by Alyssa Cole
As if summoned by the strength of his meditations, Elle’s face appeared before him in the crowd, head down but eyes vigilant, searching. Her hair was hidden beneath a dull scarf, drawing even more attention to the lovely shape of her eyes and the fullness of her mouth. To the dark rings beneath her eyes, too. She looked up and her gaze immediately met his. Her eyes narrowed, and for a moment he thought she’d not look away, not until she had won this minor battle of wills. But then she seemed to remember that a slave looking a man full in the face in the streets of Richmond was not done. She dropped her head again, seemingly searching the ground, but her feet carried her toward him none the less.
“Good morning,” he said, although his mind was suddenly full to brimming with the things he really wanted to tell her. You’re beautiful. You’re brilliant. I want to strip that dress off and make you cry out with pleasure.
None of those things would be remotely appropriate, even if they didn’t have societal constraints against intermingling, but the words welled within him all the same.
“I didn’t see you last night,” he said. “I hope the morning finds you well.”
She gave him a curt nod, unable to speak while others were around. He longed to hear that rough-sweet voice of hers, even if it were castigating him as she had on the bluff and in the carriage. But she was playing her role as a mute, and as he saw a man approaching from his peripheral vision Malcolm realized he would have to play his role, too.
“I’ll reply to Master Caffrey’s message this afternoon,” he said to Elle, patting his pocket as if he’d just placed something there. For her part, she simply nodded as if she knew what he was talking about.
“McCall!”
The portly older gentleman who approached them shook Malcolm’s hand enthusiastically, but his eyes flitted to Elle.
“How you doing, son? Hope I’m not interrupting nothing.”
“No, Willocks, this gal was just giving me a note from Senator Caffrey. I dined with them yesterday and I’m supposed to call again this evening.”
“Ah, so she’s only a messenger then,” Willocks said, eyeing her rudely. “I could think of a few other uses for her.”
Malcolm clenched his teeth and plastered a smile on his face. Hadn’t he offered her his protection and now he stood grinning at a man who harassed her? His promise to her couldn’t supersede the one he’d made to his country. Willocks was damned lucky Malcolm was such a patriot, or the lecher would have tasted Malcolm’s backhand for the next week.
And who will protect her from you?
“This one? She’s nature’s own fool,” Malcolm said blithely. He needed to warn the man off, even if it made him seem like a prig instead of one of the boys. “Can’t even talk. No fun in that, is there?”
“As long as the parts down below work, who cares if she’s a little soft in the head?” Willocks asked, then laughed at his own lewdness.
Malcolm felt his impotent rage keenly, spurred by the knowledge that he couldn’t demand satisfaction for the insult. That he might be the only person on that crowded Richmond street who thought it an insult, besides Elle, added to his frustration.
“You may go,” he said to Elle dismissively.
She turned and walked past Willocks, a blank look on her face as if she hadn’t just been subjugated before him. Malcolm’s gaze followed her over the man’s shoulder. He watched her step into a small dry goods store, perhaps belonging to the grocer MacTavish she’d mentioned the night before.
“A bit too dark for my liking,” Willocks observed after she had finally disappeared from view. “Still, it’s a shame that she’s simple. With those hips, she’d make a good breeder.”
God must be testing my devotion to the Cause, and testing it sorely, Malcolm thought as he nodded his agreement with the man.
He’d been traveling in Rebel crowds for some time now, and the people were just as varied as in any state in the Union. Some men were funny, some were gentle, some went out of their way to help a stranger. Occasionally, a pang of guilt would assail him after he’d gained some kindhearted Southerner’s trust and used it against him. Although he could never forget his duty or the danger it entailed, Malcolm often wished that his enemy wasn’t an enemy at all. But the people he’d encountered on this trip to Richmond thus far erased all guilt. They were like walking parables, reminding him of this scourge that must be wiped out from the nation.
“I hear Senator Caffrey is to have a ball in a few days’ time,” Willocks continued. “Some folks say that he’s rubbing it in the face of those who have nothing, throwing a lavish party while people are starving from this here blockade. But I hear tell that he’s fixin’ to remedy that problem very soon.”
Malcolm put his anger aside and clapped a hand cordially on Willocks’s shoulder. “You mean we’ve got something in the works that’ll show these Yanks what for?”
“Mayhap,” the man said with conspiratorial glee. “Grand plans for the Confederacy are in the works. Will you be here for the ball? I know you were helpful down in Charleston, and we might need the services of a man like you.”
Malcolm had received some of the best information of his career during his stay in Charleston. He’d undercut a plan to infiltrate the Navy and ferreted out a nest of vipers living in the Capital and sending information to the Rebels, all while pretending to be a dyed-in-the-wool Confederate. The raid on the secessionists in the Capital and the failure of the infiltration had never been connected, allowing him to trade on other small Confederate “successes” he’d spearheaded in lower Carolina despite the overall Rebel losses. He could only hope the upcoming ball would provide the same windfall of information.
“I wouldn’t miss it for the world.”
“Excellent. I’ll see you there, then.”
