“How dreadful,” Sophie murmured, and meant it. Arson, even attempted arson, was a horrifying, inhumane form of persuasion.
“’Course, I wouldn’t be surprised if Union loyalists had something to do with it.” He slanted his eyes at her. “You’re not still delivering food to Libby Prison, are you?”
She shook her head. “There’s barely enough food for our own household.”
He nodded, apparently satisfied. “Good. I’d hate for you to be lumped in with their lot. Their reputation grows more ominous by the day.”
“Oh? How so?”
Moonlight glimmered in his eyes. “Some say the Unionists want to arm the prisoners, although it’s an outlandish idea. How could it possibly be done? Where would they get the weapons? Even our own soldiers don’t have enough.” He shook his head. “Any chance they get to subvert the Confederate government, they’ll take. But as for arming the thirteen thousand prisoners into a force to be reckoned with—I have no fear of that. Neither does the Secretary of War, from what Hayes tells me.”
She entwined her fingers with his. “He believes we’re secure?”
“He must, or at least he hopes so. Hoke’s and Kemper’s brigades are gone to North Carolina; Pickett’s got his in or around Petersburg. Certainly if he thought Richmond were in danger they’d be kept closer.”
Hoke, Kemper, North Carolina, Sophie repeated to herself. Pickett, Petersburg. Easy to remember.
“Three regiments of cavalry were disbanded by General Lee for want of horses, though,” Lawrence continued, and suddenly Sophie wondered why he would share such a thing with her. Unless he suspected she would feed the information to the North. Unless it was false, a tempting trap.
“If you ask me, we’ve let our guard down. We’re more vulnerable to a raid now than we’ve ever been. Still, if the Yanks should come with anything less than thirty thousand cavalry and fifteen thousand infantry to support them, we’d repel them easily.”
Thirty thousand cavalry. Fifteen thousand infantry. What was Lawrence thinking, to share these numbers with her?
“Forgive me, darling, I didn’t mean to bore you.” He pulled her close and kissed her cheek. “A woman like you would have no interest in such matters, now would you?”
A nervous laugh tickled her lips. If she agreed, he may never speak like this again. If she didn’t, surely he would wonder. “I’m always interested in whatever you want to tell me, dear.” Sophie could only hope that her own performance was far more convincing than what they’d seen on the stage tonight.
Libby Prison, Richmond, Virginia
Friday, January 22, 1864
Five officers escaped from Libby Prison with nothing more than an open door and civilian clothing on their backs. Harrison’s most recent article in the Libby Chronicle echoed in his mind as he lay on his back and stared bleakly at the cobwebbed rafters overhead. Speculation as to where the civilian suits of clothing were found will be covered by the Rumor Mill in another section of this paper. The rest of us are rewarded for staying with tightened security. We are told the guards will also routinely bayonet the corpses in the dead-house to discourage shamming.
Not exactly the news anyone had wanted to hear. Least of all the men who had been digging in the putrid tunnels for more than a month. Hope had dwindled in equal proportion to their strength until both were all but snuffed out. When they had begun work on Tunnel Three, Rose and Hamilton directed the teams to work around the clock so they would reach success all the faster. Those not present for morning and afternoon roll call had been covered by other tunnelers who scurried to the end of the line as soon as Libby clerk Erasmus Ross had counted their heads the first time. Other prisoners oblivious to the tunnelers’ true design joined the fun, and confounded the small guard they called Little Ross, when his count exceeded the actual number of prisoners on the roll.
Starving by inches, like the rest of the twelve hundred men at Libby, Harrison did not know how much longer his body would conform to his undying desire to escape. It doesn’t matter anymore, anyway. Despair landed upon his chest like a vulture, ready to pick his spirit clean.
The day-and-night excavation had sped their digging along until they reached the small sewer. When they discovered the wood-lined pipe was too narrow to admit a man, they dismantled the lining and forged ahead.
