Copperhead

by Bernard Cornwell

  “It’s certainly foolish,” Adam said. His heart was suddenly racing as fear whipsawed through him. Scully and Lewis? Was Webster using one of those names as a disguise? Was the truth being beaten out of the two men even now? There were terrible rumors about the punishments given to traitors in the secret cells of the Confederate prisons, and Adam almost whimpered as another pang of terror soured his gut. He forced himself to look calm and to take a sip of the hot coffee, all the while reminding himself that he had not signed the two long documents he had sent to Webster, and had taken pains to disguise the handwriting on both detailed reports. Even so, the shadow of the noose suddenly seemed very close. “They’ll hang, I suppose?” he asked casually.

  “The bastards certainly deserve to, but Lewis is English and the wretched Scully is Irish, and we need London’s goodwill more than we need to watch two of the Queen’s subjects twitching at the end of a pair of ropes.” Meredith sounded disgusted at the leniency. “The bastards won’t even get ten kinds of hell beaten out of them in case the British government objects. And they know it, which is why the two bastards aren’t admitting anything.”

  “Maybe they have nothing to admit?” Adam suggested lightly.

  “Of course they do. I’d make the clods squeal,” Meredith said darkly.

  “I won’t trouble Johnston with the news,” Adam said. “I’ll wait till they have something to say.”

  “I just thought you’d like to know,” Meredith said. He clearly felt that Adam’s response had been too muted, but Major Faulconer had the reputation of being an odd fish around the headquarters. “Can’t tempt you to Screamersville tonight?” Meredith asked. Screamersville was the black section of Richmond and held the city’s wildest brothels, gambling houses, and liquor dens. Liquor was officially banned in Richmond in an attempt to cut the crime rate, but no provost patrol would dare go into Screamersville to enforce the law, any more than they would try to confiscate the champagne from the city’s expensive maisons d’assignation.

  “I have other engagements tonight,” Adam said stiffly.

  “Another prayer meeting?” Meredith asked mockingly.

  “Indeed.”

  “Say one for me, Faulconer. I plan to need a prayer or two tonight.” Meredith swung his boots off the desk. “Take your time with the coffee. Just put the mug back in our room when you’re done.”

  “Surely. Thank you.”

  Adam drank the coffee and watched the shadows lengthen across Capitol Square. Clerks were scurrying with bundled documents from the government offices to the Capitol Building while a patrol of provosts, their bayonets fixed, paced slowly down Ninth Street past the Bell Tower, which rang the alarm for fires and other city emergencies. Two small children walked hand in hand with one of their family’s slaves, going uphill toward the statue of George Washington. Two years ago, Adam thought, this city had seemed as homely and friendly as Seven Springs, his family’s estate in Faulconer County, but now it reeked of danger and intrigue. Adam shuddered, thinking of the trapdoor falling open beneath his feet and the void swallowing him and the roughness of a rope around his neck and the snatch as the noose jerked taut, then he told himself he had no need to worry, for James Starbuck had given his word never to reveal Adam’s name, and James was a Christian and a gentleman, so it was quite impossible for Adam to be betrayed. The arrest of Scully and Lewis, whoever they were, need not concern Adam. Thus reassured, he sat at his desk, drew a piece of notepaper toward him, and wrote an invitation for Captain Nathaniel Starbuck and Miss Victoria Royall to take tea at the Reverend Mr. Gordon’s home on Friday.

  JOHN SCULLY AND PRICE LEWIS ADMITTED NOTHING, NOT even when documents that might have incriminated a saint were found sewn into their clothing. Lewis, the Englishman, had a map of Richmond on which had been sketched an outline of the new defenses dug by General Lee with hatched marks suggesting where the existence of redoubts and star forts was merely surmised. A memorandum attached to the sketch map demanded confirmation of the assumptions and an assessment of the artillery contained in the new works. John Scully, the small Irishman, carried an unstamped letter addressed to the Honorary Secretary of the Confederate Army Bible Supply Society which had been signed by a Major James Starbuck of the U.S. Army who described himself as “brother in Christ” to the letter’s unnamed addressee. The letter said that the enclosed instructions could be trusted, and those instructions begged for a complete and up-to-date enumeration of the Confederate troops under General Magruder’s command with especial care taken to report the total number of troops available in the towns, garrisons, and forts between Richmond and Yorktown.

