Alias Dragonfly

by Jane Singer

  “Good work, Miss,” Mr. Riley said, the cloth on his hand now stained with blood.

  Mrs. Crawford went breezily on. “And Mrs. Warn you’ve met, of course.”

  “I’m sorry I hurt you,” I said to Mr. Riley, ignoring Mrs. Warn.

  “Don’t be,” Mrs. Warn said. “Don’t ever be sorry.”

  “Just a scratch,” Mr. Riley added.

  Jane Smith handed me a wet cloth. “Wash up, now, Madeline Bradford, and oh, my, your little wrists are a bit red, aren’t they?” She reached into her apron pocket and produced a tiny pot of something creamy. “Put this on the scratches, and they’ll be gone by morning.” She watched as I rubbed in the ointment. “Better?”

  “Yes,” I mumbled. They weren’t.

  “Mrs. Crawford has made some lovely raisin scones,” Jane Smith said cheerfully. “Are you hungry?”

  “I’m starved, thanks,” I said loudly, though my body was cold and I was shaking all over. I hid my trembling hands at my side.

  “Good girl,” Jane Smith said, clapping me on the back. “Good!”

  Mrs. Crawford bustled off, humming. Soon she was back with a new tray of pastries, sandwiches and a steaming pot of tea. Mr. Riley pulled side chairs and a table from a closet.

  Mrs. Warn did not look at me or speak all through the meal. Though the first bite of the scone stuck in my throat, I forced a swallow. Mrs. Warn handed me a sandwich.

  “Thank you,” I said, meeting her steady, piercing gaze. The salty ham and brown bread looked wonderful. I took a few bites, never taking my eyes off her. Was that a look of approval, admiration, even, on her face?

  A bell clanged three times in the hallway. They all looked up, waiting. It clanged twice more. Mrs. Crawford hurried to answer it. I heard laughter, and a loud, “Oh, you rascal!” from Mrs. Crawford, and a high guffaw. She came in, followed by the little man called Mikey. They were laughing like crazy at some silliness they shared.

  “Time to go home, Fiona,” Mikey said, pulling back my chair. He blew a kiss to Mrs. Crawford, and then danced a little Irish jig, leaping in the air and landing at her feet.

  “Oh, the scamp,” she said, blushing.

  Before we left, Mrs. Warn handed me my shawl and my gun.

  “I’ll inform Mr. Pinkerton that you . . . tolerated . . . the exercise,” she said.

  “Do you live here, Mrs. Warn?” I asked. The bit of food I’d eaten, and the realization that they were not really my enemies, made me feel stronger.

  “This is Mrs. Warn’s school. I’m one of her . . . graduates,” Jane Smith said proudly. She indicated the two men sitting in the corner, stuffing more food in their mouths. “And Mike there, well, he’s one of our best, as is Mr. Riley.”

  Mike led me down the stairs of the house I’d been brought to as a captive. I kept blinking in the faint light of dawn. I’d been there all night! If I didn’t know better, I would have supposed that a fine, well-bred family lived here. Well, in a way, they were a family, just not like any I could have imagined.

  “Well, Fiona, you held your own, and didn’t buckle under, that’s what I heard,” Mike said, skipping along beside me.

  “Thanks.” I remembered the bile in my throat and the burning in my wrists. My legs were still weak. “I thought I’d been captured by Rebels. I figured they’d kill me.”

  “And you didn’t break,” Mike said. “I’m proud of you.”

  I was proud of myself. “Is Mrs. Warn always so hard on her . . . students?” I leaned down to catch his answer.

  “She has to be,” he said. “Especially since you’re so young, and all. She has to know if you can measure up.”

  “What about you, Mike?”

  “I bless the day Mrs. Warn laid eyes on me,” he said, with a tone of reverence in his voice. “She found me working with an organ grinder. I was the monkey. He made me wear an old fur suit and monkey head that stank worse than a rotting horse. When the war started, we’d be just across from the President’s House. Those congressmen gave a mighty lot of pennies, and talked real free, talked Rebel stuff. They spouted off about who was resigning and who wanted to put a hole in Mr. Lincoln’s head. They talked plenty around an animal and his keeper. Mrs. Warn happened by and put an extra penny in my hand. She treated me good, and figured right away I wasn’t a real monkey. One day I told her what I was hearing.” Mike’s face was full of adoration. “A few days later, Mrs. Warn bought me from the organ grinder. He gave me up easy. Money does that. After that, Mr. Pinkerton schooled me in their ways and took me on. I’d die for them,” he said.

