Shadow of Dawn

by Diaz, Debra

  “I’m sorry, Catherine. I’ve pushed you too hard.”

  She blinked her eyes and looked around her. Only trees, bare of leaves, and the dead undergrowth surrounded them for as far as she could see. The pallid rays of the winter sun slanted through the naked branches and she could tell it was almost dusk. Far off a deer leaped over a fallen log and disappeared, the sound of its running clear in the deep, cold silence.

  Clayton had brought the lunch basket and he rummaged around inside. “Eat this,” he said, handing her a torn piece of bread and an apple. While she ate, he poured water from the bottle into a cup and handed it to her.

  She began to feel better and finally made herself look at him. He was pulling off more bread for himself and pouring another cup of water.

  “Who are we running from?” she asked.

  He glanced at her briefly. “We mustn’t talk now. I promise you I’ll explain everything. We’ll be safe once we reach Richmond…they won’t risk following us there. I’ll take you to the hospital where you’ve been working so we can find a place to talk. Are you all right?”

  “I feel like an icicle about to break into a thousand pieces,” she said crossly.

  He stuffed the cups and the bottle of water back into the basket and got to his feet. “Stand up,” he said.

  She let him take her hands and pull her upright. “These gloves are too light, aren’t they, to do you much good. Here, take my coat.”

  “No,” she gasped, reaching out in a gesture of protest. “You’ll freeze to death. I won’t take it.”

  But he was already taking it off. He undid the catch at her throat and removed her cloak, put her arms forcibly into his coat sleeves even as she kept protesting, and buttoned it. Then unexpectedly he pulled her close against him, his arms enfolding her, and held her for a long moment.

  She turned her face against his chest so that her head rested beneath his chin. She felt warm and safe. But she had to ask.

  “Where is Andrew?” she whispered.

  He said nothing for a moment. Then he moved away a little, put her cloak back around her, and fastened it. He took the black scarf he had worn out of his pocket, placed it over the top of her head and tied it under her chin, so that her ears were covered against the cold. Only then did he pause, and look into her eyes.

  “Please, Catherine. Wait until we get to Richmond.”

  He helped her back onto her horse and they were on their way. But a suspicion, as certain as knowledge, took firm root in Catherine’s mind.

  ***

  It had grown dark by the time they reached the city. The street lamps had been lit and the windows of the houses glowed from within as they made their way to the hospital.

  They had had a scare. At least Catherine had been frightened out of her wits. Clayton acted as though this sort of thing happened every day. Forced by the density of the trees and the increasing darkness to draw nearer and nearer to the main road, they stopped abruptly at the sound of voices. The words carried clearly in the still night air.

  “Have you seen them?”

  “They haven’t been this way, sir.”

  The other man cursed. “I knew we should have taken the woods. Still, they had a good head start. Keep looking.”

  Catherine’s horse began to nicker, its breath pluming into the frosty air, and Clayton’s hand went out swiftly to cover its nose. The sound went undetected and they listened as hoof beats faded into the distance. One of those men had been Lieutenant Hadley.

  No one paid them any mind as they rode to the back entrance of the hospital, where an attendant took their horses.

  “Keep this one ready,” Clayton told the young man. “I’ll be right back.”

  He escorted Catherine down the corridors until he came to what appeared to be a doctor’s study. A man walked out of an adjoining room. He was gray-haired and gray-bearded and wore spectacles, which he adjusted as he peered at them.

  “Why, hello, Clayton. Hello, miss.”

  Catherine returned the greeting, still in a cloud of confusion. Clayton seemed to know his way around the hospital quite well. She recognized the doctor as one she’d seen before, though he never came to her ward and she did not know his name.

  “Dr. Edwards, this is Mrs. Kelly. May we use your office for a while? We need to have a private discussion.”

  “Why, certainly. I was just about to go back to the wards. Pleased to meet you, ma’am. I’ve seen you do some fine nursing. Good evening.”

  When he had gone, Clayton steered her toward the fireplace. The logs had burned low and he reached down to put more wood on top of them. The fire crackled and began to blaze. Too numbed to move, Catherine stood still and stared at it. Clayton removed her cloak from her, along with the coat, gloves and scarf. She became aware that he was putting on his overcoat.

  “You’re leaving?” she said, startled out of her strange lethargy.

  “There’s someone I must see. I won’t be long.” He roamed about the room for a moment, spotted a decanter, and poured some of the amber liquid into two glasses. “Drink this,” he said, handing one to her.

