The Crescent Spy

by Michael Wallace

  And suddenly Josephine understood. Francesca had taken lame during her dancing days, fallen, perhaps, broken a bone. Reduced in her ability to earn a living, she had fastened herself to her old friend’s partner, had perhaps married him during one of the riverboat gambler’s flush periods, when it seemed that he might provide for her in return for what remained of her youth and beauty.

  Had Francesca’s attempts to blackmail Josephine been a similar act of desperation? Had there been no real malice behind it?

  Josephine shook her head to clear it, confused and unsettled. The Colonel, Josephine, even the whole confounded war: Did she understand any of it?

  The moment the federal band stopped playing “The Star-Spangled Banner,” the tumult started up again, and when Josephine looked back, she had lost Francesca in the crowd. In spite of the pouring rain, people kept rushing in to join the mob. By the time two Union soldiers set off under flag of truce, they were surrounded by cursing, spitting civilians, some of them waving pistols in their faces. They disappeared into the crowd, and Josephine couldn’t see how they’d reach the mayor’s office alive. And then the fleet would shell the city in revenge.

  But shortly the men returned to the flag officer with a short note from the mayor, which was later shown to Josephine.

  Come and take the city; we are powerless.

  As to the hoisting of any flag than the flag of our own adoption and allegiance, let me say to you, sir, that the man lives not in our midst whose hand and heart would not be palsied at the mere thought of such an act.

  The implication was obvious. Take the city if you think you can. Raise the Stars and Stripes. Come in with a few marines, risk the mob.

  The Confederates still hoped to hold the city, hoped that a counterattack would come downriver or across Lake Pontchartrain. And with General Butler’s bluecoats still bottled up below the forts, there was a real question as to how the occupation could be managed.

  Farragut kept the bulk of the fleet anchored off the levee while he took Hartford and several other sloops upriver to destroy batteries and shell a few small fortifications. They returned to New Orleans towing a number of captured vessels. The flag officer told Josephine that he wanted to let the fire-eaters in the city tire of their wrath, but upon their return, they found New Orleans as hostile as ever.

  In another obvious attempt to buy time, the mayor sent his private secretary and the chief of police out to Hartford to haggle with Farragut, who was clearly losing his patience. He sent another demand for complete surrender.

  For two days the mob had maintained an angry, cursing vigil on the levee, and there were dozens of pistols and shotguns in evidence. If fighting should start, Farragut warned that he would open a broadside from Hartford and every other ship at his command until the city burned to the ground, and this seemed to keep the hotheads in check.

  On April 28, word came that Fort Jackson and Fort St. Philip had surrendered to Porter’s mortar fleet and General Butler’s troops. After Porter resumed shelling, the defenders of Jackson, low on food and fuel, their morale at the muddy bottom of the Mississippi, had mutinied against their officers. Once Jackson surrendered, St. Philip also abandoned the struggle.

  And this news took what remained of the fighting spirit from the people of New Orleans. The mob began to melt away, and Farragut felt secure enough to send in a company of 250 marines to seize key buildings until General Butler could arrive with his large occupying force.

  On the evening of May 1, Josephine and Franklin stood in Jackson Square, opposite the Cabildo and the cathedral, while the Thirtieth Massachusetts Infantry came down from the levee. Marching with a jaunty step behind the regimental band, which played “Yankee Doodle” with flair and confidence, the troops passed through the square and up the streets of the French Quarter.

  Some in the crowd booed, other cheered, and all seemed to settle in for the great change that had swept over the city. New Orleans had fallen.

  Josephine opened the Oriental box on the desk. Inside she put the two photographs, the first with a beautiful woman and an angular, bony girl of eight on the deck of Crescent Queen. In the second, she was older and standing with the man who would be her father.

  The Colonel. What had become of him? Was he still in the city with Francesca? She wasn’t sure if she wanted to know, but the not knowing was almost worse. Like her mother, who had drowned on the river but had never been recovered. It left the imagination to fester, to postulate scenarios by which a woman who must be dead had somehow survived. Or, in this case, to imagine how an old gambler, unreliable as rainfall on the plains of Nebraska, might have changed his ways. Might have become a father.

  No.

  She put them away. Then she tucked in her banknotes and what silver she’d managed to get from the worthless greybacks Fein had paid her at the Crescent. She put the lacquered box into her carpetbag and snapped the latch shut.

  When she came downstairs with her bag and her spare dress draped over one arm, Nellie was standing stiff and cold in the front room. Josephine had kept out two dollars in silver, which she attempted to hand over.

  Nellie shook her head.

  “I stayed in the room; I ate your food.”

  “Treacherously, yes. You did.”

  “Please take what I owe you.”

  “I won’t take it.”

  Nellie Gill’s husband was a prisoner in a Union camp after the fall of Fort Henry. She had few resources. Her larder was nearly empty. What little money she had was in greybacks and Confederate war bonds, both nearly worthless in the city since its fall.

  Josephine made for the front door. She left the coins on the entry table as she passed. Nellie made a hiss behind her. As Josephine went down the stairs toward the cab waiting out front, she expected Nellie to open the door and throw the money after her. This she did not do.