  As we neared the boardinghouse, a familiar black-haired young man with a bouquet of carnations in his hands limped into the street calling my name.

  I gasped.

  “Know him, or what?” Mike said, pulling a small knife from under his hat, and concealing it in his hand.

  Joy and anger made a broth that bubbled on an invisible stove inside me, just at the sight of Jake Whitestone. “Yes. I do. He boards with my aunt as well.”

  “Keep walking,” Mike said. “I’ll be nearby if you need me. Over by Mr. Riley’s stand, okay? Go inside.”

  Hard as it was, I turned my back on Jake and hurried into the house. He followed me.

  Seventeen

  “Both of you come and go like stray cats!” Aunt Salome berated me and Jake as Nellie passed us mountains of food. We didn’t eat a bite. Jake kept trying to catch my eye. I kept looking away. “Where have you gotten to, Mr. Whitestone? The board is overdue,” my aunt said through a mouthful of food.

  “Madeline, you’ve still got the fever. Look at you.”

  Was my face that flushed?

  “Sorry, Mrs. Hutton,” Jake said, producing several gold pieces. “I’ve been rather busy.”

  She grabbed them up and bit down on them to see if they were real.

  “Excuse me, Aunt,” I said, fleeing the table, my heart and head in a tumble. I was so happy to see Jake, and yet, now that I was a spy, I sure didn’t want him writing about me in any way, or following me!

  I ran into the parlor. He was right behind me. Every time he neared me, I moved away. “Don’t use me anymore in your writing! Think for yourself,” I whispered.

  He winced. I was sorry to hurt him.

  “It wasn’t just you I wrote about, Miss Madeline. You are a representation of all the poor kids caught up in this mess!” he said.

  “Kids? Kids? I’m no kid! Go away!”

  “All right, maybe I did use you, but it was for my paper! My Yankee paper! Why did you pretend to not know me in the street, Miss Madeline? And who was that funny looking boy you were with?”

  “Nobody! He . . . he is the son of my aunt’s friend.” Okay, that sounded stupid. “He’s someone I know. I was minding him while . . . It’s none of your business anyway!” I was trying to think fast, and it wasn’t working. Jake was too close to me. I moved away.

  He grabbed my hand. “Madeline.” He said my name softly. So familiar, so—

  “Just leave me alone,” I said weakly, meaning it and not meaning it. Oh boy, was I in a muddle.

  I let go of his hand. There was an empty space where his fingers had clasped mine. I could feel myself going all soft and weak. I had to push him away. So I shouted at him.

  “I can’t forget that you were smiling at Confederate officers after the battle. I saw you!”

  “You mean at the reporters’ tent?”

  “How should I know what it was?”

  “For heaven’s sake, I told you before, all of us reporters were interviewing them, trying to get the real news out! Next time it won’t be so easy. They were flushed with victory and cheering at news of the Union dead. They were crowing! I hate their kind, you should know that.”

  All the excitement and jangle of the past weeks flooded over me. There was so much I wanted to tell him, so much. I sighed. My shoulders slumped.

  “You look older, Madeline.”

  “I am.”

  He touched my face. “What has
happened?”

  Nothing much, just my whole life has changed, I thought.

  “Oh, the war and the strange new things about this city, worry for my father, for all the soldiers, the wounded . . .” My voice trailed off. “A lot different from New Hampshire, the heat, the . . .” I was rambling.

  “My paper is sending me to Richmond, Madeline.”

  I felt relief and sadness all at once. I knew I couldn’t keep doing well at my new trade easily with Jake in the city. And the spies I’d come to know wouldn’t let him be in the way. I wanted to say so much more.

  “Godspeed, Pan,” I said. “Watch out for alligators.”

  “They don’t have those reptiles in Richmond, at least not the kind with scaly skin and killing jaws. You’ll read about my time there.”

  We stood very close together, not moving or speaking.

  I closed my eyes, and for a moment imagined us safe and peaceful on the banks of the Piscataqua River, an autumn wind whistling through the reeds.

