Then dust tickled the inside of Harrison’s nose. Pressure swelled and panic bloomed. He tried in vain to contain his sneeze, but it was useless. With his hand over his nose and mouth, the explosion inside his head was so loud, no doubt the guards had heard it. Harrison braced himself. “Something’s going on here,” said one of them, kicking at the straw that hid Harrison. “They’re up to something. Planning an escape, no doubt.”
Another guard exclaimed at the foul smell, while another kicked a rat from his way. “Godforsaken place. Let’s go.” But minutes fell from the clock in slow-motion before they actually gave up and left.
After the door slammed shut again, Harrison finally allowed himself to breathe, and thanked God he had not been caught. But the guards were close. Too close. It was only a matter of time before all would be lost.
Kent House, Richmond, Virginia
Thursday, February 4, 1864
“Gone?” Sophie’s knitting needles fell silent.
“That’s what Robert Ford said at the market just now.” Eyes shimmering, Bella crossed to the parlor fireplace and fed another log to the flames.
“You mean Harrison escaped?”
“Ford said ‘gone.’ Guards say he escaped more than a week ago. But I can’t imagine him leaving without at least getting word to me.”
“Bella.” Sophie’s needles clattered to the floor. Dread unfurled, filling her chest. “You don’t think …” She bit her lip to trap the words that beat upon her heart.
Bella turned, and a degree of compassion filtered through her eyes. She looked so much like Daphne at that moment, before she fell ill, it nearly stole Sophie’s breath.
“I think the best thing is to put it out of your mind, Sophie-girl. We can’t see what’s going on behind those walls. God’s got him, and us, right where He wants us. And Ford says the white prisoners have been planning something.”
“And the colored prisoners?”
Bella swiped the scarf off head and sat in a velvet armchair. “Not part of it, aside from passing information to them on the number of sentries and troops along the roads leading out from Richmond.”
“I’m sorry. I wish—”
“Wishing never did a lick of good. But if the officers get free, maybe they can help my Abraham and the others with him. They’re going to need safe houses.”
“I’m sure Elizabeth Van Lew will offer hers,” Sophie said.
“Still, we should be ready. Just in case.”
Nodding, Sophie rose from her chair. “I’ll get the blankets, pillows, and suits from my father’s bureau.” They would need to be clothed as civilians, as Dr. Lansing had, if they were to leave the city unnoticed.
“I’ll bring in pails of water, tin cups, empty buckets.”
They whisked toward their tasks, though surely no fugitives would come before nightfall. Still, with Fischer busy downstairs reconciling January’s expenses with the budget, the time to act was now.
Libby Prison, Richmond, Virginia
Saturday, February 6, 1864
Bang! The door to the west cellar burst open and little Erasmus Ross blew in, snow spotting his hair and mustache, and melting in droplets on his spectacles.
“Jamison!” he barked, and Abraham bolted to his feet, dropping the cornbread to the floor in his surprise. “Thought you could get away with it, did you?” Ross sneered as he marched toward a completely confounded Abraham.
Get away with it? He hadn’t done anything—except pass information from Robert Ford to Bella. Beads of sweat studded his brow. His breath grew short and quick. If he was in trouble for this, was Bella?
Before Abraham knew what was happening, Ross threw his fist into his ribs. Pain stabbed, knife-like, before burning white-hot. If there were a giant red X just on the spot where they’d been broken before, Ross could not have placed a more effective blow. Abraham’s breath seared.
Ross thrust his knee into Abraham’s groin, and Abraham folded in pain only to feel elbows plow between his shoulder blades. He stumbled, gripped his kneecaps to keep from collapsing on the floor.
Lord! Keep Bella safe, wherever she is. If taking this pain would somehow mean less for her, he would endure it without complaint.
“Follow me,” Ross growled.
Abraham remained rooted to the ground. Peter had followed Erasmus Ross. So had Elisha, Henry, and Raymond. They’d never been seen again.
A swift punch to his jaw, and Abraham tasted blood.
“I don’t say things twice. Now git.”
