“I don’t believe a draft will make any difference,” said Mother. “All Southern men of that age are already harassed and coerced into the service by friends and neighbors and lovely young ladies they want to impress. Where are these enormous throngs of idle, healthy young men they hope to drive into the army?”
“Not every man craves battlefield glory,” said Lizzie. “The men who have refused to be intimidated into enlisting will be outraged if they’re forced to by law, and I don’t mean only the secret Unionists among them. Perhaps they’ll mount a second rebellion against their own Confederacy.”
Mother looked dubious. “It seems unlikely that men who aren’t disposed to fight would mount a rebellion.”
“I am going to hope for it all the same.”
“As long as it is not a false hope.”
“Hope is never false. One’s hopes may not be fulfilled, but that does not mean it was wrong to hope.”
Sometimes hope was all that kept Lizzie from sinking into despair and abandoning her mission to help the imprisoned Union soldiers. Hope was what drove her to gather information about troop movements and Confederate defenses from recently captured prisoners and send it to the North. Hope compelled her to smuggle money into the prisons so the captives could bribe their way out and escape to Union lines. If she allowed herself to consider that perhaps she harbored nothing more than false hope, she might give up altogether.
Around the same time that the conscription act was announced, Mr. Botts was finally brought under guard from Castle Godwin to the court house to appear before a military tribunal. Though he had hired three lawyers, he represented himself in the trial, and over the course of several days he argued that although his objections to secession were well known, he had never been part of any conspiracy against the Confederate government; that he had been falsely accused; and that he was being wrongly prosecuted for his beliefs rather than any crime he had committed or intended to commit.
At first the tribunal seemed not to know what to do with him, but eventually they released a general order stating that it seemed compatible with the public safety to release him on parole, but it was not practicable to allow him to return to his home at Elba Park. Instead, until the Department of War declared otherwise, he would retire to the interior of the state at a place approved by the department; he would proceed to the approved destination “without unnecessary delay”; he would not leave that place or travel more than five miles from his residence; he would do nothing to injure the Confederate government while on parole; and—a requirement Lizzie thought would be impossible for him to obey—he would not “express any opinion tending to impair the confidence of the people in the capacity of the Confederate States to achieve their independence.” The tribunal would have better luck, Lizzie thought, asking the wind not to blow or water not to be wet. Almost as an afterthought, the tribunal had added, “Mr. Botts’s family will receive passports to join him, if desired.”
So Mr. Botts was to be banished to the interior of Virginia, but at least he would not face exile alone.
He had not been sentenced to death, Lizzie reminded herself when she grew melancholy thinking of Richmond without its most outspoken Unionist, the last great Whig in the city, the man she most admired in politics. He had not been sentenced to spend the duration of the war locked in the gloom of Castle Godwin, subjected to the cruel whims of the odious Captain George W. Alexander. He would not even have to leave Virginia.
Within a few days, she was reminded anew that it was never false to hope.
Mr. Botts had agreed to the terms of his parole, but moments before he was going to be released, he requested an interview with the secretary of war. When the meeting was granted the following morning, he strongly remonstrated against being sent from his home and asked to read a formal protest for the official record. Secretary Randolph was either persuaded by his lengthy argument or simply wanted to be done with the matter, for he agreed that Mr. Botts could spend his parole confined to a family farm in Hanover County, a mere ten miles northeast of the center of Richmond.
There was always reason to hope, Lizzie thought with satisfaction as she read Mr. Botts’s letter informing her of his parole, the first he had written to her from the farm. “I know you will be tempted to visit,” he warned, “and I do have much to tell you, but I beg you to choose the hour carefully. I am still closely watched, and I would not have you deemed guilty by association. If you seek interesting conversation in my absence, I encourage you to make the acquaintance of Lieutenant Erastus Ross, the nephew of my good friend Franklin Stearns. He is a clerk in the War Department under Captain Godwin, and you should feel welcome to call on him there.”
