“Either way, she’s going the way of her mother!”
A chill swept over Sophie as she fought for composure. She had hoped she had buried the past last week at Oakwood Cemetery. But wagging tongues were slow to stop.
“Nonsense.”
Sophie turned just as Madeline Blair looped her arm around Sophie’s waist. “Don’t you listen to any of that talk now, dear. It’s all nonsense.” Madeline darted a sharp gaze over her shoulder, and the whispers fell silent.
“Thank you,” Sophie breathed. “How are you, Mrs. Blair?”
“Happy to see you out and about, that’s for sure. Fresh air is always an excellent choice.” She smiled, and kindness filled her hazel eyes.
“Have you heard from Asher lately?” At age twenty-seven, he was the eldest brother and had been the man of the house since his father had died several years ago. The middle boys, Thomas and Solomon, had both been killed at Antietam, a year ago.
“It’s been sixty-three days since the last letter. The house seems awful lonesome now.”
“I imagine that’s so,” Sophie murmured. She and Susan had grown up listening to the Blair boys scramble up their mother’s garden trellises and chase each other with firecrackers. They had teased the Kent girls mercilessly with lizard tails and frogs, but eventually learned more gentlemanly ways to capture female attention. “I suppose Joel misses his brothers something fierce, as well.”
Mrs. Blair pressed a crooked smile from her lips. “It’s no wonder you haven’t heard, considering.” Her gaze skimmed Sophie’s black dress. “Joey joined up, too. Left a fortnight ago.”
Joey. The baby. He couldn’t be more than fourteen years old.
“Oh, Mrs. Blair,” Sophie whispered. “However do you manage?”
“I’m proud of my boys, Sophie. Our cause is worth the sacrifice. Independence. Isn’t that what the first Revolution was all about? Breaking away from a tyrannical government? Joel’s young, but he knows what he’s about. Who can fault him for wanting to protect our rights and our homes?” Sniffing, she pulled a lace-edged handkerchief from her sleeve and dabbed her leaking eyes. “And who can fault me, for wearing holes in my floor with my knees?”
“May God protect him,” Sophie said. Images of Joel as a chubby toddler stumbling after his brothers scrolled through her mind. “And Asher.”
“And your father. I pray for him, too, dear, and you can tell him so.”
Sophie nodded. “May He bring them all home.”
“Amen. In the meantime, do come see me sometimes, won’t you? I would dearly love some company.”
Sophie promised she would visit, and they parted ways.
Drawing a steadying breath, she turned north, thoughts swaying like the hoops beneath her skirts. She was overcome by Mrs. Blair’s sacrifice and genuinely concerned for her sons. All she could do for them was pray.
She could do more than that for the sons of Northern mothers. Resolutely, Sophie marched to the corner of Tenth and Broad, just outside Capitol Square. With the spire of St. Paul’s Church impaling the sky behind it, the frame building serving as the provost marshal’s headquarters seemed a shanty in comparison.
Once inside, she found the provost marshal and two busy clerks writing at a table. Thick waves of frosty hair crowned General John Winder’s bullish head. His piercing eyes and Roman nose reminded Sophie of her father. Nervous-looking people seemed to have sprouted in his office like mushrooms, some in clumps, a few by themselves. Passport seekers, Sophie guessed. The news from Chickamauga was favorable for the South, but the defeats at Vicksburg and Gettysburg cast long shadows of poverty and despair over the Confederate capital. Those with less hope of victory than most chose to go North.
Finally, it was her turn. Winder spared her but a glance. “Speak,” he barked, glancing at his pocket watch before steepling his fingers.
Sophie sucked in her breath. “My name is Sophie Kent. I’ve come to request your permission to do my part in the war.”
“You need no permission to sew, knit, roll bandages, donate food to the hospitals.”
“If you please, sir, I’d like to help our prisoners.”
“Fine. Packages may be received at the Northern prison camps, and I’m sure our boys will be glad of whatever you can spare.” He waved his hand toward the door in dismissal.