  Franklin jumped out to grab Josephine’s bag. She held her dress and petticoats on her lap as she climbed up.

  “I suppose leaving the city would be for the best,” she told Franklin. “Every time I’m recognized I’m abused. Such invective as would make the Cyprians of Gallatin blush.”

  He reached into his jacket pocket and removed a folded telegraph fixed with a military seal. “Ready for your orders?”

  “No, not yet. Part of me wants to stay, the other part wants to get as far away as possible. But I have one more thing troubling me before I face that. Do you need to go back to General Butler’s headquarters? I can drop you at the end of Toulouse to catch another cab.”

  “I’m too anxious to hear your news,” he said with a smile. “Let’s get on with this other business.”

  The driver looked back through the window from his perch up front. “Where to, miss?”

  “Do you know the Crescent? Good. Take me there.”

  Every voice fell silent as she entered. The men operating the press eased up on the pedals, and it clacked to a halt with a groan of the gears. Some men glared at her, others looked away. One man, a fellow named Weitzel, who she’d always taken for a fire-eater, gave her a curt, conspiratorial nod. A secret Unionist, then. Harold Keller, the fool who couldn’t write a laundry list without factual errors, sneered.

  Fein rose from a table where he’d been editing something. He pushed his new eyeglasses to the bridge of his nose and stared at her.

  “Well,” he said at last. “Didn’t expect to see you again.”

  “I don’t like to run off without explanation.”

  “No need for explanation. You presumably have your reasons.”

  “Or without doing what I said I’d do.”

  Josephine had brought in a sheaf of papers. She handed the topmost to Fein, a folded letter, stained by river water, but otherwise intact.

  “The young soldier’s letter to his mother?” he asked.

  She nodded.

  “And what does it say? The usual regrets of a condemned man, etcetera?”

  “I couldn’t say. I haven’t read it.”

>   Fein raised an eyebrow. “A bit of private correspondence chanced to fall into your hands, and you didn’t read it? That beggars the imagination.”

  Josephine couldn’t help but wince. Of course she had been tempted. Of course. She didn’t even know the young man’s name and had been itching to at least open it and read the signature. But if she had done so, nothing would have stopped her from perusing the rest of the letter as well. And she had never forgotten, nor forgiven her own culpability in the boy’s death. If she had sent him to the infirmary with a stern word, he would no doubt be alive today. Instead, she had encouraged him to desert, and he’d been caught.

  Fein must have seen the pain in her eyes, because now he tucked the letter away without further comment. “What else do you have?”

  “Stories.” She handed over the sheaf of papers. “You’ll find it all, an accurate story of what happened before, during, and after the battle. Some smaller pieces of interest. Anything I can share, I did share. Change the byline—I know you can’t use my name.

  He didn’t look down at the papers. “You’re a damn fine writer, Josephine. I hope this isn’t the end of it for the Crescent.”

  “You would keep me?” she asked. “After everything that has happened?”

  “I’m a practical man. We move and shift with the times. And you know my stance on political matters. But . . .” He ran his fingers through his hair as he glanced around the room at the other employees of the Crescent.

  “But . . . ?”

  “Things are hot at the moment. We have readers to think about, copies to move. You understand.”

  “Of course. I don’t think I’m staying, anyway. Most likely, they’re sending me away.”

  “After the war, though. If you need a job, don’t waste your efforts anywhere else. Come home. All will be forgiven someday; you know how these things go. Memories fade, time heals wounds.”

  She suspected that the collective memory of New Orleans was longer than that, but perhaps he was right. The side that won would bend the narrative. If that was the Union, the city would remember itself as an international port, a reluctant participant in the foolhardy bloodshed that had plagued the rest of the nation.

  “Maybe I will,” she said. “Thank you all the same for the offer.” She turned toward the door. “Oh, if you must put someone else’s name on my story, make sure it’s not the wrong name.”

  Neither of them had to look at Harold Keller to know who she meant.

  Franklin was waiting in the cab. He placed the telegram on Josephine’s lap as they set off again. She waited until the cab had almost reached Jackson Square before she broke the seal. Her stomach twisted in anticipation. She knew only that it came straight from Allan Pinkerton, and that he’d supposedly consulted with the secretary of war. She half expected to be thanked and told her services were no longer needed.

  Franklin, on the other hand, was now attached to General Butler’s occupying force, and he would have plenty of work in the city, which was seething with intrigue. Less than three weeks into the federal occupation and Butler had earned the title of the most unpopular Yankee south of the Mason–Dixon. A few days earlier, he’d issued a widely loathed edict directed toward the women of the city for their continued insults of Union soldiers. From henceforth, declared General Order Number 28, women behaving uncivilly would be treated as if they were prostitutes, arrested, charged, and fined five dollars for plying their illegal business. Among the outraged were the actual prostitutes of the city, who had been tearing down official postings with the general’s likeness and pasting them to the inside of their chamber pots.

  “Well?” Franklin said. “Are you going to read it or not?”

  Josephine opened the telegram.

  With commendation for meritorious service, you are hereby ordered to return to Washington with the outgoing steamer Newport. Upon arrival, you will be given honors at the Executive Mansion before receiving new orders.