Abraham hazarded a glance at his fellow prisoners as he staggered out the door. Their eyes met his in silent, smoldering farewell. The wind bit through Abraham’s rags with a thousand feral teeth as he followed Ross’s footsteps around the side of the building and into the clerk’s first floor office. Curiously, Ross left the door to the outside slightly ajar. Without a word, he pointed behind his desk. Without looking at Abraham, he left the room.
Palms clammy, Abraham waited, watching the door through which the small clerk had just exited, straining his ears toward the receding footfalls. A robust fire blazed in the hearth a mere yard from him, its crackling heat prickling Abraham’s chilled skin. Above him, floorboards creaked and groaned as prisoners scuffed the second floor. Their muted voices rose and fell. But no one came back for Abraham.
In two long strides, he was behind the desk. Shock coursed through him like lightning. There on the chair, was a set of civilian clothing, and a pass for a male slave to be out without his owner before curfew. The other five escapees. So this was how they had done it. Little Ross sure does have folks fooled, Abraham thought as he rubbed his sore jaw.
He lifted the trousers and shirt from the chair. Five had escaped this way. Four had been recaptured. A one in five chance is better than none, he decided, and quickly replaced his prisoner’s rags with the clothing of a slave. Some trade. Pass in hand, he peered from the window and studied the timing of the sentinels. As long as they didn’t see him exit the building, once he was on the sidewalk, they’d have no cause to be any more suspicious of him as they were of any other person walking by on the street.
Lord, help.
A pattern emerged. He saw his chance. And took it. Head down, he affected a limp and made his unhurried way north on Twentieth Street on the west side of the prison.
“Halt!” A guard approached. “Pass?”
Abraham gave it to him with a bow, the way he’d seen other slaves behave around white folks here.
“Where you headed, boy?”
Abraham’s mind whirred, the setting sun so bright in his eyes it disoriented him. “Why, home to Massa, sah,” he said.
“And where you been?”
“Wall, I came down to de docks to see if dar be any work so as I could get some mo pay for Massa. He as like to rent me out, see? But dey ain’t no work to be had down dar. Dey neber is, but Massa sends me ebery week jes de same, jes in case der be a change!” He tapped his temple with his middle finger, like a fool.
The guard grunted. Handed his pass back to him. “Then git. Go on with you, now.”
Abraham bowed again, then limped north until he was past Cary Street, the northern border of Libby Prison, and to Main Street. Live oaks stretched overhead, their skeletal branches silhouetted against a burning sky. The sun was settling in for a long winter’s night.
Curfew was coming. There weren’t many black folks still on the street. The ones he found unaccompanied by whites, he stopped and asked with hoarse voice for directions to the home of Sophie Kent. He was close, he had to be. But so far, no one could answer his question.
Trying desperately not to look as aimless as he felt, Abraham walked the streets of the Confederate capital, careful to yield the sidewalk to those whose skin was brighter than his. He must look savage, indeed, with his face unshaven. He was sure he smelled, too, though his own nose had mercifully grown accustomed to it. Still, he searched for his wife the only way he knew how, relying on the Lord and a thin sheet of paper for his prot
ection. But with every wandering footstep, his time was running out.
Where are you, Bella?
In the Kent family kitchen house, Bella Jamison stood with her head held high and looked Otto Fischer straight in the eyes. Pearl busied herself brewing a weak pot of tea. Emiline bent over her ironing, while Lois and Rachel sat at the table, their eyes intent on their mending and knitting. They would not meet Fischer’s gaze, but Bella would.
“As the steward, the Kent finances are in my charge,” he was saying. “So are the rest of the staff.”
“I’m not staff.” And I do not take orders from you. She kept her voice level though the hour was late, and she was bone-tired.
“Then why are you going to market? Our resources are dwindling in proportion to the Confederate currency. We simply must leave the marketing to Pearl, or Rachel in her stead. They know best how to economize. There is no need for you to go, too.”
“I go of my own accord.”
“But why?” His eyebrows raised into his forehead.