“Forgive me, I haven’t been clear. I want to help the prisoners among us. Libby Prison is just blocks from my home. I would like to bring the prisoners there small comforts. Food, blankets, reading material. As I have my own resources, this would not burden the government at all.”
His eyebrows pinched together. “Better to use your resources for our own wounded soldiers. There are dozens of hospitals in Richmond. Chimborazo alone has three thousand patients on any given day—I’d say that’s ample enough outlet for your benevolent instinct.” With more than 120 buildings, the hospital complex was the largest in the South, perhaps in the North as well. In truth, it was just as close to her home as Libby was, but in the opposite direction.
Yet, “The women of Richmond are already pouring themselves out to meet those needs. But as you likely know, the gospel of Matthew says we are to love our enemies, and do good to those who persecute us. To minister to the hungry, the sick, those in prison—the least of these. Are not Yankee prisoners the very least of these?”
He grunted.
“If we wish our cause to succeed, and believe in the Christianizing influence of our nation, certainly we must begin with charity to the unworthy. I am not speaking of military policy, but of personal, individual kindness to those already captured.”
General Winder’s chest swelled. “Your views—”
“Forgive me, General. They are Christ’s views.”
His eyes narrowed, chin jutting forward, and Sophie held her breath. “If you show sympathy for the Yankees, you will generate talk.”
People are already talking. “I am less concerned with what people say than with what my heart is telling me to do. I just lost my mother, and I need something meaningful to fill the time.”
“What does your father say of this?”
She swallowed. “He is a prisoner of war himself. Fort Delaware, Pennsylvania. Isn’t it true that our treatment of Northern prisoners often produces treatment in kind of our own soldiers in Union captivity?”
Winder guffawed. “Do you expect better treatment for your father because of your good deeds here in Richmond?”
She bristled at his condescending tone. “I pray that women in the North feel the same pity toward our Rebel prisoners that I do for the men now languishing in my very neighborhood!”
By now, the two clerks were staring at her, nibs of their pens suspended above their papers.
Winder’s chair scraped the plain pine floor as he stood and walked to the window. After a moment’s hesitation, Sophie joined him there. At length, he spoke. “My job is to keep the city safe.”
“I understand.”
“Your Unionist sympathies are suspicious. Dangerous.”
Sophie’s eyes widened. “Dangerous?”
“Spies, like roaches, skitter throughout the city. Until we destroy them.” With a jerk, he consulted his watch again. “I must be off.”
Sophie took a half step backward. “Are you suggesting I’m a spy because I want to visit the prisoners? I assure you, my motive is to relieve suffering!”
He rounded on her, fire burning behind his coal black eyes. “Join me on my—errand. I’ll consider my answer by the time we return.”
Sophie’s gaze darted about the room. The clerks had already gone. “Where are we going?”
“Camp Lee.”
Sophie blinked. The garrison and hospital grounds?
“And it is imperative that we not be late.”
A little more than two miles outside the city, Camp Lee writhed with people. Men in top hats and women in their threadbare gowns spilled out of carriages and omnibuses while still others arrived on foot. Old men leaned on canes, wh
ile small boys made guns of sticks. Nearly every conversation, whether shrill or hushed, was punctuated with Yankee and spy. Goosebumps raised on Sophie’s flesh. There could only be one reason for this vast congregation.
A rhythmic rattle grew louder until drum taps penetrated the din of the crowd. Soon voices dimmed, and the people ebbed from the Broad Street gate. The marching footsteps and steady drumbeats thudded on Sophie’s chest as they drew closer to Camp Lee.
All around her, necks craned and toes tipped toward the empty gate until the drum corps filled the space. Behind them, with the slow crush of a tide, came two companies of worn and faded militia, and then a hack, closely guarded by mounted men. At this, shouts erupted from the tittering mass of onlookers. Insults exploded until the hack was obscured from view, swallowed up by two companies of infantry bringing up the rear.
Sophie thought she was going to be sick.
With razor sharp tone and West Point bearing, General Winder parted the crowd. Sophie followed in his wake, breath squeezing against her corset to keep up with his spit-polished strides. The throng pressed around and between them.
