Spy of Richmond

by Jocelyn Green

  Libby Prison, Richmond, Virginia

  Tuesday, December 1, 1863

  By dawn, Harrison could not remember ever being more exhausted. His eyelids refused to open, but his ears magnified every sound.

  “Great news in de papers! Great news from de battle o’ Missionary Ridge!”

  One eye popped open to see an elderly colored man stepping between the prisoners, Richmond newspapers rattling in his hands.

  “That’s Old Ben,” said a man yawning beside Harrison. He pushed himself up to sit, then ran his hand through his dark, curly hair before attempting to smooth down his bushy beard, both of which were tinged with grey, though his face was yet unlined. “Charges twenty-five cents a paper—five times the price on the streets—but he finds plenty of customers here, as you can imagine.” He extended his hand to Harrison. “I’m Colonel Thomas Rose, 77th Pennsylvania.”

  “Very pleased to meet you. Harrison Caldwell, noncombatant. Philadelphia.” Nosy by trade, Harrison interviewed his new acquaintance and learned Colonel Rose was a schoolteacher and principal from Pittsburgh before the war. He’d been captured in September at Chickamauga. The thirty-three-year-old officer had a wife, a keen eye for observation, and a bright hope that his days at Libby were numbered. Harrison liked him immediately.

  “And who’s that?” He nodded to another colored man ambling through the room waving a skillet of burning tar. The smoke burned Harrison’s throat and stung his eyes.

  “Here is your nice smoke, without money and without price!” The man chanted, his voice competing with Old Ben’s over the stirring of waking prisoners.

  Colonel Rose yawned again and rubbed the heels of his hands to his eyes. “That’s The General. Comes here every morning, but the smoke only bothers us, and not the bugs.”

  “You mean that’s supposed to help us?”

  Rose chuckled. “The General does. He passes messages between us and the colored prisoners below when there’s anything worth passing. But the smoke itself is useless. In fact, it’s time you learned how to skirmish before roll call.”

  Harrison watched as Rose pulled his shirt off and meticulously picked through it like a chimpanzee. As his gaze drifted around the room, he saw one prisoner after another disrobe to varying degrees—including full nudity—to do the same.

  “Hunting for lice,” he said. “You’d do well to do the same.”

  “And you call this skirmishing?”

  Rose nodded.

  Clever. Harrison would have to remember this for the story he’d write about life in Libby Prison. He removed his own shirt and began inspecting it.

  “We’re like jealous husbands, yes?” Rose smiled. “Searching for evidence we hope we do not find.”

  Harrison laughed and hoped he’d remember that line as well.

  “So Caldwell. Did I hear you right last night—you’re a Northern journalist?” Rose’s eyes remained intent on his work.

  “Yes, that’s right.”

  “So were Junius Browne and Albert Richardson.”

  Harrison rifled through his mental files. “Should I know them?”

  “Northern reporters. Captured in the Mississippi outside Vicksburg in May. Came here holding paroles from the regular Confederate Agent of Parole at Vicksburg, certifying that they were at full liberty to return to the U.S. They’re still imprisoned here in Richmond, even though the Union soldiers who’d been scooped out of the river along with them were sent north via flag-of-truce boat. There was even another reporter, Colburn, of the World, who was captured at the same time, but he was released with the soldiers. Yet Junius and Albert are still here. In Libby for several months, and now in Castle Thunder.”

  Harrison’s fingers froze on his tunic’s seam. “On what charge?”

  “No explanation was given. But we all think they’re being punished for the crime of writing for the New York Tribune—the most famous abolitionist paper in the United States.”

  Dread clamped over Harrison’s chest.

  “Say, didn’t you say you wrote that all-famous story for the Tribune? The one about the Weeping Time?” Rose looked up when Harrison did not respond right away.

  Then, “I did.”

  “Well, that’ll get to the guards by noon, I’m afraid. You would do better to ‘set a watch before thy mouth.’ The Rebels deliberately plant spies among us, to ferret out who is planning an escape, when, how, that sort of thing. But what you shared last night was pretty big news, I’d say.”

  Harrison grimaced. Pride goeth before destruction, and an arrogant spirit before a fall. “But how do you know I’m not a spy myself?”