Mr. Botts’s strange turn of phrase told her that he suspected that his letter might be intercepted before it reached her. Lizzie knew of Franklin Stearns, the prosperous whiskey distiller and staunch Unionist who had been arrested the same day as Mr. Botts, but she knew nothing about the nephew. Surely Mr. Botts was trying to tell her that Lieutenant Ross was a Unionist too, and a potential friend, despite his place of employment.
Lizzie visited the prisoners at the Henrico County Jail as often as she was allowed, bringing them food, books, money for bribes, and, she hoped, encouragement, but she had not yet been allowed to set foot in the new prison, Libby, named after the tobacco merchant who had once owned the warehouse, and whose sign yet remained above the door.
The rule was not devised specifically for her, General Winder explained when she protested that the impertinent sentinels would not permit her through the gates. No civilian ladies were allowed.
“My visits did no harm at the old prison,” Lizzie reminded him. “In fact, I recall you yourself saying that I did quite a lot of good.”
“If I make an exception for you, I will have to permit everyone,” General Winder replied, coolly rational and utterly unlike him. He had become strangely vengeful, obdurate. She hardly knew how to bargain with him anymore.
A few days after receiving Mr. Botts’s letter, Lizzie invented an errand with Captain Godwin’s office at the War Department in order to take the measure of Franklin Stearns’s nephew, Erastus Ross. “We have a mutual acquaintance, I believe,” he said as he welcomed her into his office. He was tall and likely no older than twenty-two, with pleasant features, neatly parted fair hair, and a long mustache that followed the curve of his mouth and cheeks and tapered at the ends. “Mr. Botts has spoken highly of you.”
“He speaks well of you also,” said Lizzie, and then, mindful of other clerks and officers passing in the hallway, she turned the conversation to her errand, a small matter of a servant found at large with an expired pass. Although she was obliged to choose her phrases carefully to avoid entrapping herself, Lieutenant Ross’s remarks and responses convinced her that he was no ardent rebel. Thus satisfied, after concluding her business, she invited him to take tea with her and her mother the following afternoon.
He arrived five minutes early, smartly attired in civilian clothes and looking wary as she escorted him to the library. He fidgeted through tea and cakes and a bit of chat about the weather until Lizzie decided to have mercy on him and get to the point.
She began by showing him numerous fond letters from Mr. Botts to prove herself worthy of his trust, and then she confided what he surely already suspected—she was as loyal to the Union as Mr. Botts, as loyal as President Lincoln. After that, Mr. Ross confessed his own Unionist sentiments in a flood of words constrained too long behind a dam of prudent reticence.
“I trust that Captain Godwin is convinced of your loyalty, despite your uncle’s arrest?” Lizzie queried, pouring her guest another cup of tea.
“Yes, he is,” replied Mr. Ross. “General Winder’s own son is a captain in the Union army, so how can anyone condemn me for my uncle’s misplaced loyalties?”
Lizzie set down the teapot and offered him sugar and cream. “But he is not so satis
fied with the quality of your work that he would refuse to let you go if you requested a transfer?”
Mr. Ross stirred his tea slowly—to buy himself time to think of a response, Lizzie suspected. “I’m a good clerk to him, but not exemplary. I lack the impetus to be any more productive than absolutely necessary to keep my job. Where would you have me go?”
Lizzie drew herself up, interlaced her fingers, and rested her hands in her lap. “Libby Prison has a vacancy for a clerk.”
He laughed abruptly and set down his teacup. “Miss Van Lew, I’m trying to stay out of prison.”
“We need a man on the inside,” Lizzie explained. “As clerk, you would be privy to all manner of valuable secrets, which you could pass on to me. You can tell me what the prisoners need and help me get necessities to them. You could smuggle in money so they can bribe the guards for better treatment. I’m sure you know they’re beaten if they cannot pay.”
Mr. Ross nodded, pained. “I’ve heard the rumors. If...I suppose if I were made clerk there, I could put a stop to it, or at least try—”
“No, you could not,” Lizzie interrupted. “You must seem as indifferent to the prisoners’ suffering as every other guard or you’ll raise their suspicions.”