In vain. Harrison groaned at the memory. The large sewer, which had been their object all along, was lined with seasoned oak, hard as railroad iron and three inches thick. We can saw our way in, Harrison had told his squad, propping up his own hope along with theirs. We cut through those massive timbers while digging Tunnel One, we can do it again here. We’re too close to give up now.
They assaulted the wood with a vengeance only prisoners of war on the brink of escape can muster. Sewage oozed into the tunnel, filling the small space with the worst stench they’d ever endured. One man fainted from the smell alone.
Their chisels barely dented the oak. Their penknives snapped. Their stolen hatchet, by now, was too dull to be useful. Their candles would not stay lit, despite the fanners’ best efforts to keep air in the pipe. The thirteen workers gave up. Only Colonel Rose and Major Hamilton remained convinced escape was within reach.
Kent House, Richmond, Virginia
Friday, January 22, 1864
In the marble fireplace of the library, marigold and saffron tongues of flame leaped and curled around blackening wood. Hands shaking, Sophie unclasped the locket around her neck. The two-inch sterling silver oval was just large enough to hold the folded-up cipher from Elizabeth Van Lew. She pulled it from between the images of her parents. After gauging Captain Russell’s cues for three days to determine whether he was trying to trap her, she could not bear to wait any longer.
Lord, she prayed, direct us.
The foolscap whispered as she smoothed it out on her father’s desk. She could not imagine how he would react if he knew what she was doing. It was difficult enough to imagine him at all anymore. His short missives told her that he lived, and not much more than that. She prayed for his safe return, even as she willfully aided the army that held him captive.
She bent over the cipher now, and found the letter she wanted within the grid. Each row and column was marked with its own number, like the latitude and longitude markings on a map. With her fingertips, she found the letter she wanted to use, then drew lines to the digits at the left and bottom of the page, and wrote them down as a pair to signify the single letter. It was a tedious process, indeed, but one that lowered their risk of discovery. Without the cipher, Sophie’s message would be an insensible string of numbers. With it, Elizabeth Van Lew would be armed with valuable intelligence to deliver to General Butler. Confirm with other sources, Sophie had added, just in case Lawrence was testing her.
I don’t hate Virginia, I hate slavery, she told herself as she rolled up her message as tightly as possible. She prayed it would bring more good, ultimately, than harm. If Richmond civilians were to suffer from her actions, Sophie would suffer right along with everyone else, and rightly so. I hate war. God, bring the end. And please, she added, bring Joel and Asher Blair home safely. For their sakes and for their mother’s.
With her missive now a tiny rod of paper, she held counsel with Bella.
“Tomorrow I’d like you to go to market with Rachel. Find the Van Lew cook’s assistant, Elizabeth Draper. Do you know her?”
Bella did.
“Good. She carries a basket of eggs identical to this one.” Sophie pointed to an empty basket on the desk. “Only ours has a small blue mark on the handle, here. In the morning, fill it with three eggs and this false one.” She drew an empty eggshell from the basket. The hole in the bottom through which she had drained the yolk was half as large as the diameter of a pencil. Into this opening, she inserted her rolled-up message.
Bella’s eyes were bright as she followed Sophie’s movements. “And we switch the baskets while we chat.”
“Exactly.” Sophie pushed a curl back o
ver her ear. “There is some risk involved, you understand.”
“Could this help get my Abraham free?”
With cautious hope, Sophie nodded.
“I’ll do it.” She plucked the egg basket from the desk and swished from the room. As Sophie watched her go, she prayed for her protection, and—one more time—that the information she passed would speed the end of the war with minimal further bloodshed.
Moments later, Fischer appeared at the door, eyes dark behind his spectacles, mustache crooked like a furry caterpillar. “Miss Kent.”
“Come in, please. What’s on your mind?”
“Well, if I may speak freely, Miss.” He bowed. “May I?”
“Of course. Please sit.”
He obeyed, but perched on the edge of the armchair with back as straight as a board. “I have held my tongue as long as possible. You know it’s not in my nature to interfere. I thought there would be no need, that the problem would pass by on its own. But Bella is still here.”
Sophie’s brow knitted. “I don’t see her as a problem, Fischer.”