  Rose laughed again. “Oh, I can tell.” He pointed to Harrison’s shirt. “There’s one. Dispatch him!”

  Harrison squeezed the tiny vermin with all the vexation he harbored toward his own flapping jaws.

  “Sorry, old chap, truly. I’m afraid you’re here for keeps.”

  Foreboding spread coldly through Harrison’s limbs. He’d survived battle after battle before. Surely he could find a way to do the same in prison. But how would Bella get home again? And had he directed even more suspicion toward—

  Sophie. He stared at the shirt in his hands, a realization chilling his veins. His cloak. The map was still in it, and only one location marked: Sophie’s house. Maybe Turner won’t find it, he thought desperately. Maybe he won’t investigate, and Sophie and Bella will be fine. But sweat beaded on his brow. If they were in danger, it would be because of him.

  Richmond, Virginia

  Wednesday, December 2, 1863

  A sharp wind stung Bella’s face as she trudged along Canal Street, a fake pass from her fake mistress burning her leg through her apron pocket. Time was running out and going nowhere, all at the same time.

  Yesterday morning, she had come here with Sophie, but no Negro prisoners had been out of doors. This morning, they came again, and were met with the same failure. Please, Lord, I need to see him. Tomorrow Harrison would take her home.

  A black curl bobbed against her face until she tucked it back up under Daphne’s yellow head scarf. Hugging her shawl tightly around her shoulders, she bowed her head and shuffled toward the two Negro prisoners chopping wood in the alley. Perhaps they could fetch Abraham, somehow.

  Though the wind was keen, one of the men was shirtless as he worked. As she neared, she understood why. His back had been ripped open with a cat-o’-nine-tails, it looked like. Even a thin layer of cotton would feel like needles in the open wounds. A homespun shirt would be shards of glass.

  Within a few yards of him now, she wondered how he could even raise the axe. She could count the ribs through his back, not to mention the stripes well laid on.

  After waiting until his axe had hit its target, Bella spoke. “Pardon me.”

  Both men turned, one with a curious stare, the beaten man with eyes open wide. “Daphne?”

  His face was so thin, his eyes and teeth so large, his hair so untidy. His voice was but a thin shade of Abraham’s, but then, so was his body. The air trapped in her lungs. Instinctively, she reached out her hand to touch his face. “Is it really you?”

  The axe head still stuck in the block of wood, Abraham let the handle swing to the ground. “I must be dreaming,” he whispered, his gaze raking over her.

  “You’re not dreaming.”

  “I’m seeing things.” He shook his head. “Hearing things.”

  Fleetingly, Bella noticed the other man frown as he watched the exchange between husband and wife.

  “Abe.” His name caught in her throat. “I got your letter.”

  He blinked, eyes bright beneath his furrowed brow, then turned to his fellow prisoner. “Peter.” He jerked his head to the guard standing some distance away, and the man he’d called Peter nodded, his lips in a straight line, before trudging over to the armed man to distract him.

  Light and shadow fought within Abraham’s eyes, and he breathed in deeply. Bella could almost see the wheels in his mind grinding, laboriously. Until f
inally, “I didn’t ask you to come.”

  Bella tried not to stiffen. “I got things I need to say to you.”

  He picked up his axe, scanned the perimeter, but did not look at her directly. Nodded, and she understood that she was to speak, and quickly, for Peter’s ruse could end at any moment.

  Bella wanted to be smooth and eloquent, when her nature was to be practical and straightforward. Perhaps a little too sharp. She wanted her words to sing to him, draw a smile from his lips. She wanted them to be a tender caress, a balm to his wounds of both body and spirit. But they were standing in an alley outside a Confederate prison, with the clatter of horses and merchants and shoppers rattling the very air about them. As the guard’s voice raised itself over Peter’s, Bella’s speech was chopped to bits by Abraham’s swinging axe, and he did not look at her as she, dressed as the slave she had once been, dripped pieces of her heart from her lips. But she did it. It was as splintered as the wood scattered at her feet, but she had told him what he needed to hear.

  “Thank you. I know you love me. It’s good to hear you’re proud. But you have got to go. Now.” With a slam, another block of wood splintered on the stump.