  John Scully, confronted with the letter that had been discovered sewn into the lapel of his jacket, swore he had bought his clothes from a sutler outside the city and had no idea what the letter meant. He smiled at the Major conducting the interrogation. “I’m sorry, Major, so I am. I’d help you if I could.”

  “Damn your help.” Major Alexander was a tall fleshy man with bushy sidewhiskers and an expression of perpetual indignation. “If you don’t talk,” he threatened Scully, “we’ll hang you.”

  “That you won’t, Major,” Scully said, “seeing as how I’m a citizen of Great Britain.”

  “Damn Britain.”

  “And ordinarily I’d agree with you, so I would, but as of this moment, Major, this is one Irishman who would go on his knees and thank the Almighty God for making him British.” Scully smiled like a cherub.

  “Being British won’t protect you. You’ll hang!” Alexander threatened, but still Scully would not talk.

  Next day came news that the Yankees had at last broken out of their lines at Fort Monroe. General McClellan had arrived on the peninsula, and all Virginia now knew from where the thunderbolt would fall. A mighty army was advancing against the slender defenses strung between Yorktown and Mulberry Island. “Another month,” Price Lewis assured John Scully, “and we’ll be rescued. We’ll be heroes.”

  “If they don’t hang us first,” John Scully said, making the sign of the cross.

  “They won’t. They daren’t.”

  “I’m not so sure.” Scully’s confidence was weakening.

  “They won’t!” Price Lewis insisted. But the very next day a military tribunal was summoned to the jail and presented with the map of Richmond’s defenses and the letter addressed to the Honorary Secretary of the Confederate Army Bible Supply Society. The evidence overcame whatever scruples the tribunal might have felt for the prisoners’ nationality, and less than an hour from the moment when the court had convened, the president sentenced the two prisoners to death. Scully shuddered in fear, but the tall Englishman simply sneered at his judges. “You won’t dare do it.”

  “Take them away!” The Lieutenant Colonel who had presided over the tribunal slammed his hand on the table. “Hanged by the neck, you dogs!”

  Scully suddenly felt the wings of death’s angel very close above him. “I want a priest!” he pleaded with Major Alexander. “For the love of God, Major, bring me a priest!”

  “Shut your face, Scully!” Price Lewis called.

  The Englishman was hurried down the corridor to his cell while John Scully was put into a different room where Major Alexander brought him a bottle of rye whiskey. “It’s illegal, John. But I thought it might help your last hours on earth.”

  “You won’t dare do it! You can’t hang us!”

  “Listen!” Alexander said, and in the silence Scully could hear the sound of hammering. “They’re building the scaffold ready for the morning, John,” Alexander said softly.

  “No, Major, please.”

  “Lynch, his name is,” Alexander said. “That should please you, John.”

  “Please me?” Scully asked, bemused.

  “Doesn’t it please you to be hanged by another Irishman? Mind you, old Lynch is no craftsman. He bungled his last two. One was a black fellow who took twenty minutes to die and it wasn’t a pretty sight. Dear me, no. Twitching he was, and pissing himself,
and the breath scraping in his throat like sandpaper. Terrible.” Alexander shook his head.

  John Scully crossed himself, then closed his eyes and prayed for strength. He would be strong; he would not betray Pinkerton’s trust. “All I want is a priest,” he insisted.

  “If you talk, John, you won’t hang in the morning,” Alexander tempted him.

  “I’ve nothing to say, Major, except to a priest,” Scully insisted bravely.

  That night a priest came to John Scully’s new cell. The priest was a very old man, though he still had a fine head of long white hair that flowed well below the collar of his soutane. His face was a dark brown, as if his life had been spent in the tropical mission fields. It was an ascetic, kindly face, touched with a hint of abstract intellectualism that suggested his thoughts had already gone to a higher and better world. He settled on Scully’s bed and took an old, threadbare scapular from his case. He kissed the embroidered strip of cloth and placed it around his thin neck, then made the sign of the cross toward the prisoner. “My name is Father Mulroney,” he introduced himself, “and I’m from Galway. I’m told you want to make a confession, son?”