“I don’t trust her. Did I see her with an egg basket in the hallway just now? At night? What on earth could she be doing?” Firelight reflected on his spectacles, and his very eyes appeared to dance with flame.
Sophie smiled coldly. “I gave it to her, just a moment ago. Set your mind at ease.”
“But why—”
She raised her eyebrows, looked at him pointedly. During all his years of service, he’d never once questioned her father. Neither should he question her.
He clamped his mouth shut, his mustache concealing his lips once more. Then, “You are a kind and generous young woman.”
“Thank you.”
“Easily swayed by sentiment. Forgive me, Miss, I would not speak so if Mr. Kent were at home, but in his absence, I do feel some obligation to speak common sense to you, from a male perspective.”
Her cheeks burned. “Say your piece, Mr. Fischer.”
“Bella is colored.”
“Yes, she is. And free, as you are, and as I am.”
“She is a Negro.” His tone barbed Sophie. “She should not sleep in this house. It has gone to her head and given her airs, as though she were your equal.”
“She is. Mrs. Jamison is my guest, here at my pleasure.”
Fischer reddened. “You don’t know how it looks.”
“To whom?” Sophie stood, and so did he. “I thought I made it clear that Bella’s presence was not to be discussed outside these walls. Telling anyone that she is here would be a serious breach of my trust in you, Mr. Fischer.”
He was shaking his head. “No, no, I never said a word.”
“See that you don’t. To anyone.”
Fischer adjusted the glasses on his nose. “You’ve changed, Miss Kent. I’m not sure your father would—recognize you.”
Sophie nodded curtly. “Thank you for the compliment. Good night.”
Libby Prison, Richmond, Virginia
Saturday, January 23, 1864
This is the one, Caldwell. I can feel it.” Colonel Rose’s large eyes looked wild between the shaggy hair falling over his brow and the beard growing like a shrub from his face.
Harrison grunted and rolled onto his side, though it was neither morning nor night. Time had ceased to exist. “I’ve heard that one before, you know.”
“So you have, so you have.” Rose cleared his throat, hugged his ankles as he sat rocking next to Harrison.
“You make me dizzy.” He slapped his hand over his eyes. Truly, he was in no mood for company. If he were, he would have joined the four-man-deep columns marching double-quick together just to keep warm. Instead, he lay here, half-frozen, while the struggling fire ate the wooden partitions from the privy, the firewood supply being spent.
“Caldwell. Why are you here?”
Harrison looked through his parted fingers at the rafters overhead. “Depends on who you ask. Chaplain Putnam says it’s by God’s design. I’d say it has more to do with my own ambition, for better or worse.”
“Ambition to do what?”
“To write.” He folded bony hands atop his concave stomach. “An important story.”
“Yes. If I recall correctly, your entire aim was to discover and pen an exclusive article on Libby Prison, based on your own eyewitness account, the likes of which had never been read before.”
His eyelids drifted closed. “Something like that.” He yawned and rubbed his hand over his shorn head, fingers feeling for vermin.
“You’re missing it.”
Harrison looked at Rose, frowning.
“Your story. It’s happening downstairs.” He cut his voice low, looked right and left with those wild eyes. “We have a new tunnel that doesn’t touch the sewer. This is the one. We’re getting a half-inch deeper with every chisel stroke.”
A half-inch. Compared to their previous labors, this was quite a lot.
“But Hamilton can’t fan air into the tunnel, plus pull out the cuspidor, empty it, and send it back to me simultaneously. We’re calling back the work teams. Will you join us, and be part of the story yourself? Or will you stay here and write about the escape afterward in the Libby Chronicle?”
Harrison sat up and rolled the kinks from his neck. It was not a difficult decision. “I’m in.”
He plunged back into the work with an energy that would have made his mining father proud. Tunnel Four soon grew longer than the previous three, and the sense of suffocation hovered over Harrison as he dug. The new goal, Hamilton had explained, was to dig beneath the empty lot east of the prison, and pop up on the other side of the fence, near the warehouse that stored all those boxes shipped from the North to Libby’s inmates.