  “I leave tonight. Unless …” She didn’t know why she said it. Her mind held no other plan. But everything in her railed against leaving her husband here to die. Her gaze darted furtively around her. Could he not escape? He was already outside, after all. The guard assigned to watch him was still distracted by Peter. What if—

  “There is no ‘unless’.” He raised the axe again and swung it down hard. “You go on home to Liberty.”

  “She’s engaged.”

  “You’re her mother, even if she doesn’t know it.”

  “She knows.”

  His grip slipped on his axe, and he looked at her then, eyebrows high in his forehead.

  “It’s all fine,” she said.

  “Then think how she’d feel to lose you now, her only blood relative. You get on home, and leave me be.” His voice shook. Abraham plowed his axe into the stump of wood, looked around, then pulled her close. “I love you.” His lips met hers, and she closed her eyes, aching to throw her arms around his neck. A thousand memories from sixteen years of marriage exploded inside her, and all she could think was that for all her strength and fire, she would have been lost without him. Far too soon, he pulled away, his eyes slick. Flinching with silent pain, Abraham scooped up his firewood. The bright grooves on his back blurred in her vision as her husband returned to prison.

  Kent House, Richmond, Virginia

  Wednesday, December 2, 1863

  Back aching with years of bending in the rice fields, Bella bent over Daphne, bathing her face. “You won’t get better without the medicine, you know.” The precious bottle of quinine, now worth at least six hundred dollars an ounce in the South, remained tucked inside the bureau where the sun could not dilute its value. It was almost as full as the day Bella had arrived with it.

  A fragile smile cracked Daphne’s lips. Her eyelids fluttered open, then closed again. “I won’t get better. Period.” She turned her head toward the wall and coughed, the fluid gurgling in her lungs.

  Bella straightened, swallowing the bile backing up in her throat. If it was only the fever, only malaria, she would have told her sister she was wrong. But pneumonia had taken hold and refused to release its prey.

  Light seeped between the shutters in thin yellow stripes, but the room still felt like a tomb.

  “I’m dying, Bella.” Daphne’s featherlight voice sat on Bella’s shoulders like a vulture. The words, piercing talons.

  Her moments of clarity, like this one, were as painful as her fitful mutterings about Moses and Miriam, plus her stillborn child and the ones she miscarried. “Will you not try?” Bella’s voice cracked as she eased into the hardback chair beside the bed.

  “My babies in heaven been waitin’ on me. I’ll be free, Bella, and with all the ones I love. Except for you. But your work here ain’t done.”

  “My work—”

  Another fit of coughing interrupted.

  “My work is to keep you alive.” But the quinine wasn’t working. Daphne was slipping.

  “I need you—to do something for me.”

  Bella leaned in close.

  “Take care of Miss Sophie.”

  Confusion throbbed at Bella’s temples. “It’s you I came to take care of, not a slave owner courted by a Rebel officer!” Her own words pricked her conscience. Wasn’t her own daughter engaged to a former Rebel scout? This is different. Lawrence Russell is no Silas Ford.

  “There’s more to it than you see.”

  “She’s holding you in bondage. That’s all I need to know.” She pressed her lips into a firm, thin line.

  Though the effort clearly cost her, Daphne shook her head slightly on the pillow, lines creasing her brow. “When her mama died, her daddy gave me to her, but without power to free me. She’s more … abolitionist … than me.”

  Bella frowned, struggling to net the words swimming back to her now. Harrison’s words. I knew her in Philadelphia. Father from the South, Mother from the North. Unless she’s changed since I saw her last, she can be trusted. Only it seemed to Bella that if Sophie owned Daphne, she must have changed.

  “Why you think … she riskin’ so much … to help those Yankee prisoners?”

  Lord, help me see the truth of it. Bella was quick to judge, she knew that about herself. Usually, she was right about folks. But she hadn’t been right about Silas, when she had lumped him in with his slaveholding father, much to Liberty’s dismay. Is my instinct to protect Daphne dimming my view of Sophie, too?

  “So. You want me to take your place as Sophie’s maidservant?” The idea chafed even more than the rough clothing she’d worn as a field hand. I cannot go back to bondage, I can’t even pretend it!