He winced. “So I must work at the prison, and observe the guards’ cruelty, and witness the prisoners’ suffering, and keep silent and ignore those I most want to help.”
Lizzie nodded.
He inhaled deeply, set his jaw, and gazed out the window in silence, brooding. Lizzie and her mother exchanged an anxious look, but just when Lizzie could not bear the tense silence a moment longer, he said, “I’ll apply for the transfer. I’ll invent some excuse about how it’s always been my ambition to become a warden, and this job at Libby Prison would be—I don’t know. A promising first step. I’ll think of something.”
“Be sure to figure out your story before you approach Captain Godwin,” Lizzie cautioned. Mr. Ross managed a wry smile and assured her he would.
Very soon, Lizzie hoped, she would have an important contact well placed within the prison. Until General Winder relented and permitted civilian volunteers to visit the prisoners, Erastus Ross would be her eyes and ears.
Lizzie’s stubborn hopes also allowed her to believe until the very last hour that the condemned spy Timothy Webster would somehow escape execution.
At the end of April, as reports of Union advances upon New Orleans began trickling into the capital, Mr. Webster waited out his last days in Castle Godwin—and Lizzie waited, increasingly anxious, for the announcement that his sentence had been commuted.
On the appointed day, Lizzie rose before dawn, forced herself to choke down some tea and toast, and waited for Peter to return with the early editions. Every paper noted that the gibbet had been erected at Camp Lee, and that Captain Alexander was expected to escort the condemned man there shortly after dawn.
Lizzie was torn. If Mr. Webster was to die, she ought to bear witness to his final moments, to pray for him, to let him know he was not alone. However, they had never met, so he would receive no comfort from the presence of a friend but would assume she was just another voyeur. She also did not know, despite the grim scenes she had grown accustomed to within the prisons, whether she could bear the ghastly spectacle of a hanging.
“I’ll go,” Peter said, after she had paced and wrung her hands and pondered her options until time had almost run out. “You shouldn’t. People will take notice of a lady like you, but I’ll be just another colored man in the crowd.”
With a pang of relief and pain, Lizzie gratefully agreed, and Peter set out.
When he returned, hours later, she knew from his expression that Mr. Webster was no more.
From what Peter was able to learn, at a quarter past five o’clock, Captain Alexander had come to Mr. Webster’s cell and ordered him to prepare himself. Mr. Webster asked for more time but was refused, so he bade farewell to his wife, who had been permitted to spend his final hours with him. Then the captain took the condemned man by carriage from Castle Godwin to Camp Lee, but no crowds lined the roads, as if everyone had assumed this execution too would be halted at the last minute. They stopped along the way to pick up a minister, whom Mr. Webster asked to read the Psalm of David, invoking vengeance on his enemies. When the minister indignantly rejected his choice, Mr. Webster angrily rebuffed him, so the offended minister refused to offer him any comfort whatsoever.
When he arrived at Camp Lee, Mr. Webster might yet have entertained hopes that he would not be put to death, thinking, perhaps, that it was all a sham meant to intimidate him into betraying his country’s secrets. But when he was taken from a holding pen and beheld the gallows, and the gathered soldiers, and about two hundred civilians who had taken to trees and rooftops to obtain a better view of his death, the truth dealt him a staggering blow. He began to shake, and asked for a chaplain, and pleaded to be shot like a soldier instead of hanged like a common criminal. He was granted the chaplain—a different man than had accompanied him in the carriage—but was refused the bullet.
Captain Alexander led Mr. Webster to the foot of the gallows, but he climbed the stairs alone, slowly, calmly, and erect, clad in a black suit and silk hat. As he stood on the platform, his jailers bound his hands and legs, the minister spoke a solemn prayer, a black hood was drawn over his head, the noose slipped around his neck, the trapdoor sprung—and Mr. Webster plummeted straight through the platform, hitting the bare earth below with a sickening thud.
The hangman’s knot had come undone. Stunned from the fall, bound hand and foot, Mr. Webster lay limp and motionless before the gathered throng. Quickly, Captain Alexander ordered his men to lift him up and carried him back up to the scaffold.