Winder grabbed her by the elbow and pulled her to his side. “Pay attention.” He pointed up at the wooden gallows. “Do not turn away.”
A man in captain’s uniform stood beneath the gallows. In booming voice, he read the charges against the accused, a man named Spencer Kellogg Brown, and the sentence of the court-martial: “Hanged by the neck until dead.”
Winder bent his head toward Sophie. “This is what we do to spies, Miss Kent. Observe.”
Her eyes and throat stung. Just as horrifying as the impending hanging was the multitude who had come to glut their hatred on the morbid spectacle. As the condemned man climbed the scaffold, however, he gave no impression of horror himself. Though his skin was pale from months of confinement, his blue eyes were clear and bright.
“He attained his twenty-first year while in Castle Thunder,” Winder said. “Leaves behind mother, father, sister, and a bride. A personal favorite of Captain Alexander’s, given a spacious room, reading material. Even ate at the captain’s table. The prison chaplain tells me he is a most devout young man, firm in his faith.”
Sophie’s gut twisted. By now his arms were pinioned and his ankles tied together, but no shadow cast over his face, even as he watched a Negro climb a ladder and tie the rope to the upper beam. Wonder filled Sophie as Brown examined the rope, declared it too long to do the job, and politely requested they shorten it.
“But you see, Miss Kent, it matters not. Spies hang. We do not spare for love, youth, charm, or religion. Take heed.”
The rope now shortened, the black cap was placed over Brown’s head of rich brown hair. After bowing for mere seconds, he stood perfectly erect, and proclaimed himself, “All ready!”
Sophie squeezed shut her eyes. A sickening bang as the floor dropped away. The squeak of stretching, jerking rope. Finally, the silence of a soul departed.
At length, Sophie exhaled. The death achieved, the crowd turned its back and receded.
General Winder pinned Sophie with his gaze. “Now tell me, Miss Kent. Do you still want to play this game?”
“It’s not a game.” Tears bathed her cheeks, when she wanted to be stoic. Furiously, she wiped them away.
He sneered. “Contact with Yankees in the Confederate capital is a game, indeed. A deadly one. You play by my rules, and know that if there is ever a question, I always win.”
Sophie tucked her fear behind her indignation, and still she could form no response.
“I grant you no pass to Libby Prison. Simply and absolutely out of the question. But if you choose to visit the hospital room on the first floor of the east side of the building, you may be of some use to the medical staff there. I make no objection. Your pass.”
With trembling hands, Sophie took it, and turned to leave before he could ridicule her for that as well.
“Remember,” Winder called after her. “Play by the rules. And I always—always—win.”
Kent House, Richmond, Virginia
Saturday, September 26, 1863
Sophie’s head pounded as she stared at the dingy brown page of newsprint before her. Crude stationery, indeed. But with Richmond’s paper shortage, it couldn’t be helped. Around the notice of runaway slaves being held at Castle Thunder for their owners, and the report of Spencer Kellogg Brown’s execution, she would have to pen the news she was loath to deliver.
Dear Daddy,
Mrs. Blair sends her greeting and prays for you.
She stopped, overcome with the news she must write next. If she closed her eyes, she could imagine he was here in the library with her even now, so strongly threaded was his cigar smoke in the red brocade draperies and in the carpet blooming giant peonies beneath her feet. Head bent over the tea table, a silken curl of sunshine bobbed against Sophie’s cheek. Once upon a time, he used to call her Goldilocks. But our tale has no happy ending. She dipped her pen back into the inkwell.
I have the burden of informing you that Mother has gone to her eternal home. Do not mourn overmuch. She is at peace and at rest, God bless her. You will want to know, of course, that she died well.
Sophie examined the lie, curving gracefully among the boxy newsprint. Truly, it was merciful. Beautiful, like Preston and Eleanor in years gone by. He may have resembled a Greek god to Sophie, but there was no doubt that Eleanor had been his Aphrodite. Preston would want to picture her like this, even on her deathbed. It was charity for Sophie to let him.
Her body rests at Oakwood Cemetery and the place will be marked by a tasteful marble headstone.
