Ghosts of Time

by Steve White

  She halted abruptly and turned slowly to see a man in a gray officer’s uniform advancing toward her. She kept her face downcast and did not meet his eyes. “Yes, Cap’n?”

  “Are you Ellen Bond?” he asked, remembering Mary Bowser’s alias in the Davis household.

  “Yes, Cap’n. Ah works back there in the Pres’dent’s house,” she added, clearly expecting Jason to be properly impressed.

  “Yes, I know you do, Ellen … or is it Mary?”

  For a barely perceptible instant, her head jerked up and her eyes met his, and there was something in them that transformed her face. Then, almost too quickly to register, the moment was over and the mask of dull subservience was back.

  “Ah don’t know what you mean, Cap’n.” A note of whiny pleading entered her voice. “Please, suh, Ah gotta go. Miz Davis, she sent me to market, an’ she be expectin’ me back by—”

  “I’m sure she does, Mary—”

  “Ah tell you, Cap’n, Ah ain’t no ‘Mary’!”

  “—but others are expecting you as well.” Without the aid of his computer implant Jason summoned up from his memory the words Pauline Da Cunha had been told to use if she had occasion to make contact with Mary Bowser. “Gracchus is coming from the south.”

  She stiffened, and Jason could almost fancy he heard the mask shatter as it hit the cobblestones. There was absolute silence as he held her eyes with his. The others had come up—Dabney was staring with undisguised curiosity at the renowned but shadowy spy—but she ignored them.

  “I know you’re trying to decide whether to trust me,” Jason resumed. “You may as well. As you can see, there’s no point in pretending any more. If I really am a Confederate officer, and know those words, and know that you know them, then you’re as good as dead … and so is Gracchus, probably. But in fact I’m not. And I need your help to contact Gracchus.”

  She glanced around anxiously. There was no one else in sight. She turned back to Jason and her dark eyes bored into his. “Who are you?” she hissed. She still spoke Southern American English, but now she spoke it with an educated accent that told of her Philadelphia schooling.

  “I can’t tell you that, and if I did you’d think I’m either a madman or a liar. Just try to accept the fact that we’re friends of yours.”

  “So you’re for the Union?”

  “We’re certainly not against the Union, but we’re not taking sides in this war—which you and I both know the Union is going to win anyway.” Without needing time travel to know it, Jason didn’t add. Instead, he took a stab in the dark. “We have our own war, and it’s with the people Gracchus and his organization are also fighting. People far worse than the Secessionists. People who want to inflict something even more evil than slavery.”

  He had no way of knowing how much “Gracchus” had told Mary Bowser. But her expression told him his guess had been right. “Gracchus has told me much the same thing about his enemies, though he hasn’t told me much else. He said I wouldn’t believe it, and that even if I did it wouldn’t mean anything to me anyhow. But I trust him.” She visibly reached a decision. “I can’t do anything for you today, and we can’t be seen together. Come back here late tomorrow afternoon and wait for a baker’s wagon to show up.”

  “Thomas McNiven,” muttered Dabney with a nod. Mary Bowser shot him a startled look but didn’t inquire as to the source of his knowledge.

  “We’ll have to find somewhere to stay tonight,” said Mondrago.

  “I know a safe place—you might get in trouble otherwise.” Mary Bowser gave the surroundings a worried look. Still seeing no one taking notice, she motioned them into the shade of a tree at the corner of Clay and Eleventh. She took a pencil and paper from a small reticule tied to her wrist and wrote hastily—a skill she wasn’t supposed to possess. Then she handed the paper to Jason. It was covered with marking in what looked like no alphabet Jason had ever seen.

  Dabney looked over Jason’s shoulder. “Elizabeth Van Lew’s cipher code!” he exclaimed.

  “Quiet!” snapped Mary Bowser, who immediately looked surprised at herself for having used that tone to a white man. She had, Jason thought, probably never done it before. But then she smoothed out her expression as she looked around at the time travelers’ faces. “So you know about her, too. Well, then, you probably know she’s hidden a lot of men in her house.”

  “Escapees from Libby Prison,” Dabney nodded, eliciting another puzzled glance from Mary Bowser.