  “Not as a slave … but as a friend. Her equal.” Daphne’s thin chest rose and fell with every labored breath. “She needs you now … more than she ever needed me.”

  Bella grasped her twin’s hand and squeezed it. Her skin was cool. Waxy.

  “Miss Sophie taught me … my letters.”

  “I thought that was illegal, for both you and her!”

  Daphne smiled. “You thought right.” Her lips fell flat once more. “She been through so much with her mama … and now she tryin’ to do so much more …” Daphne’s eyes were opaque. “She gonna blame herself for me dyin’. Tell her not to. My helpin’ at Libby … brought you back to Abraham … Now. Stay with her, or I fear she gonna end up … like her mama …” Her lashes fluttered against her hollow cheeks.

  “What happened—?”

  Daphne pressed Bella’s hand, ever so slightly. “Promise … to stay … until she fine.” She wheezed as she drew in another breath. “If you love me … pour it out … on her.”

  “I do love you,” Bella gasped.

  “Love you …”

  Tears spilled down Bella’s cheeks. “I’m sorry I didn’t take better care of you, on the island, and here. If I had come sooner …” Her voice trailed to a whisper, as regret and sorrow choked her. “I missed you,” she squeezed past the lump in her throat. She hadn’t realized how much until she said it.

  Eyes suddenly flaring open, Daphne sucked at the air, mouthed, “My babies,” and exhaled her last, long breath.

  Every ragged breath Bella drew was a chain of broken glass shredding through her lungs. She bowed her forehead over Daphne’s hand, whispered, “I miss you,” and wept. Her throat ached so intensely, her stomach turned in sympathy.

  “Bella?” Sophie.

  Sluicing the tears from her cheeks, Bella turned. Caught Sophie’s anguished gaze. Her complexion snowy white, Sophie covered her face with her hands and sank to the floor in a pool of faded black mourning. Rocking back and forth on her knees, Sophie’s sobs racked her shoulders and stabbed into every corner of the shadow-laced sickroom. “I’m sorry!” she gasped. “I’m so s-s-sorry, forgive me, B-Bella, G-God forgive m-
me!”

  Bella’s heart burned. Could she handle Sophie’s pain, as well? Lord! she prayed. Help me love that girl like Daphne did. Help me love her like You do.

  Releasing her sister’s cold hand, Bella crossed to Sophie, and knelt upon the black skirt that radiated from her like grief. It’s not your fault, Bella should have said, but couldn’t. Instead, she laid her hand on Sophie’s shuddering back, and the young woman leaned into Bella’s shoulder, sobbing. “She’s where she wants to be now,” Bella managed to say, to herself as much as to Sophie. “She’s free.”

  At this, Sophie began to quiet, but did not move away. As she rubbed the tears from her face, her shirtsleeve pulled down from her wrist, revealing a razor-sharp scar. A barb of alarm shot through Bella. Take care of Miss Sophie. Daphne’s dying words echoed in her mind.

  “Lord, be the light in the valley of these shadows,” Bella prayed as her tears dampened the blonde curls of the woman who had owned her sister. And help me know what to do.

  Richmond, Virginia

  Thursday, December 3, 1863

  Dusk. Water sloshing below Canal Street. The faint smell of sewer in the air. Shouts. Pounding footsteps. The echoes of a fight bouncing off the river. Sophie’s handkerchief, growing damp in her grip, white against the darkness that cloaked her. Daphne’s lifeless form in the hastily dug grave surged in her mind, and she shoved it from her. Grief frayed the edges of her composure. But war did not pause for a woman to collect herself, but forged ahead, relentlessly. So must Sophie. Lord, help.

  The door of the dead-house opened ever so slowly, and suspense wrung Sophie’s chest. Then Dr. Lansing emerged like Lazarus from his tomb, his face nearly as white as her kerchief.

  Slowly, she waved the small square of fabric like a flag in front of her skirt, until his head stopped turning and fixed upon it. Sophie swiveled, clasped her hands behind her back and let her kerchief trail down. A man’s heart deviseth his way: but the Lord directeth his steps. The ancient proverb reverberated in her mind as she prayed that God would direct their steps tonight, indeed.