He did not need to know her mourners were so few. Nor did he need to know the bodies of unburied soldiers poisoned the air during her interment.
Tantalizing aromas stilled her pen. Daphne and Pearl entered the library, heavy-laden with baskets over their arms, and Sophie jumped up to greet them.
“Pearl outdone herself.” Daphne smiled at the cook, whose face beamed with a gap-toothed grin and shone with the heat of the kitchen’s fires.
“Thank you!” Just as she had requested, there were loaves of soft bread, covered dishes of chicken soup and corn gruel, and for the surgeon in charge of Libby’s hospital, a special gift of buttermilk and ginger cake the very color of Pearl’s skin. Finally, they had a tangible way to serve.
“Daphne, we’ll go in a moment.”
As Pearl and Daphne swished out of the room, Sophie scribbled one more line before leaving. We fare well despite our grief, and are doing what we can for the soldiers.
He did not need to know they wore blue.
Mosquitoes buzzing in her ears as she walked, Sophie tried not to pine after the horses and carriage the Confederate government had impressed from her household. Daphne hummed a tune beside her as if the baskets she carried were no burden at all. As the Indian summer sun baked their backs, their shadows glided over the brown-stained sidewalk along Cary Street. Once a lucrative tobacco district, the Union blockade rendered it obsolete. The warehouses and factories were emptied by the Rebel government and refilled with Yankee soldiers.
Composed of three warehouses connected together, Libby Prison loomed large as they approached it. Sentinels paced in stark relief to the lower half of the building, which was whitewashed to expose prisoners trying to escape. With every footstep that brought Sophie and Daphne closer, the smell of the James River one block south bowed to the odor of illness and confinement.
“Good morning,” Sophie said to the first guard she came to, and produced her pass. “We’ve come to visit the hospital, by the permission of General Winder.” The guard’s gaze skipped over the small paper and speared the basket instead.
“Would you like some?” Sophie nodded to Daphne, who broke off a piece of ginger cake and extended it to him.
He snatched it from her, inhaled its aroma, and shamelessly devoured it. “If you please, sir.” Sophie tried again. “Is this the door to the hospital room?”
&nbs
p; Nodding, he wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “You coming back?”
“I certainly plan to.” She smiled into his hollow eyes, and she and Daphne stepped inside the door.
As soon as the door shut behind them, Sophie’s eyes stung with the smell. In moments, a surgeon in grey was at her side, his brow already etched in apparent confusion. “I’m John Wilkes, surgeon-in-charge here. May I ask how you came to be here, and why?”
“I have a pass from General Winder,” she began, and handed it to him.
He held the paper in the dust-flecked light pouring through the window. “Sophie Kent? And you desire to visit for the purpose of …”
“Bringing food and drink to the men.”
Daphne handed her the plate of ginger cakes and bottle of cold buttermilk, and Sophie offered them to Dr. Wilkes.
His eyes widened. “Smells heavenly, but these are much too rich for the men here. I’m afraid their reduced condition would never be able to digest them.”
Sophie shook her head. “They are for you, sir. A gift, for allowing us the privilege of serving these men. For the ill, we’ve brought soft bread, corn gruel, and chicken soup.”
“Truly?”
Daphne lifted the linen on her basket, and he peered inside.
“Manna from heaven. Yes, yes, we need all you can spare, and I thank you on their behalf. Dr. Lansing,” he called, then turned back to Sophie. “Dr. Caleb Lansing is an assistant surgeon captured at Chickamauga.”
“He’s a prisoner?”
“By night. By day, he works here in the hospital room. I’m spread quite thin, you see, and—ah yes, Dr. Lansing.” He turned to the Union doctor. “This is Sophie Kent, and she’s brought some food for the patients. I’d like you to oversee proper distribution, taking special diet considerations into account.”
A smile creased Dr. Lansing’s face as he bowed to her. “Pleased to meet you, Miss Kent. And you are?” He turned to Daphne.
Dr. Wilkes waved his hand. “A servant, clearly.”
“I’m quite sure servants—even slaves—have names, too. And I’d sincerely like to know yours.”
Spy of Richmond Page 3