  But then I heard the city: the distant rumbling of artillery practice, the screech of a night owl and the cries of the rag and bone seller as he dragged his cart past the parlor window. Washington City, the ruckus and hum of the place was calling to me. I belonged here.

  When I opened my eyes, Jake was gone.

  Eighteen

  Very late that night, a devilishly dark night it was, I was jarred awake when I sensed a man’s form standing over me. I didn’t cry out, but turned slowly over on my side, reaching under my pillow where I kept my revolver. He grasped my arm. I drew my legs up under me, preparing to kick. Before I could, or struggle even, he reached under my pillow and drew out my weapon.

  “You didn’t make a sound. Good.” He whispered, handing me the gun, his other hand close to my face.

  Unless there were two men in this city with a most peculiar deformity, a crooked pinky finger, well—

  “Good evening Mr. Webster,” I said softly, trying to breathe evenly to quiet my racing heart.

  “Come with me, Miss Bradford. Now.”

  I was wearing a heavy cotton sleeping gown, so I slipped out of bed and grabbed the first piece of clothing hanging in the wardrobe—my old black dress. Since it was so dark in the room, I abandoned modesty, dropped my gown to the floor and pulled on a pair of underdrawers, and slipped the dress over my head. I stepped into my boots, lacing them quickly. Was I in for another test even harder than the one I’d endured?

  “I’ll have you back by morning,” was all he would say.

  We tiptoed down the hall, past bedrooms, down the stairs, through the parlor and out the front door. Mr. Webster led me around the side of the house into the alley where a horse and rig waited. The driver, yes, he was really small, perched in his seat like a tiny bird. He tipped his hat to me.

  “Hi kid,” he said. I glared up at him as Mr. Webster helped me into the rig. So Mike was in on this too.

  I knew better than to ask where we were going. At least I was with people I knew and not being dragged off, blindfolded. I leaned back against the cushiony leather back of the carriage to catch my breath.

  The city smells and sounds, the babble of drunkards, the clatter of wheels on cobblestones, and the stink of the canals, faded to the scent of dung, grass and fire smoke. We stopped. Mr. Webster got out and walked quickly away. Mike jumped down and held out his hand to help me down.

  “You look like something a cat wouldn’t drag around.” He said, appraising my black garb, and my matted, uncombed hair.

  “You don’t look so great yourself,” I snapped, pointing to his battered bowler hat and pants that barely reached the tops of his little boots. “You sounded just like my aunt,” I muttered. “I never look right to her.”

  “Sorry. Truce?” He said sheepishly.

  We both smiled. I really liked Mike.

  I squinted to try to see where we were. Just then, I stumbled over a large, inert mound. It moved and mooed. I reached down to touch a warm, wet nose of a cow. Nearby I heard the snuffling and grunting of pigs.

  A layer of fog hung low over moist, loamy grass. I could barely make out the outline of a large building up ahead.

  As we came closer, I realized then we were in front of a barn.

  Before I could ask what in heck was going on, a wooden door slid open. A tall Negro man I’d never seen before stood in front of us. He nodded to us.

  Mike offered me his arm like he was a fine dandy escorting a lady to a fancy ball. I reached down, I mean I had to really reach down, and took his arm. I entered the building at a crouch, my arm in Mike’s.

  Through flickering oil lamps positioned all around a cavernous space, men, and yes, women were lifting iron weights, jumping from wooden horses to piles of hay bales on the floor. An arrow sailed over my head and thudded into a target marked with a bull’s-eye. In another area of the barn I saw Mr. Riley, the flower seller, hitting a hanging leather bag over and over with his bare hands. He was moving with great agility, like he was dancing, in spite of his bulk. No one greeted me, or looked in the least surprised that I was there.

  A small padded form, the face covered by some kind of leather mask, waddled over to me.

  “Follow me, Miss Bradford,” a female voice said from beneath the head covering. She led me to a wooden rack hung with padded jackets, long skirts with no hoops or petticoats and trousers with leather caps over the knees.

  “Put these on.” While I donned the strange, bulky garments, pulling the skirt over my dress and sliding my arms into the jacket, the tall Negro man shouted, “Behind you!” He picked up the smaller female figure and threw her to the floor. She landed hard but slid away with ease.

