Tuesday, October 6, 1863
Please God, not Daphne too. Dread lodged in her throat, Sophie pulled her skirts between her legs and tucked them securely in her belt, affording free movement of her legs. With a cup of tea made from boiled dogwood bark in one hand, she climbed the rough-hewn ladder up to the loft above the kitchen. Rachel was right behind her, carrying a kettle of hot water. Pearl stood at the bottom, concern etched on her weathered face, a long wooden spoon spiking from the fist propped on her ample hip.
“Let’s get this in her.” Sophie knelt beside Daphne’s pallet on the floor.
Lois, the head housekeeper, dropped next to Daphne and scooped her head into her lap. “Fever sure is fierce today.”
“Much worse than yesterday?” Sophie noted the grooves in the older woman’s ebony face.
“’Fraid so, Missy.” With her thumb on Daphne’s chin, she pressed down enough for Sophie to tip a spoonful of tepid tea between her cracked lips.
Rachel poured her kettle into a bucket, her lips pressed together just like her mother Lois’s, then bent Daphne’s knees and guided her feet to rest in it.
“Good.” Sophie nodded approvingly at the young woman three years her junior. “Perhaps we can draw the fever down from her head.” She hoped her voice carried a tone of confidence she did not feel. The last time Sophie was a nurse on this property, the patient had died.
By the light of the dusty sunbeams falling in through smeared windows, Sophie spooned another dose of tea into Daphne’s mouth, then another, and another. Every time her hand neared her face to feed her, she was astonished by the heat radiating from her yellowing skin. “It’s going to be all right,” she said, and wondered if it was a sin to say such a thing when really, there was no such guarantee.
It had started with violent chills last night, Lois had told her. Guilt still niggled at Sophie that when she was dining with the relentless Captain Russell, Daphne was bundled up with all the winter blankets they had, before the fire, and still chattering with cold. Then as suddenly as the chills had begun, a raging fever took hold. By this morning, however, it had passed. Daphne had been tired, but coherent and, they had all hoped, recovering.
Mutterings bubbled from Daphne’s lips now, and Sophie leaned in closely to catch them. “What is she saying? Sounds like ‘bell, bell.’ What can she mean?”
Lois shrugged. “It maybe don’t mean a thing, Missy. That’s the fever talkin’, I guess.”
With a start, Daphne’s eyes popped open. “My baby cryin’? That my baby cryin’?”
Chills cascaded over Sophie as Daphne kicked in an effort to push herself up to her elbows. Frantically, she looked about the room, evidently unaware that she had upset the bucket of water her feet had been in. Pearl’s muffled cry from below announced that the spilled water was bleeding through the floorboards and leaking into the kitchen.
“Shhhh, it’s all right, there’s no baby here, Daphne.” Sophie hoped her tone was gentle, rather than terrified, as she had been when Eleanor had been slipping. Susan! Is that Susan at the door? She had cried, looking wildly about her in the sickroom. Has she come back? Preston, for pity’s sake let her in, she’s your daughter! “Shhh, shhh,” Sophie said again, as much to the haunting memory as to Daphne.
“Don’t you shush me, woman! You bring me my baby! Where he at? Can’t you hear he want his mama now? Why won’t you bring him to me?”
Stunned, Sophie sat back on her heels, vaguely registered that Lois and her daughter Rachel both covered their gasps with calloused hands.
Daphne flopped back, flat once more on her pallet, but her face twisted with a pain known only to her. “Hush little baby, don’t you cry …” Her voice warbled pitifully as she sang. Tears traced her broad cheeks.
“Did she have children?” Sophie whispered through tightened throat.
Lois spread her hands in a gesture of baffled ignorance. Rachel only shook her head as she mopped the floor with her apron.
Every moment that Daphne writhed in delirium on her pallet was a moment lost, possibly with irreparable damage to the brain. Sophie ticked off her options in her mind.
“Here. Keep trying, if you can.” She thrust the cup of tea and spoon into Lois’s hands. “I’m going for a doctor.”
Lois clucked her tongue, wagging her head. “Now, Missy. With all these thousands of soldier patients here, you think a single solitary doctor gonna come up this ladder to see bout a sick slave? Uh uh. Ain’t happenin’, honey.”