Though the tunnel was twenty-four inches by eighteen inches at its portal, at one point the width cinched to a mere sixteen inches. Harrison, Rose, and the others wriggled through it face down, flat on their bellies, gagging and choking on the impure air. By the time each digger emerged from the portal after his shift, he was more dead than alive. Rats remained a constant nuisance, but now served a greater purpose. When they made more noise than usual, it signaled the approach of Rebel guards, who now searched every room of the prison since the five had escaped earlier this month. As soon as the south door of the cellar opened, the digging team scattered like roaches to the darkest, foulest smelling corners of the room in the seconds it took for the guards’ eyes to adjust to the darkness.
Still, the work continued through day and night, the off-duty tunnelers filling in for the absent ones during the twice daily roll calls. Until one day, Little Ross had come in with his superior officers, and taken the roll call by name. Harrison and a soldier named McDonald had been working below, and their absences were noted.
“You have two choices,” Hamilton told them when he came downstairs with the news. “Come back up and talk your way out of the jam with Warden Turner. Or stay here and hope they don’t find you while we spread the word you escaped days ago.”
McDonald chose to go back upstairs.
Harrison decided to stay.
It proved to be a lonely choice. Save for the Rebel guards, rats, and lice that came to visit, during the day Harrison was alone until the workers came at night, bringing food for his hollow stomach. With the roll calls now being administered by name rather than head count, Hamilton had ceased all daytime digging. Harrison did not blame him.
He did, however, blame himself. If he had exercised more caution his first night in Richmond, if he had only waited until he had a pass, he wouldn’t be here in the first place. If he hadn’t bragged about penning the Weeping Time story, perhaps he would have been released by now. He and Bella would be safely North.
Ambition is such a two-edged sword, Harrison mused as he sat behind a pile of straw. Without it, one accomplishes nothing and is condemned as lazy and shiftless. Too much of it, and one finds himself alone at the top of the ladder, or with one misstep, falling headlong toward the ground.
&n
bsp; Harrison Caldwell was driven. Or at least, he had been until he’d landed here, with nowhere to go but circles or dead-end tunnels. That drive to succeed, to tell stories no one else had written, had been tied to the larger purpose of serving the public. But he’d be lying if he said he didn’t also want to be famous.
Now look at me. He could no longer even claim to be editor of a prison newspaper. By day, he sat in a putrefied cellar, pinching lice off his skin and shooing away rats, since it was too dangerous to tunnel alone. But it wasn’t just being useless that bothered him.
Being captive in Libby Prison also taught him that he was expendable. No editor in the North missed him, or even knew he was gone. The American press still whirred and clanked without him, and they were none the worse off for his absence.
But Bella was. If he were Abraham, he’d be livid that his wife had been brought down here and was unable to get home safely. If only he could figure out a way to get Abraham to the tunnel they were digging, too. But there were two thick walls between the east cellar and where the colored prisoners were held in the west cellar, two warehouses over. Even Rose and Hamilton had said it couldn’t be done. Another failure.
Sophie’s face surged in his mind, too. If that map he’d left in his cloak had been found, he’d brought danger to her doorstep and was powerless to do anything about that from here.
Groaning, Harrison bent his head into his hands. Lord, he prayed, though he hadn’t approached the Almighty in some time. This is not how I’d planned things to go. I’d like to fix things myself, but as You can see, I’m stuck. In more ways than one. Please, don’t let my indiscretions bring harm to Bella and Sophie. Keep them safe. I’ve been seeking my own fame and fortune for years, but right now, all I want is to be free and to protect the ones I’ve endangered. Please. Get me out of here. Then show me the path You—
The south door flung open, and Harrison instantly covered himself with straw just as several Rebel guards strode across the cellar, stopping a few yards from the tunnel entrance. Harrison scarcely dared to breathe. Unlike the usual cursory visits, this one reeked of purpose. Peering from his hiding place, he watched as two guards strode back and forth in front of the portal without noticing it.
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