Bella’s jaw bunched at his blatant desire to control her. “Do you censure every guest in this house, Mr. Fischer, or only the ones with brown skin?”
Emiline’s gaze flickered over to Bella, her eyebrows arched.
Fischer noticed. His eyes darkened, and storm clouds boiled in her belly. She should use caution. She was in Virginia, after all, where she had once been a slave and given birth to a slave. But she had put all that behind her. Scars itching across her back, Bella’s spirit refused to bow again.
“I am not a slave,” she said through gritted teeth, and could almost hear the other women suck in their breath. Pearl poked fiercely at the fire, and Lois’s knitting needles clicked faster. Emiline’s and Rachel’s hands grew still. Good. Let them listen. They needed to hear a brown-skinned woman with a strong, fearless voice. “I am as free as you are. You are neither my master nor my employer, and I do not answer to you. I seek to please God my maker, Sophie Kent as my hostess, and my own conscience. I do not mean to say I am above you. But don’t you dare set yourself over me.”
Wildly, Fischer’s gaze thrust at each of the other slaves in the kitchen. He grabbed Bella’s elbow and yanked her to a corner with a strength that belied his thin frame.
She jerked from his hold, every nerve tingling. “Do not touch me.” Her voice smoldered with warning.
“You should be whipped for such uppity talk!”
Outwardly, Bella did not flinch.
“Such talk about being free and equal—it gives them ideas.”
Bella folded her arms across her chest. “And here I thought ideas were a good thing. Wouldn’t you consider it an asset to have your help think, and learn, and learn to think?”
“Amen.”
Emiline’s voice was gossamer thin, but it startled Bella as much as it seemed to jar Fischer.
“You see!” he hissed at Bella. “She never said a word against me in her life. Never! You see how quickly they begin to forget their place.”
In the next instant, he towered over the sixteen-year-old laundress and slapped her. Placed his hand over hers on the handle of the hot iron. Lifted it toward her face.
Lois’s knitting needles dropped to the table as she pleaded for her daughter. “Please, sir, she didn’t mean nothing by it, she’s just a baby.”
Bella reached for him as though in slow motion, as though she were swimming through a room full of sand.
A pounding at the door, and Fischer put down the iron. Bella swept over to Emiline and Lois while Fischer opened the door. Brittle air invaded, and the fire ducked beneath its blast.
“Get out of here!” Fischer bellowed. “It’s past curfew! If you don’t get home to your master—or your shanty, if you call yourself free—I’ll take you to the slave pen for the night myself! Ugh! And take your stench with you!”
Fischer slammed the door, and the windows shivered. “Probably crawling with lice,” he muttered, inspecting his own sleeves.
The hair on Bella’s neck stood on end. “Who was that?” She stepped toward the door.
“Filthy Negro.”
“What did he want?”
“Irrelevant. Mr. Kent’s policy is that no colored males, for any reason, are ever to be allowed on the premises.”
“Because he’s afraid of arson?” The newspapers had confirmed that it was Jefferson Davis’s slave who had set the fire in the basement before running North last month.
“Because Mr. Kent’s entire family was murdered by them in the Nat Turner Rebellion.” He stalked over to her. “That is what happens when ideas are planted in minds not equipped to manage them. You court danger, Bella. If any of these women steals, runs away, or brings harm to Miss Kent in any form, I hold you personally responsible.”
But Bella was looking out the window, after the man Fischer had turned away. She ran out into the swirling snow, her skirts whipping about her legs, but there was no one in sight.
Libby Prison, Richmond, Virginia
Sunday, February 7, 1864, 1:00 a.m.
“Break through the surface, Caldwell.” Colonel Thomas Rose handed Harrison the chisel. “It’s time.”
If he hadn’t dropped to the floor immediately, Harrison’s knees would have given way beneath the wave of relief that now flooded him. Truly, if he did not breathe fresh air soon, he feared he would die of asphyxiation.