  Before I could move, she leapt up and came toward me, raising her arm as if to strike me. Instinctively, I jumped to the side and grabbed her hand. She twisted my arm so hard I nearly fainted. I fell flat on my back, gasping.

  “Get up!” she said. She repeated the move. This time I grabbed her arm with both hands. “Now, force my arm down, right above my elbow. Keep the pressure on and push me to the ground. Put your foot on my neck.” I hesitated.

  “Don’t worry about hurting me.”

  I did as she ordered. And she lay still.

  “Release me,” she said. When I did, she got up and removed her head covering. A tumble of reddish hair and an even redder, sweaty face looked hard at me. It was Mrs. Smith.

  “Not a bad opponent,” she said.

  Before I could take in this praise, I saw Mr. Webster put on an overstuffed vest and attach more padding to his legs and a leather cover to his lower area.

  As if on cue, Mrs. Smith wheeled around and walked quickly away. As I watched her, someone grabbed me from behind, his hand around my neck. I froze for an instant.

  “Kick back hard at his leg!” Mrs. Smith called out. “Don’t try to disengage his hand from your neck. He is stronger than you are. Use your elbow in his stomach, then strike between his legs. “

  I did, and Mr. Webster crumpled to the ground, groaning loudly.

  “Are you all right, sir?”

  He stood up, smiling, and brushed himself off. “Quite so. That’s why I wore protection. Or else you would have truly hurt me.” His smile faded.

  “Defending your person is critical. You are well along. Mrs. Smith reported that when they tested you with the fake capture, you defended yourself.”

  He waved his hand. In an instant the Negro man was at his side. “This is Mr. Oliver Washington, Miss Bradford, one of Mr. Pinkerton’s best. Likely you will work together at some point.”

  “Pleased to meet you, Miss,” Mr. Washington said, bowing slightly. He had a deep, melodious voice, brown coffee-colored skin and strong, well-muscled arms. One of them was badly scarred.

  “Come this way, please.” He motioned to a far corner of the barn where a man and a woman were firing guns at a paper cutout of a man.

  He handed me a pistol, and bullets.

  “Load it. Fire at the head of the target.”


  I aimed and fired. The bullet landed low and tore into the figure’s chest, leaving a black circle where the heart would have been.

  “Just as good, yes.” Mr. Washington said.

  “Give me the gun.” I started to hand it over.

  “No. Never give up your weapon.”

  “Sorry.”

  “No apologies allowed here, kid.” Mike scuttled between Mr. Washington’s legs and grabbed away my gun.

  “Again!” Mr. Washington ordered. “If he tries to take the weapon, kick him hard.”

  “Sure, I can take it.” Mike said. I kicked at Mike. He rolled himself up like a dung beetle, righted himself, pulled a knife from his pant leg and came at me. “Gotcha,” he said, jumping in the air, thrusting it at my chest.

  By now, the other agents had formed a silent circle around us. “That’s enough for tonight,” Mr. Webster said. “You are agile and learn fast, Miss Bradford.”

  I didn’t feel so agile with all those eyes on me. Finally Mrs. Warn approached, her face drenched in perspiration. She reached for my hand, as if to shake it in congratulations. I didn’t take it, rather I stepped back until she could no longer reach me.

  The group applauded.

  “Take her back, now,” Mrs. Warn said, a flicker of an expression that was something like approval crossed her face.

  “You are not among enemies here,” she said. “But you behaved as if you were. Imagine yourself as a panther or a tiger, with knives for claws. Fix images like that in your mind. That is where a lot of power comes from. The mind.”

  She nodded curtly and walked away.

  I think I was proud. Okay, I know I was. And what’s more, I didn’t want to go back to my aunt’s boardinghouse. I wanted a mission!

  Nineteen

  Except for two more training sessions that left me exhausted but knowing I did really well, the next days came and went. Long, chore-filled afternoons blended one into the other. Sometimes it felt like all I’d seen and heard in the past months were but another dream. In the privacy of my room, every morning and evening, I lifted my heavy washbasin over my head fifty times and pushed myself up and down over and over, leaning my weight on my arms. I was determined to make myself even stronger. When I finished, I sat very still and imagined myself a wild, strong animal. If I growled, it was into my pillow, so no one heard me.