Willocks hobbled off on his gouty legs, and Malcolm watched him with a friendly grin that faded as the man gained distance. Meeting Caffrey on the ferry to Richmond had been coincidence, but every good detective knew there was no such thing. Something had drawn him to the senator, and it seemed that what he’d thought to be blind angling had landed him a whopper. He needed to get word to Washington that something was brewing.
Telegraph stations were still too unsecure in the Capital, accessible to any literate man who desired to read the correspondence. Pinkerton was having a private presidential telegraph station built, but until then Malcolm would have to do things the old-fashioned way.
He made for the grocer’s with haste. He was glad Elle had told him of the place; it was a valuable connection to be made in a city where allegiances were constantly shifting as people flocked to the new capital as quickly as others fled the war.
He walked into the dusty general store, gaze searching the dim, cluttered space for Elle’s head scarf. Her hair had smelled of roses when she perched on his lap on the bluff. The tight curls had been soft against his cheek, and he’d wondered how it would be to undo the two braids and run his hands through the dark mass of hair, to feel it pressed against his chest in the aftermath of lovemaking.
His groin tightened at the impossible fantasy, quite inopportunely as she was only a few feet away from him now. The grocer stood before her at the counter, his white hair standing up every which way and clad in a shirt that was more patches than not. When he caught sight of Malcolm, his demeanor changed.
“Can I help you, sir?” he asked. His tone would have seemed cordial to anyone else, but Malcolm was familiar with the mild contempt that underlay the man’s brogue.
“I believe you can,” he said with a smile. “I need to get letters out with some haste.”
“I don’t have letter runners here, sir, you must be mistaken. Perhaps you should try another establishment,” MacTavish said, a razor’s edge still hidden beneath the hospitality in his voice. Malcolm recognized it as the same tone that laced his mother’s sweet cadence when conversation turned to the English, like there was a bitter taste in her mouth and they were at fault for it.
Elle cleare
d her throat and MacTavish looked at her. For a moment she seemed to debate what to do; then she widened her eyes in Malcolm’s direction and gave a stiff nod.
“Aye,” MacTavish said, scanning the store for any customers who may have wandered in. When he was certain no one lingered behind bushel or shelve, he swung up the wooden counter to allow them to pass through. “Follow me to the back. Quickly now.”
Elle followed and Malcolm pulled up the rear, glancing behind him to make sure they moved unwatched.
The grocer led them into the small room. There was hardly space for all three of them along with the desk and chairs, although it apparently served as a meeting place for those involved in abolition and the protection of the Union.
“This lad is a friend of yours then, Ellen?” MacTavish asked.
Ellen.
Ellen and Malcolm. The Lady of the Lake. Even though she detested a particular Scottish poet, she had to know the significance of that name pairing, of the fated lovers in the midst of war. She shot him a displeased glance and he realized he’d spoken her name aloud like a lovesick fool.
“Friend of mine? No, more like a pain in my rear end,” Elle said, still avoiding his gaze. “But he’s a friend of Abe’s, and that’s all that matters.”
She stood as far away from him as the small room would allow and stared at a horrid example of needlepoint with extreme interest, as if the cure for what ailed the nation was hidden in those crooked stitches.
“I’ve had the good fortune of becoming friendly with the master of Elle’s household,” Malcolm explained. “I’ve just run into an acquaintance from a previous journey, and he gave me information regarding a ball to be held at Elle’s place of employ. There are murmurs of breaking the blockade.”
“When haven’t there been?” Elle asked.
“This man insinuated that something or someone at the ball might be the key to doing more than talking about it.”
Elle cut her eyes in his direction. “He gave you this information? Just like that?”
Malcolm shrugged. “What can I say? People like me.”
Elle rolled her eyes at that, but he thought the hint of a smile played at the corners of her lips. It was more likely a grimace of annoyance, but he’d take what he could get from her.
“Here’s paper, ink, quill that’s still usable,” MacTavish said. He licked the end of the quill and tested it, then motioned for Malcolm to sit just as a bell chimed.
“A customer,” MacTavish whispered, heading back to the front. “Elle can help if you need anything.”
He closed the door soundly behind him and then they were alone.
“That man smells as if he’s been gargling with whiskey,” Malcolm observed in a low voice. “Are you quite sure about his ability to be of service in such a state?”
“Do you doubt my ability to discern a reliable ally from a useless drunk?” Elle asked in a whisper, then sighed in resignation. “Yes, he drinks to excess now and then, but he’s never given us reason to doubt him. MacTavish has helped the Loyal League and other networks on numerous occasions, and before that he helped smuggle untold numbers of escaped slaves up North. Besides, no one suspects an old lush of undermining the Rebellion.”
Malcolm had to agree with that.
“I trust your judgment,” he said as he settled in to write.
“Oh, thank you. While that is kind of you, I don’t have quite the same need for your approval that you have for mine.”
Ouch. When he was a boy, his brother had shown him a drawing of a little creature called a hedgehog in an encyclopedia of animals. It was as cute a creature as a boy could hope for, but its back was covered in sharp quills to keep predators away. He reminded himself that he was just the sort of predator Elle was used to, but that didn’t lessen the sting of her words. Or his nonsensical reaction to them.