  She obeyed him simply because she was too weak to argue. She had never drunk liquor in her life. She made a face at the taste but managed to swallow it. Clayton took his in two gulps and set down the glass.

  “You’ve been very patient and very brave,” he said, going to stand before her. “Wait for me here. I’ll be back within the hour.”

  “But where are you going?” She noticed with a feeling of absurdity that her speech was slightly slurred, not because of the whiskey but because her tongue felt frozen.

  “I must let someone know what’s happened. Are you all right?”

  She nodded.

  “Why don’t you lie down on that sofa and rest?”

  She glanced at the sofa. “I will. Soon as I’m warm.”

  He squeezed her hands and left the room. She wondered how he could stand going back into the wintry night.

  A feeling of warmth came over her. She eyed the whiskey decanter. No, she had no idea how much was too much, and it wouldn’t do to have Clayton come back and find her reeling drunkenly about the room. Her legs felt strange enough already, as though she had been on a boat all day. She went down the hall to the washroom, where she stared, appalled, at her reflection in the little chipped mirror.

  Her face was chapped and red, her hairnet shredded, and her hair stuck out wildly in all directions. She combed it with her fingers and tied it back with the remains of the silk net. One of the buttons had come off her basque but there was nothing she could do about that.

  She returned to the study and sat down on the sofa, and before she knew it had fallen into a sleep so deep she didn’t even hear Clayton return. She woke when a hand touched her cheek and she jerked up, looking around in puzzlement to see him kneeling beside her.

  “I’ve brought some coffee,” he said, his voice quiet and serious.

  She sat up wearily. The fragrance of coffee filled the study. Clayton handed her a steaming cup and sat down in a chair opposite her. They sipped their coffee for a few moments in silence. Then Clayton set his aside and leaned forward a little, his elbows on the arms of the chair.

  “I’ll begin with Andrew.”

  Catherine set down her own cup, folded her hands in her lap, and waited. She felt strangely numb inside and wondered if it was the effect of the whiskey or her own body’s defense against what she knew to be an impending shock.

  “He’s dead, isn’t he?” she said, as he hesitated.

  He lowered his head, nodded, then lifted it to look at her directly. “I’m sorry, Catherine. I truly never meant for any of this to hurt you.”

  “When did he die?”

  Again he hesitated, but his gaze did not waver. “He died shortly after the battle of Sharpsburg.”

  “Why, that was just a few months ago! Why didn’t he write me, or…I’d heard nothing from him for a year before then!”

  Clayton stood up and walk
ed around the room, pausing to look at the doctor’s row of medical books, but she knew he didn’t really see them. There was something else he didn’t want to tell her. Then he turned around to face her and said, “Your husband was shot for desertion.”

  CHAPTER NINE

  Catherine remained silent, absorbing it. For some reason she was not shocked.

  “I’m sorry to have to tell you. You weren’t supposed to find out. After my work here was done I was going to quietly disappear and you would later receive word that I, as Andrew, had died.”

  “Mr. Pierce, I don’t think this entire charade was carried out just so I wouldn’t discover the truth about my husband.”

  He came back to her, waited a moment, and resumed his seat. “I don’t know why he didn’t write to you for so long. I assume it was because he was unhappy…he was trying to find a way out of the army. At Sharpsburg he hid in the woods with a few others during the battle. They were discovered. They were given a trial and…were executed.”

  Catherine said nothing.

  “You needn’t be ashamed. War has strange effects on even the bravest men. He had fought before. But either his courage or his belief in the cause ran out.”

  “Poor Andrew,” she said softly. “I never really knew him. We met just a few weeks before our marriage. And then when he came back…I knew that wasn’t Andrew. I thought it was because of what had happened to him. I mean, what you said had happened.”

  When Clayton didn’t answer at first, she put one hand over her eyes and said, “What you must think of me! I’ve been such a fool!”

  Slowly he reached out and drew away her hand, looking into her face until reluctantly she met his gaze. “I think you are a woman of courage and honor, and I respect you more than anyone I’ve ever known.”

  “Who are you?” she whispered, as tears came into her eyes. “Why have you done this?”

  He released her hand and got up once more to stand before the fire. He put his hand on the mantel and bent his head, staring into the flames as he searched for words.

  She had seen him stand just that way before, as Andrew.

  “My name really is Clayton Pierce. When the war started I was a newspaper correspondent, as I told you. I still write occasional dispatches for the Atlanta papers. I did quite a bit of that when you thought I was sleeping. No,” he added with a touch of humor in his voice, “I don’t really take laudanum. That was simply a…prop.