“True,” Sophie admitted. “But maybe one of them will talk to me.”
Lois raised an eyebrow. “You going to Libby’s hospital, ain’t you?”
“I have to try.”
“Better take Rachel with you. Wouldn’t look fittin’ for you to go alone. And grab some bread for those boys, too.”
As soon as the words left Lois’s mouth, Sophie was backing down the ladder. Rachel was right behind her.
Breathless, Sophie Kent swatted through a cloud of mosquitoes and burst into Libby’s hospital room, brimming with impatience as her eyes adjusted to the gloom. “Dr. Lansing? Dr. Wilkes?” Rachel shrank back, and Sophie realized she should have prepared her scrub maid for the scene more thoroughly.
“Miss Kent?” Dr. Lansing looked paler than he had a week ago, his radiant energy dimmed. Still, he smiled at Rachel and introduced himself before he accepted three loaves of bread from her.
“This is Rachel,” Sophie breathed. “Daphne’s ill.”
His eyes softened. “Can you describe the symptoms?”
Sophie told him everything she could, right up to the moment before they left her. “She was searching for a baby she was certain was hidden in the loft somewhere. She was—she was—”
“Perhaps a little bit—like that?” Dr. Lansing nodded toward a groaning, thrashing patient. His eyes looked as if they’d been lit from within, his skin looked thin against his bones, and stained yellow with dandelions. His moans were peppered with snippets of a one-sided conversation.
“Who is he talking to?” Sophie asked.
“A loved one only he can see. Sound familiar?” Dr. Lansing asked a few more questions of her, then rubbed a hand over his stubbled jaw. “It sounds to me like she is in the throes of typho-malaria. We see it here every day, I’m afraid.”
The lump Sophie swallowed grated her throat. Malaria. People died from it. “Is there nothing we can do for her?”
“If we were about a hundred miles north, I’d give her quinine.”
Sophie blinked, waiting. “But?”
He shook his head, casting a long gaze at his own patients. “Quinine, chloroform, morphine. All of these are in desperate demand in the South. That which can be had goes directly to the Rebel army.”
She searched his eyes for any glimmer of hope. “Is there really no quinine to be had?”
“Quinine? No, none,” said Dr. Wilkes, joining their small huddle. “There’s barely any for our own soldiers, as it is. You’d be lucky to get an ounce for four hundred dollars if you find it. And the price will only keep rising.”
Rachel twitched beside Sophie at the mention of the impossible sum. Dr. Wilkes nodded, his face a perfect storm. “You can thank the blasted Union blockade for that, my dear.” He cursed under his breath as he hustled along. Dr. Lansing did not contradict him.
“The dogwood bark we boiled into tea—will that not help her?”
“There is no effective substitute for quinine.” He looked over his shoulder at his patients, his body taut. “Just keep her as comfortable as possible. If you’re lucky, after three or four weeks, she may pass the worst of it. But the convalescence is tedious in the extreme. I’m sorry it’s not what you wanted to hear. Now, if you’ll excuse me.”
If you’re lucky … Sophie could not tell how long she stood there, watching Dr. Lansing’s back, willing him to turn around with some bright new recollection that could help Daphne, and the rest of his patients, after all. It was Rachel who finally broke the spell.
&n
bsp; “He didn’t take these,” she whispered. Two loaves of bread trembled in her arms, and Sophie chided herself for lingering when clearly, Rachel was distraught.
“Come, you can help.” Shoving thoughts of Daphne’s illness to the corner of her mind, Sophie led Rachel outside for one last task before returning home.
In the vacant lot east of Libby, between Cary and Canal Street, a few Negro prisoners were unloading a supply wagon and carrying the packages into the prison. One of them paused long enough to notice Sophie and Rachel watching. “Take the bread to them, please. You’ll attract no attention. I’ll talk to the sentinels if I need to. Hurry back.” She was anxious to return to Daphne.