He wanted to go to her, to take her in his arms and soothe the frustration of their earlier encounters away. But Elle stood ramrod straight, her fingers tangled against her skirt. It was clear that she didn’t want soothing, or anything, from him. Her quills were out, and had likely been sharpened during each of their previous encounters.
Instead of further trying her, he sat at the desk and jotted down three short dispatches, hoping the information would dovetail with some other correspondence heading for Washington, or perhaps put his fellow detectives on the right trail. He added her information about the earthworks, just in case it hadn’t been received before.
He noticed she had some correspondence of her own clutched tightly in her hands. They hadn’t yet shared much with each other, he realized. He was fairly certain that was his doing.
“Would you like to read my letters to see if anything proves useful to you?” he asked, pulling his train of thought back onto the correct track.
“Yes, and you can read my correspondence as well. The letters regarding these matters, that is.”
She pulled a few papers from her packet of letters and passed them over as he handed her his scant three. His eyes lit on the signature before anything else.
Ellen Burns.
Her former master had been a Scot then. Did she associate his accent and origins with enslavement and cruelty? One day he would ask her, but for now he would read.
As he perused the letters, he came to see that Elle wasn’t exaggerating her talents, and had in fact rather underplayed them. While his letters were cobbled together summaries of his encounters, hers were word for word recountings of conversations, too detailed to be anything but exactly recalled. Beneath each recounted conversation was a brief explanation of how she felt the information could be useful and how it connected to previous conversations she’d overheard, to known information about the movements of the Rebels, and even to relevant historical minutiae that might be useful.
He glanced over the letters in his hand, momentarily silenced by the wonder pressing in at his chest. Elle had taken a seat in a rickety chair in the corner of the room. When he looked over at her, his letters sat on her lap and she stared off into the distance, eyes unfocused as if she were in deep in thought.
“You’re incredible,” he said.
“I know,” she replied in a tone that indicated she was only half listening.
He grinned and continued reading her letters, coming to the account of the day they had met. Had it really been just a few days? She didn’t mention the dreadful misunderstanding that had passed between them when he’d intruded upon her in the dining room, he noticed. But she’d recounted knocking over Susie, and the entire conversation at the table after she’d been kicked out—her earnest polishing of the banister had been a ruse as she eavesdropped at the door. He even learned what had passed when he’d left the room—Rufus had gone on about troop movements his drill master had shared with him, the possibility of dangerous soldier movement in South Carolina. That caught his interest, but the next few lines made him cringe. His blood pounded in his temples as he read the words that had been spoken about her, laid down in black ink. The situation was described without anger or condemnation. Just the facts.
He wondered if she would write about Willocks’s crude assessment of her that morning and realized that encounters of that sort probably occurred often enough to not merit reporting.
Again he thought of the bizarre promise he’d made her, one that smacked of the chivalry he’d read about in books as a boy. Perhaps Elle had been correct about the Sir Walter disease. He’d wanted to hurt Willocks for his rudeness, but doing such a thing would ruin his cover as a good ol’ boy, and worse, mark him as someone who cared for Negroes more than his own. When he’d carried a bleeding Elle through the streets of Baltimore, he’d had to hide her beneath his coat lest someone try to kill them both.
It was the height of egotism to pursue anything further with her. Even if she weren’t annoyed by the very sight of him, he wouldn’t hide her away forever just to have her for his own. And yet . . .
He folded the final letter back into its envelope, walk
ed over to Elle, and kneeled down before her chair.
“I’m thinking,” she said brusquely, not even looking at him.
“I wanted to apologize about this morning—” he began, but she cut him off with an annoyed wave, as if he were a pesky horsefly.
“I don’t want another apology,” she said. “Words of regret or sympathy serve no purpose in my life at the moment, unless they’re spoken before a master frees a slave or a politician repeals slavery and the laws that undergird it.” Her words were quiet, but that didn’t undercut their strength. “Perhaps that man did me a favor and knocked this idea of you and me being together out of your fool head. In the eyes of society, I’m nothing more than a wench for you to bed. That’s just the way things are, and even if we win the war it won’t change anytime soon.”
She spoke the words calmly, as if the fact that people assumed the worst of her and thought her beneath them because of her skin color was normal.
Because it is normal.
Malcolm thought of everything he’d just read, of the way her intelligence and obvious skill at strategizing shone through in her words, and frustration welled up in him on her behalf. He’d worked with many fine agents, but none had impressed him in the way Elle had. He thought of Elle on her knees in front of Susie.
“How can you stand it, Elle? How can you not be bursting with anger?”
“Where would that get me? This righteous anger you speak of?” She now looked him full in the face, challenge inscribed in the set of her mouth and the lift of her brow.
He hated her calmness and restraint when he was feeling her injustice so keenly. But he knew the anger that pulsed through him wasn’t caused by her prim expression, or even the situation that caused it. Malcolm was upset with himself; it galled to think that although he fought against slavery he’d never so keenly understood it’s unfairness until he met the brilliant woman before him. She’d been right to get angry in the carriage. His job was far from easy, but the difference in their reception at almost every level, despite her clear superiority, was frustrating.