  Scully knelt. “Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned.” He crossed himself.

  “Go on, my son.” Father Mulroney’s voice was deep and fine, the voice of a man who has preached sad things to great halls. “Go on,” Mulroney said again, his marvelous voice low and comforting.

  “It must be ten years since my last confession,” Scully began, and then the dam broke and he poured out the list of all his transgressions. Father Mulroney closed his eyes as he listened, the only sign of wakefulness being the slight beat of one of his long, bony fingers on a delicate ivory crucifix that hung on a simple iron chain about his neck. He nodded once or twice as Scully listed his pathetic sins: the whores cheated, the oaths made, the trifles stolen, the lies told, the religious duties ignored. “My mother always said I’d come to a bad end, so she did.” The small Irishman was almost weeping as he finished.

  “Peace, my son, peace.” The priest’s voice was dry and whispery, yet very comforting. “You repent of these sins, my son?”

  “I do, Father, oh God, I do.” Scully had begun to weep. He had fallen forward so that his head rested on his hands, which, in turn, were supported by the old man’s knees. Father Mulroney’s face showed no reaction to Scully’s terror and remorse; instead he lightly stroked the Irishman’s head with long fingers and stared around the white-painted cell with its lantern and its grim barred window. The tears ran down Scully’s face to make a damp patch on Mulroney’s faded and threadbare soutane. “I don’t deserve to die, Father,” Scully said.

  “Then why are they hanging you, my son?” Mulroney asked, and went on stroking Scully’s short black hair. “What have you done that’s so bad?” the priest asked in his sad, kind voice, and Scully told how Allen Pinkerton had asked Lewis and Scully to travel south to look for the missing agent, the best agent the North possessed, and how Pinkerton had assured them that as British subjects they would be safe from any rebel recriminations, yet how, despite that assurance, they had been condemned to hang by the military tribunal.

  “Of course you don’t deserve to die, my son,” Mulroney said with indignation in his voice, “for all you ever did was try to help your fellowman. Isn’t that the truth of it?” His fingers still soothed Scully’s fears. “And did you ever find your man?” Father Mulroney’s own Irish accent seemed to have grown stronger during the confession.

  “We did, Father, and the reason he disappeared is that he’s ill. Sick as a dog, he is. He’s got the rheumatism fever. He was supposed to be in the Ballard House Hotel, only he moved, and it took us a day or so to find him, but the poor man’s in the Monumental Hotel now, and one of Pinkerton’s ladies is looking after him there.”

  Mulroney calmed Scully, who was gabbling the words desperately. “The poor man,” Mulroney said. “You say he’s ill?”

  “He can hardly move. He’s terrible sick, so he is.”

  “Give me his name, my son, so I can pray for him,” Mulroney said softly, then the priest sensed a hesitation in Scully, and so he tapped his fingers in very mild reproof. “This is a confession you’re making, my son, and the secrets of the confessional go to the grave with a priest. What you say here, my son, is a secret between you, me, and God Almighty. So tell me the name so I can pray for the poor man.”

  “Webster, Father, Timothy Webster. And he was always the real spy, not us. Price and I are just doing a favor for Pinkerton by coming to look for him! Webster’s the real spy. He’s the best one there is!”

  “I shall pray for him,” Mulroney said. “And the woman who’s looking after the poor man, what would her name be, my son?”

  “Hattie, Father, Hattie Lawton.”

  “I shall pray for her too,” Mulroney said. “But the Major in the prison here, what was his name? Alexander? He said you were carrying a letter?”

  “We were only to deliver the letter if we never found Webster, Father,” Scully said, then described the bulletin board in the vestibule of St. Paul’s where the letter would have been tucked beneath the criss-crossed tape. “What’s the harm in delivering a letter to a church, Father?”