“I suffer a double death,” Mr. Webster was heard to say as his jailers hastened to adjust the trap and again placed him upon it. The noose was again slipped around his neck, this time so tight as to be excruciatingly painful. “You will choke me to death this time,” Mr. Webster rebuked them hoarsely, his voice muffled by the rope and the enveloping hood.
A moment later, the trap was sprung a second time, and within a minute, Mr. Webster was dead.
Blinded by tears, Lizzie groped for a chair and sat heavily as Peter reached the end of his grisly tale. “We must do something for his poor widow,” she said.
“Surely she will be released now,” said Mother, pale and shaken. “Surely, now that they have killed her husband, they will allow her to return to the North.”
“We shall take her in until they do,” said Lizzie decisively. “We will persuade them to parole her into our care. If they can parole an outspoken Unionist like Mr. Botts, they can certainly free a grieving widow whose only crime was to faithfully attend her husband.”
Mother agreed, but she begged Lizzie not to visit the prison alone out of a superstitious fear that she would not be allowed out again. Lizzie soon enlisted Eliza as her companion, and together they ventured to Lumpkin’s Alley and Castle Godwin, where Captain Alexander had already returned from Camp Lee. He looked a perfect villain, Lizzie thought as they were introduced, large, dark-haired, and thick-bearded, with a belligerent set to his jaw. As a lieutenant in the Confederate army, he had been captured on the Eastern Shore and imprisoned in Baltimore for three weeks, but while awaiting execution he had escaped by leaping from the fort, badly injuring his ankle. As his injury prevented him from returning to the battlefield, he had been assigned to prison duty, and—both strangely and sadly, Lizzie thought—his brief experience as a prisoner of war had rendered him less rather than more empathetic to the captives under his control.
Something about his manner made Lizzie instinctively adopt a respectful, deferential tone when she asked him to release Mrs. Webster into her care. “She is a poor, agonized widow, and powerless to harm anyone,” Lizzie implored. “Let her remain with us until she can be transported to the North.”
> “No,” Captain Alexander flatly replied. “She’s going to be sent off soon enough, and until then she can enjoy the finest hospitality a spy deserves.”
“She is no spy,” protested Lizzie. “Her only crime, if such it can be called, was to be a dutiful and obedient wife. Please don’t punish her for her husband’s deeds.”
The captain barked out a laugh. “Even if I were inclined to release her, which I am not, I would never let her stay with you.” He fixed Lizzie with a steely gaze. “You introduced yourself simply as Miss Van Lew. Are you not Miss Elizabeth Van Lew of Church Hill?”
Her stomach turned queasily. “Yes, I am. As the only Miss Van Lew in Richmond, I saw no need to elaborate.”
An insolent smile crept over his face. “It may interest you to know that you have already been reported several times.”
Lizzie’s heart thudded, but before she could speak, Eliza said, “What an outrage! Reported for what?”
His gazed drifted laconically to Eliza. “For improper attention to the Union prisoners.”
“Nonsense! Anyone who would spout such ridiculous accusations is either ignorant or lying. Did those same informants mention that Miss Van Lew welcomed Captain Gibbs and his family into her own home for nearly two months when they had nowhere else to go? Did they describe the many entertainments she has hosted for the Richmond Howitzers and other regiments? Why, just last week she hosted a dinner for a whole contingent of Texas cavalry officers commanded by Colonel Trinidad Martinez. They have not yet left Richmond, I believe. You can ask the colonel what he thinks of these spurious reports about the Van Lew family.”
“I can ask him and I will,” Captain Alexander said, a lazy threat in his voice. “Your eagerness to defend your friend is commendable, but don’t get carried away.”
Eliza pressed her lips together indignantly and bowed her head. Lizzie suddenly, desperately, wanted to get away. She murmured pardons and farewells, took Eliza by the elbow, and steered her back out to the street, jumping when the heavy doors clanged shut behind them.
The Spymistress Page 17