  “Before that I practiced law in Atlanta. It wasn’t exciting enough, I suppose, and I left that to work for the newspapers. For a while I stayed out of the army. I didn’t believe in secession but I finally decided I couldn’t take up arms against my own state. I started out as a scout in Jeb Stuart’s division. When he needed some intelligence work done across enemy lines, he asked me to do it. I became one of his agents.”

  “You mean you’re a spy!”

  He straightened and looked back at her, clasping his hands behind his back. “Yes, I’m a spy. This summer I was ordered to report to General Randolph at the War Department for special duty. I went to New York to meet with a French commissioner to arrange for a loan to the Confederate government. When I got back, I was given command of a new intelligence unit.” He paused, adding, “And that is what brought me into your life.”

  “But, you knew Bart—”

  “I really did meet Bart at the university, but we were only casual acquaintances. However, I knew hospitality would demand that he at least invite me to supper the day I met him, not quite by chance, at one of the local restaurants. I needed to establish contact with him and with other people, which was something ‘Andrew’ couldn’t do.”

  “But why did you have to pretend to be Andrew?”

  “I needed to be in the house. I wanted to find proof that a certain person was a traitor…selling information to the enemy. I also wanted to find out who his accomplices were.”

  “You mean Bart!”

  “Yes. He’s not a courier for the government, as he told you. He actually compiles military information and encodes it, then sends it out to the Yankees by couriers. For some reason he decided not to send his own men this time…it’s possible he’s sensed that someone is on his trail. You were less likely to be stopped and searched. It was quite a risk, but obviously one he was willing to take.”

  She felt as though she were floundering in a quagmire. “But that night on the balcony, Andrew was in his room…and then when you came to interview Andrew, how did you—” She broke off abruptly.

  He nodded and said dryly, “Madame Defarge.”

  A sob erupted from her throat. She jumped up and went to the door, but before she could throw it open and run away, he had grasped her arms and pulled her against him, while she wept in utter humiliation.

  “I was such a f-f-fool,” she said again, stuttering.

  “Don’t, Catherine. What else were you to believe when you saw me climbing up to the balcony? Nobody thinks you’re foolish. Mrs. Shirley is an agent, too.”

  One of his arms moved away from her as he dug in a pocket and handed her a handkerchief. She turned away, wiped her eyes and nose, and sat back down.

  “Please tell me the whole story,” she said, forcing a wan smile. “It can’t get any worse.”

  He sat across from her. As the tale unfolded, she realized he must trust her a great deal, for as far as she could tell he left nothing out.

  Early in the war, someone had been informing General McClellan of General Johnston’s movements, the number of his troops, even the exact quantity of his arms and other supplies. When Johnston was wounded and replaced by Robert E. Lee, the same thing continued to happen. In fact, an actual copy of Lee’s orders prior to the battle of Sharpsburg had somehow fallen into McClellan’s hands.

  There was sharp disagreement as to how it had happened—whether it was the work of a spy or a careless courier—but it precipitated the battle prematurely and brought immeasurable damage to the Confederates.

  Clayton had become convinced that someone in the attorney general’s office was leaking the information, for that was where his trail of investigation halted. That someone he believed to be Bart Ingram, though he still didn’t know how Bart obtained the information, since his job did not give him access to the military secrets he divulged to the enemy. But, there were ways.

  Security was lax in both armies, in spite of pleas by officers and secret

  service men to conceal vital information from all eyes except those of the top generals. In fact, in January of that year one of the Confederate generals had discovered an article in a Baltimore paper describing in detail a certain expedition he was about to undertake, forcing him to abandon it altogether. Likewise, the northern press had unwittingly supplied the South with statistics about its own army, as spies successfully smuggled newspapers below the Mason-Dixon line.

  Because it was highly unusual, Clayton and his associates had discussed at length the fact that Andrew Kelly, an officer, had been shot for desertion. (There was quite a bit of desertion in the army, Clayton said, but most of the time it was because the men needed to see to the welfare of their families, and they almost always returned. There had to have been no doubt about Andrew’s intentions for him to be executed.) In the course of his investigation of Bart Ingram, Clayton discovered that Andrew Kelly was married to a woman who lived in the same house with Bart.

  It was decided that Andrew’s death would not be recorded and Clayton would impersonate him in order to build a case against Bart and discover the identity of his cohorts. Clayton was about the same height and size as Andrew, and he managed to acquire the latter’s coat. Another trained agent, Mrs. Shirley, would accompany him in order to provide assistance when the necessity arose.