  “None at all, my son, none at all,” Mulroney said, then assured the frightened man that it had been a good confession. He gently lifted Scully’s head and told the Irishman he must make a good contrition and say four Hail Marys, then he absolved him in solemn Latin, and afterward he promised that he would seek mercy for Scully from the Confederate authorities. “But you know, my son, how little they listen to us Catholics. Or to us Irishmen, indeed. These southerners are as bad as the English, so they are. They’ve small love for us.”

  “But you’ll try?” Scully looked desperately up into the kindly eyes of the priest.

  “I shall try, my son,” Mulroney said, then gave the blessing and made the sign of the cross above Scully’s head.

  Father Mulroney walked slowly back to the jail’s main office where Major Alexander waited with a thin, bespectacled lieutenant. Neither of the officers spoke as Father Mulroney took off the scapular, then lifted the soutane over his head to reveal an old but finely cut black suit. There was a bowl of water on the table, and the old man began washing his hands as though he wanted to rid his fingers of the lingering touch of Scully’s hair. “The person you want,” the man who had called himself Mulroney now said in an accent that had nothing of Ireland in it at all, but only Virginia, “is a Timothy Webster. You’ll find him in the Monumental Hotel. He’s sick, so he shouldn’t give you any trouble. He has a female attendant called Hattie Lawton. She’s another of the scum, so take her as well.” The old man took a silver case from his pocket and extracted a slender, fragrant cigar. The bespectacled Lieutenant leaped forward and snatched up a candle from the table and offered it to the cigar. The old man sucked on the flame and then offered the Lieutenant a jaundiced look. “You’re Gillespie?”

  “Yes, sir, indeed, sir.”

  “What’s in the bag, Gillespie?” The old man nodded at a leather bag that hung from the Lieutenant’s shoulder. Gillespie opened the bag to reveal a brass funnel and a six-sided bottle made of dark blue glass.

  “My father’s oil,” Gillespie said proudly.

  The old man’s mouth twisted. “You were planning on administering the oil to the prisoners, perhaps?”

  “It works wonders with lunatics,” Gillespie said defensively.

  “I don’t care about your damn lunatics,” the old man snapped. “You can try it on another prisoner, one who doesn’t matter to anyone. But Lewis and Scully have to be spared.” His thin, ascetic face twitched with a spasm of disgust, then he smoothed his long silver hair back over his collar and looked at Alexander. “I fear political considerations dictate that the scum will have to live, just in case their deaths dissuade the British from helping us. But even the British won’t expect us to keep them in any comfort. Put them in the Negro section, let them break stone
for a few months.” He drew on the cigar, frowning, then gave orders that the letter addressed to the Honorary Secretary of the Confederate Army Bible Supply Society was to be put in the vestibule of St. Paul’s where it was to be watched night and day in case the spy came to collect it. “But arrest Webster first.”

  “Of course, sir,” Alexander said.

  The old man took a fine gold ring from his pocket. It was engraved with an ancient coat of arms, testimony to the man’s long pedigree. “Is it still raining?” he asked as he slipped the ring on a ringer.

  “It is, sir, yes,” Alexander said.

  “That will obstruct the Yankees’ approach, will it not?” the old man said grimly. The northerners’ advance on Yorktown was being slowed by mud and rain, but even so the old man knew what terrible danger the Confederacy faced. So little time, but at least this night’s work had uncovered one more spy and might even yield the traitor who skulked behind the mask of being the Honorary Secretary of the Confederate Army Bible Supply Society. The old man looked forward to finding that man and watching him swing on a rope’s looped end. He took a derringer pistol from his jacket pocket and checked that it was loaded, then picked up his cloak and hat. “I shall come in the morning to see this Webster for myself. Good day, gentlemen.” He crammed the hat on his long hair, then went out to where an antique carriage with varnished panels and gilded axle bosses waited in the slashing rain. A slave opened the door and folded down the carriage steps.

  Alexander let out a breath when the old man was gone, almost as though he sensed that a sinister presence had passed from the prison. Then he drew his revolver and checked that its percussion caps were firmly in place. “To work,” he told Gillespie. “To work! Let’s go and find Mr. Webster! To work!”