  “All right. Show this to her. She lives at 2301 East Grace Street.”

  “I know,” said Dabney.

  “And I can find it,” added Jason without elaborating on just how he could find it. Then he recalled Pauline Da Cunha. “One other thing: don’t reveal this meeting with us to anyone you encounter from now on. Agreed?”

  “Agreed. And now I’ve got to go—there are more people around. Stay here until I’m out of sight. And one other thing: Miss Van Lew doesn’t know about Gracchus … and she doesn’t need to know.” Without another word, Mary Bowser readjusted her shopping basket and set off down Clay Street.

  “Just as well she’s on our side,” Mondrago remarked, in a tone Jason knew he didn’t use in connection with just anyone.

  With the aid of Jason’s implant they turned left on Eleventh Street, then left again on Broad Street and followed the railroad tracks a few blocks, then crossed the bridge over Shockoe Creek. There, at the Virginia Central Railroad depot, they turned right on Union Street, then left onto Grace Street. A walk of about a third of a mile eastward up Church Hill brought them to an impressive three-and-a-half-story mansion on the right, across from a church—St. John’s Episcopal, Jason noted.

  “Wait here,” Jason told the others. He stepped up to the front door and rapped with the brass knocker. A young black woman opened the door and stared at him in apprehensive silence. He recalled that Elizabeth Van Lew’s house servants were former family slaves she had freed.

  “Please tell Miss Van Lew that I have business that requires her personal attention,” he said in what he hoped was the appropriate tone for a Confederate officer.

  “Yes, suh,” the servant said quietly, and closed the door. After a longish wait, the door was flung open to reveal a tiny, angular woman in her mid-to-late forties with faded dark-blond hair worn in ringlets. She had the kind of looks that suggested she had been pretty in her youth, in a birdlike, high-cheekboned, sharp-nosed way. But now she had become what this era called “spinsterish,” with thin lips and a chin perhaps most charitably described as “determined.” Her most striking features were her vividly blue eyes, which were currently incandescent with indignation.

  “Good day, ma’am,” said Jason, inclining his head and touching the brim of his hat. His attempt at Southern gentility fell flat. When she spoke, her voice was pure acid.

  “Well, Captain, is my home to be searched yet again? Have they sent you and your ruffians here in the hope you will discover something that escaped Provost-Marshal Winder’s odious detectives?”

  “No, ma’am. I just—” Jason tried to interject. But “Crazy Bet” was in full tilt.

  “It is intolerable! I am a loyal Virginian, persecuted and ostracized because I follow my state’s highest tradition of opposition to human bondage.” She pointed theatrically across the street at St. John’s. “Do you see that church, Captain? That is where Patrick Henry delivered his ‘Give me liberty or give me death’ speech ninety years ago. There spoke the true Virginia! But now… .” She trailed off and lapsed into a mumbled, unintelligible conversation with herself, head bent to one side, in true Crazy Bet style as Dabney had described. It gave Jason his opportunity.

  “Rest assured, Miss Van Lew, I and my men are not here to search your house or offer you any other indignity. But I wish to deliver a communication from an associate of yours.”

  “What ‘associate’?” she inquired as though barely hearing him.

  “Mary Bowser, otherwise known as Ellen Bond.” The blue eyes abruptl
y lost their unfocused vagueness and froze into ice-shards of sharp concentration. Wordlessly, he handed her the paper. At the sight of the code-writing, the last traces of Crazy Bet vanished. She read rapidly, then met his eyes again.

  “I recognize Mary’s hand, and she has identified herself in ways no one besides she and I could possibly know,” she stated in a level, expressionless and perfectly sane voice. “Who are you? I gather you are not really a captain in the Confederate army.”

  “No, I’m not, nor is the name I’m currently using my own. It is necessary for me to assume a false identity—a notion that should come as no novelty to you. I could not reveal my true identity to Mary, nor can I to you. But she trusted me, and while I don’t know exactly what she wrote, I believe she’s asking you to provide us with a safe place to spend tonight.”

  “So she is. And I trust her.” Elizabeth Van Lew reached a decision. “Come in. And be quiet. My mother is asleep upstairs; she hasn’t been well for a long time.”