They call that food? Abraham Jamison could scarcely go near his own rations, let alone eat them—which made the recent reduction to half rations per man more tolerable. The corn bread was railroad iron hard, the bacon was maggoty, and the black-and-blue meat announced its presence in the dark by its rank odor alone. Worst, perhaps, was the soup, so full of black bugs that had gorged on the inside of the beans that they died and floated on the surface. Had it not been for the soft bread Rachel had brought a few hours ago, Abraham would not have eaten a bite all day.
Of course, even that had soured in his mouth when he learned of Daphne’s illness. Typho-malaria, Rachel had said, and not a drop of quinine to be had. He wondered if he would ever see her again.
Henry had disappeared. Without warning, without cause, he was just—gone. There was no record that he’d ever been here, no way of writing to his wife. It was an ominous presence that never left, this constant question of who would be next. Whether Abraham would starve to death or discover for himself where the vanishing Negroes ended up, he could not guess. He only knew his days were numbered, and that his regiment had no idea he was even here.
Neither did his wife.
He should have listened to her when she came to visit him in Beaufort last summer after he was wounded in the leg. He should have kissed her better. Had he even told her he loved her? A frown creased his face as he racked his memory. He’d been so offended that she spoke of being hungry when the honor of black soldiers was at stake. Well, now he understood a thing or two about hunger, himself. Closing his eyes, he prayed she had enough to eat now, and that if he died in this godforsaken hole, she would one day learn to forgive him, even though it was impossible for him to beg it of her. He prayed that Daphne would live, and that the war would end, and that they could find each other and be happy. For without Abraham, Bella would be all alone.
Abraham’s eyes popped open. The voices on the other side of the room simmered with energy. Pushing himself off the floor, he joined the dark knot of men. Their eyes gleamed in the twilight spilling through the prison bars.
“Tomorrow you say?”
Lewis, who walked through the upper floors every morning with a pan of burning tar, nodded. The fumigation was of questionable value, judging by the thriving population of vermin upstairs, but the opportunity to communicate with the imprisoned officers was priceless.
“What’s tomorrow?” Abraham asked.
“Chaplains are being released. Seven of them. Said they’d take out letters with them.”
“Won’t they be searched?” Abraham asked. Surely the guards wouldn’t send incriminating evidence through the lines if they could help it.
“They’ve got a plan.” He paused, eyes twinkling. “Did you know that with a pen knife, you can split a uniform button in half, and fit inside it one small sheet of paper folded up very, very small? Snap the button back in place, the letter disappears. They promised to mail them for us once they’re at Fortress Monroe. They’ll find the stamps and envelopes themselves. You want in, get your letters to me before first light. I’ll pass them right along for you when I burn the tar upstairs.”
It was a chance to write Bella, to explain what happened, to tell her he wanted her to move on if—rather, when—he died. A dim hope flared, then sputtered like a drowning wick. “Where we going to get our stationery and quills?”
Lewis smiled, his teeth flashing white. “Courtesy of the boys upstairs.”
Abraham felt a nudge in his aching ribs, and looked down to find paper and a pencil.
“Be quick about it.” Lewis motioned to the others who would surely want to use the pencil next. “Light’s almost gone.”
Promising he would, Abraham shifted into the stream of fading light, and stitched his heart with lead onto the paper in his hands.
Richmond, Virginia
Wednesday, October 21, 1863
The James River blinked beneath the ruddy October sky as Sophie marched out of Libby’s hospital and past the sentinels, alone. Her empty basket dangled from her elbow and bounced against her leg with every step. The doctors hadn’t said it, but they didn’t need to. The truth was obvious. It was her fault Daphne was ill. Sophie would not risk the health of another slave in her care.
If she hadn’t asked Daphne to accompany her to the hospital, she likely wouldn’t have caught typho-malaria, would not be lying, sweaty and insensible, on the bed even now. Sophie had moved her from her pallet above the kitchen to the spare bedroom at the rear of the house two weeks ago, but her condition had not significantly improved, even with the better ventilation and Sophie’s daily caregiving. Lois and Rachel took turns helping, but their own work kept them busy enough without adding nursemaid to their list of regular duties.
Besides, Sophie was used to the role. And I am to blame for exposing her to the disease in the first place. The thought wore a weary circuit in her brain. With each plodding footstep that carried her toward home, guilt drilled deeper. Perhaps, if Daphne were sleeping when she arrived, Sophie could slip in a visit to Mrs. Blair. The older woman’s companionship steadied her.