  E. J. Allen

  The telegram had come from Pinkerton himself. She now knew that E. J. Allen was his nom de guerre.

  She handed it to Franklin, who whistled. “Honors at the Executive Mansion. No doubt from the president himself.” A teasing element entered his voice. “Maybe he’ll offer you a position in his cabinet. No doubt you suggested it in your last dispatch.”

  “And why not? I’m sure I could do better than some of those old fools.”

  “You have done well,” he said, and this time he sounded sincere. “You deserve honors and recognition.”

  It was everything she’d hoped for, yet somehow she felt deflated. A heroine in Washington, but a monster in her homeland.

  “I suppose they’ll send me to Richmond next,” she said.

  “You’ll have to disguise yourself.” And now it was Franklin’s turn to sound disappointed. She knew why. “They’ll tar and feather you if they catch you.”

  “It’s not as though the rebs are distributing my likeness on wanted posters.”

  “I wouldn’t be so sure about that.”

  The cab continued through the square and up toward the Paris Hotel. It was where she had begun her adventure in the city almost nine months earlier, when she’d first dined with Francesca without knowing that she’d been recognized. Now Josephine was back at the hotel for her final two days in the city.

  “And thus ends our glorious adventure together,” Franklin said when the cab clattered to a stop on the slick cobblestones.

  “Newport doesn’t leave until Tuesday.” She hesitated. “You could join me for supper tonight at the hotel, if you’d like. The food is good enough, so long as you avoid the haddock.”

  “I’m going upstream with Farragut this afternoon. There’s action brewing at Baton Rouge. I might not be back for a week.”

  “And you’re needed?”

  “Apparently I’m indispensable for the expedition.”

  “How cocky!” Josephine raised an eyebrow. “If you were a woman, I might even accuse you of being a petticoat general.”

  He laughed, but his expression quickly turned serious again. “I don’t see it, myself, but the flag officer insists that I will be needed. So I must obey orders.”

  She opened the door. “Well, then. I suppose this is good-bye for now.”

  Two porters came trotting down from the hotel. One man took her carpetbag, and the other her dresses.

  Franklin climbed down after her and told the cab driver to wait. He took Josephine’s hands. “You don’t have to go.”

  “Should I stow away in your steamer trunk?”

  “Please, can we be serious for a moment?”

  “I am being serious,” Josephine said. “You said you have your orders. Well, so do I. You saw them. What can I do about it?” The words sounded cavalier as they came out, but she didn’t say them without a twinge of regret.

  “I know it would be difficult, given your reputation down here, but if you resigned your position with the Pinkertons . . .”

  “Resigned?”

  “It wouldn’t come as a surprise in Washington. You’re a young woman, after all. The most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen.”

  “Please, now you’re being ridiculous.”

  “The point is, everybody knows what to expect in those cases. If you were to get married, for example—”

  “No, don’t say any more,” she interrupted. She still held his hands. “There are men fighting and dying to preserve the Union. Why shouldn’t a woman sacrifice to save her country? Why shouldn’t she have that duty—no, not duty, that privilege? I took an oath of loyalty to the Union that day when you tried to row me across the Potomac. I meant every word.”

  He looked pained. “What about loyalty to your heart? Does that have a place in your plans?”

  “I . . . I don’t know, Franklin.”

  “That night on the levee, when you spurned me as you sent me downriver—no, don’t interrupt. I was spurned. That was your right, even though I could see in your eyes that you felt some
thing. I told myself that it was your tender care after the explosion at the hospital that had addled my brains. Once I was away from you for a stretch I’d regain my wits. But I never did. I only loved you more.”

  Josephine didn’t speak right away, and he made to withdraw his hands. She didn’t let him. Not yet.

  “Franklin, listen to me. I am not . . . indifferent. But the time isn’t right. We’re halfway through the second year of the war already. Surely, this can’t last much longer. It might be over by summer.”

  “You don’t know that. It might be years.”

  “Maybe, but you’re twenty-five, and I’m not yet twenty-one. We have a lifetime ahead of us.” She nodded, growing more confident. “Soon enough, the war will be over. Then, if you’re still interested—”

  “Of course I will be.”

  “If you’re still interested,” she repeated, “then I would be pleased to consider your offer under more tranquil circumstances.”

  Her heart was thumping as she said this. Even this small gesture felt like tearing open her rib cage and exposing her heart to fire. He couldn’t know what this would cost her.

  Franklin was silent for several seconds. Then he nodded. “I shall write you often, if you promise you won’t laugh at the poor quality of my writing.”

  “The only writing I’ll laugh at is the kind with sappy poetry. That would be more than I could bear.” Josephine smiled. “I’ll answer every letter with one of my own.”

  He cleared his throat. “I should report to Hartford. May I . . .”

  “Yes?”

  “May I kiss you before I go?”

  Josephine’s face flushed. “You may.”

  Later that afternoon, standing on the levee, watching ships from Farragut’s fleet pull anchor and huff upstream, she thought she could feel the press of Franklin’s lips against hers. She’d expected it to feel pleasant, but she hadn’t expected the warm feeling that had flooded through her.