It will be over soon enough, Harrison thought as he wiggled through the tunnel. They’d advanced an average of five feet per night, which should put them on the other side of the empty lot, safely behind the fence by now, according to Captain John Gallagher’s calculations. The charming Irishman of the 2nd Ohio had cultivated enough goodwill with his captors that they allowed him to walk across the lot a few nights ago and check the warehouse for a box he felt sure had been sent to him. Of course, no such box existed, but by walking at a precise gait—as close to three feet as possible—he had measured the distance the tunnelers would have to cross. Fifty-two to fifty-three feet.
Right about … Harrison wormed forward another few yards as the tunnel slanted upward. Here. With a kiss to the chisel, and a prayer for God’s favor, he chipped away at the ice-encrusted earth above him. Dirt crumbled and fell on his face as he worked until heavenly, clean air poured into the tunnel. We did it. Harrison gulped in the cold, fresh air as a man in the desert would lap at a spring. Opening his eyes, he focused on the fence dividing the empty lot from the warehouse full of neglected relief boxes. And nearly lost his cornbread.
The fence was still in front of him. By almost ten feet.
Footsteps sounded on the ground near the hole, yet Harrison remained frozen in place by a horror stronger and colder than ice. The guard stopped within sight of Harrison and leaned on the fence, peering into the darkness on the other side. Don’t turn around. Don’t turn around. … The rushing of his blood in his ears drowned out every other sound. Sweat beaded and chilled his face as the guard stood there, listening. Only after what seemed like an eternity, did he walk away.
Harrison slipped back down the tunnel and wormed backwards until he was back in Rat Hell. “All is lost!” he gasped, still shaking from both exertion and mortification. “We came up too short!”
Kent House, Richmond, Virginia
Sunday, February 7, 1864, 2:30 a.m.
Sophie barely noticed the thunder’s rumble as she stabbed at her fire. After Bella told her what Fischer had done, she’d dismissed him. It was the right thing to do, of course. Even Mrs. Blair had said on their last visit that a servant who bullies another cannot be tolerated. Still, it soured her stomach. He’d served the Kent family faithfully for as long as she could remember. His volatility, however, was not acceptable. He’d become a liability. She’d given him a week to find new housing but had discharged him from his role as steward and head of the staff immediately. Besides, if money is as tight as he says, dropping a servant from the payroll is as reasonable a solution as any. Dully, she sat on her heels and watched the flames leap back to
life.
Her windows rattled. Strange, she thought, frowning. The thunder never stopped rolling. Tossing her braid over her shoulder, she went to her second-story window just in time to hear a church bell frantically peal. Then another church joined in, and another, then more. The tocsin in Capitol Square added to the discordant noise, until it seemed that all the bells in Richmond were competing for heaven’s attention. She stepped out onto her balcony in her slippers. That’s not thunder. It’s artillery. She should have recognized the sound immediately, from all they had endured during Union General McClellan’s failed Peninsula Campaign in the summer of 1862.
Sophie’s gut cinched. My missive to Elizabeth Van Lew. The recommendation for a raid. Had Elizabeth confirmed the intelligence with others? If this was a raid, it wasn’t going well. The fighting sounded as if it were as far away as Williamsburg, fully fifty miles distant.
Sophie hurried back inside the house and climbed up to the cupola for a better view. From her perch atop Church Hill, she could see lights winking throughout the city. People mobbing the streets in pandemonium. Two bony, sway-backed mules pulling mountain howitzers down the street toward the river. Small boys and old men running to join veterans and raw militia.
She turned toward Libby Prison, her breath fogging the glass. Wiping the condensation from her view, she squinted. Howitzers had appeared on the surrounding streets, aimed at the warehouse prisons and the James River bridges. Captain Russell’s words came rushing back at her then. The Rebels were terrified of a raid, and of the arming of the prisoners. So terrified they would kill the captives rather than risk their release?
Sophie whirled around in the cupola, taking in every view, grasping for comprehension but fearing she already understood. Her message had gotten to the Union general Butler. The raid was failing. But the prisoners would all be killed. Because of me.
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