  She waved them in and ushered them hurriedly through the house. They passed along a wide hallway, past fireplaces with marble mantles, and open doors through which the brocade silk-covered walls of chandeliered parlors could be glimpsed. But for all the architectural splendor and scrupulous cleanliness, there was a worn, threadbare look. Jason recalled that Elizabeth Van Lew had spent much of her inherited fortune freeing slaves and, more recently, operating her spy network, not to mention providing safe houses for escaped Union prisoners.

  They ascended several flights of stairs, finally reaching the attic level. Elizabeth Van Lew touched a panel, which slid back to reveal a chamber concealed beneath a sloping roof.

  “You’re fortunate that no one is here,” she said matter-of-factly. “The privations at Libby Prison have become so unbearable that more and more of those poor men are escaping out of sheer desperation, and they know they can come here. I must admit,” she added, “those privations are really no one’s fault. The entire city is in want of everything; the people with friends and relatives on farms in the country who send them food are the lucky ones. The prisoners are being provided for as well as possible. Which means that the daily ration is a small square of cornbread and a piece of bacon so small that the vermin in the cornbread probably contain more meat.”

  Nesbit’s color didn’t look particularly good. Elizabeth Van Lew didn’t notice. “I’ll try to do slightly better than that by you men. It happens that we’ve been able to obtain a little meat for a change. Wait here.”

  “Thank you, ma’am,” sighed Jason with feeling. They had all eaten a hearty breakfast before their temporal displacement, but had had nothing since then, and now in late afternoon, they were all feeling hungry.

  They made themselves as comfortable as possible in the cramped quarters. “She hasn’t pressed us about who we are,” Logan observed. “She must really trust Mary Bowser.”

  “Remember, she doesn’t know about Gracchus & Co.,” said Jason. “So she has no reason to think we’re anything more exotic than Union spies. I’m sure she takes for granted that that’s exactly what we are.”

  Elizabeth Van Lew returned with small portions of food, including some kind of meat Jason couldn’t identify. They all mumbled their thanks, and Dabney ventured to elaborate. “God bless you, Miss Van Lew. It is fortunate for us and others like us that there is an abolitionist we can come to for aid in this citadel of secession.”

  “Please do not refer to me as an abolitionist! I have always been opposed to slavery—it is a cruel, arrogant institution which crushes all freedom, especially freedom of speech, for it cannot permit dissenting opinion. It oppresses everyone, not just the slave. But the abolitionists are fanatics like that madman John Brown, willing to stoop to any ends, including violence and murder. I am as opposed to war and bloodshed as I am to slavery. I am no more an abolitionist than I am a ‘Yankee.’ I meant what I said earlier: I regard myself as a true Virginian, born in this city, where I intend to die!”

  It occurred to Jason that, by the military intelligence she supplied to the Union command, she was enabling the Yankees to more effectively apply the war and violence which she so deplored. But he held his tongue. She was hardly unique in the accommodations she’d had to make to the moral ambiguities of espionage. And he was in no position to nitpick her reasoning as he ate her food.

  “Well,” he said, “thank you for everything. I know how difficult it must have been to obtain the meat, especially.”

  “Yes, indeed. The butcher shop was all out of the dog they generally pass off as lamb. But there was a fairly ample supply of dressed rats, for anyone who could pay for them. These cost $2.50 apiece, can you believe it?” She departed, shaking her head and clucking over the effects of inflation.

  If Nesbit had looked queasy before, he looked positively ill now.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Luckily, a certain amount of warmth seeped up from the floors below to the hidden chamber. But they were all stiff and sore after sleeping in cramped positions on the hard floor with nothing but a few tattered old blankets whose aroma suggested that they had been used by numerous Libby Prison escapees. They were also hungry. Jason assumed that eventually their stomachs would shrink to the point where the pangs would subside.