Voices raised behind Sophie, and she glanced backward, just in time to see someone duck behind a lamppost. The hair raised on her neck as the intruder from last month flitted through her memory. A tendril of fear curled around her. She shook her head, but suspicion clung to her like ivy to brick. As she faced forward again, the warehouses and merchant stalls of Cary Street dimmed in her vision. The seagulls’ squawks dulled beneath the alarm clamoring throughout her spirit. She turned north on Twenty-second Street.
Footsteps followed, but every time she turned, she saw no hunter. Is he hiding behind a tree? Am I only imagining it? In one block, she turned east on Main Street then north on Twenty-fifth, and still she felt she was being trailed. Sycamore branches swayed with the wind that hissed through them.
By the time she turned east on Franklin, hoofbeats and carriage wheels sounded far away, though they stomped and whirled right beside her as they passed. A mere two blocks from home, her footsteps broke from their measured gait and she glided over the sidewalk double-time. Dried leaves caught in her hem, scraping the dusty ground in her wake. Were the footsteps behind her matching her pace?
Sophie’s breath whooshed in her ears. I’ve done no wrong, she reminded herself. I have nothing to fear. But her throat clamped tight with it. If this man was mad enough to threaten her with burning her home, what would he do with her in person?
Behind her, footsteps pummeled the earth. Any second, he would overtake her.
“Miss Kent!”
Her stride hitched.
“Miss Kent?” Captain Lawrence Russell drew rein and dismounted his horse, holding the bridle with one buckskin-gloved hand. Relief poured through Sophie, and she fought the urge to link her arm with his. Her gaze darted behind him, around him, looking for the shadow that had followed her.
“You look—hunted. You’re being followed?” His voice was low. “Is it that sly devil who was lurking about your gardens?”
“I think so.” She swallowed. “But I couldn’t tell you who or where he is.”
He wrapped his arm about her waist, drawing her close. “I’ll bet you my last pound of coffee he’s watching you still.”
The breath whisked from her chest at the captain’s nearness.
Sophie opened her mouth to argue.
“Shh. Don’t be cross with me, you’ll only convince him further that you’d rather be with dying Yankees than with a Rebel officer with a bare fourth finger on the left hand. Don’t you know I’m helping you here? Play along.” He brought her hand to his lips and pressed a kiss to it. His mustache sent shivers down her spine. “And you’re alone? What did you do this morning, wake up and decide to be an easy target for that man’s foul designs?”
“You know I can’t let any of my slaves come with me after Daphne has fallen ill from that place!”
“Why do you continue to go yourself, when you know you’re putting yourself at risk? You could cut the miasma hovering around that place with a saber.”
She glowered as he brushed a strand of hair from her cheek.
“Be sweet, now. We’re throwing him off your scent. You can’t be disloyal if you’re being courted by an officer in the Ordnance Bureau, now can you?” He winked. “I’ll walk you home.”
With the reins in one hand, Captain Russell offered Sophie his arm, and she looped her hand through his elbow. “Don’t look back. It’s more effective if he thinks we’ve forgotten about him altogether.”
She nodded, suddenly aware of how she must look to him. The shadows beneath her eyes had deepened with her vigils by Daphne’s side. Her mourning gown was stiff and dull. It had not mattered to her earlier today. It should not matter to her now.
A pang of disloyalty sliced through her. She was beginning to forget Harrison Caldwell. His eyes, his touch, the way he pushed her to follow her dreams. Five years, he’d said when she completed her courses at the Philadelphia boarding school where his mother taught. He couldn’t support a wife on his reporter’s wages yet, and she wasn’t ready to settle down in the family way, either. Both of them had work to do. We’ll meet back here at the five-year reunion of your class. In the meantime, you set the South on fire with your writing, and I’ll do the same with the North. The five-year reunion came and went last spring, and Sophie, of course, remained in Richmond. She hadn’t seen Harrison since the Weeping Time. Little wonder his image was a fading tintype in her mind compared to the flesh-and-blood man warming her hand.
Spy of Richmond Page 6