
Chapter 48
Mary Jane
September 1862
Despite the cheering news of Union successes in the deep South during the early summer, in late August, the second Battle of Manassas ended with a Confederate victory.
The Davises decided to host a ball in honor of the occasion. Mrs. Davis declared that it was important to let the belles of Richmond see that there were still eligible men available. Mrs. Davis’s young sister, Maggie, insisted that there were absolutely no suitable bachelors left during dinner one night. “There are some towns where the only males left are younger than 16 and older than 65,” she stated, twirling a piece of brunette hair in her finger.
“That cannot possibly be true,” Mrs. Davis retorted.
“Yes, sister, you’re right. There is the occasional invalid and amputee to add to the mix.”
Mr. Davis looked up from his plate. “If you had to choose between a man with an empty shirtsleeve and a man who stayed home to grow rich from the war, I would say you should take the hero with the empty sleeve.”
This time Mrs. Davis borrowed sabers from soldiers to decorate the parlor walls, and masked the worn damask couches with bright slipcovers in red and white. She draped every remaining surface with Confederate flags and even commissioned a local artist to draw the Stars and Bars in colored chalk on the linen rug covering the parlor floor.
In a world where unprecedented carnage and destruction had become the new normal, the Southerners’ sense of humanity seemed to be restored, at least for a few hours. As Mary Jane watched the soldiers—many of them in the empty shirtsleeves and legless pants Maggie had predicted—twirl women dressed in patched gowns and homemade palmetto bonnets, she marveled at how careless they seemed, clinging to a past that didn’t want them anymore. Like Nero hosting a ball while Rome burned.
As the night grew late, the dancers completely annihilated the chalk flag: the blue, white and red pigments becoming affixed to the ladies’ slippers and men’s boots and then scattering in a sudden gust of wind.
Chapter 49
Belle
September 1862
Although Richmond held many social and fashionable attractions, Belle longed for home. Martinsburg was again in Confederate hands which meant that travel would be safe enough. She sent word to her father, who arrived promptly to escort her. He had been given leave from the army and indeed he looked sickly: thinner, his age showing with each painful step he took using his new cane.
They arrived back in Martinsburg to the news that Lincoln had issued a preliminary Emancipation Proclamation afte
r the Battle of Antietam, warning the Southerners that the slaves of the Confederacy would be “thenceforward, forever free,” if the states did not return to the Union by January 1.
After reading the latest headline, Belle’s father folded the paper and tossed it across the dining room table. “So the war indeed is about them.”
The weary tone in his voice made Belle’s anger swell. “It was always about them, though the Yanks would have you believe it was about preserving the country. And besides Father, Lincoln can declare everyone free until he is blue in the face. It means nothing to the Confederacy. We are ruled by our own president.”
He nodded. “Indeed.”
Belle set out the next morning for Stonewall Jackson’s headquarters. She wore her favorite riding habit: it was cut close to show off her curves and Rebel gray in color. She carried a gold saber knot intended as a present for the general in her bodice, underneath her palmetto brooch.
Belle rode the eight miles from town, her anxiety mounting. She hoped that General Jackson would remember meeting her as well as praise her for the deeds she had done for the South. After she arrived at camp, she told an aide that Belle Boyd was there to see the general.
More uneasy minutes ticked by until at last Stonewall stepped from his tent. “God bless you my child!” he exclaimed, placing his hands on her head as though he was a priest. “I was horrified to hear of your imprisonment.” His hands dropped back to his side.
“Yessir, although I was happy to serve in the name of the Confederacy.”
“Ah, but Miss Boyd, if our army evacuates the area, you will once again be in danger. Take heed, it will be worse if the Yankees capture you again. You should travel deeper South. Take the time to drink in all of the beautiful scenery our great country has to offer.”
The Women Spies Series 1-3 Page 55