  Elizabeth Van Lew waited until an hour when the street was most likely to be deserted before sending them on their way. Just in case, though, she berated them in fine Crazy Bet style as they left, proclaiming her innocence and mocking them for their failure to uncover any evidence of wrongdoing in her house. Jason went along with the gag, doing his best Simon Legree (short of twirling his mustachios, which he decided would be overdoing it) and sneering, “This time!” But he permitted himself a wink at her before turning on his heel and leading his men west along Grace Street.

  “We’re early,” said Mondrago.

  “Yes. But yesterday I spotted a place where we can hang around and wait without being too conspicuous.”

  Jason led them to the Virginia Central Railroad depot at Sixteenth and Broad. There, amid constant comings and goings, often of men in uniform, they were able to kill time until late afternoon, always seeming to be waiting impatiently for some train or other. They were even able to step across the street in shifts to a tavern and obtain some of the meager fare available. Finally, when Jason deemed the afternoon to be far enough advanced, they retraced their steps of the previous day, retuning to Clay Street.

  There was no baker’s wagon in evidence, and they prepared to wait. After a while, the slender figure of Mary Bowser slipped out from the brick kitchen and stepped along the sidewalk as though on an errand. Coming abreast of Jason, she looked furtively around and paused.

  “McNiven is late,” she whispered. “And I can’t stay out here. The president isn’t feeling too well today, so he’s working here instead of at the Treasury building. And …” All at once her voice trailed off and her eyes bulged as she looked down Clay Street. A carriage was approaching, its two horses’ hooves clip-clopping on the cobblestones. “Oh, Lord!”

  “What is it?” Jason demanded. But she was too agitated to reply.

  “I’ve got to get inside. Just … just wait here.” Without another word, she scurried back to the kitchen.

  Now what got into her? Jason wondered, as the carriage came to a halt at a soft “Whoa!” from the elderly black driver. There was one passenger: a white-bearded man whose gray uniform bore the three-starred insignia of a Confederate colonel on its collar. Jason decided he’d better display a little military punctilio.

  “Ten-hut!” he said quietly to his followers, and came to attention and saluted as the colonel alighted with a murmured “Thank you” to the black driver. Jason glanced quickly sideways to make sure the others were at attention … and saw that Dabney’s eyes were bugged out even further than Mary Bowser’s had been. In fact, the historian’s jaw was literally hanging open. He wondered why.

  Jason looked straight ahead again, to meet a pair of eyes as deep-brown as his
own. The colonel was strongly built and of Jason’s height, or perhaps half an inch taller, and those dark eyes looked out of a careworn face that must have been outstandingly handsome in youth, although in fact the man wasn’t really as old as the beard made him look at a distance—late fifties at most. Jason felt he ought to recognize that face … it seemed awfully familiar …

  Then, with almost physical force, it came to him. And he recalled Dabney having said something about a certain vow to continue wearing the insignia of the wearer’s prewar rank of mere colonel until the South won its independence.

  All at once Jason’s position of “attention” and his salute stiffened into a rigidity they had not attained since he had been a young trainee in the Hesperian Colonial Rangers.

  Robert E. Lee returned his salute with grave courtesy.

  “Put your detail and yourself at ease, Captain,” he said. He gave Jason a keen once-over. “I don’t recall seeing you here before.”

  “Captain Landrieu, sir,” Jason rapped out. “Of the Jeff Davis Legion.”

  “Ah!” Lee nodded graciously. “You men from Mississippi have performed noble service, Captain. But what is your mission here in Richmond?”

  “We’re just here briefly, sir, to obtain remounts.”

  “I see. This is fortunate. I have a message for Major General Hampton, and since I’m going to be in Richmond for another few days I was going to have to send a special courier. But since you’ll be going back to Petersburg anyway, you can carry it for me and deliver it to your brigade commander, Brigadier General Butler. He can hand it up to Cavalry Corps headquarters.”

  “Yes, sir.” A captain—even if he had been a real one—didn’t say much more than that to the army commander. Certainly not to this army commander.

  “And we will of course want to expedite your departure. I’ll write out a requisition for you to take to the remount facility near the railhead on the west side of the city. Or, better still, take it to the Government Stables on Broad Street, which I believe currently holds about a hundred horses, exclusive of those reserved for ambulance use. My signature should enable you to secure horses and tack without undue delay.”